The Gorilla King Wants You to Game!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

I've been a gamer for most of my life, starting with 1st Edition when I was a wee lad. A couple of years later I distinctly remember walking into a Save-On (now CVS) Drug to buy the original Red Box edition. After that I gamed throughout junior high and high school, (Go Gondos!), and even when I was in Argentina for a couple of years and didn't have the opportunity to game, I thought about gaming a lot, and when I got back and went to college, the gaming continued. Since then I've continued to game, including after I got married and even after the arrival of the various members of the Savage Horde. (Hi kids!) I'm currently playing in Sean K Reynolds's high-level drow game, playing Daeanu Azrinae, a 15th-level drow noble rogue (swashbuckler) who's working for the Matron in an attempt to keep the other PCs focused on who attacked us; I'm co-GMing Kingmaker with Lisa and her group at Chateau Stevens-Wertz; I'm gearing up to run a Gamma World game during lunch using the new version just released by WotC; I've just made a character for a 4e game being run by some new friends here in Redmond; and I'm in the planning stages for a Pathfinder game tentatively titled The Dregs, where the PCs will be made up of adventuring group outcasts created by rolling 3d6 for stats, straight down the row, old school style. In fact, just about everyone in the office plays in a ton of games somewhere, with Rob McCreary and James Jacobs the current leaders, with somewhere around 20 hours a week each spent gaming.

Why am I telling you all of this? It's because I'm a firm believer in the importance of actually playing games, and I'm hoping to have this The Gorilla King Wants You to Game! blog idea become a semi-regular feature were I talk about the various games going on here at Paizo. After a decade in the industry, it's become clear that too many game designers and industry folks don't play games anymore, of any kind. But that's not how we roll here at Paizo. We're all HUGE gaming geeks and we love all kinds of games, from boardgames to TCGs, to video and standard card games. There's even talk of setting up some Warhammer 40k battles once the craziness of the holiday season settles down. It's refreshing to work for a company where we not only make games, we play them too. (I also think that playing games helps you make awesome games, but that's for a blog on another day.)

So this holiday season try to get some gaming in, of any kind. Don't have a local group? Head down to your local store and play in a Pathfinder Society scenario or two. Don't have a local store nearby? Try Infrno, d20 Pro, Skype, or some other virtual tabletop. Technology today makes it easier than ever to find a way to game. If all else fails, I bet your Aunt Martha knows how to play Monopoly. Although I bet she might like Settlers of Catan better.

And while you think about ways to get your gaming grove on, check out this very cool piece from the upcoming Inner Sea World Guide hardcover, due for release in February.

Illustration by Mauricio Herrera

Hyrum Savage
Marketing and Organized Play Manager