default header

Roleplaying

3.5E|PF1|PF2|5E Pathfinder setting (Golarion)

Moderator: JC Denton

3.5E|PF1|PF2|5E Pathfinder setting (Golarion)

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2020 23:34

I will have the PF group page up shortly, but in preparation for it, and for the lulz, take a look at this:

Image

lulz aside, I can tell you the thematic variety is 10x greater than the Forgotten Realms. Moreover, that's not even the whole planet. That's just the main continent. There's an entire OTHER continent, Tian Xia, all of which is China-inspired (and what a surprise, it's to the east).

Here's the whole planet:

Image

The main continent, in which the D&D3 group will start, is Avistan in the center, and that's the area the lulz map depicts.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Archonus » 24 Sep 2020 14:46

This account hosted art contests for the iconic adventurers: https://www.deviantart.com/pathfinder-art

It's a treasure trove of the best images I've seen of them.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Image
User avatar
Archonus
 
Joined: 01 Jun 2008 05:01

Unread postby Archonus » 28 Sep 2020 18:48

Some more art goodness, featuring the gorgeous work of Ralph Horsley. He's also done work for Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Dragons galore!

Image

Image

Image

Image

I really like this last one.

Image
Image
User avatar
Archonus
 
Joined: 01 Jun 2008 05:01

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Dec 2020 21:28

The upcoming campaign is called Strength of Thousands: https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adve ... fThousands

It's interesting for several reasons. First off, it's Harry Potter-inspired about a magical school, which is very unusual for D&D, maybe even unprecedented, and certainly at this scale of six adventures. There ARE wizard schools of course, but they don't get 600-page adventures.

And the other reason this campaign is interesting is because its name happens to be almost the same with the track's I picked for the Patherfinder theme: Strength of a Thousand Men. I picked the track weeks before I heard of this campaign.

The first book, Kindled Magic, comes out July 2021. So the campaign will be finished by this time next year.

Two women are writing it btw. And the magic, and the region, are African. There is apparently a lot of material coming out recently for the African part of Golarion:

Pathfinder Announces ‘Non-Western’ Magic School Adventure
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/09 ... nture.html

Image

So there will obviously be woke in it, but the art seems good, which is always a good sign. They're not phoning it in.

Image

And the southern jungles were sparse in material anyway, they needed to be fleshed out.

African-themed areas are good for adventuring and for a change of pace from medieval European stuff, what worries me is the two Karens writing them here.

Edit: They're not both Karens. One is black and the other is a Karen. Not sure if this is good or bad.

I am certainly looking forward to this.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 05 Jan 2021 00:25

Image

I am reading a Pathfinder comic series taking place in and around Sandstone, where group D&D2 is. The coolest thing about this material is that it even includes game content! Stuff like breakdowns of bandit groups in the area, with stat blocks for NPCs, and even brand-new encounters and maps! This stuff can definitely help me flesh out the campaigns in the area with extra material, and also understand the feel of the area better so I can run it better. TSR never went this far with their pure narrative content (I don't even think they ever published comics at all); the game stuff was game stuff, and the novels were novels. Paizo has definitely been stretching the envelope here too.

PathfinderWiki wrote:Other bonus features are more than 30 pages of encounters, characters, and world detail for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, including a brand-new poster map of the region explored in the Pathfinder comic!


I am now trying to determine a couple of things.

1) Should I make these comics unlockable for players, or should I rather reserve them as material I can adapt into adventures for them to play?

2) To what extent these comics are related to the campaigns in the area, and to what extent they spoil these campaigns, or the campaigns spoil them?

Once I've figured all this out—which will entail A LOT of reading on my part—I'll be able to decide how best to give this material to the players in the area. I am also about to get into Pathfinder novels, and I'll have the same questions to solve about them.

Once I manage to sort some of this stuff out, I will be able to start giving players material to read between sessions. This material won't be mandatory, but for players itching to spend more time in the world, it should be very enjoyable, and it'll also improve their role-playing, as they'll be able to understand the area more, and therefore the place of their characters in it.

I've started with Varisia, since we have two groups there, and both are mine, but I will also look up material for dan's Taldor campaign. I won't read that, I'll just point it out to dan to save him the time of looking for it himself.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 05 Jan 2021 11:00

Pretty cool video that gives a rundown of the Inner Sea region's history up until the "present time" (which begins with the Rise of the Runelords campaign). Only characters with a lot of History ranks would know all this (and even then probably not ALL of it), but every reasonably intelligent, civilized character should know some of the major events.

There are no real spoilers, so everyone who wants to can watch the video.

Revised History of Golarion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5yFS6jH08w

James Anderson wrote:This is a visual history of the inner sea region of Golarion, the campaign world for the Pathfinder RPG. I took a clean map of the region, editing it as needed to undo geography-changing disasters, and started going back through the timelines I could find. Then I redrew the nation boundaries at each milestone on the timeline.

There's a lot of gross approximations on old borders. Some countries did not have listed times for when they were founded, so I tried to come up with reasonable estimates.

Now includes the 4th Worldwound Crusade, which was left out of the original.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Jun 2021 00:25

I will be dumping here random info on Golarion that Jacobs and the other devs drop all over their forum. It’s valuable stuff, and it will be easier to find here since it’s a smaller, tidier forum.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2otw4?Stan ... Golarion#1

The elves have a network of fixed-location portals called elfgates that they can use to quickly move from location to location, but that's not the same as teleportation from the 5th level spell.

While Golarion's "level cap" (if indeed it has one, which it doesn't really) is more or less at 20th level, it's actually relatively rare to see characters of 9th level or higher. They certainly exist, but don't confuse the fact that for adventures and supplements things skew toward higher level stuff that that means they're super commonplace.

In Golarion, teleporting is not common. Even at its lowest level, getting a teleport spell from a wizard will cost you 450 gp... one way. Most wizards, i suspect, will try to charge you 900 gp since they'll probably need to cast the spell at least twice, since they have to go back where they came from. And that only gets a couple of people teleported. Shipping a huge number of people or goods via teleportation probably needs the more powerful teleportation circle spell, which runs 2,530 gp to cast.

Compare those prices to, say, the price of a ship's passage for 100 miles—ten gold pieces.

Teleporation in Golarion is for the very rich and powerful, and as such is not all that common at all. Which is by design, because having ships and long shipping routes they sail on supports a LOT of really cool plotlines, after all!

Also: Teleportation is a crazy impressive magical stunt. If it were common, it would become dull and ordinary, and that's not the type of world we want Golarion to be.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 05 Jul 2021 17:24

I just noticed this while listening to this track.

Image

Can you see the crater?

That's next-level worldbuilding. Ask your DM if his homebrew setting has that.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Re: 3.5E|PF1|PF2 Pathfinder setting (Golarion)

Unread postby icycalm » 29 Nov 2021 10:33

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4323u&page ... -an-AP#413

Ian G wrote:Really warming to the idea of a Romance of the Three Kingdoms/late Warlord Era China mashup over in Tian Xia, though. That could be super cool.


This has never been done and it would be awesome, and only Paizo can do it properly. I am sure their writers are taking notes. They are all required to post in the forum apparently, lol. You can see what a cool company it is merely by this, still supporting forums in 2021.

That thread is full of spoilers btw. It's about what campaigns people want to see Paizo make, so people necessarily also discuss past campaigns, since they are asking for sequels of them etc. Great thread, but players shouldn't read it beyond what I quote here.

Once you realize that really only GMs post in that forum, it's quite impressive, because if players were allowed too it would have at least 5x more users.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands


Re: 3.5E|PF1|PF2 Pathfinder setting (Golarion)

Unread postby icycalm » 31 Dec 2021 18:52

Don't visit the thread, it's full of spoilers.

Where Would Paizo Not Do an AP for
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2tb8m?Wher ... -an-AP-for

Image

The Glorious Reclamation failing isn't a spoiler, because it's the players and their goals and performance that determine if it fails (I don't even think it canonically fails, I think the dude is just joking, but I am not sure). Moreover, in Battlegrounds we'll also have the evil group playing the other campaign and trying to crush them, so who knows what will happen.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Re: 3.5E|PF1|PF2 Pathfinder setting (Golarion)

Unread postby icycalm » 01 Jul 2022 17:54

So I’ve been reading the “Lost Omens: Legends” book I linked earlier today, it’s a great shortcut to getting a grip on the sprawling PF metaplot without having to read 20,000 pages, and I want to correct an error that right-wing fans have been disseminating on Twitter. Paizo didn’t retcon slavery from PF2. They wrote it into the metaplot. They scripted the abolition of slavery in the various places where it was prominently practiced during PF1. I knew that a retcon would be too crude of an instrument for Paizo’s dramatic geniuses to stomach, and my hunch was verified.

As to whether the scripting was done well or hastily and shoddily, I can’t say from this book. I would need to read individual adventures and perhaps other books too to say. But I can certainly improve whatever deficiencies I find for our world. Moreover I will ensure slavery remains forever, and will even insert it in future Paizo adventures wherever it makes sense.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands


Re: 3.5E|PF1|PF2|5E Pathfinder setting (Golarion)

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Feb 2023 08:18

https://twitter.com/RhetoricGamer/statu ... 0345015296

Garrick J. Williams @RhetoricGamer wrote:I like Pharasma. Usually in fantasy settings, the god of death is a bad guy, a big jerk, or some sort of lord of undeath. In Lost Omens, Pharasma is neutral and is both the goddess of death and the goddess of life.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands


Return to Roleplaying