All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chance

I'm looking forward to the hobgoblins development from a culture engaged in unending war for survival to a culture that has to maintain a hard won nation. Rome or, especially, Sparta would be the easy answer but there are other societies built on warrior codes that carved out huge chunks of history for themselves. I don't see the hobgoblins fracturing into dozens of squabbling tribes but maintaining a highly militaristic society where every hobgoblin counts and every hobgoblin knows their place. Perhaps every hobgoblin trains as a warrior but there are those who make the military their profession. Volunteers make for a better professional military than conscripts. The first order of business would be to rebuild their strength and fortify their new home. Then they can start developing their own cultural identity which will hopeful include cobblers who can craft combat boots and other footwear.

I'm looking forward to the hobgoblins development from a culture engaged in unending war for survival to a culture that has to maintain a hard won nation. Rome or, especially, Sparta would be the easy answer but there are other societies built on warrior codes that carved out huge chunks of history for themselves. I don't see the hobgoblins fracturing into dozens of squabbling tribes but maintaining a highly militaristic society where every hobgoblin counts and every hobgoblin knows their place. Perhaps every hobgoblin trains as a warrior but there are those who make the military their profession. Volunteers make for a better professional military than conscripts. The first order of business would be to rebuild their strength and fortify their new home. Then they can start developing their own cultural identity which will hopeful include cobblers who can craft combat boots and other footwear.

I hope they don't follow either the Roman nor the Spartan model. The Spartans in particular were a nation of professional soldiers whose every need was attended to by Helot slaves (i.e. any other ethnicity between the city and the border), and they often raided these same Helots for no other reason than to keep them subjugated and in terror, slaying them with a very cavalier attitude (a bit the same way samurai tested their swords and bows against dogs).

If they for some reason need to stay evil, I mean, sure. Since I'm hoping humanoids will slowly no longer automatically equate with Evil, I'd like for them to become a war-like, soldierly society but without most of the RL horrors.

Caligae would have been nice though - agreed.

A goblin is a maniac, a bugbear is a sadist, and a hobgoblin is a conqueror and NOTHING can change that.

Considering not even fiends are monolithically evil, what exactly gave you this impression? Yes, hobgoblin culture tends towards militarism, conquest and ruthlessness; yes, many bugbears are sadists; as for goblins, they very obviously have many neutral and good people, and it would be nice to avoid lumping them all together under an ableist label.

Even when a culture is "evil", there are always exceptions, and even when that doesn't apply, people can change.

Paizo folks, we're perpetuating a moral/ethical model that teaches players there are Good Races and Evil Races (and that some of this is genetic...)... you sure this is how we wanna play this?

Really seems odd to me that they are portrayed so extremely evil and constantly torturing the PCs and their friends and then the party is expected to just let them off the hook. Maybe picked the wrong AP to try and tack this on...

Even stranger when you consider the editor articles at the opening of some of the books.

Honestly of all the advancements they have made in the timeline I'm fairly certain this is the one thats gonna cause the most inconsistencies in the setting for people using it from 1E in the long run.

Ill just keep waiting for the gnoll ancestery... a slightly taller goblin is cool too tho.

I will point out that the PCs don’t offer peace to the Legion, they do for Azaersi once they find out everything, and that’s at the very end after they've done a good job carving through the psychopathic and warmongering gobs. Which means there’s a lot less of those, whereas the non-psychopathic and warmongering goblinoids wouldn't have been in the Legion in the first place and are now the main population of Oprak since they finally have a home.

StarMartyr365 wrote:

I'm looking forward to the hobgoblins development from a culture engaged in unending war for survival to a culture that has to maintain a hard won nation. Rome or, especially, Sparta would be the easy answer but there are other societies built on warrior codes that carved out huge chunks of history for themselves. I don't see the hobgoblins fracturing into dozens of squabbling tribes but maintaining a highly militaristic society where every hobgoblin counts and every hobgoblin knows their place. Perhaps every hobgoblin trains as a warrior but there are those who make the military their profession. Volunteers make for a better professional military than conscripts. The first order of business would be to rebuild their strength and fortify their new home. Then they can start developing their own cultural identity which will hopeful include cobblers who can craft combat boots and other footwear.

I hope they don't follow either the Roman nor the Spartan model. The Spartans in particular were a nation of professional soldiers whose every need was attended to by Helot slaves (i.e. any other ethnicity between the city and the border), and they often raided these same Helots for no other reason than to keep them subjugated and in terror, slaying them with a very cavalier attitude (a bit the same way samurai tested their swords and bows against dogs).

If they for some reason need to stay evil, I mean, sure. Since I'm hoping humanoids will slowly no longer automatically equate with Evil, I'd like for them to become a war-like, soldierly society but without most of the RL horrors.

Caligae would have been nice though - agreed.

I don't think Rome or Sparta is a good fit for how they should organize, I think more traditional feudal lordship would be likely. most feudal warlords didn't stay in power due to mandate but from military might.

Rome's military tradition of course started much later, in the early days they were just a Republican City-state who vassalized their neighbors. Sparta of course never actually got that big, and was of course a bit on the crazy side.

I will point out that the PCs don’t offer peace to the Legion, they do for Azaersi once they find out everything, and that’s at the very end after they've done a good job carving through the psychopathic and warmongering gobs. Which means there’s a lot less of those, whereas the non-psychopathic and warmongering goblinoids wouldn't have been in the Legion in the first place and are now the main population of Oprak since they finally have a home.

It will be interesting to see the society they build and the culture they develop with their new nation. I always liked the hobgoblins as antagonists that were at least equals with the other nations and cultures. I doubt we'll have time to see generational advancements at least in canon but I usually time jump my campaigns by 100 years to give me some breathing room between what the publisher's doing and what I'm doing in my own campaign so an established nation of hobgoblins with their own customs and mores could be a thing.

Hobgoblin Academy of Military Sciences? Can H.A.M.S. help Hobgoblins be more 'blasty'?

I mean, I could see them going scientific because they don't trust 'elf magic'.

Now, of course, some of said 'Science' may be quite 'mad' and actually bordering into 'elf magic' in appearance, but it's 'Science', dangit!

They are intelligent, disciplined, orderly, and I could easily see them building it first as more of a military academy then branching out?

Though I think one of the things freshmen would be expected to do is learn how to make proper shoes that can withstand the rigors of the modern Golarion. Just sayin'...

The first order of business after securing the border would be to procure some sensible footwear. Everything else can wait.

Make shoes not war!

I don't think Rome or Sparta is a good fit for how they should organize, I think more traditional feudal lordship would be likely. most feudal warlords didn't stay in power due to mandate but from military might.

How a society "should" organize itself is beside the point. The question is, under these given circumstances, how will the society organize itself? What are its internal tensions that need to be managed? Its external threats that need to be met? How will it reproduce itself once it gets going, and will that process actually reproduce the society as it is, or give rise to something else?

Geography is a problem. Mountainous terrain is not great for farming, and Golarion isn't such a Tippy-setting (even less so in 2E, I hope) that food production can be handled entirely by create food traps. That means that keeping the country going will require trade, and production of things to trade. So very quickly you'll see the rise of hobgoblin industrial bourgeois and merchants, and competition of these with the military hierarchy for control of the state. Meanwhile, the point about helots is well-taken; hobgoblins typically took slaves, exploited them brutally, and have no immediate reason to stop doing so. They'll probably import slaves from their neighbors - Cheliax, Molthune, and Nidal all have unfree populations. This will also mean importing social problems. Nirmathas and Ravounel, whatever else they are, are sounding the tocsin of free labor, and Chelish imports will likely bring the Bellflower virus with them. So that's another front of class struggle. I would expect in the face of this the militarists and the industrial bourgeois to unite, and for something like the Prussian state (rather than ancient Sparta or Rome - Golarion is far more modern) to result.

In fact, Molthune provides an easy Prussian model for Oprak to copy, with its slave and otherwise bonded labor and militaristic hierarchy. Korvosa, another near-neighbor, provides a somewhat more progressive model, with its labor doubly free of bonds but also of legal protection. Oprak over time may tend toward the latter system, once its industry starts facing competition from countries using free (thus typically better-educated and more productive) labor. Competition from Oprak, in turn, would tend to drive technological innovation and push down wages in those free-labor societies, and drive conflict therein too.

Realistically I kind of see Azaersi's conquests going the way of Timur more than Caesar in the long term. But I imagine for storytelling purposes Paizo is looking to keep them around.

I sort of like the idea of a society in conflict, with the dominant warrior class finding themselves coming increasingly at odds with up and coming burghers that are becoming increasingly more powerful as the society reorients itself to rely more and more on trade rather than outright conquest.

I sort of like the idea of a society in conflict, with the dominant warrior class finding themselves coming increasingly at odds with up and coming burghers that are becoming increasingly more powerful as the society reorients itself to rely more and more on trade rather than outright conquest.

"I must study Politicks and War that my daughters may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My daughters ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine." -- Azaersi

By P3e, the hobgoblins will venerate Shelyn. ;)

Hobgoblins, looks fun.

{. . .} Geography is a problem. Mountainous terrain is not great for farming, and Golarion isn't such a Tippy-setting (even less so in 2E, I hope) that food production can be handled entirely by create food traps. [. . .}

Create Food traps? Now I've got this vision of traps which -- if you fail your Perception check and/or Disable Device check -- hit you with a pie in the face . . . .

I was never fond of hobgoblins. I was enver in the execute them all camp... I just found them boring. I like this direction. It makes them much more interesting. I also do like the new look.

The Bellflower "Virus"

That is a really...odd way to describe people fighting against slavery.

The Bellflower "Virus"

That is a really...odd way to describe people fighting against slavery.

Isn't it? It's also be how slavemasters dealing with such a thing would describe it. And since we were discussing a slave society, ruled by slavemasters, whose terms and ideology would determine that society's discourse, I thought it apt.

VerBeeker wrote:

The Bellflower "Virus"

That is a really...odd way to describe people fighting against slavery.

Isn't it? It's also be how slavemasters dealing with such a thing would describe it. And since we were discussing a slave society, ruled by slavemasters, whose terms and ideology would determine that society's discourse, I thought it apt.

As someone new to Golarion I thought you were talking about a literal virus and the impact it would have on hobgoblin society if introduced.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

{. . .} Geography is a problem. Mountainous terrain is not great for farming, and Golarion isn't such a Tippy-setting (even less so in 2E, I hope) that food production can be handled entirely by create food traps. [. . .}

Create Food traps? Now I've got this vision of traps which -- if you fail your Perception check and/or Disable Device check -- hit you with a pie in the face . . . .

Imagine being a poor family that in order to survive has to go out into the woods and get assaulted by food traps.

Maybe that's why they don't have footwear? They got so hungry they had to eat their shoes?

It's great to know that my particular campaign, in which we lost everything and fought back tooth-and-nail to restore peace to the land and free the people that were being oppressed in the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, is utterly invalidated.

Seriously, how can you just up and decide that one particular ending of an AP is just categorically wrong? And moreover, why on earth would people fighting for a free nation suddenly take pity on a woman who took everything from them and would continue to run a tyrannical regime on a plane with indigenous cultures?

This is honestly one of the biggest reasons I'm not playing 2E. This was an awful, awful way to handle this, and a big middle finger to anyone who played Ironfang Invasion and didn't show 11th-hour compassion for seemingly no reason.

This is ultimately inevitable with any advance of the timeline. For some reason I was always under the impression Paizo said they wouldn't advance the timeline, but whatever the case might be. I guess it would have been harder to add in goblins without an advancing timeline (and we know including goblins was just a no brainer choice from a marketing perspective).

Fortunately there's nothing stopping you from ignoring the canonical version of Golarion 2.0 and sticking with your version of an advanced Golarion 1.0 or simply moving on to a new setting altogether. Any books with a high amount of flavor can simply be ignored and you use 3rd party SRDs to access the crunchy parts of the books.

I could be wrong, but I imagine in terms of letting people adjust for their home games, there were two fundamental options:
1. Assume a peaceful resolution and have a small hobgoblin nation that could be handwaved away if need be.
2. Assume a more violent resolution and force peaceful games to handwave an entire nation into existence.

The first option expands the setting a bit and adjustment requires less work from GMs. The second option simply reduces the hobgoblin population but otherwise preserves the status quo. I can see why Paizo would go with the former.

It's great to know that my particular campaign, in which we lost everything and fought back tooth-and-nail to restore peace to the land and free the people that were being oppressed in the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, is utterly invalidated.

Seriously, how can you just up and decide that one particular ending of an AP is just categorically wrong? And moreover, why on earth would people fighting for a free nation suddenly take pity on a woman who took everything from them and would continue to run a tyrannical regime on a plane with indigenous cultures?

This is honestly one of the biggest reasons I'm not playing 2E. This was an awful, awful way to handle this, and a big middle finger to anyone who played Ironfang Invasion and didn't show 11th-hour compassion for seemingly no reason.

I just am confused about why the 2e default setting has to accommodate EVERYONE's tables.

Like, what if party asked Baba Yaga to make themselves the rulers of irrisen and status quo continued there? :p Or what if party did post campaign setting book thing and ended winter there? How the heck would setting accommodate for all possibilities when some of APs allow lots of very distinct ones.

This is ultimately inevitable with any advance of the timeline. For some reason I was always under the impression Paizo said they wouldn't advance the timeline, but whatever the case might be.

They said they weren't gonna do a big time jump or anything, and they didn't. They just added the events of the APs and other published adventures, plus a few other things. But the timeline has always advanced at one year for Golarion per real world year, and they've updated the setting to reflect the changes that have occurred in that period.

To be clear, they never said they were going to do otherwise.

John Lynch 106 wrote:

This is ultimately inevitable with any advance of the timeline. For some reason I was always under the impression Paizo said they wouldn't advance the timeline, but whatever the case might be.

They said they weren't gonna do a big time jump or anything, and they didn't. They just added the events of the APs and other published adventures, plus a few other things. But the timeline has always advanced at one year for Golarion per real world year, and they've updated the setting to reflect the changes that have occurred in that period.

To be clear, they never said they were going to do otherwise.

For some reason I was always under the impression that the timeline wasn't going to advance and that no meta plot was ever going to be introduced (such as through adventure modules as was done in Dark Sun. Or the FR modules at the end of 3.5 and the move to 4e). They might not have said it, but it doesnt change the fact I got that impression.

I'm not willing to sift through 10 years worth of posts by Paizo staff so people are free to dismiss me out of hand. I am simply posting what I believed.

I think second thing they said was that while APs would presumably happen on year they are released, they would avoid writing in stuff that forces most of them to be run in order(so even if by default kingmaker happens after rotr, they wouldn't write anything in Kingmaker that requires you to run it in that order in universe)

Because I know some people may take issue with my previous posts over what Paizo did or didn't say, here are two statements. The most important one:

It doesn't matter what Paizo has or has not said in the past. They have chosen to advance their timeline. There is nothing we can do about it and they are free to change their opinion on anything no matter what they might have said in the past.

On the second point: A quick search (I'm not willing to put any more effort into going through posts at this time) did reveal this post. The relevant point is

And frankly, hard coding [events from PFS] in to the setting is kinda lame. It'd be like saying someone's home campaign gets to decide how YOUR game plays out. No thanks. I'd much rather preserve a status quo and a static timeline that doesn't advance,so that any one campaign, be it a home game or a giant public one like PFS, gets to make the right decisions for it and not have to be forced to accept some other story.

(emphasis mine)

But again: It doesn't matter what Paizo said or did not say. It's their game, they can do anything they want.

All I was doing in my initial post was commenting on what I thought the situation had been. Obviously I was either wrong or the situation changed. I was not trying to assert any facts over what Paizo did or did not say. It's why I said "I was always under the impression" and not "Paizo promised".

To be fair, John, I suspect that JJ's statement actually remains true, it's just that the start of PF2e is a necessary exception.

I would be very surprised if they tried to do any "setting hardcoding" over the lifespan of PF2e; I imagine it will be much like 1e where other than the rare "sequel" AP, no book assumes any outcome for any AP.

It's great to know that my particular campaign, in which we lost everything and fought back tooth-and-nail to restore peace to the land and free the people that were being oppressed in the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, is utterly invalidated.

Seriously, how can you just up and decide that one particular ending of an AP is just categorically wrong?

By the same logic, if the canon ending was that the PCs killed the general, wouldn't that be invalidating every group that chose a peaceful ending?

it's just that the start of PF2e is a necessary exception.

Sure. And they can have exceptions any time they want (Return of the Runleords and Shattered Star were notable exceptions during the lifetime of PF1e). But each time they make an exception and advance the metaplot (whether it's for one adventure, for a world-wide publicly played home game or the entire setting with a new edition change) there are consequences which were neatly summed up in that quote.

Hecke's reaction to the advanced timeline is a very understandable and predictable one.

If the canon is not a thing you like, for any reason at all- change it. The people sitting at a table playing the game have as much (if not more) ownership over the setting of that game as Paizo does.

We can't expect Paizo to reflect what happened at any individual table in canon, since invariably that's going to be contradicted by something that happened at a different table in someone else's game. The useful standard they can apply consistently is- "all APs were successful, but we will choose as canonical whatever outcomes we think open up the most potential stories to be told."

By the same logic, if the canon ending was that the PCs killed the general, wouldn't that be invalidating every group that chose a peaceful ending?

Exactly. That's why advancing the metaplot can be problematic. Obviously Paizo thought the opportunities advancing it outweigh the disadvantages of doing it. But doing it isn't without those disadvantages.

Hopefully Paizo is right and they do get more benefit from advancing it then they would have gotten in keeping the Golarion 1.0 status quo. I personally will only be watching the setting from afar (and to be honest I haven't read most of the setting blog entries. Due to the position hobgoblins occupy in Eberron though I made an exception for this blog post).

It's great to know that my particular campaign, in which we lost everything and fought back tooth-and-nail to restore peace to the land and free the people that were being oppressed in the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, is utterly invalidated.

Seriously, how can you just up and decide that one particular ending of an AP is just categorically wrong? And moreover, why on earth would people fighting for a free nation suddenly take pity on a woman who took everything from them and would continue to run a tyrannical regime on a plane with indigenous cultures?

This is honestly one of the biggest reasons I'm not playing 2E. This was an awful, awful way to handle this, and a big middle finger to anyone who played Ironfang Invasion and didn't show 11th-hour compassion for seemingly no reason.

The make peace conclusion is likely what my party would have gotten had we advanced further into the story. Just because your table didn't work out that way doesn't mean this is a colossal failure, like you certainly seem to be acting like it is. You just don't like this conclusion, but not liking something doesn't automatically make it bad.

I feel like the team took what they believed was the likeliest of endings for each AP and worked from there, in my own opinion.

But by playing AP in first place, you change the default setting, so it doesn't match what was written anyway <_< By playing homebrew in setting, you do the same. And there are APs with multiple outcomes, so they can't pick all the outcomes. Heck, in their case, assuming Oprak never exists isn't that hard change to make, opposite is much harder to homebrew.

While it is understandable, its also irrational and unreasonable. Heck I'd say that idea of launching 2e and not taking APs in account at all would have been the worst option they could have done(well after presuming all PCs failed the aps :P)

Like, if they did that, then the Golarion would start in 4719 but nothing had happened in aps that should have happened during that era. Or heck, if they had never progressed the world further than 4707(which they have since start, Organized play has always done that along with setting books), that would result in weird thing of "Well, you can't have another AP in Osirion if it conflicts with Mummy's Mask. That or the new ap makes Mummy's Mask completely non canon" because setting being 100% static also leads to weirdness.

(I guess there is also option of having "Oh, there are two aps in osirion now that could happen in any order", but that requires the AP to disallow any major changes to status quo making setting again even more static)

Like, completely static setting only works if 1) There aren't regular new campaigns set in the setting 2) all the modules are minor scale things that never affect grand scheme of things". Otherwise, it feels annoying to have major change on world that gets invalidated by new APs set in same location dealing with same characters especially if its same BBEGs who have now never lost once in first place.

If the canon is not a thing you like, for any reason at all- change it. The people sitting at a table playing the game have as much (if not more) ownership over the setting of that game as Paizo does.

Meh. I don't have a current gaming group so any group I do get will be new. They likely won't have any attachment to the Golarion setting. So I'd have to either:

I had a strong tendency towards going with option 4 with a homebrew Golarion setting. But the inclusion of goblins in the core book really gave me pause. After weeks of mulling over the issue I'd finally found a solution on how to rephrase goblins so that they could remain in the setting as a PC option without losing their flavour. But with the reveal of new ancestries in the Advanced Player's Guide and what those ancestries were, I ultimately decided to just change to a homebrew setting that can accomodate all these races without any meaningful changes required (Eberron).

The fact that the Age of Lost Omens chapter in the CRB spoils some of the APs also played a significant role in coming to the final decision.

I mean the fact that Sandpoint as of 1E was stagnant for so long after Ameiko had in canon left to become the Empress of Minkai actually did bother me more than a little bit.

And the Runelord story-line had moved forward canonizing a handful of Adventure Paths in the world besides.

As did the NPC Guided when it jumped the Council of Thieves, Lantern Bearers, Gray Maidens, and Silver Raven factions ahead in canon.

Otherwise, it feels annoying to have major change on world that gets invalidated by new APs set in same location dealing with same characters especially if its same BBEGs who have now never lost once in first place.

I don't know if this has been asked, but are there plans to advance the timeline of Golarion? Or sequels to the APs? Do they all kind of take place at the same time in different parts of the world?

Nope.

The adventure paths are pretty much assumed to be in "limbo" and haven't happened for any one incarnation of Golarion until you run them in your incarnation for your players. At that point the order in which you run them and the ones you choose to run or not are what set the advancing timeline for YOUR Golarion.

I was going to follow up by asking if you're worried you'll run out of places for things to take place that you can keep creating APs and modules and other stories in, but given how huge Golarion is, I doubt that would happen for decades

I'm not worried at all about running out of places for adventures. Not at all. For example, we've set 5 of them wholly or partially in Varisia, and there's STILL a lot of stories I want to tell there... and that's just 1 region of about 45 regions.

Does that mean we'll never see new material published in a region that has already been thoroughly affected by an AP or novel or the like? Say, the Shackles? Considering the very structure of that nation is affected by the PCs in Skull and Shackles, does it mean there can never be another adventure there? Or if so, how do you do that?

Unlikely, but we've done a few "sequel" prodcuts before. Like Shattered Star. Or the Xin-Shalast entry in Lost Cities. We may do so again, but we generally prefer to focus on new topics.

Now clearly something changed between then and now. But at one point Paizo (or at least James Jacobs) was confident that they didn't need to have an advancing timeline in order to be able to have interesting adventures in the Golarion setting.

I DID read your post and JJ quote. I just don't fully agree with him on the matter. I get his argument and do find it reasonable, but its not my own personal preference on what I'd prefer as customer. (I run all the APs in same continuity, so stuff like what the heck Mendevian Crusaders do after Worldwound is closed is really useful for em)

My guess on what changes is that they realized that keeping track of what might have happened in limbo is harder than just taking old APs out of it. Like, "APs never advance setting, unless we do sequel to it" is more confusing to track than just deciding how AP advanced setting and following up from that. Because then, there would be old ap both its sequel in limbo while setting books presume world from before both aps.

Like "You don't see IG's effect in any other campaign that sequel campaign to IG" will still conflict with someone's setting because they weren't expecting IG to get a sequel in first place :p

Ya know, I think I feel incoherent. This morning grogginess isn't really helping right now xD

I just don't fully agree with him on the matter.

Fair enough.

I mean, a major advantage of having the timeline and the setting advance inexorably is that it gives them license also to change things they didn't like organically (people in the diagesis didn't like it either, and did something about it) rather than a straight up retcon.

I mean, if the setting did not advance Mr. Jacobs couldn't say things like "The Gorilla King is dead; we're not interested in telling any more stories about him." Since if Serpent's Skull never enters into canon, he's just going to be sitting there forever waiting for it to happen.

Just to clarify, I don't think they should start making every AP in future assume all previous APs happened or start making new setting books after each AP to update setting. I just think that presuming ten years worth of 1e adventures never happening in 2e would have been more confusing for newbies than just biting the bullet and upgrading them.

Like, I'm still morning groggy and probably writing in bad grammar(and perhaps even contradicting myself), but let's say they would have made 2e sequel to Iron Gods but 2e setting books presume all 1e APs never happened. Result would be that to someone who never read Iron Gods, it would be confusing case of AP referring to events that happened in previous edition but weren't ever mentioned in setting books when talking about Numeria.

I do think its plausible to have APs happen in limbo a single edition(because as JJ said, there are so many adventure ideas and locations that having two pirate APs in single edition would probably be too much), but when an edition change happens, suddenly there is market for 2e pirate AP. It might never happen, but in case it does(since Paizo DOES more new writers than previously that also increases chance of them wanting to also do their take on it), its less confusing now that everyone has baseline of what happened in Skulls & Shackles.

It's great to know that my particular campaign, in which we lost everything and fought back tooth-and-nail to restore peace to the land and free the people that were being oppressed in the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, is utterly invalidated.

Seriously, how can you just up and decide that one particular ending of an AP is just categorically wrong? And moreover, why on earth would people fighting for a free nation suddenly take pity on a woman who took everything from them and would continue to run a tyrannical regime on a plane with indigenous cultures?

This is honestly one of the biggest reasons I'm not playing 2E. This was an awful, awful way to handle this, and a big middle finger to anyone who played Ironfang Invasion and didn't show 11th-hour compassion for seemingly no reason.

Any canonical ending will invalidate all other endings, so unless the timeline was stuck and the earlier APs never mentioned, some games were going to be invalidated.

That said, I do agree that parts of this ending don't really sit right. When my group played it, we certainly took Azaersi out and reclaimed the artifact. Playing as an all dwarf party (which works really well for that campaign) might have had something to do with it, but I think we'd make the same decisions anyway. She had a stolen artifact and used it to murder and enslave people wholesale. That's not something you can just go "Oh, well you've had a bad life so we'll let it slide." We might have agreed to some kind of peace settlement, but removing Azersi from power, abolishing slavery and most importantly not keeping the artifact would most likely be non-negotiable positions. And at that point we'd be negotiating as victors. She's a bloody-handed butcher who's people were doing things like making tents out of human skin. I think Oprak is an interesting idea, and kind of cool. But assuming the PCs just let the butcher walk and keep her stolen war-machine just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially since she was beaten by that point. Although some of this might also be due to GM interpretation. I haven't read the modules, I just played them. So a lot of the GM facing material didn't reach me.

Oprak can still exist even if Azersei is taken out though. If she's gone, than a less militant leader could take the remnants of the army and fall back to the mountainous regions. Nirmanthis and Molthune might then agree to a peace deal that allows them to keep existing instead of having to go and dislodge them from the harsh area where they could easily wage guerilla warfare. Them having control of the Onyx Citidel is problematic though.

a major advantage of having the timeline and the setting advance inexorably is that it gives them license also to change things they didn't like organically

Sure. Of course, if you change too many things it's also a good jumping off point (as many did with the 4e Forgotten Realms and the advanced Dark Sun timeline which wasn't well received from what I've read. Dragonlance is also a mess. I don't even know if the setting exists anymore or if it was literally blown up). So while it does have an advantage in that you can change lots of things, it also has the disadvantage in that people might not like what you change it to.

But I didn't mean for my initial comment to derail the thread so much.

So how about them hobgoblins? Are people planning on letting them be available in their next home campaign? I personally will be. In the setting my games will take place in, hobgoblins were spread throughout all of the main continent before a giant war called the Last War occurred. And although there is a goblinoid nation in Eberron, it's relatively new and arose from the Last War. As such many hobgoblins come from countries where their fathers would have fought for their country and their grandfather and their great grandfather, etc. National pride is strong in the nations at the moment and the main goblins that make up the new goblin nation would be either from Cyre (a country that was completely wiped out in a fantasy equivalent of a nuclear winter) or mercenaries who fought for anyone who paid the best. Very few hobgoblins would give up centuries of national pride just because there's a new kid on the block.

How do other people plan to handle hobgoblins?

I let people play anything. If a Yaddithian, an Astomoi, a Vine Leshy, and a Locathah want to put Eutropia on the throne when we do War for the Crown, that's just going to make it a little more farcical is all.

You just have to explain "Okay, how did this person get here and what are they doing?" which you would not need to do with a CRB race/ancestry option. I'm generally a fan of "if you can plausibly justify it, it's the case" as a GM, and that's how I plan on handling everything uncommon.

From what I heard from GM(our Ironfang Invasion campaign got in perma hiatus in book 2), they were really surprised by that being option in adventure itself and that 2e took that as default. Like, I think issue sounds like it suddenly comes up in final book, but isn't foreshadowed at all through whole AP.

I definitely agree that Oprak being default option, while hobgoblin mercantile nation concept is cool, does come with few issues especially since they continue being LE and practicing slavery, latter of which is really worrying with stuff like tents made out of human leather by certain bugbear :P Like, it kinda comes across as "Was this really good idea in long run?" since its kinda hard to tell whether hobgoblins will in long run learn to be better from mercy and peace being offered to them.

(aka, I actually agree that "Let's offer peace to BBEG" scenario wasn't probably handled the best, but its hard to tell since I haven't played or read the adventure :P But its still option that I'm certain some parties picked or wanted to pick)

But yeah, I don't think I will have much problem with hobgoblin pcs or players wanting to play them. I myself don't really have problem with it, I'm actually bit more worried about regular goblins because those might incentive players to want to make too silly characters or pyromaniacs :D

Looks great. Can't wait for the book^^

I've never disallowed a race at my table, and since I mainly use my own Homebrew world I try and find a local where they're character would likely be from or at least their people would likely be from.

Want to play a Leshy? Alright you could have been grown in the depths of the Cullwood by a kindly Orc druid, awoken to life on your own in the depths of the ever-growing Nymph's Blessing Forest outside of my version of Westcrown, or you could be a child of one of the great Woad trees that mark the Elves emergence into the world.

Locathah, you've got a whole six oceans and several seas to choose from.

Astomoi, stranger creatures have wandered out of the Cairncrags of Surtova or the valley within the Nuoas Mountains.

Yaddithians are as likely to walk their way out of the Cairncrags or emerge from one of the Planar Portals within the City-States of the Jenovari Desert, or underneath the sentient city of Vorhen.

It's actually a favorite past time of mine to figure out where races came from and when they arrived since the main feature of my home game is that all of the world's sentient inhabitants come from somewhere else.