Adventures in the Isles

Monday, February 20, 2017

2017 has been a busy year so far! Tonya recently announced our revised Retail Support Program to provide boon support to public, non-convention events. Linda and I are busily outlining and assigning the rest of Season 8, we've locked in Season 9, Linda's made tremendous strides in updating our FAQ, and we're preparing the next batch of scenario product pages—including at least one surprise for an upcoming convention. The team's also enjoyed incorporating significant crossovers between the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild and the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild, including some fun Adventure Card Guild developments to the Scarab Sages narrative in the ongoing Season of Plundered Tombs. On top of that, we're busily flying around the country to meet with organized play communities in person, with Tonya having attended DunDraCon in San Ramon, CA this past weekend and Mark and Linda attending TotalCon in Marlborough, MA next weekend. On top of that, I've been helping out on several cross-department collaborations that I imagine we'll announce a few months from now.

During this busy time, we're fortunate to have several guest developers helping us with scenario development: Thurston "Thursty" Hillman and Ron Lundeen, both veteran authors and familiar with the intricacies of Pathfinder Society. We're happy to have them collaborating with our in-house developers, and you'll find them featured prominently in the credits for recent scenarios.

Illustrations by Hannah Boving and Sebastian Rodriguez

Speaking of scenarios, we have two great ones due out this Wednesday. The first is Pathfinder Society Scenario #8-14: To Seal the Shadow by the talented Jason Keeley. Especially when we've introduced new races to the campaign, I've really enjoyed dedicating a scenario to meet a representative member of that species or visit a significant settlement. We've done so with nagajis, a samsaran, a kitsune, and even a bit for tengus, but the wayangs have enjoyed only a few paragraphs of ethnographic exploration so far. For more than a year I've been looking for the right time and right author to travel to Inahiyi, the hub of wayang culture in Minata, and Jason did a great job presenting a major festival that the PCs attend to commemorate one of the wayangs' great historical events in the shadow of an extinct volcano. My inner anthropologist is excited that we at last release this delightful Tier 1-5 adventure, which features several inspired wayang illustrations by Hannah Boving.

February also sees the third installment in the ongoing Gloomspires exploration (see Pathfinder Society Scenario #6-06: Hall of the Flesh Eaters and Pathfinder Society Scenario #7-19: Labyrinth of Hungry Ghosts for earlier scenarios) by Tom Phillips: Pathfinder Society Scenario #8-15: Hrethnar's Throne, a Tier 5-9 adventure. This scenario was especially interesting to outline with Tom, as it's this level of the site that first caught Mark Moreland's and my eyes during RPG Superstar, kicking off this entire series. The PCs return to the Gloomspires with Venture-Captain Calisro Benarry, having obtained a reliable means to overcome a lethal barrier and explore what lies beyond. Don't think this is a predictable dungeon-crawl, though; the Gloomspires is full of surprises and jealous rivals, including one of my favorite scenario opening scenes in a long while and this evocative hobgoblin pirate illustrated by Sebastian Rodriguez.

John Compton
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer