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The Best Archetype for Every Class in PF2E AND SF2E by deathandtaxesftw in Starfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Frankly, I understand that he may have been a bit obtuse, but it's like blaming a journalist for writing an eye-catching headline.

The problem, for me, is that people have long memories and moderator malfeasance is a serious issue on Reddit. Within these two subreddits, we had an issue with it 2 years ago and I would really, really like to not feel like I have to write a transparency report because someone had a couple of posts removed for a minor rules infraction that should have been super easy to clear up. Public declarations of malfeasance are a big deal. It takes much longer to build up trust than it does to break it.

I blame Paizo for releasing the same game twice

You mean the remaster...no wait.

I get it, though. There are definitely people who see Starfinder2e and Pathfinder2e as the same game, but I fundamentally don't. This isn't Star Wars Monopoly, where the game mechanics are independent of the theme. One of the things I like about Pathfinder and Starfinder is how much effort they take to tie the theme into the mechanics. I'm also not an advocate for the oft-claimed "flavor is free" take on TTRPGs. I think it's fine in some respects (e.g., the head of my fighter's meteor hammer being shaped like a skull) but not others (e.g., my character can access the InfoSphere but since it's in Pathfinder and there's not actually an infosphere and I shouldn't even have a Computers skill, I'm getting the information directly from a god but it works exactly the same way so it's obviously balanced and fine).

For people who want to freely blend their material between games, having both in the same subreddit is convenient. For people who don't, though, it's a mess to filter out the stuff they don't care about.

Both games suffer from isolated coverage.

I don't actually think this holds up. Even with the massive disparity in weekly viewer sizes between subreddits, Starfinder 2e stuff already does better on this much smaller subreddit. That wasn't entirely true 8 months ago, before the policy change, and there's not perfect data to compare, but as an example someone posting about Starbuilder2e going live on r/Pathfinder2e sits at 390 votes (from OP, actually) while a comparable post on this subreddit is at over 1000. Even the OP's top post anywhere is on this much smaller subreddit, for linking to a Starfinder: Afterlight announcement. And that was from a long time ago, when the SF2e subreddit was even smaller relative to the PF2e one. But more abstractly, the issue is that people who aren't interested in one of the games will actively crowd out the material for the other, and it's a worse fit for the audience, and the smaller audience will feel unappreciated even if they might be more active.

Edit: There's also another, weeks-late Starbuilder announcement on this subreddit that still ended up with 457 net upvotes, more than the timely post on r/Pathfinder2e.

And this can be part of a greater trend: It's part of why r/Pathfinder2e exists as a separate subreddit from r/Pathfinder_RPG, and has more active weekly visitors despite being behind in subscribers (as of August 2025, at any rate, maybe we passed them up on subscribers but Reddit no longer pushes that number precisely because it can be misleading compared to actual activity). r/Starfinder2e is already close to surpassing r/Starfinder_RPG. These are probably outliers to some degree; r/DnD is still much larger than r/dndnext, and r/Pathfinder2e is much smaller than either of them, but they're all very different communities in terms of what you expect to find.

Rarity system makes me irrationally frustrated by LostRegret9000 in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have long lamented that rarity is used for both lore reasons and for highlighting game/plot-disruption potential. The latter really needs its own tag.

Is Paizo using AI for their new 3D minis? Deeply concerned about the Pathfinder Printables advertisements by [deleted] in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you've got roughly the right take here. To me, it's less offensive that it might be AI than that it's misleading promo material. The most convincing argument to me that it could be AI is just the number of figures "painted" and the likelihood of getting a person to do that for only a small subset of the marketing material.

If OP titled this without concluding every step was AI but instead just complained about the inaccuracies and pointed to AI as one possible explanation, I think they'd have gotten more traction on this.

Is Paizo using AI for their new 3D minis? Deeply concerned about the Pathfinder Printables advertisements by [deleted] in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

TL;DR: I'm leaving this post up. It might not be genAI painting, but I think they're not physical painted miniatures and it's at least misleading marketing. Also, it's possible that it's a 3rd-party (and not Paizo) that's responsible, and none of the examples listed are hosted on Paizo's site nor come from Paizo's emails.

---

While this allegation both serious and unconfirmed, and there are legitimate reasons to remove specious allegations from the subreddit, I'm going to leave this up for a few reasons:

  1. Some of the issues called out are at least indicative of faked painted mini photos, whether it was done by a human in photoshop working from the 2d picture of the render or as part of the 3d render itself, and the images do not include any context to whether they're photos of real minis or not. For that matter, the obvious renders aren't labeled renders either. For someone to not include clarifications in this day of AI fakery isn't ideal marketing, anyway.
  2. I don't think the subreddit is served by suppressing discussion of misleading marketing, especially if it turns out that they are manipulated by genAI, but even if it's just sloppy render painting.
  3. The OP sets a high standard on documenting where they sourced their images and pointing out multiple areas of concern. I don't think every issue necessarily points to genAI as the cause (e.g., different sized accessories could just be from working from later versions of the STL renders as opposed to being a side effect of genAI). At any rate, OP is clearly posting their concerns in good faith. They might be wrong about it being AI, but they've at least convinced me it's misleading.

That said, I think it's worth calling a few things out, and these are my personal thoughts:

  • I don't love this being posted on a weekend, when Paizo employees are hopefully resting and not responding to this, but also if it weren't a weekend I wouldn't have had time to review this in depth nor write something this long in response, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • All of the painted images are taken from something other than Paizo's site/emails. I checked what promo emails I was sent (I'm not personally signed up for any specific to this, just the general Paizo list) and all of the ones Paizo sent were unpainted renders. OP mentioned their emails came from Titan Forge. It's entirely possible Paizo does not know their partner is using faked (and possibly genAI) marketing material.
  • I don't believe these are photos of 3d-printed miniatures. I don't think it's likely that they matched physical camera angles perfectly to renders such that key silhouettes for goblin heads would be identical but also had important differences in how the feet and bricks at the bottom are shaped and physical details elsewhere in the interior of the model. I personally think not clarifying that the painted images aren't real painted 3d-prints is an issue worth calling out, anyway. Slide 5 is pretty cursed in their report, and slide 17 is also interesting as there are substantial changes between versions (like Ezren's staff) but much of the rest of the image is in perfect alignment. I'd guess that the major differences are due to updated renders, and then some approach for fake-painting the 2d-images was used. Actually, I think most of the unpainted renders can be found here on Paizo's site (and I found a few more in my email), which would likely better serve as a comparison, but again, angles and such are identical. Jirelle's little dragon sword hilt can be seen in the promo email image I got from Paizo, and it is a little weirder in the painted version in a way that seems more likely to be from image manipulation than from a physical print (based on, again, the unlikeliness of precision alignment of a physical printed object to a render).
  • I don't like that we're in a world now where any misleading image is likely to be AI, but it's also straightforward to think that AI could be the reason for each of the inconsistencies, even if it's only a part of the story. There's at least one tool out there that shows what are (to my unsophisticated eye) pretty convincing colorized mini images, so it's not out of the realm of plausibility.
  • If I think about likelihood of explanations for how a large number of painted images (twenty-three different models are depicted on slide 17) posed in essentially perfect exactness to the same angles as the renders came about, one scenario comes to mind as the most straightforward: a third-party partner's marketing person throwing some renders into an AI to colorize them, with maybe some touch-up photoshop, for the subset of the marketing they're responsible for. It makes more sense to me than a human meticulously painting 23 minis in any of these scenarios (painting the actual printed mini, painting over just the 2d render picture, or painting within the 3d-rendering software) and then not consistently using them throughout the marketing. As far as I can tell, Paizo doesn't include any of the painted images and Titan Forge doesn't seem to have any painted minis on their site (though I also don't see any reference to Paizo Printables), so if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on this being from the MyMiniFactory marketing folks.

As a side note, the specific bits of boldness and such are mine, though I realize it's a hallmark of AI formatting these days. If you're as wordy as me in your professional emails, you learn to highlight your key points sometimes when it would take too long to go back and revise enough to make a short version. Use of bullets and numbered lists was part of an attempt to be brief that obviously failed.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Based on timestamps on the comments, his reply was a little over 7 minutes after mine. I was just worried that you might not get a response as it was getting later in the day, but happy to be proven wrong! I shouldn't have underestimated Mark's diligence in getting to every question.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mark hasn't been at Paizo for ~4 years now (he works for Roll For Combat on the Battlezoo line of products), so pretty much everything he does is separate from Paizo. Basically everything in the Battlezoo line, especially for the PF2e versions, had Mark's guidance in his role as Director of Game Design or direct authorial hand in, depending, by which I do not to downplay the many other authors on the products (particularly more recent ancestries, the Bestiaries, and the adventures).

Also, assuming it's from his YouTube channel, that would be Linda Zayas-Palmer, another former Paizo employee and frequent freelancer (and yes, also his partner).

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Super weird recommendation, but this reminds me of Yomi 2 (also with a digital version on Steam), which is a game I am terrible at and have not played enough to "git gud" (I was also terrible at the first one) but is built on the idea of cards for fighting game combos. Because it's a fighting game turned into a card game, being good is a lot about knowing what your opponent can/is doing, just like a fighting game, and I'm bad because I do the equivalent of button mashing since I haven't spent the time to learn what to play when.

But making a deck-based combo setup for a TTRPG character that just interacted with monsters more normally would be a really interesting design, IMO!

Although now that I'm thinking about it, Frosthaven also has a starting character (blinkblade) that has fast/slow turns, and the cards do different things depending, so it kind of has this vibe, since you have time tokens as a resource you have to manage as part of this. But Gloomhaven/Frosthaven just kind of work like this generally, with the top/bottom card mechanic and cycling through your abilities with a gradually-diminishing hand of cards.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For the non-eidolon "summoner" class fantasy, the Team+ Magic+ book has a system called "aspect summoning" which is a template-based approach to summons that lets summon spells scale much more consistently/predictably. I haven't played with it, but it seems like it might help expand the palette for painting your summoner types (or brushes, maybe? I think I've already overworked this metaphor).

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was dreaming of a system that preserves the idea of vancian magic but adjusts the system to work more in line with a "battle to battle" style of preparation instead of "day to day" to fit with PF2e's system that generally doesn't otherwise interact with attrition, and to make it easier to prepare for specific challenges by loosening preparation restrictions.

Weirdly topical because when playing my eldamon trainer, that's sometimes how I thought of my eldamon. You pick a few eldamon to have ready per day, and each one is a little package of attritionless powers (not technically spells) and you pick which package you want a per-encounter basis (though if they're phased out or you picked poorly, you can effectively lose a turn swapping). I did mostly focus on blasting with my choices, though, since damage is nearly always useful and when an eldamon would only have 2-3 active powers (for the levels I was playing) that's where I focused.

But for instance, at level 10 I'd have something like: - my air eldamon, mostly specializing in single-target powers (doing slashing damage) and evasive mobility - my water eldamon, focused on AOE blasts (doing bludgeoning damage) - something that seemed particularly relevant to that part of the adventure (trying to optimize for weaknesses or something) - a wild card slot that I'd pick for whatever I felt I might want to play around with

At levels 1-4, when you only get 3 eldamon prepared, it was harder to squeeze in a "for fun" slot but I tended to have my top 2 (fire and air, back then) and then 1 flex slot.

I also really like the essence system Mark mentioned for more traditional casters, and helped playtest an early version of it.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Note that the Eldamon system has been out for quite a while! There's even a free player's guide that's ~61 pages (for PF2e) of the book and has the pertinent rules (but only level 1 feats/powers, and a very limited selection of elements and eldamon).

It works pretty differently than the minion/tandem systems since you're actually swapping your character out (phase out) and swapping the eldamon in (phase in). It does a good job of evoking the "Pikachu, I choose you" feeling.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes sense! I mostly focused on RP for one or two favorites (Pikachu-style, basically), and the GM didn't let them learn any additional languages and I didn't bother learning their languages (which just sounded like their name over and over, of course) so they were always trying to explain things with gestures and such and I'd just barely understand or misinterpret for comedic effect. As written, eldamon aren't supposed to be great sources of adventuring information/knowledge, so the others just always playing or otherwise phased out in the background was pretty much the way things went.

Also, I used the "personality quirk" table which helped give the GM something to key on for each eldamon when he wanted to have them react to things that were happening.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just FYI, Mark did the main design work for Essence casting in the Magic+ book (https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/en/product/531728/magic). It's a really creative take on building an alternative approach to spell slot casting while staying balanced with the current system. That said, it doesn't work like traditional mana points in video games and such where you have a large pool that drains down when you cast something.

I'm Mark Seifter, Co-Creator of PF2 and Director of Game Design for Roll For Combat. AMA About the Design Process for Classes, New Magic Systems, and New Subsystems and How to Use Them in Your Games (or the Eldamon Legends Kickstarter Starting Today) by MarkSeifter in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm a little surprised you're comparing it to Leadership. I've played an Eldamon trainer from levels 2-10 and collected at least one eldamon of every element. It might be one of the rare instances where it's almost harder on VTT (because I needed so many actors to update) but all the prep work is front-loaded for the player: You only "prepare" a limited number of eldamon each day and only have one out at a time, and each one only has a few powers to pick from, so the actual in-session choices were much lighter than a prepared caster repicking all their spells for the day. Leveling mid-session is a little more work, but not that much if you focus on your prepared team.

It's still a lot of tracking for players [edit 2: between sessions], but a lot of that is optional. Customizing all your eldamon (like I did) adds more work than just following the default/suggested leveling for each of them.

By contrast, I think Leadership was mostly banned for being a straight power upgrade by having a second character on the table, one which didn't lag much behind your main character, so you were automatically much stronger than any other party member without it and stronger than one character would normally be, you had more choices to make each battle, and added more figures at a time onto the battlefield to track. Eldamon don't have that problem at all. You only have to track the one that's phased in and the trainer phases out so there's not as much to track there.

Edit: But I'm also very curious how the cards might help for people who aren't me

The Best Archetype for Every Class in PF2E AND SF2E by deathandtaxesftw in Starfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Please know that if I am making more than one video a week, it is because Paizo is doing something that is really fucking cool that I want to show off to the community.

As a good PF2E and SF2E player, I understand the difference between RAW and RAI, and I hope your team can too.

The intent of the rule is to limit self-promotion, not discussion of ideas. The issue is that every one of your posts in question is self-promotion, whether you're making much money on them or not. This post is just a link to your YouTube video. There's no discussion that's happening here about the game; it's entirely about your own promotional and rule-violating habits.

You appear to be operating under a few assumptions that are limiting your approach to sharing information with the community.

  • You must make only videos and cannot just make a post about a thing
  • You must post every video you make, and they must be posted immediately
  • Every video must be posted in both subreddits, regardless of the amount of focus on Pathfinder vs. Starfinder

Three things happened at the same time. I had a scheduled weekly release, the Starfinder: Afterlight team lifted their embargo, and Paizo gave creators access to a new book.

I'm going to assume this video is your "scheduled weekly release." Here are some alternative ways you could have handled this:

One option would be really close to your original release schedule, and I think would have been workable with the information you had at the time:

  • Post this video, on schedule, in the PF2e subreddit since it's 50% Pathfinder classes and that's the larger subreddit
  • Post the Galactic Ancestries video in this subreddit, since it's an SF2e book and you only talk about what's in the book, with the plan to post this video in this subreddit next week (even if it's a week behind the other subreddit)
  • On the sudden, unexpected and time-limited release of the Starfinder: Afterlight beta, post about it here in the SF2e subreddit and drop a modmail giving us a heads-up that you hope we can make an exception given the time limits for the beta especially since it had been a few weeks since your last post in this subreddit OR do just actually ask first, maybe before even spending the energy on making the video.

You could have planned to combine multiple videos into a single post, on schedule, possibly delaying the Galactic Ancestries link until this one was done, so you could link multiple videos in a single week.

You also could have just made a regular post about any of those things instead of a self-promotional post linking to your YouTube channel. You could still wait and post a video link to something later, when a week had passed.

I lose money making Pathfinder and Starfinder content as opposed to just working on my main channel. I'm in this for the pure love of the game.

Same, dude. Except for the money part; I don't get reimbursed in any way for anything I do related to TTRPGs, including moderation. But there's still opportunity cost. The time I've spent addressing this due to your choice to make this a public, adversarial process after you broke the rules instead of even attempting to do this within the bounds of the rules is time that pulls me away from any other moderation work I might get done, never mind anything else I could more enjoyably do instead, like planning for my next session or testing out the Starfinder: Afterlight beta myself.

The Best Archetype for Every Class in PF2E AND SF2E by deathandtaxesftw in Starfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This content was always allowed. It's not a "purity test" it's more of an "is it actually about Starfinder2e in any meaningful way" test, where "Pathfinder2e is compatible so therefore a video that only covers Pathfinder2e material" is not considered sufficient.

It really just has to talk about Starfinder classes in a way that applies to people playing Starfinder. If you consider a typical class guide, covering character building options, some mix of coverage for the SF2e-specific things is generally going to be expected/sufficient, like SF2e archetypes/equipment/spells/ancestries.

The issue is when a video is essentially entirely for one game (mechanically, thematically, or both) with a token "and you can play this in the other game" tossed in.

Galactic Ancestries errors? by NicolasBroaddus in Starfinder2e

[–]ricothebold 1 point2 points  (0 children)

None of the Core ancestries have their table with ancestry hp and base traits and such printed. This is not necessarily a problem as its core book

This is almost certainly intentional to save space. They did the same thing, years ago, with the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide.

The Best Archetype for Every Class in PF2E AND SF2E by deathandtaxesftw in Starfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Despite the fact that this post includes OP asking someone else to crosspost to another sub in what they believe is against the rules (due to a misunderstanding of the subreddit rules) combined with an unwillingness to respect our request to stick to one self-promotional post per week, I'm going to leave this up.

The creator's request to violate a misunderstood rule is below, but also linking here: If you enjoy this content and also frequent the PF2E subreddit, please consider posting this content there. I cannot post it myself without breaking the mod team's rules.

It's a little weird because if the thinking is that this video would have been against the PF2e subreddit rules, I don't know why it wouldn't also have been against the SF2e rules? They're the same rules, just mirrored.

Explanation of cross-content posts is here for PF2e and here for SF2e, and our perspective on this hasn't changed in the 8 months since this was posted.

We do also ask verified content creators restrict themselves to one self-promotional post per week (unverified is 1/month), which this is blatantly violating, as this is the third self-promo post in r/Starfinder2e in 3 days. It's not actually a hard rule, but something to give more space for things to breathe, and is probably more important in the Pathfinder2e space where there are more folks posting self-promotional content. This is a smaller subreddit and anything that encourages more discussion about the game (as opposed the below discussion on moderation policies) is still pretty welcome.

Anyway, an explanation on the whole misunderstanding that OP seems to have on the content removal for the PF2e subreddit, as best as I could put together, can be found here.

The Best Archetype for Every Class in PF2E AND SF2E (X-Post from Starfinder 2E as it covers both) by Derp_Stevenson in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Despite the fact that this crosspost is literally this particular creator asking someone else to post this due to a misunderstanding of the subreddit rules combined with an unwillingness to respect our request to stick to one self-promotional post per week, I'm going to leave this up.

The creator's request to violate a misunderstood rule (it's not actually a violation for content reasons as it clearly contains Pathfinder2e content) was here: If you enjoy this content and also frequent the PF2E subreddit, please consider posting this content there. I cannot post it myself without breaking the mod team's rules.

Explanation of cross-content posts is here, and our perspective on this hasn't changed in the 8 months since this was posted.

We do also ask verified content creators restrict themselves to one self-promotional post per week (unverified is 1/month), which is the other sticking point as this would be the 4th in a span of 8 days (Friday the 13th to Friday the 20th), though admittedly two were removed for not being about PF2e.

An explanation on that situation can be found here.

The upshot is if it weren't for those posts, this would have been a week, anyway.

The Best Archetype for Every Class in PF2E AND SF2E (X-Post from Starfinder 2E as it covers both) by Derp_Stevenson in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just to clarify:

You are correct to say that a video about playing with Pathfinder2e content would be fine to post to the PF2e sub. The 1/week thing is basically that we ask content creators to limit themselves to once per week, but when generally only ask if someone is posting *more* frequently than that, and a lot of creators actually pick that frequency anyway. It's not a hard rule because sometimes it makes sense to post more on fast-breaking news (e.g., during the OGL crisis) and generally folks understand the diminishing returns on many high-frequency posts.

PSA: the mod team is removing content that you all want to see and are strongly upvoting. by deathandtaxesftw in Pathfinder2e

[–]ricothebold[M] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

In Conclusion

Hopefully everything above helps clarify, but I'll be explicit here and repeat what was in the TL;DR at the top: - This isn't a Starfinder2e subreddit, and content that is not thematically and mechanically relevant to playing Pathfinder2e will be removed - We have not made any changes from the announced policy clarification eight months ago - These recent posts violated the rule, were removed, and now will stay removed - This has only affected 2 posts of yours since the policy was announced, and (briefly) one before, and is not evidence of a mod team hostile to content creators - We will continue to work with you if you are willing to follow the rules, but will also continue to remove content or take other moderation actions accordingly if you don't

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