Q&A with Beadle & Grimm’s Product Development Goblin, Donk
Moderator: I understand Beadle & Grimm’s Pandemonium Warehouse is releasing its first ever premium Box edition of a Pathfinder Release. Why Absalom, City of Lost Omens?
Donk: Absalom is THE iconic city in Golarion. Plus there’s danger lurking around every corner, so lots of opportunity to make the characters’ lives miserable.
M: Pre-sales of the Gold Edition begin on Black Friday, with 10% off to anyone who orders by Nov 28th. Did you have any say in that?
[D]: Product doesn’t really talk to marketing. There’s a high wall, three moats, and pit traps filled with trolls between us and the marketing department. Our intradepartmental memos are stuffed in the mouths of junior VPs who are exchanged via catapult nightly. That said, I don’t disapprove.
M: I’ve heard the Gold Edition comes with NPC cards that can hang on the GM screen, with artwork on the front for players and roleplaying info on the back for the GM. What kinds of NPCs might we expect?
[D]: You’ll see all the most interesting denizens of Absalom: noble goblins, brave goblins, handsome goblins and brilliant goblins. Probably some other things, too, but I really haven’t checked.
M: It also comes with location cards. Artwork of the building or location on front, background information on the back. We’ve never seen that before from the Warehouse. Why now?
[D]: Locations cards really help you understand where you are at all times. If you’re a member of the Pathfinder Society, that’s great for their motto of “Explore, Report, Cooperate”. And if you’re a member of the Bloody Barbers, it’s perfect for their motto of, “Bury the bodies further from the house.”
M: I’m surprised a goblin would come up with wearable faction jewelry for players. What was your inspiration?
[D]: We take special pride in our jewelry pieces. They’re designed by our crack jewelry designers, and lovingly crafted from the fillings ripped out of the teeth of marketing goblin project coordinators. Reduce, reuse, recycle, but without the reduce part—we call that “maximizing operational efficiency.”
M: I see. So, you included several short bonus adventures in this Gold Edition. How do you expect GMs to use these?
[D]: Our original design mandate for the bonus encounters was that they would be a short, sharp way to terrorize an adventuring party, complete with large battle maps to mark where the characters fell.
M: Oh, so you also include large battle maps?
[D]: Battles are more fun if you know where you are and what’s around you. After all, the difference in a five foot square is sometimes the difference between living to fight another day and your fellow party members looting your corpse.
M: There’s quite a bit more that will come in the box that I saw on beadleandgrimms.com/pathfinder/absalom. How would you rate your website goblins?
[D]: In general, our website goblins aren’t worth the cost of the oil to boil them. On the rare occasion that they actually manage to make the website work properly, we hold a party with floats and cake.
M: Any last quote you’d like to leave our readers with? Words of wisdom?
[D]: If you open your windows after sundown, and if the wind is blowing just right, you can hear the screams of the mighty warehouse engines coming to life. They’re ready—nay, eager—to build something great for the Pathfinder audience, and I think the product department has really knocked it out of the park. Assuming the website goblins can keep the site up and the marketing department doesn’t go berserk and start handing the boxes out with happy meals, we should be in for a good ride.
Pre-Sales For The Gold Edition Of Absalom City Of Lost Omens Begin November 26
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
