Encounters with Flying Cats

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Fresh meat! We have to keep the cave raptors downstairs fed!

Hi there! My name is Meredith Kniest, and I'm the latest edition of the Paizo Intern. I've been asked to explain a bit about myself and my experience at Paizo so far, which frankly is an awesome relief from staring at Excel spreadsheets. Oh, the joys of interning.

I'm currently a senior at the University of Washington studying English and French. After having scoured internship postings in the greater Seattle area for months, and with gloomy national job forecasts echoing about my brain in the available space between Shakespeare and Balzac, I was beginning to resign myself to a long and dismal job search. That's when I came across Wesley's ad for an editing internship with Paizo. With a peculiar amount of trepidation did I apply—after all, the closest I've ever come to playing a tabletop RPG was creating fantasy adventures for my little brother using Playmobil people and Lincoln Logs, long ago, in the dusty days before Zelda took her first three-dimensional step, when Doug was the best show on television.

Three weeks into the position, I've learned a great deal about the Pathfinder universe, though I still feel like the greenest noob since Leeroy Jenkins, especially around the other Paizo employees, whose daily conversation—Hey, have we ever used flying cats as monsters? and Do we have a rule for wading through water?—flits by my ears like Miles Davis at a fifth-grade band concert.

My first intern assignment is to continue a job begun by interns of yesteryear: cataloging all of the Pathfinder rules not included in the Core Rulebook.

Yes, ALL of them.

It took me a couple of days to comprehend the daunting scale of this task. It's doubtful that it will be finished by me. Or by anyone, ever. I was discouraged, I won't lie. I had hoped to really wow my new employers with amazing ninja cataloging skills. (Hey, I take pride in my work. It keeps me going after caffeine has worn off.

However, I've been finding solace and diversion in the compelling, sometimes morbid storytelling that seems to make Pathfinder unique. I'm used to video game storytelling. Pathfinder is on a whole new, deeper, infinitely more variable and complex level than video games are capable of. Often I completely forget to catalog a rule or a stat block because I'm gripped by the lycanthropy of Duristan Silvio Ariesir or the perversions of the Runelords of Runeforge.

Feel free to send me your prayers, your derision, or any obscure Pathfinder rules you can think of. I'll be here, reading about the Blood Veil in Korvosa and, possibly, forgetting to do my job.

Meredith Kniest
Editorial Intern