21. What makes a good Pathfinder product?
Pathfinder is its own thing, as far as I'm concerned - there's simply no other beast quite like it. Flipping through the books, you get the very real & palpable feeling that dozens of deeply dedicated authors and designers have worked their butts off to make this the best version of the game that they can make it. Pathfinder is a culmination of combined decades worth of work on Dragon & Dungeon magazines; the best Pathfinder products, to me, really capture the feel of those publications.
What's especially interesting to me, from the new rulebook, is a little section in the VERY back of the book (it's Appendix 3!) called "Inspiring Reading". A little bit was said about it at the PaizoCon banquet by Jason Bulmahn, and I don't want to give too much away, but to me it's really cool to see something like this pop up - a list of authors & works from which the Pathfinder designers have drawn inspiration.
There are some really surprising selections on there, and I think that this game might open up new avenues of approach to the fantasy-adventure genre for some fans. And, to me, that's what Pathfinder is - new avenues of approach to an old and venerable game.
22. What is your favorite Pathfinder product (besides yours and the core book)?
But I love it.
What's great, to me, about Seven Swords of Sin, is that it's the product of an in-house "Deadliest Room Contest" run for (and by!) Paizo employees. Here are a bunch of amazing designers and writers, just hooking together a series of uber-lethal trap & monster rooms to transform parties of heroes into bone-&-meat jelly the Old-Skool way; to me, that's what I want from a classic crawl. While I've never used the entire adventure as-written, I've used more parts & pieces from that work than from any other adventure or publication with the exceptions of the core rulebooks.
I want Coliseum Morpheon to have that feel, too, while rerouting around some of the pitfalls that I think Seven Swords fell into: a mix of unbelievably cool set-pieces, all totally usable either as part of the greater adventure or as their own, separate entities.
23. (Patron Question) How do you plan to avoid it just being the grind of just arena fighting? (A grind)
That's a darn good question, and one that's I've been approaching from as many angles as possible during design. I think that Pathfinder, especially as its presented in the final RPG incarnation, is a very flexible and dynamic system that will allow for some different sorts of challenges that haven't been seen at the gaming table in a while ... if ever. Obviously, I can't say a whole lot about the final rules because of the NDA that I signed, but fans of the Beta from the open play-test will remember some very distinct changes to the core rules regarding things like poisons, polymorphing effects & traps, which are all-too-often underused in games.
There are certainly some straight-up arena battles, which are like the PvP elements of a good first-person shooter (I've found that most people who grew up playing GoldenEye on the N64 remember it & love it most of all for the head-to-head fights); but there are also classic puzzle-solving/race sections which I think fans of Zelda or Shadow of the Collossus will dig on, and I'm doing my best to mix up the challenges in such a way as to never have a single empty-room/"you two - fight!" section without other challenges. My favorite games also have a sandbox element to them (think Grand Theft Auto), which I hope to replicate with plenty of flavor and side-stuff, all augmented with intrigue & story-driven parts that lead to a bigger story.
24. What is your favorite Boomer product and why?
All told, I'm not a rules-junkie - I'm an idea man, and one who can flex his crunch-muscles when he needs to. The thing about game writing (as opposed to purely speculative fiction) is that I have to make all of my crazy ideas USABLE in-game. Really talented writers like Stephen King or Neil Gaiman don't have to make their crazy ideas table-ready; for all the hoops she has to jump through, J. K. Rowling doesn't have to worry if the magical powers in her universe are "balanced".
What I admire about ecology books is that they're 99% pure gaming fluff - work that just makes a game COOLER for being incorporated into your universe. But that extra stat-stuff, the instantly usable crunch presented for the monsters (either as PC races or GM adversaries) makes it solid gold.
The difference between Dungeon Denizens Revisited (which is also awesome, and of which I am also very proud!) and Kobold Ecologies, of course, is that I have two articles in the latter - they're of two very different flavors, one of them a collaborative piece with my long-time friend Matt Banach. To me, it's like having a solo & a duet on the same great mix-tape, along with songs by all these other amazing artists.
25. What has been your best moment playing with a Pathfinder product?
Otherwise, it's all a tie - how do I compare the first time that one of my players says "Oh, you put my old PC in this book! Also, I'm going to take this Prestige Class that your friend Jason Nelson created! Sweet" to the first time a guy walks up to you at a con and says "I loved that one adventure you wrote." - it's all gravy!
26. What has been your most memorable fan response to Coliseum Morpheuon?
Getting past the 50% mark, and without having to call my mom and have her buy a few dozen patronage levels through proxies.
Honestly, all of the fan response has been great - especially getting to field design questions! Send more!
Edit: as of this writing we are at 64% to goal and Boomer's mom only bought one Bronze patronage
27. What role do you think Coiseum Morpheuon will play in the Pathfinder gaming community?
I love those moments at a convention when someone walks up and just says "I dig your work". And I think that I'm going to be getting more of that, because of this amazing opportunity to set down the Damnation Epoch.
28. Any plans on running a Coliseum Morpheuon game using Fantasy Grounds or Maptool?
I'm kind of an e-idiot, to be perfectly honest; everyone else I know is running around with iPhones that are a step away from digital telepathy, and I've got a flippy little brick of a cell phone that can barely take blurry, thumb-sized pictures & send scrambled bits of text.
I would be MORE than happy to run a game or two using this new-fangled "internets", if someone was there to kind of hold my hand and guide me through the process, but for the most part I'm still a "be here now" kind of GM - I like to stand up when I run combats, and yell things and make sound effects and occasionally throw dice. Can you do that with Maptool?
29. Could you tell us a little about the differences between professional game design and designing for play?
Professional design is a whole different animal - it's writing a novel, not telling a story over a beer. What a GM or a player picking up a copy of something I've written should expect is a fully finished, fully-realized world - where I've done all the calculations & all the math, and they can use it right away.
Two different skill-sets, both equally challenging.
30. Why not do an "Obvious Book" (racial and class books, or sorcerous bloodlines) instead of Coliseum Morpheuon?
Right now, I have this story to tell, and I'd love for you guys to help me tell it. That's about it.
Pathfinder is its own thing, as far as I'm concerned - there's simply no other beast quite like it. Flipping through the books, you get the very real & palpable feeling that dozens of deeply dedicated authors and designers have worked their butts off to make this the best version of the game that they can make it. Pathfinder is a culmination of combined decades worth of work on Dragon & Dungeon magazines; the best Pathfinder products, to me, really capture the feel of those publications.
What's especially interesting to me, from the new rulebook, is a little section in the VERY back of the book (it's Appendix 3!) called "Inspiring Reading". A little bit was said about it at the PaizoCon banquet by Jason Bulmahn, and I don't want to give too much away, but to me it's really cool to see something like this pop up - a list of authors & works from which the Pathfinder designers have drawn inspiration.
There are some really surprising selections on there, and I think that this game might open up new avenues of approach to the fantasy-adventure genre for some fans. And, to me, that's what Pathfinder is - new avenues of approach to an old and venerable game.
22. What is your favorite Pathfinder product (besides yours and the core book)?
But I love it.
What's great, to me, about Seven Swords of Sin, is that it's the product of an in-house "Deadliest Room Contest" run for (and by!) Paizo employees. Here are a bunch of amazing designers and writers, just hooking together a series of uber-lethal trap & monster rooms to transform parties of heroes into bone-&-meat jelly the Old-Skool way; to me, that's what I want from a classic crawl. While I've never used the entire adventure as-written, I've used more parts & pieces from that work than from any other adventure or publication with the exceptions of the core rulebooks.
I want Coliseum Morpheon to have that feel, too, while rerouting around some of the pitfalls that I think Seven Swords fell into: a mix of unbelievably cool set-pieces, all totally usable either as part of the greater adventure or as their own, separate entities.
23. (Patron Question) How do you plan to avoid it just being the grind of just arena fighting? (A grind)
That's a darn good question, and one that's I've been approaching from as many angles as possible during design. I think that Pathfinder, especially as its presented in the final RPG incarnation, is a very flexible and dynamic system that will allow for some different sorts of challenges that haven't been seen at the gaming table in a while ... if ever. Obviously, I can't say a whole lot about the final rules because of the NDA that I signed, but fans of the Beta from the open play-test will remember some very distinct changes to the core rules regarding things like poisons, polymorphing effects & traps, which are all-too-often underused in games.
There are certainly some straight-up arena battles, which are like the PvP elements of a good first-person shooter (I've found that most people who grew up playing GoldenEye on the N64 remember it & love it most of all for the head-to-head fights); but there are also classic puzzle-solving/race sections which I think fans of Zelda or Shadow of the Collossus will dig on, and I'm doing my best to mix up the challenges in such a way as to never have a single empty-room/"you two - fight!" section without other challenges. My favorite games also have a sandbox element to them (think Grand Theft Auto), which I hope to replicate with plenty of flavor and side-stuff, all augmented with intrigue & story-driven parts that lead to a bigger story.
24. What is your favorite Boomer product and why?
All told, I'm not a rules-junkie - I'm an idea man, and one who can flex his crunch-muscles when he needs to. The thing about game writing (as opposed to purely speculative fiction) is that I have to make all of my crazy ideas USABLE in-game. Really talented writers like Stephen King or Neil Gaiman don't have to make their crazy ideas table-ready; for all the hoops she has to jump through, J. K. Rowling doesn't have to worry if the magical powers in her universe are "balanced".
What I admire about ecology books is that they're 99% pure gaming fluff - work that just makes a game COOLER for being incorporated into your universe. But that extra stat-stuff, the instantly usable crunch presented for the monsters (either as PC races or GM adversaries) makes it solid gold.
The difference between Dungeon Denizens Revisited (which is also awesome, and of which I am also very proud!) and Kobold Ecologies, of course, is that I have two articles in the latter - they're of two very different flavors, one of them a collaborative piece with my long-time friend Matt Banach. To me, it's like having a solo & a duet on the same great mix-tape, along with songs by all these other amazing artists.
25. What has been your best moment playing with a Pathfinder product?
Otherwise, it's all a tie - how do I compare the first time that one of my players says "Oh, you put my old PC in this book! Also, I'm going to take this Prestige Class that your friend Jason Nelson created! Sweet" to the first time a guy walks up to you at a con and says "I loved that one adventure you wrote." - it's all gravy!
26. What has been your most memorable fan response to Coliseum Morpheuon?
Getting past the 50% mark, and without having to call my mom and have her buy a few dozen patronage levels through proxies.
Honestly, all of the fan response has been great - especially getting to field design questions! Send more!
Edit: as of this writing we are at 64% to goal and Boomer's mom only bought one Bronze patronage
27. What role do you think Coiseum Morpheuon will play in the Pathfinder gaming community?
I love those moments at a convention when someone walks up and just says "I dig your work". And I think that I'm going to be getting more of that, because of this amazing opportunity to set down the Damnation Epoch.
28. Any plans on running a Coliseum Morpheuon game using Fantasy Grounds or Maptool?
I'm kind of an e-idiot, to be perfectly honest; everyone else I know is running around with iPhones that are a step away from digital telepathy, and I've got a flippy little brick of a cell phone that can barely take blurry, thumb-sized pictures & send scrambled bits of text.
I would be MORE than happy to run a game or two using this new-fangled "internets", if someone was there to kind of hold my hand and guide me through the process, but for the most part I'm still a "be here now" kind of GM - I like to stand up when I run combats, and yell things and make sound effects and occasionally throw dice. Can you do that with Maptool?
29. Could you tell us a little about the differences between professional game design and designing for play?
Professional design is a whole different animal - it's writing a novel, not telling a story over a beer. What a GM or a player picking up a copy of something I've written should expect is a fully finished, fully-realized world - where I've done all the calculations & all the math, and they can use it right away.
Two different skill-sets, both equally challenging.
30. Why not do an "Obvious Book" (racial and class books, or sorcerous bloodlines) instead of Coliseum Morpheuon?
Right now, I have this story to tell, and I'd love for you guys to help me tell it. That's about it.
You can find Part 4 of the interview HERE
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