I am fully aware of the backlash. I welcome it. It will help me determine who the bad guys are.Like you! (Writes JMD031 down on "Musical Sympathizer" list.)
Other geek things I'm not fond of: Star Wars, The Princess Bride, and Dr. Who.
This convinces me that you are an evil alien intelligence from beyond space, inhabiting a human husk - your real form is all tentacles mouths and eyeballs.
I understand Princess Bride - the book was painfull.
The only Star Wars movies that are any good are IV & V - V being the best of them.
Dr Who there are some brilliant episodes and some totally crap ones. Dr Who can be a lottery - If you get a chance the follwing episodes are worth watching "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", "The Curse of Fenric", "The Empty Child" "The Impossible Planet & The Satan Pit", "Blink", "The Vampires of Venice", and "Vincent and the Doctor"
The other problem with Dr Who is that the often the story is brilliant but the ending is terrible.
Probably because of the bad acting or bad writing. Empire Strikes Back is easily my favorite movie of them all, and I suspect that's because that one has GOOD writing, being written by a competent writer.
Can you tell this guy to stop stealing my bit?
Creative Director
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if a pathfinder golarion movie was to be made, how would you like it to be done, in terms of feel, atmosphere, ect?
and what would you whant it to be about?
It should be rated PG-13 or R, and handled with the same amount of skill and respect as Peter Jackson handled Tolkein's stuff—why not shoot for the moon? It should NOT be a comedy (although it can have funny parts) and should NOT be 3D and should NOT ever use the phrase "GO GO GO!"
As for what it should be about... I would prefer it if it were about Treerazer and/or Sandpoint.
First of all, the way this question is phrased, there's NO WAY I can answer it without a legion of rulesmongers picking it apart like a swarm of starving jackals picking apart the seven-day dead sun-baked carcass of an elephant.
"Action" is not a defined term by the rules—it covers ALL of the possible things you can do in the game. Some of them are full-round actions, some swift actions, etc. But the word "action" itself doesn't mean anything.
So yes, attacks of opportunity are an action, but so is picking up a dropped sword, rubbing your eye, building a castle, tripping over a root, blinking, remembering you just blinked, stabbing a rulesmonger, and exhaling. Along with every other thing a character does, consciously or unconsciously, in the game.
I get the feeling what you're REALLY asking is: "Can I do a trip attack or some other combat maneuver as part of an attack of opportunity?" My answer to that would be, if I were the GM, yes. My answer to that if someone else were the GM would be to say, "Ask your GM."
The more we can all wean ourselves off of errata slavery and rules as written and re-learn how to rely on the GM for resolutions, the better the game itself will be.
Not giving any orders or anything but I wouldn't make jokes about stabbing customers or compare us to jackals eating rotten flesh. It doesn't seem to be the best way to approach people.
I like rules lawyering. No joke. I've spent money on your products largely because I love dissecting rules. So give me a break, I'm telling anyone else that their style of play is wrong.
The point I was getting at is that as the GM I wanted to check my logic. A character is flat footed until they have acted in combat. Combat Reflexes lets a flat footed character take attacks of opportunity. If a attack of opp is a action after taking one they have acted thus they are no longer flat footed.
What's your favorite ice cream taste?
What's your favorite ice cream Brand ? (Do you have more than Ben & jerry and Haagen-Dazs? in the USA)
what's your favorite adventure path / adventure paths?
What kind of action is dying? ;-) Can you die more than once during a round?
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Creative Director
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Not giving any orders or anything but I wouldn't make jokes about stabbing customers or compare us to jackals eating rotten flesh. It doesn't seem to be the best way to approach people.
I like rules lawyering. No joke. I've spent money on your products largely because I love dissecting rules. So give me a break, I'm telling anyone else that their style of play is wrong.
The point I was getting at is that as the GM I wanted to check my logic. A character is flat footed until they have acted in combat. Combat Reflexes lets a flat footed character take attacks of opportunity. If a attack of opp is a action after taking one they have acted thus they are no longer flat footed.
The point I was getting at is that I don't want this thread to be used as "JAMES SAID SO" ammunition for the errata wars.
THAT said... I do not generally react well to the mantra "The customer is always right." Or to allusions to that thread. Part of the reason I'm not in the customer service department, I guess.
As for your question... had you fully disclosed your concern and spelled out WHY you were asking, I would likely not have had the reaction to the question in the way I did. Your original phrasing of the question carried with it a lot of "I'm only going to ask part of my question so that I can pre-skew the answer to one I want" kind of vibe.
In this case... taking an AoO against someone before you go in initiative does NOT mean that you're no longer flat-footed. Combat Reflexes lets you take AoOs when you're flat footed, but does not let you get out of being flat footed yourself. You still have to wait until your turn in combat before you're not flat footed, regardless of how many AoOs your Combat Reflexes lets you take.
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Creative Director
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What's your favorite ice cream taste?
What's your favorite ice cream Brand ? (Do you have more than Ben & jerry and Haagen-Dazs? in the USA)
what's your favorite adventure path / adventure paths?What kind of action is dying? ;-) Can you die more than once during a round?
Favorite ice cream flavor = raspberry.
Favorite Ice Cream Brand Ben & Jerry, but my favorite ice cream treat is It's-It; a type of ice cream sandwich made in San Francisco. It's two oatmeal cookies around a big scoop of delicious vanilla ice cream and then the whole thing is covered with a layer of bittersweet chocolate.
I like all my adventure paths. I can't choose one.
Dying is a free action. You can die more than once in a round. I saw one of Mike McArtor's characters do that once.
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Creative Director
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Do you (or any of the other Paizoians) ever use third party stuff in your home Pathfinder games? You know, like from Kobold Quarterly, Super Genius Games etc?
Yes. I also use third party stuff in Pathfinder products, all the time. From pre Pathfinder stuff.
As for third party content that's created for PATHFINDER though... I haven't yet. Mostly because I don't have the time to sift through them all and decide what elements would work well, but even MORE because the authors we use haven't started using that content yet. If they found something good and used it and we had access to that product to be able to properly edit it, though... sure! Just hasn't happened yet.
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Creative Director
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What was the best part of your judging in RPG Superstar? The worst?
Will you be judging this year?
Are you involved in determing the challenges in the different rounds?
The best part was getting to see all the excitement and innovation from the contestants.
The worst part was seeing folks cheat or be jerks, be they contestants or observers who had false senses of entitlement.
We haven't announced who the next batch of judges are, but I am indeed involved directly in determining the challenges in the different rounds.
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The more we can all wean ourselves off of errata slavery and rules as written and re-learn how to rely on the GM for resolutions, the better the game itself will be.
YES. If there's one huge difference I see from my AD&D 1st edition days ala "old school" to today's 3.x and 4e gamers, it's this constant reliance on official rulings and errata.
Dying is a free action. You can die more than once in a round. I saw one of Mike McArtor's characters do that once.
How the heck do you manage that?
whats after ultimate combat (meaning books aka not APs and such)?
and after that?
and after that?
and 5 before that?
...THAT said... I do not generally react well to the mantra "The customer is always right."...
As for your question... had you fully disclosed your concern and spelled out WHY you were asking, I would likely not have had the reaction to the question in the way I did. Your original phrasing of the question carried with it a lot of "I'm only going to ask part of my question so that I can pre-skew the answer to one I want" kind of vibe.
In this case... taking an AoO against someone before you go in initiative does NOT mean that you're no longer flat-footed. Combat Reflexes lets you take AoOs when you're flat footed, but does not let you get out of being flat footed yourself. You still have to wait until your turn in combat before you're not flat footed, regardless of how many AoOs your Combat Reflexes lets you take.
The only thing worse then being in a dork fight is being in a dork fight online so I'm not upset. It wasn't so much a "The customer is always right" as a "Please don't joke about stabbing me, it really creeps me out." I boil questions down much as I can. MOST times it gets better information then explaining the whole situation which can confuse or bias people.
As for the game content it's only came up about 4 times since we started playing right after 3.0 came out, so either way won't change much.
I'm curious now - is actions not being a game term something that was planned out because it ended up being to unwieldy to have it as one or just how things worked? Have you had a game of pop a mole with Revenance?
I like rules lawyering. No joke. I've spent money on your products largely because I love dissecting rules. So give me a break, I'm telling anyone else that their style of play is wrong.
Well this isn't the rules forum and James isn't Jason Bulmahn nor Sean K Reynolds. If you want official answer to rules ask JB or SKR.
One might say, So give James a break ;-)That said here is my take on it. Hope it will help :-)
Try to look at it like this:
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Creative Director
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Speaking of McArtor, do you still keep in touch with ex-WotC and/or Paizo staff? And in what venue (e.g., gaming, out for beers, etc.)?
Dying is a free action. You can die more than once in a round. I saw one of Mike McArtor's characters do that once.
Yes. Not with Mike McArtor so much (he's pretty much moved on completely to new endeavors) but with others, yes.
Gaming, going to see movies, playing video games, thanksgiving, parties, etc.
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Creative Director
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How the heck do you manage that?
Dying is a free action. You can die more than once in a round. I saw one of Mike McArtor's characters do that once.
Step 1: Be in one of Jason Nelson's game.
Step 2: Get killed by a howling dragon.
Step 3: Get resurrected before your turn in combat would have come up.
Step 4: Get to your turn, provoke an Attack of Opportunity from the dragon, get critically hit, die again.
Something like that.
In fact, that dragon killed Mike's character THREE times. I seem to remember at one point he was hit by its clinging breath weapon, died, got resurrected, then died from the clinging damage.
It was pretty out of this world.
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Creative Director
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I'm curious now - is actions not being a game term something that was planned out because it ended up being to unwieldy to have it as one or just how things worked? Have you had a game of pop a mole with Revenance?
This is a topic for Jason Bulmahn to talk about, the more I think about it. My take: "action" is a generic word that we want to reserve to still have a word that we can use to describe all of the things you can do in the game without it implying a specific type of activity, though.
And yeah... I do NOT like rules lawyering. At all.
If you're the GM, you get the final say. That's not rules lawyering; that's managing and running the game.
If you're a player, you can certainly provide advice if you know the rules, but you have to be prepared to let the GM make the ruling. If you bog the game down with clutter and rules lawyering arguments, you're not doing anyone any favors.
And I would actually extend that to messageboards. Not much saps my energy and excitement for gaming more than frustrating pedantic nitpicky rules arguments online.
ALSO: I'm sorry if it feels like I'm singling you out or lashing out at you, dunelord. I'm not, really. It's just a reaction to a larger symptom that 3rd edition instilled in the game: over-reliance on the rules.
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As you introduced me to Dinosaur comics, in this very thread, I wondered if you had bought Machine of Death?
Do you think that the magic 8 ball has a place the gaming table?
I often wonder if there are extensive cultural differences in the way people play RPGs - i.e Do the British have a different style play to the Scandinavians, do Texans play a different way to people that live in the Pacific Northwest? i.e Do you find that one cultural group is more focused on the combat aspects while others lean more towards social aspects?
What is your opinion players that see the game as a competition to be won?
For example I was reading a thread where a person elected to have a character with a 8 and 7 for two of their "mental" stats so they could do more damage and not for the role-playing challenges that having negative attributes would bring (I suspect that there would be no role-playing and the person would play the character as themselves).
How would you GM such a situation?
Are you looking forward to Tron Legacy?
What was your opinion on the Star Trek reboot?
Have you ever watched Picnic at Hanging Rock?
Did you like Babylon 5 and if they made a Movie would you watch it?
A lot of people credit J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Bab5) with the introduction of the season/series story arc to science fiction on tv and this had a lot of inspiration for shows such as Lost and BSG.
Do you think that this was a good thing? Or do you prefer stand alone episodes?
Do you think that modules such as Against the Giants and Redhand of Doom inspired the format of the APs?
Have you got the format for the APs? down pat or are there more tweaks or is it an evolutionary process?
What are your favourite foreign films?
Do you prefer dubbed or subtitles?
This is a topic for Jason Bulmahn to talk about, the more I think about it. My take: "action" is a generic word that we want to reserve to still have a word that we can use to describe all of the things you can do in the game without it implying a specific type of activity, though.
And yeah... I do NOT like rules lawyering. At all.
If you're the GM, you get the final say. That's not rules lawyering; that's managing and running the game.
If you're a player, you can certainly provide advice if you know the rules, but you have to be prepared to let the GM make the ruling. If you bog the game down with clutter and rules lawyering arguments, you're not doing anyone any favors.
And I would actually extend that to messageboards. Not much saps my energy and excitement for gaming more than frustrating pedantic nitpicky rules arguments online.
ALSO: I'm sorry if it feels like I'm singling you out or lashing out at you, dunelord. I'm not, really. It's just a reaction to a larger symptom that 3rd edition instilled in the game: over-reliance on the rules.
That's fine. I meant the action as a generic term question as a history of the game thing.
We all run games differently. I've found that the more everyone knows the RAW and sticks to it the less you discuss them at the table/map tools/Play by Post so it frees up time for role play and doing things besides debate. Even if you go 100% with what the GM says without giving any input back asking takes time.
Anything can be taken too far, like someone lowering a existing pseudodragon's intelligence because someone takes improved familiar. It's RAW but just silly. Same time I've seen way more awkward situations from someone who was just "playing the character" that got to the point I could either end the game or metagame my character into not doing what they really would do. But that's just my XP.
I was serious about the separate issue of the whack a mole because of Revenance, has that happened in your games?
James Jacobs: a great creative director, or THE greatest creative director, ever??
whats the most memorable thing that has happened in a game you have been in?
what is your greatest accomplishment?
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Creative Director
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As you introduced me to Dinosaur comics, in this very thread, I wondered if you had bought Machine of Death?
I have not.
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Creative Director
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I often wonder if there are extensive cultural differences in the way people play RPGs - i.e Do the British have a different style play to the Scandinavians, do Texans play a different way to people that live in the Pacific Northwest? i.e Do you find that one cultural group is more focused on the combat aspects while others lean more towards social aspects?
There absolutely are. Especially among groups that DON'T go to conventions. Since so much of the game experience is communicated via the written word, there's a HELL of a lot of room for regional influences to do their thing. If only by resulting in weird regional translations of made-up words that no one ever hears spoken aloud until their GM takes the PCs there.
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Creative Director
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What is your opinion players that see the game as a competition to be won?
For example I was reading a thread where a person elected to have a character with a 8 and 7 for two of their "mental" stats so they could do more damage and not for the role-playing challenges that having negative attributes would bring (I suspect that there would be no role-playing and the person would play the character as themselves).
How would you GM such a situation?
The game is NOT a competition, and players who do their best to "win" over the other players are disruptive and annoying.
Since ALL games I run have significant amounts of roleplaying, there's no way a player could never feel the repercussions of putting lots of dump stats into his mental stat areas. Even in combat—I'm a big fan of "If you intentionally make your character weak in one area, you're going to FEEL it now and then." I'm just sayin' that there's a LOT of effects that do ability damage to things like Int and Wis and Charisma... and being dropped to 0 in any of those is a bad thing.
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Creative Director
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Are you looking forward to Tron Legacy?
Yes, but not with any rabid excitement. I'm looking forward to "Skyline" more than "Tron Legacy," and to the new John Carpenter movie, the Alien prequels, and the prequel to The Thing more than that.
I AM hoping that they'll release Tron Legacy in a non-3D option, though.
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Creative Director
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Did you like Babylon 5 and if they made a Movie would you watch it?
A lot of people credit J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Bab5) with the introduction of the season/series story arc to science fiction on tv and this had a lot of inspiration for shows such as Lost and BSG.
Do you think that this was a good thing? Or do you prefer stand alone episodes?
Do you think that modules such as Against the Giants and Redhand of Doom inspired the format of the APs?
Have you got the format for the APs? down pat or are there more tweaks or is it an evolutionary process?
I've tried watching Babylon 5 several times, and never got into it. The acting and special effects and dialogue (ESPECIALLY the dialogue) were just too terrible for me to bear.
Whether or not he's responsible for introducing story arcs to sci-fi TV, I don't know (I suspect he's not the ONLY one responsible), but I very much prefer strong story arcs in shows.
As for the Adventure Paths—I've been involved in them from the start with Shackled City back in Dungeon magazine (I wrote the second adventure for that AP), and their evolution over the past 8 years or so is very much inspired by old adventures like the Giants/Drow/Demonweb series or the Slavelords series. Red Hand of Doom didn't inspire the APs as much as was an integral part of my work on how to do long-form adventures. Even now, as I'm getting ready to start working on my 12th adventure path (Jade Regent), I'm still learning things about how to do them.
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Creative Director
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What are your favourite foreign films?
Do you prefer dubbed or subtitles?
I vastly prefer subtitles to dubbed films. I would say that my preference for subtitled films over dubbed films is about equal to my preference for raspberry pie to wormy cow poo sprinkled with arsenic and broken glass. AKA: Dubbed movies are the worst.
If I were to pick my 20 favorite foreign films off the top of my head, that list would be (in no particular order, save that the first one is my FAVORITE foreign film, and excluding foreign films that are in English, like Mad Max or The Descent or 28 Days Later):
1: Yojimbo
2: Seven Samurai
3: The Host
4: Ran
5: Oldboy
6: Frontier(s)
7: Let the Right One In
8: Suspiria
9: Throne of Blood
10: Hidden Fortress
11: Rashomon
12: Gojira
13: Godzilla, Mothra, Ghidorah Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
14: Audition
15: The Vanishing
16: Legend of Drunken Master
17: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
18: Pan's Labyrinth
19: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
20: Das Boot
I'm sure that within a few minutes of me hitting "Submit Post" I'll remember a few that SHOULD have been on the list as well.
James Jacobs: a great creative director, or THE greatest creative director, ever??
Tom Rex thinks so.
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Creative Director
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whats the most memorable thing that has happened in a game you have been in?
what is your greatest accomplishment?
Most memorable thing? As a GM, explaining something that was so unexpected and wacky that one of the players fell out of his chair from laughter.
Greatest Accomplishment: Getting a job in the RPG industry would be tied with getting an adventure published in Dungeon at the age of 14. Seeing a monster I invented show up in a Bioware video game is up there as well (the ulitharid).
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Creative Director
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James does this thread give you a complex? :)
Nope. It DOES aggravate several existing complexes though. Particularly my bad habit of procrastinating when I should be doing something like writing the intro to "World Guide: The Inner Sea" or starting development on "The Haunting of Harrowstone."
Are you looking forward to Tron Legacy?Yes, but not with any rabid excitement. I'm looking forward to "Skyline" more than "Tron Legacy," and to the new John Carpenter movie, the Alien prequels, and the prequel to The Thing more than that.
I AM hoping that they'll release Tron Legacy in a non-3D option, though.
I saw the shorts to Skyline on iO9 - Spaceships that suck people up like giant vacuum cleaners, huge 4 legged alien killing machine/beasts, and Turk from Scrubs = Awwwsommme.