Paizo Publishing

Paizo Publishing at Origins 2008

In the big world of convention-land, some booths have displays that draw our attention more than others. Paizo Publishing’s banner of their game Yetisburg featuring a Yeti donning the Johnny Reb was a sight so ridiculous that it seemed to emanate magnetic forces to draw us in.

Unfortunately, at the time, the Yetisburg demo section was jam-packed of others drawn in by the awesome banner, so we checked out a second game they had set up, Key Largo. Key Largo is a family/light strategy board game based around divers exploring for sunken treasure. There are a limited number of turns in the game for players to hire divers, buy equipment, search for treasure, or several other options before the game runs out. When searching for treasure, players have the choice of the depth of their search: shallow, medium, or deep. The deeper a diver goes the more equipment that is required, the more valuable the discovered treasure is, and as I found out painfully quickly, the more frequent the monster attacks. Towards the end of the game, while Peranon’s divers could be found on the cover of Time Magazine, mine were constantly found in the obituaries. Overall, the game is very enjoyable family game or, dare I say, a “gateway” game.

At this point, a spot opened up at the Yetisburg table and onlookers may be able to describe the blur that may have been identified as Spewgilist writers flying towards the demo tables. I immediately made a grab for the North deck despite my hatred for all things Yankees. It seemed a good idea to play the side that actually won yeti-less Gettysburg. I had a deck of troops divided into five horizontal piles which produced two rows of troops. These cards depicted traditional soldiers like infantry and cavalry and untraditional troops like artillery, showing an elephant shooting cannonballs out of its trunk. We took turns playing a troop card from our hands to order all troops on the field of the same type to fire. To fire, we would draw a chip that would display the range and direction of each shot. Famous general cards on the field were able to “rally” troops after a turn ended, allowing troops to fire again during the next turn.

The game got interesting when the yetis hit the board. When a unit dies, the units in the second rank advance and replacing them is the top card of the corresponding face-down deck. If a yeti is drawn, the yeti charges the front line, crushing all of your troops along the way. My opponent, Peranon, wound up drawing into a yeti chain, where yetis kept running over his own troops allowing me an easy victory.

At first inspection, the game appeared to be quite luck-based as both range and direction were completely random. However, the general cards allow players a great deal of strategy of moving troops around, replacing some units on the battlefield, and other sorts of handy features. Although it was a difficult feat, the game was as enjoyable as the banner that advertised it.

We recognized some of their other board and card games as well. They had a new version of the fast-paced card game Falling and a deluxe edition of Cheapass Games’ Kill Doctor Lucky, two games that we can both recommend.

Afterwards, we were able to sit down for a little chat with Alex Mona, the publisher for Paizo Publishing, to discuss their company and product line.

One section of the booth that had caught my eye was the novel wall, as I was surprised to see several books written by the late Gary Gygax. Now, I’m a rather young fellow, and I’ve only seen Gygax’s name associated with the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. Alex explained that their line of books, Planet Stories, are out-of-print science fiction and fantasy novels that inspired some of the big gaming systems that we know today. His argument was that if the novels were good enough to inspire some of the most popular gaming systems to date, why are they still out-of-print?

Paizo Publishing’s big project Pathfinder sounded very interesting. Paizo has put out popular subscription-based role-playing modules for quite a long time now through their magazines Dungeon, Dragon, as well as standalone Pathfinder adventures for use in
”popular role-playing systems.” After noticing the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 even after 4th edition came out, Pathfinder is being released as a “fixed” version of 3.5.

Alex mentioned that one of the main goals with Pathfinder is to offer an extensive online community with support. They are taking large amounts of feedback into consideration when developing Pathfinder, hoping to turn 3.5 into an even more satisfying and well-rounded system. Another thing I found particularly interesting is their use of the Open Game License, so others can easily make adventures and campaigns as well.

I cannot say I’ve seen the dedication to the fan community that Pathfinder is promising and I’m very interested to see the final product.

The Pathfinder system is currently in the alpha testing phase and is available (FOR FREE) on their website (paizo.com) with the beta rolling out soon.

Afterwards, we were able to sit down for a little chat with Alex Mona, the publisher for Paizo Publishing, to discuss their company and product line.

I cannot say I’ve seen the dedication to the fan community that Pathfinder is promising and I’m very interested to see the final product.

The Pathfinder system is currently in the alpha testing phase and is available (FOR FREE) on their website (paizo.com) with the beta rolling out soon.