Illustration by Anthony Jones

Developer's Diary: Tentacles from the Deep

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

As one of my new duties here in Paizo's editorial pit, I've been asked to take on the development for the upcoming Pathfinder Module From Shore to Sea, designed and developed with the assistance of the patrons at Wolfgang Baur's Open Design Studio . The adventure is a fun-filled romp (some might say a terrifying delve) through sunken ruins, with ancient Azlanti technology and undersea abominations thrown in for good measure, and I thought now was a good time to share a little bit of the process that goes into developing a Pathfinder Module.

We've already done the art and map orders for the adventure, helped in no small part by author Brandon Hodge's detailed and descriptive turnovers. Which leads us to the adventure itself. I'm still wading around in the shallow waters of the module (just getting my feet wet, so to speak), but I've already ventured into spooky, seaside villages, dealt with their insular, ichthyic inhabitants (some preliminary sketches appear below), and wrestled with giant tentacles from beneath the waves. From Shore to Sea has already had extensive playtesting as part of the design process at Open Design, so most of my development work so far has involved arranging things in a more Pathfinder-friendly format, clarifying rules issues, and making a few minor adjustments here and there to make a cool adventure even cooler.

It's looking like a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to diving even further into the adventure to see what ancient Azlanti wonders and eldritch horrors come to light from out of its abyssal depths. Maybe I'll even get a chance to run some unfortunate players through it myself eventually. Now all I have to do is keep James Jacobs from throwing a tylosaurus into the adventure...

Rob McCreary
Assistant Editor