This past Monday I spoiled on the Paizo Twitter feed that we're beginning the process of working on a Pathfinder intro set. Jason quickly retweeted it and it spread from there. So, what do we mean exactly when we say an intro set? First off we're not 100% sure of anything yet. What we do know is that it'll be useful for more than a couple of sessions, will be a great PFRPG teaching tool, and will help us get more people playing Pathfinder. It'll probably come in a box, it might have counters and/or tokens, probably a Flip-Mat or two, most likely cover a good range of levels, and have a handful of classes and a good collection of feats. Essentially it'll be everything you need to get people playing, and learning, the game. Because the more people playing, the more opportunity for gaming, and we can all do with more gaming right?
We're at the very beginning of this process and nothing is set in stone though. Getting some feedback would be really helpful, though, so what would you like to see in an introductory Pathfinder product?
With the conclusion of Amber Scott's low-down, dirty story of life in the swamps of Nirmathas, it's time for the free Wednesday web fiction to head across Lake Encarthan to the little town of Dabril in Galt, best known for its fine perfumes and gloves, as well as a tendency to send folks to the guillotine at the slightest provocation. (But then, what town in Galt doesn't?) It's to this less-than-welcoming setting that a young alchemist returns home after years with the militia, body broken by the ravages of war and in search of any thread of familiarity that might help him start a new life. Yet here he finds more than he bargained for, for in the ruins of Dabril's noble manor house lie alchemical secrets beyond anything a simple grenadier can imagine...
The author of this month's story, Kevin Andrew Murphy, is no stranger to Pathfinder, having already written a chapter in the Prodigal Sons Pathfinder's Journal in the Kingmaker Adventure Path (in the process introducing the bizarre and fabulous Clever Nella puppet show, plus a new way to play with a Harrow deck). In addition, he's written fiction for everyone from George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards series to White Wolf's World of Darkness (from whence his character Penny Dreadful hails), as well as several standalone novels, RPG adventures, poems, and more.
Most pertinent to this story, however, is Kevin's encyclopedic knowledge of alchemy. A professional consultant on the subject for both television and the gaming industry, Kevin understands as well as (or better than) anyone here in the editorial pit exactly how the real-world science of alchemy evolved, and uses that knowledge to great effect in taking us inside the brain of one of Golarion's alchemists, showing off that same esoteric passion and the unique worldview it inspires. While alchemy in the Pathfinder RPG doesn't track precisely to real-world historical practices, and individual alchemists are likely as different in their approaches as any wizards or rogues, I hope you'll agree that Kevin's character of Norret Gantier is a fascinating specimen, and that his story is as educational as it is exciting!
Guest Blogger Blake Davis Announces Special PFS Event
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Illustration by Andrew Hou
The Year of the Shadow Lodge is coming to Redmond, WA! Clear your schedules, as you won't want to miss this unique Pathfinder Society event coming up this Saturday, October 2nd at the Redmond Games and Gizmos at noon.
Year of the Shadow Lodge is a unique Pathfinder Society adventure in which multiple tables of Pathfinders work together throughout the mission. Pathfinders from levels 1–11 are welcome to come join and share their skills to help fight an epic battle that threatens Absalom's Grand Lodge itself.
As a special treat, since Games and Gizmos is one of Paizo HQ's local game stores, several members of the Paizo staff will be present and participating in the event! Events Manager Joshua J. Frost will be dusting off his own PFS character to play alongside one lucky table, and Developer Mark Moreland will be GMing. Other Paizo VIPs may stop by to observe and mingle with fans and players as well!
Details for holding yourself a spot can be found in this thread in the Pathfinder Society messageboards. Players can show up on October 2nd and hope for a space, but signing up as indicated on that thread is recommended due to limited space and to ensure there are enough GMs.
The event is also still looking for a few GMs to lead their fellow gamers through the stunning adventure, and as with any PFS adventure, GMs can apply credit for the scenario to one of their own level-appropriate PCs.
Now that Bestiary 2 is wrapping up and Misfit Monsters Redeemed will soon arrive in all its flumph-loving, snail-flailing glory, Wes has asked me to give you all a quick lesson in monster concept design. Although everybody approaches monster design differently, while developing Misfit Monsters, we decided to codify certain key design principles by illustrating them on the Editorial Pit whiteboard. The attached image, sometimes known simply as the Aboleth Flowchart, represents a basic but often overlooked tenet in the creation of new monsters for Golarion. (The diagram for lesson number two, the so-called "Mad Wizard Rule," is somewhat less technical, as it's just the phrase "Did an insane wizard create it?" surrounded by a cloud of a tiny "no"s and a drawing of me stabbing myself in the eye with a highlighter.)
I hope you found this peek inside the design team's methods and philosophies educational! Next time on Inside the Pit: how to make Managing Editor Wes Schneider weep like a frightened child! (Hint: It involves spreadsheets and the 2011 product schedule.)
Way back in August I began to make some cryptic references to moving to the Emerald City of Seattle, leaving the reasons why a mystery. People began to guess, but all was revealed a couple of Tuesdays ago by Paizo as I was driving a rented U-Haul up the 5 from San Diego to Seattle. Turns out I was relocating the Horde from sunny Southern California to the green, and very wet, Pacific Northwest in order to work here at Paizo as the new Marketing Manager.
What does that mean exactly? Well, I'll be working closely with Erik Mona, our fearless publisher, making sure you the fans know what we're producing, when it's coming out, what we're planning, and other cools bits of news. In addition, I'll be working with the rest of the staff in getting them on podcasts, interviewed by blogs and magazines, and out in the wild spreading the glory of Pathfinder and Paizo.
I'll also be working on some new ways of keeping you the fans involved in what we're doing and ways you can help us out. So if you have any specific ideas, please leave them in the comments below.
BTW, have you had a chance to look at our new FAQ system? What we've done is put a link that says "FAQ" on messageboard posts. If you hit this link it will mark the message, letting us know that there's something you think we need to clarify, explain, or outright fix, and then have included in the official FAQ for the product. Every message you flag for us will be brought to the attention of our developers, letting them know someone has a question or needs a ruling. (FYI, those with more "flags" will go to the top of the list.) You can check it out here.
Sometimes, when we're trying to push a big book like Bestiary 2 out the door, it's five o'clock before anyone realizes we didn't put together a blog. So no one out there thinks the cave raptors finally got loose and gobbled us all up, please enjoy a new goblin from the upcoming Pathfinder Condition Cards and this picture of Sutter hard at work editing Plague of Shadows!
Off to the printer goes Pathfinder Player Companion: Inner Sea Primer, our new guide to what's what and where's where for characters in the Pathfinder campaign setting. Aside from being filled with the baseline, "what your character knows" details of Avistan and Garund, it's also our new go-to book for traits from around the Inner Sea, with each column-length country write-up including two new options for natives of that region. As a bit of a preview, here's a new trait for Sargava to help all you Serpent Skull players soon to be in need of replacement characters. (What can I say? The Mwangi's a killer.) Also, take a peek at more of Carolina Eade's incredible art: a Chelish infernal binder—just one of three new Golarion magic archetypes included in the guide. Enjoy!
Illustration by Carolina Eade
Jungle Guide (Regional): You've made your living outfitting and guiding expeditions deep into the Mwangi interior in search of ancient ruins and lost cities. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Handle Animal checks, and a +1 trait bonus on Survival checks in jungle terrain. One of these skills is a class skill for you.
This is the final week of editing before we ship the Bestiary 2 off to the printer and that means the whole office is neck deep in monsters. Since we've nowhere else to put them in the ever-more-crowded editorial pit, I thought a nice way to get them out from underfoot would be to exile a few to the blog. So here are a handful of beasties we no longer need immediately on hand. Enjoy!
Welcome to the playtest of the Ultimate Magic, a new sourcebook for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, due to be released early next year.
The playtest begins with a look at the Magus, a brand-new base class that blends the powers of a wizard with the martial prowess of a fighter. You can find this class as a free PDF in your downloads up at the top of this page or at this link. Once you have downloaded the class and used it in your game, check out the messageboards, where you will find a pair of boards dedicated to this playtest.
This playtest cycle will last two weeks, until Monday, October 4th, and it will be followed shortly thereafter by another cycle containing the Words of Power alternate spellcasting system.
So grab the Magus and use him in your game today. We are looking forward to seeing your feedback and comments concerning this new class. See you on the boards.
I had the pleasure of meeting and running a game for Kyle and Nani Pratt at PaizoCon a few years back, and since then Facebook has brought me occasional awesome updates from their campaign. But when THIS showed up, it was too awesome not to repost here. Check it out, with the whole story by the mad geniuses behind what looks like an incredible campaign!
(Forewarning to Legacy of Fire players, minor spoilers might follow.)
F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor
Nani and I actually took the inspiration from the battle market that someone else made a year ago from here. Originally we thought we were going to just make something exactly the same, but then when we noticed how good the map was, we thought we could blow it up properly to give a good "full immersion" for the market. So my wife Nani took the image into Photoshop, sharpened the image, and then increased the scale to 1 inch. When it was all said and done, we printed it out on ~30 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper and cemented it onto foam board. We had envisioned making the columns look better... but we sadly ran out of time before the game so we had to hurry with a makeshift styrofoam solution!
We really wanted to make our Legacy of Fire game have immersion and put us all into the feel of the game. It's what makes the Paizo products so great, so we're trying to go the extra mile with this one. All of our players were so surprised we had this game aid and thought it was wonderful. It really made everyone understand exactly what the market was like (and just how huge it is compared to the characters themselves. We actually already had the Ruined Crypt of Kelmarane made for after this, and decided we wanted to go the extra mile. I think our players are going to be really surprised at this one too. Hopefully World Works finishes up the Garden from the next AP in time!
The fight itself was completely memorable. Our entire party snuck in through the north entrance using Undrella's key. Our rogue, a goblin, scouted ahead in the guise as a member of the battle market, and ended up talking with both the gnolls in the guardroom and Hurvank. With some very good bluff checks he convinced the poor ogre that the gnolls had set him up to lose in his last bout with Haleen. Hurvank then went over to the gnolls in the guardroom imagining that each one was Haleen and started to strangle them all to death. The goblin quickly went over and pitoned the second door to the guard room, trapping the remaining guards inside, scaring and confusing the gnolls on the first floor. Meanwhile the rest of the party (who didn't know what was going on) heard an ogre running across the market yelling about how he was going to kill Haleen (all three of them). The character with the "Finding Haleen" trait went rushing in to attack the ogre... which caused the bugbears to join the fight against the PCs fighting the ogre. Meanwhile, the gnolls all were trying to kill the ogre and had no clue what was going on. After about 10 more rounds of confusion, the remaining gnolls/defenders on the upper terraces finally figured out what was going on and rushed to protect the remainder of the battle market. By this time, though, the damage was done and a large number of the forces were dead by ogre/bugbear/gnoll/PC hands.
Having the market made prior to this made the combat incredibly easy to run. Instead of just describing how far up the terraces were we just placed the gnolls and described how they were shooting down from above. It was a GREAT aid!
Paizo sure has been hiring quite a few new people of late. I came on board as a Developer at the beginning of the month, and we just announced yesterday that Hyrum Savage will be joining the team as Marketing Manager. The third new hire of the fall is none other than Andrew Vallas, who started after Labor Day. As Graphic Designer he's been a lifesaver, taking some of the workload off Art Director Sarah Robinson as she puts the finishing touches on Save Doctor Lucky. So far, Andrew's time has been taken up with last minute changes to the Bestiary 2 as we approach the finish line for shipping that to the printer, and laying out Pathfinder Player Companion: Inner Sea Primer and Pathfinder Module: The Godsmouth Heresy.
Andrew first found Paizo while using art from Pathfinder as mini-painting inspiration and through the Planet Stories line of fiction. He attended PaizoCon in June, where he not only played his first Pathfinder game after last rolling dice during the days of 2nd Edition, but he attended the art seminars and met with Sarah, and the rest is history.
And since Andrew works so hard in Paizo's Art Department, we thought it fitting to use his introduction as an opportunity to display some of the incredible art coming to your gaming table next month in Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: "City of Seven Spears"!
It's that time again! Now that Liane Merciel has wrapped up her superb Worldwound adventure, "Certainty," it's time to pull up our stakes and move somewhere else with the free Wednesday web fiction. In this case, that's down south to the forests of Nirmathas—or, more accurately, the dark waters of a nondescript little fen, where something strange has been stirring.
This week's offering is different in another way as well. For this story, long-time Paizo author Amber Scott has brought us a tale that is—if not exactly sweet—significantly shorter than previous entries, broken over two weeks rather than four, the better to keep the action moving and the lineup shifting. If you have an opinion about the change of pace, mixing shorter stories with longer ones, let us know in the comments section below!
In "The Swamp Warden," Amber brings us the story of Rhyn, an experienced swamper with a troubled past, liked well enough by the little town of fishermen and marsh-folk that he's chosen to defend, but never quite a part of things. He's good at his job, and if that isn't quite enough to erase the memory of his lost love, it's at least something. But when a new threat starts hunting the tree-shrouded waters of the fen, it's up to Rhyn to row out to meet it. And what he finds there may change him—and the swamp—forever...
I know the question on everyone's mind this glorious Monday morning has nothing to do with what you'll be wearing to the office today, or whether you remembered to put your homework in your bag before heading off to class. No, the most pressing concern for any Paizo fan worth his salt is, "What's up with that Huge Ass Map?"
Well, loyal followers, I have good news re: the HAM: we're making continual progress! Just last week we all "ooh"ed and "aaah"ed over the final, high-resolution art from cartographer Rob Lazzaretti, who deepened all the colors, added hundreds of miniscule new coastal islands, and included more detailed representations of areas like Kyonin, the Stolen Lands, and Ustalav. We've got all the tags we can fit on the existing map, and I've gone through with a fine-toothed comb to find missing locations, misnamed cities, and incorrectly placed tags. Up next? James Jacobs and I are going to go through the whole image, giving names to as-yet-unnamed rivers, mountain ranges, islands, and other geographical features.
Good morning, and welcome to S.M. Tours. Today we are offering a "virtual" tour of the elusive Paizo Publishing offices. Here to greet us as we open the front door is the ever-cheerful Customer Service Manager Cosmo! While tempting, we recommend for your safety that you do not stare directly at the moustache, as it has been known to attack on occasion.
On your left are the offices of our technical team. If we could see through the gloom in the first office, we would find the illustrious PostMonster General and his minion Ross. We here at Paizo try to simulate the native environment of these computer folks, as it helps with productivity. Please, no flash photography—it disturbs their delicate sensibilities. Moving forward, we see that our Technical Director Vic is not yet in. Unlike the cave where his team slaves away, Vic's office is usually cheerfully lit by fluorescent lighting.
On your right we have a set of cubicles: one for yours truly, one for the warehouse manager, one for a laser printer, and one for a set of label printers. While quiet now, in a few days those label printers will fire up to continuously spit out subscription labels for hours at a time—truly a sight to behold.
Pressing onward, we have several more administrative offices lying dormant. This is to be expected, as we started our tour fairly early this morning and the residents have not yet arrived. Behind the door on the right is our server closet, where hundreds of little hamsters feverishly run in shifts to keep the servers running and the website on.
And here we have the upstairs breakroom, complete with refrigerator, sink and the all-important coffee maker. Next, past the restrooms, we have probably the most impressive location at the Paizo offices: the combination conference room and library. Here you will find all manner of old, new, rare, and interesting games, books, and magazines.
We are tight on time, folks, so let's keep moving along. Here we have still more offices. You'll notice that the double-doored corner office is the largest of the lot, fittingly occupied by our CEO, Lisa Stevens. The expansive office seems to help with the various and sundry secret meetings which take place there.
If you'll follow me down the stairs, please, past the monsters... here we have the offices belonging to our publisher, managing editor, and creative director. On the left are the set of cubicles referred to (for obvious reasons) as the "Editorial Pit."
And what do we have here...? It would appear that, unlike the other unoccupied offices, this one has its door open. What do you think, folks, should we take a peek inside?
It appears this is the office of lead designer Jason Bulmahn. Jason is on vacation this week and seems to have forgotten to arm his office's defense system. You folks might be getting more of a tour than you bargained for!
Let's just take a quick look at what we have on the desk...
As of this past Gen Con, Pathfinder Society Organized Play has officially entered its third year with the launch of Season 2. In addition to the 28 new scenarios players can expect over the next year, Season 2 presents a new aspect of organized play that members of our online community have been very vocal about wanting since the very beginning: metaplot!
Approximately half of the season's scenarios will center around the Shadow Lodge, a mysterious organization set on destroying the Pathfinder Society from within. These scenarios, as with most, can be played in any order, but frequent PFS players will notice a lot of easter eggs between adventures. There are already several scenarios available to kick off the plot arc, but the biggest release of the season is one you won't see on the downloads page.
Year of the Shadow Lodge is an exclusive Pathfinder Society Special by fan-favorite author Tim Hitchcock, designed to be run at any game store or convention with at least three simultaneous tables of PFS. Spanning levels 1–11, this scenario allows both new and seasoned players to take part in an epic adventure to save the Grand Lodge itself! Year of the Shadow Lodge played to rave reviews at both PaizoCon and Gen Con (at which 36 tables played simultaneously!), and you can run it at your own event to the same response.
If you run a local convention or organize Pathfinder Society at a game store (or if you know the person who does), contact pathfindersociety@paizo.com to find out how to get your hands on this exclusive event! It won't be available for purchase on the paizo.com web store until next summer when Season 3 begins, so launch Season 2 in style with a memorable gaming experience only authorized events can offer.
Because convention season should never end, Erik, Sarah, and I spent a good part of our long weekend checking out the Penny Arcade Expo here in Seattle, previewing lots of incredible-looking games and hanging out with thousands of gamers gripping both joysticks and rolling dice. I also made another delightful discovery downtown. Here are some of the highlights!
Greetings, fun-sized friend morsels! What's the scoop? Tom Rex here, bringing you the latest that's outrageous, from the present to the Cretaceous! (Tom wrote that himself. Tom took some poetry classes in college.) And today that means another blog picking up the slack from James Jacobs.
According to Boss Sutter, Jacobs was supposed to write a blog post titled "Bestiary Breakdown." Which is accurate because, thanks to the Bestiary 2, James Jacobs is indeed breaking down! Ha! If you don't believe Tom, just observe the attached exclusive photographs. (Tom apologizes for the blurriness. The cameraman was both rude and delicious, and Tom's hands are built for holding massive prey in place while it's thrashing, not operating tiny iPhone camera.)
As you can see, James Jacobs was not having a good day—at least not until he reached the dinosaur section. Then things got better. Tom does what Tom can to keep the little people happy. (Tom has read the philosophy behind Kobe beef.)
There's a line when it comes to what sort of material we put in our products. We try not to tread over the boundary of what might be offensive, provoking, or generally beyond what you might see in a PG-13 rated movie. But every now and then we test those limits—or abjectly bound past them. In Pathfinder Adventure Path #39, the ol' "questionable content" line gets a little hazy; not because of sex or violence, or whatever have you, but because of religion.
There's no doubt religious elements influence the characters and plots of the Pathfinder RPG—clerics, paladins, monks, and witches are playable classes after all, and untold armies of cultists have fallen before legions of adventurers. But we've long danced around one religious tradition with a lengthy history of involvement in sword and sorcery fantasy: voodoo.
We've kept away from this topic—one I've personally wanted to cover since back in the Dragon magazine days—for several reasons, the primary one being that vodou is a living religion practiced and respected in several parts of the world, and no one here knows enough about it to judge what might be offensive. What we do know about, though, are films like The Serpent and the Rainbow and stories like Robert E. Howard's "Hills of the Dead" or "Black Canaan." We also know the "juju zombie," a toughened up zombie who's been in RPGs for years and years (with a name inspired by African fetish magic and in, coincidentally, Bestiary 2). So, motivated by the Advanced Player's Guide's presentation of the oracle, a divine caster who worships a pantheon of patrons and cultivates a host of strange abilities, now seemed like a perfect time to test our luck and take a swing at a new tradition of magic inspired not so much by real-world vodou but more by voodoo films, stories of bayou magic, and swamp and sorcery fantasy.
All of this comes together in Mike Shel's article in Pathfinder Adventure Path #39's "The Path of Juju." Now, oracles can look forward to a new juju mystery allowing them to tap into the mysterious secrets of nature's deadliest wildernesses, while casters of all types might create a host of strange new magical items, from soul trapping powders to the infamous ganji doll. It's all in there, ready for GMs looking to tell tales of swamp magic and mystery or PCs ready to challenge the cities of men with the true power of their ancient beliefs.
Remember that big ol' map that we started working on a while back? We're chugging away at it (with no signs of gibbering yet), and are moving ever closer to the final version!
I have to say, it was painful to fold the working map up, even gently, and not just because it reminded me how short I am! I was irrationally afraid of damaging it, yet that was the only way to wrestle it onto my desk without committing Ultimate Sacrilege—cutting it up.
It's hard to tell at this resolution, but the map is covered in handwritten notes: names of cities, islands, rivers, and ruins; arrows showing where existing labels should be moved to; circles grouping multi-word names; and check marks verifying locations or spellings. There are about a thousand or so notes in all, written in a variety of hands, some of which would make doctors swoon with jealousy. The thought of verifying all of those tags on the final version is a source of both terror and glee. (Tom Rex recommended we write our signoffs in our own blood to increase accountability, but his slavering makes suspect he cares more about softening us up than accuracy.)
There's been some speculation recently on the messageboards about my recent move from New York to Seattle, some even claiming that I'm the newest Paizo employee. Those assumptions are correct.
Frequent blog readers may recall that I worked a week at Paizo HQ back in June. At the end of that week, Erik, James, and Lisa asked if I’d like to come on board to work in-house on setting continuity and Pathfinder Society scenario development. I've fostered quite a reputation as a "canon lawyer" with all my work on the PathfinderWiki and PaizoCon trivia contests, so this was an offer I simply couldn't decline. In fact, working for Paizo is a dream come true that I can't quite wrap my head around yet.
It took me two months to close up the decade-long chapter of my life in New York City and open a new one here on the left coast, but after a 3,000-mile U-Haul drive with my brother, here I am! I’m not quite sure what exactly my job is going to entail, but I imagine my presence on the boards won’t change (though I won't be going by yoda8myhead going forward). Hopefully I'll still have time to work on the wiki.
Now that I have the power, this also means I can put up all the art previews I requested—sometimes demanded—as a fan. I've been waiting a long time to put the following in a blog post:
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