Is this campaign going to change Cheliax forever?


Hell's Rebels

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Grand Lodge

I wonder if Hell's Rebel is gonna change he geopolitics of the Inner Sea forever. i know it's still too soon to tell, but ending House Thrune rulership could be a major change in the campaign setting.


I think its only the city of Kintargo and the surrounding region (probably the bit north of the Menador mountains), so the rest of devil-worshiping Cheliax remains intact.

Anyway, its a good spot to add a good-aligned (or at least neutral) nation on the world map. If its that whole Kintargo region then that would make for a country about the size of Isger.


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It sounds like the pact between Thrune and Hell might be broken, which would have pretty huge ramifications for Cheliax.

Contributor

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Since APs never assume that APs have happened, I'd imagine that Hell's Rebels might have huge ramifications for YOUR Cheliax, but not for Cheliax as it stands in the setting.


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Unless its Varisia what happens in an AP stays with that AP:-)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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As with all APs... the events CAN have significant changes but we don't assume those changes become canon just because we publish it. They only become canon in YOUR game once you play the game through.

We've done adventure paths before where...

Spoiler:
... you can close the Worldwound, or change the rulership of regions like Minkai or the Shackles, or discover lost civilizations like Thassilon or Saventh-yhi, etc.

...but these significant events are not assumed to have yet taken place in any other product we publish, for the most part.

We'll have more information about what DOES happen in Hell's Rebels at Paizocon. It's a tricky thing, but it WILL change at LEAST part of the geopolitical elements in your game once you play the AP.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

As an aisde, do you think that you will ever produce an update to the campaign guide which allows for the various APs?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Darrell Impey UK wrote:
As an aisde, do you think that you will ever produce an update to the campaign guide which allows for the various APs?

AKA: Build a different, competing setting that will force customers to choose which version of the world they want and thus give them a built-in reason to stop buying our products that don't directly support the version of the setting they prefer?

That's the road that lead to the disintegration of TSR. Not all that interested in it at this time.

It's much better to not only focus on one "ground zero" at a time for a setting... but also better to maintain that "ground zero" as an equal grounds starting point for newcomers to the setting. And to new writers! It's nightmare fuel to require each new freelancer to keep up with a constant flow of continuity that comes out at the pace we put it out...

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I can live with that. :)

"But", why then advance the current year?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Darrell Impey UK wrote:

I can live with that. :)

"But", why then advance the current year?

Because in one specific campaign's case, the Pathfinder Society, that advance of years matters.

Advancing the years doesn't mean advancing the events, especially since we don't tie any of our adventures or adventure paths to specific years in print really.

Grand Lodge

James Jacobs wrote:

As with all APs... the events CAN have significant changes but we don't assume those changes become canon just because we publish it. They only become canon in YOUR game once you play the game through.

We've done adventure paths before where...
** spoiler omitted **

...but these significant events are not assumed to have yet taken place in any other product we publish, for the most part.

We'll have more information about what DOES happen in Hell's Rebels at Paizocon. It's a tricky thing, but it WILL change at LEAST part of the geopolitical elements in your game once you play the AP.

For a moment I thought the Campaign Setting was gonna a change, just like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance changed with the events of novels or campaigns.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Roger Corbera wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

As with all APs... the events CAN have significant changes but we don't assume those changes become canon just because we publish it. They only become canon in YOUR game once you play the game through.

We've done adventure paths before where...
** spoiler omitted **

...but these significant events are not assumed to have yet taken place in any other product we publish, for the most part.

We'll have more information about what DOES happen in Hell's Rebels at Paizocon. It's a tricky thing, but it WILL change at LEAST part of the geopolitical elements in your game once you play the AP.

For a moment I thought the Campaign Setting was gonna a change, just like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance changed with the events of novels or campaigns.

The way the D&D campaigns constantly update like that is kind of the exact opposite method of what we use for Golarion, in fact.


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I love that about Pathfinder:)


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So Golarian is like the 40th Millennium. It's a snapshot in time before big events start happening.

Liberty's Edge

Just like RuneScape . . .


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James Jacobs wrote:
Roger Corbera wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

As with all APs... the events CAN have significant changes but we don't assume those changes become canon just because we publish it. They only become canon in YOUR game once you play the game through.

We've done adventure paths before where...
** spoiler omitted **

...but these significant events are not assumed to have yet taken place in any other product we publish, for the most part.

We'll have more information about what DOES happen in Hell's Rebels at Paizocon. It's a tricky thing, but it WILL change at LEAST part of the geopolitical elements in your game once you play the AP.

For a moment I thought the Campaign Setting was gonna a change, just like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance changed with the events of novels or campaigns.
The way the D&D campaigns constantly update like that is kind of the exact opposite method of what we use for Golarion, in fact.

While I have no problem with this - I also want to chime in with a positive note about having Adventure Paths that have ties to previous events in other AP's.

I liked how Shattered Star builds on things without being obvious - and I vote 100% for continued efforts to have easter eggs, references, and casual winks and nods to people who may have played another AP tossed in - so far you have done an outstanding job of that.

The Exchange

James Jacobs wrote:
It's nightmare fuel to require each new freelancer to keep up with a constant flow of continuity that comes out at the pace we put it out...

I have to admit that I'm a strong proponent for an ongoing continuity in a campaign setting as it has been done with the Realms (before the 100-year-time-leap at least). Reason being that in my opinion,for a campaign world to feel dynamic, there has to be change in those regions not visited by the players as well. And as I have not the time to write it all by myself, i kinda depend on the designers to do it for me.

The pace you put material out obviously helps to alleviate the problem I have with the Paizo approach. I can't use all the material at the game table anyways so I have a lot of stuff to use for creating an ongoing continuity by myself.

Still I don't think that creating settings with an ongoing continuity is the same as bulding a "different, competing" setting which forces customers to chose between. I'd guess that at this time a newcomer would rather start with the Giantslayer AP, not with RotRL (or better, CotCT for which there's no Hardcover available), so it doesn't matter too much for him which outcome you define for those events in an updated Campaign Setting product. And (that goes for new and old players alike) if he wants to run older material he can easily decide if he wants to run the AP in the time for which it was written or if he wants to slightly change the setting canon to allow the events to run its course at the settings present.

I know that a lot of realms fans (myself included) consider the 4E version of the realms as a different setting compared to the pre-4E version. But that's because the one-hundred year time leap broke the continuity and forced the players to decide at which time they wanted to play (with the spellplague cataclysm adding to the contionuity breach).

But I don't think that the former realms approach (advancing the setting time for two years in around five years real time) was to hard to stomach for the realms fans and wouldn't be too hard to stomach for Golarion fans either. So I would at least suggest to think about advancing the continuity when you'll sometime decide to publish Pathfinder 2nd edition


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I love the 3rd edition forgotten realms setting, I absolutely hated trying to keep up with the advancing the timeline bit they had going on, I can't imagine being a writer for it and trying to keep up with it, that's gotta have an effect on the quality of the writing

The Exchange

I think that part of the problem (which could easily be omitted by Paizo) with the realms was that a lot of the advancing came via novels instead of actual rpg products. I also think that with things like the golarion wiki, that it would be much easier to keep up with the change than it was for the realms writers who had to spent a lot of time sifting through the various sources.

But I also can accept to be the One-Man-Minority regarding this topic. It's just that I fear that as with other settings, that Golarion will eventually start to feel a bit stale without some fresh air breathed into it. And I would hate Paizo trying to pull the same stunt the wizards did with the realms (or even worse, just republish the same stuff for a new edition).


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I very much doubt and hope a 2nd edition of pathfinder is coming soon, and I'm quite opposed to Adventure Paths happening in real time, I'll probably keep getting the APs, but the campaign setting line would be rendered useless to me


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I'll just chime in as a writer: while the reader has the right not to buy a writer's book, he or she has no right to insist that X happen in the book. Ultimately, it is the writer's story. You might disagree with what happens... but as I said, as a reader you can express this disdain by not buying the books.

We as customers of Paizo can choose not to buy more products based in Golarion. Some people actually use their own campaign setting and just edit in the APs to work in their own world. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Your campaign world is your own, and you can do whatever you want.

But as Paizo pointed out, if Paizo said (for instance) "the demons won at the Worldwound and things are going south fast" as the official line... a lot of people would be upset. There would be plenty of people who'd say "I disagree with this and I'm not going to use it in my game!"

Seeing they have a lot of the world left to map out, and plenty of regions to have APs in? They don't need to advance the timeline. And as the "writers" for Golarion, that is their right to go that route. As a customer, if you don't like it you can buy another product. However, ultimately does NOT advancing the timeline actually hurt the product? Because I don't see anything suggesting it does, and Paizo has evidence showing that advancing the timeline as Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk did would cause some problems.


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Stupid autocorrect on my phone turned an Isn't into an Is :(

Very well said Tangent :-)

And just to reiterate, I don't want or need pathfinder 2.0 :-)

The Exchange

Tangent101 wrote:
And as the "writers" for Golarion, that is their right to go that route.

I don't think that I denied them anything by just expressing my wishes. Neither did I insist on anything. I just expressed which kind of change in Paizo's setting policy would make their material much more valuable to me.

Because as it stands, I already peruse their adventures in other settings meaning that the setting material is not as interesting to me as it would be if I actually played in Golarion. Which already cost them part of my money-

Quote:
However, ultimately does NOT advancing the timeline actually hurt the product?

Probably. You're right that there's still much to do and to explore. On the other hand, it will get harder and harder to start a new AP in Varisia. And how many Rebel APs can they start in Cheliax without eventually removing House Thrune and the devils from the political landscape?

Also, your Worldwound argument has another side: The Worldwound has probably been closed at the end of the WotR-AP by quite some adventure groups. What use would they have for any kind of new "Worldwound AP"?

So with not advancing the timeline they limit their possibilities with every new AP they crank out. May be a long time 'til this hurts the product (I certainly hope so), but eventually it will. Though I trust that Paizo will act accordingly should this time come.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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WormysQueue wrote:

So with not advancing the timeline they limit their possibilities with every new AP they crank out. May be a long time 'til this hurts the product (I certainly hope so), but eventually it will. Though I trust that Paizo will act accordingly should this time come.

Not advancing the timeline does NOT prevent us from doing this type of product. In fact, we DID just this, with Shattered Star, an AP that assumes Rise of the Runelords, Crimson Throne, and Second Darkness have all taken place. If we wanted to do a sequel to Wrath of the Righteous that explored the world after the closure of the Worldwound, we absolutely could do this without hard-coding a timeline advancement into every product.

In the meantime, we've got a LOT of other stories we want to tell that don't require timeline advancement at all.

President, Jon Brazer Enterprises

The sequel AP: The vacuum of power and the warlords that stand up to take their place. Its a cross between Kingmaker and Assassin's Creed.

Just saying.


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Dale McCoy Jr wrote:

The sequel AP: The vacuum of power and the warlords that stand up to take their place. Its a cross between Kingmaker and Assassin's Creed.

Just saying.

Why that sounds like..... Galt!!

Just saying:-D

The Exchange

James Jacobs wrote:
Not advancing the timeline does NOT prevent us from doing this type of product. In fact, we DID just this, with Shattered Star, an AP that assumes Rise of the Runelords, Crimson Throne, and Second Darkness have all taken place. If we wanted to do a sequel to Wrath of the Righteous that explored the world after the closure of the Worldwound, we absolutely could do this without hard-coding a timeline advancement into every product.

To be honest, that's enough for me. Because that's what I call advancing the timeline already. More of that, please ^^

Though I don't quite get what's the big difference between assuming an outcome of WotR to advance the timeline and assuming the same outcome to create a sequel to WotR. I was told by Tangent101 that a lot of people would be upset in the first case. If this is true, they would also be upset by you publishing said sequel. If not more because in the first case, they would probably only have to ignore a sentence in a setting product, but in the second case, they would have to ignore a whole AP.

Quote:
In the meantime, we've got a LOT of other stories we want to tell that don't require timeline advancement at all.

Oh, that I'm sure about. And as said before, the more stories you tell the more stuff I have to build my own continuity.

But I still don't buy the argument that it was the continuous advancement of the timeline which hurt other settings. That had much more to do with creating new versions of a given setting via stupid world-shaking events and thereby creating a rift between the fans of said setting. Greyhawk suffered as much from the Greyhawk Wars than the Realms suffered from the Spellplague combined with a one-hundred-year time leap. On the other hand, the 3e Realms is a perfect example, how you can advance the timeline without alienating the fans.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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WormysQueue wrote:
But I still don't buy the argument that it was the continuous advancement of the timeline which hurt other settings. That had much more to do with creating new versions of a given setting via stupid world-shaking events and thereby creating a rift between the fans of said setting. Greyhawk suffered as much from the Greyhawk Wars than the Realms suffered from the Spellplague combined with a one-hundred-year time leap. On the other hand, the 3e Realms is a perfect example, how you can advance the timeline without alienating the fans.

The problem is one of the implied buy-in to join the game. If everything we published built on itself and added to the world's timeline, then in order to fully appreciate and understand a product, you would be under the assumption (and rightly so) that you would need to buy and read everything that came before. Suddenly, the "get to know Golarion" prospect goes from one book (the Inner Sea World Guide) to EVERY book... and that increases by 2 or more books every single month.

Not only does that make it increasingly daunting for a newcomer to Golarion... it makes it increasingly impossible for a new writer to come in.

By keeping things static, we basically ensure that anyone, be they a new gamer or a new writer, can hit the ground in Golarion with only the Inner Sea World Guide and not be months or years behind schedule. Yes, there are plenty of other details in our other products that add to the setting, but since the timeline isn't hardcoded in as advancing, the newcomer can pick and choose what elements to focus interest in.

There's a second, equally important reason we don't advance the timeline, and that's because we don't want to self-obsolete our products. Kingmaker remains as viable an adventure path to play today as it did the day it was published, but if we'd advanced timelines, then the implication would be that you could ONLY play the adventure paths in the order they were published. That's not good for the brand, not good for Paizo, and not good for groups who might want to play the APs in an order of their own choosing.

President, Jon Brazer Enterprises

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To expand on what James is saying, White Wolf did this in the 90's with the oWoD. People loved it because it was a single story that kept advancing and getting deeper and deeper. It was also hard for White Wolf to keep doing because they kept building to a single event and, eventually, had to deliver on that (which it finally did). The next book had to have writers that were intimately familiar with everything that came before instead of a single core setting book. As time went on, that got harder and harder. Eventually, they abandoned the continuous overplot idea and go with a plotless version. It made life much simpler for them for them as a company and easier on freelance writers.

IMO, Paizo's model of static setting + overplot that last 6 months is the best compromise between the two.

Silver Crusade Contributor

I have noticed that stuff from the very first Paths has been slipping into setting material. Common knowledge of Thassilon, the existence of Grey Maidens, greater awareness of drow and certain Second Darkness spoilers; all seem to be popping up.

So a little bit of "setting progression" is sneaking in. :)


That's a good point Kalindlara. IIRC, the baseline is that elves that have heard of drow mostly don't believe in them and that non-elves have never even heard of them and so don't have an opinion. Yet there are drow and half-drow options in a wide variety of books.

For the most part, I'm happy enough with the setting being static. Advancing the in-universe date in lockstep with the actual date does make that problematic though. Situations that are on the verge of causing major changes in early products remain unchanged in products that are set several years later.


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captain yesterday wrote:
Dale McCoy Jr wrote:

The sequel AP: The vacuum of power and the warlords that stand up to take their place. Its a cross between Kingmaker and Assassin's Creed.

Just saying.

Why that sounds like..... Galt!!

Just saying:-D

*quietly rolls up a newspaper*

*swats captain yesterday*

NO GALT FOR YOU!!!

That is all. =^-^=


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I prefer a static setting, maybe with some revelations of mysteries as things go on. It's just way too fatiguing to try and keep track of everything that's happening.

And static situations make it possible for GMs to do their thing without worrying about it all being invalidated by a change to the setting.


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tonyz wrote:

And static situations make it possible for GMs to do their thing without worrying about it all being invalidated by a change to the setting.

That was always my problem. I'd end up coming up with my own canon only to have to readjust and rewrite everything when the updated editions would come out.

Liberty's Edge

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I'm sure an individual anecdote is next to useless, but I just wanted to say that I had no problem moving from 1e to 2e to 3e Forgotten Realms -- and in fact adored the progression and it was a big part in making that my favorite fantasy setting as it grew along with me -- but the leap to 4e was done in all the wrong ways. 1e-2e-3e did not create competing settings, because the change was so gradual and organic, but the 4e leap did, with the massive time jump and so sweeping changes.

The Exchange

James Jacobs wrote:
If everything we published built on itself and added to the world's timeline,...

While I agree with this, this isn't exactly what I talked about. The first three APs have nothing to do with each other (apart from all three detailing a different part of Varisia. And they don't need to. But why should someone suddenly assume the contrary just because you would add dates to the APs (i.e. RotRL takes place in 4708, CotC in 4709 and SD in 4710? Even if you had added some nods to former APs in the later ones, it would be easy enough to just ignore them if you wanted to rearrange the APs and run them in a different order.

Also it wouldn't increase the (real or implied) buy-in. You'd still needn't to know about the Runelords, just to understand what happens in Korvosa and/or Riddleport.

What it would do for me though, is create the feeling that the world progresses in time and that my and my players actions have consequences in the world, while in a static world they haven't (because at the end, we'll just return in time and start somewhere else from anew). At the moment, it doesn't matter one bit if my group beat Karzoug or not, because the setting won't change a bit.

Now I can advance the timeline easily enough by myself, so I've no problem to accept if you don't want to. And if you reread my first post regarding this topic, I surely didn't insist on it. It's just that i firmly believe that cautiously advancing the timeline wouldn't hurt the product one bit and I don't see any evidence to assume otherwise.

But then I'm from Germany and the most successful Campaign Setting here has probably more Metaplot than all D&D Settings combined. :D


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WormysQueue wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
If everything we published built on itself and added to the world's timeline,...

While I agree with this, this isn't exactly what I talked about. The first three APs have nothing to do with each other (apart from all three detailing a different part of Varisia. And they don't need to. But why should someone suddenly assume the contrary just because you would add dates to the APs (i.e. RotRL takes place in 4708, CotC in 4709 and SD in 4710? Even if you had added some nods to former APs in the later ones, it would be easy enough to just ignore them if you wanted to rearrange the APs and run them in a different order.

Also it wouldn't increase the (real or implied) buy-in. You'd still needn't to know about the Runelords, just to understand what happens in Korvosa and/or Riddleport.

What it would do for me though, is create the feeling that the world progresses in time and that my and my players actions have consequences in the world, while in a static world they haven't (because at the end, we'll just return in time and start somewhere else from anew). At the moment, it doesn't matter one bit if my group beat Karzoug or not, because the setting won't change a bit.

It still wouldn't matter whether your group beat Karzoug or not, since Paizo wouldn't have the faintest clue whether your group had beaten him or failed or that you'd run it in the first place.

Mind you, in SS it is assumed that RotRL has happened and someone was successful in stopping Karzoug. They do this when it makes sense for a later AP.
But they don't in general change the basic setting to match what happens in APs. Most don't actually require much, even if they assume they happened and the adventurers were successful. Some would be more problematic: Should they publish information about the new Kingdom in the River Kingdoms? That's pretty much guaranteed not to mesh well with any individual Kingmaker campaign.

I think it's usually easier to add in any thing that might have been affected by adventures your group has run than to have them make assumptions and have to edit stuff out. Possibly after the fact, if you only decide later to run an earlier AP.

Personally I think they're doing a good job of running a fine line between a completely static world and having a metaplot that dominates anything individual home campaigns might do.

Silver Crusade Contributor

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Also, technically, there is a semi-sequential link in the first two Adventure Paths...

Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne:
In the Skinsaw Murders, look at who Xanesha is selling the rats to. I believe Seven Days to the Grave makes the link to Vorel's phage explicit, as does one of the setting's more recent campaign traits.

Other than that, thejeff is on the money. :)

The Exchange

thejeff wrote:
Mind you, in SS it is assumed that RotRL has happened and someone was successful in stopping Karzoug. They do this when it makes sense for a later AP.

Well, and did you hear any cry-outs from those fans in whose campaigns Karzoug had won? I surely didn't though that may have to do with the fact that this didn't happen very often (and when it happened was much rather viewed as a loss for the PCs than as a probable gain for the setting).

I'm not arrogant enough to think that Paizo should rather do nothing instead of doing something which negates the outcome of my campaigns. Because that could easily happen even within the frame of their actual setting policy.

Let's just assume that in my CoT campaign, events had developed so that House Thrune had been actually overthrown and Cheliax had been freed from the devilish influence. Should I now cry foul because in Hell's Rebells House Thrune is still alive and flourishing? Obviously not because I cannot expect Paizo to consider the individual development of my home campaign.

Don't get me wrong: I'm totally fine with that. On the other hand that's exactly the argument I get to hear by other players why they shouldn't advance the timeline: Because they had to consider the development of the player's home campaigns. Kind of hypocritical, isn't it?

Other reasons James told me I can get behind. And naturally it's Paizo's prerogative how to develop their setting. At least I get a lot of quality material no matter what, and can do with it what I want.

The rest is a matter of taste: I'd actually love to run an AP about what happened after Karzoug's victory, after the closure of the Worldwound or after the Fall of House Thrune. Hell's Rebels also sound promising, but yeah, I'd be more excited about such an "What if"-AP.

Because if I have to write it myself, it won't be nearly as good as if written by the Paizo gang.


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WormysQueue wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Mind you, in SS it is assumed that RotRL has happened and someone was successful in stopping Karzoug. They do this when it makes sense for a later AP.

Well, and did you hear any cry-outs from those fans in whose campaigns Karzoug had won? I surely didn't though that may have to do with the fact that this didn't happen very often (and when it happened was much rather viewed as a loss for the PCs than as a probable gain for the setting).

I'm not arrogant enough to think that Paizo should rather do nothing instead of doing something which negates the outcome of my campaigns. Because that could easily happen even within the frame of their actual setting policy.

Let's just assume that in my CoT campaign, events had developed so that House Thrune had been actually overthrown and Cheliax had been freed from the devilish influence. Should I now cry foul because in Hell's Rebells House Thrune is still alive and flourishing? Obviously not because I cannot expect Paizo to consider the individual development of my home campaign.

Don't get me wrong: I'm totally fine with that. On the other hand that's exactly the argument I get to hear by other players why they shouldn't advance the timeline: Because they had to consider the development of the player's home campaigns. Kind of hypocritical, isn't it?

Other reasons James told me I can get behind. And naturally it's Paizo's prerogative how to develop their setting. At least I get a lot of quality material no matter what, and can do with it what I want.

The rest is a matter of taste: I'd actually love to run an AP about what happened after Karzoug's victory, after the closure of the Worldwound or after the Fall of House Thrune. Hell's Rebels also sound promising, but yeah, I'd be more excited about such an "What if"-AP.

Because if I have to write it myself, it won't be nearly as good as if written by the Paizo gang.

The difference I think is that they do it when they want to use the results for something, rather than defining what "really" happened in every AP & adventure. That minimizes the conflicts and still leaves them free to use the results if they want to.

I doubt they'll do "What if" APs though.


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Kalindlara wrote:

Also, technically, there is a semi-sequential link in the first two Adventure Paths...

** spoiler omitted **

Other than that, thejeff is on the money. :)

and let us not forget the Entwined Succubi statues the are riddled through all the APs, or the fact that a major NPC from CotCT shows up in Carrion Crown, or even the one that shows up in both Carrion Crown and Council of Thieves, did i mention the small tie-in between RotRL, Jade Regent and Council of Thieves, etc, etc.

the continuity is there its just better utilized and hidden then Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance did, consider those two as trailblazers on what not to do with continuity:-)


James Jacobs wrote:
WormysQueue wrote:
But I still don't buy the argument that it was the continuous advancement of the timeline which hurt other settings. That had much more to do with creating new versions of a given setting via stupid world-shaking events and thereby creating a rift between the fans of said setting. Greyhawk suffered as much from the Greyhawk Wars than the Realms suffered from the Spellplague combined with a one-hundred-year time leap. On the other hand, the 3e Realms is a perfect example, how you can advance the timeline without alienating the fans.

The problem is one of the implied buy-in to join the game. If everything we published built on itself and added to the world's timeline, then in order to fully appreciate and understand a product, you would be under the assumption (and rightly so) that you would need to buy and read everything that came before. Suddenly, the "get to know Golarion" prospect goes from one book (the Inner Sea World Guide) to EVERY book... and that increases by 2 or more books every single month.

Not only does that make it increasingly daunting for a newcomer to Golarion... it makes it increasingly impossible for a new writer to come in.

By keeping things static, we basically ensure that anyone, be they a new gamer or a new writer, can hit the ground in Golarion with only the Inner Sea World Guide and not be months or years behind schedule. Yes, there are plenty of other details in our other products that add to the setting, but since the timeline isn't hardcoded in as advancing, the newcomer can pick and choose what elements to focus interest in.

There's a second, equally important reason we don't advance the timeline, and that's because we don't want to self-obsolete our products. Kingmaker remains as viable an adventure path to play today as it did the day it was published, but if we'd advanced timelines, then the implication would be that you could ONLY play the adventure paths in the order they were published. That's not good for the brand, not good for...

If it works for Warhammer 40000...

The Exchange

thejeff wrote:
I doubt they'll do "What if" APs though.

Yeah me too, that's why I'd prefer Paizo to do them as "advancing the timeline"-APs.

Alas, that won't happen either.


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It has and maybe will again, just not as much sweeping change as you want, which is a little odd considering you said that was the problem Forgotten Realms had...

The Exchange

captain yesterday wrote:
It has and maybe will again, just not as much sweeping change as you want, which is a little odd considering you said that was the problem Forgotten Realms had...

Let me clarify: What I see as problems with the Realms approach is the Advancement of the Timeline through the novels on the one hand (because players had no active part in it, which was especially bad because of all those world shaking events), and through the destruction of the continuity via the 100-year time leap.

But before that, I'm with Samy in that the time progression from first to second and third edition didn't really cause problems for anyone because even with the often critizised Time of Trouble, the Realms developed without changing too much.
The thing is that in the Realms I could run a Campaign in Tethyr (or elsewhere) over several years of setting time without the world around the players being frozen in time. There were events happening elsewhere which I could use to show my players that the world kept turning even without their direct influence.

Now I can do the same in Golarion as long as I stay in 4708 AR, because all those APs happen at the same time (let's not think too hard about if this is even realistic). But as soon as I let time progress in my version of Golarion, I've no information whatsoever about the state of things in let's say 4710. As I said before, I can rearrange the material as I like, but then it's me who's breaking the canon. No real problem because that's what I did with every setting I've run 'til today.

But what angers me a tiny little bit in this discussion is that it's obviously totally ok for most of the participants if I am forced to do this because of the approach Paizo takes, but if others would be forced to do modifcations because of another possible approach, then it would suddenly und supposedly "hurt" the product.


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WormysQueue wrote:
As I said before, I can rearrange the material as I like, but then it's me who's breaking the canon.

Except you're not breaking canon because you're creating it . . . by playing the game. That's one of the beautiful things about how Paizo does this. They give you all the backdrop details. All those little intricacies about what could be going on here and here and here and there and over there. They don't give you the storyline of the whole world past a point (4708, as you stated). Thus, everything that happens beyond 4708 in your games is canon!

I usually play different APs with different years as the starting time. Our Runelords game was in 4709; Serpent's Skull in 4710; Kingmaker also in 4710 and has progressed into 4714. As we continue playing new APs, the events from those APs has taken place, and the results are canon in my world. There's continuity there that's beautiful because we made it! My players like that a lot too! It's fun for them to hear about stuff their old characters have already done and how that changed the world someplace else.

In Forgotten Realms (the world I ran for nigh 15 years between the mid-90s to 2010), the continuity often got in the way for my players because I was the only one keeping up on it as GM. They would construct character stories from stuff they'd learned in past campaigns, to which I would tell them repeatedly, "No, no, see that's changed because of such-and-such who wrote a book about it." It aggravated them a great deal.

No such problem in Pathfinder! Everyone is much happier in my crew!

I love advancing continuity! I just love when my players are the ones doing it and not necessarily a plethora of writers and developers for the company.


James Jacobs wrote:
WormysQueue wrote:
But I still don't buy the argument that it was the continuous advancement of the timeline which hurt other settings. That had much more to do with creating new versions of a given setting via stupid world-shaking events and thereby creating a rift between the fans of said setting. Greyhawk suffered as much from the Greyhawk Wars than the Realms suffered from the Spellplague combined with a one-hundred-year time leap. On the other hand, the 3e Realms is a perfect example, how you can advance the timeline without alienating the fans.

The problem is one of the implied buy-in to join the game. If everything we published built on itself and added to the world's timeline, then in order to fully appreciate and understand a product, you would be under the assumption (and rightly so) that you would need to buy and read everything that came before. Suddenly, the "get to know Golarion" prospect goes from one book (the Inner Sea World Guide) to EVERY book... and that increases by 2 or more books every single month.

Not only does that make it increasingly daunting for a newcomer to Golarion... it makes it increasingly impossible for a new writer to come in.

By keeping things static, we basically ensure that anyone, be they a new gamer or a new writer, can hit the ground in Golarion with only the Inner Sea World Guide and not be months or years behind schedule. Yes, there are plenty of other details in our other products that add to the setting, but since the timeline isn't hardcoded in as advancing, the newcomer can pick and choose what elements to focus interest in.

There's a second, equally important reason we don't advance the timeline, and that's because we don't want to self-obsolete our products. Kingmaker remains as viable an adventure path to play today as it did the day it was published, but if we'd advanced timelines, then the implication would be that you could ONLY play the adventure paths in the order they were published. That's not good for the brand, not good for...

Yeah this is one of the reasons that I love Golarion and HATE, HATE, HATE The Forgotten Realms. The Metaplots and all of the continuity and the implied need to have to read or study the entirely of the realms and all of the NPC's and UGH.

I like that Golarion is defined not by events crafted by fiction novels but by the adventures that you can actually take or leave. and being that I've been an AP subscriber from the beginning obviously I'm taking.

But yeah please dont go down the route that TSR / WOTC did with FR. That would be the PATH OF SUCK.

The Exchange

Sub-Creator wrote:
They would construct character stories from stuff they'd learned in past campaigns, to which I would tell them repeatedly, "No, no, see that's changed because of such-and-such who wrote a book about it." It aggravated them a great deal.

Hm, that's what I never did. As in Golarion, OUR Realms canon was defined by what happened in our games not by what was written in any book about it. So when some contradicting information was published in the official material, I had to adapt it to fit in our canon or to ignore it, if I didn't like it. That's basically the same thing that I'm doing with new Golarion publications, so there's no difference in this respect.

Also, most of the new material was about regions we never even played in, so it didn't antagonize what was established in our campaign. What it did for us though was to show us that the world moved even without our direct input, because other things were happening everywhere. So it didn't matter if we moved through time because the world moved with us.

In Golarion, I'm basically doing the same thing you do, in that RotRL started in 4708 and while playing I used snippets from CotCT to foreshadow the events of our next campaign, which would start in 4710. And as said before, I use the material I do not use for actual play to rearrange it to my likings and thereby showing my players what happens elsewhere in the world.

So it's not that I need Paizo to do this for me. Problem being that there's no historical development of the setting apart from that we create in our game or that I invent by myself.. So we are still moving, but the world is basically standing still except in those regions we're playing in. That's where official material would come in handy.


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The thing is, only one of Golarion's APs has a specific date to run on - Reign of Winter. You can have any of these APs happen when you want to and Paizo intends it that way. That is one of the benefits of the ambiguity of Golarion's timeline. A GM could choose that Second Darkness happened before Runelords and thus the world knows Drow exist. Or they could have Second Darkness never have happened and thus the dark-skinned elves are unknown outside of some elvish groups.


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Oh come on!
Now you're just going around in circles

Repeating the same thing with different words isn't going to make Golarion Forgotten Realms 2.0

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