Category Archives: talk

Sanity Rules for Pathfinder from KQ

Posted on November 4, 2009 | 8 comments

Kobold Quarterly has published some bonus material for their eleventh issue that has madness and sanity rules for Pathfinder/3.x!  Check them out.  [Edit: Part 2 is out too.]

I’ve used Sanity in D&D before.  I think these rules are OK, but there are three problems I have with them.

1.  A minor gripe – the Mind stat being the “best of Wis/Int/Cha.”  That’s a holdover from this being a conversion from a 4e article, you never do that “best of” stuff in 3.5.  I always used Wisdom exclusively.

2. They try to hew just a little too close to the Call of Cthulhu Sanity rules.  I like those rules, in fact when I do sanity I do it “largely” that way – 5xWIS.  But then they carry over some things I feel like don’t make sense in the average D&D game.  Penalizing starting WIS because of Knowledge skills is an example of “too much rules” and it’s even going overboard from Cthulhu- in CoC you only get this penalty for Mythos Knowledge, not just any occult knowledge.

3.  And then they put a lot of SAN loss – too much – for only mildly horrific creatures.  1d8 for dragons, outsiders, and undead and 1d12 for aberrations…  Even Mythos creatures generally did less. In CoC, undead are d4 to d8, byakees and Deep Ones are only d6…  It’s the Old Ones etc. themselves that have big SAN losses.  I think this approach makes it too much like “mental hit points” and doesn’t get the feel you get from CoC, where little stuff gets you a little, basically softening you up for the big horrid outer god.  I know it’s hard to do in an article but they need to vary it more, a musteval guardinal is going to hit you for way less SAN than some gnarly daemon thing.  The default SAN losses by creature type are way too high. Jesus, in d20 CoC the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath are only d10, less than a carrion crawler apparently.

It’s not their fault, it’s just that the types are used too gratuitously in D&D.  There’s these Medium lobster critters in Golarion called reefclaws.  Dangerous, sure.  But they are aberrations instead of being magical beasts or whatnot.  Screws the rangers and now they are supposed to be super sanity blasting?  Maybe  if you don’t have any melted butter…

I do think the atrocity level of SAN loss is appropriate.  I’d like to see the list expanded; in my experience this is the best place from a storytelling point of view to deal with Sanity.  The list seems to “wuss out” and eliminate bad things characters can do.  Witnessing a murder or being tortured gets a SAN loss, but what about murdering or torturing?  One of the main points of using SAN is to show the consequences from being a big ass evil freak.

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Six Great Places To Use In Your Game

Posted on November 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

As usual, courtesy of Cracked Magazine, The 6 Best Towns To Live In (If You Have A Death Wish).  You don’t need magic or “gateways to the elemental plane of fire!” to have a twisted Hellscape.  Dallol, Ethiopia is my favorite.  Acid lakes right below the surface!  148 degree heat! Although the place in Chile where it never rains and the little ground water is poison but the natives are immune is neat too.

These places will definitely have you breaking out the hostile environment modifiers from Sandstorm, Stormwrack, Spires of Xin-Shalast, and the like.

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Preparing Image Visual Aids For Your Game

Posted on November 2, 2009 | 2 comments

Last time, we talked about using character standees as visual aids in your game.  Well, I found out to my horror that it’s not all that easy to extract and prepare them, which is a pain.  Even images that are supposedly “player handouts” are often mixed in with text, rendered very small, or otherwise not very suitable (and though most of us have color printers now, who the heck has a color printer or even a scanner?).  And naturally, even if you’re rich and have the full Adobe Acrobat, most of the PDFs are password protected so you can’t just edit them and get stuff out (lame!).

Here’s the combination of free software and prep steps I use.  Don’t worry, I’m worthless when it comes to graphics stuff, I can’t make a good looking image to save my life.  But the manipulation you need to do here is extremely basic.

First, extract the images from the PDF.  I use the free program Some PDF Image Extractor.  It extracts everything, which is annoying – mixed in with the real images you’d like are a hundred images that are little bits of page decoration and whatnot.  But, it’s easy enough to delete them all.  Use Thumbnail view in Windows Explorer.

Now in many cases the extracted images will mostly be JPGs but there will be more annoying formats like PPM/PBM that Explorer thumbnail view, Picasa, etc. don’t understand.  Especially for player handouts, it seems.  I use the free program ImageMagick (available on Windows and Linux) to do bulk conversions.  “convert *.ppm pic-%d.jpg” converts all the ppms to sequentially numbered jpgs (I haven’t figured out how to do what should be the base case, which is just bulk convert every name.ppm into the same name.jpg without writing a loop in a script or something).

Oh, you’re not done yet.  A lot of the extracted images have black backgrounds.  Don’t know why.  I use the granddaddy of all free graphics programs, GIMP, to fix that.  It’s like Photoshop but free (available on Windows and Linux).  Anyway, you pull in an image that looks like this:

Void Images-500

And then you use the fuzzy select tool (magic wand) to select all the black and hit delete.  Play with the threshold to get as much of the black without getting any of the main image.  You may have to go select other black subregions (like the ones between clumps of hair in this case).  Clean up stray black pixels with the eraser.  Quickly you get:

Void Images-500Perfect.  I then slap them into Word, add a caption, and print.  I like to put it in landscape and use multiple columns, so I get 2-3 vertical strips when cut.

It’s a bit of work but generally you only have to do it once per adventure, and you get to reuse the NPCs a lot. Heck, once the Bestiary is out I’ll make one for each monster and those will get loads of use.

Sometimes you can do a quicker capture of one or two things simply by alt-print screening the Acrobat window, tossing into Microsoft Paint, and cleaning it up. You can also use the same general approach to make paper minis.

Anyway, power tips from the rogue’s gallery are welcome… This process is a bit involved and I bet there’s ways to do it in a more streamlined way.

I wish companies would provide galleries – a zip of jpegs, or at least an easy to consume PDF appendix.  All the beautiful art is getting seen only by the GM 90% of the time.  And having the image handouts, paper minis, etc. adds so much to the usefulness of the product.  And it’s not like there’s a reason to protect the stuff; you can get it if you want it but of course you’d expect to get in trouble if you reused it illegally in a product or whatever.

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Using Images As Visual Aids In Your Game

Posted on November 1, 2009 | 8 comments

I buy a lot of PDFs, especially the Paizo Adventure Paths where I get the PDF free with the book for being a subscriber.  I have taken to making a lot of printouts as props for my game.

It’s a shame for the players never to see the beautiful character art for the NPCs.  Or else you have to fold the book over, hand it around, and tell them “Don’t look at the stats on the same page!”  We’ve done that, and it’s time-consuming, sometimes hard to see when the DM just waves the picture around…

Also, I get a lot of “How do you spell that weird character name?!?”  So I’ve cut to the chase, and before a game session I create a bunch of printed strips that I can fasten to the outside of my GM screen with binder clips (bulldog clips to you Brits).  It’s sweet – when the party meets their new buddy Saul from the Second Darkness adventure Shadow in the Sky, and I whip this out and clip it to the screen:

Saul

Then in later scenes, I clip whoever’s present to the screen.  It provides great visual cues of who they are talking to and what their name is, cutting down on the “Tell…  Sully, or Slim or whatever… that we accept!” And too often PCs forget NPCs that are even in their party.  Have you ever had a PC group say, two combats later, “Oh yeah, what about your follower Gerald?  I guess he’s been tending the horses or something.”  Out of sight, out of mind.  Even if you don’t have images, at least print out the names and post them up.  (As an aside, we find ourselves doing this at work for people on conference calls – it makes it easier to remember them and incorporate them into the meeting.)

In many published adventures, there’s images for the vast majority of the important NPCs, and when there’s not, Google Image Search comes to the rescue.  “I need a half-0rc wizard.   Hmmm… <types “half-orc wizard” into Google Image Search>  There we go, the first result!”

Now, there aren’t *that* many easily findable images online.  So this may not work forever, but certainly is enough for important NPCs.  And if you make a habit of ripping them you can have a library of ready-for-home-use images.  You can probably reuse them judiciously in other campaigns.

Extracting and preparing them for use isn’t as easy as it could be.  Next time, tips and tools for preparing these little beauties.

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I Like Random Generators

Posted on October 31, 2009 | 8 comments

As I prepare to unleash my PCs on a new city tomorrow, I am prepping up a storm.  I hate being caught short without NPC names and descriptions.  Luckily, there’s a lot of nice random generators out there that can provide you with an invaluable list of a dozen or so ready to go people.  Then, you just pull the one out of the top five or so that seems most applicable to the situation, whenever the PCs grab some random bar patron/messenger/guild thief/whatnot aside and you want them to be more than a stock nameless/faceless prop.

I’m using the Seventh Sanctum description generator and a Yet Another Fantasy Name Generator, freely mixing and matching for first and last names.  In short order, I have a list of potential NPCs like:

Angborn D’Evrona

This serious gentleman has large eyes the color of blue tropical waters. His luxurious, straight, brown hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a fluttering flag. He has a slender build. His skin is china-white. He has small hands. His wardrobe is sexy, and is completely gray.

Now, they do start sounding weirdly the same, so you have to finesse them in use, but it’s a great starting point that saves me thirty seconds of trying to remember some guy I ran into at the grocery yesterday to use as a good NPC description starting point (though that’s also a good exercise; over a week note down your first impressions of people you run across for later use…).

As a second pass, I use Chris Pound’s name generator to get some epithets to sprinkle in, and edit the descriptions to include styles it clearly doesn’t have (e.g. people have hair or are bald, but there’s no balding/thinning people, so I edit one of the bald guys to be partway…)  But what if a couple of these guys end up needing stats?  Well, Myth Weavers has a random NPC stat block generator.  I throw in a second level male rogue, and get:

Tahir, male human Rog2:  CR 2; Size M (5 ft., 10 in. tall);
HD 2d6+4; hp 16; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 12; Attack +2
melee, or +3 ranged; SV Fort +2, Ref +5, Will +2; AL LE; Str
12, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 15, Cha 8.

Languages Spoken:  Common.

Skills and feats:  Appraise +2, Decipher Script +3, Disable
Device +2, Disguise +4, Gather Information +4, Hide +6,
Intimidate +3, Knowledge (Local) +3, Listen +4, Move
Silently +7, Sense Motive +6, Spot +9, Use Magic Device +2;
Alertness, [Evasion], Weapon Finesse.

Possessions:  2,000 gp  in gear.

Primary motivation: Boredom. The character has no other
reason than their life is otherwise uninteresting.

Secondary motivation: A deep hatred of the Evil. The
character's hate runs deep, and dominates their personality.

Recent Past: The character has been visting a friend in
Verbobonc.

Helpful!  Obviously there are little bits to change.  But there are great bits too; sometimes random generation is awesomely wise.  This guy is LE but is motivated by a hatred of evil!  That’s a great character hook, an interesting “I’m not evil, I just use these harsh methods to combat true evil” thing.

I want the perfect Pathfinder random generator.  Pathfinder, and Golarion, are so new there’s not really good generators tuned for their ethnicities and suchlike – specifically Chelaxian names and descriptions, specifically Varisian, et al.  And all these generators do one thing and not the other – some do good names, some do good stats, some do good descriptions, some do good personalities – but none do more than 1-2 of those at a time.

My wish list:

  • Support Golarion (and other) ethnicity naming schemes.
  • Support Golarion (and other) ethnically tuned descriptions.
  • Support Golarion (and other) locations – for example, we know the general racial/ethnic makeup in Taldor, so let me roll a random Taldan!
  • Support Pathfinder (and other) stats
  • Do name (including epithets), stats, description, and personality.
  • Let me fix anything I want and then randomize anything I want.  If I don’t want to pick race, roll it for me.  If I just know I need a redhead, or a female rogue, or someone named “Bart,” pull the rest.
  • Let me do a little multiple choice – often a randomly generated NPC has bits of “bleah” in them.  Gen maybe 5 choices for each field into a popdown, and if I don’t like something I have a quick-pick to modify.

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Request for Comment: Hero Points

Posted on October 14, 2009 | 33 comments

Or whatever you want to call them  – Action Points, Fate Points, Karma Points, Plot Points, et cetera.  For reference here’s a good but somewhat dated summary of a bunch of hero point mechanics by John H. Kim.

Here’s the deal.  I want to use something like this for my new Pathfinder campaign.  We’ve been pretty constantly using the Eberron “Action Point” mechanic (Eberron Campaign Setting, p.45) in all our group’s campaigns since we saw it.  You get 5 + 1/2 character levels of them, and they let you add 1d6 (or best of multiple d6 at high levels) to a roll before you know whether it’s successful or not.  They work pretty well.  But I’ve begun to be dissatisfied with them.

I noticed it some in Rise of the Runelords and even more in Curse of the Crimson Throne that we’d end a level with a lot of action points left over.  There were a couple reasons.

1.  You would hoard them “just in case.”  This was somewhat mitigated by them refreshing every level, but you didn’t know when you were going to level.

2.  They didn’t do all that much – you wouldn’t use them unless you were ultra desperate or thought you were within 3 points of the DC you needed.  As levels get higher and numbers range more widely, a lot of the time you knew there was no point in using the action point on a given miss.

3.  Because of the inconsistency of the core D&D mechanic in terms of what is a d20 roll you are making and what isn’t, you could use them to make a save but not to not get hit in combat, so their utility in saving your bacon was reduced.  Though you can use an action point to stabilize when at negative hit points, again as levels get high it’s rarer a shot lands you in that magic 10 point range; it’s more likely to overkill you by like 30 points when it comes.  D&D 3.5e number scaling past level 10 is a cruel mistress.

4.  The APs tried to give hero points of their own, like Crimson Throne had Harrow Points that gave bonuses to a different stat with each chapter.  This was frustrating in and of itself when the stat was a poor match – as a priest, fighter, and ranger was the party most of the time, I was the only one to use the Wis and Cha boosts.  But it also created a “too many different boost points” problem and they got totally forgotten most of the time.

5.  It was a buzzkill when you used one and still didn’t make the roll.

We’re also playing Alternity, which has Last Resort Points.  These points are better in some ways.  They’re worse in that you get from 0-2 of them and they don’t regenerate with level, you have to buy more with XP, which means they’re too scarce.  They’re much better in that they just flat turn a failure into a success (or boost a success to a higher level of success).

Also, some systems (like PDQ Sharp’s Style Dice) let you use such points to make actual narrative plot changes with points.  “A Chelish warship appears on the horizon!”  “Our old ally Vincenz shows up!”  “The dungeon passage collapses!”

So there’s a couple different axes that a hero point mechanic can work on.

  • How do you get them/how do they regenerate?  (Buy with XP, when you roll a crit, when you roll a fumble, when you do something cool, when you act according to some character trait, when you level, every game session, per adventure)
  • What can they do?  (Reroll, small fixed bonus to roll, small variable bonus to roll, large fixed or variable bonus, automatic success level upgrade, change plot/world, activate powerz, make a save/get missed/soak damage, get init or an extra action)
  • When can you use them?  (Before you roll, after you roll but before you determine the result, after you determine the result)
  • How many does someone get and how often can they use them (anytime, once per scene, once per session, something else)

Here’s what I’m thinking about doing.

First, I want the points to “do more” – ideally fully turn a miss into a hit or whatnot, not add on a small bonus.  Seems to me that the mechanic’s not worth having unless it does this much; otherwise it’s a lot of fiddliness (and worse, a breaking out of immersion) without enough punch to justify it.  So one option is that the points are fairly rare, but can:

  • Turn a miss into a hit
  • Turn a hit into a crit
  • Turn a hit into a miss (usually, if you’re the one getting hit)
  • Turn a crit into a hit (same)
  • Make a save
  • Make a target fail their save (maybe…  but maybe not.  With save-or-dies seems too powerful.  Maybe make a target reroll their save.)
  • Bypass SR
  • Override a bad condition (possessed, feared, paralyzed, etc.) for a round
  • Otherwise “save your damn life” somehow

However, one of our group has an interesting alternate proposal – that the points go up in efficacy as you use them.  First point you use is a +1 (or -1 on an opponent’s roll).  Second point, +2.  And so on.  This is a clever way to both ramp up effectiveness over time (I’m neutral there) and to discourage hoarding (I’m very on board with that).  It does mean that eventually the points become worth +20 or more, at worst that reduces to auto fail/success but in higher level 3.5e play it may still not be enough sometimes. It is a little more fiddly though, they have to be strongly paced at about two per level.

I’d also like them to be usable to make narrative changes, with DM oversight.  Any kind of hero point is already stepping outside the simulation for an explicitly narrative concern, so in for a penny, in for a pound, I figure.

In general you should give them for behavior you want to promote.  I don’t really like giving them for crits or whatnot, that seems too random and also generates undesirable interactions with crit feats.  I’m doing slow advancement in this campaign, so there’ll probably be a couple adventures per level.  I plan to call them “Infamy Points” to match the pirate theme.  Perhaps give one per level and one per adventure, to semi-reflect the character becoming more bad ass and feared and… infamous.  Maybe bonus points whenever anyone does something spectacular that could rightfully be said to raise their infamy level.

I’m also considering having the Infamy Point total be used as a bonus to certain Intimidate/Bluff/Diplomacy rolls as a kind of raw fame and deadliness bonus, though the problem is that if you get 2-3 per level that bonus gets out of control.  Maybe a bonus equal to unused Infamy Points?

What do all of you think?  Do you use any kind of hero point mechanic?  Do you like lots of them with wimpy bonuses, or fewer with more guaranteed results?  Have any clever ideas for me?

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Meet the Reavers – Wogan, Chelish Sea-Priest

Posted on October 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Wogan, Patrick’s character, is a hearty priest of Gozreh.  Everyone especially loves his illustration and it causes Chris to imitate Yosemite Sam-style pistol firing anytime Wogan makes a pronouncement.

Wogan

woganWogan is a Chelish man of average height and a bit more than average weight.  Intense black eyes and a full beard braided into tendrils tied with small white bows are his main features.  He usually wears a vest and blue and white vertically striped pantaloons.  When expecting trouble he dons his blue-green studded leather armor, a pair of pistols, boots and his trusty trident.

He was born in a small fishing village near the southern end of the Arch of Aroden.  His father died when Wogan was young, lost to the sea.  His mother lived with his elder brother’s family.  He has a younger sister whom he hasn’t seen in years as she was married to a man from the Chelaxian interior.  After his mother died, there was nothing holding Wogan to his small village so he signed up with the first passing ship as a healer and sea-priest.  It’s easy enough for him to find work; every ship wants a Gozran priest if they can get one.

Wogan’s hobbies include fishing, drinking, and placating the fickle god Gozreh.

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Meet the Reavers – “Serpent” Ref Jorenson, Ulfen Druid

Posted on October 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Paul was our GM for the last couple Adventure Paths, but he gets to play this time!  He decided to go with an Ulfen character, the Viking analogue in the world of Golarion.  This somewhat-crazed druid is definitely pirate material.

Serpent Jorenson

serpent“Serpent” Ref Jorenson is an Ulfen man with pale skin that never tans or burns, pale blue eyes, and dark hair.  He is very tall and long of limb and tends to hunch over, making him seem very spiderlike when he moves.  His combat gear is a scimitar and  hide armor.  He has a very large pet constrictor snake called Saluthra.

His father, a man from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, seduced his mother,a beautiful traveller, when he was young; a year later a baby was deposited on his doorstep.  Rumors tell that the woman is a witch or fey from Irrisen.

Ref felt a strong pull towards the sea all his life.  The song of Gozreh compels him to wander the land and sea.  He loves to spin tall tales.

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Meet the Reavers – Sindawe H’Kilata Narra, Mwangi Monk

Posted on October 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Chris is known for his ass-kicking characters.  I mentioned the campaign would probably move south along the coast to the pirate kingdoms of the Shackles and venture into the Mwangi Expanse, Golarion’s Africa analogue.  The Mwangi are thus the world’s Africans.  As in the real world, that’s a meaninglessly general and imprecise term that’s only useful to white people an ocean away; Sindawe is specifically a Bonuwat, a seafaring people who live mainly along the coast of the Fever Sea.  He’s a monk, but not a “kung fu” type of monk; he’s using the Sinister Adventures “Way of the Warrior” pdf rules for a more Polynesian/Samoan inspired type of hand to hand combat.

Sindawe

sindaweSindawe H’Kilata Narra has an exotic appearance – green eyes, bald, jet black Fu Manchu-style moustache, Mwangi, scar tattoos (right arm – beating anatomical heart, left arm – a tiger’s paw raking, various tribal markings on chest and face). Wears a vest stylized to look like a tiger’s head and britches adorned with colorful shells, pieces of glass, and coins (yes, there are streaks of rust). He has a quiver of javelins across his back and many knives in his belt and vest. His feet are bare.  His hobbies are scrimshaw and collecting maps.

Due to a blood feud with the Okeke clan, most of the adult males of Sindawe’s family are dead, presumed dead, fled, or in hiding. The women folk have fled or are living with other families.  His father, Mogaba, was an infamous pirate widely feared for his brutality and cunning and supposedly was slain by the crew of a Chelaxian Q-ship. Mogaba left his family when his sons were still young. His sister and brother-in-law stepped in to help raise them. His mother, Manyara, was slain during the blood feud with Okeke family.  His uncle, Samanya, a reasonably honest merchant, was slain by business rivals from the Okeke family. He taught the brothers sailing during an extended multi-year merchant expedition.

Three members of the Okeke clan slew Samanya and Manyara for reasons unclear even today; some have speculated “ruthless commercial rivalry” or revenge for various acts of piracy by Mogaba.  The feud ended immediately after the Okeke extracted promises of peace from Bolade, Sindawe’s aunt.  Bolade, a famous and honored monk, fled to a remote area of Mwangi interior where she maintains an extended family enclave.

Over the next 8 years Sindawe and his brothers, Mosi and Ochiba, learned martial skills from various sources, sometimes far from home. They re-united on the anniversary and hunted down the 3 Okeke directly responsible for murdering Samanya and Manyara. In the process they slew 2 other members of the Okeke family. Then they hunted down 4 more that were likely to carry on the blood feud.  None of these fights were remotely fair.  Mosi was killed during the final fight. Ochiba and Sindawe and most of the remaining family fled to avoid reprisals.

Sindawe owns a treasure map and pages from a journal showing the secret location of an El Dorado island in the far most western oceans. One of Mogaba’s men delivered the map to Sindawe shortly after Mogaba’s death. To Sindawe this island represents wealth enough to restore his family and a connection to his estranged, dead father. However, he doesn’t fully understand the depths of Mogaba’s evil for the island’s full wealth can only be truly realized if its inhabitants are slain or enslaved.

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Meet the Reavers – Tommy “Blacktoes” Burrowbank, Halfling Rogue

Posted on October 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

I’ve known Kevin for years and gamed with him occasionally, but this is his first time joining our gaming group.  Like many older gamers with jobs, families, etc., he sometimes goes for years without really being able to swing regular campaign participation, but then gets fed up with it and makes the time.  Welcome aboard, Kevin!  Here’s his character, the halfling rogue Tommy Blacktoes.

Tommy Blacktoes

tommyThomas Burrowbank (aka Tommy Blacktoes for his penchant for painting his toenails with black polish) was born to a small family indentured as cooking servants to one of the minor noble houses in Cheliax.  Accused of theft, Tommy’s father was executed and he, his mother (Tish Burrowbank) and his twin sister (Sara Burrowbank) were exiled to survive in the streets of unforgiving Cheliax.  At the tender age of 9, Tommy slipped away from his mother and sister and gained passage on a small trading vessel that ultimately put in at Riddleport.

Tommy has spent the last 4 years of his life living by his wits on the streets of the debauched city.  He is driven by his lust for adventure (fueled by the natural curiosity of his race) as well as a passion for things material.  Tommy also has a burning desire to one day return to Cheliax and exact his revenge against the noble house that destroyed his father.  He envisions finding his mother and sister and taking them away from their poverty, but secretly fears how they will view him (if indeed they still live) for his desertion 4 years ago.

In Riddleport Tommy has made a bit of a name for himself as a jack-of-all-trades.  He earns coin as a crewman to various trading ships that put in at Riddleport, and has developed a love for the open sea.  He is also for hire as a spy for rival merchants of the River District looking to gain a competitive edge, an appropriator of goods (typically lifted from their owner), and a person who knows the latest information – for a price.  His activities over the last couple of years and (his ability to seemingly disappear like a ghost) have unknowingly earned the attention of several of the “crime lords” of Riddleport.  Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen…

Tommy is a rogue’s rogue and has few “true” friends, and only one person with whom he has a genuine, yet reluctant trust: Saul Vancaskerkin, the proprietor of the gaming establishment The Golden Goblin.  He is quite charming and attractive, but uses this to strategically position himself for his own advantage and personal gain.  He is however quite bright and smart enough to know whom to cross and whom to not…usually.

Tommy is 3’2” tall and weighs 32 pounds.  He has long, dirty blonde hair that he wears braided and drawn into a ponytail.  He has striking green eyes that flash when laughing or angry.  Tommy is usually seen wearing a dark blue, silken shirt under a black leather vest, black leather, knee-length pants with leather calf-wraps and spats (another curious fashion statement) over the tops of his feet.  Tommy wears a scarf to match the blue silk shirt wrapped about his head.  He is a fan of gaudy jewelry and trinkets, and his pointed ears sport many studs around their outer edges.  His favorite is a plain gold hoop (the only piece of jewelry with any real or sentimental value as it is the mate for the one his sister wears – or wore).  Tommy is very skilled with his sling staff and prefers to use this from a distance when forced into combat. If pressed, he does not hesitate to defend himself with his sword or dagger (which he keeps hidden in his right calf wrap).

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Meet the Reavers – Melako “Ox” Chaalu, Garundi Barbarian

Posted on October 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

I thought I’d introduce you all to the characters of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.  Here’s the first, “Ox.”  Ox is Bruce’s character.  It’s a bit of an in-joke among the group that Bruce likes to build useless characters – very low powered, and ideally crippled and insane.  Everyone was surprised when he came out with a Power Attacking barbarian!  Well, he is a slave, in a nod to Bruce’s masochist sensibilities.  Without further ado, here’s Ox!

Ox

oxMelako “Ox” Chaalu had the misfortune of being born to a desperately poor family of tenant farmers from the Gamadu clan.  The clan’s holdings are deep in the Rahadoum hinterlands, far up a tributary of the Uta River.  After the rains failed again the clan elders decided that ten of the clan’s children must be sold to a traveling merchant so the rest of the clan could survive.  His parents had no money and no standing with the clan, so he was among those selected.  From there he was trafficked through the slave-markets of Manaket into the hands of Captain Marcellano, a Chelaxian merchant captain and master of the Aroden’s Hand.

Captain Marcellano was cruel and relentless in both his business dealings and his attitude towards his crew.  Under his tutelage, Ox developed both the skills of a sailor and a persistent dislike for life as Chelaxian chattel.  But his time with Captain Marcellano had an ending; as the Captain gained wealth and power he retired to his estates in Westcrown and hired others to run his ships.  As part of these changes, Ox was traded to the crew of the Albers.

Ox very much lives up to his name.  He is dark-skinned with the sharp features typical of most Garundi, but he is built like a brick wall.  He keeps his head shaved, though under the harsh sun he may wear a keffiyeh wrap.  He normally wears a pair of canvas pants belted with wide leather and a red sash, though he also has light armor for when the occasion demands.  He will only carry his boarding pike and cutlass when they have been issued to the crew, but always has a utility knife and marlinspike handy.  On shipboard he never wears shoes, as he is often called to climb into the rigging.

Ox has always had an interest in rope-splicing, though his talents are clearly more functional than artistic.  Never one for unnecessary conversation, Ox has recently developed an interest in religion: it is obvious to him that Rahadoum’s decision to turn its back upon the gods has been instrumental in converting a once-bountiful nation into a sand-blasted wasteland.  He has yet to find one that really appeals to him.

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New Campaign: Reavers on the Seas of Fate

Posted on October 3, 2009 | 7 comments

Our group is starting a new campaign, and this time I’m the gamemaster! It’s called “Reavers on the Seas of Fate,” and is using the Pathfinder RPG rules to tell tales of piracy and horror on the high seas of the world of Golarion.

As usual, we’ll be posting session summaries, character writeups, etc. on the campaign home page.  Since I’m GMing, I’ll also be sharing “behind the scenes” reports on how I design and run the game.  I’ll start by explaining how “Reavers on the Seas of Fate” came to be.

Well, we’ve been enjoying the Paizo Publishing Adventure Paths quite a bit.  We played through Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne.  Unfortunately, there we got stalled.  We have a large extended group of gamers and there are other campaigns underway with some of the same people, and so Legacy of Fire and Council of Thieves were already being used.  We evaluated Second Darkness but pretty much hated the latter parts of it.  Earlier Dungeon Magazine-era APs like Savage Tide and Age of Worms had been read or played or run by people in the group as well.

So I decided so step in and run one myself, cobbling an AP together from various bits.  An aside on my terminology – a “campaign” is any game with the same characters progressing through multiple adventures, but those don’t have to be linked.  You could run a long campaign with completely unrelated adventures, or composed of mega-adventures (like if you ran through Temple of Elemental Evil, Scourge of the Slavelords, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits).  The meaning behind calling this an Adventure Path is the assumption that there will be an overarching plotline that covers all levels of play.

I knew I wanted to do something pirate-themed.  My first 3e game was a pirate campaign set in Green Ronin’s Freeport and we all loved it; that gaming group, Wulf’s Animals, is still active in Memphis, TN to this day!  I mentioned “Pathfinder Pirates” to the group and got good response.  So I went off and came up with two different coherent  options to run by them.  One was a traditional pirate campaign, somewhat sandboxey, with an equal focus on the life of piracy and more organized adventures.  The second was an Eastern pirate, or “wako,” campaign, where we use Asian races and creatures, with more of a supernatural spirit-hunter aspect to it.

I wrote up two potential premises and sent them to our group mailing list.  If you don’t have a mailing list for your gaming group, you need one.  I like Yahoo! Groups, they’re straightforward to use and besides the mailing list has calendars, polls, a file repository, etc.

Anyway, the two options presented for comment were:

Option 1:  Wako (Asian Pirates)

“A fate like that can kiss my ass.  I believe in one thing.  A better tomorrow.”

Rules:

Humans (Japanese, Chinese, maybe other SE Asian, Indian) and maybe spirit folk and/or hengeyokai (none of the standard races).  Probably not really use variant classes, just make some cosmetic changes and call clerics sohei, wizards wu jen, etc.  Often not using typical Pathfinder/Golarion stuff so would mean more work for DM and the players – Eastern weapons, races, culture, etc.

Setting:

1.  Go to Western lands and do “fish out of water” feel; could use Freeport, Riddleport, and other published stuff

2.  Use Tian Xia in Golarion (basically homebrew, as there’s nothing published for Tian Xia yet)

3.  Use Rokugan; there’s lots published for this, but a lot of it isnt really helpful.  Very into all that L5R clan crap which I don’t like.

Plot:

An ancient puzzlebox created by evil alchemists has opened a gate to the spirit realm, letting in all kinds of bizarre Asian monsters. The box broke into 108 pieces each of which is now embedded in a phantom/demon, and they all need to be reassembled to close the gate…  The evil spirits have taken over and influence the leaders, so the players have become pirates out of necessity, but are righteous rebels working to banish the phantoms and restore the Empire.  (I am even now stealing this plot from an anime called Tokko I’m watching on Chiller.)

In this option I can use some published adventures but not that many.  This would be more rural+ocean+maybe undersea. Dark horror/action.  There would be general reaving and a “dimensional crossrip” thing (like the Worldwound or Shadowlands) letting in loads of bizarre Asian monsters to fight.

I expressed concern about taking on new rules *and* immediately “going Asian” with them, but was willing to if people wanted to.

Option 2: Western Pirates

“At them mateys!  No quarter!”

Rules:

Pathfinder stock, some house rules

Setting:

1.  Pure Freeport.  Freeport is cool and theres no end of Freeport adventures.  (Is anyone too familiar with any of them?)
2.  Pure Golarion.  Use the first two Second Darkness adventures (if Paul doesn’t have them memorized) and then perhaps head to the Shackles and Mwangi Expanse areas.  Is Golarioney and I can strongly leverage written adventures.
3. Combine Golarion’s Port Peril, Riddleport from Second Darkness, and Freeport into one uber pirate city and do both.  Probably the most material rich option!

Plot:

This would work best with the players being more general pirates.  I’d have a lot of adventures but with no real “AP” I could do it sandboxey at the same time; you could expect getting a ship, losing a ship, having to join the crew of a pirate that beats you, getting pirates you beat to join you, empire building…  Depending on what you go and mess with, it could be really easy and you get to slash fools or really hard and you have to flee or get owned (traditional sandbox play, not APL=EL play).  This would be more urban+ocean+hidden treasure dungeons.  Gritty swashbuckling feel.

Decision

Everyone chipped in with their thoughts.  People did not like the “fish out of water” option, wanting to stay in the Orient if they were Asian.  They saw that doing Asian (when many of us didn’t even have the PFRPG book in hand yet) might be too much to bite off at this point, though it was intriguing.  There was strong response to the “Tokko” puzzlebox plot, however.  Players were concerned about running too sandboxey and then just kinda drifting aimlessly around sometimes.

After thinking about it, I decided to go with Western pirates, mixing Golarion and Freeport, but to adapt the Tokko plot somehow as well.  I only had a couple weeks to prep and the Asian thing would need a lot of pre-work on setting and rules.

Next time, developing the campaign!

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