Max Gladstone, celebrated author of the Craft Sequence, beginning with Three Parts Dead revealed today that he is beginning work on a Pathfinder Tale, a tie-in novel for Paizo’s immensely successful tabletop roleplaying game.
“I’m really excited about this project,” Gladstone said on his blog. “I’ve been tabletop gaming since I was a kid; it’s how I learned to talk, like in a group with people, and how I formed my closest and earliest bonds with friends.
Gladstone’s Craft Sequence is known for its weird and wonderful take on traditional fantasy tropes, and the author is excited by the opportunities presented by the deep, wide world of Golarion. “I’m itching to do something fun with the Pathfinder world’s almost but not quite medieval modes of production, murder hobos, planar travel, elves, and sideways transhumanism, with mystically reified morality axes, Vance-adjacent magic, chance-dependent physics—god, consider the sheer potential for shenanigans, and that’s just talking about the ruleset!” he said. “Then we get into dead gods, kingdoms ruled by demonic contracts, undead stuff, yes yes yes. This gnarled conceptual space has so much storytelling potential—so many dark corners and intriguing tangles to explore, Planetary style.”
The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and supplemental products—including novels, comic books, and cards games—are set in the Inner Sea region of Golarion, a fantasy world that might at first feel familiar to fans of Dungeons & Dragons, but features enough depth and diversity to its world-building to reveal itself as something entirely its own once you dig deep enough. The Pathfinder Tales series includes novels from other writers such as Michael Stockpile, Josh Vogt (a contributor to A Dribble of Ink), Chris Willich, Tim Pratt, and Liane Merciel.
I’ve become more and more obsessed with Golarion and the entire Pathfinder line over the past several weeks, so seeing a good friend and wonderful author join the team is terrific news. I can’t wait to get my hands on Gladstone’s novel, and we all know it’s going to stretch the limits of the Pathfinder universe as he bends the rules in all possible directions.
Fans of Gladstone’s Craft Sequence need not worry. “Tor already has a manuscript for Craft Sequence Book 5,” he said. ” [It has a] tentative publication date 2016 sometime. Even with my tight schedule and overlapping Seekret Projekts for the rest of the year, I don’t anticipate breaking pace on the Sequence.”
Gladstone will not being work in earnest on the Pathfinder Tales novel until 2016 and there is no announced release date.
