Paizo’s Pathfinder Burnt Offerings as a Stage Play
Welcome to Portland, Oregon. The land of wet winters and amazing eating establishments. But unbeknownst to many, a land populated with many nerds and geeks. So many, that we infiltrate places that none suspect.
Portland is a place where once I was sitting at a sushi bar with a buddy of mine talking about his D&D campaign, and the girl in her early 20’s sitting next to me interrupts us, “Are you guys talking about D&D? I love playing D&D, I just moved here and can’t wait to find a group.” Portland is a city populated with geek culture, and thrives upon it.
Now, D&D (OK, Pathfinder version there of) comes at us from the school system??? I present you, Sandpoint!
On November 21st, a veritable gaggle of gamers and many of the Paizo staff, ascended upon the da Vinci Arts Middle School for the last of four performances of Paizo’s very own Burnt Offerings. Fellow gamer and amazing player, Tom Beckett is the Drama teacher at da Vinci Arts Middle School. Being a huge fan of D&D, also of Paizo and the adventure path series, he wrote a request to Paizo for permission to write a screen play based off of Burn Offerings. I believe it was an extension of the OGL which allowed this collaboration, and what a fantastic performance it was!
You can read about it here on the Paizo Blog entry from James Jacobs as he shares a few pictures. You can also see a few more pictures of the event at Tom Beckett’s photo site for the play(where I found the image above).
Why bring this to you, the gamer, for attention? It was a great reminder to me that there are gamers everywhere. Our culture is alive and well, and not like the early 80’s where such a play would be ill-conceived, today a Role Playing Game is the basis of a middle school play! As a community, we Gamer’s need to shine where we can. I wish you could have seen the support this event had. Even a local game store, Guardian Games was on hand selling the latest wares of the RPG industry (and afterwards was on hand offering to buy beer at a local brewpub).
Enjoy the links, be jealous you don’t live in Portland, and perhaps find a way to get your community involved with our hobby.
-AndoZane
I so wanted to go to this play, but ended up with a pinched nerve in my lower back that had me down and out for a couple weeks. From everything I heard, it was a success, and there are plans to do something similar next year.