That is awesome!
Organized Play Lead Developer
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One follow-up I'd like to emphasize here:
Coming up with these scenarios is a collaborate process, and Thursty and I spend a lot of time bouncing ideas around. The ethical premise behind #1-13 involves a fair amount of my input, but the blog above doesn't speak enough to how much this scenario played into the Season 1 storyline, which is very much Thursty's narrative. This scenario and many others wouldn't be the way they are without his work.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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When I got the outline for SFS 1-13, Thursty offered that I could submit PC race stats for the izalguuns on the off chance they became a playable race further down the road. I enthusiastically did so, having immediately fallen in love with the species, and then I dutifully held my tongue as the scenario hit the shelves and for months afterwards. To see that chicken finally come home to roost in this epic way is better than I could have hoped for! Thank you for this experiment, John & Thursty! I’m so excited to see izalguuns join the ranks of the Society!
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I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the old, classic pulp adventures (or more accurately, their retro reincarnations like Indiana Jones or Johnny Quest). It had orientalizing baggage by the truckload, no argument here, but at the same time... there was this little spark of genuine interest in other lands and other cultures. "Look how cool the world is! Look at all these interesting places and interesting people!"
Seeing this made me grin, I'll say.
Anyway, this was a genius trick and I am legitimately impressed. Also putting a bunch of adventures on my to-read list, clearly.
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Developer
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Lost Colony of Taldor is one of my favorite archaelogy scenarios and I will play and/or run it whenever possible to help highlight the critical importance the field plays in shaping our lives, and the lives of those in the Lost Omens setting.
There is still and will probably always be controversy surrounding our favorite "destructive science". I'd love to see a scenario highlighting the issue with regard to contemporary far East Archaelogy given the political climate of the Dragon Empires. I could see several of the even Lawful and Good successor states seeing nothing wrong with refusing to protect or catalogue historical sites that don't help fit its narrative, in the pursuit of those artifacts that do.
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Harumph. If they'd said they wanted to keep it quiet because they were hiding from someone that would have been one thing. But as it was they were the first society we'd seen advance as far as we knew it could go and then slide back. You see I have this hypothesis that all civilizations at some point will and already HAVE...
And the party stuffs him into his own bag of holding. Again. Today.
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Organized Play Lead Developer
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I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the old, classic pulp adventures (or more accurately, their retro reincarnations like Indiana Jones or Johnny Quest). It had orientalizing baggage by the truckload, no argument here, but at the same time... there was this little spark of genuine interest in other lands and other cultures. "Look how cool the world is! Look at all these interesting places and interesting people!"
Absolutely.
Even when an adventure carries with it a bunch of problematic historical/cultural baggage, it can still convey a really powerful sense of wonder and spark curiosity that spurs further investigation. Fun stories do that. Exciting art pieces do that (for which I'm really excited about the upcoming Lost Omens World Guide books—have you seen those previews?!?). Strange characters do that. Those inspirations can last a lifetime, and I have no doubt that pulp adventure tales played a part in drawing me into formal archaeology training (and later into organized play).
Where we have to be careful is what other messages those pulp stories convey, as well as what longstanding associations they reinforce—especially when those lessons inadvertently "punch down" at groups who have been on the receiving end of those negative portrayals before. By vilifying or "othering" different groups, it's too easy to perpetuate harmful beliefs about their real-world analogues and alienate part of the community. RPGs are amazing tools for telling stories and learning. I'd much rather the lesson be "Wow, I'm seeing these people in a new and positive light" than "Huh, this portrayal confirms my subconscious biases."
Fortunately, we have great authors, developers, editors, artists, and graphic designers who can give everything additional scrutiny, and as a company and as a community, we're always on the lookout for how to make our products more accessible and conscientious. A big part of that's by amplifying diverse voices. Because for every story we look at and say "Hmm, maybe this isn't the kind of narrative that's appropriate to tell anymore," expanding the cast of authors introduces us to another three types of stories we would have never thought to tell.
Long story short, there's a lot that pulp narratives have done to inspire players, GMs, and gaming in general. And as the industry matures, it behooves us to examine the stories we have been telling, understand where we could be better, bring in new storytellers, and make our adventures even better for an ever-expanding community.
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Organized Play Lead Developer
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A few other scenarios that play into anthropology themes:
Does this mean we can get confirmation on how to pronounce the "uu" in Izalguun?
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Personally, I don't play PFS, or Starfinder, but this blog post was riveting. I believe Paizo is doing fantastic work in their products and spearheading a revolution in narratives and settings, and I definitely want to see more of this - less punching down and more scenarios where ethics and social awareness have important roles.
Congrats for your willingness to tackle difficult but important subjects again and again, folks, and thank you for the best adventures around ;)
I wish there was a "this is awesome and I love it" button to click on blog posts :D
Just had to quote this to give my +1.
Contributor
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That's exactly the sort of development I love to see in these storylines! Not only do the characters' actions have impactful consequences, but they're COOL consequences that are fun thematically and mechanically. Story evolution from choices? Fine. Story evolution that also gives new options for players? Great!
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I love the kind of care you are putting into making certain the starfinders are not fedora wearing Independent Wrestlers *winking emoji* and this result is fantastic. The emphasis on changing story narrative allows us to still be inspired (I have a Flash Gordon based character) but find new stories to tell rather than rehashing old ones. making it much more exciting to me on that alone. The other societal goods are a wonderful bonus but you can see where my passion in role playing lies.
Also I have some Pitfall Jones stickers for you to put on your dartboard.
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As an anthropology student, this post has genuinely gotten me misty-eyed. I've spent over a decade using role-playing games to express and represent cultures past, present, and novel, and my long-running PC is a pathfinder, anthropologist, and archaeologist above all else. This is exactly the kind of game I want to play. Honestly, thank you.
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Starfinder Society Developer
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First off, I want to thank our community for being so amazing about this! I distinctly remember when John and I conceived this "test" in the office, we mentioned it to a few people and were told: "Oh, well they'll all be jackals because there's a mechanical benefit to it."
In that light, it's nice to see how the result turned out.
Also, I can't let John hog ALL the spotlight with this one, so maybe let me add one more tiny spoiler, since you've all been such an upstanding community.
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It says something when (in PFS1) my dumb as rocks barbarian turned Scarab Sage immediately goes into an archaeological site and starts taking 'all the notes'. 1. Because you'll never know what you might learn. 2. If you can't figure it out and you have the notes and documentation, someone ELSE may be able to figure it out. 3. If you break it, you may NOT be able to fix it. Ever. Again. 4. There's not a lot of documentation about his choice of deities -- The Drunken Hero -- due to how the faith arranges itself.
His focus on documentation is obsessive, but after certain encounters, it really helps put his paranoia at ease if he has all the information possibly available versus 'a bunch of unknown'.
In Starfinder, my Soldier(Steward Officer)/Xenoarchaeologist has been instrumental in saving the research bacon of teams they've been on for a similar approach -- understanding and respecting the culture is an important step to not getting *squished* by ancient Titan works where she comes from.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Because for every story we look at and say "Hmm, maybe this isn't the kind of narrative that's appropriate to tell anymore," expanding the cast of authors introduces us to another three types of stories we would have never thought to tell.
I like this sentiment very much.
On the one hand, I do like my pulpy stuff. I think it doesn't have to be ditched completely, we can be the next generation of pulp heroes that's a bit more sensitive to other cultures and more diverse itself. We can say "well my dad would have just thrown the fireball, but that's why I learned a more focused beam blast". We don't have to pretend the old generation doesn't exist or reject it completely, even as we don't entirely agree with it either.
As the quote goes "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." Nowadays if I'm reading Conan stories or Lovecraft I'm acutely aware that there's a big load of racism embedded in them, but they're also exciting stories. Society has changed so much that reading this style, it's pretty foreign itself. It's a historical thrill to read it, the sensation of a different era. But I would definitely not want to write anything like it now.
And on the other hand, we have these three new stories we can tell for the one that we don't want to tell anymore. Every time I watch some very non-Hollywood movie, say a Korean movie originally made for their home market but translated, it's a thrill. I'm missing much of the cultural background, but it's intensely refreshing to be exposed to something so different.
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{. . .} those fake cultures that you find in a roleplaying game aren't really all that tied to the real world, unless I forgot that there was an ancient nation ruled by seven powerful nations in the real world that had giants as their personal slaves to build monuments to themselves. {. . .}
That comes later.
Venture-Agent, Finland—Tampere
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Does this mean we can get confirmation on how to pronounce the "uu" in Izalguun?I've been pronouncing it ih-zal-GOON, though I make the double-O sound a little deeper.
I'm always kinda confused whether pathfinder/starfinder names are supposed to be pronounced phonetically or not. I mean, I'm Finnish, so I read them as they are written phonetically anyway, but it kinda seems that for every name that is pronounced exactly as written, there is another name where letters are pronounced the way they are pronounced in english