Monday, October 5, 2015

Monday Blaaaagh! Pathfinder, Primeval Thule, Tome of Beasts and Dyson's Delve

Haven't had one of these for a while! For those not in the know, I do a Blaaagh when I have a post quota but no specific subject....so I write what comes to mind.

Right now, it's as follows:


1. Pathfinder Campaign Kicked off Without Hitch

I might blog about the tale...it was one of the better games I've run in a while. I thought Pathfinder might be an onerous system to return to, but in the end the worry was all mostly in my head, and there was only the occasional "stop and look up a rule" moment.

The reason it went so well? My Saturday group is a good gang, and they got deeply into the story and dug into a murder mystery with a serious level of zest. The result was easily one of my favorite games in the last year. Also....I missed Pathfinder's skill system.

For last night I only had half the regulars (one had her parents in town, another had a medical issue for the weekend and a third is in Europe visiting) leaving me only three...but that was honestly perfect. You can get a lot of detailed adventuring done with a group of 3-4 players. And....we didn't rely on a map and minis once! Yay.

Now...could I have run this game as-is with 5E? Yes, but with some minor work. I used a fair number of Pathfinder-exclusive monsters (such as a kappa, schir demon and draugr), and the characters so far include a changeling oracle, a "born-vampire" necromancer, and a dhampir rogue/necromancer.

Really....in many ways, the key thing that keeps Pathfinder appealing is it's large back catalogue of options. 5E will catch up, eventually. We can all hope.

2. Kobold Press is doing Tome of Beasts Kickstarter

It starts on Monday some time (I'm writing this Sunday). I am intrigued....300 monsters drawn from Kobold Press's studied history of D20 products. I am curious, given how close in format their stat blocks are to the core rules, if they have some sort of official agreement letting them produce the book.

UPDATE: Here's the Kickstarter. There's also a Book of Lairs in the mix.

3. Primeval Thule has it's PDF out

If you didn't back this you won't know that the PDF is already released to backers and I take that as a good sign it's on schedule for a December release. Yay!!!

4. Wednesday Group reaches Level 11 of Dysons' Delve

I've been running Dyson's Delve on Wednesday nights, and they hit level 11 last week. It's been a crazy fun straight dungeon delve, and although I added lots of entertaining subplots (enough so that fighting through a monstrous encounter is much less common than negotiating) they are now at the rim of the subterranean lake, and I am working on three new additions in the depths to expand the quest. For the record: they are now allied with the Black Dragon to aid him in finding a lost artifact in a dwarven king's tomb, located somewhere in the depths of the lake....so yeah, they're about to go off the rails from the prior 11 levels.



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