Here we are on the precipice of a three-day weekend, and I got so excited I completely forgot to put together a blog for today's Pathfinder Battles preview! So let's cut to the chase and get to the previews of two of the Big Bads from the Rise of the Runelords set of prepainted Pathfinder Battles miniatures!
Both of these characters come from the fifth volume of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, “Sins of the Saviors,” by Stephen S. Greer. Last week I revealed some of the rank-and-file badguys from that epic adventure, and this week I've got a couple of significant enemies that perfectly set the stage for the campaign's endgame.
First up we have The Scribbler, the first big villain of the adventure. One of the evil goddess Lamashtu's most powerful mortal servants, The Scribbler dwells very near the home base of your Rise of the Runelords heroes, and he's sure to be a sworn enemy of your player characters. With a nasty sword and a mask covering half his face, The Scribbler easily doubles as a bandit leader or any kind of unique villain your campaign requires. We've placed him at the rare rarity.
Remember the Warriors of Wrath from last week's preview blog? Well, those nasty ladies need a leader, and the good (well, ok, not “good” per se) Highlady Athroxis is quite happy to keep them in line. This high-level eldritch knight Highlady of the Halls of Wrath is ready to unleash some whupass on your PCs with her +3 adamantine flaming ranseur, molded here largely in clear plastic to sell the flame effects. Naturally, this uber-high-level adversary with the shiny clear plastic bits falls into the rare rarity.
So that's it for this week of fun in the sun. Only a few more miniatures to show off, including a “chilly” mini almost no one is expecting to help you cool off on these warm summer days!
There's something really cool about the fifth volume of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, Stephen S. Greer's “Sins of the Saviors.” After venturing through volumes loosely themed around goblins, ghouls, ogres, and giants, this fifth installment kicks the campaign backstory into high gear, with the player characters exploring a vast dungeon known as the Runeforge, a relic from the era of the ancient Runelords themselves.
In fact, during their adventure in the Runeforge, the PCs even get a chance to meet with survivors from that distant era, making this adventure an important pivot point for the campaign, essentially shifting things into the endgame to come in the final sixth volume.
What that means in a practical sense, especially because the PCs are now 12th level themselves, is that they finally get to face off against some pretty kick-ass bad guys who pack a powerful punch. In this week's blog, I'd like to reveal two of those bad guys. While they don't quite qualify as the Big Bads of the adventure (we'll get to them next week), these guys play key roles in important encounters, and are sure to be remembered by your players for a long time to come.
Coincidentally, both also make excellent player character miniatures themselves!
First up is the Warrior of Wrath, the result of centuries of genetic breeding and intense training in the Halls of Wrath, one of the most challenging of the seven sinful sub-dungeons of the Runeforge. These angry eldritch knights are the last of their long line, so it's a good thing the player characters show up to give them a target upon which to vent their rage and aggression! Because you'll need at least 6 Warriors of Wrath to pull off their encounter, we've slotted this figure in the common rarity.
Wrath isn't the only sin to get a sub-dungeon in the Runeforge. In the Shimmering Veils, pride is the sin that rules that day, and perhaps none in all of Golarion are so prideful as the illusionist Vraxeris, once among the most trusted servitors of Xanderghul, Runelords of Pride. Through cunning and the mastery of cloning techniques, Vraxeris has managed to survive in the thousands of years since the fall of the Runelords' ancient empire. Now, his mad simulacra wander the halls of the Shimmering Veils, eager to defeat intruders and certain that they have what it takes to keep their weird dungeon free from interlopers. Vraxeris is slated at the uncommon rarity.
We're nearing the end of the Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles set (though a few super-awesome figures still remain to be revealed!), so I'm slowing things down a bit here in the blog, and plan to show only two figures a week from here forward. My head is already in the NEXT set, about half of which will be showing up at the Paizo offices later this afternoon for final sculpt approval.
The actual final production figures for Rise of the Runelords have started rolling into my office, and I'm pleased to report that the figures match the paint masters with amazing fidelity. Looking at these little pictures on the blog and holding the actual minis in-hand simply don't compare. I can say with honesty that I think the Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles set will be the best and most consistently awesome set of prepainted plastic miniatures released yet for hobby gaming.
We're getting to deep into the previews for the Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles set that I've almost run out of pictures to show you! A handful of minis remain yet to be revealed, but I'm pleased to report that some of them are among the coolest in the set!
Today I'd like to show off two Small miniatures from the set that leave a very big impression.
Up first is the dreaded Kobold Champion! This lizard-like warrior woman might look a bit like a rank-and-file kobold, but she's in fact encountered late in the campaign, and boy does she ever pack a surprising punch! Although the Rise of the Runelords campaign contains only one Kobold Champion, we decided to slot this figure in the common rarity, reasoning that game masters can always use more well-sculpted kobolds to swarm over their players at any level!
It's probably a bit difficult to tell from the small photos here, but this figure has a remarkable number of paint steps for both a common miniature and a Small miniature, making her really stand out despite her diminutive size. From the paint gradient on her legs and tail to the bright blue tongue, this is one of several minis in the set where I think to myself "I can't believe this awesome mini is a common!"
Up next is the Redcap, a fey menace from real-world mythology with a long history in fantasy gaming. To my knowledge, no Redcap has previously appeared as a prepainted plastic miniature, which makes it a great addition to the Rise of the Runelords set. This little guy comes with the appropriate metal boots, oversized scythe, and the eponymous red cap. As fitting the Redcaps' role in the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition campaign, we've slotted the Redcap in as a common, so you can easily collect a bunch of them.
That's it for this week's preview. The set contains at least two more size-Small figures, as well as a few more exciting surprises.
There's lots of great stuff yet to come! Enjoy the weekend, and don't forget to get in some gaming!
Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Gross, the Bad, and the Ugly
Friday, May 4, 2012
We're getting close to having revealed all of the miniatures in the upcoming Pathfinder Battles set, Rise of the Runelords! It seems like only a few weeks ago that I started showing of sculpts and paint masters, but in fact it's been months, and as I type this the production run of miniatures is trundling through the factory. All of the paint schemes have been approved, all the decisions have been made, and now all that's left is the waiting for the early August release.
Well, the waiting and a few more previews, that is!
Two weeks ago I promised something ugly, and today I'm fulfilling that dark pledge with three figures from the murkier side of the set. These are nasty dudes you definitely don't want to run into in a dark alley, and all three of them make creepy additions to your game table.
Up first is the Ogrekin, a nasty in-bred half-ogre whose clan is the centerpiece of “The Hook Mountain Massacre,” the third chapter in the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. With rippling muscles and a deformed (really gross) head, this bruiser wanders the wilderness looking... well, let's just say he's “looking for love,” and leave it at that. This common miniature is technically Medium-sized, but he's pushing the top-end of that scale, and makes for a really intimidating figure.
Faceless Stalkers were created in ancient times by the mysterious aboleths as interlocutors with the various air-breathing races of the surface world. Via a painful biological process, the creatures can warp and contort their form to take on the appearance of an enemy. When not pretending to be your wife or best friend, these guys run around in the gross, misshapen form revealed here. The photograph above doesn't quite show off the nasty detail of reddish ink in all of the nooks and fleshy crannies along this guy's skin (especially on his back). The Faceless Stalker is statted up in Bestiary 2, but even if you don't have that resource, this common figure doubles as any kind of hideous humanoid. Ick!
Last up today we have a friendly neighborhood initiate in the local cult of homicidal slasher maniacs, known to the denizens of Varisia as the Skinsaw Cultist! This common figure makes a nice rank-and-file cultist. His skinsaw mask and war razor root him firmly in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, while his robes and general creepiness make him a good troop-builder for a wicked cult in any campaign.
That's it for this week. I've only got a few more sculpts to show off, but I promise that some absolutely amazing stuff is still waiting to be shown! Come back next week for another early look at Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles miniatures!
I took a break from the Gen Con push today to write this blog post, and my mind started to wander. I thought a bit about days gone by and how last year at this time we were under just as much pressure trying to get Ultimate Combat off to the presses in time. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Anyway, I also thought to myself, "Self, what sort of blog were you writing this time last year?"
"Aha!" myself answered. "I can do a search and find out!"
Now, those of you who've been following our Monday Pathfinder Society blog posts for a while likely remember this time in spring 2011, when we had a very lengthy series of posts covering "The Future of Pathfinder Society Organized Play." In fact, that series was when we started doing weekly posts and claimed Monday as our own special day of the week. So I checked back to Part VII of that series from May 2. And lo and behold, that was when we announced the title of the current season, the Year of the Ruby Phoenix.
"Self, you should do the same thing for Season 4 in your blog post for Monday," I said. And it seemed a reasonable suggestion, so I agreed.
Season 4 of the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign will be entitled Year of the Risen Rune. The focus of the season is going to be the Pathfinder Society's burgeoning lodge in the Varisian city of Magnimar—the focal point of the forthcoming Shattered Star Adventure Path, which also debuts at Gen Con 2012. While that Adventure Path won't be sanctioned for Pathfinder Society credit and won't use the faction system we have in the organized play campaign, there will be a lot of overlap between the Adventure Path and the Pathfinder Society campaign. So whatever campaign you play, you'll have lots of options for exploring the untamed frontier region of Varisia and the ancient Thassilonian ruins located there.
We'll have a lot more information about both the Shattered Star Adventure Path and the Year of the Risen Rune in the coming months, but until we get closer to the launch of these exciting adventures, check out the venture-captain who Pathfinder players of all ilks are likely to get to know very well—Sheila Heidmarch—and the Pathfinder Society season's shiny new logo.
Sheila Heidmarch Illustration by Kieran Yanner
The Year of the Risen Rune and the Shattered Star Adventure Path both launch at Gen Con 2012 this August!
Pathfinder Battles Preview: Behold the Black Arrows!
Friday, April 20, 2012
I'm on the road this week, so today's preview will be short and sweet.
In recent weeks, we've showed off a lot of monsters and villains from the Rise of the Runelords set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures. This week, I'd like to show off a trio of key NPCs that might prove to be enemies OR allies in the course of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, the notorious Black Arrows rangers!
I'm really pleased with how awesome these minis turned out. Best of all, they make for great player character minis, and perfect stand-ins for whatever kind of warrior-types you might need in your campaigning beyond the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path.
First up we have Jakardros Sovark, an uncommon human ranger who happens to be the stepfather of Shalelu Andosana, Varisia's famed elf ranger protector. Jakardros lost an eye somewhere along the way, but I assure you that hasn't hurt his skill with the bow and arrow!
Next up is Vale Temros, an uncommon human ranger/fighter with two axes and a whole lot of hurt to unleash on his enemies! I'm thrilled with how well Vale turned out, and in-hand I think he's one of the best miniatures in the set. I'd certainly love to put him on my table as either a PC or NPC!
Last up we have Kaven Windstrike, an uncommon ranger/rogue who might not turn out to be quite as helpful as his Black Arrow fellows. Unfortunately, Kaven's sword snapped off before we could grab a good photo of him (the paint masters are made of a much more brittle plastic than the final figures), so you'll have to use your imagination to see his supremely awesome sword. (Ok, it's pretty much just a normal sword, but as long as we're imagining...).
Be sure to get your own Black Arrows by preordering a Standard Case of Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles minis, or set up an ongoing case subscription to ensure your best chance of getting all 65 figures in the set!
That's it for this week. Next week, I promise something gross and monstrous!
Avast there, ye scurvy swabs! This week sees the release of Pathfinder Adventure Path #55: The Wormwood Mutiny, which includes, among other things, four new familiars for you swashbuckling spellcasters out there. But pirates stole into our computers during the dead of night and made off with some valuable loot—the bonuses these familiars grant their masters! Fortunately, we tracked down the villainous knaves on the open seas and recovered our lost cargo—and took a few extra bits o’ plunder for ourselves.
So without further ado, here’s the rules for the pirate familiars presented in The Wormwood Mutiny, with a few other pirate familiars thrown in for good measure!
Other Piratical Familiars
Trained animals are extremely popular among pirates, serving as pets, ships’ mascots, and company on lengthy voyages. Pirate spellcasters prove no different than their shipmates in their interest in pets, and find having exotic familiars wins them bragging rights and a degree of status. Creatures like blue-ringed octopuses, goats, hawks, rats, lizards, king crabs, monkeys, rats, scarlet spiders, snapping turtles, vipers, and weasels all serve as existing examples of potential pirate familiars that appear in either the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary or Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Magic. Additionally, the statistics for many existent familiars might be used to represent more exotic, piratical familiars. The following table presents a variety of such exotic familiars, statistics that can be used to represent them, and the benefits of having them as familiars (which, in some cases, vary from the familiar creatures whose statistics they share).
Up first is the Lamia, a creature with ties to ancient Greek mythology and a strong pedigree in fantasy roleplaying games. Appropriately placed on a Large base, this nasty creature has a hateful streak you've really got to look out for. The common miniature also a great likeness of the art from the Pathfinder Bestiary.
Here we have the Lamia Kuchrima, the weakest of the lamia-kin. These flying creatures flock to the mountain skies of Varisia, as they have since the distant days of the ancient Runelords. Many dwell there still, and player characters in the Rise of the Runelords campaign will be facing several as they hack their way to the hidden city of Xin-Shalast at the campaign's conclusion. We've placed this figure at the common rarity, making it easy to gather a whole flight of them.
This figure isn't a lamia, but we think she's plenty cool. This Huge Storm Giant towers over player characters. The creatures feature heavily in the final encounters of the Rise of the Runelords campaign, and this powerful warrior is ready to usher things to a thunderous climax.
Avast! We've stolen your weekly Advanced Race Guide* preview because the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path starts now! Download the free Skull & Shackles Player's Guide, full of ideas and advice to help create all sorts of scallywags, swashbucklers, and other seaworthy characters perfect for this piratical campaign. Also, look inside for a preview of some of the high-seas challenges and new subsystems you can expect to see featured in the most grog-guzzling, plank-walking, keelhauling Pathfinder Adventure Path to date.
If you haven't already made your mark and subscribed to Pathfinder Adventure Path for the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path, there's still time. But Pathfinder Adventure Path #55: "The Wormwood Mutiny" releases soon, so get onboard before this ship leaves port!
F. Wesley Schneider Captaining Editor
*We'll give it back to later in the week... if ye be lucky. Yarr!
For my money, that three-verse song from the opening encounter of "Burnt Offerings," the very first Pathfinder Adventure Path adventure, is as responsible as anything for the huge success of the Pathfinder Adventure Path line. Over the years (and really more or less immediately), gamers began to equate Pathfinder with goblins, and the creepy little critters (as envisioned by artist Wayne Reynolds and Paizo creative director James Jacobs, the song's author) soon became a sort of unofficial mascot for the Pathfinder brand.
The Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles fantasy miniature set gave us a great opportunity to revisit the first Pathfinder adventures, and we knew we needed to include as many goblins in the set that we could.
This week, I thought I'd show off most of the goblin miniatures from the Rise of the Runelords set to celebrate the fact that at long last, we're ready to reveal the set's product descriptions, prices, and case configurations!
I'll get to that a bit later. First, let's talk about goblins!
First up we have the common Goblin Commando, an elite goblin troop to supplement the Goblin Warrior or Goblin Hero from Heroes & Monsters. As you'll note in the Goblin Song above, goblins are no fans of horses, which is why this trooper's makeshift pole-arm is called a horsechopper.
Mounts beware!
Speaking of Goblin Commandos and mounts, here we have the vicious Goblin Commando on Goblin Dog, an uncommon figure that plays prominently in several encounters of "Burnt Offerings," especially in the raid on the town of Sandpoint that kicks off the entire campaign. August's Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition expands this encounter, working Flip-Mat: Town Square to set the scene. All you need to make it perfect is to add miniatures, and this guy is designed specifically for that purpose.
Here we have the leader of the goblins harrying Sandpoint, Warchief Ripnugget on Stickfoot. This teensie tyrant barks orders at his tribe from the back of a giant gecko, making the PCs' encounter with him (and with this rare miniature) one they won't soon forget.
There are at least two more goblin-related miniatures coming in later previews, so if you can hear one of the twisted verses of James Jacobs's Goblin Song echoing over the horizon, it's because we're not quite done with goblins yet!
The Nitty Gritty
We've been teasing product details for months, and I'm pleased to report that everything has finally fallen into place so that we can reveal all of the little details about the size of the set, when it will come out, and how the cases will be packaged. Click through to the various product pages for price and additional details.
Pathfinder Battles: Rise of the Runelords Set Details
Release Date: August 2012 Set Size: 65 prepainted plastic miniatures
The Standard Booster
Rise of the Runelords Standard Boosters contain four collectible miniatures. Each blind box contains a random selection of miniatures from the set, including one Large figure and three Medium or Small figures. Many figures feature colored clear plastic spell effects, crystals, and the like, and these figures range from monsters to important NPCs to Pathfinder iconic characters like Seoni and Harsk.
Standard Boosters come in the following configurations:
Single Standard Booster
8-ct. Standard Booster Brick
32-ct. Standard Booster Case (4 bricks)
The Huge Booster
The Rise of the Runelords set contains four Huge figures, from the Treachery Demon to the Lamia Harridan (shown below) to two figures we haven't revealed yet. The large size and relatively small number of these figures makes it impractical to include them in the Standard Booster, so WizKids created a new product configuration: The Rise of the Runelords Huge Booster. Each blind-boxed Huge Booster contains a single Huge figure from the Rise of the Runelords set.
Huge Boosters come in the following configurations:
Single Huge Booster
6-ct. Huge Booster Case
The Rune Giant
As we revealed last week, the biggest miniature in the set is the towering Rune Giant, our first Gargantuan miniature! The Rune Giant has been produced in extremely limited quantities, and is available for purchase only to retailers (from their distributor), paizo.com Pathfinder Battles case subscribers, and customers who pre-order a Standard case (while supplies last). For more details, visit the Rune Giant product page.
Subscribers
Customers with an Ongoing Pathfinder Battles Case Subscription receive the right to purchase the Rune Giant at 75% off the listed retail price, and are guaranteed access to this extremely rare figure at a rate of one per case ordered. They'll also receive a coupon code good for 20% off the purchase price of one Encounter Pack (such as Champions of Evil) and the standard 20% case subscriber discount on all Pathfinder Battles singles purchases made on paizo.com.
Completing the Set
We've worked hard with WizKids to pack the cases in such a way that customers who purchase a case of Standard Boosters, a case of Huge Boosters, and the Rune Giant can reasonably expect to complete the entire 65-figure set. While we cannot guarantee that this will happen due to the unlikely potential of packing errors at the factory, the intention is that a full line of cases will get a nearly complete set.
So that's it! The long-awaited full details on the long-awaited Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles set!
Next week we'll be mack with more previews and more exciting miniatures reveals!
We're just a few weeks away from shipping out the first chapter of the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path to subscribers. To get your peg legs itching, here are two pieces of art from Pathfinder Adventure Path #55: The Wormwood Mutiny. Both depict life aboard a pirate ship, albeit on different sides of the coin. Whether you find infamy and plunder upon the high seas or end up swabbing the decks, anchors are lifting soon and the life of a pirate awaits! Be sure to check back next week for the release of the free Skull & Shackles Player's Guide.
Illustrations by Craig J Spearing and Mariusz Gandzel
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.
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.
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.
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!
There's just no two ways about it. If you read through this Pathfinder Battles Rise of the Runelords preview, you're putting yourself at risk of some plot spoilers. If you plan to play through the campaign, I highly recommend that you do not look super-closely at the miniatures I'm revealing today, as they could spoil a couple of fun surprises in the Adventure Path.
Our new Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition hardcover is set to release this summer around the same time as the Rise of the Runelords miniatures set (still no specifics on release date or price for the miniatures, alas). The hardcover collects the entire classic first Pathfinder Adventure Path in a newly revised edition, with plenty of fun bells and whistles we'll be revealing over the next few months.
So a lot of people who have not yet had a chance to play the campaign will soon get that chance. If you think you'll be one of them, and you want to maintain your sense of surprise as long as possible, I suggest that you stop reading immediately.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Spoilers Ahead!:
First up this week we have Aldern Foxglove, a local lord encountered by the player characters in the opening encounters of the campaign. Foxglove serves as an ally and patron to the heroes, and stars in some additional expanded encounters in the hardcover, written by James Jacobs, who introduced Aldern the first time way back in Pathfinder Adventure Path #1.
Aldern is one of many NPCs to receive a new illustration in the Anniversary Edition. In many cases, we ordered these new pieces of art specifically because we knew the character needed a miniature. In the original, we only ever saw an image of Aldern's face, so this time we wanted to make sure that we captured his entire body. I think this figure, a rare, also doubles nicely for any male noble, city dandy, or even a well-dressed bard player character.
And here we have the rare The Skinsaw Man, who for whatever reason seems to have gotten a hold of a familiar jacket. I won't say much more here, other than to mention that this figure has a long purple tongue you can't quite make out in the photo, and that the splattered blood effects bring me much personal joy and satisfaction.
A noble figure like Aldern Foxglove could really use a well-dressed woman at his side, and for these purposes we've included the cunning Lucrecia, also a rare figure. Lucrecia makes a great figure for any female noble, and she plays an important role in the middle part of the Rise of the Runelords campaign. Generally speaking, we try to limit specific characters to the rare rarity. While everyone can use a nice figure of a noblewoman holding a glass of wine, you don't really need a ton of them. Placing these specific figures at the higher rarity also gives our partners at WizKids the opportunity to layer on some really great detail, like the brocade work on Lucrecia's dress and the detail on her corset. Given how many folks liked the unarmed Human Druid from Heroes & Monsters as a townsfolk figure, I think a lot of people are going to get a kick out of Aldern Foxglove and Lucrecia!
And because every preview blog needs a good monster, here's the uncommon Lamia Matriarch. This Large snake-woman has multiple uses throughout the campaign, covering two major enemies in the first half of the Adventure Path. I don't include her in this blog for any other reason. None at all. Humm dee dummm dee dooo.
So! I hope you guys dig this latest batch of releases. They look great in hand, and I'm thrilled to have them in the set. By the time you read this, an agent of WizKids is already at the Paizo office, having delivered the very final miniatures for us to approve and photograph for future preview blogs.
That means the final details on the Rise of the Runelords set, such as price and official release date, must be just over the horizon!
So far we’ve revealed plenty of monstrous menaces soon to appear on your game table as part of this summer’s new Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures set. This week, we’ll bring things back to earth with a look at some familiar friends you just might recognize from the Pathfinder world.
Before I get into the new miniature reveals, I need to point out that we still don’t have all of the specifics about when exactly this set will come out, how much it will cost, or how many figures will be in each booster box, but things have been moving steadily forward on these fronts, and I expect to be able to reveal details shortly.
Until then, we wait. I hope to soothe the ennui by showing off more awesome miniatures from the set.
These miniatures support the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition, which is scheduled for a July release. The images shown below are “paint masters,” meaning they are the painted miniatures our partners at WizKids send to their factories as guides for how the production run should be painted. Expect a little variance between these images and the final miniatures, but this is what they’ll be shooting for.
Because these are pre-production images, they’re also missing some of the fine detail work on things like tattoos, fine costume design details, and similar flourishes. These are added at the factory as a final step, so if it looks like Seoni is missing a few tattoos below, don’t despair! They’re coming soon!
Anyway, on to this week’s previews!
This uncommon figure represents Ameiko Kaijitsu, one of Pathfinder’s very first NPCs, and one who has grown to become an important figure in the Pathfinder world thanks to the events of the Jade Regent Adventure Path. Way back in the Rise of the Runelords AP, Ameiko was a simple owner of Sandpoint’s Rusty Dragon Inn, but she went on to become a very important figure whose destiny spans the globe of Golarion. She appears here kitted out in her adventuring gear, ready to help your player characters in either campaign.
The elf fighter/ranger Shalelu Andosana is older than the town of Sandpoint itself, but over the centuries she’s come to view the place as home. She makes an excellent ally and information source for the players in Rise of the Runelords, and her appearance in the Jade Regent Adventure Path means that this uncommon miniature, like Ameiko above, comes in doubly useful for Pathfinder GMs running both campaigns. Plus, female elf ranger with a bow = great miniature for lots and lots and lots of player characters.
So far we’ve managed to fit an iconic character or two into each of our Pathfinder Battles releases, and Rise of the Runelords is no exception. The first iconic in this set (an uncommon) is Harsk, the iconic ranger. I love the detail WizKids was able to achieve with Harsk’s face, and some of the detail on his outfit is absolutely amazing. Artists and sculptors always complain about Wayne Reynolds’s highly complex original art for Harsk, but we think WizKids did a great job capturing the detail and nuance of this popular character.
Speaking of popular iconic characters, they don’t come more popular than this lovely lass, the inimitable Seoni! Seoni made her debut on one of the covers of the original Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path issues, so we knew we had to include her in the set (at the uncommon rarity). And I’m thrilled that we did. WizKids definitely met the challenge with this figure. The picture above is pretty good, but in-hand this miniature is absolutely gorgeous, with a great color to it and lots of excellent sculpt details. Fans of Seoni might notice that her tattoos and some of the pattern on her outfit is missing. As I mentioned above, that stuff will be coming at the factory, and what we’ve seen so far looks terrific.
That’s it for this week! The Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path is a dangerous campaign, but these familiar faces will help you make it through alive, if not exactly unscathed!
A short and sweet preview blog this week, focusing on some of the Large miniatures in the upcoming Rise of the Runelords set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures. We’re still sorting out the fine details of product format and exact release date, so again, there’s no product page for this set, although I have reason to believe that we’ll have good news to report on that front shortly.
In the meantime, I have more images of paint masters to show you! This time, I’m taking a tight focus on stone giants, the major threat of the fourth chapter of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” by Wolfgang Baur!
If you’ve got a copy of that adventure, take a look at the cover. You’re about to see a lot of it in glorious three dimensions. Starting here:
This Stone Giant is a spitting image of a creature from the Wayne Reynolds cover of “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” and I think he may be one of the best prepainted stone giants ever created in plastic. Because you will need a lot of them, these guys are at the uncommon rarity.
You fight a lot of stone giants in “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” and some of them have different statistics. For that reason and to mix things up visually, we’ve included the uncommon Stone Giant Champion, complete with a boulder raised high to crush your player characters.
Also from the cover, the Dire Bear makes a great companion to a band of stone giants, or as a “special friend” for your druid character. He’s also a Large uncommon.
The spellcasting stone giant Mokmurian is one of the primary villains of “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” and WizKids did an excellent job bringing him to life in three dimensions. Note the clear blue magical energy flaming from Mokmurian’s right hand, as well as the complex gold pectoral, belts, armbands, and skirt hem on this miniature. This rare miniature makes a wonderful leader for your Pathfinder Battles stone giant warband, and we’re thrilled to have him in the set.
There are, of course, more giants in the Rise of the Runelords set, but those will have to wait for future Fridays!
Everyone loves goblins, right? And by extension, folks are keen on their goblinoid brethren, the militaristic hobgoblins and the sadistic bugbears. Well, this month we introduce a new goblinoid subtype humanoid to Golarion—the kijimuna, a native of the Dragon Empires of Tian Xia. These CR 2 creatures are known for their wild, bright red hair and their wide, mischievous grins, and enjoy fishing almost as much as playing pranks and practical jokes on unsuspecting targets. Much like their Inner Sea cousins, kijimunas have a deep-seated fear of a single creature, in this case the octopus, and when faced with an octopus, a kijimuna either flees in terror or desperately fights. Unlike the other goblinoid races, however, kijimunas are not innately evil, and typically have chaotic neutral alignments.
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
We’re coming up on the release of Bestiary 3 in the near future, and as readers of the Jade Regent Adventure Path have noticed, we’re already using monsters from that book in the adventures! This is more or less a necessity, since when you travel to the far side of the world, you expect to see brand-new creatures and monsters, after all. We’ve been filling the Jade Regent bestiaries with all sorts of monsters inspired from Asian mythology and folklore, but we need more—and that’s where Bestiary 3 comes in.
One of the new types of monsters introduced in Bestiary 3 and the Jade Regent Adventure Path are the kami—usually (but not always) benevolent native outsiders who exist to protect that which cannot really protect itself from the advance of humanity and civilization. Pathfinder #52 and Bestiary 3 present several kami, ranging from CR 2 all the way up to CR 20.
Presented below are two of the kami who have roles to play in “Forest of Spirits.” We’re simply presenting their statistics here—what roles they play in the adventure must remain a secret until you play it or run it for your group!
Kami Subtype: Kami are a race of native outsiders who serve to protect what they refer to as “wards”—animals, plants, objects, and even locations—from being harmed or dishonored. All kami are outsiders with the native subtype. A kami possesses the following traits unless otherwise noted in a creature’s entry.
Immune to bleed, mind-affecting effects, petrification, and polymorph effects.
Resist acid 10, electricity 10, fire 10
Although they are native outsiders, kami do not eat, drink, or breathe.
Telepathy.
Fast Healing (Ex) As long as a kami is within 120 feet of its ward, it gains fast healing. The amount of fast healing it gains depends on the type of kami.
Merge with Ward (Su) As a standard action, a kami can merge its body and mind with its ward. When merged, the kami can observe the surrounding region with its senses as if it were using its own body, as well as via any senses its ward might have. It has no control over its ward, nor can it communicate or otherwise take any action other than to emerge from its ward as a standard action. A kami must be adjacent to its ward to merge with or emerge from it. If its ward is a creature, plant, or object, the kami can emerge mounted on the creature provided the kami’s body is at least one size category smaller than the creature. If its ward is a location, the kami may emerge at any point within that location.
Ward (Su) A kami has a specific ward—a creature with an Intelligence score of 2 or lower (usually an animal or vermin), a plant (not a plant creature), an object, or a location. The type of ward is listed in parentheses in the kami’s stat block. Several of a kami’s abilities function only when it is either merged with its ward or within 120 feet of it. If a kami’s ward is portable and travels with the kami to another plane, the kami does not gain the extraplanar subtype on that other plane as long as its ward remains within 120 feet. If a ward is destroyed while a kami is merged with it, the kami dies (no save). If a ward is destroyed while a kami is not merged with it, the kami loses its merge with ward ability and its fast healing, and becomes permanently sickened.
AC 15, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (+1 Dex, +2 natural, +2 size) hp 19 (3d10+3); fast healing 2 Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +8 DR 5/cold iron; Immune bleed, mind-affecting effects, petrification, polymorph; Resist acid 10, electricity 10, fire 10
Offense
Speed 30 ft. Melee improvised weapon +4 (1d4+2/x3) Ranged improvised weapon +6 (1d3+2/x3) Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft. Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th; concentration +8)
At will—invisibility (self only), statue (self only)
3/day—hide from animals, purify food and drink
1/week—commune with nature (CL 12th)
Statistics
Str 8, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 11, Wis 17, Cha 14 Base Atk +3; CMB +2; CMD 11 Feats Alertness, Catch Off-GuardB, Iron Will, Throw AnythingB Skills Heal +9, Knowledge (nature) +6, Perception +11, Sense Motive +11, Stealth +15, Survival +9 Languages Common SQ improvised weapon mastery, merge with ward, ward (minor works of civilization)
Ecology
Environment any Organization solitary, pair, or gang (3–8) Treasure standard
Special Abilities
Improvised Weapon Mastery (Ex) A shikigami gains Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything as bonus feats, and adds its Charisma modifier instead of its Strength modifier to damage done with any improvised weapon, as attacks it makes with such weapons seem supernaturally lucky in landing damaging blows. Although a shikigami is Tiny, it never provokes attacks of opportunity when it attacks an adjacent foe with a melee weapon. If a shikigami critically hits an opponent with an improvised weapon, it deals x3 damage.
Illustration by Mariusz Gandzel
Zuishin CR 10
XP 9,600
LG Medium outsider (kami, native) Init +9; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect evil, see invisibility; Perception +20
Defense
AC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 20 (+6 armor, +3 Dex, +4 natural) hp 123 (13d10+52); fast healing 5 Fort +8, Ref +13, Will +14 DR 10/cold iron; Immune bleed, mind-affecting effects, petrification, polymorph; Resist acid 10, electricity 10, fire 10; SR 21
Offense
Speed fly 30 ft. (perfect, 40 ft. without armor) Melee +1 holy halberd +18/+13/+8 (1d10+7/x3) Ranged +1 holy composite longbow +20/+15/+10 (1d8+5/x3) Special Attacks healing arrow, holy weapons Spell-Like Abilities (CL 13th; concentration +18)
Constant—detect evil, see invisibility
At will—cure light wounds, dimension door
3/day—alarm, breath of life, dispel magic, neutralize poison, remove curse, remove disease, restoration
1/day—dispel evil (DC 20), heal, true seeing
Statistics
Str 18, Dex 21, Con 18, Int 11, Wis 18, Cha 21 Base Atk +13; CMB +17; CMD 34 (can’t be tripped) Feats Improved Initiative, Improved Precise Shot, Iron Will, Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Weapon Focus (longbow) Skills Fly +10, Heal +20, Intimidate +18, Knowledge (nature) +16, Perception +20, Sense Motive +20, Stealth +18 Languages Common; telepathy 100 ft. SQ merge with ward, ward (gate, doorway, or shrine)
Ecology
Environment any Organization solitary, pair, or warband (3–8) Treasure double (+1 composite longbow [+4 Str], +1 halberd, masterwork breastplate, other treasure)
Special Abilities
Healing Arrow (Su) As a swift action, a zuishin can infuse an arrow it fires to carry any of the following effects: breath of life, cure light wounds, heal, neutralize poison, remove curse, remove disease, or restoration. Using one of these effects consumes a use of the same spell-like ability. The zuishin must make a touch attack to deliver the effect to the target—the target takes no damage from the arrow. Holy Weapons (Su) Any weapon wielded by a zuishin is treated as if it had the holy special ability. A zuishin creates arrows out of nothing as part of its attacks with any bow it wields.
It's been over a week since Gen Con wrapped up, and a little less than that since we returned to business as usual here at Paizo HQ. But even though we're back in the swing of deadlines and such, the rush of Pathfinder Society at Gen Con still has me feeling high!
Over the course of four days and ten slots, we seated over 3,000 excited Pathfinders, many of whom played their first Pathfinder Society scenario during the convention. And though we sold out almost every event months before the show, I'm proud to say that nearly everyone who wanted to get into a game with generic tickets was able to do so. We only had to turn people away in two of the ten slots!
Our Friday night special, Blood Under Absalom, was a smashing success, and we were able to get everyone who wanted to play a seat, pulling in extra tables from the hall to ensure that no one was left out. The result was 51 tables (out of a sold-out 45) of Pathfinders of all levels running through the same adventure, GMed by none other than the incomparable Tim Hitchcock.
In addition to the rewards all players get for surviving a Pathfinder Society Scenario, we had additional prizes that players and GMs could try to win by unlocking the Pathfinder Society treasure chest. Inside were signed copies of hardcover rulebooks, free map packs and flip mats, Pathfinder Tales novels, and even exclusive Pathfinder Society boons. Some players walked away with Chronicle sheets granting them access to non-core races like aasimar, tiefling, tengu, and dhampir, and everyone who played a scenario or delve got a Gen Con exclusive boon granting them weapon proficiency with one Eastern weapon from Ultimate Combat. For those Pathfinder Society players and GMs who couldn't make it to the show, we'll be trying similar promotions at regional conventions and game stores in the coming months, spearheaded by our invaluable Venture-Captains, so keep an eye out for your chance to get some exclusive Pathfinder Society Chronicles in your area.
Thanks to everyone who spent valuable time and money ensuring Gen Con 2011 was the most successful Pathfinder Society convention to date. Without all our Venture-Captains, HQ volunteers, and over 50 GMs per slot, thousands of gamers would have missed out on the launch of the Year of the Ruby Phoenix and hours of fun exploring Golarion! Keep an eye on this blog in the coming months for early information about our plans of next Gen Con, including how you can volunteer to help make Gen Con 2012 an even bigger success!
P.S. Check out this awesome Wayne Reynolds art from the first two Jade Regent adventure path volumes. See, Shalelu's hair is blond!
ENnie Awards: Product of the Year (for the Advanced Players Guide)
Whew... another Gen Con over and done with! We had a great time at the show, in no small part due to the incredible support of our fans and customers. You all are the BEST!
In a Gen Con filled with highlights, though, for me one of the most incredible moments came about 15 minutes after the Ennie Awards wrapped up, when we went up to the Pathfinder Society Organized Play room to announce to a room of several hundred gamers that we’d won. The uproar of cheers that filled the room when Erik climbed up on his chair and made that announcement was overwhelming. Pictured is one of those many awards—the trophy for Product of the Year (Advanced Player’s Guide) held up with an enormous room of hundreds of Pathfinder Society GMs and players in the background.
We also made a large number of announcements at Gen Con for products coming out in the months ahead. Most of these announcements can be found here and there on paizo.com, but I thought I’d group them all up here in this post so everyone can find out about them at once.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Coming at the end of the year is Pathfinder Bestiary 3, followed next Spring by the Advanced Race Guide (a big hardcover book that’ll give you new options for ALL of the zero Hit Die races we’ve published to that point, as well as rules for building your own races of any power level), and then next Gen Con with Ultimate Equipment (a hardcover filled to the brim with new toys and magic items for any Pathfinder character).
Pathfinder Adventure Path: At long last, we’ve started the Jade Regent Adventure Path! But once you’re done traveling over the frozen Crown of the World and exploring Tian Xia, be ready next February for some good old-fashioned plundering and mayhem with the pirate-themed Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. And then, next Gen Con, we celebrate five years of Pathfinder and ten years of Paizo by returning to where it all began—the Shattered Star Adventure Path brings it all back to Varisia with a frantic search to be the first to recover and rebuild an ancient Thassilonian artifact—the original Sihedron Symbol—before it’s too late!
Pathfinder Player Companion: After debuting Goblins of Golarion at Gen Con, we’re ready to finish out the three-part exploration of the faiths of the Inner Sea with Faiths of Corruption. Two months later, the Dragon Empires Primer gives players all they need to know to make characters from Tian Xia. And early next year, Pirates of the Inner Sea will finally let you unleash your inner buccaneer!
Pathfinder Modules: We’ll be heading back to Varisia even earlier than Magnimar: City of Monuments and the Shattered Star Adventure Path, though, with Feast of Ravenmoor, a low-level module set in the Varisian hinterlands. Two months later, test your mettle in The Ruby Phoenix Tournament, and then next January find out what our latest RPG Superstar winner, Sam Zeitlin, has in store for you in The Midnight Mirror!
Pathfinder Battles: After WizKids releases the initial set of prepainted plastic Pathfinder miniatures of Merisiel, Kyra, Valeros, and Ezren (Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes, which ties into the upcoming Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box), you can look forward first to the 40-miniature set of Heroes and Monsters, to be followed up later next year by the Rise of the Runelords set.
And finally... the announcement that I was the most excited for: a 420-page hardcover compilation of Rise of the Runelords, fully updated to the Pathfinder rules and expanded with new encounters and tons of new artwork, due for release at PaizoCon 5 next June!
Nominations for the 2010 ENnie Awards are live and we couldn't be blown farther away! Paizo products are up for awards in 11 categories, with related Pathfinder projects showing in even more. Unbelievable! A huge thank you from all of us here at Paizo to all of our readers for your endless enthusiasm and help in expanding our rules and worlds, as well as boundless appreciation to everyone at ENWorld for organizing and hosting one of the most highly anticipated event in gaming year after year.
But this year's ENnie Awards are just kicking off. Head on over to ENWorld to check out all the nominees and prepare for this Friday (July 16th) when the voting booths open and you can cast your vote for your favorite RPG rules, accessories, products, and projects.
Thanks again from all of us here at Paizo Publishing and we'll see you at the ENnies!
Better writers than I have pointed out that the best thing about working for Paizo is the fans, but it bears repeating: Paizo fans are awesome. And even though the work of a production goblin can be grueling (can you believe I have to be into work by 10 A.M. and only get two nap breaks?!), seeing some of the stuffour fanscreate just makes me want to worker harder.
One of the most mind-boggling of those creations is the Wayfinder, a free, fan-made magazine that was released for PaizoCon '09. The brainchild of Paizo superfans Liz Courts (Lilith), Tim Nightengale (Timitius), and Hugo Solis (Butterfrog), the Wayfinder was entirely written, illustrated, edited, and published by dedicated Paizo fans, and looked as professional as many other pricey gaming magazines. Getting my copy was one of the highlights of the con, and I know it made a lot of grown men giggle here in the Paizo offices. Which is why I'm waiting with bated breath for issue #2.
Liz announced the beginnings of issue #2 back in September and has been collecting holiday- and winter-themed articles, illustration, poetry, fiction, and recipes from Paizo fans ever since. Not only does this mean even more wonderful Golarion goodness for our fans, but most importantly: It's Golarion goodness that no one here at the office has had to work on, so we get to be excited about it, too!
Unlike Wayfinder #1, Wayfinder #2 will only be available in PDF form. Like Wayfinder #1, the second issue will be 100% free and available for download here at paizo.com. According to Liz, the goal is to start making the Wayfinder a regular, semi-annual feature, with print and electronic versions available for PaizoCon and an electronic-only version available around the holidays to bring some sunshine to your winter.
If you're a Pathfinder fan and you haven't downloaded the first issue of the Wayfinder, do it now! If you're a Pathfinder fan and you missed your chance to contribute to issues #1 and #2, don't fret. Just keep your eyes on the messageboards for updates and submission information for those issues yet to come. New blood keeps the game industry alive, and you never know where the next Karzoug might come from.
Sometimes, art makes the choices for me. When we ordered the cover to Greg A. Vaughn's "Mother of Flies," we asked Steve Prescott to paint us a scene in a thieves' guild treasury involving the iconics in a fight against a six-armed stone golem. The art, as you can see here, is great!
Unfortunately, by the time I got to the section in the adventure where this six-armed menace made its appearance, I realized something. A six-armed stone golem (particularly one armed with a pair of tree-sized-swords) would be something like a CR 15 monster. Not really a fair fight to inflict on 10th-level characters, and certainly not good design to have the dude guarding the treasury be tougher than the adventure's actual boss.
So, in a last-minute brainstorm in Wes's office when he was probably trying to go home, he, Crystal Frasier, Lisa Stevens, and I figured out what to do with the situation. The result is a new monster from distant Vudra, the six-armed calikang, a race spawned from a deity's failure and doomed now to seek atonement for an ancient sin. We ordered an extra piece of art for this volume's Bestiary, I wrote up the monster that weekend, and everything fell perfectly in place just in time to ship to the printers.
As for the calikang itself? You'll just have to wait for "Mother of Flies" to find out what he can do!
So, I've made no secret of the fact that I've given large parts of my 25+ year-old homebrew campaign setting, Baria, over to Golarion. One of the more successful of these imports are the Red Mantis assassins—and by extension, their home city of Ilizmagorti. When it came time to assign authors for Cities of Golarion, I was sorely tempted to claim the chapter on Ilizmagorti as my own—I was nervous that even if another author did a GREAT job with the city that the end result wouldn't match my own personal vision of the city. The same goes for the city's map, to be honest. But my work schedule being what it was (I'd already taken up two chapters of Classic Horrors Revisited, alas, I couldn't responsibly claim the chapter of Ilizmagorti for Cities of Golarion as my own. And so, with some nervous fear and much wringing of hands, I gave it up for someone else to write about.
I'm happy to say that what Rob McCreary wrought with his words is exactly what I'd envisioned for the city of Ilizmagorti—he hit every nail square, and the resulting chapter is hands-down my favorite in the book as a result (which is saying something, since there was some tough competition!). Even more exciting, he came up with some concepts that I'd never thought of for Baria's Ilizmagorti—concepts that inspired me in some really fun ways. It's really weird being inspired to write things about something you made up due to someone else's work on that concept! Weird, but wonderful!
Yet as wonderful as Rob's words were, a city can live or die by its map. For Cities of Golarion, we tackled the creation somewhat differently. We hired writers to write the chapters, but we hired artists and cartographers to create the city maps. Long-time readers of this blog might remember earlier this year when I posted the Map Open Call—the results are some of the best city maps that Paizo's had the pleasure to print. Presented here are the two versions of the map of Ilizmagorti—the first one created by Daniel Thomson, based on my outline of what the city should incorporate. The other map is the final version you'll see in the book and in the Cities Map Folio as a four-panel poster. (We've left the tags off of Rob's map so you can ogle the beauty of his work easier.)
The votes for the First Annual Gen Con Pathfinder Cosplay Contest are in, and after a hard battle, the winner is... both of them!
Yes, it seems that our messageboard horde saw too much merit in Tiffany's fantastic starknife and Kelly's unnerving Pactmaster mask to let either of them go unrewarded. (And in a way, Tiffany started this whole idea with her costume last year, so perhaps we should consider this the 2008 and 2009 awards.) Regardless of how you parse it, the result is that both Kelly and Tiffany will be receiving $50 in Paizo store credit. Congratulations to them both, and special thanks to messageboard poster Taig who offered to foot the bill for the second prize—we may not have taken him up on it, but we always love seeing the generosity of our community.
As for all of you who didn't have time to compete this year: there's always time to start preparing for next year's contest! Time to start collecting those giant crab legs for your Rovagug suit, hitting the gym in preparation for the Merisiel outfit, or shaving the family dog and training it to carry your goblins—I mean "beautiful children"—on its back. The possibilities are endless!
(P.S: I'm ashamed to admit that Tiffany's contact information was lost in the shuffle of Gen Con. Tiffany, if you're reading this, please email me at james.sutter@paizo.com to claim your prize!)
Another Gen Con has come and gone, and as all the editors crawl out from where we've been hiding in fetal positions beneath our desks, recovering from the exhaustion and excitement, we're forced to conclude that this was the best convention yet. The release of the Core Rulebook was a rousing success, the ENnies were kind, the community was more welcoming than ever, and our favorite industry professionals were just as zany and fun as last year. Yet all that in no way lessened the excitement of...
PATHFINDER COSPLAY!
Despite the relatively late warning (next year's contestants: consider this your starting gun), we doubled our Pathfinder cosplay turnout this year. That's right: two intrepid individuals spent portions of their con wandering around in full Pathfinder regalia, forever winning our hearts (and potentially $50 dollars in store credit). This year's contestants were Tiffany as a cleric of Desna (whose same costume last year inspired the contest, and hence is allowed to compete this year as well—unfortunately, only last year's photo is available) and new challenger Kelly, who wowed us all with his incredible rendition of a Pactmaster of Katapesh.
Tiffany as Cleric of Desna
Kelly as Pactmaster of Katapesh
Which costume is the best, and most deserving of reward? It's a tough question, but it's up to you to decide. If you want to weigh in on the matter, or just congratulate them both on their amazing costumes, head over to the Pathfinder Cosplay Contest thread on our messageboards and make your voice heard. Votes will be collected for roughly 48 hours, at which point we'll announce the winner here on the blog. So what are you waiting for? Let the voting begin!
With the release of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, there are a lot of new faces here on the board, so we thought that this would be a good time to say hello and to give folks a quick tour of the site.
I suspect that many of the new folks are here because of the Pathfinder RPG, so there is no better place to start than our new Core Rulebook. Of course, we have much more in store for this game, so you definitely want to visit the Pathfinder RPG main page where you can see a summary of all of our upcoming products. Be sure to check out the Bestiary Preview and the Pathfinder RPG Conversion Guide, both of which can be downloaded for free. All you need is an account. Tip to the wise, make sure you have the most recent version of Adobe Reader installed on your machine to read these pdfs. Both of these free products, along with a host of other valuable free documents, can also be found on the Pathfinder RPG resources page, which also contains our community use policy (for those thinking about setting up a fan website) and the compatibility license (for those planning to make products using the Pathfinder RPG rules). The resources page also has the most recent errata document for the Core Rulebook, which contains a number of small changes and fixes to ensure that your game is running smoothly.
Next up, if you need to quickly reference the Pathfinder RPG online, there is no better resource than the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document (or PRD for short). The PRD contains all of the rules from the game, organized just like the Core Rulebook, making them easy to find. If you are playing your game in reach of a computer, I might recommend a bookmark or three.
We really want paizo.com to be a great community for gamers of all stripes, whether your passion is the Pathfinder RPG, other RPGs, board games, card games, or anything in between. Our messageboards are home to thousands of gamers just like you, looking for advice, sharing stories, forming groups, and getting answers to rules questions. If you are navigating the messageboards, look out for the following forums.
First up is the Pathfinder RPG messageboard, which includes a large number of useful forums. The General Discussion Forum is where you can discuss nearly anything related to the game, from reviews to announcements. The Rules Question Forum is where you can ask questions about the game. If one of your fellow fans does not help you out, one of our staff will try to help get an answer to your question. There is a lot of great discussion going on right now on the boards about the game, but I do want to take this moment to offer some advice. The rules are brand new, and there is a lot of information to digest. Before posting, make sure to take a good look through the book to see if your question is answered elsewhere. Since the game is a revision to the 3.5 rules, there are a number of discussions going on right now comparing the two and weighing the pros and cons of each change. While this is only natural, I do want to remind folks that many of these changes are designed to have a specific effect or to work in combination with other changes, making the whole of the game easier and better to run. If the rule in question still doesn't work for your group, do not hesitate to change it. It is your game after all, and you should feel free to change it in any way that would add to the fun and excitement of your campaign. Alright, back to the tour.
Next up in the Pathfinder RPG section is the Pathfinder RPG Products Section, which includes two forums for discussing individual products. One for Paizo products and one for any 3rd party product that is compatible with the game. After those forums are the Community Content forums. The first of these is the House Rules Forum, which contains a host of tips, tricks, and suggestions used in the games of fellow messageboard members. This forum also includes brand new rules content created by fans. The second forum is the Conversions Forum, which contains fan-made conversions of a host of 3.5 rules and products, making them easier to use with the Pathfinder RPG.
In addition to the Pathfinder RPG forums, you will find an array of other forums for our other products. The Pathfinder General Discussion Forum is for talking about any product with the Pathfinder logo, focusing on products that are compatible with the Pathfinder campaign setting (such as the Pathfinder Chronicles, Pathfinder Companion, Pathfinder Modules, and Pathfinder Accessories products). The Pathfinder Adventure Path Section contains a forum for each one of our Adventure Paths. These products represent complete campaigns, taking your characters from 1st level to the heights of power. The forums contain tips, tricks, and tools to use for each Adventure Path, as well as a number of great stories and anecdotes from the campaigns of fellow members.
This is also a good time to talk about the Pathfinder Society. This program allows you to play the Pathfinder RPG around the world, using the same character for each event. Pathfinder Society events can be found at most major conventions and in a number of game stores. In addition, your GM can download these PDF adventures and run them for you at home. For discussion about these exciting events, check out the Pathfinder Society Forums.
Concluding our tour of the messageboards, you might want to investigate the Paizo Community Forums, which includes forums for 3.5, 4th edition, board games, card games, play-by-post games, movies, books, television, and the always busy off-topic discussion (drive up your post count with a 3-word game today!).
Before this blog gets way too long, I want to take a moment to talk about the Paizo Store, which features just about every RPG, board game, card game, miniatures game, and accessory known to man. Be warned, there are a lot of good products hiding in there, and my wallet has paid for my curiosity mightily over the years.
Here at Paizo, we have many different levels of experience with cosplay, from Art Director Sarah Robinson's complete disdain for anything other than the latest trendy fashions (seriously, the woman has every purse in the western hemisphere) to Jason Bulmahn's days playing a lumbering oaf at midwestern renaissance fairs (how little things change!), to Wes Schneider who may, in fact, be a Pokémon. But the one thing we all have in common is that we love the idea of people dressing up as Pathfinder characters.
We never thought such things were possible until we met Tiffany, a real-life cleric of Desna, at last year's Gen Con, and thanks to her we're now convinced that anything is possible. Which is why I'm filled with glee to announce the First Annual Pathfinder Gen Con Cosplay Contest!
Here's the deal: At some point during Gen Con, you show up to the Paizo booth dressed in your best Pathfinder costume (faction shirts and other official Paizo merch don't count). We should stress that we're looking for monsters and characters with obvious ties to our world itself, not generic cosplayers (that wizard hat could be from anywhere), or people dressed up like actual Pathfinder books (very clever) or members of the Pathfinder staff (the world already has one James Jacobs, and one is enough for everybody). In addition to drawing a crowd of happy Paizoites, the contestants will have their pictures taken. Those folks with the best costumes, as decided by us, will end up on the Paizo blog once we return from Gen Con, at which point we'll allow the posters on our messageboards to pick their favorite. What criteria that mad and merry crew will use is anybody's guess—creativity? recognizability? skin-to-clothing ratio?—but whoever they select as the best Pathfinder cosplayer will walk away with fifty dollars in store credit!
So what are you waiting for? Get out that sewing machine and hot glue gun, send your party members on a run for foam rubber and acrylics, and show us what you're made of!
The dash toward the 2009 ENnie Awards has begun with Paizo accepting nominations in six categories, including a fan nomination for Best Publisher! These acknowledgments start off the process of honoring the best products and ideas in the last year of tabletop gaming, but in the end it all relies on you! Be sure to check back in with the ENnies this Friday when voting begins, giving you the chance to cast your ballot for your favorite games and accessories.
Here's this year's rundown of Paizo Products up for honors:
Check out all the publishers at the ENnies Awards homepage, and be sure to check back this Friday for your chance to cast your vote! Thanks to ENWorld and all of you for this year's nominations and the endless support!
We've been tweeting! As of yesterday afternoon Paizo has its very own Twitter account. Come join the more than 200 Twitter users already getting nearly 24-hour-a-day updates on all sorts of Pathfinder info, Pathfinder RPG details, and other Paizo ephemera! Follow along on the Paizo Twitter page right here.
There's also a new Twitter page for Planet Stories, where you can get endless updates on all your favorite pulp science fiction and fantasy stories and authors as well as other exciting news on all our upcoming adventures!
Several of us at Paizo have iPhones, but some of us flaunt that fact a bit more than others. Take Managing Art Director James Davis, for example—since he got his iPhone, we very rarely see him without at least one earbud stuck in an ear, and he heads back to show me some (admittedly cool) new app he found once a week on average.
Of course, the good news is that his iPhone obsession sometimes results in cool stuff we can share. Such as these three Pathfinder iPhone wallpapers! Check 'em out!
So one year ago today, I made a post to this blog about what was coming in 2008 for Pathfinder's Adventure Path. I just went back and looked and it's some interesting reading. For the most part, we accomplished everything on that list, although as we got toward the end of the predictions for 2008, I note a few things that didn't quite work out the way I'd planned for them to. Pathfinder #16 didn't have a gazetteer of the Darklands surrounding the drow city, and as I'd feared, the article about Demon Lords did indeed slip from #17 to #18. But overall, pretty close!
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that here we are at the end of 2009, and I need a topic for a blog post. Especially after we missed several posts over the past few days due to snow-related apocalypses. So, without further ado, here's what you can look forward to seeing in Pathfinder in 2009!
January: The Second Darkness Adventure Path comes to a close this month with Brian Cortijo's "Descent Into Midnight," taking the PCs into one of the deepest reaches of the Darklands. A gazetteer of the mysterious Land of Black Blood and an article about the 29 most notorious of Golarion's demon lords rounds out the first volume of the year. Followers of Eando Klein's adventures in the Pathfinder Journal won't want to miss this volume, for this installment brings his long adventure to a close!
February: We heat things up in chilly February by traveling far to the south of Varisia to start the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path. Paizo's own publisher, Erik Mona, penned this volume's adventure, "Howl of the Carrion King," and New York Times bestselling author Elaine Cunningham takes over the Pathfinder Journal, starting a new story that'll run alongside of the Legacy of Fire campaign.
March: Those who didn't get enough gnolls from the first Legacy of Fire adventure in February will love "The House of the Beast," by Tim Hitchcock. The picture shown here by Svetlin Velinov depicts just one of the exciting encounters you can look forward to in this massive dungeon crawl, proving that there's more than gnolls waiting for you! Sean K Reynolds continues his exploration of Golarion's deities with Sarenrae, and Steve Kenson explores the region around Pale Mountain in northwest Katapesh, ground zero for half of Legacy of Fire's adventures.
April: In April, we begin Wolfgang Baur's four-part series of articles about the Genies of Golarion, starting with an exploration of what it is to be one of these magical elemental creatures to begin with. Darrin Drader's first Pathfinder adventure, "The Jackal's Price," takes the PCs into the second-largest city in the Inner Sea region, and Richard Pett shows us what goes on in a typical Katapesh marketplace. Be afraid, as they say…
May: RPG Superstar finalist Jason Nelson's adventure, "The End of Eternity," takes the PCs into an unexpected realm both near and far from Katapesh, while Todd Stewart, author of The Great Beyond, explores the chaotic extraplanar race of the proteans. Wolfgang's genie articles continue with an exploration of methods to bind and command genies.
June: At the height of summer, Pathfinder heads into one of the game's most legendary sites—the efreeti-ruled City of Brass on the Elemental Plane of Fire. Greg Vaughan's adventure, "The Impossible Eye," delves deep into one of the city's palace fortresses, while Wolfgang Baur explores the rest of the City of Brass in a gazetteer of the mythic realm. And Sean K Reynolds adds Rovagug to the list of big deity articles.
July: The Legacy of Fire reaches its explosive conclusion in RPG Superstar finalist Rob McCreary's "The Final Wish," where we get to see just what happens when a crazed genie gets too generous with his wish-granting mojo. Wolfgang's genie articles end with all sorts of genie-powered magic, and we pull back the curtain on the spawn of Rovagug. The tarrasque is only the most famous one of many, after all!
August: Things start to get a little bit hazier once we move into Gen Con, as they usually do, but I do know that August sees the launch of something no less than the first ever Pathfinder RPG Adventure Path, "Council of Thieves." Fully compatible with both the new rules and the 3.5 SRD, this Adventure Path heads back north to the city of Westcrown in Cheliax, home of devil worshipers, tiefling bandits, and lots and lots of rebels! We've been pitching the adventure in house here as "The Godfather" meets "The Omen," but I'm still not quite sure what exactly we mean about that. Those of you who've been waiting patiently for lots of details on the Hellknights should find one of this volume's support articles of particular interest.
September: The Council of Thieves Adventure Path takes place entirely in and surrounding the city of Westcrown, and as a result, many of the adventures in this campaign will have a distinctively urban feel. This volume's adventure ups that ante, asking the PCs not only to brave the perils of urban adventures, but to take part in a violent and dangerous play in order to impress the local nobility! Anyone can kill an otyugh, but how many adventurers can remember their next line on stage during the middle of a fight for their life?
October: The PCs continue to oppose the Council of Thieves as Westcrown falls ever more under the influence of the mysterious thieves' guild, and the second part of an exploration of the Hellknights of Cheliax (a series scheduled to begin back in August) shows us even more about this organization's methods and resources.
November: At some point along the way in Council of Thieves, I suspect we'll be talking quite a bit about devils and Hell—about Mammon and Erebus in particular. I won't promise a lot more about this archdevil in November, but chances are good! This volume's adventure, tentatively titled "The Infernal Syndrome," explores just why it's a bad idea to rely too much on diabolic magic for comforts around the home.
December: It's pretty likely that by this time, we'll have a nice big article that examines the tieflings of Golarion. Also, I probably should have mentioned that Sean'll be taking a long look at the church of Iomedae back in September already, but in December we've got a toasty gift for everyone—Asmodeus, one of the deities most requested for an exploration in Pathfinder, finally makes his debut here!
And that's that! Wes and I are going to be spending a fair amount of time this week getting Council of Thieves all mapped out in detail, and in the months to come I'm sure we'll have more to say. But for now, the hints and clues and teasers above will have to suffice. Next year's looking like it could be Paizo's biggest year yet, in any case—hope to see you all there!
Science fiction and fantasy. To much of the literate world, they're the same thing—they even get shelved in the same section at all but the most enlightened bookstores. Yet among those who enjoy these genres the most, the lines between the two are sharp and expansive (even if no two people agree on where that line is drawn). Many of the friends whose book recommendations I take to heart scoff at the idea of getting science fiction chocolate in their fantasy peanut butter—they'll read one but not the other. It's a sort of literary apartheid.
For me, though, there's never been that divide. Science fiction and fantasy are two great tastes that taste great together, and I don't mind rocking some boats to keep the ampersand in SF&F.
Sometimes, of course, the purists are right. Every time Wes and Jacobs comb through one of my manuscripts to make sure I'm not slipping hidden particle accelerators or robots into Pathfinder, I'm forced to admit that they're correct to do so—it's important to keep a world internally consistent, and getting too hung up on science in a magical setting can break the feel (or the author). Never mind how cool it might have been to make Varisia's towering Spindlehorn a space elevator for ancient thaumateurgic astronauts... it just doesn't fit.
Which is why I was so happy to get a chance to write the "Into the Black" support article for Pathfinder #14, a gazetteer of Golarion's solar system and the diverse cultures which inhabit it. These days, I spend a lot of my time buried in Planet Stories manuscripts, visiting worlds like Leigh Brackett's exotic and dying Skaith in the Eric John Stark books, or Robert E. Howard's Almuric, not to mention swashbuckling Burroughsian pulp like the Mars novels from Michael Moorcock and Otis Adelbert Kline. With this article, I (with significant influence from publisher Erik Mona) got the chance to finally bring hardcore Planet Stories SF into the Pathfinder Chronicles setting.
While I included many more modern SF tropes, from the terminator-line society of Verces to the irradiated liches of Eox the dead or the Jovian floaters of Liavara and Bretheda, Golarion's closest neighbors are straight out of the sword and planet genre epitomized by the Planet Stories books. The green planet of Castrovel, with its steamy jungles and beautiful telepathic matriarchs, meshes completely with the 1930s image of Venus, and any fan of Burroughs or Brackett will quickly recognize their Mars in Akiton's four-armed warriors and desert strongholds.
If you're like me and already enjoy mixing and matching your genres, I hope Pathfinder #14 hits the spot. And if you're a Pathfinder or Planet Stories purist, well, this might be a good point to give the other camp a shot and see what you've been missing. After all, despite what Dr. Egon Spengler might say, sometimes it's good to cross the streams...
Anyone who's haunted the Paizo messageboards for a while has likely come across the artwork of Ashton Sperry, our own N'wah. (If you haven't, look for his posts in this thread!) That Ashton is a big ol' Pathfinder fan goes without saying. His deluxe-sized rune giant paper "miniature" so impressed us a few months back that when asked if we'd like to see more Pathfinder characters receive the same 2D paper miniature treatment there was absolutely no way we could turn him down. Well, the artistic fruits of Ashton's labor showed up today and they're simply too awesome to keep to ourselves! Heroes, and villains, and goblins aplenty! More proof that we have the most talented, most insane, most incredible readers in the world. So a huge thanks from all of us here to Ashton and his colorist Ben's (Benchak on the boards) amazing work!
And as we keep having to tell people, they're not paper dolls, they're precisely scaled miniature combat aids. There's a difference.
Pathfinder #14 Second Darkness Chapter 2: "Children of the Void"—A star has fallen from the sky, destroying the island known as the Devil's Elbow. Tasked by a group of elven bounty hunters to investigate a dark elf assassin tied to the catastrophe, the heroes travel to the blasted island only to find it crawling with prospectors, merchants, and mercenaries eager to salvage the legendary "skymetal" sure to have fallen from space.
Pathfinder #15 Second Darkness Chapter 3: "The Armageddon Echo"—Evidence recovered from the devastated island known as the Devil's Elbow indicates that vile dark elves have infiltrated the ruined elven city of Celwynvian. The heroes join forces with the valorous elves of Crying Leaf in an attempt to reclaim the city from darkness.
Pathfinder #16 Second Darkness Chapter 4: "Endless Night"—Disguised as evil dark elves, the heroes penetrate a hidden city in the subterranean Darklands in an effort to discover the drow plan for the coming apocalypse. The possibility of a traitor among the goodly elves of the surface world and the discovery of the heroes' ruse leads to a race through treacherous caverns in a desperate effort to warn allies of impending doom.
Pathfinder #17 Second Darkness Chapter 5: "A Memory of Darkness"—Armed with the knowledge that an elven traitor supplied the drow with the magical means to call down the stars and devastate Golarion, the PCs arrive at the elven nation of Kyonin to find their claims falling on deaf ears.
Pathfinder Chronicles
Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods & Magic—This comprehensive 64-page guidebook provides an overview of the 20 "core" Pathfinder Chronicles gods and their religions, with an emphasis on rules and information players can use at the game table, whether they're playing a zealous cleric, brave paladin, or simply a faithful member of any character class.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Into the Darklands—Delve the deep secrets of the Darklands, a subterranean realm frequented by dark elves, shadow dragons, and worse! This comprehensive sourcebook provides an overview of the cavernous realms below the surface of the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to Absalom—The largest and most important metropolis in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting comes alive in this comprehensive guide to the City at the Center of the World!
GameMastery Maps
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Darklands—features a maze of interconnected underworld tunnels. The Flip side features a huge, cavernous chamber.
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Desert—features a majestic desert filled with blowing sands and massive dunes. The Flip side features a desert oasis centered on a small pond and teeming with life.
GameMastery Map Pack: Elven City—Locations include: Treehouse Dwelling, Mystic Arch, Statuary Garden Temple of the Four Winds, and Council of Chambers.
The Dark World, by Henry Kuttner—Henry Kuttner's Sword and Sorcery classic returns to print at last! World War II veteran Edward Bond's recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar.
Death in Delhi, by Gary Gygax—A giant ruby and a plea to rescue the purloined crown jewels of Delhi arrives at the villa of Magister Setne Inhetep, philosopher-wizard of the Pharaoh of Aegypt!
There's a lot to love about pen-and-paper RPGs. Sitting around a table with your friends... telling stories... rolling dice... sweating with tension or laughing yourself sick over nothing but the combined power of your imaginations. In fact, frequently the only part that isn't fun is the actual pen-and-paper part of it: the ragged character sheets, or the frantic searches through books to see if that's actually how the spell works.
Now at last there are not one, but two computer programs that can make your time at the gaming table less work and more play. Both HeroLab from Lone Wolf Development and RPGXplorer offer you a wealth of searchable, graphically-interfaced information at your fingertips. Build and update your character with just clicks of a mouse, manage your inventory, search a massive rules database, or create new game content, all in seconds.
Now are you ready for the best part? Both HeroLab and RPGXplorer have been licensed to incorporate Pathfinder content into their products. Yes! Owners of either of these products will be able to download free data sets that include all of the crunch from Pathfinder to help your game run that much smoother. Just visit the company's websites, or click here for RPGXplorer's downloads for Pathfinder #1 and the Player's Guide.
Attention To Detail: The Story Behind Pathfinder's Supporting Material
Saturday, April 21, 2007
When coming up with the format for Pathfinder, one of the biggest questions we faced as a team was, "Okay, adventure path, check—but what else is going to be in there?" While we knew that the adventure that is the heart of each volume would grab people, that only accounts for a bit over half of each book. Something that's hard to grasp until you're actually staring down the barrel of a pagination is just how massive each one of these books is going to be—without in-text ads to eat up space, almost a hundred pages is a daunting amount of white space. What were we going to put there?
Ideas flowed fast and furious, and many of them quickly crashed and burned. Everything from familiar content like appendices of magic items and reports on current gaming news to outlandish proposals like a miniature Adventure-Path-related comic book in every issue (my own misguided suggestion, and an undertaking only slightly less expensive than putting a man on Mars). In the end, however, we came up with two guiding principles for all "back matter" (as we've taken to calling the supplementary pieces).
1. Everything in an issue of Pathfinder must be actively useful to a DM running the Adventure Path.
2. At least some of it needs to be fun and useful for players as well as DMs.
While one of the nice things about the Pathfinder format is that supplementary pieces have the luxury of being more free-form with their structure, much of the back matter in Pathfinder falls into one of the following general categories.
Cities and Regions: One of the strongest selling points of Pathfinder, in my mind, is that it gives you literally EVERYTHING you need to run a campaign. While we of course encourage people to adapt the Adventure Path to their own homebrew campaign worlds—some of us at the office are doing the same thing—we also think it's important to make the setting itself as compelling as the plot. In Rise of the Runelords alone, we have three extensive city write-ups detailing cities that the PCs will visit in the course of their travels—Sandpoint, Magnimar, and Xin-Shalast. These aren't just town stat blocks—these are massive affairs filled with locations, NPCs, backstory, encounters, and maps of surpassing intricacy and beauty. (You'd think I was exaggerating, but when Wes Schneider brought in the map he'd drawn of the city of Magnimar, site of the second adventure, I would have sworn he'd traced it off of Google Maps... there was simply too much detail. When asked how he managed it, he shrugged and replied, "latent obsessive-compulsive tendencies, I suppose.") In addition, we'll also have a large-scale map of the entire region of Varisia, in which Rise of the Runelords takes place, with write-ups for dozens of locations that simultaneously help flesh out the world and give you instant story starters for additional adventures. (I don't know about you, but I'm always a huge fan of provocative regional maps that give you just enough flavor to get your mind going, then turn you loose.)
Ecological Write-ups: Designing a new setting and working under the OGL means that we have the opportunity to introduce new monsters and re-imagine classic ones. (If you want a taste of where we're headed, scroll down to the last blog post on the goblins in our world.) In Rise of the Runelords, we plan to reveal our vision for stone giants and dragons in depth, taking things beyond a mere MM entry and showing you their society, their beliefs, their insides... in short, everything that makes them tick. Because while a good illustration can make a monster intriguing, it's how they think (and how you play them) that makes them great adversaries.
Gods and Demons: Similar to my feelings on monsters, I think that gods and demons (somewhat interchangeable terms in our world) are the most fun when they have engaging stories. Several times in each Adventure Path, we'll pick one of the gods or demons from our campaign setting and give you an in-depth look at everything about them, from their story and stats to their worshippers and heralds. For the first path, that'll be Desna, Song of the Spheres and patron of gypsies, and Lamashtu, the Goddess of Monstrous Birth.
Additional Encounters: What if your party skipped half the encounters in part of an adventure, or heads off in a direction you hadn't expected? Additional encounters in the region, conveniently tied to the Adventure Path, can help save you a lot of scrambling.
Bestiary: One of the few supplementary sections guaranteed to be in each issue, the Pathfinder bestiary will contain a number of brand-new monsters each month, both actively involved in the adventure and unrelated but thematically tied. For a sneak preview of what sorts of creatures you can expect to see in the first volume, keep watching this blog!
NPCs: It takes more than just a stat block to make a fun NPC, and whenever possible, Pathfinder will present the supporting cast—both heroes and villains—in an expanded format designed to be easily to cut-and-pasted into other adventures.
Pathfinder Journal: One of the other constants in the back matter, the Pathfinder Journal will explore a new aspect of our campaign setting each month and help tie together elements of both Pathfinder and the 32-page GameMastery Modules, helping to increase cohesion and give you even more options for expansion.
Miscellaneous Crunch: Ah, the joy of the miscellaneous category! Here you'll find everything from new spells, rules, and feats tied to sin magic (a magic system tied to the seven deadly sins and utilized by the Runelords) to pieces on how to run and maintain your own keep or castle.
History: I'm sure that by now you're probably getting the general gist of the Pathfinder ideology, but the history of a game world is just as important—and potentially inspiring—as it's geography. A chance for us (not to mention some of the biggest names in the RPG business) to shade in the historical background of our world? Yes, please!
Pre-generated Characters: Never again will you have to worry about players forgetting their character sheets at home. Each volume of Pathfinder will feature pre-generated characters based on Wayne Reynolds's stunning depictions of the Paizo iconics, allowing you and your party to grab the book and jump straight into the adventure with a minimum of prep time.
Whew! Keep in mind that those are only a few of the broad categories you might find in each volume—as I mentioned before, one of the things that excites me most about Pathfinder personally is our freedom to run the pieces that need to be run, regardless of whether or not they fit in with an established section. To build something from the ground up and have the authority to experiment is a glorious thing, and I believe strongly that when an author says, "how detailed should section XXX be?" and we can answer, "as much as it needs to be," everyone wins... especially the reader.
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