The Goblin Dog Days ...

The goblin dog days of summer, during which we combat gaming malaise!

Before we begin: public voting for RPG Superstar closes on August 20! If you haven’t yet logged in and thrown some karma at the only rakshasa entered in this year’s competition (hint hint), head on over to vote here. Please, do a rakshasa a solid.

It’s summertime, and the living is easy. Perhaps a little … too easy.

I’ve hardly been gaming at all. The last in-person session I ran was on my birthday in early June, outdoors at the Presidio Tunnel Tops in SF. An epic day that now feels like it was years ago.

Our regular PFS home group hasn’t met up since May, even though three different characters leveled up at their last session. Normally, rolling out those new PC abilities is catnip to get another appointment on the calendar. Not so during the warm summer months, it seems.

Even my Discord games, which kept me sane last summer when I was traveling in Europe, have ground to a halt. I keep promising an update to my Quest for the Frozen Flame players … and then I go to the beach instead.

Or catch a movie.

Or play some chess.

Or do literally anything that doesn’t involve the herculean effort of rolling a die.

(Yesterday I went to the donut store with my kid.)

It’s pathetic.

And yet, I’m having the time of my life. I can see now why teachers love summers off. And I’ve rediscovered the sense memory of joy and possibility that comes from hitting that last day of school as a student, knowing an entire unstructured summer lay ahead.

Of course, there are probably plenty of teachers and students that reach mid-June and RAMP UP their Pathfinder play. Hell, with that kind of time on your hands, plus the proper motivation, you could crush out an entire Lv 1-10 Adventure Path in a couple of months!

On the topic of Crush City, please earn yourself a Hero Point by crushing that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, besides motivating me!

But for me, Pathfinder is not a priority this summer.

Part of it is that the fellow parents who make up my in-person circles are traveling. Part of it might be the sunshine and heat. Part of it, especially on the Discord front, could just be burnout.

And part of it is that I’m not attending GenCon next week in Indianapolis, the largest gaming convention in the world. (They have literally trademarked the phrase, “The Best Four Days in Gaming.”) Trust me: there are plenty of players out there who are about to be up to their necks in Pathfinder content!

Whatever the reasons, the result is that I’m presently in a low-fantasy season of life.

But unless we’re talking about a critical failure vs Feeblemind, nothing lasts forever.

So in writing this dispatch, I’ve decided to engage in some low-effort planning for the future. A quartet of gaming goals to shoot for this fall:

1. I need to get my play-by-Discord wheels spinning again. Baby steps: during August, I’m going to reintroduce Hero Point Monday which is our traditional weekly Hero Point drop that’s gone by the wayside during this summer of gaming malaise. One day a week of active out-of-character posting ought to help build momentum heading September. Put it on the calendar!

2. I’m going to set a reminder on August 15 to ping my PFS players who are due for a level-up, and offer some coaching to get their character sheets tuned up for the fall. Earlier this year, the developer of Pathbuilder (where all my players build their heroes) launched a GM Connect tool for Game Masters to peek in on their characters’ sheets. Put it on the calendar!

3. A couple months back I purchased the 4x PFS Intro scenarios which form a sort of mini-series. We played the first one, “Intro #1: The Second Confirmation,” at my aforementioned June outdoor birthday session. I’m going to try to wrangle an early-September quorum for my local PFS group to play the second one in the series, “Intro #2: United in Purpose.” Calendar!

4. The solo adventure for Pathfinder Infinite I teased back in May is humming along. I’m building an August work plan to complete the writing, with playtesting and layout goals in September. I recently joined a Discord server called Infinite Possibilities where authors share self-publishing tips. And check out this badass cover sketch by my illustrator, Eric Lofgren:

So you see, summer doesn’t need to be a purely lazy endeavor. While we’re soaking up the sun on the beach, we can gather some of that sweet potential energy and channel it towards brighter gaming goals on the horizon.

Speaking of gathering energy, for those who can’t wait until September to whet their whistle, there’s always the release of the new Pathfinder Second Edition rulebook, “Rage of Elements,” coming up next Thursday, August 3. Featuring the game’s newest class (a favorite from First Edition), the kineticist. Boom!

• THE MINI AND THE DICE

Those two adorable pups lounging on the turf outside Square Pie Guys on a sunny day down in Ghirardelli Square are goblin dogs from my PF2 bestiary pawn box. I love this creature description from Bestiary 1:

Goblins’ eponymous pets aren’t true canines at all, but rather large, blunt-nosed rodents with thin bodies and long legs. As cowardly as they are ugly, goblin dogs prefer to lurk behind bushes or in deep shadows, pouncing upon lone or wounded prey … Most goblins take issue with the name, as the average goblin is appalled at the suggestion that these, their favored mounts, have anything at all to do with actual dogs. Of course, being goblins, they haven’t bothered to come up with their own, unique name for goblin dogs.

Such sweet boys! The red-and-yellow polyhedrals are a random assortment that I grabbed from my OSR dice bag: the plush drawstring sack salvaged from a bottle of Crown Royal Northern Harvest rye. Roll a Fortitude save, indeed.

• PARTY DYNAMICS

Here’s your chance to shake off the goblin dog days of summer (watch out for Irritating Dander) and scratch your gaming itch in the comments section below.

This month’s prompt:

If you were building a new kineticist PC, which of the six Elemental Planes from “Rage of Elements” would you choose to channel via “a supernatural conduit within your body”?

• Air

• Earth

• Fire

• Metal

• Water

• Wood

That’s it for this month, airbenders and metalheads (hey, I told you I was feeling lazy). And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time. 

Adventure!