What year do the modules take place in?


Adventures

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

I know that RotR taks place in 4707 AR and CotCT happens the following year, but when are the various modules set, if they are at all? Part of me likes the idea that these events exist in a certain time and would become historical facts as Golarion's canon is developed, while I am also fond of the notion that one could place Seven Swords of Sin in any existing adventure path without messing up canon. Has this ever been established?

Dark Archive Contributor

yoda8myhead wrote:
I know that RotR taks place in 4707 AR and CotCT happens the following year, but when are the various modules set, if they are at all? Part of me likes the idea that these events exist in a certain time and would become historical facts as Golarion's canon is developed, while I am also fond of the notion that one could place Seven Swords of Sin in any existing adventure path without messing up canon. Has this ever been established?

In theory, the modules take place in the year in which they were published. So adventures published in 2007 occurred in 4707 and those published in 2008 occur in 4708 (the current year).

Of course, like the Adventure Paths, you really can set them anywhere you want in the timeline, but those are our official assumptions.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

yoda8myhead wrote:
I know that RotR taks place in 4707 AR and CotCT happens the following year, but when are the various modules set, if they are at all? Part of me likes the idea that these events exist in a certain time and would become historical facts as Golarion's canon is developed, while I am also fond of the notion that one could place Seven Swords of Sin in any existing adventure path without messing up canon. Has this ever been established?

Rise of the Runelords is in theory set in 4707 AR... but in fact, all of the modules AND the Adventure Paths themselves are set in limbo-time. You can run them all in any order, really (although some of the minor links and easter eggs won't make much sense if you mix it up too much), but basically, we're not OFFICIALLY advancing the game world's calendar. Doing so runs the risk of an unintentional "obsoletion" of earlier adventures, and I'd like to think that, say, Crown of the Kobold King is just as pertinent and playable in 4707 AR as it would be in 5707 AR.

In the case of Seven Swords of Sin, we kind of broke this design philosophy. We won't be doing that in the future much, I don't suspect. But there's a bit of a sidebar in Pathfinder 6 that explains how you can incorporate Seven Swords of Sin into the AP, or vice-versa.

Basically... in the context of an adventure, events are canon. In the context of a whole Adventure Path, the events in those six adventures are canon. But beyond that... we don't have a time-table. What happens in Varisia during Runelords, for example, isn't reflected in Curse of the Crimson Throne because we want people to be able to play Crimson Throne first and then Runelords second if they want.

Scarab Sages

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James Jacobs wrote:

we're not OFFICIALLY advancing the game world's calendar. Doing so runs the risk of an unintentional "obsoletion" of earlier adventures, and I'd like to think that, say, Crown of the Kobold King is just as pertinent and playable in 4707 AR as it would be in 5707 AR.

James, don't joke about those 100 year time jumps . . . the wounds are still a bit too fresh . . . ;)

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

W1 seems to take place before Crimson Throne.. but it's easy to modify it to take place during as a side quest.

Dark Archive Contributor

SirUrza wrote:
W1 seems to take place before Crimson Throne.. but it's easy to modify it to take place during as a side quest.

Yes, that's true. W1 takes place during Eodred's lifetime, but it's a fairly easy change to make it occur during Ileosa's reign. We generally assume, for the sake of our collective sanity, that modules and adventure paths occur in roughly the order we publish them, but that's not a hard-set rule.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

SirUrza wrote:
W1 seems to take place before Crimson Throne.. but it's easy to modify it to take place during as a side quest.

AND: Assuming the PCs don't totally flub things in Crimson Throne... W1 can also take place after Crimson Throne.

But yeah... when we first started doing the modules, we did tie in a few of them a bit too closely to what was going on in Pathfinder at the time. Which does kind of make them more difficult to "just drop in" to a campaign that already has a bunch of in-game canon.

So going forward... we'll be trying a bit harder to keep the modules more evergreen.

Liberty's Edge

James Jacobs wrote:
SirUrza wrote:
W1 seems to take place before Crimson Throne.. but it's easy to modify it to take place during as a side quest.

AND: Assuming the PCs don't totally flub things in Crimson Throne... W1 can also take place after Crimson Throne.

But yeah... when we first started doing the modules, we did tie in a few of them a bit too closely to what was going on in Pathfinder at the time. Which does kind of make them more difficult to "just drop in" to a campaign that already has a bunch of in-game canon.

So going forward... we'll be trying a bit harder to keep the modules more evergreen.

Aww, I love the tie-ins, as long as they're published in a sensible order so as not to confuse the people running both (like W1 and CotCT which was done well) and not nearly retconned like what happened with 7 Swords of Sin. Sure it takes a bit more coordination but it's definitely worth it imho. Especially for those of us diving head first into this new world and not just using the modules as plug and play for a homebrew setting.

Personally I think every AP should have one tie-in module, one module that could easily be run as a side quest (examples being Seven Swords of Sin and Crucible of Chaos for RotRL) and one 'sequel' module for the characters that complete the AP.

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