They've only announced 2 of the 3 books so far, and given the final cover only for the second book (as always, don't follow the links): https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adve ... ythSpeaker
Pathfinder Adventure Path #216: The Acropolis Pyre (Myth-Speaker 1 of 3)
https://paizo.com/products/btq098ek?Pat ... polis-Pyre
Pathfinder Adventure Path #217: Death Sails a Wine-Dark Sea (Myth-Speaker 2 of 3)
https://paizo.com/products/btq0aua0?Pat ... neDark-Sea
This is the text I am putting on the overworld:
Battlegrounds wrote:A group of regional hero-gods attempt to restore the tradition of myth-speaking to an ancient realm.
The characters BEGIN the game as "hero-gods", meaning demigods!
The region, called Iblydos and placed in an archipelago about halfway between the Inner Sea Region and Tian Xia is, of course, inspired by Ancient Greece. It even says so in the official materials: "a realm inspired by Ancient Greece" which I've had to edit to "an ancient realm" for immersion (we can't have PR-speak on the overworld).
Paizo NEVER does this. I have NEVER, EVER seen them mention the real-world equivalents of regions or adventures. Who knows what their motivation is with this. Maybe they thought the playerbase wouldn't grasp the connection without it being pointed out, and maybe they think they need the connection to sell more copies? In any case, I am not a fan of this development, but it's easy enough to excise from my texts.
I've already picked the main theme:
Myth-Speaker Main Theme: Myth or Legend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs9vYjs6jAw
And as for the soundtrack, AssCreed Odyssey's 56 tracks will finally be used in a good game: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=O ... 4_XQjrwNOY
That said, Paizo now releases full OSTs for every AP, so if that ends up adequate I'll reserve the AssCreed Odyssey OST for actual Greece. That would make more sense because its tracks are named after Greek places and gods.
AWESOME PART STARTS HERE
And now we get to the awesome part. In the second book's description, we're told the book contains "a system for managing the cult forming around the pantheon of player characters"!
Do you understand what that means?
It means RELIGION-BUILDING mechanics. And not someone else's religion, but YOUR OWN. And not just of one god, but a PANTHEON comprised of the PCs! Fucking truly polytheistic religion-building!
Utterly unprecedented in strategy gaming, or gaming period. In combination with the new mythic rules (PF2 mythic) in the "War of Immortals" rulebook released last year, it means that players now can create DEMIGODS WHO BUILD UP THEIR OWN RELIGIONS.
And I ask you, isn't THIS the kind of mechanics a fantasy 4X like Amplitude's just-announced Endless Legend 2 [ > ] should aim for in 2025? Instead, they're doing yet another bad copy of a 30-year-old game, with the same ancient handheld-level mechanics and the same garbage programmer setting and garbage programmer plot. Programmers lol.
Fuck those faggots, dude. Let them keep flooding Steam with their handheld garbage, and we'll enjoy RELIGION-BUILDING DEMIGOD MECHANICS COMING EXCLUSIVELY TO ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S MASTER OF HEROES IN JULY 2025!
There are some interesting issues that we're bound to face from the introduction of these mechanics. Number 1 is... how do we determine who gets to create a demigod character? I can't just allow that in the adventure-strategy layer, you must first play a campaign that includes mythic mechanics, and you raise your demigod through that, and if he makes it through then he can be unleashed in the 4X layer at the end of the campaign. There are only a handful of campaigns featuring mythic mechanics. Off the top of my head it's Wrath of the Righteous and Return of the Runelords for PF1, and now Myth-Speaker for PF2, though there may be more PF1 ones. And I just found a thread in the Paizo forum where a GM adds mythic to Shattered Star. The point is, it's very few, as it should be for the level of power involved. (And btw this reminds me to add a "Mythic" tag on the overworld to the relevant APs, so players know what they're getting into.)
Second issue is, okay now you have a demigod, and a nascent religion. How do you jump from that to full godhood?
That's not in any rulebooks because ascension to godhood is an extremely rare occurrence that so far has only happened in lore/cutscenes. But as luck would have it, that's precisely what happens in the War of Immortals plotline that's currently playing out across multiple Paizo product lines, including a novel, Godsrain, and we SHOULD be able to get an idea of what's required from the narrative and then ADAPT that into rules if and when one of our characters gets anywhere near that level of power. We won't be needing this for years, or ever, but if we end up needing it, we can cope.
Now you might say, why get excited over these mechanics when who the fuck knows how long it will be before we run a mythic Adventure Path and get to use them? Well, our CLERICS (in both the roleplaying and adventure-strategy layers) can probably use them to manage the growth of their congregations! So instead of building a shrine/temple/church/cathedral and handwaving the followers (or using more simplistic generic follower mechanics), now we'll have more specialized religion-management mechanics to work with. I believe these mechanics will enrich the game from day 1, and just the epic "endgame"-level possibilities they will add (endgame in quotes because there's no end to this game) will be hugely inspirational to everyone. No other game is as grand!
Note that I've already published a stub Ascending to Godhood chapter in UE, and this new material will finally help me flesh it out. Even Pathfinder doesn't have full mechanics for this, neither in PF1 or PF2, so UE will be the first game to get them.
There's more to say about how Paizo is implementing mythic in PF2, it's a much more complex undertaking than in PF1, but this OP has gone on long enough for now so I'll close it by quoting James Jacobs's most recent post on the matter: https://paizo.com/products/btq098ek/dis ... is-Pyre#20
James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:2nd Edition's mythic rules are SO much more tied into and interwoven into the narrative part of the game than 1st edition's, which were very deep into the rules side of things without a lot of intentional integration into the narrative. It's one of the larger ways we've adjusted mythic rules in this edition, after hearing so much feedback about how 1E's mythic rules meshed with the 1st edition "Wrath of the Righteous" tabletop experience, and then how much more satisfying an experience folks had with the computer game version where the mythic stuff was more deeply integrated into the lore and story and world.
Hopefully once folks start playing adventures (and once we start publishing them as examples, beginning later this year with the Myth-Speaker Adventure Path) this potential disconnect with how they work will smooth over a bit?
It's crazy to learn that the WotR CRPG actually has mythic improvements over the original books. But don't worry, I will play it before we run WotR and I'll add them. And in the CRPG you're still immortal, and there's still no roleplaying, etc. so my version will be the ultimate. Interestingly, the Kingmaker CRPG also adds cool content but that has already been folded into the PF2 Kingmaker that I just bought [ > ], so I won't have to convert that myself.
P.S. Something I only recently realized is that the whole mythic tier system is inspired by the 12 Labours of Hercules via which he became a demigod. Paizo shortened them to 10 tiers for easier bookkeeping, but the rest is the exact same idea. So the mythic system was always Greece-inspired, and even the word myth is Greek. So as I noted in the official thread it's very fitting that the PF2 mythic rules are launched with a Greek-themed AP.
P.P.S. And I haven't even shown you the Greco-Roman Cult Engine 3 assets lol.
