Golarion becoming too genre inclusive?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

101 to 150 of 299 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>

1 person marked this as a favorite.

It's funny because Golarion is not "becoming" genre exclusive because it always has been. Just look in the Inner Sea World Guide. All those genres have been here the whole time.


I'm glad that stuff like numeria exists. Because it gives paizo a reason to release rules for high tech stuff, which in turn i can use for an actual high tech setting.

Apart from that, I don't mind it in golarion context either. I think it's cool that i can have one campaign going from a jungle adventure battling dinosaurs to a high tech setting fighting robots. It really helps my short attention span.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

When ever you start thinking about anthropology and cultural interaction, Golarin, FR, and Middle Earth are impossible. That's why it is called fantasy...So please don't argue if Iron Gods is realistic...


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Yet to this day we find new tribes in some remote parts of rain-forest that haven't had any contact to the outside civilization.


DM Sothal wrote:
Yet to this day we find new tribes in some remote parts of rain-forest that haven't had any contact to the outside civilization.

True. But these cultures in Golarion are sitting right next to each other.

And if they did publish some remote uncontacted tribe in some completely isolated area they'd be sure to have some special feat or be a new race that would become the cornerstone of some new build so in the blink of an eye everyone would be playing one in games set continents away from the uncontacted tribe.

I'm sure I don't have to list examples.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

You can actually find a great deal of cultural and societal difference even between countries within the EU.

And as for the Worldwound, we have plenty of evidence of large powerful and influential countries ignoring horrible violence just outside their doorstep, as long as their not directly impacted right now, it's somebody else's problem.

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.

The border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is pretty jarring. So it happens even in real life.

With the added influence of magic, I have no problem whatsoever imagining a "patchwork quilt" world.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Well, firstly, we don't have a Belkzen book yet

This is important because we don't have a lot of information on a lot of places. The reason, as far as I can see, why there isn't interaction and movement between the countries is because Paizo is giving us a starting point and expanding outward from there, giving GMs a place to work from.

So you get your information (however limited) on guns, on crashed spaceships, demonic incursions and so on so that you can run something from there.

Given from the posts I've seen that the devs are working, what, a year in advance on the APs they have to toss these ideas out and see if they work with the masses before deciding on follow up. I imagine that there are lots of areas they'd love to follow up on, and may do so in the future; they just have to balance that with pacifying whichever side of the "I hate/love X" that they are currently offending with X.


Also for all of my arguing it started with the point that it's silly to dislike Iron Gods if you don't also dislike Geb, Nex, Distant Worlds, Ustalav, and all of the other elements that don't make sense given real world demographics. You're playing in a patchwork world, don't get upset when one of the patches is blue.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Magic being a secret seems hard to accept given the nature of secrets and people in general. Unless we're working off Black Company d20 rules or Words of Power magic is predictable and in discrete units. Each time a magical discovery is made and available to the public it works 100% of the time and can be spread infinitely.

Firstly, all I said is that it being kept secret would slow the spread, not stop it. That's happened with real technologies, which are obviously reproducible. Secondly, while the magic is reproducible, only certain people can do so effectively, which makes it a lot easier to keep such things a secret.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
This is doubly important because everyone save barbarians can read and write (even commoners).

PCs of all classes (including Barbarians as previously noted) can read and write...it doesn't necessarily follow that all people can. Still, literacy is indeed pretty common.

That said...it doesn't apply to magic. Deciphering magical writings (which is needed to learn a spell) requires a Spellcraft check, not simple literacy, and that's far less universal. Saying that literacy matters to spreading magical knowledge is like saying that speaking English matters to spreading knowledge of Latin...it just doesn't follow.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Most of the tech problems I'm talking about still concern the practical application of magic and culture to everyday lives rather than non-magical technology. Though the weird technology stasis of the continent in general extends to non-magical technology as well.

What 'magical technologies' aren't universal? There are some areas where spellcasters are more common, certainly, but they aren't more effective than those in other places. That's like having more doctors or engineers one place than another, not a different technological level.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
I thought the Galt revolution had been going on for 70 years. Even so one would expect the modern Galtese to be less French revolutionaries and something far more desperate. The nature of the conflict should have changed over those successive years. It isn't the fact that the conflict is going on that long period that is silly so much the fact that it's method of continuing is static.

It's explicitly 'over 40 years'...so less than 70. And they are pretty desperate in many ways. Check out The Secret of the Rose and Glove for example. That's canonical, and about as close a look as we've gotten at Galt.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
The US only had an attack on its soil once throughout the war. Before the world stone were erected one would assume demons were teleporting all over the place. That sort of trauma should leave lasting scars on nations. Unless demons just don't use their infinitely superior mobility in the war on humans. Hence why I was thinking it comparable. Europe and China in the analogy being people actually at the Worldwound.

Uh...it was 70 years ago that the Wardstones were erected, and according to the Worldwound book the Demons prior to then (for whatever reason) focused almost exclusively on Sarkoris and Mendev. So...no, that's not what happened. And it pretty much has defined the cultures of those places.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
In a ASoIaF you also have far fewer culture groups all of which bleed into each other with plenty of transitional room between the absolutes. In Westeros you had Wildings, Northerners, Southerners, and Dornish. Sure you have subgroups, but you can clearly see how they all influenced each other and where migrations happened.

Uh...you can do the same with Golarion. Ustalav discusses how the Varisians came in and displaced the local Kellids, Brevoy talks about several relevant cultural influences and changes. And so on and so forth.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Garund and Tian Xia are not the problem, or rather it isn't a problem that they are really different than Avistan. The problem are how different yet limited nations right next to each other are. Cheliax as a nation (meaning people self identify as Cheliax not necessarily an independent country) has existed for more than 1600 years. Yet the only concrete societal change we know about them is adopting devil worship and declaring independence from Taldor. Changes that massive should come at least every hundred years. Hell languages usually don't even last that long let alone nations.

Uh...for the first thousand years of that Cheliax was part of Taldor's empire. A province of the Empire. It's only been it's own nation for 700 years or so. And underwent quite a few cultural shifts in that time. They aren't mostly gone into in detail...but that has to do with the game being focused on the modern day of Golarion, not in-depth historical details, not there not being such history.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Don't get me wrong I like Golarion for all its warts and issues. The way I like it though is as a source of really really cool individual ideas rather than as a whole. The whole is too old and too little melting pot for me to take seriously.

I disagree. Rather obviously. :)

Sczarni

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Alex Smith 908 wrote:


Garund and Tian Xia are not the problem, or rather it isn't a problem that they are really different than Avistan. The problem are how different yet limited nations right next to each other are. Cheliax as a nation (meaning people self identify as Cheliax not necessarily an independent country) has existed for more than 1600 years. Yet the only concrete societal change we know about them is adopting devil worship and declaring independence from Taldor. Changes that massive should come at least every hundred years. Hell languages usually don't even last that long let alone nations.
Uh...for the first thousand years of that Cheliax was part of Taldor's empire. A province of the Empire. It's only been it's own nation for 700 years or so. And underwent quite a few cultural shifts in that time. They aren't mostly gone into in detail...but that has to do with the game being focused on the modern day of Golarion, not in-depth historical details, not there not being such history.

4081 AR The Chelish king Aspex the Even-Tongued successfully engineers the independence of Cheliax from Taldor. Between that and today there at least 20 events that have happened that have influenced Chelish society. See the Wiki page for details. These events influence the following countries: Taldor, Isgar, Galt, Absalom, Garund, Nidal, Mothune, Varisia, and Andoran. so in 700 years they have influanced 9 countries to one extent or another, not counting wars that don't have locations mentioned on that page. They have an average of 3 social changes every 100 years, that's 3 times your 1 event every 100 years.


Quote:
Uh...for the first thousand years of that Cheliax was part of Taldor's empire. A province of the Empire. It's only been it's own nation for 700 years or so. And underwent quite a few cultural shifts in that time. They aren't mostly gone into in detail...but that has to do with the game being focused on the modern day of Golarion, not in-depth historical details, not there not being such history.

One thing that I recently learned about this is that Cheliax has moved it's capital at least three times.

Most recently, of course, to Egorian.
Prior to that, it was in Westcrown.
Prior to that it was Ostenso.

That's... a rather significant set of cultural shifts within the last 700 years.

In addition, there is the inclusion of,

Council of Thieves Spoilers!:
... the Council of Thieves as, effectively, a secret part of the government of the capital city of Cheliax (back when the capital city was Westcrown). This represented a tremendously large change in general social structure: the rulers of the thieves not only gained wealth, status, and legitimacy, they became some of the most powerful noble families in Cheliax.

Or the creation of the Hellknights (mind, the Hellknights, despite their name, are not diabolists, and were created before the death of Aroden) in response to monstrous cultist activity that the government was unable or unwilling to assist against.

Or the Even-Tongued Conquest itself, which was a combination of military force and diplomacy cleverly intended to take advantage of a weakened nation unable to fight a major war on two fronts - an act of opportunism that altered Chelish society for some time, but is no longer stylistically evidenced in the culture.

Seriously, though, if you haven't done so, read Westcrown: City of Twilight in Council of Thieves, part 1. There is so much rich and fascinating history in Cheliax revealed in the one city that it actually begins to fall into place in the larger scheme of things.


Cpt_kirstov wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Alex Smith 908 wrote:


Garund and Tian Xia are not the problem, or rather it isn't a problem that they are really different than Avistan. The problem are how different yet limited nations right next to each other are. Cheliax as a nation (meaning people self identify as Cheliax not necessarily an independent country) has existed for more than 1600 years. Yet the only concrete societal change we know about them is adopting devil worship and declaring independence from Taldor. Changes that massive should come at least every hundred years. Hell languages usually don't even last that long let alone nations.
Uh...for the first thousand years of that Cheliax was part of Taldor's empire. A province of the Empire. It's only been it's own nation for 700 years or so. And underwent quite a few cultural shifts in that time. They aren't mostly gone into in detail...but that has to do with the game being focused on the modern day of Golarion, not in-depth historical details, not there not being such history.
4081 AR The Chelish king Aspex the Even-Tongued successfully engineers the independence of Cheliax from Taldor. Between that and today there at least 20 events that have happened that have influenced Chelish society. See the Wiki page for details. These events influence the following countries: Taldor, Isgar, Galt, Absalom, Garund, Nidal, Mothune, Varisia, and Andoran. so in 700 years they have influanced 9 countries to one extent or another, not counting wars that don't have locations mentioned on that page. They have an average of 3 social changes every 100 years, that's 3 times your 1 event every 100 years.

Captain!

Can we at all possibly get a link to the Chelish cities on the Cheliax page? I... didn't see them. (That could be just because I have a poor Perception check.)

Liberty's Edge

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Darned kids and their "real world" examples in my "don't mix fantasy with fantasy" thread. Stay off my lawn!

Sczarni

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Tacticslion wrote:


Captain!

Can we at all possibly get a link to the Chelish cities on the Cheliax page? I... didn't see them. (That could be just because I have a poor Perception check.)

It looks like that page needs a bit of an update to bring it up to date with some of the other countries. But for now the Category:Cheliax/Settlements page should help

Scarab Sages

3 people marked this as a favorite.
HarbinNick wrote:

Unless the lasers create a black hole and turn the planet inside out...

...Next AP theoretical physics: the attack of the atom smasher!

Forget lasers and atom smashers.

I want a Glitterboy.

Silver Crusade

Wiggz wrote:
Lucio wrote:

With the annoucement of the Iron Gods Adventure Path it's begining to feel to me that Paizo are trying to cram every single possible type of campaign world into a single setting. Whilst it's not uncommon for a fantasy world to include several sterotypes such as Norse, Ancient Egypt and Oriental sections, the idea of throwing in aliens (which as an aside is supiciously similar to the Pinnacle Savage Worlds setting Evernight), feels like a step too far.

I am interested to see if others have a similar impressions based on the little information released so far. Should Paizo have kept back these ideas for a seperate campaign world?

This is just my opinion, no more or less valid than anyone else's... but quotes like this from the new 'Technology Guide' terrify me and other classic/high fantasy players like me:

It’s one thing to face a dragon armed with a longsword and a suit of magic plate mail, but what if you had an atom gun and powered armor? How many zombies could you blow up with a rocket launcher? What happens if you’re standing next to a graviton reactor when it explodes?

If we wanted to play Rifts, we would be.

Awe, too bad. Gravitons (gravity wave particles) have always been pure fantasy.

Silver Crusade

captain yesterday wrote:
Fantasy and Science fiction Settings are by their very nature already quite unbelievable:)

Yes, and no.

Pathfinder was designed to accommodate anything you can imagine. That's it's design. Some things will be unbelievable. However, according to the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics there is an infinite number of possibilities; so therefore all fiction is true.


Artanthos wrote:

I want a Glitterboy.

I thought people wanted less anime in Pathfinder.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Wiggz wrote:
It’s one thing to face a dragon armed with a longsword and a suit of magic plate mail, but what if you had an atom gun and powered armor? How many zombies could you blow up with a rocket launcher? What happens if you’re standing next to a graviton reactor when it explodes?

Every time someone quotes this, I keep imagining a dragon wearing a suit of magic plate mail armed with a longsword facing an unarmed fighter... who then whips out an atom gun and is suddenly equipped with power armor. He then uses his rocket launcher on the armored dragon's zombies, but that causes the nearby graviton reactor to explode.

It's... pretty awesome, actually.

Full Disclosure: I've never played Rifts, and have no desire to do so.


Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Artanthos wrote:

I want a Glitterboy.

I thought people wanted less anime in Pathfinder.

People want less non-Tolkien in their Pathfinder, since other people having fun with their non-Western settings ruins the quality of their fantasy apparently.

You're allow to have fun, but only if it's fun accepted by the fantasy fan base. Or else! :p


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Tacticslion wrote:


Every time someone quotes this, I keep imagining a dragon wearing a suit of magic plate mail armed with a longsword facing an unarmed fighter... who then whips out an atom gun and is suddenly equipped with power armor. He then uses his rocket launcher on the armored dragon's zombies, but that causes the nearby graviton reactor to explode.

It's... pretty awesome, actually.

Full Disclosure: I've never played Rifts, and have no desire to do so.

I would play this game.

I also wonder where my out and out Fantasy Western corner of Golarion is...or have I missed that?


Odraude wrote:

People want less non-Tolkien in their Pathfinder, since other people having fun with their non-Western settings ruins the quality of their fantasy apparently.

You're allow to have fun, but only if it's fun accepted by the fantasy fan base. Or else! :p

I was just making a joke about most of RIFTS but the Glitterboy in particular being kind of obvious anime rip-offs/homages (depending on who you ask).


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Odraude wrote:
Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Artanthos wrote:

I want a Glitterboy.

I thought people wanted less anime in Pathfinder.
People want less non-Tolkien in their Pathfinder, since other people having fun with their non-Western settings ruins the quality of their fantasy apparently.

Which is weird, because PF really isn't very Tolkien like. And D&D hasn't been from the very beginning. Sure, they've got the basic races, but that's really about it.

Magic, which pretty much drives everything, doesn't resemble Tolkien at all. Half the core classes (Really all but Fighter, Ranger and Rogue aren't really represented) and probably all the non-core ones aren't anything like Tolkien.

I can't really imagine why anyone who doesn't like anything non-Tolkien would ever have played D&D or PF.


The All Seeing Eye wrote:
Tacticslion wrote:


Every time someone quotes this, I keep imagining a dragon wearing a suit of magic plate mail armed with a longsword facing an unarmed fighter... who then whips out an atom gun and is suddenly equipped with power armor. He then uses his rocket launcher on the armored dragon's zombies, but that causes the nearby graviton reactor to explode.

It's... pretty awesome, actually.

Full Disclosure: I've never played Rifts, and have no desire to do so.

I would play this game.

I also wonder where my out and out Fantasy Western corner of Golarion is...or have I missed that?

If by "Fantasy Western" you mean "John Wayne's Westerns + Magic", the closest would be Alkenstar.

Scarab Sages

Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Artanthos wrote:

I want a Glitterboy.

I thought people wanted less anime in Pathfinder.

Glitterboy is a core rulebook PC option in Rift. A game full of magic, psionics and super science set on a post apocalypse earth.

While full of powered armor and giants robots, very little in the game could be called anime inspired.

*But there conversion rules for Robotech.


I know what Rifts is. I also know what anime the artists and authors were watching that had a huge impact on the look of robots, armor, and vehicles in the game. The glitterboy in particular looks very much like an ipodified Full Armor ZZ Gundam. There are also the mini tanks from Dominion Tank Police and various mechs from Bubble Gum Crisis.

I think I've killed the joke fairly thoroughly through explanation though, if it was every funny to begin with.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I blame me. I'm just in a bad mood.


Deadmanwalking wrote:
Evan Tarlton wrote:
Neongelion wrote:
Jeven wrote:

Suspension of disbelief becomes harder the more it feels like a Disneyland-type theme park.

Many of the nations are so radically different they don't sit well right next door to each other. NE Avistan feels like a mess, with its mixture of C13th-like knights, C19th-like Gothic horror, and barbarians with futuristic weapons strangely ignoring each other despite not being separated by anything more than a river at best. Stepping across a border seems more like stepping into a different world.

I still really like most of the setting up close at a local level, but the big picture feels really odd. So I'm torn between like/dislike.

How is it strange? Most Kellids in Numeria distrust alien technology at best, and destroy it on sight at worst. The Technic League, the organization with a monopoly on the tech from the spaceship, are selfish, highly efficient, ruthless individuals (spellcasters, no less) who will hunt you down to the ends of the earth if you stole a technological item. And the robots of the land do not leave Numeria simply because they were programmed not to (my theory).

Explain this as a GM. If your players still cry "but my suspension of disbelief is still being strained by the mere presence of a crashed starship on my fantasy planet!" then there's no helping them. It doesn't matter if those explanations are realistic or not, it's better than nothing.

The Technic League is also an organization largely composed of paranoid drug addicts, thus further hindering their efficacy. They are their own worst enemies in many ways, and the rest of Golarion is better off for it.
You're severely underestimating the Technic League. There's basically no evidence that they're universally drug addicts. Really, in many ways, they're like a drug cartel. And there's a reason nobody wants to piss off drug cartels. Some members are certainly addicted to their product...others not so much. Plus, they're...

except that the technic league are chaotically aligned and sourcebooks specifically state they are NOT organized.


Artanthos wrote:
HarbinNick wrote:

Unless the lasers create a black hole and turn the planet inside out...

...Next AP theoretical physics: the attack of the atom smasher!

Forget lasers and atom smashers.

I want a Glitterboy.

Booyah!

One of the players in my group is eventually going with this… Starting out as a gun tank. Hopefully pick up big boy guns and ultra heavy mod armor!!

Operated by a Gear Gnome… Should be fun!

Liberty's Edge

Pendagast wrote:
except that the technic league are chaotically aligned

You think drug cartels are Lawful?

Pendagast wrote:
and sourcebooks specifically state they are NOT organized.

Where? There's certainly infighting and such, but I've always got the impression they could manage a fair degree of organization for the purposes of dealing with external threats.


I thought the crashed spaceship has been sitting around Numeria for thousands of years. So I don't really get how a group of barbarians manage to contain it from all the other surrounding nations. Not to mention one Numerian with tech once laid siege to Absalom at the other end of the continent - so the locals are not even staying put in Numeria.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
The All Seeing Eye wrote:
I also wonder where my out and out Fantasy Western corner of Golarion is...or have I missed that?

Taldor has shades of Greece, Rome and Spain, depending on where you look. It gets more overt when dealing with the phalanx fighting armies of the former empire and rondolero duelists, obviously.

The Lands of the Linnorm Kings pretty much have 'fantasy Scandinavia' stamped on their backside.

Galt is post-Terror France.

Ustalav is gothed-up fantasy Eastern Europe by way of Ravenloft.

There's not a perfect analogue for every Western European nation (since they've plopped a devil-worshipper nation into the 'Nazi Germany' role, and a smallish American Revolution into the middle of their 'Europe analogue' and a large mostly undeveloped area (Varisia) as well), but a fair amount of upper Avistan plays along with European themes. Irrisen and Brevoy also follow some Polish / Eastern European / Russian themes pretty closely.

Few of them are as overt a 'port' as Fantasy Asia or Fantasy Persia or Fantasy Egypt might feel to those of us who are less likely to be Asian, Persian or Egyptian and realize how those 'ports' are more fantastic interpretations of our already distorted western perceptions of those cultures, owing as much to Harryhausen movies and whatnot than to the actual cultures, but that's possibly a good thing.

There doesn't happen to be a perfect analogue for *England,* but 'England' isn't 'the West.'

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pendagast wrote:

except that the technic league are chaotically aligned and sourcebooks specifically state they are NOT organized.

That may be true... but we've not yet definitively talked about the details of the Technic League. That is about to change. Comparing them to a drug cartel isn't that far off the mark. They DO have a hierarchy and do have an internal organization, nor are they really universally drug addicts at all. They're actually QUITE efficient, and are, in large part, the reason why there's not technological items spread throughout the Inner Sea region. They control the trade of those items pretty well.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Jeven wrote:
I thought the crashed spaceship has been sitting around Numeria for thousands of years. So I don't really get how a group of barbarians manage to contain it from all the other surrounding nations. Not to mention one Numerian with tech once laid siege to Absalom at the other end of the continent - so the locals are not even staying put in Numeria.

For most of those years, they contained it by burying all of the ruins ages ago and being so agressive that folks never really explored into the depths of the region. Now that the Technic League is in charge of the central heartlands, the secret of what was buried is out, but they're established now and are controlling the flow of technology.

The significant spread of technology in the region in an open way as it is now is a relatively recent development when you take the land's history as a whole; the stuff was buried and forgotten for most of those thousands of years.

In fact, until Karamoss attacked Absalom in 3637, I think it's fair to say very few people knew what was buried up in Numeria at all. That was the event that started the slow growing interest in Numeria from the outside world... and a lot of the timing of that exploration is actually entangled pretty deeply with the backstory to the Iron Gods adventure path.


DM Sothal wrote:
Yet to this day we find new tribes in some remote parts of rain-forest that haven't had any contact to the outside civilization.

Not so much. "No contact with outside civilization" is really impossible in our world, and the trope exists because of sensationalist media reporting. These reports of "lost peoples" are often contested by scholars who work in the areas, and sometimes even revealed as a hoax by journalists. To be quite honest, I would like to see a Golarion sourcebook that addresses the interconnections between what many posters are arguing is a too fractured of a fantasy world. Like our own, there are a lot of cultures and a huge range of technologies. Why not embrace that in Golarion and explore it more fully in a book focused on the trade and contact between cultures and countries?


Odraude wrote:
Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Artanthos wrote:

I want a Glitterboy.

I thought people wanted less anime in Pathfinder.

People want less non-Tolkien in their Pathfinder, since other people having fun with their non-Western settings ruins the quality of their fantasy apparently.

You're allow to have fun, but only if it's fun accepted by the fantasy fan base. Or else! :p

100% AGREED!!!

Wait, did you just--

Ooooooooh, you sly space lion, you!

For the record, I am a HUGE Tolkien fan. Just sayin'.


Graeme Lewis wrote:
The All Seeing Eye wrote:
Tacticslion wrote:


Every time someone quotes this, I keep imagining a dragon wearing a suit of magic plate mail armed with a longsword facing an unarmed fighter... who then whips out an atom gun and is suddenly equipped with power armor. He then uses his rocket launcher on the armored dragon's zombies, but that causes the nearby graviton reactor to explode.

It's... pretty awesome, actually.

Full Disclosure: I've never played Rifts, and have no desire to do so.

I would play this game.

I also wonder where my out and out Fantasy Western corner of Golarion is...or have I missed that?

If by "Fantasy Western" you mean "John Wayne's Westerns + Magic", the closest would be Alkenstar.

Yes this is exactly what I meant...and I had forgotten about Alkenstar though I read about it once or twice I'm sure. But no sourcebook yet...ah well six guns and train robberies will have to wait.


i totslly want to see a perpetually youthful fey race with elements of loligoth fashion/lifestyle choices and minor elemental affinities so i can do something for Touhou, Disgaea, Hyperdimension Neptunia and similar franchises with a lot less homebrewing required. something intellectual and charismatic, amiable and charming, genius Artisans that serve as youthful muses to inspire progress. to accomplish this, i want to see something more "cute yet otherworldly in a creepy yet innocence evoking fashion" and less "sexy buxom seductress". something mostly humanlike in appearance but alien in mindset. not a pedophiles dream race, but something that represents the creepy nature of the fey and is actually more aberrant than a gnome while being nothing resembling a gnome.

Silver Crusade

In short, you want a Sidhe?


GM Elton wrote:
In short, you want a Sidhe?

yeppies, and i want it as a playable race balanced with tieflings, humans, dwarves, and aasimaars


Auren "Rin" Cloudstrider wrote:
something mostly humanlike in appearance but alien in mindset. not a pedophiles dream race, but something that represents the creepy nature of the fey and is actually more aberrant than a gnome while being nothing resembling a gnome.

The closest in my mind to that description would be a PC version of the brownie from Bestiary 2.

The illustration makes them look unsettling.


Cranky Dog wrote:
Auren "Rin" Cloudstrider wrote:
something mostly humanlike in appearance but alien in mindset. not a pedophiles dream race, but something that represents the creepy nature of the fey and is actually more aberrant than a gnome while being nothing resembling a gnome.

The closest in my mind to that description would be a PC version of the brownie from Bestiary 2.

The illustration makes them look unsettling.

medium sized sidhe with youthful features would be a bit more appropriate. something that could pass for a child or young adult of human or half elven descent as a means to escape trouble while being alien, creepy and well, vicious. but definitely a PC race.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pendagast wrote:
except that the technic league are chaotically aligned and sourcebooks specifically state they are NOT organized.

Actually, if you're thinking of what I think you're thinking of, it doesn't say that they're not organized. It's just that they have a little bit of trouble getting into the whole "bureaucracy and division of labor" thing, probably because everybody wants the "good" jobs that are "interesting" and they'd want to shove off responsibility for the "boring" bits onto someone else. They don't have separate divisions... because that would mean someone gets stuck with the equivalent of "Chief Custodian", and none of these powerful, mostly-chaotic arcane casters want that as their title because they're a powerful caster of chaotic alignment, and if you think it's so necessary to have it then you be it. And then there are arguments, the talks about restructuring break down, there's some sniping, someone calls an assassin or two, a couple corpses turn up (which might only be those of assassins), replacement members are appointed as needed, and life goes on. Grudges are probably held for a little while, but then the Black Sovereign has to get talked to again and OK, a-holes, time to figure out what we need to tell this guy. Meeting in fifteen, if you miss it then I guess you don't get to find out what happened. Also you don't get Erioth's cookies, and the dude made those macadamia nut ones this time.


Graeme Lewis wrote:
They don't have separate divisions...

Technically, they sort of do, with the different Captains. However, as the Numeria sourcebook points out in no uncertain terms, any semblance of organisation and military discipline stops at the name, because they're a squabbling and chaotic group who will work together one minute and do their very best to assassinate each other the next.


Jeven wrote:

Suspension of disbelief becomes harder the more it feels like a Disneyland-type theme park.

Many of the nations are so radically different they don't sit well right next door to each other. NE Avistan feels like a mess, with its mixture of C13th-like knights, C19th-like Gothic horror, and barbarians with futuristic weapons strangely ignoring each other despite not being separated by anything more than a river at best. Stepping across a border seems more like stepping into a different world.

I still really like most of the setting up close at a local level, but the big picture feels really odd. So I'm torn between like/dislike.

I believe the 'local level' is the only way to look at a gaming world. What's happening here and now is the most important thing to these characters... not what is happening half a world away. Those are adventures for other people.

If I was running a world of Darkness game set in modern time... Whatever is happening in THAT city is where the focus is. Sure, there may well be massive chaos in Russia or Australia... and there are powerful people doing thing in Romania... but in Chicago??? It really doesn't bother the players or the monsters they're fighting HERE...

Same way with the guns and the laser beams...

If you don't like them... they stay in their in own land. Personally, I have never crossed paths with a rocket launcher or landmine in my real life... doesn't mean they aren't in the real world... just that they don't play a part in MY story.

Forgotten realms had crossovers all worked out with Planescape and Spelljammer back in the day... We used Planescape and we shunned SpellJammer. And Raveloft could be anywhere... even tying into 'earth' with the 1890's setting...

Options are fun :)

I don't want a lot of lore or Canon getting wrapped around the 'questionable' parts... but I like the options of them being there.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

My opinion on genre mixes in Golarion:

If we can have Maasai warriors wandering around with cell phones, or genuine Mongolian yurts with satellite dishes in real life, then stuff like Numeria doesn't even faze me as unbelievable.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Cranky Dog wrote:

My opinion on genre mixes in Golarion:

If we can have Maasai warriors wandering around with cell phones, or genuine Mongolian yurts with satellite dishes in real life, then stuff like Numeria doesn't even faze me as unbelievable.

Pathfinder is a system where Medieval French Knights Run Around with Renaissance Era Plate Armor, Worship Greek Gods, and Wield Persian scimitars, where a native american shaman clad in hides of beasts of the sahara desert and transform into prehistoric dinosaurs, where modern japanese schoolgirls wield a tokugawa era daisho and wear black kabuki stage hand pajamas, where an old man in robes can demasculate the universe by verbally solving complex mathematics while performing gangster gestures, where an anemic little loligoth can be so skilled at puppetry she can make the gods her servants, where cowboys from the wild west wield firearms from the 17th century, and shoot highly advanced robots with modern rounds, all banding together to fight brain eating space aliens, sentient jello, collossal fire breathing flying reptiles, pale sparkly emo teenagers, and reanimated corpses.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

But still not good aligned necromancers.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

You could use the Deathless (I think that is what they are) from Eberron, they are good Lich elves. Might be a basis, plus you can always do whatever you want in your game world.

101 to 150 of 299 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Lost Omens Campaign Setting / General Discussion / Golarion becoming too genre inclusive? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.