Notsonoble's Rants

Saturday, November 12, 2011

So the past few weeks have been quite crazy. That said, I haven't completely been out of the loop.

The free content on paizo.com for The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner's Box helps the box a bit. There's a second module, which adds some rules the original box materials didn't cover, and can either be doodled out on the "blank" side of the flip mat, or uses the GameMastery Map Pack: Mines I haven't had a chance to read it in detail, but it's also about two hours worth of gameplay from the skimming I got to do.

The expansion book for the players covers some of the rogue, cleric, fighter, and wizard abilities the one with the box didn't, and of course, adds barbarian to the class options. The interesting thing is how the material is covered. There's almost a whole page per level of each class now. Bulky, but easy to read.

Another GameMastery Map Pack I noticed in a store (I don't subscribe to them, but that may change) is Swallowed Whole this looks like fun. Each card is some gargantuan creature and the maps valid squares are inside the creature. So if your whole party gets munched, just replace your counter with the map card and keep going.

That's enough about Paizo's stuff, now for a plug/update.

After a question posted on paizo was answered, I was pointed to a very tiny line on several Pathfinder Roleplaying Game products. "Open Content", I knew this was on the hardback books, and they were added to the list of valid books to use under the PCL. but it's actually in all the others too, and applies mechanics in Adventure Paths, and other books. This is good news, because it means I don't have to wait on two small projects I am working on. Expect a Faction Worksheet, (with a little expansion about faction generation), and a Caravan Worksheet very soon. I'm going to try and get the Caravan Worksheet done before the last Jade Regent Adventure Path releases.

Don't forget the other three worksheets I have up at Paizo now. So far the people who have commented have been pleased with them.

Now as to why this month has already been crazy. Saturday of last week I was on the way to pickup a battery, sparkplugs, and plugwires for my 2001 Dodge Ram. I was in said pickup, and so was my dad. We were two blocks from a major intersection when someone in a elderly (late 70- early 80s) chevy pickup ran a stop sign and plowed into me. Me and my dad are okay, but the truck is totaled, worse, the guy ran. I did have uninsured, and my insurance wrote me a check for the value of the truck, problem is it's no where near enough to get a vehicle even in reasonable shape. This happened in Lubbock, and I've had to be in Abilene, but left the truck in Lubbock, and my job drove me all over that part of texas this week, and the insurance guy was in Lubbock, Levelland, and all other places around here after looking at the truck. This made getting the check madness for all. Then work's been a tad crazy, not so much a huge workload as once again its spread over half of creation. All in all, just hectic.

Tomorrow, however, I have one meeting to be at that will determine who will replace me for certain responsibilities. After that, a month or so of helping the new person adjust, and I'll have lots less on my plate.

We'll see what madness is going on in two weeks!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Game Day Report, Bleach Failday

So I got really ill right before Gameday, this meant the PDD20 game didn't happen, infact about the only gaming I got in was two rounds of chess. However, we had a larger turnout than last year, and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. So while a down day for me and D20, overall a good day.

Last night was supposed to be the first major session of my BLEACH game. Yeah, mid game a combination of my DM overreaction and player stupidity cut the game short. One of my two player's is rolling up a new character. The good news is there's a lot of promise in Magus being a good option for a Kido-friendly Shinagami.

I was actually using a lot of the new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner's Box for the game. So I'll through a first impression here.

Paper pawns: These were actually really nice quality cardboard pawns with good art. I agree with some the fronts and backs should have been different, but not many people draw characters or monsters from the behind.

Flipmap: A nice dungeon one side "blank" otherside flipmat. Nothing fancy, but nice.

Module included: Straight to the dungeon crawl, which is actually kinda short, and ends with two rounds with a black dragon??? Look I know this is dungeons and dragons, but throwing a dragon in the first encounter set is still a bit nuts. There's almost enough pre-dragon combat to validate leveling your characters to level 2, and the loot built in is enough to sorta make the characters capable of surviving (and therefore, really really powerful game items that any player's new or old is gonna latch onto and throw later games power level off) but really. The module's also SHORT, really SHORT. I don't think even a totally inexperienced group would have trouble finishing this module in 2 hours tops. (Seriously, a under strength party (one experienced gm, one experienced player, one only second session player was over halfway through it in 20 minutes, then stupidity happened and we broke up).

Once that's done, the infant gm has to figure out what to do next? Sure if your party only has the one copy of the hero's handbook, and has to pass it around leveling up either their customs or the pregens, then I can see that being enough to end a evening, but it felt kinda lacking.

I'd suggested on paizo's site that this box have a lot of good "new to GMing" material, and while its there, it's all in the "read and study" section after the module.

Overall, it's a good addition to my stuff, and a good thing to hand to a group of newbies, but still isn't quite what I'd hoped for. They could have spread the action out a little, a few map pieces wouldn't have been a bad addition, and could have let them build two "locations" instead of just one that was so small. A reduced map pack (the flip mat is a game mastery flipmat) would have been a nice addition.

So, I'll be keeping mine, if I'm in a store and someone asks about rpgs, I'll be suggesting it, but maybe not the xmas gift i was hoping for for some of my friends.