Now Accepting Adventures!*

Thursday, November 19, 2009

*Sort of.

Beginning today, I am opening the door to the Pathfinder Society Organized Play open call not for a week but for a long, unspecified length of time. I am looking for three specific types of adventures (detailed below) for Pathfinder Society. I am NOT seeking generic Pathfinder RPG adventures nor am I asking you to pitch me a new Pathfinder Adventure Path. Any submissions that aren't specifically for Pathfinder Society Organized Play scenarios will be ignored.

Instead of asking you to send me a 750-word outline, I'm asking you to send completed adventures. A completed adventure cannot exceed 12,000 words and must (MUST!) follow the style for a Pathfinder Society Organized Play adventure scenario as established by the Season 1 scenarios. Those of you not brave enough to send a completed adventure can instead send me a short (less than 500 words) query instead that quickly describes the adventure. I will review completed adventures and queries as I receive them and respond appropriately. If I receive one that I like (especially if I receive a completed adventure that I like), I will likely give that author a contract and pay him or her for the adventure. If I receive one that I 80% like, I will likely ask that author to rewrite elements and resubmit for possible future publication. There is no guarantee at any point in this process that I will give you a contract and pay you for your work.

By making the opening the open call for a longer period of time, I hope to see an increase in the quality and volume of submissions. Paizo uses the Pathfinder Society Organized Play open calls to find new talent for our other product lines—maybe that new talent is you!

And now for some rules:

Rules of Submitting for the Pathfinder Society Organized Play Open Call

1. Only submit Pathfinder Society scenarios or scenario ideas. I won't even respond to other queries.

2. If you submit a complete 12,000-word adventure, you must include a scan of this PDF with your signature on it with your submission. If your submission lacks this PDF, it will be rejected without being read. The PDF is NOT necessary for 500-word queries.

3. All submissions must be made via email to pathfindersociety@paizo.com.

4. Your submission must be in .doc, .rtf, or .txt format.

5. Your submission must include your full legal name, physical mailing address, email address, and a contact phone number on the top of the first page. This does not count toward word count.

6. Your submission file (not the agreement PDF) must be named LASTNAME_TITLE.EXTENSION such as FROST_AMONGSTTHELIVING.doc.

7. The subject line of your submission email must be labeled the same: LASTNAME TITLE.

8. Allow 72 hours for a response before resubmitting. Allow for more time on a holiday weekend.

9. Read at least one season 1 scenario (you probably want to read all of them) before submitting. I can usually tell in about the first 50 words if you've actually read or played in a scenario.

10. Failure to follow any of the above rules will result in a rejection.

General Guidelines

Here are a few tips for your scenarios or scenario ideas:

1. Use our setting details to make your own story, don't cram your story so full of our canon that it reads like a Frankenstein's monster of other authors' work. Read this post for an example.

2. Understand that Pathfinder Society is not a good-aligned organization, nor is it evil. Also understand that evil characters are not allowed in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Also understand that all scenarios must be PG-13.

3. Avoid child endangerment stories. It's cheap, it's trite, and I'm tired of reading them.

4. Not really looking for comedies.

5. I am really looking for high adventure stories with drama, action, and roleplay.

6. Speaking of roleplay, I'd love for someone to knock me dead with a good murder mystery scenario. And I mean really good in the sense that after 4 hours of game play at a convention every class of player walks away from the table satisfied. Tall order, I know, but I'd love to see it happen.

7. #5 and #6 do not mean that all I want to see are high adventure stories and murder mysteries. If you have a really good idea that's neither of those two, I want to see it.

8. Only send me your best ideas and your (very important) BEST-WRITTEN ideas. You may send more than one idea.

9. NO EASTER EGGS. What I mean by that is this: don't be cute and include a reference to your favorite comic book/movie/song/etc. If we catch it, you're done. If we don't catch it, we could get the pants sued off of us. Just don't do it.

10. Passive voice is a rejection in the making. Read this website and this thread to understand passive voice.

11. Read this post. And this thread.

What Pathfinder Society is Currently Seeking

We need the following adventure submissions for Pathfinder Society Organized Play:

1. Tier 1–5 scenario set in Absalom.

2. Tier 1–5 scenario set in Qadira.

3. Tier 1–7 scenario set in Absalom.

Good luck!

Joshua J. Frost
Events Manager

Illustration by Craig J. Spearing

A river, a river, my kingdom for a river!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

It's been just over a fortnight since I risked life and limb to infiltrate the stygian depths of Paizo's editorial pit, so I thought it was time to provide a few brief glimpses into the shadowy machinations of Paizo's editorial process.

As soon as Paizo's minions discovered my presence, they lost no time in hurling reams of word-filled paper at me. Armed only with a quill and a pot of green ink, I got right to work, slashing hanging participles and eradicating the feared passive voice. Along the way, I realized I was working on a comprehensive guide to realms of a most low character. While it was my great pleasure to read and edit a plethora of famed authors' impressions of such a dangerous and unstable land, I soon learned that mapping such a chaotic territory and compiling its history into a concise timeline were Herculean tasks of epic proportions. Nevertheless, I persevered, so that you, loyal readers, would get only the best.

But these riverine dominions were not my only task, for two new classes were ready to take their place in an upcoming guide to advanced play and needed a critical editorial eye before making their playtest debut before the eager masses. I was only too happy to give the oracle and cavalier my aid, and send them happily on their way.

As for what comes next, your guess is as good mine! I am hoarding a few secrets, of course (I've been sworn to secrecy on the threat of Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts regarding the happenings at last week's secret Sandpoint game, for example), but more tidbits will slowly be making their laborious way to bloglight, I can assure you. Until then, I bid you fond farewell. And watch out for the fish!

Rob McCreary
Assistant Editor

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Sci-Fried: Pucker Up

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Cave raptors are sated; it's time to blog!

Back when I was a little ankle-chewer in the distant 1980s, there weren't a lot of strong female role models to choose from. Most of the women on TV were simpering damsels in distress or so fashion- and boy-crazy that they triggered my normally resilient goblin gag reflex. Then in 1985, Mattel rolled out She-Ra and my youthful, violent fanaticism found someone to latch onto. She-Ra still had a lot of fashion doll in her, but she had something that no other female character did: a friggin' sword! For a long while, She-Ra was my favorite show, and I still remember it fondly today, even if the series hasn't aged well.

And why in Lamashtu's name have I forced us all down this horrifying stagger through memory lane? So that it will really drive home the point when I say quite plainly: Jirel of Joiry would kick She-Ra's alabaster ass!

For this week's installment of Sci-Fried, I picked up a copy of the Planet Stories collection Black God's Kiss. Last time around, I enjoyed Kuttner's work on The Dark World, and in my research (and by research, I mean dumpster-diving in Wikipedia) I discovered that he co-wrote most of his later novels with his wife, C. L. Moore.

Illustration by Arnold Tsang

So, major spoilers: C. L. Moore is a woman!

Armed with the knowledge that women can write science fiction, I eagerly dove into Black God's Kiss. And I was not disappointed. The intrusion of pesky adventurers kept me from finishing all six thrilling tales, as their larcenous halfling made off with my copy in the fracas. But the first three short stories were more than enough to whet my appetite and have me picking up a replacement copy today at work.

Black God's Kiss collects Moore's six Jirel of Joiry stories into one convenient volume. The original badass, no-excuses warrior woman before Xena and Lara Croft made it cool, Jirel is the military commander (and later queen) of Joiry, a medieval French territory. She's the best swordswoman in the kingdom, the toughest brawler, and supremely focused on whatever her goal might be. She's every bit as violent as I am, but with all the self-confidence and human emotions I usually use my violence to compensate for.

But like an octopus without its legs, a cool character isn't much to look at if the writing is sub par. And Moore is par excellence. Moore's writing is like an expensive meal. You get the nourishing plot, of course, but what you really love is just putting the prose in your mouth and chewing, savoring those flavorful descriptions and the rich balance of analogies. It's like eating a pickle made out of tasty Halfling toes.

"But the darkness that bandaged her eyes was changed too, indescribably. It was no longer darkness, but void; not an absence of light, but simple nothingness."

That is art. It combines such simple ingredients to create an elegant whole and makes me understand a concept I could never personally experience without visiting family. It makes me want to backtrack, taste it again, and learn how to cook it myself. Jirel's travels beyond reality are so lip-smackingly vivid that they pull me in, despite the book's glaring minority of cephalopods.

Black God's Kiss is an exciting and fun collection of adventures with the kind of action-adventure hero that anyone can enjoy, and any gamer girl and empathize with. This isn't just a book I enjoy reading, this is a book I'm going to enjoy reading to my daughter some day...

Provided I can override my natural instincts to eat my young.

Well, third time's the charm.

Crystal Frasier
Production Specialist

The Pawns of Hell

Monday, November 16, 2009

Illustration by David Bircham

It's an exciting time around here at Paizo. With all the hustle and bustle, if you've seen me on the boards at all, it's probably been commenting on Pathfinder fiction—how it's spooling up now, how some of the authors signing on are blowing my mind, and how we plan to manage things so that both the novel line and the gaming lines can flourish without breaking the world. (If you're curious, it's also the subject of the editorial in Pathfinder #29.) Yet in all this discussion of the Pathfinder fiction that's coming, it suddenly came to my attention that it had been a while since I'd talked about the amazing fiction we already have.

If you've been reading Council of Thieves, I don't have to tell you that Dave Gross is one of the most talented authors we've had the pleasure of working with on Pathfinder fiction. But I can tell you, having just finished the final chapter of "Hell's Pawns"—the noir-fantasy Pathfinder's Journal in which the tiefling Radovan and half-elven Pathfinder Varian Jeggare hunt a murderer through the upper echelons of Cheliax's corrupt nobility—that Dave has something few fantasy authors in any world achieve: Weight. Gravitas. An honest, emotional connection to characters, not just the world they live in. It's what we've always striven for with Pathfinder fiction, and there can be no question that Dave delivers—along with plenty of murder, intrigue, and gangsters both official and amateur.

But I won't get into spoiler territory. Instead, I'd rather give you all a sample of what I'm talking about, a snippet from the beginning of the story, in Pathfinder #25:

On the scaffold, a knobby-kneed herald emerges from behind the canvas. He looks to either side, shuddering with exaggerated fear when the guards eye him up and down. The groundlings laugh, recognizing him as one of the Fools of Thrune, a jester from House Sarini sent out to amuse them while they wait. I lose interest the moment he raises a trumpet to his lips and blows out a length of crimson silk and a pair of sagging pillows meant to suggest he's blown his lungs out through the horn.

I see plenty of familiar mugs among the groundlings: stevedores, stable hands, street sweepers, barmaids, a seamstress I once gave a memorable night on the Bunyip Dock. A pickpocket I know tips me a wink as he pats a mark on the shoulder while his adolescent accomplice dips his hand in on the other side. A few others touch their chins or smile when they see me. I nod back.

No one from the stands throws me a greeting, but more than a few know me better than they'd admit. I know several of them better than I'd like their husbands to know, but to most I am only the silent bodyguard of Count Varian Jeggare. The only one among them bold enough to return my gaze is Ivo Elliendo.

The Paralictor glides out of the stands where he has been receiving the compliments of the ladies. His tall figure stands out like a plow cutting through a garden. The sharp red scourges on the ribs of his black leather jack give him a gaunt silhouette.

He squints when he spots me, and I can feel his scorn hot on my face. What else can I do but shoot him my toothiest smile? All around him, ladies who had followed his gaze snap up their fans to shield themselves from the sight of a mouth that I'm told looks like a drawer full of knives. The commotion distracts Elliendo, and when he sees he is surrounded by a halo of fluttering fans, his lined face darkens.

Elliendo stalks away from the stands and mounts the stairs, followed as usual by two hulking Hellknights. I begin to frame a prayer for rotting steps before deciding that's too much to ask, even on Judgment Day. On the scaffold, Elliendo peers north at the approach of the golden Royal Carriage down the Imperial Promenade. He snaps his fingers, and the clown retreats behind the canvas to a clatter of applause. Once the carriage halts and the window shades rise just enough for the occupant—no doubt some minor Palace official, rather than the Queen herself—to peer out, the canvas on the scaffold falls away to reveal the Instruments of Judgment.

In the center is a blazing furnace in the shape of a three-faced devil. From each of its gaping jaws jut a bramble of iron implements: knives, spears, chains, rods, brands, and most conspicuous of all the Tines of Cheliax. Each is a two-pronged fork sized for a stone giant, and today there are two of them.

Arrayed between the furnaces are racks of torture devices retrieved from every civilized nation on Golarion, and several not so civilized. The spiked cages of Geb are a crowd favorite, and two of them already hold prisoners. One is a fat man who begins screaming the moment he is revealed, while the other is pock-faced Gellius Bonner, the Butcher of Merrow Lane.

I fell into the Bonner case when the boss sent me to nose around the tannery across the river. I was supposed to catch a stable master selling the carcasses of his lady's mysteriously sickened horses. That went nowhere, but I spied the tanner sneaking out of his own home well past midnight. Curious, I followed him into town, expecting to discover nothing more than a mistress in some Cheapside flat. Instead, he led me to Bonner's shop, where he joined six men wearing crude robes. Bonner greeted them with some fiendish phrase, though I could understand only a few words before he led them downstairs. I let myself in for a peek. When I saw the yak-headed thing Bonner conjured and what they intended to offer it, I ran to Greensteeples and beat on the boss's door until his sleepy halfling butler woke him. With a few questions, Jeggare confirmed that the cult was demonic, not diabolic, so he sent a message directly to the Temple of Asmodeus, who in turn asked the Hellknights to capture the cultists, minus a few who resisted arrest. They even recovered two boys who had not yet been devoured.

The discovery broke the cases of more than a dozen missing children, disappearances that Elliendo had publicly sworn to solve. As he was not on duty that night, he was surprised to hear the criers' announcement of another mystery solved by the celebrated Varian Jeggare.

If it were for the murders alone, Bonner might have met his Judgment at the edge of an axe or, if it were only one or two killings, in hard labor for a decade. The devil-worshiping lords of Cheliax, however, do not suffer the denizens of the Abyss in the city. For consorting with demons, Bonner earned his special voyage to Hell.

While not an admirer of the spectacle, I make a point of witnessing the Judgment of anyone convicted on one of our cases. This time, the boss insisted that I bring something to confirm it was Bonner and not some magic-masked substitute who did the dance of the Tines. He sent me to the Plaza of Flowers with a couple of sakava leaves plucked fresh from a plant in his greenhouse.

Once the Instruments are unveiled, four proper heralds stand on the corners of the scaffold and announce the list of Judgments. Behind them, brawny shirtless men in red hoods prepare the braces for the Tines.

When a couple of the big men unlock Bonner's cage, I slip the sakava leaves from a sleeve pocket. The size of my thumbs, they are thick green ovals with tiny white hairs glistening with oil. Just before I crush them, someone calls my name.

She is taller than me, which is not too uncommon, but most of that height comes from a pair of legs snugged in black calfskin trousers with tiny stars and suns cut out along the outer seam to reveal bare skin. Her blouse hangs loose except in just the right places to make a celibate throw himself off the roof. Her big hazel eyes are too far apart with heavy eyebrows, but they look fine above a long nose pierced above one nostril with a tiny ruby. The stone sets off a hint of late-summer red in her brown hair.

I'm staring at her over the little green leaves.

"Are you Radovan?" she asks again. I could listen to her say my name all day, but then she ruins it by adding, "Count Jeggare's servant?"

"His bodyguard." Immediately I think of three or four suave answers.

"My messages to Greensteeples have gone unanswered, and I require the count's assistance," she says. "And naturally his utmost discretion."

"Naturally," I say, but before I can give her the pitch, I feel a sharp poke just below my shoulder blade.

"Say goodbye to the girly, copper-tongue," reeks a voice inches beneath my ear. I know who it is from the stench of garlic and boiled eggs.

"Not now, Ursio." I try to sound casual, but the scratch he gave me starts to itch. Out of the corners of my eyes I see a couple of shapes that must be his backup. "I'll stay in this very public place while you and your playmates go climb your thumbs."

"These bolts are tipped with black lotus venom," says Ursio, and I know it's his treasured hand crossbow with its steel "fangs" jammed into my back. "You'll be dead before your body hits the street."

It seems unlikely that Ursio has acquired the deadly and expensive poison, but on the scaffold I see the hooded men dragging Bonner to a table, where a third man awaits with a pair of curved knives held high for the crowd's acclaim...

For more of Radovan's adventures in Cheliax, check out the Pathfinder's Journal section of Pathfinder volumes #25 through #30. I promise you won't be disappointed.

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

Welcome to the Playtest

Friday, November 13, 2009

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

The playtest of the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide begins today with the launch of two of the six new base classes set to appear in the book. The cavalier is a martial character. Like his name would suggest, he is at home fighting from horseback, but he is by no means crippled when his mount cannot be used. The cavalier gains a number of bonus abilities tied to his order, the oaths that he swears, and the challenges he makes. Next up in this playtest is the oracle. This spontaneous divine caster draws her power from the gods that support her focus, granting her special revelations as she goes up in level. This is your chance to take a look at these classes before they hit shelves in August. You can download the free PDF containing both of these classes here.

In the coming weeks, we will be releasing the other four classes, two each week. During these periods, we will be focusing discussion on the most recent classes, but the playtest itself will remain open until the end of January 2010. The release dates are as follows.

Group 1 (11/13–11/29): Cavalier and Oracle
Group 2 (11/30–12/13): Summoner and Witch
Group 3 (12/14–12/27): Alchemist and Inquisitor

Just like the Core Rulebook playtest last year, there are a pair of forums waiting for your feedback and comments. The first is a general forum, for discussing larger issues and announcements. The second forum is specifically for cavalier and oracle feedback. We will add an additional forum every two weeks as the new classes are released.

I want to take a moment to discuss what we are looking for out of this playtest. Since these are new classes, actual playtesting is of great importance. While comments and observations are still valuable, we need playtesters to actually use these classes in play and provide reports of their experiences. This sort of feedback will really help us ensure that these classes become a balanced and fun part of the game.

See you on the boards.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Uncharted Waters

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Ever wanted to contribute to a Golarion-based adventure or submit your spells and monsters to a Pathfinder RPG supplement? You can with the creative and award-winning folks at Open Design. Their official Golarion adventure From Shore to Sea is on track for a spring release, and right now they are playtesting that adventure—and soliciting game design from the project's supporters for the Sunken Empires sourcebook. The Sunken Empires book is a 64-page collection of hooks, tools, spells and monsters to support water-based adventures using Pathfinder RPG rules. Join as a patron and your design contribution just might get you into the credits! Find out more about patron projects and how you can contribute at Open Design.

Also, stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes looks at the creative process involved in taking From Shore to Sea from patron project to printed publication right here on the blog as Paizo's designers continue the open-door creative process already in the works at Open Design.

Wolfgang Baur
Open Design

Happy Erik Mona Day (Observed)!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

No one here at Paizo really understands the significance of the 8th of November, or how it came to be known as Erik Mona Day—especially not the pseudo holiday's namesake. But sure enough, like the semi-reliable working of a clock with too many numbers, on or about the 312th day of the year strange deliverymen track their way to Paizo's door with flatteringly inscrutable prizes. Typically, it's pizza—glorious free pizza in all the flavors of the Papa John's rainbow. This year, though, on perhaps the first Erik Mona Day with our publisher actually present at the office, it was fruit. Chocolate covered fruit. On pointy sticks. A delicious gift that suggests a world of devious and appropriately adventuresome extracurricular projects.

So thanks all you weirdos who chipped in to make this another awesome Erik Mona Day (observed)! We can't say how much we appreciate it, or how far this goes toward making the long nights and weekend days worthwhile.

But now, back to snacking. We we've got a lot of fruit to go through and that punji pit outside Jason's office isn't going to build itself.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Crystal's Story Time: Sacrifice

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Cave raptors are sated; it's time to blog!

My father taught me a very important lesson as a young goblin: never try to eat a live cat. He also taught me that anything that is truly important to you requires sacrifice. And not the fun sort of sacrifice, where you get the family together for dinner and grandma bakes stollen and we all sacrifice a bound-and-gagged human for the greater glory of Lamashtu. No, it demands the unpleasant sort of sacrifice.

Gaming is important to me, and this weekend, it took its sacrifice. While running my favorite Pathfinder campaign, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and pantomiming the grisly death of a moderately important NPC, I took a pratfall that resulted in the unthinkable: my glasses were snapped like so much optometric seagull bone.

With my uncanny goblin skills (and a healthy supply of glue and wire), the break was easy to patch, but the damage has been done. I now sport the Prometheus Unbound of eyewear, and my shame is without end. No longer am I the office beauty, as any goblin should be, but rather a misshapen and hideous creature, no better than a common kobold. My game took a sacrifice of my dignity...

It also made a sacrifice of the 2d6 copper pieces I have jealously guarded since I was declared a 'combatant' at adolescence, but until we get into silver pieces, money just doesn't compare to dignity.

But I am not alone. Any serious gamer has had to make at least one sacrifice or compromise for the sake of roleplaying, and if I have to wear my sacrifice on the bridge of my nose for a few days, so be it! That delightful Tom Hanks fellow sacrificed his dignity for gaming, and look at him now! Sacrifice is an important element in the stories we tell around the table: it adds the cost that makes a victory valuable or the pathos that makes an encounter memorable. And the little sacrifices we as players make are no less important or memorable than the spectacular tragedies our characters make, and probably mean more to us in the end.

Roleplaying is worth a little hassle now and then for the happiness it brings, the friendships it forges, the occasional romance it inspires, and the birth of Warduke, who will unite us all beneath his iron fist. My sacrifice amused my friends and made their table experience that much more real, and I'm sure it will give my coworkers a few laughs as well. So as oxymoronic as it may be, I'll wear my wounded dignity with pride until I can get to the optometrist this weekend.

But until then, I can't see jack.

Crystal Frasier
Production Specialist

The Playtest is Coming!

Monday, November 9, 2009

It is almost here! The playtest of the six new base classes set to appear in the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide will begin on Friday, November 13th. These classes will be presented as free PDF's that you can download starting Friday morning. Every two weeks we will release two of the classes, until all six have been playtested.

Each pair of classes will be spotlighted for two weeks, but feedback will be accepted through the end of January 2010. Special messageboards will be posted to paizo.com to allow playtesters to submit feedback, ask questions, and talk to other participants. The schedule of the playtest is as follows.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

• Group 1 (11/13–11/29): Cavalier and Oracle
• Group 2 (11/30–12/13): Summoner and Witch
• Group 3 (12/14–12/27): Alchemist and Inquisitor

Getting involved is easy. Simply download the files and use them in your games. Create characters and villains using the new classes and give them a try. Then, come back here to post feedback and your play experiences in the playtest messageboards. If you are looking for more opportunities to play, these playtest classes will be available for use in Pathfinder Society events. Look for rules allowing these classes in an upcoming update to the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play.

The playtest of the core rules was a fantastic success and I look forward to working with the community to make the Advanced Player's Guide playtest just as successful.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Illustration by Steve Prescott

Introducing the Calikang

Friday, November 6, 2009

Sometimes, art makes the choices for me. When we ordered the cover to Greg A. Vaughn's "Mother of Flies," we asked Steve Prescott to paint us a scene in a thieves' guild treasury involving the iconics in a fight against a six-armed stone golem. The art, as you can see here, is great!

Unfortunately, by the time I got to the section in the adventure where this six-armed menace made its appearance, I realized something. A six-armed stone golem (particularly one armed with a pair of tree-sized-swords) would be something like a CR 15 monster. Not really a fair fight to inflict on 10th-level characters, and certainly not good design to have the dude guarding the treasury be tougher than the adventure's actual boss.

So, in a last-minute brainstorm in Wes's office when he was probably trying to go home, he, Crystal Frasier, Lisa Stevens, and I figured out what to do with the situation. The result is a new monster from distant Vudra, the six-armed calikang, a race spawned from a deity's failure and doomed now to seek atonement for an ancient sin. We ordered an extra piece of art for this volume's Bestiary, I wrote up the monster that weekend, and everything fell perfectly in place just in time to ship to the printers.

As for the calikang itself? You'll just have to wait for "Mother of Flies" to find out what he can do!

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

Gonna Set My Soul on Fire!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Erik and I are headed tomorrow for city that never sleeps, the bright neon-flashing beacon in the desert, that sultry metropolis of lights, chips, and the clatter of dice. Yes, that's right, Erik and I are headed to Riddleport—I mean Las Vegas! We're bringing our dice, our pre-planned scenarios, adventures, and speeches, and hopefully the appropriate amount of clothing and toiletries. Why are we going there? Has Paizo given its publisher and events manager a much-needed rest in America's resort town? Nope! We're going there to play some Pathfinder RPG at NeonCon!

Erik is the special guest for the show and will give the keynote address for GamesU, NeonCon's game design and storytelling "unconference," while I am a not-so-special (Daigle would say, "very-extra-special") guest and will be assisting Doug Daulton, the show's coordinator, with all things Pathfinder Society. Erik plans to once again slaughter innocents in his continuing playtest of the Spire of Nex and I shall do my best to avoid slaying Pathfinder Society characters during Lost at Bitter End and The Prisoner of Skull Hill. Let's hope we're successful in our endeavors!

If you're anywhere within driving, flying, teleporting, or ethereal jaunt distance of Las Vegas this weekend, come by NeonCon, play some games, have some fun, and ply Mr. Mona and myself with food, drink, and the dazzling lights of the city. They say whatever happens there, stays there—so if we kill one of your favorite characters during a Pathfinder RPG session, heed the motto. We have reputations to maintain!

Joshua J. Frost
Events Manager

From Prague to Paizo in 31 Days

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

One day, not so long ago, a bright-eyed young expat freelancer was shaken from the idylls of his honeymoon with the news that Paizo Publishing, in the far-off, fey-haunted Evergreen State, had decided to add another lost soul to the depths of its editorial pit.

Knowing that such a summons could not go ignored for long, I immediately made arrangements to return to my homeland, kissed my new wife goodbye, and boarded a roc bound for Seattle. After a trying ordeal of canceled flights and missed connections, a harrowing attack by a crag linnorm, and an unexpected stay in Vancouver, I finally arrived on the cobbled streets of Redmond, ready for my first day in the hallowed halls of Paizo Publishing.

Having previously dealt with the famous Golem of Prague, I easily avoided the guardian golems at the gates, and working my way past booby traps, false doors, and nightingale floors, successfully infiltrated the sanctum sanctorum of editorial privilege. Rather than allow myself to be ignominiously thrown in shackles into the editorial pit, I rappelled down using braided ferret-fur rope (world-renowned for its flexibility and tensile strength) and staked my claim in an unoccupied and strangely cube-like side cavern.

Sadly, all my precautions were in vain, as I soon discovered that most of Paizo’s minions had apparently decided to make “Rob’s First Day on the Job” a workshop holiday. No doubt they’re imposing some sort of quarantine on me to avoid whatever virulent European plagues I brought with me. It’s been pretty quiet so far… maybe too quiet. I can sense the grammar ghouls and style sphinxes lurking in the darkness beyond my cave’s walls, waiting to vex me with riddles of usage and voice when I least expect it.

But as the ghosts of forgotten manuscripts and spectres of excess verbiage slain on the altar of editorial fiat howl about me, I remain firm, resolute, and even optimistic. How many stat blocks might I save from disgrace? How many guarded secrets can I pry from the clutching fingers of jealous writers? How many fabulous treasures might I recover from the depths of development hell?

Stay tuned, loyal readers, and I’ll do my best to bring you all the wonders of Golarion and beyond that Paizo has to offer. And not even the blue pencil-wielding troglodytes of punctuation will stop me!

Rob McCreary
Assistant Editor

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Sci-Fried: It's a Dark, Dark, Dark, Dark World

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cave Raptors are sated; It's time to blog!

Time for a little back history on everyone's favorite literate goblin (and by that, I mean Golarion's only literate goblin): I love science fiction, but I am woefully ignorant of the subject. I sat on my mother's knee and watched Star Wars and Star Trek, I read through my father's dog-eared old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a few of my Saturday morning cartoons were set in space. That's about it. I remember reading some John Carter of Mars in junior high, but it didn't leave enough of an impression on me at the time that I even remember it that well. As embarrassing as it is for any goblin to admit, I just don't know much about this subject I enjoy, least of all its mysterious origins.

I supposed that's why Erik Mona, Pierce Watters, Christopher Carey, and James Sutter, the quartet behind Paizo's Planet Stories, line, asked me to start reading and reviewing this classic science fiction. Without any fond childhood memories (literally; my childhood involved being locked in a rabbit hutch with my 27 siblings), I wouldn't be viewing any of our Planet Stories fiction through the lens of nostalgia. Instead, I can dole out honest thoughts and observations on twentieth-century classics from a twenty-first century perspective.

Illustration by Emrah Elmasli

From my perspective, this is both thrilling and terrifying, like riding one of those blood-thirsty horses humans are so fond of. Now I get to read the classic origins of science fiction from almost a century ago for work, but at the same time, these are books that my boss loves. If I don't like them, will he feed me to the dreaded bandersnatch? Plus the library of Planet Stories is huge, and getting bigger every other month! Growing like a well-fed literary octopus (and you thought those metaphors were dead and gone). For my very first Sci-Fried, I decided to look at Henry Kuttner's The Dark World.

Time for another confession that will get me laughed at in the forums: I selected Mr. Kuttner because I really enjoyed the movie The Last Mimzy, which is based on Kuttner's short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves. I imagined that Dark World would be somewhat similar, familiar, and comforting in this strange new land of fiction.

But no. There was nary a stuffed rabbit to be found.

Instead, the story follows Edward Bond, who is not a little girl but rather a World War II veteran who feels strangely out of place in his own skin. It turns out that Edward Bond is not Edward Bond at all, but rather the wizard Ganelon from a parallel world, trussed up with Edward Bond's memories and life as a prison. I don't want to share too much of the story, but obviously the majority of the book takes place in the bizarre titular "Dark World," and many of the descriptions of this setting are both psychedelic and believable.

Kuttner's writing style is distinctively "chunky;" very intricate descriptions and bulgy sentences that can be a little difficult to handle at first if you're used to the "say it all now" style of modern authors. But The Dark World drew me in after the first chapter, and I had trouble putting the book down once that happened. What at first seemed like a fantasy story instead took a sharp turn into sci-fi as Kuttner tried to explain everything from vampires and werewolves to Cthulhian gods with the science of the 1940s. Some of the theories stretched my suspension of disbelief, but never quite broke it. Having finished the book now, I almost wish it were longer, with more time to examine the uncanny science and history of the Dark World itself.

The narrator is probably the best part of the book. We see everything through the protagonist's eyes, but until the very end we're never told for certain whether it's Ganelon with Edward's memories, or Edward with Ganelon's memories. Control switches between the two personalities, and bits of memory bleed through to the other, which makes what could've been an obnoxiously perfect hero into an underdog I could root for. I really want to spoil the ending, because it made me cackle with delight, but instead I will demand that you order your own copy and read it for yourself.

My final impressions of The Dark World are that it can be a difficult book to start, but once you get into the pace and get used to Kuttner's narrative flavor, it's an impossible book to stop. Once all the pieces are in play, the action flows fast and furious, with only occasional chapter breaks to let you catch your breath. The Dark World is relatively short, making it a great first step into the genre of pulp that you can read in one sitting. If you love science and history as much as I do, then some of the genre explanations will make you positively giddy. A fun book, even 63 years after it was originally published, and definitely one I'd recommend.

Dark World may have lacked hyper-advanced stuffed bunnies, but that's only because this book is for grownups.

Crystal Frasier
Production Specialist

Illustration by Kieran Yanner

Set Sail with The Ship of Ishtar

Monday, November 2, 2009

This week we released the newest Planet Stories book, The Ship of Ishtar, by A. Merritt. Not only is this my personal favorite of the 22 books we have released since the launch of Planet Stories about a year and a half ago, but it's also an interesting look at the Planet Stories process, and how in many ways we here in the office are learning just as much about the history of the most important early authors and books in the science fiction and fantasy fields as our readers are.

I often received letters of thanks form Planet Stories readers for introducing them to authors like Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, or Henry Kuttner. Most of these authors began their careers in the 1930s and early 1940s, publishing their stories in the pre-war pulp magazines like the original Planet Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and similar magazines.

In order to locate and restore the oldest, most complete texts of the tales we've published so far, I have accumulated a respectable selection of pulp magazines. One of my absolute favorites was called Famous Fantastic Mysteries. Along with its sister magazine, Fantastic Novels, editor Mary Gnaedinger culled the vast archives of the Munsey Magazines (primarily Argosy and All-Story in their various forms and spin-offs), collecting the best fantastic material for affordable reprints. In some ways FFM was the "original" version of our Planet Stories book line, only in this case they reprinted work from the first three decades of the twentieth century almost exclusively.

Two things strike me as fascinating about these magazines beyond the actual stories they contained (many of which were brilliant) and the fact that a woman was setting the original "canon" of science fiction and fantasy in an era when many other women had to hide behind pseudonyms to get their work published at all. Beyond those two substantive issues, the things I find most fascinating about these magazines are the art, and the reader letter column.

The art stands out particularly because most of it (especially early on) came from the peerless pen of Virgil Finlay, for my money the finest illustrator ever to work in the pulp field and one of the greatest American illustrators of all time, period. Finlay's distinctive scratchboard style, fine figure work, and juxtaposition of light and dark tones is breathtaking more than six decades after it was originally commissioned, and his work brings a continuity to the canon of Famous Fantastic Mysteries that might otherwise have been less clear, different as the stories published in the magazine may have been. Many of Finlay's works have been reprinted over the years (and a Google image search will turn up hundreds more), but like the authors whose work he illustrated, he was amazingly prolific. Many of his illustrations appear only in their original pulp form, so opening a "new" issue of FFM rescued from a used book or magazine shop can often feel like digging for visual treasure.

Beyond the stories and illustrations, tacked onto the ends of the magazines and presented in tiny type, came the letters to the editor, often dozens at a time. In the course of praising or criticizing a given issue's content, these letters often include praise of authors and stories that are nearly forgotten today. How many readers other than the most dedicated literary archeologists know much about authors like E. Charles Vivian or Charles B. Stilson? Beyond King Solomon's Mines and perhaps She, who can name the titles of further adventures of H. Rider Haggard's character Allan Quatermain or the dozens of other high-adventure fantasy novels he wrote in the late nineteenth century? FFM published many of them, and the letter columns are filled to bursting with suggestions on even more minor or forgotten works that were fading into obscurity (rightly or wrongly) more than 60 years ago. Of course, even back then, fantasy fans could agree on very few things.

One thing almost everyone seemed to agree on, however, was the overwhelming quality and beauty of language in the works of A. Merritt, particularly his groundbreaking fantasy The Ship of Ishtar.

Merritt's influential 1919 novel The Moon Pool has been in print more or less consistently since it was first published, and it was one of several stories in the very first issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries that solidified the magazine as a major success that would last more than a decade (not bad for a pulp focused almost exclusively on reprints!). He was a major stylistic influence on authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner.

Prior to coming across praise for his works in the letter pages of FFM, I'd never really heard of him. I came to Lovecraft decades ago, and in subsequent works by the above-named authors I always identified the florid, lush description as particularly Lovecraftian. In fact, Lovecraft was a great admirer of Merritt, and it's clear that Merritt's style was a huge influence upon him.

Listen to what HPL said about Merritt in a letter to a friend, praising the Merritt novel The Metal Monster: "[Merritt] has a peculiar power of working up an atmosphere and investing a region with an aura of unholy dread... the most remarkable presentation of the utterly alien and non-human that I have ever seen. Merritt is certainly great stuff—he has a subtle command of an unique type of strangeness which no one else has been able to parallel."

In the early 20th century, Merritt was considered, if not the most popular fantasist (that honor probably goes to Edgar Rice Burroughs), certainly among the top two or three fantasy authors in America. A journalist by trade, Merritt edited the prestigious American Weekly for Willian Randolph Hearst, and was one of the best-paid journalists in the world, bringing in an annual salary of $100,000 at the time of his death in 1943.

His busy career left him relatively little time for fiction writing, limiting his output to fewer than a dozen novels and about the same number of short stories. All are infused with powerful, vivid imagery, an unparalleled sense of place, and unforgettable characters.

This month's Planet Stories release, The Ship of Ishtar, is considered by most critics the finest of Merritt's masterworks, a precursor of the sword and sorcery genre that would come to inform the birth of fantasy roleplaying, and one of the most important fantasy novels of the early twentieth century. Merritt was the late Gary Gygax's favorite writer, and up until the month of Gary's recent death, he kept pushing me to publish some of his works. I wish Gary could have survived to see us get to The Ship of Ishtar, but I know he would have been happy to have one of his favorite tales presented to the audience of fantasy enthusiasts he helped to create and maintain.

The Planet Stories edition of The Ship of Ishtar features Merritt's complete, preferred text for the first time in more than 60 years. It also includes 10 beautiful prints by Merritt's favorite artist and friend, Virgil Finlay, collected into a single volume for the first time ever. Prominent modern author Tim Powers provides a compelling introduction, and the book comes wrapped in a beautiful, pulpy cover by artist Kieran Yanner.

Illustration by Virgil Finlay

I am enormously proud of this book. Many of you have sent me letters of thanks and encouragement for introducing you to some of the classic authors we've covered so far in Planet Stories. And if not for Planet Stories, I may not have discovered this book, so I offer my own thanks to Gary Gygax, and my own invitation to all of you to order the book and give Planet Stories and A. Merritt a try.

One of the world's finest fantasies awaits!

Erik Mona, Publisher
At the World Fantasy Convention
San Jose, California
October, 2009

But Erik Mona Day Isn't for Weeks…

Friday, October 30, 2009

Between the slurping of soda and gnashing of teeth garbled thanks issued forth to Pathfinder Wiki mastermind Mark Moreland (yoda8myhead on the boards) and all of our other fiscally indulgent readers who sent about a dozen pizzas the way of the beleaguered Paizo staff this morning. Happy to forget ungracious questions like "why," all of us here wanted to extend our full-bellied thanks to our awesome/insane (awesomely insane?) readers for the totally unexpected gift.

Photography by Joshua Frost

Also, just a note so you can prepare your Viking helms, Erik Mona Day, which typically falls on November 8th, will be observed Monday November 9th this year.

Now back to work! Nom, nom, nom.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Joining the Core: Seekers of Secrets

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Unless you've been kidnapped by goblins and held hostage in their dingy lair, you're likely aware that we are about to release a new book in our Pathfinder Chronicles line called Seekers of Secrets. Seekers covers just about everything you can imagine with regard to the Pathfinder Society. It describes in detail how your character can join the Society, the history and origins of the Society, a gazetteer of the Society's activities in the Inner Sea region, detailed maps, brand new ioun stones and new rules for using them with a Pathfinder's wayfinder, three new prestige classes, and new feats. All of that in 64 pages!

Because this book covers the Pathfinder Society so well and because it contains a great deal of magnificent new material for Pathfinders everywhere, we've decided to include this book as part of the core assumption for Pathfinder Society Organized Play. What this means for you as a Pathfinder Society GM is that you will likely see references to the new rules, magic items, feats, and prestige classes in future Pathfinder Society scenarios. What this means for you as a Pathfinder Society player, is that everything contained within this book is legal for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play and you may begin using the material from this book immediately.

I hope you enjoy everything inside Seekers of Secrets. The authors (Tim Hitchcock, Erik Mona, Sean K Reynolds, James L. Sutter, and Russ Taylor) have done a bang-up job bringing us a detailed glimpse into the inner sanctum of Pathfinder lore and adventures. If you're ever in the Starrise Spire in Mendev, tell Venture-Captain Jorsal of Lauterbury I said hello!

Joshua J. Frost
Events Manager

Illustration by Tyler Clark

Interns! Mash them, smash them, dissolve them in energy drink!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

During my first week, I was surprised to find there is a significant lack of chaotic evil in the office. I was not whipped by a winged baboon-devil while organizing the archive, and I am given free coffee that I did not have to make myself. I was expecting that Matt and I would be told early on to "prove our worth" by enduring psychological torture or some bloody nonsense, but so far I have not had to pull my sawtooth sabre from where it is taped beneath my desk and pounce on him like an unsuspecting puppy with a remote-activated bomb collar. Though we are treated well, our nametags haven't arrived yet, and my Paizo-embroidered handkerchief scratches my nose a bit.

Well, we are on to introductions, children of Zo; I am Editorial Intern Tyler. I dwell in a cubicle with Editorial Intern Matt. He's quite nice, and sometimes I actually believe that we are not plotting each other's deaths via falling gargoyles and sabotaged car engines. Even though we don't actually have a bloody rivalry, I am still generally a happy person. I like half-orcs and barbarians, though I occasionally dabble in sorcery and the bluff skill. There are times I lie awake in bed having elaborate fantasies about being John Connor. I'm friendly to all woodland animals as long as they're cute and more than ten feet away. I don't know much about cars. I eat at Subway too much. I like Lady Gaga because she is a classy lady and could be a villain from Cheliax. In addition, I like to talk about myself (to myself), whine too much to family members, and I'm famous for once telling a story that, in its entirety, lasted 4 hours.

I'm somewhat new to the Paizo family, but so far this internship has been really fun. Hopefully I'll get to know some of you on good terms, and the rest won't hate me enough to complain.

Tyler Clark
Editorial Intern

Ecology of the Pathfinder Product, Part 6: Move 6d6 Tons, and what do you get?

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Cave raptors are sated; it's time to blog!

So far, we've uncovered the shocking details of raising an innocent idea into a rebellious roleplaying product, but if your beloved book never moves out of the house, then it will never really make anything of itself. Now is the time when a PDF, so self-important, must go out into the world by itself. And sure, it may come back wrinkled or torn, or even upside down, but without that life experience, it will never truly be its own book. It's time to talk about the physical, blue-collar side of game design: printing, warehousing, and distribution.

For all intents and purposes, Dwarves is ready to pack up and head off to college. Out of sight of its overprotective developers and even its best friend, the art director, it will grow into a bearded adult of glossy pages and the comforting scent of ink. Then it comes home, where its loving parents criticize its dress, notices it's gained weight, and implies that it should cut its hair because it looks like a hippy. Then it leaves again.

Printing of RPG products is arranged through horrible, arcane methods, often via deals with unseen and unknowable supernatural powers. Paizo prefers to deal through the fey, who are both adept at weaving physical products from ideas and accept readily available sandwiches as payment (in truth, lead developer Jason Buhlman's most important contribution to the company is his astounding egg salad, which pleases the fey queen Titania and ensures a lasting business relationship and a minimum of ironic curses). Once the electronic layout of a book is finished, it is transferred through a series of tubes to the distant faerie courts. The attending pixies immediately spin it into gold, and then press the gold itself into physical books and arrange for its return. Total elapsed time to print a Paizo product: 14 minutes. Sadly, due to the unstable chronological connection between the First World and our own mortal realm, upwards of two months may pass in our world during that 14 minutes.

Eventually, sprite couriers, glamered as UPS drivers, drop off multiple tons of product at the Paizo warehouse. This fabulous structure, adjacent to the production offices, is the realm of warehouse manager and 10th-level monk Jeff Strand. The warehouse stores not only Paizo's catalog of products, but also much of the stock for the online store, and so organization is vital. Inhuman physical strength is also important, as every pallet of products can weigh up to an Imperial ton (which is to say, it weighs as much as 2,000 pounds worth of emperors). Jeff and his able-bodied assistants work tirelessly to ship orders out as soon new product arrives, focusing first on Paizo's thousands of loyal subscribers. During these rushes, Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens and Vice President Jeff Alvarez can even be found braving the warehouse's icy trenches and lurking glabrezu in order to send books far and wide.

The enormity of Paizo's distribution efforts is staggering, especially to a little goblin. In addition to sending out literally tons of product at a time to subscribers and fans, pallets of each and every product to come through the door immediately goes back out to retail distributors like Alliance and Diamond. Like NBA scouts, these distributors then ship our MVPs all across the U.S. of A. and beyond, across the ocean to Europe and even north into the fabled Canada. And this volume doesn't even include our licensees who translate Paizo products for non-English-speaking fans.

Printing and distribution are vital to the lifecycle of a gaming product. Without that final kick out of the nest, to plummet or soar, pages would be doomed to constant revision. Roleplaying is built on a spine of pulp and glue, and losing the physical quality of the game book means losing an important piece of our heritage. Without that healthy respect for the past, the next generation will grow up cold and mechanical, controlled as they are by the fluoride in their computer screens. By the end, we'll bow before our PDF overlords, and soylent green will be people!

Plus, if you drop your latest Pathfinder in the bathtub, you can fix it with a hairdryer—try doing that with an e-reader!

This wraps up our quick review of the Paizo publishing process; you now understand as much about creating new products as I do. Starting next week, we'll take a look at existing Paizo products with our new feature, Sci-Fried.

Crystal Frasier
Production Assistant

To Boldly Go... and Do Awesome Stuff

Monday, October 26, 2009

Questions are springing to your mind just about now, I suppose. Synapses are firing, tickling with neuron transfers. Questions like "Who is this fellow? What is he doing here? What is his favorite flavor of ice cream?"

These questions are to be answered in due time, of course, and to facilitate these ends, I must insist that you take a seat around the Campfire of Good Times while I spin some lore.

In a dark time not so long ago, there was a young English Major at the University of Washington. His days were filled with classes, homework, and more horribly, lots and lots of retail work. One can only take so much retail work, but this young adventurer had need to pay the bills.

Nevertheless he applied for an unpaid publishing internship and now only works retail on the weekends, which, though undeniably a poor economic decision, is one more spiritually rewarding, as it allows him to do Awesome Stuff and be surrounded by Awesome People.

This includes but is not limited to: seeing products before they make their way to the press, copyediting said documents, and more generally, watching the creative process as it happens.

I can tell already that my time here at Paizo will be uniquely rewarding in these things alone, and it is my pleasure to be among these great people and to serve you great fans. If you want to see the first fruits of my labor, pick up Pathfinder Society Scenario #35: Voice in the Void by Rob McCreary, due out October 28th. And if you find any proofreading errors, uh… blame someone else. What do you expect to come out of a desk like this?

I'm still working on the decorations, but you guys said you wanted pictures of the new place... And for the record, my favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla. Bow to the versatility.

Matthew Lund
Editorial Intern

Measuring Westcrown

Friday, October 23, 2009

It's no secret that sometimes when we build an Adventure Path key bits of information slip through the cracks. For example, Council of Thieves takes place entirely within and near the city of Westcrown, and to support these adventures we're printing a nifty map of Westcrown on the inside front covers for the duration of this campaign. That map was always intended to be more of an art piece and a representational map that gives folks a basic idea of the shape and layout of the city, as well as a spatial aid to keep track of where the various adventure locations take place. But for much of the Adventure Path, the exact distances between those various locations hasn't really mattered. That changes with the final adventure, though, where the PCs are going to be moving all over Westcrown to handle a lot of different situations in a relatively short period of time.

And so I needed to figure out what the scale was for the map of Westcrown.

As with so many other Adventure Path-related tasks, this rapidly exploded into a pretty complex problem. While on the one hand the map implies a specific scale (there are houses on the map, after all, and we all have a pretty good idea of how big a normal building should be), the map was never created with a scale in mind and thus, those buildings and streets are not accurately sized. So that's a deceptive measurement to base a map's scale on—initially, I used this to estimate a scale of 1 inch = 600 feet, which as it turned out, was really a rather poor estimation.

You see, for better or worse, the only actual unit of measurement we have nailed down in print that helps us to measure Westcrown's size is its population—114,700 people. Having no frame of reference as to what population density numbers were realistic or not, I went to the Internet to do some research. And as it turned out, one of the real world's most densely populated cities, Paris, has a population density of something like 66,000 people per square mile, so that should probably represent the uppermost end of the scale. And more to the point—Westcrown, for all its importance in Golarion, is no Paris. I looked around a little bit more. Rome's is 5,495 people/square mile. Seattle's is 7,179/square mile. New York City's is 27,440/square mile. Mexico City's is 15,410/square mile. Venice's is 1,705/square mile. Los Angeles's is 8,205/square mile. San Francisco's is 17,323/square mile. London's is 12,331/square mile. Renton's is 4,625/square mile. Point Arena's is 348/square mile. And all of these were numbers for modern cities—what would benchmark numbers from a fantasy world like Golarion look like? Even worse... I'd gathered these numbers off the Internet from Wikipedia... who knows how accurate the numbers really are?

It was about this time that I started stressing out, realizing that I was perched at the edge of a bottomless pit of statistics and urban planning and history from which I could well fall into forever, and since I had to get back on target and finish developing the latest adventure, I didn't really have the luxury of such an oblivion

So I made a few assumptions. I assumed that Wikipedia's numbers were accurate. I assumed that Golarion's baseline levels of urban density are comparable to the modern world, and given the fact that magic can more or less replace technological advancement and that the Inner Sea region's been civilized for far longer than any current real world civilization, I'm not worried that anyone can prove me wrong on this assumption.

Armed with these assumptions, I started assigning scales. At a scale of 1 inch = 600 feet (my original assumption), we'd have a Westcrown that covered an area of only about 0.26 square miles for a ridiculous population density of 441,153 people per square mile. Obviously this is way out of bounds. My desire to have numbers that fell into something closer to the range of real world numbers, combined with my desire to have a scale on that map that's easy to summarize, ended up with me settling at a scale of 1 inch = 4,000 feet (just over 3/4 of a mile). At this scale, Westcrown covers an area of just over 20 square miles, for a population density of about 10,000 people per square mile. Kind of at the low end for modern-day numbers, but given Westcrown's lack of skyscrapers and its relatively empty ruined quarter... I'm actually pretty content with that figure.

We're still a few weeks away from me having to nail down the city's scale in print, and I'm still not convinced the complex and confusing thought process I've gone through to reach the three scales I list above are 100% solid. So I decided to make this long-winded blog post, and to put the numbers up for everyone to look over and pick apart and challenge! Hopefully if there's some sort of critical flaw in my theories, someone will point them out on the messageboards in time for me to not make a fool of myself in print with a ridiculously unrealistic scale for the city of Westcrown in Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #30!

So, unless I get proven wrong by the end of the month or so, the scale of the map of Westcrown on the inside covers of Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes #25–#30 is... 1 inch = 1 mile. Kind of a complicated post to arrive at such a simple number, but that's sometimes how it goes in the wild and crazy world of game design, I suppose!

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

Open Call Submissions Close in One Week!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Hey there future scenario authors! Don't forget that the open call for Pathfinder Society Organized Play closes on Friday, October 30 at 11:59 P.M. Pacific Time. Below are the details. Good luck!

Rules for submitting Pathfinder Society scenario outlines are as follows:

1. Based on the guidelines for the current round, write a 750-word outline that includes the following:

a. A title (if necessary, some times they are already titled)
b. A brief introduction that acts as a prologue for the scenario
c. A brief summary of how the PCs proceed through each encounter
d. A brief summary of each encounter—minimum six encounters with one encounter detailed as optional
e. A brief conclusion—what happens if the PCs fail or succeed

2. By the due date, email your outline to josh@paizo.com with the subject line SCENARIO NAME_SCENARIO#_ YOURLASTNAME. Your summary must be in a MS Word document, or a Plain Text or Rich Text Format file—these are files ending in .doc, .txt, or .rtf. Your file must be titled SCENARIO NAME_SCENARIO#_LAST NAME, i.e., PerilsofthePiratePact_17_Dayon.

3. Include your full legal name, email address, physical mailing address, and a contact phone number at the top of your submission—this text does not count toward your word count.

4. Please allow 72 hours for a response before resending your submission.

The current open call is for Pathfinder Society scenario 45—one of the March 2010 releases. The full schedule for this submission period is as follows:

• 10/15/09—Open call begins
• 10/30/09—Submissions due by 11:59 P.M. Pacific Time
• 11/9/09 through 11/13/09—Submissions review completed—selections and rejections notified

Guidelines

**SPOILER ALERT: Do not read the guidelines below if you wish to avoid spoilers for upcoming scenarios.**

Pathfinder Society Scenario 45 Title: none; up to the author
Setting: Absalom
Story: The Minotaur Prince of Absalom has been kidnapped (see pages 35–36, Guide to Absalom). Why has he been kidnapped? Who did it? Why does the Pathfinder Society care? Your submission must include Grandmaster Torch (see Pathfinder Society scenarios #1 and #14) in one form or another—it's up to you how much of a role he plays.
Level Range: Tier 1–5; Tiers 1–2 and 4–5

Joshua J. Frost
Events Manager

Illustration by Jim Pavelec

To Hell and Back

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

With Book of the Damned: Princes of Darkness showing up in stores shortly and the Council of Thieves Adventure Path well underway, the keen-eyed reader might be noticing a few crossovers. Indeed, Princes of Darkness was very much meant to be a companion to our infernal Adventure Path, while at the same time, we've drawn more than in a little bit of diabolism in from that damnable tome. So if you're reading through Book of the Damned and come across a creature or two that you're unfamiliar with, look no farther than Pathfinder Adventure Path for all the details we couldn't fit between two covers. Already the subtly mentioned ukobach (#25), stymphalian (#26), cerberi (#28), and a whole host of new devils have appeared, with even more infernal lore to come. So stay watchful all you infernal scholars out there! The secrets of devilkind reveal themselves fully to only to the most cunning diabolists.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Ecology of the Pathfinder Product, Part 5: Layabout

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Cave raptors are sated; it's time to blog!

There comes a time in every game product's life when a developer has to learn to let go; to let his sweet, innocent babe go out, make mistakes, and grow into a book. A game product needs to stay out late, crash the car, and hang out with the wrong crowd. And that wrong crowd is the art director, in Paizo's case the amazing Sarah Robinson and the undefeated James Davis.

Welcome to the jungle we call layout.

When last we saw Dwarves of Golarion's's art director, she was a childhood friend helping to tutor the infant sourcebook in good grooming and healthy posture. But now that editorial puberty has hit, the art director becomes a corruptive influence. She'll introduce the book to page composition, gateway fonts, and the pagan ways of design. While the developer cares about making a good text, the art director (or humble-yet-beautiful production goblin) is only concerned with tarting the book up.

Once development and editing are finished, layout is everything else. It means making an attractive page that doesn't remind the reader of a junior-high science textbook. It means making sure the words, the art, and all the stat blocks don't trip over each other. It also means constantly harassing the developers and editors to cut or add words and send material to work with in a timely fashion. The process is arduous, often checking a work line by line for tight spacing or dangling widows (who hang around poorly laid-out products to get their kicks; during last month's move we uncovered no fewer than thirty-eight widows cleverly concealing themselves in the recycling bin). For any given product, the process may take hours, days, or even weeks, depending on how recently the art director has been fed.

In ye olden times, layout was performed by hand, using glue and a layout churn to mock up a page and send it away to the printer by horseless carriage. These days, much of the hard work of layout is performed by computer, where all the trimming and gluing are handled digitally. The common computer terms "Cut," "Paste," and "Churn" actually hail from these pre-computer layout processes.

This is the basic workspace, with the guides for page and column sizes. Boring enough.

Our text needs to live somewhere fancy, so first we design an attractive page.

We drop in the formatted text from the developer next.

Now we switch everything to a dwarfier font and adjust the text spacing a little.

Add some frames and titles, so we all know what we're looking at.

Now we drop in our artwork, wrap the text around it, and make sure everything fits.

And that's a finished spread!

Like a fancy show octopus with a mastery of sign language, a well laid-out product is a joy to look upon and easy to understand. While the prose might make a book beloved, its layout makes it popular, and often the only difference between a bestseller and a discount special is how well each page presents itself. Without good layout, even well-written books would languish in exile, their hideous countenances creating a wall between themselves and the general populace. Resentment would set in, and as their numbers grew alongside their discontent, murmurs of revolution would spread. Cries of "Viva la Composicion!" would echo through the winding streets, followed by bloody, horrific riots. Heads of editors and writers alike would roll as the dispossessed texts yearned for justice, but settled for vengeance.

To dodge that bloodshed, make sure to follow up your writing and editing with a loving layout. The bourgeoisie will thank you for your effort.

And now our baby manuscript has grown up into a finished book! Or has it? Still nothing more than a digital file and a pile of black-and-white printouts, Dwarves won't be it's own book until it has returned with a diploma from one of several prestigious printers. Next week, we'll examine what goes on once the book is out of Paizo's hands.

Crystal Frasier
Production Assistant