Now that WotC has ditched the Great Wheel cosmology, would Paizo care to (or be able to) leave Golarion for an adventure path consisting entirely of planar adventure, with stops at old school iconic locations such as the City of Brass and the Demonweb Pits, etc.?
I hope not. While I don't disagree with your desire to see something of that sort, I really like how Golarion is something NEW. I'm not opposed to an AP that goes outerplaner, but I'd rather see new locals instead of the same old same old. Is Demonweb Pits even OGL?
I'd love to see a planar campaign. It doesn't need to be AP 4, but at some point I'd really enjoy it.
NO planar adventures. One of the things I like about Pathfinder is that so far is that all of the adventures take place relatively near the same land they started in. We should have at least a dozen campaigns in Golarion before we start stepping into other worlds. Let's explore the new material plane more thoroughly, please.
Personally, I'd like to see things from the planes rather than actually going there in Pathfinder - at the moment, at least. There's just so much flavor to Golarion that it would be a waste to leave it behind for an AP before everything has been explored.
I wouldn't mind planar adventures. I don't know whether they'd lend themselves to an Adventure Path, though.
Maybe a couple of GameMastery Modules for high levels.
And, of course, they would use Golarion's cosmology, however that will turn out.
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I have a particular weakness for HTFBRs (Horrible Things From Beyond Reality), So I'm really liking all the cool monsters in Pathfinder, like the Shining Children and Hounds of Tindalos, as well as the more "normal" but still 'orrible lamashtu demons in Sins of the Saviors. But, well, part of the coolness of the Planes is their distance. Demons and Devils, HTFBRs, and everything else kind of stop being horrifing or mysterious when you've actually been to where they're from.
That said, the Myriad planes are fun, and breif forays might be the best way to use them. I certainly wouldnt mind Pathfinder devoting one issue's adventure to, say, entering a Gate to retreive a lost explorer, or something like that.
Lets take Xen, from Half Life, as an example. aside from that weird sequence just after the resonance cascade where you see a glimpse of the borderworld, you never enter xen until the end. you fight your way through masses of things from there, but actually entering Xen is a dramatic end to the game. starting the game in Xen would have been a bad move.
Like any other AP, the campaign would have to be generic enough to work in cosmologies other than Golorian's or the Great Wheel.
Personally, if the APs are going to go extra-dimensional, I'd rather see the use of "supernatural" geography. In real world myth, this includes places like Avalon, the summit of Mount Olympus and Shangra-La; places that have a physical location but exist separate from the usual sense of space and time.
I use this concept extensively in my own campaigns and think it would fit nicely with Pathfinder's committment to drawing on real world myth and folklore for inspiration...
Foxish, I like what you say.
Fact of the matter is, I don't like planar adventure. I've always felt that any fantasy world should be fantastic enough to keep players occupied without having to travel elsewhere for high level threats or imaginative locations.
That said, the idea of a planar campaign -- as opposed to a planar adventure or two -- with a beginning, middle, and end occurring entirely on the planes, could be lots of fun.
Now that WotC has ditched the Great Wheel cosmology, would Paizo care to (or be able to) leave Golarion for an adventure path consisting entirely of planar adventure, with stops at old school iconic locations such as the City of Brass and the Demonweb Pits, etc.?
Those old-school iconic locations are still owned by WotC. Just because they're not using them doesn't make them free.
That said, while I would like to see more of Golarion's cosmology, I agree with the other posters. Interplanar travel should be special. So a GameMastery module for another plane? Good. A Pathfinder AP? Bad.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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James Jacobs has designed a mind-blowingly cool cosmology for Golarion. It is jaw-droppingly genius in its originality and yet it remains true to the "feel" of the multiverse that most of us have used for decades.
The first real glimpse of this will come in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting hardcover. Assuming there is interest, I'd love to do a whole book on the planes, with an associated series of modules supporting it.
I don't know if I'd make that a Pathfinder Adventure Path or something else, though.
It remains to be seen how far we can push the conceptual envelope away from the standard campaign model without losing people. Would six consecutive Pathfinders that involve weird adventuring through the multiverse lose the audience?
I don't know yet. My sense is that we need to firmly ground Pathfinder in Golarion and build an audience for _that_ before venturing too far from the mainline fantasy.
Maybe a new module number prefix? 'P' for 'planar'?
I'm not a big fan of extraplanar adventures. I prefer my fantasy to be "down to earth", so to speak. I wouldn't have a problem with a single volume of Pathfinder involving such an adventure, but I probably would not purchase an entire Adventure Path dedicated to that type of campaign.
But that's just me. I've found my tastes are not representative of the majority of D&D gamers, including those in my regular gaming group.
Randy
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It remains to be seen how far we can push the conceptual envelope away from the standard campaign model without losing people. Would six consecutive Pathfinders that involve weird adventuring through the multiverse lose the audience?I don't know yet. My sense is that we need to firmly ground Pathfinder in Golarion and build an audience for _that_ before venturing too far from the mainline fantasy.
My preference, and I know others have posted to this effect on several threads, would be to see something that takes us off planet as opposed to off plane. There is less weirdness involved, less pushing the envelope as Erik said, but still lots of room for things that are entirely different from the usual campaigns.
James Jacobs has designed a mind-blowingly cool cosmology for Golarion. It is jaw-droppingly genius in its originality and yet it remains true to the "feel" of the multiverse that most of us have used for decades. The first real glimpse of this will come in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting hardcover. Assuming there is interest, I'd love to do a whole book on the planes, with an associated series of modules supporting it.
I for one, can't wait! I've been drooling over the tidbits I've heard so far and am really interested to get a better feel for what you all have come up with! Yeah, likewise I don't see a whole AP set in the planes, but I would absolutely love to see some planar adventures to accompany a future Pathfinder Chronicals Planar Handbook. Exciting stuff, and totally what I've had a hankering for!
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It remains to be seen how far we can push the conceptual envelope away from the standard campaign model without losing people. Would six consecutive Pathfinders that involve weird adventuring through the multiverse lose the audience?
I don't know yet. My sense is that we need to firmly ground Pathfinder in Golarion and build an audience for _that_ before venturing too far from the mainline fantasy.
Baby steps, something that deals mostly with the material realm but has a few forays into the planes ala Shackled City for example
James Jacobs has designed a mind-blowingly cool cosmology for Golarion.
... and we get a glimpse of that very soon? Cool! :)
Being a huge Planescape fan, I would love to see some extraplanar adventuring. I think the best bet would be to do it as a gamemastery module first or to mix it with a material plane-based adventure as in STAP.
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Creative Director
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Being a huge Planescape fan, I would love to see some extraplanar adventuring. I think the best bet would be to do it as a gamemastery module first or to mix it with a material plane-based adventure as in STAP.
We do have a multiverse model for Golarion, and you can expect to see the other planes popping up now and then in Pathfinder and in our other products. We aren't going to be actually doing any flat-out extraplanar adventuring soon, though... we still need to get the main world of Golarion established and going, after all! Switching to outer planes too soon would be way too much.
That said... our model of the outer planes is going to be set up so that any 1st through 3rd edition adventure set on the planes will work with very minimum effort at converting. You could even run a Planescape campaign and keep Golarion as the Material Plane with ease.
James Jacobs has designed a mind-blowingly cool cosmology for Golarion.
The first real glimpse of this will come in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting hardcover. Assuming there is interest, I'd love to do a whole book on the planes, with an associated series of modules supporting it.
I don't know if I'd make that a Pathfinder Adventure Path or something else, though.
If you don't go the adventure path route, my vote is for a linked series of GameMastery adventures or a fat 128 page mega module.
James Jacobs has designed a mind-blowingly cool cosmology for Golarion. It is jaw-droppingly genius in its originality and yet it remains true to the "feel" of the multiverse that most of us have used for decades.
The first real glimpse of this will come in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting hardcover. Assuming there is interest, I'd love to do a whole book on the planes, with an associated series of modules supporting it.
Another reason why the PCCS can't come soon enough. How many reason is that now .... 1001?
I don't know yet. My sense is that we need to firmly ground Pathfinder in Golarion and build an audience for _that_ before venturing too far from the mainline fantasy.
I can certainly see more of people clamoring for an Osirion AP before a Planar AP. In the interrim timespan, put me down as voting for a planar mega-module as well as a planar book.
Also, let me put in a request for some shorter adv paths, say, 3 parts or so.
What if they did a 3-part GMM series. Make each stand alone, but also possible to build on the previous in the series?
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I don't really like planar adventures, mostly because the pre-made material (eg. adventures I've bought instead of making them up myself) I've seen so far is somewhat lacking in giving the DM and the players alike the feeling of an otherwordly setting.
Quite often the background material is focused on long term history of the plane or obscure knowledge regarding its shadowy power politics, with only minimal crunch useful to run a long term advenure in it; and I'm talking of encounters (not combat oriented only), alien treasure, a smattering of exotic and dangerous/beneficial locales, strange beasts that can be hunted for fodder, not just an encounter table and a couple of hazards.
"You are in a strange place, with the sky of a strange color, the earth is of a not common stuff, at the horizon you can see three suns and a cyclopean range of mountains, you encounter strange creatures, and... that's it. Oh, the lawful aligned of you don't feel really OK".
And the rest falls squarely on my DM shoulders, most of the time. Bad.
If Paizo ever develops a GameMastery module, a mega adventure (the 128 page long ones), or even a 3 part adventure arc, one of the most important goals that must be reached while developing it, is giving the DMs enough tools to keep the characters off balance for the whole time.
After all, they're not just in a exotic place with exaggerated features or even in another planet, they're in a whole different kind of reality.
In just a couple of encounters, even a cool alien critter can become "the norm", throwing off a good deal of hard work in building up the right atmosphere.
When I think of planar adventuring, the feeling that I try to convey is that from the Michael Shea novels of Nifft the Lean, where every step can bring death, horror, amazement, loot beyond dreams, damnation, arcane knowledge, or all these things together.
That said, even if planar adventures (or planar modules, to be correct) are not in my top score list, I'm quite interested in a Golarion-flavored planar trek, be it a one shot trip or even a more serious voyage in another realm of existence.
Just give me enough variety to say "this is a planar adventure" and not only "this adventure is in a strange place we can call another plane".
Sorry for the longish rant.
I totally agree, if your plane isn't other wordly why not have it just be a weird part of Golarion, even places like the material plane should be slightly off, like the gnomes and the charms in whistledown, close to right, but off in an everpresent eerie way.
Shorter paths is a great idea and worthy of its own thread...