Frog God Games Announces Rappan Athuk (Complete?) for Pathfinder RPG

[Steel_Wind]

As cool as this news is, the fact that there are three different threads here about this at ENWorld suggests, to me, that the site is way too fragmented nowadays.

When people repost in smaller traffic sub-forum areas, those posts tend to reach a comparatively small audience on ENWorld.

Admittedly, people post where they are supposed to on these matters, too. So a product announcement by a publisher or somebody posting a press release on their behalf ends up in the publishers forum, while some Pathfinder fan might post a link to another site in the Pathfinder forum.

Neither approach is "wrong."

News articles, however, reach a HUGE swath of ENWorld traffic that don't even bother to visit ANY of the forums at all. This is actually a HUGE number of visitors to the site, many times larger in terms of individual IP addresses than the number of people who visit any and all of the forums, combined. On top of that reach, News articles on the front page of ENWorld are also e-mailed to 110,000+ people every week.

In the end, the fact that somebody posted an hour or two earlier and beat the news post to the front page with a link in a low traffic forum area is neither here nor there.

From time to time, I have refrained from posting topics to the news page on a few occasions BECAUSE of this kind of forum posting activity (sometimes it's helpful -- and sometimes it just isn't). However, when it comes to significant news stories, they will go on the front page whether somebody posted them to a smaller forum area or not -- even when there is an existing thread on the General discussion forum too, if the news warrants it.

In the end, ENWorld is a very large website and each user develops his or her way in how they each use ENWorld. Those individual approaches are often very different from one another in terms of how each member uses the website, what areas they visit -- and what areas they each tend to ignore. No method of use is more "valid" than any other.

If unity of purpose and clarity of message was the point of ENWorld, Russ could just make a blog called ENWorld.org and stop people from even posting comments to his few posts a day. I'm quite certain, however, that people want more than that from ENWorld. Moreover (if not more importantly), I'm quite certain Russ does too.

In the end, ENWorld is very much a reflection of its individual users' widely divergent interests and differing approaches to the topic of RPGs generally -- and D&D specifically. If the end result sometimes looks like we are herding cats -- that's because we usually are.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

* moved to meta *

 

[DarkSasha]

I'm confused.

How did an exciting message about Rappan Athuk being converted to both PFRPG and S&W rules become an argument over how the forums on this website are set up? Should that arguement even go here? I think it shouldn't.

In fact, I think that Mr. Whizbang Dustyboots might reconsider and start posting comments about our product on the product forum, where I put it to begin with. I would really like to hear what Mr. Whizbang Dustyboots thinks of our product. I really don't care about how this website is set up. It took me perhaps 5 minutes to figure it out.

Hope to see your comments on our Publisher Announcements thread, Whizbang, or anyone else who wishes to comment.

Thanks!
Dawn Fischer, editor, Frog God Games

 

[Mythmere1]

Whizbang groks megadungeons based on his comment about how they're not necessarily for clearing out, they're for player-defined missions. That's exactly how it's supposed to work, IMO. An excellent comment. Megadungeons are more like a mini-campaign in many ways.

(this from the crusty old-school 1e/0e megadungeon-lovin' department of the Frog God Games Development team)
Matt

 

[DarkSasha]

Whizbang groks megadungeons based on his comment about how they're not necessarily for clearing out, they're for player-defined missions. That's exactly how it's supposed to work, IMO. An excellent comment. Megadungeons are more like a mini-campaign in many ways.

(this from the crusty old-school 1e/0e megadungeon-lovin' department of the Frog God Games Development team)
Matt

Good point Matt. Megadungeons work best as a GM's playground to place his or her own nefarious doings.

Also I went back and checked my thread. The good sir Whizbang already commented on our product; and I like his single word comment.

Carry on, Whizbang!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

***

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Moving my post to Meta, as suggested by Morrus.

As I've said on other incarnations of this thread, I think this coming back into print is an awesome thing. I'm tempted to get this and use this as much of the Dungeon beneath Ptolus, where it fits reasonably well, I suspect.

 

[Samurai]

Whizbang groks megadungeons based on his comment about how they're not necessarily for clearing out, they're for player-defined missions. That's exactly how it's supposed to work, IMO. An excellent comment. Megadungeons are more like a mini-campaign in many ways.

(this from the crusty old-school 1e/0e megadungeon-lovin' department of the Frog God Games Development team)
Matt

As someone who, in my 30 years of gaming, has never done megadungeons, will this RA Complete contain information on how it's supposed to be used? Will it include ways to get PCs to follow a path or clues or whatever toward the goal, rather than falling into room-clearing mode? Will it have suggestions on how to get players back on track, skipping over large sections of the dungeon in order to remain on task? My problem with the few megadungeons I've seen has been that they spend huge numbers of pages detailing room after room, but have only the barest hint of a plot or goals beyond, say, "something is stirring up trouble in the abandoned temple, go stop it". That's usually interpreted as "kill everything in sight, especially any boss creatures you find".

If RA Complete will have tighter goals and ways for keeping PCs on track, why even detail all those extraneous rooms? Why not just have, say, a "random room table", such that when PCs get off-track, they wind up at **roll, roll** #11, dark temple of the Frog God, with details including Slaad, some giant poisonous frogs, etc. Once a room is discovered, cross it off the list. Make the rooms interesting and fully detailed, maybe even consisted of several rooms/adventure locations. These rooms could include clues or ways to get PCs back on track, from an NPC prisoner who gives them info, to a scroll in the treasure pile with clues, to simply being a dead end and the PCs need to go back the other way.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

As someone who, in my 30 years of gaming, has never done megadungeons, will this RA Complete contain information on how it's supposed to be used? Will it include ways to get PCs to follow a path or clues or whatever toward the goal, rather than falling into room-clearing mode? Will it have suggestions on how to get players back on track, skipping over large sections of the dungeon in order to remain on task? My problem with the few megadungeons I've seen has been that they spend huge numbers of pages detailing room after room, but have only the barest hint of a plot or goals beyond, say, "something is stirring up trouble in the abandoned temple, go stop it". That's usually interpreted as "kill everything in sight, especially any boss creatures you find".

If RA Complete will have tighter goals and ways for keeping PCs on track, why even detail all those extraneous rooms? Why not just have, say, a "random room table", such that when PCs get off-track, they wind up at **roll, roll** #11, dark temple of the Frog God, with details including Slaad, some giant poisonous frogs, etc. Once a room is discovered, cross it off the list. Make the rooms interesting and fully detailed, maybe even consisted of several rooms/adventure locations. These rooms could include clues or ways to get PCs back on track, from an NPC prisoner who gives them info, to a scroll in the treasure pile with clues, to simply being a dead end and the PCs need to go back the other way.

A megadungeon excels as sort of campaign sandbox. It doesn't give you a story-arc to play, it gives the the backdrop and the tools for creating your own stories through play in the dungeon.

It gives you lots of rooms and detail so it can support many and various groups. It can support repeated play. It can support multiple groups within the same campaign. It's not just an adventure, or even an "adventure path," but a place the PCs can return to again and again during the course of a campaign (perhaps often, or perhaps on occasionally). Sometimes they might be going for a specific reason or a specific goal ("retrieve the legendary Sword of Yod, said to be buried with the fallen paladin in the dungeon of graves..."). Sometimes they may just be looking for loot. Sometimes they might simply be exploring.

Because it *is* detailed, the very act of exploration is meaningful. That is, the dungeon is not just a place to move through on your way to the next "scene" in the story. The dungeon is also a sort of puzzle that can be explored, mapped, and examined. For example, astute players can discover secret areas and such not just by getting lucky on some dice rolls, but by exploring and seeing that, "hey, doesn't our map make it look like there should be something over here?" A traditional megadungeon is very much about exploration, descending into the depths of the underworld "in search of the unknown." (And in search of fortune and glory, of course...)

You certainly could play a dungeon-based game using the approach you describe, but it would be a completely different approach with a different focus on play. Either approach can be fun. (For the traditional exploration-style approach, I wrote an essay on designing a "mythic underworld" kind of dungeon that goes into more details on the design goals, etc., that I would use.)

 

[rkuty]

Rappan Athuk Complete Pre-Order

Does anyone know where and how to pre-order this and the cost yet?

Thanks,