Gondolom mindenki ismeri ezt a számot. Az eredeti verziót az azóta már megboldogult Sláger Rádió gyakorlatilag minden nap leadta (ráadásul mindig olyan 11 körül), szóval nyílván senkinek sem ismeretlen Mike Oldfield szerzeménye (ének: Maggie Reilly). De ez a bejegyzés nem konkrétan erről a dalról fog szólni, hanem annak temérdek feldolgozásáról. Az ember nem is gondolná hány és hány előadát megihletett ez a klasszikus…

Érdekes módon a kommersz zenét gyártó emberkék mellett az alternatívabb műfajokban alkotókat is számtalanszor megihlette eme dal, amin én személy szerint egészen meglepődtem. A teljesség igénye nélkül fogok válogatni a különböző verziókból. Kezdjük is mindjárt egy német melodikus death metált játszó banda verziójával.

Ez volt a Suidakra-féle változat, de nem a tényleges énekes előadásában, az ugyanis férfi. Igazándiból semmi extra nincs ebben a feldolgozásban. A zenét jól ültették gitárra, viszont a vokál némi jóindulattal is csak egy erős közepes. A dalszöveg lényegében érintetlen. Mindent összevetve egy hármas fölét megérdemel.

Rühellem a punkokat (tisztelet a kivételnek), a szerbeket még inkább (tisztelet a kivételnek), de ez a punkos Moonlight Shadow végülis nem lett rossz. A srác hangja punk szinten egész jó, a zene is megteszi, sőt igazából ha azt veszem, hogy a punk zene eleve a hulladék szintjén mozog (tisztelet a kivételnek), akkor az egy elég korrekt próbálkozás. Szóval ez volt a KBO! változat, szintén hármas fölé.

Egy brit “ős” progresszív rocker bandát, a Renaissance-t is megihlettek Oldfield dallami, vokalistájuk Annie Haslam előadásában pedig meglehetősen kellemesen cseng. Legalábbis nekem nagyon bejön a hangja, de azért olyan nagyon nem különbözik az eredetitől maga a szám. 4/5

Na a Pathfinder igazán bátran nyúlt hozzá, viszont a végeredmény… hát so-so. Tetszik meg minden, de azért néha a kevesebb több. Túl sok mindent zsúfoltak bele, túl sok a váltás, túlságosan szimfónikus (sohase hittem volna, hogy egyszer ilyet leírok). Azért egy hármas fölét ez is megérdemel… áhh… faszomat, legyen inkább egy négyes.

Újabb német verzió, a gótikus rockot játszó Elane tolmácsolásában. Dallamos, lágy, melankólikus, de megint semmi extra. 3/5

Spanyolul, az argentin Marcela Morelo előadásában. Egyszer meg lehet hallgatni, de nekem speciel nem tetszett. 2/5

Sajnos van pár verzió amiről csak tudom, hogy van, de megmutatni nem tudom. Pedig igencsak érdekes lehet, pl a hardcore változat (Noize Incorporated) vagy az orosz power metált játszó Miriada feldolgozása. Szóval végezetül jöjjön a személyes kedvencem, az aktuális kedvenc zenekaromtól, a Deathlike Silence-től!

A zenekarról annyit, hogy finnek, imádom az énekesnő hangját, és úgy alles zusammen a legjobb Nightwish-es időket idézik fel bennem, bár ők nem voltak ennyire darkosak.

So lasse ich mir .pdf-Preise gefallen! Adamant Entertainment feiert Jubiläum und hat den Preis vieler ihrer .pdf-Produkte auf einen Dollar gesenkt! Neben vielen interessanten Sachen auch vier für Pathfinder.

Das Tome of Secrets (ehemaliger Preis 34,95 !!!) ist wohl das interessanteste davon, es bietet “Advanced Options for Players and Gamemasters” auf 192 Seiten. Darunter drei neue Rassen (u.a. Halb-Oger und Sauraner), acht Klassen (Priester, Ritter, Warlock, Warlord, Artefakt-Erschaffer) und regeln u.a. für Flaws, Stunts oder Moral.

Die drei Fell Beasts bieten wöchentlich (!) jeweils 10 neue Monster. Teil 1 bietet die Gnadenblume oder den Flußgeist, Teil 2 die Puppenspinne und verschiedene Totseelen-Elementare und Teil 3 Tiefe Wesen (Deep Ones), Silberfische, Menschenaffen und Skorpionwächter.

Nach seiner eher beratenen Tätigkeit bei Pathfinder und einem klasse Vorwort zum Grundregelwerk wird`s ernst. Monte Cook steuert dem Pathfinder-Universum ein Abenteuer bei: Curse of the Riven Sky.

Dazu heißt es im Paizo-Newsletter:

Monte Cook to Write Pathfinder RPG Adventure

“Curse of the Riven Sky” First Pathfinder RPG Design for Third Edition Co-Creator

Paizo Publishing today announced that leading fantasy RPG designer Monte Cook will write Curse of the Riven Sky, a new adventure for the popular Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The 32-page stand-alone adventure releases in July, 2010, and represents Cook’s first significant creative design work for the Pathfinder RPG. Cook previously served as one of the primary designers of the third edition of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, and his adventure designs have won him several industry awards, including the Gen Con/EN World “ENnie” for Best Adventure.

“I love working with the folks at Paizo,” said Monte Cook. “We seem to see eye to eye on what’s right for the game, and what makes a great product. It’s a thrill for me to be able to create an adventure for the cool new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.”

Curse of the Riven Sky features a series of challenging wilderness and roleplaying encounters as the player characters face off against the machinations of treacherous giants and includes a foray into the floating fortress of a cloud giant wizard. Cook previously served as a design consultant for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, which is now entering its third printing after a smash-hit August 2009 releas

To date we have not been able to discover the true identity of the Evening News’ walking guide, Pathfinder. Afoot Round London, his two volume collection published in about 1911 and his wartime rambles (published weekly in the paper – I possess a collection of these cuttings pasted into a little mauve scrap book that was issued specially for the purpose) explore areas around the capital that, in Pathfinder’s day, were still largely rural. It was our original intention to take a walk through the Cuffley Hills to Potters Bar as described in the volume of Afoot Round London dedicated to walks north of the Thames. However, a reconnaissance walk I undertook on my own several weeks back revealed that once the walk hit Cheshunt the route devolved down to endless car-dodging along B-roads, the margins of which consisted of new suburban homes complete with latticed windows providing discreet glimpses of white leather sofas and chunky TV sets within.

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There was nothing wrong with this of course. It could even be argued that the whole point of replicating Pathfinder’s walks a century on was to spot differences. Transport was a bigger problem: we agreed that the train journey from Finsbury Park to Gordon Hill – where the walk begins – was too time consuming, too difficult to fit around John’s busy family life and work schedule. An alternative was sought from the same volume and finally we settled on a long Epping Forest walk from Grange Hill, through Chigwell and Loughton and then via High Beech to Waltham Abbey.

It was with some trepidation that I waited on the forecourt of Grange Hill Station for John and Peter, our long-suffering photographer a couple of Sundays back : though the weather was fine – in sharp distinction to the previous night’s gale force winds and rain – I sensed that it was going to be difficult to complete the walk before darkness set in. My assumption – correct as it proved – was that none of us possessed the foresight to bring a torch and that the onset of evening would curtail the walk somewhere around Loughton. A further worry was that the little country lanes described by pathfinder would have become busy A- and B-roads, our perambulations being pushed to the margins of the roads by endless car journeys. In this I was also proved (largely) correct.

The team assembled and we set off east along the road uphill towards Chigwell Row. Within minutes we were forced to stop, held up by an astonishing view southwards across the Thames basin towards the Kentish Hills. It was a drear landscape we surveyed – everything in sight somehow aspiring to the oozy greyness of Thames mud. Far off to the right was the Canary Wharf complex as I had never seen it; a sullen attempt to humanise the land, looking like it was within inches of failing miserably. Due south were broad flats intersected by alternating bands of hedgerows, a glistening arterial road (the Eastern Avenue) and clusters of blocks and suburban houses (perhaps Barkingside or Seven Kings). I thought of Kathleen Raine’s descriptions of Essex suburbia in her autobiography Farewell Happy Fields and how she felt that such developments killed the poetic impulse. While John filmed me chattering to myself and Peter triggered off an endless run of pictures I found myself disagreeing with Raine: what I saw below and beyond was the unstable dream-like attempt to impose the human world upon the deep infrastructure of geology and time, a futile optimism in the face of the turmoil of politics and commerce. The enormous landscape challenged the temporary dream of the city and suburbia. It was the stuff that poetry feeds upon.

Staggered at the very beginning of our walk, and linked to Pathfinder through our awareness that he himself had commented on the view, we made our way to Chigwell Row. Here there is a pub called the Maypole. We laboured under the impression that this was the pub so named in Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge. In fact that pub was based on the Tudor hostelry at Chigwell village named the King’s Head (when we saw it later, John instigated a serious discussion on whether the building was genuine Tudor -  whatever topographical qualifications he and I imagine we possess, architecture definitely isn’t one of them!).

Our plan was to cut sharply north westwards across land to Chigwell but we were foiled by a closed footpath and so we decided to walk due north along Pudding Lane and then due west to Chigwell along footpaths running parallel with the Roding valley. It turned out to be fortuitous that the path was closed because Pudding Lane was blocked to traffic and we had a half-mile of road pretty much all to ourselves. John got down into a ditch with his little sound-recording device and caught the busy rush of water for use in our radio programme while I stopped and admired the beaded berries of black bryony   There were fine views eastwards across rolling Essex countryside towards Lambourne End. I wondered whether the little watercourse John was recording was the health-enhancing stream that temporarily gave Chigwell a reputation for healing waters during the nineteenth century. I am often intrigued by how streams – despite being overlooked – have to be actively accommodated through channelling, bridging and the scalding of ditches in February: they really are much more powerful and persistent then is generally realised. They have their history also, and it outlasts our paltry span, the ridiculous fashions and silly electronic devices that we imagine lift us to individualisation.

watch the video here

We turned west across fields, walking alongside a bank of blackthorn. We passed a rusting tractor and tall oaks. Northwards the sunlight lit up the orange rooftops of Loughton and Debden. I am intrigued by these towns along the Roding, the way they spin out into a parallel universe to my own Hampstead life: Places such as Loughton and Chigwell manage to ride the fine line between familiarity – they are instantly recognisable as a type to any contemporary English person – and the displaced. Here they are, clustering along the Roding as it turns east towards its source, little villages swollen by the advent of the electric railway; rural in aspect when seen against the classic English landscape and yet linked by mere minutes of journeying by train or M11 to London in its darkness over yonder. I watched the vast pools of sunlight shift from Loughton towards the black mass of the forest farther off and resolved to study this region more thoroughly.

John pulled ahead and then stopped short exclaiming ‘dead fox!’ There, resting by the track’s edge, by an oak tree and within inches of a sharp drop down into a hedge lined ditch lay the dead animal. Sun and wind had done a certain amount of work in drying out his body, yet the dark eyes seemed complete, somehow lagging behind the rest in the process of decay. Now they stared out at us accusingly. Something powerful had ruptured this little creature born of the earth’s surface, turning his body inside out. Dogs? A shotgun? Who knows, but either way I felt the townsman’s fury at his death. As we crowded round and I closed in with my digital camera for some portraiture, I sensed a further crime being committed: walloped by man-sized values and robbed of life for expediency or sport, Reynard was now being recycled in the name of more monkey business, his holy death picked up and travelling the airways via our radio show or blog. Consider this, please.

We edged through to Chigwell and then along Roding Lane – a car-thick terror sans footpath – passing the school and church until the drone of motorway filled the air and the road curved to a bridge over the M11 which was running down along the floor of the river valley. The further side brought us to dead roads and warehouses, a footpath round the attached car park leading through to a pretty little bridge over the Roding. The river had been a presence all afternoon, its course shaping the landscape in which we had walked. Now we saw it up close and stopped to admire its energy and importance as a factor in this Essex world. Rivers are my element and I silently paid homage to this grey god, winding its way towards the vast floodgate at Barking Creek (visible from Grange Hill earlier on) and Jenkins Lane before passing into the Thames.

The land hereabouts was a veritable green utility with geese squonking away by the side of a filled gravel pit and dogs being walked everywhere. The locals were very friendly and I took the opportunity to check on a dispute that had been bubbling away below the surface all afternoon: John insists on pronouncing the name of the river rodding, whereas I favour the more refined roading. This difference had brought John and I to near blows at one point and it was only the yogic equanimity of Peter’s presence that had saved the afternoon. Clearly we needed to check this out with the locals and this I did. ‘Well, we say roading but you can say rodding too’ a kindly gentleman replied. That clinched it – I knew I was right.

We crossed sports fields towards suburban houses on the edge of Loughton and I became interested in a channelled tributary that hit the Roding close by. As we walked towards the underground station and began to discuss food I noticed the steam running alongside the road in a brick culvert. Such things draw me and I have a fanciful notion that others see me as a near-mythic river man, an ipsissimistic being who lives inside the water systems of our region and experiences the stories of our collected streams, ditches and hatches in a transtemporal manner. When I once broached this subject with John he looked aghast and began to edge away from me nervously, so I think there is more work to be done in that area. When I got home that night I researched the stream, using OS maps and JA Brimble’s wonderful London’s Epping Forest (1968 edition). Apparently this sizable watercourse is the only stream flowing westwards off of the Epping watershed: a northern tributary rises near the Wake Valley Pond (which it fills) and runs south to join a second stream cutting through Little Monk Wood. A second sub-set of streams rise on Shelley and Broom Hills and close to the Robin Hood public house before running north to join the Wake Stream. The collected waters then run down through Loughton to join the Roding.

This knowledge, gained after the walk, was as close as I got to Epping Forest that day: darkness thickened as we walked uphill into Loughton and a waiting Wimpy bar finished us for the day. We settled down to chips and various burgers and then made our way to the station and home.

Continuing the insectish theme:

Like a living thing, the whip struck, carving through flesh and cloth.   With a cold word, the whip’s master made the weapon flicker with dark energy before lashing out with a killing blow.

Scorpion Tail Whip

This weapon is made from cunningly worked leather and metal to give the whip the appearance of a long scorpion’s tail the tip ending in a wickedly sharp hook.  The construction is very durable while retaining a considerable amount of flexibility.  The whip gives the illusion of being alive, moving and shifting on its own, especially when it is left coiled.

The Scorpion Tail Whip can be used as a +2 whip or as a +2 flail as the wielder chooses but unless they have the Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Whip) they will take non-proficiency penalties when using the weapon.  However, the whip can be difficult to control, on an attack roll of a natural ‘1′, the wielder takes 1d3 damage and a -1 penalty to attack rolls until the end of the next round.

Up to three times per day, the hook can be charged with a dark energy, the next time it hits a living target it inflicts an additional 2d6 of cold damage and the target must make a Fortitude save (DC 18) or take 2 points of Strength damage and be slowed for 1d4+1 rounds.  The dark energy lasts for one minute or until discharged and if it strikes the wielder during this time (from a natural ‘1′) it will discharge into her unless she makes a Reflex save (DC 22).

Aura moderate necrourgy and transmutation; CL 9th
Slot none; Price 13,000; Weight 3 lbs
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, cat’s grace, telekinesis, vampiric touch; Cost 6,500 (+520 xp for D&D)

As with all feats, skills, class abilities and farm animals, some oracle curses are more equal than others:

Left-Handed: You favour your left hand. You take a -4 penalty on disguise checks. You take a -2 penalty on attack rolls and skills checks with weapons and implements designed for right-handed people. Weapons and implements customised for left-handed use cost 10% more than the base item’s cost (this does not increase the cost to magically enhance an item). To modify a right-handed item so that it can be easily used by a left-handed person costs 10% of base item’s value.

You gain a +1 southpaw bonus to all melee attack rolls and a +1 southpaw bonus to your AC against melee attacks. This bonus even applies against other left-handed characters, since they are not accustomed to fighting left-handed characters. At 5th level you gain Improved Feint as a bonus feat, even if you do not meet the normal prerequisites. At 10th level your southpaw bonus to all melee attack rolls and to your AC against melee attacks increases to +2. At 15th level your southpaw bonus to all melee attack rolls and to your AC against melee attacks increases to +3 and you gain Greater Feint as a bonus feat, even if you do not meet the normal prerequisites.

In your backpack, you may find:

• An ornamented, silvered, left-handed fish knife (25 gp)
• 37 failed attempts at creating a left-handed pen and a horribly smudged journal
• A portable hole – an unfortunate result of turning a glove of storing inside-out in an attempt to make it fit a left hand.

- jatori

Video from the walk we did from Pathfinder’s Afoot Round London (1911). We plunged ourselves into the heart of the Essex Golden Triangle between Grange Hill and Loughton.
The reading is by Heidi Lapaine with music by Fabrizio Paterlini plus field recordings for the broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm.

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This is the spell being researched in my game at the moment.  It is a work in progress so comments and suggestions are welcome.

Forewarned in Battle, Lesser
Divination
Level: Clr 2, Pal 3, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 min + 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

By use of this spell, the caster is able to glance briefly into the future and avoid or preempt the dangers that he sees.  The caster gains a “Foresight Pool” equal to their casting statistic modifier plus their Wisdom modifier (if positive) plus their spell casting level.
The points of the pool can be spent in the following manner:

•    1 to reduce the attack roll against you by 1, this can also be used to reduce the roll to confirm a critical hit.  An attack roll of a natural “20″ cannot be changed by this ability.
•    1 to reduce the damage suffered by an attack by 1 point to a minimum of 1.
•    1 to increase the caster’s initiative for one round by 1.
•    2 to add 1 to a Reflex save.

No more than the caster’s level in points can be spent in any one round.  The pool rebuilds at the rate of 1 point per minute but never to more than its starting amount.

The divine focus is a holy symbol, the material component is a piece of a time keeping device (sand from an hourglass, a watch spring, and so on).

Notes: This is a difficult spell to balance and I am still not entirely happy with it at this point but I think it is playable in this version.

Last Wednesday, I dropped in on the biweekly Pathfinder Society game at Quarterstaff Games. I’d been meaning to check out Paizo’s Pathfinder system, as well as give organized roleplaying another go. The one and only time I tried such a thing before was a couple years ago at Carnage, when Living Greyhawk was still going. When I didn’t get to actually play because the marshal couldn’t find enough people with sufficiently low level characters to put together a table including myself and the woman who had just signed up, it put me off the notion of organized play because of the strictures that accompany it. But, several years later with no regular roleplaying game of my own and an urge for some straight-up dungeon-bashing, this seemed like the time to give it another go.

While several gamers I know participate in the Wednesday Pathfinder Society game, there was still that unknown component, so I was apprehensive about who I would meet and what the play experience would be like.

Once everyone arrived and got sorted out — we had to wait for the GM who had prepared something, as the back-up hadn’t time this week — we got down to business. I played a template character, Kyra the cleric. Interestingly, at one point in the game, a couple players expressed astonishment the character lacked Knowledge (Religion); one of them surmised template characters were intentionally made poorly to spur people on to make their own.

The adventure was straightforward enough. The king of the river pirates wanted some adventurers to find his lost men, whom he’d sent off in search of a treasure vault. There were four or five encounters of different kinds: pirates, spiders and so forth. It was an entertaining run-around, in the parlance of Doctor Who fandom. It showed me there’s no substantial difference — at level one, anyway — between Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons, which really was the whole point of Paizo publishing the thing: sell a game system that satisfied everyone who was happy with the prior edition of Dungeons & Dragons and didn’t care for the fourth edition.

In the days of Dungeons & Dragons v3.5, I’d heard people say clerics got a lot of perks to make up for the other players expecting them to play medic the whole time. I don’t know if I saw that with my first level, allegedly poorly built template character. Part of it may be I didn’t really understand anything that wasn’t the really basic stuff, like attack bonuses and such. I need to spend some time with the Pathfinder core book to make a cleric of my own before Wednesday after next.

What really struck me about the session was the variety of players at the table. There were a couple people concerned with playing the game, as it were, down to the rules as written. The proof of that was the discussion they got into over some hypothetical combination or use of abilities that really didn’t enter into anything going on in the adventure, or the near future, given all the player characters at the table were only level one or two. Fortunately, most everyone else was there roll some dice and kill some baddies, so they countered the “we play the rules as written” mindset.

The GM, Neil, did a fine job. He’s the type who gives his NPCs distinctive voices, right down to a brash falsetto for the Lady Riverbane. That takes an amount of brass on Neil’s part for which I give him credit. Neil also kept things moving, which is key in a game like this. Part of that is because we’re under the gun of finishing up by the time the store closes, and the other part is the usual cat herding the GM has to do with a table full of people of varying temperaments and motivations.

All things considered, a Pathfinder game certainly scratches the itch to go dungeoncrawling, even if there isn’t a dungeon, per se. At once every two weeks, I can see it becoming a regular event for me, although I think that depends as much on how I come to understand and interact with the core players, the ones who are there every session, as whether the rewards of the game — leveling up, cooler powers — come quickly enough to keep me engaged.

The characters decide to take the fight to the mean streets of Riddleport in the fifth installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate, “St. Casperian’s Salvation.”

Fifth Session (11 page pdf) – Michael Vick, eat your heart out.  The PCs start off by arranging one of the Gold Goblin’s underground animal fights.  The NPC ranger, Bojask, got a diseased bear off the back of a ship somewhere, and their boss Saul wanted a championship match with the current champ, Pigsaw the boar.  Here’s the naked bear:

I based this on reality – I read a recent news article about how all the spectacled bears at this German zoo all lost their fur all over except for on their faces.  Zoo staff is baffled.

Anyway, player reaction: OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT THING.  They then spent an inordinate amount of their funds buying some drugs to knock it out so they could paint it green.  It seemed like the thing to do at the time.  They started channeling Don King and dubbed the fight “Pigsaw vs. Bearclaw.”

The PCs wandered through Riddleport separately to go spread the word and got the worst end of the deal.  It’s a rough town, and when Ox went into the gambling district run by the head crimelord and started putting up flyers, three goons quickly showed up, beat his ass senseless, and robbed him.  Others fared slightly better.

I was planning to run the 3e Atlas Games adventure “Three Days to Kill.”  I handed out some rumors, though, gleaned while beating the streets doing fight promotion, and they were fascinated by a (totally false) rumor about a haunted treasure hoard in the cellar of St. Casperian’s Mission, a local derelict flophouse where, it turns out, their old buddy Vincenz is hiding out.  I had planned to run “St. Casperian’s Salvation,” a set piece adventure set there, later, but the PCs were all over that mission like white on rice as soon as they heard a rumor of cash.  Ever prepared, I switched and ran that instead.  Basically there’s a local small street gang using the second floor as a hideout.  This was somewhat of a surprise, and it was a brutal tight quarters battle.  The gang leader, the “Splithog Pauper,” got away with the gang’s loot.

Eventually they had the fight and the bear won.  In attendance was Captain Scarbelly, the orc pirate, a clear warning to those in the know that the Freeport trilogy is almost upon us.

Next time – Three Days to Kill!  I hope.

Yesterday, there was suppose to be a Pathfinder Sabbath at El Paso Northeast where we can recruit more kids to join, but since we were not able to get a hold of the Pastor of that church, we didn’t go. And we’ll never be going there again, because our Pathfinder director told us that it’s cancelled indefinitely. But we still had our Pathfinder Spaghetti Dinner and Auction, and we made at least $800 including the charges of our spaghetti dinner.

Although, people were a little bit less supportive of the auction. I mean you should have seen the tings that they were bringing to auction to “support” the Pathfinders. I swear the people were treating it like this was a garage sale or some other God forsaken second hand store like Goodwill or Savers. And I ended up spending $53 on stuff that I can give to people for Christmas gifts.

Over all it was fun and we did earn a good amount of money!

What’s new with you?

The Genius Guide to: the Harrowed is a 3-page PDF (2 pages if you remove the credits/OGL page) for the Pathfinder RPG written by R. Hyrum Savage and published by Super Genius Game.  This is the first of Super Genius Games’ Genius Guide line.

The layout is a screen-friendly landscape design, with cover art and 1-column on the first page and three columns on the second.  A few minor glitches on the formatting of the template but everything is readable.  The only art is the cover piece which is nice and creepy as befits the subject.

The Harrowed are mortals sundered from the web of life by a foul magical spell (called, unsurprisingly, Harrow, a 6th level wizard spell) which is used by a powerful group of wizards to instill fear and obedience.  The spell is, of course, included.

The Harrowed are represented by a template which reflects their forced removal from the pattern of life.  They become feral, destructive, animalistic.  They might even be mistaken for undead, which could cause great confusion.  It is a solid template though it would seem that they should gain some natural weapons.

It is a good start to the new Genius Guide line but it would have benefitted from: at least one example of the Harrowed template applied to a creature and a few adventure seed or ideas using the Harrowed.  Still, overall a solid product if you need a dangerous and unusual foe.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

I’ve been asked by a couple people how I build a game world when I’m working on it (mostly my brother, who’s trying to break into game design, but it’s a good place to start).  So, for a little fun, and to talk about my world-building ideas with examples, I’m going to walk through the world-building process that I use.

Now, I know that some guides suggest you start small, and work out to get bigger from there.  But when you’re coming up with the world’s basics, you need to start a bit larger… for example, what game system are you going to use?

I’m going to opt for three, actually – Iron Heroes, Pathfinder, and Arcana Evolved.  Why three?  Because they’re all variants on d20 3.5 – my main focus, at this point, will be on the Iron Heroes era.

Iron Heroes is a very low-magic, high-”heroism,” version of 3.5.  There are magic wielders, but magic is very dangerous to use.  There are no clerics channeling the power of the gods to heal the sick and raise the dead.  The world that it works best for is, thus, one that doesn’t use a lot of magic, one where it’s still a very young science, rather like chemistry in the first millennia… or, if not a young science, then one that was only recently rediscovered.

That idea appeals to me, actually.  There was a time when magic was more common – however, for whatever reason, it went away, or at least regressed.  This isn’t a young world, it’s one that’s very old… and that had a massive catastrophe in the past.

I’m actually going to delve into two different sources for inspiration here.  First, questions about how the moon of our world was formed.  Second, one of my favorite inspirational sources, Lovecraft.

Earth’s moon is an oddity – compared to all other worlds, it’s far, far too large… and too lonely, being the only one.  Astronomers simply aren’t quite sure how it got there, or where it came from.  Well, I’m not going to go for *exactly* that set of issues – I like the idea of multiple moons – but I will go ahead and raise the question of where the moons came from.

The ancient civilization that came before did have a moon in the sky… but they raised more.  Why did they bother to put that much effort and time into building new moons?  Obviously, because there was something that needed to be put Somewhere Else.  Maybe cities, maybe creatures… and that’s where Lovecraft comes in.

Lovecraft’s work is rife with ancient, eldritch beings that can only be contained, not defeated.  It’s also full of cities that are hard to reach, and parts of fantastical worlds – Kadath, for example, or R’lyeh.  Let’s say we’ve got a world that *had* a series of wars like the ones Lovecraft outlines in Shadow Out of Time.  Ancient beings, Aberrations in d20 terms, warring against each other… and, eventually, against their own rebelling slaves.  Eventually, our ancient races managed to score a victory, but they couldn’t destroy their former masters entirely.  Instead, they wielded powerful magic, that sent their cities into the sky, encased in massive orbs of stone, imprisoned for eternity.  Of course, such powerful magic always exacts a price – the sheer amount of magical energy involved in such an act largely impoverished the rest of the world.  What magic does remain is used at a potentially disastrous price – it weakens the bonds holding the Old Ones in their prisons.  Worse, after so much time, the very energy of magic has been tained by the evil of the Old Ones – those who use Their power are slowly warped and changed by the exposure.

So, that’s the Iron Heroes (core) magic system explained, in this world.  It also gives us things to build on later in the game.

At this point, our world has been rebuilding from the ‘cataclysm’ brought on by the loss of magic.  Without magic, people have had to learn to maximize their skills and abilities – to do for themselves what wizards and clerics used to do regularly.  This explains the pumped-up abilities of the classes in Iron Heroes.

How we tie this into the other systems later… I’m getting some ideas, but those are for much, much later.

So, are you getting any ideas?  What sort of things would you like to see in this world?  Let me know – maybe I can work them in through later posts.

Paizo’s just announced new options for Pathfinder Society players, who are all invited to participate in an open playtest for Pathfinder’s Advanced Player’s Guide. Starting this week, players can use the Cavalier and Oracle classes on Paizo’s Web site in PFS play, and four more classes will be rolled out for play through November and December, including Alchemist, Inquisitor, Summoner and Witch! Full details are on Paizo’s site here. And remember, if you want to try out Pathfinder, there’s always available play at 10 a.m. on Saturdays at Organized Play!

It’s been awhile since I last wrote about RPGs from a non-mechanics point of view, so I might be a bit rusty (please bear with me).  Paizo has recently started an open playtest for their upcoming Advanced Player’s Guide. Over the next few weeks, they will be releasing playtest versions of their six new base classes. Last week, the Cavalier and Oracle were made available for download.

While waiting around at Durban International Airport, I downloaded the playtest classes, hoping to continue my series of posts about odd or quirky character builds. When it came to the Cavalier, however, I initially found it quite difficult to come up with a character concept for the class that wasn’t spoonfed to me by the flavour and mechanics presented in the playtest. Even though I like the class, and could see myself playing one, I couldn’t help but think that very little would differentiate one Cavalier from another. Does this mean that the class design is flawed or, at best, sufficiently narrow that it wouldn’t see much play?

Actually, I don’t think that’s the case. Prescriptive classes (or classes that easily lend themselves to genre or system stereotypes) are more accessible to new players (good thing). On the other hand, when you manage to discover a new way to play with a previously thought-to-be prescriptive class in a new and exciting way (either mechanically or flavour-wise), you can’t help but share the idea with others:

Foxtrot Therdelon

Female NE Gnome Cavalier 5
Init: +1 Perception: +2 (Low-light Vision)

Defense
AC: 20; Touch 12; Flat 19
CMD: 17
HP: 54
Fort: 7 Ref: 2 Will: 1 (3 vs Illusion)

Offense
Speed: 20
Melee: Lance +7 1d6+6; Longsword +7 1d6+6 (19-20)
Ranged: Javelin +7 1d4+2

Statistics
Str 14 Dex 13 Con 16 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 12
Base Attack: 5
CMB: 7

Feats: Mounted Combat; Power Attack; Ride-By Attack; Spirited Charge
Skills: Handle Animal 8; Intimidate 9; Perform (Organ Grinding) * 11; Ride 6; Sense Motive 1

Gear: Masterwork Darkwood Lance; Masterwork Breastplate; Masterwork Heavy Steel Shield; Javelins (5); Masterwork Longsword; Adventuring Gear; Military Saddle; Potion of Bear’s Endurance (2); Disguise Kit; Elixir of Swimming; 25gp

Special Abilities
Gnome Traits; Banner; Cavalier’s Charge; Challenge 2d6; Expert Trainer; Mount; Oath (Greed; Vengeance – Paladins); Order of the Dancing Bear (as Dragon) – Braggard

Templeton the Bear

Medium Animal

Defense
AC: 18 Touch: 13 Flat: 15
CMD: 19
HP: 48 (5HD)
Fort: 7 Ref: 6 Will: 2

Offense
Speed 40 ft
Attacks: Bite +9 1d6+7, 2 Claws +4 1d4+2

Statistics
Str 20 Dex 14 Con 16 Int 2 Wis 12 Cha 6
Base Attack: 3
CMB: 8

Feats: Armour Proficiency (Light); Dodge; Toughness
Skills: Acrobatics 9; Survival 5
Tricks: Combat Training; Perform; Work

Gear: Ridiculous Pink Parasol; Masterwork Studded Leather Barding

Special Abilities
Evasion, Link, Low-light Vision, Scent

* It’s not just for monkeys.

Yes, this is an evil Gnome carnie and her dancing bear. Did you see the bear in the first sentence. Wow, sometimes I can be incredibly funny. </groan>

- jatori

P.S. [Insert Bear Cavalry reference here]

The amulet blazed with silvery light and the shadowy creatures shied from it, giving the wizard the moment he needed to banish them back to the underworld.

Soul Guardian

These amulets were made to defend the very spirit against the attacks of the undead and dark necrourgic magics.  They usually appear as a silver disc, one side blank and the other inscribed with protective sigils.

By drawing on the light, the amulet provides a +2 sacred bonus to armor class and saves against undead creatures and necrourgic magic.  Whenever the character wearing the soul shield suffers an energy drain, they may choose to have the energy drain destroy the amulet rather than suffering the drain themselves.

Aura moderate abjuration [light]; CL 9th
Slot neck; Price 6,000; Weight -
Construction
Requirements Create Wondrous Items, daylight, dimension anchor, remove curse, creator must be of good alignment; Cost 3,000 (+240 xp for D&D)

Notes: A useful tool for those who hunt undead but of almost no use outside of that function.  Pricing such narrow purpose items is always difficult.  In a campaign where undead are common, it would have to be more expensive to make (and much more expensive to buy).

We only ended up with a short time to play after catching up and having a delightful meal of homemade enchiladas (with Krispy Kream donuts for dessert, how very Southern).  So, it ended up being more of a staging post between adventures:

Interlude 1: Dresses, Dances and Hawks

Having been invited to attend an informal dance at Silverlace, the Lacelore mansion in town, Elyse commissioned a new dress and Kael a new suit in complimentary colors.  Kael began researching a new spell, Conall practiced his weapon skills, and Elyse practiced her ladylike tantrums.

The night of the dance, Elyse and Kael decided to arrive fashionably late but neglected to tell Conall who arrived on time.  Conall, as a religious devotee in a city lacking a strong tradition of civic faithfulness, attracted attention, especially as he is a self-proclaimed celibate among a nobility with a hedonistic streak.  So, he was on display for an hour.  Among his ‘admirers’ was someone with a familiar voice that he took a moment to recognize out of her official costume, Laresh Ghostchaser.

Kael manages to be just obnoxious enough to be avoided but not so obnoxious as to actually get thrown out of the party.  Elyse does her best to make friends and keep Kael from trouble, even managing to get him to dance, once.  Laresh is able to lure Conall onto the dance floor, but also for only one dance.

The young Baron Dammeron invites our trio to join him for some hawking in a weeks time, which they accepted with various levels of reluctance.

New Characters referenced in the game:

Baron Rivale Dammeron, his father never returned from a trip aboard a starship and he has been thrust into the role of head of his family at a young age.  Handsome and a bit arrogant.

Jocelyn Lacelore, youngest daughter of the main Lacelore family.  It was her party, but she only talked with our heroes in passing.

Dawn Silvereyes, a journeyman wizard.   Elyse’s cousin and a casual acquaintance of Kael.

Building on the theme of the Spider Finger Gloves, something defensive:

Wasp Woven Armor

This black or dark grey armor seems to be made of multiple plates of hardened leather or similar material.  The armor fits together with odd internal hooks and clasps rather than more usual straps and buckles, fitting together in clever ways.  As it is put on, the Wasp Woven Armor molds itself to its wearer which makes wearing anything underneath it quite uncomfortable but making the armor supremely comfortable and flexible.  When completely donned it looks like a second skin of chitin with the joints and waist guarded by overlapping articulated plates much like that of a wasp.

The armor is very resistant and it prevents attacks that are not enhanced by magic from biting too deeply (Damage Reduction 1/Magic).  The armor is surprisingly quiet and non-reflective when worn (+2 equipment bonus to Stealth) and it, oddly, absorbs much of the wearer’s spilled blood.

When not being worn, the armor will occasionally make a low droning hum, the reason and indeed the source of which is unknown.  It is difficult to get into taking four minutes to don (though onlt two to don hastily) and only a minute to remove.  As the Wasp Woven Armor is so close fitting wearing a minimal amount of clothes under the armor is uncomfortable (reduce the maximum Dexterity bonus by one and increases the armor check penalty by one), wearing more than that minimum reduces the wearer’s Dexterity by two (as well as the other penalties) while in the armor and causes them to be fatigued after wearing the armor for more than six hours.

Aura faint transmutation; CL 5th
Slot armor; Price 5,000; Weight 15 lbs
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Alter Self, Mage Armor; Cost 2,500 (+100 xp for D&D)

Armor Bonus: +5    Maximum Dex Bonus: +6    Armor Check Penalty: 0
Arcane Spell Failure: 5%     Weight: 15 lbs    Movement: 30 ft.    Light

Minutes

Archive of Meeting Minutes

They’ve announced some of the upcoming adventures and APs and there’s some crazy sweetness coming down the pike. (Note: “pike” is the correct use of that phrase, you illiterate monkeys.)

Paizo announced an adventure path for next year that makes me salivate – “The Serpent’s Skull“, set in Sargava and the Mwangi Expanse (Golarion’s Africa), dealing with the Pirate Lords of the Shackles, the Red Mantis assassins, the Aspis Consortium merchant guild, serpentfolk…  I was planning for the later part of the homebrew campaign I’m running now, Reavers on the Seas of Fate, to end up exactly there doing exactly that!   I’m sad that I’ll have to make up mine before they come out with theirs.  This AP will be hell on wheels, and I’m really excited about it.  It’s paired with a Companion about Sargava...  I hope the fabled Silverback King makes an appearance somewhere in all this!

The AP prior to that one should be fun too.  Once the current one, Council of Thieves, ends, the next one is called Kingmaker and is supposed to be more sandboxey, with the PCs looking to gain a kingdom of their own among the warlords and miscreants of the River Kingdoms.

Those who don’t like whole Adventure Paths aren’t left out.  Monte Cook is writing an adventure called Curse of the Riven Sky…  There’s one called From Shore To Sea that deals with the Azlant (Atlanteans) and their deep one heritage, and it’s being designed as an Open Design project and you can buy patronage and have input into it!  Or, even sooner, the Lovecraftian Carrion Hill.

Until those hit, the 3.x adventure landscape is still rich.  Goodman Games is rereleasing a bunch of 3/5e PDFs, including their Wicked Fantasy Factory line which I really liked.  And Sinister Adventures’ hotly anticipated mega-adventure The Razor Coast should be coming out before the end of the year.  3.x publishing is seeing a resurgence as companies realize that a) publishing for 4e, with the closed DDI and all, sucks and b) it’s not some small fringe that is going Pathfinder and/or sticking with 3.5e, but a pretty sizable market.

Our would-be pirates are at large on the streets of Riddleport in this, the fourth session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate – “Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold.”  [Warning: Spoilers for Second Darkness]

Fourth Session (11 page pdf) – First, I hand out fake pirate gold coins I bought at a party shop to represent each character’s Infamy Points!  I explain how they work (very powerful but rare hero points) and the group seems to like the idea.

Then, the PCs wander around Riddleport and I take the opportunity to introduce various local NPCs.  Snake meets Samaritha Beldusk outside the Cypher Lodge and they hit it off.  Tommy and Ox go to the temple of Calistria (aka whorehouse); Tommy gets real friendly with the tiefling prostitute Lavender Lil, and Ox gets requested by Selene.  Faithful readers will remember Selene was the captain’s woman aboard their last ill-fated voyage; she was a hooker before meeting the Captain and so it’s back to the life of a working girl.  Sindawe goes to find an altar to his god Shimye-Magalla; he finds something that looks kinda similar (the Mwangi worship a janiform incarnation of the god of wind and wave Gozreh and goddess of dream Desna) and has a bad string of luck – a stirge discovers him, and when he tosses himself into Riddleport Harbor to get it off, a swamp barracuda takes notice.  It chased him to shore and then chased him onto shore; there was an entertaining chase scene with both of them only moving like 10 feet a round (uphill in mud for Sindawe, and swamp barracuda aren’t all that fast out of water).

I open up “Shadow in the Sky,” the first installment of the Second Darkness Adventure Path, for the next part.  Tommy knows a local guy named Saul Vancaskerkin who owns a gambling hall; they go to his big devil-themed gambling festival “Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold” and end  up thwarting an armed robbery by two colorful miscreants and their gang of thugs.  I took Thuvalia’s opening line from the restaurant robbery in Pulp Fiction; our session scribe didn’t get it quite right in the summary but close enough.   I decided it would be fun to kinda base the two principals on Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from that fine film.  A more notable omission is that Sindawe used one of his Infamy Points to run across the heads and shoulders of a bunch of patrons to jump-kick Thuvalia and take her out before she escaped. Also, Wogan got to use his gun (and my firearm rules) for the first time – and the damage dice exploded; he shot Angvar right through the heart.  They end up being recruited by Saul to help run the Gold Goblin and, perhaps, some “side jobs” as well.

A lot of the session was spent getting introduced to Riddleport, the staff of the Goblin, et cetera, so not much action, but everyone had a good time role-playing!

[Editor's Note] As an way for me to explore how easy or difficult it is to create advanced creatures using the rules in the Pathfinder Bestiary, I’ve decided to try to make one.