No, I don't work for Paizo; just a fan. For my day job, I'm a librarian in North Dakota.

The changes to the rule set are rather more extensive than you suggest, though I'll grant that it's hard to see the overall effect because many of the changes are quite minor individually. Taken as a whole, though, the system is a lot smoother.

The biggest difference in terms of mechanics is the shift in emphasis towards modularity instead of multi-classing. In 3.5 if you have a character concept that doesn't fit easily into a pre-existing class, you have to do some crazy multi-classing to get it worked in. Paizo's "archetypes" approach makes that kind of thing a lot easier, because it lets you swap out class features in a standard base class in order to get something different. Not more -- just different. I used to spend ages working out how to qualify for weird prestige classes in order to get a character which matched the picture in my head reasonably well. Now I apply an archetype to one of the base classes, and never bother taking any other class. It's great.

I'd point out that Paizo has continued putting the OGL on all their new stuff, too. It applies to all of their hardcovers (though large parts of the campaign setting book are exempt), and to portions of the adventure paths as well. For example, take a look at the Sanguine Ooze Swarm. It's a monster whose stats never appeared in any of the books; it put in an appearance in "The Haunting of Harrowstone", but it's under OGL, so it's up for free.

That's exactly my point. They don't have to buy the books; the mechanics are all there online, free for use. Bring a laptop -- or better yet a tablet -- and you've got the entire rule set right there ready for use.

Dude, they put out a new adventure every month, like clockwork, as part of their Adventure Paths. Each adventure path comes out once per month for six months, then they start a new one. There are 9 finished adventure paths to date (54 total adventures), and they're two books into the tenth. The adventures themselves run 64 pages, but the actual publication generally clocks in about 92-100 pages overall once you add in new monsters, articles giving background information on the adventure setting, the monthly fiction, and the rather nice artwork. And that total doesn't even count the other adventures in their "modules" series, which are stand-alone adventures rather than part of a larger story arc. There are 50 of those so far.

Like I said -- they make their money mostly off the adventures. They're happy if you buy the books, of course, but what they REALLY want you to do is sign up for a monthly subscription to their adventure paths. That's where they make their real money. If you want a home brew game, or whatever, then you never have to pay them a dime.

The big problem with Wizards of the Coast is that it's being run by marketing specialists who don't game. They're hugely out of touch with their target market, and the result has been a crappy product that few people want to buy.

Meanwhile, Paizo -- the company that makes Pathfinder -- has taken the pulse of the d20 gaming community. The company is run by gaming geeks. Virtually everyone there plays for fun, even the CEO. Paizo makes most of its money off adventures, not rules -- their subscription-based monthly adventure modules are their primary revenue stream. All of the actual rule mechanics are available free online under an open license, and if you want pretty illustrations to go with them, the PDFs are reasonably cheap.

At Paizo, the adventure comes first, and the rules are just a framework. WotC puts the rules first, and the adventure second. Even this WotC play test strikes me mostly as the WotC marketing droids aping Paizo. Which just demonstrates their cluelessness even further.

If it's "not too intrusive" they won't care if I cover my face, right??

No, no, no.

"Proud would I be!" -- Yoda

And leaving the DEA and the companies that make and promote the scanners sadly destitute.

Phone companies have been doing that for a long time. They're required to collect a certain amount of gov't-imposed fees, but anything they can collect over and above that amount, they get to keep. Last I heard, the phone companies were thus keeping about 80% of the charged amounts... that $4 fee on your bill being only a buck or so when it came from the gov't.

There was a study done some years back (which I can't find again offhand) which concluded that "redevelopment" and expansion actually are a net loss to cities over time, since it's not just the upfront infrastructure investment, it's the maintenance and more the replacement costs on down the line that will eat you alive. Property tax increases can't make up the difference, unless you're willing to tax everyone out of house and home.

As to the deals being made, if such deals went down anywhere else they'd be called kickbacks and corruption. Here again -- why is gov't immune to what the citizens are not? If we made such deals (or cooked our books to make such deals look good) we'd wind up in jail!

It's kinda like how hosting the Olympics sounds great until you actually run the numbers not only for now but ALSO for the lifetime of the investment, and discover the lurking bankruptcy in your future.

After 1997 (mid-1997 for the F250s) Ford did so many changes to the body dimensions that I can't use 'em anymore. So I haven't been looking at anything more recent. Worse, the newer body styles look like a Dodge, they're embarrassing. :P~

Also, I've noticed there's a "dead" period in the used F-series market from 1998 thru the end of the 6.0 engine... usually such a dead spot means they died young (not many still alive to be available), and I've heard no good of that 6.0 from anyone. Conversely there seem to be a LOT of pre-1998s out there, most with over 200k miles on 'em, so the survival rate is overall good.

What would you call "high mileage"? (saw one listed with 800k on it and all original, not rebuilt!)

The Powerstroke rates at about 25% more torque than the IDI but in actual practice, folks say it'll do about the same work. I'm not gonna be racing it anyway, just hauling heavy loads cross-country.

I don't suppose we'll see Butanol in the U.S. any time soon, but it would be interesting to try it in the old truck and see how it performs... it's quite sensitive to fuel quality (tho not so much as when it was young).

Yeah, planning on around $5000 -- 95/96/97 models are my target for various reasons (tho so far the best prospect is a rather ugly but mechanically sound '94 F350 with 235k miles on it ... has the turbo, still slow to get going, tho will pull a house. Good thing I'm not usually in a rush. :) Looked at some duds tho... I gotta wonder how someone wears out that Ford front end without actually hitting something. Mine isn't near as heavy duty, has worked its poor little ass off for 34 years, and it's still good!

Good info about the injector pump, thanks.

My old truck isn't notably worse on the gas on hills; headwind is what really sucks down its MPG, to the point that when I can, I contrive to avoid bucking it.

Someone gift me three (three??!) really old Mercury wheels that are 17" and about 3" wide, and as it happens fit the F100. Not sure what I'm gonna do with 'em but the price was right. -- I run all-weather tires myself, prefer how they handle -- the F100 is very surefooted under all conditions.

To the nominal topic... I'm wondering what kind of future-fuel could be used in these older gas engines -- does Butenol really work? (F100 doesn't like ethanol at all. Runs hot, no power.)

And it won't be remotely chemically consistent, so what you can do with it is limited... maybe compress it into bricks, coat the bricks with sealant, and use 'em to resurface aging roads.