Probably a little early to ask...but I'll ask now anyway...
How was Paziocon(if you were there)?
Anything interesting happen that you can tell us about?
Any stories you would like to share?
Had a great time and the new hotel was huge, the people friendly, and the banquet was delicious.
Did spend a lot of time in the bar...Dave is a bad influence on my temperance... or maybe I was the bad influence... Also met a lot of fans and signed a lot of books.
I participated in the PFS Special game "Serpents Rising" and survived, sort of... My caster was feebleminded during the final conflict and spent the majority of the fight licking a door... hey, it looked like chocolate!
We just flew a red-eye back east, and are exhausted. I have another con this coming weekend in Charlotte, NC.
Hey, all. Apologies for coming late to the party, but I'm enjoying making my way through the thread!
How often do you guys get together (either online or at cons) and think about how your various characters would get along?
This a fun thing to do at a convention-hotel bar, but it comes to me most often in isolation. Reading REIGN OF STARS, for example, and thinking about how much havoc would ensue if Zae and Alaeron happened to adventure together. When I read Pathfinder Tales, I read them almost as much from my characters' viewpoints as from my own.
Have any of you ever tried to actually play any of your Tales characters in a Pathfinder game with other people? Or at the very least, made a character sheet for that character?
I have character sheets for all my characters, not just because it helps me stay within the world-setting rules, but because it can be useful to brainstorm backwards from when I'm stuck. (ex: "This battle scene is too boring. What ability could I use here, and what thing would have to happen to give the character an excuse to use the ability?")
I haven't played any of them, because continuity and timelines are fickle things, and they're hard enough to keep straight in one's head already.
If cool stuff happened in one place or the other, I would WANT them to overlap. If I have to stop and say to myself, "Wait, was that book-Keren or game-Keren?" or deal with some kind of disparity in equipment that works against my favor ("Can't I just say I have one of these without paying for it? She has one in the short story!"), it's just going to frustrate me.
As a result, I use game-play to explore character classes that I'm not as familiar with, thus making myself familiar enough to write about them. That way, gameplay is research for the writing instead of being at odds with it.
I'm surprised we haven't had a chance to have this answered in a story yet, but what does Count Jeggare have to say about Andoran?
For that matter, what exactly is he Count of? Jeggare would appear to be a family name, not the name of his County.
I'm surprised we haven't had a chance to have this answered in a story yet, but what does Count Jeggare have to say about Andoran?
For that matter, what exactly is he Count of? Jeggare would appear to be a family name, not the name of his County.
Good questions, although I fear that the count's thoughts on Andoran Wil require a lot of explaining since we know very little about his past.
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I'm surprised we haven't had a chance to have this answered in a story yet, but what does Count Jeggare have to say about Andoran?
For that matter, what exactly is he Count of? Jeggare would appear to be a family name, not the name of his County.
I have considered both of these questions in past and decided they'd be more interesting to answer in the context of a future story.
I'm surprised we haven't had a chance to have this answered in a story yet, but what does Count Jeggare have to say about Andoran?
For that matter, what exactly is he Count of? Jeggare would appear to be a family name, not the name of his County.
I have considered both of these questions in past and decided they'd be more interesting to answer in the context of a future story.
You're such a tease, Dave... ;-)
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This one for every author:
Have any of you read (and considered using) some of the alternate rules from Pathfinder: Unchained?
This one for James Sutter and/or Wesley Schneider: Would using such rules be a disruption to the Tales Canon? The assumption for everyone's books seems to have been "Magic items= power" when the character's inherent strengths weren't enough.
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Also (missed the edit window) What do you all think of using footnotes in a fictional writing piece as a way to deliver background info?
Johnathan Stroud did this with his Bartimeus Trilogy and I greatly enjoyed it at the time.
I briefly considered just that when first writing from Count Jeggare's point of view but decided against. It's a great tool if you can pull it off, but even then quite a few readers will turn away the moment they see something that looks too academic.
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Have any of you read (and considered using) some of the alternate rules from Pathfinder: Unchained?
I have not. Mostly for the same reason I don't read 3pp materials: it's hard enough keeping all the standard rules straight in my head, and it would be overambitious to add new ones.
Currently my grasp of just the basic rules is shaky enough that I don't write witches or summoners for fear of getting their stats wrong. Last thing I need to do right now is jump into variant rules. :)
Plus, from my point of view, ultimately the purpose of the rules is to facilitate the telling of a good story. I haven't yet felt like the base rules had any limitations in that regard. So for me, at least, there's no compelling draw. I think variant rules are more for players and GMs than writers in this world.
What do you all think of using footnotes in a fictional writing piece as a way to deliver background info?
I think they're a great tool if you're writing a certain type of fiction -- which is to say: witty, erudite, and discursive. In my opinion, however, footnotes tend to break immersion; they put the main story on pause to explore an interesting or funny tangent. Also, they make the reader more conscious of the artifice of the novel structure. Footnotes are a tool of the authorial voice; they make the reader more aware that there is an author behind the curtain, and that the story being told is not really a free-flowing account of the characters and events.
That's awesome if the purpose of the story is to wander about curious tangents or be funny, or if having a strong authorial voice is compatible with the story (so, for example, it would work for Varian's POV but not for a limited third-person narration), but generally the primary purpose of the Tales line is to (try to) tell more action-forward, plot-propelled stories, and footnotes don't generally work with that style. And most of them, Radovan and Jeggare's tales excepted, are written in third person, which also cuts against using footnotes.
All of which goes to say that I frequently enjoy footnotes as a reader but I can't see myself using them as an author, at least not for this line. :)
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I love the footnotes in Terry Pratchett's work... (RIP)
But they wouldn't be appropriate in the Pathfinder Tales (unless we somehow got one with a radically different style). Plus, on some level, I enjoy reading about a thing and not immediately knowing what it is or what's being referenced.
This one for every author:
Have any of you read (and considered using) some of the alternate rules from Pathfinder: Unchained?
Not yet, but I'm considering using some of the modifications to the monk class... Maybe...
What do you all think of using footnotes in a fictional writing piece as a way to deliver background info?
I'm with Liane on this one. I have used footnotes, or more precisely notations, but only in a humor piece where the notation itself is a joke. For straight fiction, no. Breaking the readers immersion in the world and the story with any type of definitions or notations is IMHO a mistake. The best compliment I ever received from a fan was "I forgot I was reading." That total immersion is broken if the reader is looking up references. Even maps and glossaries are a little "immersion breaking" though less so.
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So how was Gencon?
Anything exciting happened that you can share?
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Any hobknobbing with the incoming new authors?
I spent a lot of time at the booth with Josh and Gary and got to know them a little better. Chris Jackson and James Sutter and Michael Stackpole I've known for a lot longer and now sitting down with them is a little like a reunion. I also visited briefly with Richard Lee Byers and of course Wes Schneider, who has a novel coming down the pike any month now. I think his book debuts just after my next one.
I spent a little time with incoming Pathfinder author Sam Sykes, having met him many times over the years. He has a hilarious, sly, and frequently gross sense of humor and can get you laughing even while you're groaning. Like Sam, Max Gladstone is a Tor author who'll be doing some Pathfinder work soon, and I was introduced to him by James Sutter Wednesday evening. He's well-spoken with a sharp wit and good singing voice, as I learned when he and Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear and Maurice Broaddus and I were fooling around with songs that could be adapted for a Batman musical. As Bear said, Max is built on too many points, because he's also a black belt in multiple disciplines.
We discovered an inordinate number of black belts amongst the author and editorial pool at the con this year. I'm currently working toward my second degree black belt, which usually sounds impressive, but I was surrounded by people who didn't just have a second degree, but had black belts in multiple schools. It was amusing one night when James suddenly realized that five out of the seven nearest people had black belts, with my "partway to second degree" as the least advanced. Usually you have to be at a dojo or tournament to have that many martial artists next to you!
I don't know that there were any truly hilarious moments, but we kept ourselves amused. I probably laughed the most at the Friday and Saturday night dinners when out with Lynch, Bear, Gladstone, and Broaddus (we were joined by Reddit's Steve Drew Saturday). There was the point when Bear tried to decide what part our dinner crew would play on a CSI or Mission Impossible movie, or the aforementioned Batman musical, or pretending we were strangers and introducing ourselves to each other under ridiculous assumed names at a steak house Saturday. I thing that part at least was funny to outsiders because the concierge behind us began snorting with laughter.
As for excitement, I always have a blast at GenCon. The hall of treasures is a wonder, of course, and I think the Writer's Symposium portion of the con is one of the best run writer's conferences around. If you're a writer or thinking of becoming one or just a reader who wants to learn how it's done, the Writer's Symposium panels are a great source of information, and afterward you can get the chance to talk to a lot of your favorite writers. Because GenCon is a gaming convention there aren't as many regular fantasy fans mobbing the authors, so, for instance, you can bump into Pat Rothfuss wandering the halls, or not wait in line after a panel to speak to Elizabeth Bear or Michael Stackpole.
To Chris A Jackson, if I wanted a visual example (and possible map) of the Stargazer, where would be the best place to see it ?
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A while back in another thread, someone asked when I planned to do a Calgary signing. At the time, I wasn't sure.
Now the answer is, "Next Thursday."
It's at the Sentry Box, the best game store I've ever found (with its own bookstore nestled inside). Riding shotgun on the Red Carriage is the estimable Vanessa Cardui, Calgarian filker extraordinaire.
Hope to see some of you cowboys and cowgirls there.
* Edited because Thursday isn't a Wednesday.
A while back in another thread, someone asked when I planned to do a Calgary signing. At the time, I wasn't sure.
Now the answer is, "Next Thursday."
It's at the Sentry Box, the best game store I've ever found (with its own bookstore nestled inside). Riding shotgun on the Red Carriage is the estimable Vanessa Cardui, Calgarian filker extraordinaire.
Hope to see some of you cowboys and cowgirls there.
* Edited because Thursday isn't a Wednesday.
I've always wanted to visit that store. I've ordered some stuff from them over the years. Seems like they have a great selection of hard to find stuff!
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So how was Gencon?
Anything exciting happened that you can share?
Had a fantastic time at GenCon, especially hanging out with Howard... We only see each other once a year, so sipping a beer with him and catching up is great. Josh and Gary (the young guns) are both great and fun to talk to, not to mention talented and professional... I wish I'd gotten my start that early.
Also got to chat with the Tor editor handling the distribution deal with Paizo. Very good feeling about this. It's a win for everyone, really, and they are not intending on meddling with the line.
I also showed a *few* people the new cover of Pirate's Prophecy...though it has not been officially released yet. I love the artwork...it's very different from my previous covers, and instead of a map in the inside, we did a cross sectional diagram of the Stargazer, which I like very much as well. It just went to the printer... You should see it soon, and the release is scheduled for early next year.
So, yeah...a good GenCon. You were missed, Dave!
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So how was Gencon?
Anything exciting happened that you can share?
Had a fantastic time at GenCon, especially hanging out with Howard... We only see each other once a year, so sipping a beer with him and catching up is great. ...
So, yeah...a good GenCon. You were missed, Dave!
You were, Dave. We would have loved to have had you there with us!
Chris was the first familiar face I saw. We've gotten to be pretty good friends over the last few years, and I love kicking back with him and his wife both in and out of the con.
Chris, I tried to swing by your booth in author's row on the way out, but I didn't spot you -- but then by that point I was flagging. I probably could have done with a better night's sleep before I started the (relatively short) drive home.
Anyone including kineticists in future novels ?
Many of the Pathfinder Tales have unique or modified magic items included in the story, have any of you done write-ups for those items ?
Have any been posted online ?
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Many of the Pathfinder Tales have unique or modified magic items included in the story, have any of you done write-ups for those items ?
Have any been posted online ?
Well, I can't claim to be a Pathfinder Tales author (yet)... but some have already begun to enter print. Way back in Inner Sea Magic, Varian Jeggare's riffle scrolls were statted up.
There may well be others, but that's the only one that I recall off the top of my head.
Anyone including kineticists in future novels ?
I have no plans on that front, but I'm open to changing my plans if a good idea hits me. One of the characters in Current Manuscript is still pretty ill-defined, class-wise, so if something interesting occurs to me I'll probably revise that character accordingly.
Still probably won't be a kineticist though.
Many of the Pathfinder Tales have unique or modified magic items included in the story, have any of you done write-ups for those items ?
Not in the formal sense.
I have a general idea of what most of my unique magical items do (e.g., "this thing expands your carrying capacity when casting Teleport by x amount"), but a full rules writeup with cost, creation requirements, all that stuff -- no, I don't do that. It wouldn't serve any purpose in the story and I'd be worried about getting the details wrong. Balancing those specs is the province of game designers, not novelists.
Is anyone working on any new tales that feature any of the new occult classes ? Would be interesting to read reactions of people seeing a ghost following the main character everywhere they go :-)
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Is anyone working on any new tales that feature any of the new occult classes ? Would be interesting to read reactions of people seeing a ghost following the main character everywhere they go :-)
I'm thinking about it... I love the new classes in Occult, and I think a good spooky story would go well... Haunted ghostly pirate ship, maybe??? Muaaa haa haaa!
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Oh man I would LOVE to see a ghostly pirate ship.
I don't have any concrete thoughts about occult-class characters (and I'm pretty deep into working on something else right now) but I have this amazing suspicion that if I ever read the Occult Realms sourcebook it is going to change my mind completely about that.
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have any of you done write-ups for those items ?Not in the formal sense.
I have a general idea of what most of my unique magical items do (e.g., "this thing expands your carrying capacity when casting Teleport by x amount"), but a full rules writeup with cost, creation requirements, all that stuff -- no, I don't do that. It wouldn't serve any purpose in the story and I'd be worried about getting the details wrong. Balancing those specs is the province of game designers, not novelists.
That said, *we* have definitely statted up stuff from the novels—I've personally done or overseen the creation of several items and creatures that Liane dreamed up in her books. :D
Liane Merciel, James Sutter:
I posted these questions on James Jacobs' thread and got some answers, and a suggestion on the Nightglass specific ones to ask you guys. Then Kalindlara suggested I ask here, so...
The shadowcallers of Nidal use nightglasses to test children for magical aptitude. For what kind of aptitude are they looking?
I get the impression the answer is, or is mostly, wizardry, but do they accept/train other potential classes, like sorcerer or arcanist or bard, or others?
I have the impression that many (most?) shadowcallers are multiclassed wizard/clerics. Is my impression accurate?
In Liane Merciel's Nightglass Isiem is talking to the Black Triune about their plan to "send him to Cheliax". He objects, saying 'I don't have my ring yet'. What does this ring signify?
By the time Isiem gets to the Crackspire area in that story, he's 25, and his been undergoing presumably mostly wizardly training for some 14 years. Without getting too deeply into "it wasn't all wizardly training" what level is he likely to be?
In what school(s) of magic are shadowcallers likely to specialize?
I suppose in summary I could ask what the shadowcallers who are examining children look for, what training children taken to Pangolais get (wizard/sorcerer/cleric/summoner/inquisitor/other) get, how long it takes them to get through the training, what levels Isiem had achieved by the time he got involved with the Stryx, and what was that ring he was on about? :-)
Ah, that's a lot of very good questions. I'll see what I can remember from my original ideas (it's been a while, and currently I'm working in a slightly different region of the world...). Bear in mind that none of this is official, anything that an actual developer says trumps anything I suggest, and anything you want to do for your own campaign trumps that.
With those disclaimers in place:
1. The nightglasses, in my conception, are testing for any form of raw arcane ability. Any character who has any potential to channel arcane magic (in whatever form: wizard, sorcerer, arcanist, bard, etc.) can potentially get a positive result in that test. However, some characters hide their aptitude and register as false negatives (which Isiem tries to do, until he blows his own cover), and others test positive but burn out early because they can't handle the rigors of Nidalese training. Basically, there's built-in wiggle room for characters to get the "wrong" result either way, depending on how you want to build that background.
My vague notion was that the strength of the positive result would correlate loosely to the character's raw talent, so if you had a high score in the relevant spellcasting stat then you'd get a stronger result. But it wasn't tied to any specific stat; a wizard with high Int and a sorcerer with high Cha would both get strong results even though the determinative stat was different.
2. Most full graduates from the Dusk Hall have at least some arcane and some divine spellcasting ability. In most cases this translates to at least one level in cleric and a couple of levels in wizard or (less often) sorcerer. (Since they are all supposed to be able to create scryspheres before they graduate, you can surmise that they're supposed to be Level 5 wizards, but in practice it's not that hard to cheat the level requirement.) But, again, there's some wiggle room. You can invent ways for unorthodox class combinations to pass the tests if you get creative enough.
3. Isiem is talking about the shadowcaller's ring, which in my imagination is used to signify those who have finished their training and graduated with full honors. At that point he hadn't earned his ring and was not yet a full-fledged shadowcaller. There's a more detailed description of one such ring in Ch.2 of Nightglass (brushed finish sterling silver ring set with bezeled black sapphire cabochon; iirc I was debating whether I wanted to buy that ring at the time, and ultimately decided I did not, but that it was worth writing into my WIP).
Anyway, the reasoning on that one was that most shadowcallers don't have familiars, so therefore they ought to have bonded objects, and if they're all going to be trained to have bonded objects anyway (since the default assumption is that shadowcallers are mostly wizards), then the bonded object might as well have some cultural status in addition to its game effect. And lo, so the shadowcaller's ring was born. They're not all bonded objects, of course, but that was the genesis of the idea.
4. It's a secret! ...okay, it's not really a secret. You can figure it out by looking at the highest-level spell he can cast at any given point in the story, though.
If that sounds like a weasel answer, that's because it is. I actually don't remember what level I decided Isiem was at that point. I know what level he would be today, in the event that I ever decide to write about him again, but I can't recall what he was then. Wiz 7/Cleric 1 maybe?
5. Whatever works best for that character and role. Ostensibly they're supposed to be devoted to shadow (so illusion's an obvious choice) and pain (which I read as enchantment or possibly necromancy), but the glorious thing about roleplay is that you can put an appropriate gloss on whatever kind of spell effect you want to use. If you want to roleplay an evocation-focused blaster caster shadowcaller, all you have to do is portray her spells as being creepily color-drained and visually grayscale, and sounding like shrieks of agony when they explode, and voila, you have a thematically appropriate shadowcaller who just throws fireballs all day.
Thanks, Liane. Wiz 7/Cleric 1 was about what I was thinking - and also that at some point he would be a failed cleric of Zon-Kuthon. Or so it seems to me, in light of his mis-givings about his loyalty to Nidal and presumably to Zon-Kuthon — or at least that's how I read him.
I look forward to your next book, and if some day you choose to right another one about Isiem, that would be cool — I think he's a great character.
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As of about 75-80% through Nightglass he is a failed cleric, yes. "Threw that level straight in the trash" is my preferred phrasing. ;)
And thanks for the kind words!
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Thanks, Liane. Wiz 7/Cleric 1 was about what I was thinking - and also that at some point he would be a failed cleric of Zon-Kuthon. Or so it seems to me, in light of his mis-givings about his loyalty to Nidal and presumably to Zon-Kuthon — or at least that's how I read him.
I look forward to your next book, and if some day you choose to right another one about Isiem, that would be cool — I think he's a great character.
I assume you've read Nightblade, then. ^_^
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I assume you've read Nightblade, then. ^_^Thanks, Liane. Wiz 7/Cleric 1 was about what I was thinking - and also that at some point he would be a failed cleric of Zon-Kuthon. Or so it seems to me, in light of his mis-givings about his loyalty to Nidal and presumably to Zon-Kuthon — or at least that's how I read him.
I look forward to your next book, and if some day you choose to right another one about Isiem, that would be cool — I think he's a great character.
Oh, yes! :-)
Hm. Can Isiem make a nightglass? Some book recently had that item in it, and the description says CL10.
"right" vs. "write". Sheesh. Used to be I'd never let something like that slip by me. I must be getting senile.
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Hm. Can Isiem make a nightglass? Some book recently had that item in it, and the description says CL10.
13th. In addition, don't forget that he'd also need:
-Craft Wondrous Item;
-a high-DC Spellcraft check, since he can't cast trap the soul, may not actually be 10th level, and isn't a worshiper of Zon-Kuthon;
-and sixty-three thousand gp worth of components.
So... there are some obstacles. ^_^
Yeah. I meant making it requires the maker be CL 10. Which as you say he may not be. Um. How do we know he can't cast trap the soul? But yeah, some obstacles. :-)
The reason I brought it up is that I thought I remembered from one of the books, probably Nightglass, that how to make a nightglass was part of their training, and making one was a milestone in that training. But perhaps I'm mis-remembering.
I now need to go back and research how a CL10 wizard can make a CL13 item. Intuitively, that seems wrong.
Nothing to do with this, but my brain is trying to get me to figure out what class and level Lord Darcy and his sidekick are. Either that or there's a demon whispering in my ear. I need sleep. :-)
Oh, duh. 8th level spell, so CL 15, right? I do need sleep.
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All other considerations aside, Isiem is (currently) way too poor to get all spendy on nightglass components. ;)
Lack of money can be overcome. Though I have to wonder why, at this point, he'd even want to make a nightglass. :-)
I don't know if Dave has ever answered the question before, but I've always wondered where the Jeggare family wealth comes from. Varian mentions owning vineyards, and I assume they started out as traditional land owning aristocracy, but were they able to diversify their investments into other ventures?