Finding a path to the Storm Giant's Lair
News Flash: The Pathfinder version is complete!
Before I get back to my backlist of subjects for posts (the fact that I promised a review of Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers recently percolated up to the front of my mind), I have some more Ramen Sandwich Press business to share. Most pressing, the Kickstarter campaign for Lair of the Storm Giant is down to its last several days as I write this; and although it is very close to funding, it is still about 10% short. We just need a handful more backers to throw down for a copy and we’ll make it.
The normal end-of-campaign rush to get in the door should cover it, but it doesn’t hurt to nag people while the opportunity to browbeat them still exists. For instance: I can’t help noticing that there are many more subscribers to this blog than there are currently backing the Kickstarter campaign and the Backerkit campaign (which has already cleared its funding target) combined, which would mean that some of you reading this have not yet put in a pledge.
Ahem…. Well?…
As to how well our strategy of running parallel campaigns on Kickstarter and Backerkit has worked, that is a matter for post-mortem examination and both campaigns are still running. At the moment, I would say that it was probably the right decision, and it has been a useful learning experience that brought me hands-on experience with how Backerkit seems to have learned from Kickstarter.
This is also the proper occasion to state that the manuscript of Path to the Storm Giant’s Lair is complete and ready for layout as of this morning, so I can brag that we are now a little bit ahead of our original schedule.
It’s not that conversion between D&D 5E and both versions of Pathfinder are always a snap; it’s not hard, but it does require a lot of close checking to make sure you’re not missing subtle differences in terminology between all three systems. The “Replace All” function helps a great deal, so this particular task is a lot less time-consuming and mind-numbing than before the invention of word processing software. But as with all forms of artificial intelligence, if you don’t take care to give the ‘bot the right inputs, the outputs will cause you pain later.
In that sense, I have started thinking of D&D 5E, Pathfinder 1E and Pathfinder 2E as three different dialects of what is essentially the same language. They don’t differ so much that speaking one makes you incomprehensible to someone who is used to one of the others. But making subtle mistakes undercuts your authority when you’re trying to present yourself with the ease and fluency of a true native speaker. And when you don’t have an editor to cover for you, spotting those mistakes so you can paper them requires a lot of squinting at the words on the page and it is more than a bit of a grind.
Path to the Storm Giant’s Lair also marks the first time that I can recall feeling that I had to offer a bit of guidance on what character levels are appropriate for a Found by the Way module. Almost all of the creatures in Sophia’s basement are a bit more challenging in Pathfinder than they are in D&D 5E: basilisk, gray ooze, flesh golem, even mimics. Not a low-level monster among them, so they may be too much for a Level 1 party. Now, if this was a module for an OSR system like Dungeon Crawl Classics that wouldn’t matter; it would be just another reason to wonder why the game master is cackling gleefully. Pathfinder 2E gave me a bit of an out with its system for “weak” and “elite” versions of each creature. That way you can dumb down a Level 5 creature into something that a low-level party could defeat. Pathfinder 1E, however, doesn’t have any provision for that, so I felt the need to make that clear. I have not had any regrets about continuing to support Pathfinder 1E in Found by the Way because I have met enough Pathfinder fans who tell me that they appreciate it. But this is one case where I felt like 2E offered me an elegant solution that is absent from 1E.
On the other hand, I found the new creature names in the recent 2E update more tan a little irritating. Really, what is the point of changing “duergar” to “hryngar?” Put that on my list of things that make me go, “… the hell?” I honestly don’t understand what was wrong with “duergar” in the first place. Or why it’s better to call flesh golems “charnel creations.” “Flesh golem” makes it clear that this creature is part of the golem family and it’s less pretentious. Plus, now I have to make a notation to anyone for whom the 2E revision is their introduction to Pathfinder that hryngar are the humanoids previously known as duergar, and etc. Oy.