Creative Director
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Were you involved in the conversion of Abomination Vaults to D&D 5E? What about the decision to publish the conversion?
I wasn't really involved at all, other than to supply Ron with the side-view sketch of the dungeon that I drew that ended up not showing up in the first version of the adventure for lack of space, and to be a pesky fly on the wall now and then while I peeked a few times at how the progress was going along. I suspect I won't be looking at the final product until the hard copies are in house.
Nor was I part of the decision to publish the conversion, really. That occurred above my pay grade.
It IS interesting to me that Abomination Vaults is gonna be my first Pathfinder product published by Paizo hadcover cover credit though, and then my first hardcover 5E cover credit soon thereafter!
Congratulations to you and the rest of the team on the success of Abomination Vaults!
What projects are you currently working on? Still Kingmaker, or have new things joined the plate?
Hope I didn't mix up you working on the Kingmaker re-release.
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Creative Director
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Congratulations to you and the rest of the team on the success of Abomination Vaults!
What projects are you currently working on? Still Kingmaker, or have new things joined the plate?
Hope I didn't mix up you working on the Kingmaker re-release.
Still Kingmaker, yeah. But also on some other stuff that's not been announced, or projects that have been announced that I'm not sure I'm supposed to talk about. Stuff, in other words.
I could and have even argued that there's Lovecraftian influences in the movie/novel "2001."
I've had similar thoughts about that film as well. Do you mind throwing out a few quick examples?
Thanks.
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I could and have even argued that there's Lovecraftian influences in the movie/novel "2001."I've had similar thoughts about that film as well. Do you mind throwing out a few quick examples?
Thanks.
The aliens are completely and entirely non-human, as they often are in Lovecraft's stories.
The story is about an alien species triggering sapience in humanity, in effect creating humans, just like in "Mountains of Madness."
The last third of the movie is about things that humanity can barely comprehend.
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How many contemporary demons/demon lords/qlippoth lords remember the ancient demon-qlippoth war? Or were pretty much all of the modern qlippoth lords and demon lords created afterwards?
All of the qlippoth lords that survive to today were a part of that, since there aren't any "new" qlippoth lords that formed since then, really. As for demon lords, we've never really nailed down the order of their arrival in reality. I'd guess maybe 25% of them? I know Lamashtu and Pazuzu at least are that old. Probably Nocticula and Abraxas and Dagon as well.
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What?!?!
The initial inspiration behind the Thassilonian Empire was from a TPK from your White Plume Mountain game?!?!
What?
I have to hear this story. Please expound....
** spoiler omitted **
Yup. It was a one-shot game I ran for two friends in college. They got to the vampire and quickly got in over their heads, and one of the players did a Hail Mary attempt to kill the vampire by stuffing a bag of holding into a portable hole or something like that. The explosion killed the two PCs and destroyed the vampire, but the vampire just came back from his coffin. I didn't want to end the game there, so instead I had the vampire see to the PCs being resurrected and geased to help bring back his ancient intolerant necromancer lord from the dawn of time, and from there I ended up building an entire deep-history element to my homebrew that would end up laying the foundation for what I did with Thassiolon (although I did pull some of the runelords from other roles in my setting—Karzoug and Xhanderghul were my setting's versions of Vecna and Kas respectively and predated even that TPK in White Plume Mountain).
Using a lot of this stuff, including deities and several nations, as building blocks to create Golarion was sort of an act of despartion, since we needed a fully realized world as soon as possible in the month we transitioned from the last issue of Dragon and Dungeon to the first month of Pathfinder Adventure Path. Using content I had created for my homebrew starting back in the late 80s was a shortcut that made creating Golarion possible, even if it ironically made it impossible for me to retain ownership over that content for my own use. But then, since a fair amount of my homebrew was itself based on D&D stuff and authors like Lovecraft and Cambell and King, it's only fair I guess to pay it forward like that.
Mr. James Jacobs,
Considering that there are a few APs converted to 5E I have to ask: Where do you see warlocks fitting into Golarion?
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Creative Director
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Mr. James Jacobs,
Considering that there are a few APs converted to 5E I have to ask: Where do you see warlocks fitting into Golarion?
I don't know enough about how they currently work to make that call, beyond not really thinking the 3.5 original version of the warlock really felt like what I thought of as a warlock in my head.
What's your favorite cryptid?
Do all monsters that have amphibious trait can breathe in water and in air? In other words, do all monsters that can breathe in water and in air have amphibious trait?
What's your favorite cryptid?Bigfoot.
Because you own stock in Big Shoe Co?
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Setting-lore question about the origins of the final blades:
The Inner Sea World Guide (2011) states Margaery San Trayne created the final blades for noble purpose of preventing resurrection magic from working on the executed and preventing the executed from going to Hell.
My question is was the first explanation true at one point? Did the BBEG hijack the final blades and Red Revolution for their own purposes?
Or was Margaery San Trayne a patsy, follower, or front of the BBEG and the BBEG was behind the Red Revolution and final blades from the get-go? The text of NotGD doesn't say?
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Creative Director
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Setting-lore question about the origins of the final blades:
The Inner Sea World Guide (2011) states Margaery San Trayne created the final blades for noble purpose of preventing resurrection magic from working on the executed and preventing the executed from going to Hell.
** spoiler omitted **
The 11 year old Inner Sea World Guide's information about the situation is a combination of out of date and a little bit intentionally misleading—we hadn't actually made any decisions about the "REAL" cause of the situation in Galt at that point, after all. I suppose the best way to interpret this all is to assume Margaery was entirely a pawn of the BBEG and that the BBEG was the one who set up the whole situation from the start, working from behind the scenes to deliberately confuse and hide its influence and thus prevent folks for finding out the truth. It worked for a looong time as a result.
Do all monsters that have amphibious trait also have a swim speed? In other words, do all monsters that have a swim speed also have amphibious trait?
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Do all monsters that have amphibious trait also have a swim speed? In other words, do all monsters that have a swim speed also have amphibious trait?
IANJJ, but you can check this on Archives of Nethys, here's the link to all monsters with the Amphibious Trait.
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Do all monsters that have amphibious trait also have a swim speed? In other words, do all monsters that have a swim speed also have amphibious trait?
A lot of these questions are already answered in the book. We define ALL of the monster traits at the end of the bestiary.
This is the same question as your previous one about breathing water, but with a word swap. The same answer applies.
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Creative Director
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Do gods/demi-gods have souls? If not, what happens to the souls of mortals who became gods? If they do, does Pharasma judge them if they die?
All living things have souls. Gods and demigods are living, therefore they have souls. What happens to them when they die depends on a case by case basis. In some of those cases, like demon lords, they become a part of the landscape of the Abyss (be it the Rift of Repose or, up until the point she moved, Nocticula's Midnight Isles).
As to what happens to the others... that all depends on the story we/you want to tell, and it will change as needed.
Pharasma judges them as all. The last soul she'll judge is herself.
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Creative Director
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Do all monsters that have amphibious trait also have a swim speed? In other words, do all monsters that have a swim speed also have amphibious trait?IANJJ, but you can check this on Archives of Nethys, here's the link to all monsters with the Amphibious Trait.
Please don't answer for me. Helps keep this thread focused and makes it easier for me to reply. (And note that the question wasn't "What are all the monsters who have the Amphibious Trait, so your response isn't helpful to the poster of the question in the first place.)
There are ten types of the orb of the dragonkind. Do primal dragons, imperial dragons, and outer dragons have their own orbs of dragonkind as well?The orbs of dragonkind were invented for 1st edition AD&D, back in a time when the game only had those ten types of dragon in the game.
My preference is to retain that legacy, and say that there are only those ten orbs of dragonkind in Pathfinder, rather than have to worry about revising the artifacts' history whenever we decide to introduce a new category of dragon. I believe we might have said otherwise here and there in print, but to me, the orbs of dragonkind work best when they're focused on just being those 10—both to keep from having to constantly expand them, but more importantly, to anchor them to their original source as something we get to use only because of the OGL.
Primal Orbs of Dragonkind / Orbs of Primal Dragonkind might kinda work, could be some kind of Prototypes.
Imperial, Outer and Planar would probably be harder to justify in verse, they have more ties to the Divines.Guessing it's related to why there are no "Orbs of Drakekind"?
Biologically, are dragons, serpentfolk, lizardfolk, and troglodytes reptiles?
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Creative Director
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Biologically, are dragons, serpentfolk, lizardfolk, and troglodytes reptiles?
By strict reptile definitions, none of them are, because none of those creatures are cold-blooded. They all have reptilian features, yes, but the more made-up and magical and fantastical something is, the less appropriate it is to try to quantify them in real-world scientific ways.
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Creative Director
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There are ten types of the orb of the dragonkind. Do primal dragons, imperial dragons, and outer dragons have their own orbs of dragonkind as well?The orbs of dragonkind were invented for 1st edition AD&D, back in a time when the game only had those ten types of dragon in the game.
My preference is to retain that legacy, and say that there are only those ten orbs of dragonkind in Pathfinder, rather than have to worry about revising the artifacts' history whenever we decide to introduce a new category of dragon. I believe we might have said otherwise here and there in print, but to me, the orbs of dragonkind work best when they're focused on just being those 10—both to keep from having to constantly expand them, but more importantly, to anchor them to their original source as something we get to use only because of the OGL.
Primal Orbs of Dragonkind / Orbs of Primal Dragonkind might kinda work, could be some kind of Prototypes.
Imperial, Outer and Planar would probably be harder to justify in verse, they have more ties to the Divines.Guessing it's related to why there are no "Orbs of Drakekind"?
There are no orbs of drakekind because drakes weren't a thing in the game when the orb of dragonkind was created, but also because drakes are much lower on the power scale and less influential and less powerful and less world-shaping and just less important in the grand scheme of things than dragons are.
And I've already spoken about my preference for the orbs of dragonkind. Let's keep this to questions, please. If you want to do more of a back and forth discussion with folks about stuff like this it's better to start its own thread, I guess.
Dear Mr. Jacobs,
Hello again! I am running the Reign of Winter adventure path for some friends, and I have gotten to the Artrosa part. I went through the GM reference thread for possible help, but couldn't find anything regarding the relationship and interactions with Marislova and her lover, Jadrenka. I vividly remember a section in the book dealing with a possible restoration of the two's love being discussed but cannot find it anymore--was there ever something like that intended? Or is it something that a GM could actively alter or what have you if they want?
Was there a the patron deity of thieves before Norgorber?
Hi James, I have two questions. Have you ever played the Kingmaker(CRPG) DLCs? Is Vordakai in his heyday more powerful than Tar-Baphon?
Have you played Rise of Legends, a science fantasy real-time strategy video game released in 2006? Have you ever heard of it?
I'm trying to desgn a game set at the beginning of the Age of Enthronement, soon after the Taldor's First Army of Exploration. I wonder, how to depict Taldor's expansion into new territories? I imagine it being some mix of Pax Romana and Manifest Destiny, but maybe you can add tell how do you imagine it and maybe give some references that could be an inspiration?
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Creative Director
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Dear Mr. Jacobs,
Hello again! I am running the Reign of Winter adventure path for some friends, and I have gotten to the Artrosa part. I went through the GM reference thread for possible help, but couldn't find anything regarding the relationship and interactions with Marislova and her lover, Jadrenka. I vividly remember a section in the book dealing with a possible restoration of the two's love being discussed but cannot find it anymore--was there ever something like that intended? Or is it something that a GM could actively alter or what have you if they want?
I didn't develop that Adventure Path and so I'm not very familiar with the plot and story beats and all that. Feel free to adjust as you want, I say, or you can always ask other GMs what they did in their games or how they interpreted things for inspiration.
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Hi James, I have two questions. Have you ever played the Kingmaker(CRPG) DLCs? Is Vordakai in his heyday more powerful than Tar-Baphon?
I never played the DLCs, no, but in my head, the original Vordakai in his heyday was likely a level 21 or 22 threat. So not as powerful as Tar-Baphon.
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Creative Director
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Have you played Rise of Legends, a science fantasy real-time strategy video game released in 2006? Have you ever heard of it?
Nope, and no. Looking into it via the googles, I see that it's an RTS game. That's probably why I haven't played it or heard of it—Starcraft pretty much made me lose interest in that whole genre after I got so frustrated with how the game play worked that I just gave up on it.
(To me, RTS games fight too hard against my preferences for taking my time in a game, immersing myself in its story and design and characters and graphics, and not rushing through it—same reason I'm not really a fan of games like Diablo anymore, or the bullet hell genre.)
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Creative Director
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I'm trying to desgn a game set at the beginning of the Age of Enthronement, soon after the Taldor's First Army of Exploration. I wonder, how to depict Taldor's expansion into new territories? I imagine it being some mix of Pax Romana and Manifest Destiny, but maybe you can add tell how do you imagine it and maybe give some references that could be an inspiration?
These days, I would imagine it as Taldor being the villain in the story and the PCs either being on Team Taldor and being villains as well, or being against Taldor and thus being regulated to a role in the game that would force them to lose. So ... I would probably not explore a game set in this time unless I was comfortable with doing an alternate timeline that would explore a "what-if" story where the PCs helped lead an opposition to Taldor's warmongering.
(To me, RTS games fight too hard against my preferences for taking my time in a game, immersing myself in its story and design and characters and graphics, and not rushing through it—same reason I'm not really a fan of games like Diablo anymore, or the bullet hell genre.)
I also am not a fan of super speedy play. In the original doom, I took my time and was methodical, something not really possible in the new doom hence my distaste for it.
I was rather disgusted watching an rts match that took 10 minutes and the commenters said it was a long game.
However, rts games at least have the potential for slower pacing. My mother and I used to play Tiberian Sun with 10 minute truces to spend time building ourselves up, and our games often lasted a couple hours. And Homeworld 2 can have custom maps thousands of kilometers wide, and it rakes a while when you have to hunt down where your enemy actually is.
I hope to one day create such a rts game focused on the slower gameplay, with logistics, custom unit/squad design, and the need to actually search around for the enemy, and hide from them. Naturally, story and individual characters are important as well, but that is a benefit to any game in any genre so it goes without saying. Would you find such a calmer rts game more appealing and perhaps worth trying?