Creative Director
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I want to add another plane of existence to Golarion to make fae have extraplanar origins (I need this to make a specific concept work. Fae are related to fey, but not the same. They are way more powerful and scary, and steal children.). What should I call the plane of the fae?
There's always the Seelie and Unseelie Courts; those are concepts we've deliberately avoided in Golarion, so you won't have to worry about us coming in and doing something different with them.
If I were you, though, I'd go with Annwn, the Celtic underworld.
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Creative Director
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James,
I know that that Golarion is a human-centric setting, and personally, I like this about, due in no small part to the various human ethnicity. I, and others with whom I've spoken, agree that they really aid the verisimilitude of the setting. I was wondering, though, given the apparent success of this little injection of flavor, can we ever expect to see the addition of a couple of demi-human subgroups? Might we see, for example, a page or two on how the dwarves of northern Avistan differ physically and culturally from those from the Five Kings Mountains, or on similar differences between elves from Kyonin and the Mordant Spire?
We don't have as many different ethnicities among the "demihumans," mostly because we don't want to overcomplicate an already complicated scene. That said... demihuman ethnicities DO exist. We'll delve into them in more detail some day... but for now, we have no immediate plans to do so.
Thanks.
Are you as impressed by this as I was?
It's a DeviantArt picture, totally SFW, and just about the most awesome thing I've ever seen, for multiple reasons. It combines my fascination with the American Civil War, mu love of all things Navy, my Anglophilia, and my interest in alternate history into one totally awesome work of art. So much win.
I want to add another plane of existence to Golarion to make fae have extraplanar origins (I need this to make a specific concept work. Fae are related to fey, but not the same. They are way more powerful and scary, and steal children.). What should I call the plane of the fae?There's always the Seelie and Unseelie Courts; those are concepts we've deliberately avoided in Golarion, so you won't have to worry about us coming in and doing something different with them.
If I were you, though, I'd go with Annwn, the Celtic underworld.
AAAAND
We don't have as many different ethnicities among the "demihumans," mostly because we don't want to overcomplicate an already complicated scene. That said... demihuman ethnicities DO exist. We'll delve into them in more detail some day... but for now, we have no immediate plans to do so.
Awesome idea Kelsey! And I'd looooove to see some demihuman ethnicities (I'd only trust paizo to go beyond "sand elves" and "wood dwarves" though. :P). Could you throw us some examples?
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Creative Director
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Thanks.
Are you as impressed by this as I was?
It's a DeviantArt picture, totally SFW, and just about the most awesome thing I've ever seen, for multiple reasons. It combines my fascination with the American Civil War, mu love of all things Navy, my Anglophilia, and my interest in alternate history into one totally awesome work of art. So much win.
By the sounds of it, I'm not as impressed by it as you are, but it IS a dang fine piece of art. One that almost makes me want to push Golarion forward in time... but then that madness passes when I realize how much mayhem that would cause!
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Creative Director
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Awesome idea Kelsey! And I'd looooove to see some demihuman ethnicities (I'd only trust paizo to go beyond "sand elves" and "wood dwarves" though. :P). Could you throw us some examples?
They already exist, really.
Elves: snowcasters, Ekujae, Mordant Spire, forlorn, drow
Dwarves: duergar
Gnomes: svirfneblin, bleachling, spriggan
By the sounds of it, I'm not as impressed by it as you are, but it IS a dang fine piece of art. One that almost makes me want to push Golarion forward in time... but then that madness passes when I realize how much mayhem that would cause!Thanks.
Are you as impressed by this as I was?
It's a DeviantArt picture, totally SFW, and just about the most awesome thing I've ever seen, for multiple reasons. It combines my fascination with the American Civil War, mu love of all things Navy, my Anglophilia, and my interest in alternate history into one totally awesome work of art. So much win.
Just wait until I finish Six Guns and Spell Slingers. It's like Eberron with guns and steampunk.
1)What creature types would you make the movie version of Gremlins? Critters? Grey Aliens?
2)Can a Pyro/Cryo Hydra breath fire/cold with all it's heads in the same round?
3)Have you seen "Freaks"(1930's), "The Haunting"(1960's), "Them"(1950's)? if so did you like them?
4)So in order from oldest to youngest, who came first of the Celestails(Angels, Aztas, Agathions, and Archons)?
5)What were the last movies you saw in the theatres? did you like them?
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Creative Director
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1)What creature types would you make the movie version of Gremlins? Critters? Grey Aliens?
2)Can a Pyro/Cryo Hydra breath fire/cold with all it's heads in the same round?
3)Have you seen "Freaks"(1930's), "The Haunting"(1960's), "Them"(1950's)? if so did you like them?
4)So in order from oldest to youngest, who came first of the Celestails(Angels, Aztas, Agathions, and Archons)?
5)What were the last movies you saw in the theatres? did you like them?
1) Fey, monstrous humanoid, humanoid. Note that there are already some critters in the game that fill the roles these monsters have (we have several different types of gremlins, for example, and derros do all the things greys do to scare us).
2) Yes.
3) Yes; they're all EXCELLENT movies. All groundbreaking movies in a lot of ways, in fact.
4) Angels were first; the others probably came along all at the same time... but don't hold me to that since we haven't done as much work yet on the good guy outsiders yet. We will some day.
5) Last movie I saw in a theater was the remake of "The Thing." I liked it more than I thought I would, even though I was disappointed by the monster effects.
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I've just finished Orzamar quests in Dragon Age: Origins - and it was the best part of the game for me. I know that you don't like dwarves, but I've found that their depiction in DA is superb. They are not nice by human standards, but they are something more than fantasy cliche and comic relief element. So,
1) What is Golarion's equivalent of Orzamar? Will we ever get a 64-page book about some dwarven city?
2) Will ever get rules for imbuing items with runes and jewels like in DA and Diablo?
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Creative Director
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I've just finished Orzamar quests in Dragon Age: Origins - and it was the best part of the game for me. I know that you don't like dwarves, but I've found that their depiction in DA is superb. They are not nice by human standards, but they are something more than fantasy cliche and comic relief element. So,
1) What is Golarion's equivalent of Orzamar? Will we ever get a 64-page book about some dwarven city?
2) Will ever get rules for imbuing items with runes and jewels like in DA and Diablo?
I actually quite like what Dragon Age did with dwarves. It's not really something, alas, we could have done, since that route requires profanity, and pen-and-paper gamers get weirdly puritanical once you start using profanity or sexual stuff in games.
1) Golarion's equivalent of Orzamar is probably Highhelm. Or any of the Sky Citadels, in fact. Chances of us doing something big with dwarves is relatively high, although it certainly won't happen this year, and probably won't happen the next. We'll see!
2) We've done some rules like that here and there already, particularly with ioun stones and wayfinders (see "Seekers of Secrets.") So, yes!
I actually quite like what Dragon Age did with dwarves. It's not really something, alas, we could have done, since that route requires profanity, and pen-and-paper gamers get weirdly puritanical once you start using profanity or sexual stuff in games.
Unless it's World of Darkness. With that game, you'll get in more trouble if you don't lace everything with profanity (and to a lesser degree, sex) than if you do. Even the core rulebooks are filled with vulgarity.
I'm not saying Paizo should go the same route with Golarion, of course. Just making an observation.
Oh, and I concur. Dragon Age dwarves are awesome.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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...requires profanity, and pen-and-paper gamers get weirdly puritanical once you start using profanity or sexual stuff in games.
...Really? Because my local PFS-ers have to keep getting reminded that one of the two local stores bans profanity in the game room (gotta respect the pokemon kiddies).
And then there was the Throaty Mermaid incident, where the figurehead's pipe got replaced by a "suggestively-shaped carrot", and the final battle involved many jokes about my fighter "two-handing his flail" against the prone druid whose enlarged staff was coated in grease.
Or are we the anomaly?
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Creative Director
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I actually quite like what Dragon Age did with dwarves. It's not really something, alas, we could have done, since that route requires profanity, and pen-and-paper gamers get weirdly puritanical once you start using profanity or sexual stuff in games.Unless it's World of Darkness. With that game, you'll get in more trouble if you don't lace everything with profanity (and to a lesser degree, sex) than if you do. Even the core rulebooks are filled with vulgarity.
I'm not saying Paizo should go the same route with Golarion, of course. Just making an observation.
Oh, and I concur. Dragon Age dwarves are awesome.
Call of Cthulhu gets away with an awful lot as well. I suspect the combination of being set in a modern day with an entirely different customer base helps a lot.
We've actually pushed Golarion and Pathifnder pretty far into the mature content zone, overall—and I think our sales have benefited from that fact, to tell the truth. There is, I believe, a LARGER market for mature RPGs than there is for ones that try to stay "kid safe," but it's hard to break with tradition.
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Creative Director
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...requires profanity, and pen-and-paper gamers get weirdly puritanical once you start using profanity or sexual stuff in games....Really? Because my local PFS-ers have to keep getting reminded that one of the two local stores bans profanity in the game room (gotta respect the pokemon kiddies).
And then there was the Throaty Mermaid incident, where the figurehead's pipe got replaced by a "suggestively-shaped carrot", and the final battle involved many jokes about my fighter "two-handing his flail" against the prone druid whose enlarged staff was coated in grease.
Or are we the anomaly?
I don't think you're an anomaly at all. Overall, the average age of RPG gamer is, I believe, in the 20s these days—FAR more adults play tabletop RPGs than kids do these days. But there remains a strange perception that RPGs should be kid-friendly, it seems... movies and novels and comic books and video games and pretty much every other form of entertainment has managed to buck that trend and has met with financial success by doing so... but so far, pen and paper RPGs seem to be stuck in a rut.
I actually quite like what Dragon Age did with dwarves. It's not really something, alas, we could have done, since that route requires profanity, and pen-and-paper gamers get weirdly puritanical once you start using profanity or sexual stuff in games.Unless it's World of Darkness. With that game, you'll get in more trouble if you don't lace everything with profanity (and to a lesser degree, sex) than if you do. Even the core rulebooks are filled with vulgarity.
I'm not saying Paizo should go the same route with Golarion, of course. Just making an observation.
Oh, and I concur. Dragon Age dwarves are awesome.
Call of Cthulhu gets away with an awful lot as well. I suspect the combination of being set in a modern day with an entirely different customer base helps a lot.
We've actually pushed Golarion and Pathifnder pretty far into the mature content zone, overall—and I think our sales have benefited from that fact, to tell the truth. There is, I believe, a LARGER market for mature RPGs than there is for ones that try to stay "kid safe," but it's hard to break with tradition.
Perhaps Pathfinder is the sort of game where GMs should handle the vulgarity based on who's playing.
Could more adult stuff be handled by a third party publisher with disclaimers (a la Exalted Deeds and Vile Darkness) on everything? That way Paizo doesn't have to touch it, but it's there if you want it.
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Creative Director
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Perhaps Pathfinder is the sort of game where GMs should handle the vulgarity based on who's playing.
Could more adult stuff be handled by a third party publisher with disclaimers (a la Exalted Deeds and Vile Darkness) on everything? That way Paizo doesn't have to touch it, but it's there if you want it.
Absolutely. Doesn't really help ME though, if I wanted to do a more mature product for the game.
In any event, the GM should absolutely be able to control the level of profanity in his game... and he still could if we laced some of our NPC dialogue with profanity, since the players don't get to see that stuff anyway except through the "lens" of their GM's voice. But I still suspect if we started putting profanity into NPC dialogue (we'd not use it anywhere else—no need to), we'd get a lot of hate mail. It only takes a few "I'm canceling my subscriptions" to cause an uproar.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I don't think you're an anomaly at all. Overall, the average age of RPG gamer is, I believe, in the 20s these days—FAR more adults play tabletop RPGs than kids do these days. But there remains a strange perception that RPGs should be kid-friendly, it seems... movies and novels and comic books and video games and pretty much every other form of entertainment has managed to buck that trend and has met with financial success by doing so... but so far, pen and paper RPGs seem to be stuck in a rut.
Oh! I only just got that you meant in the published content rather than players' behavior. Okay, I follow now. (Though I'm glad I got an excuse to tell my Throaty Mermaid story.)
Question for you, then:
If you could get PFRPG to include a reasonable (i.e., realistic, not gratuitous) amount of profanity/sex/etc, how would you do it? How would you factor in the lack of age limitations for PFS organized play? Would you put stuff into the Core rules? Make a very, er, "special" splat book? Some other option? Or what about within the content of Adventure Paths or other published scenarios/modules/etc? Would you include any written alternatives for removing such content when kids are present, or leave the GM to figure that out themselves?
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Well, I don't think that Orzamar part of the DA had a lot of profanities. It had a lot of mature content, though. And it dealt with a lot of mature themes, such as stratification of a society created by a long-lived extremely lawful race, with a lot of wealth.
Ed Greenwood was the author of Dwarves' Deep accessory for FR. It was just full of excellent ideas that I pilfered for my homebrew. I would love to see him do something along those lines for Golarion.
Perhaps Pathfinder is the sort of game where GMs should handle the vulgarity based on who's playing.
Could more adult stuff be handled by a third party publisher with disclaimers (a la Exalted Deeds and Vile Darkness) on everything? That way Paizo doesn't have to touch it, but it's there if you want it.
Absolutely. Doesn't really help ME though, if I wanted to do a more mature product for the game.
In any event, the GM should absolutely be able to control the level of profanity in his game... and he still could if we laced some of our NPC dialogue with profanity, since the players don't get to see that stuff anyway except through the "lens" of their GM's voice. But I still suspect if we started putting profanity into NPC dialogue (we'd not use it anywhere else—no need to), we'd get a lot of hate mail. It only takes a few "I'm canceling my subscriptions" to cause an uproar.
Why not work with a third party publisher to make something more mature? The Book of Erotic Fantasy got away with it with 3.5, so it could be done with Pathfinder.
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Creative Director
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If you could get PFRPG to include a reasonable (i.e., realistic, not gratuitous) amount of profanity/sex/etc, how would you do it? How would you factor in the lack of age limitations for PFS organized play? Would you put stuff into the Core rules? Make a very, er, "special" splat book? Some other option? Or what about within the content of Adventure Paths or other published scenarios/modules/etc? Would you include any written alternatives for removing such content when kids are present, or leave the GM to figure that out themselves?
First of all... I wouldn't try this at ALL for organized play. That's a beast of its own and it is what it is... and part of what it is is reactionary.
Nor would I put it into the core rules.
I would handle it by having mature elements in adventures and sourcebooks. And honestly, we do this already... I just wish we could go a bit further is all.
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Creative Director
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Why not work with a third party publisher to make something more mature? The Book of Erotic Fantasy got away with it with 3.5, so it could be done with Pathfinder.
Because that's not how Paizo rolls. If we worked with a third party publisher to do something... that product would more or less not be third party any more.
And as long as I'm employed at Paizo, I don't really want to work for other companies in that matter as a personal preference.
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Creative Director
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Here is something I have been wondering about since AD&D. Why have there never been diamond edged weapons? I know it is another material to bog the game down, but it has had me thinking for a long time. Super expensive and get a bonus to damage at least. I don't know, just something I have wondered for a long time. Mainly because whenever I have found diamonds in an adventure, I have asked the DM if I could make it into a knife. Always got a no because there were no rules for it.
I suspect it comes down to the simple fact that no one's ever decided to do diamond-edged weapons. And the game's economics kind of support this decision—it's only 2,000 gp to get a +1 bonus to damage, and only 6,000 gp more to get an improved crit range with the keen weapon ability. At a total of 8,000 gp, that's not much more than a typical single "RPG diamond" (which is normally worth 5,000 gp), so getting a lot of diamonds on an edge would have to do something more than a +1 keen weapon.
Actually carving a knife out of a diamond though? That'd be SUPER expensive, and it'd be hard to justify giving it much additional game effect beyond a +1 bonus to damage or something like that since traditionally, greater effects are the domain of magic.
And if you find a diamond big enough to carve into a sword, you could probably just sell that diamond and buy yourself a few vorpal swords... :-P
Here is something I have been wondering about since AD&D. Why have there never been diamond edged weapons? I know it is another material to bog the game down, but it has had me thinking for a long time. Super expensive and get a bonus to damage at least. I don't know, just something I have wondered for a long time. Mainly because whenever I have found diamonds in an adventure, I have asked the DM if I could make it into a knife. Always got a no because there were no rules for it.
Diamonds can be sharp, but they aren't actually that strong a form of carbon. A diamond knife would shatter against plate armor.
What's your favorite RPG supplement ever? I like World of Darkness's Mirrors, which is all about how to homebrew all sorts of stuff.
I am curious as to some potential ways to expanded lifespan in Golarion as you envision it. In other discussions on the forums, there has been differing opinions. It is somewhat relevant, as it determines whether or not is is reasonable from a Golarion perspective to include Really Seven Hundred Years Old spellcasters as NPCs (or PCs in high-level campaigns) that are not liches, wizards, alchemists or oracles of Time.
1. Can you reliably reincarnate to life for thousands of years, using things like contingent reincarnate spells, druid allies or archetype powers, or the witch Forced Reincarnation hex applied to yourself? The change that the base spell no longer is impeded by old age implies so, as does the gladiator ruler in the River Kingdom. The point has been raised, on the other hand, that Pharasma will eventually decide to judge you at the moment of death, making such schemes eventually futile. How do you see this? (And on a related note, are there millenia-old witches in Irrisen aside from Baba Yaga? They have no option like the wizard immortality discovery, so...)
2. Is it possible to use fleshwarping, as outlined in Inner Sea Magic, to extend lifespan? I am envisioning grafting in material from creatures like skum, who coincidentally were themselves fleshwarped by aboleths, and who are described as unaging. Is such longevity a trait that could be granted by the fleshwarped template presented in that book?
3. Can a spellcaster create a clone of themselves, place it in a container with a gentle repose-type object, and then just wake up in the clone body when they die? The spell seems silent on whether the body will physically match the age when the sample was taken or the age when the donor body perishes. From the spell text, the intended use seems to be something like taking parts of people before a dangerous venture, preserving the samples, then resurrecting fallen party members afterwards, which will mean the soul will be available for return at the point of casting. Then again, there is the improved clone spell implied in the laboratory in the penultimate Rise of the Runelords book. Do similar spell discoveries exist among other arcanists at similar power levels?
Also, a slightly unrelated question, concerning magic schools as described in Inner Sea Magic.
4. Boons from belonging to a school may, as described, be unavailable or unapplicable after leaving a school or being expelled, and it is righly stated to be a DM's call as to what extent this occurs. As you perceive it, should an ex-member retain training benefits like skill specializations or eclectic training boons after such an expulsion, or are these boons tied to continuing to partake of ongoing training and education? That is, would someone like a renegade Daggerford Poisoner retain their poison immunities even after dishonourably going rogue?
Thank you for taking an active part in shaping interpretations of your work! : )
James, have you gotten the chance to sink some hours into Skyrim yet?
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Creative Director
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I am curious as to some potential ways to expanded lifespan in Golarion as you envision it. In other discussions on the forums, there has been differing opinions. It is somewhat relevant, as it determines whether or not is is reasonable from a Golarion perspective to include Really Seven Hundred Years Old spellcasters as NPCs (or PCs in high-level campaigns) that are not liches, wizards, alchemists or oracles of Time.
1. Can you reliably reincarnate to life for thousands of years, using things like contingent reincarnate spells, druid allies or archetype powers, or the witch Forced Reincarnation hex applied to yourself? The change that the base spell no longer is impeded by old age implies so, as does the gladiator ruler in the River Kingdom. The point has been raised, on the other hand, that Pharasma will eventually decide to judge you at the moment of death, making such schemes eventually futile. How do you see this? (And on a related note, are there millenia-old witches in Irrisen aside from Baba Yaga? They have no option like the wizard immortality discovery, so...)
2. Is it possible to use fleshwarping, as outlined in Inner Sea Magic, to extend lifespan? I am envisioning grafting in material from creatures like skum, who coincidentally were themselves fleshwarped by aboleths, and who are described as unaging. Is such longevity a trait that could be granted by the fleshwarped template presented in that book?
3. Can a spellcaster create a clone of themselves, place it in a container with a gentle repose-type object, and then just wake up in the clone body when they die? The spell seems silent on whether the body will physically match the age when the sample was taken or the age when the donor body perishes. From the spell text, the intended use seems to be something like taking parts of people before a dangerous venture, preserving the samples, then resurrecting fallen party members afterwards, which will mean the soul will be available for return at the point of casting. Then again, there is the improved clone spell implied in the laboratory in the penultimate Rise of the Runelords book. Do similar spell discoveries exist among other arcanists at similar power levels?
Also, a slightly unrelated question, concerning magic schools as described in Inner Sea Magic.
4. Boons from belonging to a school may, as described, be unavailable or unapplicable after leaving a school or being expelled, and it is righly stated to be a DM's call as to what extent this occurs. As you perceive it, should an ex-member retain training benefits like skill specializations or eclectic training boons after such an expulsion, or are these boons tied to continuing to partake of ongoing training and education? That is, would someone like a renegade Daggerford Poisoner retain their poison immunities even after dishonourably going rogue?
Thank you for taking an active part in shaping interpretations of your work! : )
1) As long as you can arrange a reincarnation cast on you every time, yes you can continue to live forever using this route. You get a new body every time, though, which can severely impact your role and class. And eventually, yes, Pharasma will decide you've lived long enough—which more or less coincides with the point at which your reincarnation train has a hitch and someone doesn't cast the spell on you after you die. There are not any millenia-old witches in Irrisen aside from Baba Yaga, and she's only there in Irrisen for a few years every century at best.
2) Fleshwarping does not extend lifespans. It just changes a physical feature of the body.
3) Clone is one of the weirder spells in the game, and to a certain extent it requires GM adjudication. Gentle repose won't keep a clone from aging, in any case, so normally a clone won't be able to extend your lifespan. The "improved clone" from "Rise of the Runelords" does just that, though... but the methods for that kind of immortality are effectively lost to time.
4) Whether or not a school perk would be retained after someone's expelled depends entirely on the nature of the perk. Something like poison immunity could well remain after being expelled. It's a GM call.
Dear James Jacobs,
Did you see The Muppets yet?
Manah Manah.
James, I know that the APs are Paizo's bread and butter and therefore you are, quite reasonably, reluctant to get too crazy with them. But I'm wondering what the chances are of something fairly audacious, like an AP that restricts PCs to a single race. I keep coming back to this in my head, as I think an all-dwarf game set in the snakepit of Five Kings Mountains politics would be pretty awesome.
Similarly, are we likely in the foreseeable future (knowing you can foresee pretty darned far) to see another AP set primarily in the Darklands? Maybe one actually starting there and delving very deep into some of the lowest recesses?
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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James,
When you find yourself with the opportunity to make a new character, and have too many different nuggets of concept and mechanics in your head to fit into a single character, but almost any combination of a few of said nuggets could be mix-n-matched into a single character, how do you decide what to do?
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Creative Director
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Mister Jacobs, how would you compare Skyrim to Morrowind in terms of content and not graphics? Curious because I loved Morrowind and was bored by Oblivion, since it did not have nearly as much content as Elder Scrolls 3.
I've played all of the previous four Elder Scrolls games to completion, and in my opinion, no single game franchise improves upon itself so dramatically with each release. Skyrim has better graphics than Oblivion, and Oblivion had MUCH better graphics than Morrowind... so Skyrim's graphics pretty much blow Morrowind's graphics out of the water. Skyrim also seems to have more customized, hand-crafted content than pretty much ANY single player RPG I've ever played. Oblivion had a lot too, but most of Oblivion's dungeons felt almost like just monster cages where you go in, fight monsters, and leave. Also, by the time you hit level 15, you've seen all of the monster models in the game. In Skyrim, EVERY dungeon and location feels unique—many of them have hand-crafted stories with scripted events, in fact. And I'm level 38, and I'm STILL finding new monsters with different appearances.
So... I would compare Skyrim VERY favorably to Morrowind. If, on a scale of 1 to 10, Morrowind got a 7... Skyrim gets a 15.
For Jade Regent, I am planning on making a Savage Barbarian, due to my love of the old AD&D Berserker. What kind of human and barbarian tribe would you recommend for that kind of class in Jade Regent? This will be quite a ways off because we are still trying to end Kingmaker and then get into Carrion Crown.
A Shoanti barbarian works pretty well, since you start Jade Regent in Varisia. A Linnorm Kingdom barbarian who's traveled south and got stranded in Varisia is a good choice as well.
The first time I ran Call of Cthulhu, I only killed off one investigator. He was hiding from the cops in a crypt in Arkham's cemetary after robbing the rare book section of mistakonic university library, and I sent a few ghouls at him. Since I have no frame of referance, did I do something wrong here or is that just fine due to the nature of the game? Asking cause I don't want to be one of those GMs that treats the players as their opponent.
Charactrers die relatively frequently in Call of Cthulhu. Far more often than that if they do things like rob libraries or otherwise deliberately put themselves in harm's way. Call of Cthulhu is an unusual RPG in that it's not the characters that are the most important for the fun of the players, but the story. As long as the story is satisfying, any number of player characters can die.
Can you help me clear my driveway? It's full of ice and slush right now and my snowblower can't pick it up.
You misunderstand the situation. That situation doesn't mean "WORK!" It means you get to stay home and play Skyrim! In any case, clearing driveways of slush and ice is none of my business.
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Creative Director
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James, I know that the APs are Paizo's bread and butter and therefore you are, quite reasonably, reluctant to get too crazy with them. But I'm wondering what the chances are of something fairly audacious, like an AP that restricts PCs to a single race. I keep coming back to this in my head, as I think an all-dwarf game set in the snakepit of Five Kings Mountains politics would be pretty awesome.
Similarly, are we likely in the foreseeable future (knowing you can foresee pretty darned far) to see another AP set primarily in the Darklands? Maybe one actually starting there and delving very deep into some of the lowest recesses?
An AP that restricts PCs to a single race sounds really cool to me. I've actually run campaigns like this before and it's great fun.
But it's not something we're quite ready to try yet. With "Skull & Shackles" we're doing an AP where it's probably not a good idea to play a paladin... I'm gonna wait until we see feedback from that before I go even crazier with the restrictions. Especially since doing so is going to more or less ENSURE that a significant number of our customers are going to lose interest in that particular AP. As an example—an AP where you have to play all dwarves would absolutely lose MY interest in playing in the AP... and probably even my interest in writing and creating the AP in the first place.
That said... there's no reason why you can't do something like this with any of the APs we have in print. Second Darkness, for example, would work REALLY well with only forlorn elf PCs.
As for the Darklands... we'll be going back there some day, I guarantee.
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Creative Director
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James,
When you find yourself with the opportunity to make a new character, and have too many different nuggets of concept and mechanics in your head to fit into a single character, but almost any combination of a few of said nuggets could be mix-n-matched into a single character, how do you decide what to do?
You assume that I keep all those mechanics in my head in the first place. I don't. I've not yet read all the way through Advanced Player's Guide, and I've barely even looked in Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic beyond looking at the specific concepts that I need for building things like the Jade Regent Adventure Path.
When I decide to make a new character, the first thing I do is decide on that character's personality and niche—is she an exiled priest from Cheliax? A surly archer whose parents were killed in the Goblinblood War? A healer who secretly hates organized religion? I'll also weigh in the balance what the other players in the group are building and try to come up with a concept that'll not only fill holes in the group's dynamic, but also won't be overshadowed or duplicated by other characters.
Only THEN do I sit down and start sifting through rulebooks looking for rules. I don't really bother with trying to find the best options, either. I look mostly for the options that seem to be the most fun. Nor do I generally plan my character's level progression out before hand. I might have in my head the goal of qualifying for a specific prestige class some day, but I don't make level-by-level decisions until I gain said level.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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When I decide to make a new character, the first thing I do is decide on that character's personality and niche—is she an exiled priest from Cheliax? A surly archer whose parents were killed in the Goblinblood War? A healer who secretly hates organized religion?
It was my intent to include things like that in the "nuggets" I referred to (sorry that wasn't clear). For instance, a character could be any 1, any 2, or even all 3 of those examples you listed. How do you pick?
Only THEN do I sit down and start sifting through rulebooks looking for rules.
I kind of do both at the same time, which might be exacerbating the problem - instead of just having to decide between a jumble of concept elements, I'm trying to sift through a jumble of concept elements AND feats/classes/etc that seem cool.
I don't really bother with trying to find the best options, either. I look mostly for the options that seem to be the most fun. Nor do I generally plan my character's level progression out before hand. I might have in my head the goal of qualifying for a specific prestige class some day, but I don't make level-by-level decisions until I gain said level.
Same here. :)
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Creative Director
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When I decide to make a new character, the first thing I do is decide on that character's personality and niche—is she an exiled priest from Cheliax? A surly archer whose parents were killed in the Goblinblood War? A healer who secretly hates organized religion?It was my intent to include things like that in the "nuggets" I referred to (sorry that wasn't clear). For instance, a character could be any 1, any 2, or even all 3 of those examples you listed. How do you pick?
I just go with the one that's most interesting to me at that time. Usually, the nature of the campaign plus the mix of other PCs plus the location of the campaign in the world narrows the choices down for me.
An AP that restricts PCs to a single race sounds really cool to me. I've actually run campaigns like this before and it's great fun.But it's not something we're quite ready to try yet. With "Skull & Shackles" we're doing an AP where it's probably not a good idea to play a paladin... I'm gonna wait until we see feedback from that before I go even crazier with the restrictions. Especially since doing so is going to more or less ENSURE that a significant number of our customers are going to lose interest in that particular AP.
This is interesting to me. I know players who like to play paladins, but I don't know any who play ONLY paladins. Do you have any idea on how big a backlash you expect?
Personally, I don't have a problem with campaigns that restrict you in a given way up front, because it allows you to tell very focused stories where you know what the players are going to be playing. My qualification to that would be that I don't like the idea of playing in with restrictions that would "break the game" -- Pathfinder seems to me to be designed to work around arcane magic, which means that the Mana Wastes would be a problematical setting, and would have a VERY hard time working at all well in a setting where you don't have access to divine healing magic, which means that Rahadoum would be a challenging place to set an AP (though at least divine magic works there, unlike arcane magic in the Mana Wastes).
As an example—an AP where you have to play all dwarves would absolutely lose MY interest in playing in the AP... and probably even my interest in writing and creating the AP in the first place.
Dang, whacha got against the dwarves? :-) Probably the same thing I've got against elves -- I've played one elf in 32 years of gaming and I've no interest in playing another. I just don't feel them.
As for the Darklands... we'll be going back there some day, I guarantee.
Well, may I say WOOHOO!!!!
will you ever fill out your profile? :-)
In Irrisen, Baba Yaga shows up every 100 years and appoints one of her daughters as the new queen, then takes the old queen and her daughters with her to wherever she goes.
I always had in my mind that Baba Yaga showed up with the new queen in tow each time, but "Faiths of Corruption" makes it sound like all the daughters are already there, living in Irrisen. That seems weird, since it implies there are enough daughters there to provide an indefinite number of queens, and all of them are at least 1,400 years old.
Are Baba Yaga's daughters already there, or does she bring a new one every 100 years?
In Irrisen, Baba Yaga shows up every 100 years and appoints one of her daughters as the new queen, then takes the old queen and her daughters with her to wherever she goes.
I always had in my mind that Baba Yaga showed up with the new queen in tow each time, but "Faiths of Corruption" makes it sound like all the daughters are already there, living in Irrisen. That seems weird, since it implies there are enough daughters there to provide an indefinite number of queens, and all of them are at least 1,400 years old.
Are Baba Yaga's daughters already there, or does she bring a new one every 100 years?
I am betting the answer will be you will find out soon, as in 2013ish.
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Creative Director
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This is interesting to me. I know players who like to play paladins, but I don't know any who play ONLY paladins. Do you have any idea on how big a backlash you expect?
I expect a loud vocal minority being annoyed with the fact that we dared publish an AP that doesn't work well with paladins. We've had that same vocal minority complain before for other APs, and those only had certain parts that were not paladin-friendly (the last few installments of Savage Tide, for example). Which is why I'm trying to manage expectations for Skull & Shackles so folks know from the start what's up.
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Dang, whacha got against the dwarves? :-) Probably the same thing I've got against elves -- I've played one elf in 32 years of gaming and I've no interest in playing another. I just don't feel them.
There ya go. Reverse your opinions on elves and you more or less have my opinions on dwarves.
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Creative Director
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In Irrisen, Baba Yaga shows up every 100 years and appoints one of her daughters as the new queen, then takes the old queen and her daughters with her to wherever she goes.
I always had in my mind that Baba Yaga showed up with the new queen in tow each time, but "Faiths of Corruption" makes it sound like all the daughters are already there, living in Irrisen. That seems weird, since it implies there are enough daughters there to provide an indefinite number of queens, and all of them are at least 1,400 years old.
Are Baba Yaga's daughters already there, or does she bring a new one every 100 years?
The "daughters" are actually her descendants. And they ARE already in Irrisen, although they may not realize it until Baba Yaga comes along and picks one of them to be the new queen.
We'll go into more detail about it some day. (Cue Justin Franklin's appearance with an authoritative-sounding prediction about when that day might be...)
