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PF2 Pathfinder Adventure Path: Blood Lords

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PF2 Pathfinder Adventure Path: Blood Lords

Unread postby icycalm » 17 Sep 2021 05:23

The next Adventure Path has been revealed, starting after the conclusion of Strength of Thousands, Quest for the Frozen Flame [ > ] and the recently announced Outlaws of Alkenstar [ > ] in summer 2022. and it might be for evil characters, which I am all for, we could use a bunch of those. It takes place in Geb, on the southeast corner of the Inner Sea region map, a state where almost everyone is undead and ruled by an "undead aristocracy" of vampires, liches, ghouls and so on. And the players "are members of this aristocracy"! You'll play undead characters! It'll be a great opportunity for PVP!

Paizo Keynote Address with Publisher Erik Mona
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GMppnwVm-Y

The video above has MASSIVE spoilers in PRECISELY the place where it talks about this new Adventure Path, and I haven't watched all of it so it may have spoilers elsewhere too. It basically spoils the final campaign of First Edition, Tyrant's Grasp—and that's one of the best campaigns of all time—so if you're playing in my groups, don't click on that video.

HOWEVER, if you want to see awesome concept art of this new campaign and can be very careful with your clicking, click on that video and skip to 27:30. The spoiler comes RIGHT BEFORE this time stamp, but if you start the video at 27:30 you'll get most of the juicy stuff without the spoiler. And on Saturday they'll have a panel with more information.

Some spoiler-free forum gossip below. Just read what I give you and don't venture into the forums to look for more info yourselves.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43g9w&page ... ements#174

keftiu wrote:I believe the specific undead listed were ghouls and vampires, which means we can probably expect both playable in Book of the Dead - alongside the previously confirmed skeletons.

If the title really is just "Blood Lords," I'll think that's a little dull - but interestingly, it seems to suggest a story pretty firmly within Geb as a framework, rather than being the "Nex comes back" plotline a lot of us are anticipating. I'll be curious to see what shape this takes, because right now I'm worried it's going to be an evil, undead version of War for the Crown. If it's a Good campaign that significantly shakes up the nation of Geb? That's terribly exciting.

They also confirmed that Outlaws of Alkenstar will be hitting up the wider Mana Wastes, which means Nex and Jalmeray might be due for some love...


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43g9w&page ... ements#175

Ly'ualdre wrote:Pathfinder has done a pretty good job of tying evil characters into the greater fold of everything, without making them particularly irredeemable. So even if it is strictly evil, which I'm honestly not expecting, I think it'll still be quite good.

My guess is it'll have a lot to do with the PCs, and some NPCs, rise to being Blood Lords within Geb's government. I'd wager most of the conflict will be political in nature, but may very well pit the party against the likes of rival Undead, Nex's Arclords, or even some of the Knights of Lastwall. That in itself doesn't have to translate to "evil PCs" since neither group particularly cares about the moral and ethical standing of citizens of Geb or general Undead respectively. Seems like a good place to put some moral decision making. I wouldn't be surprised to see Nex return by the end of it, or to see him or Geb stated, if for no other reason that to do so.

But, I'm very excited for it either way. As a nation whose entire government is openly dominated by Undead, it will certainly be interesting to see how Geb interacts with the wider world. Most of their dealings seems relatively cordial, aside from the living fooder trade. Geb actually supplies quite a bit of the Inner Seas food stuff, since Undead don't eat it.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43g9w&page ... ements#181

PossibleCabbage wrote:I'm really hoping that the Blood Lords AP is not "you have to be evil and you're going to do evil stuff". I'd prefer to just play a normal person trying to make their way in Geb.

There's a world of difference between "evil characters are fine" and "evil characters are mandatory". Though the ending of our campaign was hilarious, being a deeply detestable person throughout Hell's Vengeance was a really unpleasant experience.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43g9w&page ... ements#182

keftiu wrote:I hope we can hear more soon, because anyone in any position of power in Geb is complicit in the most brutal sort of chattel slavery imaginable and I don’t want those PCs at my table.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Sep 2021 05:33

P.S. This is a full-length six-part AP that goes from level 1 to 20, and not the half-length three-parters they've been putting out a lot in PF2. So basically by the end of this you'll have a group of proper setting-threatening villains that have to be dealt with somehow. What an amazing setup for us, as if we'd custom-ordered it.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Dec 2021 08:25

We have some details on this, specifically the back-of-the-cover blurb of the first adventure, and its mockup cover: https://paizo.com/products/btq02art/dis ... mbie-Feast

(Note that links to Paizo should not be followed, their entire site is full of spoilers and I post the links here solely for my reference.)

Paizo wrote:Pathfinder Adventure Path #181: Zombie Feast (Blood Lords 1 of 6)

Something gnawing at you? The undead nation of Geb gains most of its international trade from the export of food grown on zombie-worked farms, but lately one farm has been the site of a series of strange occurrences. Dispatched to investigate the problem, the player characters discover a grave threat to Geb's minority living population, bringing them to the attention of the insidious Blood Lords who rule the land in the name of their undead wizard-king. Defeating the wicked forces behind the plot is the first step on a long road to gaining influence and power in Geb, but if the investigators can't solve the problem to the Blood Lords' satisfaction, their first step may be their last!

"Zombie Feast" is a Pathfinder adventure for four less-than-good-hearted 1st-level characters. The adventure begins the Blood Lords Adventure Path, a six-part, monthly campaign in which the characters rise from skilled troubleshooters to join the Blood Lords who rule a land of the dead. The adventure also details the Great Factions of Geb, whose favors are key to rising in political influence, and provides a complete gazetteer of the town of Graydirge, where the adventure takes place. New monsters, spells, undead companions, and more round out the bountiful buffet of "Zombie Feast"!


Image

The cover isn't good, but don't forget it's a mockup, and if you want to see the vast quality difference between Paizo's mockups and final covers, check the Quest for the Frozen Flame thread: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=34721#p34721

Even the logo isn't final. Can't wait to see the final thing.

Some comments from the forum (again, don't follow links to the forum, they're only for me):

https://paizo.com/products/btq02art/dis ... ie-Feast#3

Mike Kimmel, Pathfinder Society Developer wrote:No zombies were harmed in the writing of this adventure.


https://paizo.com/products/btq02art/dis ... e-Feast#10

Rysky wrote:Hehe “grave threat”.


https://paizo.com/products/btq02art/dis ... e-Feast#14

4LeafChloe wrote:I could not be more excited for this! Undead are some of my favorite entities in fantasy and being able to play them is something I always crave. The only problem is I don't know if I want to run it, or convince someone else to do so!


The theme I've chosen for this campaign:

Blood Lords theme: "Raising The Damned"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gRS6qF ... dxs6n5fjrj

Image

And don't forget Paizo is releasing a 224-page hardcover sourcebook to go with this campaign, the "Book of the Dead" (this cover IS final, and that's why it's so good):

Image
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 May 2022 00:54

Fascinating little chat between players and developers, pretty much spoiler-free, that reveals a bit about how the Pathfinder universe works and is put together. I can't get enough of reading this stuff.

The crux of the matter is that Geb, the king of the eponymous Southern Garund kingdom, is so powerful he's way above 20th-level and into Mythic territory, but Paizo hasn't released Mythic rules for the PF2 system yet. Hence this thread:

hope geb himself gets a statblock in book six!
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43lp0?hope ... n-book-six

belgrath9344 wrote:I'll be disappointed if a book with his name in the title & an ap about his namesake nation doesn't give the king himself stats


keftiu wrote:Why would you need stats for what is functionally your boss? You work for his state.


Kasoh wrote:Important NPCs often get full stats regardless of affiliation in the book in which they are relevant. I think it will depend on how much we see of Gebmeister himself.


The Raven Black wrote:I think NPCs that get a stat block are those you are likely to be in a fight with, either on your side or against you.

I don't think Geb is supposed to fight in this AP. I feel he is in the same category as Kaijus or deities.

You learn how to survive them. Not how to destroy them.


keftiu wrote:Geb having stats here would imply he could be destroyed here, and I think he's got too many fans for that to happen, especially on the eve of what seems like it might be Nex coming back. I might be wrong! But I think it's unlikely.


Check out the next guy. I love how he talks about "precedents" as if this is a legal case and Paizo is bound by a web of written or unwritten laws.

Kasoh wrote:They published stats for Abrogail Thrune II in Hell's Vengeance book 4 and there is no reasonable point at which PCs fight her in that AP. So, there's a precedent.

Also, putting stats for creatures like that can sell volumes to people who might otherwise not be interested in the adventure content.

ANd, as a ghost, Geb can't be permanently killed until he knows Nex is dead, if I recall. So you can kill him as many times as you like.


And finally the big boys step in to explain what's up.

James Jacobs, Creative Director wrote:To manage expectations: Until we decide if or how we want to support play that uses stats for characters who are canonically mythic, we won't be providing those stats for them.

Kortash Khain, for example, is mythic in 1E. In his 2E entry in the adventure he shows up in, I built an Influence stat block for him, but not a "fight him" stat block.

I don't know what Ron's plans for Geb are, but I suspect they might be the same.


Ron Lundeen, Pathfinder Development Manager wrote:James is absolutely correct. Geb doesn't get a stat block--you meet him (several times, in fact!) but not in a way that ever requires his statistics. This is the "work for Geb" AP, not the "fight Geb" AP.


This next guy has the best take. He must be a hell of a GM:

W E Ray wrote:I like the idea of Geb getting a lot of text without a stat block -- don't get me wrong, I like the idea of Geb getting a stat block here -- but if he gets a few thousand words in the canon, well, that could be even better than just a stat block with barely a paragraph of flavor text.

My concern is this though: If we don't get Geb's stat block now, in this AP, where will we ever get it?! This is the place where it fits and where the customers will expect it. (It's not like future, upcoming products for Galt or Vudra, for Elves or Daemons, for The Maelstrom or Eox, will have it.) Without it in This AP, it likely will Never get done. That is a significant missed opportunity. Hopefully the flavor text where he's roleplayed "several times, in fact" really hits it out of the park and is full enough to sate the Crunch need as well as the Flavor, despite not having an actual stat block.


The final reply in the thread, for the time being, comes from a dude who buys and reads ALL the books without playing ANYTHING, because he says he loves the lore but he can't handle the depth of the mechanics. He is one of the biggest lore experts in the forums. No real spoilers here, and what he says is so many years ahead of where we are, that it all sounds like gibberish to me too, but I am posting it just so you can get a sense of the magnitude and depth of the metaplot:

keftiu wrote:Several 2e texts hint that we’re on the brink of seeing Nex return to this reality, and any plot involving him will have to include Geb; given that Blood Lords doesn’t seem to be that story, I have hope we’ll see it in a few years. (We’ll probably see the Bright Lions take a swing at Walkena first, though).

I don’t think an AP where you’re in the employ of his state was ever going to be the place to see Geb’d statblock, personally.


And let me take this opportunity, since I am bumping the Blood Lords thread, to post here another thread from the Blood Lords subforum, written in fact by the cool GM I quoted above, W E Ray.

Take a quick look at the subforum, there are only three threads there currently, and I am linking two of them in this thread, but since the AP is about to premiere next month, the forum will be flooded with threads all through the summer and on to December, when the last episode is published, and beyond: https://paizo.com/community/forums/path ... bloodLords

I love, love, LOVE how Paizo has structured its forum. And they've been going since 2007, so two years after Insomnia's forum began. It's my favoritest forum of all time outside of mine, and I will be backing up all of it soon. But in the meantime, take a look at another cool Blood Lords thread that basically says that two of the campaigns we're currently running, War for the Crown and Curse of the Crimson Throne, are the two most roleplaying-heavy Paizo campaigns ever.

Intrigue?! Urban Roleplaying?!
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43loc?Intr ... oleplaying

W E Ray wrote:Ron Lundeen mentioned that there is quite a bit of intrigue in this AP – though maybe he was specifically referring to volume one, Zombie Feast.

Can any of the developers or authors give us a bit more than that? Are parts of this super heavy roleplay with guile and innuendo and Skill Check gambits with very little combat? Does it have the ROLEplay vibe that large chunks of CotCT and WftC have? Is it so much more urban adventure and NPC development than classic dungeon crawl and wilderness adventure?

If your out there Ron Lundeen, or Mike Kimmel for vol. 1....

….If so, I am WAAAAY more ‘All In.’ A heavy intrigue/ roleplay/ guile/ urban setting AP – all in the backdrop of an Undead kingdom – is really awesome.


At this, the lore expert chimes in with his studied opinion:

keftiu wrote:I mean, the product pages seem to imply that you’ll become Blood Lords, part of the ruling council of Geb, and the first book says it’ll have a backmatter on the Great Factions you’ll need to leverage to get there. This is probably coming at things from a different angle than War for the Crown, but I think this AP will scratch the itch of what you’re asking for.


TRDG wrote:Seems like we will get a whole lot of everything in this AP, everything but the proverbial witch's cauldron, but even then you never know, LOL

GREATLY looking forward to this as something quite different (new and fresh) than STR of 1000's and Tusk AP. Which are quite good in their own right, but very different themes and play styles.

So nice to really get diversified AP's needless to say, Ha Ha Ha

Tom


And that's where the thread ends currently, just three posts, and the developers are mum on the issue, so we'll see how things work out. I will be checking the books in the summer for sure, but you guys keep your heads pure for me so you can be great actors and players and roleplayers when the time comes, and we can all do this campaign justice together!
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Re: PF2 Pathfinder Adventure Path: Blood Lords

Unread postby icycalm » 01 Jul 2022 03:33

The Player's Guide is out, but I won't be linking it, and indeed I'll be removing the links to the Player's Guides for the last two Adventure Paths that I posted in their threads (Outlaws of Alkenstar [ > ] and Quest for the Frozen Flame [ > ]). I decided that I won't be giving out Player's Guides until a campaign has been selected and locked-in. More mystery this way.

What I CAN give you today on Blood Lords is the redesigned page on Paizo's site: https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adve ... bloodLords

It's really a work of art. Far superior to the bland forum-style pages they used to have before. Check out the final logo and final cover illustrations (it's not the covers themselves, just the background illustrations for the covers).

DON'T READ THE BLURBS. You can read the titles. Just take in the whole page, and scroll to the bottom to see how cool it is that they've set aside a section to advertise the "Book of the Dead" rulebook that ties in with the campaign.

Image

They've redesigned the pages of almost all the PF2 Adventure Paths to this standard. Only the first two haven't been done yet, but I think they'll get round to them. Some of the APs even have trailers, and when a trailer exists, there is a YouTube icon at the top-left of the page you can click. Typically, a trailer will launch several weeks if not months after the release of the first book of an AP, so the Blood Lords one isn't out yet. I am not a fan of most of their trailers anyway. Some are pretty decent, but most are mediocre to subpar because Paizo is a book publisher, not a videogame or multimedia company, so they lack the expertise to produce good multimedia content. The multimedia bells-and-whistles Foundry adventure adaptations they just started publishing are not made by them, but by specialist partners, so the trailers for THOSE are good. But the pure book AP trailers are made in-house... and they kind of suck I am afraid, at least so far. That said, I've seen some improvements lately: better voice talent, better screenplays. It is possible that one day they'll be up to par. Until then I mostly won't be linking them here, nor embedding them in the overworld, and anyway players shouldn't be seeing them since they're full of spoilers.

Blood Lords will be releasing starting soon and through December, and on January a new Adventure Path begins called Gatewalkers [ > ], of which I'll talk more soon.
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Re: PF2 Pathfinder Adventure Path: Blood Lords

Unread postby icycalm » 01 Jul 2022 04:33

A fun quote from the Player's Guide:

Paizo wrote:If you die trying, well, the undead rule in Geb just as much as the living!


And another one from the forum (don't follow the link or subsequent ones): https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748d ... s-Guide#14

Mark Moreland, Director of Brand Strategy wrote:
Perpdepog wrote:The intrigue focus in this AP, rather than a strictly horror focus, sounds like it's exactly the middle ground I didn't even know I was looking for until I read it.


It's only horror when the undead are coming for you. When you're the undead, what's a little zombie horde between friends?


Also interesting: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748d ... s-Guide#15

Perpdepog wrote:Also, apparently the site ate my edit, but I also mentioned that I love how Common is a different language in this AP. That's a cool touch I haven't seen before, though I assume it's in Strength of Thousands as well.
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