On March 20th, a contingent of Paizo staff visited the Washington State Capitol to run some games for state legislators and their staff. Logan Bonner and I received an invitation to the Legislative Game Day from the office of Steve Hobbs, our Secretary of State. Steve is a big nerd and recognizes that Washington state is the tabletop game capital of the world. When it comes to industry in this state, most people think of aerospace or agriculture. While those two sectors drive much of our state’s economy, you’d be remiss to sleep on the games industry, as Washington has the highest concentration of game companies in the country.

Some two-hundred months ago, I was a wrecked ball of frazzled nerves as I waited for the verdict to come in on the very first Pathfinder Adventure Path. This was before Pathfinder was its own RPG, and while I had experience writing and developing three previous Adventure Paths, this was the first one that wasn’t tied to an established world.

Amanda Hamon joined the Paizo fam back at the start of April in 2015 and now she’s heading off to new adventures where she will be joining the Kobold Press fam as Editorial Director. (The Kobold empire is hers!—I can’t confirm that, but it’s likely.)

An Encounter for a Bestiary Bundle! Using accessories can really enhance your game, and I couldn’t be more excited for people to get their hands on the new Pathfinder Bestiary Battle Cards. I helped put them together and during the process I was constantly thinking how they could make a game easier by just plucking out the cards you need for the session and not have to flip through the Bestiary. You can even throw together a quick encounter by grabbing a few cards from the box, plucking the corresponding pawns from the Pathfinder Bestiary Pawn Box, and slapping down a Flip-Mat on your table. Since I was thinking about it, I did just that and want to share it with all of you.

A short while ago, Logan Bonner and I appeared on Paizo’s Twitch stream to demonstrate the monster-building rules featured in the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide. With the help and suggestions from the chat audience, we walked people through the steps of creating a brand-new monster based on a piece of art that appears in the book. Now we’d like to share with you the result of that exercise. Meet our unofficial creature—the ailuran!

We want to wish all of our community a happy Pride month! As many of you know, during the month of June people across the world celebrate people in the LGBTQIA+ community being out and proud. The gaming community is full of wonderful queer folk who came to the hobby to find community with those that share their geeky interests and explore various identities through their characters and other characters who populate the worlds in which they play.