What’s a Desna?
Some two-hundred months ago, I was a wrecked ball of frazzled nerves as I waited for the verdict to come in on the very first Pathfinder Adventure Path. This was before Pathfinder was its own RPG, and while I had experience writing and developing three previous Adventure Paths, this was the first one that wasn’t tied to an established world.
We were starting from scratch.
Not only was my adventure, “Burnt Offerings,” kicking off the first Pathfinder Adventure Path, but that volume also had to present a brand new campaign setting, complete with its own pantheon of gods, new weapons and items, world maps, new monsters, and more, all at the same time. Before “Burnt Offerings,” no one knew what a starknife was, who Desna was, or where Sandpoint was but me. All of those things (and quite a bit more) were part of my homebrew campaign, exported into the new Paizo setting largely as a time-saving stunt so that we didn’t have to build everything from nothing in a few months of frenzied creativity. Fortunately, we had an entire company of incredibly creative folks and amazing artists (in particular Wayne Reynolds and his iconic goblins) to support the adventure, and by the time that first Adventure Path came to a close, Golarion was off to the races.
And so here we are, waiting for the 200th volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path to hit store shelves, and I just wanted to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of the folks who helped keep this thing going over the years—and to all of the gamers who kept their subscriptions going and spent countless hours exploring the adventures we’ve been creating. You’re all the reason we made it this far, after all, and unlike the first time I wrote about Sandpoint and its many troubles, this time I’m confident it’s here to stay.
Well... unless one of those seven dooms gets loose and has its way!
James Jacobs
Narrative Creative Director
Shadows Under Sandpoint
Coming back to Sandpoint to celebrate the 200th volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path isn’t just a return to the site of the very first Pathfinder adventure back in our very first volume in 2007—it’s a return to the town where the Pathfinder RPG was truly born, in the very first Paizo office campaign to use the new rules. As players around the world were playing one of our first four Adventure Paths, the Paizo creative staff itself (or at least a very large portion of it) gathered in our office conference room to explore James Jacobs’s Shadows Under Sandpoint campaign.
Players like Jason Bulmahn, F. Wesley Schneider, Rob McCreary, PaizoCon co-founder Tim Nightengale, Sean K Reynolds, Christopher Paul Carey, James L. Sutter, and more gathered weekly to explore the town, facing off against foes like Pillbug Podiker, the menacing undead Kanker, the maddening Red Bishop, and even the Sandpoint Devil itself in a campaign that spanned the first few years of the Pathfinder RPG era. Traces of these adventures have appeared in previous Pathfinder products. The old Pathfinder Chronicles NPC Guide contained early stats for the characters of everyone listed above, and in the few times we’ve revisited Sandpoint in print since Rise of the Runelords, more NPCs and other plot developments have worked their way in, a palimpsest record of our original adventures hidden between the sheets of official Pathfinder material. Heck, my own character in James’s game, Ostog the Unslain, is now a genuine regent in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, a development right out of the final session of that old office campaign.
Now, with Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, James has pulled together all these threads into a new narrative that features many of the same challenges and foes that went into our original game—an office game that literally influenced the development of the Pathfinder rules and world more than perhaps any other.
It’s not every day that a monthly periodical manages 200 volumes. The predecessor to Pathfinder Adventure Path, the venerable Dungeon Magazine, only lasted 150 issues. A rare milestone like this calls for reflection, and for celebration. We hope you enjoy facing off against the Seven Dooms just like we did in the Paizo offices more than a decade ago, when we weren’t even sure Pathfinder would last 20 volumes, let alone 200.
Here's to Sandpoint, to Pathfinder, and to at least 200 more months of adventure on the road ahead!
Erik Mona
Publisher
This is Where I Came In
Let’s fiddle with the Scepter of Ages a little and bounce back to the quieter times of 2007. I learn that the excellent Dungeon and DragonMagazinesare ceasing publication and Paizo, this little company that put the excellence into those magazines says that they’ve got this monthly Pathfinder thing they’re making that will carry the torch of the Adventure Path forward. I liked their stewardship of the magazines, so I took the option to roll my subscription over to this new endeavor. When “Burnt Offerings” (Pathfinder Adventure Path #1) arrived at my house, I was greeted with a tale of evil wizards from a forgotten empire waking into a world already full of uncertainty and hard people eking out a living in a remote corner. And goblins. Delightfully maniacal goblins. I immediately volunteered to run it for my group as soon as we wrapped our current campaign.
Maybe it’s because it was my first taste or maybe it was because the place oozed with colorful characters full of life (and potential conflict), but Sandpoint has been a gold standard of the small fantasy town in my eyes. It’s small enough to have that “everyone knows everyone else’s business” thing going, but big enough that there’s always some shady goings on when the town goes to sleep.
Years later, I joined the company while we were working on “Skull & Shackles”—so, well after most of the foundational Runelords work was done or the return to Sandpoint in “Jade Regent”—but I helped out with “Shattered Star,” wrote for “Return of the Runelords,” and developed both Sandpoint: Light of the Lost Coast and this—the 200th volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path, a return to Sandpoint to save the first town I came to love in the world of Golarion. I in no way created Sandpoint or the Runelord saga—that’s James’ crown to bear—but I’d like to think I’ve guided it a bit.
Adam Daigle
Director of Game Development
And before any of y’all ask in the comments below... Yes, our digital-play-loving friends, this adventure is getting support from Foundry VTT and it will be available on the same day as the PDF! In fact, since this is a big deal—being the 200th Adventure Path volume and all—the team over there is pulling out all the stops and making this one fancy. In addition to the usual stellar maps and smooth play experience, It will include a fully-integrated, original musical score and special digital dice themed specifically for Seven Dooms for Sandpoint!
Pre-Order The Seven Dooms For Sandpoint Adventure Path Today!
Meet The Doomvelopers
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
