ArborArcanist's page

Has “world’s oldest” replaced “world’s greatest” in the D&D marketing lingo, or was that a cheeky touch?

Pathfinder 2E is so big and diverse it'd be kind of impossible to do an inspirational media list for it without leaving something/someone out or even-misadvertising the types of content at play. Guns & Gears alone drew inspirations from a laundry list of anime, American shows animated and otherwise, Filipino media, video games, historical events, novels, and the game's own unique history. Consider the number of people credited as writers, designers, developers, creative directors, etc. in any given book and then factor in that they each have their own bucket of inspirations, and the scope of the thing becomes such that accurately listing everything would make the game look much less intentional and specific than it is, while leaving things out could do a huge injustice to a source that had a meaningful impact on the game.

Stephen-Radney McFarland used to say (probably still does, he's not dead, I just don't work with him anymore, lol) "Fantasy is a language." Like a language it grows and evolves over time and with new speakers, and also like a language it has lots of regional dialects influenced by a wide variety of factors. The real source inspiration for Pathfinder2e is that language itself, as understood and spoken by all the people who contribute to the game.

I understand the line of thinking in this explanation, but I respectfully disagree with the conclusion to remove them.

The way you describe the decision, it comes across as looking inward, not unlike citing sources for a paper. Saying “this is what defines the game”.
I don’t think many people interpreted inspirational media this way, unless 1e players legitimately assumed the first edition was built entirely on print inspirations, that included only one Ancient Greek text, and no major Eastern fantasy works.

Looking outward would be treating the inspirational media blocks as sharing key bits of developer inspiration from different aspects of the game; not for the purpose of citing, but better nudging along players and GMs in finding relevant material to find them.

I won’t deny that part of my OCD is a fixation with lists, so I have something of a bias towards these collections; but I also think that there is genuine worth in saying to beginners “here, these are great places to get started in our various subgenres, go get inspired”.

I would certainly include the Witcher, since those games were my primary inspiration for the first version of the alchemist back in the day.

Oh cool! (And the more I think back on the mutagens and bombs of the 1e alchemist, the more that makes sense, haha)

Golarion can be a little tough to do general inspirations for, because it’s such a patchwork - the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Numeria, the Mwangi Expanse, and Osirion are all rarically different vibes, just as examples.

I don’t think most of the media on those lists were intended as general settingwide inspirations- Doom, Dead Space, Dragonriders of Pern (Starfinder), The Shining, The Hellbound Heart, and The Time Machine (Pathfinder), are mostly reflected in regionalized/specific ways.

While Horror Adventures and the 1e core rulebook covered print sources fabulously, there has never (to my knowledge) been a Pathfinder equivalent to Starfinder’s video game/tabletop section for inspirational media- and there were some fascinating and obscure picks on that one (Aerannis in particular).
I’m also curious if The Witcher video games would’ve been included in a hypothetical 2e inspirational media, as the original books were never named as inspirations in either of 1e’s sections.