Tag Archives: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

Something wicked this way comes!

The folk over at ofdiceanddragons.com have announced that it’s carnival time, and what a creepy carnival it is.  Here to hound and harrow your players is the Seething Slime, an ooze for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game that gets more powerful as the heroes get more angry.

Seething Slime by D & R Sloan. © 2014 – 2015.
Seething Slime by D & R Sloan. © 2014 – 2015.

Continue reading Something wicked this way comes!

Spicy Stories, Free Books and Creepy Japan

I cooked a pretty good meal today. Garlic chicken, rice, onions, and cauliflower. It tasted amazing. The thing was that it looked plain, everything was a shade of white. As a GM, it’s our job to bring the excitement, to colour the world and spice it up for a fun session. This takes a number of skills, not least of which is story telling.

At Rising Phoenix Games, our motto is Tell Thrilling Tales. That’s at the heart of everything we do, and the key concept to this blog. I have always wanted to tell stories, and I realised that telling captivating stories is something that can be learnt and that takes time to practice. Role-playing games are the perfect medium to practice with, and the games table makes an excellent “dojo”. So here’s to learning to tell thrilling tales together, cheers!

Avernos Unearthed
Are you ready to discover the secrets of Avernos? Beware, for those who know the truth must choose a side and make a stand.

Get your free copy of Avernos—Secrets when you subscribe to the blog.

EMAIL


Avernos Secrets Cover

Campaign Journal

Have you ever taken a look at dragons in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary? Have you ever played around with their stats, tweaking them to bring something unexpected to challenge your players? A different set of skills and some feat changes can give you some very interesting concepts.

The Covetous Wand Wielding Wurm: Ranks in Appraise, Spellcraft and Use Magic Device give you a wand wielder who knows the worth of every shiny object and has the magic to add it to his collection.

The Silver Tongued Serpent: Ranks is Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate and Sense Motive makes for the kind of dragon that might send the party on a merry dance, all for her own good.

The Slippery Snake: Ranks in Acrobatics (not a class skill for dragons though), Climb, Fly and Stealth make a small or medium dragons particularly deadly. Add feats such as Dodge and Mobility and you’ve got a very tough little worm.

Inspired in Japan

Who better to take you on a tour of Japan than Cthulhu himself… um, actually, I can list several better options. Chaosium, for example, have a book, so their’s need to endanger your soul (just the soul of your character).

Secrets of Japan is a 360 page book that takes you to modern day Japan, Call of Cthulhu style. It’s loaded with stuff for your investigator, delves deep into Japan and Japanese culture, and expands the Mythos into Asia.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales

Zombies! - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

All the books!

We’ve got a bunch of titles that we’re about to publish, some book recommendations, and some lessons learnt from Disney. Enjoy.

Inspired in Japan
In my spring break I went to Tokyo Disney Sea, one of the world’s busiest amusement parks. What struck me was how much the park controlled the visitors experience, much like a GM control the player experience (there’s a pun in there somewhere).

Here are some ways they achieve this.

Visuals: Eye popping architecture, characters in costume, moving sets, smoke machines, lights, darkness. Every visual effect you can think of. We can use candles, light switches, props and costumes for the same effect, if not with the same budget.

Elimination of distraction: The park is cleverly designed to keep your eye—and attention—inside the park at all times. This keeps you immersed in the fantasy world that Disney creates. It’s also surprisingly difficult to see the exits to the park and quite easy to get lost in the labyrinth-like layout. Again, this keeps your attention where the park operators want it. The more we limit the distractions, the more our players are immersed in the worlds we create for them.

Sound: Sound, even the sound of birds in the trees, can really set the mood. It’s easy to do sound wrong, but I think the best thing is to keep it simple. Use sounds that set the mood you want but don’t distract players.

Avernos Unearthed
Everyone has a secret, and every secret has a price.

Avernos—Secrets is an upcoming free ebook that introduces you to the world of Avernos, a world where a secret war threatens humanity at a time of broken alliances and forgotten destinies.

Coming soon.

Rising Phoenix News
I know you’re as eager as I am to send your gnome from the garden and down into the deadly depths of the earth with Claustrophobia! And you don’t have too long to wait! The layout/artist guru-gnome just sent me a preview of the book, in all it’s illustrated glory, and it looks awesome. But I’m not going to show you anything just yet, I don’t want to spoil the big unveiling. Watch this space, you’ll be blown away.

Campaign Journal
I’m all over Pathfinder Society Quests at the moment. If you don’t know what Quests are, go check out The Silverhex Chronicles on Paizo, it’s a free download and well worth a read.

I’ve adopted the quest format for a bunch of once-off games I’m planning to run on Roll20. I’m so busy at the moment that it’s hard to squeeze in a game, but Quests only take an hour or so to play, making them perfect for busy people.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Cthulhu Mythos - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

The Goblin of Adachigahara

Four contestants. Four adventure proposals. Only four winners…

RPG Superstar 2015

As RPG Superstar enters its final round, it may be easy to dismiss the prize of the contest, since all four contestants are essentially winning it. The prize—a chance to write an adventure proposal for Paizo—is kind of like the round 5 submission. But there’s so much more at stake here—the contest isn’t called RPG Superstar for nothing—with each contestant having grown a fan base since the beginning of round 1. And that counts for a lot. Who will be the next Gygax?

So, who’s your favourite?

Avernos Unearthed
It is said that there exists a place on the very edge of vision, hidden in the shadow of shadows, where man is not welcome and where weird, twisted things live. None venture there by design, and those who enter unwittingly struggle in vain to escape. This is Feoni, land of the fey.

Avernos Wiki

Campaign Journal
Game mastering takes effort, practice and dedication. Recently I’ve been reading the Pathfinder GameMastery Guide and thinking a lot about how I GM. Part of GMing is prep, but a whole other part is what you do at the table, which encompasses so many things: rules knowledge, social skills, time management, voice acting—the list goes on. Of all these variables, rules knowledge is probably the easiest to tackle during prep time and between sessions.

Last week I took a practice exam for DCI Rules Advisor, which might not have anything to do with roleplaying, but did get me thinking even more about rules. Things can get confusing, but usually it all comes down to common sense and an understanding of how the rules are written. What keywords are important for the game and how do they work? In Pathfinder we have checks and actions, with so much coming from the interactions of those two. Can you make an attack roll (it’s a kind of check) during a move action? No. Why? Well that all comes down to understanding those keywords and what they mean and how they work.

So if in doubt, go back to the basics, especially those keywords.

Rising Phoenix News

We’ve slashed our tile prices for this week only. Save big on Print-on-Demand and PDF titles until March 27th. Get em now!

Inspired in Japan
Last week we battled an oni in Kyoto. This week we come face to face with The Goblin of Adachigahara.

In the story, a lost monk comes to the home of an old lady, who is actually a human-eating goblin*. She doesn’t invite him in at first, but finally lets him sit by her fire and feeds him. When her fire dies down she tells him not to look into the back room of the house, then goes out to gather firewood. When the priest gives in to his curiosity, he finds the grizzly remains of all her past victims. Making a run for it, he is chased through the night by a very angry—and probably hungry—geriatric goblin.

*In Japanese folklore, oni and goblin can be used interchangably, so the term goblin is used lightly here.

This tale could easily be turned into a thrilling, roleplay heavy, horror encounter.

Scene 1, the PCs are travelling at night. Perhaps they failed a navigation check or were given a missleading map. Force them to roll against the cold and fatigue, then offer them a shining light in the distance. On closer investigation they find the run-down home of an old woman who isn’t overly eager to let them in.

Scene 2, the delapidated hut. The old woman eventually lets the party in, offering them some rice and stoking up the fire. She’s friendly enough, but mostly she’s polite, and that offers interesting leverage—sure, you can go and collect the wood, but you’ll offend your host. For this scene a good knowledge of Japanese ettiquete makes all the difference between a good session and a great session, and you’ll want to give your players some prep too, so they can play along. The scene ends when the old lady tells the party not to go into the back room, then goes out to collect firewood. This the time to start building the suspense, which means it’s a perfect time for those Knowledge(local) rolls and the howling wind to pick up.

A lot will depend on how the players feel about their situation starting out. They might expect that the old woman will have a mission for them, that the cottage is really a safe place to be and that, after all, she’s just a little old lady. You want to lull them into a sense of peace. One option for this is the cold, but the party could also be hiding from monsters or just need a place to get those eight hours of rest.

Scene 3. The PCs will either stay around the fire, leave, or explore the house. All three options will probably lead to a confrontation with the goblin. So what kind of stats are we looking at here? I’d probably make her human and stat her as an NPC with ranks in commoner. With a reputation as a “goblin”, this little old lady cannibal is so much scarier than a real goblin. But really, she could be anything, whatever fits best with your campaign.

Once you’ve figured out who or what she is, the rest is fairly simple—the party needs to deal with her and get out of there. The cottage gives you a lot to play with; you could have traps, haunts, undead servants, prisoners that need freeing, rats, whatever fits with your idea of her hut.

For more inspiration, read up on Adachigahara, a sci-fi version of the story, and about the grusome Onibaba.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

A GMs Gift

March 4th was GMs day, so don’t forget to buy something nice for the GM in your life at the Drive Thru RPG GMs Day Sale. This post is dedicated to GMs everywhere, you lords and ladies rock! Secretly all of our posts are aimed at GMs, but nobody knows that, shhh.

This week is also our first post in the new time slot and we have loads of stuff for you, so let’s dive right in.

Avernos Unearthed
As promised, this week we venture into the Veiled Lands, the mysterious home of the elves.

Next week we’ll go beyond the Veil and into a whole other world, the fae lands.

Avernos Wiki

Campaign Journal
For my Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign I made my own Daily Bugle template in Word (docx 863kb).
You’re free to share it, just provide a link to this post by way of credit if you do. It helps me to keep doing what I love to do.

I use the Bugle to do “in character” session reports, which have been a great way to keep everyone informed and excited for the next session.

Rising Phoenix News
Yarr, ’tis swell ta be a buccanneer on the high sea, where every day be talk like a pirate day. Our new Sea Tiles let you create vast oceans and rivers on the tabletop. I made them to use with maps I already had in my collection, and I know you’ll find them useful too.

Raft vs Fire Elemental
Miniatures and raft model not included.

Sea Tiles

Inspired in Japan
The Ogre of Rashomon is a great little tale about a samurai and his battle against the menace of Kyoto, a fearsome oni. It would make for a good adventure.

Scene 1, the PCs are asked to investigate a string of murders at the Rashomon gate in town. They discover that all the murders happened at night, the only time the oni comes out, and so they wait for night fall.

Scene 2, before the Rashomon gate, during the darkest hours of night. The group is surprised by the oni, who attacks them after using magic like invisibility or darkness. Before the oni is killed, he uses magic to escape into the night. The heroes find his arm lying on the ground.

Scene 3, after finding no trail of the oni, several weeks pass before an old lady visits the party. Really the oni in disguise (disguise self), she attacks the party again, seeking to make off with her arm. If she escapes then you’ve got a very interesting recurring villian who might be all sorts of trouble for the party. That arm could even become a much sought after artifact, causing even more headaches as various daimyo send their ninja to claim the appendage.

If you’re playing Pathfinder, then both the fire yai and kuwa oni from Bestiary 3 would work, giving you a CR 15 and a CR 4 option, although I like the fire yai more, since he more closely fits the story.

The Books of Faces
I love the Internet, especially the way I can quickly test the strength of a concept. The Book of Faces hasn’t had the response I was hoping for, but that’s okay, because it has been a great chance to learn. As such, I’ve decided to pull the Book of Faces section from future posts.

I’d like to thank you for your interest in the project. Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy books were a big part of my youth, and I’ve really enjoyed writing my own adventure for you. Rest assured that the adventure will continue, and you can still play on the Facebook page, but it won’t be a regular weekly feature here from now on. This will give me a chance to work on the book and relaunch it later in a much more polished form.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Savage Worlds: Fast, Furious, and Fun! - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

PFRPG Sumo

Here are some simple rules for sumo wrestling, for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Inspired in Japan

The objective of sumo is to throw your opponent out of the ring, or dohyou, or to force them to touch the ground with any part of their bodies other than the soles of their feet.

Sumo Match by Kunisada, 1851
Sumo Match by Kunisada, 1851

To play, both contestants roll for initiative. They then attempt to grapple each other. The first contestant to successfully grapple and move their opponent is the winner of the bout.

When a contestant attempts to move an opponent, the opponent gets a free attempt to break the grapple with the usual +4, as if they were being moved into hazardous terrain. See the “Combat” chapter in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook for more on grappling and moving grappled opponents.

The above rules will appear in a forthcoming supplement for the Kamen, Land of Masks Campaign series.

Sneak Peek – Where Heroes Stand

I’m very proud to share this sneak peek of the book cover for Where Heroes Stand, the first adventure in the Kamen, Land of Masks Campaign.

Where Heroes Stand Preview
Copyright 2014, R. & J. Sloan.

All credit goes to my beautiful wife for putting this together so masterfully.

You can get the poster map of the campaign world over at RedBubble.com, or read more about Kamen, Land of Masks right here on the blog.

Till next time, Tell Thrilling Tales.

Inspired in Japan

Pathfinder Bestiary 3

I just picked up the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 3, since it will form a major cornerstone of my upcoming Kamen, Land of Masks campaign. The campaign is set in mythical Japan, and Bestiary 3 has loads of monsters that can slot right in, like the Spirit Oni, Tanuki and Jorogumo.

I always thought any bestiary after the first to be a waste of money, but Paizo did a great job of providing groups of creatures that fit well together. I already mentioned the traditional Japanese monsters you’ll find. Can anything be more iconic than the Kappa and Yuki-Onna (Snow Woman)? There are also creatures of Chinese origin (Terracotta Warriors), RPG cult legends (Flail Snail and Flumph) and loads more.

A bad example though is the Jubjub Bird and Bandersnatch, from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, since you’ll need the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 2 for the Jabberwock. Still, the Jubjub Bird and Bandersnatch work well together, and the Jabberwock is a great loner. That’s the same with the Sasquatch, Axe Beak and Bogeyman, which are all in Bestiary 3.

Groups of monsters include Clockwork creatures, Asura, Kami and Oni, to name but a few.

Challenge Rating (CR) wise, I’m very happy, I hardly play high level campaigns but there’s plenty to throw at mid level players. If you are starting out though, this isn’t going to give you all your Orcs and Goblins.

On the art side, this is a gem. I love the Kappa. Living in Japan there are loads of Kappa illustrations around (usually comical), but they made it look believable and scary. I didn’t like the Kodama (watch Princess Mononoke by Studio Ghibli to see more of these cool little dudes) or the oni in general. But I am biased.

Overall, a great addition to the collection.

 

Savage Worlds: Fast, Furious, and Fun! - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com