Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition Player's Guide

With the release of the first instalment of each adventure path, Paizo has also released a short player’s guide. These guides provide players with some initial background, selections of campaign traits, and a variety of other things appropriate to the particular adventure path. The idea is to help players design characters that are suited to the adventure to come. With the early adventure paths, including Rise of the Runelords, the guides were printed books. Starting with Council of Thieves, the guides became pdf-only releases. The attractive part, however, was that they were free downloads. The new Rise of theRunelords Anniversary Edition Player’s Guide is in the style of these later guides, a free pdf download.

The original guide for Rise of the Runelords was somewhat different than all the guides that followed it. It was less a guide to Rise of the Runelords (indeed, it was called simply Pathfinder Player’s Guide on the cover, only mentioning Rise of the Runelords on the inside title page) than it was an introduction to Varisia and Golarion. Golarion was a brand new campaign setting at the time, and so this book needed to cover things like the gods and the domains offered, and race and class information. Obviously for the new Player’s Guide, details such as these are no longer necessary, so the book is free to deal a little more with the campaign itself. It includes long-sought-after campaign traits (traits had not yet been created when Rise of the Runelords first came out) and tips on the most useful skills to select. These are followed by a more extensive gazetteer of Varisia than the original Player’s Guide had.

Red Dwarf X - Entangled

With the latest episode, Red Dwarf X is now two-thirds over, and it continues along quite strongly. “Entangled” is an episode that focuses quite squarely on the crew, particularly on the relationship between Lister and Rimmer, but it’s really Kryten and, especially, Cat who steal the show. While some jokes are little too drawn out (particularly Rimmer ones), it’s a very funny episode with some absolutely hilarious moments involving Cat and Kryten being “quantum entangled”.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Disney buys out Lucasfilm

This is news that is probably spreading like wildfire across the net. Disney is buying out Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion (USD). A full press release can be found here. Star Wars: Episode VII is already being planned for 2015. According to IO9, Disney plans to make a new Star Wars film every two to three years.

I'm not really sure what to think of this. On the one hand, I think it's good that George Lucas is willing to pass on the baton. But of all the places to pass it to, Disney would not have been my first choice. Nor my second. Or third. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition

This year is the tenth anniversary of Paizo Publishing and the fifth anniversary of the Pathfinder Adventure Path. A lot has happened in both those time periods. Paizo began by taking over the publishing of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and at the time, many people mistakenly believed they were just another part of Wizards of the Coast (WotC). It was during their time publishing Dungeon that they began developing the concept of the “Adventure Path”, a series of linked adventures that spanned an entire campaign. Three full adventure paths were published in Dungeon before WotC decided not to renew Paizo’s license (later learned to be in preparation for the then forthcoming 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons): Shackled City, Age of Worms, and Savage Tide. The adventure paths were successful enough that, when it came time for Paizo to decide what it was going to do when it could no longer publish Dragon and Dungeon, they decided to take the adventure path concept and expand it into its own full publication. And thus the Pathfinder Adventure Path was born.

Although still a periodical, Paizo abandoned the magazine format and published the Pathfinder Adventure Path under the Open Gaming License (OGL) as a full book in its own right. Each instalment was bigger and more detailed than the individual instalments in the Dungeon adventure paths. However, instead of spreading out each adventure path over twelve instalments like in Dungeon, they decreased the count to six instalments, allowing them to publish two full adventure paths per year. The first of these was Rise of the Runelords, and its first instalment was Burnt Offerings.

It was an interesting time for people like me. I had been a long-time buyer of Dragon (since the late 80’s/early 90’s) and in the last couple of years (since Paizo had taken over) had started buying Dungeon as well. However, for most of those years, I had never actually subscribed. While I bought the majority of issues off the shelf, I had always wanted the option to skip an issue if it didn’t appeal to me (that and producing the funds, even with the subscription discount, for a full year or more of issues all at once was an intimidating task at the time). But when Dragon came under Paizo’s control, I started to notice that I was buying every issue, not just most issues, and I had even started buying Dungeon, which had never impressed me before then, but I now considered better than Dragon. So I finally decided to subscribe. Then, only a few months later, Paizo announced that their licence had not been renewed and that the magazines would be ending—well before my subscriptions ran out.

Give a Scary Book for Hallowe'en!

I commented briefly on this great Hallowe’en tradition last year (okay, so it’s only been around for a couple of years and is mostly unknown, so it doesn’t really count as a tradition—yet), but thought I should draw attention to it again, as Hallowe’en is approaching once more. All Hallow’s Read is basically about giving someone a scary book for Hallowe’en. As Neil Gaiman explains in the introductory video, this isn’t meant to replace candy. It’s simply giving somebody you know (or don’t know) a scary book, any scary book (although it’s best to choose a book appropriate for the person you’re giving it to). It’s just a little way to help circulate more books in a day and age when the internet dominates our entertainment.

Learn more at the All Hallow’s Read website and help spread the word!

Red Dwarf X - Lemons

While the previous two Red Dwarf X episodes each focused primarily on one of the crew (“Trojan” on Rimmer and “Fathers and Suns” on Lister), this week’s episode, “Lemons” is more of an ensemble piece, with each of the main cast getting more-or-less equal screen time (although Cat probably gets the least). The character focus of this story is instead on the episode’s guest star, making for a bit of a change of pace from the previous two stories, made especially so by the fact that this is the first episode of Series X to have some fairly serious social commentary going on in it as well. The episode is a bit slow to start, with a few forced jokes, but once it gets into full swing, it’s very entertaining and quite funny—not as fall-out-of-your-chair funny as I found “Trojan”, but still funny enough to leave me quite pleased by the episode as a whole.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Jade Regent - The Empty Throne

In Jade Regent, the PCs have set out from their home in Sandpoint, a small town in southern Varisia, trekked north with their caravan to Kalsgard in the Linnorm Kingdoms, then ventured across the frozen Crown of the World to the continent of Tian Xia, crossed through the Forest of Spirits, and arrived in Minkai, the homeland of Ameiko Kaijitsu’s family. Now, having gathered allies, they must set out for the capital city, Kasai, to overthrow the Jade Regent and place Ameiko, the rightful heir, on the throne, in The Empty Throne, the sixth and final instalment of the Jade Regent Adventure Path. Written by Neil Spicer, the adventure has the unenviable task of wrapping up an entire campaign with a suitably epic conclusion, whilst simultaneously allowing for the possibility of more should individual gaming groups wish to continue with their characters. Overall, it manages this pretty well, especially given the difficulties high-level adventures can present to designers. Gaming groups who have played through the entire adventure path will likely find this conclusion exciting, thrilling, and most importantly, satisfying. While the adventure isn’t perfect, few things are, and players aren’t likely to notice its imperfections, especially in the hands of a skilled GM.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Red Dwarf X - Fathers and Suns

The tenth series of Red Dwarf got off to a great start with “Trojan”, heralding a triumphant return of the show. Unfortunately, the second episode, “Fathers and Suns”, does not live up to the heights of the first. That’s not to say it’s a bad episode. It deals with some clever and funny concepts, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. However, while I laughed, it didn’t have me in stitches the way “Trojan” did. Nonetheless, I still think Red Dwarf X is off to a very good start indeed, and I remain eager to see the remaining episodes.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Doctor Who - P.S.

People who have been following my Doctor Who reviews will know that my favourite new addition this year is the character of Brian Williams, Rory’s father. Although he was only in two episodes, he added an immense amount of humanity to the story of Amy and Rory, a story I’ve been very critical of. I still feel strongly that he is a character who should have been included in the show ages ago, but at least we got him towards the end of Amy and Rory’s time. After Amy and Rory’s departure in “The Angels Take Manhattan”, I was left somewhat disappointed that Brian had received no closure and isn’t even mentioned in the episode. However, the BBC have now released a short unfilmed scene titled simply “P.S.” It is a collection of story boards with some written narration and a voice-over by Arthur Darvill, who plays Rory. Written by Chris Chibnall, who wrote the two stories in which Brian appears, the scene provides that needed sense of closure for the character. For people who haven’t seen it, I’ve included the scene here so you can watch it before reading the rest of my response (although there’s not really much in the way of spoilers anyway).

Simply put, this would have been a beautiful scene, and I really wish it had been filmed. After “The Angels Take Manhattan”, I didn’t really expect to see any follow-up on Brian in the show. Although I really hoped that maybe some future episode would look in on him, it’s just not in the style of the series at the moment to follow up on secondary characters like this. The release of this scene in this format pretty much cements that Brian will never appear on the show again, but at least he has some closure now.

Red Dwarf X - Trojan

I’ve been a fan of Red Dwarf ever since I first discovered it playing on YTV in the early 90’s here in Canada. It was a brilliant mix of science fiction, great characters, and absolutely hilarious comedy. The fact that it was a science fiction comedy series when science fiction comedies were extremely rare (they still are) certainly helped make it stand out, but it had much more going for it that made it unique: the last human alive, travelling with a very small band of misfits, three million years away from Earth. I was hooked right away.

The series went through a number of changes through its original eight years. Series I and II had the feel of a standard sitcom that just happened to take place on a spaceship in deep space. While there were many science fiction elements, the focus was very squarely on the relationships between the characters of Lister, Rimmer, and Cat. Series III began making the science fiction elements more overt and upped the slapstick and silliness factors considerably. It also added the android Kryten to the main cast. The next few years kept to much the same pattern, although even so, there were changes, such as the gradual fading out of the computer, Holly, and the complete loss of Red Dwarf itself in Series VI. In general, Series III through VI are the most highly regarded by fans (although I and II certainly have their defenders, too). It is certainly true that some of the best and funniest episodes (like “Gunmen of the Apocalypse”) come from that period, although the same could be said of some of the worst (“Meltdown” comes to mind).