Oh how time flies…

Wow, I can’t believe how long it has been since I have had time to post. With work, I have just been swamped. What little time I do have, I jump on and post in a PFBB game over on the Paizo Forums. So far it is going great. Just what I needed, a little PFBB fix, since my FtF group plays 4E. Granted I haven’t even been able to make it to my FtF games due to work, and I am Jones-ing bad!

The PFBB PbF game has me itching to start my own. Something along the lines of a King Maker-esque game but using the book I bought that has the AP’s OGL in it. Time will tell though. I want to have the players create Humanity’s world. Just wonder how long it would take doing it via forum…

Until next time,

The Bane

Reading, Not Writing, and Some Arithmetic…

Ok, I haven’t posted in a bit, real life kicked off. I haven’t been writing, but I have been reading. My reading was spurred on by my desire to make a setting/adventures, as discussed before, and I wanted to take a look at the PF Core Kingmaker AP. Unable to find any OGL material on said document, I looked into purchasing the AP itself. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay that much for a product(s) that I wouldn’t use whole cloth. On further searching, I found Jon Braser Enterprises’  Book of the River Nations – Complete (BotRN) on RPGnow.

Why was I so excited to get it for $5.99, for the PDF? Well, based on the fact that I wanted to do an E5 kind of PFBB as a complete game, I thought it interesting that the Kingmaker AP started the process of land ownership off at 5th Level! It almost screamed,  “5th Level is the equivalent of ‘Name Level’ in my BECMI”, mind’s eye. It has dominion founding, mass combat, and a myriad of other rules goodies in it. It basically IS the OGL data of the dominion rules of Kingmaker, plus some. Now what am I going to do with it? Well incorporate it of course!

But how? My first knee jerk reaction is to create my setting with it. But that is kinda going against start small and grow tenant. I do want to experiment with it by doing a regional map and starting off a handful of NPCs within it just to see how they fair taming the wilderness. This would give me a chance to flex the system and try several courses of action on domestic settings.

Mathematically, I may have to do some tweaking to the rules to make it E5 compliant, as well as taking a look at converting the hex scales. In BotRN, the hex scale is strangely described as, “Each hexagon of land has sides 12 miles long.” Typically I find hexes described as X miles across, or from one side to the opposite side. It does mention that each hex is roughly 375 square miles, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of three 12.5 square mile hexes, the scale that I prefer. I think I can live with that, but will have to see how it pans out when I start crunching the numbers.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Maybe I’ll gen up a rough regional map using Hexographer in preparation for future post before I go to bed…

TB

PFBB Consolidated Classes Are Back

Announcement Post: EdOWar has updated his OGL/CUP for his Consolidated Class Conversions for the Pathfinder Beginner Box and he has graciously permitted me to host the PDF here as well (see Downloads at the bottom right of this blog).

Truly glad he did so, as this is some remarkable stuff!

TB

0 Level Considerations

So today, during breaks from the honey-do list, I have somehow ended up searching the nets about 0 level characters rules. Why? Well, I noticed the Apprentice Class in the Pathfinder SRD site under 3rd party publishers. It technically, in my opinion, is not a zero level class. It is more of a multi-class template, for lack of a better description. But, it did get me thinking about the fun adventure that I played, were we started at zero level. I don’t recall the module, or even what rules we used, but I do remember that transitioning from zero to first level was confusing at best.

In the remarks of the Apprentice Class, some mentioned the Apprentice of the 3.0 rules and how they were better. So, I checked those out. There are many links to this when searched, but some make it too diluted or too advanced / cumbersome, in my opinion. For me, I believe, the best course of action, should I want to expound on the idea further, would be to just halve everything and start them at -500xp. This approach would require making zero level character construction rules for each class for the PFBB. Which might not be worth the effort… but I really enjoyed that adventure way back when and it just might gel with a PFBB E5 setting. Effectively making it E6 and a tad bit more gritty.

Some just suggested using NPC Classes, as they are roughly equivalent to 1/2CR, but what do you do when you hit first level? Rebuild? Keep the NPC Class and effectively multi-class?

So, is this worth further development?

TB

The Flow Of A Plot Point Adventure…

So I threw together a quick image of what I envision as an example. Please excuse the crude nature of the diagram:

So based on this, this adventure starts off with the party in the proverbial town, where they have four courses of action that could be events of; rumors, request, etc. for hooks. From the top event, the party goes to the Forest for whatever reason. I would point out that I envision each event kicking off a session and for each session the villain moves one space along his path to success, ie. the ruins on the first session. Though the party may very well head there first. Anyway, at the forest adventure happens and the party gets a clue. What that clue is, is based on the progression of the plot, ie. where the villain is. If the part goes there first, it may be an encounter vs some spiders attacking an old shaman woman. The Set Piece, to use Savage World’s vernacular, would be her offering to scry their futures. If they go there later, they find the shaman’s home in ruins, suggesting a struggle and possibly a kidnapping.

I guess I should focus on a motive and plan for the villain. So looking at it, he needs to head to the ruins to get a magical dagger, then to the forest for a sacrifice, and finally to the swamp for a key ingredient (frog saliva) for success of casting a summon spell… blah blah blah.

I should probably delete this, as the image, I don’t believe, is as intuitive as I would have hoped it would be. But, I’ll leave it. I’m tired, and perhaps someone will stumble along this and offer a mind blowing suggestion!

TB

Step Off With My Left Foot…

Not wanting to fall under the scrutiny of Paizo, like EdOWar had, for not complying to their Community Use Policy (CUP), or the Open Gaming License (OGL), I have added them both to the top of my blog. The cool thing about WordPress is that it keeps the page headers on the top of every page as a link “to one centralized copy of the License”, so I feel this covers the requirement of having both the CUP and OGL on all site pages:

Q: I want to create a website that contains many different pages with Open Game Content. Do I have to include a copy of the License on every page?

A: It will be sufficient to include a link on every page containing Open Game Content to one centralized copy of the License.

I also plan on putting the Section 15 update on the bottom of any post where I reach back into something OGL, which I hope not to do too much, as well as the OGL main page.

If this doesn’t add up to satisfactory for a fan made, for free, publication, then, piss on ’em. I’m not a legal expert, but I have attempted, in “good faith”, to meet the intent of the law.

Now, what is my current intentions? Well, I plan on focusing on Pathfinder Beginner Box, obviously, or I have wasted my time with trying to be Paizo compliant. But exactly what do I want to start with? Well, based on some of the things I did back on my old blog, I am interested in making a setting for the PFBB and Adventure Path ‘modules’ to go along with it, or sort of.

Rather than creating an expansive setting at first, I want to start with a small base and using guidelines from Savage World’s, create Plot Point adventures. If you are not familiar with Plot Point adventures, I highly suggest you read this Reality Blurs blog post. By building the Plot Point adventures first, the mini-setting should naturally unfold. I think this will help me considerably with my difficulty of starting big setting, then trying to zoom in, which I never seem to finish.

I’ll leave it at that for now, while I work on visualizing what, or how, I want to do this. I hope to present what I come up with next time I post. Until then…

TB

Legal Setbacks:

Over at EdOWar’s Blog it seems he ran into the arm of Paizo.

Okay, I’ve gotten some feedback from Paizo (that was quick!)  Apparently the BB is covered by the CUP.  However, there’s all this legal stuff I have to do, which, frankly, is too much work for a bunch of fan created content that I won’t make any money off of.  So, I think I’m just going to pull my BB material.

Sorry to do this, but this is a bit of a hassle to deal with for something I do just for fun.  I’ll be taking down all my BB stuff in the near future.  Thanks to everyone who read and commented on it, I appreciate your feedback.

I hate to see him stop his work on the Pathfinder Beginner Box posts, but I completely understand why he did and I wouldn’t want to go back retroactively and change a bunch of stuff either. He was kind enough to point me in the direction that Paizo had pointed him, and as EdOWar mentioned, “… It might be a bit easier for you since you know all this in advance now…”

I can only hope to do half as good a job as he did, with what I want to accomplish. To that end, I have started trying to get compliant by adding the Community Use Policy at the top of this blog. Though, I know it will have to be in each future post containing Pathfinder ‘supplemental’ material. I have yet to add my site to the Community Use Registry, but will do that as soon as I figure out exactly where I am going with this. Which, I have a pretty good idea of, based off of some of the posts in the Pathfinder Beginner Box forums. More on that in future posts. Till then, happy gaming!

TB

Downloads Added

With EdOWar’s permission, I have added his pdf of Pathfinder Core classes that have been converted to Pathfinder Beginner Box standards. Check them out, they are available all in one pdf, and can be download from the right of this blog. Then hurry to his blog; EdOWar’s Blog, to see other things related to PFBB, that are equally awesome.

TB

Direction… Decided

Based on comments from the “Direction…” post, and the fact that I have been rereading Enworld threads about E6, I have decided to start off with some Pathfinder Beginner Box posts. Notice I did say, “…start off with…”, as I am not sure, at this time, if I will stick strictly to this particular rules set.

Thanks to Koren nRhys’s comment, that directed me to EdoWar’s Blog, I found additional motivation to go with PFBB. He has a great document of converted Pathfinder Core character classes created, and I have requested permission to host it here as well.

To that end, as I wait on permission, I wanted to try out hosting a test document to WordPress, to see how well it does, or doesn’t, do hosting of documents….

Test Document

Direction…

With the new non-google-blog, which I am liking, I am wondering, or rather, searching for a direction to take it. I really enjoyed doing the mini-settings that appeared on the old blog, but not sure if anyone was interested in them all that much. Not to mention I am wondering what rules-set to focus on, or if I even need to focus on one. I have been bashing around with focusing on either; Pathfinder (Beginner Box) as I would love to see something developed for it, Microlite20 because it is something I can (read “might”) be able to get going locally, White Box, or even BECMI (read “Darker Dungeons”) as the staple system. I like so many ‘flavors’ of systems, I hate to narrow it down or commit the content of this blog to only one. But, on the flip-side, I am afraid if I don’t, I will wonder all over the place.

At the moment, I am leaning toward PBB. Mainly because; I have recently purchased it, there is some interest in it locally, there hasn’t been much developed for it, and mostly because I feel it has some old-school-cred, or could. For now I think I will go eclectic and see what materializes, though.

I am both excited and intimidated, to say the least…

As always,

TB