Good modules

I've read quite a few modules in the last year or two as I've gone through my various RPG trawls, and I've got opinions. Some of these opinions I already had, but some of them crystalized just based on the process of reading a bunch of modules in relatively close proximity, and it made me think on what I liked and what I don't. This isn't meant to be a review of any particular module, publisher, or anything else, just a general discussion (occasionally with examples) of what I like and don't like. Keep in mind that I've run very few of these modules. I'm not currently running anything except for one-offs here and there, because of my relocation a couple of years ago; I joined a group that was in a recently started campaign, so while I"m not exactly at the ground floor, they were only a couple of sessions in to a new campaign. Because they were already going, I felt like it was poor manners to try and immediately subvert the campaign and offer to run something myself, needless to say, so what I've offered to do was run stuff sometimes when the whole group is struggling to get together because of scheduling. 

Of course, since the beginning of the year, my own scheduling and stress level has been a nightmare. But prior to that I had pretty good availability and more demand for playing than I was able to get from the group. Two other people in the group were in the same boat, so we were talking about running a partial group campaign in between regular sessions in the main campaign. That hasn't actually happened, although at least in some sense, that's a good thing, because it meant that the two "flakier" group members have been participating a bit more than we anticipated, and we haven't had to cancel as many sessions. Of course, it's also been at least 2-3 months since we've been able to get together now... but I'm a big part of that problem myself with my insane travel schedule, work drama and extended family drama. (It's not all drama. A wedding isn't really drama.) Anyway, this is a larger sample Millennial-looking D&D party than we'd have; our smaller group would be me and two players, husband and wife, and all three of us are Gen-Xers in our early to mid 50s. But an image of a posing fantasy adventurer party is an image of a fantasy adventurer party, and I do at least appreciate the lower fantasy vibe of it with regular humans in regular clothes, more or less.

So, I've read a lot of modules. Some old modules. Many old style but not really that old modules. Many newer modules. Many Dungeon Magazine adventures. Adventure paths. Book-form campaigns. What do I like and dislike?

- Site based adventures are very limited in their ability to be entertaining. Most of them lack much context for why the site is there and why PCs would be exploring it. In some, this is explicit; DMs are supposed to provide that context themselves, or weave the adventure into their ongoing campaign. This is a bit of a cop-out, though. It's easier to change, modify or even ignore context that it is to create one from scratch, so I'd rather have some. 

- That said, some of those set-ups and context texts can be either pretty bad or overdone. There's no reason to provide historical context for stuff in a dungeon that the party has no way of ever finding out other than the GM simply telling it to them. Adding that just to entertain the GM while reading the module strikes me as honestly kind of silly. And overly forced or unlikely context doesn't really do anyone any favors either. It will certainly have to be ignored. At least create context that tries to be useful and interesting, not just self-indulgent or contrived.

- Also, just exploring trapped rooms stuffed with monster and treasure was cliche in the early 80s and many people eschewed the whole paradigm. It's still a problem. I just finished this morning, because I woke up almost an hour early and knew I wasn't going to fall back asleep, "Heart of Nightfang Spire", one of the early 3e adventures. It's very site based and has no context, and it was a pain to read, not very interesting, and I found myself wondering how I could possibly make it fun to run or play. The context really matters, because without it, it's just a game... you're not doing anything that feels meaningful to the characters, to the setting, or to the fiction. 

- Many designers are too afraid of railroads. Others aren't afraid enough. Having a plot, through-line of events, or something like that is not a railroad. Forcing players to stick to that regardless of what decisions they make is what makes it a railroad. Writing adventures that call for forcing PC actions is bad. That's a railroad in the making. Writing adventures that assume a certain sequence of events, but doesn't force it, is perfectly fine. In fact, that's what I think I prefer after reading all kinds of alternatives. Well-designed adventures will have some built in leeway; "yeah, we assume that the players will do this, but if not, here's some other material so you're not just on your own completely."

- Because this is the way that I like to consume modules, and it works best for me running them somewhat loosely, I don't need a lot of exacting detail about what your players will see "on the ground" with their characters; I need a looser format, where I can fill in stuff depending on how it actually goes at the table, what my PCs actually do, etc. I was somewhat surprised, and I don't think a lot of other GM's will agree with this necessarily, but I think that the format that WotC uses for their one-book campaigns is actually the format that agrees with me and my playstyle the most. That doesn't mean that the specific adventures or the content is the best, just that I like the format. ~200 page campaigns that are written somewhat loosely and focus at least as much on events and plot-point opportunities as they do on site exploration and things like that—that's exactly what I want. 

- Paizo's adventure paths are the second best format for me. I rarely can run them as is, both because they do often tend too often to be written as railroads, because there's a lot of stuff that I have to change, and because they're too long, too meandery while they lose the plot for whole adventures at a time, and because they're too enamored with dungeon-crawls for my taste. But format-wise, they're pretty nice, and I've seen lots of good moments and "stealable" stuff in the (so far) seven or eight full adventure paths that I've read all the way through. It is a bit intimidating to try and read a whole thing of them, though. A full adventure path is six ~100 page books; nearly twice as long as I really need it to be. Especially since the fiction I can take or leave, the monsters can be in the monster books, and the setting stuff is also mostly replicated or abbreviated versions of content that ... also appears in one of the setting books.

- Old school and old school like modules that are site-based and offer little or no context, backstory or much in the way of hooks other than "there's probably monsters and treasures and danger in here; go check it out because that's the game that I prepared, so if you don't, I got nothing" are my least favorite. 

- Of course, style and quality are different axes, and a module can be on the good side of one axis and the poor side of another, or vice versa, or good on both or poor on both. I hoped to like the early 3e modules better than I have so far, and given that I've read five of eight, I'm confident that that's not going to change. However, once we get past the 1-20 level "pseudo adventure path" modules, I think that the next batch of them, which were spread out throughout the entire "3rd Era" period probably vary quite a bit more. I've read Expedition to Castle Ravenloft before, and honestly, I doubt that the famous and well-regarded Curse of Strahd for 5e is much better. I guess I'll see when I eventually read that one, right? In fact, in general, far too many of the 5e campaigns are really just trumped up leftovers from classic 1e modules. The next one on my list, Princes of the Apocalypse is really just the Temple of Elemental Evil put into Forgotten Realms and written in, maybe, a format that I'll like better. But I seriously doubt that they've done anything terribly interesting or innovative with it. The original is highly regarded albeit often seen as somewhat flawed, but this oneis usually perceived as middling at best by most who've read and/or played it.

On a completely separate tangent, just because, I found this cover image of a recentish Call of Cthulhu book: talk about missing the point. Cthulhu is supposed to be a game about terror, not about being embarrassed because you had an accident in the back of your pants. Seriously, what in the world are these characters doing? If they didn't just have diarrhea in the woods, they're desperately trying not to. I've seen people try to defend it as pooping your pants is the reaction of a terrified individual. No. I mean, yeah, sure, but that's not the point. The point of horror game cover art is supposed to evoke the theme and tone to the audience who would buy it, and if the audience who would buy it is making fun of the cover art because it looks ridiculous, then that defense is a non sequitur and is dumb.

Speaking of Call of Cthulhu, I often listen to Graham Plowman's stuff while reading my game books (including right now while typing this post), and it's mostly all based on Cthulhu stories, and is deliberately designed for reading and gaming. He's my favorite of the amateur "background music" artists floating around out there, mostly because he tends to stick with sounds, themes and tones that I like the best—dark, moody and horror, with occasional touches of action and terrifying excitement. My only complaint is that he likes the theramin a little bit too much, which sounds kind of corny to me because I associate it with corny 50s sci-fi b-movies. He doesn't always use it, but he does enough that it stands out in certain of his longer tracks, like "The House on Sentinel Hill" and "Yuggoth."

Curse of the Brine Witch

I finished the first adventure of Return to Freeport, "Curse of the Brine Witch." It's actually a really good adventure, written by Patrick O'Duffy, an old-time Freeport campaigner who worked for Green Ronin for many years. Apparently, he's from Melbourne and also does freelance work for White Wolf. Interesting stuff. Regardless, the adventure is quite good. Although I feel that the hook to get the characters involved is a little weak and forced, that's often true for published adventures (including the original "Death in Freeport") so I'm not going to count that too much against it. A good GM needs to come up with tailored starts that account for the PCs he actually gets, which no published adventure can possibly do. Another point against it, although this is pretty common for Paizo products too, and it's a moot point for me, is that it requires you to own a few other books, including the big Pathfinder Freeport setting book (which originally retailed for ~$80, so quite a lot) as well as two of the bestiaries, 1 and 3. I know that it saves a page or two to not repeat stats each time they need them, but it's not really worth it; it requires that you buy more stuff, which limits how much people will want to buy this product unless they already have them or already plan on getting them anyway. Even though, like I said, it's a moot point to me because I do own the referred to products, it's still a hassle to switch between various products to run a game, and it's obnoxious to tell people that they need to go buy other expensive products to properly use the one that they're reading. Maybe that's a principled or even ideological stand to take, though. I dunno. I need to use the OGL and SRD to copy portions of the Pathfinder compatible stuff onto my website to be able to even refer to how to use my conversion, but I'm going to do that rather than just say, "go buy this other book and read those few pages."

Today was an interesting day of work. I left early because there was a department picnic. I didn't go to that because I had to call into three separate meetings during it, and I figured I'd go home rather than stay in the office to do that, when nobody else was really going to be there anyway. However, two additional emergency meetings came up, so although I had some disconnected free time that I didn't exactly expect, I also wasn't able to actually quit for the day until nearly 8:30 PM, which really sucks. But, I did manage, like I said, to finish this first adventure, which was shorter than I expected; about ~35 pages or so. If they'd added the statblocks that they referred to, which they should have done (even if they're in the appendix or something after all) then it would have been maybe closer to ~40 pages. The whole omnibus is about 176 pages, I think, which is shorter than most of the WotC 5e campaigns, and significantly shorter than the Paizo adventure paths. But, of course, that's not exactly fair. While an adventure path issue is about 100 pages, only about half of that is the actual adventure, then there's several pages of setting material, new monsters (many of which don't feature in the module; they're just there because the writers thought they looked fun), episodes of linked fiction, and all kinds of other material. Still; at ~40-50 pages a module and six in an adventure path, the Paizo campaigns, ignoring all of the other material, are still 240-300 pages or so of module material; at least a third longer than this one, and maybe even almost twice as long. This doesn't really compare in size to a Paizo adventure path after all; it's not even as long as their earlier Black Sails Over Freeport. 

I was also a little bit amused to see that they recommended using the fast advancement, so that the adventure will get you to at least third level. I just re-read that in my Pathfinder Core Rulebook read (remember that while I haven't read it cover to cover, I've had it pretty much since it was new, and have read many portions of it here and there off and on for years) and thought to myself that I'd likely take the slow method, and then nearly double the XP listed there, so that instead of needing 3,000 XP to get to 2nd level, 7,500 to 3rd, 14,000 to 4th, etc. I'd require 6,000, 15,000, 28,000, etc. To my sensibilities, the entire "Curse of the Brine Witch" feels like what a 1st level adventure should feel like, and I'd be wary of even suggesting that at the end of it, you should advance to 2nd level for the next one. At least in terms of scope of the adventure, if not necessarily difficulty of the challenges.

I generated an image in Grok of the Brine Witch. Of course, Grok is the AI that, in my experience, is the least likely to actually do what you tell it to on image generation. I ran out of generations that I could use long before I got one that actually works; I don't know why it couldn't, despite very clear and repeated prompting, just have nothing but a gigantic eye inside the hood, or why the shark's teeth I requested around the eye and hood turned into a row of triangular decorations all along the edge of the cloak. Sigh. I only used Grok because I'd already used up all of my ChatGPT image generations. UPDATE: Got a slightly better one, and then hit my limit again this morning. Sigh. Anyway, I swapped out the image that I had for this improved version. This one just needs 1) I asked for it to be at night, and after a few tries, Grok completely forgot to do that, 2) I also asked for teeth around the eye, which Grok also ended up forgetting about, and 3) I'd like a little bit more brightness on the eye. It's a bit hard to see. Still, it's an improvement over what I had before. Honestly, maybe I should just be happy with what I got and not worry about the teeth, which Grok is unlikely to do well, I think. As soon as it lets me generate a new one, I'll try and get it done at night and otherwise let this one go. Honestly, I'm trying a little too hard to get this one done. It's just an image for this one post. I guess if I ever run this, I could use this as a player aid of some sort. I do like to have visualizations of what they're seeing sometimes.

When I first tried Grok for images, I quite liked them, but now I find ChatGPT reliably gives me my best results. If I do go for a premium account someday, that's the one I'd use. But again, it's not worth it for a minor toy. I don't need that many images, and even when I'm trying to correct ones that don't get it right, I'm OK with what I can generate already.

Maybe one of these days, I'll actually pay for a premium account so I don't run out after just a few images, but probably not. It's fundamentally just a minor toy to me, not something essential.

Anyway, I'd like to finish Return to Freeport by the end of the weekend. I don't want to overcommit, even to myself, and think that I'll get it done before then, but that's reasonable, I think. And 'll make a new post about module writing in general. As I've recently read quite a large number of them over the last several months, I've certainly developed preferences in terms of what I want a module to actually have and be like. 

New Conan animated series

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/tv-shows/conan-the-barbarian-animated-series-genndy-tartakovsky/

Pretty terrible article and a dubious premise to begin with. Robert E. Howard wasn't a novelist, and he's credited with creating sword & sorcery not sword & sandal, which is a completely different genre. And the idea that Conan "found love" with Bêlit sounds pretty silly and out of character to me. I think a lot of low status men are anxious to "promote" her to his equal for the same reason that they love Jirel of Jorey or other girlboss female characters... even though Howard never wrote her as such. I'm more and more irritated by the trend to try and make strong women characters by low status men who get turned on by them. Why can't women just be feminine? And why can't men just be happy with that? I mean, I realize why; it's because too many creatives are low status, but man is it irritating. Howard may have been low status in his way; he seems to have been obsessed with his mother, and never had too serious a relationship with any woman (although he did, maybe, have a girlfriend for a little while) but at least he understand masculinity and femininity. It must be a generational thing.

Not that Conan hasn't already been pretty poorly treated in anything other than the original stories anyway. Starting with the oft-times questionable "revisions" updates and edits of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the vast corpus of novels in the 80s, even the movies... even the popular one with Arnold... other than some of the comics over the years, I haven't been very impressed with Conan pastiche. Luckily, I've had the complete collection in three trade paperbacks by Del Rey for many years. In fact, I've got them "out" of their box and readily available. I might even re-read them again soon.

Reading

I am sick and tired of traveling. I'm sick and tired period. I rarely get more than 5-6 hours of sleep a night lately. Too much anxiety about work, about my house situation, about retirement and our debt, etc. Life as an adult hurtling towards retirement age and not really being prepared for it, as well as one who was kind of screwed over by one of my own kids who, in retrospect I have to admit probably has some kind of personality disorder like malignant narcissism or something, is really bringing me down. 

Anyway, it wasn't really my intention to whine about my anxieties, financial or otherwise. Maybe I'll get lucky and win a lottery or something, and I can retire early to a nice big chalet or timber home in Wyoming with no neighbors for at least a mile in every direction and more or less swear off people entirely other than my wife and some of the rest of our family in limited doses. And a vacation home in Destin for my wife, who hates the cold and loves the beach. What I really wanted to talk about was reading. More likely, I'll get a better job, make more money, and get ahead little by little that way. I actually am expecting a new offer shortly, and if not, I've got more irons in the fire still too. Sigh. No wonder I've always liked fantasy. Real life can suck, sometimes.

I got a "pocket" sized Pathfinder (1e) Core Rulebook, but I found that I didn't want to carry it around in my backpack, because it was starting to beat up the cover a bit. I also didn't want to read it in that format because the text is very small on my elderly eyes. Luckily, I bought a pdf years ago and never read it, so I fired up that pdf and am reading it there, when at home, and moving my bookmark in the book too, just in case I read the physical book occasionally. It's a little bit ridiculous that I've had this since... well, essentially since it was new, and I've never read it. But the entire Pathfinder 1e corpus is on my reading list now, in the form of five separate trawls (core rules, adventure paths, stand-alone modules, chronicles/setting, and companion books) However, that's a monster book, 578 pages or something (although that includes covers, title pages, and an index, etc. It's still big) so I don't want it to consume my Freeport Trawl which I was poised to finish shortly, with only one relatively modest sized campaign book to read. 

I took several physical books with me, Prisoner of the Horned Helmet, the novel that for some reason I'm struggling with even though I've read it twice before; once in the late 80s when it was new, and once in the late 00s or early 10s, so I know what to expect. I also took the 3e Pathfinder Campaign Setting which is the next book in that trawl, Oriental Adventures which I haven't read since it was new, but I figured I better read before I finally and very belatedly read the Rokugan campaign setting, all for 3e. (I've had the latter for probably twenty years and only flipped through it and read a few pages here and there.) I also brought the Pathfinder Core Rules book mentioned above, but didn't crack it open, as well as the early Companion series on Taldor. But I'll probably read pdfs more frequently, and the only book I finished while traveling was the next T. H. Lain ebook in the old 3e iconics ten novel series. I'm now half way through that series, for whatever that's worth. 

I want to finish the Freeport trawl by reading the Return to Freeport module, which was originally published in six parts (although I bought the "omnibus" pdf from DriveThru), read the next adventure path, Second Darkness, also in six parts, as adventure paths are, and read the big Pathfinder Core Rulebook, all on (mostly) pdf.

I added that image just for visual interest. I don't like making a post without an image. But that also reminds me, given that that prompt was something along the lines of D&D party in a dungeon confronts a Lovecraftian horror, that I also need to finish the Yig Snake Granddaddy campaign, which I've read half of. It comes in four books, and I've read two of them. 

The problem with having so many trawls, especially because the Paizo trawls have so much material in them, is that it feels incredibly slow moving to get some of the other trawls moving. I'd like to finish the next two there too, as well as read the next 5e campaign, Princes of the Apocalypse in the relatively short term. It'll feel nice to get the Freeport Trawl done so that I'm not juggling so many balls in the air at once. The Eberron 3e trawl is the next most reasonable to finish, but 3e Forgotten Realms and 5e campaigns aren't crazy, if I just buckle down on them. The 3pp trawl is also manageable, and I can massage somewhat what's on it as well, as some of the products aren't really campaigns in the traditional sense. 

And maybe I can reach hanging points on some of the others, like on the Pathfinder Modules trawl, I can at least finish the D&D 3.5 compatible modules and then feel like I've reached a half-time of sorts for that trawl. Same thing with the 3e Adventure Trawl if I finish the pseudo-Adventure Path modules, and then just have the stand-alones in chronological order left to read. I'm halfway to that half-time already, and those modules are pretty short. Maybe if I focus on them, I can feel like I can "rest" that trawl for a little while, at least.

UPDATE: Last night I wanted to read the first volume of Return to Freeport, but instead I read the classes chapter of the Pathfinder Core Rules. It was longer than I expected, because I had forgotten that many of the classes have much longer and more expansive a la carte menus of options than their 3.5 equivalents. After reading that, I didn't feel like reading anything else, so I watched some stuff on the TV and then went to bed. I'll be reading it today, though.

Golarion Remixed

I'm going to do it. I'm going to remix Golarion. I've already got a good start with some earlier noodling that I did, but I'm going to actually start with remixing the rules. I'm going to use the Race Builder rules to build the races that Old Night has, I'm going to tweak available classes, use E6, and otherwise tweak the Pathfinder 1e rules to work for my setting, if I wanted to use them, and then I'm going to take this House Rule document and remix the setting. Some of the elements of Golarion will get a minor face lift. Some will be ignored and will essentially not exist for all intents and purposes (although I don't think I'll literally excise them, I'll just deliberately ignore them.) Where Golarion has nations that I'm not interested in at all, Golarion Remixed will have blank spots on the map with nothing of interest. Like I did with Eberron Remixed, changing up the races and adapting it to a low magic dark fantasy vibe will naturally change the setting quite a bit, and Golarion Remixed will work perfectly well with the Shadow of Old Night rules... but it won't need to, because my Pathfinder 1e House Rules document will perfectly model the setting as well. They'll be two complementary systems for achieving the same thing, and the "DesdichadoFinder" house rules for Pathfinder 1e will also work perfectly for the Old Night setting too. 

But as with the Eberron Remixed project, the real fun is actually remixing the setting to fit the rules, including the allowed races and the changed assumptions about magic availability and PC power in general. If Darkness In the Hill Country is meant to be run in the Old Night setting with the Old Night rules, it could equally well be run in Golarion Remixed's version of Varisia with the Pathfinder house rules. That is, in fact, exactly the point. 

There may be some third party rules in play. I'll almost certainly use the Freebooter class from the Freeport book, because it's a great class, and I like it for the swashbuckler archetype more than I like Paizo's own Swashbuckler class. I may also take some of the Madness rules from that book as well. (After I compare them to whatever Horror Adventures has, and even maybe what the 5e SPCM book has to see which gives me the best experience). This will be an old-fashioned "binder of house rules". Well, maybe not that bad. I hope actually that by kitbashing and mostly by limiting what's available, I can do it in just a few short pages. But it's a weird exercise. This isn't the way most people would play a Pathfinder game. But I'm not trying to play a Pathfinder game, I'm trying to get Pathfinder to accommodate my specific tastes for a low magic, dark fantasy game with a low magic, sword & sorcery, dark fantasy tone and themes. Although 1e is arguably a little better at that than 2e or than D&D 5e is, it's still very much a game of Open Society, Diversity, Inc. super-heroes who are meant to appeal to the power fantasies of broken wokesters first and foremost, so it'll need some help to get there. But it's not a lost cause; the elements are there, you just need to go through them with a highlighter saying "don't use this, it won't work". And that's 95% of what I'll be doing; creativity by limit rather than actually building all that much that's new. 

Of course, although I'm pretty familiar with Pathfinder 1e from years of poking around it's PSRD and reading all kinds of setting and adventure supplements that are supported by it, I've never actually read the rulebooks in a the traditional sense. So this will also probably be a long-running work in progress, as Pathfinder 1e is infamous for, among other things, having lots of lots of rules spread over lots and lots of books. I've had many of the original core rulebooks in pdf for a long time; they were worth it to extract the art alone! but I've recently bought the pocket (trade paperback, really) sized core rulebook, and intend to start reading it shortly, cover to cover. But it'll be until I get to the Advanced Player's Guide and some of the other subsequent books that I'll really be able to start sifting through many of the options like archetypes and alternate classes, etc. 

I've created a new tag, PATHFINDER REMIXED and a new banner both. Some posts will merit both Golarion Remixed and Pathfinder Remixed, but many will focus on just the rules or just the setting, and therefore will get one or the other. 

Paizo Iconics - Imrijka

In spite of the fact that I'm not a fan of a sheboon half-orc girl, Imrijka actually has the best backstory of an iconic that I've read in a long time. Of course, she's a half-orc, so her parentage is kind of mysterious; she was turned in to a church orphanage as an infant, but she seems to have had a happy enough childhood, well-cared for by her "grandfather," an elder of the church. It's nice to see someone without a tragic, tortured backstory for a change.

That said, they did give her something interesting. As a teenager, her "grandfather" told her that three times mysterious strangers have approached the church attempting to adopt or claim her, pretending to be her parents (in spite of obviously not being), etc. She actually snuck out to try and meet with them, but the Inquisitors of the church interfered before she could have the tragic backstory of most of these other characters, and chased off whatever mysterious monster was trying to claim her. Because of this, she threw herself unapologetically into the church out of, of all things, what appears to be gratitude and appreciation. An actual psychologically healthy character? And a half-orc orphan raised by the church, of all things? Not at all what you'd expect from the woke mutants of Paizo.

Of the four that I've done today, she's by far the best one.

The Inquisitor class is also an interesting one, kind of like a cleric, but with less magic and more class abilities that are non-spell abilities. I'm listening to the long Carrion Crown actual play podcast by Hidous Laughter, and one of the characters there is an Inquisitor of Pharasma too. While I love the idea of an Inquisitor or Witch Hunter, I don't think this class is the way that I'd want to play that idea. Maybe I can find an archetype that does the job, though. There are plenty to choose from.

The next four iconics, whenever I get around to doing them, are Balazar the Summoner, Jirelle the Swashbuckler, Quinn the Investigator, and Oloch the Warpriest. I don't actually see most of those illustrated much. Balazar was even replaced with a different iconic summoner for 2e, and for my money, the Freebooter is a better swashbuckler class than the actual swashbuckler. But, of course, it's 3rd party, done by Green Ronin.

Paizo Iconics - Feiya

I suppose making the iconic witch be a woman is, probably, iconic, but once again, she has a bizarre deus ex machina tragic backstory. Bizarrely, she's a "Japanese" girl, daughter of two "Japanese" merchants who lived in fantasy Viking-land. Kidnapped as a child by hags, and tortured and abused for years, she somehow escaped after following her fox friend, and an avalanche or something killed the hags. Unexplained. Then she was on her own, with yet another tragic Cinderella backstory, just like at least half of these iconic characters. 

Sigh. She also has white hair, but I guess that's kind of a Chinese witch ghost story or whatever thing that probably makes her somewhat iconic of sorts. The reality is that the witch isn't an iconic archetype, except as exemplified by the hags in the monster manuals. Even the Asian witch character, which Feiya kind of looks like, is still a villain, not a PC archetype. Witches, of course, are also the darlings of weird Seattle hipster woke retards, because of Wiccans and pagans and other weirdos who claim the title. That said, mechanically, the witch is probably a fine alternative to the sorcerer or wizard. Maybe a bit darker and edgier... a little... but y'know, what are you doing to do? The attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of what was always considered black magic go back to Tolkien and his inversion of wizards. Even Merlin from Medieval romances was an often shady figure, although not always... they tried to rehabilitate the idea back then too.

Of course, if I'm playing a "guy witch" I'd almost certainly have to rename the class. I just can't imagine calling a man a witch. Warlock would probably be my go-to. But I don't really love playing spellcasters, so the idea that I'd actually play one is probably moot. The idea that I'd play any Pathfinder 1e game is pretty remote, and if I did, I've got tons of non-spellcasting options that are front of witch in line to be used.

For whatever reason, probably because of the popularity in general of the class, Wayne Reynolds did a refresh of it after a few years, so there are two Wayne Reynolds portraits of Feiya.

Also, for whatever reason, her fox turned from being a normal-looking fox to being some kind of weird magical being. Probably level differences.

Paizo Iconics - Reiko

The ninja is a superfluous class, in my opinion. Not only is it too culturally constrained, but it covers the same territory as the slayer does, only not as well. It also uses a pool of points to power abilities, which is a mechanic which I don't like. Whatever. It was inevitable that it be done. Complete Adventurer also did a ninja for 3.5, although it was a little underpowered. Rokugan also had a ninja, but of course, that makes perfect sense, since that class was the 3e version of Oriental adventures. 

Although I'm not a fan of all of the girlbosses in Paizo's iconic line-up, having been a fan of games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and King of Fighters for a long time, I have to admit that the girl ninja is kind of actually iconic if you're going to make a ninja. Not as iconic as the 80s video game character Shinobi or something like the 80s movie character American Ninja, but there are a lot of girl ninjas around. If they'd made Reiko more cute like Ibuki from Street Fighter, I might have actually liked her more, but instead she's got to be cynical and have a tragic backstory. Then again, you've got to have some reason to get a fantasy Japanese archetype into fantasy Europe, so there's probably only so many ways to do that. Orphaned and adrift in Andoran, Reiko comes across as more condescending and cynical than anything else. Too bad. Then again, they hardly use her, or the samurai, and for good reason. Ironically, she's probably more iconic, although she is in a narrow sense. 

Paizo Iconics - Lirianne

Her backstory is, again, not what I'd expect from a 1st level character. Did Paizo decide that the iconics weren't really meant to be used by players as example pregens, and just make them Mary Sue characters in the meta fiction of the setting? Yes, I think, obviously so. Anyway, the gunslinger was kind of an interesting class for a variety of reasons; flintlock firearms being something that Golarion didn't have right up until suddenly it did. Mechanically, it's a bit fiddly for my taste, with points to spend to do special tricks and stuff like that. That's the kind of thing that I never loved about Pathfinder 1e, and Paizo's approach to game design in general, but of course, firearms are also just weapons, and having used sources like Freeport and Iron Kingdoms for years before this, the idea of having flintlock pistols and muskets that any class could use was hardly a new idea to me. Darkest Dungeon did so as well, with a Musketeer class, and the Highwayman who used a flintlock pistol as his main signature weapon. I like the inclusion of guns more than a class that specializes in using them.

Lirianne is this kind of wild-eyed adventuresome person who feels, as most adventuring female characters do, more like a man in a woman's body than a woman. I expect that all of today's crop of four girlbosses will feel that way, although I don't remember the backstory (yet) of those to come. Anyway, she was from Alkenstar, but got magically teleported to Avistan in a crazy case of deus ex machina and now adventures there, I guess. 

Because she's kind of an esoteric character concept, there aren't a ton of illustrations of her. More than the samurai and ninja and the psionic classes, but less than the truly iconic iconics. Her get-up is obviously steampunk too, and I have to think that that was a design goal for her; to appeal to that aesthetic crowd. 

Of course, making her a steampunk pirate with some samurai armor who's from fantasy Africa is... really weird. She's yet another iconic who doesn't feel very iconic because the choices made to build her are simply too esoteric. I think the people writing these iconics got bored doing the predictable and... y'know, iconic things with these characters after a while, and had to go off the reservation more and more with them after a time. 

Freeport Trawl update

Could be a slightly high magic Freeport character concept...

Well, I finished reading the Freeport Bestiary last night which, contrary to my expectations, was not just a rehash of Creatures of Freeport, and I ended up having to read it pretty much entirely. There's a good 15-20 pages at the end that are just basic rules stuff, kind of like how the 3e monster books all explain (again) the rules for reading a monster stat block, so I skimmed or more accurately nearly completely skipped all of that, but otherwise, I actually read the whole book (minus statblocks. I always skip those unless I'm actually planning on running the monster.) It was a much more than I expected, and so I was, once again, pleasantly surprised by the Pathfinder conversion of Freeport. Green Ronin really seemed to believe that Pathfinder 1e was the true "heir" of 3e, I think. Although, of course, they were already doing a lot of their own things with the AGE system and whatnot, so their support of it was less than it had been during the d20 boom, but their best material seems to have been their late Pathfinder 1e stuff. They only had one half-hearted attempt to dip their toe in the 5e market; a conversion of their first slim adventure, and have left Freeport entirely once Pathfinder migrated to 2e, other than apparently a vague allusion to it in some form or other in their Fantasy AGE stuff. I'm not interested in their Fantasy AGE system, which simply replaces everything else already in the market with a woker system, so I won't investigate any of that, I don't think. As I'm getting to the end of my massive Freeport Trawl, I'm finding that the setting is getting kind of played out. The exact same problems that I anticipated would be its downfall are, indeed, its downfall—increasing wokeness over the years, too much conflict in tone, and somewhat surprising to me, too much insistence on not just advancing the meta plot, but while doing so, changing the nature of the setting rather dramatically and adding all kinds of new elements which we're supposed to pretend were just always there. (Island trolls, for instance? Whiskey tango foxtrot.)

I also skimmed the Freeport Companion: Shadow of the Demon Lord or however exactly you want to title that book. I marked it, but kept it in gray, because I didn't really read it, and I confirmed that it was just system-specific mechanics, a bit of talk about how to fit setting elements from Shadow and Freeport together, which I wasn't terribly interested in because I still haven't read Shadow of the Demon Lord and don't know or care much about its setting, so there wasn't any need to (re) read much of the text there. I also was trawling through the Green Ronin storefront, and realized that there is, in fact, at least one RPG product for Freeport that I was missing from my trawl; a Pathfinder book called the Player's Companion to Freeport. I presume that this is similar to the player's companion books that accompany each of the adventure paths, but on looking at it in more detail, it looks like just a portion of the updated Pathfinder Freeport: City of Adventure book, and none of the material in it looks original. In would serve, I suppose, mostly as a replacement for the Pathfinder Freeport Companion with the updated rules, but missing the Madness rules and the adventure, I think. In spite of the oversight in leaving it off, I don't think I'm missing literally anything by skipping it, as everything in the table of contents appears to be a repeat of something I've already read.

By jumping ahead and skimming the Demon Lord companion, the only thing left to read in the trawl is the Return to Freeport mega-adventure, originally published in six parts like a Pathfinder Adventure Path... although much slower. The first two adventures were published in 2016 (I didn't look up the months), the second two in 2017, the fifth one in 2018 and the last one in 2019. By then, Pathfinder 1e was about done (same year, I believe that Pathfinder 2e was released) and it missed its chance, probably, to be a significant product for the game line by virtue of its poor timing. Maybe that explains it; slower sales, bad timing, and a renewed focus on their own products, plus more recently the debacle with the Diamond distributor bankruptcy, but Freeport does seem to be well and truly finished, and I will have read everything published for it when I finish these last adventures. Although I bought the omnibus from DriveThru on pdf, it was originally published as six discrete titles, so that's how I put it on the trawl, and as I finish each section, I'll write them off as if I'd read an entire "book" even though I'm still in the midst of my actual book. 

As usual, diving into Freeport tends to make me want to re-read Five Fingers: Port of Deceit again. I may put that on my physical game book list again, because, y'know. It's a great book. I re-read it recently enough that it's on my tracker document that I've been keeping since 2023, but at the very beginning. Although it'll set me back a bit on reading something else, I'd rather read something that I really quite like than knocking off stuff that I'll probably be more ambivalent on just to say that I finished it. I'm sure I'll enjoy re-reading this more than I'm enjoying my re-read of Races of Eberron for instance. 

The real intimidating trawl is all of the Pathfinder stuff, even though I've broken it up into multiple discrete trawls; one for the rules, one for the adventure paths, one for the stand-alone modules, one for the Companion line and one for the Setting line. At the rate I'm going, I'll still be reading those in ten years. Which is ironic, because the likelihood of me actually playing or running Pathfinder 1e is very low. Still, seeing it as an iteration of the d20 system which I played for many, many years, I quite like it. There's things that it did that I wouldn't have, but mostly I've come to agree that it does seem to be an actual improvement at the end of the day over 3.5 in most respects. I'm not thrilled with the bump in power level, when I think that d20 was already arguably an un-needed bump in power level vis a viz D&D as it had been before d20. I almost think that I'd prefer a hybrid of Pathfinder 1e and 3.5; races from 3.5, classes from Pathfinder, the skill consolidation and the CMB/CMD from Pathfinder. And, of course, playing with non-power gamers so that the broken builds and combos that seem to have plagued discussion of the game are a moot point because your players are really only interested in the roleplaying opportunities of the mechanical chargen options, not creating broken combos or munchkin builds. 

Races of Eberron

I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of the four Eberron races, warforged, shifter, kalashtar and changeling. I wasn't sure if it would actually be able to parse that, but it did OK. The changeling is the only one that it didn't really understand, and I wasn't super pleased with either the shifter or the kalashter, but y'know. Whatever. It's just to add visual interest to the post.

I've been reading Races of Eberron and I'm reminded once again that I'm not really a huge fan of the signature races. Even the ones where I like the concept, I'm often not a fan of the mechanics, which are often more fiddly than I'd like. Let me talk about the four races and tell you what I think of them.

Warforged: I don't like the concept of the warforged, actually. They are probably the most signature of the signature races. They're really kind of a pain to use, though. From a roleplaying perspective, they aren't necessarily a bad idea. but I'm not really a fan of them. Fantasy robots animated by magic. They have much of the exact same vibe as emancipated robots in many science fiction settings. But mostly I just find that the mechanics of playing them are kind of a pain, and the concept doesn't fit D&D to me, and I just don't really like or care for them. I can, however, at least understand why they're important to the setting, and why someone who doesn't mind the mechanical nonsense around healing and whatever might find the idea of roleplaying one to be interesting. 

Shifter: This is one that I've always really love the concept of the race, but it's also a bit complicated to build, with lots of things to choose from; but if you set it up where it's a pretty standard shift, kind of like a barbarian rage, then it probably works OK. I do like the concept of a "wild man", whether associated with lycanthropy like the shifters or not a lot. It's really up my alley (although I don't love the image ChatGPT just gave me. I'm going to guess that that character is shifted which is why she looks more inhuman.) Their communities of xenophobic introverts who hang out in the forest and avoid everyone else doesn't really lend itself to being eminently role-playable, but I guess maybe that kind of depends on the campaign.

Changeling: This is another great roleplaying race, if you want to play a disguised spy or something. However, I can tell you by personal experience that you have to be careful to validate that your campaign will actually accommodate your concept, or you'll be pretty disappointed. My changeling rogue in Age of Worms wasn't meant to be a trap-finding, lockpicking scout, but more of a con artist and disguised spy or criminal type, but it turns out that that didn't matter at all, and I couldn't use the character the way that I intended to. That's the one that I ended up retiring shortly after getting to Greyhawk City and replacing with my shifter barbarian/ranger/stuff character. In most respects, he was more straightforward, at least from a roleplaying perspective. I had a prestige class that basically gave me the Pounce ability, and I'd just shift and rage and jump in and do maximum damage as fast as I could. I'm still a little bit regretful that I didn't get the roleplaying opportunity to play the changeling that I wanted to. I've also seen a changeling rogue played without any particular roleplaying hook; he just liked to use his disguise ability to impersonate enemies and do stuff like that. I think this is a pretty fun race.

Kalashtar: I don't care for this one, and it really doesn't feel like it belongs. Because their whole thing is that they're from the other side of the world, but a few of them have started to trickle into the main Eberron area (Khorvaire) I've always felt like they came across as very tacked on, and they don't really have much of a place in the normal setting that isn't kind of forced. Also, the weird, peaceful "shaolin monk elves" kind of vibe that they give off is one that I don't like. I do like that the guys, Keith Baker and whomever else he worked with on this one, deliberately wanted to find a race that was set up to use the psionics rules, but I think the decision to make them too foreign and really associated with Sarlona, which is far enough away to almost be it's own sub-setting that's not really related to Khorvaire except by awkward fiat. 

I'd really like to finish Races of Eberron this week, and maybe I can get quite a bit read while traveling. I'm taking tomorrow off to drop my wife off at the airport, but I actually don't have to take her until late afternoon. It's about an hour and a half to two hour one-way drive, depending on traffic. so I'll still have most of the day to sleep in, maybe pack my bag, or at least half of it, and have a couple of hours to read before I have to do that. And then I travel the next day, but again it's late in the day, so I'll sleep in, finish any last minute packing (like my toiletries that I'll still need to use) and I'll still have some time. With any luck, I'll actually finish it before I leave, and I can pack it away and read something else on the flight.

Snakes, Deep Ones and undead and stuff

I've read half of the Sandy Petersen Cthulhu Mythos Saga #2: Yig Snake Granddaddy. In spite of it's stupid name, and other problems, I like it better than Ghoul Island so far, and it's made me feel more "friendly" towards the concept of snakemen than normal. I've always liked the idea of snakemen, of course, but I was reluctant to do too much with them for a long time, only adding them to the monster list after reading several years ago the Paizo adventure path Serpent's Skull. I'll read that again (once I get to it on the trawl, so not anytime too soon), but even reading what I did of the SPCM made me jones for a bit more snakemen. I pulled out my old Dragon Magazine #305 from way back in 2003 which had a Robin Laws penned Ecology of the Yuan-ti article in it. I've always liked Sertrous at least as much, if not more, than any of the other Elder Evils in the book Elder Evils. I've been as anxious to read the Serpent Kingdoms book in my FR trawl as pretty much anything else on the trawl, honestly. And, of course, "serpentfolk" feature prominently in the Freeport material, which I'm finally getting close to wrapping up on. 

Both Paizo and Green Ronin had to go back to the original Robert E. Howard well for serpentfolk, because Wizards of the Coast neglected to put yuan-ti in the SRDs for either 3e or 5e. I thought this was curious and kind of petty, given that yuan-ti were clearly themselves just remixes of Howard's serpentfolk from stories like "The Shadow Kingdom" and probably degenerate forms in "Worms of the Earth" and also mentioned prominently in the ghost-written Lovecraft story "The Mound".

Anyway, I really like the idea of these prehistoric snake people lurking in the shadows, and I've got them integrated into my own Cult of Undeath campaign, where they take the place of Deep Ones (fish people) on my Innsmouth alternative. Instead of fish people in the ocean near a coastal town, I have snake people in a swamp near a town that's on the edge of the swamp, but otherwise, they play a very similar role. I actually prefer to make the majority of them more like yuan-ti purebloods, i.e., mostly human with only a few reptilian features, like funky snake eyes and a slight greenish tint to their skin or something like that. But there has to be actual, original snake-people too, and I've generated these few images of one of their cities deep in a tropical or at least subtropical forest. 

 Although I'm doing snakemen to replace my Innsmouth, Deep Ones are still important to me. Here's some images. I can't take too much credit for them, even for generating the prompt that made ChatGPT create the image, but I'm using them shamelessly nonetheless.

And undead, of course, are always one of my favorites. Here's a few images. Again, I didn't create these. AI did, but someone else created the prompt. I screen-capped them from a YouTube video just to have a few undead images.

There's a pretty good lore video that just went up recently on Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant, the great necromancer of the Golarion (Paizo Pathfinder) setting. It also made me want to read some of my Nagash lore, the great necromancer of the Warhammer Old World setting, but I can't find a decent YouTube video of it. I'll probably have to dig around in my boxes to find my old copy of White Dwarf 173, which reproduced most of the lore text from the Warhammer Undead Army book, which came out about that same time (mid-1994.)

Which makes me perhaps want to propose Cult of Undead rather than Curse of the Corsair Coast to my gaming group as an alternative when the flaky ones aren't there. Whatever. All of my campaigns interest me, so I can run any of them. But right now, the snakes and the undead in particular are catching my eye. 

Freeport, actual plays and music

A number of updates, some personal, some just hobby:

First, we've had several months of family drama involving my oldest son and his wife. Despite years of probably denial on my part, it took a real catastrophe in his life for me to connect the dots and admit that the two of them probably have some kind of clinical personality disorder. In any case, not only have we had tons of stress and anxiety for the last several months, but I've also been worried about our house, which they've been living in, up in Michigan where we used to live. Now, we heard finally that they decided to get out, stop paying us rent, and we've got about two weeks notice. In July, we'll have to spend some time (and luckily we have some friends to help us with that) fixing up a few cosmetic things as cheaply and quickly as we can and putting the house on the market. Everything that we're hearing is that it's a seller's market right now, and we can hope to make off relatively well, sell very quickly, unload the burden and make enough over and above what we still owe that we can put a nice down payment on another house for us, finally. Although... we literally just signed another year lease on the house we're renting, so we won't be moving right away. But if we can get the house sold, and get our finances a little bit more organized, then we should be able to get into a house again about this time next year, with a hopefully significantly lower payment, much shorter term, and a plan to get completely out of debt entirely so that I can actually afford to retire when I'm old enough to do so. I mean, I'd love to retire now, while I'm still young and healthy enough to enjoy my retirement, but after the drama and worry that I've been through the last few years, this is a good outcome for me. Still have to actually manage to sell the house, of course, but every indicator I can see looks good on that front. With at least one significant long-term worry looking to be resolved in the near term, I'm looking good going into the second half of the year.

Second, I've been listening to a few actual play podcasts. The Red Moon Roleplaying rendition of The Enemy Within, the Hideous Laughter rendition of Carrion Crown, and alongside that one, there's The Zone of Truth; a kind of OOC supplement to Carrion Crown, and Evil Interlude, a kind of weird prequel mini campaign running alongside it as well. I try to alternate these, and then in between them, I listen to my hardtrance megamixes. However, those are too long. Those are all 20 songs long, which gives them an average length of about two hours or so. I'm thinking about redoing them and instead of ten mixes two hours long each, I'll have twenty mixes about an hour long each, with ten tracks each. This will be better as interludes between my podcasts, which are also about an hour to an hour fifteen or so in length (although I play them at 1.5x speed.) That will also give me the chance to clean up some of my older mixes, which are a little bit more clumsy, sometimes. If I do it quick and dirty, I just split the files and mix in the ends and beginnings of the tracks right in the middle, but I'd like to actually redo the mixes from scratch. I might even reshuffle a bit what tracks are in which mix. We'll see.

On that, though, I'm enjoying these podcasts. I tend to say that RPGs are not a spectator sport, and I simply could not get in to Critical Role. However, I think the combination of making them shorter (about an hour rather than four) and having them be audio so I mostly only listen to them when driving, when I'm not going to be distracted by my phone, my computer or something else sitting around close at hand works. When I try to watch video actual plays, I find that my mind wanders and I get really distracted by... well, really by pretty much anything else around me. Podcasts work much better than video actual plays, at least for me. Video actual plays rarely, rarely work out for me. The only exception, although I never finished this, was wasd20's Rime of the Frostmaiden actual play.

Third, I'm about to finish the big fat Freeport book. I've only got 25-30 pages left, and I'll finish it for sure tonight. In fact, I'll make sure that I do, even if I have to stay up late to do so. In any case, that means that I'm on page 512 or whatever exactly I'm on of 540 or whatever exactly it is, and I think that I can effectively review it, or at least make a comparison to earlier products that it kind of replaces. Compared to The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, it advances the timeline and makes a few changes. I like that they took the time to make these changes, but most of them I don't actually care for or at least care about. I'm not a fan of the fact that they 1) greatly increased the population of orcs and goblinoids and made them a kind of obvious metaphor for black people and/or immigrants. Although, because they're orcs and goblinoids, they inadvertently make the conservatives' case for them, on accident without realizing that they've done so. They also play right into the hands of the narrative that it's liberals who are racist trolls who think that black people are like orcs. The whole thing is a somewhat amusing charlie foxtrot on the allegory that they kind of obviously were trying to make. 2) created new races, like the island trolls, which I have no use for and don't know why they suddenly came to prominence out of nowhere, 3) created this odd Salt Curse thing, but then it's almost just an offhand kind of thing with no explanation, and it's easily (and probably prudently) ignored. I feel like the city sections are just a bit lighter, but I really need to compare them again to see if some of the details were changes or are missing.

The mechanics stuff was substantially updated from the Pathfinder Freeport Companion, and I'd say improved significantly. Every prestige class and some of the base classes were changed to archetypes, and the Freebooter base class is all new, and is honestly one of my favorite 3.x classes, serving as a great alt.swashbuckler.

Mostly the presentation is improved; it's all color, for instance, and most of the art is new. I do miss some of the old art... but then again, I also have the old book, so "miss" isn't really the right word. There's a new adventure module at the end of the book, which is what I'm finishing up right now. It's actually quite long; 50-60 pages worth, but it's curiously kind of poorly organized, and it's not at all my type of adventure, being a scavenger hunt where you go all over town solving puzzles. It's probably my least favorite, or close to, of the modules/adventures for Freeport that I've read as part of this trawl.

It's gratifying to be (almost) finished with this. I'll only have to read the Pathfinder Bestiary, and I may skim that because I imagine that much of the material has already covered in earlier products. Then there's the Shadow of the Demon Lord Freeport Companion, which I can probably skim because, again, the companions are all pretty repetitive. The only thing really to read is the combined Return to Freeport since I'll probably skim rather than read cover to cover the remaining two titles. I expect that mostly that's repeating material. 

Once I'm done with the Freeport trawl, I'll do a big wrap-up post and maybe a high level 5x5 adaptation of it into my Curse of the Corsair Coast. And then, I'll pivot, I think, to the Eberron and Forgotten Realms trawls—although first I'm trying to finish reading the SPCM second saga about Yig and time travel, and read the next Paizo adventure path, Second Darkness. I actually brought Races of Eberron with me to work in my backpack today, although I didn't end up getting it out at lunch because I was listening to a podcast instead. I've already read a fair bit into it, so it's been started. Getting whole trawls finished and taken off of my page list (although I won't delete the pages, just the link to them.)

UPDATE: Yeah, I finished the book early. The final adventure was disappointing. The adventure included with the companions is way better. Heck, most of the adventures in Tales of Freeport were way better. Actually, most adventures period are way better. There are some good Freeport adventures. A poorly conceived scavenger hunt who's main purpose is really just to give you excuses to go to a lot of the writer's favorite haunts in the setting isn't one, though. Maybe I'll do a palate cleanser and read a short 32-page module or something before diving into whatever is next. It's Races of Eberron in physical books, although I also added the next short Pathfinder Companion book, which is Taldor, Echoes of Glory. As with the Osirion book I recently read, there's a larger, more fleshed out Pathfinder Setting book that came out later, but y'know. It was nice to have something to start with in the meantime. I'll be honest with you, though—by far my favorite parts of Golarion are Varisia and Ustalav. Most of the rest of the setting could get bent as far as I care. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I doubt I'd use it for much. I really need to start the next adventure path.

But not tonight. I'm tired.

Freeport Pathfinder and E6 Low Magic

I just finished the chapter on Freeport Classes, so I'm getting near the end of this monster book that's twice as big as most of my other books. I had thought that it would mostly just reprint two sources: 1) The Pirate's Guide to Freeport and 2) Pathfinder Freeport Companion. I was surprised—mostly pleasantly—to find that this was not the case. The Pirate's Guide stuff is largely intact, but there were many minor updates and changes. This wasn't necessarily good nor bad; why did the Union guy die and his widow is now taking his place, for example? I don't remember reading about him dying in one of the adventures, so I think that that's just meant to both advance minor details to make the setting "feel more alive" from a meta perspective, and I also suspect to eliminate another strong (albeit a liberal) male icon and replace him with a woman. Some of the other changes were more consequential. Why is there a new third crime lord competing with Finn and Mr. Wednesday? (None of whom are anywhere near as good as the four crime lords from Five Fingers still. Sadly.) Why are there now a lot more orcs and goblinoids than there were even in the Pirate's Guide, which is already a lot more than there were in the original Freeport sourcebook? There seems a concerted effort to make liberal themes more front and center, because in spite of the fact that they are orcs and goblins, this is clearly meant to be a morality tale of sorts around immigration, racism, etc.; although they haplessly kind of demonstrate the conservatives' point while doing so, even though they clearly expect you to take an NPC liberal perspective on it. As an aside, because of this, the Freebooter's seat on the council, which has a three year term limit and so needed to have a different NPC in it, now has Captain Scarbelly, a notoriously villainous orc captain from earlier in the game, shown prominently on the anniversary omnibus version of the original Freeport trilogy.

I was pleasantly surprised by these kinds of developments, you may ask? I suppose. It's pleasant to see that they actually took a look at the text and didn't just replicate it. Many of the changes that they made are not ones that I personally would have made, but others are interesting, and I applaud them for making the effort anyway.

The rules were also significantly changed, probably because of more things that had come out in Pathfinder since the original Pathfinder companion. There's a new base class, the Freebooter, that kind of combines the corsair and assassin into one flexible a la carte menu version. The corsair does still appear as an archetype instead of a class, as does the survivalist, and most of the prestige classes. I didn't notice too much different with the monster hunter class, but I didn't really check, and the noble seems to have been substantially restructured. The Freebooter is actually, as written, a great alt.swashbuckler class for use with the PF1e rules, and I'd highly recommend it as such. It has a more traditional feel than the swashbuckler too, which is kind of a fiddly-looking class to play, where you have a pool of points to spend, etc. This one just has a big menu of a la carte options to pick from, giving it a flavor somewhere between fighter and rogue, but with the fighters' BAB and hit die, and lots of ways to actually build it. 

In fact, they didn't do any prestige classes at all, converting all of the ones that they used to have into archetypes. I kind of think that's what Pathfinder should have done in the beginning; replace prestige classes with archetypes. I'd modify my E6 low magic rules to say that this is actually how you should do it; not use prestige classes at all, and just open up the use of archetypes. I'd also say, although not force, that players consider higher level (than 6) class abilities as your first option for feat selection; continue taking those class abilities, in order, as if they were feats for your post 6th level advancement. Sometimes you need to throw in a feat too, but I think a more "bounded accuracy" feel can be maintained by using E6 and continuing to gain class abilities.

Of course, this applies to non-magical classes. It remains the only way to cast higher level spells that you have to treat them as rituals/incantations. But hey, lower power and bounded accuracy isn't the only goal; lower magic was obviously always a goal too, right? Speaking of which, the noble offers an ability to become a minor spellcaster which I could take without skipping a level. It becomes another alternative to spellcasting where you can get some magic without having to use the spellcasting classes. Another plus. 

UPDATE: As another aside, I see the Pathfinder 1e rulebook at Half Price Books selling for $12.99 with $4.99 S&H in Very Good condition. I doubt I'll ever play it, and I wonder if I'll ever even really read it, yet I'm very tempted to buy it because having it as an actual book instead of a pdf seems much more solid. Sigh. I have enjoyed having this big Freeport book, for what it's worth. Even if I don't ever really need that either. I'm really motivated to try and finish the Freeport Trawl entirely since I'm so close to being there. I've only got about 100 pages left in the big 540+ page book, then the new(er) Freeport Bestiary then the big single book AP Return to Freeport, and then I can skim the Shadow of the Demon Lord Freeport Companion and be completely done with the trawl! Once that one's done, it'll presumably be easier for me to focus on some of my other trawls, many of which have many, many titles to read, but others of which are slightly more modest. I think I want to stick to my roots just a bit, though, and focus on Eberron 3e, Forgotten Realms 3e and the Paizo Adventure Paths before getting too involved in, say, the Paizo Companion Trawl, or the Goodman Games module trawl, both of which I'm not even very invested in doing; I just thought what the heck, why not track them too.

I do want to dig more into the Pathfinder 1e rules and Chronicles/Setting line. And, of course, the Adventure Paths and I'd like to read all of the modules eventually. Those are higher priority than Companion, Society Scenarios, or some of the others, but the Adventure Path is really the top priority from Paizo.

What would I play, PF1e edition

I added a new tag; WHAT WOULD I PLAY? where I noodle for a post about potential character concepts that I'd like to play. These aren't necessarily for any specific campaigns, I just look at character concepts in rulesets that I'm familiar with and have characters that I think are potentially interesting concepts that I'd like to play, if I get a chance. I'll probably do two per, but I don't know how often I'll come back to this series.

Many of these concepts are ones that could be readily adapted to other rulesets, but I'm looking specifically today at some classes and archetypes in Pathfinder 1e that I'd like to play. All of these would, most likely, be human males. Pathfinder 1e is, of course, very similar to D&D 3.5. I actually think either of these three character concepts that I'm looking at today could be used in 3.5 as is, just adjusting for the slightly consolidated skill list for Pathfinder 1e vs 3.5 (Listen and Spot combined into Perception, Move Silently and Hide consolidated into Stealth, Jump, Tumble and Balance combined into Acrobatics, etc.) Of course, I'd otherwise see them as perfect characters for a PF1e adventure path character, and if I could find adaptions, I'd love to see these in 5e, with the archetypes maybe converted into subclasses. I don't understand 5e as well as I do 3e and Pathfinder 1e, so I'll leave that to someone else, however...

Concept #1: Brawler. I've kind of tried to like the concept of the monk, but I simply don't, really. It's too mystical with too much supernatural crap. I really want a more "western", non-supernatural alternative rather than a character who feels like he belongs in a Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat game. The Brawler class does this quite well. I actually don't think I'd even want an archetype, although if I change my mind and use one, the Snakebite Striker is the one that I'd use, most likely. Using the Shield Champion as a kind of fantasy Captain America might be interesting. The Strangler would be an interesting one for a smaller group, especially if I can use him as a kind of murderer of sorts, although just as a UFC fighter who puts people into sleeper holds would be boring. And I don't know how often I'd be interested in playing a murderer. Maybe some kind of hit man of sorts? I dunno. The concept of the Strangler archetype isn't terrible and it kind of interests me, but I'm not sure where I'd use it.

I don't like Wayne Reynolds "Rhonda Roussey with short hair" illustration, but if it were a guy, it'd be perfect. The mixed martial arts headgear kind of thing that she has is kind of cool, though. Although it feels weird because in the fiction that characters like this are based on, we rarely see this kind of thing.

I used ChatGPT to generate a "Gaulish martial artist" and removed the tattoos, and got this image. It might be an interesting place to start. Although using metal MMA headgear might be interesting too.

It's interesting to me that this was done as a hybrid class between monk and fighter, but without much of the supernatural weirdness. Freeport did the same thing with their 3.5 and Pathfinder stuff. The Survivalist is another good western, non-supernatural fist-fighter, and in the Pathfinder version it's converted to an archetype rather than a new class. But I'd rather just use the Brawler class. Like I said, maybe with one of the archetypes mentioned, but if not, the base class as is looks interesting enough to me already.

Concept #2: I've always been a huge fan of alt.rangers, and the Slayer is a hybrid class that's like a ranger with some rogue-like abilities added too. It may be my current favorite alt.ranger, and trust me, I've played around with a lot of them! (The wildlander from the Midnight campaign setting was my previous go-to.) I like the slayer, again, as is, but the sniper is my preferred archetype if I pick one. Curiously, although I prefer more "jock" characters, and magic and supernatural abilities often are not my thing at all, the Stygian Slayer archetype is kind of a creepy alternative. Curiously, with some of these archetypes, the "ranger-ness" of the slayer is reduced. Without Track and a lot of wilderness kind of activity, is it even really a ranger, or just some kind of skirmisher? Ah, well; I'm on record as saying that I think the ranger is really more of a skirmisher than a "ranger" in most cases anyway, or at least that's how most people play them. 

I'm well and frequently on record as not being very interested in magic-using classes or spellcasters. But I also find the fighter to be, generally, too bland for my tastes. There's probably some archetypes in the Pathfinder 1e rules that make it workable for me, but I haven't looked in a long time, and I prefer these two hybrid base classes instead, if I were to actually make and play a Pathfinder 1e character anytime soon. 

I say all of that as I'm currently playing a 5e fire genasi sorcerer in my Tyranny of Dragons campaign, of course. There's always exceptions, I guess. Plus, we already had a rogue, a barbarian, a cleric, and a ranger in that campaign, so some kind of arcane magic seemed like what was needed when I joined. But again, martial with a twist non-magical "jock" characters are kind of my go-to.

Concept #3: The freebooter class in the big, fat Freeport Pathfinder setting book is a great option; another great alt.swashbuckler, kind of like a fighter with a lot of class abilities borrowed from the old assassin, the rogue and other similar classes. What would I do with this? Well, a pretty typical swashbuckling rogue, of course. Someone kind of like Captain Blood, or Andre-Louis Moreau (Scarmamouche) or D'Artagnan; a kind of flippant, merry duelist. As a friend of mine once opined on the classic 70s Three and Four Musketeers movie (absolutely brilliant movies, by the way) that as likeable and charismatic as the characters are, they are also kind of sociopathic, if not psychopathic, given how readily they'll kill someone for frivolous reasons, and take great pride in it. Mechanically, it may not be terribly different from the Slayer, but in terms of flavor, it's kind of a world apart. Although that depends, in the end, on which class abilities I end up selecting.

Now, I realize that none of these concepts; the brawler, the slayer or the freebooter, is a character concept in the traditional sense. It's a mechanics concept, i.e., what mechanics would I be interested in playing. I'd still need to come up with a character concept to back up the mechanics. But that's often how I like to build; either do the two in parallel, or come up with a mechanical concept that looks fun, and work from there on what exactly the character is like.

I'm also not a fan of over-developing backstories. I prefer brief and broad character concepts, and then I work on what the actual character is like in play. Think of characters like James Bond, for instance. He doesn't need backstory, and in fact, is probably a worse character if you try to saddle him with one. Conan too. Even Wolverine. Marvel were very reluctant to issue the Origin series back in the early 00s precisely because he was their most popular character (perhaps after Spider-man) and they were very worried that a backstory would actually make him less interesting rather than more. In the end, Origin was a success, but ultimately, it wasn't needed and I wonder if the character would have been better off if it hadn't been done.