Riddle Me This

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Attendees of PaizoCon 2018 might have noticed something new and unusual in the program booklet: a page with a map of Varisia overlaid with a grid, accompanied by a challenge to seek out a packet of puzzles and solve the mystery of the virtuous sihedron.

Why, that was just the annual PaizoCon Puzzle Hunt coming back strong! We debuted this event last year, and it went over so well, we were able to increase its exposure and present an even more exciting and involved set of puzzles. But we know not everyone can make it to the convention, so we are proud to present the entire thing here for you! Check the link below, which contains everything you need to participate in this year's puzzle hunt... except, of course, your wits. Unfortunately, we can't offer any prizes for completing this puzzle hunt (or for discovering the secret secondary puzzle that hides within), but rest assured we will be back in 2019 with another set, as well as some new partners in this endeavor!

Download the PaizoCon 2018 Puzzle Hunt! — 3.1 MB zip/PDF

What is a puzzle hunt?

A puzzle hunt is a series of linked puzzles, with the answer to each being a word or phrase. Those words and phrases are used in the puzzle on the first page of the PDF to generate the hunt's final solution. Figuring out how that puzzle works is part of the challenge!

Who made this, anyway?

Once again, that's us! We challenged ourselves from last year to add more visual elements to these new puzzles, creating what we hope are a diverse array of interesting mind-bending enigmas. But we couldn't have done it without the aid of Art Director Sonja Morris, who created all of the puzzle hunt's outstanding graphics!

What do I do if get stuck?

First, put the puzzle down and come back at it in an hour or so with a fresh mind. Perhaps you'll spot something you hadn't seen before. Be sure to reread the instructions at the top of the page; sometimes clues are hidden in there! If all that fails, feel free to ask for a hint on the Paizo.com forums. There's no shame in getting a nudge from a fellow solver, and perhaps you can help her in return with a different puzzle!

Jason Keeley and Joe Pasini
Developers

Countdown to PaizoCon 2018!

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Our books and dice are packed, the trucks have left for SeaTac, and we're ramping up to meet everyone at PaizoCon 2018 tomorrow! Four days of Pathfinder, Starfinder, Organized Play, seminars, board games, old and new gaming friends, and more await over the long weekend. Plus! This year we are joined by our guests of honor: The Glass Cannon Podcast and artist Taylor Fischer.

If you aren't on your way to PaizoCon 2018, you can follow along with updates from the show by following Paizo's social media accounts, or by following #paizocon2018. This year we're so excited to announce that for the first time we'll be streaming on our Twitch channel from the show! You can find the full streaming schedule here.

See you at the show!

Chris Lambertz
Web Product Manager

The Evolution of PaizoCon's Monday Events!

Friday, May 18, 2018

My very first PaizoCon, and the only one I've been at as an attendee and not an employee, was in 2009. It was an amazing experience to be surrounded by so many gamers and gaming professionals excited to share their knowledge and sit down and game as a community. One particular highlight came on the last day as things were winding down. Employees and fans started informally gathering in the lobby area of the hotel and it provided a unique experience getting to ask questions and listen to expertise from not only the game designers and developers, but operational staff as well. I had a unique experience getting to learn about some of the aspects of what keeps the amazing RPG books I loved in print and shipping out. When a customer service position opened at Paizo a few months later, I had no hesitation to apply since this casual networking had let me know that the people I was hoping to work with were fantastic, friendly people. As the convention has grown and moved hotels around, sometimes without a good central lobby space, that kind of connecting atmosphere has been harder to figure out how to facilitate.

A few years ago we moved to Memorial Day weekend, turning PaizoCon into a 4 day convention. Monday's have always been a bit difficult day to predict for scheduling as many folks use this day as a travel day and are worrying about checking out of the hotel, thus making attendance for Monday events much lower than those same events would traditionally pull on one of the other days. Thinking about both of these puzzles together, we've decided to try a bit of an experiment with PaizoCon Monday's schedule.

There will be the traditional 50 tables of organized play Monday morning and Delves-two Playtest and one Starfinder. But this year we're only putting one panel on the schedule, a Playtest feedback seminar where attendees can talk with the designers about how their Playtest experiences at PaizoCon went, and we have no scheduled individual games. Instead, from 10am to 1pm we have over 30 Paizo employees from all departments who will be up in the Evergreen Rooms ready to play our favorite casual board & card games. I'll be there with one of my favorites, Settlers of Catan and I've heard from other folks that games like Dice Forge, One Deck Dungeon, Sentinels of the Multi-Verse, Undercity/Widower's Wood, Island of Dreams, Munchkin Nightmare Before Christmas, Munchkin Rick and Morty, and variations of Fluxx might all make appearances. If you have young kids I'll also be bringing copies of Dinosaur Escape and Spookies. There will also be two employees in Olympic 1 who will be hooking up video games to play on the the seminar projector and bringing a Switch to battle in Mario Kart. For those who are still hoping to play pick up games with other attendees, all of the Cascade rooms will be open for use.

My hope is that the more casual aspect of gaming will help facilitate both PaizoCon attendees and employees getting an opportunity to interact and have fun together in a semi structured environment. As this is an experiment this year, if you have any feedback, please let us know at paizocon@paizo.com.

See you next week!

Sara Marie
Customer Service Manager

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Playtest at PaizoCon!

Thursday, May 3, 2018

The designers of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game can't wait for PaizoCon! I mean, we can. We're physically capable of it. But we don't want to wait for it, because that's when we get to show you what we've been cooking up for the last year. At PaizoCon, we'll have the first public playtest of the new version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.

Now, the word "new" may throw some of you. We've been very clear that this isn't a reboot of the game—our baby is going to remain firmly in the tub while we change the bathwater. But we've been using that word because we want to be open to changes that we might not do if we were "just" launching our next Adventure Path—Curse of the Crimson Throne—by itself. Since we're making a universal base set—that is, a set of cards that can be used with any Adventure Path or standalone adventure—we wanted to address just about everything that's been on our minds to change about the game for the last five years.

I'm not going to get too deep into that now, because I want to save some surprises for PaizoCon. Specifically, I want you to playtest those changes without knowing what they are in advance. Playtesters' reactions have guided us as part of the process of every PACG set we've made. We use PaizoCon as an incubator for new concepts. After all, the first time anyone outside the Paizo and Lone Shark offices saw the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (codenamed "Project Swallowtail"), it was at PaizoCon 2012. And it looked like this:

Look how clever we were! The W is a swallowtail butterfly!

The thing we’re taking into PaizoCon 2018 looks like this:

Don’t get too attached to anything you see—it’ll all be different by Monday.

So we want you to play with us! Even if you haven't played much PACG, we want your feedback. And Adventure Card Guild members will get rewards for their characters even though we're testing some weirdness that may not make sense to them. (They'll get over it.)

Here are the times we're playtesting.

• Friday 8:00 AM-10:00 AM, 11:00 AM-1:00 PM, 7:00 PM-9:00 PM, and 10:00 PM-midnight
• Saturday 8:00 AM-10:00 AM and 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
• Sunday 8:00 AM-10:00 AM and 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
• Monday 8:00 AM-10:00 AM and 11:00 AM-1:00 PM

You can sign up for these now, if you like. Or just come find us at those times. We'd very much like your help.

And if you'd like to be among the first to find out when the new version is coming out, you'll want to make sure you secure your ticket to the Preview Banquet!

Hurray, PaizoCon!

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

PaizoCon 2018 Events Schedule is Live!

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

The events schedule for PaizoCon 2018 is now live and the process for event registration has begun.

Signing up for events at PaizoCon begins with an event lottery. The lottery allows hundreds of fans to get an equal chance at claiming a coveted spot at small events run by Paizo Staff like Crystal Fraiser running a special author edition preview of our Free RPG Day adventure We Be 5uper Goblins, gaming industry veterans like Jessica Redekop running Celestial Intrigue and RPG publishers like Legendary Games running their multi-table Legendary Planet Special: Hope and Salvation, and many, many more.

The first step in the lottery process is to head to our events page and set your event preferences. Games that are part of the lottery will allow you to rank from 0 (don't want at all) to 4 (really want). Our lottery code is designed so that the more events you rank honestly the more likely you are to get an event that you want. Ranking preferences goes until on Tuesday, May 8th at 2:00 PM Pacific time so don't delay.

After the preferences sign up closes, we will run our lottery process. For each day, people with PaizoCon badges on their accounts who have set preferences are randomly ordered and attendees are assigned an event based on their preferences. If all of your #4 events are full, it moves onto events you ranked as 3's, then 2's and so on until either you are placed in an event for that day or there is nothing left that you have a ranked preference for. If the lottery goes through all accounts and there are still games left, it repeats the process until all lottery events for that day are full or everyone who made a preference selections have been assigned events. The lottery runs through each day separately. After the lottery runs, we do a quick internal check of the results to make sure the code behaved as it should and then on Wednesday, May 9th at 10:00 AM Pacific time we should be uploading the results to your online schedule.

For attendees that must game with another attendee, we do have a buddy system. We recommend that only attendees that cannot game alone use this system. If users are marked as buddies during the preferences ranking period, the lottery will pair them together in events that one of the attendees is placed in. If there is only one space left in an event, neither buddy will get that event. Once the lottery has been run, buddies no longer affect event placement and during open registration, and accounts must register for any additional events separately.

When the lottery results are live, you'll be able to trade and sign up for open events. These are most of the organized play games, seminars, workshops and any games that were part of the lottery that did not fill up. We're leaving open event registration open as long as possible, however we will need to close it on Monday May 21st so that we can print off event tickets and prepare attendees registration packets.

Let us know if you have any questions about how the event lottery and registration work. We look forward to seeing you in just a few weeks!

Sara Marie
Customer Service Manager

Pathfinder Playtest at PaizoCon 2018!

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The Pathfinder Playtest doesn't release until August, but attendees at PaizoCon 2018 will get a chance to see the evolution of Pathfinder in action!

Two of our popular Delve tables have been dedicated to running Playtest mini-adventures all weekend long. These 30-40 minute long games are designed to give you a taste of what's new in the Playtest. There is no registration for these delves, just stop by between 9:00 AM-6:00 PM Friday and Sunday, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM on Saturday, or 9:00 AM-1:00 PM on Monday. On Saturday from 9:00 AM-12:00 PM we'll have the designers themselves running the tables for groups of lucky adventurers and talking Playtest Rules with spectators.

Friday evening in Olympic 2, Guests of Honor: The Glass Cannon Podcast will be recording the finale for the Crypt of the Everflame Playtest game run by Jason Bulmahn. You can listen to Parts 1 & 2 and Parts 3 & 4 on Glass Cannon's website.

For a more academic approach than rolling dice at the delves, the Design team will be hosting an "Introduction to the Pathfinder Playtest" seminar on Saturday from 1:00 PM-3:00 PM followed by a "How to Playtest" panel from 3:00 PM-4:00 PM for those who want to learn all about how to provide feedback and help shape the next edition. Afterwards, from 4:00 PM-5:00 PM, Creative Director James Jacobs and Franchise Manager Mark Moreland will talk about the possible changes to the campaign setting and the world of Golarion. Rounding out the Playtest Seminars on Saturday from 5:00 PM-6:00 PM, the Design team will be back with "Find Our Path"—a panel for attendees to tell the Designers what they hope to find in the next evolution of Pathfinder.

Sunday afternoon from 2:00 PM-3:00 PM the Organized Play Q&A panel will also be including a discussion on how the Playtest rules will interact with Organized Play Pathfinder games. Come with your questions for Tonya Woldridge, John Compton and Linda Zayas-Palmer.

Our Celebrity Gaming events are back for PaizoCon 2018, and Sunday's game from 3:00 PM-5:00 PM has Director of Game Design Jason Bulmahn as game master for a group of heroes played by Customer Service Rep Diego Valdez, Managing Editor Judy Bauer, Editor James Case, and Sales Associate Cosmo Eisele. Come cheer for (or against) your favorite Paizonians as they try to keep their characters alive despite the merciless machinations of Jason's GMing!

As PaizoCon winds down on Monday morning, we will again have the entire Design team at the delve tables from 9:00 AM-11:00 AM, followed by a Playtest Feedback seminar where they will discuss how the Playtest events went over during the PaizoCon weekend.

Of course, sprinkled throughout the convention, longer-form games with the Playtest rules will be run. Organized Play Lead Developer John Compton, Editor Leo Glass, Developer Chris Sims, Developer Linda Zayas-Palmer, and Editor Lyz Liddell will all be offering chances to play The Rose Street Revenge, a series of Playtest quests that will only be at PaizoCon, Origins, PaizoCon UK, and Gen Con until its official release date on August 6.

Managing Developer and master of RPG horror Amanda Hamon Kunz has prepared a special Playtest conversion of the classic Pathfinder module Gallows of Madness. Designer Logan Bonner will be offering an Osiriani Playtest adventure The House of Ekmendi and Designer Mark Seifter will be running a classic social intrigue adventure, Bid for Alabastrine, with Playtest rules. Finally, Developer Ron Lundeen has converted an adventure he authored, A Lucky Morning from Run Amok Games, to playtest rules.

These special opportunities to experience the new Playtest rules will all be in the PaizoCon event lottery. A number of our games are in high demand with only a few seats available in each game. The lottery is a way for attendees to get an equal shot at the the games they are most excited about. Once events are published on the site, attendees can rank preferences for events. We'll then run our lottery code and place attendees into events. Once that has been determined, we'll open up the general events (seminars, organized play, etc) for general registration and event trading. The preferences and lottery selection will be happening at the beginning of May—be sure you've got your 4-day badge on your account so you can participate!

Sara Marie
Customer Service Manager

PaizoCon 2018 Event Submission is Open!

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

PaizoCon 2018 is now less than 100 days away, and that means the time to roll dice together is quickly approaching. But we can't roll dice if there are no games to play, and that's where you come in! Each year, we allow attendees—both fans and third-party publishers—to run their own events, put them on the official PaizoCon schedule, and allow for online registration. This year, we've moved the event submission interface to Google forms: PaizoCon 2018 Event Submission Form.

You can fill out an event form for each event you'd like to submit. If all of the details are the same and you want to run it multiple times, you only need to fill out the form once. (If you represent multiple GM's who will be running the same event you only need to fill out the event form once).

If you save the link when you have submitted your event, you should be able to go back and edit your submission until March 1st.

We have reduced the length of event descriptions to 150 characters. Once the schedule is posted online, you will be able to post in your event's discussion thread with more details.

Paizo will not be running Organized Play events during the 1pm-6pm time slots. We will be offering the use of part of the Grand Ballroom for individuals who wish to run organized play scenarios during this time. If you wish to do this and be included in the PaizoCon schedule which lets attendees sign up for the game online and reserves you a table, you can submit an event using this form. Note that Saturday's time slot will be 1pm-5pm and all attendees must leave the room promptly at 5pm so hotel staff can set up for the PaizoCon Preview Banquet. Please format Starfinder and Pathfinder Org Play scenarios as #[season][scenario number]: Title (example: #9-01: The Cost of Enlightenment).

We can't wait to see what fantastic events the community comes up with this year, so don't delay. Submit your event before March 1, when the submission window closes.

PaizoCon 2018 will take place May 25th–May 28th, 2018 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotels, 18740 International Blvd., Seattle, WA, 98188. For more information, check the PaizoCon page.

Sara Marie
Customer Service Manager

PaizoCon 2018 Announced!

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

If you've been waiting for PaizoCon 2018 badges to go on sale, your wait is over!

May 25th-28th 2018, join Paizo employees, authors, artists, and many more as we gather in Seatac, Washington for another year of gaming and camaraderie. In addition to lots of Starfinder & Pathfinder Society and Adventure Card Guild games, we'll be offering games, panels and workshops run by Paizo staff, game industry veterans and fans from our community. Guests of Honor from the Glass Cannon Podcast have promised events and shenanigans all weekend long and our artist guest of honor, Taylor Fischer will be hosting panels on concepting and designing aliens and monsters.

4-Day Badges are $75, Preview Banquet tickets are $35 and purchasing them together gives you a $10 discount! We also offer Kids Badges for children 10 years old and younger. Single Day Badges will be available in person at the PaizoCon convention store and are priced at $25 for adults and $15 for kids. For 2018 we have revised our Code of Conduct and all attendees, by accepting their badge, agree to follow PaizoCon's Code of Conduct.

If you have any questions about the PaizoCon 2018 (including badges/tickets or hotel information), please check our FAQ or visit the PaizoCon forums.

We're so excited for PaizoCon 2018 to get here and will be updating you with more information including how to sign up for games and how to submit your own events as the show gets closer.

Sara Marie
Customer Service Manager

A Call to Vol—PaizoCon 2018!

Monday, December 18, 2017

In prior years, it seemed that we had a distinctive convention season with a slower period during the winter. This model doesn't work anymore, as PAX Unplugged extended the season into mid-November, and next year pushes it further back into early December, while Martin Luther King Junior's birthday weekend is the launch of the new convention season.

The new season brings with it several Paizo-sponsored conventions with a large organized play presence. PaizoCon, Gen Con, Origins, as well as travel to other shows such as UK Games Expo, PaizoCon UK, and PaizoCon OZ. Planning for these conventions started several months ago. Over the past few months, Paizo staff worked hard on updating the Attendance policy. With it completed and releasing to the public this month (along with updates the PaizoCon area of paizo.com), tickets sales are soon to follow. One of my goals includes offering volunteer slots for Paizo-sponsored conventions before the ticket sales open. This allows volunteers to make plans with their friends before purchasing tickets. Thus, we moved the call for volunteers from its usual February timeslot to today.

We have a few big changes from last year. We hope this streamline some of the processes or bring more options for attendees at the convention.

First, we changed the nomenclature from session or slot to block. Each block is 5 hours. This unifies the terminology from the event support form used by our event organizers and keeps things consistent across the board.

Second, we ditched using the Tier system to describe how many volunteers. It is a RPGA holdover that caused confusion, as the lower number the tier, the more slots a person volunteered. Also, we have tiers for our scenarios, so having tiers for volunteers caused some confusion in our data. This year, you register for the number of 5 hour blocks you wish to volunteer.

Third change is overnight madness! Following on the success of having overnight games at Gen Con 50, we are trying it out at PaizoCon. We will schedule some tables of Pathfinder Society or Starfinder Society, but there will be a limited number of tables available on a first-come, first-served basis for attendees wishing to play other games.

Fourth, afternoon tables may be submitted to the PaizoCon event system. When Sara Marie requests submissions from third parties, feel free to submit items for Pathfinder Society or Starfinder Society. Any tables not allocated through the system by the time submissions will be available on site with first-come, first-served priority.

Finally, we are setting a 7 block maximum for volunteering. We want people to take a break and see what the convention has to offer. PaizoCon is a celebration of Paizo, its staff, and community and we want you to experience different aspects of it. Oh, and eat. We really want you to have time for food, rest, and showers.

Last year, we utilized 78 GMs, Card Guild organizers, and HQ volunteers to ensure organized play activities at PaizoCon ran smoothly. I anticipate the same needs again this year, depending on how many blocks each volunteer requests. We have a few new choices for volunteers this year. As we are running overnight games, we will need a handful of GMs to run games through the wee hours of the morning. We are also looking for two HQ volunteers for the afternoon block to man the information desk and two for the overnight block, when they would be manning the info desk but mainly focused reporting prior blocks game information. Due to the limited number of places, space fills up quickly, so I recommend signing up as soon as you know you can commit to the event.

Volunteer slots are scheduled as follows:

Block	RPG/ACG GMs	HQ
Friday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Friday Afternoon	N/A	1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Friday Evening	6:45 PM to Midnight	6:30 PM to Midnight
Friday Overnight	12:45 AM to 6:00 AM	1:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Saturday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Saturday Afternoon	N/A	1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Saturday Overnight	12:45 AM to 6:00 AM	1:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Sunday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Sunday Afternoon	N/A	1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Sunday Evening	6:45 PM to Midnight	6:30 PM to Midnight
Sunday Overnight	12:45 AM to 6:00 AM	1:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Monday Morning	7:45 AM to 1:00 PM	7:30 AM to 1:00 PM

The breakdown of what benefits are available for each tier are:

# of Blocks	Print Product	Badge	T-Shirts	Boon/Reward	Store Credit
7 Blocks	✔	✔	✔	Choice of 3	✔
6 Blocks	✔	✔	✔	Choice of 2	✔
5 Blocks	—	✔	✔	Choice of 1	✔
4 Blocks	—	—	✔	Choice of 1	✔
3 Blocks	—	—	—	Choice of 1	✔
2 Blocks	—	—	—	—	✔
1 Block	—	—	—	—	✔

The details of each benefit are as follows:

• Print Product—A FREE copy of one Paizo print product of your choice valued at $59.99 or less (excludes preorders or backorders).
• Badge—A free 4-Day PaizoCon 2018 badge
• T-Shirts—Limited release t-shirts given every other year.
• Boon/Reward—An PaizoCon exclusive boon for Starfinder (RPG), Pathfinder (RPG), or (ACG)
• Store Credit—Paizo.com store credit at $10 per slot

Those interested in volunteering, please complete the PaizoCon 2018 volunteer questionnaire. I will consider everyone who completes the form, but reserve the right to select volunteers who have worked at PaizoCon in prior years.

Huge thanks to everyone who gives of their time and resources to help make us the largest organized play program in the world. You rock!

See you Wednesday for an early holiday present. Until then—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge

Organized Play Manager