Paizo Leadership Team Update

Oh, yeah, the original stuff sucked. I would never try to defend "lawful neutral slaveowners".

Yeah the origonal stuff (ie none evil slave nations/cultures was bad.) However I'm not sure Erik's proposed solution is much better (Since it feels more like just pretend none of it ever happend rather than actually addresing the issue.)

Also it's one heck of a continuity change when your setting seems to have slavery get Thanos snapped out of existence especially since that is going to create several unintended situations (For example Ironfang invasion so instead of the hobgoblins capturing and enslaving people for you to later rescue they murder everyone on sight is that better somehow? Devils with there bargains to ensnlave peoples souls does that just not happen anymore?)

I think that's taking the posts to an extreme that neither of them really go to. I doubt Erik Mona is saying "we're going to rewrite and reprint Ironfang Invasion". More, "In the future, we're going to decenter slavery as a story device, and we're going to deemphasize it when explaining the lore of the world."

I do think that there needs to be a place for empowerment fantasies versus escapist fantasies. I don't love how transphobia basically doesn't seem to exist in Golarion, because it makes Golarion feel less real to me (and yes, that's pretty screwed up, I didn't make the world that way, Doc). You can't please everyone. But organized play complicates things a lot, and it's better to err on the side of "don't force players into narratives like this" when you're talking about a huge PFS event like this one.

Honestly a (Increasingly) Cynical part of me thinks this is more smoke and mirrors anyway "Were not doing anything to deal with the inhouse problems but oh look at how were removing this bad thing from the game."

The blog post was not posted by Paizo management.

Yeah the origonal stuff (ie none evil slave nations/cultures was bad.) However I'm not sure Erik's proposed solution is much better (Since it feels more like just pretend none of it ever happend rather than actually addresing the issue.)

Also it's one heck of a continuity change when your setting seems to have slavery get Thanos snapped out of existence especially since that is going to create several unintended situations (For example Ironfang invasion so instead of the hobgoblins capturing and enslaving people for you to later rescue they murder everyone on sight is that better somehow? Devils with there bargains to ensnlave peoples souls does that just not happen anymore?)

Which is why they originally took years to address complaints, since they wanted to link changes to things happening in the world, which required finding room in the schedule to put them in adventures. Which is much of what the freelancer complained about.

I doubt the devil's bargains will change - that's a very different, very much pure fantasy thing that doesn't really trigger the same reactions as more mundane slavery.
Personally I'd be fine with something like the Ironfang Invasion - that falls into empowerment fantasy. Even if they don't take that approach in the future, they're not likely to retcon it away. It just won't be a focus of adventures or setting books going forward.

The blog post was not posted by Paizo management.

Was more refering to Erik Mona's responce

Okay, one thing I'm not sure I can comfortably agree with the blog post about--as a white person, I'd want to get more perspectives, though, instead of fully trusting my own uninformed one on it--is the criticism that the "free the slaves" narrative has the characters arming the enslaved people and cooperating with them to overthrow the slaveowners.

"Okay, so the slaves have to fight and die just to 'earn' their freedom," sounds like a really fair criticism, but so would, "Okay, so the slaves are just passive objects in this story without any agency or involvement of their own."

This is probably a good reason not to force people to play in narratives like this in a huge Organized Play event, mind you.

I personally wish we could get an Adventure about breaking the back of Okeno and driving slavers out of the Golden Road region, but I’m also a white gal - happy to defer to those with more claim to the trauma of slavery.

Also the whole thing rings hollow to me when they have a character who enslaved people both physically and mentally get a redemption ark.

Redemption arcs are complicated, but I'd need more context than that to judge them.

Runelord Sorshen (Which I will admit is a big bugbear of mine and I say that as someone who is normally all for redemption arks.)

I do think that there needs to be a place for empowerment fantasies versus escapist fantasies. I don't love how transphobia basically doesn't seem to exist in Golarion, because it makes Golarion feel less real to me (and yes, that's pretty screwed up, I didn't make the world that way, Doc). You can't please everyone. But organized play complicates things a lot, and it's better to err on the side of "don't force players into narratives like this" when you're talking about a huge PFS event like this one.

Im pretty sure I came across transphobia pretty recently myself. Its just one of those things that you have to be careful putting it into the setting and presenting it because you might make people uncomfortable.

Okay, one thing I'm not sure I can comfortably agree with the blog post about--as a white person, I'd want to get more perspectives, though, instead of fully trusting my own uninformed one on it--is the criticism that the "free the slaves" narrative has the characters arming the enslaved people and cooperating with them to overthrow the slaveowners.

Early Pathfinder Society had a large litany of issues ranging from virulent sexism, transphobia, racism, sexism, and other issues. To their credit they've moved away from that and the writing got better but to hear that Erik was trying to undo that is not good.

I cautiously agree. Be careful, yeah, but I am always very wary these days of "don't do this because it makes people uncomfortable". I hate saying this in a mixed crowd, because the "anti-SJWs" love to misuse its rhetoric, but... no, discomfort itself isn't the problem. For real, if I changed my behavior to accommodate people's "discomfort", I'd still be using the men's bathrooms (or giving myself another bladder infection by holding it in until I'm home).

Discomfort is always valid, but it can't dictate behavior. Not on its own.

Now, if you're causing discomfort in a way that disproportionately targets or alienates a marginalized group... then it gets stickier. It's not the offense that's the issue, though. It's the fact that you're making a space less comfortable for a group that may already not have a lot of spaces that are safe for them, which contributes to a broader systemic problem of them being pushed out of comfortable, mainstream spaces that the majority group gets to enjoy.

So, like, some trans people are not comfortable with in-world transphobia, and they should at the very least be accommodated. But that doesn't make narratives that feature transphobia inherently problematic to tell, even for a mostly cis group of storytellers. That's my opinion, anyways.

(They can still be super offensive, though, and that's definitely still problematic. :P)

EDIT: I don't think Erik was "trying to undo that". That doesn't match what either post seems to be saying.

I think that's taking the posts to an extreme that neither of them really go to. I doubt Erik Mona is saying "we're going to rewrite and reprint Ironfang Invasion". More, "In the future, we're going to decenter slavery as a story device, and we're going to deemphasize it when explaining the lore of the world."

It's this.

The mistake I made with the Absalom book is in dwelling too much on a very sensitive topic. Yes, the PFS plotline helped by removing legal slavery from the city, but I should have just let well enough alone, mentioning that it had happened in the timeline and then moving on to any of a countless number of other evils.

Instead I wanted to flesh out the context more, and make the change a more holistic part of the setting while still giving a few illegal baddies for people to kill.

The thing is, with this topic, that's too much. People just hate it in the setting period. We really should not have put it in there in the first place. Trying to deal with "phasing it out" within the context of the story adds fuel to the fire and makes people even more uncomfortable.

It's not worth it.

So while I suspect the word may come up a time or two in the future, we're just not going to be covering it going forward. A few in-production items might reference it still, but it's no longer going to be a notable part of the Golarion campaign setting.

If you want to write a big adventure where people burn Okeno to the ground to have it all make sense within the fiction of the campaign world, you are free to do so.

But we are not going to.

Honestly to me it sounds like it might be simpler just to reboot the setting rather than having several parts of the setting you just dont talk about.

That sounds to me like it would be way less simple.

That sounds to me like it would be way less simple.

I admit simple was the wrong word more sense is what I should have said.

(Although at the same time they are now stuck with a fair few countries/ organisations that there gonna have to dance around including but not limited to Cheliax, Okeno, Andoran (Since a big part of Andorans identity is them being completly anti-slavery)and there entire first 2e adventure path,

There's some considerable irony in the much-delayed, much-anticipated OH YEAH THIS IS GOING TO BE IT Absalom book landing flat because a) Erik couldn't just let go of the slave trope without making sure to "phase it out organically" and b) Mwangi Expanse and Grand Bazaar happened and welp, both are books from another planet and another era, the year 2021 to be precise.

There's not a lot of dancing for most of them. Cheliax is still an evil empire, so Andoran and Galt can still hate them. And why would they need to dance around an adventure they already published? It's not like they'll be rewriting it, or like PCs who play through that AP are frequently going to go and play other APs later and go, "heyyy, wait a second... where's all the slavery? My suspension of disblief is shattered."

And why would they need to dance around an adventure they already published? It's not like they'll be rewriting it, or like PCs who play through that AP are frequently going to go and play other APs later and go, "heyyy, wait a second... where's all the slavery? My suspension of disblief is shattered."

Well since they now do update the timeline (Admitadly probably not again for a while) and they do now have canon conclusions to all 1e ap's which I imagine they will plan to do for the 2e ones at somepoint gonna be pretty odd if there is next to no mention of there launch one in said timeline, Also if they ever want to do anything with the areas that ap touched such as Hermia.

Also, it's not like Paizo hasn't already once axed one element of the setting and declared that they'll never mention it again *cough* Folca *cough*.

Also, it's not like Paizo hasn't already once axed one element of the setting and declared that they'll never mention it again *cough* Folca *cough*.

Again correct but Folca was a miniscule part of the setting (I believe mentioned in all of two books and 1 of those two was the briefest of mentions)

Anything is an improvement over over having the charterers put down an uprising of ex-slaves demanding an end to slavery, like in Serpents Skull, Racing to Ruin. Freeman Insurgents from the "Brotherhood". Yeow!

No, no, you don't get it, Fergie, they were extremist abolitionists, that's why they're bad.

Also, don't they kidnap one of the NPCs, potentially including one of the two white ladies? Oof. I did not enjoy that encounter.

The roar of approval at Siege of Absalom (Skalcon) was tremendous when the announcement was made that any former slave that took up arms in defense of the city would earn their freedom, and then the subsequent announcement that if but for the bravery of the emancipated the city WOULD have fallen is still one of the biggest events I'd ever seen, either in OrgPlay or otherwise (including some Serious Seeker Stuff). The subsequent emancipation decree by the leadership of Absalom fit.

It didn't feel 'contrived', it felt 'vibrant', it felt 'live', it felt like *we did something GOOD.*

It also, in my limited perspective, partially made up for the cesspit of a few other earlier scenarios dealing distastefully with the topic, with still plenty of work to do.

That there was a backslide to go over the history of things is discouraging -- but the Creative Officer and Publisher coming straight out saying 'We messed this up" is refreshing compared to some 'radio silence' from other members of the Leadership Team.

Thank you for your clarification, Erik, and for owning the mistake made.

It's a learning experience for everyone.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

I think that's taking the posts to an extreme that neither of them really go to. I doubt Erik Mona is saying "we're going to rewrite and reprint Ironfang Invasion". More, "In the future, we're going to decenter slavery as a story device, and we're going to deemphasize it when explaining the lore of the world."

It's this.

The mistake I made with the Absalom book is in dwelling too much on a very sensitive topic. Yes, the PFS plotline helped by removing legal slavery from the city, but I should have just let well enough alone, mentioning that it had happened in the timeline and then moving on to any of a countless number of other evils.

Instead I wanted to flesh out the context more, and make the change a more holistic part of the setting while still giving a few illegal baddies for people to kill.

The thing is, with this topic, that's too much. People just hate it in the setting period. We really should not have put it in there in the first place. Trying to deal with "phasing it out" within the context of the story adds fuel to the fire and makes people even more uncomfortable.

It's not worth it.

So while I suspect the word may come up a time or two in the future, we're just not going to be covering it going forward. A few in-production items might reference it still, but it's no longer going to be a notable part of the Golarion campaign setting.

If you want to write a big adventure where people burn Okeno to the ground to have it all make sense within the fiction of the campaign world, you are free to do so.

But we are not going to.

The problem with this is the mistakes goes far beyond focusing on slavery. Seriously, how does your book acknowledge or deal with the fact that Absalom owes its existence to what essentially is an act of genocide?

And on top of that why wouldn't you just use the Aspis Consortium. By default they are the premiere evil organization in the setting. Want someone to stage a coup and over through a government? They got you covered. Kidnapping? Murder? Extortion? Weird eldritch conspiracies? Hey.... They've done that before. Some of which occurred in Absalom.

The references to illegal slavery make it pretty clear that slavery is considered to be immoral and evil. It gives good characters motivation for confronting evil doers such as slavers. As the City at the Center of the World, Absalom is going to have smuggling. Certain nobles with few if any scruples will see this as a means of profiting off the illegal and evil trade which puts in more plot hooks.

Wait, did Absalom only abolish slavery because enslaved people helped them win against an external enemy?

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

Wait, did Absalom only abolish slavery because enslaved people helped them win against an external enemy?

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

Almost hilariously tone-deaf.

There are so many more compelling stories you could tell to give the reason for the end of slavery in a city-state. The end of slavery for the end of slavery's sake is a good first step. In a setting where there are literally gods of good around, abolition movements should have been around from the jump.

Yeah, organizing a slave revolt against the leaders of Absalom and putting everyone responsible to the sword (or exile, if we prefer) seems a little more proportionate.

When something in your setting is wrong (such as a non-evil aligned nation having legal slavery) having in-setting stuff right that wrong isn't always a good solution.

In the case of Absalom, having a slave revolution lead to the outlawing of slavery doesn't address the initial issue - that a neutral aligned city had legal slavery.

Changing things to "They did have slavery, but don't have slavery now" while leaving it as "They where still neutral aligned back then though" aligns with the harmful view that "It was a different time/Those things where okay back then".

In this case, I think a proper retcon would have been a better solution. Just say that slavery was never legal in Absalom. It takes significantly less work (no need for a PFS event, no need to write paragraphs about it), and actually addresses the issue appropriately.

There is place for revolutions and slave revolts in the setting (places where the powers you revolt against are actually acknowledged as evil) but Absalom isn't that place.

Yeah, I think this is where I pull the plug. Will think it over tonight, but this is yet another misstep, yet another time writers with concerns have been ignored, and yet another sign that Paizo needs a total management overhaul. So I expect in the morning I'll be cancelling my AP subscription for good.

And to be clear, this ain't a boycot until things improve. This is the last several months having sucked all joy I get out of something I loved. And I honestly don't know if that can be fixed or the trust repaired at this point.

Maybe I'll come back at some point in a vague undefined number of months. But now is the time to put my money and time into games that make me happy. And doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach.

When something in your setting is wrong (such as a non-evil aligned nation having legal slavery) having in-setting stuff right that wrong isn't always a good solution.

In the case of Absalom, having a slave revolution lead to the outlawing of slavery doesn't address the initial issue - that a neutral aligned city had legal slavery.

Yeah, hence the "put the leaders to the sword" thing, to try to emphasize, "hey, this wasn't actually Neutral at all" Still a retcon, just a softer one.

Yeah, I think this is where I pull the plug. Will think it over tonight, but this is yet another misstep, yet another time writers with concerns have been ignored, and yet another sign that Paizo needs a total management overhaul. So I expect in the morning I'll be cancelling my AP subscription for good.

And to be clear, this ain't a boycot until things improve. This is the last several months having sucked all joy I get out of something I loved. And I honestly don't know if that can be fixed or the trust repaired at this point.

Maybe I'll come back at some point in a vague undefined number of months. But now is the time to put my money and time into games that make me happy. And doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach.

Man, I'm sorry it came to this for you FD.

Sadly, this is something I predicted when I first heard about the mis-management coming to a head. I said it then and I'll say it again. When people start cancelling and leaving, it won't be for a short-term boycott, it will be because they are burned out from having their trust abused and will be leaving permanently.

FallenDabus wrote:

Yeah, I think this is where I pull the plug. Will think it over tonight, but this is yet another misstep, yet another time writers with concerns have been ignored, and yet another sign that Paizo needs a total management overhaul. So I expect in the morning I'll be cancelling my AP subscription for good.

And to be clear, this ain't a boycot until things improve. This is the last several months having sucked all joy I get out of something I loved. And I honestly don't know if that can be fixed or the trust repaired at this point.

Maybe I'll come back at some point in a vague undefined number of months. But now is the time to put my money and time into games that make me happy. And doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach.

Man, I'm sorry it came to this for you FD.

Sadly, this is something I predicted when I first heard about the mis-management coming to a head. I said it then and I'll say it again. When people start cancelling and leaving, it won't be for a short-term boycott, it will be because they are burned out from having their trust abused and will be leaving permanently.

Appreciate the sentiment. I feel bad for the freelancers and developers though. I love what they do, I love these worlds. I've had great conversations and been inspired by them over the years. I want to keep supporting them, but I just... can't at this point. It's not fun for me anymore. I have other games that probably means when I run RPG clubs and classes for my students, it will be with non-d20 systems. Hopefully that will broaden their horizons a bit.

But yeah, this entire thing sucks mightily. I agree with your prediction. I am burnt out on work, I am burnt out on writing, I am burnt out on COVID. I can't change those, I'm burning out on my leisure too, that one at least I can fix. Just close the door and don't looking back.

If that's any consolation, Monsters of Myths is awesome, or at least the chapters I read. Seems like when Paizo does a "dozens of freelancers, most of them being young blood" books it works much better than "a pet project of one guy 20 years in the making, except the world today is not the world of 2001" endeavors.

I feel that complaints that Paizo abolishing slavery on Golarion through storylines, instead of just zapping it away without an explanation, is a bad thing seem a bit, um, overwrought. Slavery is an historical fact throughout the entire world and there is probably no region on Earth which didn't have this institution at some point. It can't be owned by any particular group of people as their collective trauma, because it happened everywhere at some point in history.

I find it unrealistic to the point of suspension of disbelief that we get abolitionist movements throughout the entire wrold of Golarion at the same time (especially in places like Cheliax, because why would they care what other nations do?), but if Paizo wants to go that way, then they should have the right to at least explain it in a way which makes sense in the world.

Now, mechanics like "buying slaves to use them as soldiers in an abolitionist movement" seem tasteless, although I've never read the module, so I can't say if that is exactly how it was written down. So, yeah, some sensitivity in that area probably should have been applied.

I'm just gonna say, "all these social movements happening around the continent at the same time"? Kind of just how social movements tend to work.

They move.

I'm just gonna say, "all these social movements happening around the continent at the same time"? Kind of just how social movements tend to work.

They move.

Hm, comparing a world so connected via the internet that news pass the entire globe in a minute to a quasi-medieval world seems a bit weird. Unless we have Magicbook and Magictwitter and so on which we never heard about.

Feudalism, which presumably will not be abolished on Golarion, is a function of such insufficient ways of communication that a centralized government isn't possible and as such absolute power in a region has to be delegated to local lords. As such, I have to presume that even the presence of magic doesn't make Golarion as interconnected as our modern world.

Now, I can totally see that moral codes on Golarion have evolved to a point where slavery was seen as so immoral that it should be abolished everywhere, which is what happened historically on Earth as well. But that took many decades and much strife to be implemented everywhere. And on Golarion it again runs into the problem of plainly evil nations, which wouldn't care much about what other nations do.

I was going to post commentary on the slavery issue and my complete lack of problem with it being addressed in Lost Omens or the way it was abolished in org play. However, this is way off topic and IMO nearly the entire last page and a half should be scrubbed and moved to its own thread. YMMV

I'm not even American so I don't think I can really comment on slavery as plot device :/ Like from my view its not anymore off limits than other horrible things people do, but this is more complicated issue than my outsider's point of view on the matter. Like I will agree that neutral slave owners never felt right for me and can't really add more to that.

I would like to politely repeat that this slavery topic feels distinct from the current thread.

If nothing else, there’s probably folks who would like to know about the letter and Erik’s reply who aren’t nearly twenty pages deep into an old blog post.

Ah that is true yeah.

Tender Tendrils wrote:

When something in your setting is wrong (such as a non-evil aligned nation having legal slavery) having in-setting stuff right that wrong isn't always a good solution.

In the case of Absalom, having a slave revolution lead to the outlawing of slavery doesn't address the initial issue - that a neutral aligned city had legal slavery.

Yeah, hence the "put the leaders to the sword" thing, to try to emphasize, "hey, this wasn't actually Neutral at all" Still a retcon, just a softer one.

Exactly -- rather than rewriting history, correct the depiction of the city's alignment (also need to do this with Molthune, Rahadoum, etc.).

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

When something in your setting is wrong (such as a non-evil aligned nation having legal slavery) having in-setting stuff right that wrong isn't always a good solution.

In the case of Absalom, having a slave revolution lead to the outlawing of slavery doesn't address the initial issue - that a neutral aligned city had legal slavery.

Yeah, hence the "put the leaders to the sword" thing, to try to emphasize, "hey, this wasn't actually Neutral at all" Still a retcon, just a softer one.

Exactly -- retcon the city's alignment (also need to do this with Molthune, Rahadoum, etc.).

Rahadoum needing a fresh look is a big part of why I really, really want a Lost Omens: The Golden Road as considerate and nuanced as the Mwangi book was.

ALso, to add to what I posted above, need to correct the specification of certain individuals' alignments, like what's-her-name that rules over the party in Legacy of Fire. I'm perfectly willing to play in that AP, but having her be described as non-Evil is nevertheless a sore point (doesn't mean she can't be described as polite, just that non-Evil doesn't fit).

Rahadoum is kinda in weird place because its oppressive anti religious government that does remind of real life religious oppression, but its considered LN despite being portrayed as bad guys because... I guess they aren't as malicious as the actual Evil governments?

(That and Pathfinder has weird habit of treating religious worship and cultures separately while real life religions are usually heavy part of cultures even if member of culture isn't religious. I think its side effect of "gods are real and kind of role models rather than faiths per say")

Like... In early Pathfinder lot of neutral governments are actually quite bad on moral side, they just aren't openly malicious than stuff like Nidal and Cheliax is

Oh and by the way, if you decide you actually do want to have a proper AP of burning Okeno to the ground, count my vote for that.

I mean... if we go that way, we will have to say that every government of Earth was Evil-aligned before at least the Enlightment and presumably thereafter as well for a long time. Applying modern moral codes (especially when they are evolving so quickly as they are now) to historical governments is not the best idea, IMO.