Pathfinder Battles Preview: A Salute to Evil!

Friday, March 30, 2012

Things are moving fast and furious on the Pathfinder Battles front, with the Rise of the Runelords set moving ever closer to its August release. We're currently designing the packaging for the set, and I can say with confidence that we will be posting full product release details such as price and product configuration in next week's preview blog.

Before that happens, though, we've got one more standard preview, and in honor of the gremlins who have kept some of the details secret and prevented us from posting the product pages to date, I've decided to dedicate this week's preview blog... TO EVIL!

First up this week we have the ancient lich Azaven, a key villain from the second half of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. Some of you may remember Azaven as Kazaven, his original name. We changed it in the upcoming hardcover collection of the campaign to prevent confusion with the dragon Kazavon from Curse of the Crimson Throne and Varisia's Kazaron River. I still remember the day five years ago when the Adventure Path staff realized it had used three nearly identical names in less than a year, and the new edition of the campaign was the perfect chance to make this minor change to clear up any lingering confusion.

Azaven's name may have changed, but he's still as treacherous and imposing as ever. This rare miniature has a cool crown and a gnarled staff. With pallid skin and a scraggly beard, Azaven represents a lich that hasn't quite rotted away to a skeletal state like the one in Heroes & Monsters. I think the two of them make a nice team, and I'm sure your players will too!

The image shown here is a paint master. The final production miniature will have additional painted detail on the hem of his cloak.

A lich not evil enough for you? How about a half-demon filled with the pure evil of the Abyss? Did I mention she's quite the looker? This gorgeous Alu-Fiend figure is a common, because you "get" to fight a bunch of them in the Rise of the Runelords campaign. They make great minions for the Succubus from Heroes & Monsters.

This is one of those miniatures that you can't believe is a common when you hold it in-hand. The detail on the open hand, the face, and the back of the outfit is just breathtaking, and I'm not just saying that because this figure is a serious hottie.

Last up this week is the Yeth Hound, a traditional canine foe with a long history in mythology, fantasy fiction, and fantasy gaming. Yeth Hounds are particularly honored allies of the twisted aasimar villain Nualia we showed off a few weeks ago, but they also make devastating enemies in their own right.

They're common, making it easy to build an encounter with a pack of these fearsome creatures.

So that's it! The last preview before you can click through and start ordering these miniatures directly off the product page.

Thanks for being patient with the product details. It's almost impossible to believe, but there are still several awesome minis we have yet to reveal. Be here next week to be among the first to see the next batch!

Until then,

Erik Mona
Publisher

Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 1 (2003)

Fine-Tuning the Magazine Business

Thursday, March 29, 2012

This blog entry is the second in a series of blogs commemorating Paizo's 10th anniversary.
Click here to read the first installment.

The paizo.com homepage in late 2003 showing off our ability to take subscriptions!

As January 2003 rolled in, the rose-colored glasses that accompany any new venture had faded, and it had become obvious to me that relying on the expertise of others wasn't working out—I needed to gain a full understanding of the complex magazine business myself. So I spent many a long hour in the offices of Paizo's resident magazine gurus, Publisher Johnny Wilson and Circulation Manager Pierce Watters, asking questions and challenging common practices. I also took the month of February to lock myself in my home office and pore over all the financial data we had, looking for better ways to make a profit in the magazine business.

One thing that made my analysis difficult is that we didn't yet have final sales figures on a single Paizo issue. While the publishing part of the magazine business happens at a breakneck pace, the distribution end of things operates at near-glacial speeds. Newsstands and bookstores have the ability to return unsold magazines for up to ten months after they're no longer available for sale, so the distributor holds back part of the publisher's revenue from sales as a reserve against these late returns. So, even though we had sent out first issues to the printer in July 2002, we wouldn't have final sales figures for those issues until late summer. And those were issues that had begun life under Wizards of the Coast; we wouldn't see final figures for the first magazines that Paizo was entirely responsible for until late 2003, nearly a year and a half after we started.

This also means that it took us ages to see the results of changes we made. If we came up with an idea for a particular issue, it would take a couple of months for that idea to reach the newsstand, and by the time we had final sales figures on that issue, a full year had passed. We liked to imagine that making running changes to a magazine must be a lot like trying to turn an oil tanker in the dark with no instruments.

One of the first things we figured out was that we were paying too much to have an outside firm handle our subscriptions. I did an in-depth analysis of where the money from a subscription goes, and determined that there was very little margin for error. If we needed to send out a single replacement for a lost issue, it pretty much destroyed any profit we might have had on that subscription. If we needed to send more than one renewal notice, same thing. And the fees that our subscription service charged made things even worse.

But bringing subscriptions in-house was a big task. Our staff was set up to create magazines; we didn't have the customer service or data management people we'd need to handle subscriptions ourselves. We figured out quickly that we needed to take advantage of the internet to cut down on the costs for data entry and sending renewal notices. If we could get subscribers to move away from sending in checks in response to mailed renewal notices, shifting them to renewing online with notices delivered by email, we could actually begin to make some profit on subscriptions. But that meant we'd need a website that could process credit cards and a robust database to keep track of customers and issues sent. At the time, nobody in the world provided e-commerce solutions for managing magazine subscriptions over the web.

Enter Rob Head, one of Vic's friends from high school who had been working at Amazon. We hired him to create our very own subscription fulfillment system from scratch—a system that has successfully evolved to support all of the business we do today. (Rob also provided Paizo with our first unofficial motto: "We suck less every day.")

We also needed to make changes to the magazines themselves. At the time, Dungeon magazine was bimonthly, but with each issue having a higher page count than the monthly Dragon. I quickly figured out that we would need to charge close to $12.99 per issue to bring in the same profit as the smaller Dragon issues, and that just wasn't feasible on the newsstand. So, in May, Dungeon/Polyhedron went monthly with a smaller page count and a lower cover price.

Wayne Reynolds' three-part Incursion cover artwork for Dragon #309, Dungeon #100, and Polyhedron #159.

But the most important development for Dungeon in 2003 was a bit more subtle: the debut of our first ever Adventure Path, The Shackled City, in the March/April issue. The idea for running a full-length campaign in Dungeon, one adventure at a time, predates the start of Paizo, but the process of turning that idea into reality took long enough that the concept only saw fruition in our hands. Dungeon #97 included Chris Perkins's "Life's Bazaar" adventure, set in the town of Cauldron. The reaction to The Shackled City was nothing short of fantastic, yet little did we realize that the Adventure Path would eventually become our flagship brand, and our salvation in our most difficult time.

Dungeon #97 also marked the debut of our first PDF product, a free web enhancement containing extra content that we couldn't fit into the issue. In the future, PDFs would become a huge part of Paizo's success, but at the time, it was just a way to keep Chris Perkins's overwriting from ending up on the cutting room floor!

Later in the year, Chris once again wrote too much, leading to our first for-sale PDF, the Tu'narath City Guide supplement for Dungeon #100. This PDF provided an entire githyanki city to go with our Incursion super-event, a huge crossover that ran in Dragon #309, Dungeon #100, and Polyhedron #159, each cover featuring one part of a three-piece mega-cover by Wayne Reynolds. (Wayne's original triptych hangs in my office today.)

The following issue of Dragon, #310, had the first-ever 3.5 DM Screen polybagged with it. The screen was a huge success, driving record sell-through in stores and increasing our subscription numbers quite a bit.

I had also realized that Paizo had a bunch of resources that weren't being used to their fullest. While the editorial staffs of Dragon and Dungeon rarely had a spare moment, the editors of Star Wars Insider (which Lucasfim limited to eight issue per year) and the people who handled advertising, circulation and print brokering could easily shoulder the burden of adding a new magazine to the fold. So Johnny came up with Undefeated, a magazine about competitive games such as card games, board games, and miniatures games. When Johnny was at Wizards of the Coast, he had helmed a magazine called Top Deck, which had pretty good sales. Top Deck was linked to Magic: The Gathering, an advantage we didn't have, but we figured that if we could capture even a small amount of the Top Deck crowd with Undefeated, that would be good enough for Paizo. We did the math, and worked out that if we could just get each hobby store in the country to order two copies of each issue, we'd be set. We also knew that companies that published CCGs, board games and miniatures games had more money to spend on advertising than RPG companies, and since there were no magazines dedicated to covering them, we figured we'd be able to bring in decent advertising revenue. In addition, the fact that Paizo was built entirely on licensed magazines we didn't own—and that could someday go away—wasn't lost on me. Undefeated was our first shot at building equity in something we owned.

We announced the magazine on April 9 with the tagline "Covering Games You Can Win... Because Nobody Likes a Loser!" A stealth mission of Undefeated was to serve as a test bed for taking subscriptions in-house. On June 6, we announced that you could subscribe to Undefeated on paizo.com. We used the next few months to tweak our system, hire a full-time customer service staff, and figure out how to port all of the legacy data from our third-party fulfillment service before we moved the other three magazines' subscriptions to our website later in the year.

Undefeated was a huge part of our Gen Con push that year, as the first issue was released at the con, introducing thousands of gamers to our new baby.

Lisa Stevens and Mary Franklin address the crowd at the Brown Derby during the first Official Star Wars Fan Club breakfast.

On the Star Wars front, our primary efforts revolved around making Star Wars Insider more than just a magazine—we wanted it to be the voice of a revived Star Wars Fan Club, which had been reduced to little more than a magazine subscription over the years. The original Star Wars Fan Club offered exclusive merchandise to its members, so in that vein, we worked out a deal with Hasbro to be the exclusive seller of a special silver Boba Fett action figure. Again, there was a stealth objective here—we wanted to test our ability to take orders for and ship a product through paizo.com. The silver Fett was a huge sales success, with the barrage of people making a run on paizo.com bringing the site down for a short while and lines of folks stretching out of the Paizo booth at Origins, San Diego Comic-Con, and Gen Con.

The summer of Fett also saw us launch a series of Star Wars Fan Club Breakfasts. The first was held at the Brown Derby restaurant at Disney/MGM Studios in Orlando, coinciding with their annual Star Wars Weekends event. Hundreds of ardent Star Wars fans got up very early to get one of the coveted silver Fetts, and to meet Jeremy Bulloch and Peter Mayhew, who played Boba Fett and Chewbacca respectively. We then took the whole group into the park for an early morning Star Tours ride before the day's regular festivities kicked in.

At our other three conventions that year, we had Jeremy Bulloch and Daniel Logan (young Boba Fett in Episode II) at our booth signing silver Fetts. They were also guests at our Fan Club breakfasts at Gen Con and Comic-Con, with Star Wars author Mike Stackpole filling that role at Origins.

We also adjusted the content of Star Wars Insider to appeal more to the ranks of Star Wars collectors. In addition to including more articles on collectibles, we arranged to reveal upcoming Hasbro toys for the very first time in each installment of a new regular column called "Toybox."

Vic Wertz shows off the Holiday Yoda action figure at San Diego Comic-Con 2003.

Later in the year, Paizo spearheaded a partnership with Hasbro, Del Rey, and Scholastic to offer an exclusive Clone Wars short story collection (get the free 1 MB PDF here!) that bundled original Star Wars fiction with select Hasbro toys for the first time. And at the end of the year, we celebrated the holidays with our second exclusive Star Wars action figure, the lovable Holiday Yoda, inspired by the Christmas card artwork of Ralph McQuarrie.

The end of the year also saw a big change in the management of Paizo with the departure of Johnny Wilson. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I spent a lot of 2003 analyzing the magazine business and coming up with ideas about how to make it work better for Paizo. This led me to clash quite a bit with Johnny as I questioned decades of common industry practices that he considered sacrosanct. Eventually, it became apparent that our differences were too vast to reconcile, so on December 8th, we announced his departure from Paizo. While this move relieved some of the pressure in the office, it also put me in a position I didn't intend to be in when we started Paizo: I was now fully in charge of a business that I had all of 18 months experience with. It was daunting, but I had a great staff. Nevertheless, I needed some additional help running the company, so I brought in Keith Strohm, whom I had worked with as part of the Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition team at Wizards of the Coast.

The final big event of 2003 happened at the very end. As Vic and I were about to leave the office to join the rest of the staff for a holiday screening of Return of the King, I received a phone call from Lucasfilm. They were invoking a clause in our contract that would allow them to end our license should Johnny Wilson ever leave Paizo. They had put this clause in at the beginning of our relationship because of my lack of experience with magazines—they wanted to be protected if Johnny, the guy who knew the business, left. I had also spent a lot of the year convincing Lucasfilm of the potential I thought the Fan Club held, and it turns out I'd done that perhaps too well—they now wanted to manage it themselves. They gave us a few months to tie things up before Star Wars Insider went away, which takes us into 2004, so I'll talk more about the implications to Paizo in the next anniversary blog. (Needless to say, after receiving that news, Vic and I weren't much in the mood for watching Return of the King, so we went home and only shared the news with the company the next work day.)

As 2003 ended, there were a lot of big questions for Paizo. Could I run the company without the years of magazine experience that Johnny had brought to the table? Could Paizo survive the loss of its biggest magazine, Star Wars Insider? Could we continue to make the hard decisions we needed to become more profitable?

Employees who started in 2003 (in order of hiring date and with the title we originally hired them for):
Sean Glenn, Art Director
Rob Head, Webmaster
James Jacobs, Associate Editor
Rob Stewart, Advertising Director
Greg Hanson, Customer Service Representative
Jeff Alvarez, Customer Service Representative
Wade McNutt, Customer Service Representative
Jeremy Walker, Customer Service Representative
Kelly O'Brien, Prepress Supervisor
Patrick Velotta, Graphic Designer
Jenny Scott, Editor
Amanda Titus, Customer Service Representative
Dave Neri, Warehouse Manager
Mike McArtor, Assistant Editor
Keith Strohm, Vice President
Wes Schneider, Assistant Editor

Employees who left in 2003 (in order of their end date):
Dawnelle Miesner
John Dunn
Scott Ricker (now Okumura)
Stacie Fiorito (now Magelssen)
Jesse Decker
Greg Hanson
Chris Thomasson (now Youngs)
Johnny Wilson
Wailam Wilson

A Star Wars Fan's Dream Comes True

One of the benefits of being the president of the Official Star Wars Fan Club and publishing Star Wars Insider was being invited to Australia to see the filming of the final Star Wars movie. Vic Wertz, Dave Gross, Mary Franklin, and I got to spend three glorious days on the set of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith watching the filming, including much of the final lightsaber duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. We also interviewed many of Lucasfilm's department heads, including props, stunts, wardrobe, makeup, special effects, set design, production, and editing. This culminated in a lunch with the maker himself, George Lucas. Here I was, watching the last days of filming of the last Star Wars movie—an event that I will cherish for the rest of my life!

Maximum Play

One little-known 2003 project was, like Undefeated, an attempt to leverage our expertise—and extra bandwidth—in prepress and printing. From the beginning, Paizo did our own prepress work, something many companies outsourced at the time due to its specific expertise and relatively high equipment costs. But Wizards of the Coast had been doing all of its prepress in-house, so we inherited the necessary skills and equipment. Our Production Manager, John Dunn, felt that we could make some money selling our prepress services to other companies, and he spent much of 2003 pitching our services to no avail before he left to do print management for Microsoft.

We did have one bite, though: one of Johnny's friends was starting a company called Play Interactive in order to publish a videogame magazine to be sold through GameStop stores, so Johnny offered up our services as prepress and print coordinators. Paizo would receive the finished magazine files and Play Interactive would pay us to handle things from there. Vic and I had insisted that Play Interactive put money into an escrow account to cover their costs before we began work, but Johnny decided to proceed without waiting for payment. Of course, by the time Maximum Play #1 hit our warehouse, things had already started to break down. Play Interactive's deal with GameStop had gone south, and they couldn't pay us. Play Interactive quickly disbanded, leaving us holding the bill, and with no place to sell the already printed magazine to recover our costs. We eventually won a lawsuit against Play Interactive, but, as they say, you can't get blood from a stone, so we never recouped a dime, and the cost of the lawsuit just increased the amount of money we lost on this little venture. You can still buy a copy of the first—and only—issue of Maximum Play here on paizo.com: it's a lasting memory of a deal gone bad.

Lisa Stevens
CEO

"That's Not A Desk": The Wes Schneider Story

Today, I would think, "That's not a desk. Desks are about 2-1/2 feet tall. This is over 3 feet tall and attached to the wall—making it a mailing counter." At the time, though, still less than 96 hours off the plane from my former home in Maryland, all I could think was: "I'm here. I have a desk. I work on Dragon." Then I smirked, because my face was cracking trying to hold back another bout of maniacally delighted laughter.

Less than a week earlier, when Dragon magazine Editor-in-Chief Matt Sernett asked if I could start Monday, I told him of course! It's only a 3,000-mile move to a place I've never been—it's an adventure! I'd known since 10th grade that I wanted to be the editor-in-chief of Dragon magazine, so it's not like I was going to say no.

The Paizo offices were not glamorous in 2003, but it'd be years before I realized that. All I knew was that this was how the world of professional gaming and magazine publishing looked: four magazines' worth of staff in one room broken up by cube walls, stacks of Wizards of the Coast-branded boxes stacked in corners and squirreled away under desks, leaking black beanbag chairs, enough RPG manuals to fill three games stores, a galaxy worth of Star Wars tchotchkes, and desks crammed with incoming and outgoing manuscripts, sketches, letters, interviews, previews, and articles all created by the best-of-the-best in the gaming world, each aimed at its own sickeningly imminent deadline. It would take days to take it all in, but there wasn't any time for that—Dragon #314 had to get out the door. (Pro Tip: The first thing you do at your new magazine job should NOT be to criticize the cover of the issue hours away from shipping—even if that's not how Strahd looks, and even if you're still right a decade later.)

The next few months were professionally about learning the ropes the Paizo way, coming to live with deadlines, sitting and editing on top of my misproportioned desk, getting the inside story on the gaming industry, and undergoing the quintessential new guy rite of passage: shoveling through the mountain of unsolicited article proposals in the slush pile (sorry P. L., the crawling head has some dues to pay before it gets an ecology). My education in the history of Dungeons & Dragons beyond my second edition roots also started about this time. With freshly minted Dungeon Editor-in-Chief Erik Mona laying the foundations for elaborate schemes like Maure Castle (and eventually the Age of Worms Adventure Path), the Dragon and Dungeon editorial pit was awash in inspiration from gaming's oldest and fondest-remembered adventures. Only a few years later, many would start considering revitalized stories and characters from these early adventures among Paizo's and the magazines' signature talents—a knack we still indulge as often as possible today.

Unprofessionally, those first days were for figuring out what I'd gotten myself into. Mike McArtor and I had been hired as Dragon's new assistant editors at the same time, and as we both sported similar hairstyles and facial hair at the time, many staff members either couldn't initially tell us apart or didn't realized there were two of us—a matter that was urgently addressed and led to the destruction of all evidence of my goatee-wearing days. Happenstance and insane odds also had it that I'd moved all the way across the country and into the apartment directly next door to James Jacobs, which began a long (and still ongoing) tradition of movie marathons, commute-based collaborations, and thoroughly blurred professional/personal boundaries. Dave Gross, editor of Star Wars Insider at the time and man of a dozen congenial but often mysterious agendas, also made it a point to introduce the company's freshest fish to Seattle's vibrant art and film culture—ensuring that I'll live in this city for as long as it runs a film festival. In the office's cramped quarters, any moment without a headset blaring meant listening to coworkers, typically Sean Glenn, Kyle Hunter, and Erik Mona's mile-a-minute, in-joke riddled banter on the bleeding edge of nerdery (key pieces of which I started transcribing into a still-living document that gets printed out for every other Paizo Christmas party, and that—for reasons of legality and good taste—will never be publicly shared).

It's been a while since I was the newest and youngest guy at Paizo, and since I've done every editorial job there is at a company where "editor" means "guy who does everything." We've come a long way from being a bunch of distinct operations with a communal living space. There have been plenty of laughs and raised cups, but also a fair share of yelling and even a few tears—that's what you get when you have a group of the world's most passionate gamers devoted to putting out projects they're excited to use in their games. But after nearly a decade and almost a third of my life, one thing about Paizo has remained the same since my first day: it's definitely still an adventure.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

James Jacobs: Fifth Time's the Charm

It took me five tries to get hired to work on RPG stuff.

Attempt 1: I was told that I interviewed well, but that I hadn't done enough design work for D&D—as such, the magazine department at Wizards of the Coast (where I was working at the time in the Sales department processing mountains of Pokémon orders) didn't have a good idea of my skills and strengths as a designer/developer/editor (AKA "as a writer"). Owen K. C. Stephens ended up getting the job I was interviewing for.

Attempt 2: A few years later, with several more adventures and articles and even a few hardcover book credits under my belt, I interviewed again, this time for an assistant editor position on Dragon. They ended up hiring one of my closest friends, Eric Haddock, instead, because he had more experience editing.

Attempt 3: Not long after, I interviewed again... but they hired Matt Sernett instead because he came into the interview with actual "had worked on a magazine before" experience.

Attempt 4: By this point, the magazine business had been spun off and Paizo Publishing was up and running. A new design position opened in Wizards of the Coast's R&D department, and I interviewed for that position and felt VERY good about my chances. By that point I'd helped write quite a few D&D hardcovers and who knows how many adventures and articles for the magazines (including a few that had become relatively notorious—thanks, Book of Vile Darkness!) A few days later, on the day I knew that R&D would be making their decision, I was walking down the hall at lunch to go get a soda from the machine. I happened to look out the window and saw Chris Perkins shaking Jesse Decker's hand. Both were smiling.

Attempt 5: My phone rang at work a week or so later (it was still a few weeks before Jesse Decker would be leaving Paizo to come work at WotC)—it was Johnny Wilson. His words, more or less: "They took one of my guys, so I'm gonna take one of theirs—do you want to come work at Paizo as an Associate Editor on Dungeon?" Since that had more or less been my dream job since the mid '80s when I'd had my first published work appear in Dungeon #12... I said yes.

I started work in the middle of the year, and from the very beginning I knew that I'd indeed found the proverbial dream job. Here are a few memorable highlights from my first half-year working at Paizo that convinced me I'd finally landed the job I wanted to stay at as long as they'd let me keep hanging around...

• Playing in a D&D game where the CEO of the company was playing as well. Lisa played an ogre-mage, if I remember correctly. May have been a gold Dragon, though. Being the boss lets you play the best monsters, apparently.
• Sitting across from Sean Glenn's desk, I got to see all the incredible art as it came in, and also got to watch how he built each issue of Dungeon into a work of art from nothing more than an art order and a big bucket of words.
• One of my first tasks that first week: Erik dropped a document on my desk and said, "Here's stats for Rary. He's 23rd level. Make sure he's a badass." No pressure!
• Kyle Hunter getting worked up enough to grab the plastic rim off the top of a cubicle and wield it like a katana. I still don't remember what I said to get him that freaked out. I should have written it down.
• Watching a snake fight a hawk in the Paizo parking lot.
• Finding out about Erik's fear of bears.
• Watching Wes adjust to the rinky-dink desk they had to build for him in the hall because we'd run out of desks. Ha.
• Reading adventures by new authors like Richard Pett, Greg A. Vaughan, and Nicolas Logue, and getting to decide that they'd be put into print. And getting a picture of Warduke on the cover of the magazine.
• The day Erik accidentally clicked on a particularly "festive" Christmas-themed link that, while he managed to close the browser before the picture loaded completely, still scarred many of us for years to come.
• Finding out that one of Wes's superpowers was an uncanny ability to bowl REALLY WELL.

All in all... good times! And I still had the one and only performance of Operation Banjo Thug, a (false, alas) pterodactyl sighting, the chance to work with Rob Kuntz on Maure Castle, the excitement of ordering my first magazine cover (Dungeon #119), seeing an adventure I wrote get turned into a stage production, and more to look forward to in the years to come!

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Sean Glenn gets settled into his new surroundings!	Vic Wertz, Lisa Stevens, Mary Franklin and Dave Gross along with Star Wars magazine editors from around the world on the set of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!	Johnny Wilson and Vic Wertz challenge all comers at the Gladiator Arena at Gen Con and Origins.	Two Boba Fetts! Jeremy Bulloch and Daniel Logan show off their silver action figure incarnation.	The Paizo booth in 2003. In picture: Mary Franklin, Vic Wertz, Lisa Stevens and Mike Mikaelian.

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Five: A Diversion

"Hurt a little?" Krunzle began. "Then perhaps we could—" He was unable to continue because his senses were now reporting that his insides and outsides had apparently changed places, and that his entire carcass had subsequently been consumed by a raging firestorm wrapped in a freezing blizzard, then crushed to the size of an ant—and not a very big ant, at that.

He was next conscious of screaming hoarsely, and then vision returned, along with the rest of his sensorium, which advised him that all his systems were now running normally—except for his fear-measuring capacity, which was strained to its limit. He closed his mouth and took in a long, shaky breath through his nostrils. "Please," he said, "don't do that again."

"Typical," said the woman. "I free you from a serious enchantment—a service, I want to point out, that I perform at no charge. And do I see gratitude? Do I hear so much as a murmur of thanks?"

"Thank you," Krunzle murmured.

"Too late now," she said, picking up the knucklebones and rolling them expertly between her palms. "Now let's see what you can do for me in return."

"I thought you said there was no charge."

"Typical," she said again, shaking her blonde locks. She threw the bones onto the tabletop, regarded them for a long moment, then said, "Apparently, the answer is: nothing. You're not part of my future at all."

Krunzle heaved a sigh of relief, until the thought occurred that the bones might be saying he was not part of anybody's future. The demon worshipers next door could likely use a spare body. And he knew that some of the uses to which the bodies were put rendered them useless for any future employment.

She had picked up the amulet again. "So he sends in a thief to steal this piece of gimcrack, which the idiot Didmus gave to the equal idiotic Galathea as some sort of mawkish love-token."

Krunzle dared to interrupt. "Who," he said, "are Didmus and Galathea?"

Again, that look that his teachers used to give him, then she shook her head as one does who accepts that some shortcomings must be borne with. She said, "Galathea is the girl from whom you took the apprentice's eye. She is my daughter. And Baalariot's, for that matter. Didmus is a half-grown half-wit of a sorcerer's apprentice. They think they are in love."

"You and Baalariot are married?" he said.

Again, the look of disbelief. "Men and women do not have to be married to produce children," she said. "Baalariot wants to wed her to one of Hedvand's courtiers. I have a better plan: she will train to become a priestess of Nocticula, cementing my relationship with the cult."

"And Didmus," the thief said, his mind beginning to form the picture into whose frame he had been pressed, "what does he want?"

She assumed an exasperated look. "What does any young man want?"

"He doesn't happen," Krunzle said, "to play the zither?"

"I wouldn't put it past him."

For all its academic shortfalls, Krunzle's intellect was adept at plans and schemes, his own and others'. The pieces now fell into place. He debated for a moment as to whether he should voice his conclusions—but only for a moment. If he was right, events would shortly reveal the facts for themselves, and he would gain nothing by too late a revelation.

"I believe," he said, "that I am here as a diversion."

Hortenza's brows consulted each other, then her eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment a heavy concussion sounded from downstairs. The building shook, and shards of plaster sifted down from the hole in the corner of the ceiling.

The priestess recovered quickly. "The bastard!" she said, reaching for the ebony rod and striding to the door. She slammed it behind her and he heard the click of the lock. He gave her a moment to clear the corridor outside then went to kneel at the keyhole, reaching for his picks.

But, even in her hurry, Hortenza had been thinking a step ahead of him. The pick would not engage the tumblers. He went to the table, where she had left the apprentice's eye, and brought it to bear on the door. The lock made the stone glow bright red.

Krunzle said a short and pungent word, then turned to the hole in the ceiling. He pushed a small table underneath, then leapt atop it. When he stood upright, his head and shoulder poked through the opening, so that his eyes rose just above the level of the packed-earth roof.

The open space was in darkness and silence, except for the sound of a zither being inexpertly tuned. Then the thief heard a noise like sand rushing through a giant hourglass, as the great blind snake slithered across the roof toward him. He ducked down and, after a moment, the sound ceased.

The lock clicked. The door opened. In the moment between the two events, Krunzle put the table back where he had found it and himself where Hortenza had left him. The witch stepped through the doorway, panting from the stairs and presumably from the effort of dragging an unwilling young woman all the way up from the sub-basement.

"A good thief knows when to make himself scarce, and Krunzle is better than most."

She flung Galathea into the room. "You stay here, or so help me..." She left the threat implied as she turned to the thief and said, with a meaningful glance at the hole in the ceiling, "Keep her here, and I will make it worth your while. Let her go, and...” She pointed a tapered fingernail at him and left the rest to Krunzle's imagination.

Then she was gone, the door slammed. The girl tried the opener, found it locked, and stamped her foot, saying under her breath a word that was not supposed to be available to gently reared maidens. She looked at Krunzle, and the thief recognized the parents in the child.

"You're thinking," he told her, just to get the process rolling, "what it will cost you to secure my assistance."

She folded her arms. "Well?"

"What have you got?"

She showed her fingers, unringed, her wrists unbraceleted, her neck unlaced. "I had only one thing, an amulet with a green stone."

He patted a bulge in his upper garment. "I already have that."

She stared at him for a moment, then sighed and slipped one arm out of her shift, followed by the other. A loud detonation from outside in the street caused her to pause, then she continued, slipping the garment down to her waist.

"This is scarcely the time," Krunzle said.

She had been about to wriggle the shift down over her hips. "Then what?"

"How well do you know the snake?"

"Hothet? He used to guard me in the cradle."

"Will he obey you?"

She casually signaled an affirmative, as if serpent-commanding was a universal skill.

"Then get dressed and get up on the table."

She looked up at the hole. "The roof is too low, the walls to either side sheer."

"Leave that," he said, "to me."

He boosted her through the gap, then fluidly followed. He crouched next to the hole, ready to duck back down, but then he saw the great reptile coiled at her feet, its spade-sized head rubbing against one thigh.

From the side of building that faced the street came another crump! accompanied by a brief yellow glare. Almost immediately, there followed a metallic rattling sound, like iron hail striking cobblestones. The thief crept to the parapet and looked over. Below in the street, Baalariot stood, legs spread, a nimbus of red light about his head like a halo, one hand holding a carved staff whose upper tip ended in an amorphous cloud of stygian darkness which kept spitting out little zig-zags of white lightning. He raised the implement and pointed it at where the front door would be—with Hortenza presumably in it.

From the blackness at the end of the staff rushed a torrent of colorless force, flecked with sparks of gold and black. The angle of his view prevented Krunzle from seeing where it struck, but he knew the effect must be less than overwhelming when he heard a hiss of rage from directly below him, followed by a rumbling, trundling sound, as of iron-shod wheels on stone. Now a shimmering wall, blue and almost transparent, moved outward from the shrine toward the wizard, rolling back his rush of energy until Baalariot gestured with his staff and the outflow ceased.

The wall moved on, however, even picking up speed, and its outer edges began to curve inward so that soon it would form a tube around the wizard. He made a downward chopping gesture with one hand, while speaking a stream of syllables, and the center of the approaching barrier began to melt and dissolve. A moment later it winked out of existence.

Krunzle heard another hissed curse from below him, and a snarling sound from her opponent. He thought it best to withdraw before either parent became aware of him. Something was now snarling and bellowing in the street below, accompanied by the stamp of heavy, hoofed feet on the cobbles. The animal roars were soon met by a chittering sound, as if ten thousand maddened insects were clashing their mandibles. The tramp of iron-shod hooves was overlaid by a skittering, whispering noise. Krunzle imagined a horde of chitinous scorpions, their pincers clicking, flooding across the street to swarm up some rough beast.

Then he decided there was no profit in imagining such unpleasantness. He crept back across the roof to Galathea, finding the snake asleep in a coil and the girl indulging in some impatient toe-tapping. He felt a brief twinge of compassion for poor, love-sick Didmus, who must eventually learn that the girl's parent's temperaments had bred true in their offspring.

But that was not his concern. "This way," he said, and led her to where his grapnel and knotted rope still hung from the neighboring roof. As she took hold of the cord, the love song from above began again. She went up quickly, and the thief after her. They followed their ears to a corner of the tenement roof sheltered by movable walls of plaited bamboo.

A tender moment ensued, then Krunzle intervened to say, "It would be wise to leave here before the battle below ends and the winner—assuming there is one—comes looking for the prize."

Didmus, a gawky youth with ears almost large enough to serve as wings, said, "I have a carriage. We'll go to my uncle's manse. A priest of Erastil lives next door. We'll be married before midnight."

Galathea looked down at her shift, its hem soiled from the unswept roof. "Married?" she said. "In this?"

Krunzle felt another brief spasm of sympathy for the apprentice wizard, but said, "In what quarter of the city is your uncle's manse?"

The youth's cracked voice said, "By the night market, near the Druma Road Gate."

"Then let us go."

And so, with eldritch lights and harsh sounds fading behind them, they fled the lower city. Didmus, a generous sort for a budding wizard, pressed into Krunzle's hand a small purse of gratitude when they dropped him off at the market. The thief used the funds to buy a change of clothing and a broad-brimmed hat that would obscure and shadow his face.

He pinned the apprentice's eye to his new headgear, then settled himself beside an untenanted booth at the edge of the market. When the gate opened in the morning, he would be first out of it and on the road to Druma and its capital, Kerse, where the streets were literally paved with gold and the walls of the houses inset with gems.

Krunzle had long had a hankering to see Druma. He sat with arms resting on his knees, and head resting on arms, and dreamed of easy locks and unlatched windows.

Follow the rest of Krunzle's adventures in the new Pathfinder Tales novel Song of the Serpent!

Coming Next Week: Piracy and parenthood in the Ironbound Archipelago in Chapter One of Wendy Wagner's "Mother Bears."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

RPG Superstar™: Vote For Your Superstar!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The time has come to determine this year's RPG Superstar™! For Round 5, each of our Top 4 competitors have submitted a 3,000 word Pathfinder Module adventure proposal. They've rolled with the puches and absorbed feedback from the judges and voters, and now it's time to see who will come out on top!

Congratulations again to our Top 4! Get to voting and determine who will become RPG Superstar™ 2012! Voting ends on April 2 at 2PM Pacific Time.

The ultimate winner of RPG Superstar™, announced April 3, 2012, will write a Pathfinder Module to be published in early 2013. The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in April 2012.

Vote now!

Carnage at Your Fingertips

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Do you like your combats bloody? When you score a critical hit or your enemy fumbles, do you want viscera to spray across the screen in you mind? Do you like the sound of your vanquished foe’s body slam against the walls of that cliff you threw him down? Then you probably already have the GameMastery Critical Hit Deck and Critical Fumble Deck. Paizo now offers them in digital form, as the iCrit and iFumble apps and they are available for both iPhone and Android.

The iPhone versions of these apps have been up for a while. Many of you have already downloaded them and we’re glad you like it. We hope the Android users will be just as pleased with the new versions.

This is the beginning. We are moving forward with more digital tools. We want to make tools that are useful and fun. We want to make tools that you will use and love because they aid the game you love to play.

We have some ideas. We have some secret plans. But you folks have an opinion on everything, and as a group, you folks buy nearly everything. What do you want to see in future phone and tablet tools for Pathfinder?

Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Designer

Mid-year Report of the Pathfinder Society Campaign

Monday, March 26, 2012

Illustration by Eva Widermann

Today is my six-month anniversary at Paizo. The time has flown since September 26, 2011. Usually, State of the Union/State/County/City addresses are given on an annual basis. In the future, I will most likely present this report at the yearly Pathfinder Society Members’ Meeting at Gen Con. However, this being my first year and with all the changes that have taken place, and in light of the goals set for the future, I thought it was important to give a report of how my first six months on the job have played out.

First and most importantly, I want to thank all of the Venture-Captains and Lieutenants, regional and convention coordinators, GMs, and people I use as a sounding board (you know who you are). Without all of you, I would not be able to achieve everything listed below and make Pathfinder Society as great as it is. I also want to thank all of our players and fans. Without you, I wouldn’t have an awesome job to come to each morning. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your efforts and support.

The Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign has already seen numerous positive improvements and changes. Here is a short list of things we’ve accomplished together in just six months:

• Established the Venture-Lieutenant program and the recruited more than 75 new Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants to help us grow Pathfinder Society by presenting a Paizo 'face' in many local areas.
• Implemented numerous small updates to the Pathfinder Society webpage, the campaign FAQ (red updates!), and Additional Resources list.
• Planned and staffed 750 Pathfinder Society tables for Gen Con 2012., as well as the creation of Beginner Box introductions and a kids’ track.
• Streamlined the process by which regional coordinators can request convention prize support.
• Opened up post-retirement play beyond 12th level, sanctioned 15 additional Pathfinder Modules, and released Chronicle sheets for five Pathfinder Tales novels.
• Added holiday boons to event organizers’ arsenals.
• Worked with Venture-Captains to coordinate the worldwide Beginner Box Bash event and released a Pathfinder Society character creation guide using the Beginner Box rules.
• Planned and staffed 150 Pathfinder Society tables at PaizoCon 2012, as well as scheduled the debut of GM 101 workshops on a large scale.
• Worked with Venture-Captains to establish GM 101 workshops in multiple locations.
• Analyzed community feedback and reporting data, concluding that future scenarios should be designed with six players in mind.
• Established a new set of convention Chronicle sheets for the second half of season 3 with Tian-flavored and teamwork-inspired boons.
• Overhauled the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play that included more than 400 changes and additions.
• Established new guidelines for earning and maintaining a fifth GM star.
• Worked with Paizo’s web team to change the Events Page from a calendar format to a more user-friendly event listing.
• Readjusted the release schedule for Season 4 scenarios to release at the beginning of the month instead of the end.
• And finally, I experienced firsthand the sledding rules first detailed in To Scale the Dragon.

We've addressed our leadership, our organization, our ground game, and our rules. And we couldn't have done any of it without all of you.

All that is great, but it's not enough. We're not done yet (which means that we all have more work to do). I'm excited about the future of the Society. In particular, the following items on my now-less-than-secret list excite me:

• The Grand Convocation interactive will return at PaizoCon 2012.
• A second, competitive round has been added to the Pathfinder Society Special at Gen Con 2012.
• Continuing to attend as many conventions as I can get to. I've been to NeonCon (Las Vegas, NV) , DunDraCon 20 (San Ramon, CA), GAMA Trade Show (Las Vegas, NV), and the Alliance Game Distributors Show (Ft. Wayne, IN) over the past six months. My upcoming 2012 schedule includes stops at:
• PAX East (Boston, MA)
• Origins Game Fair (Columbus, OH)
• PaizoCon 2012 (Redmond, WA)
• Connecticon (Hartford, CT)
• PaizoCon UK (Birmingham, West Midlands, UK)
• Gen Con 2012 (Indianapolis, IN)
• Dragon Con (Atlanta, GA)
• Neon Con 2012 (Las Vegas, NV)

My goal is to meet as many Pathfinder Society players, GMs, and coordinators as I can face-to-face. I encourage you to introduce yourself to me at those conventions.

• The plotline for Season 4 has been laid-out, and Season 5 has already been put into a rough draft.
• We are looking at ways to make faction missions have a meaningful impact on the campaign and make more sense as presented in scenarios.
• Improve our Retailer Support program, including upgrades to the website interface to make it more user-friendly for both retailers and customers.
• Improve the GM Rewards program (we already made some adjustments to 5-star GMs as noted above).
• I would like to see the creation of the three campaign documents that were discussed on the April 4, 2011 blog.
• Expanding the Venture-Captain program to additional areas in North America, as well as increasing the number of Venture-Captains internationally.
• Working with Paizo’s web team to implement a more user-friendly web interface for event coordinators.
• Continuing to highlight international Pathfinder Society play through monthly blogs.

The last six months have been a great learning experience for me. I continue to transition from a regional coordinator mindset to one of a global campaign administrator. There have been some bumps in the road, but nothing that has proven insurmountable. I already knew that the Pathfinder Society community is smart, diverse, and very passionate. It is amazing how much energy and enthusiasm you all have for the game and it is very inspiring. Likewise, the people here at Paizo are some of the most creative and different-thinking people I've ever met. It's as amazing as you'd think it would be.

I will finish by letting everyone know that I will continue to do the best job I can to grow and improve the Pathfinder Society campaign. Sometimes I will make mistakes. But, when I do make a mistake, I will own up to it. As always, I am available for all of you to reach out to me with concerns, criticisms, thoughts, suggestions, venting, and ideas via email, private message, Skype, phone call, an in-person visit, carrier pigeon, written letter, message spell, pony express, contact other plane spell, or sending spell.

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Big Reveal

Friday, March 23, 2012

Ardent followers of our Friday Pathfinder Battles preview blog surely noticed its absence last week, when necessity pulled me away to the wild frontier of Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show, an important game industry event that draws publishers, distributors, and retailers from around the country. While at GTS, I had a chance to sit down and chat with my counterpart over at WizKids, and our discussion covered where the Pathfinder Battles line has been, and where it's headed in the future.

We spoke for the first time about the set after the next set (which we haven't even announced yet, but which is already in sculpting!). Sales have been strong for the line, and retailer comments at the show were very positive.

WizKids leaked a few details about Pathfinder Battles at a GTS presentation, including that the Rise of the Runelords set will have two booster configurations. The Standard Booster contains four figures, one Large and three either Medium or Small. The set also contains four Huge figures, sold in random single-figure Huge Boosters. Unlike with Heroes & Monsters, these two booster configurations will come in two different case sizes, so that retailers (and customers) will be able to re-order the size of booster that they need.

Although we are very, very close to being able to reveal specific details about price and availability, we still lack a couple of pieces of critical information that are preventing us from posting the product page so you can preorder these exciting figures right this very second. I expect that to change very soon, so keep your eyes on this space!

At the GAMA Trade Show, WizKids also revealed the worst-kept secret of the line, finally officially identifying the set's premium miniature: the Rune Giant! This gorgeous Gargantuan figure towers over Medium, Large, and even Huge figures, and with his enormous sword he cuts an imposing figure on your game table.

The final miniature will have elaborate tattoos all over his skin, inspired by the original rune giant art by Wayne Reynolds. That's the Vampire from Heroes & Monsters down there by the Rune Giant's shin. I thought you guys would appreciate a sense of just how big this figure is relative to, say, a player character miniature.

Like the Huge Black Dragon of Heroes & Monsters, this figure is produced in extremely limited quantities, and will be available to purchase by customers who subscribe or preorder cases of Rise of the Runelords Standard Boosters (as well as through select retailers). Details on pricing and exactly how you can be sure not to miss this amazing figure will come shortly.

WizKids also revealed another much-anticipated figure, the rare Runelord Karzoug the Claimer, arch-villain of the entire Rise of the Runelords campaign!

This pose was drawn from a chapter-opener image from Ultimate Magic, depicting Karzoug in battle against a hated foe. Both the magical spell effect launching from Karzoug's left hand and the flames of his pole-arm are rendered in tinted clear plastic, adding to the energy effect. With gorgeous fine detailed painting along the hem and embroidery of his robes and lavishly detailed equipment and clothing features, this is a miniature your players will long remember and really relish defeating.

Lastly this week, I wanted to show off a figure that WizKids didn't reveal at the GAMA Trade Show. I wanted to pick a monster, and I wanted to pick something distinctly Pathfinder, something emblematic of the Pathfinder brand that maybe wouldn't have ever appeared if not for the original Rise of the Runelords campaign.

I decided on this guy, the brutal Sinspawn Axeman.

This miniature is an armored, souped-up version of the Sinspawn miniature we previewed weeks ago. As the campaign gets tougher, the player characters actually fight more of these axe-wielders than they do the regular type from the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, which is one reason we've put both of them in the common rarity.

That's it for this week! We've still got plenty more awesome figures to preview in the weeks and months to come, as well as a lot more specifics on price, exact configuration, and other important details.

Until then, we'll see you next week!

Erik Mona
Publisher

RPG Superstar: Round 5, Go Go Go!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

The Top 4 competitors in RPG Superstar 2012 are hard at work on their adventure proposals, which are due tomorrow at 2 p.m. Pacific Time! This weekend the four judges and guest judge James Jacobs review these entries, and on Tuesday, March 27, they go live for public reading and voting!

Don’t worry, competitors, you still have more than 24 hours to go before the deadline! James, Mike, Steve, Tom... good luck!

Sean K Reynolds
Developer and RPG Superstar Judge

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Four: Caught

His first awareness was of the ache in his ribs, that swelled every time he took a breath. He cursed the pain, then thought, No, wait, I'm still breathing. That has to go on the positive side of the ledger. He took a deeper breath and groaned, his emotions mixed.

"Get up," said a voice from somewhere above him: female, but without the girlish tone of the amulet-wearer. This was a mature contralto, with strong overtones of I am used to being obeyed. Krunzle opened his eyes and discovered he was lying on a thick carpet. He recognized the hole in the ceiling.

A toe nudged his sore ribs—bruised, not broken, he deduced—and the voice said, "Up."

From this vantage, she seemed extraordinarily tall, an impression that did not diminish when he struggled painfully to his feet and found that she still overtopped him so that he had to crane his neck to meet her eyes. In doing so he discovered that his neck was joining his ribs in registering a complaint of maltreatment. "Ow," he said, rubbing it.

She looked to be of middle years, except for a face as smooth and ageless as magic could make it. She wore a complex headpiece of entwined snakes fashioned from some pale metal, inset with eyes of polished opal. Hair the same shade as that of the girl in the cell cascaded down onto a robe of pale silk, marked in red and black arcane symbols.

"I am Hortenza, and this is my house," she said. "Name yourself."

He did so, without resorting to sleights or subterfuges. She did not look the type to enjoy a frivolous puzzle.

She studied the thief. Krunzle had seen much the same expression on the faces of farmwives deciding which chicken would have its neck wrung for the stewpot. As if interested in the decor, he looked about him. The room was still windowless; there was one exit, besides the one he had made.

"Meddling in the affairs of spellcasters is rarely advisable."

As if she could read his thoughts—and perhaps she could—she said, "The door is locked and the snake is on the roof. He likes to take sleeping birds. But he'd rather have you."

Krunzle thought of several things he could say, but none of them seemed likely to profit him. He remained silent while she studied him some more. Meanwhile, the geas was urging him to escape, and to do so loudly. He focused mentally on the impossibility of doing so, and the urge quieted. Thanks to Cardimion for making it discriminating, he thought.

By now, his new captor seemed to have seen all there was to see. She said, "Baalariot sent you."

Again, the thief saw nothing to be gained by speaking. After a moment, she said, "Answer."

"I did not hear a question."

Her hard face hardened further. She raised a finger whose nail tapered to a black lacquered point and pointed it at him. The air around him crackled and he smelled a whiff of sulfur, then he became aware that every bone in his body had suddenly become hot enough to scald the flesh that touched it. The pain lasted only moments, but the memory of it lingered after she lowered the digit.

"Oh, yes," he said, "that question. Indeed, Baalariot sent me."

"To steal Galathea."

His eyebrows knitted themselves in confusion. "He called it something else."

That brought him a quizzical look. She studied him again, then said, "What, exactly, did he call her?"

Krunzle blinked. Her? But he was in no position to offer a correction. "He called it an apprentice's eye."

As a young student, the thief had never risen to the top of any class in literature, history, or philosophy. His was a practical intelligence, best expressed through his hands, whose remarkable deftness at eye-bamboozling speed had won him his nickname. But his inability to recite even the best-known dates and precedents used to win him a certain look from the preceptors at the day school, a look that said, Can this oaf really be that much of a thimble-wit?

He was seeing that look again, on the face of the witch. Now she looked down at the carpet, where the amulet with the color-changing cabochon lay, the polished, uncut stone now green again. The snake's coiled embrace must have pressed it to him. Indeed, he suspected the hard stone was responsible for one of the bruises on his ribs. The moment he noticed it, he involuntarily stooped and picked it up.

"That?" she said. "You want me to believe he sent you for that?"

The darkening expression on her face told Krunzle that he needed her to believe it, because it was the only explanation for his conduct that he was able to offer.

She was studying him even more closely now. "You're not one of his coterie."

"I have never been a joiner," Krunzle said.

"A hireling?"

"Not as such."

She picked up the amulet and held it to him. The green stone turned red. "Ah," she said.

"Why does it do that?" he said.

"It is an apprentice wizard's tool," she said. "It perceives the energies involved in magic, and mostly serves to prevent the inexperienced from touching that which might do them harm. Right now, it tells me that you have been ensorcelled."

She tilted her head in thought then added, "Which might make you dangerous. Don't move."

She went to a cupboard that stood against the wall, opened a door, and selected an object from several that were stored there. She brought it back and he saw that it was a tube carved from black crystal. She put it to her eye and inspected him through it.

"Ah, Baalariot," she said. "Always the obvious. Of course it would be Cardimion's Discriminating Geas." She went back to the cupboard, chose other items from its contents and brought them to a table. Then she moved a brazier to the same part of the room and, with a mere motion of one hand, ignited its charcoal. She inspected the things she had arranged on the table—Krunzle saw scrimshawed ivory, an ebony rod, some old, time-worn knuckle bones, a scrap of pale hide tattooed with blue runes, a diminutive, oddly shaped skull—then she began to perform actions beyond his comprehension.

"If we were out in the street," she said, touching this and elevating that, "I could scarcely make a dent. But I have an arrangement with Our Lady's sanctuary next door, and that gives me access to a power that..." She broke off, concentrating while she tapped the black rod a precise three times on the top of the skull, then covered the bone with the tattooed skin. The air inside the room was suddenly charged with energy. Kunzle felt a crackling in his ears. Then she looked over at him and aimed the rod in his direction, saying, "This will probably hurt a little."

Coming Next Week: The final chapter of Hugh Matthews's "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

Mundane Necessities

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Illustration by Vincent Dutrait

This summer we're unleashing Ultimate Equipment, a massive tome full of all sorts of equipment both magical and nonmagical. Last time, Sean asked you about what kind of items you would like to see in the book, and we got a bunch of magic item ideas. This week we're asking again, but this time we're looking for something a little more... well, mundane.

What kind of nonmagical equipment do you think should be in this book? It will feature all the nonmagical equipment found in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, the Advanced Player's Guide, and Ultimate Combat, as well as a bunch of nonmagical equipment that we produced for the Advanced Race Guide, including weapons and armor. But what other sort of nonmagical things should be in this book? Specifically, we're looking for those nonmagical pieces of equipment that should be in the game, but that we haven't yet published.

As always, we are listening.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Designer

Daigle Comes Calling

Monday, March 19, 2012

You may have already heard that longstanding Paizo freelancer, messageboard crusader, flumph preservationist, and all around great guy Adam Daigle has officially signed on as Paizo’s newest developer. Well, this week he showed up at the office, terrified and disheveled after several straight days of driving all his belongings up from Texas in a truck he’s absolutely not qualified to drive.

In order to show him what swell folks we are, a couple of us headed over to help him move into the Paizo dormitories (AKA a nearby apartment complex). Since fewer than 24 hours is clearly enough time to get his life in order, he’s already set up in the office, learning the ropes by trying not to fall asleep while whimpering quietly in his new cube. Pretty soon he’s going to find out about all the projects he’s already late on, and when he does, I thought it might cheer him up to have a nice welcome thread on the blog.

So please join me in saying: Welcome, Daigle! Now get to work!

Daigle arrives in true Paizonian fashion.	Captain of Industry Wes Schneider proves he’s not above sparing some time for the little people.	Hobo Beard Patrick says, "I could totally live in here..."	Daigle knows that the key to moving is properly labeling the boxes.

“Get back in there, Renie! You don’t come out until Blood of Angels is developed!”	Mark Moreland is ashamed.	Sutter obeys the golden rule of moving: Always make sure that it’s the owner who drops the expensive thing.

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

Story Time with Uncle Sutter!

Friday, March 16, 2012

Since everybody’s working around the clock on the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition Hardcover, Wes and I decided it was time that we broke the glass and unleashed Uncle Sutter’s Emergency Storytime Blog!

Back in January, we had a reading/launch party for Death’s Heretic at the University of Washington bookstore. It was a ton of fun, and as it happens, Wes used the wonders of modern technology to capture me reading part of the book’s prologue. So if you’re bored at work and want somebody to read fantasy stories to you, bust out your headphones and enjoy! The end of the clip even contains my soon-to-be-patented ghoul voice...

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

RPG Superstar™: Advice from Your Future

Thursday, March 15, 2012

To the top four competitors: congratulations! Though I’m not a guest judge this round, I will be the person developing the winner’s submission, so I thought I’d take the opportunity while you’re putting together your adventure proposals to offer some advice. Chances are good that the same elements I touch on here are the same things Clark, James, Neil, Ryan, and Sean will be looking for and judging you on next weekend, so pay attention!

1. Scope: Every year at least one competitor puts forward an adventure proposal that simply couldn’t fit in a 32-page print product. The judges will ding you for this hard, and even if you win by popular vote despite that, the physical limitations of the medium will necessitate changes from your proposal that may jeopardize your winning vision. A Pathfinder Module typically has around 20,000 words, with 1,800 of those restricted to appendixes. That means you have around 18,000 words to describe all the backstory, characters, and locations in the adventure, as well as all the stats contained therein.

The average encounter is 500 words (including statblocks). If you anticipate using 10,000 words of your final adventure detailing a cult’s lair, know that you’re going to need (and have room for) about 20 encounter areas. Some of these will be fights that have statblocks that push them over the average, and some will be mostly empty rooms with only a paragraph or two of text to even that average out. But if you set half of the adventure in a giant castle that couldn’t reasonably have less than 20 rooms, chances are you’ll have to cut a lot of the contents within, or cut other elements of the adventure to make room. If everything you propose is vital to the story, then cutting things can drastically change the adventure from the proposed concept.

2. Simplicity: Another thing we see every year are what we’ve termed “wahoo” elements in folks’ proposals. I understand why some competitors want to pull out all the stops with complicated and cinematic fights, locations, villains, and adventure premises: you want people to think your adventure will be the coolest to play. But consider that the more we need to explain something—whether it’s a rules subsystem or the complex way an encounter in a weird location plays out—the less words you have to tell your story. You’ll note we often save our rules subsystems for Pathfinder Adventure Path books, where they can be explained as independent articles that don’t eat into the adventures themselves. This is because we don’t have room for such things in most 32-page modules. Tell an engaging story that relies on plot, memorable characters, and interesting locations rather than a few complicated, off-the-wall elements; your job, my job, and the GM at the table’s job will be easier, and if it’s a good story, the players will enjoy it just as much as something wacky, as long as their PCs partake in something meaty.

Along the same lines, consider the number of sources needed to run the adventure and especially to run any single NPC. If your adventure hinges on a creature from the Bestiary 3 who has levels in both alchemist and rogue and uses an archetype from Ultimate Magic, you’ve necessitated the use of four books to design, develop, and ultimately run that character. In most cases, the same story can be told with only one or two books, everyone has an easier time, and the encounter can be just as memorable.

3. Scale: The assignment this year is to propose a 9th-level adventure. That means it assumes a balanced party of four 9th-level PCs and thus needs to be able to account for some of the things a 9th-level party can do. By this point in a character’s career, she has become a mover and shaker on the national or even regional stage. A 9th-level spellcaster can cast such spells as commune, dominate person, polymorph, raise dead, scrying, teleport, and true seeing. It’s not unreasonable to assume they also have a few higher-level spells on scrolls, which are more than affordable in limited quantities. Characters of this level should always be assumed to be able to fly, turn invisible, and take on whatever disguise they want, and encounters that hinge on them not being able to do these things will fall flat. Large parties of creatures with class levels to bring them up to the right CR are likely to stretch credulity, in that a meager thieves’ guild wouldn’t typically have a lot of people in it with more than a few levels; they’d have already taken over the whole town, not to mention that masses of low-CR creatures are literally speed bumps overcome with a single area of effect spell. All of these are the sorts of things to keep in mind when deciding if a general premise or specific encounter is appropriate for characters running through your adventure.

4. Format: Pathfinder adventures (and Pathfinder Modules specifically) follow an established format. When coming up with your idea, consider whether it will work within the format it will be published in. Could the “story so far” fit on a page or two at most in the Adventure Background section? Can the events of the adventure itself be summed up quickly and concisely in the Adventure Summary? Would you need to use more than the two and a half pages of maps most Pathfinder Modules get? Does the story have a clear beginning, middle, and end that could be broken into three distinct parts or acts? Does it contain a new monster and can that monster be run without us needing to print its stats twice (i.e. the base creature in the appendix and a version with class levels in the adventure itself)? Is there a location in the adventure that, while set in Golarion, could be easily ported to a different setting or dropped into a GM’s game independent of running this adventure? All of these are parts of the Pathfinder Module format, so it’s important you build an adventure that adheres to these elements.

And now that I’ve fully channeled Neil Spicer with my lengthy post, I’ll let you get back to the task at hand. I hope the above advice is helpful and doesn’t discourage you from proposing the story you really want to tell. Rather, I hope it encourages you to find creative ways to tell that story in a way that will both capture the voters’ attention and garner the backing of the judges and your potential future employers here at Paizo. Best of luck, gentlemen!

Mark Moreland
Developer

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Three: The Apprentice's Eye

He descended several flights of steps, took a number of turns along torch-lit corridors, and came at last to the threshold of a windowless cell deep below ground. The glowing orb entered and Krunzle did likewise. Once within, the light blinked out, and he had a momentary glimpse of a small, winged man fluttering out through the open doorway and disappearing along the corridor.

Krunzle made to put his head through the opening to see the creature more clearly, but the air that filled the exit now demonstrated the ability to become a clear, springy substance that flung him back into the room. By the light from the corridor, he looked around and found an ill-smelling pallet, a rough stool, and a terra cotta oil lamp with a wick of greasy wool. He was able to just reach this last item around the edge of the door to meet the torch ensconced in the passageway and, with the lamp's feeble light, sat down on the stool and took out the scroll.

It was written in a script that he could read, and he quickly took in what it had to tell him. He was to wait until the pixie returned to lead him out of his cell. Then he must go to a house in the lower town—a map to find the place, an image of its exterior, and a second, multi-leveled map of its interior were provided. He was to find his best way in, locate something called an "apprentice's eye"; the note said that the geas he was under would ensure that he recognized the object when he saw it.

You may use whatever means and procedures you deem appropriate, said the note, but if you offer violence against any persons within the house, the hand you raise will instead strike you where you have already felt a blow.

Once he had achieved the goal of the mission he was to bring the apprentice's eye back to Baalariot. The note said that while exiting the target area he was encouraged to make as much noise and commotion as possible.

"Why would I do that?" he asked the walls of his cell. He received no answer.

Krunzle turned over the single sheet of parchment, but there was nothing on the other side. He reread the note again and, when he realized that the letters were steadily fading away, applied himself to memorizing the map before it disappeared.

A few moments later, he was left with two things: a blank piece of scraped sheepskin and a question. The question was: what was an apprentice's eye?

Then came a third: an overwhelming urge to sleep.

∗∗∗

He awoke to find that his various pains had faded. He was also hungry, and was glad to find that while he slept someone had brought him a platter of bread and cheese, as well as a stoneware jug that proved to contain an almost drinkable wine. He refreshed himself, then sat on the stool and contemplated his predicament. He failed to see any immediate advantage to being the slave of a spied-upon wizard. Nor did he envision that his situation would much improve: as he understood these things, spellslingers tended to rely on conjured assistants, like the pixie, for their domestic needs. They generally kept no slaves—which meant that upon successful completion of his mission, he would become surplus to Baalariot's requirements. The wizard would cast around for some useful purpose that a superfluous thief-slave could serve. Several images came to Krunzle's mind, none of them encouraging.

His early education at a rather prestigious rogue’s academy had taught him the cardinal rule of the thief's life: always have a plan. He quickly devised a scheme that had two parts. Part one: break the enchantment that bound him to Baalariot's will. Part two: depart Elidir at maximum speed.

He was sure he could execute part two with energy and dispatch. Part one, however, remained a problem. His mind failed to gain traction, and soon he lacked the leisure to pursue the matter, because now the winged manlet returned, hovering in the corridor at the center of his globe of light.

Krunzle stood and the light moved away. He was able to exit the cell as if the air in the doorway was nothing but air. He strode after the guide, and noticed that he was not retracing the route that had brought him down from Baalariot's chamber. Instead, he and the winged fairy-man proceeded deeper into the warren of dark rooms and barely lit corridors beneath the wizard's manse, until he came to a narrow space which contained a spiral iron staircase leading up and a rough table on which were spread several items Krunzle recognized.

They had all be taken from his person after he had been delivered to the Gyve, and they constituted the tools of his trade: picks and slips; grapples and cords; a double-bent tube with mirrors inside that bent light and allowed him to peek around corners, under doors, and through windows without being seen; and a handful of other objects.

Krunzle was glad to recover them. Not only were they useful, but as part of his first tasks as a journeyman, he had personally made each one of them. Thieves could not usually afford much sentimentality, but an exception was made for the toolkit. He disposed of them in the various concealed pockets and loops that abounded in his garments, and felt slightly better about the course of events.

He was given little time for satisfaction, however. No sooner had he stowed the last implement, than the pixie flew up the staircase, illuminating the darkness above. Krunzle experienced a strong desire to follow and began to climb. He noted, with faint gratitude, that his groin no longer pained him with every lift of a foot.

No sooner had he risen out of the small room—it turned out to have been the bottom of a shaft—than the globe of light disappeared. In complete blackness, Krunzle felt the flying creature flutter past him as it went back to wherever it perched when not on duty. He was unable to do likewise and continued to ascend until he arrived at a confined space that offered not the slightest glimmer of light. He felt in front of him and found a wooden surface which, when he explored further and discovered a simple latch, turned out to be a door.

But thieves' caution prevented him from opening the portal until his searching fingers discovered what he expected to find: another moving part at eye level that, when he slid it aside, uncovered a peephole. He peered out and saw a darkened Elidiran alley, lit only by a few gleams leaking through the closed shutters of houses that turned blank walls to the narrow passage.

He opened the door and stepped out, then looked up at the evening stars to orient himself. The map appeared on the screen in his mind—no magic there, but the mental discipline learned in the academy and practiced ever since—and he set off for the lower town. His route avoided the city's major thoroughfares and plazas, leading him instead along narrow, twisting alleys and down flights of stone steps that reeked of urine and rotting vegetables. Clearly, he thought, whoever occupied the house to which he was headed did not enjoy the elevated social status of the wizard who was sending him.

The building, when he came to it, was not imposing. Mud brick rather than stone, it stood two stories high, with a flat roof; he knew from the map, though, that its foundations had been dug down three levels, creating sub-basements and even a bottomless pit. Baalariot hadn't said anything, but Krunzle knew enough about magic-wielders to have reasoned out that anyone who could steal from a wizard was likely to be another practitioner of the arcane arts. Wizardry and subterranean chambers seemed to be an infallible combination. Maybe it was a matter of containing unruly powers; or maybe it was just that depth muffled the screams.

His urge to get to the target eased when he came to the mouth of an unlit passageway that met the sloping street on which the house stood. His vantage point was several doors down from the entrance, which featured a sturdy-looking front door between tapered pillars, all carved with some complex design he was too far away to see clearly, flanked by two torches that burned with a green flame. There was something about the arrangement of the portal that argued less for decor than for defense.

He would not be going through that door. Some thieves preferred the direct and obvious approach—get in, grab it, and get out while they're still blinking—but Krunzle was an old-fashioned practitioner of the full art.

He wondered how much leeway Cardimion's Discriminatory Geas would grant him. Experimentation revealed that he could move a certain distance from the target structure, but only enough to circumnavigate it. If he tried to go farther, he experienced shaking limbs, nausea, and a sense of impending dread. When he struggled to overcome the resistance, his fist swung up and struck him sharply in an eye whose surrounding flesh was still tender from the wart-nosed torturer's attentions.

Trial and error over, the thief turned his attention to the house that contained the apprentice's eye. The memorized map had highlighted an area in a lower, though not lowest, level of the building. There was probably a concealed entrance much like the one through which he had made his exit from Baalariot's manse, but it would be a waste of time to look for it. He worked his way around the building and its neighbors again, seeking the opportunity that would make the task easier.

The house had not been constructed as a detached structure; its sides abutted directly against the neighboring buildings; its front was two stories of sheer, unbroken mud brick; its rear was separated from the alley behind by a walled courtyard, also lit by green flames.

The courtyard presented easier access but too much light, the thief decided; besides, the rear wall was as unwindowed as the front.

He examined the buildings to either side: one was of stone, tall and solid as a bank, but a half-hidden glyph near the door identified it in the language of thieves and street people as a temple of the demon Nocticula, which meant that its main use was as a brothel, and not a particularly safe one. The other building was a rickety, three-story tenement, with a wooden staircase running up the rear wall to give the residents false hope that they'd be able to escape in the event of a fire.

A lifetime of professional experience told Krunzle that a mud-brick building's greatest weakness was in its roof. He went up the fire steps with practiced quiet, slipping past the noises of clattering pots, squalling babies, and arguing couples, all overlaid by what sounded like a semi-skilled musician singing a maudlin love song while endeavoring to accompany his cracked voice on an out-of-tune zither. At the top of the stairs, a wooden ladder led to the tenement's flat roof. He scaled it and rolled silently onto a surface of dried mud overlying matted reeds.

The zither player was up there, somewhere. But the shadows were thick enough. Krunzle rose to a crouch and made his way to the lip of the roof where it overlooked the mud-brick house, paused to listen for any sounds that indicated someone might be enjoying the upper air—though he was fairly sure the zither-player's amelodic strains would have driven indoors all but the profoundly deaf. He slowly raised his head above the low parapet until he could see down. The flat space was empty and unlit. Krunzle readied a grapnel and its knotted cord.

Moments later, he was crouched in darkness. He had chosen one of the corners of the roof above the front wall. He knew that rooms at the rear of a building were more likely to contain servants busy at their tasks; front rooms were for the quality, who more frequently left them empty while they sashayed out to enjoy privileges denied their underlings.

He took a small, sharp blade from his toolkit and applied its point to the roof's packed-earth surface. The desiccated soil broke into powdery flakes, and soon he had exposed a layer of dried reeds laid over a network of thin laths of wood. He removed a patch of reeds and beneath it saw the pale gleam of plaster.

New tools came to his hands. He drilled a tiny hole through the plaster, inserted a thin tube fitted with an eyepiece, and a moment later he was seeing a fly's eye-view of a sitting room illuminated by brass lamps whose wicks were turned low. The decor tended toward erotically curved furnishings and draped swathes of faux-soie. The room was otherwise empty.

Busy seconds passed, then the thief was standing on the thick-pile carpet beneath a Krunzle-sized hole in the ceiling.

He padded silently to the closed door, opened it, and saw a corridor ending in a downward-leading staircase lit from below. He crept to the top of the stairs and listened, hearing a faint bustle of kitchen noises and beneath it a female voice half-raised in a monotonous chant.

He went down to the ground floor. The clatter of pots and pans grew louder; it came from somewhere to the rear of the building and down another level. The chanting also increased in volume; it originated from behind a pair of large, ornate doors that must lead into a room that took up all of the ground floor's front. A wizard would have his study there, he thought. Or perhaps a witch.

Krunzle looked about. So far he had seen nothing worth stealing, even if this had been a burglary of his own devising. It was possible the apprentice's eye, whatever it was, was in the front chamber, being chanted over right this minute. If not, it would be somewhere it could be kept safe and perhaps guarded. Again, experience told him that somewhere would probably be below ground, behind layers of defense.

He searched his memory for the image of the map Baalariot had provided. He recalled the symbols for more downward-leading steps and soon found them, through they were behind a double-locked door, strongly made, itself concealed behind a wall hanging that depicted a decidedly female person making an intimate though unlikely connection with a snake at least twice her length. Krunzle swiftly picked the locks, opened the door, and stepped through to a small landing above a set of narrow stone steps that circled down into darkness.

"So this is the apprentice's eye."

A rank smell wafted up from the stairwell. Krunzle didn’t recognize the odor, but some part of him decided that it was the kind of reek that ought to raise the hairs on the back of his neck. Cautiously, ears straining the silent darkness, he began to descend.

He counted fifty steps before his outstretched hand encountered a barrier: another door, also well locked. He again deployed his picks and with small effort soon had the way clear. Beyond was yet more darkness, but here the acrid stench was far stronger.

Krunzle put his head through the doorway and looked to either side. There was a dim glow, enough to show him that the door opened onto a vaulted subterranean passage. The source of the illumination was a thin bar of yellow light that he took to be a leak of lamplight from under a door at one end of the corridor. The other end was unlit and ended in a blank wall with what seemed to be a pool of stygian black at its foot. The pit, Krunzle thought. The stench came from there.

Krunzle went on silent feet to the source of the light. It was definitely another door, but there were no locks, only a thick iron bar that slid into a slot in the stone wall. And, his fingers told him, another peephole.

The thief peeped, and saw a windowless cell not much bigger than the one in which he had spent part of the day, but with a good carpet on the floor, a three-wick oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, a narrow cot (though with pillow and quilt), and a table and chair.

Seated on the chair, back turned to the door, was a small figure in a plain white shift—by the narrowness of the shoulders and the fineness of the golden, collar-length hair, either a young woman or an older child. She (or he) was concentrating on something in her (or his) lap.

Krunzle studied the scene, angling to look through the peephole into the corners of the room. He saw no intimations of danger. After one last visual sweep, he slid the latch and eased open the door.

The figure in the chair turned and looked up at him over one shoulder—a girl on the cusp of becoming a woman, startled in the act of reading poetry from the small book now visible in her grasp. Then surprise turned to excitement tinged with pleasure. "Did he send you," she said, "to rescue me?"

Krunzle ignored the girl's question. You will recognize it when you see it, Baalariot's note had said. And now, as the thief looked at the slim, young figure, and especially at the chain around her neck, and most especially at the amulet that hung from it, he knew.

He stepped into the cell, reaching for the apprentice's eye. It looked like nothing all that special. It was a palm-sized circle of some shiny metal, in the center of which was set a large green cabochon. Around the rim ran a legend carved in a script he could not read.

The young woman stood, her face showing alarm. "Wait!" she said.

"I can't," he said, and took hold of the gaudy thing, giving it a yank that expertly parted the chain. As he did so, two events occurred: the unfaceted green gem in the center turned red; and something cold and strong curled itself around one of his ankles and rapidly rose up his leg. The stench that had been so powerful in the corridor was overwhelming now.

Krunzle held tightly to the amulet—the geas made sure of that—at the same time as he tried to shake his leg free of whatever had seized it. He looked down and saw a broad, triangular head, clad in leprous white scales, its eyes filmed and blind but its forked tongue aflickering. The head connected to a thigh-thick, limbless body that continued to slither toward him along the floor of the corridor, even as it slid upward and addressed its huge strength to the task of squeezing air and life from his torso.

He toppled headlong onto the carpet as the great snake opened its fanged maw and hissed into his face.

"Oh dear," said the girl in white.

Coming Next Week: The perils of working for wizards in Chapter Four of Hugh Matthews's "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

RPG Superstar™: Top 4 Announced!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Congratulations to our Top 4 RPG Superstar™ competitors!

Steve Miller - Raleigh, NC James Olchak - Raleigh, NC

Tom Phillips - Fleming Island, FL Mike Welham - Kernersville, NC

The Top 4 competitors have rolled with the punches and absorbed feedback from the judges and the voters. Now they are making that last push toward the finish line. Now is the time to double down in their efforts and write a proposal for an exciting adventure that'll impress the judges and the voters.

Congratulations to the Top 4—they've survived three rounds of voting and four rounds of sometimes-harsh judge commentary. They've caught the eye of the people at Paizo who make freelance assignments. Each of them has an eye on the prize: getting to write an adventure module and get it published, in print, with his name on the cover. The winner supplies the text, Paizo takes care of the rest. The proof of the winner's quality will be in game stores all over the country.

The deadline for Round 5 entries is March 23rd and submissions for will go live for voting March 27th at 2 PM Pacific time.

The ultimate winner of RPG Superstar™, announced April 3, 2012, will write a Pathfinder Module to be published in early 2013. The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in April 2012.

Advanced Race Guide is Away!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Last week we sent the Advanced Race Guide to the printer. In the very near future we’ll be sharing some previews of this book, which is chock-full of new options for characters of all playable races. Until then, we thought we would whet your appetite by showing off this books amazing cover, painted by the lovely and talented Wayne Reynolds.

And now, just for fun, if you were writing a caption for this cover, what would it be? You get extra points for fun, creativity, and humor... as well as good taste.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Designer

Six Sells

Monday, March 12, 2012

Illustration by Yngvar Asplund

One of the largest benefits of working as developer on a shared-world campaign like Pathfinder Society Organized Play is having the ability to gather data about how the community uses our products and improve them based on that data. In addition to the extremely helpful Pathfinder Society messageboards, where Campaign Coordinator Mike Brock and I can interact directly with some of our most active and engaged GMs and players, we also have the benefit of looking at literally thousands of tables’ worth of reported session data entered by GMs and event coordinators. This goldmine of information lets us keep a close eye on campaign trends, such as what level scenarios are most often played, which are particularly deadly, and what factions have a higher rate of success in their respective missions. When combined, the synergy of objective data from session reports and subjective feedback from the messageboards, direct email and personal interaction with players and GMs, and a mixture of the two from our growing network of volunteer regional coordinators is nearly unmatched, at least compared to the level of feedback we can get on our other product lines.

About this time last year, prompted by community feedback, I started looking closely at the average size of tables in Pathfinder Society games. Specifically, I was looking at what percentage of reported sessions were played by six or more PCs. The evidence was staggering. While seven-person tables are a relative rarity (as they should be), six-person tables are undoubtedly the norm in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. So I took that data and let it simmer for a while as I continued my routine development tasks.

A few months ago, in a conversation with Mike and a few other members of the editorial team, we were bouncing around the idea of giving GMs a little bit more power to scale adventures to accommodate parties of different sizes. Coming up with a means for GMs to scale encounters up proved incredibly difficult, and there wasn’t an elegant or easily implemented solution. But putting in guidelines for scaling encounters down was much easier.

Thus, beginning in Season 4, all Pathfinder Society scenarios will be designed with six PCs in mind, effectively increasing the CR of all encounters to accommodate larger parties. Each adventure will provide specific changes to apply for parties of four PCs, maintaining consistency in how the scenarios are altered, but giving a bit more latitude to account for table variance. Because five- and seven-person tables are both reasonably equipped to handle a six-person challenge, tables of both sizes should be run without any changes.

So that’s the plan! In true Pathfinder Society fashion, however, we’re eager to hear what the community thinks, so be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below! And because we like you all so much, here’s a piece of art from the recently released Pathfinder Society Exclusive Scenario: The Cyphermage Dilemma, which your local regional coordinator or 4- or 5-star GM can run for you.

Mark Moreland
Developer

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Burnt Offerings

Friday, March 3, 2012

The Paizo office is abuzz with activity as the schedule shifts into overdrive in advance of the big summer releases. We're shipping the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide today, and final pages of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition are spooling off the new color printer and into the hands of eager editors. Most of you will enjoy the fruits of our recent activity later this summer, perhaps at Paizo Con or Gen Con, but in order to get all this great stuff to the printer in time for its release, Paizo central is buzzing NOW.

As I write this sitting on my couch at 2:32 AM, I've just finished looking over the color proofs of the first chapter of the Rise of the Runelords, “Burnt Offerings,” by our own James Jacobs. James really set the tone for the Adventure Path (and Pathfinder Adventure Paths in general) with his devious adventure. When we decided to feature the Rise of the Runelords in the upcoming Pathfinder Battles set with our partners at WizKids, one of the things that excited me most was the opportunity to bring some of James's brilliant NPCs to full-color life in plastic.

This week in the Paizo Blog, we'll take a look at four NPCs from “Burnt Offerings.” I'd call them all villains, but that would mean spoilers, and I wouldn't want to do that to you. Besides, at least one of these folks could be convinced to join your party as you venture through the town of Sandpoint and the nearby goblin enclave of Thistletop.

First up we have Tsuto Kaijitsu, a half-elf about town whose obsessions help to embroil the player characters in the events of the Adventure Path. Tsuto's sister is the already-previewed Ameiko Kaijitsu, and players will have occasion to encounter both of their miniatures on the field of battle. Tsuto also makes for a good player character miniature. Like all of the miniatures in this week's preview, Tsuto is rare.

Tsuto's obsession is Nualia, an aasimar who is not one of Sandpoint's most upstanding citizens, to put it lightly. She's got a demon hand, a belly full of scars, and a nice big sword to carve up player characters. It took us a few tries to get Nualia's pose correct, but I'm very happy with how it came out. I love the way she's beckoning her enemies to approach.

Lyrie Akenja is another interesting adventurer and Varisian wanderer pulled into the schemes of Tsuto and Nualia. This figure gave us a chance to incorporate a familiar into a spellcaster miniature. Lyrie's little cat is super cute. This figure works great as a player character, too.

Lastly today we have Orik Vancaskerkin, a fighter who like Lyrie found himself drawn into the affairs of Nualia and her minions. Whether or not he counts as one of those minions is really up to the player characters, meaning this figure could easily double as a friend or a foe. Like Lyrie, he makes an excellent player character miniature. Orik is only one of many Vancaskerkins in the Varisia area. Others appear in other Adventure Paths (and at least one more will soon appear as a Pathfinder Battles miniature!).

That's it for this extremely busy week! I'll be meeting in person with the folks from WizKids at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas next week, and I hope to reveal specific release details (including cost, case information, and more) shortly thereafter.

Incidentally, that means we'll be taking a break from previews next Friday, as I'll be on the road and scheming wonderful schemes.

See you in two weeks!

Erik Mona
Publisher

RPG Superstar™: Get Those Round 4 Votes In!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The official playtest period for the Round 4 encounters is over and voting is open! Voting closes Monday, March 12, so you still have a few days if you want to playtest the encounters. Whether or not you get a chance to playtest, be sure to read the entries and playtest feedback from other gamers, then cast your vote. Next round is the big challenge: create an adventure proposal for a 32-page Pathfinder Module. The winner of RPG Superstar gets paid to write that adventure, and Paizo will publish it in 2013!

Vote now!

Sean K Reynolds
Developer and RPG Superstar Judge

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Two: Axe? Noose? Garrote?

Turn and run they did, the leader of the three knife men just missing having his collar caught by the guard captain. With admirable agility, they sped toward the caravanserai gate, dodging around—or under—mules and camels, leaping over bales and chests, weaving between startled drivers and merchants.

"Stop them!" Idrix bellowed, and his guards leaped to obey. But horse-archers were at their best in the saddle and with their weapons strung. On foot, their recurved bows still in their cases, they were no more agile than anybody else in the crowded compound, and certainly less direly motivated than the three now become fugitives.

Still, the guards at the gate were quick enough to swing the portals closed. Their quarry immediately veered toward the nearest wall, which had an elevated walkway behind its crenellations, reached by sets of wooden steps. Two of them chose separate stairs, took them three at a time and vaulted over the top, without pausing to ascertain what they might land on.

The third, he of the low brow and unsettled gaze, had found no steps within easy reach and had instead opted for several heaped bales of velvet, from which he hoped to spring across a narrow distance to the walkway. But the bales were too loosely stacked to offer firm footing, and he missed his leap, tumbling back to the hard-packed earth at the feet of a hurrying archer. The guard used one of those feet to kick the smaller man sprawling, then used it again to hold him fast to the ground until one of his fellows, with practiced skill, arrived to truss the captive's wrists and ankles securely with bowstrings.

They hauled the prisoner before Idrix and the caravan's headmen, who ordered him taken to where the three dysenteric guards lay in the hospice. Fingers were angrily pointed and curses bitterly flung, then the captive was taken to the city gate and handed over to the provost, whose bailiffs hauled him off to the Gyve.

In a dank, foul-smelling chamber deep below ground, the prisoner declared himself an innocent pearlmonger from Merab, a victim of conspirators and mistaken identity. But the steward's torturers knew their craft well, and soon it was established that the man's true name was Krunzle, sometimes known as Krunzle the Quick, a self-proclaimed master thief. He named his confederates, a pair of locals he had hired on in Elidir.

The plan had been to join the caravan as replacements for the guards they had dosed with loose-leaf, a powerful diarrhetic. Then, while ostensibly standing night guard, they would appropriate as much as they could carry in the way of light but valuable goods, and disappear into the landscape until the caravan had moved on.

"Have you anything more to add?" the interrogator said.

Krunzle could think of several things he wanted to say to the hulking, wart-nosed torturer, but none of them would have served him well. He shook his bruised head, spraying a few last drops of blood.

They manacled and fettered him, then took him to a lightless cell and left him there, groaning on damp straw that stank of black mold and worse. The night passed, and then the morning, though the semi-conscious prisoner had lost his inner sense of time's passage, and neither breakfast nor lunch arrived to mark the hinges of the day.

At some point, a bailiff came and collected him. As Krunzle limped, clanking, up the stone stairs, he said, "Am I being taken before the magistrates?"

His escort laughed gently. "We are an impoverished land, grimly overtaxed by our Chelish overlords. We cannot afford to waste the court's time."

"But I wish to plead my case!"

The bailiff spoke as if to a not-very-bright child. "Your 'case' evaporated when you confessed."

"But the confession was extracted by torture!"

"Most are. We are, as I say, efficient."

They had arrived at the top of the stairs. The bailiff unlocked a sturdy door and led the shackled thief, blinking in the noonday glare, out into a courtyard. At one side was a wooden hustings, with a set of stairs leading up. At the top of the steps were gathered some bored, official-looking personages, while at the bottom stood a line of about a dozen wan-faced men and women who all wore the same heavy wrist-and-ankle jewelry as Krunzle's.

"What is it to be?" the thief said. "Axe? Noose? Garrote?" He shuddered. "Not the half-strangle followed by disemboweling?"

The escort chuckled indulgently. "I have said, we are a poor country. We don't waste good flesh and sinew." He delivered Krunzle to the rear of the line. "Now stand there until it's your turn to go up."

A horn blew and the courtyard's outer gate opened. In came a motley crowd of Elidiran citizens who bustled over to the line of prisoners and began to poke and prod their persons. Krunzle noted that great attention was being paid to the thickness of arm and leg muscles, and struggled to recall if cannibalism featured in the city's reputation.

Few of the newcomers gave the thief more than a passing glance. A plump Elidiran in a merchant's robe and a floppy hat squeezed his lean bicep. The man's mouth twisted in a disparaging moue, and he made a backhanded gesture as if Krunzle was a fly to be shooed away.

"Baalariot gets straight to the point."

The inspection of the goods completed, the first prisoner in line was called up and bidding began. Krunzle was no expert in slave-market economics, but it seemed to him that the bidding was neither enthusiastic nor competitive: most of the items went for a few pieces of silver.

Then it was his turn. He laboriously mounted the hustings and looked out over the diminishing throng. Purchasers were leading their new acquisitions away, and only two faces looked up at him. One, the merchant who had prodded him, gave his head a shake, turned and walked off. The other was the gaunt, blade-nosed man from the tavern and the caravanserai. He regarded Krunzle with a dispassionate aspect and said, "One copper."

There being no other bidders, the official in charge of the auction banged the butt of his staff of authority on the boards and said, "Sold."

Krunzle was hustled down the steps and into the care of the man in the figured robe, who scarcely cast a glance in his direction as he paid over the single coin and signed a document held out to him on a scribe's copy board. Then he signaled to the bailiff that the manacles and fetters should be struck off.

A few moments later, lighter by several pounds of iron, Krunzle regarded his purchaser from the corner of his eye as he assessed his own condition. Being unfed for a whole day had sapped some of his vigor, and the torture had taken even more out of him, but once out the gate and into the warren of streets and alleys around the Gyve, he thought, there might come an opportunity or two...

His thoughts were interrupted by the tall man's action. He placed a round metal object against Krunzle's forehead and voiced an obscure word. The thief felt a coldness that penetrated through to the inner reaches of his skull, and for a moment his eyes bulged of their own accord. Then the medallion was withdrawn and the sensations ebbed.

"Strike yourself smartly," said the man who had bought him, "in the groin."

Krunzle was framing a derisory reply when a bolt of agony shot from his crotch to every other part of his torso, and the breath left his body. He found himself in an involuntary, knock-kneed crouch, a posture which gave him a good view of his own fist still wedged into the softness at the apex of his legs. The strangled sound he made was as much from surprise as pain.

"Good," said the man who had bought him. "Now come with me."

∗∗∗

"You have inadvertently done me a service," said Krunzle's purchaser when they were settled in the sumptuous room to which the thief had been led. They had reached it by traversing half the city, climbing to the elevated district where large public buildings and major temples predominated. Then they had ducked down an alley—by then Krunzle was walking almost normally—and through an unobtrusive gate in a blank wall, across a small courtyard and through a heavy ironbound door that opened when the robed man said a quiet word.

"I am Baalariot," he said, seating himself on a backless chair made of polished wood and curved aurochs horns. "My profession should be obvious to a discerning thief. You are now in my service."

From the man's portentous tone, Krunzle deduced that he was expected to express a respectful gratitude. Somehow the sentiment eluded him, but he judged that the circumstances—especially the residual ache between his legs—called for a measure of dissembling. "I look forward to—" he began, and was interrupted.

"Spare me the soft-soaping," Baalariot said. "I would rather trust to my skills than to your feigned goodwill."

Krunzle was not pleased at having been bought for small change and introduced to a novel form of self-abuse, but he smiled and agreed that his owner was a gentleman of rare insight.

Baalariot raised an eyebrow. "You are a canny one," he said. "I believe you will not only succeed in your mission, you may even survive."

The implied possibility that he might not survive whatever the wizard contemplated immediately focused the thief's attention. "What mission?" he said.

The other man preened the lay of his robe and said, off-handedly, "One that requires an able member of the thieving profession."

"Ah," said Krunzle, "I see where the error lies. I am but a traveling pearlmonger from—"

"Shh," said Baalariot, and Krunzle found that his lips and tongue would no longer obey his brain. "I've seen your transcript from the Gyve," he said. "More to the point, I know how you inveigled your way into the caravan's guards troop. You even fixed it so poor Idrix had to talk you into taking the job."

Speechless, Krunzle replied with a confessional lift and settle of eyebrows and shoulders.

"You showed intelligence and resource," said the man in the chair, "and, as I say, you've done me a service. I was on my way to Kerse to purchase someone like you from the Kalistocracy's prisons—they catch some of the cunningest specimens there, you know—but now you've saved me many days travel, there and back. Plus, you were a bargain."

Krunzle's face and hands now expressed a desire to communicate. "You may speak," said his owner, "so long as you do not waste my time. And,"—he glanced around at the walls of the chamber—"so long as you do not use... blunt language."

The slave found that his vocal apparatus was his own again. He thought he understood the admonition against blunt speech, and said, "You have bought me to 'acquire' something for you?"

"Technically, to 'acquire' something back from the one who 'acquired' it from me."

"And my reward?"

Baalariot moved a finger in a circular gesture. Krunzle felt a sudden intrusion, like a whirlwind of red-hot sand, in an intimate orifice. After a moment, it ceased, and so did his hopping about. "I see," he said.

"Good," said the wizard. "Best not to labor under any misapprehensions."

Krunzle gave over fanning the seat of his breeches. "So what is this object?"

"I cannot say."

"You don't know?"

"I know," said the wizard. "But I cannot say." He gestured toward the walls of the chamber. "Some of the spiders and cockroaches are in thrall to the... opposition. If I speak the name of the... object, it will be reported."

Krunzle wrinkled his brow. "And I'll wager you can't tell me who the opposition is, either."

"I said you were canny. The small eavesdroppers do not understand much," he tilted his head toward one wall, "but they are empowered to notice certain key words and report their utterance to the one who commands them. Then that person listens in. Sometimes, also, the listener tunes in at random intervals."

"Why don't you just kill the vermin?"

"Because they would be replaced by something else, and that something might be more difficult to circumvent."

"So how do I–"

"I will instruct you in your duties," Baalariot said, loudly, with a meaningful flick of his eyes toward the walls. "The floors must be swept morning and evening, the censers and braziers continually refilled..." He went on listing domestic requirements, but meanwhile, his hand slipped inside his robe and emerged with a small scroll, tightly rolled and tied with a horsehair. This he proffered to Krunzle, who took it and secreted it within his own upper garment.

"Your quarters are in the lower basement," the spellcaster finished. "You will remain there when not on duty. You will take your meals—two a day—in the servants' refectory, and—"

The wizard broke off, and Krunzle presumed that whatever force informed him of the surveillance had also signaled its end. He pointed at Krunzle and made a few incomprehensible sounds, then said, "There. I have placed you under the influence of Cardimion's Discriminating Geas. You will go to your quarters and study the scroll. When a chime sounds, you will set off on the mission detailed there."

"But," said the thief, "I don't know what I'm—" There was no point finishing the complaint because he found that he was suddenly possessed by an overwhelming desire to find the lower basement and read the scroll. He exited the room and found a corridor. For a moment he did not know which way to go, but then a small globe of light appeared in the air some distance away. When he turned toward it, it moved off at a walking pace. He followed it.

Coming Next Week: The perils of secret missions in Chapter Three of Hugh Matthews's "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

RPG Superstar™: Voting for Round 4!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Our Top 8 contestant have had their entries playtested by you and it's time to vote! This round, our contestants have created a Golarion Location, Map and Encounter. Round 4 included a new twist, where each submission is being playtested and each encounter uses monsters from the Pathfinder Battles Heroes & Monsters miniatures. Fan votes will determine who of the Top 8 advances to Round 5, where the Top 4 will be submitting a Pathfinder Module adventure proposal. All finalist submissions, complete with judge and reader commentary, are posted to the paizo.com messageboards.

Voting ends on March 12 and the Top 4 will move on to Round 5. You can change your mind anytime until voting closes Monday, February 12 at 2 PM Pacific Time

The ultimate winner of RPG Superstar, announced April 3, 2012, will write a Pathfinder Module to be published in early 2013. The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in April 2012.

Vote now!

Ultimate Equipment: What's Missing?

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Now that we’re wrapping up the last of the Advanced Race Guide, the design team is starting to work on Ultimate Equipment. This hardcover will cover all kinds of mundane and magical items for the Pathfinder RPG. As we have a little time before the text goes over to the editors, we’d like to give you one last chance to provide feedback for the book. Is there a kind of magic item that you’d like to see in this book? Is there an item category that’s lacking? Is there a class or game mechanic that is underrepresented in the item lists? Leave your feedback to this blog entry and we’ll see what else we can cram into the book!

Edit: Just to clarify, this book is basically a "shopping catalogue" of items fantasy adventurers may want to own and have a reasonable chance of purchasing. It isn't introducing any new rule systems or subsystems (such as legacy weapons), rework character wealth by level or the problems with the "big six" magic items, or introduce new magic item slots, new classes or archetypes, clarifications or expansions of the crafting or magic item pricing rules, castles and furniture, shift existing items to different slots, include magical equivalents of technological items (cell phones, portable stoves), items that duplicate or invalidate class abilities or feats, or futuristic weapons. We are adding new magic items to every single magic item slot. In particular, we'd like to know if there are any mundane items, weapons, or armor that fill a niche which isn't already covered in the game.

Illustrations by Kieran Yanner
for GameMastery Item Cards: Skull & Shackles

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

Pathfinder Society in the UK (How the Brit Faction Earns Prestige)

Monday, March 5, 2012

Illustration by Ben Wootten

Like many of the Pathfinder Society player base, most of my experiences and understanding of Pathfinder Society Organized Play is based on what I have seen, experienced and organized in the United States. However, the campaign and player base is a worldwide network. What I have learned since stepping into the Campaign Coordinator role is that Pathfinder Society experiences can be varying and different in other parts of the world, including Canada. This includes the way game days and conventions are organized, the expectations of the campaign’s past, current, and future scenarios, and the direction the campaign should move toward.

I think one of the most important responsibilities of a Campaign Coordinator is trying to understand the make-up of the entire fan base, not just the largest percentage of the players. I also think the campaign can be better served if all of us have a better understanding of how our fellow gamers participate, promote, and try to grow Pathfinder Society in their own regions of the world.

With that in mind, I plan to devote one blog a month to a different region where there is an active Pathfinder Society presence. I have tasked my international Venture-Captains with sending me a write-up of what Pathfinder Society is like in their part of the world. Most of what you will read is in their own words. There may be some slight editing changes, but by and large, what you will be reading is the Venture-Captain’s perspective on what Pathfinder Society is like under their guidance in their region.

I hope all of you will find the articles as interesting and informative as I do. First up is the United Kingdom under the direction of Venture-Captain Dave Harrison and Venture-Lieutenant Rob Silk. I plan to attend Paizo Con UK this year, and am excited to get an insight into what I can expect when I arrive in mid-July (and no, I do not fear the curse). Without further ado, I present Dave Harrison’s report on Pathfinder Society in the United Kingdom.

The Pathfinder Society is global, not just on Golarion but also in our world! While it has its origins in the United States, it has been active in the UK since its inception. And so, I’ve been asked to introduce you all to Pathfinder Society play in the UK.

Who am I to talk about this? My name is Dave Harrison, also known online as Wintergreen, and after being a GM and playing roleplaying games for far too long, I’m a self-confessed Paizo addict who has somehow become the UK Venture-Captain. Of course, it’s not just me over here. I’ve lost count of the many players and GMs we’ve recruited over the last few years. Oh, that’s not a royal “we” by the way. I’m also including my co-conspirator and Venture-Lieutenant, Rob Silk, in all of this. (Make sure you pronounce Lieutenant the British way too!)

Pathfinder and Paizo itself have always been popular here in the UK. When Paizo staff members have come over from the US, we have made sure they have felt very welcome despite any differences in the roleplaying cultures—two countries separated by a common hobby?

The Pathfinder Society was officially launched in the UK at Gen Con UK 2008 with a contingent of Paizo staff and that was an immediate success. Pathfinder Society games were sold out and everybody was talking about the quality of the scenarios. From that, I managed to talk my way into helping organize GMs and games at several conventions. Flush with success, I did something that might be called foolish, and has certainly influenced my life! I asked, on the Paizo messageboards, if there was any interest in a UK-based Pathfinder Society convention—our very own version of PaizoCon. The answer was positive and, somehow, one of the most disorganized of roleplayers found himself setting up a new convention. Thankfully, with the help of a lucky Bluff roll, I managed to talk a few other people into helping me!

So the first PaizoCon UK ran in July 2009 at Aston University’s Business School & Conference Centre. I’ll admit, even on that Saturday morning, I was worrying that nobody would turn up and I’d be sitting alone in a large room for the whole weekend.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Over fifty people attended, including special guests such as our PaizoCon UK regular Richard Pett, some awesome GMs, and a fantastically keen group of players. Our only missing element was that Nick Logue, then Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator, couldn’t attend. Even so, by the end of the Sunday, people were already talking about how it would go next year! Even before I finished asking about doing another one, I heard a resounding “YES!”

The next year we had over 70 people attending, including Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator Joshua Frost, and we were given the opportunity to playtest the Year of the Shadow Lodge event. We also have a tradition of a Friday Night Balti meal to get everybody socializing at the start of the convention. Thankfully the waiters don’t bat an eyelid when we ask for a table for everybody.

By 2011, we had grown to over 100 people gaming across three different rooms in the conference center. Although one special guest, Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator Hyrum Savage, had to drop out at the last minute, we still held the Grand Melee where our high-level team “Szallus’ Mighty Taldan Beard” won through with a world-beating score. We concluded the convention with Shadow’s Last Stand, bringing the Year of the Shadow Lodge to a satisfactory conclusion.

This year, we will once again be at Aston University on the 21st and 22nd of July, with a host of almost 150 delegates and special guests, including Richard Pett, Eva Widermann, and many European Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants, and Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator Mike Brock is braving the rumored curse to help us with an Olympic Class PaizoCon UK. Full details can be found on our website at www.paizocon.co.uk.

PaizoCon UK is our flagship, the Pathfinder Society convention for the UK, but it is far from the only event we attend (some might say dominate when the Pathfinders are noisily adventuring) in the UK. I have made efforts to ensure Pathfinder Society is represented at other major UK conventions, particularly Conception, the UK Games Expo, Oddcon, and Dragonmeet. Pathfinders turn up at many smaller conventions, fan-organized events, and regular games held at clubs, societies, and players’ homes.

So what do we have planned for Pathfinder Society in the UK?

Certainly we continue to grow—particularly into other parts of the UK besides England. Plans are in motion for a PaizoCon Wales, and Scotland and Ireland have growing numbers of Pathfinders. I am constantly recruiting GMs, more people willing to do my job for me by running and organizing games at conventions. We have more and more special events planned as well. Details will be disclosed at a future date.

While the UK lacks the US tradition of games being run in stores, such events are something I am working on. A few such events have already taken place and, inspired by the Beginner Box Bash event, we are planning a “Learn to Play Pathfinder” day at the Sheffield store Patriot Games on March 31st.

Convention organizers and store owners who wish to have Pathfinder Society events in the UK should contact me via paizoconuk@hotmail.com or through our website at http://paizocon.co.uk/ for support.

I am very proud to say that here in the UK the Pathfinder Society has established an excellent reputation for roleplaying, quality adventures, and skilled GMs. Convention organizers invite us to their events where we are consistently over-subscribed. Most of all, I am happy to report that when players are talking, I hear descriptions of heroic deeds, intriguing personalities, and thrilling adventures—exactly what gets reported in the Pathfinder Chronicles!

Dave Harrison
Venture-Captain

And there you have it, our first international Pathfinder Society blog. If you are in another country and do not have a Venture-Captain, but think you can do as good a job as Dave did above, please do not hesitate to send me a write-up about Pathfinder Society play in your area of the world and include some photos.

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Ogre the River and Through the Woods...

Friday, March 2, 2012

One of the best parts of working at Paizo is getting to see the brand new art fresh as it arrives in the office. When a new Wayne Reynolds cover painting makes its way to the art department, editors and developers flock to the big monitors to check out the latest masterpiece. It's become a sort of ritual around here.

Five years ago, when we first launched the Pathfinder Adventure Path, we marveled as each new volume brought a fresh take on a classic fantasy monster. Wayne's goblins on the very first Pathfinder cover (flavored by James Jacobs's insane portrayal in the text) immediately conveyed our plans for the new Pathfinder product line—delivering a fresh new take on the classic themes and monsters of fantasy gaming.

In Pathfinder Adventure Path #3, “The Hook Mountain Massacre,” author Nicolas Logue cranked the “fresh new take” into overdrive in his portrayal of ogres as monstrous inbred hillbilly brutes. Wayne Reynolds gave Nick's ogres a puppet-like look that pushed the creepiness even further.

Just as we'd done with the goblins in volume #1, we wanted to give Pathfinder's ogres a distinctive take, and a distinctive visual look. Nick and Wayne delivered, creating an adventure that remains one of the most memorable and unsettling of Pathfinder's entire run to date.

You'll get a chance to play this great adventure (or play it again) in July with the release of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition hardcover. The Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures set will support the campaign, with tons of miniatures inspired by images from the adventures.

Including three amazing ogres!

Up first is the uncommon Ogre, your general rank-and-file maniac. Like all three ogres in the set, this handsome gentleman comes directly from Wayne Reynolds's cover of “The Hook Mountain Massacre,” and he's never looked better. Don't tell the Ogre from Heroes & Monsters, but he's the runt of the litter when placed next to his, um, kin from Hook Mountain!

YEE HAW! Look out for this here big fella with the huge club! We call him the Ogre Brute on account of him swinging around that big stick, but he works just fine as a rank-and-file warrior. He's an uncommon like his brother.

On Hook Mountain, it takes a strong ogre indeed to keep all the family in line. In this set, that duty falls to the brutal Jaagrath Kreeg, a rare miniature with a leering smile and lust in his beady little eyes. I can say with authority that your players will love killing these guys, and you'll love putting them out on your game table.

Details on the release date, format, and price of the Pathfinder Battles Rise of the Runelords set are still being solidified by our partners at WizKids.

And in late-breaking far-future news, I now have a pretty good idea what will be in the NEXT Pathfinder Battles set. I can promise exciting Pathfinder Battles previews at this time in this space for many, many more months to come!

Erik Mona
Publisher

RPG Superstar™: Grab a character sheet!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The Round 4 entries for RPG Superstar are live! Take a look at the locations and encounters designed by the Top 8, playtest the encounter with your group, and post your results! Your playtest feedback may be what pushes a competitor into one of the Top 4... or knock him out of the running entirely!

Voting opens Tuesday, March 6, and closes Monday, March 12!

Sean K Reynolds
Developer and RPG Superstar Judge