User:Oznogon/PaizoCon 2024 Infinite Possibilities panel

>> Hi, this is PaizoCon 2024.

>> It's the third day.

MEREDITH GERBER: Thank you so much for being here with us.

We are really excited to talk to you about all the infinite possibilities with Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite.

Before I go into my long spiel, I'm Meredith Gerber, my pronouns are she/her, and I am the Partner Relations Manager at DriveThruRPG, as well as the representative for Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite.

Dustin, would you like to introduce yourself?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: Yes, greetings. My name is Dustin Knight. I'm a Starfinder developer with Paizo, an infinite master, and the administrator of the infinite possibilities Discord, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Infinite Creator Space.

MEREDITH GERBER: Thank you for all the work you do. Alex.

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: Hi, I'm Alexander Augunas. You can call me Alex. My pronouns are he/him. I am, gosh, I'm a lot of things. I'm the Master of Ceremonies on Know Direction Beyond, which is Know Direction Starfinders News Reviews and News Reviews Podcast.

I am the owner of Everybody Games, and I'm also an occasional freelancer for Paizo.

The last thing that I wrote that I'm allowed to talk about is the back matter in the Starfinder Dynamite comics, where I am the author of the Vulkarisu , and I'm also the author of the squox , if you like squoxes.

MEREDITH GERBER: Thank you. Excellent intros.

All right, so first and foremost, what is Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite? It is a great website that you get to create some beautiful, amazing work for Pathfinder and Starfinder.

If you have questions about licensing, how to get started, and all those wonderful things, we have a fancy button if you go to Pathfinder Infinite or Starfinder Infinite that says get started, and we have some wonderful articles.

Also, yes, we're having a sale this weekend on Pathfinder Infinite, Starfinder Infinite, DriveThru RPG, and Roll20 at 40% off. Some of your favorites, I have, there's so many. On DriveThru, there's 10,000 plus on Infinite. There's so many.

So definitely check those out as that sale is ending soon. And on Roll20, they have close to 100 converted titles for you to play online now. So definitely check that out. And also there's bundles, there's so many bundles. There's so many flipping bundles. So definitely, definitely grab them.

So first and foremost, let's go over a couple of things. We are gonna use the term Infinite Masters sometimes. Infinite Masters is an invite-only group. They are some of the coolest creators on Infinite, and they get a couple perks as well, and they get a shiny, cool badge. They're just great.

Dustin, can you tell us a little bit about your Discord?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: Oh, yes. I run a Discord called Infinite Possibilities that you can find at http://www.infiknight.net/ which I've thrown in chat. It is a community creator space where you can get private channel, thread channels for your projects. You can join other people's projects. You can find tons of free guides. There's methods there to teach you how to like, make these PDFs and work on all these licensing stuff and people there who could possibly help you with questions with everything from rules to just talking about your favorite books.

Honestly, there's a lot of people there who don't write, who are just there because they have products on Infinite that they like, or they wanna tell us like, "Hey, I found a rules kerfuffle. What's this supposed to mean?" You know, there's all types of people there. It's a really fun, chill community, and you can check us out at http://www.infiknight.net/.

>> Yeah, and I wanna say too, that the Infinite community are some of the most supportive people that if you're looking to start, you do have a really supportive community within that Discord. There's no question that they haven't asked before. So don't be nervous, jump on in and start creating.

So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the process. Let's talk about all the fun stuff and the challenges and more coming up.

>> You wanna know how the sausage is made?

>> Yes, how the sausage is made. (laughs) All right, Alex, we're gonna start with you.

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: Okay.

>> What made you, oh, what, what? Go ahead. No, you were gonna say something, you go first.

>> No.

>> Content.

>> No, give me direction, please guide me.

>> Alex, Alex, what made you start working with Infinite and what do you enjoy most about Infinite?

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: So a little bit about me. I started with publishing back in like 2014 where like I partnered with publishers. I did like a bunch of Pact Magic-style rule sets for Pathfinder First Edition.

Eventually I decided that I wanted to do my own publishing. So like I went and I got a lawyer, I made my own company. That's where Everybody Games came from.

I started putting out my own products. I had to learn how to like, or do art orders. I had to learn to be an art director. I had to learn how to do like page design, graphic design, lay out all of these different things and do that for like a decade.

And then all of a sudden Pathfinder Second Edition comes out and they're like, no, no, no, you don't need to do that here. We, Paizo Publishing, will give you all these resources, will give you the ability to use our settings so you don't have to worry about trying to make up some of your own stuff.

And it's like, wow, this makes things easier. And there are people out there who want content that's more tailored to the Paizo-verse and its lore than what you could reasonably do as a third party publisher.

At the time, we would publish under the OGL. That doesn't happen anymore because of things that nobody wants to talk about because of shared trauma. And now nowadays, yeah, exactly. Nowadays you would publish under the ORC license.

But back then it was like, you couldn't really do any of Paizo settings. Like people would ask me, wow, Alex, you made this Kitsune Compendium, why didn't you tie it into Tian Xia more? And I'm like, I can't do that. That's not allowed.

But now it's like, I can use all the lore I want. I can use all of the content that I want to reference. And I could do it in a way that gives it, puts it front and center to the people that are interested because it's people who are already invested in Paizo's lore and its universe.

So like, I've seen personally, I have a lot of friends throughout the Infinite Mastery like Discord and the Infinite Discord. And everybody is a little bit different. Some people are like, man, I don't want to have to learn how to do this skill or that skill and Infinite lets me do that.

And like for me, when I do my products, I'm like, well, I know how to do all these things. So I'm just gonna order my own art and make my own assets still because I can do that. But you don't have to. And the fact that the program is so accommodating to different creators of different skillsets is what I think is most attractive about it.

>> Yeah, absolutely agree. And we see that too with, that was the other thing. We had a micro-jam that I totally forgot to mention. We had a game jam where we invited anybody to submit a one page, two figures, one page submission for PaizoCon's Educate, Entertain and Inspire. And it's wild because I thought that it was just gonna be infinite creators who are already established. And we had so many new people and it was awesome. And they were so excited and learned too.

Like they would submit like a cover that was just like black text. And I would say, hey, did you know they have ARPX?(?) And they're like, what? So it was mind blowing for them, which was really, really, really, really wonderful. So I'm really excited about that.

- A lot of creators, even like artists will go and they'll make their own ARPX. In Kitsune of Golarion, or Kitsune of Golarion Remastered, which came out last year that I put out, I went and I partnered with Eldritch Osiris Games to get like custom maps made for each of the Golarion contents.

And when we were done, I was like, you keep this art. Why don't you go and put it on infinite and see if people wanna buy these maps? So like, you could go on infinite now and like, if you wanna use those maps, they're there. You can pay, I think it's like $3 to $5 or something like that. - That's wild.

>> You can just grab the map and be like, oh, if I wanna write my adventure, I have this map and I'll just circle the nation where it's on and you're done, cool.

>> That's awesome. Yeah, that's what I love about it.

>> I always say if Pathfinder Infinite had come out a decade earlier, I would have been writing a decade earlier. It really kickstarted me into making my own books rather than just writing freelance. It's a fantastic resource and it really does eliminate a lot of the biggest hurdles into writing your own books.

>> Yeah, which is wonderful. All right, Dustin, it's your turn to go first. You ready?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: I'm ready.

>> Okay, what challenges or stumbling blocks did you think you would encounter when writing for infinite and what challenges or stumbling blocks did you actually encounter during your process?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: Well, I had some insights into the program as I helped write a guide that Alex Augunas led that I've linked to chat on the Know Direction website. That was the first iteration of using the term "infinite possibilities". And the guide has a lot of useful information to help you get in there. But it doesn't have everything. And even today there's still people trying to make it easier to put your ideas to PDF, so to speak.

I think the biggest hurdle for me, aside from simply all the same writing hurdles we all have challenges of figuring out what we wanna write, concentrating on and getting it out there was probably have more to do with standards for creating the PDFs. The technical side of things, which again, a lot of help from Alex, a lot of help from that article, a lot of help from other people on the Discord, figuring out how to make these web ready PDFs and not simply massive, massive print ready PDFs that shouldn't be uploaded.

So that was definitely a challenge. But I mean, the biggest challenge has always just been like artwork, artwork, artwork has always been the biggest like stumbling block for me to wanna write my PDFs has been like, I wanna write this book about this idea I have, but I can't afford the artwork. I felt that way. And I felt like it's, I don't know, it was just hesitation. It was an excuse. It was an excuse to not do the work.

And Pathfinder got rid of those excuses and those hurdles. And I didn't realize how deceptively easy it was going to be to finally get your product out there. It was just awesome. It was just deceptively easy. There's a lot of things where I'm like, "Wait, how am I supposed to do this?" But then I get there and try it and read the guides and do it and it's like, "Oh, okay, I get it now." Just the little technical things like how to upload, how to write, where do you put the title of the product? How do you price your product? Things like that.

Once you just start talking around, it's a lot easier than you think.

>> Yeah, I'm just remembering when you asked me to consult on Kitsune of Golarion Star Spinners(?) and you hyperlinked every single Fool's Text(?) element in that PDF and I was like, "No, honey, don't."

(both laughing)

>> Alex, what about you? What did you think was gonna be the most difficult but or biggest challenge, biggest stumbling blocks and what actually was when you went through the process?

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: I thought that the thing that was gonna be the most challenging was getting like, so that there's a lot of rules and a lot of things that are different about Infinite from using the OGL and so like for me going into it, I had all this experience, I knew how the OGL worked and I didn't know how this license worked and I thought learning a new license was going to be difficult and that wasn't really true.

The Infinite license is very straightforward. It's a lot of, I'm gonna call it common sense restrictions and for the most part, you could just do whatever. One of the things that ended up being challenging that I wasn't expecting to be challenging, it was kind of like figuring out the sort of content that the community wanted because where I had come from, it was a lot of games mechanics heavy stuff and initially when Infinite launched, people seemed like they wanted more of the rules flavor or they wanted more expansions on things that already existed and didn't want so much like pushing the boundaries but as I've watched the program grow and the audience grow and change along with it, that doesn't seem to be true anymore.

The things that do well seem to be much more diverse which is good, it's important to have your finger on the pulse of like what your audience wants and watching that grow and change is always fascinating but it can be really frustrating when you have this idea that doesn't necessarily mesh with what is currently popular.

>> If I could jump in and plug something we have a picture here for.

Talking about diversity, I am so happy to see so many diverse tools aside from just like you expect adventures, you expect player guides, mechanics but seeing stuff like maps, like Starship Maps 3 which is a Starfinder Infinite product of just really cool maps you could use in your game. Cities, Starship, Starport, stuff like that.

Seeing these things and the VTT integration in a lot of these products has really made me realize that this is really something special and really opened up the infinite possibilities for what you could publish on Pathfinder Infinite. You know, we have, there's card games, there's novels, there's so many different things.

DUSTIN KNIGHT: So much. And for me to go on saying the thing, you said the infinite possibilities, you said the tagline, great job. We just gotta get Alex to do it, naturally and not forced.

>> No, I agree with you entirely. I think that when we started Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite, that was kind of the direction people were going with adventures. But now that you look at it, there's all sorts of things.

I also wanna call out like the Queerfinder as well which is like mind-blowing in creativity. Like there's just so much. So I highly recommend anybody watching this if you haven't looked through the catalog, you are missing out.

>> Yeah, for those, to jump off of what Meredith said, if you don't know what Queerfinder is, it's basically like an old school style like Dungeon or Dragon Magazine, but like for Pathfinder.

>> Yeah.

>> It's so good.

>> It's very good, yeah.

>> Yeah, I've used content from it in my own adventures.

>> Oh my God, that Banshee, was she a Banshee or was she just?

>> She's an undead spirit dancer.

>> Oh my God.

>> She was a ghost.

>> Ghost, ghost, ghost.

>> She almost killed us.

(laughing)

>> Oh no.

>> She's a murderer.

(laughing)

>> Yeah, and not to mention too, the other thing that the reason why Queerfinder always comes to the top of my mind too is that the cover is incredible. And I mean, it's not just Queerfinder, like the covers across the board are just beautiful and incredible and to see them evolve from just the art packs like and people like going out and like speaking to artists and working together is so exciting and it's really, really wonderful.

>> Yeah, if I can jump off of that.

>> You may.

>> I have an advice for anybody who's like listening and wants to like get into this. Number one, it's using the art pack for your inside is a great idea and you can use it for the cover too. But just remember that like the cover is the thing that people are gonna see from you first and unfortunately people do judge PDFs by their covers.

If you go and you get, just a little bit, and if you get yourself like, if you're willing to put the money in and get a good cover that gets people's attention, like it all, it'll make your product really shine. Like you definitely wanna do that at the bare room.

>> Yeah, absolutely and I'm gonna jump off of you, Alex, because one of the things that I see on DriveThru and of course we see it on Pathfinder, Starfinder, Infinite and I'm gonna use this opportunity to tell everybody, there are a couple things that people look at.

Number one, your cover. You don't have to be in it, you don't have to have this like wild, super expensive, like super arty, like there's all sorts of ways that like you can be creative essentially, simply.

Black text on white, immediate, no. Because a lot of people do that. But just like doing a little bit of something creative, even just being creative with the title or there's tons of opportunities as well.

We have on Pathfinder and Starfinder, Infinite, we do have like a article that is stock art, essentially. A lot of people don't realize, I tell people this every time and it blows their mind, museums have tons and tons of stock art. Tons, tons, just free, you can use them however you want, which is great. And so there's a lot of different opportunities there.

Number two, your preview. Make sure you have a nice looking preview. A lot of times people will like forgo a preview, but they'll have like a 120-page book. A lot of people just kind of wanna see what they're getting into. So preview is important.

The most important thing is your description actually. One of the things that I see a lot is people will say an adventure for Pathfinder. That doesn't tell the customer what it is. So investing time into your description is wonderful. The president of Roll20, Steve Wick, always says you spent two months on this creation. Spend 20 minutes on your descriptions and show people what makes it great. That's super, super important. So yeah, description's important.

And think about it, yeah, and think about it this way. My hot tip always is if you were a customer who has never heard of you, has never heard of your work, and even a little bit has never heard of Pathfinder or Starfinder, I'm not saying you gotta write a dissertation explaining the history of Pathfinder on your description, but what would help you buy? What would influence you? So, but yes, Dustin, you were saying something else.

DUSTIN KNIGHT: Oh, I was just gonna bring up that you could also, of course, use community use art from the Community Use of Paizo.

A very large portion of the pictures that Paizo posts to our blog that just shows the inside art or even cover art of various Pathfinder books can be used before your cover or inside your book. And that has been an invaluable resource. There's just like a dozen plus that these pictures released every week. So there's tons of them in there.

And you can find tips on how to find those pieces and make sure that they're part of the Community Use Package at our Discord, aifinite.net.

- Yeah, absolutely. And RBGLE(?) said this. The other thing, putting samples of your layout in the description is helpful.

And media pieces, you look at, we talk about Team Plus. Team Plus is pretty well known around the Infinite community. They have very, probably one of the best descriptions, in my opinion, where it's the tagline, the bullet points of what you're getting, and then they have a little friend that kind of spices up the description. Like it doesn't need, it's so simple, but it's so effective. So, yeah.

>> Yeah, they recently released Summoners Plus.

>> Yeah.

>> I believe we have the cover of...

>> Do we? Do we just pull it up?

>> I think so.

>> Do we? Do we, I think we do.

>> Show off the cover. Give those people money.

>> Yes. Give those people American dollars.

>> I mean, there we go. Yeah, and these covers, the Plus, I love how they have these covers all done. I believe Derry Luttrell.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah, illustrates all these covers. And it gives the Team Plus a very distinct brand identity and a very distinct feeling. So you'll instantly know when you see one of their products. Oh, that's a Team Plus product. I know what's gonna be inside. I know what it's gonna be like.

>> Yeah.

>> And they've been very successful building their brand.

>> And there's plenty too of a lot of infinite creators who have essentially made a brand for themselves, which shows up, which is awesome for it.

>> I know one such infinite creator who's been really good at making a brand for himself.

>> Who is that?

>> Yeah, who?

>> Oh, just some everyperson gamer.

>> Oh, you're talking about me and my foxes?

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Okay, cool. Hi, that's me. I like to see you.

(laughing)

>> Speaking of, Alex, can you talk a little bit about we're kind of talking about branding a little bit and talking about what books look like and like you do have that consistency and I have to completely agree with Dustin on it. So what was the direction for that?

Like aside from obviously you love kitsune, like what is, why did you wanna go in that direction and continue going in that direction?

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: Well, so for me, I think one of the most important things when you're trying to figure out what you wanna do and I know you told me to not say I like kitsune, but like if you have a passion for something, then your passion is going to be in that product. People are going to see that you care, right? You shouldn't go and make something just because you think it's gonna check off the boxes on what the community wants.

I promise you that if you have a hyper-fixation like I do and you make a product about it, there's gonna be at least one other person out there who sees that and goes, wow, I can tell you put a lot of love into this. I am going to do it.

And so like when you're doing your branding, when you're showing off what your work is, show how much you care about the thing you put out. That's not something that you can always get from like an official product.

Like obviously Paizo loves everything they put out and loves everything that they do, but their books are so big and they have to apply to such a general audience that they're not going to be able to match me blow for blow with how much I like Fox people. Like, sorry, it's not gonna happen. And you can capitalize that. That's your biggest strength. The fact that you've got a heart and you've got complete control over what you're doing. So keep that in mind first.

The next thing that you could do is it's gonna sound silly, especially if you're someone like me, who's a very like rules focused, like mechanic game play kind of guy, but like how you present yourself and specifically what it looks like is so important. So like when I did my most recent remastering of Kitsune of Golarion, one of the things I looked for is I was like, okay, if I was going to make this look like it's a fox book, how can I do that?

And so what I came to, I was like, well, everybody knows that foxes are orange. So I'm gonna make orange the primary color of this book. And then I was like, well, I need this orange to pop. So I'm gonna pick the shade of orange I wanted. And I literally went online and found like a whole bunch of samplings of different fox colors and picked an orange that I liked. And then I went to like a color tool, like a color theory tool, plugged in the oranges code and got a teal blue that was opposite of it. And literally the entire book is gold, orange and teal blue.

And if you go through all of the headings, the main headings are orange and all the sub headings are teal and you just go through and you create this sort of like consistency and just the crispness and how you're gonna do it. This is my strategy.

I like sans serif fonts better than serif fonts. I think that they look more modern and the Pathfinder community in general really brands itself as like a modern tabletop gaming experience. So I'm like, I'm gonna have no, I'm gonna use this modern looking font. And I picked all my fonts out. I very consistently applied them. I painstakingly went through InDesign and made sure that I had every single header and footing matching and like everything literally to the point where like I could type a few lines to enter.

And Dustin has seen this in some of my InDesign products where literally you hit enter and it just goes to the next style. And it makes, I use the machine to make sure that I keep everything very consistent.

And honestly, that consistency and that level of like extra thought and how you are going to take your work and present it is what makes you different from, you know, the run of the mill person who is black page border, white, black text on a white background. You remember team plus because they have a consistent style, right, they, their texts, they use the same thing up, jump the product to product, they use the same heading font. If you can pick something that you like that matches what you're doing, and that fits the that you're doing, you'll find that it'll go really far.

I would imagine that if Team Plus was going to do a product that was focused more on like Tian Xia, they would probably change their heading slightly to have that feel like they might add some direct draconic flourishes for the dragon empires, or they might like change the coloring to match like whatever nation they wanted to do. So like keeping that consideration into your brand is really how you make yourself look one step above what everybody else is doing.

>> Right, and if you click the link that I posted in chat, you can see the inside of the book on the images that Alex posted on his product description, which will help you get an idea of this layout he's mentioning.

>> My team and I worked way too hard on that book for me not to show people like a billion pages for fun.

>> Oh yeah, we don't have enough time to talk about how he programmed traits.

>> But you don't understand, I've programmed traits and then I've literally given it to like half a dozen people, including Dustin and Luis Loza. Like I take that and I'll just like give it to you.

The secret is that if you go into InDesign, go under to the underline menu, make a really thick underline and use the underline tool. Done, I did it in 10 seconds and you thought we didn't have enough time, I win.

>> Okay.

>> Winner.

>> This is a great transition. All right, Alex, I'm coming to you, okay? And I have this great idea that I would like to collaborate for something for Pathfinder Infinite. What would you say are your hottest tips and biggest challenges that you faced and how did you overcome them for when you did collaboration projects?

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: I think the biggest challenge is you need to go out and you need to find people. And it's not just about finding people, it's about finding the right people. In my experience, as much as it would be wonderful for people to come to you for collaboration, oftentimes that doesn't happen. Most people either have an idea and they wanna do it themselves or they think to themselves, I could never be good enough to collaborate.

And let me tell you, as I've mentioned before, I made Everybody Games years ago and that sort of came out of this idea of, oh, I think I could never do this, but what if I could? And you'd be really surprised what you can get if you ask somebody and you pitch things to them. One example that isn't really related to Infinite but is tangently related to this topic, I wrote a book for the OGL called The Advanced Occult Guide years ago. It's a book that's all occult rules for Starfinder, lots of stuff. And I was like, I really want short stories in this book, but I want things that are probably better than what I could write. What would I do?

And so I ended up asking a couple of my designer friends for help and they were like, oh, you should message this person. I was like, is this name right? Because that's Lianne Merciel. Lianne Merciel is a New York Times bestselling author. I don't think I could get that.

And so they're like, just try, you never know. Writers like money.

So they gave me the email. I said, hey, this is who I am. This is what I want to do. Are you interested? And Lianne was like, yeah, I'll write you some short stories. That's pretty easy. You're asking only for like four one pages. Like I could do that.

And I'm like, the Chris Pratt meme. Like, oh, so you just take your shot. You're never going to know. So like when it comes to being on a collaboration and you want to collaborate with people, ask. It might not be the right time, but even being told no doesn't usually mean no forever. It usually means no, not right now. That would be rule number one.

Rule number two, when you're collaborating with people, you should try and figure out how each of the person that you're collaborating with works best with you. Sometimes you're going to have people who want to be off and they want to go into their cave and they want to seal the stone door. And then five days later, they push the stone door open and they hand you perfection. And then they walk away into the mist and like, you won't see them again for five years. And it's like, okay, that is collaboration.

I've also been a part of like official Paizo Discords where like everybody gets into a Discord and they start riffing and joking and having a good time. And then amazing stuff comes out of that too. Everybody is different.

So try to figure out what people would thrive in. And you can ask them like, hey, what would be best for you? Would you like me to try to get everyone together? You want to just go about it and do your own thing. What works? And you'll find that when you meet people where they're at and try to collaborate with other people in a way that works for both of you, you're going to get a better product out of it.

>> And if you are asked to collaborate for a product, if someone, if I come to you and say, I'm writing this book on this subject, I think you're good at, do you want to help? And you're just not in a place, you have too much stuff, you have too many other projects, tell, just say so. Very often it will just become, oh, that's okay because I wasn't sure about writing this now. I'll write it in three months or thank you very much. I'll ask you again later if I want to write on this again, because it's much better to miss one little opportunity than to completely burn out, not get the writing in on time, or get something in that subpar. You know, your reputation is more important than that. And it's a mark of a good reputation when, to me, when a writer says, no, I can't write now. That tells me, oh, they take this seriously.

>> Awesome. Also do want to point out that there's a collaborative roles on the Discord at http://www.infiknight.net/. And that's a great resource to help you find people. I especially needed it for my editor. Script who has helped me immensely. It's really, really a great thing to find an editor who knows the rules and knows the game themselves, in addition to the language. So you could find things like editors, graphic designers, artists, writers, whatever you might need for your project. They're out there, they're looking to help and they really do make your product shine.

>> Awesome. Thank you. Dustin, do you have any other hot tips that you can think of?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: On collaboration?

>> On collaboration, yes.

DUSTIN KNIGHT: Oh, just what I mentioned right now.

>> Okay. Cool.

>> Take your shot. Do it.

>> Take your shot. That's what I was looking for. Yeah, there's never, like, to bounce off y'all is, you know, the worst someone's gonna say is no. And that's okay and isn't a reflection of you. And collaborations, collaborations are so cool. When I see them on Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite and I see all the names, I'm like, wow. Like, that's so, so neat. It's so much love into it.

I mean, like, people put a lot of love into their individual pieces, but like, being able to watch a team essentially make a bunch of work together, edit it down so it's all consistent, having the artwork, having the layout, and it just comes out to be this beautiful piece of work is wonderful and I love that. So collaboration is great. So, everybody should-- - Actually, I wanna, I wanna hop off that for a second.

>> Go ahead, we're hopping off everybody.

>> Yeah, right, we're just playing leapfrog. So one of the things that's really important to remember about collaboration is that, like, when you get everybody together, there's this expectation that, like, you're all equals and you're all doing things together and you're all, you know, getting the content together, but at the end of the day, somebody is doing the editing and somebody has to determine what the direction of that product is. And one of the things that can be hard, whether you're a freelancer for a company like Paizo or whether you are collaborating with your friends at Team Plus, that thing that can be hard is, like, this idea that, like, sometimes people's work needs to change in order to fit the overall tone of the product and the overall direction.

I would say that, like, one of the things to really keep in mind is, like, that is a necessity when you do collaboration. Not everything that you write is always going to stay exactly the way that it is. Things need to change. And so be okay with that. Be, like, understand that, like, in order for the project to become greater than the sum of its parts, it does mean that those parts need to work together in harmony and somebody's job should be to make everything feel, like, uniform and whole. Does that make sense?

>> No, it totally makes sense. I understood what you said. And editors, in my mind, are magicians to me, consistently. That someone can go, ah, 10 voices, got it. And it all sounds so consistent. And I'm like, y'all are magicians. I don't know how you do it. So shout out to our editors.

>> Yeah, we talked about editors since you brought it up. That'd be a pretty cool transition.

>> Okay, we're transitioning.

>> Sure, sure. Are we? Did you wanna talk more about this? I'm cool.

>> I got one little thing to say here.

>> Yeah, go ahead.

>> Another thing fun about Infinite is not only do you get to play in the Golarion and Pact Worlds settings and use all that delicious Starfinder and Pathfinder goodness, but you can write very directly in a way that's almost like you're collaborating with the Paizo products.

The Infinite Masters always have stuff released like this that ties directly with the latest Pathfinder product. And there are a lot of things out there, like I just saw, and I've never seen this before, that the Dally, I can't pronounce that word, this handbook that goes with a famous academy in Absalom that they printed and released that allows you to expand on existing adventures in there. So if your players, if you find that after your game of Secrets in the Academy, or one of the other Dally and Kay adventures really kicks off and your players love the academy, but you're like, but there's not, there's only 36 pages or whatever information about the academy. Go on Infinite and hey, look, there's an entire products that they made where they put their heart and soul into expanding this one little tiny section of Golarion that otherwise wouldn't have be expanded because Paizo has only so many pages that we could print per year.

So Infinite really allows people to expand on that. And in a lot of cases, it's the same authors. I know there was a Starfinder Society scenario that takes place in a giant prison and the author then released an additional lot of pages expanding on the entirety of the prison and every little corner of the prison and all the people there and everything that could happen there.

So there's a lot of really cool products there that are like collaborations with the existing content that you love from Paizo.

>> What I'm hearing is that you should release a product that's just the political dynamics of shark people, right?

>> One paragraph, one page, that's it.

>> Oh, oh.

>> Dustin wrote a scenario about shark people and had like 12 pages of background for like their political history that didn't get submitted.

>> Incredible.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Just go ahead Dustin to do it.

>> You're absolutely incredible.

>> You get the voice of the characters for their two lives they have before they get killed by the PCs. (laughing)

>> Oh, to jump off of that too, one thing I want to tell people who haven't started creating it, a lot of times we're talking about these bigger books on Infinite. You do not have to write a dissertation or a 300-page, 200-page, 100-page book. Sometimes it could be simple, like essentially what we did with the Microjam, right? Where we said it was one page, that's it. Because sometimes that information can fit on one page. So don't feel that you have to essentially compare yourself to the other pages because we have on Infinite PDFs that are from one page all the way up to like 300. So there's no essentially right or wrong size. That's super important to mention.

>> Yeah, and I mean, Spell Trickster is like eight pages. I mean, probably seven pages if you take out the cover and the licensing page. And it's been one of my best selling products on Infinite. And it's just, here's a bunch of feats for this one very specific archetype from one play-as-a-book. Here you go.

>> It's true.

>> Good luck out there. Yeah, good luck. Your players, good luck.

(laughing)

>> No, listen though, that one's needed because that archetype is all built around being able to cast cantrips and the original one just doesn't hit enough.

And that's the thing, a good Infinite product is one that identifies places where existing content needs expansion. You could certainly get away with doing your own thing, but even a new adventure in a place that doesn't get much adventure attraction is an expansion of something that doesn't have content. So that's where you should look. I would hazard a guess that while places like Chelyaks and Nermanthus have lots of content and are popular, you might not get a lot of sales there because Paizo does a lot there.

Like similarly, I personally don't know that unless I was Team Plus and it was adding expansions to something that knew that was coming out, I might try to look at places that people are interested, but maybe it needs a little bit more.

>> Yeah, you need a little love, as we like to say. Like this needs a little bit of love, especially because there are so many options. Infinite possibilities, which is great.

>> Oh no.

>> Oh no, we did it.

>> I had a chance and I missed it.

>> You missed it. I'm gonna get, Alex, we're gonna get you, don't worry.

>> It's okay if you missed it. There's infinite possibilities to get. Oh my God, I hate both of you.

>> Dustin's on two, I'm on two, Alex, come on.

>> Do we have an opportunity to talk about editors now?

>> Yeah, let's talk about editors, absolutely, please go.

>> So we could start by agreeing that editors are magic, right?

>> Yes. They're all magicians, literal.

>> Forget the ponies, it's editors that are magic.

>> Yeah, just ponies are like number two, like, yeah.

>> So let's start. The thing that you should know is that you need to know what kind of editor you want because there are different types of editors that specialize in different things. You can have text editors that are literally just checking your work to see if you have made spelling or grammatical errors, right? I think a grammatical editor is the technical term for it. I am not an official person, so you're gonna hear me use wrong terms all day. It's gonna be great, you'll love it.

So you're gonna have an editor that specializes in editing your grammar, your text, your sentence to next, your structure. You also have editors that are narrative. These are the people that are looking at your adventures and are like, is this story consistent? Does this plot make sense? Do you resolve all of your questions? Do you have all this content that you say that you have? Then the third type of editor is a game editor who is gonna look at your rules and be like, do these mechanics match up? Is this too powerful in the context of the overall game? And it's important to know what kind of editor you want and what the editor you're hiring will do and can do, because different editors are good at different things. It's always important to ask.

I've worked with game editors and they have missed syntax stuff. And I was like, oh no, I wanted a grammatical editor, oh no. And you may need to pay for multiples. You may find the rare editor who will do more than one, but when you do remember that person's rate is gonna be higher. So always make sure you know what type of editor you're looking for and what type of editor you need. If you are Dustin and you're writing seven pages of spell tricks, you probably don't need a narrative editor, for example.

>> Yeah, and I'll bounce off of that. I'm cheating. For the record, one of my peers, Sadie Lowry, who's done a bunch of work for actually DM skill, is an editor, and it's proofreading, copyediting, and developmental editing, is the three things that she offers. So that's, 'cause I was sitting there and I was like, oh my God, I think those are the ones.

But you're right, and that's something that's important. And I think that also too, that's with most anything, like with writing too, there are writers who have very specific skills as well in terms of writing mechanics or writing fiction or writing what have you. So it's good communication. Definitely ask and say what you want up front so that you can figure that out.

>> And it's funny you'd say that, 'cause not only did I use the copy editor for the first page that has a bunch of story about spell tricksters, but then I also hired a cultural consultant because I wasn't 100% sure about one of the characters I wrote and needed that extra help. And that's another great resource that you can find people on the Discord or around social media spheres that can help with that. And it really does make them, oh, go ahead, Alex.

>> One thing I wanna add to that, I've talked to a lot of people who think that hiring writers from different backgrounds is the same as having a cultural consultant, and it's not. Like you need both. You need to have someone with the proper experience and you need somebody who is trained in appropriate context, especially because a cultural consultant will likely have an aptitude in multiple areas beyond just the one thing that your one person is doing.

As a good example, I don't think it was Kitsune of Golarion. I think it was the Advanced Race Guide. I had a, yeah, it was, 'cause I had a, I wanted to do rules for what happens if your character is blind or deaf. So I went out to those communities and I found cultural consultants for both of them. And that's not something you're gonna get without going and finding those resources. It was very interesting talking to them.

>> Absolutely, and that's really, really good advice as well. Cultural writers, cultural editors, cultural experts, they are absolutely wonderful to have. And yes, 100%, 1,200%, 18 million percent.

Holy cats, we only have 10 minutes left. Oh my gosh, this has been really enjoyable, both of you. We've been just flying through these. Okay, can I move on to the next question? >> Please, please.

>> Yes, absolutely.

>> So we said, what do you recommend for those wanting to collaborate? Who would you love to collaborate with?

>> I have always wanted to do a collaboration with Team Plus, but I don't know what I would do. I think that would be fun.

>> They need Kitsune Plus, hit me up.

>> Oh, that would be cute, that would be really cute. I like that.

>> That would be amazing, yeah. Oh, that's a good answer, dang.

>> That's a really good answer.

>> I stole it, it's mine.

>> I'm probably thinking about it because of the Whimsy and TTRPG panel I was just on, but man, it would be really fun to write something with John Compton.

>> Wow, if only you worked at a company where--

>> I mean, yes, and I have worked with him before at a company on stuff, but I mean just completely, it was just the first thing that came to mind.

>> You want John Compton off the rails. You want like after hours John Compton. You want 12 o'clock at midnight at the Sagamore Ballroom John Compton. I understand what you want, don't get me wrong.

>> Yeah, and I'd throw Thirsty, and you know what, if we could get Thirsty and John Compton to work on a book together without any rails, man, I wouldn't even need to be part of that. I would just sit there and watch.

>> I think that's just an actual play.

>> That's true. See, I'm thinking too much of like actual play stuff now. Yeah, sorry.

>> No, it's wonderful. Okay, so with that in mind, I'm gonna ask Dustin first. What is your one singular favorite title not yours on "Infinite" and why?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: That's not mine, meaning I also didn't work on it.

>> Yeah, you didn't touch it.

>> I didn't touch it at all.

>> Well, I mean, actually, I'll say you could have play tested it or looked it over, but you didn't do the writing, the edit, nothing on it. You're first one that comes to mind that you wanna tell everybody about.

>> Probably Queerfinder. I've used it so much, and there's so much fun accessories in there that I absolutely love. I love the menus, in-character ads and in-character menus that could really help you spice up campaigns and gives you those extra verisimilitude-inducing campaign aids that I love using in my own games. So that's the first thing that comes to mind.

>> Whatever my answer.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> I was afraid Dustin was gonna take it, but I got it.

>> Okay.

>> My answer is Witches Plus by Team Plus.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> The reason I picked Witches Plus is that Witches Plus, like, I don't think it was the first Team Plus product, but Witches Plus was the product that was like, there's a lot of community complaints about the witch class, 'cause this was before the Remaster came out, right? So, like, the Remaster has fixed a lot of the issues with the witch, but at the time, there were a lot of people who weren't happy with that class, and actually, I played in a game with Dustin as the GM, where one of our players was playing a witch and was having a rough time of it, and Dustin went and pulled out that book and put it into the game, and I got to see how much better and how much true to the character that that player character became when that was put in place, and just, you know, sometimes reading a book is great to pick a favorite, but "Man, Oh Man," when you see a book that just says it does a thing, and then you see it in action and you play with it, and "Man, Oh Man," like, that is a good feeling.

Like, that, to me, is why, like, I have a high opinion of Team Plus, just 'cause I've gotten to see their work in action at the table.

>> Oh, okay, I got one more. I forgot. Oozefolk of Golarion, the art and the fact that it is a Starfinder 1-y, Pathfinder 1-y, and Pathfinder 2-y book is really cool.

Plus, it's just really cool. I like playing oozes. I like ooze characters. It really shows, like, how you could expand on this niche idea to a 58-page awesome product.

>> Yeah, I remember. I thought you liked that one just 'cause there was an oozefox in it.

>> There is an oozefox in it. There's a lot of cool ooze stuff in it.

>> There is a lot of cool ooze stuff in it. Man, do I need a second one now, Meredith? Do I have to, like, rise to the occasion?

MEREDITH GERBER: Well, I can give a fun fact while you're picking a second one, which is Team Plus's first, yes, I just organized by date, was Witches Plus, was their first, and they just had the anniversary, I feel like, recently in April, which was great, so.

>> Yeah, they have a bundle, too. I'll throw that in chat as well.

>> Yeah, they do. All right, so number two. My number two is also cheating, maybe. It's not one of mine, it's not one of Dustin's. Micah Draws puts out stock art regularly, and one of the stock art series that they do is gender-bent versions of Golarion deities, and I love the male Daikitsu stock art. I think that one's great. I haven't figured out a place where I could use that yet, but I'm happy that it exists.

>> Exactly.

>> The Travis box(?).

>> Micah is a good example of somebody that not only will put their work on Infinite that you can use as stock art, but if you message them and say, "I want you to draw me a thing," it doesn't even have to be for an Infinite product. Maybe you just want him to draw your player character. You can message these artists, and you can give them money, and they'll make you the art.

>> It's wild. It's wild.

>> Wild.

>> Wild, that's the biggest secret of the Infinite panel.

>> Well, actually, I feel very bad, because ordering art quickly spirals out of control into a crippling addiction.

>> Yes, it does. Yes, it does. On that note, it looks like the mods are saying we are closing up shop soon, so let's do some outros. Alex, where can people find you if they want to follow what's happening next?

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: Well, I technically have a Twitter. It's @AlJAug. It's Al, like Alex J is my middle name, and AUG. I don't use that as much. You can use that same on Bluesky. I like Bluesky better, just me. I also have a website at https://www.everybodygames.net that I have a lot of my personal products from my own company up. You're welcome to go there.

And if you go to Pathfinder Infinite, you can search for Kitsune of Golarion, and I'm there. You can buy the product. It's great, enjoy it. There's so much content on all of those different places. I try to pretty good about posting more, but I'm there. You can find me.

>> Wonderful. We look forward to Kitsune Plus coming soon. Okay, Dustin, where can people find you?

DUSTIN KNIGHT: You can also find Alex on Know Direction Beyond. I like to mess in with him in chat there, so I want to make sure there's more people there in chat. Who can see me mess with you in chat?

ALEXANDER AUGUNAS: We have a show this Wednesday. It's gonna be live on Twitch TV. It's https://twitch.tv/knowdirection, I think. And we're going over PaizoCon announcements for Starfinder.

DUSTIN KNIGHT: Oh, cool. All right. And my name's Dustin Knight, Starfinder developer here at Paizo. You can find my work at starfinderplaytest.com. You can also join my infinite possibilities discord at http://www.infiknight.net/ where you can talk to your favorite infinite creators, learn how to create infinite products yourself, or just hang out and look at all the silly memes that are posted when people suddenly rise and lower in the top 10 charts.

>> They're so good.

DUSTIN KNIGHT: And you can go to my AMA here at PaizoCon and ask me any questions you want, tell me about your character, post pictures of your dice, or just throw anime intros at me.

MEREDITH GERBER: Wonderful. Thank you. Like, I'm Meredith Gerber.

The only thing that I have to say, you can't really follow me. I'm sort of on Twitter sometimes, but really I'd like to use my time to say, please check out Starfinder and Pathfinder Infinite. It is a treasure trove.

And like I said, sale 40% off, which is fantastic. Also on DriveThru, also on Roll20. And you can play Pathfinder and Starfinder online with Roll20 with close to 100 titles from Paizo. And yeah, we cannot wait to see your next infinite creation. If you're listening out there and you're thinking, I think I'm gonna do it. We think you should do it too. And you have tons of resources and we would love to see your work.

>> That's right, because there are infinite possibilities on Pathfinder and Starfinder.

>> Yeah, great close. We could have just ended it there. I love that you got the finger guns.

(both laughing)

Did it. All right, friends, thank you so much for joining us. Have a great rest of your Paizocon and we will see you soon. Thanks for joining us.

>> Bye.