Pathfinder and all the players who love the game had a very strong presence at Gen Con 2014. As someone who personally loves to play Pathfinder, it's sometimes hard to believe that the game is still so new.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Paizo Publisher and Chief Creative Officer Erik Mona about how Pathfinder has come to be this incredibly popular game beloved by fans worldwide.

Back in 2008, the tabletop fantasy roleplaying game world was shaken-up by the shift from Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition to 4th Edition. While some players were willing to learn this new system that wouldn’t be compatible with the older version, there were still fans who enjoyed the 3.5 system and wanted to keep it alive. Paizo Publishing at the time was producing monthly adventure supplements that used the 3.5 Open Game License.

With all the 3rd Edition stuff going out of print, Erik Mona recalls the incredible decision they made at Paizo.

“Let's use the OGL [Open Game License] to create our own version of that rule set. Fix the stuff we don't like, throw it into open playtest, get 50,000 gamers to really run it through its paces and tell us what they would like changed. Then republish the rules as the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game,” said Mona.

This was the largest open playtest in the history of tabletop gaming. Gathering so much feedback from the players has definitely contributed to the success of Pathfinder. “After we released the rules in 2009, every year we sold more Core Rulebooks than the year before,” Mona explains.

In the tabletop gaming world, the network effect is key. Word of mouth is probably the most powerful way to get your product out there and grow your brand. Friends introduces other friends to Pathfinder, parents teach it to their children, and so on.

“It has sort of become like a self sustaining thing where the more Pathfinder players there are, the easier it is to find Pathfinder Campaigns. And the easier it is to find Pathfinder Campaigns, the more players there are,” Erik Mona explains the precious cycle of gaming.

In less than a decade, Paizo has gone from publishing monthly gaming magazines to creating the best-selling tabletop roleplaying game in hobby stores.

What makes Paizo such an amazing company is there passion for the game and respect for the players. Their employees are gamers, and if you visit the message boards, you'll see that they're also there communicating with the players and getting feedback from their customers.

Paizo prides themselves on making products their players want, and it's refreshing to see a company actually care about their customers.

One of their hugely anticipated releases at Gen Con 2014 was the Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide. The Advanced Class Guide introduces 10 new hybrid classes, new class abilities and archetypes for the existing 29 base classes, new feats, spells, and so much more.

“We ran the book through an extensive public playtest. We did two iterations of each of the new classes during the playtest, and the third iteration is the final ones that are in the book. There's a lot of feedback that we've incorporated into their development, and I think they're stronger for it,” Mona explains.

As long as Paizo continues to see their players as their most important asset in the success of their brand, they will continue to dominate the tabletop gaming world.

"Looking at the numbers can be dangerous."

One of the most striking things to see at Gen Con is certainly Paizo's Pathfinder special. 160 tables, each seated with five to seven players, all playing in the same world at the same time. Paizo widely touts that they only make the game products they want to see, from their Pathfinder Roleplaying Game to their wildly successful Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. It's clear that Paizo is at Gen Con because their fans are - because their players are. It's a philosophy that has always guided the company, according to Publisher Erik Mona, because the entire company are gamers "from the CEO to the interns." I spoke with Erik Mona at Gen Con about the philosphy that has allowed Pathfinder to grow into a brand capable of taking on those towering above it.

"Sometimes there is a difference between what's good for the business and what's good for the game," said Mona. "We don't want to mess up our own campaigns by releasing books just to sell them. And the players have reacted really well to that."

Its paid off. Mona said that Pathfinder has sold more core game books each year since they released, which Mona says isn't supposed to happen in roleplaying games. "When we started making Pathfinder the style to support a d20 Tabletop roleplaying game was to release loads of splatbooks. That model was increasingly about jamming as much player character content out as fast as we can." Mona described how that model evolved, with the leap from selling player content because there's more players than game masters, then the leap to selling more expensive full-color hardcover books, then the leap to putting out a book every month. "You churn through your design space very fast, and people can't keep up the pace. That's why it took us so long to make an entire book of classes."

"We didn't like that option as players," said Mona. "So looking at the numbers can be dangerous. We have to look at what the players want."

"People are always asking us when we're going to do a new edition of Pathfinder, well, we'll do that when the players want it."

In the meantime, Paizo has supported the game by expanding the Pathfinder brand rather than game specifically. That's why they did products like the Adventure Card Game, the Pathfinder Battles miniatures, monthly adventures, and minifigures. That includes their recent partnership with Obsidian Entertainment to develop digital games for Pathfinder - which happened more or less because of mutual passion for each others' games. The newest version of the card game, Skull & Shackles did brisk business. The Paizo booth itself sported the longest line of any at the show for several days, with loyalists lining up to get the latest releases and show exclusives.

For Mona, and the Paizo veterans like him, its been a long and humbling road. Mona neatly summed that up with an anecdote about the early days of Paizo: "I remember saying to Lisa [Stevens, CEO of Paizo] that you need to commit to publishing at least the first six volumes of Rise of the Runelords, our first product, because none of us will be able to rest until it's done. If we don't finish we'll be hounded for the rest of our lives by fans. And now we're working on Pathfinder #100."

As for the future? "We're going to have action figures, so that's almost everything on my dream checklist," said Mona. When I prompted him for more, he said there were only about three things still on that list they haven't done.

"Like what?" I asked him.

He grinned and said "Well, there's no Pathfinder movie."

For now, though, they're staying focused on making the game. Like they always have.