Gen Con Announcement Recap!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

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 Campaign Setting: We sold out of the copies of Inner Sea Magic and Pathfinder Society Field Guide we brought to the convention! Coming in the future in this line is a trip to the north with Lands of the Linnorm Kings, a visit with the daemons and their overlords in Book of the Damned 3: Horsemen of the Apocalypse, our first real excursion into the lands of Tian Xia in the Dragon Empires Gazetteer, and an investigation of ten favorite beasties in Mythological Monsters Revisited. Then, next year, we’ll explore the other planets of Golarion’s solar system in Distant Worlds, look at the big guys in Giants Revisited, look to ancient empires with Lost Kingdoms, explore the pirate and monster infested Isles of the Shackles, and finally take a trip back home with Magnimar: City of Monuments.

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 Tales: Dave Gross’s trip into Tian Xia, Master of Devils, launched at Gen Con to great success. Later this year comes Death’s Heretic by Paizo’s own James L. Sutter, followed next year by Hugh Matthews’s Song of the Serpent and Tim Pratt’s City of the Fallen Sky.

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!

James Jacobs
Creative Director