I can't begin to express the relief that Paizo taking this seriously brings to me. It shouldn't I guess. I'm 2,800 miles away. No one at Paizo could pick me out of a lineup, maybe Mark Moreland or the lady who used to bring cookies to GenCon for GM’s, if she’s even around. I got disgruntled with PFS around Season 3, right after Josh Frost left. Stopped reporting one-shots. That was my protest. No reason really to protest other than Josh spent time at the Crowne with a room full of first time Pathfinder GM’s having cocktails and swapping stories from our tables.
That night more than any other solidified Pathfinder as being my RPG. Folks my age, guys who would have been my friends at Largo Middle School, had built an RPG and were starting to make it. Those guys would have been at home at our homebrew game while we tracked down Vecna’s various artifact body parts - scouring the Greyhawk map for clues as to the final resting place of those items. A guy named Mike and I brought PFS into Pinellas County. We hosted tables at my house in Largo. One of those early participants went on to replace Mike as the Venture Captain. We grew to love Pathfinder as a system, Golarion as a world, and Jason, Josh, Mark as our guides into this world that allowed us to escape shXt tech jobs, bad wives and the loss of friends to ‘Adult’ responsibilities.
Fast forward I don’t know how many years…. I move to Tallahassee. I’m in my 40’s. I don’t have any friends in Tally but a couple of guys I work with want to ‘get the gang back together’ and play an RPG. Desperate to make friends I agree to GM Rise of the Runelords for a table of 7. A table of 7. 2 Min-Maxers, 2 guys who care less about dice but create backstories to rival any character in the Marvel Universe and 3 folks who are character fault driven. I’m scared to death I can’t pull this off. I don’t know these guys well. I have no idea how to manage these personalities at a table but I didn’t need to. The incredible story of the origins of magic originating from the 7 Deadly Sins does all the work for me. The campaign rocks. Two years of twice a month sessions and the table never stops rocking. Our Cleric develops her own Cayden Cailean sect using the Golden Helmet from Thistletop as her banner, our Wizard takes ownership of the library and starts a magic school of his own. Paizo made it easy. I made friends during that campaign. It’s brutal making new friends in your 40’s, I owe you guys for that which is why it crushed me to hear that my ‘friends’ were being a-holes to some of their employees.
I couldn’t believe it, but couldn’t NOT believe it there were too many corroborating stories. My Paizo friends were acting like jackasses.
Thanks for starting the process of turning it around Paizo friends. I don’t think I’m alone when I say “We’re counting on you”
