Paizo Goes Out On A Limb: The Pathfinder RPG

It's no big secret that I'm a bit of a Paizo fanboi. I admit it... for a long time now they've been publishing great stuff, from killer adventures in Dungeon magazine to the Class Acts in Dragon - and have continued to do so even when the licenses reverted to Wizards of the Coast with their Pathfinder Adventure Paths and GameMastery Modules (which were recently rebranded to bring them more firmly into Paizo's Pathfinder world, Golarion).

So when Paizo shuts down its webstore with a message that goblins have taken over the building and demanded a decision on whether Pathfinder would switch to 4.0 - well, I take notice! And the news is, perhaps surprisingly to many, that Pathfinder will not be going to 4th edition.

Today Paizo announced their plans. The links are lengthy and located here, but the crucial bit follows:

Paizo Publishing today unveiled the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, a tabletop fantasy roleplaying game that will serve as the anchor for the company's popular line of Pathfinder adventures, sourcebooks, and campaigns. Today marks the beginning of a year-long Open Playtest of the new rules, which are based upon the popular 3.5 rules available under the Open Game License. The Pathfinder RPG is designed with backward compatibility as one of its primary goals, so players will continue to enjoy their lifelong fantasy gaming hobby without invalidating their entire game library. The first Pathfinder RPG Alpha release is available now as a free 65-page PDF download at paizo.com/pathfinderRPG. Until the finished Pathfinder RPG's release as a hardcover rulebook in August 2009, all of Paizo's popular Pathfinder-brand products will continue under the current 3.5 rules set.

Obviously, I'll have more on this development as soon as I can weasel some juicy bits of Pathfinder RPG gossip out of folks.

[via Paizo]