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James Jacobs: "I like #1, #100, and #200" smiles. Good. Round. Numbers. [For what it's worth, "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv" was so good that the rest of the SS AP was, tbh, pretty awful in comparison after that amazing intro. Sometimes, there's just no way for the rest-of-the-play to live up to the first Act.]
The degree to which I am entirely enthused by this announcement is difficult to overstate. I'd say you have been missed at my gaming table -- but that isn't true. We just finished running through The Skinsaw Murders under PF2, City of Locusts (also in PF2) is on the docket, and speaking of dockets - I'm converting Trial of the Beast to PF2 right now. But I'd rather not have to convert your stuff :)
I know you think you are trying to help; however, this isn't helping. Unless you work in the Paizo warehouse, you have no information at all about the % performance of subscription shipments. You might be right, sure -- truth is though, you have no information about this one way or the other. I've been a subscriber for a dozen+ years. Mine have not shipped yet either. No, I'm not terribly happy about it, but I'm philosophical about it at least. I well appreciate that others are not. That said, I'd be a good deal less happy about it to receive a smarmy post like yours in response to a reasonable complaint. And his complaint IS reasonable, even if it is grounded in his own narrow self-interest. Perhaps ad hoc Customer Service and PR for a company you don't own and aren't employed by is not your calling?
Mythic 1E *did* have a playtest. The Mythic monsters did not, and they were utter weaklings compared to any optimized PC. And the result was awful. Bottom Line: WotR, converted to PF2 with Mythic stripped out is an excellent adventure path.
The link below to my Google Drive includes my maps for Wrath of the Righteous Volume 1. I am moving on to Volume 2 and will include those when they are complete. The Maps also include a few "Theatre of the Mind" maps for some locations. These are 2d images from a FPS perspective made as an image intended as role-playing backdrops as opposed to traditional battlemaps (though you can run a combat on a TotM map if you so choose). Bottom line: don't worry -- all of the battlemaps are there - and then some. Some of the battlemaps are far more elaborate, namely, Topaz Solutions (now located in a building within its own district of Kenabres, with a dangerous attic as opposed to a basement- Avinia's home in the same district on the north-east side of the map. Similarly, Blackwing Library is far more detailed, with the rest of the Librarium buildings shown as they are burning. Additional encounters to Blackwing may be added as you see fit. In some cases, details have been added where it seemed appropriate, but in no case has it been reduced. Resolution is 150 pixels per sq, created in DDraft with FA Assets, with additional effects and shadows added post in Photoshop. Images are in .webp, and include a login Splash and "Campaign Candy" landing page.
Thank you! Hopefully they get better and better so I can do the later books justice. I would ask that, in the future, you strongly consider exporting your maps with the grid OFF. If it is at all possible for you to re-export your existing maps with the grid off, that would be very helpful as well.
The death of a major god in the PF2 Pantheon comes as part of the Remaster rebranding and the move away from anything mentioned or associated with the OGL. Consequently, Asmodeus is far and away the most likely candidate to chat with Aroden, soon.
Purchased and installed. It will be a while before I get to running this, (probably quite a while) but I played it from start to finish in PF1, reviewed it in depth, and will likely kick tires on running this for a new group under PF2. Thanks for all the work and the product, most especially to James Jacobs for his initial work on the conversion which proceeded under less than ideal circumstances. The Foundry implementation in term of the "open box" experience looks GREAT.
Haven't had a chance to actually watch the notes streams lately Cori, but as soon as I can, I will. And that's good to know Aaron, thank you for some insight! According to the Twitch stream PF2 dev team for Foundry VTT last night, there is a remarkably good chance that the FVTT module for Kingmaker PF2 will be available on September 28, 2023. Price is not yet announced.
Essentially you would need the PCs to each possess some sort of Artifact in order to be able to stand their ground against the truly potent foes out there... and even then you risk enemies nuking the PCs by a couple lucky critical hits.Why? Remember that you are also rebalancing the monsters. This is exactly correct. Which is entirely fine, too. There is a practical problem when discussing WotR with a significant segment of gamers that the AP inherently appeals to. Put simply, they are power gamers who enjoy very high level play. Reducing or eliminating that aspect of the AP is anathema to their preferred approach to it - so they don't even consider it. It's a disconnect in these discussions and it happens just about everywhere you attempt to have that discussion, too. Which is okay, as people are allowed to like different things. The insistence that Mythic for PF1 was great and didn't need a complete re-write to deal with balance issues is ... well... that's not an objectively rational point of view. People like what they like and some don't want to have any other discussion. Which is a shame, as WotR is actually, story wise, one of Paizo's very best APs. James Jacobs is on his game with WotR. It's simply that it was built on top of Mythic, which was a rules set that never got play-tested and it was broken on release; which made WotR broken on release, too. I would like to be more optimistic about similar efforts in next years War of the Immortals AP and new stab at Mythic for PF2. Sadly, I'm not sanguine about it. I AM optimistic that my conversion of WotR to normal PF2 rules will work out just fine though!
Top Shelf
Middle Tier
Bottom Rung
I could get into a long explanation to defend and explain the above choices – (believe me I have extensive and well thought out reasons for this) – but if I post those reasons and start getting into the minutiae and criticism, all that will accomplish is piss off and potentially denigrate many ex-Paizo developers (and maybe a few who aren’t), alienate current freelancers and, in general, piss in the coffee cups of a lot of people who, understandably, would not appreciate that flavor with their java. So, no, I’m not going to do that. I will say this: the job of developer of an Adventure Path was invented by James Jacobs back in the days of Dungeon and was refined over a course of many years by him while at Paizo. He did the job the longest – and he did it best. Far and away the best - No, it’s not even close. I also consider James Jacobs to be the best adventure writer for RPGs of all time. Yes, I mean that – all the way back to 1974. There are no asterisks or exceptions to that overall representation of quality or statement of approbation. No, it doesn’t mean that everything he has written is awesome – he’s had some duds in there, too – but overall, yes, he’s the best there is or ever was. That matters. As for freelancer writers on whom so much depends – the best Freelance adventure authors have almost entirely sat out writing any adventures for PF2. There are a number of good reasons for this, but the end result is a perceptible decrease in the quality of the overall product. Yes, this is, in my view, plain and obvious. Paizo has also shied away from the world-shaking AP themes of the past with the APs it has published in the PF2 era. There were, initially at least, good reasons for them to do this. But as time has worn on, that lack of “epic” in terms of flavor to the AP line has been conspicuously absent. Quality of themes have suffered as a result. Too much travelogue and niche filling – not enough “epic”. And that’s before we talk about the complete disruption within Paizo’s staff in the AP line over the past 7 years or so – which has taken its toll on the product line. Add all of that together: Developer, Theme, and Freelance writers – and that’s why you get a top Adventure Path List that would exclude every single one of the Adv Paths written for PF2 so far, imo. That doesn’t mean they are all bad. Volume 1 of AV, for example, is a top-shelf product (but the magic of Vol 1 doesn’t persist into Vol 2, does it? Be fair.) Overall, the three volumes of AV still would slot in in the middle third, not within the top shelf of PF1’s offerings. All of this is a problem for the current product line. I hope John Compton gets it right and that he is given adequate time to find his feet and make his mark on Pathfinder: Adventure Path – which is still the single greatest RPG adventure publication of all time.
The only 2e adventure paths I’d give a hard “not recommended” to are Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and (sadly) Blood Lords. The rest of them through Sky King’s Tomb I’d consider good to great. My list is a little longer than that, but this isn't about "what's the worst" -- it's about "what's the best" - a different question. As for Agents of Edgewatch, that one, sadly, has a lot to recommend it and there is the basis for an excellent Absalom campaign. All the key ingredients are there... And then they serve it up to GMs and players on a garbage can lid. The problem with AoE is the developer's choice to have the PCs acquire treasure by looting the bad (and not so bad) guys - the so called privateer model -- fundamentally undermined the entire premise of the campaign. The PCs, officers of the law, are required to fund their patrol operations by stealing from those they arrest. It's a plain conflict of interest. So BY DESIGN the players find themselves role-playing bad cops. No cop under a treasure model like that is lawful -- nor good, in my view. It's a case where the treasure model basically forces the PCs to play dirty cops who are all in the Neutral, Neutral (Evil), Chaotic Neutral, and and even Chaotic Evil parts of the alignment spectrum. And this happens BY DESIGN, no less. I played AoE, Vol 1 and this aspect of things was such a distraction to me that I couldn't wait for that volume to end. And we ended the campaign right afterwards. As you might imagine, I have some strong views about that design, and some adjectives to attach to it which are both critical and unflattering. Could we have changed the treasure model? Sure, absolutely. But changing something that is so plainly and obviously wrong in an AP's inherent design should not be necessary.
I think the stuff that belongs "top-shelf" is back in PF1's Adv Paths. This is not an edition war post: I prefer the rules of PF2. But the plots, the development work, and perhaps most of all, the quality of the freelance writers with PF1's APs, especially chronologically, the first two-thirds of them, are better than anything we have received in PF2. It takes a lot of time to convert PF1 APs to PF2 if you are being meticulous about it -- but if you are looking for the best Paizo adventure paths? That's where you will find them.
I expect that what you are looking for in terms of Derzen is these two map images, created with Inkarnate by redditor u/IXMandalorianXI They are located here Derzen Citadel and Derzen Dungeon. If not, they are still great maps!
Arise my Unthread minions! It's simpler than that, by the way. I am redoing all of WotR for PF2 and stripping mythic out of it entirely and just rebalancing the foes across the board for PF2. Mythic was -- and is -- AWFUL. It was always so open to optimization "abuse" (if just building a logical Mythic PC can be said to be "abuse") that it came pre-broken for our better enjoyment. Trying to fix it with Legendary Adventures options for Mythic sort of works, but the amount of effort that must be put into each mythic encounter, adjusted to work alongside the specific mythic builds of the group of PCs is just not worth it. At all. It's awful. Let it be. The AP, once freed of this dross, is actually pretty good. Unlike PF1, PF2 plays much better at higher levels. So just rebalance it for PF2 and call it done.
Arise my Unthread minions! It's simpler than that, by the way. I am redoing all of WotR for PF2 and stripping mythic out of it entirely and just rebalancing the foes across the board for PF2. Mythic was -- and is -- AWFUL. It was always so open to optimization abuse that it came pre-broken. Trying to dis it with Legendary Adventures options for Mythic sort of works, but the amount of effort that must be put into each mythic encounter, adjusted to specifically work alongside the mythic builds of the PCs is just not worth it. It's awful. Let it be. The AP, once freed of this dross, is actually pretty good. Unlike PF2, PF2 plays much better at higher levels. So just rebalance it for PF2 and call it done.
Arise my Unthread minions! It's simpler than that, by the way. I am redoing all of WotR for PF2 and stripping mythic out of it entirely and just rebalalancing the foes across the board for PF2. Mythic was -- and is -- AWFUL. It was always so open to optimization abuse that it came pre-broken. Trying to dis it with Legendary Adventures options for Mythic sort of works, but the amount of effort that must be put into each mythic encounter, adjusted to specifically work alongside the mythic builds of the PCs is just not worth it. It's awful. Let it be. The AP, once freed of this dross, is actually pretty good. Unlike PF2, PF2 plays much better at higher levels. So just rebalalance it for PF2 and call it done.
I was very pleased to have confirmation of continuing remote working conditions for Paizo employees. This offers a number of benefits to both Paizo and its employees, while reducing costs for Paizo and for its employees -- and permitting employees to reside in areas with far less expensive housing. That's a net raise to United Paizo Workers, without it costing Paizo anything. Indeed, it should save you money in the medium to long run. Good. More net pay after rent to employees with lower costs to Paizo. I call that a win-win. While I am sure inertia and unspecified general concerns militated against this for many years, the pandemic wiped that away at a stroke. Realizing it and accepting a gift-horse has been difficult for many businesses in the wake of the pandemic. The fact that you have done so Mr. Butler is commendable.
There are many cool features of PF2 in Foundry VTT. There are many cool features of Foundry VTT for that matter - whether it is used for PF2 or not. But far and away the most impressive achievement -- the thing which is FAR more difficult to do than writing software -- is to build the community around FoundryVTT in general and PF2 in particular. You could try and do that 100 times, and you would be unlikely to succeed as well or as brilliantly as the current community has. Truth is, you'd outright FAIL 98 times out of 100. These things are once a decade or two events. The last time something like this happened around the RPG brand was BioWare's Neverwinter Nights 1. These communities are as rare as rare can be; so all readers here should treasure it and not take it for granted. Because when they come together? It's magic in a bottle.
Look at your Interactive Maps for Vol 2. :P
Uhmmm... what is UP with the cover art on the PDF? The cover art on the printed product is as advertised; however, the cover art on Vol 2 of Gatewalkers: They Watched the Stars Interactive Maps is just ... wrong. You have included as the cover art of the PDF for Vol 2 of the Gatewalker AP Interactive Maps the cover art which is for Vol 3 of the same AP. I just noticed this today as I received Vol 3 of the PDF in my download section. James Jacobs is writing this one so I had to go look (even if only a cursory glance as I likely will be playing this) and I saw it was exactly the same cover art as for Vol 2! Which art is correct? My physical copy of volume 2 indicates: the cover on the PDF for Vol 2 Interactive Maps is wrong! This... this is an odd mistake for Paizo (there's a first time for everything) but uhmm... yeah. There it is, just the same.
I want to return to Varisia and the new Runelords. After that, back to Lastwall and perhaps Ustalav, please and thank you. The two main BBEGs in this world require some attention. Should we let James Jacobs know that his Runelord's a good guy and that the Whispering Tyrant is a punk compared to Geb? Geb will doubtless pass that on to his wife "the guy who killed you when you were the Herald of a god is a punk". It's good to know that Lastwall is gone for good and hasn't mattered since 2019. It would be preferable if someone told Paizo though, who released the Lost Omen Book for Lastwall ten months ago, in May, 2022. Alternatively, maybe trying to stir up a 1st vs 2nd Edition war isn't helpful?
What I want to see? Less Golarion travelogue and niche APs focused on making this, that, and the other corners of the fanbase happy. I want to return to Varisia and the new Runelords. After that, back to Lastwall and perhaps Ustalav, please and thank you. The two main BBEGs in this world require some attention. Yes, I know, how "boring, typical, and samey". Pssst: the reason why Abomination Vaults was received so well? Because it was familiar red meat, served up medium-rare, just the way people like it. There are a lot of new GMs and players in PF2 right now -- though most of them are 5e refugees who default to "strong home brew" in terms of what they run. Give them a reason NOT to do that.
What I'm mostly hearing here is that our current methods of doing multiple Adventure Paths a year and varying the contents and themes and stories continues to be the right call. So that I am clear on this, I was VERY pleased to see that Outlaws of Alkenstar was another lvl 1-10 3 vol AP. A heavy bias favoring level 1-10 in the 3 volume APs is preferred by me -- and it's not even close. Leave the 6 volume APs for those who want higher level play. That is my STRONG preference as a customer.
Personally, as a painfully shy person, I'm loving the virtual cons. If there is anything which the move to more online play via VTT during the pandemic proved, the demand for VTT play is there and will remain. The ability to reach FAR more potential customers via Twitch was already recognized by Paizo for many years in terms of presenting its panels to others not able to physically attend. That process began back in 2010 when we recorded and podcasted their Gencon panels. So we know that element is not going away. Similarly, there seems little reason to exclude participants from VTT play during a con. If there are GMs willing to run those scenarios via VTT, I am sure there will be spots. Whether Paizocon will be online only, or a mix of online and in-person gathering is the only question. Nobody is suggestion "in-person only". Going forward, I would be genuinely surprised if online play is ever dropped by major RPG sellers at any major convention. How large that presence may have is an open question and will be governed by both supply and demand and logistics in dealing with both -- but I would be flabbergast if there is an attempt to put that Genie back in that bottle, ever.
It's the best AP Paizo has released in many years. This treatment is a good idea. I have little doubt that it will be regarded as one of the best, if not The Best AP for Pathfinder 2nd Ed. To characterize it as simply a "dungeon crawl" misses the mark - as well as how adaptable the adventure is in terms of its structure outside of the Ruins below Gauntlight.
Here's the thing: I have Paizo's entire library of Map Packs, Flip-Tiles and Flip-Mats in electronic form. If this is Pokemon? I have quite literally caught them all. (I even have this physical product line before Paizo made them, going back to Steel-Squire's versions of them, for that matter.) I use these products in digital form, not printed form and have for nearly a decade. The problem I am now running into the past year or three -- and it is a problem now every single time I try and use these map making assets -- is that I find that I no longer can use them digitally, at least when it comes to the map packs/tiles. I just ignore the flip-tiles entirely now when it comes to map making. It's a damned shame. The problem is simple: there are pre-existing grid lines on these digital map products that I do not want on my finished map image. And I have no way to turn them off. I don't want more than the digital product delivers -- I just need a little less I appreciate that these products are primarily intended for physical use. Any digital use became an unintentional "bonus". That's entirely fair. And so in that context, a grid make sense. But as a digital product, the grid is usually not desirable in the finished assembled map when used in a modern VTT. I could get into a lengthy technical discussion of digital map making, resolution independence, and VTT implementation -- but I don't think the specific technical reasons are terribly germane. Suffice to say that while grids are helpful to help make a map, they are bad -- very bad -- with the finished digital product -in-use. In the AP line, the interactive map packs exist so as to permit an end user to turn off the grid. This is super helpful to GMs using those maps for VTT play. Bottom Line: Providing something similar, or simply just another PDF with the map images supplied **without the grid lines** would be greatly appreciated by subscribers who want to use these products for VTT play. Because these grid lines are interfering with my ability to use what is otherwise an excellent digital product. I don't get any value-in-use out of them. Which is a shame given how awesome they otherwise could be in digital form.
While your comment is several months old, the issue is a recurring one so this reply will be of use to you as well as to others. The cost of printing maps adds up quickly. The simplest and most cost-effective approach is to not print anything. Instead, use a 40" inch flat panel TV and lay it on the tabletop and hook it up with an HDMI cable to your PC or laptop -- or cast to it from a tablet or phone if it supports that feature. Display your map on the TV, either through the use of a VTT -- or simply the use of a graphics program or even Adobe Acrobat if you must. Put your minis on top of the flat screen and just play. You can get fancy and add a wood frame or install it in a purpose built table if you like -- but just laying down an old TV on the kitchen table works just fine too. If it gets tippy -- use a bath towel scrunched up underneath the tippy side to stop it from doing that. Carry on gaming. You may well have an old flat-panel TV you no longer use that could be repurposed for this (I have two of them in the 40" range we no longer use). If so, the cost of doing this + your old bath towel to prevent tipping is exactly ZERO DOLLARS. And yes, it will look better than any printed map, too. And the ease of use of changing maps and so forth during play will take you less than 1 second to appreciate and come to enjoy. On Craigslist, a used flat panel can be had for less than $100. Hell you can buy a NEW low Hz 55" model for $200-$300 or so. 60 Hz is totally fine for still images. High Hz resolution is a concern for showing movies and sports - not for Tabletop gaming!
Separate Map pack like with PF. Starfinder added this feature to the Starfinder AP PDF package last Fall. The ship maps had not been included in there though. Now they are.
So we customers can be a b@~%*y, pain-in-the-ass ever complaining group of customers, I know. Still, it is gratifying to know that Paizo pays attention to the grumbling. The problem, hitherto, (which was really just this past AP and the one before, tbh, as the Interactive Map Packs were not in place for Starfinder prior to that) was that the ship maps on the back page were left out. While it is true that Starship Maps don't contain the secret door info that was, once-upon-a-time, one of the main reasons for Interactive Map Packs in the first place, their utility has grown beyond that narrow use case. In particular, the Map Packs ability to turn off the grid allows for easier importing of the art into a VTT -- and we never want grids on maps for *final* VTT use as that just makes it harder to use them. (We do need the grids temporarily for scaling purposes to get them into the VTT though). Anyways, bottom line, Paizo listened to us and with Vol 6 of FFoD, they included The Risen in the Interactive Maps too. So very happy for this development. Thanks to Jason and Jason (and their other brother Jason, too) and all the non-Jasons at Paizo for this.
My players just finished up We're No Heroes, but they escaped from the rendezvous point without killing Deminda. The book says that Sinjin will kill her if she fails, but that feels like a waste given how much of an impression she made on my players. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to incorporate her into future adventures? Well, the module anticipates that the PCs may not go the Golden League hangar and will instead attempt to make a run for it. "However, because the PCs never face Deminda, she could reappear in a future adventure—at an appropriately higher CR and accompanied by drow henchmen." The time to re-emphasize this threat and re-insert the Drow, in my opinion, is not so much in Volume 2, but at the beginning of Volume 3. The perfect hook is the throw-away part of the intro to the adventure which follows up with a job offer while the PCs are still on Marixah - the planet where they finish Volume 2. Marixah is the homeworld of the colonists the PCs probably helped on Vohxa (the labor camp) in their struggle with the Hobgoblins of the Gideron Authority. It is the GA which is the link back to the Drow. The GA are being supplied arms from the Drow on Apostae through House Zeizerer. Sinjin is from House Zeizerer, though he has largely "gone rogue" outside of the Drow matriarchy and has instead built up his criminal network with non-Drow in the Golden League. Still, the links between the Drow and the Gideron Authority provides your opportunity to re-insert Deminda. By this point, as the FFoD AP provides, the first contact with the GA was with Captain Harradan, Commander of the Gideron Authority Attack Vessel Falchion. This occurs as the PCs initially come into land on Vohxa in Vol 1. While in orbit, Harradan checks out the PCs bona fides, sees their arms shipment papers from House Zeizerer, and authorizes them to land on Vohxa. (At that time, Harradan's name is not mentioned - though his ship is.) He's potentially your recurring GA BBEG if you like. At the beginning of Vol 3, Verran asks the PCs to bring a shipment to Absalom Station. The PCs don't know what this shipment is, but it's actually a fascinating collection of archaeological artifacts which underlie the conflict between Marixah and the GA. The PCs take the gig and shortly thereafter, Captain Harradan in the Falchion and another GA ship confront the PCs in space above Marixah as the Oliphaunt leaves. Ideally, what you want Harradan to do is to board the Oliphaunt to take the archaeological relics back. Harradan's ship ordinarily has himself and five other Hobgoblins on it. (There is another GA ship out there as well). Problem: The GA above Marixah is WAY too dangerous for the GA. They will get crushed trying that stunt above Marixah. Instead, have the shipment of cargo to be picked up on Sansorgis, a nearby planet outside of Vesk Space where the GA and Marixah are fighting. It's the setting for SFS 1-24 where the GA is introduced. Deminda sets up Verran as a fence to draw the PCs in - and get the GA Navy to help her do it. Put Deminda and a group of Drow thugs on Harradan's ship. The entire delivery of the artifacts from Varran to the PCs is all part of her elaborate bait to catch the PCs, while using the military ships of the GA to help her do it. So Harradan will board with his "crew", all done up in armor and with helmets on to conceal who they are. Some will be hobgoblin - others will be Drow thugs. The fight will be on board the Oliphaunt and it will happen even if the PCs comply with the GA's demands. Harradan brings Deminda aboard to verify the artifact cargo is the cultural relics. Deminda will use that opportunity to start a fight on the Oliphaunt. Frankly, I consider the Gideron Authority and that entire subplot as being FAR more interesting than the underwater adventure that takes place in Vol 3. So much so that I may scrap Vol 3 as written in preference for some home brew with the PCs vs the GA. Anyways, the drow will be on board the Falchion and will board the Oliphaunt if they get the chance. Problem: They might not get the chance. Your PCs may choose try to escape from the GA vessels because the Oliphaunt has a Speed of 12 and the Sword Class Attack Vessels in the GA navy sent to interdict the artifact shipment have a speed of 8. Unless the GA ships get lucky and crit the Oliphaunt in order to slow it down, the PCs will get away. If the PCs escape the GA, Deminda will use Sinjin's allies in the Golden League to attack the PCs at Absalom Station as part of Hafrigek's Xun's crew. Again -- that is the reason the Hafrigek family is attacking the PCs in the first place -- because Sinjin asked them to. Well, Sinjin asked them to do it through Deminda. So either boarding The Oliphaunt with the GA or with the Golden League on Absalom station -- that is where the drow and Deminda re-enter your tale. Why are the PCs going off to Entha for underwater adventures while this far more interesting intrigue with the Gideron Authority and the Golden League presents a more plot cohesive option in Volume 3? Honestly, I think it's the biggest weakness in all of the FFoD AP. Volume 3 is detached by design from the rest of the AP and is intended to be a "palate cleanser" where the bad guys are the nameless, faceless EJ Corp. The AP is supposed to be about working class truckers and their former employer in EJ Corp, right? So that's why Jason Tondro made that choice and it makes sense from that perspective. This is a story not about "saving the Galaxy" but "woking class heroes". Vol 3 attaches its premise to the PCs former employers at EJ Corp - all vaguely wrapped around the idea of Big Corporate environmental exploitation. So in that sense - it fits the theme. But if the politics of the setting appeals more to you, maybe you don't want or need to play up the heartless environmental destruction EJ Corp is involved in. Perhaps to you,the Gideron and Drow subplot is far more interesting and it also integrates well with Volume 1 and Volume 6 and Sinjin. Pick your poison. I find the GA subplot to be so interesting, I may just scrap the Entha adventure in Vol 3 in its entirety and homebrew that part of the AP to go down that rabbit hole and just pick it back up in Volume 4 with the White Glove Affair.
There is nothing about Paizo maps that is more frustrating than futzing with the grid. The number one way to avoid all of those issues at a stroke -- and which is relatively no work at all to implement -- is just don't add the grid. Gridless art makes all digital users happy, no matter the platform. No grid: This Is The Way.
Please note that the stat block for this ship is in error. As written the ship is described as having the following AC / Target Lock: AC 11; TL 19 This in error, the correct numbers are: AC 18; TL 26 Explanation: The AC and Target Lock, as published, do not incorporate the skill bonus +7 included in the crew's stats attached to the same ship.
I got it working with Cupscale 37.0. The install process is, indeed, most aggravating, but navigable for those who do not code. You just have to pay careful attention. There is a video on Youtube that is of some moderate assistance. "Princess Potato" still needs her ass kicked for being an impatient and terrible tutorial recorder though. (It's like she's trying to be unhelpful while pretending to be helpful! If she worked for me that might have been her last day on the job.) Gatekeeping is all too real it seems. Anyways? The good news is? It works very well!
For those with nVidia video cards, ESRGAN is a particularly excellent free open source tool to do this (it does not work with ATI or Intel integrated graphics though). There are some front ends for ESRGAN that make it easier, but yes, by default it's a python command line environment and as unfriendly as it gets. You can try Image Enhancing Utility of Cupscale as a UI for it. Installation on those is also a pythonesque event (though not of the Monty variety.) The output from ESRGAN upscaler is pretty awesome though. If you can get it working, it is NOT a waste of time. Over on the Starfinder channel on Foundry's discord server, @Nachtrose has got his install working and he is happy with it. You might ask him for some pointers on installing ESRGAN and the UI's for it: #Starfinder
Yes. Same for D20Pro for that matter. When it comes to cropping, you can try to roll with partial map squares in some programs. Foundry supports, it, for example. However, I find it just makes the entire process clumsy and uncertain. I prefer precision when dealing with maps and map resolution in a VTT -- or as close to it as I can get at least. So I prefer to crop, or where the map looks like it's small enough already, I'll recreate the missing map geometry by kludging it.
Please follow the April & May 2021 New Releases and Subscription Shipping thread for updates. Starts shipping in a week? "Not so sounded as we were lead to believe; so much the better" Looking forward to this one! Oh hell, looking forward to all of them (except for Ruby Phoenix genre is not my cuppa - but I'll still get them of course).
Well damn, about the release being pushed back, but whatever still super looking forward to it! The August to September is gonna be insane if Guns and Gears doesn't also get pushed back, we're gonna have actual back to back rulebook releases. "Ill news is an ill guest, Aaron Stormcrow." - Customer Wormtongue Actually, ill news is appreciated and candid posts manage customer's reasonable expectations and assist in marketing and long-term customer goodwill. So all of this is really helpful. And the best thing about all of this, to be perfectly honest, is that I find myself excited about both the PF2 and Starfinder releases. I've subscribed throughout for both PF and SF, but during that time, I think it has only been in the past 3 months or so that I have come to get excited about all of these products again for both brands. Sometimes, it takes the return of something to realize that its absence was bigger than I gave credit for. Thanks for the updates Aaron.
All my sympathies. You do not have an easy job, and I know keenly how frustrating this can be for everyone. When the whole business is planned on regular subscriber income for cashflow purposes, my sympathies go well beyond those of warehouse staff. Delays of this magnitude are craptastic for Paizo. In a year full of nasty Covid impacts, nobody foresaw how a 10 minute strong desert wind squall in Egypt could disrupt the economies of all businesses, great and small, around the globe.
So Vol 5 of the AP should have been roleplaying 23 hours a day in a cell, 1 hr in the yard - and three squares a day? FLY FREE OR DIE: THIRTY YEARS OF HARD LABOR EVENT 1 - THE TRIAL (Curse your Sudden and Inevitable Conviction) EVENT 2 - HELLO FISHY (Say Hello to your new cellmates, Bubba1 and his hairier, more rapey cousin, Bubba2.) EVENT 3 - CAFETERIA Using the new expanded economy rules for trading smokes and smuggled narcotics for favors and BPs! EVENT 4 - SOLITARY CONFINEMENT (30 DAYS IN THE HOLE): You count a lot of bricks. Over and over. Will Save DC 18 or suffer PTSD? Roll on the below table for your acquired secondary mental illness? EVENT 5 - PRISON BREAK - Notwithstanding the fact that this future technomagical society should be able to consign your fate to A High Tech magical Azkaban from which light itself should not be able to escape, we'll pretend you can anyway, or else Vol 6 is just Vol 5, with more bugs in the potatoes? Seriously, where are you going with these criticisms of a RPG adventure series? P.S.: the security guards in Vol 1 are all constructs - every one of em - though admittedly one of them is an Android.
The activities on Fortune's Heart are not exactly all above board. The Kalistocrats are crooks, too. Their ability to Go. Run. Tell. is somewhat constrained by those realities. The opponents of the PCs look instead to their civil remedies, rather than direct criminal justice for what has happened. And so Eline uses the lawyers (and good name) of EJ Corp (as plaintiff) to do it. Doing just that, the PCs are sued for fraud and literally all of the PC's assets are frozen via court order across all of Known Space™ within 60 days of the event. That injunction is so extreme, they can't even buy a coffee using a creditstick. That's before a judgment is even granted or before they have had their day in court. It's a Sci Fi Mareva injunction on steroids with a reach that extends hundreds of light years in all directions. They are persona non grata and are wanted in some of those jurisdictions. So, au contraire, for the first time in an Adventure Path or other adventure module since Gygax rolled dice at his sand table, there ARE actually adverse legal consequences for the PCs' actions -- and pretty drastic ones, too :)
I wonder if PDF;s for subscripers would be released on time? Subscribers are not sent PDFs until they have billed you for the physical product; Subscribers are not billed for the physical product until they are shipped.They can't do any of that if there is no product in the warehouse to ship. There won't be a "street date" for product that Paizo doesn't even have yet to send to distributors/retailers, let alone subscribers. The reality is that with Covid and seasonal irregularities caused in early February by the Chinese Lunar New Year already disrupt things in the 1st and 2nd quarter. Add to that a global disruption of all oceanic shipping as a result of the Suez Canal blockage, all oceanic shipping has had its schedule disrupted last month. And it will be disrupted next month and the one after that, too (whether here specifically at Paizo or just "other products" it is a far reaching ripple effect). While the Suez blockage didn't stop a cargo ship carrying goods from China to the West Coast of North America, that doesn't mean that it doesn't effect what ships were in China to load in the first place, or what those that were intended to be loaded for destination X will do when reassigned to destination Y. So the indirect effects of the Suez blockage are pernicious and far reaching across the globe, as all ships that were expected to move through the Suez couldn't. That affects other deliveries and other ships that were supposed to be available to send goods hither and yon have been disrupted --- blah blah blah, basically. We'll be a few months working all of this out as the spawn of countless delays that were caused by the ripple effect when 12% of all Oceanic travel was put on hold for nearly a week works itself out over time.
Aliens threatening an Ice Planet, besieged terrified scouts/researchers huddling in the cold from an alien monster. If there isn't a scene or three channeling John Carpenter's The Thing meeting Ridley Scott's Alien to produce a Swarm lovechild, I am going to be disappointed Jason! [Spoilers: I do not expect I will be disappointed].
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