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So listen, as a less experienced player, I am always seeking a short cut that helps translate the huge tome that is the Core Rulebook into something...well...readable. The Strategy Guide is, oh god, it's perfect and I love it. It does a great job of showing me what's important in core rules and how to understand them. Core Rulebook is a big giant tome because it has to be, Strategy Guide helps make that huge book more fun for rookies without trying to replace the important parts of it's functions.
Literally my only regret with Strategy Guide Is that I didn't buy it sooner.
I want you to know you did a great job with that product and if you ever decided to release Strategy Guide 2: Electric Boogaloo, something to cover either prestige class mechanics or helping explain optimizing some of the other classes, I will buy it...and I will use money, not shiny rocks like the last few times I tried to buy stuff.
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I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it! It was a lot of fun to work on, and I certainly enjoyed how it turned out.
Although by word count I think I wrote about half of the book, the two people who really made this come together as well as it did were Sarah Robinson (managing art director) and Jessica Price (project manager). Without an intuitive and attractive layout, any book that caters to beginning players is facing an uphill battle; Sarah and her team made this a really attractive volume. Jessica has a great sense of user-friendliness, and she's the one who really championed this project during its development, added some very helpful text (and refined a lot more), and relentlessly pushed to make it the great book that you have.
If the Strategy Guide treated you well, you might also want to check out the Rules Reference Deck.
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Thanks for shouting your opinion regarding this book! Personally I feel like I'm already too deep into Pathfinder for the Strategy Guide to have any big use for myself so I always wondered how a less experienced person would experience this book. Now I know :)
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Thanks, John. <3 I believe my favorite part of the book--the character selection quiz--was you, right? And yes, Sarah's layout is a huge part of why this book works, I think. I hope we can continue to experiment with better ways to organize information visually going forward, and this was a big step.
And thanks, thecursor! I'm really glad it's helpful for less experienced people. I'm proud of how it turned out.
I've always said the Core Rulebook is sort of like the Bible: it's super-long, it inherited a lot of stuff from older sources that sometimes fits awkwardly together, it's not organized in a terribly intuitive manner, people love to quote parts of out it of context and get in heated arguments about it, and almost no one reads it cover-to-cover.
So, when people are trying to teach you about Christianity, they rarely just hand you a Bible and say "read it!" Usually there's some sort of pamphlet that's a guide to the Bible and its concepts.
This is an attempt to do something similar with our RPG scripture. ;-)
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Thanks, John. <3 I believe my favorite part of the book--the character selection quiz--was you, right? And yes, Sarah's layout is a huge part of why this book works, I think. I hope we can continue to experiment with better ways to organize information visually going forward, and this was a big step.
Yep, the character selection quiz was me.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it! It was a lot of fun to work on, and I certainly enjoyed how it turned out.
Although by word count I think I wrote about half of the book, the two people who really made this come together as well as it did were Sarah Robinson (managing art director) and Jessica Price (project manager). Without an intuitive and attractive layout, any book that caters to beginning players is facing an uphill battle; Sarah and her team made this a really attractive volume. Jessica has a great sense of user-friendliness, and she's the one who really championed this project during its development, added some very helpful text (and refined a lot more), and relentlessly pushed to make it the great book that you have.
If the Strategy Guide treated you well, you might also want to check out the Rules Reference Deck.
Wow then I want to thank you, Sarah, and Jessica directly because honestly it's a great book and very useful, especially the step by step leveling guide that's individualized for each character class is enormously helpful and gives me an amazing guide for each new tier of play.
And even though I had already played enough Pathfinder to "know what I wanted to play", I saw the inspired method of breaking character class choice into "rookie archetypes" was pretty spectacular. Thank you for this book guys, seriously.
I've always said the Core Rulebook is sort of like the Bible: it's super-long, it inherited a lot of stuff from older sources that sometimes fits awkwardly together, it's not organized in a terribly intuitive manner, people love to quote parts of out it of context and get in heated arguments about it, and almost no one reads it cover-to-cover.
So, when people are trying to teach you about Christianity, they rarely just hand you a Bible and say "read it!" Usually there's some sort of pamphlet that's a guide to the Bible and its concepts.
This is an attempt to do something similar with our RPG scripture. ;-)
LOL as a Catholic (who literally has to go to sunday school to learn how to be Catholic) that's the best explanation I've heard so far about gaming. The frustrating thing is a lot of experienced players and gms, don't get that. They knew this book inside and out and when I ask a question they can be a little dismissive and refer me to the Core Rulebook, which itself is written as a continuation of certain gaming methods that have been around for years.
Sure I could dip into the Beginner Box, but that's designed for Beginners and it doesn't really present a full game system. A lot of Game companies do this and it can be frustrating because I'm inexperienced, but not a beginner. I don't need a primer, I need a literal guide. I need something that takes beyond the point of beginner and explains the nuts and bolts of game play.
The thing that I like about the Strategy Guide, the thing that really makes it fantastic, is that it sits between the Core Rulebook and the Beginner Box. You guys truly should know what a master stroke that is and how utterly unique that makes your product: So many companies release a beginner box and a core rulebook and then send you out into the cold, making the assumption that you're going to intuitively know the ins and outs of their system based entirely on that. Few people are smart enough to know that there is such a thing as an inbetweener, someone who knows enough to get started but will get lost trying to get BETTER.
Thank you all again.
I also enjoy the strategy guide. Makes building a complete character very fast. But I found a small rule error. Page 67 offers suggestions for starting gear for a shield fighter. It states you can swap out the long sword for a bastard sword. It costs more and is heavier but it makes up for it in doing damage. The error in this is fighters are not proficient with exotic weapons. I take it this was missed in the editing process. Am I right in this?
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I also enjoy the strategy guide. Makes building a complete character very fast. But I found a small rule error. Page 67 offers suggestions for starting gear for a shield fighter. It states you can swap out the long sword for a bastard sword. It costs more and is heavier but it makes up for it in doing damage. The error in this is fighters are not proficient with exotic weapons. I take it this was missed in the editing process. Am I right in this?
Yes, for a shield fighter. Using the bastard sword two-handed makes it count as a martial weapon, but then the shield fighter doesn't have a hand for a shield.
I noticed another minor error in the fighter section: the 3rd-level Brute suggested feat, Great Cleave, requires a +4 Base Attack Bonus.