Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. My guest today is a torchbearer a guiding light a Pathfinder. We're not developing games. My guest is enjoying good food, good films and good puns. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Pizer developer, Luis Loza to the show. Luis, welcome to the show.
Luis Loza:Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here
Snyders Return:is an absolute pleasure to sort of get you on the show. Before we go into your, your body of work and everything you're doing, now we're moving into the future. Which one, giving us a bit of background about yourself and how you got involved with tabletop role playing games, please?
Luis Loza:Oh, sure. I think I can trace it back quite a bit. But the easiest way to say is, one day I script I skipped a sports practice, to play Dungeons the dragons with a few friends in in when I was about 14 or so. And from there, I was hooked. I played d&d, 3.5 and then into fourth edition. And soon enough, I learned about this thing called Pathfinder, which was kind of like the game I played back in high school, let's check it out. And I fell in hard and deep and just never got out of the Pathfinder pool. At that point, I, I bought up every book that I could, I went back and found all the books I didn't have at the time, and completed my collection and have run through so many adventure paths and so much Pathfinder material that I soon decided I wanted to work with that myself, I like telling stories. And I'm like gaming and doing Pathfinder and other role playing games was a great mix of both. So I considered writing, and soon enough, was able to start doing some freelance work for third party companies. And that got me enough enough in under my belt to work with piezo. And I had been working with them. I'd say about four years worth of freelance work, before the opportunity came up to take the developer position. And that's where I've been since 2018. Then I've been writing along with the closing the book on the chapter for Pathfinder first edition and going forward with Pathfinder second edition now, in my current role,
Snyders Return:exciting times going forward, definitely for yourself and piezos. But if I may, just in case someone isn't familiar, what is it about that Pathfinder that drew you in and and has kept you so engaged with it? Honestly, it
Luis Loza:would have to be the setting. The reason I got into Pathfinder, first and foremost is I had found an image on the internet, with the cover art from the second adventure path volume, which is the skin saw murders. So part two of the very first AP Rise of the rune lords, and it has a picture of some ghouls clambering out of a well with a body. And there's a spooky haunted house in the background. And the caption for the picture just said foxglove Manor, the scariest night you'll ever have in d&d, and that immediately intrigued me. And I had never read a pre written module, a pre written adventure, like the ones that Pilar was putting out at the time, it was exciting, the world already felt so alive. And it was just an interesting story. And when we decided to get into Pathfinder, we picked up our first adventure path. And just, it was a delight to read on its own. Just sitting down in the chair and reading it was was great. And then being able to play through that story and have my fellow players. Enjoy. That was so fun. And as I learned more and more about the setting, I just liked most of what I was seeing it, it was a fun time. I'm sure a lot of other people have had that same experience where they've played their first greyhawk Adventure or Forgotten Realms adventure, and fell in love with the world. And that just happened to be golarion for me, and I never looked back since.
Snyders Return:I mean, the way you describe that artwork is very evocative, and I can say almost, obviously, I can't recreate it exactly in my mind, but it sounds it sounds like a definitely a way to to draw you in. So you mentioned there the adventure parts and things if someone is unfamiliar, or you want to give us sort of a breakdown or a structure of how Pathfinder works with respect to source books and adventures, adventure pass scenarios and things like that, but that'd be okay.
Luis Loza:Yeah, absolutely. So if you're playing Pathfinder Or any RPG, tabletop RPG, by default, you're going to have the main rule here your core rules that you have available that you can use to build your characters, build adversaries and set up adventures. That's great, you can do that on your own with just the core rules for most games out there. But if you want to save time, or are interested in possibly the settings and worlds that are attached to these rules, we in a lot of other companies have pre written adventures. And sometimes these adventures are short, little stints that are meant to run you an entire session, you know, one evening or a weekend or so. But paizo has what we call adventure paths, which are campaigns that nowadays take you from the very start of your career first level characters all the way to 20th level, and tell you an entire epic story that that you can be part of that you can change in effect, and kind of live out just a grand fantasy adventure. In the game without having to worry about coming up with your own plot, or your own villains and monsters and things like that we've done all the work for you just grab these books, there are six parts, you know, you can use as little as much as you want, or you can even grab from that for your own games. But in short, we sell you a whole level one to 20 campaign, all bundled up in six volumes that you can enjoy. And we have, you know, a variety of themes from classic fantasy dealing with dragons and things like that to more horror themes or other stuff like that. So if that sounds exciting, you can always just snag one of those. Or you can even just pick up our shorter pre written adventures that are maybe for just a few levels, or like I said, a weekend or just a few sessions.
Snyders Return:So I mean, there's so many different options there for people to get into it. And if you aren't sure there's a number of fantastic other podcasts out there that play Pathfinder to you and another typical top role playing games. But with respect to so many things you're putting out, what is it that you've worked on that you're you're most proud of, and people could go out and pick up.
Luis Loza:So I've been working with Python, as I mentioned, for about four years before I'd started with them. So I think my first official products and freelance work with them was in 2014. And that was during the first edition days when we still had what was called the player companion line in there that provided a lot of rules options for for characters on a regular basis. And there would also be campaign setting books that would give you deep dives into specific nations or specific cultures and things like that. So a lot of that work I've been really proud of, but I think I'm most proud of the work that I'm doing nowadays with Pathfinder second edition, we've taken the campaign setting books, and our player companion books kind of smash them up into a brand new product line that we call the lost omens line. And that book is both setting material and rules material for players to learn the game and learn the setting and add more stuff to the character. And these books are bigger than our previous setting books. And we've managed to do some really interesting things with them. Anything I'm most proud of our most recent book, which is lost omens legends, which is a kind of who's who in the inner Sea region, which is the main part of the campaign setting. And it takes I think, over 40 different NPCs that exist in the setting and gives you their background gives you their motivations gives you their connections to other NPCs and ties them all to the ongoing plots in the world ongoing events and connections between these other NPCs in the same book so it lets you understand the world and who the movers and shakers are. And it's a really interesting book there's a lot of insetting writing so there are letters and journals and stories and stuff that are really interesting and fun to read. And I think it's a great book to read even if you know nothing about the setting but if you do you can pick up on a lot of interesting stuff and learn a lot more about these characters that have been around for some of them over a decade at this point.
Snyders Return:Yeah, definitely a way for are they don't they games masters or dungeon masters for
Luis Loza:pathways Game Master game? Most? Yeah.
Snyders Return:Okay, so there's a lot for the the game master to get the hands on plays as well. So with as you serve up to over 40 NPCs and these letters and journals, where is it that you draw your inspiration from when you're putting your work together for pytor.
Luis Loza:So a lot of my inspiration, I think will probably have to come from video games. I grew up playing way too many video games and I still play too many video games based on how much that eats into my writing schedule sometimes, but I've been inspired a lot by classic RPG is on the Super Nintendo and things like that. But also movies are great TV shows are great. We, I think a lot of us here at paizo aren't just bound to books for inspiration, I find that movie plots translate really well for adventures and ideas from games like specific monsters that you might have seen translate well, for, for role playing games. And just all over, I happen to consume a lot of movies, I happen to consume a lot of video games. So that's specifically what I do. But I've also found inspiration here and there. from other gems from other games that I've played in. It's kind of inspiring, seeing the ideas that other people come up with the stories for their home campaigns and things like that. And sometimes they come up with really exciting things just a homebrew monster, or a fun encounter that inspires me to try to expand that into proper rules that everyone can can play around with it. Sometimes GM don't have an opportunity like I do to share that with the rest of the world. So if something is inspired me that a GM is done, I'd like to let the rest of the world hopefully be inspired by that too
Snyders Return:much. That's amazing to be able to do that. I won't say the powers may be the wrong word, but the the ability to bring those things to life. And you mentioned their gyms, their home brewing, and home games, and things like that is do you have much to do with the organised play side of things.
Luis Loza:I for the longest time hadn't had a good opportunity to play organised play my home before I moved to Seattle to work with piezo, there wasn't much of a organised play scene at that time, or if there was, I wasn't aware of it enough to hop in. So I would play I conventions. And occasionally here and there. But I didn't do much on there. But now that I've working for piezo, and especially with second edition, kind of setting the or wiping the slate clean and letting everyone start from the same point. It's something I've started dabbling with. I've especially now when a lot of people are playing a lot more online, it's easy to connect a game. So I started dabbling with, you know, some friends, fellow co workers, sometimes even fellow writers and freelancers for for games here and there. So I'm slowly building into that. And I think it's good, especially because it means I get to tap into another part of our game another part of our world and products that I have kind of neglected for a while.
Snyders Return:Yeah. And you mentioned they're sort of tapping into other creators and writers and things and Pathfinders sort of really taken off recently, with respect to how much support is getting from outside groups, the miniatures and the team up with Beto and grimms. You ever to sort of talk us a bit more about but that side of Pathfinder,
Luis Loza:yeah, a lot of that work can be attributed to our franchise manager Mark Moreland and our publisher, Eric mon. I think the two have been spearheading initiatives to just get the Pathfinder name on to as many quality products as they can think it began with the minis with with kids and has since expanded into even comics, novels and the like. So I it's definitely a brand that a lot of people are starting to recognise a lot more. And it means we can do interesting things. Especially because we we have interesting partners that come with us Come meet with us to offer amazing possibilities. I think the most amazing one so far has been our cat games who has made the kingmaker video game. And it's doing a follow up here soon. And it's just great to see that. I know a lot of people have grown up on video games like boulders gate, and the like. So just letting the the world expand just a bit more and having Pathfinder step up and join the ranks of all of these great products is exciting to see. And it's kind of especially fun for me now as an employee because, hey, I get myself a free copy of video games sometimes.
Snyders Return:It's always nice to get a perk.
Luis Loza:Yeah.
Snyders Return:So you mentioned there, that sort of the world expanding and you mentioned a setting early on how wide How big is the sort of paizo Pathfinder multiverse? How many places Can people sort of set their games when they when they pick up the the adventure paths or the the core books.
Luis Loza:The the fun part about the age of loss domain setting, to the name that we've given our setting here is that it was built from the ground up to accommodate a lot of different adventures, it would have been very easy to have golarion just be here's your standard fantasy fair with Knights in castles and dragons and the like. And if you wanted to play a different type of adventure that was even more magical or much more gritty, or had interesting, weird twists, like, it's more Gothic. If you're more into that, that kind of thing, then it, it wouldn't have accommodated that. But when, when the setting was first created, all of those considerations were were important to to the original setting creator. So Eric, Mona James Jacobs, Western Knight, all these great people that have worked at pies or continue to work at pies. So it's a kitchen sink, kind of a setting, there's a spot where you have your horror, Gothic stuff in love, and you have your super ridiculous high magic in the form of next. But you then have more interesting things like, like the Egyptian themes of a Syrian or the supertech of malaria. And if you want to do kind of weird different style fantasies, there's something there for you, just right out of the gate, if you pick up our our lost omens world guide, and it gives you a rundown of all of these initial nations, it has just all types of fantasies, all types of stories ready to go, depending on what you want to do. And that's only a small chunk of the world. There's basically one and a half continents that we've looked at in our setting. And there's still the rest of the globe where we can expand that to be even more stuff. I recently wrote an adventure that is basically the Norse Viking mythology kind of mashed up with the sum of a little bit of Native American mythology and tradition. And that's already, you know, just toeing the line of all the more interesting things that we can do as we continue to look at the other parts of the world. So there's so much possibility out there. But already, like I said, out of the gate, it has so many different possibilities in terms of the the initial adventures that you can just do. And all of our adventure paths and module start following those things as well. We have an adventure path set in America. So all that high tech stuff is available for you and a full campaign or there's one in a series for your full Egyptian campaign as well as your classic fantasy, adventures and stories.
Snyders Return:So as you open the world up, and and there is something for everybody. Where is it? They can go on purchase this way? Where can I rephrase that slightly? Where can they find you? Where can they find PI's own? Where can they find like the last omens and all the the Pathfinder products?
Luis Loza:Sure, well, if you go to paizo.com pzo.com, it, that's the homepage for all things Pathfinder. And from there, you can look into our selling books, or our rule books or whatever you like, and just build out from there, you know, you can start with just your core rulebook or beginner box as an early product and dive as deep as you like with this. And from there, you know, it's up to you what you want to do, you can look back into the first edition adventures and play with those as well. There's, like I said, over 10 years of Pathfinder at this point that you can look into and learn about, so just head over to our site and kind of dip your toe and decide how deep you want to go. That's for me, you can follow me on Twitter, my handle is at donado Classic, and I'll make sure to send that to you. So we have that it's not easy to spell but but another thing you can do is you can just find my website, Luis lives calm. And that's kind of my landing page for my link to my Twitter, I also have a Patreon there where I provide material that I've written for my home games and share them with the rest of the world because even though I'm working with piezo there's specific stuff that we're publishing that some of the ideas that I come up with, maybe don't fit in, those are just aren't the kinds of things that that piezo would publish. So if you're ever interested in seeing material from someone who works with piezo it's not any kind of official material but you know, there's there's a lot of stuff that works alongside all of your other Pathfinder material, then you can always check out my site, my Patreon and my Twitter for cool stuff.
Snyders Return:All right, well, the links will be in the description below this podcast. So please check the show notes, but the description that the show notes below and you will find the links for all of those things. And you mentioned there, the Patreon and writing for Pfizer so if you're able to sort of quantify what is your, your writing process, how is it you solve the process you go through? Do you sit in front of a blank piece of paper tablet screen, how is it you go about creating your adventures,
Luis Loza:a lot of it, I think comes down to just thinking about it, there's a lot of brainstorming that I end up doing far in advance before I even put anything to paper. In, there's been a lot of productive thinking done in the shower or on, you know, while I'm out running for exercise or shopping, and just thinking a lot of plots out and, and trying to find all the holes in my ideas before I even start committing to them. When it comes to writing an adventure, if I'm writing a story, if for an adventure, I'd like to make sure it's as airtight as I think it is, there is as I think it could be before it even gets handed off to anyone. And then from there, I will follow the kind of standard process we do for a lot of our products here, internally, which is I make an outline to get a lot of the big ideas out. And if I'm working with a developer, if I'm writing for pies, though, I actually work with one of my co workers and they're essentially my quote unquote boss for the project, or I'm working for myself, still having an outline is very helpful. And I can hand out, hand off the outline to another developer, someone else to look over, get some feedback on that. And then I do a basically about half of the work, which was what we call a milestone here. And with that we tend to try to work on or at least Personally, I try to work on what I find to be the most difficult things and get those all out of the way first, because then I can once again turn around, hand it off to someone and get some feedback and incorporate that there. If I save the more difficult stuff for later, it could end up leading to more problems or not be as good as it could be. So I'd rather take something I'm unsure about, have someone look at it first and get some feedback. And then from there, I finish up the draft and hand it off. And most of my work I just do directly into my word processor. I don't bother writing stuff in advance. The only stuff I really work on on paper is when I'm drawing maps, I will do those on paper and then scan them in and then provide them to provide them alongside with my adventure as a digital file.
Snyders Return:So you can't tog refers well as as avid writer,
Luis Loza:yeah, we have to be able to create maps for these, the adventures for our encounters and everything. And that's part of the expected process when we're doing adventures for at least for paizo that we're gonna meet making our own maps, which is a fun part of the adventure writing process. For me personally, because coming up with an interesting encounter requires an interesting map, I could just say, you know, the adventure has a fight in the middle of a forest and not give a map. But if I create a new map, give you know interesting elevation within the form of large rocks and things like that, or, or lots of tree cover, it makes suddenly a more interesting environment to have a fight in. And I love thinking about that kind of thing. And then it's personally just really fun to draw the maps I enjoy doing them I really am proud of most of my maps when when I'm done with them. So it's just kind of fun to show those off. And then see them when they're finally put to print with a proper cartographer proper artists going over those and interpreting My Maps
Snyders Return:nice It sounds like you I can hear it in your voice the the joy and excitement that that it brings you and as you say, definitely using a map or having an an interesting map to two people standing in a field is is far less dramatic than as you say fighting on on the rocks in a forest or any kind of dynamic situation like that. So with respect to your outline, you mentioned you created one but how would you go about creating that outline? Do you use bullet points you say you draw inspiration from movies video games you know thinking in the shower, how do you process that into something that you can hand off as a as an outline
Luis Loza:so the the main things at least when it comes to adventure writing for me the main things are figuring out the key encounters and the key plot points on the the adventure itself. So I can I I'll use an example from a previous adventure I've already written has come out so I don't have to feel bad about releasing any information. So my very first adventure path that I wrote was for the final AP first edition, which is tyrants grasp, I wrote the second to last adventure They're born by the sons grace. And that one, I kind of have free rein to do what I wanted, I was given the high key points, the play of the characters need to show up in this location. And if and from there, at some point, they need to defeat this undead dragon. But from there, I was kind of given a lot more freedom than I've actually received in in in later adventures. But the the idea that I had immediately was okay, I want this to be kind of a sandbox, I want to give players a big location that they can kind of move around as they see fit. And just let them go, I will set up a lot of the information like the lighting, and you know, the thickness of the walls and what doors are locked and what guard patrols are like. But from that point on, leave it free to let gms and players run that as they like. And I took in essence, I ripped out a section of one of my favourite games, Metal Gear Solid three. And witches has, you know, a lot of sneaking around, there's lots of facilities that you sneak around in, and I basically took one of those buildings, plot it into a fantasy game, obviously, tweaked it to meet the needs of the adventure. But the the premise was there that it's it's a big medical facility, a big science facility, and set up all the information about the guards and stuff and said, run with it. And the outlining for that was really mean just figuring out the important details like what kind of guards would be there, and what kind of creatures they might encounter what kind of monsters or enemy NPCs that they might find. And just kind of working from that, I think I was able to kind of freeform just come up with a lot of the stuff on my own, that one I was a lot I felt a lot stronger about going into so I didn't actually outline too much. Whereas the last part of the adventure, it's another kind of dungeon crawl through a temple. In that one, I did go through meticulously and kind of make sure that I had every room thought out, I didn't necessarily have a map yet. But I said there would be you know, x rooms, say 20 rooms, and at least 20 rooms. 12 of these have possible fights and here's encounter, one would be this creature and counter two would be these creatures. And counter three would be that creature and figuring out the total possibility for XP, one could earn there and the total treasure one could earn there because we do have specific needs that need to be met. For example, the players have to be level 15. By the time they're done with this, making sure there's enough XP and treasure for all that is important. And then planning out simple ideas. For maps, I would just draw rough shapes to squares connected by lines that kind of give the general flow of the look of the dungeon not necessarily the the exact specifications of the dungeon but knowing that they start in the central chamber and that's three halls and then from there to further halls and so on and so forth. Just that's very easy to figure out and it's perfect kind of thing for the outlining phase.
Snyders Return:Yeah. Thank you. I wasn't quite sure.
Luis Loza:I'm sure how. Yeah, I'm sure everyone has their own process on this, but I won't have that's that's what I do is I just think a lot of the basics out and then kind of fill in the details as I go and further.
Snyders Return:Well, that sort of leads into my next question and everybody's path into writing for when writing in general but for tabletops and things is very different. So yours will be different to the next person's but have you got any advice to pass on to new tabletop writers people that love pies Oh, almost as much as you do a Pathfinder on it and and say look on Drive Thru or look on poser adventures and think I'm going to sit down and and I want to I want to create an I want to broaden this knowledge, this law that you guys apply if you got any advice that you would give to writers looking to get into this, this genre?
Luis Loza:Yeah, absolutely. The The first thing to know is that you don't have to have anything published through any kind of company to gain our attention. And a lot of work that I've given to to freelancers. Now as a developer, I've just been sent homebrew material, I've been sent links to blogs, I've been sent, you know, just stuff that people have made for their own games that they happen to have put up onto the internet so I can see it or happen to put into a nice little, you know, document that they can share with me. And that is more than enough to get you started. You don't need to go knock on every company store and ask for an opportunity to the to write, to start writing is basically what it comes down to, you can start writing without anyone else having given you an assignment. So that's what I would recommend. First, it's very easy now to sign up for a free blog, or a free website, and just start putting stuff up there. Even if it's simple little things like oh, I came up with a new type of magic sword. Great, that's usually 200 words that can prove that you can write a magic sword. And that might be enough to get you started on writing more magic sword, surprise Euler for a different company. And the other thing I would recommend is find whatever company you want to write for whatever game you want to write for, and start learning their formatting the way they style, you know, how do their stat blocks, look what things are bolded, what things are italic, and so on, and so forth. And try to match that as best as you can. You obviously won't have the exact fonts or the exact images or anything like that. But the closer you can get to it that the more it shows an attention to detail, and a willingness to be able to work within the the requirements and constraints of a particular company's needs. So if you write a magic sword, and you want to write a magic sword specifically for Pathfinder, Second Edition, make sure it follows the Pathfinder second edition rules and stats and everything like that, you can write a magic sword and have it look like d&d fivey. But that's not the kind of thing you would want to show to someone that you want to have Pathfinder work for. And vice versa, if I've, I've written for fifth edition material for other companies before, and when it comes time to show what I can do, I will share specifically my fifth edition references and material that I've done. So make sure to keep that in mind. And, you know, if it's just prose and, and flavour and lore, that obviously has no stats or anything that you have to worry about. So that that can be applied anywhere, but get something together. And as soon as you have a blog with even just three or four entries or, or you know, a homemade PDF or doc that you've made, that you can start using as your kind of sample writing that you can share with their publishers or developers and and use them because it's very easy to just come up to me or any of my co workers at a con and say, hey, I want to work for you. But if you have nothing to show for it, even if it's never been officially published, then we can't know what your skills are or anything like that. So just just start writing for yourself. And sometimes you'll find that it's fine. Or you might decide, I've written enough of this that maybe I'll throw it onto a Patreon and people might give me$1 or two to read that.
Snyders Return:Yeah, yeah, I think that's great advice. Not just do writing but tailor the your writing to the system that you love and enjoy. So and you mentioned they're writing for a third party for fifth edition and obviously your your passion for for Pathfinder with paizo. Other any other tabletop role playing games, you look out from a game developer point of view, when you think I like that system, or I like the way that game mechanic works, or I'd love to give that game a try. At home with friends or my own gaming group.
Luis Loza:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Much like I'm sure writer. I know that writers read other authors, books and stuff. And you know, Video game developers play other people's video games to learn and work from there. I play a lot of other RPGs I am primarily playing Pathfinder, but a lot of the time when we're done with a campaign or need a break, we will spend a month or two trying out other game systems. So I've had the opportunity to play Call of Cthulhu and The Chronicles of darkness where the darkness games, and I've played games for one shots at cons and things like that I have a whole bookshelf behind me that is a separate bookshelf from my Pathfinder bookshelf, which has all these other games. I literally turning around right now to tell you that I have you know, the Star Wars game from Fantasy Flight. And I have, you know, Call of Cthulhu and legend of the five rings and numenera and all that just lots of games that I've tried out. And a lot of them even if I don't get a chance to play, I'm just reading through them. Understanding that the basic mechanics can can be inspiring, so a more storytelling driven game can can inspire me for the possibilities of how to implement that kind of thing as a mechanic in Pathfinder or just be fun to read and consider for future stuff. There's there's always mechanics out there that might translate well to Pathfinder. Or just inspire some some fun stuff, huh? Yeah, definitely
Snyders Return:I have a smaller bookshelf of similar books. So I know the the, the joys of reading through the different works. So and a few of those games you'd mentioned that I'd love to get a chance to play myself but that's that's by the by and that's me and my gaming group that has to work that one out. So you write for pi visor, you write for yourself, you work on other. I have worked for third parties for other tabletop games and and you do lots of other stuff. What is it you do for downtime? How do you sort of unwind, relax and sort of reset your creative counter,
Luis Loza:again, at too many video games to start with. I'm playing a lot of Hades, which just recently came out and it's a lot of fun. I'm really into action games and rogue lights, sound those are a good time. I'm hoping to sometime in the next couple of months, maybe snag myself PlayStation five, so I can play the nice Spider Man and then stuff that's coming there. I don't know if you've heard of that scheme that just came out Phasma phobia which is all about ghost hunting. Got that and started playing with my friends and it's silly time but i'm i'm also watching movies, watching TV shows I'm doing a run through the Hayao Miyazaki films like spirited away and the like China watch those, because those are something I haven't watched all through, and I'm enjoying that. But I also go out on hikes with my wife, here in the Pacific Northwest in the Seattle area, that happens to be a lot of mountains, lots of forests that are perfect for hiking around for hours. And that's really enjoyable, and, you know, going running in like, so. There's a lot of stuff I do, unfortunately, it means I can't do all of them as much as I would like. And I guess that's a good problem to have. It's just I have the potential for a lot of fun stuff and, and ways to relax and keep my mind off of work in writing. When when I don't necessarily want to be thinking about that. And sometimes, you know, while I'm at a hike, it turns out that I can't keep my mind off of writing and end up coming up with the next idea or, or trimming down the plot for my next adventure.
Snyders Return:Always at work, not always at work.
Luis Loza:Yes. Unfortunately.
Snyders Return:It's fair. And I guess, sort of the creativity you have would be hard to stifle with especially with the must be close to Mount Rainier.
Luis Loza:Yeah, exactly.
Snyders Return:So you've got that landscape beyond the city plus all the other beautiful, concentrated countryside around that. So when you're unable to sort of break free from work is Is there anyone in the team ttrpg space that you would like to collaborate with maybe or bring in or, or sort of maybe GM for or anything like that with with the way that we're, as you mentioned earlier, we're playing more online and unable to communicate
Luis Loza:just as easily as we did before. Avoid if I had my dream game, or at least chance to run with or for someone I think so I've taken a lot of inspiration from a an actual play. I guess it's an actual play podcast called the adventure zone, which is run by Gryphon McElroy and the other McElroy brothers and those those guys are just super funny, but also super creative. The story itself, you don't have to have played d&d at all and know any of the rules to just get enraptured by the story that they were telling and getting them to play Pathfinder once would be super fun and just letting them play around in our world for just a bit would would be a great time. Same for the the critical role crew get them back into the world of golarion for a bit would be a blast. But honestly a lot of my co workers are the kind of people I would want to run games with and I do get to run games with you know, Ron, Lindy and and Eleanor Ferran and, and all these other great people here that were names that I was reading in the author list as I was enjoying the these adventures and products. And now I get to work with them and collaborate with them on a daily basis and create just exciting, interesting things from every day. Basically,
Snyders Return:it must be very special to work alongside your aspirations and inspirations, I guess.
Luis Loza:Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that's there are some people that are as brand new as me but they still inspire a lot of all with just, you know, their skill and what they've done and continue I need to do every day.
Snyders Return:So is there anything that we haven't touched on that you would like to bring to prominence? Anything within Pizer or Pathfinder we've not touched on yet or anything outside of that you want to discuss.
Luis Loza:I guess I have an adventure path volume that I turned in a few months ago. And by the time this comes out, won't be too far from the lease, which is the first volume of the fifth of the Ruby Phoenix adventure path, which is called despair on danger Island. That is an adventure for, I believe, 11th through 14th level characters. And it's all about getting thrown onto an island to do a big martial arts tournament stealth qualifier. If you've ever watched or read through Battle Royale, imagine, just, you know, a bunch of teams thrown together. And the last one standing gets to move on. It's not exactly as grim and bloody as that, but it's similar, similar themes. where, you know, it's just 32, teams Enter, and only a handful will get to move on to the next round. It's just a big sandbox full of lots of martial arts themes and, and kind of illusions inspired by martial arts films and video games and things. So it's really, it was really fun, putting all of that together and not knowing exactly how things are going to go because it's such a huge Island and the possibilities are kind of far more, there's, there's a lot more Liberty here for where the players can go and have the adventure can turn out. So I just kind of threw in as many fun things I could think of. So there's a part where one of the enemy teams just happens to be a group of dozens of fighters that overwhelm the opponents by having far greater numbers. So it's your party of four players, versus a essentially what's a huge swarm of 50 or so other fighters that are all kind of jumping on you and overwhelming and I thought that was just a fun, silly thing. You know, it's full of goofy ideas like that, that I think will hopefully make memorable encounters every time that you find the next team to fight I
Snyders Return:have to say the way you've described that and the references and influences gonna have to look out for that and pick myself up a copy because I'm I like that kind of stuff. Bruce Lee Jackie Chan. Yes, all films have on that Battle Royale. Love that the most as well.
Luis Loza:The beginning of the adventure has all the contestants being brought in by boat clear, which was just directly ripped from Enter the Dragon which has had the tournament starts and that's how people are brought onto the island of little boat brings everyone on one, one on one by one. So just as many illusions as I could throw in without getting in trouble or losing the the narrative that we were in seminars to
Snyders Return:Yes, exactly. written that one down. I'm going to put that in my diary. I thank you so much for taking some some time out of your day to speak with me, would you mind just reminding people where they can find the game company and yourself again, just just in case people have somehow forgotten through this interview, please
Luis Loza:share for all things Pathfinder or star Finder. I'd say go check out paizo comm pa IZO COMM And for all things about me my Patreon link or my blog, and the like, you can visit Luis loza.com. And that will have all the different places that you can find me on the internet.
Snyders Return:All right, again, links will be in the description below. Luis has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you in learning about Pathfinder and learning a bit more about yourself. So, you know, I'd love to have you back on later in the year since of the time of release. To discuss more more Pathfinder and see how things that go on and let you know how we've done on the on the battle rail front.
Luis Loza:Yes, absolutely. I'd love to be back anytime. All right. Well,
Snyders Return:thank you very much for joining me.
Luis Loza:Thank you.
Snyders Return:Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon and we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you