CULTxicycalm's page

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 This charmingly outdated forum and attached store are merely the most obvious proof of that.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.

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 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!

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...

I've made an interactive overworld of the Inner Sea region with all Adventure Paths placed on it (including the three upcoming ones): https://interactive-img.com/view?id=18493 (takes a while to load if you're on a slow connection or cellphone etc.)

Click on each AP to get details on it, including main soundtrack theme.

I am also working on a zoomed-out Golarion one for the two APs that aren't set in the Inner Sea region. I'll be linking that here in a future post. (I am also making a Starfinder one, but that's a few weeks off.)

Sketched out in these details you will find the beginnings of an unlockable "tech tree" in the manner of Sid Meier's Civilization, if you're familiar with that game. That is to say, a group needs to complete Rise of the Runelords in order to unlock Jade Regent or Shattered Star. They need to complete Council of Thieves to unlock Hell's Rebels/Vengeance. Moreover, when they unlock Kingmaker, they also unlock the "Ultimate Campaign" rulebook; when they unlock Carrion Crown, they unlock the "Horror Adventures" rulebook; and it is only then that they unlock the new rules, classes, feats etc. in those books.

The same applies for other products and standalone adventures. E.g. when they meet Zellara in Curse of the Crimson Throne, they unlock the "Harrow Deck" accessory plus The Harrowing standalone adventure; when they try to visit the Acadamae in Korvosa they unlock the Academy of Secrets adventure.

And finally, the groups have to complete ALL 23 PF1 campaigns in order to unlock Tyrant's Grasp, and then completing that unlocks Pathfinder Season 2, and so on.

I currently have four groups unleashed on this overworld, and I am looking for more groups and players. Message me if you're interested (but note that it isn't free). It is the GROUPS here which choose where to go on the overworld and what to play, not the GM. Think of it like a videogame. The biggest videogame overworld ever, powered not by subpar programmer rules and programmer settings and programmer adventures, but by the genius of Paizo. It essentially IS a videogame because it's all run through Fantasy Grounds, Foundry and TaleSpire.

I have a whole set of rules that elaborate how this works, and I call them "Ultimate Edition". They include aspects like procreation and bloodlines, city-building and 4X powered by TaleSpire, group co-op (where two or more groups join forces to tackle a disaster that one of the groups failed to contain), and group PVP for campaigns like Hell's Rebels/Vengeance, or generally for campaigns where the group is evil and another group wants to take them on. I can provide reading materials to interested players and parties. The book will be released on DriveThruRPG later this year, and there is an interactive website coming that tracks all the campaigns and events.

But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about the tech tree. I am asking for the community's help in order to fully develop it, as a single person can't know anywhere near enough to set that up. Note that I am also placing things like novels, comics, web fiction, Society one-shots, etc. on the overworld. All these things will be unlockable at the right time, and the goal of this thread is to decide on the trigger-event. E.g. defeating the goblin raid on Sandpoint at the start of Rise of the Runelords unlocks 1) We B4 Goblins! standalone adventure, and 2) Shalelu Be Food? web fiction.

So whoever wants to contribute, start contributing, and I'll be adding your major contributions to the overworld and setting up a Google Document for the minor ones. Which particular event in a Pathfinder product do you think should be the trigger event for unlocking another Pathfinder product out of the thousands that exist? And note that a product can have more than one trigger-event. E.g. the Dragon's Demand adventure can be unlocked by talking to Tanasha Starborne in War for the Crown, but maybe no group will talk to her, so I need more Verduran-related characters and trigger events to sprinkle throughout the overworld for players and groups to stumble on.

I can complete the whole project on my own, but it will take years, and it won't be as nuanced as if I got the backing of some knowledgeable community members. So whoever likes this project and wants to help flesh it out, jump in.

West Marches is a type of hexcrawl that's suitable for random groups of players collaborating to explore a wild region. It's a fascinating style of play, and you can read more about it here if you don't already know about it: https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

I'd like to find an area of the Inner Sea region to place a West Marches campaign in. I don't want it to overlap any APs or standalones or Pathfinder Society scenarios—or even any areas covered in sourcebooks past and upcoming, first or second editions. I want it to be an area that Paizo hasn't covered, and ideally will never cover. Obviously none of us knows the future, neither does Paizo past a certain point, but what I am looking for is an educated guess. What do you guys think?

I don't want it to be another continent, far from the action. I want it to be near the action, but undeveloped. I don't know enough about the setting to make the call, so I am turn to you for guidance.