APs, Web fiction, books, comics, and canon


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'm a comic nerd, and, one of the most important things to us comic nerds is canon. I love the pathfinder comics, the web fiction, PFS, adventure paths, and novels, but, I've been thinking, what counts? Are the events of all the pathfinder properties counted as have happened for for the world story going forward? I'm thinking along the lines of the Forgotten Realms/LFR for story.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
fine_young_misanthrope wrote:
I'm a comic nerd, and, one of the most important things to us comic nerds is canon. I love the pathfinder comics, the web fiction, PFS, adventure paths, and novels, but, I've been thinking, what counts? Are the events of all the pathfinder properties counted as have happened for for the world story going forward? I'm thinking along the lines of the Forgotten Realms/LFR for story.

No... PFS has it's own canon... Each AP has it's own canon which does not impact other AP's or world history unless specifically called out as does the comics line. And the setting books have their own as well.

Liberty's Edge

The way it all seems to me, is that each bit is self contained in a way. We have the Golarion as it is presented in the Inner Sea World Guide and further detailed in the Player Companion and Campaign Setting lines. From this starting point we have the APs and modules taking place exclusive from one another for the most part and not building on the assumptions that the others have taken place. Then we have the fiction line which seems to be in its own version of Golarion, building upon characters and events that happened in previous tales. The comics are the same, their own stories told separately from the other bits. Finally we have PFS, which is also its own campaign with its own characters and evolving storyline which very much builds upon the events that have come previously.

Now with this being said, there is crossover in terms of storylines such as the events in the Worldwound this year crossing over all of the iterations of the world. This makes it seem like all of them are connected but the way I look at it is there are events and characters that exist in each but that does not mean they are cannonicaly connected. Problems and hiccups in this can also come in the form of events in one AP or somesuch being referenced in another, such as the discovery of Xin Shalast appearing in a later CS book and sequel AP.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Given that the AP's generally culminate in world altering events, they are by necessity isolated canon.

Paizo Employee Developer

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With only a few exceptions, there's a single continuity for all Pathfinder products, using the Inner Sea World Guide as a baseline and expanding from there. The most notable exceptions are products in which the outcomes are unwritten—when they're left up to individual GMs and players. Thus, the canon of what happens as a result of an adventure is really only canon in a campaign in which that adventure took place. We want everyone to feel that they can run through just about any adventure, in any order, at any time, and not feel like they are doing so in defiance of established canon. This means when you run Rise of the Runelords, what happens as a result of that campaign defines what is canon in your game. Except for a few rare events we've built sequels around, the events of an adventure or adventure path are always assumed to be just on the verge of happening in official canon. (This includes the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign, which has its own internal canon for players of that campaign.)

Something like a setting sourcebook, in which we can say, "this event occurred" and "this is who secretly runs the city's assassins' guild," can follow the same continuity as any other source that describes concrete events. This includes fiction and, yes, comic books. Where the continuity of the Iconics' particular adventures gets a little fuzzy is that they appear a lot of places, and often in different adaptations of the same content.

The intention for the Iconics was that they would be stand ins for the PCs in art in our products, and that they'd have names and personalities so that players could identify with them over the course of the brand's life. That means that when it comes time to tell some stories set in our world, either in audio dramas or comics or a television series or Hollywood film adaptation, the characters that are most identifiably "Pathfinder" are those same Iconics.

Since you mentioned comics, I guess the best comparison I can give on how continuity with the Iconics works is to think of the various "Earths" in DC, across which there are multiple Supermen and Wonder Women. Whichever reality you're reading is internally consistent and what happens in that reality is canon. But a single different decision on Earth 2 could mean large butterfly effects for the continuity on that world. The Iconics are our Supermen, Green Lanterns, and Flashes. So while they're the same character across all instances of themselves, the specifics of the events surrounding their lives in any single reality might not line up perfectly with those of other realities. The Iconics' continuity within the comics is canon for the comics, and the Iconics' continuity for the audio dramas is canon for the audio dramas. And if one of them ever appeared as an NPC in an adventure path, they'd be canon for that AP in any campaign that included those events.

Liberty's Edge

Starfinder Superscriber

Hmm... I'd sort of hope that the iconics never show up as NPCs in an AP, precisely because they're the sort of "stand-in PCs" for APs and modules. Having them show up as an NPC would sort of "fix" them in a given place, the same way that (say) Koriah Azmeren is "fixed" as somebody who bases herself, at least sometimes, in Magnimar.


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I like the approach of having the comics and audio dramas in different continuities, it's like having different GMs running their own campaigns. :)

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

What about the novels? My whole question comes from the WotC problem and the LFR. I LOVE LFR, but, when WotC decided that LFR was "sanctioned," but not directly "supported," the novels went one place and the modules another. I read the new FR Sundering novels to learn about the Realms. When I started to do that, I learned that all the awesome LFR stuff I did didn't really count for the world going forward since direct novel events conflicted with it. That really made me mad.

Besides general knowledge, am I learning about events in Golarion when I read a Pathfinder novel or web fiction? Their great fiction, but does it count fiction?

To put that question in perspective, I don't read DC BECAUSE so many events "kind of" happened. I read Dark Horse because whatever happened, Happened! This happened. We can recon the crap out of this latter. But, this really happened to the characters you love

I do understand this is all fantasy stuff, nothing is really real, whatever you decide at your table bla bla bla. Thanks for baring with an old school comic nerd.

Liberty's Edge

Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted.

More seriously, no events from APs or novels happen unless you want them to. The timeline does not advance in a meaningful fashion (though the year does, and certain APs should happen in particular years if they happen at all).

The novels are also usually very low world-impact, intentionally and by design. They're more Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than they are Lord of the Rings or Elric in terms of how they effect the world. A canonical person might die, but a canonical government isn't gonna be overthrown or anything like that.

The APs, if they happen, do change the world to a greater degree, and Shattered Star, as a spiritual sequel, even assumes that the first few APs happened...but it's almost literally the only book to make that assumption, and can easily be ignored along with all the rest.

Paizo's been trying really hard to not have metaplot in the setting at all, and pretty much succeeding. So...there won't be a disconnect between novels and APs changing the world, since novels don't do that, and nothing else except the AP in question assumes APs ever happen.


fine_young_misanthrope wrote:


To put that question in perspective, I don't read DC BECAUSE so many events "kind of" happened. I read Dark Horse because whatever happened, Happened! This happened. We can recon the crap out of this latter. But, this really happened to the characters you love

Hm. I don't think Paizo's approach is really aimed at you, no. There is no single canon continuity. At best it may be that the comics will all stick to one comic continuity; you could fix on that and ignore the other stuff. Or likewise with the novels I guess.

Liberty's Edge

Oh! Almost forgot about the audio plays and comics:

Those are separate continuities (like comic books and a TV show based on them usually are), and the comics fall under the same banner as the novels in terms of how earthshaking they are, while the audio dramas simply are an adaptation of an AP.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I guess I'm fine with the comics being a little more loose, but what about the novels? Any official Paizo word on their continuity?

Liberty's Edge

fine_young_misanthrope wrote:
I guess I'm fine with the comics being a little more loose, but what about the novels? Any official Paizo word on their continuity?

Again, they're as canonical as the APs. The characters portrayed exist, and at some point will probably do the things in the Novels...but there's no timeline on whether they've done such things as of yet. So, if you've read a novel, feel free to have had it happen, and if you haven't it doesn't need to have.

Liberty's Edge

Basically, nothing is canon unless you want it to be.

Events referenced in the novels as being "Golarion history" could be considered sort-of canonical, except they might turn out to be misleading information because no one in Golarion actually knows what happened in those times and the version stated in the novel is history "as far as the characters know it".

Liberty's Edge

I believe the intention is while they may all exist within their own continuity they try very hard not to conflict with one another so there is no reason any given GM could say it all happens or none of it happens or only certain parts happen, etc.


Joshua Goudreau wrote:
I believe the intention is while they may all exist within their own continuity they try very hard not to conflict with one another so there is no reason any given GM could say it all happens or none of it happens or only certain parts happen, etc.

This, plus Paizo have stated they want continuity to effectively be frozen at the point the sourcebooks introduce it, and don't want it evolving along a timeline. That way new writers don't have to familiarize themselves with two years worth of reading to check for obscure references before they can start writing.

I take that as meaning sourcebooks = canon, everything else = "what if?" and may or may not happen.


I believe Wrath of the Righteous, if it happens, is intended to reference both the PFS campaign of the year as well as King of Chaos (the recovery of the Lexicon of Paradox, which plays a role in the latter half of the AP). Which also seems to say, to me at least, that WotR happened in some form in that particular series of novels given the destruction of Kenabres and so on.

For the rest, continuity is frozen for the setting to 4606 AR-ish. It creates a bit of an oddity in places. Some events/APs also need to happen in specific years, such as Reign of Winter in 4613 for obvious reasons.

Liberty's Edge

Alleran wrote:
I believe Wrath of the Righteous, if it happens, is intended to reference both the PFS campaign of the year as well as King of Chaos (the recovery of the Lexicon of Paradox, which plays a role in the latter half of the AP). Which also seems to say, to me at least, that WotR happened in some form in that particular series of novels given the destruction of Kenabres and so on.

This is what I was thinking of when I mentioned that the same big events happen but not necessarily in the same continuity above. These big events crossing over make it easy for folks to intermingle the lines but the lines do not seem to act as if they are interconnected. For example, a GM need not read King of Chaos (though I recommend it because it's a great book) to run Wrath of the Righteous because the events of the book are not referenced and the campaign does not explicitly state those events ever happened and vice versa. The same holds true for Season 5 of Pathfinder Society. All three things deal heavily with the eruption of the Worldwound, the fall of Kenabres, and so on, but do not rely on or contradict the others.

Liberty's Edge

I'm interested to see what gets rolled into the official cannon when the game rolls over to Pathfinder 2nd Edition. I'm sure the switch is still a ways off, but it will happen eventually, and when it does the setting will get moved forward.

Liberty's Edge

Joshua Goudreau wrote:
I'm interested to see what gets rolled into the official cannon when the game rolls over to Pathfinder 2nd Edition. I'm sure the switch is still a ways off, but it will happen eventually, and when it does the setting will get moved forward.

That's not necessarily true. A new edition's probably inevitable eventually, but that doesn't necessitate a timeline advance at all. It's a common industry practice, but I can think of games that haven't changed the timeline for new editions, occurring instead in an eternal now.

That's what I'd expect Paizo to do in the event of a new edition (well, that and have few enough changes that the game's as backwards compatible as Pathfinder is with 3.5).

Liberty's Edge

The developers have talked elsewhere about a hypothetical advancement of the timeline when they update to 2E. The discussion revolved mostly around incorporating the events of the APs and they said that not all APs would be considered to have completed successfully.


My headcanon is this, the Runelords, Crimson Throne, & Second Darkness were all performed by their respective pregenerated iconics.

The rest (at least Kingmaker, Jade Regent, Carrion Crown, & WoTR) were performed by the Pregens made by Legendary Games.

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