Creative Director
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What about AP sequels maybe another runelord?The fact that there are 6 runelords unaccounted for is very much something that we won't leave alone forever.Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't Jade regent technically be a sequel Since
** spoiler omitted **
Jade Regent IS technically a sequel. Although it'll have some advice for what to do if you want to play it before Runelords.
As its daylight over here, my theory that James is a mohrg who never sleeps is growing...
I thought it was always dreary and about to rain, like the Wolfman movie.
Funny, we've got the same problem with east coasters thinking the world revolves around them in Sweden, and we haven't had any time difference since the trains started leaving and arriving on time (a k a the good old days).
Are there girallons on Akiton?
War, what is it good for?
Why does it always rain on me?
Do you know the way to San Jose?
WHY does Vic Wertz enjoy hurting us?Because you deserve it, probably.
Well, that got personal quickly.
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What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
What, exactly, is your job? Just generate new ideas and give them to the staff to flesh out? Vote/veto their ideas? Modify their ideas? Or all three?
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What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
If you have conflict with the other Paizo staff on a ruling about a particular of crunch or fluff for Pathfinder, who has ultimate say on what's printed...and what's not?
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What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
Did/do you ever fear Paizo made a mistake going on its own direction with Pathfinder instead of waiting, then supporting, WotC's GSL?
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What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
Which adventure or supplement, from your tenure at WotC to now at Paizo, would you revised if you had a chance? How would your revise it? Burn it? Convert to new rules? Add more fluff? Crunch? Or...?
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What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
What questions are truly off limit? Seriously. I assume, for example, Paizo sales would be off limits. Same about your, ah, personal life.
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Creative Director
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Funny, we've got the same problem with east coasters thinking the world revolves around them in Sweden, and we haven't had any time difference since the trains started leaving and arriving on time (a k a the good old days).
Are there girallons on Akiton?
There are girallons everywhere. You cannot escape.
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Creative Director
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What, exactly, is your job? Just generate new ideas and give them to the staff to flesh out? Vote/veto their ideas? Modify their ideas? Or all three?What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
As Creative Director, the core of my job is to make sure that everything that goes into Golarion is good for Golarion. I also help to spearhead and establish the mood for Paizo's RPG and novel products. The word "director" is the key; just as a movie director is in charge of the movie's overall look, I kind of do the same thing for Paizo's products.
In the movie analogy, Jason (as lead designer) would be the writer of the movie, while Erik (as publisher) would be the producer. Wes (as the managing editor) is the editor of the movie and the guy who makes sure the rest of us stay on schedule. And even that's not entirely right, since a lot of the responsibilities switch around.
Here's ten things that the job "Creative Director" entails that I've done over the last several days or will do in the days to come.
1) Come up with product ideas, including Adventure Paths or topics for rulebooks or supplements or whatever.
2) Rewriting text that needs rewriting.
3) Making monster entries in Bestiary 2 all fit on a page without sacrificing anything that makes the monster cool
4) Approving art for all products.
5) Outlining products so that we know what they're going to be about, and can then start assigning authors.
6) Developing key and major projects, such as the revision to the Campaign Setting.
7) Deciding what towns and rivers and mountains and swamps and islands in Golarion are called.
8) Creating map orders out of author submissions that can be turned into beautiful maps by our cartographers.
9) Browbeating late authors into finishing overdue assignments.
10) Writing those assignments myself if an author doesn't deliver what we need.
It's a pretty complex job, but it's (mostly) pretty fun, too. It's certainly never boring!
ok so I have not got a AP yet because I usual don't run pre-written adventures, not that I am against them it is just that the cost/benefit does not work out because running second time does not work that well. Plus I have lots of time to plan because my player can't make it more then once?
Ok so that was a long set up but given all that, what AP would you recommend?
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Creative Director
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How exactly are the APs and mods playtested? Or are they?What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
Adventure playtesting is the responsibility of the author. For "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv," I playtested it with a group of players I know very well (friends I've been gaming with for a decade or more) and then I also playtested it with several gamers I'd never met before (at PaizoCon).
Not all adventures are playtested, though. That's not all that unusual. In fact, the developer's job is to be a sort of stop gap for that eventuality; as a developer, you pick up an adventure manuscript that you didn't write and you organize it so that you and others can make sense of it, rewriting some sections, replacing others, moving things around until the end result is an adventure that retains the author's intent but is presented in a way that is both entertaining to read AND not illogical or impossible to understand without reading it through dozens of times. And while that's going on, the developer makes sure all the rules work.
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Creative Director
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If you have conflict with the other Paizo staff on a ruling about a particular of crunch or fluff for Pathfinder, who has ultimate say on what's printed...and what's not?What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
I do. Erik has veto power over my decisions. Said veto powers don't get used often though, since Erik and I have a weirdly synced-up mind when it comes to RPGs.
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Off the top of your head, create a continent wide to global spanning network/cabal of nobles/wizards/priests/and merchants in vein of the Zhentarim in the Forgotten Realms for Golarion.
Name the group.
Who/what would lead this group?
What would thier motivations/goals be?
Where would their power base(s) be?
What is this group's symbol or heraldry?
Which gods/devils/demons/paizo editors would they venerate or have as patrons?
Give them a 'special something/twist/agenda/or philosophy' (however minor) that would make them different from any past dark network that has appeared in fiction previously.
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Creative Director
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Did/do you ever fear Paizo made a mistake going on its own direction with Pathfinder instead of waiting, then supporting, WotC's GSL?
Absolutely. And I couldn't have been happier than when those fears were shown to be baseless.
But in the end, working only on licensed properties is NOT a safe way to stay in business. I would have been MORE afraid if we'd decided to go with the GSL. Had we gone with the GSL and ended up having to wait, Paizo would be a very different company today. Probably a LOT smaller, since we would have gone on a product (aka money) starvation diet since we would have had to go for close to a year without producing products.
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Creative Director
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Are you on facebook? And if so, how can we friend you (if possible)?What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
I am. As "James Jacobs." If you wanna friend me just send me a request. I pretty much friend everyone.
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Creative Director
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Which adventure or supplement, from your tenure at WotC to now at Paizo, would you revised if you had a chance? How would your revise it? Burn it? Convert to new rules? Add more fluff? Crunch? Or...?
Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. I would rewrite it in the Pathfinder style rather than present it in the Delve style. The delve style is far too heinous to read. And if reading an adventure isn't fun, why would anyone want to RUN it?
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Creative Director
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What questions are truly off limit? Seriously. I assume, for example, Paizo sales would be off limits. Same about your, ah, personal life.What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
Paizo sales are off limits. We don't discuss those numbers in public.
Questions about my personal life are less off limits, but I'm under no obligation to answer them with any degree of clarity. And that type of stuff is boring anyway.
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Creative Director
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ok so I have not got a AP yet because I usual don't run pre-written adventures, not that I am against them it is just that the cost/benefit does not work out because running second time does not work that well. Plus I have lots of time to plan because my player can't make it more then once?
Ok so that was a long set up but given all that, what AP would you recommend?
First off... the concept that one who writes their own adventures doesn't need to check out published adventures is a bit... sketchy.
Stephen King is an EXCELLENT writer. A big part of why he's an excellent writer is that he's a voracious reader. He can certainly write an entertaining novel, but he still reads other folks' writing and novels; he'd be the first to admit that there's always something new to learn about writing by reading others' work.
Same goes for GMs. If you never read adventures, you're running a VERY real risk of stagnating yourself. Even reading BAD adventures can educate you on how to make better adventures yourself, and as it turns out, there's a lot of really talented authors out there who write adventures that have a lot to offer. I learn something new about writing adventures every month by reading and developing the adventures that appear in the AP.
So even if you always run your own adventures, you're doing yourself a disservice by not reading other adventures. You don't have to run them. But trust me, the more adventures you expose yourself to, either by playing them, reading them, or running them, the better your OWN adventure writing and creating skills will get.
Now... as for what AP would I recommend? At this point, I'd say Kingmaker, because it's getting some REALLY positive reviews and it's all in print. And because it's very sandboxy; there's a lot of stuff in those adventures (more than usual) that's easy to extract and use in homebrew games, be they new monsters, maps, stat blocks, rules for mass combat, rules for building kingdoms, single encounters, pictures of NPCs, or whatever.
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It is the last hour of Golarion.
Every thing that could have gone wrong has.
Gods and mortals have died.
Pharasma thought to be 'uncaring', weeps unabatted.
Groteus swells with so much energy that he himself shatters as he enters the edless void.
The world and this very plane is about to end.
You are the last man in Golarion and you are about to enter oblivion.
What will your last actions be? What are your final words ?
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Creative Director
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Off the top of your head, create a continent wide to global spanning network/cabal of nobles/wizards/priests/and merchants in vein of the Zhentarim in the Forgotten Realms for Golarion.
Name the group.
Who/what would lead this group?
What would thier motivations/goals be?
Where would their power base(s) be?
What is this group's symbol or heraldry?
Which gods/devils/demons/paizo editors would they venerate or have as patrons?
Give them a 'special something/twist/agenda/or philosophy' (however minor) that would make them different from any past dark network that has appeared in fiction previously.
This sounds too much like work (or maybe a sneaky way to get free Golarion content), and not a question. :P
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What, exactly, is your job? Just generate new ideas and give them to the staff to flesh out? Vote/veto their ideas? Modify their ideas? Or all three?What do the numbers 12, 24, 35, 85, 89, 92, 95, 98, 134, 139 and possibly 112 have in common?They all appear in your question.
Come ON folks! Ask me some HARD questions!
As Creative Director, the core of my job is to make sure that everything that goes into Golarion is good for Golarion. I also help to spearhead and establish the mood for Paizo's RPG and novel products. The word "director" is the key; just as a movie director is in charge of the movie's overall look, I kind of do the same thing for Paizo's products.
Wait a minute. That means you have to review every written piece that's being published by Paizo. Yow! Who covers for you while you're on vacation/sick/emergency?
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Creative Director
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How'd you develop Shensen? Did you come up with her history or did it develop within the campaign?
I came up with the central idea: a drow who got adopted by a non-drow and then was raised to be a good person, but then who lost her adopted mother when she was petrified and taken away to be sold as a piece of art. Shensen was a replacement character for an in-progress campaign, so I needed a way to introduce her to the party; she'd come to Thay following up a lead that her adoptive mother's statue had been sold to a collector there, and carried around a scroll of break enchantment to fix her mother once she found her. The rest of her personality more or less grew organically during the course of the campaign, which went on for a couple of years.
In the "NPC Guide," the bit about her childhood is more or less what I came up with; she didn't get reincarnated into a half-aquatic elf until later in the campaign, but that's such a cool concept that I set that up earlier. All the stuff about her hanging out with a tengu and the mysterious fire and her fear of gorillas and a lot of other stuff all came out of the campaign's development. (although since it was an FR game, I did some name changing to transplant her into Golarion)
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Creative Director
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It is the last hour of Golarion.
Every thing that could have gone wrong has.
Gods and mortals have died.
Pharasma thought to be 'uncaring', weeps unabatted.
Groteus swells with so much energy that he himself shatters as he enters the edless void.
The world and this very plane is about to end.
You are the last man in Golarion and you are about to enter oblivion.
What will your last actions be? What are your final words ?
Roll up a new campaign. 4d6, drop the lowest, in order.
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Creative Director
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Did you have a chance to work with Monte Cook while he acted as consultant for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game? Or he worked mostly with Jason?
He worked with Jason pretty much directly. I didn't really have much input there. That'd be like sticking one of my big fleshy hands into the gears of the remorseless machine. It was already doing what it needed to do. I didn't need to tinker.
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Creative Director
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Wait a minute. That means you have to review every written piece that's being published by Paizo. Yow! Who covers for you while you're on vacation/sick/emergency?
I don't review every single word that's being published. I review the ideas and the concepts, and then folks like Sean or James Sutter or Wes or Rob or pretty much anyone and everyone works together to make sure that the words that ARE produced fit with the ideas and concepts. And when there's weird issues with stuff, they bring it to my attention.
That said, I've not been on a significant vacation for pretty much my entire time at Paizo (not counting a few days or a week around Christmas, but everyone ELSE at Paizo is gone then too, so that hardly matters), so it remains to be seen how things'll work if I'm not reachable.
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Did you have a chance to work with Monte Cook while he acted as consultant for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game? Or he worked mostly with Jason?He worked with Jason pretty much directly. I didn't really have much input there. That'd be like sticking one of my big fleshy hands into the gears of the remorseless machine. It was already doing what it needed to do. I didn't need to tinker.
Was/were there any particular rule or rules that you can recall that proved especially difficult to hammer out?
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Creative Director
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Do you ever base any of your PC or NPCs on people you know?
PCs or NPCs for print: No more so than any writer uses his experiences of interactions with people through his life to craft believable characters. But as for building characters that are obviously in-jokes based on real people I know... no. I try to avoid that. It's not very safe.
NPCs for private games: Sometimes. Usually when I need to come up with an NPC on the spot.