CULTxicycalm's page

The Runelords Strike Back!

Okay so the wiki needs an in-lore timeline of products, to start with. I’ll get to working on that.

At the very least we need a timeline with ALL products on it. Figuring out the temporal sequence of one line of products is fairly easy, but figuring out how ALL the lines fit together is practically impossible at this point without constantly begging strangers to help you. Just the other day I found a thread that listed the Korvosa content in order, and I didn’t even know there was an order to it. And that’s just ONE city on one continent!

Btw Morhek’s idea for an ancient history book is awesome, but instead of contributing to the solution it contributes to the problem because it merely creates one more lore-rich book that many GMs won’t read, or even know about. We need a META-lore book that creates NOTHING but merely points to what EXISTS so that EVERY GM can buy this book and get a handle on the lore’s ARCHITECTURE. And it’s best if the product is digital and constantly updated.

It’s the 21st century. I know this is a book-publisher but the book format has limits that our culture has long passed. At some point Paizo will need to think of modernization if it wants to continue growing its world complexity as it has been doing since the start.

It’s not an issue of competence. You can be hyper-competent, but if you haven’t read tens of thousands of pages of the lore, you... won’t know the lore.

It’s an issue of experience. We’re getting to the point where the next generation of writers will have to take 4-year classes in Golarion History before they can create stuff that links up well with older stuff instead of ignoring old stuff like D&D does now and just creating random new stuff that makes the world feel dead.

Change in direction is also only possible if you KNOW the current direction. If you don’t know it, it’s not change, it’s bulldozing. Again see Forgotten Realms.

I have not seen this mentioned anywhere but Pathfinder is the biggest fictional setting ever, and it’s not getting smaller. It’s getting even bigger every month. That is awesome, but it also is a problem.

In all honesty I just see the project as imploding the moment a handful of people retire. The new generation just won’t have the drive, just like the D&D worlds are now pale shadows of what they were. It’s in the nature of progress to be a matter of diminishing returns, and Pathfinder has been pushing worldbuilding so hard and for so long that past a certain point it simply becomes too hard to keep pushing further, or to even maintain the current standards. It’s not an accident that no one has written a better novel than Proust: it’s just extremely hard because of how hard he pushed the novel. Maybe he will never be surpassed.

If Paizo means to keep pushing, they will at some point need some advanced tools to help them do so. You can climb a mountain without special breathing equipment, but you can’t go to space without it.

Paizo will need these tools. I already need them, because I am a newcomer. But some day, Paizo will need them too. And judging by the Casmaron thread, they would already be very helpful to them.

First of all, they would sell like hotcakes.

But more importantly, they would be terrifically useful to people, especially newcomers. And the more time passes and more products are released, the more this is true.

In addition, Paizo needs an internal tool that connects all mentions of places and people and events, a kind of internal wiki. I read the other day that the guy making an Azlant product had to search the forum for mentions of Azlant or something. That’s commendable on his part, but also very amateurish for a multimillion dollar company.

Obviously the Pathfinder Wiki covers some of these needs, but from what I have seen nowhere near what’s needed. When I was looking for the major connection between RotR and CotCT there was no resource that could help me so I made a thread and even then most people didn’t know until ONE guy happened to see the thread and gave an amazingly long and detailed answer. But if he hadn’t happened to see the thread, maybe I still wouldn’t know the connection and I NEEDED to know it because I am running two parties playing the two APs in the same world and I need to know how far apart in time to place them. “Just make it up” is not an acceptable solution to me. I am fully aware I can also make my own campaigns and settings and rule systems, but I don’t want to: I want to play what Paizo wrote. Problem is when your game weighs in at tens of thousands of non-searchable pages, it’s next to impossible some times to find what that is.

I get it that Paizo isn’t very technically savvy. This charmingly outdated forum and attached store are merely the most obvious proof of that. They are a book publisher after all, not a multimedia company; their expertise is in book publishing. When they do multimedia they partner with multimedia firms, which is part of the reason their multimedia efforts are so much better than D&D’s (lmao at Project Sigil being shut down; sidenote: Paizo should partner with TaleSpire and dominate also 3D VTTs as they now dominate 2D with Foundry). But... they’re still not good enough in some areas, and one of them is managing the scarily fast-expanding worldbuilding that’s probably even threatening to undermine their own worldbuilding efforts at this point and not only mine.

The worst will come when the people like James Jacobs and Erik Mona retire. The new generation will have it very tough at that point. I certainly foresee the collapse of metaplot efforts and lore consistency at some point if this issue isn’t handled. It’s kind of scary to me on how few shoulders this whole gargantuan edifice is balanced. To be sure, it is also at the same time kind of awesome, but it can’t continue like this forever. I just don’t see how it could.

Maybe it’s something that the community can handle. I will probably get there at some point, though it could take five-ten years at the rate I am going. I might start a thread to see if I can harness the community so that many people are contributing. Some efforts have been made in the past, and there have been some results, the greatest of which is the wiki. But I still had to make a thread about one of the biggest and oldest connections between two of the oldest and most famous APs, so imagine how much more subtle stuff is basically unknown to almost everyone. As a perfectionist, this scares me, and I am afraid I WILL have to make up stuff in the end when I end up running two PFS Scenarios in the wrong order just because I didn’t know the order, and then have to edit the connection on the fly to have it make sense.

I know none of this stuff is the end of the world. I know the RPG community’s reaction to any hyper-detailed concerns is “Just relax and make up stuff! You’re just rolling dice with friends, not writing world history!” But then I see how seriously Erik Mona researches his own company’s work in the Casmaron thread by basically asking the community to help him, and I know the people who architected this world are on the perfectionist side and not the “nothing really matters” side. And I believe their work is getting harder every year and will suddenly get 10x harder when people like Erik Mona retire.

Hopefully I’ll have a tool that gets the job done by then, and I can offer it to his successor. But I really think this should be an official job, and the setting will massively benefit from it.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Maybe Steve will also work.

Just kidding. But man, you are the big boss, you can get a name added to that book if you want. Pull some rank.

Isn't three levels more like a module and not an adventure path?

Well Seven Dooms for Sandpoint is also “just” 200 pages and few levels iirc. The term Adventure Path has been stretched a lot since its inception. I think it’s meant to be Paizo’s copyrighted term for campaign. And I don’t think they publish campaigns anymore. They just publish trilogies. So if the 3PP people want to stretch the term even more to apply even to standalone adventures... Paizo started it lol.

Anyway, this sounds like an interesting product. Very ambitious, and even if the adventure isn’t to my liking, it sounds like the material could be useful. I will check it out.

If the story is right we'll do a 6-part Adventure Path again, but we need to plan for something like that literally years in advance, so even if we DO decide this, we won't be talking about it for 2 to 3 years.

I am sure btw that many people would love a blog post breakdown on your process for developing APs. Hell I think even your competitors would like to study it. It’s the premier adventure publication of all time and it would be fascinating to learn how you craft it, and also how this process has evolved over the years.

Filthy Lucre wrote:

Well, I'm looking at this from the perspective of how the rules interface with my game world - not official Paizo/Pathfinder/Golarion. So I imagine a ruler to essentially be a 1st level NPC who has inherited his right to rule by birthright.

In that case, the game ABSOLUTELY supports that sort of setting. My take is that if you want to have a situation like that, then the 1st level queen might be a pushover, but she's still the queen, and the fact that she was born into a situation that comes with a national superstructure, including powerful defenses, higher level loyal bodyguards, and traditions of royal support will help. If you want to tell a story where someone wants to challenge the 1st level queen's rule (be they a PC or an NPC), then that's as simple as adjusting the power level of her guards and defenses and resources as needed.

The problem with adjusting the queen’s resources’ power to fit the PC’s power is that you then unbalance this queen and kingdom versus her neighbors. This works in an isolated handwaved campaign, like most campaigns are, but it breaks the entire world to pieces for GMs who try to simulate the entire world. And the whole premise of this thread is simulation. That’s what the OP is discussing. Ergo GM fiat in autobalancing power levels won’t work for him.

I know you’re joking but adding a Warhammer dimension to Golarion is precisely what I would like Paizo to add above all. My own world is a 4X strategy version of Golarion where each of my 15 players, in addition to their roleplaying character, owns several “heroes” who operate like the heroes in the strategy videogames Master of Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic, being free to roam Golarion and city-build etc. as described in “Ultimate Campaign” (and Legendary’s “Ultimate Kingdoms”), plus they can zoom in and play PFS Scenarios as if they’re playing SRPG stages. All the while 4 APs are also running at any given time and everything interacting with and affecting everything else!

Why am I saying this in this thread? Because the only thing I am missing is the stats for all the armies of Golarion. I have to make them myself, and I don’t know enough about the world plus lack the experience to do it as well as Paizo would do it.

But aside from my personal desires, don’t you think that adding a Warhammer dimension to Golarion (and a 40k dimension to the Pact Worlds) would be a hit for Paizo? It would enrich the world figuratively, and Paizo literally.

I’ll grant that if war can be initiated by players at any time, it can mess with the complex
narratives. It sure isn’t easy to GM something like this, and it’s even harder to plan and publish as a company at Paizo’s scale. But... there are ways to constrain it and make it manageable. And how glorious if it succeeded!

Anyway that’s my idea and my thinking. And while I am dreaming, I look forward to whatever useful bits and pieces that Battlecry will contain for my 4X Golarion
world.

P.S. Experienced 3PP devs should write Armies of Golarion for Pathfinder Infinite. I’d buy it in a heartbeat and shill it on my site.

Here’s another vote for missing the 1-20 APs btw. It’s funny because before the 3-parters appeared I was asking precisely for 3-parters. But now that they’ve completely replaced the 6-parters, I am missing the latter. We really do need both formats, I feel. But it looks like the 3-parters sell more?

At least when you wrap up Second Edition, maybe do it with a 6-parter? It feels more appropriate for an ending at any rate.

This is something I had hoped we would have announced already but have not yet, but will soon... hopefully by the end of next month. AKA: I've done a LOT more than just "thinking" about this thing. Stay tuned!

This has GOT to be the Oct-Dec AP!

Foundry VTT module?

Yep, I’ll be using the homebrew forum. It’s all good.

First off, thanks to everyone for their contributions, they’re very helpful.

I just want to say that you are talking to a GM who runs 4 groups of 15 players and counting in a hexmap version of Golarion that works like a 4X strategy game and simulates even the detailed weather in every settlement, narrative be damned. So if there is terrible weather on the day the players are supposed to be doing something that requires decent weather, too bad. They need to find a way around it. So the suggestions to basically hand-wave aspects of the simulation as important as whether a store is open or closed won’t work for me. But by all means, tell us what you do in your own game. Hand-waving just isn’t for me though. At least not on the subject of this thread.

Guide lists Moonday (1st day of week, so our Sunday), as a day of work with religion at night. Then it has work every day day until Sunday (7th day of week, so our Saturday) which is the day of rest & religion.

If you think Moonday isn’t meant to be Monday and Sunday isn’t meant to be Sunday we would have severe rules issue if we played together. The first day of the week is Monday for every person I have known or heard of in my 47 years.

That said I like your argument that the much greater diversity of faiths in Golarion over Earth means probably also greater work schedule diversity. So now that we also have the official answer (thanks for that!) my sense is that Paizo made the schedule simple for playability’s sake, and if we complexified it a bit it would be an upgrade to the game. So I am thinking how to introduce this complexity. I could roll for every shop, but I would first have to determine the shop owner’s faith, which means I would need every major deity’s holy practices, as well as every nation’s. Then somehow combine all that into a couple of rolls to arrive at every shop’s policy. If anyone has ideas on how to do that, please use this thread to let us know. I come from D&D and I am not super-knowledgeable in either Golarion or the PF rules (I play PF1 btw, but even a PF2 rule would be helpful to me and I use books from
both editions).

It’s not about my campaign. It’s about the setting. The setting must take priority because my campaigns come and go, but they are all playing in the same setting, and if the setting isn’t believeable by its own internal logic then my campaigns suffer for it. So first of all the task is to find out if Paizo has an answer for this issue. Then and only then I begin to think how to incorporate it.

If Paizo doesn’t have an answer, then I like your idea that it should vary from shop to shop. So maybe I would have to make a roll for every shop to determine if it’s open. And maybe the roll can vary from region to region or deity to deity.

I know a bakery in Sandpoint is, but I am not sure if this is an exception or a common practice. Since I am using the downtime rules a lot, I kind of need to know the answer. Anyone has any clue?

I want the entire planet in full VR 3D Unreal Engine 5. It will happen this decade in Menyr and it’ll be glorious. I just have to take care when I cross the street so I can stay alive to see it.

Feros wrote:

I take it Bog Bottom is a new village near Dunmire? I don't see it on any maps of Kortos, just Pier's End and Willowside.

It's a new village, yes.

Is it because the village is newly-founded or you’re just retconning it in because you need a new village? Just so I know how to present it in my world. Maybe it has something to do with First-to-Second Edition metaplot?

Boxed sets died with TSR. No one after did them like they did them. Glad to see Paizo is trying them out after the hugely awesome Beginner sets.

This needs to be followed by the “Armies of Golarion” book that has been mentioned before. With all these wars going on, shouldn’t every settlement in Golarion get an “army sheet”?

I heard somewhere that Paizo was preparing to update this for PF2 the way they did with Kingmaker? Is this correct? In fact I think I read this on Owlcat’s blog.

Now that we have the second book’s final cover, the first book’s is also probably available? Any chance we can see it?

The cult-raising mechanics are the highlight for me. Can never have too many mechanics, especially when they are 4X ones.

Are any of these games featured in an upcoming adventure?

I never liked the stuff in Dungeon in the ‘80s. Their adventures seemed amateurish to me and a waste of 3 dollars or whatever. Never spent a dollar on that magazine and put all my money in books and boxed sets instead.

But with 3E it looks like Paizo took the magazine to heights that even the books couldn’t match. And my guess is the book writers felt so threatened that they conspired to pull the mags from Paizo.

Or what other rationale is there for it? What was the reason given?

And the mags after Paizo left were even worse than the ‘80s!

Myth-Speaker Main Theme: Mythic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ojpEYLaiqU

CULTxicycalm wrote:

I realized two hilarious things:

1. The Americans at Paizo removed Greece from the Mediterranean and placed us in Asia.

2. They placed themselves exactly where Greece is in the Med, and even took our invention of democracy as their own invention.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I realized this. If it was intentional it was genius. If it was unintentional it was hilarious.

I love you guys. No sarcasm.

Thanks! That said... it's worth remembering that while we do draw a LOT of inspiration from real world locations, history, mythology, and tradition... we aren't trying to make Golarion entirely into an Earth Analogue. So you'll see areas inspired by the pacific northwest and northern California (Varisia) show up just south of areas inspired by Scandinavia (Land of the Linnorm Kings), and just west of areas straight out of fantasy (Hold of Belkzen).

You put Europe in the center, Asia in the east, Africa in the south, America (the Native America) at any rate, in the West.

If you aren’t trying to copy Earth I would say you’re doing a poor job at it. If you want to see a setting that’s not trying to be Earth, look at Dark Sun.

Best to own it and say that you’re doing Forgotten Realms on steroids, and doing a bang up job as well. It’s already an incredible achievement to beat the Realms in its own game. Beating Dark Sun is a whole other can of worms you haven’t tried opening yet.

Another cultural tidbit people might be interested in.

The Olympian gods were our religion. Not “mythology”. We believed in them just as much as the Hindus or the Muslims believe today in their gods.

If you want to be cool, instead of “Greek mythology”, say “Greek religion”. Nobody ever says that, so if you say it people will think you’re cool.

I realized two hilarious things:

1. The Americans at Paizo removed Greece from the Mediterranean and placed us in Asia.

2. They placed themselves exactly where Greece is in the Med, and even took our invention of democracy as their own invention.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I realized this. If it was intentional it was genius. If it was unintentional it was hilarious.

I love you guys. No sarcasm.

I will add the D&D/Magic Theros book to round out the region. Look it up, it’s cool and has tons of cool art and rules and even a starting adventure.

I can’t wait for the final logo and cover of this.

Is the Oppara map the same one we already have? It looks like it from the cover.

We need a way to distinguish between thematical war and mechanical war in published adventures. I take it this AP is thematic war as in pretty much every published adventure ever except Kingmaker to an extent. I’d like to see the day when the word war would only be used in the title if it’s a mechanical war, since these are games and not movies after all.

The last megadungeon was Abomination Vaults, right? Or have I missed an episode?

The cover image is tiny. Since it’s clearly the final cover, can we get a larger version please? I am asking because I run a videogame site and I love to announce new Paizo products. But when you give me a stamp to announce them with, you put me in a difficult position because the stamp makes my site look bad. So I have to choose between making my site look bad or not mentioning the new product for months until we have a decent image.

My 2 CP: I would be way more interested in what you, James, want to make than in what the playerbase as a whole wants. Of course the players pay the bills, but I’ll always side with the artist.

I for my part will play anything you make.

Wow. Now that’s some storytelling.

I am running both APs with two teams in the same world and I am trying to figure out what the connection is so as to decide how many months apart to set them. I have read in these forums that the events of Curse are kicked off by something that happens in Rise but no one has elaborated. What is the Rise event and in which book does it happen?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. It’s daunting to find this info in 1,200 pages and we really need a book or at least fan site that connects all the dots between all Pathfinder products. An informed GM can do a much better job bringing the world to life than an uninformed GM. I have so many questions...

Now that the final cover of Book 2 of this AP has been revealed, surely the Book 1 cover is also done?

Aroden died... for the Varisians’ sins.

I hope you guys are finally bringing out the “Armies of Golarion” supplement that has been discussed before. The game needs it, and with all the wars you have planned, now is the time for it.

Art theory time: The most important aspect of a session is the adventure. Then the setting. And finally the system. I would rather play a great adventure with bad rules than a crap adventure with great rules. Ergo what guides my choice of system (and setting) is: which system has the best adventures. And that is Pathfinder without a doubt. As for why I prefer PF1 over PF2, I don’t know PF2, so I can’t compare them. I plan to run all APs though (I run 4 groups in a single interacting world), so when I am done with the PF1 APs, I will run the PF2 ones. And if I discover that I prefer PF1, I will convert the PF2 ones to PF1.

Just started reading this comic. Loving it thus far. However I'm also playing in a RotRL campaign. I'm seeing some big similarities in the story lines. Two questions before I read any further...

1. Are there any spoilers for the campaign that I'm going to come across reading Dark Waters Rising concerning Rise of the Runelords?

2. RotRL starts with the Swallow Tail Festival Rova 4711. What is the timeframe or timeline for Dark Waters Rising?

On another note...

I've been a long time Rolemaster/Middle Earth Roleplayer and have just recently bought into the d20 Pathfinder system. (and by bought in... I mean I've bought almost every hardback book available) I am loving it. Love the world, love the system. I'm hooked. Thanks Paizo for creating such a rich fantasy world.

And one final question... When will the next volume hardback comic series be released?

Thanks again!

Does anyone a decade later know the answer to what this guy was asking? When is Dark Waters Rising set compared to Burnt Offerings?

I think JJ went back to the opera theme because it is the oldest niche theme that wasn’t given full attention in the 5th AP, as many players would have liked. So maybe they’ll do them in order and we’ll get a real circus AP and a real cop one etc. This can also be used as counterpoint to those clamoring for more epic in PF2; epic is by its nature opposed to niche, so an exploration of niches—and the development of practices to design and publish them—will necessarily have an effect on the epic. That said the PF setting is huge so it can contain everything, as long as the writers want to write everything, of course, which is never guaranteed.

Glad to see you’re supporting evil adventures still, Paizo. I would personally like to see more equality for evil content, with 33% good, 33% neutral, and 33% evil; but I’ll take whatever evil content I can get at this point, and no company gives more and better evil stuff than Paizo. ResPECT.

Wow that’s some change. Moving towards the Wizards model. I do like the thicker adventures, but I also need thinner ones to cover more area on my overworld, and now Paizo will stop doing that. Nothing between tiny PFS Scenarios and thick standalones... Quite the blow to my worldbuilding... But maybe it’s the same in terms of pagecount? I think so off the top of my head. 2x128 is 8x32. At least try to pick regions that haven’t been covered yet, thus plugging holes in my overworld. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing variety for depth if at least that depth goes into developing underdeveloped regions.

I am sure everything will be quality anyway. Just thinking out loud in case my ramblings are helpful.

Yes, it’s clear Paizo has heard the complaints about not leaning into niche themes, and now they are trying it. Good for them, and good for us and RPGs. Even if the experiment isn’t a resounding success, it’ll be a useful experiment and we’ll learn a lot from it. And smart move to do only a 3-parter. That’s how you experiment with things.

What about a digital version?