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James Jacobs

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James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 27 Sep 2021 03:42

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#82230

icycalm wrote:Hi James. I just want to say that I believe you and Bulmahn are the true continuators of Arneson and Gygax (he's Gygax's and you're Arneson's). You are my heroes. (And Paizo is the true continuator of TSR.)

Now for my questions.

Do you realize that the future of role-playing is this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fiHRHIqCiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wNFXfq_i08

And this:

https://culture.vg/forum/topic?f=28&t=7276

Do you want/plan to be a part of it?
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Unread postby icycalm » 27 Sep 2021 16:57

He answered. His answer was very based, I did not expect it. Go check it out.

I was used to talking to game devs who are all programmers, and they are stupid.

This guy is no programmer.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 24 Nov 2021 04:18

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43ihq&page ... variety#70

James Jacobs wrote:We've come close a few times to a "Dragonslaying" Adventure Path, but every time, it crashed and burned. The "slay the dragon" plot is a classic example of a story that works better as a single adventure rather than a 6 part one, because doing that story 6 times in a row gets repetitive, and having just one dragon to slay in an Adventure Path results in the five adventures before it NOT being part of a Dragonslaying Adventure Path.

Giants work fine in that model because giants have a legacy of being a "mob" enemy. Dragons are SO deeply rooted in the "one big boss" storyline that you really have to redefine their role from the ground up to do something different with them. As a result, for many years whenever we put a dragon into an adventure in Dungeon magazine and that dragon wasn't the main boss of the adventure, we'd get angry mail and complaints about "wasting" a dragon in a side encounter.

Add to that the simple fact that Wizards of the Coast has been leaning in HARD on the "dragonslaying" plots for their big adventures, for decades. It helps that the word "dragon" is in their name. But that does mean that, on a personal note, I've really not been super interested in pursuing an "off brand" Dragonlance or Dragon Mountain or War of Scales or Red Hand of Doom or insert-classic-D&D-Dragonslaying-adventure-here thing for Adventure Paths as well.

Which is why, when I was tasked with relaunching the standalone adventure line several years ago, I went with the plot that became "The Dragon's Demand."

When we launched 2nd edition, we were super nervous about the reception, and were facing a MUCH stronger D&D than we were when we launched 1st edition, and so there was a pretty strong push from the powers that be to include dragons as foes in our first 2nd edition Adventure Path. But the problems I mention above didn't magically vanish with an edition change.

The result is my best stab at building a "dragonslaying" adventure path with Age of Ashes, which isn't "slay a dragon every volume" so much as a "deal with the repercussions of a single dragon" for the course of a campaign. Being able to hitch that story to a dragon that didn't feel like he was kidnapped from Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Eberron or Dark Sun or (etc) was a nice benefit, for sure.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#82596

James Jacobs wrote:
Richard Forrest wrote:How much of the lore we're given in the Wrath of the Righteous video game is canon, ignoring path specific events and things that directly contradict the lore from the actual AP? Things like there being a Pathfinder Society lodge in the Midnight Isles, etc. Just curious how closely the game makers worked with your lore team when writing the game.


It's canon for the video game, and canon for the Owlcat line of games, but it's not canon for the tabletop RPG.

The Owlcat game is more akin to a super-high-production-value game run by a GM with lots of GM additions and enhancements to expand the storline, but just as we don't adopt any one specific GM's home game to our published content as canon, we don't do the same for computer games based on our adventures.

For the basic plot of the game and the basic stories of the companion NPCs, Owlcat worked with us to get approvals on outlines, but the vast majority of the writing for the game did not go through a line-by-line approval process by anyone at Paizo.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#82598

James Jacobs wrote:Pretty much everything we published for 1st edition still has a place in 2nd edition, but since we had a decade or so to publish 1st edition content and only a few years for 2nd edition, AND we want to do new things so we don't bore ourselves, some 1st edition stuff will never see a published transition to 2nd edition.

This includes the things you mention. But those things are mostly D&D exports, and increasingly, we've been more interested in charting our own path and embracing more of OUR creations instead. That said, I did just update several old classic critters from 3rd edition D&D for an unannounced thing coming out next year, including at least one (1) thing that drops down from the ceiling. I don't know when we plan to announce said thing, but I wouldn't expect it for several months.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#82607

James Jacobs wrote:Not everything in the game needs to appeal to everyone. Me included. That does mean that when it comes to content I'm not passionate about, be it Ragathiel, or dwarves, or Rahadoum, or whatever... that those topics are better covered by other writers and developers. And in fact I'm hoping that more and more voices than my own continue to become experts on the setting, like they already have been.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43ihq&page ... variety#51

James Jacobs wrote:In theory, the plot of ANY Adventure Path is something the players would be rooting for to happen. Note that this is very different than "ALL" potential players.

Not every storyline will appeal to every player. Trust me, if I knew how to create stories that everyone liked all the time, I would have been doing these long ago and we wouldn't be having this sort of discussion.

Sometimes we do better than other times, but sometimes we'll create Adventure Paths that simply won't appeal to the majority.

Certainly I hope that the majority of folks enjoy the Blood Lords Adventure Path, but I hope that for everything we publish. It doesn't always work out that way.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Nov 2021 11:06

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4356t?What ... avioral#15

James Jacobs wrote:Don't mistake "we give you all the information you need to run your game" for "we expect and encourage your players to scrape loot off the walls."

Furthermore, we always aim to put about 200% of the expected loot into our published adventures, on the assumption that not every group will have every encounter, some groups will donate treasures, some groups will have more than 4 players, some groups will need to sell extra stuff to recover from deaths and the like, and indeed, some groups aren't murderhobos and won't be scraping walls.

In the end, it's the GM's job to make sure that the party has the right amount of treasure for the table, and that doesn't have to be what we suggest in the rules.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4356t?What ... avioral#17

James Jacobs wrote:Let me amend then to say that Adventure Paths and Adventures I write/develop aim for 200% of the treasure handed out. Not every developer does things the same way.

Regardless, the GM should always adjust the game to fit the table's needs.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4356t?What ... avioral#26

James Jacobs wrote:We try different things with our Adventure Paths all the time, mixing that up with "traditional" ones now and then. The next one after Agents of Edgewatch is an example of a traditional Adventure Path.

If we didn't mix things up, we'd get stale and boring and repetitive.

If we didn't experiment, we'd never innovate and we'd never have things like Kingmaker, Iron Gods, Reign of Winter, or Strange Aeons for example, all of which are examples of various experiments and deviations from the traditional plot in one way or another that have resulted in very popular and very successful Adventure Paths.

Furthermore, not everyone is the same, and by varying our stories and telling them in different ways, we increase the chances of building more Adventure Paths that appeal to more types of groups.

We don't expect anyone out there to like or want to run everyone of our Adventure Paths. That's not possible. But if we didn't change them around, we'd be ignoring a HUGE amount of possibilities and would only appeal to a fraction of the potential audience and would increasingly bore them.

And don't underestimate the power of a GM to enhance or ruin an Adventure Path! Hopefully, more GMs fall on the enhance side, where they take a published campaign and adjust it to make it better for their specific group. And hopeful in cases where a GM isn't up to that task, the players realize it and seek out a better GM... but that's a tougher call, I fear, since most groups don't have a wide pool of GMs to pull from...


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4356t?What ... avioral#28

James Jacobs wrote:Any Adventure Path where we limit player options by saying that the PCs should all be part of a group or faith or organization or whatever is always going to be experimental next to the standard of "Build whatever character you want." Skull & Shackles is an example of a similar experiment we did with a previous Adventure Path.

I've considered doing adventure paths along the same line where everyone has to worship Sarenrae, or everyone has to be an elf, etc.

Has nothing to do with the plot being experimental, but enables us to do plots and stories that normally would be a lot tougher to do if we didn't make the assumptions that all the PCs were at an identical baseline.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4356t?What ... avioral#33

James Jacobs wrote:
The Raven Black wrote:I am now left wondering what the value of traditional APs is. Especially if experience shows that they are less popular than the experimental ones.


The operating theory is that traditional Adventure Paths give players who are used to decades of expectations from playing D&D or similar games familiar ground to start their first Pathfinder game in.

Our most popular Adventure Path of all time, Rise of the Runelords, is in this category, so they're demonstrably NOT less popular than experimental ones.

Some are, some aren't.

That said, we're doing more experimental ones these days than not...
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jan 2022 02:18

I asked James Jacobs for some advice on my West Marches campaign, and he gave me tons of extremely useful advice. He didn't like my use of the word "exotic" however, and a tense exchange occurred between us over it. I won't link you to the full exchange, only to the clash over political correctness. The full exchange spoils the ending of my West Marches campaign, so you've been warned not to look it up. Here's the bit of it you can read:

Image

The man is a genius and a gentleman. I was ready to go to war with him when he critiqued my phrasing, and you should be able to see the iciness in my reply, as I made sure to telegraph loud and clear (the "straight white male Greek-European" is a war banner) that I wouldn't be pushed around and take his bullshit PC shit. To my amazement however, he deftly defused the confrontation, and ultimately came on top. I had to apologize at that point and back down in awe of his Diplomacy roll.

What a guy.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 13 Jan 2022 02:29

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83020

James Jacobs wrote:
Kelseus wrote:Where did the idea of doing a 6 part AP come from?


Because the amount of space we had to do an Adventure Path in Dungeon, if you strip out the ads and other adventures, was about the same amount of material that would fill a six part 100 page Adventure Path. It's what Dungeon Magazine without anything but the Adventure Path and the directly supporting materials would have been.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83026

James Jacobs wrote:
NECR0G1ANT wrote:How did you all choose the name 'Pathfinder' for the product line back in 2007?


By having several meetings where we brainstormed ideas. I forget who came up with the phrase "Pathfinder", but it seemed right for two reasons:

1) It leaned in to the "adventure path," which was arguably the most successful new element Paizo brought to the magazines.

2) It implied setting off into a new, uncharted wilderness and discovering a route through it.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 16 Mar 2022 02:57

Jacobs had locked his thread for two months, and now he unlocked it. I think the reason for the lock was me, as he locked it a mere few posts after our interaction. Keep in mind this is a 1664-page thread started in 2010, and a couple posts from icycalm where I was even TRYING to be nice caused him to lock it. You be the judge: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83112

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:My advice there is to try things out. Playtest your choices, and work with your players so they know if your choice ends up being off or wrong that you will adjust and let them rebuild their characters as they see fit. That's the best way to work these things out for a home game, since it also helps build skill and confidence at the game as a GM.

ALTERNATELY: Abandon the concept and do something else. If an RPG is like a cookbook, not every recipe in there is something you and your friends will enjoy. Some recipes might even contain elements that you or a friend are allergic to, so using that recipe is hurtful. That metaphor works for a complex RPG like Pathfinder—some rules options aren't gonna mesh well with every group or player so don't be afraid to just not use them in your game or make replacements.

(Side note: the main reason I get hesitant to answer super specific and complex looking questions like this one is because they're so specific and complex that there's a significant amount of guesswork and opinion involved—too often, an answer I provide someone works for them but breaks the game for others, and then those who clash with my ruling, be they customer or gamer or employee, use my post against me to undermine my self-confidence and, in worst-case scenarios, get people complaining to my manager that I don't know the rules and use that as evidence that Paizo doesn't know how to play the game they create. I just took a 2 month hiatus from the thread for a similar reason—not because of a ruling, but because someone was offended about a whimsical and jokey reply I made to a question. I've even had folks deliberately try to bait me into answering a question in a way so they can take my reply out of context and weaponize it against their GM or players or the Org Play program. So I've been trained to be super picky about which questions I answer and how I answer them—and one of the red flags to me to NOT answer a question is when it's a long, detailed question that looks complicated and leaves out basic details—such as what edition of the game the question is for.)


He sounds extremely weak-minded, to the point of neuroticism. He's extremely interesting as a designer and gamer and artist, but as a person I know children with more self-confidence. He's reached the absolute heights of the craft of role-playing, and random people's complaints can STILL harm his confidence. It's ludicrous. But once you realize this, then the RPG industry's complete capitulation to the woke mob makes perfect sense. These people would bow down before a hissing kitten.

Anyway, I am glad he reopened the thread because it's a gold mine, and there's already tons of interesting new stuff in there. Goes without saying that the thread is full of spoilers aside from what I link here for you.

Btw, he's playing Elden Ring right now: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83093

Image

Seems like he's REALLY liking Elden Ring: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83115

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
Rysky wrote:What do you think of the setting?


Love it. This is on the track to becoming one of my favorite ever games.


And he seems to be quite a videogamer in general: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83069

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:at the moment I've got Dying Light 2 on hold until I finish Horizon Forbidden West which itself is on hold until I finish Elden Ring.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83103

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
Leon Kyngstone wrote:What do devils get out of a mortal selling their soul to them? Is it simply an extra soul consigned to Hell, or does the specific devil get some personal benefit from being sold a soul?


They get more prestige in the infernal bureaucracy.


Hilarious. I like how he has an answer for the motivations of every single monster in the entire RPG universe.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83136

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
Aenigma wrote:In D&D black dragons are called skull dragons due to the general shape of their heads. What about in Pathfinder? I have seen several arts of Pathfinder black dragons but not sure. Do you think black dragons in Pathfinder have skull-like heads?


That's not a thing in Pathfinder. They don't have skull-like heads. We deliberately went for different designs for our dragons from D&D.


I remember Archonus mentioning that Paizo dragons look unique. Looks like he nailed that one.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83134

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:I certainly include tactical combat in most sessions, but it's about a 50/50 split between tactical combat and roleplaying/exploring/story building. I also do a lot of ad-lib stuff so that I roll with the changes to the story, be they things I come up with on the fly, things the PCs do, or the results of the dice.


It's always interesting to hear how he GMs. I GM EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. My ideal breakdown is IDENTICAL with his.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83156

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
Mimski wrote:Welcome back James! I hope you will have a good time in thread now.

My Malevolence group has mostly finished the adventure, we will have a short epilogue session next week or so. Everyone had a lot of fun with memorable moments, I'd say.
Before jumping into the next Pathfinder adventure I want to have a few sessions playing something else. Outside of a Starfinder one-shot I don't have any plans yet and am curious:
What are some non-Pathfinder TTRPGs that you enjoy? I am guessing Call of Cthulhu too.


Yay; glad you enjoyed the haunted house!

Call of Cthulhu is probably my FAVORITE RPG in fact. At the very least, it's on equal footing to Pathfinder.

I've played a lot of other RPGs over the years—the most notable of which is D&D, be it the BECMI version, 1st edition AD&D, 2nd edition AD&D, or 3rd edition AD&D, all of which I played obsessively. I tried 4th edition once and did not like it and never tried it again. I played 5th edition a few times and liked it better than 4th, but not as much as any previous edition and not as much as Pathfinder.

Starfinder is fun too—was playing in Dead Suns but that campaign kinda crashed when the pandemic hit, alas.

I don't get much time to game lately, alas, in part due to the pandemic (I really don't enjoy VTT play), but historically I've also played a fair amount of Battletech/Mechwarrior, Shadowrun, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Alternity, and a lot of shorter indie games. My favorite current indie game would be Dread... but I played one that a fellow employee designed recently that's a LOT of fun. Not sure how much I should say about that though since I don't know what their plans are for it.

And finally, there's Unspeakable Futrues, which is my d20 based post-apocalyptic game that I've been working on for decades. A fair amount of this game's contents have crept into Pathfinder/Starfinder (the gunslinger class and all this stuff in the Technology Guide for the most part), but there's a lot more that hasn't. I keep thinking that I should go back and update Unspeakable Futures to either 2nd Edition Pathifnder or its own new system, but haven't really started work on that yet. Kind of waiting until I get out from under the creative rain-shadow that is Kingmaker before I attach myself to a big project like Unspeakable Futures.


By "Kingmaker" he is referring to the PF2 update of the campaign that he's currently working on. It's been delayed at least once, so it's been giving him trouble.

Looking forward to playing Call of Cthulhu when one of the teams unlocks it by playing the Strange Aeons campaign.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Apr 2022 05:33

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83241

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:"Feast of Ravenmoor" came out many many many years after our initial hesitation about including Lovecraft in the setting. The first timid footsteps we made there were in Rise of the Runelords (where we introduced the denizens of [REDACTED BY ICY] into the setting in [REDACTED BY ICY], and had introduced the [REDACTED BY ICY] a few volumes earlier from Lovecraft contemporary Frank Belknap Long) and a bit later in Curse of the Crimson Throne (where we brought in [REDACTED BY ICY] of that campaign).

When I mentioned being hesitant, I speak more about including Lovecraft creations in more significant ways—at one point, I was pushing for Nyarlathotep and/or Yog-Sothoth to be in the core 20 deities. Other folks pushed back for various reasons, but then when Starfinder came about, at no actual urging from me, Nyarlathotep became one of the core deities there.

By the time we published "Feast of Ravenmoor," we were already doing a LOT with Lovecraftian elements, so that initial hesitation was far in the past. Again, "Feast of Ravenmoor" was based on a short story I wrote back in the very early 90s, which had some inspiration from the rural horror elements in Lovecraft (but just as much in Stephen King—there's more "Children of the Corn" in the story than there is "Dunwich Horror"), but contained characters and monsters of my own creation. I wanted to preserve that in the adventure version. Changing [REDACTED BY ICY] into, say, Cthulhu, was never part of that plan.

As for the skum—we didn't create them. They were created ages ago for D&D, and were brought into 3rd edition, and were one of the hundreds of monsters we inherited from the OGL via the Monster Manual being open content. We rebuilt a lot of their lore and flavor, along with the aboleths, but they were still invented long before Paizo was ever a thing.

Back in THAT day, Lovecraft's works were in a much hazier place regarding copyright, and TSR had already had a clash with that with the inclusion of Lovecraftian elements in AD&D's first edition Deities & Demigods. As a result of that, they were much more cagey and canny about including Lovecraft-inspired things in the game. Skum are a good example of that, where they essentially took the deep ones and re-named them. There's always a LOT of Lovecraft in the game already (mind flayers, ghasts, evil books like the Demonomicon, etc.). Not all of it is actual copy-paste names.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83160

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:I'd like to assume that I would be involved if management decides to make a new campaign setting, since I was a big part of setting up Golarion, and my work on the Technology Guide and Iron Gods is what helped convince management to take a shot at Starfinder... but it's a different world today so who knows.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83162

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
Duskreign wrote:James, have you ever tried Thousand year old vampire? It’s quite interesting. Single player RPG where you are a vampire. Events happen (based on choices you make) and you can only retain so many experiences that define who you are. As time goes on, you have to make decisions about what memories you forget and what memories continue to define who you are. Ultimately, you weave a story around your memories choices. It’s really quite interesting and has incredible nuance. Worth checking out if you haven’t heard about it.


Nope; it sounds familiar though, but haven't played it. I've been pretty cut off from a lot of games lately as a result of the pandemic and having fewer folks around to play games with overall.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83249

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
Aenigma wrote:Why did Nyarlathotep become one of the core 20 deities in Starfinder and why did you push for Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth to be in the core 20 deities in Pathfinder? I ask this because I have always thought that Chulhu and Hastur are much more famous than Nyarlathotep or Yog-Sothoth in the real world. Was it because you or other folks at Paizo like Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth more than Cthulhu and Hastur?


Cthulhu is the most recognizable of Lovecraft's creations, but he's also actually on Earth, so transposing him to another planet is weird and tricky. He's also just a Great Old One, not an actual God, so his reach and impact are less from a metaphysical sense. Hastur is a lot of fun, especially because he's one that predates Lovecreaft and has a HUGE range of different possible interpretations—which is why he ended up being one of the main parts of [REDACTED BY ICY].

Again, I'm not on the Starfinder team so I can't answer why he was chosen to be a core deity there.

The reason I pushed for him was because of all Lovecraft's creations, Nyarlathotep is the most "human" of them all. He's the one who actually interacts with humanity, playing the role of a tempter or a tormentor or corrupter. He's more active than most, and has personality traits we humans can identify with. He's the most "approachable and understandable" of the mythos deities, but also has many different forms, so we would have been able to introduce new versions of him we invented for Pathfinder while still being able to cash in on the nostalgia of his name. AKA: He's the most versatile of them all.

Yog-Sothoth was a contender as well because he represents time and space—as such he's EVERYWHERE, not just trapped dreaming in a tomb on a distant planet (like Cthulhu). And furthermore, since he's so much beyond human morality and concern, it's possible to set up non-evil (but likely not good) worshipers of him—Yog-Sothoth would be a deity that we could design character options for PCs, not just NPCs, since we assume most players play non-evil characters. But also, Lovecraft himself viewed Yog-Sothoth as the central axis of his mythos—he referred to his connected stories not as the "Cthulhu Mythos" (that term came after his death), but as "Yog Sothothery." So by focusing on Yog-Sothoth as an important deity in our setting, that's me nodding toward the creator's preference for him being important.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83261

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
W E Ray wrote:What?!?!

The initial inspiration behind the Thassilonian Empire was from a TPK from your White Plume Mountain game?!?!

What?

I have to hear this story. Please expound....

** spoiler omitted **


Yup. It was a one-shot game I ran for two friends in college. They got to the vampire and quickly got in over their heads, and one of the players did a Hail Mary attempt to kill the vampire by stuffing a bag of holding into a portable hole or something like that. The explosion killed the two PCs and destroyed the vampire, but the vampire just came back from his coffin. I didn't want to end the game there, so instead I had the vampire see to the PCs being resurrected and geased to help bring back his ancient intolerant necromancer lord from the dawn of time, and from there I ended up building an entire deep-history element to my homebrew that would end up laying the foundation for what I did with Thassilon (although I did pull some of the runelords from other roles in my setting—[REDACTED BY ICY] and [REDACTED BY ICY] were my setting's versions of Vecna and Kas respectively and predated even that TPK in White Plume Mountain).

Using a lot of this stuff, including deities and several nations, as building blocks to create Golarion was sort of an act of despartion, since we needed a fully realized world as soon as possible in the month we transitioned from the last issue of Dragon and Dungeon to the first month of Pathfinder Adventure Path. Using content I had created for my homebrew starting back in the late 80s was a shortcut that made creating Golarion possible, even if it ironically made it impossible for me to retain ownership over that content for my own use. But then, since a fair amount of my homebrew was itself based on D&D stuff and authors like Lovecraft and Cambell and King, it's only fair I guess to pay it forward like that.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83280

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
crognus wrote:Do gods/demi-gods have souls? If not, what happens to the souls of mortals who became gods? If they do, does Pharasma judge them if they die?


All living things have souls. Gods and demigods are living, therefore they have souls. What happens to them when they die depends on a case by case basis. In some of those cases, like demon lords, they become a part of the landscape of the Abyss (be it the Rift of Repose or, up until the point she moved, [REDACTED BY ICY]).

As to what happens to the others... that all depends on the story we/you want to tell, and it will change as needed.

Pharasma judges them as all. The last soul she'll judge is herself.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43lku?New- ... st-Omens#6

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:I've been pushing for us to publish more lore about the underwater nations and monsters and regions of Golarion for about as long as I've been pushing for something like the Travel Guide, so the more interest folks show for underwater stuff, the better, I say!


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83307

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:At a certain point, the play of an RTS morphs into an RPG or a sim. To me, the fast pace of a game, combined with the idea that any time you spend just looking at the game rather than clicking a new project is time wasted that will grant your foe an advantage is what makes an RTS unappealing, but take those away and its no longer "real time" really, because you get to take your time making choices. I do love squad based RPGs and, depending on the sim, have fun with them as well BECAUSE you get to take your time and play at your own pace.


You can see he's a genius here, but not a strategic genius. He's a role-playing genius. He explains why there can be no role-playing in RTS, and that's why he doesn't like it. And that's also why RTS is a lower genre than role-playing. But RTS still has its charms. I wouldn't play it as much as I role-play, but I still love a good multi-hour war, that pushes my brain to the edge. His brain just doesn't work that way, and that's fine.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83309

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:It means that I don't like running stories that rob players of agency. Be it read-aloud text that assumes player actions, up to including things like "You see a room with five chairs in it" (because that assumes that a PC is looking, or can see in the first place), or games set in historical eras where the players KNOW how the events are supposed to end up no matter what they do.

I'm not into Halo so I don't get the Halo Reach comparison exactly, but stories where what's accomplished ISN'T the biggest thing going on in the world at the time are fine... but the more something becomes a full first to twentieth level campaign, the more to me it seems that the story should be about the PCs and how they can affect change through their choices. That's what makes an RPG interactive. If you know what the end is, then you're not immersed in the role. You're just playing out a part with no chance to bring anything of yourself. That's fine, but to me, that's something you do when you act in a play or movie or a public reading of a script, not play a game where you are helping to create the story.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83315

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:In the well-over-a-decade span of time that we've built Golarion and expanded the setting, we've taken the world into all sorts of new areas we didn't expect back in the earliest days, when we were simply hoping we'd be around long enough to be able to publish all six parts of "Rise of the Runelords" before going bankrupt and having to shutter Paizo's doors. That mindset never 100% went away, and tended to rise up whenever we had to do a big new sea-change to the company (such as when we made the decision a year or two later to switch over to a game of our own design, etc.).

Now that we feel pretty stable and well established, in the past many years we've started to do things more experimental and non-traditional for D&D stuff. And that includes delving into Steampunk genre and gasslamp fantasy tropes. For the former, see "Guns and Gears" and the Outlaws of Alkenstar Adventure Path. For the latter, see "Agents of Edgewatch," which feels and looks more modern than any adventure we've done yet for Pathfinder—deliberately so, as we aimed at a gaslamp era feel.

So, since we've added those elements now, yes, Lost Omens is more steampunk now than it was when we started. It's also just MORE than when we started, with literally hundreds of products exploring and expanding the setting.

If you see us publish something, it was SOMEONE'S deliberate choice. I don't make all of those decisions. Best person to look to for that "deliberate choice's" source is whoever we credit in that book as the development lead, or in the case of a rulebook, the lead designers, with Erik Mona above it all.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83322

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:Kaiju are above level 26. And while we could TECHNICALLY just extend the monster values up five levels from where they currently cap out at level 25, that puts those stats far beyond the threshold of what a 20th level party could handle–as it stands, a level 25 creature already does that, but it's close enough that a fully optimized party that has access to super powerful magic and has spent several levels preparing specifically for that level 25 monster could have a chance.

That breaks down quickly with each level above that.

Since we currently have no plans for if we ever want to do something that expands the power of a player character past 20th level, we pretty much cannot do stat blocks for kaiju, demigods, [REDACTED BY ICY], or other things that, in previous editions, were above level 25.

But those things are still in the world, so instead of giving them monster stats, we tackle them in different ways.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page ... Here#83328

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:
AceofMoxen wrote:Hey, James, I just finished reading Wrath of the Righteous. I was wondering about your thoughts on what succubi bring to the game.


The same thing they bring to any story that they take a part of—which is to say, the same thing vampires bring to a story. They're basically the same monster, thematically. They build on horror themes of betrayal, fear of intimacy and sex, fear of being killed by someone you love or lust after, and are excellent monsters to use in adventures that require a subversive element causing a society to rot from the inside out. Their nature makes using them as they work in stories and movies that aren't Pathfinder adventures a bit tricky, of course. They also bring in elements of actual game play temptation, where you can use them to tempt player characters to accept the rules boost they can give, knowing it's a choice that might come back to haunt them.

They also (along with things like vampires) let us tell stories where we subvert the "evil monsters are ugly" trope. Not everything that's pretty is nice.

The converse is true as well. Not everything that's ugly is bad. We try to include examples of "ugly" creatures and NPCs being in heroic or good roles, but those are limited by the fact that the main "heroes" of the stories we tell are the only elements we actually CAN'T tell—the story of your player characters. It's further complicated by the weird side effect that a lot of artists tend to rely on classic visual cues where beauty = good and ugliness = bad. It can be difficult to push back against centuries of tradition there.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2024 14:04

Thread is full of spoilers, just read what I am giving you: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43v5l?So-w ... d-stuff#26

Steel_Wind wrote:I will say this: the job of developer of an Adventure Path was invented by James Jacobs back in the days of Dungeon and was refined over a course of many years by him while at Paizo. He did the job the longest – and he did it best. Far and away the best - No, it’s not even close.

I also consider James Jacobs to be the best adventure writer for RPGs of all time. Yes, I mean that – all the way back to 1974. There are no asterisks or exceptions to that overall representation of quality or statement of approbation. No, it doesn’t mean that everything he has written is awesome – he’s had some duds in there, too – but overall, yes, he’s the best there is or ever was. That matters.
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Re: James Jacobs

Unread postby icycalm » 07 Feb 2024 22:30

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43ttt?Path ... h-Vol-2#11

I wrote:Is it verboten to observe that absolutely every high-level decision of this Asian-themed AP was made by Whites, including the choice of the traditional Kishotenketsu structure? Don't get me wrong, I love White guys, I am one myself after all, but I am a little stunned that with so much diversity at Paizo today we can't get some locals to direct the APs set in their own lands. Asians are Master RPG designers after all, just look at JRPGs. Why not give them a chance to show us what they can do some day?

Please don't be offended. All I am doing is pointing at the elephant.


James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:It's not verboten at all. I was very self aware of the fact that as interested and immersed as I am in Asian culture, I'm a white guy. I can't change that, nor were there any other options other than that at the time Season of Ghosts needed to be concepted and outlined and developed among those at Paizo who have experience running an Adventure Path. That's increasingly not the case today and going forward, I'm happy to say.

(I can't speak for James Case, the man who brought kishotenketsu to the table for this Adventure Path, but don't make assumptions about people, I guess, is my advice there.)

Which is why I did everything I could to make sure that as many people writing for this Adventure Path are Asian, and why we hired sensitivity readers to look over everything.

But the process of directing an Adventure Path is very difficult and requires a lot of specific skills and reources that not everyone has access to. It's a full time job in a lot of ways. Essentially hiring a freelancer to do this job would not be feasable, and not just from the economic side of things. The process of getting an Adventure Path up and running starts years before it sees print and requires a lot of planning and access to and involvement with Paizo's plans going years into the future as well, and that's a difficult thing for someone who's not a full-time employee at Paizo to have access to.

What I CAN do is use my position as Creative Director to amplify other voices. I tried to do that with Asian authors with Season of Ghosts (and beyond that have personally hired folks who wrote for Season of Ghosts for the NEXT Adventure Path I'm running), but also tried to do that with women—Season of Ghosts is the closest we've ever come to an Adventure Path written entirely by women.

That all said, limiting the creators of content to only things that they represent in their own selves is not a viable model for writing, but more so when it comes to an intellectual property created by a relatively small company like Paizo. We really try to include a lot of voices beyond our own, and speaking for myself as a white bisexual man, I'm extraordinarily interested in immersing myself in other viewpoints to expand my own way of looking at the world AND writing. I believe that it's just as destructive to limit creators to only being allowed to write and create content as it is to not give a wide range of people chances to create content and bring their own life experiences to enhance a shared excursion into creativity.

I'm fortunate enough to have found myself in the position of creative director at Paizo. I understand that part of my journey to this position was made easier by being a white man, and I carry a lot of shame and self-doubt and imposter syndrome as a result of that, so I view my responsibility of amplifying the voices of other creators as seriously and as important as is my responsibility to create adventures and gaming content for Paizo to thrive as a company and for players to thrive as as gamers.

I'm not offended by your post, but I am a bit ashamed at having to have to reply with this "justify your job and role" post. I hope I'm not coming off as arrogant or as trying to minimize your very real concerns. I am and will continue to fight for non-white men to have creative power in the industry (alongside trying to get representation for bisexual people into the game, something I've pretty much been pushing for from the start with Merisiel).


I wrote:What's happening here is also happening in videogames. Look at Ghost of Tsushima. White people doing the best Japan-themed open-world game because the Japanese don't make open-world games. Even Ghosts' soundtrack was composed by a White guy! Couldn't they have found a Japanese guy to do it? They tried! But they failed. So they went with a White guy in the end.

If the Japanese could make a game like this, they would have made it. They still aren't even trying to, just as they aren't trying to start a roleplaying company. It's not your fault people aren't clones of each other and we don't have the same tastes. And the Japanese don't like games with freedom. That's why you struggle to include them in your endeavors.

Roleplaying could only have come from Arneson and Gygax, just like your work could only have come from you, because you are unique and irreplaceable. I wish I could say something to ease your guilt and help you appreciate more the glorious legacy you are so gloriously continuing. But nothing I can say seems to help. If anything, the opposite, so I should post less, assuming I don't just get banned, which I expect every time I log into this site.

P.S. The JRPG reference was my hint that I was joking.
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