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Episode #1 of Chronicles: The Pathfinder Podcast is now up. It may a take a while to appear on iTunes, but for now, you download the file by clicking and saving this link:Episode 01

Thanks to Mark and a HUGE thanks to Azmyth, the man with the mixing board and more patience than I.

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.Robert

Congratulations, gentlemen! It's a podcast! (hands out cigars)

Those #$&&*!! blood-caked skeletons nearly TPKed our party, as I'm sure Mark remembers. We ended up with Zanamazar (my wizard) as the only PC on his feet. Someone suggested a tactic to me and we ended up trapping the things in the arrow-trap room. Skin of our teeth, lads, skin of our teeth...

For a first effort, very good indeed. I will give you my impressions and suggestions when next we meet at the gaming table.

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Visit beautiful Erastia!

Right off the bat, really good first podcast. You guys were organized, not too far off topic at any given time, and entertaining. I'm looking forward to listening to this cast, and I also have to say, as a general note, while I'm a big fan of Paizo, and I don't want to listen to a cast, say, bashing Paizo, I'm really glad that you guys come across as fans that can still be critical of Pathfinder as well.

Sometimes it sets me off when a cast is a little too sure that its subject can't possibly have any flaws.

General Discussion

I have to say, while I kind of understand that paladins at low level may not be too much of a threat to dominate a combat (our paladin actually needed that extra damage in Legacy of Fire for the BBEG of one low level adventure for our guys to survive), at high level, as someone that plays and GMs, I was quite worried about an extra +15 damage for a 15th level paladin with each attack, especially for a full attacking two weapon fighting paladin.

What was cited about designing an encounter for your players is true, but Paizo is also very aware of what their strengths are, and the Adventure Paths are their big sellers. In a set piece adventure, if you make the BBEG harder to kill to account for paladins, that means that it becomes much harder if the party does't have a paladin.

I guess, in the end, the bonus change doesn't bother me too much, and reassures me that I can use an existing adventure at a given level and not worry as much that the paladin is going to wonk the encounter difficulty.

Moving on to the Crypt of the Everflame discouse, regarding using the Dungeon flip mat, I tend to draw out my dungeon maps ahead of time for all of my adventures, using Gaming Paper, because drawing out the map tends to let me visualize where everything is in the dungeon as I'm recreating it. Because I draw the whole thing out ahead of time, I'll use sheets of black felt from the craft department at Wal Mart to cover any part of the map that the PCs can't see.

Non Player Friendly Commentary

I will say that I think in the modern era of swarms and the like, holy water, acid, or alchemist's fire is about as standard for adventurer's gear as 10' poles and door spikes were in the "old days." Not that I haven't forgotten these thing and been horribly crippled/injured/killed by this, but I usually assume that I screwed up by not getting more utilitarian gear.

In fact, there is something to be said for having to have some odd, not optimal equipment in order to deal with some threats. If every threat can be dealt with by a PCs that super specializes into something they are suppose to be good at, it feels less like a classic dungeon crawl to me.

I've also come to the conclusion that my combat types tend to pick up a morning star as a secondary weapon whenever they have a slashing weapon for their primary weapon. I was actually never against the "golf bag" approach to having to have multiple weapons, because I always thought it was a classic trope of fighting some monsters was to have various specialized weapons for killing them.

Of course, the skeletons mentioned at the end aren't nearly as much of a problem, even with their DR, if the party has a cleric. I will say that I think the assumption of this adventure, right or wrong, is that the PCs will have a cleric, which can be a deal breaker (see my comment above about paladins and designing encounters that more or less require you to have a certain class in the adventure).

I do think that the adventure suffers from a few things. One, I think some of the actual mistakes that popped up have to do with it being the first PFPRG adventure. I'm not saying that's a good excuse, just that its obvious that this was being put together during a very hectic timeframe.

I like that the adventure has a starting area with a least a bit of a fleshed out home base, but I do agree that it feels a little loosely connected to the other adventures, though I'm a bit spoiled since I generally run or play in the Adventure Paths, and its hard to create the same amount of connective tissue between this series compared to an adventure path.

Still, I'm a bit spoiled for "1st level really deadly dungeon crawl that starts off a storyline" with Erik Mona's Whispering Cairn that started off the Age of Worms AP, which did have a lot of hints of a greater world within it, on top of being a really deadly low level dungeon crawl.

I will say that, while this adventure is good, its not great. Its a solid dungeon crawl starting point for a campaign, but it is rooted a lot more in the actual Pathfinder campaign setting than some of the 3.5 Pathfinder adventures were, so if you like the world, its a better choice than some of the 3.5 adventures that feel more like "generic setting with proper names," since the theme and tone for various countries wasn't really set at the time the earlier adventures were developed.

I like the idea of finding the aforementioned bandits as a means of boosting XP and creating a bit more of a connection between the adventures.

I will agree with the flip mat being a bit of limited utility. I've used many of mine over again, but I've never used that because I don't know when I want to "spring" this one on my group, since it i pretty much a once shot map.

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"The things that we love tell us what we are."--Saint Thomas Aquinas

Thanks for the kind words.

Regarding striking a balance between constructive criticism and highlighting aspects of the module which were good is difficult -- this is especially so in a podcast aimed at suggesting ideas at how GMs might be able to better work with the module in their existing campaigns. Because we really don't want to be fanbois about this. If an adventure "sucks" - we plan to say so. Moreover, whenever your mission statement inevitably focuses on aspects of a product aimed at making it work better - or at least differently - you end up spending more time numbering a product's few sins, rather than singing the product's many praises. So while negativity can therefore be an implication or impression -- that was not our intent. We really did like Crypt of the Everflame and with some more work spent in integrating the module so that it meshes more seamlessly into the adventures that follow it, I think Crypt can prove to be an excellent module, potentially just as good a module as Whispering Cairn was.

On the flip-mat issue, the other thing to remember about the use one gets out of a flip-mat can't only be meansured in the number of sessions a flipmat gets used, but in the number of hours within those sessions that the flip-mat is used, too. So if you count up the sessions that something like the 2009 Dungeon Flip-mat gets used at your table, you will probably end up with a session count of 2 or perhaps 3 at most. That seems relatively low, to be sure. But when you stop to consider the hours of use you are getting out of that flip-mat throughout the session, where the map is the centre of attention continuously for about 10 hours or so, give or take, that improves the value in the product considerably. And there is a coolness factor in the ability to use the mat for the entire adventure, no matter the cost. What can I say? I love cool gaming stuff. And I do think the 2009 Dungeon Flip-mat rates as Cool Gaming Stuff™.

Overall, I think I might have preferred the flip-mat in non-laminated form to be bundled with the module as a $19.99 product, if I had my druthers. I think that would have struck a nice balance in my opinion.

Glad you enjoyed the podcast. For a first effort, we were satisfied that it didnt completely suck as much as we feared it might. We're still learning, but as we go along we'll hit our stride sooner or later. Hopefully sooner rather than later

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.Robert

Here's some advice: Don't rag on yourself about how bad your product might be because it's "your first time" and then put out a high quality podcast with the flow and organization of a veteran. Just like when you did it in high school, you just leave us saying "c'mon, that was not your first time. Who did you do this with before? Why are you lying to me?"

Thanks for the shout out, by the way. I don't know about you, but I get the impression people expect us to be rivals. Strange to think. How many 4e podcasts are there out there that get along swimmingly? There's plenty of room on the MP3 player for more than one Pathfinder podcast.

I think you handled the format very well. Not only was it exactly as you proposed but it exceeded my expectations. I didn't agree with the hosts' consensus that Smite Evil didn't need to be nerfed, but you reached a consensus I disagreed with in a logical and diplomatic way. Some podcasts are so frustrating to listen to when the hosts gang up on a topic and I'm left desperately wanting to say my peace. You guys handled the topic maturely and eloquently.

I enjoyed your look at Crypt of the Everflame. You covered it very well that despite never having looked through it myself, I had no trouble following and feel I could pick it up and run it cold now than had I read through it and ran it before listening.

The only real downside now is resisting the urge to listen to the full episode when the GM side of it covers something I'm playing in.

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We lost a lot of good hit points that day.

No, not really. Azmyth has a lot of experience in sound editing, but the number of hours spent in post-production on that episode to clean up Episode #1 and get it into a coherent format was in the dozens of hours Ryan. We’re noobs. We are, however, perfectionist noobs, so we certainly hope to improve substantially over time. It’s all Degrees of Suckage for the first 5-10 episodes of any podcast, imo.



I think it’s expected, yes. For all that, it is an AWFULLY popular RPG right now, so I expect that the game community can survive the rape and pillage of a game system that puts out an average of 150-180 pages per month of new rules and adventure material by two podcasts, not just one.

For that matter, it will suvive a third and a fourth just as easily, I expect.



Three hosts is a little awkward for some formats – but it does work reasonably well for “round table” discussions. I hope to shore up the Player’s Companion in subsequent episodes, though i always expect (and intend) for the meat of the show to be focused on the adventures.



Thanks. I’m glad you enjoyed it. We hope to improve that discussion in the future and perhaps release some encounters / proposed fixes and additions on paper – a “page 33” to these adventures as we go forward. That way, a GM will have a paper version of the proposed additions and alterations to assist them when running the module.



As I recall, you are playing in Kingmaker? We won’t get to Kingmaker for a while yet so I think you are in the clear. At this rate, we anticipate to cover Council of Thieves more or less in its entirety before we get to Kingmaker. Subject to change of course, but that's the current plan.

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.Robert

Hey guys, great first show! I have been podcasting for 2 years now, as well as I was in Radio for many years and I want to say, you guys nailed it. Great audio, good mix, good topics.

If going off the theory of radio, and that the average person listens to a radio station for 10 seconds, before judging it, I think you got a winner.

Thanks for the cast, I look forward to learning about PF.

Question: Is Piazo still going forward with the recreation of D20 Modern?

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DM Vincent
Executive Producer | Save or Die Podcast | Roll for Initiative Podcast
(570)865-4210 | http://SaveorDie.Info | http://RFIPodcast.com

That was never Paizo. Super Genius Games was trying to adapt the philosophy behind the Pathfinder adaptation of 3.5 D&D into their own Pathfinder-ized d20 Modern. They did not hit their original goal (raising about $10 000 of the $70 000 target) and so are assessing how to continue.

The geniuses, Stan!, Hyrum Savage, and Owen KC Phillips, really do put out top quality third party support for the Pathfinder RPG. I would love to see them be able to follow through with this project.

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We lost a lot of good hit points that day.

Ahh ok. Damn. I was looking forward to seeing this come out. Oh well

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DM Vincent
Executive Producer | Save or Die Podcast | Roll for Initiative Podcast
(570)865-4210 | http://SaveorDie.Info | http://RFIPodcast.com