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  1. James Jacobs

    Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

    We've been doing more than modules for a while, actually—campaign setting stuff, player crunch, board games, card games, generic RPG accessories, all before we tackled the Pathfinder RPG last year.
  2. James Jacobs

    Module-writing: the proper ingredients

    Really? A big hardcover novel these days is about 30 bucks a pop, and there's a LOT less art in a typical novel. Of course... Paizo adventures are usually 20 or 13 or 4 bucks, so I guess I shouldn't be too worried about 30 dollar adventures...
  3. James Jacobs

    Module-writing: the proper ingredients

    Maps are a HUGE key to a good adventure. So is art. An adventure with boring maps or bad art is worse than an adventure with no maps and no art, I think. But maps, in particular, are important. I've seen thousands of maps in my time at Paizo, and a well-made or interesting map that looks like a...
  4. James Jacobs

    Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

    Hey everyone... first of all, let me just say thanks for all the kind words in this thread. And that first thread, the one that pointed out how many pages of adventures and stuff we've produced over the past few years helped explain to me why I'm so tired all the time lately! :) Seriously...
  5. James Jacobs

    How important are demons/devils to D&D?

    It does. The second-ever-published story for Krynn has Tasslehoff meeting Demogorgon, after all! :)
  6. James Jacobs

    How important are demons/devils to D&D?

    I would actually qualify demons and devils as important as dragons and dungeons to the game. And not just because they start with the letter D. They've ALWAYS been the classic "end boss" type bad guys, and among the more powerful foes in the game. And having an "ultimate evil" for the PCs to...
  7. James Jacobs

    Knowledges that are hard to fit.

    Having started college as an engineering major, I (and my grade point average for those first two semesters) can confirm that putting math and physics under Knowledge (engineering) is 100% accurate. :P I would categorize astronomy under Knowledge (geography) since it's got a lot of navigation...
  8. James Jacobs

    Whatever happened to Necromancer Games?

    The thing with the OGL is that if it DIDN'T exist, Paizo wouldn't exist in the way it does today. I'm not sure what we would have done after the magazine license went back to WotC—probably would have just turned into a web store for a year and then MAYBE if we lasted we would have tried out some...
  9. James Jacobs

    A Bestiary question I'm embarrassed to ask...

    Yeah; by linking whether a natural attack is primary or secondary to the TYPE of attack (be it a bite or a hoof or whatever), we can get away from the awkward issue of timing determining which attack is primary and which is secondary. This means that no matter what order a monster makes its...
  10. James Jacobs

    Whatever happened to Necromancer Games?

    Because Call of Cthulhu is AWESOME, that's why! :) Also, I approve that these boards correctly spellchecked the word "Cthulhu" and corrected my initial fast-typing of "Ctulhu" to the correct spelling. Iä Chaosium! Iä Enworld!
  11. James Jacobs

    Call of Cthulhu - Recommend Me Some Good Adventures

    Huh... Interesting to hear that "At Your Door" has been "almost universally panned," because I really quite liked that one. Maybe because of the T.E.D. Klein elements, but probably because when I ran it back in college I had a GREAT time with it. But yeah... Masks of Nyarlathotep is pretty much...
  12. James Jacobs

    Chaosium sale, weird and cool.

    Well... "Masks of Nyarlathotep" is regularly cited as the best RPG adventure ever written for any system, so that's a good place to start! I also rank "Beyond the Mountains of Madness" and "At Your Door" quite highly on the list of awesome Chaosium adventures. But basically, the only thing you...
  13. James Jacobs

    Advanced Template added Horses

    If you use the quick rules for the advanced template, you don't adjust stats at all; this is the assumption we make for most advanced creatures, since the template is simple enough that you don't really need to rebuild the entire stat block to use it; that's the entire point of a simple...
  14. James Jacobs

    AP questions

    Yup. We had to reinvent the XP progression, of course, since that bit of rules wasn't actually in the SRD. We went for a 3-track option to give GMs options on how to run their games, and for all Pathfinder adventures, we assume the Medium advancement track so that it's less of a hassle for GMs...
  15. James Jacobs

    Pathfinder 1E Is PAIZO becoming the next Wizards?

    Well, since Paizo's founder and owner (my boss) was more or less at ground zero helping make Vampire and Magic the smash hits they turned into... I'd say our chances are better than slim. :P
  16. James Jacobs

    Pathfinder 1E Is PAIZO becoming the next Wizards?

    Well... to be fair, it wasn't just one element that sunk TSR. A wide range of campaigns splitting your audience and increasing your production costs (spend more to sell multiple products to basically the same amount of people you could sell one product line to) certainly didn't help, but it...
  17. James Jacobs

    Pathfinder 1E New to Pathfinder

    I wouldn't really call calling an Ulfen a viking a "screw up" as much as it is, perhaps, a little bit lazy on the writing side of things. Being able to describe a creature as a viking does in one word what a more in-depth description cannot. And sometimes, sub-optimal choices are made under the...
  18. James Jacobs

    Aura of Resolve

    To echo some earlier sentiments... there's not a lot of charm effects in the game, but they happen to be spells that show up a LOT. Not only as prepared spells, but as monster spell-like abilities. Hardly lame at all, in my opinion, since the chances of encountering a charm effect in an...
  19. James Jacobs

    AP questions

    They're ABSOLUTELY usable in other campaigns. In fact, that's one thing we try really hard to do with our Adventure Path products. Each volume is 96 pages long; about 50 of those pages are the actual adventure. The remainder of each volume has support articles (including the kingdom building...
  20. James Jacobs

    Pathfinder 1E Word Count for WotC, Paizo, other adventures?

    Folks are pretty close on the money for Paizo adventures. We generally assume about 900 words for a full page of text. Stat blocks and illustrations reduce this number, obviously. For a 32 page module, we ask our authors to provide 20,000 words. For a Pathifnder adventure path installment, we...
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