Creator Spotlight: Patrick Renie, Senior Developer

Welcome to the start of our newest blog series! Nearly every Monday, we’ll focus on a different wonderful industry creator, as an individual, including Paizo staff, freelancers, contractors, podcast players, streamers, YouTubers, licensed partners, and more. The format is a list of standardized questions from which interviewees can choose. Let’s get started!

Name: Patrick Renie
Pronouns: he/him
Title (if staff): Senior Developer
Department (if staff): Editorial

What are your goals or dreams as a creator?

I was a very shy, quiet kid. When my nose wasn’t buried in a book or my eyes glued to a video game, my head was often simply lost in the clouds. I invented all sorts of make-believe games and had multiple imaginary friends. One of my favorite books was an illustrated children’s dictionary. My teachers wrote things like “daydreamer” and “easily distracted” on my report cards.

Though I was a gifted writer, I struggled to compose anything longer than one or two pages. I didn’t like sports or group activities, but I knew how to give engaging presentations and I reveled in making the other kids laugh. I liked to doodle symbols and draw treasure maps in the margins of my homework. I loved to read books about sword-swinging knights and fireball-flinging wizards. Arithmetic and algebra came to me easily, but somewhere around geometry I hit a wall and basically gave up on math.

When I discovered tabletop RPGs, it was like opening a secret door to the clockwork of my mind. These games were full of all the things I liked: stories of fantasy adventure, sketches of crazy monsters, weird dice to fiddle with. The idea of creating my own adventures—something these books not only encouraged but gave me the tools to do—felt insane and electrifying. It was like for my whole life my brain had been this strange, almost alien machine that came without any instructions, and with roleplaying games I’d finally found the missing user manual.

Making adventures felt like a natural way to express myself. I could write stories with interesting scenery and cool villains without having to worry about protagonists’ specific motivations or settling on one ending. When I got bored with one idea, I could write about something else and come back to the first thing later. Eventually, to my astonishment, this mishmash of thoughts coalesced into something amazing—an entire world, a cohesive thing. It was like alchemy, or witchcraft. Once I got going, I couldn’t stop. I never stopped.

Today, I write Pathfinder adventures for young people who don’t fit the mold: oddballs who have weird, terrific ideas and great senses of humor. I want to inspire kids who love books but maybe struggle to focus—youngsters who might not have a lot of friends but love to make people smile, or those who burst with creative energy but whose talents don’t necessarily align with one particular discipline or trade.

If this sounds like you, then I at least hope you know you’re not alone. I know how it feels to live in a world that wasn’t designed for folks like you and me. It’s okay. We can make up our own little world instead. And in our world, everybody’s invited, no matter how much they fidget or how good they are at math or whatever it says on their report card. Anyone who wants to play is welcome.

In our world we can say, Come on in, everybody. We’ve got sword-swinging knights and fireball-flinging wizards and all sorts of other stuff too, like clockwork brains and goblin alchemists and winter witches. We’ve got all kinds of things, so come on in, everyone. Come on in and get ready, because we’re going on an adventure.

What’s the best creative advice you’ve ever gotten?

Write fearlessly. Whatever your burning idea, whatever it is you want to put into this world, it will resonate with someone else—that’s a statistical fact. Have you seen the stuff that’s out there? However silly you fear your idea might be, I guarantee there’s something far sillier already out there which is resonating with millions of people. There’s a guy on YouTube who makes sausages out of bubble gum, water, dirt, etc, then tastes and ranks them. It’s utterly ridiculous. I love it!

The best thing to do as a creator, whether you’re a writer, photographer, or sausage maker, is to work on the things that excite you. But what is that, exactly? How do you separate what you’ve been taught you should want from what you really want? You have to find that "flow state," your personal Nirvana. Here’s how: throw your phone in a lake, bury your computer in the desert, and lock yourself in a room with just a pencil and some paper. Only when you’ve totally lost your mind in your work can you catch a glimpse of the thing at the core of it all—that dynamo hidden under your flesh and bone, the self-experiencing universe inside you, transcendence, enlightenment, the Cosmic Sausage.

What I’m saying is: Get in the zone! Don’t think about recognition or what comes next, and definitely don’t listen to self-help gurus or motivational podcasts or wild-eyed windbags like me! It’s just you and the craft, buddy!

If there’s any actual wisdom at all buried in my mound of prolix drivel, then here’s the tl;dr: when you have fun writing it, readers will have fun reading it.

Make what you want. Forget the rest. That’s the only advice I can offer.

Please tell us about your pet!

My wife and I have two cats. We call them Coco and Patches. They’re the best.

Find Patrick on social media: patrick.renie@paizo.com