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I was looking for an adventure to run tomorrow night and looking through Dungeon Index saw Last Stand at Outpost 3. Sounded like a neat adventure as psionics play a big role in my homebrew world, and that it would be fun for a playtest of the Gunslinger class.
Swiped my friend's copy of the magazine and dear god this adventure is awesome. Not just the adventure/story itself, but the quality and layout (which may be editing as much as the author of course) is fantastic.
So...I vote you steal him back from wherever he went and get him to do a module or something. Maybe an Alkenstar one =p
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Noonan's early stuff is Fantastic!
His "Interloppers of Ruun Khazai" is the best Githyanki adventure EVER and deserves to be listed as one of the all time greats!
His "Zenith Trajectory," with its painted atmosphere of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now is the best ambience-adventure since 83's Ravenloft by Tracy Hickman, I. Sh+t. You. Not.
(Both of those precede your Dark Sun mini-adventure.)
His later work, though, including an Eberron(sp?) adventure with a vampire, is pretty pathetic.
Nonetheless, he is on my short list of WotC designers that I would like to see in Paizo. (Perkins, obviously, comes first -- then Cordell, Mearls, Noonan and Wyatt.)
What is the campaign setting for The Shackled City adventure path? Is it Golarian, Greyhawk, or generic?
Please for the love of GOD keep Mike Mearls away from Pathfinder and Golarion.
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Please for the love of GOD keep Mike Mearls away from Pathfinder and Golarion.
Yes. Please.
On the other hand Noonan also penned the underrated (IMO) Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard for D&D 3.5 near the end. Awesome work on backstory and populating the setting makes this the 'Thunder Rift' for the new generation.
So I'll toss in a hearty huzzah for the Davester too.
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Shackled City Adventure Path, like Creighton said, is in GH -- but it's all brand new sites.
Perkins, Youngs (Thomasson) and Mona took the point where the Hellfurnaces meet the Amedio Jungle and created a brand new town called Cauldron -- and then Sasserine on the coast.
So it's GH all the way, just not the place names we know and love from yesteryear.
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Please for the love of GOD keep Mike Mearls away from Pathfinder and Golarion.
+1
+1
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..
Wow, I guess I don't know what's become of Mike Mearls in the last few years (haven't polluted my soul by looking at WotC in years).
I only think of Mearls as the guy that wrote "Root of Evil" -- Unbelievably Awesome -- and some excellent Dragon articles in the first half of the 3E era.
Fortunately, he's still a full-time WotC employee, but in any event he would be available, DON'T.Please for the love of GOD keep Mike Mearls away from Pathfinder and Golarion.
+1
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If we are creating our fantasy wish list of folks we'd love to see .....
Well, yeah, Monte Cook and Wolfgang Baur --
and then Chris Pramas and Clark Peterson and Mike Selinker and Ryan Dancey and Skip Williams and Robin Laws.... the list goes on. But I was just naming WotC folks.@ W. E. Wray - if I'm not mistaken, I think Mearls had a pretty big hand in Fourth Edition.
Sure, but James Wyatt was bigger (far as I know); heck, all the WotC folks are pretty big into the development of their game. I figured there had to be something bigger for Mearls. The way it sounded made Mearls seem more like a Bill Slavisuck.
No biggie, though -- they're in WotC.
Mearls two of the best modules for 3E:
Belly of the beast
Siege of Durghams Folly
as well as Blood Bayou for Scarred Lands. Whatever your opinion might be of 4E, don't let it prejudice your opinion of Mearls and his talent.
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Mearls two of the best modules for 3E:
Belly of the beast
Siege of Durghams Follyas well as Blood Bayou for Scarred Lands. Whatever your opinion might be of 4E, don't let it prejudice your opinion of Mearls and his talent.
\
Honestly, I've never heard of either.
Unlike, say, Whispering Cairn or Prince of Redhand :)
add me to the petition to hire david noonan.
I would like to remind folks to please avoid stirring the coals of Edition Wars—it's completely unnecessary.
Since it's Friday, I have cookies to share.
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!
On the other hand Noonan also penned the underrated (IMO) Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard for D&D 3.5
I agree. I have that very product sitting out on my shelf for conversion to PF in the near future.
Mearls two of the best modules for 3E:
Belly of the beast
Siege of Durghams Follyas well as Blood Bayou for Scarred Lands. Whatever your opinion might be of 4E, don't let it prejudice your opinion of Mearls and his talent.
\
Honestly, I've never heard of either.
Unlike, say, Whispering Cairn or Prince of Redhand :)
They are older modules, especially Belly of the Beast. Both have very interesting concepts behind them and are very well designed. Erik, Pett etc. write great adventures too, no one is disputing that.
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!
Tito Leati- i loved his writing and style, and would put him up there with Logue and Pett...not sure what happened to the guy? He seemed to have vanished.
Liz, if you could pry him away from the Colonial Gothic line Graeme Davis would be one Id throw out there.
He wrote The Enemy Within campaign 'nuff said!
Since it's Friday, I have cookies to share.
thanks, don't mind if i do.
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!
based on the 3rd edition draconomicon, andy collins.
based on "the quicksilver hourglass" adventure, anson caralya.|
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Liz, if you could pry him away from the Colonial Gothic line Graeme Davis would be one Id throw out there.
wrote The Enemy Within campaign
Graeme wrote one of the Serpent's Skull episodes.
Actually, this brings me to a problem I've found that I have with outsourced AP writers. They usually have a hard time integrating Golarion lore into their modules.
This is, of course, logical, because the amount of writers that eat, breathe and talk Golarion amounts to Paizo staff and a few most dedicated freelancers (Vaughan, Pett, Hitchcok, all the RPGSS finalists etc.).
And of course, it's James Wes and Rob on the ball to insert Golarion stuff into adventures as they develop the manuscript, but still I'd prefer authors who know the setting well.
That's why I'm happy about author choices for Carrion Crown and the news that Jade Regent will be written by in-house staff and veteran AP writers, because the "experiments" in Serpent's Skull didn't really work (City of Seven Spears, I am looking at you).
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Post your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!
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How 'bout getting Mike Selinker to do a Pathfinder Shakespeare!
How 'bout getting Robin Laws to do a Pathfinder thing, preferably an AP volume.
How 'bout getting Willie Walsh back in the game.
How 'bout getting Monte Cook to do an AP volume -- he's not really busy.
(And still, how 'bout getting Chris Perkins to leave WotC for Paizo.)
How 'bout getting Mike Selinker to do a Pathfinder Shakespeare!How 'bout getting Robin Laws to do a Pathfinder thing, preferably an AP volume.
How 'bout getting Willie Walsh back in the game.
How 'bout getting Monte Cook to do an AP volume -- he's not really busy.
Robin Laws has an upcoming Pathfinder Tales novel, The Worldwound Gambit.
Willie Walsh has done something recently in Kobold Quarterly #16 and I'm certain he's working on some other things as well.Cook and Selinker I'm not sure about, though Kevin Andrew Murphy has been doing some pretty awesome poetry lately. :D
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It's a good thing I'm a Pathfinder Tales subscriber, huh?
And ya gotta admit, Selinker doin' a Pathfinder Shakespeare would be even cooler than a really cool Mike-Shel-doin'-a-sorta-"Mud Sorcerer" / "Maure Castle Redo"-Pathfinder-Module.
. . . . Maybe get some of your famous cookies and/or homemade mead to Perkins; trick him into signing a Paizo contract, Mwahahahaha
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Liz, if you could pry him away from the Colonial Gothic line Graeme Davis would be one Id throw out there.
wrote The Enemy Within campaign
Graeme wrote one of the Serpent's Skull episodes.
Actually, this brings me to a problem I've found that I have with outsourced AP writers. They usually have a hard time integrating Golarion lore into their modules.
This is, of course, logical, because the amount of writers that eat, breathe and talk Golarion amounts to Paizo staff and a few most dedicated freelancers (Vaughan, Pett, Hitchcok, all the RPGSS finalists etc.).
And of course, it's James Wes and Rob on the ball to insert Golarion stuff into adventures as they develop the manuscript, but still I'd prefer authors who know the setting well.
That's why I'm happy about author choices for Carrion Crown and the news that Jade Regent will be written by in-house staff and veteran AP writers, because the "experiments" in Serpent's Skull didn't really work (City of Seven Spears, I am looking at you).
On the opposite hand, makes it easier for people who run in Homebrew (as my group switched back to after a year or so of Golarion) to convert the adventures ;)
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!based on "the quicksilver hourglass" adventure, anson caralya.
+999
Writing a runnable, exciting, 30th level adventure in 20-some pages... wow.
Creative Director
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Shackled City Adventure Path, like Creighton said, is in GH -- but it's all brand new sites.
Perkins, Youngs (Thomasson) and Mona took the point where the Hellfurnaces meet the Amedio Jungle and created a brand new town called Cauldron -- and then Sasserine on the coast.
So it's GH all the way, just not the place names we know and love from yesteryear.
Actually... the original few adventures in the Shackled City Adventure Path were world-neutral—they weren't actually set in Greyhawk at the start. It wasn't until several adventures into the AP that Erik and I decided to finally ground the world in which "Shackled City" was set in Greyhawk—I don't think this actually happened until near the end of the AP.
Then, when I went back through it and revised it all up for its hardcover re-issue, I made sure that it worked from start to end in Greyhawk.
The original concept for Shackled City, though, was for it to be in a generic world.
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Creative Director
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Tito Leati- i loved his writing and style, and would put him up there with Logue and Pett...not sure what happened to the guy? He seemed to have vanished.
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!
Tito didn't have a lot of free time for a few years there to write.
But that's about to change... stay tuned!
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Creative Director
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That's why I'm happy about author choices for Carrion Crown and the news that Jade Regent will be written by in-house staff and veteran AP writers, because the "experiments" in Serpent's Skull didn't really work (City of Seven Spears, I am looking at you).
Even our best authors get burnt out or decide to move on to other pursuits—Nick Logue is a great example of this. He's a full time teacher now and doesn't have much RPG time on his hands. As a result... we can't simply rely on a single "stable" of authors... we HAVE to bring in new authors relatively regularly.
That said, going forward, we'll be using the modules line, the Campaign Setting line, the support articles in Pathfinder APs, and the Player Companion line to test out new authors (including established authors we've never worked with before). The Adventure Path Adventures themselves are incredibly complex... and as such, we'll be sticking with authors we know can handle the type of writing and tasks an AP requires of them. Essentially... they'll need to "prove" themselves writing for a bit for our other lines from this point on before we turn them loose on an AP.
As long as we are bringing up names of known writers with excellent work under their belts, how about Morten Braten? He did the utterly amazing Ancient Empires: Mesopotamia for Necromancer back in the day.
He is now doing some PFRPG compatible stuff. Although I don't know how involved he is with Xoth Publishing, which I believe is his own.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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If we are creating our fantasy wish list of folks we'd love to see .....Well, yeah, Monte Cook and Wolfgang Baur --
and then Chris Pramas and Clark Peterson and Mike Selinker and Ryan Dancey and Skip Williams and Robin Laws.... the list goes on. But I was just naming WotC folks.
A lot of these guys have already contributed to Pathfinder.
Monte Cook: Curse of the Riven Sky
Wolfgang Baur: Numerous contributions, but notably Crucible of Chaos and Fortress of the Stone Giants
Chris Pramas: Chris contributed a kingdom to the Guide to the River Kingdoms
Clark Peterson: Nothing yet.
Mike Selinker: Mike helped out a bit with the Harrow rules, and co-desinged our card game Yetisburg. He was also the driving force behind Stonehenge, our anthology boardgame. He hasn't done any adventures for us, but it could happen.
Ryan Dancey: Ryan helped us judge RPG Superstar this year, but a major Pathfinder contribution has yet to come.
Skip Williams: Skip did several adventures for Dungeon, but hasn't yet contributed to Pathfinder.
Robin Laws: He just recently wrote our fourth Pathfinder Tales novel, The Worldwound Gambit, as well as the Pathfinder Journal during the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path.
Dave Noonan is one of my few genuine RPG heroes. He would be an incredible asset to Pathfinder if he could be coaxed.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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As long as we are bringing up names of known writers with excellent work under their belts, how about Morten Braten? He did the utterly amazing Ancient Empires: Mesopotamia for Necromancer back in the day.
He is now doing some PFRPG compatible stuff. Although I don't know how involved he is with Xoth Publishing, which I believe is his own.
I'm not familiar with Braten's work. If he's interested in writing for us he should send a copy to James. Sometimes we spend so much time working on our own material that high-quality material from other publishers sneaks past us. Perhaps this is one such case?
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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My understanding is that Dave Noonan is working in video games these days. I haven't heard from him in years.
He was always one of my favorite contributors during the Dungeon years. Under the right circumstances I would love to have him design an adventure for us.
In fact, I think it fair to say that Dave has an open invitation to pitch us an adventure any time he'd like to do so. We'd love to hear from him.
As long as they don't get Bill Slavicsek anywhere near PF i am happy.
And he's one of the others. :(
He was always one of my favorite contributors during the Dungeon years. Under the right circumstances I would love to have him design an adventure for us.
In fact, I think it fair to say that Dave has an open invitation to pitch us an adventure any time he'd like to do so. We'd love to hear from him.
Precisely. Dungeon/Dragon articles (esp Dark Sun stuff), PHB2, and heroes of battle. All awesome.
I've not run or played in any of his adventures (that I know of) but his supplementary rules were always the most balanced. Personally I'd like to see him work on whatever player or DM resource is after ultimate magic/combat.
I hope something comes from that offer, Eric. :)
As long as we are bringing up names of known writers with excellent work under their belts, how about Morten Braten? He did the utterly amazing Ancient Empires: Mesopotamia for Necromancer back in the day.
He is now doing some PFRPG compatible stuff. Although I don't know how involved he is with Xoth Publishing, which I believe is his own.
I'm not familiar with Braten's work. If he's interested in writing for us he should send a copy to James. Sometimes we spend so much time working on our own material that high-quality material from other publishers sneaks past us. Perhaps this is one such case?
Whoops! Correction, it was called Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia.
Here was Clark Peterson's words on this guy from the Necromancer messageboards which caused me to pick this work up on ebay.
"Morten is a stud. Its official!
I have to tell a little story. Bill emails me and says he knows a guy who has this project he is working on (what later is Meso). Bill is often a little overly enthusiastic about stuff that never pans out, so I gave him my usual "yeah yeah sure sure send it to me." I freaked. Then when the full manuscript came in, I double freaked. Then, when Chaney finished the pre-press PDFs I triple freaked. Now it was my turn to gush about this thing. I called Bill, "I will never doubt you again, this thing is amazing." Literally, every step this thing got better and better and everyone who added to it improved it. And Chaney did a hell of a job. This is, IMHO, perhaps one of our top 5 best books to date and I wouldnt argue too hard if someone said it was the best so far.
So Morten, you are hereby a stud.
Clark"
What I don't know is if he is interested in actually doing any work directly for Paizo. But I do know he has just come out with a PFRPG compatible adventure, which he recently posted about on these messageboards.
Song of the Beast Gods it is called.
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That's why I'm happy about author choices for Carrion Crown and the news that Jade Regent will be written by in-house staff and veteran AP writers, because the "experiments" in Serpent's Skull didn't really work (City of Seven Spears, I am looking at you).Even our best authors get burnt out or decide to move on to other pursuits—Nick Logue is a great example of this. He's a full time teacher now and doesn't have much RPG time on his hands. As a result... we can't simply rely on a single "stable" of authors... we HAVE to bring in new authors relatively regularly.
That said, going forward, we'll be using the modules line, the Campaign Setting line, the support articles in Pathfinder APs, and the Player Companion line to test out new authors (including established authors we've never worked with before). The Adventure Path Adventures themselves are incredibly complex... and as such, we'll be sticking with authors we know can handle the type of writing and tasks an AP requires of them. Essentially... they'll need to "prove" themselves writing for a bit for our other lines from this point on before we turn them loose on an AP.
That's great news and a logical setup of testing new folks before handing them over your crown jewel, the AP.
On the topic, I hope Mark Moreland and Crystal Frasier get to write an AP episode sometime.
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A lot of these guys have already contributed to Pathfinder.
.... Keep 'em coming!
(It's funny, I never got into the Pathfinder Journal articles in the AP until I saw Robin's. I even started a Thread (back when the AP began) asking if I could read the Journals without catching spoilers.
And a couple months ago bought a product from a Paizo scratch-n-dent sale just cuz Robin wrote it, something about sample kingdoms for a DM's game (haven't read it yet, ah to have more time).
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He was always one of my favorite contributors during the Dungeon years. Under the right circumstances I would love to have him design an adventure for us.
In fact, I think it fair to say that Dave has an open invitation to pitch us an adventure any time he'd like to do so. We'd love to hear from him.
Precisely. Dungeon/Dragon articles (esp Dark Sun stuff), PHB2, and heroes of battle. All awesome.
I've not run or played in any of his adventures (that I know of) but his supplementary rules were always the most balanced. Personally I'd like to see him work on whatever player or DM resource is after ultimate magic/combat.
I hope something comes from that offer, Eric. :)
Didn't realize he did Heroes of Battle, that's my favorite rules supplement of all time. Battlefield as a dungeon concept is genius. Definitely get him if/when you ever do a big war campaign (Worldwound/Mendev hopefully!)
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CEO
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Tito Leati- i loved his writing and style, and would put him up there with Logue and Pett...not sure what happened to the guy? He seemed to have vanished.
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!
I have a feeling that he may just unvanish sometime later this year. :)
-Lisa
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Tito Leati- i loved his writing and style, and would put him up there with Logue and Pett...not sure what happened to the guy? He seemed to have vanished.
On a similar note, there are quite a few authors that I ran across while digging through my Dungeon Magazines recently whose work I'd like to see more of, so keep posting your thoughts about other designers you'd like to see more of!I have a feeling that he may just unvanish sometime later this year. :)
-Lisa
There we go, Lisa casts unvanish freelancer.
Wish she could cast that on Nic Logue...