Here are Will's Angels assembled in a single group.
If you have an eagle eye, you will notice that one of the angels was not added here previously... so here is it. The painter's highlight on this one for me is the hair, which is not quite blonde, not quite white, but somewhere in the middle.
It is always an exciting times when a book comes together after months of work. This is what Akhamet has been. It is the first setting I (JP) has truly built from the ground up. Saggakar was the child of many influences from long past to more modern. But Akhamet was the result of the many online classes I took over the last two years, furthering my knowledge of the ancient world.
I must send a big shout-out to the guys who helped me by adding material, either by writing entries or by providing me with ideas. These guys are Ed Kabara from Throat Punch Games, Randy Price from Two Kings Games, finally Wesley Oar (my beloved Noldar... *giggles*) jumped in to provide additional ideas when I got into a funk and got stuck.
This is really a project I will cherish as much for the work put into it as the many things I had learned that I did not put into it, whether because they did not add anything to the setting or did not make it more unique.
I am now waiting for delivery of my proof copies.
What's also new? Akhamet will be available in TWO format: one in color (AKA "Deluxe Edition") and one in black and white (aka "regular edition"). I will post pictures as soon as they get here...
Another ArcadiaQuest angel! This guy has his wings on fire! The pictures do not give it justice, but it is the highlight of the model. I wanted the rest of the model to be somewhat drab to draw the eye to the color.
One of the reasons I prefer attending Origins over Gencon, is that you can chance upon someone and talk to them about stuff. Everyone is not running left or right. There is a feeling that you can take time off your schedule. That you do not have to run 5 miles to your next slot is not foreign to that. I am both extremely lucky and very blessed with knowing so many awesome people. I will try to put everyone I met here.
- Chad N Chad is the VC of Kentucky and a close friend of mine. He loves to tease me about playing Pathfinder as much as I tease him about playing 5e. I was able to ask him about my PFS playing experience: "So if my boon gives me another boon for my boon..." He brushed me off. I also got to say hello to his wife Holly a few times, usually at Starbucks.
- Ginny Loveday Ginny is one of the head honchos for the Adventure League. She is based out of Knoxville, TN. She is always a delight and a pleasure to meet. As she is busy, that she takes some time to speak with a curmudgeon like myself is great. Interesting tidbit: I learned her real name... as it was on her badge! I can't wait for the next event in Knoxville/ Eastern TN to take ActionMan.
- Jay B I first met Jay during the days of Living Greyhawk when he was a triad for the Bissel region (IIRC) and we've kept in touch on and off since then. It was a pleasure to talk to him about the coming of Akhamet.
- Jay H I met Jay and his wife when they lived in Colorado. Since I moved, they moved eastward as well (DC IIRC) and every year at Origins we crosspath and catch up. Always a delight!
- John Wick Okay, you know John Wick, the real one, not Keanu. I first met in Dublin back at Leprecon 01 at Trinity College. He was promoting his latest book at the time and I was a major Legend of the Five Rings fanboy. Well, this year, he complimented me on my curves while I wore my dress. So there it is folks... John Wick came on to me!
- Matthew M I first met Matt at the first gaming event in Louisville I attended: Fandom Fest. He organizes events and participates in so many things. After I posted that I was there, he asked to come see him at the Rogue Cthulhu events, which I did during one of my breaks. He always runs these strange and interesting Cthulhu cross-overs like Criminal Minds-Cthulhu, or CSI-Cthulhu, or Scooby-Doo-Cthulhu. In all the years we've been crossing paths, I think we only got to play together once.
- Paul, Nicole G and their boys For many years now, I play every BI with Paul and Nicole. With Paul GMing more, Nicole and I do more playing (as Paul beats us up) but that is one of the many pleasures I have and one that keeps me coming back to play more Arcanis. This year, I met their two older kids and next year, I am thinking about bringing ActionMan... Having a table of wild boys would be an interesting experience. I don't know if we could all survive it. Great time!
- PCI crew I always feel priviledged to get to know these guys in person: Henry, Pedro, Jimmy, and Eric (don't argue) and I am very proud to consider each of them friends. Which reminds me, that I have to send something to Henry... Every year, these guys provide me with hours of entertainment.
- Tom-C If you read the whole description, his name comes up very often. The two of us share a lot of views on role-playing and have a play style that feed on each other. I can't wait to see what happens with the wedding idea. I think it will be awesome, so stay tuned folks.
- Thurston H If you do not recognize the name, you do not know about Pathfinder Society (PFS). Thursty wrote some of the most memorable PFS adventures out there. I talked to my fellow Canadian about a few things regarding PF and PF2. Definitely interesting to get an insider's spin on a few of my many worries.
- I cannot put down all the great people I met here, particularly the folk that put up with my shenanigans during the adventures. The GMs that ran me through the gauntlets. If you are not in the above list, then blame my sleep-deprived brain.
FOE tables The players who sat at my tables were all a bunch of great guys and I had a blast running them all through loops and plot line craziness
Arcanis was 4/5 awesome (1 adventure I really did not enjoy, still getting 80% is not bad).
- I can truly say that this was about Personal achievements (character-wise). That I stood before everyone and claimed to be in charge will no doubt impact my character for a while. Those moments are really what makes it come together for me.
- One thing I really thought was great and I must commend Henry Lopez for, is that he was soliciting feedback about a multitude of things. In organized play, doing that is something I always like to see. Not (just) through a bunch of ignoreable online questionnaires or drowned in endless forums threads. Getting this face-to-face interaction and getting a feeling that your ideas are heard is something I value more and more. I do not expect that all my thoughts will be implemented or will change, but hopefully they will tug at his mind in the future.
- *Last minute update* Henry reached out to me after the event and commented on this blog. For making me feel important and inflate my ego, he gets a double thumbs up!
- I like very much what they are doing, being able to support both ARG and 5e system. Now if there is something I would like to see more cross-system interaction for characters (say, during a Larp-like event or some kind of special). Many of the 5e players have characters who are very interesting, and their participation during the BI through shouts and cheers. I have not spent much time thinking HOW this could happen, but I would love to see more PC cross-play.
Unfortunately, I cannot in good conscience say that everything was awesome and that there was nothing to be improved. So here they are.
Origins had a lot of issues this year.
- The Web site is just bad. It may have been great around 1996, but it suffers from glaring issues: accessing your own registration/logging in requires you to go through a series of vaguely related screen. How to buy tickets. What you are GMing. In short, everything is a mess and in need of a serious revamp to get up to par. When you compare to Gencon's site where everything you want is right there front and center... the comparison is even worse.
- A personal thing, but Event ordering was just terrible. I sold no tickets for my Akhamet stuff. The thing is, I was not able to search for that adventure, unless I put the event code. Putting the name in the search bar returned nothing. This is 2018 people, anything that generates or send and excel spreadsheet should be taken out to the shed and taken out of its misery. 1996 called and wants its speadsheet back.
Sleep (or lack) By now you will know that I was barely able to sleep. Next year, I will have ear plugs for sure!
My Car stinks I have to finish with this. This is a negative point, a massive negative. So I bought that new cooler on Wednesday morning, loaded it up with ice and food. I was impressed how good it kept my food cold. Same on Thursday. On Friday morning, I added an extra bag of ice to the mix. Everything was fine until Saturday around 1pm. That's when I realized the cooler did not keep the ice... It melted the ice and let it seep through into my passenger seat... That whole side was soggy with the smell of curdling milk, no doubt from the cheese. So now, I have a car that smells of curdled milk cooking in the Tennessee sun... So I drive with the windows down. I will buy myself a very powerful smell remover and have the car cleaned.
I had a good time overall. I will definitely be back next year! Hopefully to fuller tables for my own stuff.
So all that's left is to say "Bye Y'all!"
Part of my series of books on ancient Greece, which includes (up to now) the following Gostor titles: Amazons, Olympians, Amazons, the magic item collection Gifts of the Gods, and the adventure A Question of Judgment.
The idea for this book came as I was working on Olympians wherein I thought about some enemies for the Olympians. The myths recorded in the Titanomachy, the war against the titans, they were defeated in the distant past by the gods. Many were imprisonned, locked away, or exiled in creative ways.
The titans themselves, unlike the gods of Olympus have a wide variety of appearances from human to monstrous. They are creatures close to the primordial Chaos and their appearance reflect that. So when I put down ideas, I did not want to have them be just Olympians with different spell abilities.
Instead, I decided to classify the titanborn into four basic categories: Cthonian (earth/underworld) which grow large, Oceanid (sea/water) which as creatures of the sea, Selenite (sky/stars), and a more "generic" one which I called simply called Primordial. Primordial weren't one of the original ones. As I created different types, I decided these should be made into feats. The Primordials get to select one Titanborn-specific feat at creation. This elegant solution allowed me to create on sub-race and give a variety of powers.
The result is a fun race that when you tell others that you play a titanborn, you have to explain and provide additional information.
Like all our Gostor products, this one is fully legal in the Legacies Organized Play Campaign.
So, check out this new addition to FOE's Mythic Greece series: Gostor: Titanborn.
Again, I wrote among the locomotives from 5am on. Made good progress on the story.
For the morning, I wanted to do something different, so I went to play Shadowrun, one of the Last Vegas adventure. It was a fun. We got into some complicated stuff without problems and used the typical solutions to fix them. This one used much fewer bullets than usual...
I showed up at Arcanis muster and prayed for a seat. I was told to find a table of 6 and see if they'd have me. Well... right as I entered the room, Paul-G's table (with Nicole-G and the G kids, Philip-T and his friend, reuniting the dream team from the night before, and adding Maria-R) was right there. I had a sign that read "Larissan Nun, single and available" (For those not in the Arcanis know, Larissan have a well-deserved reputation as being easy and "open to all"). Paul invited me and I gratefully and happily agreed to join the team. Adding another healer/ support helped.
The action for the battle interactive (BI) takes place just after the ending of the "unpleasant one" from yesterday afternoon. Paul sent us a lot of nastiness in the early round and we beat them up through effective teamwork. Everyone had a role and did their thing.
Perhaps the most memorable moment in the game, and one I hope the player will grow, was when we were fleeing this nightmare land, leading slaves away to "freedom". So we captured horses from our pursuers. I think I was the one who first mentioned "hey we can feed our army with the horses." Well Maria's character who is from a region where horses are sacred refused to give her new-found mount, which was fully in character. We told her "you decide, but if we decide, people are eating well." I must admit, I both wanted and expected her to say "I'm keeping the horse." But she did not decide, giving us the power of decision. Again, I really hope she will grow her character with that decision. Those points are what makes or breaks a character... I really hope she rides off with it and that it changes her character for the future. Knowing the other players, if she chose to keep the horse, we would have gone with it and altered how we played. It was intense and a great moment of roleplay.
I had two moments during the BI.
First, when we finally reached the border and the legionnaires were all on the wall and the centurion called "Who is in charge?" I stood up and in my best valley girl, I explained what was going on-ish. I thought it was awesome and I know my character will think herself that she was like, totally in charge!
Second, at the end game, we are fighting a slaver warlord who wants revenge for the death of his son (from the game I played on Thursday night). At that point, I am down most of my resources (Fate points, abilities, one-shot goodies), cannot cast spells for a while, so I begin to look through the book for something I can pull off. Spent a Fate point.
So, Kermina stood on the drawbridge in just her cloak and shout at the general. "This, this is what you could'a had!" And I threw off my cloak. At the time, I was wearing a cloak-like hood and I threw it off. Then I made my seduction roll, blasted the DC, but I wanted this to be epic, so I threw my last full Fate point into the roll.
The General fell in love with me right then and there! When he died a short time later, after he tried to hit me and my defensive magic took him down, I know he has a single tear running down his cheek. Paul may deny it, but I saw that tear running down as he mouthed "I'm sorry".
*Sigh*
IT WAS AWESOME!!!
The event ended on a really positive note for me. Thanks Paul!
Following the game, I talked some more with Tom-C about the engagement and how we wanted to do a few things. As we talked, some adventure ideas came up and we told Cody-B, one of the campaign leaders. Who knows what can/will happen? That's all for another day.
I was lucky enough to sit and talk with Henry Lopez about the campaign. It was more a case of me listening to him talk about it and players asking him questions and clarifying him elements of the game lore. Great fun.
I talked with my bed-roomie, Jeff, about Arcanis and other campaigns before we turned each to our side and snored away.
6am came early enough and I packed my stuff and rolled out. Unexpectedly, my game without a single ticket sold did not go off. I stayed for an hour, hoping to hit the dealer hall, but as I barely slept 4h in short chunks during the past 5 nights, I decided not to wait until 10 to leave. Origins was over and it was time to go home.
I was around 5am when I gave up sleeping and opened my computer to go over a story I wrote at some point last year. The story features a lonely night for my Arcanis character. I wrote the story for me, to remind me of some of the elements of her story and background, why she is here and her motivations for doing some of the things she did.
The idea was not simply personal, but my good friend Tom-C approached me with the idea of having our two characters get married. Since we are both of high social status and our characters have a lot of synergy together. So we got to talking and I told him I had a short story for him. This was the story. I cleaned it up some and expanded a few passages, still needs a little work, but it works for the purpose of letting him know what is going on.
My morning table was of Exalted Pains for Tyrants of Saggakar. Great group, a lot of fun. The guys really got into the backstabbing element the houses of Faremh do to each other. Good stuff.
My afternoon table did not make, so I jumped on a table of Arcanis (again) this time. I joined a party of Peter-P, Eric-G, and Mary to play one of the adventures we missed earlier in the year. Investigation? Alcohol? Yes!
For the evening, my table did not go off, so it was the first of the adventures leading into the special two-round Saturday interactive. I was very curious because the adventure was set in a region that was considered mythical and where nothing was ever written for it. Psionics and other nastiness.
The adventure was very intriguing, with alien encounters and meeting cultures completely different to others on Arcanis. A fair amount of lore here and many things to do: find the missing legionnaires.
One thing I really loved about this one, and how my GM Ryan-W, from Colorado, allowed me to play it is that the adventure starts with a scene, then you jump back to the past. Since I have oracular powers, I was able to warn the party of what was coming. Really cool stuff, made me feel like a million bucks! Thanks Ryan!
I retired to the room and wrote a little before being kept awake by the multi-snoring machines...
I gave up on not being able to sleep again at 5am, when the snoring machines stopped their infernal racket... I wrote some more, starting a new story, one that followed the previous story, "when Kermina was told of her marriage." For that one, I had to go back and review my old 3.5 Arcanis characters, their special abilities, their histories. It was a trip down memory lane I thoroughly enjoyed!
Again, my morning slot went off. This time since I did not have all the handouts for the Saggakar adventure, I offered the guys to instead play the Akhamet intro: Lost Pyramid of Neferheket which was very fun. I really like that adventure. These guys did the adventure in the opposite order that all other groups have done so far. It was interesting to see how some encounters play with different information.
The afternoon, my table did not go off, so I jumped on a table of the second hard point for Arcanis.
This one was not as enjoyable.
I hate to say, but there was very precious little making this one fun in any way. To avoid spoiler, I will say that three over-the-top climactic battles in a row is not climactic. I am not certain we would have survived. This was unpleasant, and not in a way that you remember fondly. This was the first Arcanis adventure in a VERY long time that I did not see a point for characters that were not uber-twinked out (which I am not one of them, I'm more of a toolbox). Attack rolls that only check for crit/crit fail. Now I don't care about my own character (I'm always surprised when I am NOT hit, but that was just going above and beyond).
We got saved by the marshal kicking us out of the room. Thanks Josh! Again... Not fun.
I heard a few people talking about quitting Arcanis, which I thought was over-the-top. I told them that "everyone can write a Star Trek VI once in a while". Not enjoyable. Not having tickets for the next day's mega battle interactive, I seriously wondered if I should instead try to find a seat for Shadowrun or something else...
Next up was the "interactive"... not a battle, but one made up of mini-missions. I met up with Nicole-G (who plays my BFF Dessa) and her kids and my good friend Paul-G ran us for two mini-missions and Paul-B ran us through two more.
The fun I had on this one soothed my doubts about the previous adventure. I resolved to be back for the BI, if I could find a seat.
Next up: 5h of interrupted sleep
MEGA-NERD ALERTBefore I left, a coworker and I were discussing a way we could make some data in our Entity Framework for a Dot Net Core application perform some validation and throw errors when that would happen. We had a basic idea, but I did not like it. It was too heavy, intrusive and required us to drop the pattern and basically re-write the framework. Not something I enjoy doing.
Inspiration, usually for writing material, comes during these long solo drives. This time, I got nothing for any of my gaming stuff. Nada.
However, I did figure out a way I thought was elegant and would not force us to rewrite everything if the framework changed.
Since some of you wonder what it was (in real short): I overloaded the .SaveChanges and .SaveChangesAsync method of my context to look for a given interface (also new) and throw an exception if found. This made that readonly. Whipped up a few unit tests to validate and verify, checked it in and sent that to my coworker for his input...
Then I managed to sleep.
It was 3am my time.
Without any games before 1pm, I was able to get up at a leisurely 7am. I got up and drove an hour to the outskirts of Columbus to a Walmart. There, my plan was to buy a cooler (I had forgotten mine) and some food for the con. Later, I had a styrofoam cooler filled with lunch meats, fig newtons, chips, pretzels, and more than I really needed, and a bag of ice to keep everything cool. But at under 40$ that would allow me to live the epicurian lifestyle of mine.
MEGA-NERD ALERT Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who encourage taking pleasure in the small things in life. By making and simplifying expectations, one would live a life of felicity. Therefore for food, one does not need to eat a sumptuous feast to satisfy the desire for food, when a lunch meat sandwich would suffice. He did not discourage the partaking of feasts, just that they were not needed.
It was around 11am when I rolled into the parking lot beneath the Greater Columbus Convention Center (GCCC) and searched for a spot where I could leave my car all weekend. Creating a base of operation for myself. Done.
I acquired my GM badge and went to meet with the Gathering folks with whom I was running events.
It is always great to see everyone, many faces I see but once a year. It also reminds me that I have to get my rear end into gear to write something for Arcanis. It has been a year since I did anything on it...
My first slot was for the latest Rhym adventure, Come to the Hills and it went off. It was a fun time. That adventure is a rather simple, very traditional D&D one, something I rarely do for Saggakar, which makes Rhym so fun to write for.
My evening slot was one of the previews for Akhamet and did not go off. I had the pleasure of sitting a Sean-E's table. It was great fun and I was particularly happy to see Arcanis dig back into an adventure some 15+ years old as a hook. I will have to re-read the adventure because I ran that for Homer, Ryan, Jim, Matt and Kenton way back when... Around 2010-11.
Night was interesting. I will keep it down to the following: I will bring earplugs at future conventions where I share a room. In addition to food, earplugs will be obtained.
I am happy to preview some of of the art for an upcoming FOE project.
I can't reveal the full detail, so I will leave you guessing. This is the mock-up for the cover of something I've been working on... I've actually given Zammy options and see where inspiration takes her...
You can see my skills have greatly improved to now include letters AND smiles on the faces of the characters!
This is high-quality stuff!!!
While JP is off to Origins, the gremlins decided to offer a sale! Everything FOE is 30%.
With the current Pathfinder sale week, that's TWO stacking sales!
This sale will run until Monday the 18th, when JP returns home!
Follow this link for the full FOE catalog DriveThruRPG.
Enjoy Origins!
More ArcadiaQuest from Will's stash of minis! This is the last big batch of models from the Kickstarters he participated in. It is from the Inferno set, I believe.
For this batch of models, since they are angels, he wanted them to have them be on a cloud-like effect. So I painted the base blue with some light blue locations where I added two or three layers of snow-flock to create a cloud-like effect. I think it finally came out pretty nice.
Way back in 2016, I put out a very successful book called Gostor: Ethereal Horrors which presents a series of monsters from the Ethereal Plane, presented in such a way as to can be easily added to any campaign or setting. That first book was for the Pathfinder RPG. I had someone working with me at the time who wanted to perform the conversion from PF to 5e, so I let him work on it.
As you can see, that work was never done and the porting of the Ethereal Horrors to 5e was never done. So while in Montreal at the end of May, I took time to look at the book and see what it would take to review and alter the creatures to make it to 5e. Less than two weeks later, it was done. The text had been reviewed, cleaned and clarified, the sample encounters had been updated and presented for 5th edition.
In short, it was done.
Therefore, after two long years of procrastination, I am please to announce the release of Gostor: Ethereal Horrors for 5th edition! It is available now on DriveThru RPG and RPGNow, and shortly, on the Open Gaming Store.
Let me know what you think of it! I am really excited to unleash those monsters on unsuspecting players...
With the latest FOE releases: Gostor: Medusans and Gostor: Gifts of the Gods this past month, there are now more and more FOE products coming out. This post is to update you with what is coming up in the pipeline at some point this summer. For those who follow, Medusans are now fully legal in the Legacies Organized Play Campaign.
Tyrants will see at least two adventures, and hopefully one source book. The exact content is unclear because I keep flip-flopping. I have enough material for a book on the Houses of Faremh, but could split it into two: one book for the major and one book for the minor houses. All with the clear intent of completing my "Tyrants of Saggakar - Campaign Setting" by bringing together all those sourcebooks into one massive book. But I have a few other pieces to complete before that one can be ready... Farelis, and the Markhem Hills...
We have not forgotten about Rhym. JD is working on a book of allies and adversaries. I have nearly completed a location book, set in the country of Therland. I completed the third adventure of my Rhym series, which premiered at Conglomeration earlier this year. I will be running this one at a few events this summer, shall I say "Origins" and "Gencon"?
After talking about it since last November and playing with it since the winter, Akhamet is moving forward. So you know, I have just two comments left. This one really grew on me, the definition of scope creep! My latest idea and what I have left? So the bestiary section has more than stat blocks, I have tried to put a short adventure with every one of the creatures. That way you get more than just a stat block. I thought it was pretty cool.
Gostor will see a number of releases. Already you have seen the addition of the Mythical Greece products, including new character races just came out Gostor: Medusans and Olympians will be followed by at least two more Ancient Greece-inspired races: coming up next will be the titanborn and the nymphs.
Titanborn as primordial humanoids related to... the titans of course. I worked to make them very different from the Olympians, and I think they are. The book will have four very different sub-types that will allow you to make a truly unique character, whether you play for the uber-specialized character or the generalist.
Nymphs are still in production, but they will allow you play a minor deity.
