Kthulhu wrote:

John Carter seems to have been marketed with failure specifically in mind.

Quoted for Truth.

Which is so sad...I thought it was excellent. A friend of mine that's not even into pulp fantasy/sci-fi really liked it too, but another friend hated it.

Does Castrovel have polar caps or does the map just kind of fade off the page?

Matthew Morris wrote:

Kthulhu wrote:

John Carter seems to have been marketed with failure specifically in mind.

Quoted for Truth.

Which is so sad...I thought it was excellent. A friend of mine that's not even into pulp fantasy/sci-fi really liked it too, but another friend hated it.

You know, it might have helped to call the thing John Carter of Mars... Might have helped with ticket sales here in the States where the average movie-goer has the attention span of a gnat and doesn't know who John Carter is...

There's an article I read online where the creators addressed the "of Mars" bit. I forget their exact reasoning, but it had something to do with both their belief that putting the name Mars in a title would lose a big portion of their audience (just as "Princess of Mars" would lose their boy fanbase), and the failure of "Mars Needs Moms" at the box office recently.

I think they were silly reasons myself, but presumably they must have spent good money on market research to arrive at their opinion. Or they are just silly people.

You know, it might have helped to call the thing John Carter of Mars... Might have helped with ticket sales here in the States where the average movie-goer has the attention span of a gnat and doesn't know who John Carter is...

Actually I think they were right not to. Popular conventions of sci-fi have changed so much since when the books were written that a lot of people would likely have rejected out of hand the premise of an inhabited, habitable Mars.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Cthulhudrew.

I saw it last night and I loved it but then I am a huge fan of the books. There were things they did a really good job with and some things the did poorly.

drkfathr1 wrote:

Matthew Morris wrote:

Kthulhu wrote:

John Carter seems to have been marketed with failure specifically in mind.

Quoted for Truth.

Which is so sad...I thought it was excellent. A friend of mine that's not even into pulp fantasy/sci-fi really liked it too, but another friend hated it.

You know, it might have helped to call the thing John Carter of Mars... Might have helped with ticket sales here in the States where the average movie-goer has the attention span of a gnat and doesn't know who John Carter is...

I think perhaps the most horrible marketing fail I've ever seen for a movie was the 10 minute clip of this film on IMDb. Instead of picking 10 minutes that actually has some relevance to the meat of the movie, they pulled the clip from the 10 minutes right before John finds the cave. Yep, 10 full minutes, and not a single moment of it on Barsoom. It'd be like having a commercial for the Avengers where Bruce Banner did a science experiment.

Do Formians have a "king"(like termites) or "drones"(like ants, Bees)?

Are Formians type going to still be Outsider or will be changed to Magical Beast(or Aberration, Etc.)?

Does Castrovel have polar caps or does the map just kind of fade off the page?

Polar caps! Same with Triaxus and Akiton.

Do Formians have a "king"(like termites) or "drones"(like ants, Bees)?

Are Formians type going to still be Outsider or will be changed to Magical Beast(or Aberration, Etc.)?

Sorry, citizen--that information is still classified. :)

John Carter seems to have been marketed with failure specifically in mind.

How so? And why would anyone market their film in the hopes it fails, the plot of The Producers aside?

I understand why the John Carter discussion got started in this thread, but it really should go to this thread.

I will add my voice to the chorus that proclaims this book as exceedingly well done.

I would be delighted to see other products in this vein.

Especially a "Distant Worlds" series of connected modules or even a full AP on one (or many) of the planets.

I also demand more information on the planets separately as well. The book is full of clever hooks and tantalizing ideas - and I want more.

I would also accept a novel based on one of these worlds as well.

Check out the upcoming module, The Moonscar.

Check out the upcoming module, The Moonscar.

Looks awesome! I can't wait.

Is this the greatest setting book Paizo ever put out? I look at the picture of Kyra leaning out of a spaceship to high-five a flumph and determine "Yes."

Is this the greatest setting book Paizo ever put out? I look at the picture of Kyra leaning out of a spaceship to high-five a flumph and determine "Yes."

Fluff-wise? Yeah, it is, even better than the ISWG. Quantity-of-crunch complaints can certainly be made, but fluff-wise it is #1, no contest.

Excellent book.

I'd like to ask that the scholarly runes for the planets and other celestial bodies in the book be made available under the Community Use Policy please. This would be especially useful for the PathfinderWiki.

A Player's Companion to this would be much appreciated to be quite honest. The AP after Skull and Shackles did get my hopes up but the more I read it the less I liked the prospect. Still I'm one of the backers of the Clockwork Gnome project in a similar vein and that is something to look forward to.

Also it's because of this book in part that I tracked down some books of the sword and planet genre. I now have the Planet Stories edition of Swordsman of Mars by Otis Kline. I also bough Otis Kline's Planet of Peril and Burroughs's Pirates of Venus. However, I would like to see Planet Stories produce more in this vein. I already have other books of the genre published through Planet Stories in my Amazon wishlist. But I really do think Paizo dropped the ball in not mentioning these books in the introduction of DH.

I just finished reading this book for the third time. There is so much rich, fluffy goodness here. It's chock full of material I want to exploit.

More, please!

Mr. Sutter:

This was an awesome book. Its a great start. We need more.
Have you read "Code of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan?

Mr. Sutter:

This was an awesome book. Its a great start. We need more.
Have you read "Code of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan?

Thanks, everybody! And nope to the James Hogan book. Does it do something similar to Distant Worlds?

Franko a wrote:

Mr. Sutter:

This was an awesome book. Its a great start. We need more.
Have you read "Code of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan?

Thanks, everybody! And nope to the James Hogan book. Does it do something similar to Distant Worlds?

It's similar to Aballon. Future-NASA discovers a robot ecosystem on Titan, descended from a heavily damaged alien mining operation.

I agree with everyone who said "I want to see more of fantasy outer space from you." Great, great book. I especially like Castrovel and Akiton (Burroughs Venus and Mars, yay!); Eox, for who couldn't love a whole planet filled with malevolent undead masterminds; Triaxus and it's (literally in some cases) dragon-loving people; and Yuggoth sorry I mean Aucturn out on the fringes of reality.

I went about searching for a solar twin to Earth's sun, in an effort to pick out a real-world star that could play host to Golarion and her sister worlds. For any who might be interested in Earthmen of the distant future (or mystical past) visiting Golarion's star system or vice versa, putting Golarion in orbit of a real-world star establishes a known distance between the two star systems, and allows one to identify which stars are nearest to Golarion's home system and what they might be like.

So, suppose Golarion's sun == Delta Pavonis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Pavonis
http://solstation.com/stars/dpavonis.htm

I went about searching for a solar twin to Earth's sun, in an effort to pick out a real-world star that could play host to Golarion and her sister worlds. For any who might be interested in Earthmen of the distant future (or mystical past) visiting Golarion's star system or vice versa, putting Golarion in orbit of a real-world star establishes a known distance between the two star systems, and allows one to identify which stars are nearest to Golarion's home system and what they might be like.

So, suppose Golarion's sun == Delta Pavonis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Pavonis
http://solstation.com/stars/dpavonis.htm

Gets more amusing when you look at the fictional references.

Dune: Caladan is mostly covered with water.
Sundowner Shelia: Terra Nova is a planet orbiting Delta Pavonis in tidally locked rotation, so that one hemisphere of the planet is in perpetual darkness, and the other, Nevernight, is in perpetual daylight.
Now if only we had a gate address...

Delta Pavonis also happens to be almost exactly (d)20 light-years from our sun...how coincidental!

Just heard that this book is *really* close to selling out! Thanks so much, everybody!

(And if anybody on this thread likes other planets but hasn't picked it up yet, you might want to while you still can...)

Just heard that this book is *really* close to selling out! Thanks so much, everybody!

(And if anybody on this thread likes other planets but hasn't picked it up yet, you might want to while you still can...)

It was worth every penny!

I hope that means we will be seeing more books on the subject. Maybe a book per planet. And an AP. Both would be awesome. Or a hardcover of the solar system.

Just heard that this book is *really* close to selling out! Thanks so much, everybody!

Congratulations!

Does this sufficiently answer the question as to whether or not there's enough interest to do an interplanetary AP or perhaps more specific planetary Gazetteers?

I hope that means we will be seeing more books on the subject. Maybe a book per planet. And an AP. Both would be awesome. Or a hardcover of the solar system.

A good start would be a planet-hopping module trilogy, like the Razmir sequence. That way, the next year's set of modules would have a few slots to keep the interest of the planet haters, while also offering something to the sword & planet fans.

I nominate Golarion, Akiton, Castrovel as the sequence.

Shem wrote:

I hope that means we will be seeing more books on the subject. Maybe a book per planet. And an AP. Both would be awesome. Or a hardcover of the solar system.

A good start would be a planet-hopping module trilogy, like the Razmir sequence. That way, the next year's set of modules would have a few slots to keep the interest of the planet haters, while also offering something to the sword & planet fans.

I nominate Golarion, Akiton, Castrovel as the sequence.

With Vercite Aetherships being involved plz?

(one of the hooks from Distant Worlds was pretty much that, Vercite Aethership captain asking the PCs "Hey, you wanna go on an adventure?")

That sounds good to me too.

Glad to hear that it is about to sell out, that didn't take long to do at all.

I like the idea of an AP that goes to different worlds
1st AP-Golarion
2nd AP-Akiton
3rd AP-Castrovel
4th AP-Aballon or Verces or Triaxus
5th AP-Liavara or Bretheda
6th AP-Aucturn

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Glad to hear that it is about to sell out, that didn't take long to do at all.

I like the idea of an AP that goes to different worlds
1st AP-Golarion
2nd AP-Akiton
3rd AP-Castrovel
4th AP-Aballon or Verces or Triaxus
5th AP-Liavara or Bretheda
6th AP-Aucturn

I AM TOTALLY ON BOARD FOR THIS...

So is this unusually fast? Almost selling out in half a year seems pretty incredible, and seems to stem fro the inherent AWESOMENESS in that book.

Just heard that this book is *really* close to selling out! Thanks so much, everybody!

(And if anybody on this thread likes other planets but hasn't picked it up yet, you might want to while you still can...)

More Golarionverse announcements at PaizoCon please. :)

Space.

I have no clue but it usually takes a couple of years for a book to sell out.

I looked and even the 3.5 books from 5 years ago seem to be available in a print edition.

I would say this book might be the first one to sell out as far as I can tell from seeing what seems to be available.

That is impressive and says a lot about what the fans want.

I have been asking for this since Second Darkness had an article on the solar system that had just a taste.

Give us more. We want it obviously... Hardcover, AP, Modules, more setting books....

I WANT IT ALL...

I'd like a hardcover worldguide, a primer, an adventure path and a bestiary.

Personal dream DS system-wide AP:

Every planet is gettin' ready to align, even Apostae.

Start on Golarion at a population center that could reasonably have a wide range of potential Golarion characters

Vercite Aethership crash along with a forboding Dominion of the Black appearance, crash site is a known dangerous locale

PCs get there and rescue the injured Vercite captain and possibly some of her surviving crew (giving the players a larger number of regular NPCs to interact with) from both the local dangers of the site.

Aeathership captain reveals that they're on a mission of great importance and that there's som Macguffin further down in a previously-unknown-to-local-scholars portion of the site that they have to retrieve for the safety of the surrounding area, and that their crash was caused by a sort of defense system left behind by the Dominion. PCs save the day, Aethership captain offers them the adventure of a lifetime if they help her complete the mission she can't carry out alone, journeying to each world in the system and recovering/activating these artifacts to prevent some terrible disaster related to the Dominion.

Aethership is completely busted, leaving only a back-up vessel that's kind of crap, but it'll do.

As they go from planet to planet, more and more of the Dominion's corruptive influence shows itself almost in reaction to their collecting/activating of these MacGuffins.

They also potentially gain new crew members from some of the worlds they visit, building an ever more motley collection of people from all over the system.

They first travel to Akiton, get into all sorts of trouble, maybe some arena matchs, and have to secure a meeting with the Contemplatives of Ashok.

Then the captain inexplicably changes direction and steers the ship to Castrovel, where they have to help the local Lashunta defend a city against a possessed, sentient jungle before they'll allow them near their artifact.

Then onto Aballon, where they have to weave between battling robotic forces to reach their goal.

Then after hesitating as long as the captain can, they head to Verces, where she and her crew are immediately arrested and the PCs are placed in confinement, until a Steward manages to get them released (with distant supervision). There they find out that the captain was herself a Steward that went off the radar and stole her ship and crew to take on her mission despite her governments forbiddance after she came across some archives on Darkside. While some in the government believe that the information she discovered bears investigating, they fear that her mission would instigate all out war between Verces and the undead planet Eox, where their mission would eventually take them. The PCs either manage to convince the government to allow them to carry on with their mission after some subterfuge adventures in the streets of Verces or they manage to break their captain and crew out. Either way, they gain access to a new and larger ship.

At this point the PCs likely take the lead over the captain as far as inspiring and driving the crew and mission on. She's still driving, but now she's depending almost entirely on them to save the system.

Then they cut through the Diaspora, not just hunting for the next artifact but also gaining help from the locals and trying to find a way to safeguard their mission on Eox.

The Eox mission should be tense affair, not just because they're trying to pull off a lightning raid or a stealth mission without igniting a war or because they're on the most hostile planet they've been to yet, but because they may find the biggest presence of the Dominion's footprint on the system yet, and it becomes clear that the Dominion is aware of their efforts. It could even drive home that (some of) the bone sages of Eox are worried about the Dominion.

Liavara's visit take them to Triaxus, where a bit of high fantasy dragonrider action can be engaged before setting off back into the wild and crazy.

Bretheda takes them to a floating metroplis and/or ruin, where the local Brethedans need their help against a Dominion-corrupted legion of their own kind.

Apostae has them having to teleport blind into Apostae from its surface, and from there they have to manage to weave through or negotiate peace with warring and disparate bands of Ilee, not only to reach their artifact, but to gain a wildly and insanely genetically varied army to fight the Dominion(as the Dominion's tactics and corruptive influence seems to tend to depend on regular patterns of genetics, behavior, and culture. That could be a thing with the Dominion, they read and manipulate patterns, guiding life itself to fit their purpose. This could make the Ilee a wild card.)

Then Aucturn, Dominion-influence Central. Where Eox as tense and full of dread, Aucturn might be a place of absolute horror. The cost this place takes from the heroes should probably be terrible, but it should also make clear the depth of what's at stake for the PCs and every world in the system.

(maybe a quick stop by Numeria for some recovered equipment from the Silver Mount, which turns out to be a ship from another system that the Dominion has already dominated, could be good, pulling in some help from those who have fallen already to the Dominion)

Once every artifact is gathered or activated, the PCs, their crew, and any other allies they've managed to gather have one last place to go: The Sun. There, as the planets align, in an ancient city of crystal hanging within the burning fires of their home sun, they'll find the ancient remnants and/or remains of the beings born from the Sun and system before the coming of the Dominion. And the Dominion arrives as well.

All out war between the PCs, their allies, and the vanguard of the Dominion(along with their corrupted creations and the spawn of Aucturn) breaks out within the city, all the while with the PCs running towards the final artifact, one that can be used to either attack the heart of the Dominion and drive them out of the system, even if only for a time, or used by the Dominion itself to darken the very sun, and immediately remake the system in its own horrible image.

reads back over post

Maybe with the ME influence not so obvious? >_>

Fun AP idea...

Reapers

Reapers

He can be an important gnome NPC!

Just felt like saying... I LOVE THIS BOOK!

OK that was more like shouting but you get the point.
Thanks Paizo. :)

So, Mikaze, when are you planning to release the first installment of that? 8^)

Personal dream DS system-wide AP:

Every planet is gettin' ready to align, even Apostae.

Love your idea btw... hope I can find a GM to run it or something like it. :)

Just heard that this book is *really* close to selling out! Thanks so much, everybody!

Nobody likes a sellout. :(

(Congrats! Hope this means much more planetary goodness to come!)