Making Golarion "Yours"


Homebrew and House Rules

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WormysQueue wrote:
phantom1592 wrote:
I've heard they don't do that TOO much... Shattered Star is a sorta-sequel to Rise of the Runelords... but beyond that, whatever APs you play you play and the ones you don't... you don't. Everyone's continuity is meant to be their own and their novels stories don't bleed over too much.

That's actually another pet peeve of mine, that they decided to go without a continual progression of time and a metaplot. Now we don't need to recount all their reasons for that, I've already had this discussion.

But again, the consequence is, that I have to do the work for myself. And I decided rather to work on my own setting, which has the advantage that I can steal all the awesome Golarion stuff while simply ignoring those parts I do not really care for. Though in the meantime it has become less stealing and more getting inspired.

I don't see how that is any different though?

I mean.. we do the same thing playing in Golarion and running APs. There are 19 APs either out or announced... we have 4 or 5 that are a part of our continuity, with another about to start.

I've never really heard anyone in favor of metaplot bleeding into their own games whether they played/read it or not... and I've heard a lot of people that HATED it in Forgotten Realms and Old World of Darkness...


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Oh! Oh! I'm one of those people. :-)

The Exchange

phantom1592 wrote:
I don't see how that is any different though?

It's not necessarily different from doing the same in Golarion. It's just that I have more creative control when using my own setting. And that I don't have to explain any changes I make to my players. Apart from that, while I think Golarion is a great setting, I'm still a big Realms and Eberron fan and I have a lot of fun with converting the APs into those settings. IF Golarion had a continuous timeline and/or a metaplot it would be a no-brainer for me which setting to use. But as it stands, it hasn't this advantage.

Quote:
I've never really heard anyone in favor of metaplot bleeding into their own games whether they played/read it or not... and I've heard a lot of people that HATED it in Forgotten Realms and Old World of Darkness...

Well, The Dark Eye ( the most successful RPG here in Germany) thrives on metaplot. And I also heard a lot of people who loved this in the Realms (don't know about WoD) and were quite annoyed when WotC decided to put an end to it.

And what it does to me is just that it allows me to present my players a dynamic world that changes even without their direct influence. For example, the Dark Eye knows the "Aventurischer Bote", an ingame newspaper which you can get in actual newspaper format to present to your players as an ingame prop. I think it's an awesome way to remind the players, that the rest of the world doesn't stand still while they are adventuring elsewhere.

And yeah, again, I could simulate this in Golarion, so this is more a matter of my personal preference than me saying that with Golarion, I can't do that.

Dark Archive

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Yeah, I was also not a big fan of metaplot. Having crap like the god your 4 year running campaign Cleric worships (Lleira) having been ganked off-screen by some new mortal-turned-god from the novels you didn't read pissed me off, since it means she never got a specialty priest or anything. Similarly, it pretty much wrecked White Wolf, which was at one time the second biggest RPG company, as they rebooted their entire line post-apocalypse, with an, IMO, inferior version of what they'd just destroyed.

Given how annoyed people are that Aroden, a setting element that none of us have ever even gotten to play with, is off-limits, I can't imagine how much more annoying it would be if they had a metaplot and entire countries or races or classes changed overnight (because of storyline X, Cheliax has been liberated! because of storyline Y, Kaer Maga has been destroyed! because of storyline Z, all Magus' are now spontaneous psychic casters!).

The Exchange

Set wrote:
Given how annoyed people are that Aroden, a setting element that none of us have ever even gotten to play with, is off-limits, I can't imagine how much more annoying it would be if they had a metaplot and entire countries or races or classes changed overnight (because of storyline X, Cheliax has been liberated! because of storyline Y, Kaer Maga has been destroyed! because of storyline Z, all Magus' are now spontaneous psychic casters!).

Not at all, in fact. First, the mere existence of a metaplot doesn't force you to do anything, it just adds another option to choose (or decide against). The worst thing that can happen is, that you can't use it, which is the same we now have with Golarion, just that I have no choice in this case at all. You don't like Lleira's death? Well, don't let it happen and create your own specialty priest. It's the exact same thing I have to to, when I don't want Aroden to be actually dead. Or, just stay in the time before Lleira's death, which again, is basically the same as playing in official Golarion.

Second, no one says that Paizo had to do it the TSR/WotC way and accumulate a stupid amount of world shattering events. You can change a world much more gradually without invalidating player choices all the time. And you don't have to let those WSEs happen off screen. I would expect such storylines being part of an AP (and remember how many people where actually disappointed that the Cot-AP was not about the liberation of Cheliax? It's not as I'm the only one here).

Third, I'd rather have even substantial change than no change at all. I'm much more annoyed by a great setting I actually would love to play in already feeling stale, boring and meaningless to me. I'd rather have the designers liberating Cheliax (and then inventing new threats) than already knowing that in the meantime we have the third Cheliax-AP whose outcome will have zero influence on the setting as a whole.

And fourth, not changing the setting doesn't even help with the problems that could arise by doing it. Because if I decide to change a setting element in my home game (making Golarion my own, so to say), chances are, that eventually there will come a module or an AP making use of exactly the element I changed. Which means I would have to rework said module or AP anyway if I still want to use it.

But I'm preaching on a lost cause I guess. And as said before it doesn't stop me from using Paizo products, it just stops me from using them with the setting they were written for.

Grand Lodge

So far I have only made minor adjustments to Golarion as written, changes in flavor to support the atmosphere my campaign. For example, Ameiko at the Rusty Dragon is Sandpoint buys monster meat from adventurers and has an experimental dish ready every month for patrons to try out.

Creatures and NPCs are not bags of experience points in my setting. Those that have intelligence and are capable of reasoning can be reasoned with. The Seven Tooth Goblins, for example, asked the player characters to do something about the baddies who kicked the tribe out of their cave home. The player characters did that with gusto and now the Seven Tooth Goblins are grateful to them and afraid of them for their destructiveness.

Creatures and NPCs in my campaign can be pragmatic, which means their alignments tend toward Neutral. For example, the Kobold miners are Lawful Neutral with Evil tendencies. They know if they attack Sandpoint, they're going to get decimated. They reserve their evil for the creation of the nasty traps used to defend their home.

I recently joked about adding a cadre of Awakened Wombats to the BBEG's groups of minions. The Wombats would be directed to gnaw Sandpoint to its story foundations. I wouldn't actually do this, as it goes against the tone of the campaign arc. Also, one of the players in the campaign gets irritated when I include out-of-place humor in my settings and adventures.


WormysQueue wrote:
But again, the consequence is, that I have to do the work for myself. And I decided rather to work on my own setting, which has the advantage that I can steal all the awesome Golarion stuff while simply ignoring those parts I do not really care for. Though in the meantime it has become less stealing and more getting inspired.

This. I got to this stage thanks to Forgotten Realms burnout several years ago, before Golarion existed, and haven't looked back since. Golarion just gives me more resources to cobble into my group's homebrew.


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WormysQueue wrote:
But I'm preaching on a lost cause I guess. And as said before it doesn't stop me from using Paizo products, it just stops me from using them with the setting they were written for.

I think it's a cultural thing. You say in Germany that this sort of thing is very popular. Here in the US, that couldn't be more untrue.

The thing you praise about the Realms is something that the majority of people here hated. Myself included, 99% due to administrating on a FR-based Neverwinter Nights community and constantly having to deal with difficulties with canon interpretation from people reading this or that novel and wanting X or Y out of it or to know the server's reactions/consequences from thing Z that occurred in a story none of the admins have ever read. We ended up having to say "we ignore everything that happened in the novels and our canon stops at Year W so nothing after that on the official setting-book timeline happened". And we end up having to repeat that every few months or so because new players show up and the whole cycle starts over again.

And what you want so eagerly to happen in Golarion is something that the majority of people here are dreading will occur - usually due to bad memories of the above-mentioned metaplot situations or similar ones from other settings/companies/games - and are praying upon praying that Paizo will never go that direction.

Dark Archive

I've been reading through the last couple Bestiaries (I'm not a monster guy, generally, so apart from the art, I've rarely had much use for Bestiaries), and noticed the Deep Ones and Deep One Hybrids, which, IMO, are so much sexier than Skum or Gillfolk, and with some flavor and mechanical tweaks, I think I'd prefer the Deep Ones and Hybrids in those roles.


I know the 100 year jump and the 4th edition gutting of Forgotten Realms is what brought us to Golarion. The Meta-plot got too heavy and the maps and worlds became just unusable with our own campaign. So we bailed on that world.

The fact that Pathfinder had AP's out when life started to get in the way of Epic Home-brew campaign writing was just icing on the cake.


WormysQueue wrote:
Set wrote:
Given how annoyed people are that Aroden, a setting element that none of us have ever even gotten to play with, is off-limits, I can't imagine how much more annoying it would be if they had a metaplot and entire countries or races or classes changed overnight (because of storyline X, Cheliax has been liberated! because of storyline Y, Kaer Maga has been destroyed! because of storyline Z, all Magus' are now spontaneous psychic casters!).

Not at all, in fact. First, the mere existence of a metaplot doesn't force you to do anything, it just adds another option to choose (or decide against). The worst thing that can happen is, that you can't use it, which is the same we now have with Golarion, just that I have no choice in this case at all. You don't like Lleira's death? Well, don't let it happen and create your own specialty priest. It's the exact same thing I have to to, when I don't want Aroden to be actually dead. Or, just stay in the time before Lleira's death, which again, is basically the same as playing in official Golarion.

Second, no one says that Paizo had to do it the TSR/WotC way and accumulate a stupid amount of world shattering events. You can change a world much more gradually without invalidating player choices all the time. And you don't have to let those WSEs happen off screen. I would expect such storylines being part of an AP (and remember how many people where actually disappointed that the Cot-AP was not about the liberation of Cheliax? It's not as I'm the only one here).

Third, I'd rather have even substantial change than no change at all. I'm much more annoyed by a great setting I actually would love to play in already feeling stale, boring and meaningless to me. I'd rather have the designers liberating Cheliax (and then inventing new threats) than already knowing that in the meantime we have the third Cheliax-AP whose outcome will have zero influence on the setting as a whole.

And fourth, not changing the setting doesn't even help with the...

You have several solid points that I'd like to add to.

I still love Forgotten Realms. I didn't get to play Eberron enough to really get a feel for it. I like when a setting can be "refreshed" with WSE's that bring change, but bring something new. I liked the changes that came from major events in the FR setting. (Not at all happy with the advent of 4th ed. but glad they retconned most of that nonsense with the "Sundering" event that ushered in 5th ed.)

I know I'm not the only one who is mad at Games Workshop for totally scrapping the Warhammer Fantasy setting in favor of a more "cosmic" setting.

Your point that we now have 3 APs concerning Cheliax, and that no matter what the outcome of those APs the setting as a whole will not be affected except in each groups' individual setting is, to me, spot on. It seems kind of lazy on the part of the developers that they release APs that have potentially World Shaking ramifications, but the setting as a whole remains the same no matter the outcome.

But, it's Paizo's game. They'll do with their setting what they choose. Hence, the reason I started this thread to see what other people do in "their" Golarion setting.


But two of the adventure paths take place concurrently and the the third is assumed to have taken place, so that argument is false.


The Beardinator wrote:

Your point that we now have 3 APs concerning Cheliax, and that no matter what the outcome of those APs the setting as a whole will not be affected except in each groups' individual setting is, to me, spot on. It seems kind of lazy on the part of the developers that they release APs that have potentially World Shaking ramifications, but the setting as a whole remains the same no matter the outcome.

There's the flip side to that though...They could either be 'lazy' or 'greedy'... It's a no win there...

On the Paizo site here, under the Pathfinder Settings section, they list 17 books they made for 3.5 rules... Books that were updated with Pathfinder rule systems... That's totally legit. Update to keep things current.

In the Pathfinder rules system... there are 72 books listed for Pathfinder Setting.

72...

That's a lot of books to update and expect people to rebuy. I REALLY like my settings to 'marginally' stable, so I wouldn't have needed to buy the 3.5 setting guide, the inner sea world guide... the Cheliax empire of Demons... and whatever new books would be required in a Post Hell's rebel setting.

I much prefer them working on new stuff then reprinting a new book for each of the three APs they do a year... yet, if the world changed... I want all the players to be on the same page.

Look at all the complaining we get with 'another' book about gods... or 'another' book on core races... I can't imagine the uproar if we needed updated Setting books every 6 months.

I don't mind the occasional world shaking event, but I don't want it THAT big. If the world wound goes away... it doesn't bother cheliax or River Kingdoms... If Ydersius rises in the Mwangi... it doesn't rattle Varisia. The best world shaking events are if the PCs fail.... I like it when heroes save the world, and things keep rolling as is.

The Exchange

captain yesterday wrote:
But two of the adventure paths take place concurrently and the the third is assumed to have taken place, so that argument is false.

How? Because the claim is that it probably won't influence the next Cheliax AP to come in any way.

"phantom1592 wrote:
There's the flip side to that though...They could either be 'lazy' or 'greedy'... It's a no win there...

I get what you're saying though I think you exaggerate the need to update the setting book's every 6 months. Also, neither the Beardinator nor me advocate for every AP being about World-shaking events which would make this necessary.

On the other hand, there's something I'm actually curious about. How many people, be it longtime Paizo customers or being relative newcomers really will start playing the old APs in the year 2016 and the years to follow. I guess the re-release of CotCT will have that effect, but my general assumption is that newer releases will be preferred (and as much as I love those old APs, they came immediately to my mind when you talked about reprinting old books instead of doing something new, like for example, a sequel). So, does it really matter if the setting includes the old APs in it's history, and thereby facilitates the possibility to return to the topic? Just taking RotRL as an example, I'd love to see a new AP handle the outcome of this (and yeah especially, when it was assumed that the PCs ahad failed :D). I'd love to play in a gold rush scenario, when the existence of Xin-Shalast became known to a wider audience. I'd also love a massive war AP, where the PCs have to gather forces to defend Varisia against Karzoug and his armies, or, better yet, the Mhar awakens scenario.

We won't get those for probably more than one reason, maybe even because the designers are simply not interested in those topice. But it would be a shame if the only reason such things didn't happen was because of those five GMs planning to maybe run the RotRL-AP somewhere around 2050 and expect the setting not to change until then.

So that's what I'm really wondering about: given, that we get 2 new APs each year, how big is the need to have the setting unchanged, so that player's can play the old APs. Because to me, the only reason to reuse one of the old APs would probably be if there was a timeline and the use of newer APs would spoiler the events of their predecessors.

Dark Archive

The Beardinator wrote:
Third, I'd rather have even substantial change than no change at all. I'm much more annoyed by a great setting I actually would love to play in already feeling stale, boring and meaningless to me. I'd rather have the designers liberating Cheliax (and then inventing new threats) than already knowing that in the meantime we have the third Cheliax-AP whose outcome will have zero influence on the setting as a whole.

Valid points, but it's a question of what toys to 'take away' from players who haven't really gotten around to using Cheliax, or whatever, and also runs the risk of getting all comic-book-y and having the meta-plot events, which happen in APs at least twice a year, not counting anything 'major' that might happen in novels or standalone larger adventures, causing rather a lot of change. (An example from comics, in the Marvel universe, there's the Savage Land, that's been around for thousands of years. It's blowed up. There's Attilan, which was in one place, stable and safe, for thousands of years. It's been moved to the moon, blown up, brought back to earth, and blown up again, in 'only' a few short decades. Atlantis? Survived sinking into the ocean millennia ago, and is now blowed up, again. DC is, if anything, even worse, with various 'NPC nations' like Qurac or hidden lands full of bird-people getting destroyed willy-nilly. In comics, hidden lands or 'NPC countries' or 'Coastal/Central/GenericName City' might exist for centuries, if not millennia, but once introduced, comic books being comic books, they are going to get blowed up at least once a decade!) I don't like the idea that at least twice a year, some element of the setting is going to be changed so radically that anyone using that element of the setting (such as infernal Cheliax) is going to never again see support for that element.

On the other hand, it would be 'diluting the brand,' in a way, and this is generally regarded as a Bad Thing (even if I'm not 100% sure if it *is* a Bad Thing, or has just been tainted by association with some Very Bad Decisions by those who have attempted it in the past), but it might be possible to come up with a setting version of 'Golarion Unchained,' which is specifically addressing meta-plot style changes to the setting, in specific incremental detail. How did Golarion change because Cheliax is free? How did Golarion change because Xin-Shalast has been tamed and is a new city in Varisia? How did Golarion change because Irrisen is no longer 'The land of Eternal Winter?' Keeping the chapters discrete allows a GM to focus on just the amount of 'meta-plot' he or she wants, while ignoring the rest, and keeping it all confined to one 'Unchained' book (with new ones every three years or so, covering meta-plotty changes that could occur with the latest batch of APs, etc.), could make it purely optional and modular, and not at all interfere with the regular product line. Infernal Cheliax remains infernal Cheliax, in the core setting, but if you are going with the Unchained option for it having been liberated, you now have an entire section of the Unchained volume dealing with how things could change, like an eighty page 'Continuing the Campaign' section, dealing with who steps in to replace Asmodeus (is it Abadar? perhaps 'the Inheritor?' or will it be Milani, in the conservatory, with the candlestick?).

Other notions that could pop up in a 'Golarion Unchained' sort of book could involve 'what ifs' like 'What if Boiltongue is a Veiled Master' or 'What if the Whispering Tyrant breaks free' or 'What if the Tarrasque wakes up?' or 'What if the countdown clock hits zero and the Dominion of the Black set up a beachhead in Katapesh from which to invade the rest of Golarion?' or 'What if the Eye of Abendago *starts moving?*'

The Exchange

Set, it's interesting that you would mention the comic industry, because I'm a big comic fan and I'm actually glad that Marvel and DC don't listen too much to conservative views of how the properties should be handled. I can be quite conservative myself but I probably would have stopped reading comics a long time ago without these changes.

Quote:
but it's a question of what toys to 'take away' from players who haven't really gotten around to using Cheliax

It's not that I don't acknowledge the sentiment behind this. I'd like to compare it to the WOW Cataclysm add-on when suddenly everything changed. First I was a bit pissed of because there were a lot of regions I hadn't explored before. But on the other hand, the add-on didn't only take something away but added something new instead. So it was just a matter of embracing the new, instead of clinging to the old.

I kinda like your Unchained books idea, though, especially if the contents of these books would include adventure path skeletons.


WormysQueue wrote:


I get what you're saying though I think you exaggerate the need to update the setting book's every 6 months. Also, neither the Beardinator nor me advocate for every AP being about World-shaking events which would make this necessary.

On the other hand, there's something I'm actually curious about. How many people, be it longtime Paizo customers or being relative newcomers really will start playing the old APs in the year 2016 and the years to follow. I guess the re-release of CotCT will have that effect, but my general assumption is that newer releases will be preferred (and as much as I love those old APs, they came immediately to my mind when you talked about reprinting old books instead of doing something new, like for example, a sequel).

From what I've seen it's a two-fold concept. What is still available... and what kind of quality is it?

I've seen a lot of people asking 'What is everyone's favorite AP' or 'Where should I start' and such. The AP's come out so fast, that most groups will never run ALL of them (another thing that makes me against metaplot...)

I've seen a lot of suggestions for RotRL, CoCT, Kingmaker, and a couple of others... I've seen very little positive said about Second Darkness and Wrath of the Righteous... I know some people have zero interest in Mythic, guns, Pirates or Technology... so they're unlikely to be started in 2020 or whatever... and of course if they don't rerelease them or they sell out, then they aren't available.

But I also haven't seen anyone jumping on board to play 'whatever is the newest' AP just because it's the Newest... There's usually a theme or hook that catches players regardless of when it was published.

The Exchange

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phantom1592 wrote:
But I also haven't seen anyone jumping on board to play 'whatever is the newest' AP just because it's the Newest... There's usually a theme or hook that catches players regardless of when it was published.

I was more thinking about that the "newest" AP is usually the one who gets the most support by other "new" products, is the one who gets advertized at the moment and so on. Basically so that's the one which most probably catches your eye first when you come here. Plus you don't normally start spending your money on the backlog when there's shiny new stuff available.

But I also won't deny that there are quite some of the older APs I'd like to run sometimes in the future, so you have a point here.

In the end, it doesn't matter anyway. It's still a good read, I still get use out of the product, so while not perfect (for my needs), the things I buy are still worth their money. And using the stuff for my own world without simply copying it is a creative challenge I really like.

It's just that sometimes I realize how much work I wouldn't have to do if Paizo simply published exactly what I want (and to hell with sales numbers, I only need one example anyways :D)


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I actually greatly prefer the "setting remains in stasis" stance that Paizo has taken.

As a few people have already said, the constantly changing setting of older editions did cause problems with new players, as they came in with an idea of what they wanted their characters' background to be, only for some large part of their history to be completely invalidated by a novel he had never heard of.

I see a lot of "I just use Golarion for stripping what I want out of it, and putting it into my game" as some argument against the way Golarion's state is set. But that's exactly what Paizo wants.
They set the neutral state of the world, and have created (with few exceptions) adventures that have no impact on the world itself.

If your group allowed Karzoug to get free and reunite the giant tribes, forming a large threat to Varisia as a who, that's fine. No one's going to tell you that's wrong.
If your group ran through Iron Gods and established Cassandra as a deity, and you want to have android PC's who worship her, that's great.

But to say that a neutral world state for Golarion removes control from the GM or players is actually the opposite of the truth.

The Exchange

bigrig107 wrote:
I see a lot of "I just use Golarion for stripping what I want out of it, and putting it into my game" as some argument against the way Golarion's state is set. But that's exactly what Paizo wants.

No, that's not some argument against the way Paizo does it. That "I just use Golarion for stripping what I want out of it, and putting it into my game" is the consequence of the way Paizo does it. And with all due respect to Paizo, when I'm discussing MY preferences, what Paizo wants isn't necessarily on my agenda.

I also don't think that anyone stated that a neutral world state removes control from anyone. I think I stated that creating my own playground gives me more control, but that's not quite the same. That I can basically do what I want with all the stuff Paizo produces goes without saying. What I stated was that I'd rather prefer Paizo doing this for me (and I repeat: because a) it's time consuming and b) I really like what they do and if they did it would most probably be more awesome than when I have to do it myself).

I hope that clarifies what was actually said.


Paizo wants to sell products and I want them to make products I want.
Some customers just use parts. Some use lots of the books, the figures, and one adventure path after another. I collect the books and chat on the boards as something to do till I can find a game. It's taken so long I'm making the jump to Play by Post. Some like to buy the Golorion world books and supplements so they can gripe about the Aroden situation and the inclusion of robots and androids.

Sure I would like mirror image to make some sense, but that's not a deal breaker. Serious problems, I make and use other's homebrew which Paizo encourages. Paizo does it ok. Arguments against how Paizo does it are for the gripes topic. How do you solve these problems for your game world? If you don't call your game world Golarion, you are kinda off topic, but if your method can be adapted by others, more power to you.


Kobold Cleaver wrote:
What I liked about the Mournland was that Keith Baker was very clear that there was no right answer. He has his own theories, and we have ours. It's not a "I never plan to tell anyone", it's "nobody knows, including me, so have at it". Paizo is a bit less clear about how they feel about Aroden.

Precisely why I have no interest in official Eberron products. If I'm going to have to make it up myself I sure as #### am not going to pay good coin for getting the privilege of doing the heavy lifting myself.

Srsly, seemingly the major feature of The Mourning is that it happened and it ended the Last War. Except... maybe it didn't happen? Maybe it was a ruse by House D'Cannith in preparation for world domination? Or a massive illusion perpetrated by The Dreaming Dark? Or anything (literally anything!) you can think of, whether it is making sense or not.

TAGLINE*
"In a world of plot points described with the most squishy of adjectives, anything is possible. Will you join me?"

*TAGLINE entirely optional. Please pay me $39.99 for this idea but really you need to make up your own :P


Quark Blast wrote:
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
What I liked about the Mournland was that Keith Baker was very clear that there was no right answer. He has his own theories, and we have ours. It's not a "I never plan to tell anyone", it's "nobody knows, including me, so have at it". Paizo is a bit less clear about how they feel about Aroden.

Precisely why I have no interest in official Eberron products. If I'm going to have to make it up myself I sure as #### am not going to pay good coin for getting the privilege of doing the heavy lifting myself.

Srsly, seemingly the major feature of The Mourning is that it happened and it ended the Last War. Except... maybe it didn't happen? Maybe it was a ruse by House D'Cannith in preparation for world domination? Or a massive illusion perpetrated by The Dreaming Dark? Or anything (literally anything!) you can think of, whether it is making sense or not.

TAGLINE*
"In a world of plot points described with the most squishy of adjectives, anything is possible. Will you join me?"

*TAGLINE entirely optional. Please pay me $39.99 for this idea but really you need to make up your own :P

I'm gonna use my money to buy PDFs. Do you know of any very useful if someone is looking for characters for a PFS, PBP adventure?

I'm looking for something about Golorion with maps, region based bonuses, and such.

An atomic wasteland might be Golorion adjacent. Maybe a permanent gate with mutants living near it.

Grand Lodge

Goth Guru wrote:

I'm gonna use my money to buy PDFs. Do you know of any very useful if someone is looking for characters for a PFS, PBP adventure?

I'm looking for something about Golorion with maps, region based bonuses, and such.

An atomic wasteland might be Golorion adjacent. Maybe a permanent gate with mutants living near it.

The Inner Sea World Guide will be your starting point.

The Inner Sea Primer and Cities of Golarion give various regional bonuses, then you could get into areas that interest you.

For elements of an atomic wasteland with mutants, you might look at Numeria (which has a sourcebook and relates to the Technology Guide) and the Mana Wastes (which I don't think does yet). More distant connections might include the Worldwound (sourcebook of the same name) and other planets (Distant Worlds and People of the Stars).


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I removed the need to confirm critical hits. It makes combat more unpredictable. I also use the iFumble app from Paizo. Makes fumbles Fun!


Humans are roughly only 1/5th of the total population of humanoid 'aka' PC races, instead of around 95-98% ish as presented.

There is still no canonically good drow, but born drow doesn't mean guaranteed evil either. (a predisposition to acting like an a-hole sure...but so are their paler cousins.)

Lesser racism, except for places like Cheliax and Taldor.


I'm going to be running the AP's in the order they were printed, using the results of those to grown and add to "my Golarion". The only one I won't be running due to just how boring it looks is Shattered Star. I'll use bits of it for Rise of the Runelords but otherwise I'm jettisoning it.

Also, I'll be having Amaya be back in Varisia by time Jade Regent comes up.

Liberty's Edge

I wonder how I could introduce players of other settings to the Golarion setting, or vice versa. For instance, somebody who came from Dragonlance, or somebody who wants to try out Forgotten Realms.


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We've expanded the map eastwards in Kingmaker. The land to the east is called Eastsea and it was an aborted Prefecture of the Empire of Taldor. It was founded around 30 years before the Grand Campaign (so approximately 4050 AR). There was a terrible, unnatural blizzard the winter before the Grand Campaign that was reminiscent of the civilization-killing events in Iobaria. By the following spring (spring 4079) all communication had ceased from the prefecture and by the summer Taldor and Qadira were at war. In the ensuing 500+ years of conflict, the prefecture has been almost completely forgotten.

The event was the final fracture that separated the Nomen centaurs from their brethren to the east. In their words:
“Yes, there remains a great evil to our south. Something larger, more ancient and sinister dwells in that region. We communed with the spirits and our ancestors seeking a name for our enemy. We learned bits of the tale and these bits recalled other stories. We had forgotten the arrival of men an eternity ago. Noble men who gained our trust and our friendship. These were in the last days when we spoke with our sisters to the east and even then contact was fleeting. But we spoke to the men and traded with them and a few of us even lived among them for a time. It was an acceptable arrangement.

From what we can recollect and reconstruct through half-remembered legends there was a great winter a long time ago. It was miserable for us, but it worsened to the south. Plants died, food went scarce. A number of our sisters perished in the cold. When news came from the south, it was more grim. A few of our sisters managed to escape the high drifts (and several more froze in the attempt). They spoke of starvation, desperation and whispered of cannibalism. That was before the worst of the winter struck.
In the spring, several of us ventured south as soon as the snows melted enough for travel. When we reached the boundary of our lands we saw darkness to the south. Although it was already warming under our feet, the lands of men remained frozen and snowy. This lasted for several days until the wind turned south. Only our most cunning hunters would proceed further into this fell land. They returned a week later, much bloodied, telling tales of darkness, the dead walking, burnt homes and a chill that sucked away life from bones. They fled, not from any enemy, but from the land itself, which had turned against them. Afterwards, we could get no one to explore that land, though we kept sentries along the border for several years and occasionally drove some undead beast back into the wilderness."

Moreover the Iobarian cities of Kridorn and Vladmirr say this:
Eastsea was not very popular to the leaders of Vladmirr and Kridorn. Both cities viewed Eastsea as a threat and a competitor to be expunged from the coast. But both cities also feared the Empire’s retribution should they take outright action. Yet the common folk of both cities held a different view. They saw Eastsea as a refuge from their oppressive homes - one that they could literally walk to. What first began as a trickle of emigres from these cities quickly became a flood until both cities had to post soldiers to keep their own citizens within their lands. Further accounts consisted of many prominent citizens expressing their disdain for the expatriates and admonishing them for leaving. It was frequently mentioned that “something terrible” would befall them, though the form of their downfall was always vague.

Accounts dating from the end of AR 4078 were the most interesting, correlating to the “big winter” mentioned by the centaurs. The harbor at Vladmirr froze first, followed by Kridorn soon after. For awhile, couriers on sleds were able to travel on top of the snow to reach Eastlight, but as the year came to a close even this became too difficult. Sometime after the new year a great black plume appeared in the sky causing panic in the streets. The plume lasted for several weeks, at one point blowing northward and raining hot ash onto the city of Vladmirr. Several buildings caught fire that day and many townsfolk feared the end of their city. The Iobarians refused to sail or travel towards Eastlight afterwards. It was not until a storm late that summer forced a trading vessel within sight of Eastlight that any information came back to the cities.

The captain of the vessel reported no lights on in the city, but considerable movement. A bitter wind came off the shore, sapping vigor from the crew. All became listless and several collapsed in short order. The captain tried to steer the vessel away but instantly the wind failed. In desperation he used a magical item to create wind and speed away. As the ship hastily departed, sailors looking reward noticed glowing apparitions on the shore floating out to sea. Any who saw the apparitions immediately became overwhelmed with fear and fled below-decks.

Following the description Iobarians became convinced of Eastlight’s awful fate. It became practice to sail many leagues west into more dangerous waters rather than risk seeing the coastline. In time the black plume dissipated, but the Iobarians kept their distance. In time, the area would no longer be referred to as ‘The Prefecture’ but rather by a more descriptive name - the Forsaken Shore. Occasionally a ship would catch a glimpse of the coast. There, they would see a dead land - stunted grass, trees in a perpetual state of dying, a chill breeze even in summer and air that drew life from the body. Captains unfortunate enough to sail within sight of the land found they needed to have their ships consecrated and blessed afterwards, for no sailors would venture onto their craft for fear it would be cursed.

Anyway, we're placing Giantslayer on the foundation of a successful Kingmaker campaign. One of the things I'm planning is adding the 1st Edition "Isle of Dread" out in the Castrovin Sea. That should be fun.


I added in a whole new continent called Verda and created a bunch of lore & history for it. I even made a full map for it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52013824/Verda_Names.bmp


Eryx_UK wrote:
No Numeria in my games. That area is just a blasted wasteland where a meteor struck. But then I'm not a fan of sci-fi technology in my games.

Numeria was the crux for the second arc of my campaign. Players discovered a portal which lead to Numeria. The villain for that campaign arc (an AI golem) was using tech from there and trying to bring it over to the primary continent in my campaign. Let's just say a city got destroyed in the process D:


Ghray wrote:

I added in a whole new continent called Verda and created a bunch of lore & history for it. I even made a full map for it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52013824/Verda_Names.bmp

Dude! I totally want the background info on Verda. The cities, lore, inhabitants, legends, all that good stuff!


It has happened. In "my Golarion" the Whispering Tyrant has been freed from Gallowspire. His first move to restore his power and reestablish his street cred, was to fly to the tomb of the Runelord of Gluttony and in an epic battle of magic and irony, he Consumed the corpulent Krune. A tremor was felt in the arcane aether as Tar Baphon has become the one true Master of Undeath. Pray to whatever deity you believe in.

skull emoji


The Beardinator wrote:

It has happened. In "my Golarion" the Whispering Tyrant has been freed from Gallowspire. His first move to restore his power and reestablish his street cred, was to fly to the tomb of the Runelord of Gluttony and in an epic battle of magic and irony, he Consumed the corpulent Krune. A tremor was felt in the arcane aether as Tar Baphon has become the one true Master of Undeath. Pray to whatever deity you believe in.

skull emoji

Edit: Zutha, I meant the Grodulant Zutha.


A new interesting idea:

The serpent people aren't evil. Maybe back at the time of Ghol-Gan they were, but by the time of Azlant they were okay. The Azlant, though, were bastards (I think Inner Sea Races said as much) so they knocked off the serpent god forcing the serpent people to take their civilization underground. Which then spared it from Earthfall, and when the dark clouds cleared the serpent people came back and made the Mwangi expanse great at magic with their lost knowledge. (Or is that too "Ancient Aliens are what make non-Europeans any good"?) Mwangi today is a mixed community of serpent people and humans.

Also Qadira conquered Taldor like the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. (Because my personal reading doesn't seem to give Taldor a purpose in the modern day.) Maybe Qadira is more of an Ottoman-style aesthetic (not that I could do that much justice), perhaps even breaking away from the Kelesh empite.


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In my Golarion, Ancient aliens aren't automatically bad.
The Coatl are the result of celestials reshaping snakes on a distant planet. They came to Golarion to influence their past. Quetzalcoatl is like an arch angel Coatl, who was limited in his visitation rights by some sort of treaty between the higher and lower outer planar beings. There are rituals to summon him, which are in place in case Yig gets summoned back.

Some monsters go native and have chosen alignments and may make choices non typical for their bestiary listings.


I have mindflayers, beholders, the dolgaunt from the Eberron setting, and I am working on adding psionics races from DSP.
There are also Azlanti still around, but they are very rare.
Kobolds, not goblins are the comic relief. Goblins can be a real threat.

Noble Drow have the "see in darkness" ability.


Inspired by actual history, then gone crazy:

In this version Ancient Taldor falls to invading Kellids and Orcs, which send the territories back into a Dark Age. The exception being the eastern bit, but this eventually get conquered by the Kelesh. In addition to their canon conquests they occupy the Cheliaxian penninsula before being stopped by emerging human/orc Avistani states like Nidal and Molthune. Eventually the Kelesh territories fracture, first into an independant Inner Sea state, then Rahadoum (including the Cheliax territory) breaks off, and eventually Thuvia, Osirion, and Katapesh, leaving Qadira (including Taldor). Rahadoum then goes secular so it doesn't have to bow to the Sarenrae priests, causing the Cheliax population to revolt and drive them out. However in their zeal they fall prey to extreme Law and go Evil, causing Andoran to break away from them.

So that's a big mess, but I think there are some good ideas in there.


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Our group has added a few cultural details here and there, apart from house-rule changes to mechanics (Str-based crossbow damage, for example). Here's a couple of additions:

Venture-Captains have "dispatch-boxes." These magic items, wooden boxes measuring 3"x6"x9", are attuned to each other in a teleportation network. Each can be activated once a day to transfer its (nonliving) contents to one other box in the network. Magic items have a flat 25% chance of being disenchanted in the process. It's a great way to keep in touch, file reports, pass along information, etc.

New holiday: Ancestor Week. Originally a solemn occasion for honoring legendary figures and folklore heroes in Osirion, it has since evolved into a week-long stories-and-booze festival with elaborate or homemade masks, bardic performances of tall tales, and cheap wine. Think Mardis Gras with an Egyptian theme.

Zon-Kuthon: Since lying is a way of avoiding or denying something painful, it's a doctrine of the church that its adherents must never lie. Kuthites may be cruel, perverse, or even murderous, but they never lie.

Vudra: This one is utterly random--Vudra has no native halfling population, and nobody seems to know why. Halflings are entirely welcome there, they have equal rights, and the locals treat them no differently from any other non-evil humanoids... but halflings don't live in Vudra.


Long ago, perhaps even before starfall, there was chaos of many forms. Consumables randomly came to life and demanded their rights. Some Halflings came down with kleptomania and were called Kender. There was an archetype of engineers that intentionally set off traps to see how they worked. An organization of inquisitors was formed named, "The Purge" and they set out to exterminate these threats.

For the most part, they succeeded and still exist, but they keep a constant vigil against these things and more. They are not above slaughtering an Old One tainted family line. They are also against time travel for fear of what might be brought back from the past.


Bump?

Dark Archive

The Beardinator wrote:
I like Sarenrae. Iomedae is way too rigid for me. I loved the Forgotten Realms gods. To me, they seemed to make sense. Granted, you had a god/goddess for every day of the year, the gods seemed to fit.

[necromancy!] While I *generally* prefer less gods to more, there are times when it seems like there are 'holes' in smaller pantheons. Golarion already has a bumper crop of gods, some of whom (Hanspur? Naderi?) are ridiculously niche, but reading about Irrisen, I just ache to see Auril the Frostmaiden, from the Realms, as the local deity. Similarly, Golarion has a few gods with Luck as a Domain, but none of them really scream 'god of luck!' like Tymora. Cayden Cailean is about as good as it gets for 'god of adventurers,' and he's, canonically, a recent addition to the pantheon, making his role (and those of Iomedae and Norgorber) apparently non-essential, since Golarion got along just fine for *millennia* without a god of thieves, or a god of murder, or a god of chivalry, or a god of beer.

On the one hand, Auril 'fits' Irrisen so hard that the country seems to have an Auril-shaped hole in it, just waiting for someone like her to fill it. On the other hand, the lack of a 'perfect' god to 'fit' Irrisen only helps to highlight how Irrisen is *wrong* for Golarion, and does not and never will 'fit.' It's unnatural, and the Winter Witches being 'stuck' worshipping deities with little or no relevance to their practices, like Zon-Kuthon, kind of makes sense.

I *like* that the gods of Golarion have such disparate 'origin stories,' from Starstone Scion (Iomedae, Cayden, Norgorber) to self-made-god (Irori, Urgathoa, Nethys) to ascended outsider lord (Lamashtu, Asmodeus, Sarenrae) to 'born that way' (Shelyn, Zon-Kuthon) to 'possibly primordial' (Pharasma, Rovagug) to 'nobody knows' (Abadar, Erastil). And yet, in real world pantheons, the gods are usually related, and that's not the case in Golarion. Pharasma, the goddess of birth, has no kids. Erastil, the god of gettin' married and settling down, is still stag, after all these millennia, which has a hypocritical patronizing 'okay for me, not for thou' sort of ring to it.

It would be intriguing if Erastil *did* have a lover, and that she (or he?) died. (Gods were said to die during the fight with Rovagug. Why not have one or two of them fill 'holes' in the relationship dynamics of the Inner Sea pantheon?) It would be interesting if Pharasma was as much a goddess of birth as she is a goddess of death, an 'All-Mother' to multiple other gods whose 'origins' have not been sourced, such as Abadar, Calistria, Erastil, Gozreh, etc.

There could even be some controversy in some places. One branch of the church of Pharasma might focus on her role as 'All-Mother,' while other branches focus more on her role as 'Lady of Graves,' and quietly discourage any talk of other (lesser) gods. Some churches of other gods might similarly discourage chatter about their god being some other gods wayward child, particularly if that church has a preferred 'origin story' for their god, such as the church of Asmodeus, which insists that Asmodeus was one of the first two gods to come into existence, and would find the idea that he was one of Pharasma's childen to be insulting. [/necromancy]


You could have a movement to force all of the gods into a family.


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Pare down the races, remove the high tech, claw back the average magic level a bit.

Dark Archive

Goth Guru wrote:
You could have a movement to force all of the gods into a family.

An in-game movement, like some sort of 'heresy' that was all about defining the various gods relationships to each other, could be kind of cool, with some trying to hijack it to make their favorite god the 'all-father' or 'all-mother,' betterer and primary god over the others, and others trying to cut certain gods out of it altogether to 'prove' that they don't belong or are imposters, unworthy of worship... That could be funky.

But I do prefer that the 'truth' remain such that the various gods have a plethora of different 'origin stories' and not *all* be related, just perhaps those who have specific ties to family, marriage, fertility or birth (like Erastil and Pharasma).


How has our group made it their own?

Welllll....

Zon'Kuton has his glaive back.

Heh, yeah, my Crimson Throne campaign was weird. The PCs liked Laori Vaus so much, they converted to the worship of Zon'Kuthon and became his champions.

Instead of killing Queen Ileosa, they purified her of dracolich influence - she rules Korvosa still.

In return, they established the worship of Zon'Kuthon in Korvosa - specifically a sect dedicated to experiencing pain as revelation and self-purification. The PC led sect is against doing violence to others (unless it is consensual) and focuses instead on violence to self as meditation.

The church of Shelyn didn't much like this, so THEY became the villains for a while. This led my now very high level PCs to lay a trap for Shelyn, briefly capture her, and steal her glavie, which they then returned to Zon'Kuthon.

In return for this service, Zon'Kuthon imparted a great secret on the PCs. That secret: The reason for his madness is because out in the depths of space, he encountered the Great Old Ones. He saw them... he knows they're coming... and he wasn't strong enough to fight them. He has been trying to strength himself and all of Golarion since, in preparation for the day when they arrive - hence all the cutting and fleshcrafting.

The campaign ended with the PCs expanding their religion and preparing for the day when creatures beyond understanding arrive.

....

That was probably my biggest unexpected-left-turn in lore.

Oh, wait no. There was one other. Aroden is alive again. He's been reincarnated as a mortal human. Only a very few people know this, one of which is Iomedae. He is currently living in Absalom.


Well....

After the death of Ileosa, rather than deal with an inevitable civil war among the Great Houses or Cheliax storming, the magisters and arbiters temporarily united, and created the Office of Patrician, in order to mediate between the rival groups that run the city. The new Patrician is Donovan Castamar, whose policies include allowing guilds to form again and increase ties with other nations (most notably, not Cheliax).

Ustalav is experiencing civil war.

A titan has appeared in the middle of Mwangi.

Katapesh was devastated (adventurers did their best).

Also, Absalom also celebrates Pie Week, a halfling holiday, revolving around the baking and eating of pies.


When it comes to adventure paths that are relatively close to each other we sometimes make assumptions as if the previous campaign happened. For example I've made characters that were descendant to characters I've already played.

Grand Lodge

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The Beardinator wrote:

Have any GM's made changes to "your" Golarion setting as a result of campaigns or just your own customization?

...How have you made Golarion "yours"?

1.) One of my short campaigns was set in Nidal, which I depict as being much more of a "film noir"-style place. All the same Hellraiser-inspired craziness is there, it's just more behind-the-scenes and subtle. People don't walk around in black leather studded with chains (they save that for private, special occasions). The windows in Nisroch sport "Opparan Blinds" (Oppara isn't exactly Venice, but it has canals and it's not like Venetian Blinds were actually from Venice). The alleys and side-streets of Nisroch are also lit up by "Nidalese Glass" signs, which are shaped tubes of (usually red) colored glass with a continual flame stuffed inside.

My previous write-up of Nidal from a different thread

2.) An Aldori dueling sword is a katana. Not in a "they're different weapons but I'm using the same stats" kind of way ... I mean they are literally the same weapon with a regional name. None of the people in remote, isolated Rostland had ever seen a katana before, so when Sirian First came back into town with a new name and a new sword everyone just referred to it as "Aldori's sword". The name stuck.

More Details:
After losing his famous duel with the bandit lord, Sirian First traveled the world trying to learn how to become a better swordfighter. His travels eventually took him to distant lands, where he apprenticed to and adventured with a ronin samurai ... a sword saint obviously inspired by Kyūzō from The Seven Samurai but based a little more on James Coburn's depiction of Britt, Kyūzō's expy from the Magnificent Seven. After the samurai's death, Sirian returned the Rostland sporting a new name that held personal meaning from his time as an adventurer. With help from the master smiths of the now-vanished Golka Clan, Aldori's sword was reverse-engineered into modern Aldori Dueling Swords. So if you're looking for a katana you can travel to distant Tien Xia ... or Restov.

3.) Keeping with the above-mentioned theme, I use an in-house archetype of the samurai class to represent Aldori initiates. The archetype trades away heavier armor, order, banner, and mounted abilities for more focused dueling abilities and better defense in light or no armor.

4.) I also use an in-house archetype of the samurai class to represent Hellknight armigers. The archetype trades away the banner abilities, the mount, & the mounted archer ability for some armor training and expanded Order abilities themed to the different Hellknight orders.

5.) Although I look forward to the new Hellknight sourcebook, I'm not sure how much I'll end up using since I've already spilled some extensive ink on the Hellknights in my world.

6.) Orcs are a Spawn of Rovagug. Not individual orcs ... the entire orc race itself is, collectively, one of the Spawn of Rovagug. They "leaked out" of Rovagug's prison millennia before Earthfall but primarily stayed in the darklands and harassed the ancient dwarves until they were driven to the surface during the Quest For Sky.


I put the City State of the Invincible Overlord in the Shackles and dropped the Tomb of Horrors and Rappan Athuk beneath Kaer Maga.

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