Tag Archives: Pathfinder

The 8 Year Old GM

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Iron Tavern readers have certainly noticed I have written about the Pathfinder Beginner Box a fair amount. Everything from Beginner Box Anticipation, Hero Lab for the Beginner Box, mentions in weekly reviews and just earlier this week an actual play account of playing the Beginner Box. All of this has led to a final post about the Beginner Box, my eight year old son, whom we will call X, GMing his own adventure.

X has been studying the books in the Beginner Box since he received it in December. He will ask the occasional question out of the blue “What is DR?”, “Tell me more about alignments”, “Dad, why don’t black dragons deal acid damages with their bite too?” and several more over the past weeks.

A little over a week ago he started mentioning that he wanted to try to run an adventure. I told him we could take a week off our normal weekend game and he could run what he had come up with. I showed him how the creatures had challenge ratings and gave him a rough idea of how he could use those to gauge semi-appropriate encounters. He picked up on the concept and ran with it.

So this past weekend he announced he was ready to run his adventure. I built up a quick Dwarven Barbarian and advanced him to second level. His younger sister broke out her 2nd level cleric and we took along Merisiel as a pre-gen. While I put the finishing touches on my character he took care of rolling out my battle mat, getting the wet erase markers ready and picking out his pawns he would need for the adventure.

He started us off in Sandpoint with the mayor summoning us for some assistance. Apparently various weapons and minor valuables had been taken from people’s homes over the course of the past five nights. The mayor requested our help with investigating and tracking down who was responsible for these thefts. We did some dialoging with the mayor and then headed off through town to check out the most recent house that had been burgled.

We approached cautiously and observed the house for a bit to make sure it was not being watched. Then we approached and searched around and found tracks. The tracks were not human tracks he said and after a knowledge nature check we were able to determine they were lizard, web footed like tracks. We also found some scratch marks on the door from some sort of clawed hand.

We then talked to the owners of the house and asked to see the locations where things had been taken from. X did a pretty good job of playing this out and seemed to pick right up with responding to the questioning.

Soon we found ourselves heading out of town and towards the swamps. We traveled for a bit and found a roguish looking individual whom we spoke with. We dialoged a bit with him and learned of some lizard, frog like creatures off the main trail in the woods. Sounding like someone we might be interested in we headed off that way.

We traipsed through the woods a bit and came across an enormous tree where we encountered a few goblins, several of which tried to sneak up on us after we had already engaged the first few.

With those goblins dispatched we found a hole that seemed to lead into an area near the tree roots. My dwarven barbarian promptly went in and we encountered several giant centipedes. The fight was a bit on the tough side with Merisiel getting poisoned multiple times, but we were victorious.

Unusually enough we found two boggards who had been prisoner beneath these tree roots. We quickly realized their feet could have made the prints we found in town. With information from the two we found we plunged further into the woods.

We met a trio of people that we thought could possibly be bandits but it never came to blows, so we simply used information from them to further close in on the boggard camp. As we headed that way we did encounter an abandoned building of sorts which we checked for more clues, but found little else than a series of traps!

With that we reached the final encounter. Up until this point all of the encounters had been fairly balanced. It seems X is a chip off the old block and is a firm believer in tough final encounters. Turns out these six boggards had a boss. Their boss just happened to be a young black dragon!

We fought and we fought hard, but in the end the party fell one by one, finally losing our cleric which soon led to my barbarian falling in battle as well. We actually managed to take the dragon down, but the remaining boggards made easy work of a bruised and battered party at that point. I think this encounter worked out to the ballpark of a CR7/CR8 encounter. Just a tad much for us!

All in all X did a great job running this adventure. Frankly, given the number of mock battles he likes to play through on his own, I expected it would be one encounter of random monster after another. He surprised me with opening with an investigative scenario and handling the investigation questions pretty well!

From there he dropped in some roleplaying encounters on the road (ideas he said he picked up from the Game Master’s Guide) before reaching our first actual combat encounter. He chose interesting terrain for that encounter and the dug out opening under the tree’s roots was a nice touch. His dropping some boggard prisoners in there was a great link to the actual enemy who had been causing the town’s problems.

The final encounter was a little overwhelming, which I chalk up to inexperience. We’ve all been there I think where an encounter turned out a little tougher than originally intended. The fact the boggards had a big boss orchestrating the whole thing was great though!

To me this really helps show how awesome the Pathfinder Beginner Box is. It enabled an eight year old boy with an interest in the game to learn the rules to the degree of actually being able to run a session himself. He did this with only a few questions of me as he studied the rulebooks and pieced it all together himself. I fully consider the Pathfinder Beginner Box a success in bringing the game to people new to the hobby – both young and old.

Pathfinder Beginner Box: Actual Play

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My son received the Pathfinder Beginner Box shortly before Christmas. Now, a little over a month later we have had time to play several sessions with it. With these sessions under our belt I wanted to post here at The Iron Tavern a little about the box from an actual play perspective.

As reviews and many forum threads across the Internet will attest to, the Pathfinder Beginner Box is simply a great product. With an easy to read Hero’s Handbook to get a player started, a GM’s Guide to help the budding new GM, dice, cardboard pawns and flipmat you have everything you need to get started in one box. If you are looking for an introduction to Pathfinder or are new to RPGs in general, the Pathfinder Beginner Box provides a very solid entry point to that audience.

I wanted the Beginner Box as a set of rules my son could easily read and make use of on his own. He is eight and I have introduced him to a house ruled down version of Pathfinder before, but the core rulebook was a bit big for him to read and grok the rules on his own. I thought the Beginner Box might simplify the game a bit and allow him to read the rule books on his own between sessions instead of having things told to him by me.

It succeeded very well at accomplishing that. He has been toting around the Hero’s Handbook and GM’s books nearly every day. He is usually looking at character options, studying spells and equipment or giving a thorough look over the monster section. He’s done mock battles between characters he has built and monsters that catch his interest. One day as he was getting out of the car he stopped, went back and covered the Hero’s Handbook up with a jacket, leaving his iPod Touch in plain view saying “I have to cover up the valuables.”

As for actual game play, we’ve also had a very good time with the sessions I have run so far for them. We started with Black Fang’s Dungeon, the adventure included in the book. It went very well and served as a good way to teach skill checks, traps and combat in small bite sized chunks. My son was playing a Dwarf Wizard and a GM controlled Merisiel and Kyra for some extra support.

Using a rather unique way around the final encounter the adventure ended as a success. The next session we played the free download adventure from the Paizo site for the Beginner Box. That went well, but he quickly complained it was too short! Part of that was simply due to choosing the most direct route up front.

The past two sessions were done with former Free RPG Day adventure, Hollow’s Last Hope. I just swapped in Sandpoint for the starting town as that is where the first sessions have taken place. It was an easy swap and both sessions of that were very popular with him.

Next weekend we will continue on with Crown of the Kobold King, also transplanted from Falcon’s Hollow to Sandpoint. I suspect it will go well also as so far the only complaint from my son has been the shorter free download adventure and that was only because it was short!

The game play has been excellent, the simplified Pathfinder rules have been easy for him to pickup and play. His younger sister joins us frequently to roll the dice and participate some as well. Her grasp of the rules is obviously more limited, but she has a great time hanging out with us as we play and does offer up ideas along the way (much to her brother’s chagrin!).

In addition to the great gaming we have had with me as GM, I strongly suspect he will be running his own adventure for me in the near future. He has hinted at it and seems to be eying the rulebooks from the GM slant. If this happens, fully expect an account of him running his first game!

Week In Review: 1/15/2012

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image from Brendan Adkins

Welcome to another week in review at The Iron Tavern. I use these review posts to cover several items in one post that do not quite merit a post in and of itself.

Troll in the Corner

I recently became a contributing author over at Troll in the Corner. Ben had gone on a search for more authors to keep the content over there fresh and interesting. It looks like he has brought on a good crew and I am looking forward to see what the other new folk bring to the site. If you are interested you can catch my articles over there on Tuesdays.

Kingmaker Campaign

Things are going well in the Kingmaker campaign I am running. We missed this past week as one of our players could not make it and there was something that involved his character coming up that I did not want him to miss. Normally we would have gamed one player down, but circumstances and story dictated otherwise.

The group has faced their first major threat to their kingdom from another kingdom. The group was not real happy with the mass combat rules. I tried to let them know it was not a full mass combat system ahead of time so there would not be disappointment. We made it through, but I think their expectations were higher. Given the level of the characters when this occurs I think it might have been better to have the mass combat come earlier when the players would have been more content to lead armies than put themselves on the front lines.

If we can keep up our schedule for the next month and a half or so I suspect we will be wrapping the Kingmaker campaign up in early to mid-March. We shall see. It has been a fun campaign, but I will be looking forward to a chance to be a player again for a bit.

Open Design – Journeys West

I have been participating in the Journeys West project by the Open Design folks. So far I have been extremely pleased with my decision to participate in the project. Everything from the practice of pitching to the other patrons, to watching the others design and build and tweak to the Google Hangout opportunities with some of the others has made it a worthwhile experience.  I have made several pitches for various items so far and I think I have been making some improvements along the way. I look forward to what lies ahead for this Open Design project.

Timeless Adventures

Carl Bussler of Flagons and Dragons fame has been working on his self-publishing effort under the guise of Timeless Adventures. He’s tweeted a bit about it and been active on Google Plus as well. He has previewed various maps along they way and it looks like the project is going well.

I volunteered as a reader and hopeful play tester of the adventure. Those of us doing so received the first part of the module earlier this week and the final part arrived today. It looks very interesting and I am particularly interested to see how one mechanic works out.

I’ve started wrangling a play test group together. It is shaping up to be a remote session for those involved. At the moment I am leaning towards using Google Hangouts and sharing a Google Drawing document for combat encounters. I played with that setup earlier today and it seems promising and more lightweight than a full on MapTool session. Hopefully schedules will cooperate and we will get to see how that goes – both the adventure and the Google Hangouts and Drawing combination.

Gaming With Kids

As I have mentioned on the blog previously, my son received the Beginner Box for his birthday in December. We have had several sessions with that and he has been having a great time. He has also been studying the rule books on his own and seems to be retaining a lot of the information. He certainly reminds me of myself when I was only a year or so older than him and learning the D&D Basic Set.

We missed last weekend as I did not get an adventure prepared in time. I am all set for this weekend and will be playing Hollows Last Hope later today. He has been playing a Dwarven Wizard and his sister helps out as an Elven Cleric. We usually bring along one of the pregens as well. I let him choose which pregen to bring and he usually chooses either Merisiel or Valeros.

Weekly Wrap

And that is the week in review! I have certainly been keeping busy. Remember to watch for my Tuesday article at Troll in the Corner and keep an eye here for more!

Review: Hero Lab Beginner Box

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Developer: Lone Wolf Development
Price: Free
Tankard Rating: 5/5 

Lone Wolf Development, the makers of Hero Lab, released a free version of their character generation software for the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Being a current user of Hero Lab for main Pathfinder game I was anxious to download the tool for the Beginner Box and see how it looked. This was particularly good timing as I had run my first Beginner Box adventure last weekend for my son, which went very well.

Currently the software only runs on Windows 7, Vista or XP machines. A Mac version is slated for release early in 2012 for both the Beginner Box version and the main Pathfinder version. Luckily I still have a Windows box around and I downloaded the application from Lone Wolf’s site and installed it there.

The download and install were painless. I found it refreshing that Lone Wolf was not even making people provide email addresses and login information for their site. Just click the download link and off you go. The install went quickly and I was soon ready to start entering my son’s character into the software to see how it went.

First up after launching the software is a welcome screen prompting for whether you are a player in the game or the game master. Choosing game master unlocks a few more options in the software we will look at later. For now I chose player and entered my son’s character name – Dolgrim and his own name for Player name.

There is only one choice to make on this screen and there is a short paragraph on choosing one. Click the drop down and you can choose from Human, Dwarf or Elf. I went with Dwarf here and then clicked on to the Class tab.

Under class you get to choose from the classes included in the Beginner Box and the Player Option Pack download from Paizo. The choices are Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard.  We went with Wizard as that is the character we had created last weekend.

Here is a look at the race and class selection screens.

Next up is the Ability Score screen. Here you are directed to follow the rules in the Beginner Box which use the 4d6 drop the lowest method. The option to use the built in dice roller is also noted. We had rolled our scores earlier so I put them in as we rolled them.

Moving on to the class tab, Wizard for us, though it will change title depending on what class you chose earlier in the process. Here we chose class specific items such as school of magic, populate the spell book and pick the spells prepared for the day. It was on this tab I discovered an error we had made last weekend and noted that we had shorted Dolgrim one spell from his spell book. Another reason I find Hero Lab a great tool! It always catches my careless mistakes!

We rolled through the next tabs pretty quickly. There is a dedicated tab for skills, feats, weapons, armor, and gear. Having chosen these this past weekend we just selected the items the character had. Painless. Dolgrim is also the proud owner of a new ring of protection +1 that he picked up on an adventure last weekend and we were easily able to add that magic item to the character sheet.

With the character created we could save it as a PDF or export a stat block which can be handy for online games and such. The PDF looks pretty good. They emulated the character sheet format the included sheets had in the Beginner Box minus some of the window dressing. The data is in very similar spots for people going between character sheets.

I tried out the interface from the GM’s side as well. Choosing the “I’m the Game master” option from the drop down brings you into this portion of the tool. It is nearly identical to the Player’s side except you get a few more options. One of the biggest is that you can choose monsters as a race. Even better you can add class levels to these monsters!

While in as a GM I also played a little with creating multiple troglodytes, adding a rogue level to one of them, and importing Dolgrim from the player portfolio I created earlier. This all worked quite well.

With multiple NPC critters and the heroes in the same portfolio I brought up the tactical console. With the tactical console a DM can use it as a combat board and also track hit points and such. You can also apply combat effects such as dazed, nauseated, and more to NPCs and characters on the tactical console to update their stats on the fly. A very powerful tool if you use (or want to use) electronic aids for play.

I am already a happy user of the full version of Hero Lab for Pathfinder, but this free release for the Beginner Box is an excellent addition to the line from Lone Wolf Development. It is an extremely easy to use character generator and the pairing with the Pathfinder Beginner Box makes a very strong combination. From the player perspective the tool provides a fast way to accurately create and level a character. With the journaling ability you can also track your gold and experience rewards from session to session.

As a GM, Hero Lab for the Beginner Box will ease your prep greatly and allow you to craft interesting creatures with class levels if you desire. Throw in the combat manager and ability to apply conditions on the fly and this can also be a very powerful tool at the table as well.

If you find yourself with the Pathfinder Beginner Box in your house this holiday season make sure to check out this free version of Hero Lab. I think you will be quite impressed with what it can do.

Tankard Rating: 5/5

Week In Review: 12/18/2011

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The last week got away from me and I missed getting out a post here at The Iron Tavern. I have had several things keeping me busy and I will put some of the related ones up here for a week in review post!

Kingmaker Transition

My weekly gaming group just transitioned into Book Five of the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I always find blending the transition from one installment to another takes a bit more work in my game preparation. Without some additional preparation it seems a little rough going from one book to another. I am not sure why this is; it really shouldn’t be any different than any other transition in the campaign.

Our most recent session found them investigating some disgruntled pixies in the forest who had a rather unusual surprise for them, then to the Kingdom of Pitax to partake in a festival there, followed by an attack on their own kingdom by some unknown armies at this time. The session went well and it feels good to have the Kingmaker campaign back on track again!

Pathfinder Beginner Box

This week was also IronPup’s birthday. He received the Pathfinder Beginner Box for it and was quite excited to unwrap it. He spent this week writing up his character. He will be going with a Dwarven Wizard for the first session. He worked through most of it on his own and I sat down to help him get his information transferred to a character sheet yesterday. Later this afternoon we will be running through the first adventure in the set. He is looking forward to it. This initial session will be part of the actual play review I write up for The Iron Tavern.

Writing Contests Galore

It seems to be a busy time for writing contests! First we have Paizo’s RPG Superstar 2012. This is an annual contest that Paizo puts on and is probably the best chance an unknown freelancer has of getting noticed by Paizo. The number of entrants is rumored to be quite high and the bar for making the first cut of 32 is also quite high. I am entering the contest this year and hope to learn some things through the process by being more vested in it with an actual contest entry.

Today is also the last day of @Brainclouds‘ design a treasure vault contest. He has posted a blank treasure map with some interesting features to act as a blank canvas to design what is in that room. I have some ideas scrawled down on a print out of a map, I just need to get them written up and submitted by midnight tonight!

Basement Remodel (a.k.a. Game Room)

And finally I have been busy the past several weekends working on phase one of a basement remodel of which a portion will be used for a game room. I am not doing anything overly elaborate. First phase consists of painting the basement walls. I believe I finally have that portion wrapped up. Phase two is to clear out way too many years of computer equipment and parts along with other things accumulated over the years. Phase three will be putting up a wall to keep the utilities and storage side of the basement hidden away. Phase four will be to improve the lighting a bit to not be so industrial.

Once those phases are complete I will begin work on getting a portion of the basement ready for a gaming area. I see a decent table and comfortable chairs as must haves. I will also include an area for some easy access to minis and hang some small speakers for background music and easy sound effects. I am also planning on hanging a webcam to possibly open the door for streaming a video of the battle mat for remote players. We will see how that all works out!

Where the Week Went

That sums up where the following week went for me. With holidays approaching it is likely to be a busy next couple of weeks!

Beginner Box Anticipation

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Anticipation? The Beginner Box has been out for well over a month you say?

Yes, I have a still shrink-wrapped, unopened Pathfinder Beginner Box on the top shelf of my closet. Why in the world do I have that? It is going to be a gift for IronPup’s rapidly approaching birthday next week. So far I have made all of my Will Saves to keep from peeling away the shrink-wrap and peering inside. This in spite of numerous blog postings, tweets and message board forums talking about how great the set is.

I will admit that I did take the money I saved by ordering from Amazon and picked up the PDF of the set from Paizo. But honestly, that’s just so I can be ready to run it when IronPup opens the set himself on his birthday! Well, that is the story I am sticking to!

That is why you have not seen a review or unboxing of the Beginner Box at the Iron Tavern yet, because it is sitting on the top shelf of my closet.

The Iron Tavern and the Beginner Box

I will be taking pictures of the set similar to my other unboxings here at The Iron Tavern. The caveat being that IronPup will be the one doing all of the opening initially. I hope to at least get some good shots of the pawns up, included battle mat and dice that come with it. That post will come pretty early after opening next week.

Even with the delayed opening I still plan on reviewing it once it has been opened. To help make up for the late review I will be holding off on reviewing until after we have had a chance to play it, then I can justify the later review with an actual play review! Not only will it be an actual play review, but it will also be one with a youth. He has some Pathfinder experience already, but through my own trimming down of the rules. I think with the Beginner Box he will be able to read and verify the rules himself and possibly build his own adventures to run me through as well.

So keep an eye on The Iron Tavern for these upcoming posts coming in the next couple of weeks. If there is anything in particular you want to know about feel free to drop a comment here and I will try to include it in the unboxing or actual play review.

Beginner Box Campaign

I also have plans as to how I will be using the Beginner Box with IronPup once he opens it. We will certainly start with the first solo adventure at the beginning of the Player’s Guide to start.

One IronPup finishes that we will roll into character creation for a character we will embark on a longer term campaign with. We’ll start with the introductory adventure and then the freely downloadable one form the Paizo site. If he is happy with his character we will probably get some friends together and start off a mini-campaign with The Crypt of the Everflame. I am hoping to get a few friends together, possibly over Skype and play a few hours on the weekend every other week.

If all goes well with that then we’ll add in Masks of the Living God and  City of Golden Death to round out the mini-campaign arc.  Where we go from there is undecided. A lot will depend on how much IronPup seems to enjoy the game and how he wants to proceed. I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out!

Your Beginner Box Plans

Now you know my plans for the Beginner Box, both for The Iron Tavern and games I plan to run with it. How have your experiences with the Beginner Box been? Anyone else planning on running a campaign with the Beginner Box and use it for more than just an intro to Pathfinder?

Kingmaker: The Exploration Blues

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My gaming group is three sessions back from our Kingmaker hiatus I mentioned in a previous post. We have had a good start back and will be starting in on part five, War of the River Kings, of the six part Adventure Path next session. We came back from hiatus with part four of the AP, Blood for Blood, though we were already halfway through that module when we came back from the hiatus. The fact that it took three sessions to wrap up what was essentially the bulk of the exploring in that installment is the topic of this post!

We have really enjoyed the Kingmaker campaign so far. The sandbox nature of the adventure path, while trickier to GM, allows plenty of room for a GM and players to make the campaign their own. Kingdom building has been quite entertaining and it has been fun to watch the kingdom grow over the many months.

Exploration Blues

The part that I find most difficult as a GM running the adventure path is the monotony of the exploration. Exploration and the quests associated with the exploration was fun for the first two books of the adventure path. It was pretty easy to come up with varied terrain descriptions and travel. The early quests were enjoyable and provided some of the early interaction with the locals before the characters were more of a driving force.

From book three, The Varnhold Vanishing, on though it has felt like a real slowdown to me as the GM. By this point in the Kingmaker campaign I had a harder time making the descriptions of terrain and travel entertaining enough. I tried of course, but after two books worth of travel and exploration of hexes this task began to feel monotonous.

I have also found it harder to get the quests properly introduced without it feeling like a laundry list of tasks. With the kingdom growing and more interactions from the characters with their neighbors the action within the adventure path by book three was steady enough that quest introductions felt shoehorned in.

And finally, it seems that several of the quests are a much better fit for adventurers hired by the rulers of the kingdom, not the rulers themselves. Giving some of the quests out just seems silly sometimes given who the characters are within the scope of the kingdom.

What to do?

Admittedly given the exploration necessity in Kingmaker to grow the kingdom it can be difficult to handle this. The need for exploration in the campaign means we cannot drop it completely from the adventure path.

I felt exploration worked well in the first two installments of the adventure path. As noted above the adventure path was fresh, it was easier to come up with unique terrain, weather and travel descriptions and the quests helped introduce the characters to the locals.

Moving past the first two installments of the adventure path I think the number of quests given should be dropped significantly. The quests that are left should be ones that the rulers of the kingdom would have real motivation to pursue. Additionally tying some of the quests together with a related thread between them could help make them more interesting.

GM prep can certainly help some with the exploration monotony by having terrain descriptions and such at the ready. This becomes a touch burdensome after time though as I can only think of so many ways to describe a grasslands and such. Several of the hexes with encounters do have some terrain description included which helps to a degree.

In my own group I have even suggested that we could bypass some of the exploration and focus on the meat of the campaign more if they wanted to hire some adventurers to take care of the work for them. They voted this idea down, rather unanimously. So maybe I am doing a better job at running the exploration than I give myself credit for!

Take Away

Kingmaker has been a great campaign so far. The group is enjoying it and I have been fun running it. This post has focused on exploration being one of the parts of the Kingmaker adventure path that I have found more difficult to run.

Despite this complaint the adventure path of a whole is a very fun one. It gives the GM plenty of room to work in as well as the players. It takes a bit more work to run because of the sandbox nature, but the rewards are there.

How are other people’s Kingmaker campaigns going? Have you had more success or ease at running the exploration bits than I have?

Pathfinder Beginner Box Minis Unboxed

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and reviewed….

Manufacturer:  WizKids
Pricing:   $12.99
Tankard Rating:  4.5/5 

The Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes Miniatures Set arrived on my doorstep late last week much to my excitement. I had pre-ordered it as soon as I learned of it and the anticipation grew as I saw some of the pictures posted from Gen Con earlier this year.

For those that are unaware, the Beginner Box Heroes is a set of four minis made by WizKids. The Beginner Box Heroes is meant as a complement to the also recently released Pathfinder Beginner Box. Included in the set are:

  • Kyra, Female Human Cleric
  • Valeros, Male Human Fighter
  • Merisiel, Female Elf Rogue
  • Ezren, Male Human Wizard

Pathfinder fans will easily recognize these as four of the iconics in the Pathfinder game. They also match the four pre-generated characters included in the Beginner Box.

The minis come in a clear plastic case, letting the buyer see the four minis inside quite clearly. The back of the plastic case has the art from the Beginner Box cover at the top and a short description of each iconic included in the pack.

One of the first things I noticed as I popped the minis out of their plastic cases was the level of detail on these minis. For plastic pre-painted minis the detail is simply amazing. I went through my days of the D&D minis as plastic crack and these Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes are simply awesome in their level of detail.

Let’s move on to the unboxing!

In closing, I was very impressed with the Beginner Box Heroes Miniatures Set. The paint jobs are better than I can paint and the level of detail is most excellent as shown in the pictures above. The only concern I have is they seem to be the more brittle plastic than the old D&D minis were. That leads to some minor concerns about incidental damage, but if you take care of them they should last just fine.

If this set is any predictor of how the upcoming set of Pathfinder Battles: Heroes and Monsters miniatures are going to look, we are all in for a treat!

Tankard Rating: 4.5/5

Tiaro’s Mirror of Capture

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Tiaro’s Mirror of Capture is a magic item I wrote up loosely based on an item a player in my Kingmaker campaign wanted to create. In the Kingmaker campaign the players have a museum in their city which they have been using to gather various old artifacts and tomes they find on their adventures through the Stolen Lands. They have a reasonable collection in the museum and it has been drawing people from across Golarion to see some of the artifacts stored there.

The idea for this Mirror of Capture came from the party wizard, primarily as a means to allow the group to capture an image, take a picture if you will, of some place they have been and then bring that picture back to the mirror to display in the museum. The wizard in the party is currently working on crafting this item.

The mirror I have posted below is based on that idea. I added the element of capturing a soul that can be used later to defend the mirror. Enjoy!

Tiaro’s Mirror of Capture

Aura:  Strong Divination and Illusion        CL: 20th
Slot: None                                                      Weight: 40lbs

Description:

The Mirror of Capture is a 2’x3’ mirror that has a smoky, swirling, reddish gray hue and bordered by an intricate gold worked pattern of flowering vines with painted vermilion blossoms to match the similarly colored gem fitted at the top of the mirror. The oblong gem appears to watch over those that gaze into the mirror.

The Mirror of Capture will display images on its surface when speaking a command word with the vermilion gem in the socket at the top of the mirror. The mirror can store and display a series of up to ten images. The Mirror of Capture cycles through the stored images at a constant rate, the mirror becoming the smoky, red-gray tinged hue during transitions.

A person can remove the oblong gem from the mirror and upon speaking a command word capture the image of either an inanimate or living object.  The oblong gem functions similar to a Prying Eyes spell. The gem can hold only one still image at a time until placed back into the mirror. Returning the oblong gem back to the mirror will transfer the image into the Mirror of Capture.

The Mirror of Capture also has a lesser known ability known to those who study it, the ability to capture the shadow of a soul. Capturing the shadow of a soul requires one to use the oblong gem as normal to capture an image of a living creature. Upon capturing the image the living creature must be slain and the gem coated with the blood of the creature while speaking the command word. Speaking the command word will cause the gem to collect the shadow of the slain creature’s soul.

Returning the gem to the mirror within seven days after capturing a soul will successfully transfer it to the Mirror of Capture. Failing to return the gem to the mirror within seven days will cause the shadow of the soul to expire within the gem. Placing the gem into the mirror socket transfers both the image of the once living creature and the shadow of the soul to the mirror. The Mirror of Capture will display the image as it would any other.

Speaking a second command word after the image and shadow of a captured soul are in the mirror will release the shadow. The release functions like a Greater Shadow Conjuration spell duplicating a Summon Monster VI spell that calls forth a Shadow Demon. The Shadow Demon will take the shape of the captured image.

Destruction:

Destroying the gem and mirror while combined is near impossible due to their significant power. Attempts to destroy the pair while together will fail. In addition the Mirror of Capture will defend itself by releasing one shadow soul per round up to the number currently stored in the mirror.

Attempting to destroy the gem or mirror while separated is also near impossible without coordination. In order to successfully destroy the mirror one must separate the gem from the mirror and simultaneously cast them into different active volcanoes under stormy skies.

Kingmaker Returns From Hiatus

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Several weeks ago I mentioned in my Game Scheduling post that my gaming group had been on a hiatus from the Kingmaker Campaign I am running. I had some come up that were going to keep me from being the most reliably person for an extended period of time, especially to be in the position of running the game. It appears our last game was July 7th.

Here we are, in early November ready to bring the campaign back out of Hiatus. Schedules have calmed down a little bit and I think the group is anxious to get back to a longer term campaign again. In this post I plan to look at two things. One, what helped our group stick together during our Kingmaker hiatus and two, how I plan to bring the campaign back from hiatus four months later.

Why Our Group Made It

The primary reason I think our group survived an extended break from our long running campaign is that we’re all friends. Sure we game together and actually met through gaming for several of us. But over the years we’ve become good friends. Gaming is still our primary bond, but we long ago transcended the gamers that hang out together to gamers that are friends. This is certainly a primary reason why our group handled a break from our main campaign for the period of four months. I also think it is why we avoid a lot of the problems seen in other groups as well, but that is another topic for another post!

The other factor that really helped is our group has several people willing to actually run a game. It seems several groups out there only have one person willing to run a game. If that person is unable to run then the group simply does not play. This is certainly not an issue for our group. We have at least one other person who has no issues running a game. Between the two of us we run the majority of our group’s longer running campaigns. So even when the current GM needs a break or something comes up that limits his time, there is usually at least one GM waiting in the wings ready to step up and run for the group.

Further helping our group is that we have at least another two players who are good for running a one-shot or very short campaign arcs on a fairly limited notice. This also goes far to help keep our group gaming even in uncertain times.

For times that there is short notice or perhaps our substitute GM has something come up there is always board game night. People can still meet up at our host’s house and people can play a few board games instead of the normal RPG that was on the schedule.

All of this goes far to help keep our group together even when we have to put a longer term game on hiatus for a few months. It is also a good time to experiment a bit. During the course of this hiatus we were able to play Star Wars, Supernatural, Call of Cthulhu and I even ran the Pathfinder We Be Goblins as a one-shot when a short gap needed filled.

Bringing the Campaign Back

Four months. No serious talk about the campaign during that time and we are actually bringing it back to the table. How to pull this off successfully?

As GM of this campaign I have turned first to our group’s primary tool, our message board forums. When we first formed our group we created a set of message board forums. We use the forums between sessions for planning of the next game, who is picking up food on the way, are we ordering pizza, etc. We also use it for between session recaps, roleplaying and out of character commentary to help know what we are going to be doing the next session.

My first step has been to read back through some of the threads on the boards to get a solid feel for just where we left off. I reviewed the main message board forums and went through the private forums for each character to refresh my mind with what hooks we had working on a character by character basis.

I also took this return to the campaign to ask for feedback from the group to see what they had thought was working well for the campaign so far, what could use some improvement and so on. I believe this will help bring the campaign to a strong conclusion despite the four month hiatus. I received some valuable feedback from this process and helped get the wheels turning again in my own head. It helps focus the energy for campaign prep if you know what the group thinks is working well and what could use some more work.  (If you are curious they primarily want to see more from the politics side of things and a little more depth to some of the NPCs.)

I have also been re-reading the portion of the AP we are in to get my head back in the AP and know where they have been and which important plot points are coming up. This seems an obvious course of action, but certainly not one to be overlooked.

We were at the tail end of the 4th installment of the Kingmaker Adventure Path. It looks like our first session back will be getting back in the swing of things with some exploration, making sure the political pieces are a little more obvious as to what is happening at this point and hopefully some NPC spice sprinkled in or at the very least brought back to the surface again. The group also has some interest on getting a standing army due to some prior events.

Wrapping Up

I am looking forward to assuming the GMs seat once again and getting things rolling. I am lucky to have a great group to game with – both in being patient while I took the time I needed due to outside factors and to have had a group that can fill that gap where I could not GM. I think with some of the preparation noted above we will have a strong start back to the Kingmaker campaign and have a strong finish. I am looking forward to this Thursday!

How about others out there? Have you had a game go on long term hiatus? Were you able to successfully able to bring it back to life? Any tips or techniques you felt made the return to the campaign put on hold especially successful?