During GenCon, Brad Brockway and myself had an amazing opportunity to interview several companies, some up-and-coming and some already juggernauts in the gaming industry. One of these interviews was with a person that I have been a fan of for many many years and I have to thank for providing the system which really hooked me into gaming. This interview was with Wes Schneider, Editor in Chief of Paizo, the company responsibility for my favourite system, Pathfinder. Wesley took time from his very busy schedule to meet up with us, indulge our questions, and tell us more about some of the new things that Paizo has out now. Since the interview was conducted in the exhibit hall with several thousand people around us, it has been transcribed below for your reading pleasure. This is the second part of a three part interview. Part one can be found here

New Pathfinder Minis

Wes: So this is set that we have here is our new “Dungeons Deep Set” and it just came out about a week or so ago. There are a few cool things about it. We have been doing these sets with Wiz Kids for years and years and it really starting to feel like a mature miniature set. So you are not seeing a lot of “oh well I sure do need 5 orcs and a town guard and a dragon..really basic stuff”. So what we have been able to do is do a ton more with the characters and monsters from Pathfinder game that are really way more ours. So every Pathfinder adventure pack has a “Bestiary” section in it and we are even working now on our 5th Bestiary right now. And so we just have a ton of monsters and so much of that is from the world of Golarion from the Pathfinder campaign setting. We have all this history behind it, so now what we are seeing are the characters and monsters from that coming forward and just things that we enjoy in our games. A bunch of our adventures are horror stories as much as they are fantasy stories. So we have a lot of Lovecraftian monsters like the Yithian, there’s a little Mi Go, we have a Daughter of Urgathoa-which is a manifestation of the Goddess of Disease. But what I personally think is coolest is that we got into dungeon dressing.

Brad’s favourite, the Iron Maiden.

Geekly Inc.: Oh awesome! I love the Iron Maiden. These are great because most of the time you draw a circle on your mat and label it as “table” or here’s your weapons rack.

Wes: Exactly and so the first thing we had to do was your treasure chest and of course here is a little mimic of it as well. Other thing they have been doing that is super cool is working with clear plastic. So they sculpt the entire model from clear plastic and then paint it. On the Daughter of Urgathoa, she is made from all clear plastic and then painted to have this spectral look. On another model, we have it done in a green plastic to give the vibe that he and his book are floating. So we have been able to do these really neat special effects that really make the models feel so much more active.

Daughter of Urgathoa

Geekly Inc.: Just looking at these, sometimes you can go and buy different minis and your person is wearing blue or white and their sword is grey, but these look like you had someone sit down and paint them. You have shading and dry brushing and all of that and so it’s the quality that is different on these and that really helps to create a “real world” for your players. It’s really nice to see the time and effort put into all those details.

Wes: The nice thing about it is that Wiz Kids always does a great job. These aren’t master paints or anything. If you crack open several boxes, these are what they look like. All of these pieces for new sets we are sending Wiz Kids new art. And we are giving them the actual art, not we want it to look like this guy, we want this guy. So there are a lot the characters in here that are straight out of our NPC codex or the Bestiary and they even look straight out of the pictures. So it is really neat to see them come out.

Part three of our interview with Wes will be dropping soon but until then, you can get the newest edition to the Pathfinder miniature world, Dungeons Deep, online or in your local game store now.