Terrifying Transformation

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The new GameMastery Module J1: Entombed with the Pharaohs has arrived in our office and is about to ship. In anticipation, I have decided to turn you all into terrible undead servants, forever bound to the tomb of the Four Pharaohs of Ascension. Are you ready? Great! Please look at the following four images:

There! Does your skin itch a bit? Do you have the urge to wrap yourself in linen bandages? Feel the need to go "Urrrrrrr?" Congratulations, you are now one of hundreds of terrible mummy guardians bound to the pyramid for all of time! Anyone who sees all four of these images is cursed and transformed into a horrible mummy. This, of course, includes any unfortunate player characters that dare to explore this ancient tomb.

Happy Halloween everybody. Now get out there and spread some undead menace—you don't even need your mummy's permission.

Jason Bulmahn
GameMastery Brand Manager

Get Your Big Break!

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Ever thought about trying to break into the gaming industry, but have no idea where to start? Now's your chance! Starting at the end of October, paizo.com will host RPG Superstar, the first adventure game industry design contest voted on by the fans, aimed at finding the newest talent in RPG design.

"With the end of the print editions of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, Paizo has lost a conduit to find new designers," says Lisa Stevens, Paizo's CEO. "We're launching a RPG design contest to give unknown talent a chance to get noticed!"

Starting on October 31, 2007, any eligible person will be able to submit an entry into the contest. For the open call, that entry will be a wondrous item using the 3.5 SRD. Each entry needs to be 200 words or less, and must include all of the proper mechanics and flavor. Judges will announce the top 32 entries on November 28; those contestants will advance to the first round of public voting, where they will be assigned a new design task and their entries will be posted on paizo.com for the public to read, critique, and vote on. The designers garnering the most votes will continue on to subsequent rounds, and the ultimate winner will earn a paid commission to write one of Paizo's upcoming GameMastery Modules!

Paizo has gathered together three judges to oversee the competition. Paizo's Publisher, Erik Mona, will share the spotlight with fan-favorite author and Kobold Quarterly publisher Wolfgang Baur, as well as Necromancer Games co-owner Clark Peterson. Each round, these judges will critique the entries before the public vote.

The fans themselves will decide which talented designers go on to the next round by casting a vote on paizo.com for their favorite contestant. Each round includes a six-day window for fans to discuss the entries and cast their votes. After the open call round ends, the next rounds will proceed as follows:

Top 32: Design a country
Top 16: Design a villain (complete with stat block)
Top 8: Design three thematically linked monsters
Top 6: Design an encounter
Top 4: Submit a full adventure proposal

The winner of the first RPG Superstar contest will be announced on February 20, 2008.

Complete rules and entry form are available at paizo.com/rpgsuperstar. Do you have what it takes to be the next RPG Superstar?

Go to paizo.com/rpgsuperstar and find out!

Joshua J. Frost
Paizo Director of Sales and Marketing

How to Stage a Haunt

Monday, October 29, 2007

With Halloween coming up, we thought it a good idea to look back to the Foxglove Manor chapter of Pathfinder #2 (which, incidentally, would work extremely well as a standalone haunted house romp for All Hallows' Eve) and explain a bit more about one of the spooky innovations introduced there.

In "The Skinsaw Murders," we present a new way to handle an old classic—haunts. The mechanic for haunts is cool because it allows us to present really atmospheric encounters in a way that combines crunchy game play and creepy flavor. It also allows for a lot of flexibility in ways that classic haunted house monsters like ghosts don't really work. You want a room with walls that bleed? A haunt can do that. With a ghost, it's a little trickier.

You can expect haunts to show up now and then in Pathfinder—when they do, we'll reprint the basic rules so you don't need to always have a copy of Pathfinder #2 on hand. But one thing became clear as I started reading messageboard posts about "The Skinsaw Murders": what's missing is a section that talks about how haunts play out in the game. I posted the rest of this blog post on the messageboard, but I think it's important enough to "graduate" into the blog, so here it is! (WARNING: A small spoiler for "The Skinsaw Murders" is built into the rest of this post!)

The best analogy for a haunt is a trap. Treat them in play as traps, but traps that are evil and freaky and have a malevolent guiding intelligence behind them.

Take the first trap, the Burning Manticore, as an example. The PCs may smell burning hair the first time they pass through the room. The second time, the haunt manifests. Ask the PC who's haunted by burning to make a Spot check. If he fails the DC 20 check, the haunt manifests, makes its attack on him, and if he's hit he makes a Reflex save to avoid catching on fire. If he catches on fire, to his friends it looks like he just spontaneously combusts—he's the only one who can see the haunt, remember. Once the haunt's done its thing, that's it. It's done for a day; it can't be triggered again for 24 hours.

If the haunted PC makes that DC 20 Spot check, have him roll Initiative. Describe to him the image of the manticore lurching to life, its face shifting and its fur igniting, but don't have the haunt do its thing until initiative count 10. If the PC alerts his friends that something's going on, they get to roll Initiative checks as well. Anyone who goes before 10 gets to do something about the haunt (but remember, only the haunted character can SEE what's going on). This includes attempts to turn undead, to run out of the room, to cast resist elements (fire) on the haunted character, and so on. At initiative count 10, the haunt triggers (unless its target is gone, in which case it fades away and can't activate again for 24 hours) and does its thing, then fades away.

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder

Meet the Iconics: Ezren

Friday, October 26, 2007

For many adventurers, wanderlust strikes at a young age when minds are impressionable and the urge to escape the doldrums of homelife become too much to resist. In other cases, there's never a choice at all—being raised on the streets leaves few other options available for those who do not wish to become criminals. Rarest are those who come to adventuring late in life.

This was Ezren's path to adventure. Born to a successful spice merchant in one of Absalom's more affluent districts, Ezren's childhood was pleasantly safe. As the fourth of six siblings, he never knew the responsibility implicit in being the eldest (and therefore the one expected to carry on father's trade) or the freedom of being the youngest. He enjoyed the comforts of a well-to-do family, lived in a neighborhood relatively safe from crime, and seemed poised for a life of mediocrity.

That changed when his father was taken away, charged with heresy by the church of Abadar. The charges were too spurious to stick, and while his father escaped excommunication, the damage had been done—his father's business fell to pieces. Shocked, dismayed, and convinced that his father was innocent, Ezren abandoned his future and spent his adult life trying to repair his father's ruined reputation. So when Ezren finally uncovered irrefutable proof of his father's guilt, and he realized he'd wasted his life on a lie, he turned his evidence over to the church and said goodbye to his home, his family, and his life.

At the age of 42, Ezren is full aware that he's missed his adulthood, yet at the same time he looks forward to discovering the world, and making a difference for a cause that he believes in. His dissatisfaction with family, religion, and government left him precious little to trust but his own intellect—in fighting for his father's redemption, he had become a gifted researcher, scholar, and intellectual. Lacking the spry limbs of youth, the trust in religion, the strong arm of the soldier, or the way with words of the politician, Ezren felt he had but one option open. He traveled to tarnished Oppara, capital of Taldor and one of the oldest cities of the continent of Avistan, hoping to join one of several prestigious schools of wizardry. Yet time and time again, he was turned away due to his age. No wizard seemed to want an apprentice who, in many cases, was older than them. So Ezren was forced to strike out on his own once again.

Over the next decade, as he traveled Avistan, Ezren studied where he could, picking up tricks of the wizard's trade here and there. The combination of arcane study mixed with his worldly first-hand experiences have given him an edge over young wizards fresh out of apprenticeship and eager to make names for themselves. Ezren knows about the many ways the world can trick and betray you, but now he's finally begun to master the art of magic, giving him the tools to fight back.

Ezren is scheduled to make his debut as a pregenerated character in volume 7 of Pathfinder and in GameMastery module U2: Hangman's Noose.

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder

How big is it?

Thursday, October 25, 2007

For some time now, people have been asking us how big Golarion is, and many have had the misconception that Varisia, being our most detailed region so far, comprises the majority of our setting. Nothing could be further from the truth, and to give you an idea of scale, Jason Bulmahn has pulled out the coastal outlines of the two continents that comprise the first Golarion world map (which will appear in the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer) and dropped in our maps of Varisia and Osirion (from J1: Entombed with the Pharaohs). Don't let the rough sketch fool you, though—the map itself is very close to being finished, and you can expect a load of new world-related tidbits on the blog in the weeks to come. Stay tuned!

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Beware the Mother of Oblivion!

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

You've heard the legends, now witness the awesome glory of Black Magga! Read all about her interdimensional horror in this sample spread from Pathfinder #3's Bestiary section: 552 KB zip PDF.

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Pathfinder Chronicles Chat Finds A New Home

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Pathfinder Chronicles chatroom has a new home over at dmtools.org, making it easier than ever to log in, hang out, and avoid your other responsibilities. Just visit http://chat.dmtools.org, enter a username, and you're ready to go—no internet savvy required! Plus, in addition to chillin' in real-time with some of your favorite Paizo messageboard regulars, stop by every Tuesday at roughly 8:00 PM Pacific Standard Time to chat with folks like Erik Mona, James Jacobs, Jason Bulmahn, and numerous other members of the Paizo creative team. Get previews of what's coming, further detail on the topics you're most curious about, and most importantly, a chance for you to give your feedback directly to the folks who make the decisions in a fun, casual atmosphere. See you there!

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

PF5 Cover and Wallpaper!

Monday, October 22, 2007

Last week you saw Wayne's awesome white dragon fight for the cover of Pathfinder #5. This week, we've brought you the whole thing as a downloadable desktop wallpaper—including the newest iconic! Who is this well-equipped wizard? Only time (and, perhaps, a blog post in the imminent future) will tell....

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Second Darkness Adventure Path

Friday, October 19, 2007

Since we're getting dangerously close to starting actual work on Pathfinder's second Adventure Path, Curse of the Crimson Throne, I figured it'd be a great time to reveal some information about Pathfinder's third Adventure Path. This one's still quite early in the development stages, but nonetheless we've got a fair amount about it nailed down. And it's those things I want to talk about in today's blog post.

The Name: The third Adventure Path is called "Second Darkness." Yes, that does imply that there was a First Darkness. Keen-eyed blog and messageboard readers might be able to figure out what that First Darkness is talking about, and rather than say here, I'm inclined to let people guess and talk for a bit.

The First Adventure: I'll be writing the first adventure in Second Darkness—and it's going to be called "Shadow in the Sky." It'll be set in and around Riddleport in northwest Varisia. None of the other adventures in the campaign have names yet, but by the time we're in adventure #4, the campaign will have moved from northwest Varisia into the vast network of caverns deep below the surface world. When the campaign comes back up for air on the surface, it'll be somewhere rather far away from Varisia.

The Edition: I can't say yet if Second Darkness will use the 3.5 rules or the 4th edition rules, simply because we haven't seen the 4th edition rules yet and have no way of knowing if they'll do the job for what we've got planned for this campaign. The only thing I can guarantee is that whatever edition of the rules we use for "Shadow in the Sky," we won't be switching editions halfway through the Adventure Path.

Level Range: Like Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness starts your PCs out at first level. I'm not sure what level they'll end up being, but chances are pretty good that, since Second Darkness is a 6-part campaign, it'll be pretty similar in that regard to Pathfinder's first two Adventure Paths.

The Plot: I don't want to give away too much about the plot of Second Darkness, but I can say this: readers of Pathfinder and GameMastery Modules have no doubt noticed the absence of one of the more iconic RPG bad guys. That's because we were saving them for this Adventure Path. That's right: Second Darkness reveals the role of the drow on (and under!) Golarion.

Drow of Golarion: Drow are certainly a hot topic among fans of the game. A lot of people actively hate them for various reasons, it seems, but nonetheless, every time a drow ended up on the cover of a magazine, that magazine sold incredibly well. More to the point, drow have been (and remain) one of my favorite villains for the game. There's just something so delightfully warped about elves who live in non-elven areas deep underground, who worship demons, who have a sadistic matriarchal society, and who have all sorts of creepy magic items and tricks up their sleeves. The old D&D adventure "Queen of the Spiders" remains my favorite D&D adventure of all time in large part due to the drow, who were of course first introduced in that series as an evil mastermind race of bad guys. Eclavdra, Erelhei-Cinlu, tentacle rods, death lances, the Elder Elemental Eye, temples that were actually called fanes, and the demons the drow trafficked with are where I'll be going for inspiration for Second Darkness. Don't expect any angst-ridden heroic loner drow in Second Darkness—these drow will be villains through and through. We've also got some new angles for drow in Golarion as well, something that I'm not allowed to reveal quite yet, but it does have something to do with where drow come from.

Other Elements: Of course, the drow aren't going to be the only villains in Second Darkness. You can expect one or more of the following creatures to have important roles in the campaign as well: dragons, derro, giant arachnids and insects, demons, tieflings, and maybe even some aboleths. And as you might be able to tell from the first adventure's title… not all of the monsters will be coming up from below. The skies above Golarion spawn dangers of their own that are more than a match for anything the caves below can disgorge up into the world!

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder

Happy Blogiversary!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

As of Friday, October 19th, the Paizo Blog will have been in action for six whole months. There's been laughter, there've been tears (mostly mine), there've been sneak previews, setting information, contests, and a boatload of new art, and it's generally been a good time for all involved.

But now we're coming up on that crucial six-month mark, that time in every relationship where we have to look hard at each other and ask some serious questions: Are you satisfied? Are your needs being met? Do you think this blog has what it takes to keep you interested in the long run, or are we just a casual thing?

To let us know what you like most about the blog, where we could improve, and what you'd like to see more of in the months to come, head on over to the Blog Feedback thread on our messageboards and make your needs known—communication is, after all, the key to a healthy relationship, and we'd really like to make this work....

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Bigger is better!

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Like the majestic hermit crab, as the iconic characters level up, they continue to require larger and larger accommodations. As such, Pathfinder #3 features a brand-new half-page format for the pregenerated characters—take a gander at the bigger format, and get a sneak peak into Valeros's personality as well!

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Meet the Competition

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Welcome to Sothis, capital of the great desert nation of Osirion, gateway to the mysteries of the sands. Centuries ago, the legendary ancient pharaohs ruled over a nation of sorcerers and slaves with an iron fist, wielding godlike magical abilities unlike anything in the modern world. Now they are gone, and all that remains of their wonder and terror lies buried beneath the dunes, concealed in vast stone pyramids and protected by traps and curses that reflect the height of their terrifying ingenuity. But the prospect of being eaten alive by beetles in the dark corridors of some lost tomb doesn't seem to bother the myriad adventurers, guides, soldiers, mercenaries, swindlers, thieves, and noblemen that have come from all over the world to get a chance to plunder the lost treasure of the pharaohs.

Among those who have recently arrived to stake their claim on these treasures is a group of adventurers led by a Chelish noblemen named Paracount Julistar, who just happens to be one of the most famous Osiriontologists in the world. Fanatical, yet suave, Julistar is an archetype of his fellow countrymen, and has carefully assembled a private team of profiteers from across the globe to race the PCs to the Find of the Century.

Collectively, this group of specialists is known as Her Majestrix's Expeditionary, and includes Xaven, a hardcore, wisecracking tomb raider who has spent so much time outwitting the traps of the dead he's begun to lose his grip on reality, Scepter, a brooding ex-Pathfinder sharpshooter who sports a bandolier of custom-crafted magic wands and employs a specially built wand-rifle, Hrokon, a half-orc shock trooper, and Lonicera, a drop-dead gorgeous liar and master of the long con. Together, they are prepared to give the PCs as much as they can handle and more as the two groups pursue the prize that awaits them in J1: Entombed with the Pharaohs.

Jeremy Walker
Assistant Editor, GameMastery

Wayne Does It Again!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Wayne Reynolds just delivered the cover painting for Pathfinder #5: Sins of the Saviors, and man, is it a doozy! Looks like Valeros has learned a valuable lesson about what it means to play meat-shield for the party when there's a dragon involved.... Click the image for a larger version.

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Top 5 Open Call Mistakes

Friday, October 12, 2007

So, we're not going to have time to send out detailed feedback to everyone who failed to make it to the second round of the Open Call for W3: Flight of the Red Raven. But I know that people want to know what they did wrong, or how they can improve for the future, for the next open call or for other endeavors. With that in mind, here are the five most common mistakes people made that caused me to reject the submission.

1. Novel-writing. An adventure is about the PCs. People who had experience submitting to Dungeon had an advantage here, as it's something I've been saying for years. No matter how fascinating your backstory is, no matter how many tangled plotlines you have between complex NPCs, in the end, the most important thing I want to learn from your proposal is: what happens to the PCs during this adventure? That is what most of the adventure will be about, it's the only thing the players really care about, and it's the basic quality upon which all adventures are ultimately judged. For that reason, the most important questions were: "What are the two obstacles?" "What does the final encounter look like?" and "What is the new monster?" The "Who took the object and why?" question, while important, was probably the least interesting question from my point of view. If you spent over half your proposal answering this question, that's bad.

2. Details, details. The module failed to meet the minimum standards for either: following instructions, writing quality, or some other "mundane" detail. Several of the queries I read did not make any sense. Several more were rife with grammatical errors, spelling errors, or other fundamental problems. And there were a few that were written almost entirely in passive voice. Any of these things really hurt your chances. Also, I'll throw one more mistake in this category. Several people based their adventure around monsters, classes, or concepts that are Wizards of the Coast's IP. If your main villain was a hexblade, or your most important monster was a nerra, your proposal didn't get far.

3. Been there, done that. The module simply wasn't very creative. This is a hard one to quantify, and subject somewhat to individual taste, but nevertheless, if your plot was straightforward, your challenges predicable, your "moral quandary" at the end clichéd, and your villain pulled straight from a movie or book, then we weren't that interested. The best proposals, the ones that got passed through to the next round, all contained at least one element that provoked some kind of emotional response from the editors. Whether we thought it was funny, tragic, romantic, creepy, exciting, or mysterious, the important thing was that we got involved in the story. That's probably the hardest thing to pull off with any proposal, but its also the most important. If you can draw us into your adventure, we are going to want to print it.

4. Overly ambitious. The proposal was inappropriate for the level. There are two ways this could happen. First of all, if your proposal involved monsters or challenges that were clearly beyond what 4th-level characters could handle, it was an easy pass, since it demonstrated that you didn't really know how the CR system works. But there was another way you could trip up here too. 4th-level characters are not equipped to save the world. If your plotline involved ancient demons emerging from the Abyss to destroy the planet, or a mad lich plotting to undo creation, you missed the point, even if the monsters themselves were the right CR. At 4th level, the PCs are still just beginning their careers, if they are facing epic forces and saving the world now, what will they be doing at level 12? That's not to say that the PCs shouldn't be doing important things, but saving the world is not in the cards, at least not yet.

5. Breaking the toys. The adventure created or modified a large amount of campaign setting continuity. This is a simple matter of practicality. We don't want to blow up cities or nations, destroy mountains, or make major shifts in the campaign setting in the context of these modules. Especially when the writer doesn't have a lot of history working with us.

I hope that gives you guys something to go on for the next time around. In closing, I just want to thank you all for submitting. There were lots of great ideas, and it was difficult, in the end, to narrow it down to the right number. This won't be the last open call we do, and I hope to see many of you again for the next time around.

Jeremy Walker
Assistant Editor, GameMastery

Open Call Round 1 Results

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The results for Round 1 of the GameMastery Module Open Call are in. It may have taken a marathon meeting, about half a dozen cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, and a host of minis to play with while we chatted... but it's finally done. In the end, we couldn't settle on 10 candidates as initially promised, and instead decided to go with 12! Those who advanced will have a little more than two weeks to submit a full outline, including sample encounters and monsters.

All of the acceptance and rejection emails have now been sent out, so you might want to go check you inbox right about now. Congratulations to those who got accepted. For those of you who did not make the cut, do not despair: we're combing through the entries to see if any of the monsters might make suitable entries into the Pathfinder bestiary section.

We got a lot of really great entries, and trimming them down was not an easy task. There were a large number of proposals that probably would have made for a great module, but unfortunately cuts had to be made. So keep an eye out for future writing opportunities, for both the GameMastery Modules and Pathfinder alike. Next time, we might pick you!

Didn't make the cut and want to share your ideas with others? Feel free to post your ideas to our messageboards.

Jason Bulmahn
GameMastery Brand Manager

Welcome to Riddleport!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

By now, Pathfinder readers are getting to know Magnimar (detailed in Pathfinder #2). And when we launch the second Pathfinder Adventure Path, Curse of the Crimson Throne, there'll be all sorts of details on Korvosa. But what about Varisia's third city, Riddleport? While we do indeed have plans to eventually present Riddleport in greater detail, for the foreseeable future there's not going to be much about the notorious port town at the northernmost edge of the Lost Coast.

In Pathfinder #3, we'll be presenting a gazetteer of Varisia. Remember all of those names and locations on the map from the inside back cover of the Player's Guide? They all get, at minimum, a paragraph of descriptive text. Riddleport gets a little bit more—it gets a picture to go along with the following entry:

Riddleport: Varisia's northernmost port, the infamous city of Riddleport is renowned as a haven for scoundrels, outcasts, and worse. Cutthroats fill its harbor and dockside brothels, with Riddleport's officers of the law being just another gang of thieves (and hardly the most powerful one at that). Yet even in such a den of inequity and vice, scholars and historians abound, attempting to decipher the runes of the great arch known as the Cyphergate, which spans the mouth of the harbor and looms over each vessel that passes into the city. Although any progress on the inscription has been kept quiet, recent excavation hints that the massive arch might actually be just one segment of a ring that extends into the cliffs surrounding the port.

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder

Looting the Treasure Chest

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

We've received quite a few questions about the GameMastery Treasure Chest over the past several weeks and I thought I would take a moment to give you the skinny on this box full of goodness.

This box gives you a wide assortment of our most popular GameMastery products, including an original adventure (TC1: Into the Haunted Forest) that ties together all the products into one "deluxe" game experience. Here's what the box contains.

TC1: Into the Haunted Forest
Critical Hit Deck
Item Cards: Elements of Power
Campaign Workbook
Map Pack: Inns
Flip-Mat: Woodlands

Now, if you happen to own a bunch of these products, but still want the module, no worries. TC1: Into the Haunted Forest will be available separately for just $5 (note that this module is not part of the subscription deal, so if you want it, you will need to order it as normal). As for the module itself, you do not need these products to run the adventure, but they do include all the maps and treasure cards used in the adventure. (Incidentally: TC stands for "Treasure Chest," in case you're wondering.)

Hope that clears things up, but if you have any further questions, feel free to post them to our messageboards.

Jason Bulmahn
GameMastery Brand Manager

Free Pathfinder 2 Download Supplement!

Friday, October 5, 2007

It's a fact: sometimes there's just too much good stuff to fit in a given volume of Pathfinder. While we here on the Paizo staff squeeze and condense as much as we can to make sure that each book is 100% concentrated awesome, print still has certain limitations... after all, sliced tree can only hold so much ink. That's why, from here on out, you can expect to see free supplement downloads to go along with specific volumes of Pathfinder popping up irregularly on paizo.com. Whether it's an alternate version of a map, an extra stat block, or a new item, whatever we put online will add to the adventure without being essential—just us doing what we can to offer a little bit extra to the gaming community.

Today, that's an alternate map of Magnimar, tagged with 30 new streets and places of interest, courtesy of mapping fiend Wes Schneider. We hope to shortly have a spot on the Pathfinder homepage where you can easily check to download the latest free content, but until then, click here (1.1 MB zip PDF) to download a high-res version of the map.

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

The Ivy District

Thursday, October 4, 2007

GameMastery Module U1: Gallery of Evil takes place against the backdrop of the largest city in Golarion: Absalom. This burgeoning metropolis is filled to the brim with people from all walks of life across three continents. Easily the most cosmopolitan city in the world, Absalom must expect the unexpected. In the jaded manner common to many large cities, nothing really surprises them.

While we intend to unveil more about our iconic major city over the course of the next several months, for now we are going to limit ourselves to one district at a time. The idea is to enable the readers to drop these districts into whatever major city they use in their own campaigns, while slowly building up Absalom's identity, history, and culture. In time, this metropolis will become one of the major centerpieces of our entire campaign setting, and in Gallery of Evil, we give you the first of Absalom's districts to be revealed: the Ivy District.

As one of the oldest districts in the city, the Ivy District sits a good distance from Absalom's outer walls. Its tranquil parks, flowering, ivy-lined streets, industrious mercantile and artisan zones, and upper-class homes have been blessed with relatively little disruption from the countless sieges that have shattered against the city walls and seaside cliffs surrounding the Isle of Kortos. The Ivy District is the hub of culture and art within Absalom and, some might venture, the greatest influence on the styles and trends of its neighboring kingdoms.

Winding cobbled stone streets and hard-packed dirt roads, separated by narrow drainage canals that eventually empty into the sea, wend their way through the district. Decorative bridges connect numerous streets with one another, each one decorated somewhat differently from the next, with bas relief sculptures, murals, or even tiled mosaics appearing seemingly at random. Its streets are among the busiest in the city, save only the market and dock districts.

The Ivy District is the most popular location in Absalom among those who appreciate the arts and the finest products and entertainment gold can buy. Because of the Ivy District's reputation for beauty, fine art, and masterwork trade goods (fine blades, stylish and top-quality armor, renowned gem cutters and jewelers, exquisite clothing, carpentry products, and so on), it is also very tempting for thieves. The district has a surprisingly low theft rate, however, thanks to the efforts of a well-paid District Watch and the Brotherhood of Abadar, which patrols the streets looking for signs of unlawful activities and disturbances.

One of the most significant areas of the Ivy District is The Ivy District Park and Topiary Menagerie. This public park is filled with beautiful oak groves, pines, beech trees, weeping willows, cedars, and a wide variety of more exotic flora. Flower gardens and fruit-bearing trees line the neat dirt paths that wind through the park, and a large pond dominates its center. At places where the water is narrow enough, gorgeous bridges arch across its placid surface. Ducks, geese, colorful fish, and frogs live in the pond. Other wildlife lives here too, such as squirrels, owls, foxes, and hares. The druidic members of the Perfumers' Conglomerate tend all the life here. Through continual effort they manage to keep the trees, grass, and flowers pruned and blooming all year round. The sparkling clean water and happy and healthy wildlife are a testament to their hard work.

One of the park's main attractions is located at the center of a tall hedge maze: the topiary menagerie. Shrubs and bushes have been expertly pruned and trained into shapes of animals, people, and even rare and magical beasts. Although this wonderful horticultural menagerie seems innocent enough, the park's attendant druids recently discovered a group of teenage kids dead in the surrounding maze and a topiary unicorn missing from the menagerie. The stab wounds on the bodies were enough to confirm their suspicions of the missing unicorn's involvement, but they haven't determined how it happened or what happened to the missing topiary killer.

Jeremy Walker
Assistant Editor, GameMastery

Bidding Adieu to Volume 2

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

So after what felt like years of waiting (it was more like weeks), we finally got in our office copies of Pathfinder #2 today! Which also means that we'll be shipping them out to subscribers and distributors very soon. I actually walked by a pallet of them down in the warehouse earlier today, and seeing "SKINSAW MURDERS" written on a stack of boxes as tall as me was strange. The Skinsaw Man came out of a game I ran back in college set in my own campaign world, and seeing the word on those boxes really brought it home—the word may have been born in central California, but then it went up to Seattle, then over to England, then back here, then over to China, and now it's back here and ready to begin its final step in global saturation. It's exciting. And a little surreal.

In any event, that's about a wrap for Pathfinder #2! We'll have an alternate map of Magnimar to show you on Friday's blog post, and then starting next week we'll start revealing tidbits about Pathfinder #3: "The Hook Mountain Massacre." Demented ogres, haunted campfires, castles and gazetteers and lake monsters, oh my! I can't wait to show some of it off!

In fact, I don't want to wait. Check out this sneak preview of one of the pieces of art from Pathfinder #3. Who could this dwarf be? Does he have nefarious plans for our heroes? Why is his ass so tiny?

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

GameMastery Open Call: Closed

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The first round of the GameMastery Module Open Call closed yesterday at noon, and let me tell you, there was quite a rush there at the end. Can an email program smoke? I think mine did a little yesterday.

All told, we received 168 entries over the course of nine days, with most of them coming within the final 48 hours. Following the closing of the contest, I have gone through and stripped the names from files, assigning them all a number. After printing them and sorting them into three even stacks, Mike McArtor, Jeremy Walker, and I have dug in, reading all about wondrous dragon eggs, stolen town icons, missing children, and a veritable swarm of red ravens.

Of interest to me (and perhaps only to me), the shortest entry clocked in at just 245 words while the longest came in at 1,405. The word count limit only caught 7 proposals, but other problems (such as incorrect format or lack of name) nabbed another 11, bringing the final total down to an even 150.

Mike, Jeremy, and I are all feverishly looking through our stacks of 50, picking out what we feel are the best to bring to a contest meeting later this week, where we will narrow down the search to ten finalists. For those of you who are anxiously waiting, expect word late this week or early next. Feel free to send bribes, but since this is a blind review, I am not sure it will help you much.

Jason Bulmahn
GameMastery Brand Manager

You got GameMastery in my Dragonlance!

Monday, October 1, 2007

While seeing folks play in our campaign world is of course the biggest compliment we can receive, here at Paizo, we understand that many people have been playing in alternative game worlds for a long time, and simply aren't interested in switching over. As a result, we're always excited when we hear about someone getting jazzed enough about our products to mine out ideas or convert them over to their favorite setting.

Thus it was with great enthusiasm that we stumbled across this article over at the fan site Dragonlance Nexus, all about converting the kobolds introduced in D1: Crown of the Kobold King for use in your Dragonlance game. If you're a Dragonlance fan—and there are certainly a few of them around here—hit it up and check out the author's thoughts on the kobolds' religion, subraces, and more.

And if there's something else from the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting that you've been using in your Dragonlance game... why not submit it to the Nexus and spread the wealth?

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder