Drakli's page

Something like the ghost lord from Red Hand of Doom would work totally fine in Golarion... In fact, MANY of our adventures have encounters where you can ally with or otherwise deal with bad guys without fighting them, and many of those are undead. Said undead are still evil though, as is the Ghost Lord.

But it offers a place for redemption. Going from memory here, but wasn't one of the primary contributors to the Lich being reasoned with because he felt regret for being a big evil guy, and that played into the possibility of the PCs getting him to turn around and help them, all Darth Vader vs Emperor style?

I do understand that... but also—a world where EVERYTHING is a part of the world is not a world at all. One defines a setting as much as by what's not in the setting as one does by what IS in the setting. Having certain stories "locked out by canon" is a strength of a setting, in my opinion.

I'm actually shocked and saddened by this statement. Are you seriously suggesting that Golarion, which is literally an unadulterated mish-mash of everything ever, with space aliens, firearms, pirates, post-apocalyptic wastelands, planar travel, and literally a knockoff of about a dozen real world cultures, doesn't support morality in a believable way, and that's a good thing? All of that, literally demonstrating how it's literally every campaign setting ever, and a good ghoul or lich is going too far? O.o

My mind is boggled.

EDIT: Also high fantasy, low-fantasy, the underdark (by a different name), unspeakable cthulu-type horrors, and more. Heck, Golarion is seriously like somebody duct-taped everything from the Forgotten Realms to Call of Cthulu together in some sort of sphere, rolled it around the office a few times, and said "Hey guys, we've got it". The thing is, by your definition, that would make Golarion not a world. By my definition, it makes Golarion nearly the best world ever. :P

It's not about futility and nihilism with the investigators fighting a losing battle?

Not after Cthulhu got his head bashed in by a ship, anyway.

Sure, many Lovecraft stories end with some dude going quietly insane (or getting eaten), but none of them end with the 'great old ones' destroying the world.

More generally, one man's world (or, at least, his preconceptions about it) is shattered. The world goes on. Stuff that the rest of the world doesn't want to know about continues to happen in the shadows.

The existential despair of 'there are no gods watching over us, or, if there are, they are vast, cool and unsympathetic, and care not for us at all,' is indeed a powerful part of the 'age of enlightenment' issues that Lovecraft was addressing, but they can still exist in a setting where there are powerful benevolent outsiders as well, so long as the ancient horrors remain a threat. Note that, in Golarion, the majority of gods, good or evil, are from other dimensions, and not native to this reality. The gods *of this world* are the old gods, and the only escape from them is to *literally* escape, swearing your soul to some extradimensional outsider, and fleeing the plane entirely.

That's pretty dark, right there. Sell your soul. Doesn't matter to whom, Asmodeus or Iomedae, but sell it fast, because if you don't get out, the god of this world is named Azathoth, and you don't want none of that.