Superstar Lineup for the Emerald Spire Announced

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Dear Friends of Paizo,

First off, I want to thank you for your support of Paizo through this, our 10th anniversary year. It has been a year of reflection, a year of celebration, and a year of exciting new projects! I am blessed to have an incredible team here at Paizo that I enjoy working with on a daily basis. I am equally blessed with such a super group of fellow gaming enthusiasts that I can call my friends and customers. As Conan would say, life is good!

As many of you know, we have a Kickstarter going that will help our sister company, Goblinworks, make the Pathfinder Online MMO. This game has me excited because it will be the first time that anyone will be able to visually immerse themselves into the world of Golarion and to see what it would be like to actually live in this campaign world that we have only seen through the words of our incredible authors, the pictures of our amazing artists, and the imaginations of our own brains. I can tell you that when I actually was able to take Merisiel and run her through the wilderness outside of Thornkeep in the River Kingdoms the other day, I was trembling with excitement! Pathfinder Online is the type of game that I can really get excited about because it doesn't just lead you through a scripted Pathfinder experience, it allows YOU to shape the experience just like you do in our real world. It reminds me so much of my 30 years of playing tabletop RPGs—I get to decide what happens in my campaigns. That, to me, is very exciting!

The Pathfinder Online Kickstarter has been up for two weeks and I'm pleased to announce that yesterday we reached the $300,000 sub-goal: 30% off the way towards our final goal! Statistics have shown Kickstarters that reach the 30% mark have a 90% chance of success. It means that early supporters came in and the project is on a good track to go all the way. However, we still need a ton of support if we are going to make our goal and see Pathfinder Online become a reality. That means we need your help! Of course, we don't intend to just ask for your help without giving you a little something in return. We've added some tasty morsels to the Kickstarter by way of new reward tiers, some cool add-on products, and some additional value for the already announced tiers.

The biggest announcement this past week was for the Emerald Spire Superdungeon, a Pathfinder RPG product that could become the largest official Pathfinder dungeon ever created! We have enlisted a massive number of superstar RPG designers to each pen their own unique dungeon level in the Emerald Spire. As the Kickstarter pledges grow, so does the dungeon! This superdungeon will be available in both print and PDF, and there are numerous options to support us that will get you this cool collaboration of RPG legends!

I'm super excited to announce today the all-star lineup for the first 12 levels of the Emerald Spire Superdungeon. They are:

Rich Baker (author of the Birthright campaign setting for D&D)
Wolfgang Baur (CEO of Open Design, and legendary TSR designer)
F. Wesley Schneider (Paizo Editor-In-Chief and creator of Ustalav)
James Sutter (Paizo Fiction Editor and creator of Kaer Maga)
Lisa Stevens (CEO of Paizo, and co-founder of White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast)
Keith Baker (Creator of the Eberron campaign setting for D&D)
Ed Greenwood (Creator of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for D&D)
Erik Mona (Publisher and co-creator of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting)
Mark Rein-Hagen (Co-founder of White Wolf Publishing, author of Ars Magica, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Wraith: The Oblivion, and Changeling: The Dreaming)
Jason Bulmahn (Lead designer of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and co-creator of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting)
Frank Mentzer (Founder of the RPGA, co-author of The Temple of Elemental Evil, author of D&D boxed sets)
James Jacobs (Creative Director and creator of the Pathfinder Adventure Path and Varisia)

These folks have been my heroes, my co-workers, and my friends in the industry. They have created the products that have defined my 25 years in this industry and I am extremely proud to have them working with me to create the most amazing superdungeon ever! The very cool thing is that this baby can grow bigger if enough people back this Kickstarter. We have another dozen or so amazing authors waiting in the wings should we need to call on their services to add additional levels. How low do you want the dungeon to go? Back this Kickstarter and tell us!

In addition, our friends at WizKids have worked with us to create some prepainted plastic minis for this Kickstarter campaign! The Bloodbriar Goblin and the Shadowfire Elemental have already been unlocked, and we're on our way to unlocking the Lava Lurker. These minis have been added to the reward package for everyone at the Crowdforger Pioneer level and higher. There are more minis waiting to be unlocked as we head towards our funding goal, giving backers a minimum of nine cool new minis if this Kickstarter campaign is funded!

For our Pathfinder Society friends out there, we have added a new reward level that will get you a very cool boon that you can use in Pathfinder Society play! Erik, Mike and Mark have pulled out all the stops in making this the coolest Pathfinder Society boon I have ever seen! Check out the Kickstarter page to learn more!

Now is a great time to help us spread the word about this Kickstarter. The more people hear about us, the more momentum we gather, and the bigger rewards get for Kickstarter backers and Pathfinder fans! Here's how you can help:

1. Pledge to support the Kickstarter! Even if you don't play computer games, there are plenty of awesome rewards to add to your tabletop Pathfinder game.
2. Share the Kickstarter link with your buddies on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
3. Check the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter page every day to watch the newest videos and learn about the latest reward reveals!

In closing, thanks again for making Paizo your gaming company of choice. If it weren't for you and your patronage, Paizo wouldn't be heading into year eleven. It truly means the world to me and my staff. Have a wonderful holiday season—I look forward to sharing so many new adventures in 2013!

Lisa Stevens
CEO

Pathfinder Online and the Emerald Spire

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Our sister company Goblinworks is busy developing Pathfinder Online, a sandbox-style MMORPG game based on the Pathfinder world. In celebration of them raising $200k in the first week of their Kickstarter initiative, and to thank our fans for their continued support, Paizo is thrilled to announce today new reward tiers for the Pathfinder Online fundraiser. These tiers add awesome new content to the Pathfinder world, we're sure you'll agree!

The biggest news, literally and figuratively, is the launch of the Emerald Spire Superdungeon, what will become the largest official Pathfinder RPG dungeon ever published. The Emerald Spire Superdungeon includes 32 pages of source material detailing the area around Fort Inevitable, one of the starter towns in the Pathfinder Online game. It will also add at least four, 8-page dungeon levels, designed by Pathfinder superstars Richard L. Baker, F. Wesley Schneider, Wolfgang Baur and James L. Sutter. The Superdungeon will be accompanied by the Emerald Spire Dungeons Flip-Mat Multi-Pack, a set of Pathfinder Flip-Mats presenting each dungeon level in tabletop miniatures scale.

As the Kickstarter funding grows, so does the Superdungeon. When the $250k sub-goal is met, I will come out of game design semi-retirement to add an original dungeon level to the book. As each $100k sub-goal is met thereafter, new levels by superstar designers will be added. By the time the Kickstarter reaches its $1 million funding goal, the Emerald Spire Superdungeon will encompass 12 dungeon levels in 128 pages, accompanied by 6 double-sided Flip-Mats in the Emerald Spire Dungeons Flip-Mat Multi-Pack. But it won't stop there! As additional stretch goals are met, the Emerald Spire will become even larger, and the number of Flip-Mats will grow.

Also, a new RPG Print Pack has been added to the Kickstarter reward tier. Backers at any pledge level can get the RPG Print Pack for an additional $100 (plus $15 shipping outside of the U.S.). The RPG Print Pack includes a hardcover print edition of the Emerald Spire Superdungeon, which will feature an exclusive Kickstarter cover by Wayne Reynolds; a print edition of the Emerald Spire Dungeons Flip-Mat Multi-Pack; a print edition of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Crusader Road by Richard L. Baker, and an Emerald Spire Campaign Cards game accessory.

New WizKids Pathfinder Battles Miniatures will be added to the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter as rewards for all of the Crowdforger backer levels, which start at $100. The miniatures will all be drawn from the Emerald Spire Superdungeon, starting with the Bloodbriar Goblin Raider. A second miniature, the Shadowfire Elemental, will be unlocked when the Kickstarter reaches $300K, with additional miniatures revealed for each $100K raised. This means that starting at $250,000, a new reward will be offered for every $50K reached, alternating between new dungeon levels for the Emerald Spire Superdungeon and new Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures!

With the success of this Kickstarter, Pathfinder Online is targeted for a mid-2014 Beta. As stretch goals are reached beyond the base funding level, this target date will move up as more resources are brought to bear on getting Pathfinder Online finished.

The Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Campaign is in progress and concludes at 2:00 GMT on January 14, 2013. We look forward to your being involved in the development of Pathfinder Online – the voice of the fans will be at the core of what we do, and we thank you for your support.

Lisa Stevens
CEO, Paizo Publishing, LLC
COO, Goblinworks, Inc.

Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Now Live!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

This is an exciting time at Goblinworks, and we wanted you to know about our latest development! As our biggest fans and customers, it is important to us that you are in the loop right away. Your support for Paizo and Pathfinder has allowed us to make Pathfinder the top RPG in the world! That success has lead us to license the MMORPG rights to our sister company, Goblinworks, so they can make a next generation fantasy sandbox MMO called Pathfinder Online. Last May, we launched a Kickstarter to fund a Technology Demo, and many of you supported us there. In turn, that Demo allowed us to get the funding we needed to put Pathfinder Online into production. Right now, a small team of very cool professionals are working very hard on building Pathfinder Online, and we have you to thank for that!

But right now our team is limited in size. There are nine people working on Pathfinder Online—enough to get us to launch in a few years, but not enough to do it with the speed and scope we really want. So we are launching a new Kickstarter for the Pathfinder Online Fantasy Sandbox MMO. The purpose of this second Kickstarter is to get the money we need to make Pathfinder Online bigger, faster and better than we can with our current level of funding. It will let us hire more people and dedicate more resources to Pathfinder Online, potentially cutting the time to launch in half, and massively expanding the content and features available on release.

Could we have gone out and got investment capital to do this? Sure, but with that investment comes costs and entanglements that could very well derail the vision that we have for Pathfinder Online. Investors don't like to push boundaries, color outside the lines, or think outside the box. Instead, they want you to do things only in ways already proven successful for other companies. It is their money, after all.

Our vision for Pathfinder Online doesn't fit those boundaries. It doesn't color within the lines. It doesn't want to exist inside of a box. You already get that—you have believed in Paizo from the beginning and helped us to create a unique community around the Pathfinder RPG. We would rather report to you than to a group of investors who are only interested in making the biggest pile of money and having an early exit strategy. You are with us for the long haul. You believe in our vision for Pathfinder. We would prefer never to sacrifice this vision in pursuit of bigger profits. With you, we can make an MMO that we can all be proud of, and it can happen if we are successful with this Kickstarter. We can do this if enough folks want to become our "bosses" and work with us to make Pathfinder Online.

Another cool aspect of this Kickstarter is that we are finally revealing how YOU can become an Early Enrollee and get involved with the Pathfinder Online Beta. As you probably already know, during the Beta, we are going to limit the number of folks who can enter the world of Pathfinder Online each month, so that we can slowly begin building the society that is going to make Pathfinder Online so successful. The new Kickstarter offers a limited number of slots for each month on a first-come, first-served basis. The earlier you back this Kickstarter, the earlier you will be able to get into the Beta. After the Beta, we'll open the game to everyone, and as part of this Kickstarter, you can preorder your copy of the game at a discounted price.

Because our customers are so important to us, we're contacting you right away. We hope you take advantage of this early notice to become the first to join us as we crowdforge Pathfinder Online. Crowdforge? Glad you asked. Crowdforging is the word that we've come up with to represent the intense process we will use to work with you, our customers, to make Pathfinder Online the best MMO it can be. When you get into the Pathfinder Online Beta, you will become intimately involved with the decisions that go into making a game of this size. If you have helped Paizo playtest our various RPG projects, you understand what we are aiming for here. No other game will give you this type of access and input into its creation. But there are only a limited number of folks who will be able to get into the early stages of crowdforging this game, so make sure you back our Kickstarter soon!

In closing, we would like to thank all of you for helping us make our dream a reality. We wouldn't be here without you, and we very much appreciate your ongoing support. For this Kickstarter to be a huge success, we're going to need your help getting the word out to the MMO and RPG communities. Please tell your friends on Facebook, Twitter, various messageboards, and anywhere gamers congregate. Together, we can grow the legions of fans interested in building our next generation fantasy sandbox MMO. With enough support, we can all make Pathfinder Online faster, bigger and better.

The journey is just beginning!

Lisa Stevens
CEO, Paizo Publishing
COO, Goblinworks, Inc.

The Kickstarter Chronicles

Monday, June 4, 2012

Since Paizo and Goblinworks first announced the Kickstarter project to fund a technology demo of the Pathfinder Online MMO game, one of the most common questions both on our forums and on the Kickstarter project page has been: how will this work with Pathfinder Society Organized Play?

Backers who pledge at least $15 will receive the PDF of Thornkeep, an all-new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game sourcebook written by industry superstar Rich Baker, containing not only a gazetteer of the River Kingdoms “hive of scum and villainy” that will play a prominent role in the online game, but also a massive dungeon with levels designed by Baker, Paizo Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn, Paizo Creative Director James Jacobs, and Paizo Publisher Erik Mona, and if the project nets $175,000, all levels of the dungeon will be included in the printed version of the book with an expanded page count.

And we plan to release Chronicle sheets to give Pathfinder Society characters venturing into the dungeons beneath Thornkeep an in-world benefit for surviving the dungeons within. The fact that all backers will have the opportunity to select the theme of each dungeon layer beyond the first means it’s a rare chance for Pathfinder Society GMs and players to help decide what adventures their PCs will take part in. And by backing the project, you ensure that you’ll have access to those levels when they’re released.

So make sure you check out the Kickstarter project, consider backing it, and spread the word to your fellow Pathfinder Society members. The project ends this week, so don’t wait. This is your chance to help make the Pathfinder Online game a reality, and decide the flavor of an all-star multilevel dungeon that promises to go down in Pathfinder history!

Mark Moreland
Developer

Kicking Off Pathfinder Online

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

You've probably heard that Paizo is working with Goblinworks to produce Pathfinder Online, a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. Goblinworks has been giving you snippets of our plans in the biweekly blog posts on goblinworks.com, and we've been getting your feedback on the Pathfinder Online messageboards here on paizo.com. Well, we're now ready to kick off the next phase of Pathfinder Online.

Today we announced a Kickstarter project to help us build the Pathfinder Online Technology Demo. Go take a look at the press release or visit the Kickstarter project page to find out what this Kickstarter is all about, and then come back here so I can share some details you'll want to know. Don’t worry, I’ll wait right here...

...Did you read it? Pretty darn cool, huh?

Goblinworks.com has its own blog today talking about the Kickstarter, so head over there when you're done here for more details on that. What I want to talk about here is the Thornkeep book!

Since the Pathfinder Online Technology Demo itself isn’t something that we can offer to Kickstarter patrons, we had to go outside the box for our Kickstarter rewards, and the Thornkeep book seemed like the perfect answer.

Thornkeep has a Pathfinder Online logo on the cover, but make no mistake—Paizo is handling this book just like any of our other Pathfinder products. It's set in the very same world of Golarion as our other roleplaying products, and contains 100% official Pathfinder campaign setting material for use with the Pathfinder RPG.

The first half of the 64-page Thornkeep book is a Pathfinder RPG sourcebook covering the town of Thornkeep and its surrounding area. Thornkeep is part of the River Kingdoms area, which is the setting for Pathfinder Online. (You could also drop Thornkeep into almost any wooded area in your own campaign setting.) As we mentioned in one of our earliest Pathfinder Online blog posts, Thornkeep is one of three starting locations for PCs in the MMO—it's the chaotic frontier town that Ryan dubbed our "hive of scum and villainy" (think a fantasy version of Deadwood). (You even helped us name Thornkeep in our first online poll!)

We thought it would be cool to allow folks to explore Thornkeep's various dark corners in their Pathfinder RPG sessions before Pathfinder Online is released. We will be using this book as our guide when we're building its digital equivalent. We're even going to have a small dungeon in this book that will map directly to the one featured in the Technology Demo. So not only will you be getting a guide to one of the towns in Pathfinder Online, but you'll also be getting the first look at how content from the RPG transitions to Pathfinder Online, as well as how content from the MMO might find its way to your gaming table!

Rich Baker, author of Thornkeep!

When we were looking for somebody to write the sourcebook material for us, we went to our good friend Rich Baker. This is Rich's first time working on Pathfinder, but he has been involved with classic D&D campaign settings from the Forgotten Realms to Birthright, and we figured it would be fun to see how he would approach Thornkeep! I've seen his partial turnovers already, and they're awesome!

So what about the second half of the book? That's going to be a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Pathfinder Online, including excerpts from our internal design document, plus design sketches and early artwork for the MMO, as well as essays from Goblinworks and Paizo team members designed to give you insight into the making of the MMO. Consider this a backstage pass to all of the goings-on at Goblinworks!

Of course, we couldn’t have a cool product like this without a Wayne Reynolds cover. The cover image you see here is a mock-up—Wayne should have the real Thornkeep cover done by PaizoCon, and we plan to unveil it at our banquet!

Thornkeep isn't the only Kickstarter reward, though. There are lots of fun rewards for folks at all levels of pledge support! You could even come to Paizo for a day, play a Pathfinder game with your dream Paizo GM, and have a four-hour dinner with your GM, Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey, and myself. Check out all of the Kickstarter rewards and help us get to the next step in the development of Pathfinder Online. We wouldn’t be here without you!

Lisa Stevens
Paizo CEO
Goblinworks COO

I've Come Full Circle!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Not many people would guess this, but my love of roleplaying actually started because of a computer game. In 1980, I discovered one of the first computer roleplaying games, Akalabeth: World of Doom. It had very simple graphics, and gameplay amounted largely to wandering through computer-generated dungeons, killing things, and taking their loot. But I was hooked! I used to go down to my local computer store—Computer World, in Appleton, Wisconsin—and I'd play the game on their Apple II demo setup for hours. (The Computer World staff tolerated my incessant play because it attracted lots of attention to the computer!)

In 1981, I went off to St. Olaf College, leaving Computer World—and Akalabeth—behind. I soon needed to scratch my adventuring itch, so put I up a message on the bulletin boards asking if anybody at St. Olaf was playing Akalabeth. That didn't pan out, but it did lead someone to contact me about a game that was new to me: Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, I fell in love with D&D, eventually leading me to a career of more than 25 years in the gaming business, including working at Wizards of the Coast on the launch of D&D's third edition in 2000!

My boss on that 3E team was Ryan Dancey, and when I left Wizards, I told Ryan that I'd love to work with him again someday. But our lives diverged; I started Paizo, and Ryan went to CCP in Iceland to be the Chief Marketing Officer for the EVE Online MMO. We stayed in touch over the years, and after Ryan left CCP earlier this year, I asked him what he was going to do next. His answer: "How about a Pathfinder MMO?"

Visit goblinworks.com for more information about Pathfinder Online!

At first I was skeptical. I'd heard horror stories about hundreds of millions of dollars lost developing games that were never released. Or games that launched with a big splash only to become zombies within months, their subscriber base dwindled down to a barely sustainable number. But this was Ryan, and I really wanted to work with him again. So I challenged him to convince me—to make me a believer. Over the next few months, Ryan started developing a plan for this Pathfinder MMO, and I started to believe. The plan wasn't 100%, though, so I brought the resources of Paizo to bear on it. Erik Mona, Vic Wertz, James Jacobs, Jeff Alvarez, Gary Teter, Wes Schneider, Sarah Robinson, and more each contributed unique insight to help us come up with a plan for the game—now christened Pathfinder Online—that we could all believe in. What we are announcing today is the result of that work.

Pathfinder Online's journey is just beginning. We've started a brand-new company called Goblinworks to create the game. At the moment, it's owned by myself, Ryan, Paizo, and Mark Kalmes. Mark is one of the top tech guys in the MMO field, and he'll be Goblinworks' Chief Technical Officer. (And we're currently looking for additional investors to help us move forward with Pathfinder Online.)

Traditionally, projects like this are developed in secrecy, with information leaking out in whispers for months before a formal announcement. But we don't want our loyal customers to find out about Pathfinder Online through rumored half-truths; we want you in on the ground floor.

A lot of big picture work has already been done on Pathfinder Online, and it's going to be a bit different from your traditional fantasy MMO. It's going to focus around the characters you create, in a world that will grow out of your interactions, developing the way you choose to develop it. It takes place in the River Kingdoms of Golarion, with our own Kingmaker Adventure Path providing some of the inspiration. There will be an overarching storyline, and dungeons aplenty to explore, but where Pathfinder Online is going to thrive is in the ability of each of you to leave your mark on the world. Do you want to build a castle that you own and control? Go for it. Want to start a town and rally folks to your banner? Do that. Do you want to ally with the neighboring villages to form a new nation—or perhaps wage war on them instead? The choice is yours. Want to become the most feared bandit in the River Kingdoms? The path is available. Want to become the greatest armorer that Golarion has ever seen? All it takes is hard work. If you can imagine doing something in the world of Golarion, we want you to be able to do that in Pathfinder Online.

The fun is just starting! Please use the discussion thread here on paizo.com to interact with Ryan, Mark, myself, and the rest of the Goblinworks crew as we start this new adventure. We're going to be very interactive with you, the Pathfinder community, because we want this game to be YOURS. Stay tuned for blogs, trailers, and other teasers as we move forward. In true Paizo fashion, we will keep you guys in the loop, and listen to your feedback as we progress.

Things have come a long way since Akalabeth. Join me for the ride and help make Pathfinder Online the best MMORPG ever!

Lisa Stevens
CEO, Paizo Publishing
COO, Goblinworks

Something is coming...

Tuesday, November 22, 2011