Musings from Organized Play Land

Tonya’s Note: While the first of the month blog offers me an opportunity to talk about topics tangential to Organized Play, the rest of the team hasn’t gotten many opportunities. Their communications usually fall into categories – scenario previews, sanctioning updates, and program updates. Today, we shake things up a bit, with a freeform blog by Organized Play Lead Developer Linda Zayas-Palmer. We envision this style of blog as a regular feature, rotating through the team. If you want to read more blogs like this, let us know in the comments.

Until next week - Explore, Report, Cooperate!

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Life as an Organized Play developer is filled with surprises. There’s almost never a day when I sit down at my desk in the morning, put on my headphones, and just work on a scenario until it’s time to go home. There are always other questions, minor projects, and conversations that crop up. It’s challenging in a way that keeps things engaging and exciting. Over the course of my four and a half years here, I’ve gotten the chance to learn so many different skills. And it wasn’t all the ones I expected. Sure, I’ve become better at writing, editing, mapping, and pacing adventures. But I’ve also learned how to run auditions, how to speak to crowds without being nervous, and, at the risk of sounding like a corny after-school special, I learned to believe in myself. A big part of what makes the experience on the Organized Play team so positive and has helped me grow as a person is the people. My team is awesome. We joke around, give each other a light-hearted hard time, and share our triumphs and struggles. And when misfortune strikes, we have each other’s backs. I’m so fortunate to have the coworkers I do.

Certainly, when I started, I didn’t expect that I’d be the Organized Play Lead Developer someday. I saw John Compton with his seemingly endless lists of tasks to complete, written in tiny handwriting on folded sheets of paper with checkboxes not much bigger than the ones on a Chronicle sheet. I remember my first convention season at Paizo, staring down the mountain of work that had to be done and internally freaking out as I tried to figure out how it would be possible. And I remember John reassuring me that we would make it work, because convention season is always hard, but we always find a way. I remember working late nights at the office with him, laughing, joking around, and making puns so bad he eventually just told me in faux-horror that I should go home, and we should “never speak of this again”. A few years later, when Michael Sayre had his first experience with the demands of convention season, he asked me a similar question to the one I’d asked John. And I found myself reassuring him, just as John had reassured me, that we would make it work, because convention season is always hard, but we always find a way. That feeling of being the experienced person, who trusted in our team to handle the challenges set before it, has really stuck with me.

Our team has a lot on our plates. You’ve probably noticed that we’re not as far along as we’d hoped to be in terms of supporting Pathfinder Society in Second Edition and filling in backlogs of First Edition support. There’s more that needs to be done than there are working hours, and that’s not even to speak of what we would like to do. But we have a bit advantage going into this year. I look back at the last few years, in which we launched Starfinder Society, and the Playtest campaign, and the revamped Adventure Card Society, and Pathfinder Society in Second Edition. It’s rather liberating to not be actively building the bones of a new campaign, but instead be able to focus on supporting what we already have and helping our new Pathfinder Society take flight. As we look forward to the future, our team is still short a person, but we’re actively working to fill that missing slot. More on that soon. As for the rest of the team, I’ll leave it to them to share their stories.

Take care, everyone, and enjoy your games :)

Linda Zayas-Palmer
Organized Play Lead Developer
“Overleshy”