Jade Regent sounds to me like an adventure of exploration. Marco Polo going east, or even like books and movies like Shogun and Tai-Pan by James Clavell, or even movies like the Last Samurai. This sounds more like a west meets east and the adventures of culture clash that arise.
Based upon James' description it seems like the adventure starts in Varisia and moves north through the Lands of the Linnorm Kings and on to the Crown of the World, before reaching Tian-Xia. So players would be starting off as "westerners" and are going to go explore the "mysterious east" by way of traveling north...
Now if the ENTIRE adventure was set in Tian-Xia then I would be very very reluctant to try it out. As it is it sounds more like an adventure of exploration than an oriental adventure.
It does, and it sounds as if it's not important that the players be immersed in Asian culture to run characters in it.
HOWEVER. The GM must be deeply into it to bring Tian Xa to life once you get there. If the GM isn't positively an enthusiast, it will come off utterly flat because there will be no immersion. Neither I nor anyone in my group fits that description.
Creative Director
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Personally i would love to see more of that myself. Paizo does it more than most, but I would love to see them push it even more personally. More mature stuff that is, of all types. I do think Golarion is better than most the only D20 based game that comes to mind that pushed it more was Conan by Mongoose, but well it's Conan so thats expected.
To be honest, I'd love to do this as well. Shows like "The Sopranos" or "The Walking Dead," movies like "Alien" or "The Godfather," or novels like "The Stand" or "Game of Thrones" all have LOTS of adult/mature content, and they haven't hurt society. In fact, all of the things I just mentioned are acclaimed; most have won awards.
I would LOVE to present Golarion as a world that's grim, gritty, and mature, without being IMMATURE. Unfortunately... that's not really all that much of an option, due in part to the fact that RPGs are still relatively new when it comes to entertainment; movies and novels and TV shows have been around long enough for the mass market to have grown used to these venues as entertainment, and thus mature content is more acceptable in those venues. More recent forms of entertainment, like comic books and video games and RPGs are only now getting to the point where we can have titles like "Sandman" or games like "Halo" or "Red Dead Redemption" be blockbuster hits that the public accepts... although even then you still see outcries against them when they delve into mature content. Comics not so much anymore, but that's because they've been around a lot longer than video games and RPGs. And the big advantage video games have over RPGs is that they are so much more ubiquitous that they've entered the mainstream a lot faster than tabletop RPGs, despite the fact that RPGs have been around a bit longer.
And that viewpoint is expressed not only by the mass market, but by the RPG market as well. Whenever we push the boundaries of what is deemed "mature content," (be it the ogres of Hook Mountain or the creation of a trait like Temple Prostitute, or even something as relatively innocuous as having someone like Seoni with her revealing attire headline a cover), we see a pretty vocal outcry on these boards from customers who are offended or threatened or scandalized or insulted by the mature content. And we're not a large enough juggernaut (like, say, Rock Star Games) to just barrel through and continue using the profanity or the sex or the violence in our products without monetary repurcussions.
Eventually, yes, I hope RPGs will be at a point where a mass-market RPG CAN do something on par with "The Sopranos" or "Red Dead Redemption" or "The Stand" or the like. We're not there yet, though. And in a lot of way's we're our own worst enemies in achieving that goal.
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Creative Director
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OK, so just throw out my goblin AP ideas in public why don't you?
But if, for example, Paizo were to produce the AP equivilent of my most hated genre, the Musical, I would probably cancel my subscription for a half-year too. ;-)
Rich brings up a good point.
I put a song into the very first Pathfinder. So does that make "Burnt Offerings" a musical?
I would say no. The goblins don't spontaneously break into song; they sing songs that they all already know.
I have nothing against songs or singing in movies. The ONLY thing that annoys me is when a group of people spontaneously burst into song and dance. It's just not realistic. It annoys me the same way something like how the bad guys never hit the good guys with bullets might annoy someone.
Singing goblins, now that is scarry
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For the record, I will likely end my subscription after Carrion Crown. Not because I'm not big into Asian-flavored games (I'm not), and not because the premise doesn't sound cool (it does), and I certainly would like to return to Sandpoint.
But I've got three APs sitting on my shelf that I haven't run yet. Throw in CC and I'll have four. I can't continue that path! But the decision certainly has nothing to do with the quality of the product. I just don't game as often as I'd like, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. Kids have that effect, dangit.
And as an aside, ** spoiler omitted **
I ended my subscription when I got the last volume of Council of Thieves - I hadn't run anything but Rise of the Runelords and my players were not yet sold on the whole new game thingy.
That was then, this is now.
I have converted my entire gaming group off of 3.5 and one of my novice players is inspired enough that she's reading through Serpent's Skull, deciding whether she'd like to run it.
Then my wife, my beautiful amazing wife, bought me all 6 volumes of Kingmaker for my Birthday and said she would run that.
With the Legacy of Fire game I started 4 months ago, that's now one campaign I'm running and three to play in. I'm restarting my subscription as soon as Carrion Crown becomes available (I promised my players I would not get any of the Serpent's Skull books until after she had run them).
This is a really long way to answer your concern: If you have campaigns piling up, challenge some of your players. While some of the APs may require more DM-mojo than others, they are all, generally, well-built enough to help novice DMs find their feet. If my wife had not bought me Kingmaker, I'd have missed out on some awesome articles on Erastil and Gorum.
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Personally i would love to see more of that myself. Paizo does it more than most, but I would love to see them push it even more personally. More mature stuff that is, of all types. I do think Golarion is better than most the only D20 based game that comes to mind that pushed it more was Conan by Mongoose, but well it's Conan so thats expected.To be honest, I'd love to do this as well. Shows like "The Sopranos" or "The Walking Dead," movies like "Alien" or "The Godfather," or novels like "The Stand" or "Game of Thrones" all have LOTS of adult/mature content, and they haven't hurt society. In fact, all of the things I just mentioned are acclaimed; most have won awards.
I would LOVE to present Golarion as a world that's grim, gritty, and mature, without being IMMATURE. Unfortunately... that's not really all that much of an option, due in part to the fact that RPGs are still relatively new when it comes to entertainment; movies and novels and TV shows have been around long enough for the mass market to have grown used to these venues as entertainment, and thus mature content is more acceptable in those venues. More recent forms of entertainment, like comic books and video games and RPGs are only now getting to the point where we can have titles like "Sandman" or games like "Halo" or "Red Dead Redemption" be blockbuster hits that the public accepts... although even then you still see outcries against them when they delve into mature content. Comics not so much anymore, but that's because they've been around a lot longer than video games and RPGs. And the big advantage video games have over RPGs is that they are so much more ubiquitous that they've entered the mainstream a lot faster than tabletop RPGs, despite the fact that RPGs have been around a bit longer.
I think it has a lot to do with the idea the RPG's are "kid stuff". Movies aren't kids stuff to begin with. Comics got "liberated" sometime around the Watchmen and Dark Knight. Video games suffer from "kid's stuff" as well, but as you correctly point out their market success means that they can start going "god damn the torpedoes" on the maturity issues.
In the US, RPGs are synonymous with D&D, at least as the common man is concerned. I can't count how many times did I read about people playing "D&D", as a generic name for RPGs. In this way whatever Paizo does is at high risk, because anything coming out of the D&D family is automatically assumed to be children-friendly.
That's also why White Wolf got their break - they never aimed for the young target. And that's why Warhammer always had a hard time in the US - it's a fantasy RPG but hey, the party is made up of a leperous gravedigger, a prostitute with syphillis, a dwarven psycho berserker and an elf necromancer, where did the Care Bears go?
Well, best I can do is spread the Pathfinder love in the rotten, morally relative, axiologically ambigous, wanton, rude and downright not children-friendly Federal Republic of Europe. In hopes that someday EU sales of RPGs will be large enough for the publisher to consider our decadent tastes in necromantic necrophilia. :)
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Personally i would love to see more of that myself. Paizo does it more than most, but I would love to see them push it even more personally. More mature stuff that is, of all types. I do think Golarion is better than most the only D20 based game that comes to mind that pushed it more was Conan by Mongoose, but well it's Conan so thats expected.To be honest, I'd love to do this as well. Shows like "The Sopranos" or "The Walking Dead," movies like "Alien" or "The Godfather," or novels like "The Stand" or "Game of Thrones" all have LOTS of adult/mature content, and they haven't hurt society. In fact, all of the things I just mentioned are acclaimed; most have won awards.
I would LOVE to present Golarion as a world that's grim, gritty, and mature, without being IMMATURE. Unfortunately... that's not really all that much of an option, due in part to the fact that RPGs are still relatively new when it comes to entertainment; movies and novels and TV shows have been around long enough for the mass market to have grown used to these venues as entertainment, and thus mature content is more acceptable in those venues. More recent forms of entertainment, like comic books and video games and RPGs are only now getting to the point where we can have titles like "Sandman" or games like "Halo" or "Red Dead Redemption" be blockbuster hits that the public accepts... although even then you still see outcries against them when they delve into mature content. Comics not so much anymore, but that's because they've been around a lot longer than video games and RPGs. And the big advantage video games have over RPGs is that they are so much more ubiquitous that they've entered the mainstream a lot faster than tabletop RPGs, despite the fact that RPGs have been around a bit longer.
And that viewpoint is expressed not only by the mass market, but by the RPG market as well. Whenever we push the boundaries of what is deemed "mature content," (be it the ogres of Hook Mountain or the creation of a trait like Temple Prostitute, or even something as relatively innocuous as having someone like Seoni with her revealing attire headline a cover), we see a pretty vocal outcry on these boards from customers who are offended or threatened or scandalized or insulted by the mature content. And we're not a large enough juggernaut (like, say, Rock Star Games) to just barrel through and continue using the profanity or the sex or the violence in our products without monetary repurcussions.
Eventually, yes, I hope RPGs will be at a point where a mass-market RPG CAN do something on par with "The Sopranos" or "Red Dead Redemption" or "The Stand" or the like. We're not there yet, though. And in a lot of way's we're our own worst enemies in achieving that goal.
Oh I understand why you guys don't push it more than you do. I just wish you had free reign to make stuff like the examples you gave. Or could do a side product line that pushed things to that level. You guys push it more than most and I like that. Just wish you was able to push things more is all. :)
I put a song into the very first Pathfinder. So does that make "Burnt Offerings" a musical?
Proving zat unconsciously you love ze very thing zat you consciously claim to despise. No matter how far you push ze "goblins" of musicals down, zey come surging out, a primal irruption of ze collective unconscious und your own unconscious, in rebellion against ze ego!
A big reason TO get Jade Regent even if you're not into Asian-themed adventures:
FREAKIN' VIKINGS, MAN!
Big whoop. I get to shout that every football season.
All I want in the next APs are good villains.
Someone my PCs can hate from book 1, or 2, you know, early. Just get them out there and in my PC's targets before the last part of the last book!
This is a really long way to answer your concern: If you have campaigns piling up, challenge some of your players. While some of the APs may require more DM-mojo than others, they are all, generally, well-built enough to help novice DMs find their feet. If my wife had not bought me Kingmaker, I'd have missed out on some awesome articles on Erastil and Gorum.
My wife doesn't play, and my son is too young to not put dice in his mouth . . . wait, I know gamers who do that . . . my son is too young to not know better than put dice in his mouth.
No, the real problem is real life. The regular group is sporadic, I've moved farther away (I love living in the country!), and no one wants to GM. I don't really want to, but if I want to play . . . . Which means I don't enjoy the process as much. Those three coupled together spell "not a lot of gaming."
I'm working on it though. My dentist has two boys who love miniature games, and consistently win against me. So I paint the minis and build the terrain, and they come over and mop the floor with me. Glad I enjoy gaming so much more than I do winning!
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Creative Director
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Rise of the Runelords... particularly the first three volumes, have plenty of edge, nipple, gore, and complex characters in it. For starters.Wait...nipple?
There's a visible female nipple in Pathifnder #3. The fact that it's not used in a sexual way to titillate (ha) means that most folks didn't even seem to notice, I think.
Oh no. I went and looked. I think I am going to be sick, or at least have nightmares for the next year or two.
For those who want to know
-- david
Papa.DRB
There's a visible female nipple in Pathifnder #3. The fact that it's not used in a sexual way to titillate (ha) means that most folks didn't even seem to notice, I think.
The reason for that is it's simply not to my taste, in the "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell" sort of way. At the same time, I realize that this sort of content IS to an awful lot of people's liking, and since you can't please everyone I completely understand that sometimes things will come along that I simply don't care for. It's not even that I don't LIKE it so much as I don't care about it at all. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that.
Fair enough. I hope you check it out anyway. And I'm honestly a little curious as to why it's not to your taste, but if you don't want to go into it further, that's fine.
Personally, having grown up watching movies like Godzilla, Seven Samurai, Ringu, and various kung-fu movies, I've always been interested in Asian fantasy themes.
But if, for example, Paizo were to produce the AP equivilent of my most hated genre, the Musical, I would probably cancel my subscription for a half-year too. ;-)
Wooh! Paizo is making a Musical AP? Wow!!! Drunkin' Karaoke D&D!!! That is FREAKIN' AWESOME!!! ;)
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I don’t really understand when people decide they don’t like a particular product (be it a book, movie or in this case Adventure Path) before they’ve actually seen it or at the very least heard reviews of it.
Sometimes it’s good to try to broaden one’s horizons. And if there was any company that I really trusted to take a new and interesting approach to a subject (even a subject that I wasn’t generally that into) it would be Paizo.
Only slightly on topic anecdote to follow: I recently read a book about several generations of a Greek family who emigrated to the USA. The blurb on the back of the book promoted it as a family drama, a ‘great American novel’ (or something similar) and said that the family secrets included incest. The book’s narrator is a sexually dimorphic character.
Now, on first reading, absolutely nothing about this appealed to me. I rarely read anything that doesn’t contain fantasy, science fiction or horror elements; I’m not that interested in modern Greece or the USA, I’, not interested in family drama and incest and hermaphrodites really don’t do it to me. But, on the advice of a friend who insisted that it was a good book, I read it, and you know what I actually enjoyed it. I still wouldn’t say that, on paper, it’s my thing, but I consider my horizons broadened.
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That's also why White Wolf got their break - they never aimed for the young target. And that's why Warhammer always had a hard time in the US - it's a fantasy RPG but hey, the party is made up of a leperous gravedigger, a prostitute with syphillis, a dwarven psycho berserker and an elf necromancer, where did the Care Bears go?
And that's the exact same reason why Warhammer was a hit over this side of the pond. Because it dropped the pink unicorns and glittery pixie-farts from the fantasy.
I don’t really understand when people decide they don’t like a particular product (be it a book, movie or in this case Adventure Path) before they’ve actually seen it or at the very least heard reviews of it.
Sometimes it’s good to try to broaden one’s horizons. And if there was any company that I really trusted to take a new and interesting approach to a subject (even a subject that I wasn’t generally that into) it would be Paizo.
Only slightly on topic anecdote to follow: I recently read a book about several generations of a Greek family who emigrated to the USA. The blurb on the back of the book promoted it as a family drama, a ‘great American novel’ (or something similar) and said that the family secrets included incest. The book’s narrator is a sexually dimorphic character.
Now, on first reading, absolutely nothing about this appealed to me. I rarely read anything that doesn’t contain fantasy, science fiction or horror elements; I’m not that interested in modern Greece or the USA, I’, not interested in family drama and incest and hermaphrodites really don’t do it to me. But, on the advice of a friend who insisted that it was a good book, I read it, and you know what I actually enjoyed it. I still wouldn’t say that, on paper, it’s my thing, but I consider my horizons broadened.
That's Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002). A good book. There are strong magical-realist aspects to it that are more applicable to gaming that one might think. [This is my librarian degree kicking in-- I can't help IDing books people mention because I've been busy looking them up for people based on far less info.]
I don’t really understand when people decide they don’t like a particular product (be it a book, movie or in this case Adventure Path) before they’ve actually seen it or at the very least heard reviews of it.
Sometimes it’s good to try to broaden one’s horizons. And if there was any company that I really trusted to take a new and interesting approach to a subject (even a subject that I wasn’t generally that into) it would be Paizo.
Only slightly on topic anecdote to follow: I recently read a book about several generations of a Greek family who emigrated to the USA. The blurb on the back of the book promoted it as a family drama, a ‘great American novel’ (or something similar) and said that the family secrets included incest. The book’s narrator is a sexually dimorphic character.
Now, on first reading, absolutely nothing about this appealed to me. I rarely read anything that doesn’t contain fantasy, science fiction or horror elements; I’m not that interested in modern Greece or the USA, I’, not interested in family drama and incest and hermaphrodites really don’t do it to me. But, on the advice of a friend who insisted that it was a good book, I read it, and you know what I actually enjoyed it. I still wouldn’t say that, on paper, it’s my thing, but I consider my horizons broadened.
And that's fine if you don't need to be steeped in the background of something before you pick it up. That worked for the book in question. However, I would venture to say that had the same book required an extensive background and longtime interest in incestuous hermaphroditic Greeks to make sense of it, well, you would likely not have found it as engaging. That's the case with Jade Regent or any other Asian adventure, in my experience (and yes I do have experience in trying to play Asian-themed adventures back in the 1e days -- it just wasn't good experience): if the GM, at the very least, does not have a passion for bringing something so markedly different to life, then it will remain flat and lifeless. And that's the case in my group, where nobody really cares about Asian themes.
In addition, there's the simple fact that my disposable income is very limited these days, and I want to have a pretty good idea I'm going to like something before I drop my $20 on it. I just don't have much cash to toss around on something I have no reason to think I would enjoy.
Personally i would love to see more of that myself. Paizo does it more than most, but I would love to see them push it even more personally. More mature stuff that is, of all types. I do think Golarion is better than most the only D20 based game that comes to mind that pushed it more was Conan by Mongoose, but well it's Conan so thats expected.To be honest, I'd love to do this as well. Shows like "The Sopranos" or "The Walking Dead," movies like "Alien" or "The Godfather," or novels like "The Stand" or "Game of Thrones" all have LOTS of adult/mature content, and they haven't hurt society. In fact, all of the things I just mentioned are acclaimed; most have won awards.
I would LOVE to present Golarion as a world that's grim, gritty, and mature, without being IMMATURE. Unfortunately... that's not really all that much of an option, due in part to the fact that RPGs are still relatively new when it comes to entertainment; movies and novels and TV shows have been around long enough for the mass market to have grown used to these venues as entertainment, and thus mature content is more acceptable in those venues. More recent forms of entertainment, like comic books and video games and RPGs are only now getting to the point where we can have titles like "Sandman" or games like "Halo" or "Red Dead Redemption" be blockbuster hits that the public accepts... although even then you still see outcries against them when they delve into mature content. Comics not so much anymore, but that's because they've been around a lot longer than video games and RPGs. And the big advantage video games have over RPGs is that they are so much more ubiquitous that they've entered the mainstream a lot faster than tabletop RPGs, despite the fact that RPGs have been around a bit longer.
And that viewpoint is expressed not only by the mass market, but by the RPG market as well. Whenever we push the boundaries of what is deemed "mature content," (be it the ogres of Hook Mountain or the creation of a...
See that is a shame, because for me, carrion crown seems like the perfect place to really dig your teeth to mature roleplaying.
I really had hoped that we as players would be forced by this AP to make touch choices. Having morality in a game seems really pointless if your not going to make Players make truely tricky moral decisions. Do I commit single murder of an innocent to save a whole city, or do i let them live, but watch as the city burn.
I don't feel the need for gore especially, and sex really just doesn't offend me, but tricky moral questions, alliances which serve the greater good, but which mean getting in bed with truely unpleasant people and even helping to cover up their crimes. That is awesome, and I wish we could have more of it.
Whenever we push the boundaries of what is deemed "mature content," (be it the ogres of Hook Mountain or the creation of a trait like Temple Prostitute, or even something as relatively innocuous as having someone like Seoni with her revealing attire headline a cover), we see a pretty vocal outcry on these boards from customers who are offended or threatened or scandalized or insulted by the mature content.
That's because it's puerile, not mature. Well, temple prostitutes might or might not be such, depending on the context, your other examples are.
I really had hoped that we as players would be forced by this AP to make touch choices. Having morality in a game seems really pointless if your not going to make Players make truely tricky moral decisions. Do I commit single murder of an innocent to save a whole city, or do i let them live, but watch as the city burn.
See, this is precisely the sort of thing that makes most of the attempts to insert "tough choices" fail. The situations where the real answer is "play nothing but selfish bastards, because otherwise God will take personal interest in concocting a lose-lose situation specifically intended to screw you over".
See that is a shame, because for me, carrion crown seems like the perfect place to really dig your teeth to mature roleplaying.I really had hoped that we as players would be forced by this AP to make touch choices. Having morality in a game seems really pointless if your not going to make Players make truely tricky moral decisions. Do I commit single murder of an innocent to save a whole city, or do i let them live, but watch as the city burn.
I don't feel the need for gore especially, and sex really just doesn't offend me, but tricky moral questions, alliances which serve the greater good, but which mean getting in bed with truely unpleasant people and even helping to cover up their crimes. That is awesome, and I wish we could have more of it.
And this is very much a matter of taste. If I want to revel in squalor, misery, and moral relativism, I can get it basically everywhere else in the world. I don't need to play "let's pretend" if I want that, I can just go outside or turn on the news. That's how things ARE. I see no need for more of it in my gaming, which is, after all, supposed to be relaxing and fun. You find choosing to murder an innocent fun (your example, not mine), I find it wearisome and depressing. Innocents end up dead all the freaking time in the real world. I don't need to add an imaginary corpse to the pile to have fun.
I really had hoped that we as players would be forced by this AP to make touch choices. Having morality in a game seems really pointless if your not going to make Players make truely tricky moral decisions. Do I commit single murder of an innocent to save a whole city, or do i let them live, but watch as the city burn.See, this is precisely the sort of thing that makes most of the attempts to insert "tough choices" fail. The situations where the real answer is "play nothing but selfish bastards, because otherwise God will take personal interest in concocting a lose-lose situation specifically intended to screw you over".
Being 'moral' is hard work. Sticking by your convictions makes your life difficult. If it is a tenet of your personal morality to give 10% of your income to charity, there will come a time when you have to choose between luxury, or perhaps even comfort, and maintaining that commitment.
And that goes double so for stories. If you are going to mention morality at all in a story or a game(and DnD/pathfinder does on BOTH counts) your really wasting words, unless you make it the focus of dramatic tension.
You don't need morality at all for conflict after all. self defense against animal intelligence level creatures is not something that has a moral dimension the vast majority of time, for instance. One can ignore ideas like is this conflict right or wrong and just get your fight on in DnD.
As such inclusion of morality is either there for dramatic tension, or it is there to make you feel better and not confront the fact that at its heart, a fairly major part of this game is about killing intelligent creatures and taking their stuff, and that very often all they have really done wrong is 'be evil' and defended their territory or tried to expand it, in much the same way that humans have done, both to each other and to other species, without being considered evil in the same game world(let alone the real world.)
The examples I gave where very quick ones, on account on not wanting to have to write several hundred words per example, but since you seem to think that the only option for characters is to become'selfish bastard' in a morally challenging game, I will provide a slightly more in depth example.
The PCs are hunting a major villain, who plans to release a plague in the city, along with other members of his cult.
The Party is working with a group of vigilantes from a economically deprived area. The Vigilantes act to stop the worst excesses of racist discrimination by the local guards. They also provide social services, medicinal aid and protection for their community, and have been active enemies of the cult which the PCs are fighting.
The party discovers a drug factory, in a safe house run by the group.
The drug is illegal and has some moderate long term health effects, however it is also a sacrament of a goodly faith currently prescribed by the local authorities. Use also has medicinal effects, for a local chronic illness.
The vigilantes are selling the drugs to fund their activities, to the faithful, the ill and to recreational users. In addition to selling the drug the vigilantes do engage in some criminal activities(such as rackateering outside of their neighbourhood)
What do the PCs do?
Allow the vigilantes to continue their trade? After all they are achieving a lot of good, from protecting their community to aiding a repressed goodly church and the ill. They are also drug dealers, murders and rackateers!
Do they betray their allies to the Guards? While the guards will stop the criminality, they are renowned for their corruption is near legendry and the drug will likely still flow, and perhaps at a higher price and only to the recreational users, as the repressed church members will not risk the purchase and the sick will not be able to afford the raised price. It will also mean an end to the positive elements of the vigilante's work. However, the good will of the guards, might well make it easier to find the terrorist.
Perhapes the powerful local evil church? While they would certainly both put an end to the flow of the drug to recreational users, and end criminality of the vigilantes, they would also likely use evidence from the raid to undertake a progrom against the smaller good faith. However, given that the illness reduces productivity, the drug will flow to the sick at a much reduced rate, so that the economy will be much improved.
People arnt born evil in real life!? Yes they are! Its called being a sociopath, and it can be followed from the early life untill they start commiting crimes. Or conversly, go to work in big buisness or other places that have no moral contience. Personally for a fictional look at this I like to watch "The Good Son" with that Caulkin kid :)
Being 'moral' is hard work. Sticking by your convictions makes your life difficult. If it is a tenet of your personal morality to give 10% of your income to charity, there will come a time when you have to choose between luxury, or perhaps even comfort, and maintaining that commitment.And that goes double so for stories. If you are going to mention morality at all in a story or a game(and DnD/pathfinder does on BOTH counts) your really wasting words, unless you make it the focus of dramatic tension.
You don't need morality at all for conflict after all. self defense against animal intelligence level creatures is not something that has a moral dimension the vast majority of time, for instance. One can ignore ideas like is this conflict right or wrong and just get your fight on in DnD.
As such inclusion of morality is either there for dramatic tension, or it is there to make you feel better and not confront the fact that at its heart, a fairly major part of this game is about killing intelligent creatures and taking their stuff, and that very often all they have really done wrong is 'be evil' and defended their territory or tried to expand it, in much the same way that humans have done, both to each other and to other species, without being considered evil in the same game world(let alone the real world.)
The examples I gave where very quick ones, on account on not wanting to have to write several hundred words per example, but since you seem to think that the only option for characters is to become'selfish bastard' in a morally challenging game, I will provide a slightly more in depth example.
The PCs are hunting a major villain, who plans to release a plague in the city, along with other members of his cult.
The Party is working with a group of vigilantes from a economically deprived area. The Vigilantes act to stop the worst excesses of racist discrimination by the local guards. They also provide social services, medicinal aid and protection for their community, and have been active enemies of the cult which the PCs are fighting.
The party discovers a drug factory, in a safe house run by the group.
The drug is illegal and has some moderate long term health effects, however it is also a sacrament of a goodly faith currently prescribed by the local authorities. Use also has medicinal effects, for a local chronic illness.The vigilantes are selling the drugs to fund their activities, to the faithful, the ill and to recreational users. In addition to selling the drug the vigilantes do engage in some criminal activities(such as rackateering outside of their neighbourhood)
What do the PCs do?
Allow the vigilantes to continue their trade? After all they are achieving a lot of good, from protecting their community to aiding a repressed goodly church and the ill. They are also drug dealers, murders and rackateers!
Do they betray their allies to the Guards? While the guards will stop the criminality, they are renowned for their corruption is near legendry and the drug will likely still flow, and perhaps at a higher price and only to the recreational users, as the repressed church members will not risk the purchase and the sick will not be able to afford the raised price. It will also mean an end to the positive elements of the vigilante's work. However, the good will of the guards, might well make it easier to find the terrorist.
Perhapes the powerful local evil church? While they would certainly both put an end to the flow of the drug to recreational users, and end criminality of the vigilantes, they would also likely use evidence from the raid to undertake a progrom against the smaller good faith. However, given that the illness reduces productivity, the drug will flow to the sick at a much reduced rate, so that the economy will be much improved.
I find it telling that you didn't include an option of convincing the vigilantes to stop doing the objectionable things and fund themselves through different mechanisms. Why not?
I've only seen 2 episodes of Buffy. One of them wasn't the musical. I've heard great things about it, but I refuse to watch it.
One of them wasn't, so the other one was? Now yer messin' with my head.
The Buffy musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling" was the reason I sat down to watch the entire series front-to-back. I'd had little interest before then. Granted, I'm a singer and perform musicals, but Joss gave the audience a legitimate reason *why* people were bursting out into song and dance. It fit beautifully, and some of the lines he was able to use were great: "The police were taking witness arias."
Out of curiosity, do you have the same thoughts on opera?
And now I feel I must put a specialized fey into my Kingmaker game. If they can make people dance, they can make 'em sing, too! ;)
And now I feel I must put a specialized fey into my Kingmaker game. If they can make people dance, they can make 'em sing, too! ;)
And make 'em laugh! Make 'em laugh! Don't you know everyone wants to laugh!
And this is very much a matter of taste. If I want to revel in squalor, misery, and moral relativism, I can get it basically everywhere else in the world. I don't need to play "let's pretend" if I want that, I can just go outside or turn on the news. That's how things ARE. I see no need for more of it in my gaming, which is, after all, supposed to be relaxing and fun. You find choosing to murder an innocent fun (your example, not mine), I find it wearisome and depressing. Innocents end up dead all the freaking time in the real world. I don't need to add an imaginary corpse to the pile to have fun.
Consider that the default DnD universe is a very horrible place to live, compared to ours (only a select few time periods and places can even start measuring to it in terms of ongoing misery, suffering and violence), even assuming standard heroic fantasy genre conventions (i.e., PCs are good guys, PCs are practically assured to win, PCs are going to save most of the things they care about, PCs are going to enact relatively long-term changes for the better), and Golarion adds extra layers of grimdark on top of it. Remove these genre conventions and Golarion will be on par with many of the deliberately dark, cynical and depressing non-RPG settings out there. What is the point of playing DnD, out of all games, this way, I don't know.
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That's Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002). A good book. There are strong magical-realist aspects to it that are more applicable to gaming that one might think. [This is my librarian degree kicking in-- I can't help IDing books people mention because I've been busy looking them up for people based on far less info.]
Yes, yes it is. Hmmm, not sure that I consciously saw the ‘magical-realist’ aspect, but perhaps sub-consciously that’s why I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Happy to discuss it further, but this is probably not the correct forum.
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In addition, there's the simple fact that my disposable income is very limited these days, and I want to have a pretty good idea I'm going to like something before I drop my $20 on it. I just don't have much cash to toss around on something I have no reason to think I would enjoy.
While I remain somewhat unconvinced that your other reasons are 'good' reasons (at least they wouldn't be to me, I'm not really qualified to say what is a good reason for you), this right here is reason enough as far as I am concerned, and one that I can identify with.
Hopefully the AP after Jade Regent will be something that you think you can enjoy more and you can pick up your subscription again.
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I've only seen 2 episodes of Buffy. One of them wasn't the musical. I've heard great things about it, but I refuse to watch it.One of them wasn't, so the other one was? Now yer messin' with my head.
The Buffy musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling" was the reason I sat down to watch the entire series front-to-back. I'd had little interest before then. Granted, I'm a singer and perform musicals, but Joss gave the audience a legitimate reason *why* people were bursting out into song and dance. It fit beautifully, and some of the lines he was able to use were great: "The police were taking witness arias."
Out of curiosity, do you have the same thoughts on opera?
And now I feel I must put a specialized fey into my Kingmaker game. If they can make people dance, they can make 'em sing, too! ;)
Fantastic episode, and one of the best things about it (apart from the clever lines in and out of song, all the important reveals, and the surprisingly good singing voices of some of the cast) was, as you say, the fact that there was an actual reason why people were bursting into song and dance ... if you apply that same reason to other musicals, they take on a really different light ...
And make 'em laugh! Make 'em laugh! Don't you know everyone wants to laugh!
And now I feel I must put a specialized fey into my Kingmaker game. If they can make people dance, they can make 'em sing, too! ;)
All praise the words of Samuel J. Snodgrass!
"Now you can study Shakespeare and be quite elite
And you can charm the critics and have nothing to eat
Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet!"
The reason for that is it's simply not to my taste, in the "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell" sort of way. At the same time, I realize that this sort of content IS to an awful lot of people's liking, and since you can't please everyone I completely understand that sometimes things will come along that I simply don't care for. It's not even that I don't LIKE it so much as I don't care about it at all. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that.
Fair enough. I hope you check it out anyway. And I'm honestly a little curious as to why it's not to your taste, but if you don't want to go into it further, that's fine.
Personally, having grown up watching movies like Godzilla, Seven Samurai, Ringu, and various kung-fu movies, I've always been interested in Asian fantasy themes.
But if, for example, Paizo were to produce the AP equivilent of my most hated genre, the Musical, I would probably cancel my subscription for a half-year too. ;-)
I'm not fan of Asian style games. Mainly because Asian style games tend to be Japanese style games and to me an Asian style game should cover all Asians not just one small country. I guess I find Ninjas and Samaria kind of over done in movies and books. I'd like to see the Mongolian culture and Genghis Khan for example. Another would Korean Hwarang.
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Creative Director
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That's because it's puerile, not mature. Well, temple prostitutes might or might not be such, depending on the context, your other examples are.Whenever we push the boundaries of what is deemed "mature content," (be it the ogres of Hook Mountain or the creation of a trait like Temple Prostitute, or even something as relatively innocuous as having someone like Seoni with her revealing attire headline a cover), we see a pretty vocal outcry on these boards from customers who are offended or threatened or scandalized or insulted by the mature content.
Why is it puerile when an RPG does it, but not when movies do it? And if your answer is "It's puerile when movies do it too!" then I guess that's all we have to say about that.
Being 'moral' is hard work. Sticking by your convictions makes your life difficult. If it is a tenet of your personal morality to give 10% of your income to charity, there will come a time when you have to choose between luxury, or perhaps even comfort, and maintaining that commitment.
This hard work also pays off in the long term, according to whatever viewpoint on morality you choose.
And that goes double so for stories. If you are going to mention morality at all in a story or a game(and DnD/pathfinder does on BOTH counts) your really wasting words, unless you make it the focus of dramatic tension.
I smell a false dilemma here. The morality as the focus of dramatic tension is in no way mandates "shades of grey" (by which most people who say these words, you included, really mean shades of black). I mean, morality is at the forefront in Lord of the Rings, the clear good-vs-evil story to inspire them all.
One can ignore ideas like is this conflict right or wrong and just get your fight on in DnD.
It is practically impossible to find a conflict which rightness or wrongness is unclear even if you deliberately comb through the entire fantasy genre. Much harder than find a conflict where both sides are equally bad (never mind equally good). Even in George Martin's saga you can quite easily say which wars are fought for a just cause, and which are not, as well as which side in them is worse.
So your demands are unrealistic.As such inclusion of morality is either there for dramatic tension, or it is there to make you feel better and not confront the fact that at its heart, a fairly major part of this game is about killing intelligent creatures and taking their stuff, and that very often all they have really done wrong is 'be evil' and defended their territory or tried to expand it, in much the same way that humans have done, both to each other and to other species, without being considered evil in the same game world(let alone the real world.)
Well, you want to run DnD as the game of murderous hobos and then bend over backwards to slam your PCs face into the fact that they are murderous hobos, I cannot forbid this to you. I prefer more genre-appropriate stories, though.
The examples I gave where very quick ones, on account on not wanting to have to write several hundred words per example, but since you seem to think that the only option for characters is to become'selfish bastard' in a morally challenging game, I will provide a slightly more in depth example.
It's not the only option for characters in a morally challenging game. It's the only option in a morally unwinnable game, because it is, well, unwinnable. So the only real option (besides not playing with you at all) is just to play characters that won't care.
What do the PCs do?
Shut down the cult, then enact local reforms necessary for the vigilante organization to go legal, then shut down the parts of organization that try to continue criminal activities. And don't forget to also shut down the evil church, while you're hanging around. A nice fodder for a couple of adventures. What's so difficult about coming up with this decision, save for your own desire to make the situation unwinnable?
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That's because it's puerile, not mature. Well, temple prostitutes might or might not be such, depending on the context, your other examples are.Whenever we push the boundaries of what is deemed "mature content," (be it the ogres of Hook Mountain or the creation of a trait like Temple Prostitute, or even something as relatively innocuous as having someone like Seoni with her revealing attire headline a cover), we see a pretty vocal outcry on these boards from customers who are offended or threatened or scandalized or insulted by the mature content.
One man's puerile is another man's Oscar
You can't say in one post "...the default DnD universe is a very horrible place to live, compared to ours (only a select few time periods and places can even start measuring to it in terms of ongoing misery, suffering and violence)" and in another post say that having that real horror in the game is "purile".
I mean, I guess you can because you did...
The point being, one of the major races is primarily a result of Orc rape raids. The game isn't about sunshine and roses. It can be if you want to run it that way, but "the default DnD universe is a very horrible place to live"
Also, puerile means "Childish or Silly", something that does not in any way apply to the Ogrekin of Hook Mountain or Temple Prostitutes.
Goblins maybe...:)
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Confused in MinnesotaGregg,
The good news is that no matter how bad things get, and no matter how confused you might be, you will always have the Lion's Tap in Eden Prairie, home of the best hamburger in the entire world, to tide you over.
We should all be so lucky.
GO VIKES!
:)
No way, Mona.
Matt's Bar and the Jucy Lucy are the way to go. No better bad-for-you meal, and you get to dip your fries in your hamburger.
Nice to see you spelled Jucy Lucy (tm) correctly!
Matt's is also a favorite. There is no shortage of good hamburgers in the Twin Cities (as opposed to, say, Seattle, where they are almost impossible to find).
There's a place in St. Paul called Shamrocks that also has mighty good burgers.
So yeah, lots of options, but I think the Lion's Tap is still the best hamburger ever. I go there at least once every time I get back to Minneapolis (which is usually at least twice a year).
Why is it puerile when an RPG does it, but not when movies do it? And if your answer is "It's puerile when movies do it too!" then I guess that's all we have to say about that.
Cheap gross-outs and ridiculous outfits (more generally, making villains ridiculously evil and ugly just because, and fanservice at the expense of taste and common sense) are puerile in any medium.
...
Being 'moral' is hard work. Sticking by your convictions makes your life difficult. If it is a tenet of your personal morality to give 10% of your income to charity, there will come a time when you have to choose between luxury, or perhaps even comfort, and maintaining that commitment.And that goes double so for stories. If you are going to mention morality at all in a story or a game(and DnD/pathfinder does on BOTH counts) your really wasting words, unless you make it the focus of dramatic tension.
You don't need morality at all for conflict after all. self defense against animal intelligence level creatures is not something that has a moral dimension the vast majority of time, for instance. One can ignore ideas like is this conflict right or wrong and just get your fight on in DnD.
As such inclusion of morality is either there for dramatic tension, or it is there to make you feel better and not confront the fact that at its heart, a fairly major part of this game is about killing intelligent creatures and taking their stuff, and that very often all they have really done wrong is 'be evil' and defended their territory or tried to expand it, in much the same way that humans have done, both to each other and to other species, without being considered evil in the same game world(let alone the real world.)
The examples I gave where very quick ones, on account on not wanting to have to write several hundred words per example, but since you seem to think that the only option for characters is to become'selfish bastard' in a morally challenging game, I will provide a slightly more in depth example.
The PCs are hunting a major villain, who plans to release a plague in the city, along with other members of his cult.
The Party is working with a group of vigilantes from a economically deprived area. The Vigilantes act to stop the worst excesses of racist discrimination by the local guards. They also provide social services, medicinal aid and protection for their community,
It was an example, there are more possible outcomes and actions than anyone could possibly list, and i had other things to do, like eat supper.
But sure, another choice is, attempt to turn you allies from a life of crime, risking that they will turn from you, or perhapes even become your enemies. Worse still risk failure in success when you turn the vigilantes from drug dealing and racketeering, only to watch them crumble to nothing as their revenue dries up.
Was there supposed to be some relevant point?
You can't say in one post "...the default DnD universe is a very horrible place to live, compared to ours (only a select few time periods and places can even start measuring to it in terms of ongoing misery, suffering and violence)" and in another post say that having that real horror in the game is "purile".
Well, good that I haven't said that. Ogres of the Hook Mountains aren't "real horror". Well, they would have been if it was possible to take them seriously, but I have yet to meet anyone who did. My party was cracking jokes about shooting up overgrown rednecks on the way through.
The point being, one of the major races is primarily a result of Orc rape raids. The game isn't about sunshine and roses. It can be if you want to run it that way, but "the default DnD universe is a very horrible place to live"
Again, I'm pretty sure you wanted to object to something I said, but it's not clear what your objection is. Noticing that some grimdarkness crosses the line to funny due to being too extreme, does not run counter to the statement that the world is too grimdark.
Was there supposed to be some relevant point?
That taste varies by individual. That you are not the sole arbiter of what is purile.