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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder | Starfinder

9/13/18 12:00 PM PST

Hey everyone! I imagine most of you are here because you saw the news on paizo.com today - if not, you should give it a read, but the short version is that the Archives of Nethys is now the official and licensed representative of the Pathfinder and Starfinder reference documents. This is something I’ve been excited to talk about for a long time and now it’s finally out in the open.

There’s a lot to cover here, both for brand new visitors and for those wondering what’s next. I’ve organized the information below to help with that.

What’s Going to Change?

Paizo and the Archives of Nethys (underneath Rose-Winds LLC, the company I founded to represent it) are still going to be seperate entities - business will be mostly as usual on my end of the fence, with the only real changes coming from the greater access I’ll have thanks to this partnership. I’ll be working with Paizo to get my hands on content, errata, and other updates earlier than normal, allowing us to prepare an update in advance of release dates. Due to the agreement with Paizo, we still won’t be posting content until ~2 weeks after products have been released in a given month, but now we won’t have to wait until a book is out before we can start formatting it. Lastly, though this comes later on the priority list compared to getting rid of the backlog, this partnership will give the Archives access to some of Paizo’s art and illustrations! While I likely won’t display art automatically on any existing page to save on bandwidth costs and loading times, the current plan is to add links where applicable so (if you desire) you can click to see what exactly that monster or item looks like.

The State of the Sites

On the Starfinder side, I’m happy to say that we’re caught up on every title that Starfinder has released save for Starfinder AP #7 and some Society content. The only remaining big ticket item for Starfinder is a proper search engine. To go along with the other good news, Andy and Milan (the two developers working on a new search) are nearly complete with the first build and we plan to deploy that to the site in less than 1-2 weeks.

On the Pathfinder side, the backlog is a little larger, but it’s getting smaller every day and we’ve been keeping up on all of the new releases (save for Adventure Paths; see below). With Starfinder’s massive update behind us (posted last week on 9/7), our focus is now on ingesting our current backlog and other Rules content which was previously missing from the Archives.

Pathfinder Backlog

Books: Adventure Paths #120 - Present; Bestiary 5 (76 monsters done); Bestiary 6
Rules: For a long time I chose not to post this longer content as Paizo’s own PRD had it covered; generally, I focused on mechanics which were reproduced across multiple volumes, like Feats and Spells. Since the discussion of this partnership, however, we’ve made large strides towards bringing that same content onto the Archives. Still, this is the one area in which we’re behind the original PRD, but that gap is closing every day. We’ve already finished ingesting the rules from the Advanced Player’s Guide, and the Gamemastery Guide is next on the list.
Other: Universal Monster Rules page; errata and changes from the Advanced Race Guide

Starfinder Backlog

Books: Adventure Path #7
Other: Search Engine feature; content from a number of Starfinder Society adventures

Pathfinder 2E / Playtest

A number of people have asked me if I’ll be supporting the Pathfinder Playtest - the short answer is no. Sadly, I don’t have enough time to focus on developing a site for a game system which is still very much in flux. That said, we aren’t being idle either. We’ve been taking a look at the new rules and have slowly started creating new tables in the database for the future content. As rules get more solidified, we’ll start ingesting them, and when the Playtest is over and the new edition released, the Archives will be ready with the content.

Future Updates

The next update coming for Pathfinder will be this weekend, which will add:
  • Heroes from the Fringe
  • New material from the Comics product line
  • Improvements to the loading times for Spells (potentially other areas of the site)
    •  Starfinder was just updated last weekend, but as soon as the Search feature is ready then I’ll deploy it, ideally in the next week or two.

    After each new update, I’m going to start calling out our next planned update date - I want to bring some more stability to the Archives and make sure the players know when content is going live. Another top goal is to improve mobile accessibility - the new Starfinder search is being designed with this in mind, and I want to eventually make the left-menu collapsable as well.

    Support

    Nothing is changing with regards to how the Archives generates income for hosting expenses. I aim to keep the sites free and available to all players for the duration of its existance, along with minimizing any ads (right now we just have a single one, at the bottom of the screen). If you do want to support us, the easiest way to do so is by visiting the Patreon, but there are other ways to help out if you’re interested.

    Contacting Us

    In order to make sure the players have a voice, I’ve setup a few more emails for these sites that will allow me to better reply back and address bugs that are found. The "Contact Me" page still needs to be updated, but all of these emails are now live and should be used:
    Pathfinder: bugs@aonprd.com (Bugs/Errors), feedback@aonprd.com (Comments/Suggestions)
    Starfinder: bugs@aonsrd.com (Bugs/Errors), feedback@aonsrd.com (Comments/Suggestions)

    If you have something to discuss that isn’t really appropriate for one of the above emails, or is about both gaming systems, you can still use nethys@archivesofnethys.com to get a hold of me.

    With Bugs, please don’t be offended if you don’t hear back from me immediately - my process when getting a new bug is to firstly generate a ticket in our tracking system for it. I generally won’t send a reply until the bug has been fixed, but sometimes a bug will get fixed and I neglect to tell the person who notified me. Apologies in advance if that ever happens, there is a lot to do and my priority is always on correcting the content first, letting those who reported it know about it second. I encourage anyone who spots an error to send me an email, it is the best way to get the content corrected.

    Conclusion

    Back in March of 2010 (note: the link for the Archives in that post is old/dead), I thought it’d be fun to start learning SQL and C# by making a simple database and front-end for Pathfinder rules. At the time, I just wanted a faster way to identify what was legal for Pathfinder Society, as my friends and I were heavily involved at the time. I never dreamed that the Archives would grow to encompass the content it does now, or that a partnership like this would ever take place. There were many times over the last few years where I got behind in content, had to deal with health problems, and other "attacks of life" that made me doubt whether or not I could keep the Archives running. The support of my family and the thousands of Archives fans out there is ultimately what kept me going - I hope that the updates we bring to the Archives will suffice in some small way as a thank you.

    It’s here that I want to call out a special thank you and shout out to Devin Burke - he’s been a humongous help with data entry, catching the site up on dozens of titles, helping me brainstorm ideas, and never once complaining about the pile of work to do. His work allowed me time to build the new Starfinder site, get its content online, and now I can bring other improvements I’ve learned with Starfinder’s code back to Pathfinder. This partnership would have been a lot less likely without his help, and I owe him a world of thanks.

    I also want to give very special thanks to my wife, Katina Davis. She’s never stopped believing in me or the website, and has even helped out herself by adding a few dozen of the monsters in Bestiary 5. She is a large part of my drive to improve things every day, and I owe the world to her.

    Thank you so much to everyone who’s ever used the Archives, talked about it with their friends, sent me an email, or even just said "Hi" in the hallways at PaizoCon. When I won "Volunteer of the Year" at PaizoCon 2016... that remains one of my happiest gaming-related memories. I didn’t really think anything could eclipse it until this day.

    Thank you, everyone... thank you.

    9/7/18 11:47 PM PST

    Happy Friday everyone! Well, maybe it’s still Friday when you’re reading this - I did end up posting pretty late. Still, this is an update I’ve been wanting to bring to everyone for a while now.

    See, the Starfinder side of my site has been a little light lately - sure, I had the Core Rulebook, but that’s just a single book. That’s not how the Archives of Nethys handle things.

    So... how about the rest of it?

    Announcement Threads

    Paizo
    Patreon
    Reddit

    New Books

    [Adventure Path] Starfinder #1: Incident at Absalom Station
    [Adventure Path] Starfinder #2: Temple of the Twelve
    [Adventure Path] Starfinder #3: Splintered Worlds
    [Adventure Path] Starfinder #4: The Ruined Clouds
    [Adventure Path] Starfinder #5: The Thirteenth Gate
    [Adventure Path] Starfinder #6: Empire of Bones
    [RPG] Alien Archive
    [RPG] Pact Worlds
    [RPG] Starfinder Armory

    Site Additions

    While we’re now caught up on all the recent publications, there’s still more to do. There’s a number of items from Starfinder Society scenarios that I want to add (I haven’t forgotten your help, John), along with more ease-of-use improvements to the site. A big one is the new search engine, which I’m happy to announce is very close to pushing live - the developers working on it have been making a lot of updates in the recent days and we may have something ready for your use in the next week or two.

    Enormous thanks as always to Devin for his help in data entry, and to everyone out there for supporting the Archives! Enjoy the new updates and as always, send me an email if you find any bugs or have any questions.

    5/19/18 3:45 PM PST

    At long last, I can finally say that the Core Rulebook is done. Today’s update gives you all of the systems and data necessary to support the entire Starfinder Core Rulebook, including a few new areas:
    • Rules: The largest new section is the "Rules" area. Historically, the Archives has focused on the "Mechanics" of the game - things that repeat throughout books, have a single set of rules to guide them, etc. For example, I’ve tracked Feats, but never really gave you the rules on how Feats themselves work. I tracked every Spell made, but not the rules on how Magic worked.

      Now you get both. The Rules section will contain all of the rules that tell you how to use these different mechanics. It will focus primarily on all of the data from the main RPG line, but any significant new rules from other books will find its way there as well.
    • Afflictions: Curses, Diseases, Drugs, and Poisons all can be found in the new Afflictions section of the website.
    • Traps: I’ve updated the Equipment section, adding a new Trap menu item to show off all the different Traps that GMs can throw against their players.
    Now, though I’m done entering the data necessary to support the Core Rulebook, that doesn’t mean I’m finished. The Alien Archive is the next big addition, which will bring with it a new section for Aliens and all of the rules needed to support them. Starfinder #1-6 will follow after that.

    Beyond those two books, there’s still a lot of areas to improve in the existing site structure - more hyperlinking is a big one. Thanks for stopping by and keep checking back for more updates!

    Announcement Threads

    Paizo
    Patreon
    Reddit

    4/16/18 8:04 PM PST

    The Starship section is now online! With that complete, the Core Rulebook is nearing full completion. Work on the Alien Archives has already begun and I hope to share progress on that with you soon!

    3/19/18 10:20 PM PST

    The Sources page is complete, now listing all the areas shown on the site thus far. Enjoy the long list of mechanics from the Core Rulebook thus far.