Tag: Jason Bulmahn

Pathfinder and Starfinder Web-fiction

Hello, and welcome to d20diairies!

Over the past few months Paizo has released a ton of short web-fiction on their blog.  These thoroughly entertaining short stories and vignettes focus on the Pact Worlds and Golarion, with the Iconic Encounters series showcasing each of the iconic characters in the Starfinder Core Rulebook and the Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook, and the Tales of Lost Omens series showcasing the many meta-regions of the Inner Sea Region. Each instalment has been an absolute delight and, if you haven’t stopped by Paizo’s site and given them a read yet, I highly recommend you do. They’re definitely worth it!

For sake of ease, we’ve compiled the links below.

Enjoy!

Jessica

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the new ‘The Windsong Testaments’ series, featuring tales of the gods of Golarion, linked to below!

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the new ‘Tales from the Drift’ series, exciting short stories that showcase the setting of the Starfinder RPG, linked to below!

Iconic Encounters: Pathfinder Second Edition

Tales of Lost Omens: Pathfinder Second Edition

The Winding Testaments: Pathfinder Second Edition

Iconic Encounters: Starfinder

Meet the Iconics: Starfinder

Tales from the Drift

Oblivion Oath Premiere Tomorrow!

Last month Paizo announced a the launch of a liveplay campaign that will feature the new Pathfinder Second Edition ruleset! Launching on April 4th and featuring Paizo staff members, this liveplay will be our first glimpse at the newly updated Pathfinder Second Edition rules.

GMed by Paizo’s Director of Game Design, Jason Bulmahn, the liveplay is called Oblivion Oath and will air live on Paizo’s twitch stream every Thursday at Noon Pacific for one hour. Episodes will go up on Paizo’s Youtube Channel a few days later. Each week since the announcement the players have sat down with Dan Tharp, producer of the show, to describe their characters and answer questions. The final character reveal happened  last week and tomorrow marks the premiere of the Oblivion Oath campaign! Oblivion Oath will continue for an indetermined length of time.

Jason Bulmahn will be joined by four lucky Paizo Staffers, Gabe Waluconis (Paizo’s Project Manager) will be playing an Iruxi (lizardfolk) rogue named Zel. Katina Davis (from Paizo’s Customer Service Team) will be playing Zel’s best friend Mykah, a gnome wizard. Sara Marie (Customer Service and Community Manager) will be playing Carina Whisperbane, a runaway dwarf Redeemer Champion of Pharasma (Champion is the new term for Paladin, which can be of any good alignment. Paladins are LG Champions, Redeemers are NG Champions, and Liberators are CG Champions). And finally, Owen K.C. Stephens (Starfinder Design Lead) will be playing Qundle, a Celestial blooded goblin sorcerer capable of using divine magic and possessing a deep love of pickles. Unlike the previous Doomsday Dawn livestream, Oblivion Oath is meant to be a character driven liveplay that features the same players and characters week after week. Although it is sure to feature spoilers about the upcoming Second Edition rules, it’s not intended to teach viewers how to play Second Edition. It’s about story, and the characters helping to drive it.

Oblivian Oath
The characters of Oblivion Oath! From the left: Zel, Mykah, Carina Whisperbane, and Qundle. Illustrated by PxelSlayer. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc. 

Oblivion Oath takes place in Golarion in the year 4719, which makes it concurrent with the events of the final Pathfinder First Edition Adventure Path: Tyrant’s Grasp. Oblivion’s Oath is said to feature a glimpse at that AP, but not spoilers. Instead, it will be it’s own story.

“Four unlikely heroes set sail from the port of Vellumis aboard the Sleepy Sea Cat, a slow-moving barge sailing the waters of Lake Encarthan,” Jason Bulmahn revealed on Paizo’s blog. “Packed with travelers and cargo, Captain Heliana Ironeye assures everyone of a smooth journey north to Ustalav before turning south and making for the elven port of Greengold, but tensions aboard remain high. Terrifying rumors out of the west, combined with fires throughout the city have set folk on edge, and the barge contains more than a few eager to put Lastwall behind them. In the case of our heroes, that could not be more true…”

For more information on Oblivion Oath cast and characters check out Paizo’s Twitch Stream or Youtube Channel! A list of the current episodes it at the bottom of this post. Be sure to tune it to Paizo’s Twitch Stream weekly on Thursdays at Noon Pacific to watch Oblivion Oath live! The premiere is tomorrow!

We’ll see you there!

Jessica

Current Oblivion Oath Episodes:

Be sure to check out the premiere episode tomorrow on Twitch!

Oblivion Oath Announced!

Paizo announces a brand new liveplay campaign that will feature the new Pathfinder Second Edition ruleset! Launching on April 4th and featuring Paizo staff members, this liveplay will be our first glimpse at the newly updated Pathfinder Second Edition rules. Exciting stuff!

GMed by Paizo’s Director of Game Design, Jason Bulmahn, the liveplay is called Oblivion Oath and will air live on Paizo’s twitch stream every Thursday at Noon Pacific for one hour. Episodes will go up on Paizo’s Youtube channel a few days later. Each week between now and launch players will take to the stream to describe their characters and answer questions, culminating in the premiere episode on April 4th. Oblivion Oath will continue for an indetermined length of time.

Jason Bulmahn will be joined by four lucky Paizo Staffers, Gabe Waluconis (Paizo’s Project Manager), Katina Davis (from Paizo’s Customer Service Team), Sara Marie (Customer Service and Community Manager), and Owen K.C. Stephens (Starfinder Design Lead). Unlike the previous Doomsday Dawn livestream, Oblivion Oath is meant to be a character driven liveplay that features the same players and characters week after week. Although it is sure to feature spoilers about the upcoming Second Edition rules, it’s not intended to teach viewers how to play Second Edition. It’s about story, and the characters helping to drive it.

Oblivion Oath takes place in Golarion in the year 4719, which makes it concurrent with the events of the final Pathfinder First Edition Adventure Path: Tyrant’s Grasp. Oblivion’s Oath is said to feature a glimpse at that AP, but not spoilers. Instead, it will be it’s own story. Oblivion’s Oath is set in the port city of Vellumis in Lastwall and begins with our (as yet unknown) PCs determined to gain passage on a barge out of the city. The barge in question, Sleepy Seacat, is scheduled to make it’s way clockwise around Lake Encarthan, heading for Caliphas (and skipping Razmiran).

And from there?

We’ll have to wait and see.

For more information on the Oblivion Oath Liveplay tune in to Paizo’s Twitch Stream weekly on Thursdays at Noon Pacific! We’ll see you there!

Jessica

Pathfinder Second Edition: Forging the Future!

We haven’t talked about Pathfinder Second Edition in a while. Neither have the folks over at Paizo. Or, at least, not publicly. That’s because the Development Team has been hard at work sifting through survey data, making changes to the game, and generally working their asses off to make Pathfinder Second Edition the best RPG that it can be.

But, this past Pathfinder Friday on Paizo’s twitch stream, we finally got some news! Jason Bulmahn, Director of Game Design, sat down with Host and Marketing Manager Dan Tharp to talk about the future of Pathfinder.

His first topic of conversation?

Surveys.

Feedback surveys on the PF2 Playtest are going to be open until December 31st at midnight. That’s right! You’ve still got time to give them your feedback, answer their questions, and give Paizo the data they need to continue improving the next version of Pathfinder. Be sure to get your surveys done before the New Year!

But, even though they’re still accepting feedback, and sifting through our responses, the development team is already working on improving the game, and revising everything. Word is they’re halfway done editing the book, with another quarter that they hope to get done over the holidays. (Yes, they brought home more work). The whole development team deserves a huge round of applause. Keep up the good work! (And take a breather while you’re at it!).

Now, as I mentioned, they’re still accepting feedback, and they still testing and retesting everything they can. They’ve made some changes, but they’re not done yet — not by a long shot! In addition, some of the things they’ve changed are likely to change again. But they’re making progress. And Jason decided to share some of that progress with us.

The Top Five Things That You Can Look Forward To for Pathfinder Second Edition!

#5 – Polish and Flavour. Jason admitted that a lot of the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook was technically sound, but dry. It lacked pizazz! They intend to change that. The development team is trying their best to inject as much flavour into the rulebook as they can! Thank goodness! Haha. Sneak peeks Jason mentioned included calling the various rogue specializations a ‘Rogue’s Racket’ and that Wizards get to create their own graduate thesis to represent their specialization in magic. Awesome! I can’t wait to see what else they bring to the table.

#4 – Jason rewrote Chapter 1. This new introduction to the game is said to be an engaging narrative which is meant to be as entertaining and easy to understand as possible. It even includes a sample build and an example of play. Awesome!

#3 – GM Resources. The folks at Paizo are trying to make GMing as easy as possible. The table of DCs, which were overly complicated, are now streamlined into a simple chart. Conditions are undergoing some changes, as well. Some were removed, others were changed, and they even added a new one: Doomed! Essentially, Doomed lowers your dying threshold. This is a condition players will want to get rid of ASAP!

#2 – Resonance. They got rid of it completely. Pardon me while I dance in glee.

#1 – Proficiency. Although the system makes sense and was met with positive feedback, many players said that they didn’t feel like the numbers involved allowed for enough variance between the proficiencies, so they’re being changed! Untrained will remain +0 (and does not add your level), Trained skills will be at +2 plus level, Expert at +4 plus level, Master +6 plus level, and Legendary +8 plus level. Here’s hoping they’ve got the math right this time around!

Other mentioned changes include allowing the three different alignments for paladins, making spellcasters and spells more powerful, adding ‘Fail Forward’ rules (which is when even on a failed roll your PCs progress, but with some kind of penalty or downside caused by their failure), and more! I don’t know about you, but I’m exciting to see what Pathfinder Second Edition will become!

Jessica

Assorted Dice Rainbow

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