Pathfinder MMO on the Way

Paizo has officially licensed the Pathfinder MMO Rights to Goblinworks.  Details about the game are still somewhat scarce but here is some info from the Goblinworks website...

Pathfinder Online takes place in the world of the award-winning Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, an industry-leading tabletop roleplaying game based on more than a decade of system development. The Pathfinder world includes elements inspired by classic and modern fantasy, from lost cities shrouded in misty jungles to decaying pyramids in deserts of burning sands to a fantastic island metropolis where folk from countless kingdoms live side by side with all manner of exotic creatures. If a player wants to tell a fantasy story, the world of Pathfinder has a place for it. (For more information on the world of Pathfinder and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, please visit paizo.com/pathfinder.)

Pathfinder Online is a hybrid sandbox/theme park-style MMO roleplaying game where characters explore, develop, and dominate the River Kingdoms, a treacherous no-man's-land of squabbling kingdoms on the edge of wilderness. Players explore, adventure, develop, and dominate their domains by playing fighters, rogues, wizards, or any of Pathfinder's many character types, or they can use the game's archetype system go beyond the standard options to create nearly any sort of character imaginable.

Pathfinder Online's robust trading system puts players in control of the world's economy with player-created items, consumables, fortifications, and settlements. Character-controlled settlements can grow into full-fledged kingdoms that compete for resources as they seek to become the dominant force in the land, raising vast armies to hold their territory against the depredations of monstrous creatures, NPC factions, and other player characters.

Social organizations scale from small parties of a few adventurers to player nations inhabited by thousands. As settlements develop, the surrounding wilderness develops more complex and challenging features, including randomly generated encounters and resources as well as exciting scripted adventures.

The design process for Pathfinder Online has only just begun, and there is plenty of opportunity for gamers to get in on the ground floor of this exciting new project. Paizo and Goblinworks are committed to soliciting player feedback about the Pathfinder Online project, and will track the game's development here at goblinworks.com. Add your email address in the box on this page to receive regular updates on the Pathfinder Online project!

Early indications seem to be that we are looking at another World of Warcraft clone that can't hope to compete against the juggernaut that inspired it, but we'll see.   I wish Paizo and Goblinworks luck.  Even if I don't like MMOs and don't think this game will be very good, I would like to see them succeed. 

Hell it's not like it could be much worse than the piece of shit that was the Dungeons and Dragons MMO...

Paizo Picks Up Wizards of the Coast's Slack

A while back Wizards of the Coast decided to discontinue production on their line of pre-painted plastic miniatures.  A lot of people, including me, were disappointed at this.  Though I don't play 4e, their minis were still really cool, durable, and best of all painted (I can't paint a mini to save my life!).  

I just received word that Paizo has teamed with WizKids have teamed up to fill the void.  This is good news, and not just for fans of Pathfinder.  This is good news for everyone who likes to use miniatures in their games but can't paint, likes cheap minis, and doesn't want to worry about damaging a fragile pewter figure.  T

he teamup is also something to be excited about.  Paizo has been offering quality products for a few years now and has built up quite a reputation in the gaming community.  Most people know WizKids for their miniature games like HeroClix and Mage Knight.  With the two working together this line seems destined to be a quality product.

The new miniatures will be available fourth quarter of this year. 

Which Monster Manual?

Yesterday's Monster topic and Seth's comment about the 2nd Edition Monster Manual really got me thinking about the differences between the various editions Monster Manuals.  From edition to edition the books vary a great deal while containing most of the same core group of monsters.  So my question to you, noble reader, is which Monster Manual do you like best and why?

There are plenty to choose from, here are pictures of your options to jog your memory a bit.  Noted that I've included Pathfinder as many (including myself) see it as D&D 3.75, and I included two covers of the AD&D 1st edition MM because one is near and dear to my heart and the other is the one that most people owned.  

Could You Use Call of Cthulhu Magic In D&D?

Has anyone out there used portions of Call of Cthulhu's magic system in D&D?  It seemed like a weird idea first, but if one were aiming for a Conan-esc Sword and Sorcery feel it seems like it would be just right.  Half-mad Necromancers summoning demon-gods that wreak havoc and cause gruesome death to all they encounter seems to fit into both categories nicely.    

There are a couple of options if one chose to go this route as well.  You could pair d20 Cthulhu with a 3rd edition D&D or Pathfinder game and because they both use the same base mechanics they would likely fit together pretty well.  I don't have much experience with the d20 Cthulhu rules and I've heard conflicting reports about their quality but it certainly is a streamlined option. Alternatively you could pair old school D&D and traditional Call of Cthulhu, though the rules would take some tweaking to fit together. 

The more I read of the Cthulhu magic system the more I like its dark and ominous feel.  That having been said, I'm not sure it would encourage people to play Magic Users in games if they had to deal with the added danger of going insane through spell use.  

Has anyone out there tried to pair D&D and CoC magic?  What worked and what didn't? Please feel free to share any sage wisdom you have. 

Love It & Loath It: D&D Edition

Each version of D&D has its pros and cons.  Some aspects of the system are great, while others are much less so.  Today I found myself thinking about the various editions, some of the things I liked most about them, and some of the things I liked least.

Here we go...

AD&D 1st Edition 

Loved    - Light rules with plenty of room for the GM, the classic modules, Nostalgia, the Cavalier class, combat tends to move quickly, historical inspirations, Gary Gygax
Loathed -Poorly organized rulebooks, descending armor class, demihuman racial limits


AD&D 2nd Edition


Loved    - flavor and feel, character class descriptions, non-weapon proficiencies, Nostalgia, historical inspirations
Loathed - THACO, descending armor class, superfluous supplemental books with no eye for game balance, demihuman racial limits

D&D 3rd Edition

Loved    - Improved saving throw system, modular design, improved skill system, feats and other factors allowed for more customizable characters, online SRD, classes well balanced while maintaining their individuality
Loathed - Out of Control Multiclassing and/or Prestige classes, wildly unbalanced supplemental books, the removal of weapon proficiencies


D&D 4e

Loved    - Encourages team play, less work for the DM
Loathed - Dissociated mechanics, classes are too balanced and loses a lot of flavor, overabundant player options (almost 3,000 feats and counting!), skill challenges, healing surges, rules poorly organized in PHB


That's just what I could think of off the top of my head.

What are your favorite and least favorite things about each edition of D&D?

Bolstering the Ranks: Why the Hell is it so hard to find new players?!

I've played with the same group for about eight years now.  We have had many people come and go for various reasons over the years, but the core four members of the group have remain unchanged.  Recently we lost two members in quick succession and found ourselves down to just the aforementioned four players.  While it is certainly possible to play with four, and we have done it many times, it was the general preference that we add a few more members to fill out the table.  

Normally when we need new members we will invite a friend of one of the already existing members.  This is the easiest option for both the group who is getting a known quantity, and for the new player who already knows someone at the table.  However, after eight years we seem to have exhausted this option; none of us could think of a single person to invite to the game.  After a bid of head scratching we examined our options.  We do live in the information age after all, how hard could it be to reach out and pluck a prospective gamer from the orchard of the internet? 

As it turns out, pretty hard.

Now there are various ways to find new members, many of which I'm sure we weren't aware of., but of the ones we did know the three that seemed the most promising to us were message boards, Obsidian portal,  and Pen & Paper Games. 

Message boards for specific games have worked really well for people I know.  I once knew a guy who would hit the D&D boards and within a week would have a whole new group.  That man had a talent for finding people that it quickly became clear that I, and the other members of my group, lack.    The problem is that my group no longer plays just D&D anymore.  When 4e came out it became clear that the game was not for us and so we started looking elsewhere.  In the time since 4e came out we have played Hackmaster 4th Edition, Hackmaster Basic, Hackmaster Advanced, Aces & Eights, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, 1st Edition D&D, 2nd Edition D&D, and D&D 3.5.  So though it was cool that the release of 4e caused us to branch out and leave our comfort zone a little bit, it no longer made it possible to hit the D&D boards looking for players.  Similarly, Paizo has prolific message boards, but by and large those players are Pathfinder players who might not be interested in switching systems should the need arise.  So in the end we didn't have much luck with message boards and decided to forgo others like ENWorld, RPGNet, and others. 

Obsidian Portal is an awesome site and a great resource for many things including finding games.  We used Obsidian Portal as kind of a passive way to look in the months leading up to our active search.  We listed the campaign we were playing along with some information on our group and tossed our line out, hoping some Gamer without a group would bite.  Alas, we had little to no luck.  We considered contacting some of the other groups in the immediate area, but many of them were playing 4e, so it was unlikely they would have been a good fit.  However, all was not lost.  Obsidian Portal partnered with Pen & Paper Games, a site dedicated to helping Gamers find Gamers.  We all figured this would be our best bet. 

It was at Pen & Paper Games that we made our last  ditch effort to find some new blood.  We threw a wide net over the area, opting for a "spray and pray" philosophy.  Rather than working our way down a long list of people one at a time, we just emailed everyone we thought might be a good fit.  So just how many was that? 

Thirty two.

That's right, thirty two people got messages from us offering them a seat at our table.  This was not just a quick "hey you don't know us but join our game" email.  No, this was thorough.  We talked about our group, how many members, what ages, our play styles, what games we play, what times, how long we had been together, what we were looking for, what we would be playing, and a host of other things.  We added a "no pressure clause" by stating that it was just a trial to see if the person was a good fit for the group and the group a good fit for the person.  When we finished writing the email (a group effort) I was sure that we had emailed too many people and would be bombarded with responses.  This was a little worrying because the table we play at is only so big.  Turns our I shouldn't have worried.  Go ahead and guess how many responses we got.

If you guessed one and a half, you are correct.  

What do I mean by that?  Well we got one ligit response by a guy who was interested, and one quick email from a guy who said he might play if we change the day we play on.  To say we were disheartened would be an understatement. 

Now I should mention that all of the people who we emailed were not held in equal regard.  We rated each person on a 1-10 basis and only emailed the top 32 people.  So naturally where was our one response from?

If you guessed the very bottom of the list, you are correct. 

Needless to say it was more than a little disheartening, but we emailed the guy (Doodle, by handle).  Doodle seemed nice enough via email and was very prompt in his responses so we invited him to come down for the start of our Call of Cthulhu game and roll up a character with us.  When he showed up we were all pleasantly surprised, he was friendly and very normal.  Hey, don't look at me like that... it's the internet you never know what you're gonna get.  Doodle had played CoC before so he was a help with some of the rules and his sense of humor really seemed to mesh with the rest of the group, something of underrated importance in my opinion. 

As I write this we are two weeks into our CoC and things are going great.  Everyone is very happy with Doodle and he seems reasonably happy with the group.  Still when I think of the process we went through to find and recruit him I have to ask myself, why the hell is it so hard to find new players? 

If you have a story of your own trials and tribulations of finding new group members please, let's hear it!  If you have any advice on finding new members, please share that too!

Of 4e Sales, Ryan Dancy, and the End of D&D as we Know it

I caught wind of Ryan Dancy's recent article over at ENWorld from JoeTheLawyer.

It's a very interesting read to say the least. 

Among the things he says Dancy states that, according to his industry sources, Pathfinder is outselling 4e.

Paizo couldn’t exist without the OGL and the D20 System Reference Document. And according to my industry sources, it’s outselling Dungeons & Dragons a feat (no pun intended) I would have considered almost impossible 10 years ago.

Pretty staggering no matter how you feel about 4e.  To think that ANY fantasy roleplaying game would outsell Dungeons and Dragons is mind blowing.  

He went on to say,

Three years ago I told people that it didn't matter if 4e was successful or not, because it was likely to be the last version of D&D that would be based on paper based tabletop gaming. I've seen nothing so far that changes my opinion about that.

To think that 4e would be the last version of D&D to be printed on paper is a little shocking.  Yes, PDFs have seen a mediocrity rise over the last ten years, but to think that people won't buy books any more...  

Guess I should get an ipad or one of those new ripoffs. 

Obviously D&D is changing, but what will it change into, will it be reconizable, and will it be something the majority of us enjoy? 

Those are the questions WotC and other industry leaders will have to answer in the coming years. 

Diary of a Gamer : The End of Pathfinder as we Know it

Last night my group's Pathfinder game came to an end.  The campaign started in October, was relauched in January and has run more or less steady since then.  Perhaps it was the relaunch effect, but it doesn't seem as though we've been playing Pathfinder for about seven months. 

The climactic conclusion of the campaign (or at least this part, there is still hope that we will return to it later) was the party storming the castle of an evil witch to rescue the King... Well, technically he's a general, but he is the game's King Arthur equivilent.  The game got off to a rough start with one of the players (Moox) not being able to make it, and got worse when another (Revil) had to leave.  This left just your faithful narrator and AngryBear to face off against the Big Bad, a CR 15 Green Hag Witch.  Fortunetly we had some NPC backup including a faery who was able to break the Hag's mental hold on the King.  He joined us in the fight and we put a wooping on the Witch, Evard's Black Tenticles be damned! 

I was glad to see the game (or at least this chapter) get a good end to it.  The game started off great and had a lot of really fun moments, but started to get bogged down after the Witch kidnapped the King.  We found outselves battles Derro left and right with no way of knowing we were going the wrong way.  What should have taken a few weeks instead took us months, and that sapped a lot of ethusiasm and energy from the game. 

So after months of playing Pathfinder what do I think of it?  Well first off I find it damn confusing! The rules are so close the 3.5 rules that I often find myself almost shocked when they made a rule change.  For example, they changed DR a bit, making it so that you consider your total weapon bonus in the case of a magic weapon when determining if it passes a certain DR type (this is a great change in my opinion).  For example, my weapon was a total of +4 so that passes the Cold Iron DR (which came up as we were fighting this strange Nyph creatures).  I didn't know that, nor did anyone else realize it until the fight was pretty much over.  These types of mistakes were common during the campaign, and I'm sure happen all the time to people who have a lot of experience playing 3rd edition. 

Overall the Pathfinder rules are good.  They fixed some really big problems that 3.5 had and added some more flavor to some of the classes, like the Sorcerer.  Upgrading the DR system and introducing CMB and CMD for Combat manuevers was also a welcome change.  That having been said not all the changes were for the better.  Pathfinder knocked the Ranger back down to suck-town, did nothing to address the fact that the Monk is a crap class, and left several broken spells in place.  So between 3.5 and Pathfinder you can find things that are better about each. 

But at least for now, Pathfinder is the past.  The future is Hackmaster, Advanced Hackmater (the playtest).  I'll be making what I hope to be a triumphant return to GMing... If not at least I'll have a screen to hide behind.  I'm really excited about this playtest, but nervous as well.  It's been a while since a I ran a game, and a while since I played HM so I'm concerned about getting the kinks out.  I'm plan on taking time this week to review the rules and brush up on the setting we'll be playing in, Frandor's Keep.  With a great setting and a great Rulesystem if this game fails no one will have to look far for who to blame. 

Because I wanted the players to have some time to consider their options I let them roll their stats ahead of time to mull over their options.  One player (ManOnFunTrip) is rejoining the game and wasn't there so he'll be doing all of his character creation next week.  Those who have already rolled had some mixed results.  Both Revil and the Professor did well, but AngryBear barely qualified as a PC. 

I promise to try to do better with this damn diary.  I may have epicly failed for Pathfinder, but its a new campaign and a fresh start.  Plus, ever GM wants an audience to complain to, right?   Obviously I'll be limited what I can discuss rules-wise, but the general narative will be fair game.

Return to Hackmaster

My group and I are now officially playtesting Advanced Hackmaster!  I'm not sure I can put into words how excited I am.  Obviously none of us can speak about the rules, but we can still give tales of the group's adventure, which I plan to do weekly. 

I'll be running the game, Revil and the Profressor will be players along with AngryBear and Moonxine.  We are starting out with Frandor's Keep, which only adds to the excitement. 

Unfortunately we won't be starting until May 11th (AngryBear has finals coming up), at which time we will commence a 2 game a week schedule.  Tuesday will be Hackmaster, and Pathfinder will continue on Thursdays. 

Overall this is an amazing opportunity and I can't wait to dive in.

Diary of a Gamer: Relaunch Edition

As you have no doubt heard the very popular film franchise Spiderman has opted not to continue with its next planed installment, Spiderman 4, but has opted instead to relaunch the franchise.  Relaunches for comic book series are not new.  Many franchises have been relaunched, and though results vary, the motivation behind these resets are largely the same; long term success.  In that respect it is not so different from the recent relaunch of my group's Pathfinder game.  The game was moving along, and did not require that we restart, but the group believed that for long term success it was in our best interest to restart.  

Pressing the Reset Button

Judging by the emails I've gotten a few people are curious as to where the Diary of a Gamer section went.  Yes, my group has been playing our Pathfinder game, but to be honest it hasn't been going very well.  This week the group took drastic measures to improve our weekly gaming experience by doing something I have never been too fond of, hitting the reset button.

Basically we have completed started over.  Same campaign concept, same well designed very detailed setting, but a different set of characters, and hopefully a different outcome as well.  I'm actually really excited about the reset, and the new characters.  I'm hoping to do a diary of a gamer this week to detail last night game session where we designed our characters and even got a bit of play in.  

Diary of a Gamer: Pathfinder Begins

My group has officially moved from Hackmaster Basic to Paizo's Pathfinder.  We have had two sessions of Pathfinder now, a session dedicated entirely to character generation and the first session of play.  

The character generation session really didn't go as well as I would have hoped.  My biggest problem was deciding what kind of character to play.  I had originally planned on playing a Half-Elf Druid and had a character concept in mind, but when I really considered the Druid I decided I didn't want to deal with all the paperwork that went with the class.  Keeping track of an animal companion, stat differences for various Wild Shapes, etc was just not for me.  At least not on the first run through the new system.  Before I move on I should clarify, I don't dislike the Pathfinder Druid.  If anything I like it much MORE than its 3.5 counterpart.  Paizo did an amazing job making the class a balanced one.

Pathfinder: A First Look

One of the members of my group, James, pre-ordered the Pathfinder book and got it in the mail yesterday. We usually get dinner before the game so as we muched down some subs at Blimpie we looked over some of the book.

My first impression was that it looked great. The book is huge (over five hundred pages) is well bound, hardcover, the cover art looks great, and the interior art and page design look excellent as well. We didn't have a whole lot of time to look over rules at this point, we usually use diner time to catch up so we didn't get any hard look at the rules until we arrived at Josh's house where we play.

At first everything seemed normal. I didn't participate in playtesting for the game, and I don't keep up with the message boards over at Paizo. So if they leaked certain information, like Clerics no longer getting heavy armor proficiency, I was unaware. Needless to say there were a few surprises of that sort in the book. Other than those things, the books looks great. I won't get a chance to actually play the game for a few months, but I'm looking forward to it.

For those of you who do not yet have the book here is a preview!

You can head over here and order the book (it's going to be on back order for a while), or buy the PDF for only $9.99. On that page they also have some pages of the book that you can take a look at. Also, Paizo is providing players with a Conversion Guide to aid the transition from 3.5 to Pathfinder. This is all the more impressive when you consider that their competitors (and in my quest to stay neutral I'm not naming any names here) refused to do the same thing. The Conversion Guide is absolutely free, but heavy traffic has made both the Core Book and the conversion guide difficult to download since it came out yesterday. The conversion guide, and Pathfinder's forward from Monte Cook, show that Paizo is really keeping their fans in mind.

Pathfinder PDF Delayed

The Pathfinder core book PDF has been delayed a few hours by Paizo. The product which was supposed to originally be available at 1:00pm EST has been pushed back to 3:00pm EST. This is no doubt to prepare their website for the massive barrage of Internet traffic that will befall them as soon as the product becomes available.

To help decreased traffic Paizo has disabled their message boards, and asks that anyone who can wait until Friday to purchase their book does so. How big will PDF sales be? That is an excellent question that I can't wait to find out the answer to.

PDFs have become very popular with the roleplaying community, particularly in the last few years. Many gamers were outraged when Wizard of the Coast announced that they would cease selling any and all PDFs of their products. Their decision hit sites like DriveThuRPG, who specialize in PDF sales, hard. Paizo has gone in the other direction by making their Pathfinder Core book available on PDF though out development. Both the Alpha and Beta were available on PDF for free and the core game will be available on PDF shortly for $9.99. The demand from the gaming community is obviously there and Paizo is filling it wholeheartedly.

Pathfinder Sold Out Part 2

Just some followup on the news that Paizo's Pathfinder game sold out in pre-orders. I have been looking around to try to find some hard numbers on their sales, but so far Paizo isn't saying anything. So how much of a success are we expecting? I'd be shocked to learn that their first run was anything under 10,000 copies based on the publishers words. Erik Mona called the first run a, "Hugely ambitious print run." Regardless of how many copies they sold it's obvious that the game has exceeded Paizo's expectation which is a good sign for them and for the hobby. It should also serve to boost their PDF sales, which I don't think will stop people from ordering a hard copy when it becomes available.

Despite Pathfinder's recent success I'm going to take this opportunity to bring some of you back down to earth. I've gotten some emails from readers asking me if I think Pathfinder will outsell 4E. Paizo's numbers, whatever they turn out to be, will not be near WotC numbers. Pathfinder is just getting started, you can't expect it to instantly have a fanbase on par with the most popular RPG of all time.

That having been said, Pathfinder obviously has a lot of potential. People are paying afternoon and Paizo has an opportunity to develop a large fan base. As for the rest? Only time will tell...

Pathfinder Sold Out!

Paizo has just released word that its Pathfinder Core Rulebook has sold out. That's right, sold out. Ten days before it's release and all that remains are the copies that they set aside for Gencon. According to their press release they originally believed the number of copies they had printed would last until the end of the year. Boy were they wrong.

My group plans on playing a Pathfinder game once we finish our Hackmaster Basic game. Fortunately one of our members pre-ordered the book months ago. The rest of us will have to make due with the PDF that Paizo is supplying for the very reasonable price of $9.99.

It seems Pathfinder may far exceed expectations, despite those expectations being quite high. We'll just have to wait and see...