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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Seekers of Secrets talks about the tests to become a Pathfinder and the training members receive if they pass, but the carrot that convinces most applicants to try is the chance to explore strange places, discover exotic treasures, and be published in the Pathfinder Chronicles. This illustration encompasses all aspects of those rewards, from the young Pathfinder referring to the Chronicles for clues on how to open a strange sealed door, to the female Pathfinder so impressed with Venture-Captain Ambrus Valsin that she cut her hair just like his, to their overzealous companion too intent on unearthing a cache of wayfinders and ioun stones to heed his fellows' warnings.
Illustration by Craig J. Spearing
Of course, few could blame him for this eagerness. The Pathfinders are said to have enough treasures in their vaults to buy and sell all of Absalom—surely an exaggeration, but greed is a powerful lure, and many join the Pathfinder Society just to get their hands on as much magic as possible.
So, I've made no secret of the fact that I've given large parts of my 25+ year-old homebrew campaign setting, Baria, over to Golarion. One of the more successful of these imports are the Red Mantis assassins—and by extension, their home city of Ilizmagorti. When it came time to assign authors for Cities of Golarion, I was sorely tempted to claim the chapter on Ilizmagorti as my own—I was nervous that even if another author did a GREAT job with the city that the end result wouldn't match my own personal vision of the city. The same goes for the city's map, to be honest. But my work schedule being what it was (I'd already taken up two chapters of Classic Horrors Revisited, alas, I couldn't responsibly claim the chapter of Ilizmagorti for Cities of Golarion as my own. And so, with some nervous fear and much wringing of hands, I gave it up for someone else to write about.
I'm happy to say that what Rob McCreary wrought with his words is exactly what I'd envisioned for the city of Ilizmagorti—he hit every nail square, and the resulting chapter is hands-down my favorite in the book as a result (which is saying something, since there was some tough competition!). Even more exciting, he came up with some concepts that I'd never thought of for Baria's Ilizmagorti—concepts that inspired me in some really fun ways. It's really weird being inspired to write things about something you made up due to someone else's work on that concept! Weird, but wonderful!
Yet as wonderful as Rob's words were, a city can live or die by its map. For Cities of Golarion, we tackled the creation somewhat differently. We hired writers to write the chapters, but we hired artists and cartographers to create the city maps. Long-time readers of this blog might remember earlier this year when I posted the Map Open Call—the results are some of the best city maps that Paizo's had the pleasure to print. Presented here are the two versions of the map of Ilizmagorti—the first one created by Daniel Thomson, based on my outline of what the city should incorporate. The other map is the final version you'll see in the book and in the Cities Map Folio as a four-panel poster. (We've left the tags off of Rob's map so you can ogle the beauty of his work easier.)
Pathfinder RPG Open Call for Pathfinder Society Organized Play
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Hello and welcome to another installment of the Pathfinder Society scenario open call using the new Pathfinder RPG rules! Most months we'll open one of our Pathfinder Society scenarios to you, the general public, to search for new authors and new ideas for use in Paizo's worldwide organized play campaign. We're looking for authors who have a clear and concise writing style, who have solid and creative ideas for adventures, and who are capable in every way of following instructions and meeting deadlines. And while we're seeking new authors through this process, we certainly encourage previously published authors to participate as well.
Speaking of new authors, special congratulations go to paizo.com messageboard regular Yoda8MyHead, who was selected as the author for the previous open call. His scenario, #43: The Pallid Plague, will come out this February. Be sure to pop into the Pathfinder Society messageboards and congratulate Yoda on this assignment!
As always, keep the following guidelines in mind when submitting:
1. Don't break our world. If you submit something that breaks part of our world, it'll be auto-rejected. The scenarios are 4-hour adventures—epic story arcs, world-shattering events, wars, mass famine, etc. don't have a place in them.
2. Understand Pathfinder Society Organized Play before you submit. Specifically, understand that the Pathfinder Society is an organization of vagabond scholars, thrill-seeking treasure hunters, and extreme explorers. They are not necessarily the "good guys," they don't get "hired" for their adventures, and they're not generally looking to make the world a better place. Submitting generic 3.5 "save the day" adventure ideas will decrease your chances of getting to write one. There are plenty of resources out there to give you a feel for the Society: the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play, Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #1, and the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting all have information on the Pathfinder Society.
3. Read one or two scenarios before submitting (particularly 29 through 32).
4. Pathfinder Society Scenarios must be no more offensive than PG-13. Scenarios are played in public at public settings and children will be playing them. Submissions that include violence toward children will be auto-rejected.
5. This is not a contest. This is more like an interview for a job—you're showing me your best idea and I'm deciding if the combination of your idea and writing skill equals you being selected as our next scenario author. We need authors—not winners. And I really want to stress the author part of that. Only send me your best work that is reflective of your writing style. I can teach someone the rules system—I can't teach someone to write.
6. I don't have time to return every submission with feedback. Feel free to post your rejected proposals to the Pathfinder Society messageboards for peer review. For those of you not submitting, please give feedback to those who do and are rejected.
7. Lastly, I posted some general feedback on recent submissions here. Please read that thread before submitting.
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 roll he plays.
Level Range: Tier 1–5; Tiers 1–2 and 4–5
Ecology of the Pathfinder Product, Part 4: The Editor's Compositional Fitness Challenge
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Illustration by Crystal Frasier
Cave raptors are sated; it's time to blog!
Yes, editing: the sport of grammatically minded kings. So far we've examined the natural growth of Dwarves of Golarion, as well as its invaluable hours of education, and yet we've ignored physical fitness. Without a steady regimen of editing, our little manuscript could turn into a clumsy butterball, drawing ridicule and cruelty from other game products.
To keep a product trim, healthy, and happy, it's going to need editors to run it through its paces.
According to Paizo's editorial tag-team of Christopher Carey and James Sutter, an editor's job involves neither crushing the dreams of authors nor blindly hacking away at text, but instead is a carefully crafted routine to burn off flabby text and improve narrative posture. Like a cephalopod, any quality Paizo product needs to hit the gym regularly to keep it healthy. Just like any fitness-obsessed octopus will hit both the free-weights and the treadmill, Paizo products will rotate their editing to catch problems with grammar, spelling, word choice, continuity, voice, and even the occasional rewrite to adjust the word count. Even the greatest authors will occasionally dip into the candy-coated bacon of purple prose or forget to tie their punctuation, so a good editor can help make sure every product can fit into its cover before the big class reunion.
The amount of editing any given product needs is easily determined with the formula n+1, where n is the amount of time you actually have to edit the book. Because of this conundrum, it's important for editors to make the most of the time they do have. At Paizo, the ideal grammatical specimen sees four editorial passes: two from each of Paizo's own hard-nosed prose-wranglers. A 'pass' is a single read-through. Obsessive-compulsive as any wild pack rat, these editors greedily gobble up any mistakes they sniff out, trading it for proper spellings or active voice. And because anyone, even editors, can make mistakes, multiple passes and different editors help to ensure that no errors go unexamined.
For Paizo products especially, the editors also serve the dual role of security. They stand constant vigil over continuity of Golarion, ensuring that dead NPCs don't crop back up, that cities don't spontaneously shift location, and that worst of enemies aren't running around as BFF. The editors have the blessing and curse to read every product Paizo releases, from thrilling Planet Stories to mysterious modules, and serve as living repositories of the universe.
And yet they stay so svelte, just like the products they care for.
Editing is necessary for the health and longevity of a product. Without it, mistakes, typos, and plain, old dead wood can slip through into the final product, clogging intakes eventually leading to frustration overheating in readers. The heat released by frustrated readers contributes to the inconvenient truth of global warming, melting the polar ice caps, flooding coastal regions, and causing alligator populations to explode. Ultimately, mankind devolves into primitive tribes of swamp dwellers, hiding in terror from the maurading ultra-gators that have made this marshy, dystopian Earth their own!
So to keep your writing trim and healthy, and to ensure the survival of the human race, edit!
Now that our product is happy, healthy, and knows where its going in life, next week we're ready for that special time in every product's life when it truly becomes a book. Next week, we examine layout!
The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary has reached our warehouse, and we've loaded it with hundreds of updated monsters for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. However, some of our favorites didn't quite make the cut and had to be left out of the book. Fortunately, we're clever and sneaky, and found a way to get one of the extra monsters into the Pathfinder Module Carrion Hill. After all, in an adventure with Lovecraftian horrors, this shapeshifting creature should feel right at home.
Well, as any devoted follower of our messageboards or weekly chat room meetings knows, things have been pretty frantic here at Paizo. As it turns out, releasing about 1,000 pages of rules (between the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary) and moving offices to Redmond, WA, all at the height of the convention season, is a really good way to knock product lines off schedule. We've been scrambling to get things back on track, and I'm happy to report that we're making some really good progress there—in fact, Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #28 is just now heading off to the printer!
This volume's adventure was originally going to be a stand-alone adventure written by me for our Pathfinder Module line. When I kept not having the time to get it started, I realized that it'd make a perfect fit into Council of Thieves. Splitting the writing duty for it with RPG Superstar Clinton Boomer, we explore a "what if?" scenario in this adventure: What if a "nuclear reactor" used a powerful devil as its energy source instead of radioactive material? And what if that infernal reactor had a meltdown?"
Presented is a hint of what's in store for Westcrown when things go bad—part of Steve Prescott's incredible cover for the volume. And that's just what's going on up topside—just wait until you find out what's happening down below in the Nessian Spiral itself!
The most frequent request I get from players, GMs, and convention coordinators is, "What scenarios will be out by [date]?" I get this question enough that I've decided to keep a rolling 2-to-4 month schedule up on paizo.com/pathfindersociety. This rolling schedule has some unique challenges—for example, scenarios aren't assigned to authors as far in advance as, say, Pathfinder Adventure Paths, and so I often know very little about a scenario coming up in three months beyond a potential title, tier-level, and location. The open call further complicates this as those scenarios are usually just tier-level and location with no additional details.
That said, it seems to me that the most important details for convention coordinators especially is the tier-level of a given future scenario. So we're going to keep you apprised of that, even if we don't know much else about the scenario.
Without further ado, here's a peek at the future scenarios coming from Pathfinder Society Organized Play!
Pathfinder Society Scenario #35: Voice in the Void
Description TBA. Due out 10/28/09.
Written by Rob McCreary
Tier 1–7
Pathfinder Society Scenario #36: Echoes of the Everwar Part I: The Prisoner of Skull Hill
Description TBA. Due out 10/28/09.
Written by Joshua J. Frost
Tier 7–11
Pathfinder Society Scenario #37: The Beggar's Pearl
Description TBA. Due out 11/25/09.
Written by James F. Mackenzie
Tier 1–7
Pathfinder Society Scenario #38: No Plunder, No Pay
Description TBA. Due out 11/25/09.
Written by Larry Wilhelm
Tier 7–11
Pathfinder Society Scenario #39: Citadel of Flame
Description TBA. Due out 12/30/09.
Written by Steven Robert
Tier 1–5
Pathfinder Society Scenario #40: Hall of Drunken Heroes
Description TBA. Due out 12/30/09.
Written by Tim Hitchcock
Tier 7–11
Pathfinder Society Scenario #41: The Devil We Know Part III: Crypt of Fools
Description TBA. Due out 1/27/10.
Written by Larry Wilhelm
Tier 1–7
Pathfinder Society Scenario #42: Echoes of the Everwar Part II: The Watcher of Ages
Description TBA. Due out 1/27/10.
Written by Greg A. Vaughan
Tier 7–11
Home to the jadwiga ("children of the witch-mother"), the descendents of the witch Baba Yaga, Whitethrone is a playground for evil nobles, with Queen Elvannia's family enjoying the last few years of its ruling legacy before her mother instills another daughter to rule for a century. The city is home to snow goblins, ice trolls, and even winter wolves and worgs, all of them with the same rights as humanfolk. Visitors must beware, for Baba Yaga cast a spell on the Howlings district that allows the lupines to walk in human form to more easily interact with the two-legged population; the people of Whitethrone know better than to hunt wolves outside the city, or insult the shaggy-haired men and women whose breaths fog the air on even the warmest days.
Ecology of the Pathfinder Product, Part 3: An Outbreak of Art
Tuesday, October 5, 2009
Illustration by Crystal Frasier
Cave raptors are sated; It's time to blog!
As it stands, Dwarves of Golarion is now written and assembled by its loving developer. Though awkward and gangly, we can see what it will finally grow up into. But at this point, this happy child is nothing more than a text document in the daycare that is a documents folder, happy rolling in the mud and receiving bowl cuts from mom. But there's an ugly truth for gaming products that this little production goblin's learned at her junior prom: you can be creative and brilliant, but if you don't look good, nobody'll pick you up.
Enter the art order, the good grooming of game design.
The majestic octopus mates for life, and hopes to find a sensitive and intellectually compatible lover that shares its appreciation of American Gothic poetry, but it will make its initial judgments based on appearance and health. Similarly, good art can make a product seem interesting and romantic before the first words are even read. It can make the difference between a product you don't tell your friends about, and one you take home to mom. But like an attractive octopus, a quality illustration must be carefully cared for if it is to be worthwhile.
The art order begins once the text for a product has begun development. By now, the developer knows how everything will shake down, even if the specifics remain a mystery. The developer will sit down with the decorator crab that is the art director, and with careful attention to the budget, they decide how much art the book can stand and what compelling elements to call out in pictorial form. With that list completed, the task is kicked back to the developer and his editorial cronies, who write up brief descriptions of all the illustrations they'll need to get their product a seat at the popular table during lunch.
By now, the art director is already comfortable in its den, combing through the preferred artists list and thinking about what to assign to whom. Just like writers and tutors, different artists' styles lend themselves better to different moods and fit different products*. A happy, bubbly, or wacky artist would be a terrible fit for Dwarves of Golarion's "quiet and cool" attitude, and would be better suited for its goofy sidekick, Gnomes of Golarion. Once the art orders are written, the art director mails them along to the illustrators of choice, together with the promise of great riches.
The first thing received from the artists are those embarrassing family photos we like to call 'sketches.' These are passed out among the editorial and art staff, who make crippling judgments about cowlicks, large ears, and crooked teeth that will haunt the product well into adulthood. They also make note of any changes the artist needs to make.
Finally, the finished images are received from the artists who, like the octopus, die shortly afterwards. This cruel cycle of nature provides the few glimpse of a grown-up, mature product that needs to be home by ten because tonight is a school night.
Illustrations by Jeremy McHugh
The art order is vital in a product's life cycle because it prevents the normally docile artists from breaking free of their enclosures and wandering the streets, mauling and tagging innocent civilians at random. It also serves as the cranial implant that prevents the art directors from seizing the reigns of power and assuming their rightful places as god-kings, directing the entirety of a company's funding into a single, penultimate illustration that makes children weep and grown men fall to their knees in prayer. Very important if you are a company looking to put out more than one product.
By now in the life cycle, our game product has begun to grow up and go through some awkward changes. Suitors have come calling, and its started wearing makeup. Tune in next week when we'll examine how to cope with your precious first draft's frustrating period of editing!
Crystal Frasier
Production Assistant
*Except for Wayne Reynolds, whose art is universal and can bring peace to warring nations.
I may have mentioned this before, but the main villain of Pathfinder’s first Adventure Path, Karzoug, was no stranger to tormenting PCs. He was one of my homebrew campaign’s major recurring characters—a powerful wizard who served as the true menace behind the throne of an evil warlord. In my homebrew, Karzoug wielded a scythe and had already made the transition to lich and wasn’t as concerned with greed, but he was very much still the campaign’s poster child for “evil wizard.” He eventually met his end when a pair of heroes, the barbarian Verik and the wizard Zefram, confronted Karzoug in, of all places, Baba Yaga’s dancing hut. Karzoug was trying to claim the hut’s legendary power source for his own evil purposes, and while this certainly annoyed Baba Yaga, she wasn’t about to give the PCs uncontested access to her magical fortress. And so these two high-level PCs snuck through the depths of the dancing hut filled with fear about breaking or even touching anything, avoiding every single encounter and trap through an uncharacteristic caution that, in the end, served them quite well. I’d intended them to finally reach Karzoug and have the final battle with the evil wizard after the PCs had depleted much of their resources dealing with the natives of Baba Yaga’s hut, and when they reached Karzoug with much of those resources untapped, I figured they deserved the advantage. Turns out, they needed that advantage anyway. Even in the 1st edition of the game, Karzoug was a menace.
And so, when it came to deciding on a villain to inflict upon Golarion, it was with quite a bit of pride and nostalgia that I resurrected old Karzoug. He’d changed specializations (necromancer to transmuter) and weapons (scythe to glaive) and got a promotion (from the power behind the throne to the guy who sits on the throne), but in a lot of other ways he remained the same. Of course, getting Wayne Reynolds to illustrate him was one of the more surreal moments of my gaming career... and now, seeing him on the cover of our upcoming GameMastery Guide, that sense of surreal pride has returned. Wayne Reynolds has done a fantastic job making Karzoug epitomize the role of "super-powerful wizard." Take a moment to look through all of his stuff! Caged imp, pet blue dragon, throne manacles for prisoners, spellbooks casually stacked to the side, crazy crystal ball with some sort of apparatus wrapped around it, a throne that can probably see—and that doesn’t even touch all of his fancy magical equipment he’s got ready to ruin the next PC to step his way!
One of the big highlights of Gen Con Australia 2009 was the "What’s Next for Pathfinder?" seminar that took place Saturday afternoon. The Pathfinder players at the show were so excited for this seminar that they took a break from their Pathfinder Society games to attend. Not surprisingly, it was pretty packed.
Although much of what was covered during this seminar had already been announced, there were a few surprises in store, including the final two new base classes being planned for the Advanced Player’s Guide and a special surprise, a first look at one of the base classes from that book. At Gen Con Indy this year, we announced four of the six base classes slated to appear in the Advanced Player’s Guide: the alchemist, the cavalier, the oracle, and the summoner. During this seminar, the final two were revealed: the inquisitor and the witch.
The inquisitor class is going to look a lot like your Van Helsing-type character, dedicated to hunting down and killing monsters. This means that the class is going to have a fair number of skills and some limited divine spellcasting ability. In addition, the inquisitor is going to have the ability to designate a foe during combat, and the longer the combat progresses, the more damage he will deal to that foe in combat. Unlike a ranger, the inquisitor’s abilities are not based on monster type. Instead he has to carefully study his targets, learning how to more effectively deal with them as a combat progresses. Higher-level inquisitors will learn how to exploit monster weaknesses and possibly even add additional weaknesses to a monster using special attacks.
The witch class is going to be a class that fully embraces both the arcane and divine spell lists, taking select spells from each to make for one intriguing list. The big news for the witch is the focus on her familiar. This will function like a wizard’s familiar, but with additional powers and abilities, with maybe a few extra limitations thrown in to balance out the rules. You can also expect some new mechanics for witch curses, through some new spells and class features.
While the crowd was certainly excited to hear about these new classes, the room grew rather quiet as I handed out a sample oracle character for them to analyze. But rather than leave you out in the cold, here is that character, updated with the most recent version of the class.
Sample Oracle
This sample shows one of the first builds of the new oracle class. The relevant class abilities are summarized, but they do not include additional bonuses that Areanna would gain at higher levels. For example, at 9th level, Areanna’s form of flames ability improves, allowing her to assume the form of a Medium fire elemental.
Areanna
Female human oracle 7
CG Medium humanoid Init +6; Senses Perception –1 Defense AC 19, touch 14, flat-footed 16; (+5 armor, +1 deflection, +2 Dex, +1 dodge) hp 49 (7d8+14) Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +5 Offense Speed 40 ft. Melee+1 flaming shortspear +7 (1d6+2 plus 1d6 fire) Ranged dagger +7 (1d4+1/19–20) Special Attacks fire breath (2/day, 7d4 fire damage, DC 17), form of flame (Small fire elemental) Spells Known (CL 7th)
3rd (5/day)—cure serious wounds, dispel magic, fireball (DC 17)
2nd (7/day)—aid, augury, resist energy, summon monster II
1st (7/day)—bless, cure light wounds, divine favor, produce flame, remove fear, shield of faith
0 (At Will)—guidance, light, purify food and drink, read magic, resistance, stabilize, virtue Focus fire Statistics Str 12, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 18 Base Atk +5; CMB +6; CMD 18 Feats Combat Casting, Dodge, Eschew Materials, Improved Initiative, Mobility, Nimble Moves, Toughness Skills Acrobatics +12, Intimidate +14, Knowledge (religion) +10, Perform (dance) +14, Spellcraft +10 Languages Common, Ignan SQ oracle’s curse (speak in tongues), orisons, revelations (cinder dance, fire breath, form of flame) Combat Gearelemental gem (fire), elixir of fire breath, wand of cure light wounds; Other Gear+1 flaming shortspear, daggers (4), +2 studded leather armor, cloak of resistance +1, ring of protection +1 Special Abilities Cinder Dance (Ex): Areanna’s base speed increases by 10 feet. At 5th level, she receives Nimble Moves as a bonus feat. Fire Breath (Su): As a standard action, Areanna can unleash a 15-foot cone of flame from her mouth. This flame deals 1d4 points of fire damage per level, maximum 10d4. A Reflex save halves this damage. The save DC is equal to 10 + 1/2 her oracle level + her Charisma modifier. She can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day for every four oracle levels she possesses. Form of Flame (Su): As a standard action, Areanna can assume the form of a Small fire elemental, as elemental body I. She can use this ability once per day, but the duration is 1 hour/level. Speak in Tongues: In times of stress, Areanna speaks in tongues. Whenever she is in combat, she can only speak and understand Ignan. This does not interfere with spellcasting, but it does apply to spells that are language dependent. She gains Ignan as a bonus language.
As you can see, oracles are spontaneous divine spellcasters, working in a manner similar to sorcerers. Instead of bloodlines, each oracle has a focus (fire in Areanna’s case). At 1st level, 3rd level, and every four levels thereafter, oracles can select one revelation from their focus to learn. These revelations grant them special powers and abilities, such as the ability to breathe fire, turn into a fire elemental, or even call down a storm of fire (Areanna is not quite high enough level for that one). In addition, oracles must select a curse at 1st level. These curses are a mixed blessing, with each one limiting the oracle in one way, while granting special bonuses in other areas. Areanna’s curse is perhaps one of the easiest to deal with, which is why it grants one of the smallest bonuses.
Well, that about wraps up my summary of Gen Con Australia 2009. I want to thank Ian Houlihan, the convention director, for bringing me down to the show, Mark Rogerson, the events manager, for showing me a great time in Brisbane, and Peter Ball, the seminar manager, for setting up some great panels. I am hoping to make this show a regular in my convention schedule. Maybe next year, you will too.
After a lengthy, globe-trotting adventure, I am finally back and well rested from my journey to the future. I am here to tell you that Gen Con Australia 2009 was a big success! For those of you that missed it, I thought this would be a good time to recap my trip to Australia and the news from the con.
Flying to Australia is hard, even if you are not very tall. The plane ride from LA to Sydney alone took about 14 hours. Arriving in Brisbane (two days after I left thanks to the international date line), I was greeted by some of the friendly con staff and some truly terrific weather. I spent some time exploring the city, including a wonderful tour down the Brisbane River, but no trip to Brisbane would be complete without paying a visit to the Australia Zoo (of Steve Irwin fame). When we arrived, Mark, my incredibly helpful guide, explained that most of the animals inside were ready for their tryouts to get into Bestiary II. Let me tell you, the animals in Australia do not disappoint!
From Koala's to Kangaroos, the Australia zoo is a real "hands on" experience, allowing you to feed and get up close to all of the animals. Except for the large and hungry ones, such as their extensive crocodile exhibits. Lucky for us, we showed up in time to catch one of the crocodile feedingdemonstrations. Yeah, I am beginning to think that CR 2 might be a bit underrated. We also got to take a good look at the Cassowary, one of the world's biggest and deadliest birds. Apparently, the claws on its toes can rip a man open with relative ease. Terror bird anyone?
After the zoo, it was time for the Gen Con Australia to get underway. There were thousands of folks at the show, playing board games, card games, miniature games, and many RPGs. The Pathfinder RPG fans were there in force, playing a lot of Pathfinder Society games thanks to the tireless efforts of Stephen White (DarkWhite to those that lurk on the boards), who organized and ran more tables than any sane man should. Much of my time was spent talking to fans, participating in a host of seminars, and signing books (I may have signed over 50% of the Core Rulebooks on the continent).
Of course, the big seminar that everyone was waiting for was the "What's Next For Pathfinder?", where I spilled the beans on the final two classes to appear in the Advanced Player's Guide, set to release next August. But that was not all. I had another surprise in store for the attendees—a first look at one of the new classes. Tune in tomorrow for all the juicy details!
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