Here at Paizo, we understand that our fans, friends, and contributors (and the sizable cadre of folks who combine all three categories) are a little different than most companies' communities. It's not uncommon for Paizo fans to send us pizzas out of the blue as a thank-you gesture, or offer to buy us drinks when they run into us somewhere in the city. (Both of which initially confused us—you're giving us presents for selling you books?—but we aren't complaining.) We've seen a room full of Paizo trivia champions, Paizo cosplay, and a whole darn Paizo theater performance from an extremely talented grade school (and their supremely cool teacher). It's humbling and awesome at the same time.
Tim Hitchcock, however, may have just taken the cake, at least for me personally. You see, a while back, Tim and I were talking about music in the Tuesday-night Paizo Chat. Tim, a musician who retired from touring in order to become a teacher, was asking me about the bass rig I used in my metal and hardcore band, Shadow at Morning, and my opinions on distortion pedals. I said that I thought they were cool, but I'd never gotten around to picking one up.
"Why don't I build you one?" he asked. Apparently Mr. Hitchcock knows a thing or two about electronics.
I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's not every day somebody offers to build you custom gear. I said sure, and promptly forgot about it for about six months.
And then today, I got this in the mail: proof positive that Tim Hitchcock is totally insane, in the best possible sense of the word. (When I originally opened the package, the glowing light made Wes think Tim must have finally had enough and decided to send us a letter bomb.)
Photograph by Christopher Carey. Goblin illustration originally by Kyle Hunter.
Without question (at least until I get it home and plug it in), my favorite part is the little goblin that Tim etched into the steel of the faceplate. (And in case you're wondering, the goblin is referencing the classic Big Muff bass pedal, upon which Tim based the electronics.)
Though Shadow at Morning unfortunately disbanded a few weeks before the pedal's arrival, I'm already in the process of recording with a new project, and you can bet that when we're ready to hit the stage, Tim's phenomenal creation will be front and center...
From the journal of Mike Selinker, the first harrower:
The story of Harrow starts as all good stories do, with Erik Mona and a portent of doom. "You, Master Selinker," he foreshadowed, "are being hunted by a undaunted band of brothers. A band that cannot be daunted by the mightiest of daunters. I speak, perforce, of the strapping young men of Pathfinder. They are coming for you."
I sought an exit, but these are Pathfinders, you see. They can find anyone, and since I am anyone, they found me. From me they demanded a boon: a tarot deck they could call their very own. Messrs. James and James and Jason and F. Wesley believed that the world thirsted for such a deck. I was the humble peddler of games that could slake this thirst.
"Sa-ha!" I vocalized to all who would hear, "I shall call this deck 'Harrow,' as it speaks of travels through the inferno, and it rhymes with 'Tarot.' And I shall not be alone in this undertaking! If I am to walk this road, I will have a mighty illustrator to illuminate my path." This depicter of souls would be Kyle Stanley Hunter, he who could pluck from the darker planes the disturbing images that would force legions of gamers into hiding betwixt carpet and bed.
"I need one card," I posited to Mr. Stanley Hunter, and his expression of relief was palpable, and just as fleeting when I continued: "One card for each of fifty-four intersections of alignments and abilities laid upon an imperceptible grid. This is what I command. But what shall they be?"
"There may be a prince of rabbits," Kyle pronounced, "and a cricket with a melon, and a queen with six legs, and...." I left him to his prattle, and hearkened for a woman who could detail our method of beckoning that would strip the truth from the past, the present, and the future. This woman was the oddly-named Teeuwynn Woodruff, an oracle of (Phila-)Delphi(-a). "Tell me of my future," I beseeched Mistress Teeuwynn, "the future which involves you writing most of this rulebook."
She set her laptop to such a divinatory task, and I returned to Squire Bulmahn, he of the boisterous laugh and unbending stomach. "From you I do exact a concept for a cutthroat gambling game," I invoked. He had been warned of his destiny. "There shall be towers," he declaimed. "Oh, yes, there shall be towers."
Could there be a pair of stalwarts to weave all this together, I conjectured? There could. We would enlist yet another Mike (McArtor) and still a third James (Davis) in the editing and graphic design of this most epic of decks. From hither and from yon, they weaved.
Now it was done. The past, present, and future were divined. All that remained was the ritual sharing of the stomach-turning soda pops, and the recounting of the glories, and the filling of the requisite 500-word count. Which is now complete.
The 54 cards of the Harrow do not only portend sunderings and strife. Indeed, the cards can also express creation and unity.
The Forge, for example, represents strength through great diversity. It is a test, and those who pass the test are the stronger for it. The Marriage is a union—of people, of countries, or even of ideas and thoughts. Mergers portended by The Marriage cannot be parted.
Note how both the Forge's hammer and the Marriage's crown are positioned in the middle of the left-hand-side of their respective cards. As hinted at in the past, the alignment of each icon and the icons themselves all mean something specific for the cards. Where the position of its icon determines the card's overall demeanor, the icon itself keeps score of an ability the card represents.
Harrow releases in only a few weeks. When it does, I foresee in your future years of enjoyment.
The 54 cards of the Harrow do not tell you what you want to hear. No no. They tell you what was, what is, and what will be. Sometimes, a card comes up in your reading you do not want to see.
One of the cards nobody wants is the dreaded Cyclone. This dire card expresses destruction and cataclysm. Worse yet, it symbolizes disaster wrought by thinking minds, and not the oft-random tragedies wrought by Nature.
All is not lost, however, when the Cyclone appears in your reading. At times, when it appears in specific places of the spread, this card of chaos and evil actually signifies renewal and rebirth after a blustery, trying ordeal. You must still endure suffering and tragedy, for the Cyclone never portends good tidings, but you shall survive the challenge put before you.
What other dark omens await you in the Harrow deck? Only time will tell...
Within the 54 cards of the Harrow deck live your past, your present, and your future. Like you, each card is unique and has its own story to tell.
Take, for example, the Rabbit Prince. He tells stories of battle. Glorious, bloody, horrific battle, with opponents facing off in chaotic melees doing all they can to kill one another with sword and spear and axe. The Rabbit Prince relishes hand-to-hand combat and, like it, he is both quick and capricious.
Let's take a quick look at the card itself. The broken sword indicates the singular purpose of battle: to destroy. Anyone who engages in combat—regardless of courage, experience, or skill—can be maimed or killed. As a member of royalty, the prince himself can represent young aristocrats, whether royal or noble. And what meaning has the key? Does its placement on the card affect its importance?
Well, there are some things one must wait to discover. For while the Harrow knows all, it is not necessarily quick to share its knowledge...
It's not every day you get a chance to create a means of time travel. Some might argue that divination isn't really time travel, but the way I envision it, a harrower—one gifted in the use of the Harrow deck—uses her deck of 54 cards to travel the paths of time, catching glimpses of the past, present, and future along the way.
With this in mind, I had to imagine myself as a harrower. Each card must be defined broadly enough to cover a number of situations, yet narrowly enough for those conducting harrowings—and those running adventures—to get some real information. Once some of Kyle's evocative art began to come in, I tweaked the cards' meanings to enhance their connection to that art.
The divinatory system itself needed to be easy to run, create the proper mystical mood, and fit into the roleplaying milieu. We gave every card a symbol of one of the six abilities in a position of one of the nine alignments; for example, The Unicorn is a chaotic good Charisma card, as shown by the crown in the upper right corner. The harrower lays the cards in a three-by-three divinatory grid matching time (past, present, and future) to the Law/Chaos alignment axis. After all, the past (represented by Law) is most fixed and difficult (although not impossible) to change, while the future (represented by Chaos) is infinitely changeable. Similarly, the Good/Evil axis came to represent positive, neutral, and negative situations for the person whose questions the harrower is answering. The good section of the grid represents the positive, while the evil section reflects negative outcomes. This basic grid presents the harrower with a solid framework to begin doing readings, but the nuances of the cards are evocative and expansive enough to let a capable harrower use them in many situations—both in game and out. Take a look for yourself and see if you agree.
The Harrow Deck has a wide variety of uses, from a divination tool to a common game played for coppers in taprooms across Golarion. The game is known as Towers, and it is included in the Harrow Deck.
Towers is a simple gambling game for two to four players. At the start of the game, six special cards are laid out from the Harrow Deck, forming the base of the towers. Each player is dealt a hand of three cards. Players take turns placing cards from their hand onto the towers, trying to rid themselves of as many cards as possible while blocking the way for opponents to do the same. If you can't play some of your cards, they accrue as debt owed to the other players. As the game progresses it becomes harder and harder to play your cards and your debt can really spiral out of control. The game comes to an end when no one can play any more cards. At that point, each player's debt is tallied and players must pay the difference to those with a lower value.
The game is simple to learn, but has some complex strategy for those who are eager to fleece their opponents. A word of caution: This game can be addictive and I would hate to see someone lose a vorpal sword over a few bad hands.
One of the most innovative things I've seen in D&D occurred back in the original Ravenloft, where the villain's motivation, treasure placement, and adventure goals depended upon the results of an in-game fortune-telling session. Even years later, I still recall that feeling of surprise and excitement when I first looked through that adventure. With Curse of the Crimson Throne, Pathfinder's second Adventure Path, we'll be trying something similar.
The Harrow deck is our fortune-telling tool for this Adventure Path. The deck itself is a 54-card deck broken down into six suits of nine cards each. While, in-game, these six suits and the card images themselves are "in character," it draws a lot of its inspiration from the mechanics of the game as well. The deck's six suits each symbolize one of the six basic attributes all characters are built around: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. And in each of those six suits, we have nine different cards for each of the nine alignments. Therefore, we have a chaotic evil Wisdom card, a neutral good Strength card, a lawful neutral Dexterity card, and so on.
Of course, the actual art on each of these cards hides its genesis in the rules behind symbolism and metaphor, so you don't have to worry about any weird self-aware metagame strangeness popping up (I doubt very much you'd ever hear a Varisian say something like, "that chaotic evil king has a really low charisma!"). The Harrow deck itself is an ancient divination tool used by the Varisians to tell the future and divine fortunes. Think of it as an RPG-version of the tarot deck.
Each of Curse of the Crimson Throne's six adventures are also tied in theme to the six suits of the Harrow deck, and as you play through this new Adventure Path, Harrow deck readings can provide valuable insights, helpful bonuses, or even unexpected perils and dangers. You can expect to see some recurring themes throughout the Adventure Path tied to the Harrow deck, but we'll be going beyond that. Players will be able to select a feat, "Harrowed," that'll let them use draws from the deck to hopefully tip fortune in their favor. Visit a rough-and-tumble bar down on the waterfront in Korvosa and you'll be able to gamble away your treasure in a game of Towers, a gambling game created by lowbrows and scoundrels using the Harrow deck (and designed by industry veterans Jason Bulmahn, Mike Selinker, and Teeuwynn Woodruff). And just as the infamous Deck of Many Things was inspired by the tarot deck, there might be a powerful magic Harrow deck waiting to bring all matter of mayhem to your group at some point in Curse of the Crimson Throne.
And the best part? We're making a Harrow deck you can use yourself, whether as part of your campaign, in readings of your own, or just as a fun fantasy-themed card game. Over the next several weeks, we'll be showing off Kyle Hunter's artwork for the Harrow deck here on our blog. Keep an eye out, and see if you can figure out which image goes with the chaotic evil strength card versus the one that goes with the lawful good one!
Some of you may have already noticed a striking stylistic similarity between the fun cartoon goblin illustrating Pathfinder #1's introduction and those strange little monsters that used to appear in Dungeon to illustrate the Dungeoncraft column and the table of contents. That's because both series are done by one of our favorite artists and creative minds, Downer creator Kyle Stanley Hunter.
Much as he did in Dungeon, each month Kyle will be giving us his unique take on a key monster found in that month's volume of Pathfinder. For "The Skinsaw Murders," for instance, he's produced a fearsome ghoul, and future adventures will bring ogres, giants, and more.
We're all super-excited to have Kyle onboard for this and some other super-exciting secret projects a bit farther down the road, and for those of you unfamiliar with his work, I highly recommend checking out Downer: Wandering Monster or his personal website at www.superunicorn.com/kyle/, both of which contain galleries featuring dozens more of his trademark "mini monsters."
Finally, the entire run of Downer, Kyle Hunter's magnificent adventure epic from the pages of Dungeon, is being collected in one place! Well, two actually. Collected in two full-color trade paperback volumes, of which Wandering Monster is the first, Hunter's dark and witty comic chronicles the adventures of Downer Tarantula, renegade drow, and his band of misfit friends as they attempt to keep a powerful relic known as the ulolock out of the clutches of a bevy of mysterious enemies. In addition, this book features selections from the artist's sketchbook, a gallery of over 100 classic monsters, and a complete map and overview of Downer's home city, the underground metropolis of Oubliette. Check it out today, and get into the story from the very beginning!
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