Thread by @MarkSeifter

I've been thinking about people who have been asking what they can do, and I have a small thing I'd like everyone to do. At the base level, it doesn't even require you to do much more than look a little closer and pay attention...

It's perfect for if you want to do something but, like most of us, you don't have spoons with the way the world is and just, everything. What I'm asking you to do is to learn the names of the unsung heroes. This applies to other parts of life, but I'll be focusing on Paizo.

It's very easy not to do this. In fact, before this I did research on cognition and AI and we are kind of wired not to. We learn stories, and even history, associated with big names of the movers and shakers. It's easy to remember.

And so at Paizo, you probably know a few names you can rattle off instantly. They're likely extremely senior staff who have been there since forever. The oft-sung This is not to say they haven't earned being oft-sung, but we will tend to be overassociated.

They will sometimes get credit for books completely outside their department, for example. Not out of any active attempt to steal credit for those books, necessarily. Certainly not out of any fault in any of you. It's just how people remember things.

Because it takes active effort to see the unsung heroes. I will make it easier. Because I am going to do my best to list them off here on twitter group by group.

But Shelyn help me, I am not usually a big tweeter and I don't have everyone's twitter handles, so if I miss your handle it's out of the fact that I just don't know very many and am relying on a specific list, not intentional.

I'll be including the "sung" here as well as the unsung so they don't get stuck in the middle. I'll leave out the oft-sung because you know who they are already.

This has been a major effort of mine for years. In fact, when Linda and I launched our interviews on our twitch stream ArcaneMark, our rule was that we only interviewed junior members and lower management because we wanted to give the exposure to more unsung staffers.

We could have made our channel bigger by including more oft-sung staff, but that wasn't what the interviews were for. So we interviewed customer service representatives, editors, developers, art team, tech team, and more. I learned so much from that, and I'll pass some on.

I'm realizing after my long thread that most people go one at a time, replying later. That's what I'll do this time around starting here. These are in no particular order and will include both the sung and the unsung because the cutoff is a judgment, but, again, not the oft-sung.

First up is a group who aren't Paizo employees and yet who shape so much of what you know and love about Paizo. Our freelancer authors.

Some people might not know the technical terms, but basically these are non-employees (though employees can freelance too) who we can count on to produce amazing content for all of you to read, typically after they have already completed a long day of work at another job.

I'm not even going to begin to name them because they are legion, they are each special and amazing, and inevitably I will have left someone off and I can't live with that. But I WILL tell you how you can find them for yourself for any book you especially love.

It's easy! Go to the credits list just in the front. You will see either a list of authors (if there are no cover authors on the book) or additional writing (if there are cover authors). These are equivalent, and I honestly wish we could signpost that better.

Now it's important to note that the developers, designers, and editors who came after have contributed a lot to those words. And depending on the book may have written a lot of it in house too and be listed on that list. It's a beautiful collaboration.

And it's far stronger than what any one step of the chain could produce alone. And that chain starts with those freelance authors. So my first group to learn is freelancers. For some of these, I will also provide a more-in-depth exercise for if you have more spoons or time.

Exercise (Freelance Authors): Go check your favorite Paizo book for the authors list. Now check a few more. See if you can find a name that is in several books that you didn't know before. Then look that person up. Try to find more that they've written.

Maybe leave a review for one or more of those products specifically mentioning the freelancer as being someone whose work you enjoy. If you're lucky you might be able to find a blog or other record of what sections they wrote.

If you still have spoons, support the authors you've discovered in this way on their patreons and other non-Paizo projects too. Our freelancer pool is brilliant and vibrant, full of an incredible number of diverse voices, and they're a big part of what makes us who we are.

As a close parallel to our freelance authors... our freelance artists! Almost every piece of art you see in a Paizo product is drawn by a freelance artist

(we do have one art team member who does in-house concept art that is so amazing and well-researched that he earned an author credit in Mwangi Expanse without meaning to, but we'll get there eventually, for now, freelance artists)

Paizo's freelance artists come from across the globe, and my team doesn't talk directly to them like we do the authors so I don't even have a full handle on exactly how widespread but it's a lot. And the art is *so good.*

Of course there are our iconic artists like Wayne Reynolds (Pathfinder rulebook line and iconics), Remko Troost (Starfinder rulebook line and iconics), and Ekaterina Burmak (Lost Omens line). But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Exercise (artist freelancers): In the same way as author freelancers, you might be able to find artists you especially like by checking which books seem to have the art you like best and learning their style. One clue is that blog art is always attributed, so that can help.

From there, many artists have art pages where you can see what other things they've worked on. If there's an artist you especially enjoy looking for commission, see if you can get them to draw a picture of your favorite character, or a friend's character as a special gift!

Also the artist's page can help you identify which pieces in the book you liked that they drew, as they'll usually have their Paizo work up on there. So in some ways it can be easier to narrow down the favorite artist you never even knew you had when reading Paizo's books.

OK so up next are the most traditional unsung heroes who are actually getting a little bit sung right now and it fills me with joy: Paizo's editors.

It's a truism in the publishing industry that editors never get enough credit because people only talk about them when there's a mistake they missed. Nobody ever draws attention to the 1,000 mistakes they actually caught because you don't see those.

And you can see how many typos I'm making in this twitter thread and so, let's be honest: we need editors and they catch mistakes like those...except that's only the tip of the iceberg of what editors actually do at Paizo. It's not just typos and copy edit.

Editors are the comrades-in-arms of developers and designers in every way. We have an edit lead for each book who looks at an outline from the earliest stages and offers organization advice. Editors do layers of passes based on each one's experience and expertise.

They look for not just copy edit mistakes (typos, bad grammar, weak or repetitive wording, overwrought purple prose) but for problematic wording and representation, and even rules implications. And they bring things back to dialogue with dev and design as needed.

Is it really a surprise, with how much they do, that some of our best designers and developers were once editors at Paizo? Not to me.

Our editors are all amazing. I'm only going to list current members because I don't know which former members would want me to list them or not but I will always consider them part of the family.

I am including our fantastic contract editors, who have worked hard to allow the edit team to have more passes on every product, and I'm not separating them out either because they are part of the team and the family.

I will give a callout to Leo Glass (@leoglasswrites) the Managing Editor for managing the team and Avi Kool (@legalizegoblins) the Senior Editor for Pathfinder (and thus one of the main editors I work with) for setting the gold standard in compassion, skill, and sheer output.

The rest of the team, in an order based on our team chat program's listing (which I think puts people first if they were somehow still logged in at work right now) are:

Patrick Hurley (@hurlepat),
Ianara Natividad (@imachinate)
Janica Carter (don't have Janica's handle, sorry)
K Tessa Newton (@kieran_tessa)
Shay Snow (@spellsinsugar)
Simone D Salle (@virsamajor)
Sol St. John (@StJohnSol)

These traditional unsung heroes of Paizo make the final words you see the best they can be and do so much more than that. I am extremely happy that they have been in the spotlight more recently, for instance @legalizegoblins has a spotlight panel at GenCon. Go watch it!

Exercise (editors): Look at your favorite book and go check who the edit lead was. That person made sure, from start to finish, that the product was as readable and well-written as it is. Send that editor a note or a message thanking them for their work, naming the book.

This is something almost no one does. You will brighten their entire day, and chances are they share it and you brighten the day for entire editing team. All with one simple check. You don't even have to try to figure out what they edited unlike the freelancers. It's everything.

Next up is perhaps the least sung team just because sometimes other extremely unsung teams sometimes get called out as unsung heroes when people go looking for them, but I have almost never seen this one get called out even then: Project Management.

There's a similarity to editors because like editors, Project Management only really gets noticed when something goes wrong. Paizo's project management team is just two people. Each one does something absolutely crucial for everyone at Paizo

First up is Glenn, the leader of the dynamic duo. Glenn takes a look at big picture scheduling for the company, and crucially he is a powerful ally for getting teams the resources they need to complete tasks.

When we on design had been having trouble getting the staff we need to complete our projects, Glenn told me exactly what I needed to do to convince the executives more effectively than we had done in the past.

When I did that (an analysis of our needed work hours compared to the people we had that indicated we needed five designers), Glenn deployed it and we got up from three to four designers, after years of trying.

It would have been even sooner if Covid hadn't hit right when Glenn's efforts went into full swing.

If Glenn has the macro, Lee Rucker has every team's back on the micro elements of our schedules. And that requires a level of mastery of exactly what we are doing in every team, in every task, that is simply staggering.

When I had an impossible deadline for Guns & Gears and a Computer Science based pipelining strategy that could make a success? Lee made my dream into a reality.

When another book with a different and complex layout plan had a complete overlap of the same staffers developing it and another book at the same time? Lee put the art steps ahead of development so that the times overlapped less and the developers coul see exactly what would fit.

Lee is constantly thinking outside the box to make the impossible possible and as such is a major behind-the-scenes stress reliever for every single designer, developer, editor, and art team member at Paizo.

Exercise (PMO) I can't really think of a perfect exercise for Project Management because they managed all of the projects and they are so unsung it's kind of impossible to know which ones they did something clever.

My best guess: Look for a month that somehow, everything seems to be coming out at once and you're thinking "How did that many books come out this month? Does Paizo even have that many people." Especially if it's a one-off big project like Kingmaker. Then go thank Lee and Glenn.

Chances are good they had their hands deep in the process making it work.

Next up, I'm swinging over towards a side other than editorial with the tech team, while we're on the theme of "Only noticed when something goes wrong."

Before this job, I was working on my PhD in computer science, and one of the big things I learned is that things always go wrong, they always surprise you.

The idea that computer systems will surprise you goes back as far as Alan Turing's seminal paper on the possibility of Artificial Intelligence, when he refuted Ada Lovelace's arguments that a machine can't think because it can only do what you tell it to do.

So no tech team in the world is going to get you a website with no hiccups, just like even editors as mind-bogglingly good as the ones who work at Paizo are going to let through some tiny percentage of text errors we designers and developers don't catch.

But our tech team works hard to stop crucial flaws and to predict when something unexpected might happen and preempt it. So for instance, when we get a sudden surge in users looking for a new playtest and the site doesn't go down? The tech team caught that one.

Our tech team is Director of Technology Rei Ko, Front End Engineering Lead Andrew White, Senior Software Developer Gary Teter, Software Architect Brian Bauman (@BrianMBauman), Software Developer Robert Brandenburg, Software Test Engineers Erik Keith and Levi Steadman (@arrannai)

System Administrators Whitney Chatterjee (@mongress) and Josh Thornton (@hochiwawa), Web Content Manager Maryssa Lagervall (@MaryssaMari), and Webstore Coordinator Katina Davis (@KatinaLMDavis).

The tech team at Paizo are deeply connected to the Paizo culture as well. You might remember Erik Keith's Valeros costume, Katina's leadership at the charity gauntlet tournament, or even several of our tech team members as freelance authors of some of your favorite content.

For instance, Erik Keith wrote those hilarious gnome feats in APG, Andrew wrote the dwarf and goblin feats, Katina wrote the agathions, Brian wrote some of the coolest APG rituals, and the list goes on.

And when we need something that won't take much time quickly because of a dependency, for instance getting up a new FAQ or errata for you in time for it to coordinate with another release, if you have a tech team in your company you know there's a long wait queue.

Our tech team has been able to prioritize these smaller low-weight tasks for me even sooner than I needed, which shows how well they can multitask around multiple requests.

Foe example, one time I needed something up within only a few days and apologized for the short notice because it blindsided me too, and Maryssa, Andrew, and Katina had it up within the hour.

And Whitney and Josh have sorted out the few tech issues I've had (I'm not a mac guy, and Paizo uses macs) with ease.

Exercise (Tech Team): On any kind of big launch or other major change or update that might require tech, if it just works? Remember to thank the tech team. Probably many of them are responsible so send a message to Rei to pass on to her team.

Next up is a team that is stereotypical unsung and hard-pressed at any company, and one that is in all of our hearts right now. Customer Service. These representatives handle everything. I talked today about many fans having deep passion but maybe losing sight of compassion?

It's typical among fandoms, and so being customer service for a fandom is even harder than normal. If you've been to the paizo messageboards you know that there are wonderful conversations that you can find there but also some pretty heated things...

And if you're nodding along with that and thinking "For sure, I've read the boards, I know what Customer Service has to deal with moderating there," think again.

Unless you are so active that you got there first, what you've seen is whatever is left after the Customer Service team made it better (and if you're so active that you've usually seen it all, you probably already know and love our wonderful Customer Service reps).

And that's just talking about conversations. Customer service has to deal with complaints, issues, everything that department always has to deal with at any company, but with the added weight of that passion that every paizo community member brings sometimes making it hotter.

The Customer Service team have been a voice of wisdom and kindness throughout Paizo. I spoke in my other maybe-way-too-long-but-hey-not-as-long-as-this-one thread about how Customer Service, along with Org Play and volunteers, started me on my path to Paizo.

They urge us to be our best selves, and they set the gold standard in customer service from any company I have seen, including my unvarnished experience from before I worked here. They fixed problems for me that were GenCon's fault, not Paizo's.

I've seen them replace a messed up book purely on faith in the customer multiple times, including when it was obviously the fault of the postal service and not Paizo. They just wanted the customers to have a great book from Paizo.

They muster and send free products to underprivileged schools and even once to a teacher as far away as Africa. This might seem extreme, but these are not tall tales, they are just our customer service team in action.

And so many of these are stories that deeply involve the two holes in all of our hearts this week, the two names that won't be on the list I'm about to send.

Nonetheless, the current fantastic four are Raychael Allor (@annoningelydh), Heather Fantasia, Keith Greer, and Logan Harper (@LoganHarper_).

Exercise (Customer Service): Many of these other exercises are conditional, but if you are reading this, you probably know that the Customer Service team needs all your love and support right now. Please send it to them, and now is a good time.

Pre-Covid people used to sometimes send baked treats to the Customer Service Team by shipping them to the office. There might still be a way to do it where they come in with masks and pick the cookies up. If you have extra spoons, consider arranging a care package.

Next up, the art team. We covered the artists themselves, but the actual art team aside from being led by a super famous original Paizo staff member is mostly more unsung than even some of our top freelance artists. That's too bad because they are amazing.

This is the first team that has a prominent member who is both director level and super well known (Glenn and Rei are directors but their teams are deeply unsung) As a reminder, I'll be covering the more unsung members here. I know it's been a while since I last mentioned that.

These unsung members are Managing Art Director Sonja Morris, Art Directors Kent Hamilton, Kyle Hunter, and Adam Vick, Senior Graphic Designer Emily Crowell, and Production Designer Justin Lucas.

Our entire art team are incredibly skilled at laying out gorgeous books, and I've worked extensively with all of them except our newest member Justin who I hope to work with soon, and watched them save projects, use clever layout, and make things look gorgeous.

While every single person on our art team does numerous amazing layout tasks, Kent is special because he was a freelance artist before being art director and so he does concept art and small art generation assignments in house...

And by "small art generation assignments," that's a euphemism for one of us made a mistake and we need Kent to save us with a last minute piece of art. Which is always fantastic.

Also Kent's concept art for Mwangi Expanse was so well-documented with cultural notes and research that some of those notes wound up in the text as well.

Meanwhile Sonja, who is the primary person I work with laying out the rulebooks I'm working on, is the biggest miracle worker. Any time something unexpected comes up, Sonja has our back.

For example, in Guns & Gears, with only days to go before the finish line, we discovered that the number of pages that we had thought to do wasn't a possible configuration. It needed to go to a signature (translation: a multiple of 16).

By the time this information had even reached design's ears, Sonja had already come up with a solution that solved 3/4 of the problem on her own and implemented it, remembering that we had some concept sketches from Wayne that might look beautiful in the index.

Mike and I can't even truthfully say what level of panic Sonja managed to save us that day because we didn't even manage to hear the full bad news and receive the panic, as she had already given us something manageable, and Mike and I quickly found a great way to do the rest.

These are who our art team are, people who make books beautiful and creatively solve problems to find great layouts for our books. I gave a story for Sonja because I work with her more and ha an easy story to pull. They each have surely dozens or even hundreds of these stories.

I haven't even gotten into the way they care for and interact with our pool of amazing freelance artists because, frankly, they handle it so smoothly that it runs seamlessly from my brief to their order and the next I interact again is with the sketches to see if they match.

Exercise (Art Team): Find a book with a beautiful layout that stood out to you. Then look for that book's Graphic Design credit. Consider writing a review and naming the art team member whose graphic design impressed you, contacting them with a message of praise, or both.

Next up, the warehouse team! The warehouse team work tirelessly to get your books shipped to you ASAP but also in an extremely careful way that maximizes the safety in shipment.

As a fan before working here I was always impressed by the way the warehouse team protected my subscriptions, and the way they arrived in such good condition.

The warehouse team is also notable because, well, it's a warehouse. They can't work virtually. So they really put the "heroes" in unsung heroes because they have to take risks (however much smaller, all of us are vaccinated) that no one else has to take.

Not only all of that, they handle getting books to staffers who need desk copies for work (OK, I know your subscription is much more important to you, but that part's really important to us, so we'll call it even?)

Plus it's always been our warehouse staff who have organized fellow staff for the setup and teardown of the whole gigantic Paizo booth at GenCon. It just makes sense. They have the skill and expertise in just that kind of operation.

Our warehouse staff are Warehouse Manager Jeff Strand, Logistics Coordinator Kevin Underwood, Warehouse Distribution Lead Heather Payne, and Warehouse Team Alexander Crain, Mika Hawkins, James Mafi, and Loren Walton.

Exercise (Warehouse Staff) Warehouse staff are going to be at the office, so look up Paizo's address. Or if it's easier, the address is 7120 185th Ave NE suite 120, Redmond, WA 98052. Then consider arranging a care package for the unsung heroes of the warehouse staff.

The next set of people are across a few different teams. I am grouping them together because all of them are incredibly unsung but do incredibly crucial things that help out with money, either directly or through a step or two.

They are on several teams which also include marketing and several VPs and above, the former are not on this list because they are already extremely public-facing and the latter because they are of such high rank.

Accountant William Jorenby, Accounting & AP Specialist Eric Powell, and Finance Operations Specialist Scott Keim all make sure we get paid. Scott is also in charge of handling contracts, so he makes sure our freelancers are paid too.

Meanwhile, Sales Manager Cosmo Eisele (@feralsloth) makes sure we can, y'know, sell our books so that we get some money.

And Director of Licensing John Feil is just quietly over there creating amazing licenses with old and new partners alike, which you'll then suddenly hear about in GenCon announcements, Steam bestseller lists, and more.

Each of them is deeply passionate about what we do and you can depend on them when you need a solution to something, even if it's sudden. For instance, John can get me in contact with a partner very quickly when time is of the essence.

Much as the forum meme is to blame him for everything and he likes to run games with evil spooky clowns, Cosmo is kind of the opposite of that an is an extremely compassionate person and alum from the CS Team.

He's the only roommate I've had at a convention other than Linda, the one time I went to a convention and she didn't (Origins), and as a result I actually got to see a very small bit of how sales work

And the upshot is that he is VERY good at it, networking and remembering all kinds of details about our sales partners, and he was kind enough to help introduce me to people, which was great because I knew basically no one there outside of Organized Play and other Paizo staff.

Exercise (Finance, Sales, Licensing): Most of these folks keep the lights on, so I can't think of a good targeted special thing to do other than to thank them for that specifically. For licensing though, if you see Paizo get some new license and you think

"Whoah, I'm so excited there's not a Pathfinder X or a Starfinder Y!" think about sending some of that excitement, or a thank you, to John for all the work he does finding licensing partners.

And of course, if you love what our existing licensing partners are doing (like, just to name one, the amazing work over at Archives of Nethys that so many of us benefit from, especially me in my day to day work)

There's no reason you can't talk about those, and he can pass the love on to the partner in question.

Now you might think surely I am done because most of the people left are either extremely prominent and high ranking staff members or designers and developers...

Except, and this is one of the disheartening things, many developers and designers are "sung" at best by my breakdown into unsung (rarely discussed), sung (sometimes discussed), and oft-sung (discussed extremely often, may even get accidental credit for things they didn't do)

Even for me, and I know you probably know me because you read this I guess, one of the most recent cons when Paizo asked to send Linda and me instead of the oft-sung guests they wanted were like "OK I remember Linda and that's cool, but who the heck is this Mark Seifter"

*However,* I think that stopping here for tonight is a place that makes sense because they (we) are less unsung than the others and hopefully no one will fault me for using this as a stopping point. I promise to come back and fill it in.

Spoiler alert: Digital Products + OP Team is next, and it includes a non-developer from the operations team who is a major unsung hero and would have made the list even sooner if I had singled him out.

Former Paizo Finance team member Ashley Kaprielian had more advice to offer on supporting finance team!

"Generally, I would say just a nice post on the Paizo forums is lovely."

A "thanks!" in person is nice too when we're seeing each other face-to-face more frequently than we do now :). It's been years since I worked at Paizo, but I still remember when fans (or freelancers!) came up to me, specifically, to chat or say thank you.

The finance department is generally inundated with email and phone calls though, so I would shy away from emailing them directly. Some places where I think finance shines, that tend to be more customer facing:

When we can start going full force with conventions again, if you're excited about getting to shop at the store at the Paizo booth, thank finance (and CS and the tech team)!

So much time and planning goes into the logistics of the POS system, training people on how to run it, and just getting the cash into the registers. They're helping set up the shop, and they're also running the registers.

If there's a month with a lot of product releases (especially a large mix of releases, like hardcovers and minis and boxes, etc.) thank finance!

They've most likely been working for months to make sure that products get printed and shipped on time so that they can get to customers (nothing gets printed without a payment!).

OK, I'm back! And I know I said I'd start with the Digital Adventures + OP Team and I keep my promises, but I realized during the stream that what I said, not having a way to name any freelancers because I couldn't name them all and there was no way to split wasn't accurate.

There's only been a few freelancers who we would trust on the design team to write such a large portion of one of the rulebooks that they would be a cover author. So far, we've only confirmed one such author, Book of the Dead author Jessica Catalan (@d20diaries).

@d20diaries has contributed to numerous books from pretty much every line, and is a well of endless creativity who has taken more freelance than I can even fathom. We have the best freelancers in the business including many other who are creative as well.

But only the most shining stars among our freelancers combine that creativity with the other qualities she has. She is also the kind of freelancer who has her designer or dev's back in an emergency.

For example, during my lead on the Advanced Player's Guide, one of the authors dropped their contract after an extension, so it was already late. I explained the situation and that I needed it already but I knew that was impossible.

I asked @d20diaries if she could do it the Monday after the next, with an increased rate to thank her for the inconvenience of the rush. She had the spells for me the next day.

And they weren't short-shrifted. These were spells that were easily in the top half of the spells we received, including those who had the full time period to write them, and include fun spells that you might have used in your game like thoughtful gift 2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID…

As if that wasn't enough. The triple threat is that @d20diaries takes even subject matter that lends itself to overly complex or troublesome mechanics, and she finds a way to make you feel like you're experiencing that story while keeping the mechanics something simple to run.

Take time magic. It's kind of a bugbear in every game system that can wind up with the most complicated or problematic elements of a magic system. Extra actions, takebacks that force you to play accountant *even if you don't cast them* and more.

@d20diaries gave us time magic spells for Secrets of Magic like cast into time, which sends the target through time in a journey that feels like days. This is so epic. And the temptation for a freelancer might be, let's make some rules to adjudicate the journey through time.

And become something really complex. But she gets across this story and narrative with simple, easy to understand mechanics. They vanish, the journey happens in the time realm, they reappear at end of turn, and they've come with damage and a sickened condition.

Think about how this spell is different from a spell that makes an explosion of sewage that damages and sickens someone, for example, and just how much story she was able to put into the spell with very few additional mechanics. That is skill.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about at least one freelancer in detail in a way that exemplifies the best of Paizo's freelancers but that doesn't exclude any freelancers, so I figured singling out our cover author for BotD was one way to do that. Next onto the OP team as promised!

So one thing about a lot of these unsung heroes of Paizo. If they were in your adventuring party, they'd be the support characters who made it a win while the damage dealers had the spotlight.

For instance, Customer Service are the champions (strict code of good alignment and they handle incoming aggro). Teams like edit and tech are healers, fixing things and making them better to prepare for next time.

Many of the others are bards, buffing you up so you can be the best you can be. OrgPlay and digital adventures are no exception. Like I said, arguably developers and designers are "sung," though not as much as you might think.

OP/DA are the least sung among us, as they don't produce physical books, and there is an element to those physical books that can help get a bit of the spotlight. But this is a team not only critical to our success but near and dear to my heart.

Perhaps so much so that I want to discuss my bias. I am obviously a Paizo employee and so a biased source about all of my coworkers because I care for them. I am especially biased as we get to the developers and designers, and I am even more especially biased for this team.

I mentioned in my "origin story" that Customer Service, Org Play staff, and volunteers made things right for me and then I joined and became a prominent volunteer myself. That's part of it, certainly, and more than sufficient for bias.

I'm the design lead for all the Pathfinder Org Play products, that's another reason. We'll get to the third reason in a bit, but know that I am very biased.

There's OrgPlay / Digital Adventures team are Development Manager Linda Zayas-Palmer, Organized Play Coordinator Alex Speidel (@AlexSpeidel), and Developers Thurston Hillman (@OnCallGm , lead on one-shots and specials)

Jenny Jarzabski (@jenjski, lead on Starfinder Society), and Mike Kimmel (@_MikeKimmel, lead on Pathfinder Society). But that's not really the whole family because the Org Play family is enormous and composed of all the volunteers from OPF.

These are the GMs who are out there spreading the word, creating welcome communities, and in some cases traveling across their country and the world to meet others and share the joy of the game.

They learn and understand the playstyle of sometimes hundreds or even thousands of other gamers and offer sage wisdom for the OP/DA team and for all of Paizo.

But back to the five people I named. Alex is not a developer. He is from operations. He is also magic and might be three halflings in a trenchcoat, thus explaining his impossible ability to fix things faster than anyone else can do it.

Real example from YESTERDAY. At 2 PM I had a discord chat for an hour about Guns and Gears, having come off my panel. All but Thursty on this list immediately entered another panel. So discord was timing me out and I had to wait 30 seconds between posts.

I knew Alex was in a panel. Otherwise he's first on my metaphorical speed dial. But I tried with other people who tried almost a dozen fixes. At 2:40 after 40 minutes, Leo said he was going to ask Alex to help and I was on slow mode and couldn't say "Wait, no! He's in a panel."

At some point after that Leo sent the message. At 2:43, Leo told me to check and slow mode had stopped. So Alex fixed it in at most 3 minutes, probably 2 or fewer. *While he was in a live GenCon panel.* This is Alex in a nutshell.

Every single member of this team is amazing. Thursty is an extremely impressive long term arc planner who knows how to deliver an incredible payoff as well as someone with an eye for the biggest, flashiest, most fun one off experience when there's no time for a slow burn.

Jenny is a deeply passionate advocate for her coworkers and freelancers alike, an amazing storyteller who knows how to set the scene, and incredibly skilled in all the ins and outs of Starfinder.

Mike has incredible integrity, an amazing grace under pressure, and the skills honed as a teacher to instruct freelancers on how to do better, and instruct coworkers how we can do better at explaining things too.

So Linda. Well, this is awkward. Linda has been called out as potentially being Paizo's best manager by many other people from various teams at Paizo, and I can "How do I love thee, let me count the ways" for days. But it's going to be hard to take my word for it because...

Linda is my domestic partner. So I will try to only praise Linda in the words and actions of others. And with that, for a moment I'm going back to editors, the backbone of Paizo's print and digital products. Now a thing about editors and designers/devs in a crunch time.

We kind of both want the time. Editors are the most gracious and amazing coworkers and will be like "We wish we had the time, but we know you need your pass so we will, with regret, skip more editing passes." But they still wanted the pass.

Linda does the final pass before edit on all OP/DA products. She is so skilled at understanding stories (especially hidden plot holes or side cases where a complex narrative breaks),

mechanics (complex subsystems? Pah! She wrote the book on those, sometimes literally like in Ultimate Intrigue), wording, and more that when she is late and she tells edit "I can't get to my second pass and I can't steal your time, I'm handing it over." they say

"No Linda, please take your pass instead. Don't worry about how long it takes, it will always save us time on our passes." That is the highest compliment an editor can pay your skills as a developer doing a pass.

Here's some words from her team I stole from Discord:
"So Linda is super sweet and she advocates for our team, we appreciate her for it! Last winter she sent me some really nice teas and they came in really handy on the NY snowy nights before I headed out west." (Jenny)

"Linda is an unfailingly positive collaborator, and I always know that if we have a problem to untangle I can rely upon her. She's a fantastic leader and I'm thrilled to be working with her to make Organized Play better over the next [indeterminate period of time]" -Alex

"Linda is basically the reason I am here at Paizo to make awesome adventures, and not just because she literally hired me. She was my developer for a long time, when I was a freelancer, and helped me to tell some stories with deep personal meaning.

She's been a source of positive energy and creativity for the entire Org Play community for years. Before I came to Paizo I was lost for a while, personally speaking, and when I was thinking about whether to apply to work at Paizo, I thought about Linda...

and all the other developers and amazing staff I'd met at conventions, and I said, "yeah, I could work with them. They could be my people." She is a constant advocate, and whenever I say "sorry," she tells me not to.

Also I can't imagine how she has her brain in so many different stories and games and systems. She touches every digital adventure we make." -Mike

Exercise (Org Play / Digital Adventures Team): Write a review for your favorite digital adventures. And when you check them out, look for the development lead in addition to the author and maybe send a message. They worked hard behind the scenes to make the author shine.

And send a message of thanks to Alex whenever support for something in OP goes up promptly. Chances are he used that Alex magic to expedite the process by at least double the speed.

Next up is the Starfinder team, which is only allowed to have members whose name starts with J (also including @jenjski as honorary member since as Starfinder Society lead she goes to the meetings, plus has an acceptable name that starts with J):

This team is full of veterans and higher titles: Development Manager Jason Keeley (@herzwesten), Starfinder Lead Designer Joe Pasini (@joeadultman), Senior Developer John Compton (@archaeotagh), and Developer Jason Tondro (@doctorcomics) who goes by Jake b/c two Jasons.

All but John actually started in editing. Remember I said Paizo's editors often became amazing developers or designers? This team is living proof. Jason and Joe are the company's biggest puzzle hunt fans and are responsible for any puzzle hunts you might have seen at PaizoCon.

They also devour board games of all kinds and have deep insights into various games. @joeadultman is someone who pulls apart things analytically and determines what fits and what doesn't.

As an editor, he once came to me with an adventure and he had pieced together a second-order problematic complication with the way that a complex subsystem was being run in reverse, all during his editing pass.

I told him candidly that this was an incredibly impressive thing to notice in an editing pass, and we did what we could given the little time we had so late in the process. He has only grown his skills from there. That super creative Deck of Many Worlds? That was @joeadultman

@herzwesten seems like he has done a little bit of everything, from editing crosswords to codesigning a tarot-based RPG. He is also a deeply considerate person, a great developer on some really cool Starfinder APs, and an effective manager, plus knowledgeable in both systems.

Really all of Paizo editorial's lower/middle managers (Sonja, Linda, Ron, @herzwesten, @leoglasswrites) aside from myself are fantastic (abstain from commenting on self) and are boots on the ground types as well as managing.

@Archaeotagh is deeply (DEEPLY) invested in lore, rules, writing, you name it. For both worlds and rules systems. And like his tag hints, he legit is trained in archaeology and knows how all this business in-world should really work!

His most uncanny skill that makes you think he may have some kind of psychic powers is when you start describing a picture in some paizo book vaguely, he will tell you the book and the page number.

I can't even begin to understand how you can train you brain to do that, but I have seen him do it enough times... that is how deeply he knows the material. He's one of the best writers you can have on your book, Starfinder or not.

@doctorcomics comes from academia like me, though a totally different field. Like Jason he has been at the helm of some of Starfinder's top APs, including fan favorite Fly Free or Die. And he is also a double threat with strong knowledge of both systems.

But the thing about him that I find the coolest is that his degree is in exactly the kind of things that I (and many of us) love to nerd out about when we aren't playing RPGs.

King Arthur, comics, and the connections between like the changing Arthurian tales and comics under different writers and eras, how that shows commonality in the human experience over millennia.

I could literally listen about it for hours. In fact, I have listened for an hour once that he might not know about. At a post GenCon dinner, which is super loud, I was sitting just far enough away I couldn't join the conversation...

but just close enough to hear him talking to another staffer about this stuff, and for the next hour I mostly just listened. He lends his expertise to his writing as well. For example, he wrote authentic Anglo-Saxon style poetry for Monsters of Myth (think like Beowulf).

With an academic's scrupulous use of notes, he added something to the tune of "Developers and editors, be mindful of the mid-line alliteration. It is a key element of Anglo-Saxon poetry"

Deeply respectful of the other person but also informing what is important so they know. Classic @doctorcomics.

So I said the Organized Play team was more unsung because they were a powerful support team who made everyone shine and digital products were less sung, what about the Starfinder team? They are "Damage dealers" in our metaphor...

but they are the switch-hitter or flexible monk style character who is sometimes underestimated in whiteroom theorycraft but kicks butt in actual play. And that leads into the exercise:

Exercise (Starfinder Team): If you're following along as a fan of Paizo products, this may be the simplest ask of all, and for many of you you are already doing this... but for those of you who just play PF2, *check out what the Starfinder team is up to.*

They are unfailingly creative, constantly innovating, and teaching us working mainly in PF2 lessons about products to use in our game (and vice versa). And if you do play Starfinder, awesome! Review your favorite products and check and find a favorite developer.

Maybe you check and find that you love all the APs one developer oversees more than the others, for instance? If so, chances are your gaming taste matches their style! Find more things they developed or wrote for freelance and I bet you'll find even more that you'll love.

Next up is the Pathfinder AP Team. This is maybe not really a thing because Ron, who I am going to say is on this team, is newly the manager of both this team and the Lost Omens team so maybe it's one team. But I'm separating out into two teams anyway.

These are Development Manager Ron Lundeen (@RPGRonLundeen) and Developer Patrick Renie. They produce the amazing Pathfinder Adventure Paths as the development leads, alternating off, and I have had the pleasure and privilege to work as design lead with both of them...

helping out with the trickiest rules bits they sent me.

There is something on the list of developers here that makes Patrick unique though.

I haven't literally asked all of them, but every single other developer and designer I know of *wishes* they were one of the PCs in your story of Paizo and that you would know who they are and what they've done. Patrick doesn't.

He is incredibly chill and zen, and as far as I know he just wants to make something awesome for you that you play and enjoy, and step out of your way into the background. I have seen him refuse multiple chances for interviews where most devs and designers are happy to take them.

He's not on social media, etc. I had a chance to have a rare interview with Patrick on ArcaneMark just about his philosophy and stuff he likes to do, like nature photography and book clubs.

@RPGRonLundeen is an all-star author and developer. A literal rules lawyer, he quit practicing law to come work at Paizo because of his love of the game (though he assures me he "swore at a judge" to get his license to practice in WA as a backup).

Ron can write anything, especially adventures but don't sell him short on anything else either, and he keeps up freelance at an astonishing rate while still working at Paizo matched only by a few. His dad jokes are legendary.

@RPGRonLundeen recently became a manager for three of the Pathfinder devs like @herzwesten did for Starfinder. I need to tell you a story about how great he is at it but first I need to give you some context that will bring in some people we won't be addressing directly

They are some oft-sung, the powerhouse superstars at the head of the creative teams. I'm not including them because they have their time to shine already. But I need to talk about how they have been growing over the years in a way that impressed me so I can tell you about Ron.

When I joined the company, to their credit, decisions, even relatively big ones, on creative direction could often come to a creative meeting for a brainstorm. But end of the day the most powerful people decided.

Maybe there would be a bit of a straw poll, but if enough of upper management thought one way, the vote count didn't really matter. That started turning around a bit a few years ago as we moved into Pathfinder 2nd Edition, a time to start fresh.

For example, when I proposed leshies for Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, at the advice of the rest of my team as their rep in the meeting with all of development and edit, plus upper management (Linda wouldn't do it herself as she thought she was too biased in favor)

Literally the three senior people in that room were opposed to it and just didn't like it. But they read the room, and how excited everyone else was when *literally* all of the other people except John, who is grippli for life for understandable reasons, voted leshy.

And they said to each other "Look I really don't like this. But see how much the rest of our staff does? I bet that means the fans will too, even if it's not my thing." And they proved wise that day because y'all love leshies. Also I will never type leshys except now.

OK so fast forward to...pretty recent. We are making one of the first plans since Ron becomes the manager and he comes in pushing hard for a particular book in a management-only meeting.

And upper management is not really interested at first. "Ron," they ask, "Why do you love this book so much? Why does it speak to you. Help me see."

Ron says "This is actually one of my least favorite topics for a book, personally. But understand this: my direct reports, the developers who will be working on that book, want to see that book badly. And in the end, isn't that what matters most?"

Upper management agreed with Ron, to the credit of all involved. Ron showed how a manager should be, an advocate for their people above themselves.

So I didn't talk much about the APs here yet, but Pathfinder APs, like Starfinder before, have been continually innovative

I personally can't wait to play Strength of Thousands with a group who doesn't mind the design lead who knows stuff. I haven't been this excited about an AP since @amazonchique's fantastic War for the Crown, which I hold as a high water mark for the AP line for my group.

Exercise (Pathfinder AP Team): Like with Starfinder APs, I want you to figure out whose style you like more. They're a little different in subtle ways too.

For instance, Patrick likes to include story info alongside the rules in his toolboxes that will help you contextualize them in the story and know where to place them in the adventure whereas @RPGRonLundeen bets he can fit in several extra rules for you if he skips that.

And even though I named a Ron AP as my most hyped AP personally, on a lot of days I'm with Patrick on that one because I love having the rules really tightly linked to feel like natural parts of the narrative. So I like both styles, but what about you?

Find a favorite and check out their other work too!

Next up is the Lost Omens Team (again, technically maybe not a team, managed by Ron over in AP land, but w/e, doing it like this) and Eloise. Wait, you say, there is no one at Paizo named Eloise... or is there?

Eloise is the superhero duo name of two of Paizo's most powerful secret weapons, Developers Eleanor Ferron (@Izsisu) and Luis Loza (@donatoclassic). I'm biased again, I've been design lead on all their books, and they have more rules so we have worked extensively and closely.

They are a team of two who grew together to perfectly complement each others' weaker areas with strengths and strengths with other complementary strengths, which has allowed them to produce just a continually fantastic series of hardcover Lost Omens books.

The Lost Omens line comes from a reimagining of the minor PF1 Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines, but there is nothing minor about the Lost Omens powerhouse that Eleanor and Luis created together.

These are enduring, popular books that weigh heavily in the minds of the entire community. And many of them are fan favorites that have buzz that punches to the highest weight class.

For instance, it's likely that Advanced Player's Guide is on more shelves and tables than almost any other PF2 book, but Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse has more reviews than APG. Lost Omens Legends has more reviews than CRB! And both Lost Omens are 5 Star average of course.

But let's talk about how they do this and complement each other.

Both, but especially @izsisu, have been on the front lines of recruitment of new, amazing, and diverse freelancers, a process that involved building trust, rapport, and friendship with communities who have been burned by RPG companies in the past.

This can only be done through demonstrating real integrity and compassion, which she has in spades. She also has one superpower...

which is the ability to find every piece of art that is cool, cute, or both on twitter or elsewhere and link them if you can buy them to support the artists. This has led to a huge percentage of Paizo having bought something off an @izsisu link at one point

and Director of Technology Rei Ko (remember her from the awesome tech team? I hope yes!) must have an entire closet full entirely of axolotl merchandise purchased due to @izsisu at this point, or maybe her office at Paizo is what's full, I don't know, tech team can check for me.

@Izsisu is someone who even when she is feeling down, she will find some kind of cute and comforting picture to send someone else, or get them a small and thoughtful gift. @MichaelJSayre1's car keeps breaking down due to gremlins? She gets him a lucky charm.

Stress for Linda? A mini mandrake leshy. Things a bit too much for me. This snake sticker I keep on a shelf near my desk.

Her general sense of style extends to just a great sense of what to try to order in terms of art for Lost Omens books. Make no mistake, the actual art is done by the artists and the layout by the art team. But Eleanor performs meticulous research using her art-finding superpower

to find the coolest references and ideas to order, so that when the art team and the artists work their magic, it comes back according to @izsisu's research. She would probably tell you that her weakness is rules, but that undersells a major strength of hers with rules.

@izsisu knows whether a rule is cool or not, something that will excite you the fan, just by reading. She might tag team with @donatoclassic on rules text because he's faster, but the rules she writes on her own are amazing too (anyone here like the cursed items in GMG?).

@donatoclassic is steady and unfailingly positive. Even when the going gets rough, he's always considerately checking to see how other people are doing. It's remarkable, and you may have read that conditions aren't always great for people working on the trenches.

But @donatoclassic will be the one person in the room who isn't complaining about work stress when it's hitting everyone, himself included. He'll be smiling, nodding, and interject with something fun that is more productive than just talking about the stressful thing anyway.

As I mentioned, he handles the rules sections faster so that the two of them can tag-team off which one takes a pass first (typically the harder pass on the raw text, as the second pass is to check for lingering things the first pass missed).

One time there was a mistake and each longer section in a book was off by about a page. @donatoclassic was like "I got this" and just soloed that. As a member of Know Direction network, he also adds media savvy and promotion to the Lost Omens mix.

As an example of his rules-fu, @donatoclassic has also worked on so many ancestries' rules at this point that he would rank competitively somewhere in the midst of the design team in terms of knowing the different subtle pitfalls.

This is no mean feat since the aforementioned design team includes me and Logan, who between us wrote most of the rules for ancestries in the first place.

In conclusion, @izsisu and @donatoclassic are great and the Lost Omens line is great, full of creative ideas and new innovative formats, the vanguard for diverse representation in Pathfinder, and more.

Exercise (Lost Omens Team): Write a review for a Lost Omens. I guess you could do Legends, it'll be funny if it gets more. But jokes aside pick one you love. Reach out to tell @izsisu and @donatoclassic what Lost Omens mean to you. Be sure to check and praise the authors too!

I saved the Design Team for last because it's actually deeply strange that this team could include any members who are on the "unsung" or "sung" list. Surely designers would all be "oft-sung," you might think, as someone who knows who I am enough to read this thread.

But you might also think "What are designers?" It's a good question, and if you called us developers, you would be in good company and not at any fault because Paizo's terminology is a little different.

You may be familiar with videogame developers "the devs" who code the game, and for a smaller game also make all the decision. Perhaps a bigger video game also has designers to come up with top level mechanics, story, world, and things like that. This is not how it works here.

In TTRPGs and board games, designers make the nuts and bolts of the rules and design new games and editors edit games.

At Paizo, extremely skilled staff who juggle six different kinds of skill sets involving setting lore, narrative knowhow, outlining, freelancer outreach, project pitching, and more also have the title of developer that to my knowledge is not used like this anywhere but here.

I may be wrong, but it's definitely not common. So anyway, Paizo's in-house designers know the rules of the game best and design rules that are groundbreakingly new (not just new games but big things like classes and subsystems that need intricate design work).

We do some dev tasks too on the books with the most rules, and we send a design lead to help with rules on each other book. All other initial "design/initial writing" than that is actually done by those amazing freelancers we started with and the developers help make it shine.

And we come full circle. So OK, now we've got the distinction. The designers write classes. The designers make a new game. Surely this must mean they are oft-sung and everyone in the fan base knows who they are 1,000 times over. I would have expected that too.

But it's not the case. Last in-person GenCon I would go around introducing myself to blank stares from most anyone except people I already met as a volunteer for OrgPlay, even after I offered to sign their CRB they would be like "Why" until I pointed to my name of the cover.

Volunteer Mark who GMed at GenCon was actually much more well known than Design Manager Mark who designed a huge portion of Pathfinder Second Edition. How can that be possible though? We come back to my earlier thesis about narrative.

Back to mind research for a bit: we all tend to simplify things into a narrative where fewer individuals are involved, it's easier to remember and learn.

It's one reason why the executive of an area (mayor, governor, president, prime minister, etc) will take the praise or blame for economic shifts and natural disasters that had nothing to do with them whether they like it or not.

It's also true that the more prominent someone is, the longer shadow they cast. And the design team has an upper manager who is so oft-sung, so much a face of Paizo in streaming, games, and more, that he casts one of the longest shadows in the company.

By the way, especially in recent years, he has noticed this and has actively tried to counteract it. It's not like he's trying to take credit for work done by his team.

When someone thanks him for a book that he did 1% of the work on (because he's actually innovating the entire business model while Logan and I did the book, or Mike and I, etc) he will be clear.

"No the real heroes who did the lion's share of the work on this are" and he'll name the right people. But it doesn't work because what's driving against him is the inertia of our brains wanting to create a narrative

And it takes too much more effort than that to actually break that inertia. So when he says that, people might process it as an actor receiving an Academy Award for their own work but thanking all the supporting roles for their part. And the designers still aren't seen.

This thread will be one place for them to be seen. Bias check: These are my teammates, my comrades at arms, my direct reports, and my friends. We have laughed together, cried together, been mad at each other, made up, and overcome what seemed like impossible odds together.

Do not expect me to retain objectivity, though I will as usual try my best to use objective metrics and stories.

I'm going to start with James Case (@toriaria) because he just announced his first lead today on Dark Archive and I know how excited he is. James Case is another of the editor alum phenoms at Paizo. In what was his very first book as design lead*

*(design lead for a rulebook line means that he is in charge of the organizational tasks a development lead would usually perform in other books, this is opposed to a design lead in other books who is a rules consultant)

he might very well have performed the most thorough analysis of what tasks would be both necessary and advantageous for the announcement and launch of his book of any design lead I have seen. On his first book.

He realized things five steps in advance, like watching the summoner playtest and people not knowing Ija's ethnicity or even if she was a halfling or something he realized "

"Since the thaumaturge is nonbinary, they might be misgendered if we just say nothing until the final meet the iconics just before launch, and anyway it makes sense to let people know the core facts right away." He convened the stakeholders from multiple depts and got it done.

This is classic @toriaria and he is deeply invested in all sorts of new products and will figure something brilliant out and get it solved, even for things outside our own line.

He is deeply connected with some of our fan bases overseas, especially in Japan, where he worked editing English translations of Japanese scientific papers (ask him about "space man."

You may remember from before he was on the team when I mentioned he was in Japan in a tengu temple writing about tengu. He has a deep commitment to authenticity in representation in all things.

It was a delight to try to translate with my feeble Japanese when he linked from Japanese social media excited about Japanese creatures done correctly

or an extremely skilled Japanese fan who translated Eleanor's blog on Hao Jin and @toriaria would explain how the wording choice of the Japanese translation is just archaic enough that it really makes the reader feel she is coming from the distant past.

@Toriaria is also a master at what my advisor at MIT called the Rumplestiltskin principle (that you can gain power over things by Naming them). He creates neologisms that people pick up by a combination of his force of personality and the usefulness of the word.

This extends to design work too. How many abilities have a name that's twice as good because @toriaria went through on his pass and came up with a suggestion or two for a new name that blew the original out of the water.

Next up is @MichaelJSayre1. To start out with, I want to remind you of something. And if you actually noticed and remembered in this novel length infinite twitter thread, you are the true hero. Remember when Glenn helped save the design team way back in chapter 2?

You can go check, but I said that I gave Glenn a report that said we needed 5 people, and that's how we got from 3 people up to 4. Well something doesn't add up. The thing that doesn't add up is @MichaelJSayre1.

He and I as a tag-team are able to output high quality content at a pace that exceeds anything else design can do. It might come with extra hours and potential significant costs to health, mental or otherwise. But we *can.*

And that's good because if you gave me any of my other team members than Mike, even Logan, enormously omnitalented as he is (we'll get to him later), this book would not have come out on time.

I suppose the shipping means it didn't anyway, but you get the idea, it would have been delayed more. Mike combines a fiery passion for what the kinds of stories and rules he likes best with a stress drive that begs him to create.

We had an extremely stressful week, so Mike asked me "Hey after work, can I pitch you class ideas for something we don't even have a book for, just your take on a few early mechanics." And it was perfect. Because I'm the same way. I mean, that's why I'm here now. I need to *do.*

Add this to Mike's extreme creativity in design, honed through years of working on some of the most famous PF1 third party products, and you have a mixture as explosive and likely to leave you grinning ear to ear as a gunslinger who found a giant cannon.

Which is good because @MichaelJSayre1 is a gunslinger and we gave him a giant cannon, Guns & Gears. Mike was not just passionate enough to get things done in that book, he was flexible enough to roll with the punches, of which there were *many.*

Due to unforeseen circumstances involving mismatched expectations, we had a dozen issues of sizes as big or bigger than the one I mentioned Sonja solved 3/4 of the way on her own one day. Those are big issues.

I had to come to Mike being like "Mike here are three plans to repaginate this section, which one is the best" and he would pick, roll with it immediately, and we would get it done and soldier on.

Virtually everyone else I have worked with at Paizo is much more adversely affected by those kinds of shifts than Mike was. And this was on his own first rulebook lead which was also mostly his first book. Not much time for SoM when G&G needed him this much.

If this sort of gives a yin and yang feel to @toriaria and @MichaelJSayre1, with one designer who has methodically planned everything in advance and goes "Keikaku doori" and the other who can quickly roll with anything, that's sort of intentional.

My two friends and designers complement each other's strengths well. @MichaelJSayre1 is also someone who respects a structured order, he was in the military, he just is very poised under pressure when the plan doesn't survive contact with the enemy.

Last but kind of the opposite of least, is Pathfinder Lead Designer @loganbonner. That he is not oft-sung for how amazing he is is a huge mystery to me.

I can only suspect it is because he more than anyone is sitting directly in our upper manager's shadow by taking on his former title directly, whereas I inherited a different portion of the mantle with a different name.

Before I talk about my work with him, I want to make sure you realize that @loganbonner is the one person at Paizo who, if you cloned enough of him, could replace the entire editorial department and still put out books around Paizo's quality standards.

With a degree in art, having worked at Paizo as an editor, developer, and designer, plus at Wizards of the Coast, Logan has done it all and the synergy just makes him more powerful.

He's worked on a bunch of other RPGs like Mistborn and D&D4E, and he created his own parody RPG called Refuge in Audacity, wherein he as the author plays the role of a pompous game designer obsessed with his own RPG.

Anyway, our original team once I joined was me, @loganbonner, Stephen, and Jason. And from the beginning, Jason always had so many meetings and upper management decisions he couldn't do as much.

And Stephen handled all the freelancer coordination for the team as well as multiple map products and so did less design for that reason as well. That left me and Logan as the most prolific designers on nearly every rulebook from Pathfinder Unchained through Villain Codex.

That's not to say we did it all, but together we did *a lot.* That extended to Starfinder. The Design Team pitched in a lot of early chassis help, all four of us, but Logan and I were the ones called back to give a second round of help

To have @loganbonner work out the monster creation math while I helped with hazards based on early PF2 rules for hazards.

To have us both work out the weapons math for the sixth time while an apologetic @Owen_Stephens promised this was the last time and we all laughed as we told him the change he wanted to make were so cool they were more than worth it (but that we too hoped it was the last time)

To have me stay until midnight beside @Owen_Stephens checking all the spells so that they would get a check before the playtest. And so on

And that's not even the longest stretch in the office. That was the time Logan and I worked an 80 hour week to get the classes finished for the PF2 final, not even sure on Sunday where dinner would come from until @archaeotagh saw us and bought us some delicious Indian food.

The point is, Logan and I have been through a lot. And we have produced a lot. Logan has told me he thinks I wrote over half the initial words in the PF2 CRB. I think not quite that

But I am sure that the two of us combined totalled to over 3/4 (Jason had major promotional duties and Stephen was making sure we had a Bestiary ready to go next). And then of course, we passed on that text to the next person, which was often the other one of us.

Now don't put *too* much stock in wordcount because Jason and Stephen invented many of the most important innovations of the game, like the three action economy.

But even so, it's a major achievement. And some things could never have happened without our signature back and forth. Logan and I started each with strong design skills but different perspectives,

And more than anyone else at Paizo Logan has made my design better and made me the designer I am today. Because he taught me how to see his perspective better, and I could see I taught him how to see mine. It's a mistake to oversimplify

But to try to describe, I was focused on what a rule could do and making sure it was effective but not broken, and I could make PF1 sing and do whatever I wanted if I twisted it the right way.

I had a ton of experience running literally over 200 games for OrgPlay and seeing playstyles and optimization and would be like "OK but the players are going to do it like X."

@Loganbonner was and is a master at making the rule simple and effective in getting the point across and speaking to the story and narrative while being easy to run at the table. Few are better.

We met in the middle and I know I became a stronger designer overall and to my sense so did he. So I would start applying ideas of elegant coding from computer science to make simpler rules and I would see Logan smile and nod when he got to them

And after playtests where he saw players going the way I had said they might, and from talking and designing together, eventually when I would say that a certain rule was going to have players doing something we didn't want

And Stephen would say "Nah, the good GMs will just say not to do that" (it was more Stephen's take, to design assuming that and make the rule better for those groups) and I was like "But what about the groups who play based on what it says it can do" Logan would back me up.

Even so, our back and forth produced some of the coolest rules, in my opinion. For instance, consider the ABC character generation specifics, the way the ability scores are assigned as you make your character's choices.

I am obviously a very experienced RPGer but when I play a new Computer RPG (or TTRPG) with a point based free choose character generation I wind up needing to read the whole manual and look at various progressions to make sure I don't make an unrecoverable choice.

I think for new players it's even worse. And this chargen system provides flexibility and structure while subtly guiding new players to make good decisions they will eventually appreciate making so they don't have to worry. It may even seem obvious to you now.

My advisor said "Obvious doesn't mean trivial. It often means brilliant." We got there by iterating well over three dozens variations in an almost Socratic dialogue where we questioned each other's proposals and looked at them from different lenses as designers.

Did this proposal satisfy *this* goal of ours? No? OK what if we tweaked it a little so that things were slightly different.

As I crossed off possibilities in the idea space and Logan innovated, we eventually narrowed it down to a few small variations and we hit our Eureka moment and created the stat gen system you know now.

I could keep going on more than that, like the time that I was close to breaking from the pressure to complete GMG (Stephen had left and Logan and I were doing the book alone)

And Logan gave me a pep talk and told me that the thing that impressed him about me most was how even under pressure, I never really get snippy or mad with people.

Suffice it to say, Logan has been the person throughout my time at Paizo most instrumental to my growth in design and many of my greatest successes, which I pursued with his assistance and advice. And he is a role model in more things than design.

His one liners are among the best at Paizo too! (helpful on twitter as well)

I'm not going to talk about myself, though I qualify for my list because that's awkward as heck. You got everything you'll get about me from me through the stories I told involving myself and other people.

Exercise (Design Team): Take a look at your favorites rulebooks in PF2. They have a design lead. Who is that design lead? Do they match? That designer might really "get" you, check out other things they've worked on.

In addition to design leads check cover credits to see which designers wrote big swathes of the book. And if you have a class you like post CRB, research which designer wrote it. Or ask me and I'll tell you. Thank that designer and tell them how cool their class is.

Really a lot of these exercises come down to learning about someone and then telling them something positive. Because Shelyn knows, our minds move us onto social media so easily when we are upset to post something negative.

But it is *much* harder to motivate yourself to do something positive. In this moment you are feeling passion about the Paizo staff. Channel it into compassion while you have the energy and the spoons from all this. Let's make things better for Paizo staff on the ground!

So this has been my overly long thread. If you're still here at the end, either you're a completionist or just a really good listener. Either way, if you want to talk to me about this, you can find me in the ArcaneMark discord tiny.cc/arcanemark

There's also a reddit thread at reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e… if you prefer it to replying here on twitter to this giant thing. Until next time!

~Mark

Honorary member no more! @jenjski just announced on @knowdirection that she is an official member of the Starfinder team. I can't think of anyone in the world who was more perfect for the team and I can't wait to see how she applies her creativity to the Starfinder line!

By the way, I said here that he was a Developer on the Starfinder team because I believed it hadn't been publically announced, but I see in his handle on twitter that I was wrong

So I want to let you know that Jake has been promoted to a Senior Developer on both Pathfinder and Starfinder. Fits in with Jenny joining Starfinder, right? Good thing Jake is a double threat in both systems. I look forward to being his design lead on one of his books some day!