KnightErrantJR's Gamer Blog

I've always loved dwarves. Sturdy short guys with beards that aren't pretty boys like some other fantasy races I could name. Plus, when I was growing up, I always gravitated more towards Norse mythology over Greek (not that I didn't enjoy that as well), and of course my sisters had me read Tolkien and C.S. Lewis as well.

That having been said, as much as I loved dwarves, the longer my own beard gets, the more frustrated I am with dwarven pop culture references. The longer the shadow the dwarf casts (i.e. the more people actually know what a fantasy dwarf is), the more that dwarf is a really goofy stereotype that fails to grab hold of what I liked about dwarves over the years.

The Archetype

Its true that Tolkien's dwarves are very much the stuff of what common fantasy dwarves are made of. Grumpy, xenophobic, war like, greedy, yet steadfast in their fellowship if they warm up to you. The only problem is, the last part seems to get played up, and the rest gets turned into running jokes, instead of interesting, if somewhat crippling, character flaws.

While the modern fantasy dwarf was born of Tolkien's interpretation, the fact of the matter is that its probably shaded much more by Gimli than by Thorin Oakenshield, while an overview of Tolkien shows that Thorin is probably the better example of the dwarven norm.

A few other traits have come up over the years as well. The one word traits most likely to be nailed to a dwarf now would be greedy, racist, xenophobic, defeatist, surly, blunt, orderly, war-like, and loyal. The problem is, somewhere along the line, Gimli grabbed everyone's imagination and the positive traits became the "real" traits, and the negatives became the grist for comedic effect.

The Ghost of Dwarves Past

Another thing that I miss when it comes to modern dwarf tropes has to do with some baggage they picked up, and that I liked, from various D&D setting, that never quite took hold.

In Dragonlance, the default dwarf alignment was Lawful neutral. I loved this characterization of dwarves, because it didn't feel to me that a dwarf had to constantly overcoming his more negative aspects. Dwarven pride meant that the best solution to a lack of food was to watch thousands die in a pointless war. Dwarven xenophobia meant that it made perfect sense to lock the gates and wait for the end of the world instead of fighting for it, because you might have to fight next to an elf or a hill dwarf (see also, dwarven racism).

It also seemed that for every shining dwarven hero (Kharas, Flint) you had at least a neutral, if not downright evil dwarf that still seemed very dwarven (Arack, the Dewar).

Although most people won't know it due to R A Salvatore's work in the Realms, Realmsian dwarves were suppose to have quite a few very dwarven, but very distinct traits that never seemed to settle into the popular conscious. In the Old Grey Boxed set, it was pointed out that dwarves din't have names like "Stonekegger" or "Goldbunyon" or whatever. Dwarves went by the "X, son of Y" naming convention, although there might be clan names associated with them. Still, most dwarves, as reiterated in Dwarves' Deep, didn't use a clan name as a surname.

Also an interesting aspect to Realmsian dwarves which got lost over time was the fact that the race really was dying out. Some dwarves became nearly suicidal in their effort to do something great, and others resorted to frowned upon tactics like taking human wives, but there was a certain fatalism or desperation in the portrayal. Also, the "lets go out with a big bang if we have to go" mentality really helped to hearken back to the dwarf roots in Norse mythology.

Plus, dwarves of Faerun were obsessed with dragons. Not only was it something great to kill a dragon, not only was dwarven greed a perfect mate for a dragon's horde, but dwarves had legends of dragon's blood granting immortality and other boons (yet another hearkening to Norse myths as well).

If only we could have avoided the majority of dwarf-fiction in the Realms having to do with dwarven suicidal plans working out in the end, reclaiming ancient homelands, suddenly becoming more fertile, and being represented by clans such as the illustrious Clan Bouldershoulder, Pwent, or Muffinhead.

Very . . . deep . . . sigh.

Fresh Air in the Deeps?

So, why do I mention that Dragon Age Origin was in inspiration to me? Because In Dragon Age, dwarves are very lawful, very war-like, very organized, pretty much xenophobic, and complete bastards. I loved it. There is no "oh, they are racist, but its a funny racism," or "they're stubborn in a cute way." Its more like "these bastards are so damn stubborn they'll sit in the depths while the Darkspawn kill them all as they argue succession," or "wow, they are so lawful that they advocate leaving a clanless baby in the wilds of the deep caverns to die because he doesn't have a caste to belong to."

It reminded me much of the "stubborn to the edge of Armageddon" dwarves in Dragonlance.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd love to see much less benevolent, benign dwarves than what has become the norm. I'd love to see more dwarves whose primary personality trait isn't the "just" or "loyal" aspect of the dwarves, and focused a lot more on the "greedy" or "xenophobic" aspect of the dwarf personality. Dragon Age Origins manages to portray a dwarven society that feels very dwarven, and yet really feels like a fresh take on dwarves as well, while still using the classic building blocks.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Bio Ware for making sure that Dragon Age Origins includes a helpful relationship simulator. Given the number of geeks that will be spending hours with this game instead of actually sharpening their social skills (of which I am one), this provides a valuable service to the gamer community.

What are the lessons we learn from Dragon Age?

1. If you can't figure out any other way to advance a relationship, give her a gift.

2. You might want to pay attention to her dialog once in a while to figure out what kind of gift.

3. Even if a woman says that its a casual commitment, you'll find out how exclusive you are if you flirt with someone else.

4. You cannot maintain two romances indefinitely.

5. Saying the wrong thing can loose you a LOT of points.

6. If you find a gift that she likes, and you are currently maxed out on "points" with her, save it, because eventually you'll say something stupid and need to get the points back.

I've started this post several times, and not posted it, because I don't want to be constantly griping, and I'd rather be positive, etc.  Given that I've had a hard time at work this last week and was really looking forward to just posting on the boards and chilling out this weekend, I have to say that I'm having a harder and harder time enjoying a trip to the Paizo boards.

Sure, I can post in some sections of the boards and ignore others, but honestly, I used to be able to discuss future products and rules and the like on the site without getting frustrated.  I know at first it seemed like "growing pains" with a lot of new people that jumped on the boards during the playtest, and I'm not saying its bad, but I do think that there were so many "new style" posts that this quickly has become the new normal.

And by "new style" I mean posts that argue about trying to mangle rules as written to an unrecognizable degree based on an intentionally obtuse reading of the rules, posting an opinion over and over again in what appears to be an attempt to make sure that because you cared enough to post the same opinion 100 times, you must have your opinion given more weight than anyone else's, and doing so in a way that is just a bit above being reportable or offensive, but falling into that grey area of "probably being a dick."

I love the boards because I really like the interaction with the Paizo folks, and I know, as I said, some areas of the forum aren't in this kind of shape, but I really don't want to be locked out of rules discussions and the like just because we have a new standard for how to present opinions on the boards.

Last Tuesday we played session three of our KOTOR game.  Campaign is still a blast.  I spent some time making sure all of the PCs had an NPC contact for them to interact with, including a Mon Cal flight instructor for the Duro pilot whose voice I did in full Admiral Ackbar-ish form for the whole conversation. 

What was great was that one of the players did at least one thing that plays perfectly into the campaign and what I had planned, and everyone seems to be having a great time intereacting with each other and ferreting out the leads they have been given.  Its been a lot of fun.

The one thing I am interested in right now is trying to figure out if I can retroactively put this campaign on the requisition system from Galaxy at War.  They have a ship that they have been customizing, so I have to poke through the rules a bit and figure out if this can be done without too much of a pain.  Given that the PCs are working for Republic Intelligence, it really makes sense to use it.

In one of the greatest irony moments of the campaign was when the badly wounded Wookiee needed surgery, and the PCs drag him onto the ship so that the medic of the group can work on him . . . the Trandoshan medic.  We figured that, one way or the other, Trandoshans probably do know Wookiee physiology. 

I just got home from playing in a Savage Worlds demo game at the FLGS, playing in the Necessary Evil setting.  I was playing a mafia scion that had earth controlling powers  (think Terra, Geo Force, or Avalanche . . . or maybe a really powered down Terrax).  The rest of our party was comprised of a Solomon Grundy type undead powerhouse, a warrior with a cursed sword and magic armor  (kind of like the evil version of the Black Knight), a half-Atlantean teleporter with a code of honor  (a theif, but not a killer), a Soviet era Russian super android  (complete with flight and red lasers), and a 13 year old phasing, healing girl.

Ironically, I had assumed that the guy with the code of honor and the 13 year old healer/phaser would be almost too heroic for the rest of us scumbags, but then some interesting things happened.

The 13 year old phasing hero apparently really likes grenades.  And phasing grenades into people.  And leaving them in people and letting them become solid again.  So much so that we spent a lot of time discussing various and sundry things that she might want to try phasing into various and sundry people to watch what happens to them once said foreign object becomes solid within a living  being.

Also, while the teleporter had a sense of honor about not killing anyone, he apparently had no qualms about teleporting our sword possessed warrior into a heavily guarded outpost without actually getting his permission to do so.

We had a blast playing this game, especially when I got to try crushing one of the flunkies with my earth powers and fumbled my power check to accidentally . . . break him.  The sword possessed warrior, probably the most hard core of all of us, got to lop off a leg while we were trying to capture another flunkie for information. 

The Russian android was probably the most consistent of all of us, and in true villain fashion we let the 13 year old girl take on the BBEG on her own to start the whole fight, but in the end, the slow but steady Solomon Grundy type managed to punch said BBEG so hard that body parts fell off as he was indented into a bank vault door.

Aside from the fun we had with this session, I pick up a few opinions on Savage Worlds as a system.  Its strikes me as a very flexible, fairly simple system that can be used for a pretty wide range of things, which is how it's advertised.  I have to admit, it doesn' t make me want to run out and run a campaign using the rules, but it does seem like the perfect system to use for people that aren't too invested in rules and are just interested in role playing in general, and for games where you mainly want to roleplay, but you could use some rules to help guide how the story is going. 

First off, a bit of confusion on my part.  I keep hearing from my FLGS owner that he's hearing about tons of people interested in Pathfinder Society, and that I might need another GM.  I try to find another GM, but its not easy . . . but then these people that keep saying they are interested never show up.  I guess they might be concerned that they might show up and I'll have assigned all of the slots in the game already, but if they never show up, they'll never get a slot, and more importantly, if they never show up, even if I do get another GM lined up, said GM is going to have done a lot of prep work for nothing when no one shows up for the second table.

Coordinating these things makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes, not because its not rewarding, but because I'm never really sure if there is something I could be doing differently that would be brining in new GMs and tons of players, and I'm just not bright enought to figure out how to manage it.

As for the session, it went well.  We the "standard" encounter numbers, but didn't have enough time for the "optional" encounter.  The interesting thing is that actually the PCs skipped a non-optional encounter, but pretty much invalidated their ability to run into that encounter, and ran into the optional one instead, and killed off one of the Taldan extra goals due to this.  Still, it was a fun session, although one of the players thought it felt a bit too easy for the tier and characters involved.  We talked about it after the session, and its he thought that one aspect of it might have been that the new channel energy has been rough on them with clerics that use it with undead minions  (and thus aren't limited in how they use the ability), and that the party has three clerics and purchased lots of healing magic now.

The second session of the KOTOR game was a little less dangerous on the PCs, as they retrieved some Jedi refugees from a Sith internment camp on a hidden Hutt controlled world.  Still, after dealing with some Sith Hounds and some Droch beetles, the group ended up running into an every so cute Kushiban Jedi master.

Well, he would have been cute, except for the whole "both eyes have been gouged out by the Sith" thing.  Still, he took to the future-Jedi Wookiee right off the bat.

I had a bit of a NPC on NPC arguement towards the end of the session.  I figured it was a gamble to have any amount of game time taken up with me talking to myself, but thankfully, I kept it fairly short and to the point, and the gamble paid off, with the PCs getting the distinct impression that the two NPCs are at least a bit at odds when it comes to the Wookiee's Jedi training.

It was also nice to hear one player say that he was really looking forward to a potential mission to Nal Hutta, even though his character is dreading it. 

On top of that, one of my players, who just joined the campaign this session and played a hastily made up Trandoshan soldier, really fleshed out his character in a post on the campaign journal and cemented himself as a potential future politician.  It was great.  Our GM from our Pathfinder game read the post and said "did he really use 'peace loving' and Trandoshan together?"

I found a fillable character sheet I really liked, updated my cleric, Zhuhair of Sarenrae, for our Legacy of Fire Campaign.  Then our regular Thursday session didn't happen.  I totally understand, but I miss playing Zhuhair.  While I'm on the topic, am I just weird, because I kind of like being the "healer/cheerleader" type cleric that fixes his party members and buffs them.  I like playing the support role in combat, at least sometimes.  I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that I'm usually a GM?

Ah well, no cheerleading this week.

Seeing people use the term chakra on Paizo's boards relating to body slots reminded me of my latest attempt, a few nights ago, to penetrate further into the depths of my copy of Magic of Incarnum.  I managed to read through it once, when it first came out, and promptly forgot everything in the book at the time, as it was immediately shunted into the "too much work to add to my Forgotten Realms campaign" region of my brain.

As the years passed, I started thinking the concept might fit in with Ra-Khati or some of the less known eastern Realms near Kara-Tur, but despite this conjecture, I never picked the book back up to look at it again.  Much of it just felt like a wall of text that my brain couldn't climb over again.  I must admit that some of my bias was based on the really stupid "Incarnum races" that were introduced in the beginning, and it didn't help that the accompanying artwork had the "iconics" posed like G.I. Joe figures showing off their points of articulation.

The most useful thing I've ever been able to pull out of this is the Incarnum feats and using them to boost non-Incarnum class abilities. 

This read through, however, something did occur to me.  I think I may have almost got my arms around the concept enought to make a point about it.  It started to occur to me that a lot of Incarnum abilities were so much like having spells, even though they naturally seem to be like spellcasters, it was about having characters that could pick their class abilities each day based on what they thought they might need  ("I'm going to bind a fire whoosits to my beatstick so I can do fire damage today").

It then occured to me that WOTC kind of revisited this concept and did it much more succinctly and in a way that appealed to me more in style and flavor with the Binder class.  There was no "you invest a point of blue glowy stuff in your pulsepoint and then shape your meld into making it even better at that point and then synergize it with whatever else  . . . something something . . . unborn souls . . . something something . . . complete."  Compare this to "you draw a symbol and and then summon a spirit that's almost faded from the universe and get this set of powers from it."  

I hate to say this, but Magic of Incarnum, along with Weapons of Legacy, both strike me as streaching a concept way too far, a concept that was probably good to begin with, but becomes so complicated by the end of the thing that it becomes useless unless something about the concept really, really speaks to you.

Giving credit where credit is due, I much prefered the flavorful introduction of new magic systems in the Tome of Magic, and the "just different enough and just familiar enough" feel of The Expanded Psionics Handbook to the "simple concept that has to fill a full sized hardcover" of the previously mentioned works.

I love Pathfinder, and I have to admit, while I have had fun with 4E, I much prefer Pathfinder to 4E for my RPG fantasy fix.

That having been said, I have to say that doing prep for my Star Wars Saga game is so much faster than doing prep work for Pathfinder.  Since I'm running Star Wars on the alternate week from my Pathfinder Society game, its works out really well.  In fact, I do have a lot of time to read up on Wookieepedia and my Dark Horse comics for "fluff" prep instead of mechanical prep.

I can't perfectly put my finger on why this is.  Saga isn't quite as "plug and play" as 4E is, and it maintains a little bit more complexity than 4E does  (which I like), but yet, I don't feel like I have to look up and reference quite as much when I try to throw together an interesting encounter.  I have to say, I still think that Saga was a lot closer to the mark as far as simplifying 3.5 than 4E turned out to be.

I think another reason is that stat blocks are a lot more general and more easily used for Saga.  I've got Mandalorian stats, Sith Trooper and Sith Assassins, speeders, fighters, freighters . . . all generic enough to use in a wide range of encounters.  In a lot of cases, there is no reason to modify "thugs" to be Twi'leks or Aqualish, since they are generally just thugs.

Maybe its more a psychological thing.  For some reason, it matters more to me to make sure that a warrior in Pathfinder has his racial stats applied than it does to me in Star Wars Saga.  Perhaps its because there are fewer default playable races, and I want to make sure to play up their differences, whereas if I want to say a group of thugs is made up of multiple alien species, I just have to look up some species that aren't too radically different than humans and throw the descriptions into the game.

Still, even with those musings hanging out there, I can't quite put my finger on exactly what works more quickly to my satisfaction, but I do appreciate it. 

Also, I have to also admit that my prep time is also helped greatly now by our new printer, which I can use to scan images and which can also print out on index cards, making it really, really easy to scan my Saga books, print out a few stat blocks on index cards, and roll on into the game.  What did I ever do before I had all of my tech toys . . . I know I used to DM when all I had was a typewriter . . . hm . . .

Hooray, I didn't kill anyone this week!

I do continue to find it interesting when I read complaints about scenarios not allowing players to do X or Y, and then realize how many unorthodox things that the players at my tables come up with for various challenges.  I do wonder sometimes if either players get very locked into what can and can't be done sometimes based on what is obvious, or if GMs sometimes actively discourage approaches that aren't explicitly spelled out in an adventure.

(We ran the first Pathfinder RPG scenario, the Devil We Know Part I:  Shipyard Rats.  I'm not going to spoil too much here, but be warned just in case)

That having been said, having players come up with unique solutions to problems does mean that two things tend to happen, especially in PFS events.

1.  You have to think on the fly, and quickly adjudicate things so that you don't get behind.  If you are going to say "yes" to something, be ready to rule on it, and don't spend too much time tracking down a specific rule that may or may not spell out what you just allowed to be introduced.

2.  Be prepared to figure out what you have to do to make up for time if the alternate method takes a bit more time than bashing in the door.  Thankfully the scenario we were playing had an encounter spelled out as one to cut if you are running behind, but not every scenario has this luxury.

I have noticed that the last few PFS scenarios I prepped had many combats in them.  I never used to have a big problem running to time.  In fact, at the local convention last February, several times I was about an hour ahead of time.  But lately I've been really pushing for time at the FLGS running these, and the last few that I've run  (Season 0 Among the Living and Season 1 Shipyard Rats) have seemed very combat heavy, and as such, more likely to sap time.

I'm enjoying the stories, and I'm not running into the "mindless dungeon crawls" that others have complained about in PFS  (I did have one scenario that didn't quite gel for this reason, and another one I had a problem with for other reasons, but its hardly an epidemic from my perspective so far), but I do wish for maybe a little bit fewer combats to make sure these run in time.

Maybe a few more skill based encounters, that can be solved a little bit quicker than a combat?

All in all, I'm having a good time, and I had a full table  (six), plus an extra player using a pregen.  So interest seems to have picked up, since three of my other regulars are sitting these out for now, as they played the scenarios I'm running at Gen Con.

I ran my first PFS event in a while two Thursdays ago.  I was really excited because there seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm from the people planning to attend.  It was a lot of fun, although I like to always keep a running tab of things that I personally want to improve on based on the things that happened.

1.  Even though it was brought up at the table that no one can be forced to "play up," I do feel like I should have reiterated this instead of just stating what the tier ended up being when I averaged everyone out.  In fact, I think I'm going to kind of reinterpret this rule as reading that anyone that has to "play up" gets the final say on tiers when there is a question of playing up for some players and playing down for others.  I'll elaborate further as this I make some of my other points.

2.  Evil clerics channeling negative energy are evil, especially to low level characters.  Not just because they are dangerous by themselves, but because they hit just about everyone at one time.  Plus, if said cleric has grunts around him to serve as a shield and to slap the PCs around, the channel negative energy tends to be quite the evil follow up "finishing move."

That having been said, the "grappling druid" in the group came up with an innovative way of shutting down an evil cleric trying to channel.  He pinned the cleric, then set his holy symbol of fire with produce flame.

3.  Some PCs can make RP encounters out of any encounter.  

4.  I still feel really, really guilty when someone gets killed in one of my games.  This was one of the new players, playing up a tier, wandering around a corner into a monster's reach, with an evil cleric following up with a negative energy burst that took him one . . .  just one . . . point beyond his negative con score to make him more than mostly dead.

That having been said, that same player showed up last Thursday, a week early for the next PFS game, with a new character, respectfully asking me to try not to kill him this week with a smile on his face.  Hopefully that means I still came across as a fair and fun GM that night.

We had our first official session of our Star Wars KOTOR Saga game last night.  The setting for the game is five years after the Dark Wars  (the events portrayed in KOTOR II), and the PCs are working for the Republic and the Jedi Council, doing secret stuff.  I won't go into the details here  (I've still got to get going on my campaign journal for this one), but some of the highlights of the night follow:

No, Let ME Drive!

The very, absolute start of the campaign allowed the PCs to break Coruscant traffic in their Dynamic class light freighter, and the very first piloting check in the game started with a natural one.  This was low enough that the freighter bounced off of some civilian traffic, which damaged both ships. 

This also delayed the ship with half the PCs on it from reaching the landing platform where the other PCs were about to be attacked by Sith assassins.  Since the ship was late due to traffic problems, the Jedi got a rather nasty Force Wound from the Sith, and the droid wheeled as far away from the Sith as he could and started making with the stun blasts.

However, this wasn't the end of the shipboard fun.  At this point, the co-pilot says "let ME do it this time," and procedes to roll a 1, and given that he had a lower piloting score, he crashes into the landing platform that the Jedi, the droid, and the Sith are currently standing on.

The Sith was knocked prone, the Jedi continued to clot, and the droid continued to run like hell from the Sith.  Just due to the bizarre nature of the entire situation, I had the pilot make an intimidate check modified by the ship's size, and the Sith apprentice broke and ran as fast as he could.

Long story short, Coruscant security showed up, and stun barraged the entire platform full of characters, including the PCs.  

Corner Cases

Later on in the session, the Jedi was chasing down a Sith assassin  (one of those guys with the personal cloaking devices from the games), and followed him around the corner of the cantina . . . right into a mass of six Sith troopers.  Everyone in the group, when I placed the minis, brought up the scene in A New Hope where Han chased the stormtroopers down the corridor in the Death Star and ran into the wall of armor.

Its always good when you can get the players to draw a movie reference without hitting them over the head with it.

There's No Such Thing As Luck

Earlier in the game, our Wookie soldier, the one that desperately wanted to become a Mandalorian, had taken one of the Sith lightsabers, and then mesh taped it to his vibro axe  (nailing the DC 10 mechanics check, boo yah).  Later on in the session, when the Wookie and the Jedi had faced three frag grenades and then still were the only real targets for the firing squad, the Wookie used his Destiny Point to avoid the damage.

Since this was a Destiny Point, I wanted to dress up the explanation of why the shot didn't hit.  So, on the backswing of his axe, the Wookie accidentally ignited the Sith lightsaber, and the blade deflected the blaster bolt from hitting him.  While it would have been amusing enough for the Wookie's new toy to have saved him on accident, to the Wookie, this became a sign.

Rowlaur wasn't destined to be a Mandalorian . . . Rowlaur was to become . . . a JEDI!

(Did I mention that Rowlaur has a Int 8, Wis 6, and Cha 6?)

A New Beginning . . .

At any rate, this was an awesome start to a campaign.  While I had an outline for the campaign, I got tons of material from what the PCs did to modify and add to the campaign, and it hit all of the right notes, and the only fatalities were the four Destiny Points that gave their lives so that their PCs might live.

All and all, a rousing success.

So, ever since I was a fan of the Forgotten Realms, and the afterlife "mechanics" were introduced, and were further tweaked by Planescape, I've thought about how souls work in a D&D like setting.  On top of that, Pathfinder caused at least a little stir with their disposition of souls in that particular game. 

I have my own personal beliefs and while I'm sure they affect me at some level, I'm more interested in a "story" that makes sense for the setting.  I honestly think that a few people on Paizo's boards got a bit bent out of shape by assuming that the "athiests die in the afterlife" part of Golarion was a value judgment on athielsm as a belief.

Honestly, when I read about Golarion's afterlife, it actually crystalized how I had come to view the afterlife and how souls and the like should work.

Spiritual Recylcing and the Gods

I'm going to more or less use Golarion as my model here, but a lot of this applies to other settings that I've played in over the years.  The core assumption is that souls kind of "spawn" in the positive energy plane, and that the gods can't really mess with that source of souls.  Souls show up, and they find a body, and the cycle of spirtual life begins.

When someone dies, a soul, eventually, after a while, would naturally break apart.  Its kind of like spritual fertilizer, much as the body becomes physical fertilizer.  If a god takes a soul out of the stream of souls breaking up and returning to life, they are basically claiming that life, and interupting the normal flow of souls.

The soul breaking up over time doesn't really equate to reincarnation, as the soul energy breaks up and gets recombined, etc.  On the other hands, sometimes the gods do send a soul back into the stream, at a specific time.  While its not quite as "natural" as the soul breaking up, it is returning that soul to the spiritual cycle that naturally occurs.

Its probably beyond even the gods to know if there is a finate amount of soul energy in the planes, or if the postive energy plane is just sort of a lightning rod for the broken down soul energy. 

Now, anything that completely destroys a soul basically removes that soul energy, in its entirety, from the multiverse.  It may not be destroyed, but it isn't part of the same collection of planes that it once was a part of, and as such, if you keep destryong souls, i.e. doing something that scatters the soul energy to another "multiverse" for lack of a better term, and do so at a rate more quickly than souls can appear in the Positive Energy plane, you essentially have spiritual entropy happening.  While unlikely and grandiose, you could have a situation where there were no souls left in the multiverse if you could destroy them faster than they can enter the multiverse.

It also makes for an interesting take on devils and "locking down" a set amount of soul energy for their own personal use.  While the gods might once in a while think that a soul should return to the material plane, if under their own terms, devils really, really want to be able to say that this soul energy is theirs, to define and shape as they see fit.  In fact, this helps reinforce the difference between devils  (all your soul energy are belong to us), deamons  (sure, maybe eating these souls will end the universe), and demons  (hey, lets see what happens if we eat this soul but turn this one into a quasit, or more accurate, let the Abyss determine what to do with the soul energy).

The Athiest Factor

So now, how do athiests fit into this, and how are athiests "dying" in the afterlife not equate to a moral judgement?  In the grand scheme of things, its fairly easy to see that, while it might be nice for a god to reward faithful followers, the natural tendancy of a soul, barring some kind of infusion of energy  (such as effects that might change a given being into an outsider, for an example), is to break up and return to the universe. 

So the gods are essentially being a bit selfish by claiming certain souls.  If there is a finite amount of soul energy, they are claiming it every bit as much as the devils are, albeit in a more attractive manner.  In fact, divine mechanisms that break up souls faster could very easily be seen as the gods trying to play both sides of the fence.

"Sure, it might be bad to remove these souls from the natural order of rebirth, but hey, we made sure that the souls we really don't want got back into the mix even faster, so its kind of okay, right?"

In this light, its not too hard to see an athiest saying, for example, that they don't want to have an immortal soul if the cost is having to be beholden to a deity for the terms of  immortality  (it also does generate some impetus for looking for effects that might change a mortal into an outsider).  Granted, the soul energy is immoral, unless its intentionally "destroyed," but the unique soul does drift, forget who it is, loose details, and eventually just breaks up into the multiverse.

And, in the long run, it may be that the gods can't even grant immortality in the truest sense.  Very few beings would have the long view to know if a soul "confirmed" to a given deity lasts for 500,000 years versus an unclaimed soul, which, if not "mulched"  by some other means, might break up after a few hundred years. 

An Athiest can still claim that they are, at the very least, the determining factor in their own afterlife, no matter how quickly it might degenerate, and they can still claim that their soul energy is reentering the multiverse in the natural process that should take place rather than being used as a pawn by some powerful outsider for some long term game.

Thats kind of how I'm looking at this right now, and it feels workable.  Followers of gods obviously don't mind being claimed by a god, but athiests aren't being "punished," they are just being subjected to the way things would naturally work if the gods didn't stick their divine noses into things and change the process.

Just for fun, I decided to try and convert something from 3.0 to Pathfinder RPG.  Its not a big deal, honestly, but in hindsight, I can see where I ran into some problems.  I chose, as my experiment, the Berserk from the 3.0 Deities and Demigods.  I had no problem zipping through the simple stuff, like converting prerequisites, but when I got to the actual class abilities, I hit a wall.

My initial thought, before reading too much into the class, was that it would gain a rage ability that would stack with a barbarians and I could just figure out what Beast Shape form to use for the class and if it should bump up in levels.  Unfortunately, for some reason I completely forgot the whole "Berskers can pwn their own party on a bad day" drawback.

Technically, its not that I can't convert that ability, just that if its used, as written, its a little clunky for, say, a barbarian to take this class and track their rage separately from the Berserk's battle fury. 

Looking at the beast form ability, I got a little tripped up, because the Berserk not only can turn into their totem animal, but they can also turn into a hybrid version of that animal.  So a direct port of the Beast Form spells doesn't quire work to get the same result.  As a patch, I guess you could allow for a form that doesn't gain the special abilities of the new form  (i.e. move, burrow, scent, etc.), but does still gain the str boost from the spell, as if the beast emulated doesn't have any of the special abilities of said totem animal.

In the end, it wasn't that big a deal, but it felt a little clunkier than I wanted it to.  I'm calling it an ugly win, but still mainly a win.

I never want to let something go when I think its important.  I think that every company that "grows up" to become an uncaring monolith started out as a company that was loved by the fans, and that the fans let slide when it made understandable mistakes and compromises, until finally the company does what the company feels like doing.  Personally, I feel its best to make sure that even little infractions don't go by too lightly, so that I can keep feeling warm and fuzzy about said company.

Now, with that preface firmly in place, I have to say the following.

Paizo is absolutely amazing.

The Pathfinder RPG is a beautiful book, and while I have some issues with the last minute changes from the Beta to final, I cannot deny that this book is, overall, a quality piece of work that everyone at Paizo should rightly be proud of.  This was a monumental task that seems to have worked out to be an even better product than anyone could have hoped for.

However, it would be easy to miss how monumental today was for Paizo.  Not only did Paizo put the RPG on sale today, and had the PDF ready to go  (yes, there were some issues, but the fact that I could even get the PDF within a few hours of the initial "go time" is pretty impressive, all things considered), but they also had their own PF RPG SRD site ready to go, and put out previews of the Bestiary, errata, and a conversion guide.

The Bestiary preview was an amazing looking product as well.  I liked how the Bonus Bestiary looked, but the entries in the preview put that book to shame.

All in all, Paizo pulled of an amazing launch day, and they deserve to be proud of every bit of work they did.

I'll admit it.  I'm not thrilled with clerics loosing heavy armor proficiency in Pathfinder RPG.  I fully understand the reasoning for the change.  I understand and appreciate James Jacobs explanation that was offered to me on Paizo's boards, and as I said on the boards, I can understand the change, divorced of the design goals of Pathfinder RPG.

1.  It breaks backwards compatibility.  Lots of cleric NPCs around with heavy armor, and even at levels where they don't have an extra feat to burn to pay for the proficiency.

2.  It breaks tradition.  I know at least going back to my magenta Basic set and AD&D 1st edition, clerics could use plate armor.

3.  It puts players converting characters to PFRPG, especially at lower levels, in a bad position of having equipment they can't use, or having to switch out feats they may have banked on for their character's concept.

4.  Despite the fact that we were told repeatedly that nothing will be taken away from classes, only added  (and maybe redefined, like spells, animal companion, and channel energy), this very clearly subtracts from a class.

I've already said my peace on Paizo's boards, and I'm not going to harp on this or run this into the ground.  However, one other thing kind of bothers me about the entire situation.  I felt that I was, rather fairly, stating my opinion of the change.  I even pointed out that I could understand it in theory.

Despite that, Jason felt the need to pop into the thread and tell me to  hold off on discussing the change until after Gen Con when he could explain the decision process. 

What?

I can understand if I was really getting abusive with my comments, but I'm not really sure that I like being told not to discuss something until the staff is ready to directly participate in the discussion.  I know Gen Con is busy, and I know that this wasn't a decision made lightly, but I can tell you that my reasoning is pretty sound as well, and, barring being outright abusive, I really don't like being told not to brook a given topic, especially when that topic is actually pretty much on topic for the thread in question.

Beyond the fact that I think this was a pretty major change to have not been brought up during the actual playtest, this just doesn't set right with me.  I respect Jason and the work he has done on the book.  I know he has worked hard and has had to learn a whole new definition of diplomacy while dealing with the playtest threads.  On the other hand, I'm pretty civil and diplomatic myself, and I really, really don't like being told to not discuss something until someone else is ready to discuss it.

I've evagalized Pathfinder at the FLGS.  I spend all of last Gen Con running PFS events, and spent an entire weekend last February running Pathfinder society events at our local convention.  I've been using my own free time to figure out how to get more people to pick up these rules and participate in the PFS and in the RPG in general.  I don't think that makes me any more special than anyone else, but honestly, it makes it a little bit harder for me to feel motivated to put my energy into bringing people into the fold.

Again, I know, Gen Con is a busy time for the Paizo crew, and I know a lot of work went into this game.  I can understand not wanting to have a bunch of negative eruptions on the site as the game makes its debut.  But honestly, I was less negative before I was asked to quit discussing the change than I was before  (and again, I really did appreciate James' time and response to my concern).

The more the excitement builds over the release of the PFRPG, and the more I think back to how much fun it was to be in on the ground floor of the Pathfinder Society last year at Gen Con, the more it truly, truly sucks that I'll not actually be able to make it to Gen Con this year.  That is all.

So far the following Star Wars tropes have made it into my Old Republic play by post campaign. 

1.  The story starts with a space battle.

2.  The Jedis' Master died before they were fully trained.

3.  The heroes befriend a native alien from a race that doesn't interact much with the galaxy as a whole.

4.  The heroes end up in a remote corner of the galaxy.

5.  The heroes "convert" an enemy into a friend  (even if it was just reprogramming a Sith droid).

6.  The heroes need to fix their hyperdrive to get back to the galaxy at large.

I'm hoping that this campaign is striking the right tone with all of my players.  I think that hitting the right notes is important for the feel of any setting, and having some familiar tropes woven into the story are my way of "playing the John Williams theme."
 

Just announced on Paizo's site, the first print run of the the Pathfinder RPG is already sold out.  They have a the copies they reserved for Gen Con sales, and a some for their own online store, but for the most part, the entire print run is sold out.  For any of you not keeping up stuff on Paizo's site, but still interested in Pathfinder RPG, this doesn't mean you won't be able to get any when they release, it just means that all of them have been ordered, with some of said orders being what the FLGS or book stores are planning on stocking on their shelves.

This is absolutely amazing, and I am truly happy for Paizo.  While I've got my little issues here and there with some changes, the amount of work and attention to the fan base has been amazing, and Paizo has worked for every sale.