I got into role playing games and storytelling board games at a very young age. My first experience in role-playing was before I even knew games like Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, and Pathfinder existed. My brother and I made up a rules system that went along with our Clue board game that allowed us to tell stories of mystery and horror.
Little did I know then that I would eventually become immersed in the gaming world in my adult years. For the past five years my favorite, and most frequently played, role playing game has been Pathfinder.
Today, I am extremely excited to have the privilege and opportunity to interview one of the creators of Pathfinder, the Editor-in-Chief at Paizo Publishing, and a inspiration to aspiring writers and game designers like myself: F. Wesley Schneider!
His newest upcoming book, titled Bloodbound, is the next entry in the Pathfinder Tales fantasy fiction book series set in the Pathfinder universe. Bloodbound is a dark fantasy novel set in the gothic horror setting of Ustalav with a focus on vampires.
And now, onto the interview:
What was your first experience with role-playing games?
Weird. When I was about thirteen, a buddy inherited several Vampire: The Masquerade hardcovers and a Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set. Vampire perhaps wasn’t a middle schooler’s best introduction to RPGs, but my friends and I were persistent and forged ahead. We almost immediately grew more enamored with the Forgotten Realms’ monsters and magic than with Vampire’s gritty reality, so for a while, we split the difference, playing Vampire in the Forgotten Realms world. It didn’t take long to make the shift fully into Dungeons & Dragons, though. Getting a massive, D&D Monster Manual for my birthday that year sort of cinched things. Throughout high school and college I became the defacto storyteller for several groups of friends, mostly running games in the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, but, probably unsurprisingly, mostly in Ravenloft (D&D’s horror setting).
How did you originally get involved with Paizo and the Pathfinder RPG?
I started working at Paizo in 2003 as an assistant editor on Dragon Magazine, landing the job only a few months after finishing college. Prior to that, I’d done a considerable amount of writing for Paizo and other d20 game publishers, and at some point realized that I might actually to turn my favorite hobby into an actual career. I was with the Dragon team through a number of format revisions and relaunches, as well as our sister magazine, Dungeon, shifting to highlight multipart Adventure Path series. In 2007, Paizo’s stewardship of Dragon and Dungeon magazines came to an end, leading Paizo to start our fantastically successful Pathfinder Adventure Path series. James Jacobs and I kicked off that series and worked on the first fifty-some volumes together, while also taking significant hands in the creation of the Pathfinder campaign setting and our own Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. In the years since, Paizo’s grown a lot and I’ve moved on to serve as the company editor-in-chief. The job’s very different from spending my days stating up spells and monsters, but now I get to collaborate with an amazing team of creatives who are either outright creating fantastic stories or giving readers new ways to tell their own tales.
Monsters are the best part of fantasy. They’re easily my favorite parts of gaming, but also mythology, fiction, movies, everything—the scarier, the deadlier, the better.
I was tempted to go down the route here about how the greater the threat, the greater the hero that defeats it, but that’s not really the case. I like monsters in a National Geographic sort of way. I want to know where they came from, why they do the things they do, their methods, their goals, there are so many stories there. If the creature’s something like a hydra or dragon, then you’ve got something truly like a National Geographic special. If it’s more alien, who knows bizarreness you might get into. Or, if it’s a devil or angel, then you get a story more about the nature of life, death, humanity’s place in existence, etcetera. There’s such a range there, influenced not just by what the creatures do, but the stories, psychologies, and cultures that they originated from. This has always fascinated me, leading me to really enjoy researching obscure world folklore, mythology, and urban legends—usually with the aim of populating Pathfinder’s various bestiary hardcovers. But if I find a monster that really creeps me out, or that has some bizarre shtick, that’s usually enough to start down the route of “wouldn’t it make a great story if….”
Are you fan of the horror genre?
Absolutely. I don’t read as much modern horror as I should, though. At least recently I’ve been getting most of my creepiness through movies, comics, and gaming. I’m also absolutely a fan of internet fakelore and creepypasta—fringe, no-safety-net, purportedly true stories that pass around message board communities. You never know what you’re going to get with them, in quality, in content, in gimmicks, but all that, and their blurred reality narratives, can make them truly effective horror tales. While the popularity arc of characters like Slenderman have probably run their course, there’s a wealth of clever creepiness floating around on various creepypasta wikis and Reddit sites. It’s fascinating how the internet has so rapidly changed (and continues to change) how we share urban legends, and if you’re into reading or telling creepy stories, there’s an endless supply of bizarre ideas.
Do you draw on any modern horror film or horror writers for inspiration in your darker works?
I’m a big fan of monster movies in general, but especially 80s horror and the most audacious Hammer horror films. I’m probably most a gothic horror and ghost story fan, though. That’s a genre we usually equate with the 1800s—and no doubt many of my favorites come from that century—but I love seeing more modern reiterations on the moodiness and dread of that genre. James Wan’s The Conjuring is one of my favorite ghost stories in recent memory, and on multiple occasions I’ve sworn that I’m going to get a full-body tattoo of Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak—the whole film. (I am NOT a tattoo guy.) So I love how storytellers keep finding ways to breathe new life into basic concepts like “the dead aren’t gone” or “that place is wrong.” The basics might be familiar, even comfortable, but that we’re still wringing fear from those ideas, and as audiences that we’re still scared, proves there’s something powerful there.
Robert E. Howard. I know he’s not best remembered for his horror tales, but no story has ever scared me like his short story “Pigeons from Hell.” “The Black Stone” and “The Haunter of the Ring” are also favorites. Beyond that, no one writes a fight scene like Conan’s dad. There were multiple times working on Bloodbound where getting stuck during fight scenes sent me to my favorite Conan anthologies.
Beyond Howard, Clive Barker, M.R. James, and Junji Ito are also favorites— though, as a Baltimore kid, I’d be remiss in not mentioning Poe. Thanks to some fantastically morbid friends, I actually have rubbings of Howard’s, Lovecraft’s, and Poe’s gravestones—but I won’t mention that, since that’s kind of creepy.
The author has far more control writing fiction, it’s one story and it’s your story. With game material, particularly adventures, you have control of the story’s general flow, but you have no idea how the story’s specifics are going to progress. Writing a Pathfinder adventure, you are literally giving someone else what they need to be the narrator of your story, with characters neither of you control. The upside of all that is that you’re creating an endless number of stories, and players will come back to you with anecdotes and twists that you’d never have expected.
As for which I prefer, I love the variety. Whenever I’m finishing up a big Pathfinder adventure, I’m usually ready to do fiction afterward. Toward the end of a fiction project, I usually start getting ideas for game stuff. After I finished Bloodbound, I binged on game stuff with two big adventures, a book on Pathfinder’s Hellknight faction, and a bunch of articles—most of which are going to be hitting in the next few months. But now I’m starting to think about fiction again, so we’ll see where that leads!
Tell us a little about your new dark fantasy novel Bloodbound.
Bloodbound focuses on a dhampir—a half-vampire—named Larsa. Larsa’s existence on the border between life and death draws her into the politics of Caliphas, her nation’s capital, where the thriving city’s living rulers have made a truce with the ancient vampire population that dwells underground. As a member of both communities and neither, Larsa hunts vampires who would jeopardize the strained peace—a role that makes her even more an outcast. There’s of course a story about the exceptional circumstances that led to Larsa’s birth, but that’s not her story, and it’s not one she’s pinning to learn. She’s got a grudge against her parents, particularly her father, an exiled heir of Caliphas’s vampire overlord. When her father’s handiwork starts disrupting the capital’s peace, Larsa takes the opportunity to exorcize some bad blood.
Drawn into Larsa’s vampire hunt is Jadain Losritter, a young priestess of Pharasma—goddess of both birth and death. Jadain has a reputation for being too sympathetic toward the living and is on the outs with some of her faith’s higher ranking clergy. When she falls in with Larsa, she’s forced to choose a side in a theological conundrum, as her order is sworn to stamp out vampires and other undead. Larsa’s half-live, half-dead state places her in a doctrinal gray area, but Jadain decides to accept her as one of the living—another unpopular decision. Joining Larsa’s hunt, Jadain’s faith in herself, her church, and her goddess are tested, forcing her to come to a new understanding about what it means to stand at the crossroads of life and death.
Bloodbound takes a tour across the gothic nation of Ustalav—my favorite part of the Pathfinder world. Along the way, Larsa and Jadain’s path intertwines with those of a haunted sanatorium’s head doctor, a swordsman from a distant Egyptian-inspired nation, one of the Pathfinder world’s most famous vampire hunters, and—my favorite character—Larsa’s sarcastic “brother,” Considine. While family and acceptance (or lack thereof) are significant themes throughout the story, I wanted to paint the vampires of the Pathfinder world as true menaces—ancient, cunning, and dangerous. These are savage, inhuman monsters Larsa and Jadain have to face, and it quickly becomes clear that, if they fail, death would be a mercy.
It’s going to sound cliché, but Dracula. In fact, the way I pitched the novel was a twist on Bram Stoker’s story: What if Van Helsing snubbed Dracula?
I still love that idea. What would happen if, after the whole pursuit, Van Helsing just quit. What if Dracula retreated all the way back to his lair, and no one came. How does Dracula feel? Can you break up with Dracula?
That sets up the story behind Larsa and Jadain’s mission and puts them on the path to meet Ailson Kindler, a character who’s pretty much the Pathfinder world’s Van Helsing. While our protagonists have goals beyond untangling Kindler’s lifetime of vendettas and regrets, one of the veteran monster hunter’s adventures intersects with their hunt and dredges up more than dark memories.
How long did it take to write Bloodbound? Did you have a specific writing process of regimen you followed?
Too long—the better part of two years when all was said and done. I worked on Bloodbound around a number of other projects, so it wasn’t my focus for a good bit of that. Once I realized my casual pace was going to have me finishing in the 2050s, I focused more and got most of the writing done in a 6-month period. Two habits helped fantastically with this. While I write everyday as part of my job, I started making it a point to write for myself first. So, every day, almost first thing in the morning, I write for a couple hours. If I try to put it off until after work, I’m usually all written-out, so the morning just works better—both for my energy and for avoiding the guilt of not writing.
The other tactic is simply tracking how many words I write every day. On those days where I crank out a few thousand words, recording them feels like a huge win. On days I don’t, those 0s turn into guilty eyes. But the most motivating part is seeing how even a few hundred words add up and contribute to goals. Doing this really showed me that everyday doesn’t need to be an utter writing conquest—even the little wins count.
Sure is. I detailed the nation of Ustalav, the country where Bloodbound take place, in the Pathfinder sourcebook Rule of Fear. That nation also serves as the setting of Pathfinder’s horror-themed Adventure Path, Carrion Crown, which I scripted but that was ultimately directed by adventure design artiste Rob McCreary. Both works serve as tours of Pathfinder’s creepiest country, whether you want to experience it via a guidebook or over the course of a terrifying, six-part adventure.
While I’d done a few short fiction pieces over the years, it was actually the Carrion Crown Adventure Path that unexpectedly brought the opportunity to do something more significant. Every issue of Pathfinder Adventure Path includes a section called the Pathfinder’s Journal, which includes one piece of a six part, serial novella. I had intended to write the fifth adventure of Carrion Crown, an urban horror story that took place in Caliphas and dealt with the vampires that made their home in the city—which probably sounds really familiar to Bloodbound readers. Our fiction editor, James Sutter, threw a wrench in that when he asked if I wanted to pitch and write a creepy, Ustalav-based tale to parallel the adventures’ events. I struggled with it for a while, but ultimately took Sutter up on the offer, handing “Ashes at Dawn,” the adventure I’d scripted for myself, to designer Neil Spicer—who ultimately did amazing things with it. For my own piece, though, the result was a six-part ghost story that was later collected as the novella Guilty Blood. While Bloodbound’s main characters don’t feature in Guilty Blood, the story did introduce the city of Ardis and the no-nonsense vampire hunter, Ailson Kindler. There’s a bit of crossover between the two stories, but it mostly falls into wink and nod territory—nothing at all vital. Though, Bloodbound readers interested in learning how Ms. Kindler wound up with her most unlikely gardener need look no further than Guilty Blood.
If you’re into dark fantasy, you’re going to want to check out Dave Gross’s Prince of Wolves. Not only was it our first Pathfinder Tales novel, its also set in Ustalav. In fact, both Bloodbound and Prince of Wolves begin in the same city, Caliphas, and pass under the ominous spires of Maiden’s Choir Cathedral. There’s also a bit of an Easter Egg in Bloodbound that marks where our characters’ paths diverge—a touch of vandalism to a certain bridge that I hope Dave’s readers will get a kick out of. I also makes the two stories feel like they’re honestly set in the same world, which I really enjoy. Dave gave me a ton of great advice when I was just getting started writing, so I had to pay my respects to his characters who had come before.
I’d also be a fool not to call out my editor James L. Sutter’s fantastic planes-hopping tales Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine. If I wasn’t writing creepy stories, I’d totally be horning in on his awesome adventures spanning Heaven, Hell, and stranger places.
While the Carrion Crown Adventure Path remains my favorite series, for a truly unique experience, RPG players have to check out Crystal Fraiser’s tour through a living tarot deck dimension, The Harrowing. It’s like Alice in Wonderland in a whimsically lethal world of rabbit princes, ant queens, and imprisoned dragons. The whole story is equal parts fanciful, unpredictable, and deadly, which makes it perfect for first time players and veterans alike. Crystal’s also a brilliant adventure writer and I’m endlessly jealous of her brilliantly demented ideas.
Do you have any pointers for aspiring writers of dark fiction/dark fantasy fiction?
Don’t pull your punches. While you (probably) don’t want to create your characters just to slaughter them, you shouldn’t make life easy for them. If they end the story without any scars, physical or otherwise, what’s the point? How do they or the reader know it even happened? Hit your characters hard, then let the story tell you whether or not they get back up.
Do you have any tips or pointers for aspiring game designers who may want to work with a company like Paizo or in other mediums?
While persistence is a virtue when trying to land work in any industry, professionalism means a lot to me when I’m choosing whether or not to try out new writers. For many would-be game designers Pathfinder is their favorite hobby, but for all of us at Paizo, it’s our career. So we really appreciate writers who take their writing seriously, work to improve their designs, and, of course, who hit their deadlines.
How do you feel about 3rd party modules/self-published works for 3.5 and Pathfinder?
They’re fantastic. Pathfinder, and by extension all roleplaying games, are foremost about sharing stories with friends. The license Pathfinder publishes under allows people to share their work with the larger gaming community. This doesn’t just encourage the spirit of these games, but lets all gamers benefit from a breadth of options and stories greater than any one publisher could produce.
Anything else you want to tell fans and readers?
I think some readers might hesitate to pick up a Pathfinder Tales novel because they’re not familiar with the Pathfinder game or they expect the world to be inaccessible. With all the Pathfinder Tales novels, though, we’ve had those exact concerns in minds. Of course we want our core Pathfinder audience to enjoy the novels, but what’s more important to us in simply releasing great stories. We’ve got an incredible fantasy world with dynamic characters and endless possibilities for adventure, so of course we want to share that with as wide an audience as possible. So, if you haven’t checked out the Pathfinder Tales novels yet because you haven’t taken the graduate course on Pathfinder lore, stop worrying, these stories are absolutely meant for you.
Make sure to Follow F. Wesley Schneider on all his social media pages: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr.
Also, visit his website: www.wesschneider.com
And make sure to check back here in the coming months for our review of Bloodbound! You can buy your own copy of Bloodbound starting December 1st online and at local bookstores.