Succubus Sunday

Succubus by Ian Perks from Pathfinder Player's Companion: Monster Summoner's Handbook

Tengger Cavalry

Recently, I discovered the band Tengger Cavalry. These cats are pretty awesome.  They're a great blend of metal and Mongolian folk music (including throat singing). Check them out!

I Refuse To Make A Soviet Russia Joke...

...but I'm not above referencing them.

Recently I've seen some mention on some of the D&D Facebook groups about Russian miniatures. It seems that there is a historic/fantasy game in Russia called Castle Craft that has minis comparable to standard sized D&D ones. You can check out the (Russian) website here. The periodically get listed on eBay, thought they are quickly snatched up. I managed to buy a lot of 24 for 11 dollars (after international shipping). 

Packaging (Front and Back)

The minis

I put a D&D mini next to them to show scale.

The minis are a bit short and squat compared to standard 28 mm minis. In addition I have a feeling that they'd be tough to paint because of the type of plastic they're made from. That being said, they make great mook/horde miniatures and for the price, you can't beat them.

Again, I know the scale's not perfect, but I may pick up some of the castle sets too.

Cursed Birthday

Unless you've avoided the internet, you're probably aware that the next D&D storyline is Curse of Strahd. The adventure is going to be for levels 1-10. Here's the blurb:
Under raging storm clouds, the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich stands silhouetted against the ancient walls of Castle Ravenloft. Rumbling thunder pounds the castle spires. The wind’s howling increases as he turns his gaze down toward the village of Barovia. Far below, yet not beyond his keen eyesight, a party of adventurers has just entered his domain. Strahd’s face forms the barest hint of a smile as his dark plan unfolds. He knew they were coming, and he knows why they came — all according to his plan. A lightning flash rips through the darkness, but Strahd is gone. Only the howling of the wind fills the midnight air. The master of Castle Ravenloft is having guests for dinner. And you are invited.

While I've not really played it much, I've been in love with Ravenloft since I was a kid. I'm excited to see that Chris Perkins worked with Laura and Tracy Hickman on this. I'm in talks with one of my 5E groups (my original, not the Itinerant Gentleman Adventurers) to put the game on hold and play through this. The best part is the book drops March 4th for WPN stores and my birthday is the 5th. It's going to be a ghoulishly fun birthday I think.

If you go and retweet this, Madam Eva will read your fortune. This was mine:

@JustinRIsaac Find the traitorous nobleman who must be returned to life and question them. pic.twitter.com/V60N8DyRzU

— Madam Eva (@Wizards_DnD) January 26, 2016

Tabletop Props Covered Wagon and Tent

I am happy to show off the items I received from the Tabletop Props Covered Wagon and Tent Kickstarters. The items took longer to get into backers hands than originally planned because of unforeseen inspection and international shipping issues. However, I think the items are top notch and were well worth the wait. They aren't perfect to scale for 28mm minis, but they're close enough for me. 

Shown: two wagons, three tents, one tree, and a campfire (plus extras set pieces that came with each).

I added some minis to show the scale.

(Mostly) detailed shots of the standard wagon.

Detailed shots of the gypsy wagon (my favorite).

Both wagons can be taken apart easily.

Johnathon shipped the wagons with toy horses. Dungeon Crawler sent a few complimentary bases for them.

Wagon add-on for Scenes of Chance, a cool accessory I want to pick up when I have some extra cash.

Succubus Sunday

Succubus by telthona

Pathfinder: Pirates of the Inner Sea

Today I'd like to briefly talk about  Pathfinder Player's Companion: Pirates of the Inner Sea.

The Basics: Pirates of the Inner Sea is a full-color 32 page Pathfinder book. The retail price is 10.99. The book gives an overview of piracy on Golarion. The book starts three page overview, then goes into six different pirate regions. Each region gets a two page spread which includes character traits. We then get four pages of equipment, four class archetypes, one prestige class, and two page discussion of the faith of Besmara (the Pirate goddess), and six spells. The book ends with a discussion the social aspects of pirate life.

The Good: I love the discussion of Andoran pirates. Essentially Andoran is colonial America and their pirates are actually pirate hunters. My other favorite is the discussion of the pirates of the River Kingdoms. These pirates use rafts and barges to ply the waterways. I plan on using this info when I finally get around to running Kingmaker. The archetypes are really cool. My favorite is the buccaneer bard. They get songs of surrender, which is great when you're trying to take over a ship. The prestige class is cool too. The Inner Sea pirate prestige class is very rogue-y. It gets sneak attack and pirate tricks.

The Bad: I can't point to anything in this book that I don't like, but then again, I LOVE pirates.

Final Thoughts: If you want some pirate goodness in your Pathfinder game, pick this one up.

Pathfinder: People of the Rivers

I recently snagged some Pathfinder books at a great price and decided to keep my little mini reviews going. Today I'm going to talk about Pathfinder Player's Companion: People of the River.

The Basics: People of the River is a full-color 32 page Pathfinder book. The retail price is 12.99. It's a player focused book that describe the people that live in areas that border the Sellen River. The book is a tie-in to both the Iron Gods adventure path and The Emerald Spire and Thornkeep.

The Good: This book has a lot of crunch. It has 29 traits, 6 archetypes, seven feats, a cavalier order, 3 arcane discoveries, a sorcerous bloodline, barbarian powers,10 magic items, 7 spells, and more. My favorite archetypes are the witch ones. First we have the veneficus, which is a witch that specializes in poison. The second archetype is hag of Gyronna. This which dedicates herself to the minor goddesses of hags. Finally there is a really cool map of the Sellen River region that looks like something you could hand your players in game. The other thing that's cool about this book is that it's a good resource for Kingmaker, which takes place in the northeastern part of the River Kingdoms.

The Bad: This book is very divided. The material is either useful for Iron Gods or Emerald Spire, with not a lot of crossing over. It's just odd.

Final Thoughts: If you're playing Iron Gods, The Emerald Spire, or Kingmaker you will probably find this book useful. Otherwise, it's one to pass on.

A Real Hot Date

I found this on the D&D Memes Facebook page yesterday and wanted to share it for laughs.

Looks like I have a nice date with an adult black dragon. I better bring protection, don't want any half dragons wandering around later.

How about you?

Succubus Sunday - Nocticula Redux

I've posted about Nocticula before, but she's a succubus queen, so why not do it again?

Nocticula is a patron of whores, assassins, sexual criminals, and succubae on Golarion. Her titles include Our Lady of Shadow and Demon Lord of Darkness and Lust. Her portfolio is lust and darkness. Like all demonic lords, she's Chaotic Evil. Her domains are chaos, charm, darkness, evil, and solitude. Her favored weapon is the hand crossbow. You can read more about her here.

The Other Side of the Screen

Last night was a nice change of pace. The last session my original 5E group played they finished a major interplanetary storyline. To give me a session off, one of my players decided to run a one shot for me and the other players.

A death cult stole a favored relic of the church of Moradin. They hired my character, NG half-orc fighter (champion) named Zeru the Crimson to work with one of their agents, Rogar the cleric (one of the pc's), and his party. We traveled through a swamp and entered the cult's lair. We fought a dozen lizardfolk (including a king and shaman), a huge crocodile, several cultists, and finally the head the the cult, an adult black dragon, and her children.We bypassed all the the traps, though David did get us with some poison mold in one of the hidden rooms.

David did a really good job, especially considering it was his first time DM'ing. I had a lot of fun being a player this time. My group is talking about doing this like this a little more often. I'm going to be honest, it's nice having a little break and getting to be a player again.

I'd hoped the Murloc hat might have helped with diplomatic relations to the amphibious warriors.
Spoiler Alert: It didn't.

First combat encounter with the cultist's lizardfolk allies.

A fun encounter with a giant crocodile (which got demolished by a control water spell).

Final encounter against the black dragon mastermind behind the cult and her hatchlings.

Pathfinder: Distant Worlds

This is a companion post to my discussion of Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the Stars.

The Basics: Distant Worlds is a full-color 63 page Pathfinder setting book. The retail price is 19.99. There are three chapters. The first is a gazetteer of the Pathfinder universe. Each heavenly body gets about four pages which is an overview, a section on adventuring, important locations, and adventure hooks. The second chapter (which is only four pages). One page of this is a title page, two and a half are pretty bare bones rules and discussion on getting between planets and dealing with other atmospheres, and finally a half page with two spells (planetary adaptation, and mass planetary adaptation) and one magic item (pressure suit). The final chapters gives us six new monsters and a page listing monsters from other books and what planets they tend to inhabit.

The Good: The descriptions of the planets give you a good overview. Each world feels pretty unique (yet archetypal to sci-fi fans). The new monsters are all unique, yet familiar. The Shobad are my favorites, but who doesn't love four-armed tribal warriors?

The Bad: There's just not enough material in this book. I was really disappointed in the lack of discussion of vessels and how to get in between worlds (this is because I'm a Spelljammer fan). Also, the book has tech. If you don't like tech mixing with your fantasy, stay away.

Final Thoughts: With the amount of information that could be in this book, I think it would have made a great hardcover. I also feel like this book and People of the Stars are a part of an incomplete collection. I feel like there needs to be a third book that discusses space adventuring. I don't recomend this one, unless you really just want to read about the other planets. People of the Stars is cool, especially if you're running Iron Gods, but Distant Worlds is a super niche book.

Dungeon Crate and Mythoard

People like subscription boxes. I have several friends that are monthly subscribers to Loot Crate. I, myself, signed up for the fantasy themed month. If you aren't familiar with the subscription box model, you pay a monthly fee (typically 25 to 35 dollars, after shipping) and each month you get a random assortment of goodies (which would probably cost you double if you bought them individually). I know of two subscription services like this for tabletop gamers,  Mythoard  and Dungeon Crate.

With Mythoard you get 5 or more tabletop items delivered monthly. It's been around for about a year now (though there was a beta version in 2014). The contents of the box could be miniatures, books, posters, maps, dice, etc. You can check out an archive of previous months offerings on their site. There is some really cool stuff, including Mythoard exclusive adventures from companies like Awful Good Games.  The monthly rate is $25 dollars if you decide to pay month to month. The rate is cheaper if you prepay for multiple months. Researching this post I noticed they have a few coupons right now that are valid through tomorrow. Use the code HOARDTRYOUT25 to save 25% off your first box. That makes it $18.75. With the code MYTHMANIA16 you get an additional 16% of multi-month plans.

Here's a sample.

Dungeon Crate is another box subscription that has its official launch tomorrow. It is a bit pricier (having a month to month subscription fee of $35). Here's a video explaining what Dungeon Crate is and the details:

I think Dungeon Crate looks cool. From the sample products on their webpage, I've seen some great minis related items.

I decided to give Mythoard a try (mainly due to the discount code). When I get my first box, I'll take some pictures and post about it. I'd like to get in on the founding level of Dungeon Crate but I will admit I'm a bit apprehensive about dropping around a hundred dollars for a product I've not seen. I'm definitely going to pledge for the first month and then I'll take it from there.

Succubus Sunday - Fallen

Today's Succubus Sunday comes to us from Bastien Lecouffe Deharme, an extremely talented French artist that oddly enough lives in my hometown.

Pathfinder: Familiar Folio

One advantage to working at a big library is being able to check out gaming books. Today I checked out Pathfinder Player Companion: Familiar Folio.

The Basics: The Familiar Folio is a full-color 32 page Pathfinder book. The retail price is 12.99. The book is a player focused looked at familiars.

The Good: The book has familiar granting archetypes for the paladin, bard, fighter, druid, magus, alchemist, witch, and several for the wizard. The paladin archetype, The Chosen One, is my favorite. The Chosen One isn't trained by a temple, but rather has humble origins and is guided by a familiar sent by the gods. The familiar has knowledge of religion, can use the paladin's lay on hands ability, and eventually reveals itself to be an outsider (essentially granting the player an outsider improved familiar). Oh and it eventually is able to act as a conduit for the paladin's smite. The drawback is that the paladin's divine grace and smite evil are gained just a bit later. My other favorite part of the book is the familiar archetype section. Much like class archetypes, the familiar loses its standard progression but gains new abilities. They archetypes are all really cool. MY favorites are the Emissary, Mascot, and Sage. There's a new poison/drug statted, catnip. I laughed a lot about that. Finally the Ioun Wyrd is a really cool looking and useful construct familiar. My next wizard may have one.

The Bad: I want to like familiars, but in general I find them to be a tacked on thing with most wizards. Unless the player really roleplays the relationship, they're just an often neglected pet that occasionally does something useful. This book helps with that a bit, but a lot of the stuff just seems meh.

Final Thoughts: Unless you really like familiars, I'd probably pass on this one. It has some cool things, but 6 pages of really cool stuff probably isn't worth 13 bucks.

Itinerant Gentleman Adventurers - Session 3: Into The Caverns

You can read about session 1 here and session 2 here. Character descriptions are here.

Recovering from their betrayal at the hands of Brother Heinrick, the party once again sets off for the Caves of Chaos. They stop at the ambush site and lizard folk mound. Erevan says a few words over the bodies and Valkorne suggests they burn them to prevent them from rising as or attracting undead. Continuing on their path they were attacked by a pair of giant spiders. After finishing the monsters off they decided to rest and dine on spider flesh. Later that evening while resting for camp, they fought to bandits that were trying to ambush them. The let one of the bandits, Roscoe, live and learned more about their group (which was led by a bandit named Battlin' Belle). They set an ambush for the search party that would be looking for the two. They easily took out the three bandits and their lieutenant. The next morning went to Belle's camp. They easily took down one bandit and decided to parley with Belle. She was an attractive red head with a rather shrewd business-like manner. She left, but not before severely wounding one of her men (whom Valkorne finished off). A little later  the party arrived at the ravine with the Caves of Chaos. They entered the kobold's cave, sprung the pit trip, and faced off with several. After the fight they managed stumble into the kobolds' common room. Sixteen kobolds were hidden waiting for an ambush. The party spotted them and had to decide if they were going to fight or flee. They decided to fight and while they took down several of the scaly warriors, Valkorne and Erevan were ko'd. Alton escaped, trying out the entrance and the session ended with the brave halfling plotting his next move.

• Stew wasn't there, so Valkorne was on auotpilot.
• Valkorne is using the updated Blood Hunter and it's a vast improvement on the first draft Witch Hunter.
• I'm not normally bothered by spiders but the discussion that led to the spiders being devoured bugged me (no pun intended). According to Andrew Zimmern it's a bit like shellfish. All of this was made worse by the fact that Chad said the silk glands were supposed to be a creamy tasty part.
• Roscoe the bandit wasn't very smart.
• Battlin' Belle was not amused with Alton's flirtations. During the discussion Everan made a comment that the party weren't fans of killing people. Alton sort of shrugged at that and Valkorne said he kind of liked it.
• Everan had a comedic breakdown when Belle shot her fellow bandit.
• Josh wanted to attack the kobolds, Chad didn't. However, when he saw that they just had slings, he thought they might be able to take them. Unfortunately kobolds also are fast, despite their size and they closed the gap in a round. 
• The party still might have been able to take out the kobolds if I hadn't rolled three crits in a row. Also, my non crit attacks were doing max damage.
• The kobolds didn't kill the fallen party members because they want to try to ransom them off.
• I have a great plan for how the Alton can rescue his friends.

Our next session should be the 17th, but unfortunately I have to work. It looks like the 31st will be the next time we play.

Succubus Sunday

Ophichus by Guangjian Huang

Pathfinder: People of the Stars

My recent purchase of Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition has resurrected my love for Pathfinder. New Year's Eve I stopped by Dungeon Dwellers, the game store in my home town, and decided to pick something up. Since my friends are doing a Pathfinder Spelljammer game, I decided to pick People of the Stars.

The Basics: People of the Stars is a full-color 32 page Pathfinder setting book. The retail price is 12.99. The book is a player focused look at the other planets of the Pathfinder setting. The book has four new races, feats, archetypes, equipment, spells, magic items, and traits.

The Good: The four races are interesting. The nanite using androids and four-armed kasathas are my favorites. Each of the races has it's own class archetype. The brief planet sidebars give a good overview of the planets (at least from a player's perspective) and the traits associated with each are cool. The book discusses non-evil PC's that worship the Dark Tapestry (Elder and Outer Gods), which was unexpected and cool. I like the inclusion of simple gravity rules. This lets players know what to expect when traveling to different planets.

The Bad: This is also a very specialized book. It's definitely not for everyone. I assume most GM's won't allow most of this material in a typical Pathfinder game. Also, while this is fantasy in space material, it is not actually Spelljammer. It never makes that claim of course, but as a lifelong D&D player, my assumption is it would be something similar. While there is mention of a few space ships, none are detailed or really discussed.

Final Thoughts: I really liked this book. It's different and I dig that. I've ordered the GM book Distant Worlds and will discuss it once I get it and have had a chance to read through it.

Panic! At the Graz'zt?

Hmmmm....

Wait a second...

I've seen this demon before. 

 Graz'zt is that you?

These images are from Panic! At the Disco's new video Emperor's New Clothes. You have to admit he kind of looks like Graz'zt though.

I'm a Panic fan, the song has been stuck in my head for a week or so, and the video is fun. Check it out.

Thornkeep and The Emerald Spire

Pathfinder Online: Thornkeep and The Emerald Spire are Pathfinder products created to help promote to Kickstarters for the mmo, Pathfinder Online. Unfortunately, despite the Kickstarters, the mmo has run into some funding issues. That being said, the two books to come from the kickstarters are a lot of fun. I didn't back either Kickstarter and I don't care for mmo's, but I did snag both books.

The first Thornkeep is a hybrid setting and adventure book. Detailed within the pages is the titular Thornkeep, a wretched hive of scum and villainy in the River Kingdoms, and the the surrounding area. The area is cool because it contains Azlanti ruins (think Atlantean for those unfamiliar with the setting), as well as the ruins of a goblin kingdom (and let's be honest the goblins of Pathfinder are one of the coolest things). After the setting material we are given several short, interconnected adventures that take place in an ancient dungeon beneath Thornkeep. Each section is written by a different rpg superstar: Richard Baker, Jason Bulmahn, James Jacobs, Erik Mona, and Ed Greenwood.

As it states on the cover, The Emerald Spire is a Pathfinder superdungeon. I guess they didn't want to use the word, megadungeon. The hardcover discusses Fort Inevitable (an interesting town ran by Hellknights), which can serve as a homebase for the party. Most of the book discusses the levels of the dungeon, itself. Like Thornkeep, it features many big names in the industry: Keith Baker, Rich Baker, Wolfgang Baur, Jason Bulmahn, Ed Greenwood, Tim Hitchcock, James, Jacobs, Nicolas Logue, Erik Mona, Frank Mentzer, Chris Pramas, Sean K. Reynolds, F. Wesley Schneider, Michael Stackpole, Lisa Stevens, and James L. Sutter.

Both books seem like they'd be a lot of fun to use and both are set in the same part of Golarion (the Emerald Spire is mentioned in Thornkeep). Want an old school dungeon crawl with a modern twist? Check out The Emerald Spire and Thornkeep.