The long-awaited War for the Crown Player's Guide is now available! As chaos falls across the ancient land of Taldor and powerful parties move their pieces into place, the action of lone figures can shape the fate of a nation. Spies, assassins, and cultists rub shoulders with nobles and sages, and all of Taldor stands open for canny adventurers to save or exploit. But how do elves fair in the bustling human courts? What role does a woodsy hunter or foreign psychic have to play in events? This player's guide contains plenty of information and advice for the themes and challenges yet to come, and what classes and character options can help you prepare for them!

As the Ruins of Azlant sink below the waves, a new age dawns across the Inner Sea. Discord is coming to Taldor. More accurately: the discord that has simmered quietly just beneath the staid surface of Taldor is ready to boil over, and consume the remnants of the once-great empire. Taldor's end is in sight, and has been for a thousand years. The end may be a generation away, or a century, or an age, but always it closes. The nations passengers know they plod steadily toward to edge of the world, and yet the captains at the wheel refuse to see, refuse to change the course. Most Adventure Paths aim to save the world from a new and immediate threat to emerge on the scene, but the villain threatening to destroy Taldor is entropy and tradition. And victory means changing how a whole nation thinks. Victory means winning the War for the Crown.

Eh? Is that you, girl? It's about time! I have a blasted archive to run, and I can't lollygag all day in some café waiting for a single customer! I'm Gloamont Sanderson, genealogist to kings! I don't care if I was the one who insisted on meeting here. My time is valuable!

Thursday, July 19, 2017

As you may know from yesterday's Paizo blog, F. Wesley Schneider has begun a new and exciting journey, leaving the offices of the Paizo building behind. And as you may have gleaned from that blog, remaining Paizonians have some words for Wes. And, without further delay, here they are!

With Thurston Hillman's Pathfinder Adventure Path 118: Siege of Stone about to hit subscribers, this is a great time to talk about themes and stereotypes and writing with intention. You often hear that people insist that their pop culture—their video games, their action movies, their roleplaying games—should be free of politics and "agendas," but the truth is that the personal is just politics on the small scale. Your own needs, opinions, and preferences become politics when shared or opposed by multiple people. As an author or a game developer, at some point you have to accept the responsibility that everything you create carries cultural weight, that you describe what is and isn't normal, what is and isn't moral, who is and isn't a protagonist or a villain or even a person. The orcs of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books were self-loathing and aggressive, without personal goals or culture, while elves are nuanced and individual and reflect a long and storied history—one of these groups is defined as "people" while the other are faceless opponents. Killing a hundred of one is the background noise of the trilogy; killing one of the other is a tragedy that Tolkien uses to dredge up emotion in his readers.