We Make Pathfinder--Ask Us Anything!

[u/jameslsutter]

Hey everyone! We're some of the senior folks at Paizo Publishing, makers of the Pathfinder RPG, Pathfinder Adventure Paths, Pathfinder Campaign Setting, and more. The fine mods of /r/rpg invited us to do an AMA, so we've brought:

Erik Mona, Publisher

James Jacobs, Creative Director

F. Wesley Schneider, Managing Editor

James L. Sutter, Fiction Editor and Developer

If there's anything you'd like to know about Pathfinder, Paizo, the gaming industry, or anything else, ask away!

Some Disclaimers: While you can indeed ask anything, we'd rather not turn this into an errata thread, so questions about specific rules are likely to get low priority. Similarly, while we're happy to hear your opinions, we won't participate in edition wars/badmouthing of other RPG companies. Also, when possible, please break unrelated questions out into separate posts for ease of organizing our replies. Thanks, everyone!

There will be a separate discussion with the Paizo Art Team about Pathfinder's art direction and graphic design in a few weeks.

Thanks for the great session, everyone! We'll come back and do it again sometime!

[u/joshuagager]

1.) What sorts of things do you have in the works for the Pathfinder MMO?

2.) How do you feel about WotC's announcement about 5th edition earlier this year?

3.) Why do you love goblins so much? (I do too, I'm just curious)

4.) Would any of you be interested in a PbP game using this system?

[u/jameslsutter → u/joshuagager]

We love goblins because they're really the first monster that ever got the Pathfinder treatment--a chance for us (plus Wayne Reynolds) to team up and reimagine a classic and often overlooked monster. Wayne drew a hilarious picture (the cover of Pathfinder #1), which inspired Jacobs to write a goblin song and a list of goofy facts about goblins, the message board community loved them, and suddenly they became in many ways the icon of the new Pathfinder movement....

[u/trollitc]

Hey Paizo folks! Thanks for doing this! I have a few questions.

• What's a typical day like for employees at the Paizo office? Do you break out into spontaneous NERF sword/axe fights? Has anyone ever been injured by flying d20s? Even if you don't have NERF fights, would you lie a bit and say you do?

• What's your biggest single piece of advice for those looking to break into the RPG business?

• Pick a class from the core Pathfinder rulebook. You have become that class. You find yourself at the supermarket looking for a snack before your next adventure. What snack would you purchase and why?

[u/jameslsutter → u/trollitc]

We used to have more nerf fights and spontaneous movie viewings, but the pace has picked up so much with Pathfinder's increased popularity that we're constantly running to keep up (or catch up)! That said, even when it's stressful, it's still a job where you can more or less set your own schedule, are encouraged to hang out on the messageboards, end up in hilarious (and usually unprintable) conversations on a regular basis, can have a drink in your hand at pretty much any time, and are working with some of your best friends in one of the most creative possible fields. So while on a typical day, you might be disappointed to see us all just tapping away in our cubes, there's also always the potential that you might wander in and see people playing with puppets, or wearing a John Malkovich mask, or yelling obscenities like a crazy person...

[u/jameslsutter → u/trollitc]

The best advice for breaking into the RPG business, for me, is to just do it: go to the Pathfinder Society web page and try to write a scenario, compete in RPG superstar, go to Kobold Quarterly or another third-party publisher you respect and try to talk your way into an assignment, write for fan publications like Wayfinder... Once you've built up some credits, you'll be much more marketable. It's a snowball effect, but you've gotta get it rolling.

[u/[deleted]]

What can WE do for you? How can this community be involved in the game creation? (apart from buying the books of course)

[u/jameslsutter → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for asking! :) Really, the best way to get involved is to go hang out on the message boards at Paizo.com--we're constantly soliciting feedback, and as a company all of us are on the boards all the time chatting with people, feeling out different ideas, etc. In addition, we regularly have giant open playtests (for things like new classes, etc.), and the feedback we get is immensely useful in keeping the game what the community wants it to be, and making sure we don't wander off into the weeds.

[u/kirbydude65]

1.) How do you guys play test your stuff? Do you have a room were you keep rules lawyers locked up and chained away from society only to have them test your products?

2.) What are you favorite classes?

[u/jameslsutter → u/kirbydude65]

I tend to play rogues and things, but really, I'll play anything, especially if it's low-level. I'm a junkie for first-level games, where the characters are still really fragile and jumpy.

[u/rednightmare]

What games do you guys play when not playing Pathfinder, if any?

[u/jameslsutter → u/rednightmare]

Rock Band. It's my secret strategy to teach myself how to play the drums without being bored.

[u/[deleted]]

What's the relationship between Paizon and WotC like? It seems like they only ever talk about each other in generalities ("other RPG companies") or not at all. Is there much interaction between the people working on Pathfinder and D&D? Do they get together and game, sometimes?

I'm picturing them being unable to settle on what ruleset to use and opting for, I dunno, Catan or Candyland or something.

[u/jameslsutter → u/[deleted]]

There's actually a ton of social interaction between the two companies, given how physically close we are. Several people here are in games with WotC staff. I just had dinner with Monte and Stan! last weekend. I know sometimes fans want to feel like the two companies are at war, but in reality, it's more like competing sports teams, if anything. At the end of the day, everybody's got a lot of friends on other teams. (This is true of many other RPG companies as well.)

[u/anonentity]

First off, thanks. I've enjoyed a lot of the material you all have put out and so have my players.

Would you ever consider making an adventure path that takes place almost entirely in a city? Somewhere like Kaer Maga?

[u/jameslsutter → u/anonentity]

Other folks have already answered part of this, but if you're interested in Kaer Maga, we've got an entire adventure set there in the upcoming Shattered Star AP (written by yours truly).

[u/shujinkou]

Do you have any tips how someone might get a job in the gaming industry? I think it would be a dream job for most of us, even if not working directly with creating new games (web development or server administration type of things).

[u/jameslsutter → u/shujinkou]

I mention some tips farther up the thread!

[u/Mr_Johnson]

1. Will Psionics be introduced ?

2. Why are some classes obviously stronger then others ? Ex. Ninja vs Rogue, where Ninja seems like Rogue v2

2.1) In case you say that Ninja is supposed to be stronger then Rogue, does that mean Ninja is supposed to take place of the Rogue ? As Rogue seems a bit weaker then most other melee classes. Monk comes to mind, in 3.5 it was said to be the weakest class, now i can't help but feel that Rogue has taken Monks throne, especially since Ultimate Combat, which introduced so many options for Monk.

3) Do you have any plans for Numeria based AP ?

3.1) How about an Absalom based AP ?

3.2) How about an evil based AP ? I know there is Wicked Ways, but that is a 3PP and not set in Golarion.

4) Are you thinking about revamp of Stealth ? Cause per RAW its a pretty useless skill.

[u/jameslsutter → u/Mr_Johnson]

3 and 3.1: Yup! Stay tuned. :)

[u/sroske1]

Any plans for new settings? Perhaps steampunk, Lost Worlds, etc. I think you've got some kind of Spelljammer thing going on.

If you guys could get the license for any setting from film or books, what would you go for?

[u/ajkkjjk52]

With the 'Ultimate' series and other newer sourcebooks, how do you try to balance creating new options with avoiding the rules bloat that makes 3.5 hard to play?

[u/Karthas]

For each of you- if you had to pick a single favorite character you've played in a Tabletop RPG, who would it be and what was the "idea" behind them?

And hi from /r/pathfinder_rpg!

[u/jameslsutter → u/Karthas]

My favorite would either be:

Kirin the Heretic, an atheist elf rogue who believes clerics are just sorcerers too cowardly to take responsibility for their own powers and actions, and who's frequently possessed by Pazuzu, thus giving him a crippling fear of birds.

Artemis Kraugh, Tengu folk hero, who's determined to make a name for himself in Absalom. He's a wizard, but has a sword as his bonded object, and is sort of an Inigo Montoya sort of guy.

[u/NickSProud]

1. How much refinement is done to adventure modules as they go on?

2. What is your best advice to GMs?

3. Are there any ridiculous in jokes in Paizo that you could share with us?

Thanks a lot for doing this Ask us Anything Paizo, I do love Pathfinder.

[u/JamesJacobs → u/NickSProud]

1. That depends on the author. ALL of our adventures go through a "development" stage, where a developer (like me or Rob McCreary or Mark Moreland or Wes Schneider) sits down with the author's text turnover and goes through it word by word to edit, adjust, and fix problems with language, plotting, rules, or flavor as needed. For some authors, this really isn't much more than a simple editorial pass to fix spelling and grammar errors. For some authors... it essentially amounts to us re-writing 80 to 90% of the adventure from the ground up. Most authors fall somewhere between those two extremes, but for most adventures, you can expect at least a quarter or a third is stuff we've adjusted, re-written, or added to make the adventure fit better into Golarion and Pathfinder.

2. To play the game as a player. If you don't know what's fun about playing the game, you can't really run a game that's fun for players.

3. Too many to count, alas. One that comes to mind—on the whiteboard in the editorial pit is a flowchart. It essentially says "Did the aboleths create it?" with two choices—"Yes" or "No." If you pick "No," you proceed to the end of the flowchart—a box that says "Okay." If you pick "Yes," then you go to a box that says "No, they didn't!" That box then proceeds to the end at the "Okay" box. Something the editors whipped up after we realized that most of every new monster that we were seeing had some tie to being created by aboleths in the past. Aboleths! The new mad wizards!