Hello Pathfinders!
The Pathfinder community is rapidly growing, reaching numbers in the hundreds of thousands, spread all over this great wide world. Each month, we ask a member of our community to tell us a little bit about themselves. We'll feature players, hobby shops, and anyone else helping to make Team Pathfinder awesome!
This month, Thurston Hillman basks in the warm glow of Paizo's adulation, as our way of saying thanks for all his hard work writing scenarios and generally being awesome!
To preface; it was a cold Canadian Monday when my local venture-officers told me to stop by the local game shop for their weekly game of Pathfinder Society. I showed up, only to find that it was 'Thursty Night' and they were running tables using only my Society scenarios—what an awesome feeling! Of course, when Jenny Bendel messaged me about 30 minutes after I left about being 'Pathfinder of the Month', I figured I was in some crazy gamer dream world. As it turns out, I wasn't in some weird delusion, and now, here I am standing beside giants (well John Halpin at least, I can't comment on Steve's height).
Living in the cold northern lands of Winnipeg, I can't say when I got into roleplaying games. I started with a copy of AD&D Second Edition, which I ran throughout high school. The roughest looking of my 'old gaming collection' would be my stack of Ravenloft books, which I've kept to this day.
Later, while living in a bachelor pad of gamers, I was running about eight games, all of which were Pathfinder. During this time, I GM'd my first adventure path; successfully running a group of players through the Second Darkness where they managed to avert the end of the world with only a single surviving character... who may, or may not have been facing down the BBEG and about 30 of their minions before a well-timed fade to black.
As you may have gathered from my little introduction, I also freelance for Paizo. I started in 2010 when I tossed in a Pathfinder Society open call submission. A browbeating set of feedback later and I was writing for Paizo! Since that first project, I've been involved in writing two convention specials and three more scenarios for the Society. Somehow I tricked the Paizo staff into letting me do more work for them, and you can see some of my handiwork from monsters in the upcoming Mummy's Mask adventure path.
In 2011 I snuck out to my first GenCon, where I volunteered at the Pathfinder Society room. It was there I started making my first real connections in the community; sharing drinks and conversations with people like Liz Courts, Jason Bulmahn, Tim Hitchcock, Mark Moreland, and many more. Following GenCon, I was able to visit Seattle and the Paizo home office during the weekend of PAX Prime 2011. During this visit, I managed to meet Erik Mona, after forcing him into the gaming room when I had all the tables chanting 'Squealy Nord'. I also had the privilege of sleeping on Kyle Elliot's couch.
Bah, there are too many people and too many stories to tell. That's the great thing about being part of this community, I've made friends from across the world, and I like to consider this community more than just a game. It's a group of great people, and it's my pleasure to interact with them.
Except that Jim Groves guy, he's still my archenemy.
If you'd like to nominate a Pathfinder of the Month, or would like to be featured yourself, send a blog of 500 words or less, along with a photo, to press@paizo.com.
Jenny Bendel
Marketing Director
