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We have these for the iconics now...why not one for Wes?
(And by the way, that's your first official question, mister)
Nobody?
Dear Mr. Schneider,
Could you please describe your job responsibilities at Paizo in the form of the Up Goer Five Challenge?
Thank you!
Wasn't there a thread like this for Wes already? Or am I thinking of something else
Dunno. I didn't see one and I thought I'd give it a shot.
I'm surprised it hasn't yet - Wes is pretty rad :P
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Whoa! Oh hi! It took Upstairs Justin to point this out to me. Things have been SUPER heads down here at the office with the Gen Con Crunch for the last few weeks, but especially for the past week. So sorry for being slow on the pick up!
And I'm going to have to be a bit slower still! I've got approvals for Mythic Adventures, outlines/paginations for the end of 2013's/early 2014's projects, an untouched e-mail folder, stacks of about 200 misfiled books, and a 1/3rd of the way drank bottle of rum on my desk today.
So let me hit you guys back this evening and we'll get caught up. :)
dot
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Dear Mr. Schneider,
Could you please describe your job responsibilities at Paizo in the form of the Up Goer Five Challenge?
Thank you!
Oooooh, tricky. "I make books" seems like cheating. Lets see here...
I make books and help other people make books. I know every step on the road that leads from idea to what's in your hand and covering your game table. I'm part of the team that decides which ideas to build and stories to tell. I write plans that turn into work for people across the world who write, who read, who play games. Day in and day out I work with people who are worlds past bright or good or quick, and help them make amazing things even better. When they have problems, I help fix them. I write, I read, I play games--I play the games that let other people play better games. Sometimes I even still get to write for the books we make. Sometimes I fight, sometimes I flip tables. Sometimes everything goes totally to plan--but only once in a while. Sometimes I or mine get things wrong. Every time we do better then last time. We never rest on the past and we hate easy answers. In the end, my team touches, reads, and/or writes every book that has our name on it. And when we're done with the last one, we do it--and a hundred other crazy things--all over again.
Could you please describe your job responsibilities at Paizo...
In other words, I'm the guy in charge of all the developers and editors at Paizo--though the editors are such a huge problem that Senior Editor James Sutter is vital to keeping them in line.
Our brilliant editors/continuity keepers/style makers/book-making masterminds are:
Chris Carey (Pulp Mastermind; All Lines)
Judy Bauer (Diversity Specialist; All Lines)
Ryan Macklin (From the Internet; Hardcovers and Most Lines)
The developers/project directors/scheme makers/the REAL names of many of your favorite writers include:
Rob McCreary (AP Adventures, Night & Weekend Watchman)
Adam Daigle (AP Back Matter, Campaign Setting, General Fixer)
Mark Moreland (Pathfinder Society, Modules, Continuity Guru, New Yorker)
John Compton (Pathfinder Society, Heffalump Bearer)
Patrick Renie (Player Companions, Campaign Settings, Wunderkind)
Logan Bonner (Hardcovers, Fixer, Man About Town)
Project management is also a big part of operation, which I did for long enough to know that I don't want to ever return to the dark days without Project Manager Jessica Price. Jessica also keeps a tight rein on our two editorial interns Cassidy Werner and Jay Loomis.
Judy also has a plant, which reminds us there's an outside, and Jessica has a variety of whiteboards that remind us why we can't ever go outside. Logan has a catapult.
Aside from making sure all these jackals haven't (outwardly) regressed into savagery, I'm part of the team--with Erik, James, Jason, and Sutter--that work out large parts of our editorial calendar, then make sure those concepts turn into outlines, orders to freelancers, work for developers, grist for editors, and eventually books for you. So I write pages and pages of outlines for authors and art & cover orders for artists every month. I also take on projects that we don't have captains for (you might notice we have more product lines than we have developers), be they the occasional bonus hardcover, a card game, card decks, maps, or other crazy initiatives we take on, etc. (I also have my hooks firmly in every Bestiary hardcover we do--because making monster books is one of the main reasons I got into doing all this to begin with.) I also am the only person on the first floor with a couch in his office, meaning that I'm in most impromptu meetings, occasionally a therapist, and typically a co-conspiritor in most schemes. And if anything gets swamped, I can usually jump in and help in some way--I've been designing, developing, writing, and editing since I got hired at Paizo more than 9 years ago (November is my 10-year anniversary with the company).
I can't really say what a normal day looks like, though, because there's not really a normal day--except that there's always some fire to help put out or problem that needs solving. But the answers always involves the most phenomenal crew of super hardworking gamers, brilliant freelancers, and other genius creatives.
And sometimes I go home and edit what I can steal off the editors' plates or write my own twisted stuff. :)
Oh no! Wes bit the cookie.
Or he took the red pill. ;-)
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And, just to do my part in giving Wes lots of questions to answer...
What do you look for in a good freelancer and why? How do you keep them on their game so they deliver what you need, when you need it?
Also, how long does it take you to write a typical outline for a freelancer?
How's Devils Revisited coming along?
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Wes!
How much money, in the form of charitable donation, would it take to get a Bastardhall module or adventure path?
Inquiring minds with large paychecks want to know :)
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I have a plant too!
Because I like to taunt everyone.
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From the look of your avatar, perhaps it's also your familiar.I have a plant too!
Because I like to taunt everyone.
I actually have a cat who's auditioning hard for the part of my familiar, but as she's hilariously incompetent it's never going to happen.
Contributor
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I actually have a cat who's auditioning hard for the part of my familiar, but as she's hilariously incompetent it's never going to happen.From the look of your avatar, perhaps it's also your familiar.I have a plant too!
Because I like to taunt everyone.
I've considered playing a cat wizard with a human familiar. (sorry for the threadjack)
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As for you Mr. Wes what other areas of Golarion do you have a major hand in besides Ustalav?
Many thankies for taking time out of your schedule to see and respond to these questions. :3
Hum, lets see here. Well, Varisia for one. James and I were coming up with stuff for that nation before there was even a world for it to go in. There was a point where we didn't know much more besides that place except that there were wizards, giants, and magic tied to the seven deadly sins. Then we talked around which wizard to make the big boss for the new AP--there was a while where the boss of what would become Rise of the Runelords was a resurrected buried giant, but we reused a lot of those ideas for the end of Legacy of Fire. Anyway, for the wizard, Wrath was too obvious, lust was pandering, pride was also obvious, gluttony and sloth were boring, envy--meh--so we finally ended with greed. Or avarice.
I was doing a lot work coming up with deity names at the time, writing big lists and moving around letters--hoping to hit on something like reordering the letters in "Vance" to get "Vecna." So I started spit balling names for the place in the moleskine I was using at the time... Avarice... Avarise. Avaria. Avarisa. Avarisia. Varisia.
That last one, obviously, stuck.
Beyond that, Varisia was really a team effort between James, Sutter, myself, and lots of others at the time. James did Sandpoint. I did Magnimar (I've got a HUGE map I sketched of it around here somewhere; that was also where I first name dropped Empyreal Lords). Sutter did the original Varisia Gazetteer. So that's where we spent a lot of our first year or two.
Since we've had a full world to play in, I--of course--moved a lot of my focus to Ustalav, but I've also written a lot on Nidal, the Worldwound, and Numeria in the Inner Sea World Guide. Zirnakaynin and the drow houses took up a lot of head space back in the Second Darkness days (I've got another HUGE map of Zirnakaynin's layers around here too). I've spent quite a few words on Sarkoris, my lost kingdom of choice, in the past year or so--trying to mix things up with the clans and pantheism and god callers--and even getting some stink from there into neighboring Ustalav (see Dragons Unleashed). Bits of Cheliax, especially with my details on the Hellknights. And a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.
Monsters, deities, and the planes are really some of my big interests, though. There was quite a while where I had a new monster or two in every other volume of Pathfinder--the Sandpoint Devil, strix, the first heralds of the gods, all the devils in Council of Thieves, etc. But putting a lot of thought into how the planes work, especially Heaven, Hell, the Boneyard, and the Plane of Shadow has grown out of a lot of those creature descriptions.
(Now if I could only come up with a satisfying way to map those places...)
But even for all these spots, no one at Paizo can really honestly say "This is all mine." We've got dozens of super creative, super talented people at the office and we brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other constantly. Add into that the work of hundreds of freelancers and nothing is purely the effort of one person. There are certainly people who are experts on specific places, but no one can honestly point at a place and say "I did all of this." It's a shared world after all, and all the pieces are stronger for the collaboration, the plotting of in-house schemers, and the stories of players out there everywhere.
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What are all of the secrets of Bastardhall?
Rule of Fear says there's an angel named Cevairiel in the vaults there. How weird is that!?
If you want to find out more, though, come to Paizocon and play in my yearly Bastardhall game (which I talked a bunch about over here).
I started the map of the place last year. I should show that off sometime... but I don't think anyone's really interested. ;)
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What are all of the secrets of Bastardhall?Rule of Fear says there's an angel named Cevairiel in the vaults there. How weird is that!?
If you want to find out more, though, come to Paizocon and play in my yearly Bastardhall game (which I talked a bunch about over here).
I started the map of the place last year. I should show that off sometime... but I don't think anyone's really interested. ;)
Memememememememememememememememememememememememe!!!
I'm really interested!
*wags tail expectantly*
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What are all of the secrets of Bastardhall?Rule of Fear says there's an angel named Cevairiel in the vaults there. How weird is that!?
If you want to find out more, though, come to Paizocon and play in my yearly Bastardhall game (which I talked a bunch about over here).
I started the map of the place last year. I should show that off sometime... but I don't think anyone's really interested. ;)
Augh, want to Paizocon so badly. D:
Yay! This is picking up! :D
What are your favorite books?
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wow, Mr wes seems to be more inclined to post wall of text than the other >>ask "someone from paizo* all the question here <<.
That's. The. Best. Part.
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What are all of the secrets of Bastardhall?Rule of Fear says there's an angel named Cevairiel in the vaults there. How weird is that!?
If you want to find out more, though, come to Paizocon and play in my yearly Bastardhall game (which I talked a bunch about over here).
I started the map of the place last year. I should show that off sometime... but I don't think anyone's really interested. ;)
:( I miss PaizoCon this year. I guess... I'll have to imagine what happens; having played Bastardhall the last two. Nothing too bad, I suspect...
Are you implying that we should start an "ask Adam Daigle" thread?wow, Mr wes seems to be more inclined to post wall of text than the other >>ask "someone from paizo* all the question here <<.Well, for now. ;)
Glad I'm not the only one that got this reading ;)
Developer
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Are you implying that we should start an "ask Adam Daigle" thread?wow, Mr wes seems to be more inclined to post wall of text than the other >>ask "someone from paizo* all the question here <<.Well, for now. ;)
Oh, no no no. The implication was that those big wall of text posts are bound to trickle off. Enthusiasm is always strongest at the start.
Oh no! Wes bit the cookie.
Shush-it you! It's give me the opportunity to say nice things about you guys in semi-permanent public instead of just behind closed office and conference room doors. :P
Or...to publicly call them out, as well. ;-)
What's the dish on Adam these days in the office?
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I hear he's a real flumph sometimes.
Wes,
I've heard you helped design the mythic vampire. Was the ability name (and function of) "blood omen" an intentional nod at the Legacy of Kain series? If so, you sir deserve the highest of fives.
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And, just to do my part in giving Wes lots of questions to answer...
What do you look for in a good freelancer and why? How do you keep them on their game so they deliver what you need, when you need it?
Also, how long does it take you to write a typical outline for a freelancer?
This is going to sound weird, but one of my favorite breed of freelancer are the ones who tell me "no." Specifically, those who tell me "Sorry, I can't take that assignment, I don't have time for it." If I offer someone an awesome assignment and they're both professional and aware enough to judge the project's scope in relation to their other responsibilities and then make a call that doesn't end in money or credits, that's a freelancer I WILL go back to again.
We've been burned again and again by enthusiastic freelancers, first timers and thousandth timers, who heap an assignment on top of a shaky mountain of other personal and professional responsibilities. When something in that mountain inevitably crumbles, the resulting landslide means that not just the freelancer, but our project, gets buried. At that point, I have developers not working, editors not editing, art not being assigned, projects falling off schedule, and my bosses looking at me saying "WTF!?" That puts me in one of two positions: A) I never use that freelancer again and I or someone on my team writes the assigned thing in my/their off time, or B) I never use that freelancer again and I find some brilliant, super dependable other freelancer to save my ass.
Why do you think Adam Daigle has a job here? I can't count how many times I had freelancers pooch it at the eleventh hour--especially working on monsters, which I commonly used as testing grounds for new writers. I'm not at my office desk at the moment to pull an actual message, but there was a span of years where I was very familiar with writing e-mails like this late on a Friday evening:
*ahem*
Heeeeeeey Adam!
So we're in a bit of a sticky place. We had a freelancer fall down on writing two CR 88 kyton gardeners for Pathfinder #118. I've attached the complete details below. Here's the trick: I need this Monday*. I'm headed out, but if you have the interest and the time just run with it. Thanks a ton man! Hope things are going great!
~W
(* I usually had till the following Friday, but if he couldn't take (or just needed a couple more days) I wanted to have some wiggle room, even if I had to do it myself.)
Easily 9.5 out of 10 times I would come back Monday morning to two e-mails. One from Adam dated the past Friday or Saturday pretty much saying "Got this!" and a follow-up from him dated the previous night or that morning saying "Here's a thing! Check it out!" and an attachment.
Ultimately, Adam saved me from so many crunched deadlines and late night writing sessions that when it came time to hire someone to do exactly that full time as a new developer, he was the first person I held out a chair for. And you know what the mother@#$%er did?
He turned it down.
What an @$$! But the timing wasn't right and he and Heather had other responsibilities at the time. So after months of searching, we finally got Sutter's spirit animal, Patrick Renie, out of that deal--though we had to wait for him to finish college. (Well, well worth the wait! Except he always makes the rest of us feel old. -_-)
It would be more than another year, but when surges in the company's growth gave us the opportunity to add another hand to team Adventure Path--specifically to fill my role as guy handling the AP support articles and Bestiary--the chair again got held out for Adam, and that time he actually took it.
The editor-author relationship can be like any other relationship. If either side doesn't live up to their promises or out-right lies, there's friction, stress, hurt feelings, anger, bad endings. But when editors and authors can trust and rely on each other, it can lead to a fantastic working relationship. I've had authors who have done right by me dozens of time get in hard spots, and I'm happy to make concessions for them, give them assignments when they need them, see if we can do anything on our side to make life easier, or pull strings with contacts throughout the industry. I don't do that for people who don't live up to their sides of bargains.
Adam's not the only freelancer I or Paizo uses who's done fantastically fast and consistently reliable work. Every editor develops their own stable of authors who they can rely on not just to do the job, but to do it fantastically and make their lives easier when they get in sticky spots. I've got several favorites at the moment, many of whom I'm working with to get even better. It's those folks, the ones who are eager and invested, the ones who are professional and responsible with their time, the ones who look at what we make and try to emulate our styles and techniques, who ask questions and demand feedback, who don't let their e-mails get forgotten, who know and use our game rules, and who, on top of everything, have fantastic imaginations and are solid writers that I'll go to again and again and again. And when huge projects come down the pipeline or new chairs get added around here, those are the authors--the ones who are already making my life easier--I save the awesome stuff for.
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And, just to do my part in giving Wes lots of questions to answer...
What do you look for in a good freelancer and why? How do you keep them on their game so they deliver what you need, when you need it?
Also, how long does it take you to write a typical outline for a freelancer?
This is going to sound weird, but one of my favorite breed of freelancer are the ones who tell me "no." Specifically, those who tell me "Sorry, I can't take that assignment, I don't have time for it." If I offer someone an awesome assignment and they're both professional and aware enough to judge the project's scope in relation to their other responsibilities and then make a call that doesn't end in money or credits, that's a freelancer I WILL go back to again.
We've been burned again and again by enthusiastic freelancers, first timers and thousandth timers, who heap an assignment on top of a shaky mountain of other personal and professional responsibilities. When something in that mountain inevitably crumbles, the resulting landslide means that not just the freelancer, but our project, gets buried. At that point, I have developers not working, editors not editing, art not being assigned, projects falling off schedule, and my bosses looking at me saying "WTF!?" That puts me in one of two positions: A) I never use that freelancer again and I or someone on my team writes the assigned thing in my/their off time, or B) I never use that freelancer again and I find some brilliant, super dependable other freelancer to save my ass.
Why do you think Adam Daigle has a job here? I can't count how many times I had freelancers pooch it at the eleventh hour--especially working on monsters, which I commonly used as testing grounds for new writers. I'm not at my office desk at the moment to pull an actual message, but there was a span of years where I was very familiar with writing e-mails like this late on a Friday evening:
*ahem*
Heeeeeeey Adam!
So we're in a bit of a sticky place....
I sympathize with you on this so much, Wes. I used to be the assistant art director for a North American branch of a Malaysian game development company. We had a lot of freelance artists working as concept designers for an MMO title we were developing.
On more than one occasion I'd have artists bail in the middle of crunch time when we were trying to get a demo ready for E3. It was a nightmare scenario, but thankfully I had my own Adam-like miracle worker who could hop in and save the day. I wish more of those freelance artists had said "no" to me back then, it would've saved a lot of trouble.
I think that entire philosophy is really important to maintain as a freelancer in any field, "know when to say no" or more directly, "know your own limitations."
Now that I'm getting in to the freelance writer field for Pathfinder, it's good to know that the same mentality holds true now as it did back then and that management appreciates the honesty.
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Well done, Mr. Daigle. Well done. :-)
You are truly a hero among flumphs, Mr Daigle.
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Sutter's spirit animal, Patrick Renie
... there's a story here, I can smell it.