The Unofficial Top 32 Guildhall: End of the Mayan Calendar Edition

[Will Cooper]

It isn't good enough.
It's a cliche.
The judges will see right through it.
No one will want it in their campaign.
People will laugh at it.
It's not cool, it's juvenile.
It doesn't fit in Golarion.
It's boring.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind killier. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

MUAD'DIB

Ahem... personal catharsis... as you were.

[Jacob Kellogg]

Jacob W. Michaels wrote:

Jacob K., I sure hope so. I'm trying to figure out whether it's good or bad I'm not getting any comments on my wondrous item. I'm very jealous of those of you in the 20s and up!

Go read the comments in mine; you'll be less jealous. :P

[Mikko Kallio]

Now that's an idea. Maybe the smurf avatar?

[Andrew Newton]

Thomas LeBlanc wrote:

Question: Who here only likes to GM? Only play? Or if you both GM and play, what is the ration?

I much prefer to play, but as its usually PFS I still GM about 20% of the games I'm involved in.

[Jacob Trier]

Mike Welham wrote:

Alternately, we could all switch to the same avatar. :)

Now THERE's an interesting idea.

@ GM/player ratio
I get my main Pathfinder fix from PbP. I am a player in three different games right now, and I am running Neil's Realm of the Fellnight Queen (so is the other Jacob - motteditor).

In RL i run Kingmaker at irregular intervals, and play in a just as irregular Legacy of Fire campaign.

Oh, and I was recently appointed Venture-leiutenant for PFS in my local area, and am working on arranging regular games.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Yes, let us all slip smurf somewhere in each of our posts. :D
The three Jacobs, at least, should all have the same avatar. :)

On GMing/Playing:
I'm actually running my first campaign ever right now. It's going excellently! That's on Fridays (except today :p), and Tuesdays we do Pathfinder in our Faerun setting.

We're doing a low-to-no magic variant with guns everywhere and a wild west theme. Trolls are from... Austrollia...

(Also, armor as DR mechanic. You can subtract from your attack roll to reduce their DR. It's actually working surprisingly well. I'm also making magicless Bard and Alchemist archetypes~)

[Jacob Kellogg]

Okay, I've never understood the whole Smurf thing. I've never seen them in the selection of avatars, but I see them pop up from time to time. Can someone explain this to me?

EDIT: Okay, wtf?

[James Raine]

I'm currently playing in Kingmaker (playtesting DSP's Marksman class) and running War of the Burning Sky. I love that adventure soooooooo much. All 900 pages of it.

[N. Edward Lange]

Will Cooper wrote:

It doesn't fit in Golarion.

i have the opposite concern- i'm worried there are parts of mine that people in homebrew games will read and be like "what on earth is he talking about?"

[Andrew Newton]

Mike Welham wrote:

Alternately, we could all switch to the same avatar. :)

NO! :-)

Now future employers can discover I'm a gamer if they google me when I apply for jobs the last thing I need is them getting mixed up with other people's posts. It's going to be hard enough as it is...

"What's gaming? It's 90% debating the off-side rule, and 10% pretending to be an imaginary pirate. I'm the right guy for your organisation, no, really..."

[Mike Welham]

If you post using the word "smurf", you get a random smurfy avatar.

[Jacob Trier]

There! This is now the official RPG Superstar 2012 Jacob avatar.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Jacob Trier wrote:

There! This is now the official RPG Superstar 2012 Jacob avatar.

The judges are going to hate us.

[Thomas LeBlanc]

Andrew Newton wrote:

Thomas LeBlanc wrote:

Question: Who here only likes to GM? Only play? Or if you both GM and play, what is the ration?

I much prefer to play, but as its usually PFS I still GM about 20% of the games I'm involved in.

I've been trying to start some smurfing PFS play in my area, but no one is interested.

[Jacob Kellogg]

Jacob Trier wrote:

There! This is now the official RPG Superstar 2012 Jacob avatar.

Now if only there were one more of us, we could fill the Top 4!

[Jacob Kellogg]

Mike Welham wrote:

If you post using the word "smurf", you get a random smurfy avatar.

Oh! Okay, thanks. So does it still work if you merely quote the word?

EDIT: I guess so!

[Jacob Trier]

Well, if I can change my uber-cool demon avatar, the least one of you guys can do is change his name. C'mon, all the cool kids are named Jacob, and you get to use the nifty little dragon avatar too.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Once the 3 Jacobs get to the top 4, I'm sure the judges would encourage that the 4th person be named an honorary Jacob, avatar included.

[Jacob Kellogg]

Well, if I can change my uber-cool demon avatar, the least one of you guys can do is change his name. C'mon, all the cool kids are named Jacob, and you get to use the nifty little dragon avatar too!

[Greg Monk]

Chris Shaeffer wrote:

Once the 3 Jacobs get to the top 4, I'm sure the judges would encourage that the 4th person be named an honorary Jacob, avatar included.

I suppose that would make that, the ....

[wait for it...]

... Jacob's Ladder effect?

(sorry, I couldn't help it... it just popped in there...)

[Jacob Trier]

New thread out in the general forum - Jacobs, go represent.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Greg Monk wrote:

I suppose that would make that, the ....
... Jacob's Ladder effect?

*Dons sunglasses*

YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAH~!

[Jacob Kellogg]

Greg Monk wrote:

Chris Shaeffer wrote:

Once the 3 Jacobs get to the top 4, I'm sure the judges would encourage that the 4th person be named an honorary Jacob, avatar included.

I suppose that would make that, the ....

[wait for it...]

... Jacob's Ladder effect?

(sorry, I couldn't help it... it just popped in there...)

You forgot to don your shades so that one of us could yell "YEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

[Greg Monk]

[testing] "smurf".

EDIT: well, that's just silly.

[Joshua Murphy]

Submitted and it feels great. I still look at my clock every 30 seconds and have hysterical micro-panics that its after deadline. Unfortunately, the submission idea I worked on for the bulk of our three days struck me as utter crap at 3:00 am in the middle of the tenth? fifteenth? draft. I'm glad I was able to see it was diminishing returns, but the timing could have been better.

I want to win pretty bad, but now I can sit back and enjoy 2012 Top 32-hood.

And dang, I'm so glad this challenge made me dive into ISWG. It is just delicious juicy bite after delicious juicy bite.

The crunch was hard, glad Kingmaker game is tonight.

To all pursuits dorkish! Huzzah!

[Jacob Kellogg]

Joshua Murphy wrote:

And dang, I'm so glad this challenge made me dive into ISWG. It is just delicious juicy bite after delicious juicy bite.

Isn't it though? I've only read parts of it, but it's great stuff! The flavor opportunities of the human ethnicities have all but guaranteed that every PFS character I make from here on out will be a human. :P

[Daniel Rust]

What have you lot been up to while I've been away? Smurfs and Jacobs everywhere.

So, I got mine in with 17 minutes to spare. Cutting it a little too fine for my liking!

As far as GM/Player goes, I'm generally the GM these days (although I'm taking a short break from GMing Kingmaker to play in a game of Mage: The Awakening for a change). I was a player a lot though, in the 3.x years. Come to think of it, I usually GM'd back in 2nd Edition and I only ever played 1st. Guess I like to skip roles with every edition.

[Jacob W. Michaels]

This smurf thing is great (as are my fellow Jacobs). How have I never noticed that before? (Oh yeah, because I mostly just stick to my PBP threads, where there's not much call for using smurfs.)

It's funny, when I first looked at Golarion, I was honestly not impressed. It felt like they tried to just put together a bunch of genre pastiches (here's France over here, the Crusades over there, sci-fi in Numeria), but it's really grown on me.

It all started with Cheliax, which I loved unreservedly from the moment I saw it, but more and more, I just appreciate different bits (and this contest is helping me discover still more). My suggestion to switch our home campaign from Faerun to Golarion didn't go over well, but I think whenever our current campaign wraps up, I may try again.

Back to smurfs -- I really hope those aren't the pictures we might be getting as a possible Round 3 twist (though clearly Smurfette could be statted out as some type of succubus who taunts men by never consumating the deal).

[Alexander Bennett]

GM/Player?

I like to GM but I rarely have the chance. Currently I am in two weekly games (in a mere two and a half hours from now) that switches off every few weeks as the GMs are too busy to run continuously. The current game requires my rogue to deal with Nixon the Drow (think Luster from Gamers 2 "I'm not evil, I'm chaotic neutral!"), then in two weeks it's back to me playing David Bowie (starborn sorcerer, look it up *dazzle*) in the dragonnip game. Makes it interesting, get to play different characters and our GM* gets to actually play (which is amusing when he's on my side arguing a nitpicky rule).

I wish I could game more, but I work as a stage tech so we work at strange times. It's bad enough that I have to request Friday nights off when I apply to new places. At least for the moment I can claim that I can work nights...
-Xander

*yes, our GM is still our GM, even when he isn't.

[Greg Monk]

I hope you all submitted your entries in on time! I'm looking forward to seeing the organizations, partially at least because I can always use more inspiration for games to run at some point.

As far as the DM/Player ratio, we have currently 3 guys that run games in our little group, the Knights of the Ping Pong table (What can I say, makes a great gaming surface) - and we rotate so I GM 1/3, play 2/3rds of the time.

[Alexander Bennett]

Jacob W. Michaels wrote:

It's funny, when I first looked at Golarion, I was honestly not impressed. It felt like they tried to just put together a bunch of genre pastiches (here's France over here, the Crusades over there, sci-fi in Numeria), but it's really grown on me.

It all started with Cheliax, which I loved unreservedly from the moment I saw it, but more and more, I just appreciate different bits (and this contest is helping me discover still more). My suggestion to switch our home campaign from Faerun to Golarion didn't go over well, but I think whenever our current campaign wraps up, I may try again.

Golarion is the first campaign world that I've actually wanted to run in. I would look at Grayhawk or Faerun and it was interesting but I never felt like making a character that lived in them (particularly Faerun, that world is far too complicated. The real world is simpler).

Jacob W. Michaels wrote:

Back to smurfs -- I really hope those aren't the pictures we might be getting as a possible Round 3 twist (though clearly Smurfette could be statted out as some type of succubus who taunts men by never consumating the deal).

I believe that was the exact reason she was created too. First noticed them was in the 'Ask Merisel anything' thread, so I knew it had to be automatic when Merisel's portrait changed. She needs that portrait to be an iconic you know.

-Xander

[Thomas LeBlanc]

Jacob W. Michaels wrote:

It's funny, when I first looked at Golarion, I was honestly not impressed. It felt like they tried to just put together a bunch of genre pastiches (here's France over here, the Crusades over there, sci-fi in Numeria), but it's really grown on me.

My first experience with Golarion was The Demon Within and I have been hooked ever since.

[Garrett Guillotte]

Thomas LeBlanc wrote:

Question: Who here only likes to GM? Only play? Or if you both GM and play, what is the ration?

My preference is to GM 1 day and play 1 day a week.

I want Pathfinder to be the system I use to start GMing. I'd like to play at least once a week but haven't yet found a group that lines up with my schedule.

[Tom Phillips]

Thomas LeBlanc wrote:

My first experience with Golarion was The Demon Within and I have been hooked ever since.

I was a firm 3.5-er. Then I read the Darkmoon Vale modules. My curiosity piqued, I picked up the RotRL AP. It. Blew. My. Mind. I've been involved in a torrid affair with Pathfinder ever since.

[Mike Welham]

testing...

Edit: No posting with an alias, I see. :)

[Mike Welham]

Welcome, Benjamin!

[Jacob W. Michaels]

Wow. Congrats, Benjamin. I was just looking at comments other items was getting and suddenly saw your chalice listed as well. Had to look and see what happened.

Two alternates this year, when I think there's only ever been one before. Poor Alex has to be really praying for some sort of final miracle.

[Sommers]

Yup, I'm here sacrificing chickens in the basement.

I found out at work on Tuesday by looking at the website. At first I saw Alexander in the Top 32 and was excited. Then I saw it wasn't me and crashed. By chance I kept on going and eventually saw my name in the alternates. Then a bit later saw one of them crossed out. It wasn't til I got home like 5 hours later that I saw the "Bad news, good news" email.

Just in case I did get further, I started mulling org ideas in my mind, but didn't put anything down. I got home on Tuesday and pretty much cranked the whole thing out before I went to bed. Then I spent the next two nights with 5 more drafts, and multiple inputs from my wife. I think its pretty solid, but I wish I had another few hundred words to add some texture and complexity. I have a lot more backstory that are full of plot hooks in my head, just no room for them.

Just submitted it this morning at 10:00. Now I wait for a few days, and no offense to the Top 32, but hope that someone has a computer crash and I slip in on a technicality. ;P

[Sommers]

Aaaaaaannnnndddd I just noticed that Jacob was pointing out the second alternate was used, and wasn't referring to Andrew but Benjamin. I'm really happy that the judges liked my item enough to make it as an alternate, but wow it would suck to know to an absolute certainty that I missed the cut by one.

Arghhhhhh!

[Neil Spicer]

This just goes to show the importance of making the list as an alternate. You can and will be called up if circumstances require it. In 2008, three alternates made their way into the competition due to a variety of factors. This year, we've had similar factors arise. So, it can happen. The important thing as an alternate is that you be ready if your number gets called.

[Jacob W. Michaels]

Ah, didn't realize three alternates were used one year. I thought only one had ever been called up.

[N. Edward Lange]

i think its awesome that everyone's just chatting about gaming (i guess because we're not stressed about being in the middle of a challenge). my first character's class was "Elf" :)
i've GMed and played every edition of D&D except 4th (and enjoy doing both), as well as a few other systems. i still game regularly with one of the guys from my first party and we kind of take turns running things- last year i ran a mid-high level homebrew pathfinder campaign, this year he's running a different homebrew pathfinder game. unfortunately, i'm really busy so we're only playing once a month :( it's a lot of fun when we do though.

ps- congrats benjamin, welcome and good luck

[James Raine]

My biggest issue is finding DMs who will let me use the material I've homebrewed. :(

[Jacob W. Michaels]

This is why you DM, James. Give 'em to your NPCs and it's good motivation not to make 'em too powerful because chances are the PCs will end up with 'em.

[James Raine]

Well, to be fair, most of my homebrew is classes and feats, not items.

[David Ross]

GM/Player:
I almost always GM, though I've played PbP sometimes as a PC over at Dicefreaks. I do enjoy the break from having to plan so much, but on the other hand I love the variety of roles and tactics and settings I get to weave together as a GM.

[Dan Jones]

I usually GM, but I prefer to play. My group usually does homebrew stuff. The other GM in our group is an archaeologist, so his campaigns can be pretty interesting.

[Andrew Marlowe]

I spend over 2/3 of the time in the DM's chair but not at this minute. Our regular group has three campaigns going in rotation. I run Rise of the Runelords and when we reach the end of a chapter one of my players picks up with Council of Thieves and I get to play we reach the end of that chapter and I pick up my homebrew Pathfinder-Planescape campaign then it's back to Rise of the Runelords.

I just started running a PbP here on the boards. I'd like to play a little more frequently but I really enjoy running.

*Edit* ooh, and Smurf! Cause I had to miss out on all the avatar fun while I was at work.

[Ian Studebaker-Grey]

I was introduced to the little brown box (1st ed. for those who never encountered it) at an impressionable age and have never been the same since.

I'm a GMing addict. While I like to play when I can (currently a regular in a CotCT game a friend of mine is running - just hit our 2nd year too - there was pie!), I suffer from withdrawals if I'm not running something at least once a week (no joke - it isn't pretty). These days I'm running two weekly Pathfinder APs (CC & JR) and one WoD game.

[Ian Studebaker-Grey]

Oh, and... Smurf?