Freeport Companion: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Edition

One of the books I just got was new companion for the Freeport setting that gives rules information for the Pathfinder RPG.  I've been a fan of the Freeport setting from the start and while I've yet after 11 years had the chance to run a game in the setting, in particular the original classic trilogy, I know I want to someday.  Given that most of the Freeport products are written using D&D 3E as the rules engine, and given PF is just an update to 3E, I figured the companion book I wanted for my Pirate's Guide to Freeport is the PF edition.  So what did I get?  This is a 175 page perfect bound book that talks about how to use the PF races and classes in the Freeport setting.  On top of that it adds five new core classes, an NPC class (the cultist), and five prestige classes.  That's a nice amount of crunch and options when combined with Paizo's PF classes and prestige classes in the core book, Advanced Players Guide, etc.  But wait, there's more.  This book also has rules for firearms in PF, since guns and pirates go together like rum and coke.  It has 48 pages of NPC stat blocks, a combination of generic thieves, pirates, merchants, etc. and a bunch of named inviduals from the campaign setting.  Lastly, the book has some beasts and an adventure, Fury in Freeport.  That's a lot and all of it combined makes for a book you really must have if you plan to run Freeport using the PF rules.  Are there negatives?  Yes, but they're cosmetic ones so far in my reading.  Recycled art including the same cover as the Pirate's Guide.  The book is all black and white inside, again with a lot of recycled art.  The map of the city hurts in particular by not being in color.  At an MSRP of $27.95 the price is up there with a lot of smaller full color hardbacks from WotC and others.  Still, I give this product four out of five pieces of eight.

New Products

I just received a box from Amazon with some new game books.  Those were the Plane Above and Plane Below supplements for D&D 4E, the Pathfinder RPG edition of the Freeport Companion, the Smallville RPG and the Aliens and Creatures box for the Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle 7.  All great stuff.  I plan to review these over the next several days, starting with Freeport Companion.  More to come.

Best adventure formats

Adventures come in a number of formats all with their advantages and disadvantages.  I'll group them as follows:

1) One shots - these are short, say up to about 32 pages, that stand alone.  Usually these can be played in a single long session or a few 4-5 hour sessions.
2) Series - these are usually trilogies of connected adventures which individually take 1-3 sessions to play.  While they can be played independently, they usually have tightly coupled plot lines.
3) Adventure path - this is the extension of the series, as seen with the numerous APs that Paizo has created, which basically take the characters from first level to level 15-20.  As with the Series, these are well coupled with an over arching plot line but in my experience the individual adventures that make up an AP can be made to stand alone fairly well.
4) Megamodule - unlike the AP, the mega module or super adventure is a single long adventure.  It usually is meant to take characters across a span of 4-8 levels and often consists of a single location like a giant dungeon.  These take months of regular play to finish.  Frequently, they are broken into several sections but it can be hard to break out a section.

I've owned all four types of adventure but my experience has mostly been one shots, connected together, more or less, to form a campaign, or the megamodule.  As a single product that makes for the best reading, I have to say I'm partial to the mega module.  That said, under my current situation I'd get the most bang for my buck out of individual stand alone modules.  With some good hooks it can be easy to integrate it into a longer campaign if desired.  A great AP in my opinion is really a bunch of one shots with a really loose plot line and great setting hooking them together.

In an upcoming post, I'll talk about some of my favorite examples in each category.

DMing

I certainly have enjoyed both running and playing in games over the years but in general I find myself behind the screen more than in front of it.  I think the reason here in part has something to do with something I heard someone say on a You Tube video I was watching recently.  During the game, the DM is always involved.  He's a part of every scene, every battle, every initiative count.  There's no downtime for the DM.  I think the other reason is just that the DM gets to play so many characters - and a lot of those characters are monsters.  Monsters are cool.  And it doesn't matter if it's just a dumb hungry animal or an evil vampire lord, there's fun to be had there and a challenge to adapt every scene.  Oh, and the DM can fudge dice rolls.  lol

FLGS - part 1

The Friendly Local Game Store.  You'll see a lot of discussion at times on line about the FLGS.  Saving the FLGS seems to be a cause like saving the whales to some people.  There's a signficant portion of the gaming community that looks at it like treason if you buy your game products online or through a large big box chain of book stores or the like.  I have my own feeling about game stores and over several posts I'm going to explore my feelings on them and where I think they are going.  I'd like to look at the letters of the acronym as a focal point for the discussion. 

Let's start with F.  Have you ever been in a game store that wasn't friendly?  Chances are high that the answer is yes.  And by friendly, I mean several things.  The most obvious is that the people working there need to literally be friendly.  They need to greet customers when they come in.  They need to be working and available to you if you have questions.  And when you are ready to check out they need to be ready to check you out.

Another aspect of friendly is the store itself.  This combines several things but the most obvious are the store shouldn't be overly cluttered, it shouldn't be overly dark, it should be in a good location, it should have good hours, it should be clean, and well organized.  I've seen plenty that failed on one or more of these points.

To be continued.

Campaign Settings: The Known World

While the first real campaign setting supplement I ever bought for a roleplaying game was the World of Greyhawk boxed set that was released in 1983, and Greyhawk is one of my favorite settings for D&D, I have to say that my favorite setting is still after all this time Mystara, or as it was originally called, the Known World.  From that first wilderness map in the Mentzer Expert set showing the nations, to include the Isle of Dread far south, it had such a great mix of locations to make your own.  As a setting, it always felt like it was yours to do with as you wanted.  That said, they did provide a great amount of setting detail in the form of the wonderful Gazetteer series, eventually 14 of them in all, all set in the same moment in time.  On top of that there were boxed sets, trail maps and a wonderful travel log in the form of the Voyage of the Princess Ark series in Dragon magazine.  Given the BECMI rules around which it was designed which supported characters up to 36th level, this setting really supports play of all levels from your basic dungeon crawls near Threshold in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, to claiming your own territory in Norwold, to fighting a war with the Master of the Desert Nomads.  I'll try to go into more details on the various parts of this world and the campaign products themselves in future installments.

Missing the magazines

I was a long time subscriber to the Dragon and Dungeon magazines from Wizards of the Coast and thought they were at their best when Paizo was publishing them.  The content was excellent as was the art.  Last night I was looking through one of my old issues and realized how I miss having those magazines in a physical form.  Don't get me wrong, there have been some good articles and adventures posted online on the DDI which I subscribe to but it's really not the same.  To use an analogy, the paper magazine issues were like albums - a whole collection of material.  Sure, each issue had its hits and misses but overall they combined to form a great product.  Downloading an article here or there is like downloading a single song and not getting the whole record.  I even miss the advertisements.  It's great to look at issues from years ago to see what was being sold at the time.  I miss getting those magazines in my mailbox each month.  I do get Kobold Quarterly which is well done and has a lot of the same feel but it's not up to the same production level at this time and with only four issues per year instead of twelve doesn't get me my fix as often.  I'd love it if WotC decided to restore the magazines to the prime material plane.

Classic adventures

I have a large number of roleplaying game supplements starting with the first D&D adventure I ever purchased back in the early 1980s, X5 Temple of Death.  Back in those days we started originally playing using the 1981 Moldvay/Cook version of Basic and Expert on the living room coffee table after school.  I recall us playing B2, B3, B4 and X1 with that first campaign and set of characters.  We later played more first edition AD&D.  Looking back now it's really clear to me, that what defined the experience those days were the TSR adventures we all played.  There weren't 100 supplements with extra races, classes and spells.  There weren't dozens of published campaign settings.  But there were these iconic adventures with memorable encounters, great new monsters, and great villains.  Do you recall fighting Zargon?  Remember facing off against Strahd Von Zarovich?  Plundering the depths of the pyramid in Pharaoh?  I know I do.

Let the games begin

Here it goes.  This is my first blog entry in the new Dungeon Explorers blog.  This blog will mostly be about pen and paper roleplaying games but all manner of games will be sure to come up.