Paizo

History

Paizo was founded in 2002 by Lisa Stevens, Vic Wertz, and Johnny Wilson, taking over the production of Dragon and Dungeon, two magazines for Dungeons & Dragons that Wizards of the Coast had previously handled internally. Erik Mona, who had been Dragon’s editor-in-chief, became Paizo’s publisher, while James Jacobs, formerly in charge of Dungeon, now oversees the company’s Pathfinder periodicals. In 2003, Paizo launched a bimonthly magazine called Undefeated, and the following year revived the classic science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Early in 2007, Wizards of the Coast chose not to renew Paizo’s license for Dragon and Dungeon, ending a five-year run that had started in September 2002 and concluded in September 2007. After that, Paizo began publishing Pathfinder Adventure Path, a periodical that carried forward Dungeon’s approach of delivering monthly adventure installments that form a complete narrative. These adventures take place in Golarion, the official campaign setting for Pathfinder. On March 18, 2008, Paizo announced the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, a product line that would revise and update the System Reference Document version 3.5 under Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game License, while also supporting the Pathfinder campaign setting. That same month, Paizo introduced the Pathfinder Society Organized Play program, loosely inspired by the RPGAs Living campaigns. Other Pathfinder offerings include modules and the Pathfinder Tales series of novels. In May 2018, Paizo announced work on a second edition of Pathfinder, aiming to refine the rules based on player feedback and clarifications from the original system. A preliminary version, the Pathfinder Playtest, was released in August 2018 for public testing, and the final ruleset came out on August 1, 2019. On June 15, 2020, Paizo announced that CEO Lisa Stevens would step back from daily operations as she prepared for retirement.