Now You Know – Vanessa Hoskins: PaizoCon Guest of Honour

Every week, Now You Know recaps the Know Direction content of the past week, previews the Know Direction content of the week to come, and shares the thoughts on the state of the network from the director of operations, Ryan Costello.

In last week’s PaizoCon 2022 update, Paizo announced that the guest of honour would be the Know Direction’s own Vanessa Hoskins.  For nearly 10 years, Vanessa’s contributed to the Pathfinder community with classic content like The Solstice Scar Pathfinder Society multi-table special, and Adventure Path volumes like Abomination Vaults: Hand of the Devil. She joined the Know Direction Network in April 2018. That doesn’t seem that long ago, not just because time stopped making sense in the early 2000s, but also because in that time she’s been a staff writer, cast member, on the board of directors, and now hosts the flagship podcast. To put that into context, when listing staff, we put names in order of start date with the Network. Whenever Vanessa’s towards the end of the list I go through the same routine looking up her earliest contribution to the site to confirm her starting date. Beyond her writing and Network contributions, Vanessa’s a champion of LGBTQ representation, using her profile in the community to raise awareness, counter misinformation, and support minorities.

I’m proud of Vanessa for all of her accomplishments, value how much time I get to spend with her, and know that Know Direction is lucky to have her.

Speaking of Know Direction, here’s a recap of the Know Direction Network content that came from last week:

Recap of April 11th to April 15th

What happened last week on knowdirectionpodcast.com and twitch.tv/knowdirection?

Monday, April 11th

Podcast

Valiant Episode 33: In Which Xiadani Uses an Interact Action to Draw a Wand

Have I mentioned how much I love Luis’ naming conventions? Even though they fight a zombiew couatl, a combination I never imagined I’d hear about, Luis names this episode after Jess questions if anyone actually plays that you need to spend an action to draw a wand, followed by awkward silence and eventual admission that this cast of game designers, editors, and influencers absolutely spend an action to draw a wand.

Article

Now You Know – Busy Again, Again
By Ryan Costello

Between an aggressively missed deadline and a return to the office meaning a return to hours of commute eating into my free time, I’ve been feeling a lot more pressure lately.

Tuesday, April 12th

Article

Fox’s Cunning – The Truth Domain
By Dustin Knight

Dustin dedicated an entire article to extolling the virtues of Word of Truth and Glimpse of Truth, and did an excellent job convincing me these spells can create campaign-defining moments.

Wednesday, April 13th

Podcast

Presenting – Mike Bramnik

In addition to getting to know Mike and his history with PFS, his experience as Southern Indiana Venture Captain and PaizoCon Online Committee Chair gave great insight into what convention planning has looked like over the last two years and going forward.

Article

More Lore – Campaign Guide Part Two: Player versus Character Knowledge
By Scott D Young

GM: You know how cool this campaign is gonna be?
PLAYERS: Yeah!
GM: Well your characters don’t! Forget everything you know about everything that’s exciting about this campaign!

Scott offers two methods for dealing with player knowledge versus character knowledge in your campaign guide.

Thursday, April 14th

Article

Investing In: Victory Points
By Rob Pontious

Rob goes in a different direction for this blog post, importing and adapting other game systems to create a victory point subsystem for Pathfinder 2e. This was probably my favourite KD content of the week.

Preview of April 18th to April 22nd

Block 1 of our 2-block schedule.

Monday, April 18th

Twitch

Know Direction 274 Live – Book of the Dead Breakdown

Following up on Know Direction 272 – Book of the Dead Sneak Preview from two weeks ago, Luis and Vanessa break down the Book of the Dead from cover to cover.

Podcast

Intrepid Heroes 084 – The Final Battle!

This! Is! IT! Our Intrepid Heroes’ assault on the crucible leads them to Khaim, the General behind it all.

Article

Now You Know – Facts From Fools
By Ryan Costello

I don’t care if Paizo thinks Vanessa’s their Guest of Honor, she’s the Guest of Honour by my Queen’s English!

Tuesday, April 19th

Podcast

Know Direction 274 – Book of the Dead Breakdown

Find out what Book of the Dead has for your Pathfinder characters and campaigns.

Article

Eldritch Excursion
By Nate Wright

Nate Wright’s journal of flavour and mechanics.

Wednesday, April 20th

Podcast

Game Design Unboxed 35: Phantom Ink

Danielle speaks with artist, designer, and business owner Mary Flanagan about her co-design Phantom Ink, published by her company Resynom Games.

Article

Behind The Screens – Run An Inefficient Game
By Ryan Costello

Eek, I’m on my third cycle of promising this article and I’m still not sure I’ll get it out this week.

Thursday, April 21st

Podcast

Digital Divination 55

John and Ron talk Starfinder.

Friday, April 22nd

Article

Monstrous Physique
By Luis Loza

Luis makes monsters.

 

Now you know,

Ryan Costello

Ryan Costello

What started as one gamer wanting to talk about his love of a game grew into a podcast network. Ryan founded what would become the Know Direction Podcast network with Jason "Jay" Dubsky, his friend and fellow 3.5 enthusiast. They and their game group moved on to Pathfinder, and the Know Direction podcast network was born. Now married and a father, Ryan continues to serve the network as the director of logistics and co-host of Upshift podcast, dedicated to the Essence20 RPG system he writes for and helped design. You can find out more about Ryan and the history of the network in this episode of Presenting: http://knowdirectionpodcast.com/2021/01/presenting-ryan-costello/