It's Alive! And It's in My Head!!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Words aren't supposed to float like this, bobbing in this slow, mildly nauseating way before my watering eyes. This sucks. And if you were at Norwescon this past weekend, I blame you. Con crud: it happens every time we go to a convention—and this time I didn't even go!

My office quarantine makes me but one gross cog in a large, messily predictable, sick-machine. Every 3 minutes Jason, through the wall to my left, coughs twice. Every 1 minute and 20 seconds, to my right, James "Harumpghs"—as Jacobses do. Every 25 seconds I sniff, punctuated by nose blowings after every 15, and with cycle-marking sneezes after every 30 blows. It's not pretty. I especially don't envy Chris, Judy, Rob, and Sutter outside our doors listening to this sickly symphony. Although, if anyone forgot their watches today, they can measure the time by the rising tissue tide.

Now that I've set the gross factor for your week, how does this pity party tie into Pathfinder and RPGs and everything you've come to expect from Paizo? Well, we're foolishly here at work aren't we? And never ones to let little things like our collectively decomposing bodies stop us from bringing new elements to your campaigns, please accept the following gaming grossness, along with an appropriately awesomely awful illustration from Jeff Carlisle (that unfortunately we didn't have room for in the GameMastery Guide, but I'm sure will find a home down the line). Now, back to trying to build a Skinsaw mask out of tissues and mucus...

Creeping Contamination (aka Creeping Crud or Con Crud)
Type disease, contact or inhaled; Save Fortitude DC 14
Onset 1d3 days; Frequency 1/day
Effect 1d2 Wis damage and target is fatigued. Any creature that comes within 5 feet of one infected with con crud must save or also become infected (whether or not this save is successful, the target is immune to the infected creature's con crud for 24 hours); Cure 2 consecutive saves

Illustration by Jeff Carlisle

Wes Schneider
Managing Editor

Norwescon 33 Quick Recap...

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

This past weekend was Norwescon 33, a fantasy/SF convention near Seattle, Washington. In recent years it's started to pick up some RPG momentum (thanks to the tireless efforts of Tim Nightengale, founder of PaizoCon), and we had several Paizo staffers attend to talk about fiction and gaming (including a most awesome two-hour workshop about learning how to paint miniatures).

In addition to the many people dressed in steampunk, fantasy, BSG, and Star Wars costumes, there were seminars about writing, getting published, game design, world design, and being a better Game Master, plus Josh Frost and a gang of volunteers ran more than a dozen games for Pathfinder Society Organized Play!

Photo #1 is from a panel called "Ask the Gamemasters," featuring Sean K Reynolds (me!), Erik Mona, and Jason Bulmahn. Photo #2 is a pic by Tim of the "Underwater Ninja Tigers! (or A Friendly Discussion on Monster Design)" panel, with James Jacobs, Erik, Wolfgang Baur, and the illustrious panel-crasher Jonathan Tweet! Overall, it was a good show for us and gave us some ideas for neat stuff at PaizoCon this year!

Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Chronicles