curse you greg a. vaughn for being such a great adventure writer!(not really:).Hmmmm...a couple of ways you can read this..
;-)
Oh, you should read this in the worst possible manner because you're a horrible, horrible person.
(not really:)).
:P
Your players can be given any option that you, the GM, decide to give them.But the Pathfinder Society will be playing a much larger role in The Shattered Star.
NOTE: ... Magnimar is the newest major city with a Pathfinder Society lodge in it, and we'll be exploring what it means for the society to launch a new chapter in a new region to a certain extent, and will probably set up the PCs in that one as part of that initiative.
That's too bad. :(
I pretty much have zero interest in the Pathfinder Society. And Serpent's Skull really didn't enamor me of them all that much, either.
Hopefully my players will be given the option to not be any part of that, in the adventure.
Uh, thanks, but that's a little too obvious for me.
I just need to know if the adventure has appropriate enough options to get me to buy the product. I look forward to the results next year!
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I hold out hope that one day there will be Barbarians vs Robot love with a Numerian AP.Everyone should be against Robot Love...just sayin...
Do you know what Billy's planet was?
IT WAS GOLARION! DON'T DATE ROBOTS!
I just want to see an reappearance from Orin Vankaskerkin!! I LOVED playing him as the GM in RotRL! I'll take any other Vankaskerkin as well. :D
He's right! There hasn't been a Varisian AP yet which didn't have a Vankaskerkin in it. Don't fail on this now!
I just want to see an reappearance from Orin Vankaskerkin!! I LOVED playing him as the GM in RotRL! I'll take any other Vankaskerkin as well. :DHe's right! There hasn't been a Varisian AP yet which didn't have a Vankaskerkin in it. Don't fail on this now!
Until they turn into the Palmer clan from "24": Oh, look! Another Palmer sibling we've never met before. How big is this family, and what are the odds they keep getting mixed up with Jack Bauer? ;)
Any further developments on this AP ???
I already have my character written up for this one :P
Creative Director
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Any further developments on this AP ???
I already have my character written up for this one :P
Absolutely. The first three parts are being written. I'll be assigning part 4 here in a week or two or three, I suspect.
We're deep in the zone between "AP is announced" and "We start talking publicly about the juicy details." That zone can last for many, many months.
Any further developments on this AP ???
I already have my character written up for this one :P
Absolutely. The first three parts are being written. I'll be assigning part 4 here in a week or two or three, I suspect.
We're deep in the zone between "AP is announced" and "We start talking publicly about the juicy details." That zone can last for many, many months.
I really need to get the Paizo offices bugged. ;)
Seven parts you say, artifact, you say - sounds familiar and I am really looking forward participating in such an adventure (please, please, please, let somebody else be on GM duty...).
I really need to get the Paizo offices bugged. ;)
Count on me for assistance on that mission!
I really like that you've chosen Varisia again. There are so many books out having that nation as setting, that you can actually go and pick different books from different APs and cobble together your own adventure with interesting turns and twists to catch your group off guard (hopefully none has taken the feat).
On another note (slight derail) Shattered Star starting in August means, that for getting the PDFs for RotRL HC means staying a subscriber for the pirate thingy, right?
Ruyan.
Any further developments on this AP ???
I already have my character written up for this one :P
Absolutely. The first three parts are being written. I'll be assigning part 4 here in a week or two or three, I suspect.
We're deep in the zone between "AP is announced" and "We start talking publicly about the juicy details." That zone can last for many, many months.
It's sad really...I'm 47 years old and I feel like a 4 year old trying not to pee his pants when it comes to waiting for an AP :P
Oh and Silken Strings. You are in a cruel mans harem and break out, only to find the town burning and everything gone to hell.
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What exactly makes a gather the artifacts AP? From the APs I have seen, there seems to be a dungeon in every book (limited AP knowledge though), or something that takes the place of a dungeon. What makes it different then that, with an Artifact at the end of each one?
Dungeons are a significantly important part of the game. That's why they show up in pretty much every adventure in some form or another.
What makes a "gather the artifacts" storyline is NOT dungeons... it's that the adventure hook for each part is more or less the same—go to this location (which need not be a dungeon, although that IS the case with Shattered Star) and find the artifact fragment. Once you've gathered all the parts, you put the powerful artifact together and then get to use it on the last adventure.
It's basically the overriding theme of the adventure path, just as "explore the lost city" was the overriding theme of Serpent's Skull, "save Korvosa" was the theme for Curse of the Crimson Throne, "horror" was the theme for Carrion Crown, and "the epic journey" was the theme for Jade Regent.
heh, rod of seven parts... except theres just 5 preceding adventures, and thus gotta be a 5 part star :p
Then entering the much mentioned city of elders from maure castle.
Kewl.
Afterall where better to hide stuff than a demiplane and make it so theres a special key and can be only opened in one specific way.
Oh and since the AP is essentially over with the last adventure, theres really no problem in setting up a mother of all hoards. Think 4*2 million gold..
I wonder how many players would even bother with a small pool filled with goldcoins ala 10 million coins, as its such a obvious trap :D Theres a laugh for years to come, walking past the hoard of hoards since you didnt believe your eyes.
Surely the star will be a sihedron?
I believe that has allready been stated ;)
Surely the star will be a sihedron?If it's not... I would think that would look like a colossal error on our part, wouldn't it?Clearly, I need to improve my writing skills so that my rhetorical questions are more obvious.
What's the CR on a Colossal Error?
I'm sure its probably a haunt ;) at least CR 15 would be my guess.
I truly hope we got some Cypher Mage opportunities in this one (as in, getting a chance to play one) and more of them mystic stuff related to Varisia (the giants, the Shoanti and all that). I still find the premise (and name) of "sin magic" to be silly and sound like a "not-so-good borderline porn fanfic" involving mind control (lust is ALWAYS highlighted among sins) but that's just me.
Then again, all the other magic stuff is cool, and while I was hoping to see an AP involving Irrisen or the Worldwound, I guess exploring Thassilonian stuff is pretty good too. Now if only you guys went to Iblydos in detail so I can work on my homebrew race more easily...
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I still find the premise (and name) of "sin magic" to be silly and sound like a "not-so-good borderline porn fanfic" involving mind control (lust is ALWAYS highlighted among sins) but that's just me...
That seems a fairly odd statement, given the sins which are highlighted in RotRL.
greed
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wrath
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all the rest
It doesn't stop my players from laughing at the Runelord idea and then explaining to me what makes them so darn ridiculous. But like I said, I love most of the other stuff like Harrowing (though it's annoying to try it out in an actual game), Cypher Magic and the actual Runelords themselves.
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It doesn't stop my players from laughing at the Runelord idea and then explaining to me what makes them so darn ridiculous. But like I said, I love most of the other stuff like Harrowing (though it's annoying to try it out in an actual game), Cypher Magic and the actual Runelords themselves.
Didn't know that Finns are such puritans.
That's not really true in the sense that Finns tend to be violent and often overindulge in alcohol. That's already Wrath and Gluttony covered up pretty well. Also, we suffer of rampant patriotism, so Pride is also there on the list. Oh, and studies show that we are all Evil. :3
It's just that "sin magic" just sounds silly to me and the guys at the table, like anything you would pick up from the Book of Erotic Fantasies/"sex magic".
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That's not really true in the sense that Finns tend to be violent and often overindulge in alcohol. That's already Wrath and Gluttony covered up pretty well. Also, we suffer of rampant patriotism, so Pride is also there on the list. Oh, and studies show that we are all Evil. :3
It's just that "sin magic" just sounds silly to me and the guys at the table, like anything you would pick up from the Book of Erotic Fantasies/"sex magic".
sin = sex
OK.....
How you jumped into that conclusion is beyond me. Then again, I might have misunderstood what you meant by "puritan" :U
Oh, well. Main points are...
1. Sin magic sounds funny.
2. The Runelords themselves are awesome.
3. Referring to them as masters of sin magic makes them less awesome.
4. I sticked to referring to them as masters of their respective school of magic.
5. And they still embody the sins associated to their schools of magic and the fluff.
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Oh, well. Main points are...
1. Sin magic sounds funny.
2. The Runelords themselves are awesome.
3. Referring to them as masters of sin magic makes them less awesome.
4. I sticked to referring to them as masters of their respective school of magic.
5. And they still embody the sins associated to their schools of magic and the fluff.
Everbody has his own tastes, but I don't find "sin magic" funny. IMHO it's one of the things that makes Runelords awesome, because without sin magic they're more or less a bunch of generic uber wizards yadda yadda.
Agreed with the matter of taste issue. It sadly won't stop my players from being all "lol lust magic" whenever I mention "sin magic" at the table. I might as well refer to them as the boring generic uber wizards instead because at least one of the players is a fan of such characters.
Oh, and I want more Iblydos. Did I forget to mention how much I wanna see something about Iblydos? :U
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I always thought the idea of sin magic was really cool, imaginative, and original. Thinking out of the box type stuff. And I didn't think sin magic = sex (ok, except for maybe lust). But I know that the 7 sins can be a bit overgeneralized at times. Lust doesn't always mean 'too much sex'; it originally meant committing adultery.
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I always just called it Rune Magic. I have thought the Sin thing was unnecessarily tied to Christianity. When I ran Runelords, I tried to step away from the direct sin names and used rage, avarice, overconfidence, etc. instead. Occasionally I used the traditional names, but made it more of a personality trait focus.
I always just called it Rune Magic. I have thought the Sin thing was unnecessarily tied to Christianity. When I ran Runelords, I tried to step away from the direct sin names and used rage, avarice, overconfidence, etc. instead. Occasionally I used the traditional names, but made it more of a personality trait focus.
Sounds a lot better in my head. I'll probably snatch this idea for my own table, if you don't mind :3
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I think the Christian analogue was actually what made it for me. Sin magic feels so vile. Tapping into the corrupted representation of a virtue, channeling the baser emotions into corporeal effects and creating a whole empire with such perversions as its law and dogma always felt so grandly vicious to me.
The way I saw some of the spellcasting of the setting was to imagine for example the symbol spells as being Thassilonain runes of power. Symbol of Pain, for instance, was a rune of unbridled hate so powerful that merely hearing it spoken aloud or seeing the first few curves of the actual one would invoke a feel of nausea and ennui. In fact the actual symbol spell was not that way because it featured magic of a certain school, but because of the dire nature of the ancient glyph. Runes of sin just felt "wrong". Not wrong in the Mythos sense*("roll for SAN and call unca Theobald"), but wrong in the sense of leaving lasting images in your vision and invoking the emotions they represented in the watcher/hearer. Carnal desire, anger, strong egoism, etc
Similarly, old Thassilonian wasn't just any tongue, but a language of magic and creation like draconic and druidic. Many of the ruins of the old empire stood tall, because of the mere nature of the symbols drawn on and into the bones of those structures. Sure, scanning the area magically would tell you that it contains strong abjuration and conjuration, but it's not the afterimage of the spells cast, but the handiwork of the architects. Imagine a Varisian architec seeing the blueprints of the building! It would be so powerful to a modern mind that designing mad curves and imposing statue plazas is all he could do for months and months.
In that vein, the magic of Varisian dancing, song and card-reading might indeed be so powerful because of the vestiges of ancient magic running through the cadences and notations and steps of those arts. Indeed all bardic music of North-Western Avistan may as well be the post-product of Thassilonian runemages having given voice to creation thousands of years ago. Ask a traveling bard to put on a performance near the ancient standing stones and he'd murmur something about "the echo" and ask the troupe to back their things while giving you wary looks.**
*Though yeah, certain runes would certainly feel like the Yellow Sign if the end of the RotRL AP was of any indication.
**And ancient beings dig bards, just ask Eric Zahn. Oh wait...
When I first got my issue of Burnt Offerings, I almost dropped out. The sin magic angle stank so badly of christianity, I was waiting to find out there was single over diety, with maybe a few worshipable saints. I' very glad I gave it a try.
First time I ran RotRl we didn't get to any mention of sin magic, which is good, as it just seems hokey to me. I like the above idea of reskinning it, though I'm worried my players will see through it. Probably not as big of a deal as I'm making out of it...
When I first got my issue of Burnt Offerings, I almost dropped out. The sin magic angle stank so badly of christianity, I was waiting to find out there was single over diety, with maybe a few worshipable saints. I' very glad I gave it a try.
First time I ran RotRl we didn't get to any mention of sin magic, which is good, as it just seems hokey to me. I like the above idea of reskinning it, though I'm worried my players will see through it. Probably not as big of a deal as I'm making out of it...
See we had the opposite reaction. My group is a mixture of backgrounds but we all knew the the same base reference for the sin magic which gave them something thy could identify as bad to work against. It played to their player knowledge at how depraved the Thasilonians must have been...
If this timeline works out, i will probably be finished my Rise campaign right when Shattered Star begins. I wonder if my PC's will be keen to "continue" the story.
I recently borrowed Crimson Throne and been thinking of that one next though.
I always thought the idea of sin magic was really cool, imaginative, and original. Thinking out of the box type stuff. And I didn't think sin magic = sex (ok, except for maybe lust). But I know that the 7 sins can be a bit overgeneralized at times. Lust doesn't always mean 'too much sex'; it originally meant committing adultery.
Not only that, adultery in the original texts of th bible was more defined as not living according to any values, not specifically sexual ones. This was what God punished Sodom for, not specifically sex related issues. Generally, we have a poor understanding of the original messages of the bible. Not that this is strange.
We generally refer to these magical traditions as "Thassilonian magic" in print. Calling it "sin magic" or "runelord magic" or "Sihedron magic" works as well. The rules don't care what they're called.
And hopefully that's the end to this derailing.