Frustrated with Campaign Setting book


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I got the campaign Setting yesterday and have been reading through it. I'm just over 50 pages in and despite really liking the setting, I am quite frustrated with the organization of the book. My primary issue is the innumerable references to places and events that that are not explained until much later in the book or not explained at all.

For Example: The Starstone
I pieced together that the Starstone is a meteor that hit the planet ages ago, was followed by an age of darkness and was later raised from the sea by Aroden. The Starstone is mentioned frequently but isn't described in full, even in the Absolom section. It doesn't even have a reference in the index.

In the Absolom section there are references to some test involving the Starstone and becoming a Deity, but the reference is never expounded upon. I'm hoping the Guide to Absolom has more information, but the Campaign setting should seriously have a section devoted to such an influencial part of the setting.

I got through 51 pages before Avistan and Garund (which are mentioned frequently in the race section) were indicated as being the northern and southern continents of the region. Had I not found a map online with the two continents labeled I'd have been completely lost up to that point.

Don't get me wrong, I love the setting, the nations and their people - I'm really looking forward to running campaigns in it. I suppose over time it'll all come together much like the Forgotten Realms did, but the setting book itself is not particularly user friendly IMO.

Am I being overcritical?
Anyone else have this issue?


:)
It took me a while to work out what Avistan and Garund were.
If you have question/queries, post them on a thread, exactly like this, or even drop by on the Tuesday night Chat in the Paizo Chatroom. (20:00 Paizo Standard Time)

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Sovereign Court

Matt Gwinn wrote:


Am I being overcritical?
Anyone else have this issue?

Yes.

No.

Scarab Sages

Matt Gwinn wrote:

Am I being overcritical?

Anyone else have this issue?

Not really.

Yes, kind of. (but it's going to happen with a book like this. It's not supposed to give everything in high detail.)

I had a hard time figuring out Avistan and Garund too.

Welcome Matt.

-Matt


I had similar complaints, though I was mostly put off by the alphabetical listing of the regions and the complete lack of a small map within the book that established geographic context.

I had read the Pathfinder wiki before I received the book, so I knew about the Starstone and the continents. But I don't remember them ever being defined in the book, so I think that is a valid concern.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Matt Gwinn wrote:


Am I being overcritical?
Anyone else have this issue?

Nope.

Yes.

Another big problem for me was not have a small map in the book. I don't frequently read in a space where I can fold out a giant map. To this day, I still don't know where a lot of the countries are in relation to one another.

Awesome setting though...


jscott991 wrote:
I had similar complaints, though I was mostly put off by the alphabetical listing of the regions and the complete lack of a small map within the book that established geographic context.

This was my biggest criticism -- the only map showing political divisions is the poster map. Boo.

However, I agree with the original poster that it's very difficult to tell whether a reference is supposed to be cryptic (with no further mention in the book) or whether I'm not looking in the right place. I don't have the book in front of me at the moment, but I'll come up with an example when I get home.


Speaking as someone who came to Pathfinder/Golarion just in the past couple of months, with no background in the Beta ruleset or the Adventure Paths, I can tell you you're not alone in this issue. I'm struggling to make sense of a lot of references all at once.

I've tried a couple of times to shortcut the learning curve by making connections like "Avistan=Europe, Garund=Africa, Arcadia=North America" but I find that if you try that on the boards, at least half the responses will be in the vein of "no, Avistan != Europe, Avistan = Avistan, you can't make assumptions about it".

The Wiki does help a lot but it's still uphill work trying to locate meaningful definitions or descriptions of many of the Timeline references, for example.

Now, I don't expect the Campaign Setting book, which is an introduction to the setting, to detail the complete geography, history, ecology, demographics of even the Inner Sea region, much less the whole world. But it is frustrating to be unable to tell which offhand references may already be detailed elsewhere, and which are likely to be intentional loose ends (for example, mention of a couple of empires that fell to the Thassalonians; vanished empires from thousands of years ago aren't likely to be relevant in 4700+ AR, so the name may well be all we ever get.)


I think any book of this type should use the Forgotten realms books as a guide in regards to what it should include. Things like population, racial percentages, etc. would be very helpful. And a small map of each nation would be incredibly helpful.

And if you are going to mention countries/continents that are not even on the map, at least have arrows pointing to where they are.

Something the FR Campaign Book has that I really like is the map that shows the trade routes and the different commodities exchanged between the nations. It's a great visual representation of each nation's resources.


In size and ability to throw resources at a project (staff, equipment, $$$$$$$$, data from previous products) Paizo aren't in the situation that Wizards of the Coast were in when Wizards of the Coast brought out the 3.0 Campaign Setting. Whilst it was before my gaming time, I'm not even sure that Paizo would be in the position that TSR were in when they brought out the original Forgotten Realms material.
So I'm prepared to sympathise with Paizo to a certain extent when an index gets partially misnumbered or typos creep in.
Given what I understand to have been the circumstances around its production, the Pathfinder Campaign Setting is a remarkable product, and for what it's worth it did take the Ennie (a game industry award) for best Campaign Setting at GenCon this year.


Charles Evans 25 wrote:

In size and ability to throw resources at a project (staff, equipment, $$$$$$$$, data from previous products) Paizo aren't in the situation that Wizards of the Coast were in when Wizards of the Coast brought out the 3.0 Campaign Setting. Whilst it was before my gaming time, I'm not even sure that Paizo would be in the position that TSR were in when they brought out the original Forgotten Realms material.

So I'm prepared to sympathise with Paizo to a certain extent when an index gets partially misnumbered or typos creep in.
Given what I understand to have been the circumstances around its production, the Pathfinder Campaign Setting is a remarkable product, and for what it's worth it did take the Ennie (a game industry award) for best Campaign Setting at GenCon this year.

It is the best setting book since FRCS.

There's no question about that.

But that doesn't mean it couldn't be slightly better.


Wow.

I recently bought the PDF of the Gazetteer. It was the first time in my life I paid more than $4 for a download, and I felt a little foolish paying $12.99, when LESS money could have bought me a nice, attractive hard copy of the book at amazon...

...and yet...

I could print out an 8.5" x 11" copy of the map for easy reference.

And it's easy to search for text, so I can instantly see what other references there are in the book to the Starstone, Avistan, Garund, and whatever else I want.

I feel like my $12.99 was well spent. Maybe I'm not so foolish after all.

(Although it would be nice actually to hold a solid, attractive book in my hands as I read it...)

And in my (admittedly ignorant) opinion, if saying "Avistan=Europe, Garund=Africa, Arcadia=North America" helps you get into the setting, you shouldn't let the experts talk you out of it. Later, when you become more Golarion-savvy, you can change your way of thinking. But listen Golarion-philes, this kind of assumption can help attract more people to the setting. Is that a bad thing?


Aaron Bitman wrote:

I recently bought the PDF of the Gazetteer. It was the first time in my life I paid more than $4 for a download, and I felt a little foolish paying $12.99, when LESS money could have bought me a nice, attractive hard copy of the book at amazon...

...and yet...

I could print out an 8.5" x 11" copy of the map for easy reference.

And it's easy to search for text, so I can instantly see what other references there are in the book to the Starstone, Avistan, Garund, and whatever else I want.

I feel like my $12.99 was well spent. Maybe I'm not so foolish after all.

Indeed. When you read something in the timeline like "Queen Aooogah becomes the frelm of Mizjor", you can look up Aooogah, frelm and Mizjor, rather than checking the index and then giving up.

Liberty's Edge

Aaron Bitman wrote:
And in my (admittedly ignorant) opinion, if saying "Avistan=Europe, Garund=Africa, Arcadia=North America" helps you get into the setting, you shouldn't let the experts talk you out of it. Later, when you become more Golarion-savvy, you can change your way of thinking. But listen Golarion-philes, this kind of assumption can help attract more people to the setting. Is that a bad thing?

I took that to mean in terms of geographic location. People who naysayed that description might have been thinking more in terms of social or cultural labels. Just my thoughts *shrug*

Sovereign Court

There was a time before Speilberg when folks with imaginations could watch a movie and allow their minds to fill in the blanks, because the movie itself didn't explain everthing explicitly.

I am often disappointed with the type of critique that says, "I wasn't spoon-fed everything I wanted to know." Just ask any designer, and they will tell you that reaching a wide audience is difficult. Further, the context and history of our game has produced many, many books that simply allude to incomplete ideas. The purpose of the allusion is not to hand the cannon and dogma over to the gamer, but to inspire.

On the variable of inspiration, imagination, and incredible quality, the Campaign Setting book delivers in every way. I do understand your frustration, but we're not building software here, we are fueling imaginations, and asking that you take it from there, ...fill in the blanks with your own ideas. This is not the forgotten realms, this is not dogmatic cannon. This is Pathfinder RPG by PAIZO, and I hope you're open to seeing this from a different point of view. Try using it as a resource and springboard to other ideas, rather than a cannonical endpoint in itself. Hope that helps.


Tessius wrote:


I took that to mean in terms of geographic location. People who naysayed that description might have been thinking more in terms of social or cultural labels. Just my thoughts *shrug*

In the examples above, yes, I was thinking primarily in terms of geographic location (and climate); but to be fair, I have also made attempts to take short cuts by equating some of the individual political and cultural groups with Earth equivalents, and the naysayers objections to that are much more valid. Cognitive dissonance occurs when I try to equate both Andoran and Arcadia with the USA, for example. :)

I figured I could use familiar nations/ethnicities as a starting point, aware that the groups in Golarian were different; the problem is that with only the Campaign Setting to go on, I won't always have enough information to quickly identify what the differences are, which could lead to me running a nations/ethnicities in a very different manner than what was intended by the designers. Rule Zero says that's fine, but if I do it I want it to be a conscious decision on my part, not a misunderstanding.

Sovereign Court

Bear in mind that the Campaign Setting book was one of the very first created for Pathfinder, along with the Pathfinder Gazetteer. I'm not sure how helpful the two are together, but they're both very early guides in the development of the setting. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there were some updates and revisions intended for the campaign setting book to address these issues and flesh out some of the content they hadn't fully developed at the time.

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

Pax Veritas wrote:
There was a time before Speilberg when folks with imaginations could watch a movie and allow their minds to fill in the blanks, because the movie itself didn't explain everthing explicitly.

[off-topic]Spielberg is actually pretty masterful at using off-screen mise-en-scene to leave things up to the imagination. There is quite a bit in most of his movies, especially the more pulpy/sci-fi flics of his early career, that is never explained.[/off-topic]


Pax Veritas wrote:
I am often disappointed with the type of critique that says, "I wasn't spoon-fed everything I wanted to know."

I am often disappointed when clearly eloquent people cannot make a distinction between cannon and canon. :)

Pax Veritas wrote:


On the variable of inspiration, imagination, and incredible quality, the Campaign Setting book delivers in every way.

On this point I do not disagree. It's a fine book, supplemented by other fine books. No game books for any system or setting will ever be deemed perfect by all users; the Pathfinder material I've seen so far does seem to be quite high on the scale of what's achievable.

Pax Veritas wrote:
This is not the forgotten realms, this is not dogmatic cannon. This is Pathfinder RPG by PAIZO, and I hope you're open to seeing this from a different point of view. Try using it as a resource and springboard to other ideas, rather than a cannonical endpoint in itself. Hope that helps.

Mainly what I want, as I mentioned in the earlier post, is to be able to easily sort out what's already been done and what that means, if anything, in terms of other material already published, so that I can (a) avoid reinventing the wheel and (b) make informed decisions about what I may want to change or ignore.

In many cases I'm not asking Paizo to fill in the gaps, I'm just trying to map out where the gaps are. Gaps are a good thing. They not only allow a DM freedom of movement but (for me) increase the setting's quality by adding verisimilitude; it's not realistic that everything should be known about a world.


Pax Veritas wrote:

There was a time before Speilberg when folks with imaginations could watch a movie and allow their minds to fill in the blanks, because the movie itself didn't explain everthing explicitly.

I am often disappointed with the type of critique that says, "I wasn't spoon-fed everything I wanted to know."

My benchmark for a great campaign setting is the Greyhawk boxed set.

On the one hand, the Greyhawk set has more information on demographics and trade routes.
On the other hand, the Golarion book has more information on history and organizations.

So which one is spoon-feeding? Both of them? Neither of them?


Damon Griffin wrote:
In the examples above, yes, I was thinking primarily in terms of geographic location (and climate); but to be fair, I have also made attempts to take short cuts by equating some of the individual political and cultural groups with Earth equivalents, and the naysayers objections to that are much more valid. Cognitive dissonance occurs when I try to equate both Andoran and Arcadia with the USA, for example. :)

Well, obviously the geography shouldn't map EXACTLY to the real world. If I wanted that, I wouldn't buy a campaign setting; I'd just take a map of the real world and throw in some magic and monsters.

Look at Faerun. Zakhara is supposed to be arabian-type lands. So what is Calimshan doing so far from there? I don't know. Maybe some powerful genie picked up a chunk of land from Zakhara and teleported it to the Shining Sea area.

Okay, so I'm quite ignorant about Forgotten Realms. I'm sure a lot of FR fans can pick the above paragraph apart for reasons beyond my knowledge.

But I think you get my point. Equating fantasy ideas with real-world equivalents won't - and shouldn't - be perfect. In a way, Arcadia is America. In another way, Andoran is the USA. Why isn't Andoran located in Arcadia? Because this way facilitates game play. You can set an adventure in the "US" without traveling all the way to "America." That makes it easier to game in the setting. Did the French Revolution last 40+ years? No, only 10. But the idea of Galt is fun, and could inspire GMs to write adventures. (Maybe a "Scarlet Pimpernel" type of campaign?) The basis is obvious, but the details are changed, and that's the way fantasy ought to be, in my not-so-humble opinion.


For the people who say you shouldn't compare the setting to the real world, I ask, how can you not?

When the book describes a nation of tan skinned people that typically don't eat meat, believe in reincarnation and have women with red dots on their foreheads, how can you not compare that nation to India?

I see a great deal of similarity between the Inner Sea and the Mediterranean. The governments of the nations might be quite different, but based on what I heave read so far (basically just the race stuff) you can clearly see the connection to real world Norse, Egyptian, Indian, Arab and European cultures.

Those connections seriously helped me differentiate between the nations - primarily in the desert regions.

-----

In regards to things being left intentionally vague, I have no problem with that. However, it's kind of important to let the reader know that you are being intentionally vague rather than erratic. Many times I'd read something and think that entire blocks of text were missing. I got the impression that 3 pages of material were written for a 2 page spread and chunks were cut to save space.

A possible reason for these issues could be the common problem of the author making unconscious assumptions about the readers familiarity with the material. Using my example in my original post, it's entirely possible that the author(s) made the assumption that everyone knew what the Starstone was. Now, this is quite common, so I can't really blame the writer(s). However, someone unfamiliar with the setting should have been asked to proof the book from front to back before publication. This often helps with typos as well which I understand this book has a lot of (including the title of the map). I'm a graphic designer and can attest that a fresh pair of eyes proofing a book once is far more effective than the author proofing it 10 times.

I understand Paizo is not Hasbro and doesn't have the manpower or cash to do things perfect every time. Hell, I bought another $150 in books AFTER I noticed these issues, so clearly I don't hold it against them.

It's still frustrating though.

,Matt


Matt Gwinn wrote:
I got through 51 pages before Avistan and Garund (which are mentioned frequently in the race section) were indicated as being the northern and southern continents of the region. Had I not found a map online with the two continents labeled I'd have been completely lost up to that point.
Charles Evans 25 wrote:
It took me a while to work out what Avistan and Garund were.
fray wrote:
I had a hard time figuring out Avistan and Garund too.

I just re-read the first 4 posts in this thread, and again, I have to say "Wow."

I always assumed that if you get the campaign setting book, then the gazetteer would be redundant, as the info in the campaign setting book is a superset of the gazetteer. But maybe the gazetteer makes for a better introduction to Golarion. It clearly states, in the 2-page introduction, what Avistan and Garund are. Maybe I actually made the right purchase! Unbelievable!

Okay, you could argue that I'm getting off-topic, as this discussion is supposed to be about the campaign setting book. But hey, maybe someone who's wondering whether to get the gazetteer or the big book might read this thread, so this post MIGHT be helpful.


Aaron Bitman wrote:
Matt Gwinn wrote:
I got through 51 pages before Avistan and Garund (which are mentioned frequently in the race section) were indicated as being the northern and southern continents of the region. Had I not found a map online with the two continents labeled I'd have been completely lost up to that point.
Charles Evans 25 wrote:
It took me a while to work out what Avistan and Garund were.
fray wrote:
I had a hard time figuring out Avistan and Garund too.

I just re-read the first 4 posts in this thread, and again, I have to say "Wow."

I always assumed that if you get the campaign setting book, then the gazetteer would be redundant, as the info in the campaign setting book is a superset of the gazetteer. But maybe the gazetteer makes for a better introduction to Golarion. It clearly states, in the 2-page introduction, what Avistan and Garund are. Maybe I actually made the right purchase! Unbelievable!

Okay, you could argue that I'm getting off-topic, as this discussion is supposed to be about the campaign setting book. But hey, maybe someone who's wondering whether to get the gazetteer or the big book might read this thread, so this post MIGHT be helpful.

I bought the CS first and then picked up the Gazetteer for the same reason: the CS seemed to assume a lot of information I didn't already know. The Gazetteer is really more of an "intro to Golarion," whereas the CS is more like an encyclopedia, where once you know what you want to find out more about, you can look it up.


Evidently some of us (me, me!) need GOLARION FOR DUMMIES. :)


I would like to ask Joana - and anyone else reading this thread who has read both the Gazetteer and the big book - would the Gazetteer make a good "For Dummies" book?

Because based on seeing the Gazetteer alone, I would say yes.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

To respond to the original poster:

The Campaign Setting is a big book. A really big book, with a LOT of topics to cover.

And since it's about a whole world, a lot of those topics interconnect.

As a result, it is a lot more like an encyclopedia or dictionary in that it isn't really meant to be read cover to cover. No matter what order we put stuff in, something at the beginning of the book is going to reference something at the end of the book. There is some shuffling to be done to minimize it, of course, or the relevant information from the other section could be repeated, but every time the editors do something like that, it gets a little harder to actually use the book as a reference (because information isn't in alphabetical order or is hidden in a different section), something gets left on the cutting room floor (to make room for redundant information), or there's one extra place for an editor trap (because the someone revising the Cheliax section, for instance, forgets to change the repeated information under Asmodeus, creating a contradiction).

I would encourage you, when encountering a term that hasn't yet been defined or clarified, to go ahead and look it up in the index and flip to the appropriate section. Obviously, you don't need to read the whole section (or you fall into those sort of infinite free-association traps that happen on sites like Wikipedia or TVTropes,) but you can sort of skim and find enough to cover the reference.

Hope this helps.


Warforged Gardener wrote:
Bear in mind that the Campaign Setting book was one of the very first created for Pathfinder, along with the Pathfinder Gazetteer. I'm not sure how helpful the two are together, but they're both very early guides in the development of the setting. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there were some updates and revisions intended for the campaign setting book to address these issues and flesh out some of the content they hadn't fully developed at the time.

There is a Revised Campaign Setting in the works, it has been mentioned before. I would reccommend buying the gazeteer until the revised campaign book comes out.

Liberty's Edge

Aaron Bitman wrote:

I would like to ask Joana - and anyone else reading this thread who has read both the Gazetteer and the big book - would the Gazetteer make a good "For Dummies" book?

Because based on seeing the Gazetteer alone, I would say yes.

All I own is the gazetteer and it was a fantastic primer to the setting. It wasn't hard to follow what was going on at all. I have not done an intensive reading of the hardback CS, so I have no basis of comparison, but I would happily hand off the gazetteer to someone who has no idea what Golarion is and wants to learn more. I would be confident they could quickly grasp the basics of the setting with that book.


I have both the Gazeteer and the Campaign Setting. I use both at various times. I carry the Gazeteer with me to the game I GM as it doesn't take up too much space and isn't as heavy with all of the other books I carry. In a manner of speaking the Gazeteer would classify as a "Golarion for Dummies" or more appropriately a "Golarion Primer".

Just my 2 cp.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Shivok wrote:
Warforged Gardener wrote:
Bear in mind that the Campaign Setting book was one of the very first created for Pathfinder, along with the Pathfinder Gazetteer. I'm not sure how helpful the two are together, but they're both very early guides in the development of the setting. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there were some updates and revisions intended for the campaign setting book to address these issues and flesh out some of the content they hadn't fully developed at the time.
There is a Revised Campaign Setting in the works, it has been mentioned before. I would reccommend buying the gazeteer until the revised campaign book comes out.

Actually...

What you're thinking of is comments by us at Paizo that if/when the current printing sells out, we'll reprint the book and at that time make the revisions to make the book fit better with the Pathfinder RPG and to correct typos and errors. We've still got plenty of stock on the book, though, and no time or resources to devote to a reprint for some time to come. I wouldn't expect a revised reprint of the PCCS to come along for many, many months. Or years.

As for the book itself... Ross is right. It's not a book that can be absorbed and comprehended on a single read; it's one that benefits from study and multiple reads. It's more like a textbook or an encyclopedia or a reference work than it is a novel.


silverhair2008 wrote:
I have both the Gazeteer and the Campaign Setting. I use both at various times. I carry the Gazeteer with me to the game I GM as it doesn't take up too much space and isn't as heavy with all of the other books I carry. In a manner of speaking the Gazeteer would classify as a "Golarion for Dummies" or more appropriately a "Golarion Primer".

In a similar vein, I have a copy of the PFCS for myself, and got my players a copy of the Gazetteer, as they were totally unfamiliar with the world and it was a nice bite-sized intro to Golarion.


James Jacobs wrote:
I wouldn't expect a revised reprint of the PCCS to come along for many, many months. Or years.

If and when it does happen, please consider integrating the updated PCCS and an updated-to-match Gazetteer into a single (near Core Rules sized) book. To make re-editing a little less of a chore, they could even be separate volumes in a single binding, the way some editions of the Hero System came out with core rules and setting in separately page-numbered sections of a singly bound tome.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Damon Griffin wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
I wouldn't expect a revised reprint of the PCCS to come along for many, many months. Or years.
If and when it does happen, please consider integrating the updated PCCS and an updated-to-match Gazetteer into a single (near Core Rules sized) book. To make re-editing a little less of a chore, they could even be separate volumes in a single binding, the way some editions of the Hero System came out with core rules and setting in separately page-numbered sections of a singly bound tome.

There's no reason to update the Gazetteer itself, actually; there's no crunch in there that got impacted at all by the new game.


James Jacobs wrote:
Damon Griffin wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
I wouldn't expect a revised reprint of the PCCS to come along for many, many months. Or years.
If and when it does happen, please consider integrating the updated PCCS and an updated-to-match Gazetteer into a single (near Core Rules sized) book. To make re-editing a little less of a chore, they could even be separate volumes in a single binding, the way some editions of the Hero System came out with core rules and setting in separately page-numbered sections of a singly bound tome.
There's no reason to update the Gazetteer itself, actually; there's no crunch in there that got impacted at all by the new game.

I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that there were currently some discrepancies between the two; also, is the PCCS (and associated Gazetteer) expected to never expand beyond the Inner Sea region? Will we instead get entirely separate CS books years down the road for other continents?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Damon Griffin wrote:
I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that there were currently some discrepancies between the two; also, is the PCCS (and associated Gazetteer) expected to never expand beyond the Inner Sea region? Will we instead get entirely separate CS books years down the road for other continents?

Any discrepancies between the 64 page Gazetteer and the 256 page PCCS are accidental.

We will some day go beyond the Inner Sea region, but when we do, those'll be their own books.


Aaron Bitman wrote:

I would like to ask Joana - and anyone else reading this thread who has read both the Gazetteer and the big book - would the Gazetteer make a good "For Dummies" book?

Because based on seeing the Gazetteer alone, I would say yes.

I'd recommend having both if your budget is not too tight (although imo it's very cheap). The Gazetteer is a great "Campaign guide-lite" plus its map is better. There is a significant amount of duplication between the two, so if you're someone who objects to that, perhaps not.

Nonetheless, as others have said, it's convenient to have a smaller version without having to lug the hardcover around with everything else one has to take gaming.

Sovereign Court

yoda8myhead wrote:
Pax Veritas wrote:
There was a time before Speilberg when folks with imaginations could watch a movie and allow their minds to fill in the blanks, because the movie itself didn't explain everthing explicitly.
[off-topic]Spielberg is actually pretty masterful at using off-screen mise-en-scene to leave things up to the imagination. There is quite a bit in most of his movies, especially the more pulpy/sci-fi flics of his early career, that is never explained.[/off-topic]

Sure—very true Y8mh. The guy is a genius. I'm sure you can appreciate the point I was making, alluding to, for example, the difference between a Dalek and a Mogwai though;)

Sovereign Court

My previous attempt to suggest that the "user" view the campaign setting book as a resource for inspiration has, it seems, been misinterpreted as a suggestion not to compare real topography and geographic terrain to fantasy maps and so forth. *sighs* I need to just let this one go.

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