Pathfinder 1E [Paizo Publishing] Paizo Announces New GameMastery Modules Line

Paizo Publishing®, LLC Celebrates "Paizo Five"

Paizo announces their GameMastery Modules Line!


February 6, 2007 (BELLEVUE, WA) – Paizo Publishing turns five this year and, to celebrate, they've promised their most aggressive and exciting line-up of games and gaming products to date! Starting with February and continuing through the end of the year, Paizo will make at least one Paizo Five announcement each month. These major announcements will cover new and exciting products, company changes, and a late summer release of a line of products Paizo's never produced before.

The Paizo Five announcement for February is a line of stand-alone adventures called GameMastery Modules. GameMastery Modules will be 32-page, high quality, full-color, OGL-compatible adventures for use with your favorite d20 fantasy RPG and will retail for $12.99 USD. They will be available at your local hobby store or bookstore and online at paizo.com.

GameMastery Module D-1: Crown of the Kobold King releases this June and pits low-level players against an evil Kobold King and his minions who've spilled forth from their dungeon to menace a local village. Written by fan favorite author Nicolas Logue, Module D-1 will be the backdrop for a huge, three-dimensional "delve" event premiering at Origins 2007.

GameMastery Module W-1: Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale releases in July and sends mid-level players into the wilderness of Bloodsworn Vale to tame the monsters within. Module W-1 is written by Jason Bulmahn.

GameMastery Module D-2: Seven Swords of Sin releases at Gen Con in August and challenges mid-level players to thwart an evil enchantress who has stolen the fabled Seven Swords of Sin and stored them deep within her deadly dungeon lair. Module D-2 will be the backdrop for Paizo's second summer "delve" event held at Gen Con Indy. This product is unique in that its story was written by an established designer but its room content was written via an internal Paizo Publishing "Deadliest Room" contest. If you want to give your players a challenge, run them through the bloodiest, most visceral, most heinous rooms the Paizo Publishing employees could think of.

"There are a lot of adventure products on the market," says Jason Bulmahn, Paizo's GameMastery Brand Manager and Managing Editor of DRAGON. "We are committed to delivering the highest quality adventure modules written by some of the best in the industry."

GameMastery Modules will release monthly. Stay tuned for future Modules releases.

ABOUT PAIZO PUBLISHING
Paizo Publishing®, LLC, publishes special interest magazines and gaming products in the field of hobby gaming. Paizo also operates a full-line Internet game retail store at paizo.com. They are dedicated to creating the best products in the hobby gaming industry and strive to encourage new and experienced hobbyists to become more excited about their interests.

Paizo Publishing, LLC and the Paizo “golem” logo are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

I guess I'll be the one to ask the obvious question. Why do these when you already publish Dungeon?

I can think of several reasons.

1. 3rd party content. There's a lot of GREAT material out there. Some of it, like the Tome of Horrors from Necromancer games, handling that 'nostalgia' or 'classic' feel far better than WoTC does.

2. Compilations. Seen an Age of Worms or Best of Dragon 2? We've been told that it's WoTC on the holdup. If they decide to latter put these books into a compilation, they don't need approval for that.

3. Testing the Waters. WoTC may be cutting into Dungeon with it's adventurers competing with Dungeon so the time might be to try out new formats. Full color adventure modules that are 32 pages are well, no where. (I could be wrong and point 'em out to me if they're out there.)

Several reasons.

It gives us an opportunity to publish longer adventures and experiment a bit with the format in a way that wouldn't be appropriate for Dungeon's highly stable format. Secondly, we have more ideas (and our freelancers certainly do too) than we can fit into the magazine, and this is a way to exorcise some of them without messing too much with our core business. Thirdly, without the need to be 100% official we can get away with some interesting creative exercises that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

There are some boring business reasons, too. We want to experiment with a format that is not immediately out of date one month after it comes out, we want to start developing some of our own IP, etc.

The work has already begun on these, and they are looking incredible. Everyone here is very excited about them.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing, LLC

Erik Mona said:

Several reasons.

It gives us an opportunity to publish longer adventures and experiment a bit with the format in a way that wouldn't be appropriate for Dungeon's highly stable format. Secondly, we have more ideas (and our freelancers certainly do too) than we can fit into the magazine, and this is a way to exorcise some of them without messing too much with our core business. Thirdly, without the need to be 100% official we can get away with some interesting creative exercises that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

There are some boring business reasons, too. We want to experiment with a format that is not immediately out of date one month after it comes out, we want to start developing some of our own IP, etc.

The work has already begun on these, and they are looking incredible. Everyone here is very excited about them.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing, LLC

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cool. I'll definitely check them out. Any chance they will be available as PDF?

A 100% chance, I should think.

--Erik

Assuming these are a success, Erik, should we expect submission guidelines for the GameMaster Modules to be made public?

Erik Mona said:

Several reasons.

It gives us an opportunity to publish longer adventures and experiment a bit with the format in a way that wouldn't be appropriate for Dungeon's highly stable format. Secondly, we have more ideas (and our freelancers certainly do too) than we can fit into the magazine, and this is a way to exorcise some of them without messing too much with our core business. Thirdly, without the need to be 100% official we can get away with some interesting creative exercises that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

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Reason 3 is the winner for me.

Mouseferatu said:

Assuming these are a success, Erik, should we expect submission guidelines for the GameMaster Modules to be made public?

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Absolutely!

--Erik

JoshuaFrost said:

The Paizo Five announcement for February is a line of stand-alone adventures called GameMastery Modules. GameMastery Modules will be 32-page, high quality, full-color, OGL-compatible adventures for use with your favorite d20 fantasy RPG and will retail for $12.99 USD. They will be available at your local hobby store or bookstore and online at paizo.com.

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SOLD!!!

Wait? PDF as well?

DOUBLE SOLD!!!