Search Results for: pathfinder

Modular: Pathfinder Planar Adventures

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For as long as it has existed, Dungeons & Dragons (and its spin-off game, Pathfinder) have not been about a single world, but a multiverse of different worlds and dimensions. The entities that exist within these realms can be good or evil, or sometimes merely strange and exotic. But regardless of their precise nature, they are distinctly other than us, because these different realms and dimensions are governed by rules different than event he fantasy rules that govern the main adventuring worlds. As Pathfinder…

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Origins Game Fair: Pathfinder Society Organized Play

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Earlier this week, I spoke briefly about attending my first Origins Game Fair event in Columbus, OH, over last weekend, and about the Origins Awards they handed out for best game products of the year. But I wasn’t there for the awards, of course. I was there for the games themselves. Origins gave the one of the first real opportunities in the wild to see the upcoming Pathfinder Playtest in action. (It has previously been available at GaryCon, PaizoCon, and the…

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Old School Role Playing, and Pathfinder by the Pound: Gary Con 2018 Report, Part I

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My favorite gaming convention is Gary Con, founded in Gary Gygax’s home town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 2009, the year after he passed away. I attended many of the early Gary Cons, but regrettably have missed the last few years. I’d heard the convention had outgrown the local lodge and was now being held in a much larger venue a few minutes outside town, the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa, and I was very curious to see just how big it…

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Modular: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Announced – Never Say Never

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Yesterday, Paizo announced an upcoming playtest for a 2nd Edition of Pathfinder. Wow. For years, Paizo officials have said that there would never be a second edition. I suspect that all evidence of those statements have been scoured from the Internet. A quick search didn’t find any. There might have been qualifiers along the way, such as ‘unless the demand is too great’ or some such. But I remember the message as ‘We won’t do a 2nd Edition.” With the inference,…

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Modular: Picking Pathfinder

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I’m currently running a Swords & Wizardry (S&W) campaign for a few friends. I wrote here about why I chose S&W instead of my preferred system, Pathfinder. In fact, that post served as the genesis for this Black Gate feature,  Modular. But now, I’m going to look at some of the strengths of Pathfinder and why, when this S&W campaign is done, I’m going to transition the group to a Pathfinder adventure. So, though I had both played and run…

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New Treasures: Pathfinder Tales: Through The Gate in the Sea by Howard Andrew Jones

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Howard Andrew Jones’ fourth Pathfinder Tales novel, Through the Gate in the Sea, will be released in trade paperback by Tor Books next week. I made the long journey to his wind-swept writing tower to get the skinny for Black Gate readers. Here’s what he told me, in tiny script written on yak hide, lowered down on a long rope. I love the lizardman. Everyone’s favorite lizardman Jekka is a point-of-view character this time. And there’s a pirate captain, Ensara. He’s…

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New Treasures: Pathfinder Tales: Reaper’s Eye by Richard A. Knaak

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I’m not much of a fan of game tie-in fiction, to be honest, but I’ve been consistently intrigued by the Pathfinder fiction line, Pathfinder Tales. Tim Pratt’s tales of Rodrick the thief have been called “Fafhrd-and-Grey-Mouser-style sword and sorcery adventure” (SF Signal), and Lightspeed and Nightmare Managing Editor Wendy N. Wagner has been praised for her “Pathfinder meets Lovecraft” series featuring the notorious pirate Jendara, and Black Gate‘s own Managing Editor, Howard Andrew Jones, has produced four highly regarded Pathfinder novels, including…

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Tabletop Terror: Pathfinder Edition

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Humans hate to be frightened … except when we love it. There’s a small, sinister part of our brains that love terror and menace, not in real life so much as in our entertainment. This shows up regularly in our fiction and films, of course, as shelves are stocked with horror and thriller novels, as well as slasher flicks and suspenseful films and television series (some of which, I hear, even feature zombies). Over this month leading up to Halloween,…

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Why I Went Old School — or Swords & Wizardry vs. Pathfinder

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When I got back into playing RPGs, I chose Pathfinder over 4th Edition D&D (as a whole lot of people seemed to do). I was familiar with 3rd Edition and the plethora of rules, skill checks, etc… I’m still pretty well versed in Pathfinder, which is a great product, and I’m a big fan both of Golarion, the campaign world, and of the company, Paizo. Two members of my gaming group have never played an actual pen and paper RPG….

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GenCon: The Pathfinder Post (featuring Starfinder)

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For years, the publisher Paizo has been one of the major presences at GenCon. I still remember years ago (2009, I believe) coming upon their booth and seeing a pile of hardcover books for their new (at the time) Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook (now available in paperback, as well). I didn’t realize at the time that it was transforming the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons into a completely new and improved system of mechanics, and how many hours I would spend…

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