Jason Bulmahn

Growing up in Milwaukee, tabletop roleplaying games were everywhere in the early 80’s and, like most, I was introduced by a friend who could not wait to take me on thrilling adventures. The moment I rolled my first d20, I was hooked! Not a year later, I  was running my own games and had tickets to my first ever Gen Con.

Throughout high school and college, tabletop gaming was my hobby of choice, expanding to include miniature games, card games, and board games. I ran a number of year-long campaigns and even participated in the earliest days of competitive gaming, playing Magic the Gathering at the first ever Pro-Tour event and the second World Championship.

In 1998, I took my first steps into the game industry, volunteering for the RPGA, which then led to the launch of the Living Greyhawk campaign at Gen Con, in August of 2000.

My first credits in the Tabletop Game industry came from the Living Greyhawk Campaign, a vast organization with dozens of administrators and hundreds of events per year, spread all around the world. Starting out as a regional coordinator in Wisconsin, the Senior Campaign Managers asked me to join their ranks in just the second year of the campaign. It was hard, but rewarding work, and it taught me a lot about editing and developing adventures.

In 2004, leaving behind a career in Architecture, I accepted a job in gaming, as the Managing Editor of Dragon Magazine at Paizo Publishing. It was a position I held for the remainder of the magazines run, ending with the final print edition, issue 359 in August of 2007. Soon after, we began to publish 3rd-Party content, compatible with the 3.5 Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. My responsibilities included oversight on all of our modules and accessories.

In late 2007, it became clear to us at Paizo that the future of the OGL movement, which had allowed many 3rd-party publishers to thrive, was uncertain. At the same time I had been working in secret on a revision to the 3.5 ruleset, hoping to publish it as a side project. When the time finally came to make a decision, Paizo took a gamble on my game, and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game was born. Over the next year we would release three alpha PDFs, followed up by a print edition of the Beta Rulebook. After conducting a public playtest, listening to the feedback of thousands of enthusiastic gamers, I spent months refining the game into what would become Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Over the next 10 years, as the Lead Designer of the Pathfinder RPG line, we released over two dozen hard cover books and countless supplements and accessories. This work earned me over 20 ENnie Awards, including Product of the Year on four separate occasions.

Today as Paizo’s Director of Game Design, it is my mission to ensure that we make some of the best games in the business. First and foremost was the redesign of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Starting in 2016, Pathfinder Second Edition went through a three-year design cycle. During that time I have had the privilege of managing an incredibly talented group of game designers and through their tireless effort and insightful work, we have managed to deliver an exciting and engaging play experience. I could not be more proud of this work and cannot wait to show you what we have in store for the future of this game, and many more!