RPG Site of the Day: Paizo.com

Paizo is the company that published Dragon and Dungeon magazines during their last few years.  They wisely branched out before their contracts with Wizards of the Coast were not renewed.  In particular, they created “Game Mastery” and “Pathfinder” imprints among other imprints including some for non-RPG games.  Game Mastery products centered on upscale game aids such as encounter maps, miniatures, and magic item cards.  Pathfinder at first took the concept of linked modules from Dungeon magazine and published them as stand-alone compilations.  (They took the one adventure from each of several Dungeon magazines that were each part of a larger arc and published that arc of adventures as one book.)

When the magazine licenses were not renewed, Paizo continued on with their other product lines including Pathfinder (but with material that wasn’t from Dungeon magazine).  When Wizards of the Coast decided to launch the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons and encourage everyone to move to 4th edition, Paizo saw this as an opportunity for a new fantasy adventure game.

Most gamers were tiring of the 3rd edition (or even the 3.5 edition) rules.  Over time, people had found issues with those rules and some of these critiques were almost universally agreed upon.  GMs made fixes as needed and in the 4th edition rules Wizards of the Coast addressed many of these issues and more.  However, some would disagree with the way Wizards of the Coast changed the game to address the issues, particularly making the 4th edition rules completely incompatible with the earlier rules.  Some felt the game was radically changed.

Enter Paizo.  Because the 3rd edition (and 3.5 edition) rules were published under the open game license, the rules could be picked up and changed and largely republished by others.  In fact other publishers had already done this to create other RPGs such as Mongoose’s Conan and Babylon 5 games and Green Ronin’s Mutants and Masterminds and True20 games.

Paizo has attempted to address the issues many have found in the 3rd and 3.5 edition game rules in a different way.  They plan on calling the game Pathfinder and have created an open alpha playtest process to allow anyone to give feedback on the game.  It should be mostly compatible with the older rules, yet still fix many of the issues with those rules while staying more true to the spirit of the game.  Hopefully.

Check out their web site at Paizo.com, especially their Pathfinder game that is in testing and participate in their very active message boards.