Tales of the Old Margreve

”My Ancestors are from Eastern Europe, I can remember my Great-Aunt telling me not to let the cat sleep in my bed because they steal the breathe of children” - Me


     In case you’re not familiar, Open Design uses a patronage system to come up with some truly excellent adventure settings. Not only am I a fan, but I’m a patron as well. When they asked me to review “Tales of the Old Margreve” I was more than happy to oblige.
     Lead by the Design team of Tim and Eileen Connors this literally has everything you need to keep a Pathfinder group busy for six months.
     Eight adventures inspired by Medieval Eastern European folklore are supported by 12 new Pathfinder monsters, new spells and a truly spooky 32,000 sq. mile living forest.
     Quite simply the Open Design Settings are as good as any the Big Dogs put out. Best of all at 113 pages you get all meat with no fluff for half the price. If you’re GM’ing Pathfinder and you’d like to inject some of that old Transylvania creepiness to your campaign this is the book for you.
(click here or on the cover art to learn more)

Gleefully Killing Clerics Since 1981

First off I would like to tip my hat to the RPG'ers who voluntarily play healers in adventuring parties.  They rarely get awesome treasure or have bards compose lengthy biopic songs about them.  But, they are extremely important! 
     The newest incarnation of every one's favorite RPG has brought some healer issues to the forefront.  The main one is that "You can't kill a 4th Ed. Party that has a good cleric/healer."  Now this might be a tad overstated, but in a balanced encounter the players will always have a huge upper hand.  Is that so bad? Yes.  It makes combat extremely boring and sometimes painfully so. 
     So how do you change that.  You can tweak the monsters, give them regenerative powers and action points among other things.  But, that has the unwanted effect of extending the combat.  The easiest and most efficient way is to go after the cleric.  You certainly don't HAVE to kill them, but you should definitely make them a focus of the bad guys.  When the healer is more worried about his own ass, he becomes less of a healing machine and more of a real party member.  This makes combat more fun, and makes the time fly by.