The past year has been a great one for Paizo and Pathfinder and we've been happy to help spread the Pathfinder message far and wide. Last week we had the opportunity to sit down with the fine folks from the Atomic Array podcast. It's their 50th episode and they wanted to make it a Pathfinder show, so we had James Jacobs take the time to talk to them about the upcoming Inner Sea World Guide hardcover (due in February). They also had Greg Vaughan on to talk about his just released module, The Witchwar Legacy. You can listen to the podcast by clicking here.
With the holiday season already here, we couldn't be happier to have been featured on Wired.com's Geek Dad Holiday Buying Guide. Every year the Geek Dad site puts together a list of the coolest products available that year. This year we had 5 products mentioned, a Paizo first!
When Mike Selinker and I were designing Yetisburg, Mike had this awesome idea to write a bunch of Yeti-themed songs based on the actual soldiering songs of the American Civil War and sprinkle them throughout the rulebook. Unfortunately for Mike, those songs proved too big for our little rulebook and only one, Dixie, was left in. Fortunately for you, the outstanding Paizo blog reader, we're going to share all of them with you now!
Dixie (Oh I Wish That Weren't a Yeti)
Oh I wish that weren't a Yeti,
No way, no way
In Dixie Land it's not so grand
To be eaten by a Yeti
Run away, run away,
Run away now from the Yeti!
Abominable Hymn of the Snowman
Mine eyes have seen a Yeti
On whose tusks my friends are gored;
He is trampling through the Cavalry
And cannot be ignored;
'Twould protest this incursion
But his rage I can't afford;
I hope he'll soon be gone!
The Yetis are Marching Home
The Yetis are marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
To join their belov'd Canadians,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
It was great when they battled by our side
And great when so many of them died
And we'll all exhale as the
Yetis go marching home!
All credit for the songs should go to Mike Selinker. Yetisburg is available now on paizo.com and will soon be available at your local game store.
This past weekend, roughly thirty adventurous gamers descended upon the LaQuinta Inn in Bellevue, Washington to participate in the first annual PaizoCon. In attendance were several of our messageboard family's most visible personalities, including Lilith, Chris Mortika, Pete Apple, Grimcleaver, Timitius (who put together the event), Russ Taylor, and many more. Paizo itself made an appearance Saturday, with Lisa, Vic, James, Wes, and Erik (along with Open Design's own Wolfgang Baur!) answering questions and joking around with everyone at the Game Industry seminar. Josh, Corey, and I stayed shyly in the back, while Cosmo sneaked around the room snapping pictures, including the four presented here.
After the seminar, the Paizo staff mingled with the con's excellent attendees, and eventually a number of Pathfinder RPG games broke out (run by Wolfgang Baur, Jason Bulmahn, James Jacobs, and Russ Taylor), as did demos of Titanic's upcoming Yetisburg and Falling, as well as Kill Doctor Lucky and Key Largo.
Here's a look at the entire room, including the panelists, during the seminar.
Here's a look at everyone during the seminar.
From left to right: Lisa, Vic, Erik, Wolfgang, James, and Wes, with Lilith off to the right reading off questions.
From left to right: Timitius, James, Jason, and Mike.
To see all of Cosmo's pictures and to get a glimpse at what the elusive bronze dragon editor looks like in his human form, check out this page. For a different perspective, check out Timitius's pictures. For a detailed recap and a chance to weigh in, check out this thread on our messageboards.
A few appropriate remarks, spoken by President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, after a two-hour fusillade of yowling by the Right Abominable Statesman, Senator Everett OrYARRadoogOOch'ook!ook!:
Four score and seven yetis ago, our fathers discovered on the northern fringes of this continent a new breed of soldier, conceived in the Belly of Hell, and dedicated to the proposition that not only men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a rarely civil war, testing whether those yetis, or any yetis, so ill-conceived and so odiferous, can long be endured. We are met on a great charnel house of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that those yetis might be once again returned to Canada. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, for they do us no good at all here.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not even find—this ground. The brave yetis, living and dead, who struggled here, have pretty much torn it to ribbons, far above our poor power to reconstruct. The yetis will little note, nor long remember what we say here, as they have the attention span of a chamberpot. It is for us the humans, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished collection of random soldiers' body parts, which they who fought here have gnawed down to the bone. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they ran screaming from the field, those that could walk, anyway—that we here highly resolve that these dead should not have died in pain, oh such horrible pain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new resolve to solve its own damn problems—and that government of the people, by the people, and specifically only for the people, shall not rest until every last man-ape is driven from its shores. Really, what in thunderation were we thinking?
It's been passing long since last we embraced. After months of fighting in this damnable battle between the states, I fear I shall never hold you in my arms again. It's the Yetis, Clarabelle—they've torn off my arms at the shoulders. I write this hasty note to you with pen firmly in mouth. I trust my tears shall not disrupt the ink and that our love will carry me through the challenging months to come.
In the weeks after the traitorous Secession, the shaggy beasts came from the darkened forests of the Canadian north. My grandfather remembered tales of the hulking monsters serving in the front lines of the enemy in 1812, but this time, the generals claimed, they would battle on the side of the righteous Union.
Believe me, Clarabelle, these Yetis fight on no side but their own. In the first few battles their razor claws and savage maws tore great bloody holes in the ranks of the enemy, but bullets in a territory of war know no difference betwixt friend and foe. This Wednesday last I had occasion to misfire my carbine into the back of one of the shaggy white beasts, and he turned on me with the fury of a savage beast. It was all the doctors could do to save my life that wretched day, and the worst of it is that my wedding band now rests with my festering fingers in the belly of that overgrown, odiferous meat-monkey.
I write with trembling lips that Johnny Reb has Yetis of his own, disgusting hair-patched beasts they purchased from the distant North. I am no longer certain of the future of our Union, but I can say with confidence that war breeds greater and greater weapons of destruction, and now that the Yetis have joined the field on both sides, there can be no assurances as to the eventual victor of this conflict.
May God above save us from the wretched Yetis. May God above save the Union!
We Paizonians have a tradition: every year at Gen Con we invent something. One year we invented Titanic Games. Another year we invented Pathfinder. Yet another year we invented trans-hyperdimensional quasiphasic proton pillows (patent pending). Last year, quite by accident, we invented Yetisburg.
The gathered Paizo editorial staff (Erik Mona, James Jacobs, Jason Bulmahn, F. Wesley Schneider, Jeremy Walker) and myself were playing rugby in the lobby of the incredibly expensive Burg de Yeti hotel in downtown Indianapolis. It was just after the second scrum when Jason threw his head back and howled, charging the ball carrier (Wes) with a vicious fervor that only a man as imposing as Jason can muster. One might say that, with his towering height and rampaging facial hair, he looked rather... yeti-like.
Wes, not wanting to be run over, retreated back behind his line and started rallying his team, pushing them toward the beastly Jason Bulmahn while shouting, "Don't be afraid of him! He's only seven feet tall!" Wes's teammates, Jeremy and James, took to Wes's orders like crows to a battlefield and started flinging all manner of object at Jason: silverware, bowling pins, a circa 1863 cannon ball, and one very angry muskrat. These distractions caused the hulking Bulmahn to pause just long enough for an errant Russian teapot to clonk him upside the head. He went down like a telephone pole, crashing terribly to earth and taking myself and the rest of our team with him.
As I struggled to extract myself from the pile of collapsed bodies, it hit me: this could be a game! It could be about our famous rugby match in the Burg de Yeti! And Jason would be represented as a yeti, with Wes as a famous rugby general and the rest of the guys as teams of brothers fighting against each other. Most importantly, I would need someone at least half as crazy as me to help me design it—Mike Selinker!
Yet another Gen Con. Yet another invention.
That's exactly how it happened. If anyone says that, as the Paizonians gathered for dinner one night, a very tired James Jacobs incorrectly heard an equally tired Erik Mona and then blurted out an incredulous "Yetisburg!?" in response, thus causing an idea I couldn't get out of my head, prompting me to tell Mike Selinker, and the two of us deciding we had to make this game—well, they're probably lying.
And that's the truth.
*Not a guarantee
Joshua J. Frost Yetisburg Co-Designer
Director of Sales & Marketing
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