Raven Bower

Christmas at Paizo with James Sutter ~ Perfect Gifts for Gamers!

Celebrating a Gothic Christmas with us is James Sutter – author of Death’s Heretic and senior editor at Paizo Publishing, creators of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. This is a particularly exciting guest for us, weekend Pathfinder games are a family tradition you see. The kids even get their chores done early just to nab extra time rolling dice, fighting beasties and enjoying our party’s pet goblin, Itchet’s, pranks! It’s worth mentioning that you really don’t find many kids playing board games like ours do during the holidays. Most children nowadays are taken in by video games like Minecraft, and all the add-ons that are available to make this the expansive game it is, like the minecraft bedrock servers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; Minecraft can inspire creativity, but it’s great to see the kids get involved with some good, old-fashioned gaming!

Today James tells us a bit about Christmas at Paizo. Take it away James!

Paizo as a company has a variety of winter traditions, from the seemingly annual “we all got snowed in at the office and have to live off whatever food’s in our desks” to the far more pleasant “it snowed half an inch so I’m panicking and working from home.” There’s also the ever-popular Paizo Holiday Card with its absurd holiday-themed art and discounts for anybody with a paizo.com account. But by far the biggest holiday tradition for us is the Paizo Holiday Party. Once upon a time, that took place in the house of our owners, Vic Wertz and Lisa Stevens–a structure that is possibly the world’s greatest shrine to Star Wars not actively owned by George Lucas. Now that the company’s grown so much, however, we have it at a winery (with this year’s party featuring the first official goblin wine!). Though we’re all a bit older and calmer than we used to be–I was 20 when I started at Paizo eight years ago–putting all of us in a room together still results in some serious decibels, especially once you add in the traditional white elephant or secret Santa gift exchanges.

When it comes to our personal celebrations of Christmas/Hannukah/Festivus/Solstice/etc., most of us are pretty standard, spending that time hanging out with family and friends and eating a lot of food. (Our respective New Years’ parties are probably a bit more interesting–one year my roommates transformed the entire house into a steampunk dirigible, the HMS Incorrigible, with all the guests dressing up as its crew.) For us, the coolest and craziest thing about the holidays is probably the fans that decide to send us presents–check out these amazing goblin and flumph tree ornaments made for us by Amanda M!

Other than that, here’s what some of the team had to say about their holiday traditions:

“Does corrupting the next generation count? Every year I bring my nephews the coolest new board games, miniatures games, and RPGs I’ve dug up, making sure they get the chance to check them all out. Often the holiday ends up being too short and we don’t get to break out all of them. But the best is when, the following year, I return to the motherland, determined to play through last year’s overflow… only to find that those cunning tweens have mastered the games and are more than capable of schooling their unsuspecting uncle. I’m so proud.” ~Wes Schneider, Editor-in-Chief

“My Christmas Eve general consists of Chinese takeout and zombie movies.” ~Jenny Bendel, Marketing Director

“My parents live at the beach, so for the last few years, our whole family’s gone out with flashlights on Christmas Eve and turned over rocks in the tide pools, looking for the sort of aquatic monsters that only come out at night. There’s some seriously alien stuff in the ocean!” ~James L. Sutter, Fiction Editor

Happy holidays everyone, and thanks so much for being part of the Pathfinder community!

James L. Sutter

Are you looking for more gift ideas for the gamer in your life? If the person you need to buy a gift for loves playing PC games like League of Legends, you might want to consider buying them an account from somewhere like Unranked Smurfs. Purchasing an account can help you to access skins, as well as other higher level content that you might not normally be able to find. Similarly, if your gamer friend or family member is an avid fan of Diablo II, you can purchase some items and add-ons for the game by visiting the online store for d2 items. If PC games are the gaming equipment of choice for them and thy like to have their stuff customizable, then you could look at custom mouse pads for a good gaming gift.

Thanks for joining us here today James, we appreciate all the hard work Paizo puts into making Pathfinder great. Happy Holidays to all of you guys!

Speaking of Pathfinder though – Lain and I are gamers from back when the original Gygax was around and AD&D was first getting its scaly legs. Then we found Pathfinder and discovered it’s a lot like D&D 3.5, only better! It was the best investment we’ve made.

So for the gamer in your life, I can’t recommend these high enough.