Order of the Amber Die here, ready to kick off 2026 as a year of firsts! Want to play alongside us on the Paizo blog? It just might happen. Before it does, however, you’ll find yourself at our table as a member of The Crown Academy!
For the first time, we’re about to show you what our home game looks like. It’s not just our in-house campaign though, it serves other purposes. We call it The Crown Academy; this is where we test builds, vet new players, and play alongside friends. Some of our members are even new to leadership roles at our table, such as player captain or referee, and they hone their skills in the Academy before we play under the lights for our main Paizo blog projects. Yes, referee is a position in addition to our GM, much like the many referees that assist in running a sporting event. The Crown Academy is for everyone, rookies and veterans—you might not think practice is important until you are part of a Total Party Kill in front of the entire Pathfinder community.
Why else are we excited to show you the academy? Because there are THREE life-sized kobolds that hang out with us on an average day! This is also where the “crown” comes in. Our GM likes to use time away from our main projects to turn us into tourists of Golarion’s most iconic locations; before Pathfinder Quest made the lumber town of Falcon’s Hollow famous all over again, there was Hollow’s Last Hope. Published in 2007 under Paizo Publishing (these are the old days), this adventure then became part of a larger series that included Crown of the Kobold King. When Paizo celebrated its 20th anniversary by releasing a hardcover of this historic series for Pathfinder 2nd Edition, we matriculated our most recent roster of students and set out to battle some kobolds!
Here is how this release fits into our overall body of work that we’ve shown so far:
The Emerald Spire Project, 2014
The Giantslayer Endeavor, 2015
The Strange Aeons Experiment, 2016
The Azlant Odyssey, 2017
The Pathfinder Playtest, 2018
The Slithering Salve, 2020
The Abomination Arsenal, 2022
The Crown Academy, 2023
The Sky Scions, 2025
Highlights from Crown of the Kobold King:
□ This is our time off from major projects, so we relax and eat well. Our GM started out the campaign with our party standing in line to buy the most renowned flapjacks on Golarion. Jak A’ Napes, an old inn located in Falcon’s Hollow, sees dozens of patrons lining up to get some of Jak Crimmy’s cinnamon-crusted pancakes once a week. The best cooks in the Order whipped up plates of the exact same flapjacks out-of-game, and we stuck them right in the middle of the table.
□ The academy is a school of hard knocks, and our GM will stop the game and use your character death to teach the class. A freshman, new to our table, learned that the halfling sorcerer should probably NOT lead the party when entering rooms. An animated cauldron, once belonging to the green hag Ulizmila, came to life as we searched an abandoned hut. Our weapons failed and our jaws dropped as the lid slammed over and over on his fingers while he tried to escape its still-burning gullet—to no avail.
□ When you arrive at the academy, remember that our life-sized kobolds get their own seats, and on some days maybe even your seat. They have names too, though members disagree about them. The kobolds follow us to game conventions, so you might find us at Philly Area Gaming Expo running Crown of the Kobold King while being held at spearpoint!
□ We can’t resist the occasional prop, and our GM still creates awesome maps for us to play on for our home game. Since we’re not on a deadline, we actually get to hear plenty of his commentary about how the maps are made. Adam also gave us a full tutorial on how to blend Pathfinder Flip-Mats into surrounding terrain, and a walkthrough of a major drawing on vinyl surface. The dungeon of Droskar’s Crucible, level one, with its 10-foot wide hallways, host of classic monsters and rough symmetry, made a worthwhile tour for any fan of Pathfinder history!
□ New academy students often show up with backpacks full of ideas. More important than the 20th level character build you want to show us though, is that we have to get along well. Our Player Captain is definitely about to hijack this blog and say that your 20th build is still important. Seriously though, we look at each potential member as someone who might be playing Pathfinder as part of our team for three-day marathon sessions. Remember that a bunch of us are from New Jersey too, so the table has a certain vibe to it that might not be what you were expecting. Chemistry is as important as skill!
The Academy
When you show up to The Crown Academy, things will look different than the projects we normally show the community. There won’t be any backdrops surrounding the play area, as we’re actually in the living room of Fort Rannick, our headquarters. We won’t be playing Pathfinder’s iconic characters like many of our past projects, the goal here is to test risky new builds you’ve thought of. We play our home campaign for twelve to sixteen hours on a single day, not three or four days straight. As for a standard five-hour session? They don’t exist in Order of the Amber Die. We mostly wear our jerseys to Crown Academy sessions, but we’ve been known to wear those pretty much anywhere. Adam will also show you the Word Wall, where phrases from past years are posted much like those in a professional sports team locker room. Sayings like “OAD life” and “actual, actual play” serve to remind you: We aren’t in mom’s basement anymore.
What’s Next
It’s been fun to finally pull back the curtain on our home game, and we’ll drop more blogs occasionally to catch you up on The Crown Academy. We collectively continue our quest to reach 200 published adventures played across the history of Order of the Amber Die, and our members—new and seasoned—are the core of that journey. Don’t be afraid to reach out to us through social media, or especially at game conventions. Some of the faces you’ve seen here over the years went straight from commenting on these blogs to a seat at our table!
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