The Pink Dice Chronicles

So we've lost a few players along the way, so now I am strongly considering combining the Pathfinder campaigns.  The Monday Night Pathfinder Pirates campaign has been taking place in the same world as the Friday Night Pathfinder campaign.  So how could this combination of campaigns possible happen?  First lets start with the current state of things in both: On Monday Nights, the crew of the Celestial Kyte is being followed by the massive Zelbinion as they make their way to the Cimarine Isles.  When last we left the crew, they had boarded a derelict ship out of Candlekeep that seems to have one sandman creature aboard that they've seen thus far.  He became very agitated about some scrolls and was threatening to drop a torch into the hold.  This is particularly frightening since the black powder wasn't anywhere else on the ship and yet there are numerous destroyed cannons strewn about. On Friday Night, the group has descended into a 10...

I am always looking for ways to make GM prep take less time and to make my game time job easier and quicker.  After all, a person has only so much time to put into game prep, and in game delays waiting on the GM are no fun.  Some of these I have found solutions for, and some of them I am still looking for. Creature Stat Mobility  -- There should be an easier way to bring creature stats into game plans.  Currently it means either copying creature stats into my GM notebook or scanning stat blocks out of books.  Why can't, for example, there be a common interchange format for Pathfinder stat blocks that come with all resources (including 3rd party ones) so I can drag and drops them into a plan. Tracking HP for Large Numbers of NPCs / Creatures  -- Tracking HP for a large number of NPCs/creatures can become problematic.  Stuffer Shack has a great set of markers for 'labeling' minis to keep track of them, but it still requires a separate sheet of pap...

I have always been intrigued by the role that myth and legends and storytelling play in building a world.  Maybe it comes from my fascination with Tolkien's Silmarillion or the greek myths I studied as a child, or perhaps it comes from years of pouring over anecdotes of famous historical figures, scientists, and mathematicians.  For me, to know history is really to know the personalities involved and how their unique perspectives on things interacted to make big things happen. In an RPG setting (Faerun, being my favorite currently), stories, legends, and background stories seem like an important element that gets overlooked too often.  Backgrounds woven together out of people and places and things help ground the maps of endless names and give the deities of character a form and flavor beyond things written on a character sheet.  The greatest asset of Faerun, which to a GM is also a curse, is the abundance of material that has already been written regarding the his...

I have been wanting to start a different sort of campaign for a while, something a little off the beaten path of traditional dungeon delves and overland adventuring.  Psionics Unleashed and the Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic books have been on my radar and my players' radars for a while.  With the release of Skull and Shackles and all of the related material, I finally found my new environment. Pathfinder Pirates on Mondays is going to be a more advanced, open, and yet casual RPG session for me.  I've opened up the books to include Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Psionics Unleashed, all the pirates resources from Paizo, and player's test for Advanced Race Guide.  In addition, I found a resource over the weekend called "Armada: Expanded See Combat and Rules Sourcebook." The game will be emerging guns, no lawful alignments, and is going to take place primarily aboard ship and seas. I chose the Sword Coast as a setting, since it is familiar, since I can cros...

The original shadow curse in the Dungeon of Death causes PCs to lose one prime ability score point per hour while in the dungeon.  What a pain!  That means each character sheet is changing constantly while going through the dungeon. So, talking with some of my players, I proposed this alternate Shadow Curse: Characters lose 1 permanent hit point per hour while in the dungeon. These hit points can be restored 3 ways: While at full hit points, take a potion of curse serious wounds (or better) Use a healing potion that restore ALL hit points. Any restoration spell Resting for 8 hours after leaving the place that is cursed. Keep in mind that the dungeon of death has over 40 rooms, and averaging 10 minutes per room, that is 400 minutes of in-game time, not counting rest.  That is 7 hit points lost.  Throw in a few rest 8 hour rest periods for mages, and that is some serious motivation to keep healing the hit point loss.

I was able to pick up an excellent copy of Dungeon of Death the other day on Amazon.  For being published in 2000, the copy I got was impressive, almost new.  The Dungeon of Death is the second major dungeon in Lurkwood, the first being the Dungeon of Ruins.  I wrote my own Dungeon of Ruins, but it seemed fitting to try to convert the original AD&D Dungeon of Death. Though conversion from D&D 3.x to Pathfinder is pretty straightforward, with there even being a conversion guide, converting AD&D is not.  There is not conversion guide, so far as I can find.  So basically I get to convert the entire adventure piece-by-piece using my GM instincts, a stack of bestiaries, and a lot of gaming paper. As I go through this process, I think I'll post my experiences on here, as reference for other GMs that might take on a similar conversion. First Impressions: There is nothing quite like a well-written AD&D adventure.  It has an entirely differe...

Yeah, I was one of the luck few to get the Tome of Horrors Complete  bundle hardcover and PDF.  I saw it, I got it, and by the time I got home from work it was sold out. The best part is that I was able to download the rather large PDF already, and the content is really cool.  Demons, undead, planar beings, animals and plants, playable races, trainable creatures, templates... it is all good. In fact, already in honor of this new addition (edition too! lol) in my hoard of Pathfinder Stuff, I already have a new adventure brewing. There will have to be time on a ship, time in the jungle, time underground, time near a volcano, and traveling of the planes. I can't wait.