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Definately Elaine, with contributions be Ed Greenwood and Steven Schend.
This is the book FR fans waited a decade for, and now Paizo once again will trump them.
Since I and many other FR fans feel Golarion is the TRUE succesor of the Realms, it is only fitting the masters of all things Elven be given a chance to work on this tome.
I haven't felt this way about a setting since opening up the old Grey box back in 1987.
Three Words:
Elaine Cunningham, please.
She may or may not be doing the elves of golarion book itself, but it definitely appears that she has her hands in the golarion world, working with the elves as was mentioned in the forum post below.
Elaine Cunningham is writing something else for us. This book is being mostly written by an industry veteran, though. :) And the other guy we've got working on it ain't no slouch, either. ;)
Maybe not a slouch but definitely a layabout, idler, and wastrel. :)
I'd say I was hoping to work my up to ne'er-do-well if it wasn't a contradiction in terms...
Elaine Cunningham is writing something else for us. This book is being mostly written by an industry veteran, though. :) And the other guy we've got working on it ain't no slouch, either. ;)Maybe not a slouch but definitely a layabout, idler, and wastrel. :)
I'd say I was hoping to work my up to ne'er-do-well if it wasn't a contradiction in terms...
So, is it you?
So, is it you?Elaine Cunningham is writing something else for us. This book is being mostly written by an industry veteran, though. :) And the other guy we've got working on it ain't no slouch, either. ;)Maybe not a slouch but definitely a layabout, idler, and wastrel. :)
I'd say I was hoping to work my up to ne'er-do-well if it wasn't a contradiction in terms...
Yippers. Rubbing my hands and cackling in glee even as we speak :)
Hey everybody, Hal hepped me that the discussion was popping here again, so I thought I'd show.
My bona fides: Waterboy is a noble job, and one I'm glad to hold. Check out my RPG bibliography if you want to see where I've been. Erik Mona came to Wizards to replace me when I left Polyhedron to work in R&D full time in the last century. I knew him when.
As far as when elves start adulthood, there's actually a long range. I don't think adolescence applies to elves in the same way that it does to humans, but as an analogy, elves can have a drastically extended "adolescence" that can end anywhere in the first couple hundred years. But in other ways, elves don't ever quite "grow up."
I've always been intrigued by immortal creatures, trying to make their behaviors and cultures make sense. I think I came up with some never-before-seen wheres and whyfors for elves in Golarion. Check it out, whydoncha.
Jeff Quick
Dark_Mistress
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
Gnomes of Golarion! Make it so!Seconded!
I am normally not much of a Gnome fan but so far the Pathfinder variation has me interested. I wouldn't mind seeing a book for each race, humans could cover ethnic groups, half-orcs, tieflings (would like to see Paizo's take on them and other planer half breads but they might be better in their own book)
Hugo Solis
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
So when exactly is this book going to be released?
It has been in my sidecart for two weeks, despite saying it was an October release, but now it says it is a November release.
Also, I thought the sidecart was for subscription items that were waiting to ship with another book. It says it would ship with Pathfinder 14, but even with the delay, 14 should ship weeks before this book, Right?
Dark_Mistress
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
So when exactly is this book going to be released?
It has been in my sidecart for two weeks, despite saying it was an October release, but now it says it is a November release.
Product pages on our site indicate when we're expect the product to be available at *retail*; we do expect that the retail release date will be in November, but we're still on schedule to ship it to subscribers in late October. (As a subscriber, you might find the Product Schedule page more applicable.)
Also, I thought the sidecart was for subscription items that were waiting to ship with another book. It says it would ship with Pathfinder 14, but even with the delay, 14 should ship weeks before this book, Right?
Even though Pathfinder 14 was delayed in customs, we do still expect to ship it several weeks before Elves of Golarion. Right now, the sidecart display doesn't tell you the whole story—Elves is waiting to ship with another book, but it's not quite smart enough to choose the right one. Making that display more accurate is fairly high on our to-do list.
Bah! elves are always so generic and typical to me. "guardians of nature and obscure knowledge. hiding in the forests. rangers and druids" etc. just once, I want to see a setting that has the majority of elves die in a genocide for some reason, and they're struggling to get back up. or have the elves be formed by cities so that they are the spirits of urbanization. or have elves be the underground mining race. Or have elves be ultra modern Aliens and come from spaceships crashin into the planet. GAH!
(incidently, before I get a "practice what you preach" comment, in my homebrew the elves are just as urban as the humans are, and in fact are the more agressives and inventive ones. now we got a english/french during the age of expansion and colonization vibe going on.)
Bah! elves are always so generic and typical to me.
Before being so quick to judge, remember the fine job Paizo did at making the classic monsters new and unique in Classic Monsters Revisited. I have faith that, while still nature/magic oriented, they'll provide enough elvish goodness that the fair folk will feel like a brand new race.
Bah! elves are always so generic and typical to me.Before being so quick to judge, remember the fine job Paizo did at making the classic monsters new and unique in Classic Monsters Revisited. I have faith that, while still nature/magic oriented, they'll provide enough elvish goodness that the fair folk will feel like a brand new race.
I'm always open to admiting i'm wrong if it comes down to it, and based on Paizo's classic monsters book, I may just have to. but based on the paragraph above and the accompanying picture (please, no judging a book by its cover please), I have a feeling I'm going to end up standing by my statement. Is anything radically differant about these elves from the other settings out there? maybe, but I'm getting no indication of this from the description here. I'm sorry if I sound overly harsh, but this is one of my sore spots in fantasy gaming.
but the sword she's holding is pretty cool...
In some ways I think your fears will be confirmed. The elves of Golarion are very much true to the spirit of the original concept as expressed in the Pathfinder RPG rules, which is a tradition that's gone on for three decades.
That said, we have lots of little tricks up our sleeves to make them more interesting. The elves left the world en masse just before humanity's folly brought an asteroid into the planet 10,000 years ago, and only fairly recently have they emerged from their mysterious gates leading back to their hidden refuge of Sovyrian. The details on what that migration meant to the elves, to those they left behind, and to the world into which they have recently reemerged gives them a solid foundation on which to build a character and with which to use them in a campaign.
This book adds a great deal of interesting details and rules-bits to work in tandem with the general take on elves, and away we go.
Bah! elves are always so generic and typical to me. "guardians of nature and obscure knowledge. hiding in the forests. rangers and druids" etc. just once, I want to see a setting that has the majority of elves die in a genocide for some reason, and they're struggling to get back up. or have the elves be formed by cities so that they are the spirits of urbanization. or have elves be the underground mining race. Or have elves be ultra modern Aliens and come from spaceships crashin into the planet. GAH!
When working on something like this you have to strike a balance between the "elves should be elves" folks and the "Why can't we have something different" folks. Of course, the primary focus of the book was to present elves the way they get depicted in most campaign settings. After all, sometimes backwards compatability applies to flavor too. However, I think you'll find some stuff for those who like a little variation on a theme threaded into the book.
As Erik touched on above, there's a lot of milage in the idea of elven refugees returning from another planet and trying to reclaim their ancestral strongholds from the "new" tenants (new only if you count years the way elves do :) ). Plus, the concept of elves adapting to their surroundings both physically and tempermentally, ostensibly a simple enough idea, nevertheless offers up entire bucketloads of great ideas to play with.
In some ways I think your fears will be confirmed. The elves of Golarion are very much true to the spirit of the original concept as expressed in the Pathfinder RPG rules, which is a tradition that's gone on for three decades.
That said, we have lots of little tricks up our sleeves to make them more interesting. The elves left the world en masse just before humanity's folly brought an asteroid into the planet 10,000 years ago, and only fairly recently have they emerged from their mysterious gates leading back to their hidden refuge of Sovyrian. The details on what that migration meant to the elves, to those they left behind, and to the world into which they have recently reemerged gives them a solid foundation on which to build a character and with which to use them in a campaign.
This book adds a great deal of interesting details and rules-bits to work in tandem with the general take on elves, and away we go.
Ok, so it seems you threw enough stuff in there to make this interesting. the whole migration thing is pretty unexpected, and given your track record the writing and puictures alone make this a must-have on my list. but I want to know why elves have to be tied to nature like this. the above comment telling me that an elf who mines underground is not a elf, or an elf that is a barbarian arctic race is not an elf, is a clear indication that either i'm missing something or i'm turning into a radical. I always pictured elves based on their appearence. taller, lithe, pointy ears, etc. nothing in that says they have to be tied to nature. in fact, pretty much the only thing that does is tradition. "it's been done that way for 30 years, let's keep doing it that way", and I get the whole original ties to norse mythology as nature and fertility gods. now i understand that backwards compatability extends to fluff too, so I guess I can see why you had to do it this way. but just once, I'd like someone to do something radical with the races. shake them up, break them and put the pieces back together in a new way.
Considering that Hal MacLean also wrote Blight Elves I suspect that Elves of Golarion will be pretty interesting, even if it presents a more traditional version of elves.
Dark_Mistress
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
I think it is more when most people hear Elf, they think a certain thing. Good or bad elves are kinda tied to the nature loving magical race. To go to far from that and you risk annoying a huge chunk of people that like elves like that.
me personally I always wanted to see their fey connection played up big time. Their ties to other fey creatures like nymphs satyr ect.
Elves, like Humans, need not be monolithic. I'm fine with there being some 'traditional' elves, living in the woods and doing their fey mysteries thing, as I can always put in some woad-covered wild elves or haughty elitist elven supremacists or some cruel otherworldly Melnibonean elves, without any issue at all. They can even be part of the same communities, just as a crowd in Korvosa might have some Shoanti Barbarians rubbing shoulders with some Chelaxian Wizards, humans all.