Chaos Isaac's page

I'm rounding up to run a new game with a few of my friends in the standard Golarion setting. We recently picked up the Villains Codex for a kinda quick, pre-set villain groups to kinda get the ball rolling, and of all the opposition they liked Cruel Musketeers the most.

With a bit of reading, it's told in book that they were formed seven generations ago as the personal guard of the queen and recently disbanded by order of the King.

So, to use in setting i've been peering through the Inner Sea World Guide and the only time Musketeers are mentioned are in the Mana Wastes. The land doesn't really fit with the idea. Not to mention I have yet to find a steady line of queens who could have been recently disposed by the King and his Vizier that I know of.

The question is, what land or kingdom of Golarion would be the best fit for this group of enemies to originate from? I'd rather not spend time trying to implement a original land for this.

I think the difference is likely that Chaos Isaac was introduced to Shadowrun by someone or actively went looking to find out how FASA structured their books.

They mentioned upthread that they got into PF in 2009 and were unaware that Golarion was already well established. It seems obvious that impression is based from a cursory reading of just the RPG books, or possibly even just from a rules website.

I suspect there might be a non-native English speaking issue here too (though that's just a hunch based on sentence structure).

The Shadowrun I'm familiar with is done by Catalyst, not FASA. I learned of Shadowrun after wanting a cyberpunk game but couldn't find good books or pdfs of cyberpunk 2020. I picked up 5th edition and learned how to play the game, the state of the world, brief snippets of the races that gave a glimpse into their realities. How Man, Machine and Magic were all Most of the other games I play regularly mix fluff and crunch in their core rulebooks and Pathfinder really didn't. They're entirely different worlds, and that really disconnected me from the game and the setting.

To the point, that despite having read through a lot of Advanced and Ultimate books, and even the Primer, I had only the barest understanding of the setting. I didn't know each nation had it's own book, and I don't understand why they weren't all included in the primer. Or that the primer wasn't re-released having all of this information in it in some collection.

That in no way suggests a setting book. From the title, I imagined it to be a splat book on gear and abilities about movement. From the description, it is a splat book and it has more than just movement. But a campaign setting book? I have no idea how you'd derive that.

Yup, it's clear as rain Run Faster has some setting stuff. Shadowrun's books have typically started out with the definition of a Shadowrunner, then a bunch of setting fluff. They mention lifestyle rules, and expanding on metatypes and new ones.

That said, Shadowrun has many other problems, including some of it's other setting books not being clear at first sight.

The key word here is the word campaign, which from first glance of it's size makes me believe it's for a adventure module. Especially with this addition, "Yet while a Game Master or player might know all the secrets of the setting, courtesy of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting World Guide: The Inner Sea, what does a character know about his or her world?" That sounds like a players guide to adventure module while this other book has the setting stuff. I'll admit I was wrong on the book, but the description basically told me 'grab other book for actual setting information'.

It is a common misconception, usually because they only get or have seen the RPG line.

If you want Asmodeus, Urgathoa, and Groetus to come together and form Supergod end duke it out with Triune, go nuts!

For that matter, don't wait for Paizo to tell you what to do with the Vesk, Klingon them up if you want.

You, I like you.

While I agree that setting was rich in detail, it was restrictively rich. It basically told you how to play your character by race. My group ignored over half of it since we wanted to play our characters the way we envisioned, not the way the developers told us. We still kept much of the cultural stuff, but languages etc , meh.

You're having an issue with the way YOU played the setting, not the way Paizo developed it.

So, it's not the way I played the setting. I never bothered with the Golarion setting because it didn't exist when I started playing Pathfinder as far as I know. (Picked it up in 2009) I made up my own stuff for adventures and did whatever. But I think with what Zabraxis said I found the core. The big problem I probably have here, is the way Paizo published it. I never knew what the inner sea primer was for a very very long time even though I saw it around. Unlike Shadowrun's "Run Faster", which I understood to be a race and setting expansion book, the Primer just... seemed like an adventure module book. Which I don't really use.

Hell, when Zabraxis mentioned foreign relations, I didn't even know Andoran had a Spirit of Liberty book. Which, actually I have as a PDF and didn't know it. Zabraxis, a lot of that stuff is still really a foot note. It's a shame even after i've learned this stuff and read through it, i'm still disappointed. I couldn't say what exactly is putting me off about it right now though.

As a side note, I still own all the old 40k books and most of the white dwarves from 88 through to early 2000. I watched them selectively butcher the rich setting they had in order to better focus on the products that sold. Good business model, dodgy setting exploration.

Good business, but the fluff definitely suffered due to it, but also benefited, and as someone who only got into Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k) this year, I can't imagine some of annoyance people like you had to go through for so long.

I know Shadowrun (a longtime personal favorite of mine) and Warhammer 40k (which I've always found quite dull - there's only so much bleak angst I can take before I just start taking the mickey).

The fact I'm only passingly familiar with Dragon Age is another indication of just how far apart you and I are experience-wise, I suspect.

With rare exception, if it wasn't released in the 80s I probably don't like it. :o

Mn, Dragon Age originally came out as a video game in 2009, and the tabletop sometime after that. The tabletop oozes the feel of the setting, littered with good art and character creation backgrounds giving details on the world and a bit of a primer from where you're from. The later half of the book really gets into lore and religion and it's pretty cool. It's a dark fantasy, though, and i'm not sure how the game system lasts in higher levels. It's fairly simple, but the setting makes it for me.

Oh, and 40k's hilariously dumb grim-dark is dumb and probably shouldn't be taken that seriously. Between the 7 foot tall space vikings and orks who make guns out of lead pipes and duck tape, the over the top 80's grimness is dumb fun and super good for creating conflict for the heroes. Having someone make a nerd who just wants to learn actual history is pretty much heresy punishable under death, and so you can have a entire campaign just about trying to learn stuff and then like gaining crazy magic powers because you read the wrong book. It's great for shenanigans.

Warhammer Fantasy, to me, is a bit better, with many more 'hero' like characters who fight evil, and not everyone being a idiot. Also great crazy wood elves and like the occasional dwarf helicopter and elven flying fortress.

Wrath. You couldn't be more wrong or right. 40k canon, all is told by a unreliable narrator and everything is canon and nothing is true. But the god-emperor's corpse and the poor state of the galaxy is still at the forefront, and the mood of the setting is still kinda there.

I've played a lot of Pathfinder, over about a three year time it was pretty much the only thing I played, and that entire time... I couldn't tell you anything about the setting asides the iconic barbarian carried a over-sized sword. Because the setting never was important, and still not really important. It's all set-dressing for an adventure, not a place to roleplay a character.

Races have their generic cultures where nothing is different from other iterations, they don't have much iconic to themselves. And this makes me extra sad, as I love the Kasatha, but hah, there's not much on these dudes. I can give you a basic overview of how to act, but I have nothing for anything of depth.

Conversely, if I was going to play a Orc in Shadowrun, I could tell you racial insults they have, how they try to own the insult 'trog', their own orxplotation genre of music and other media, the honor they take in having their own language after not having one for a while. The rage they get when someone compares them to dogs because they birth litters, their bond with trolls for being similar. The affects of their shortened lives, living in ghettos and kids getting pregnant at 9-12 years old because that is when they're maturing and that's their teenage years. The underground societies they formed, how protective they are over their mothers where a mob of them will come kick your teeth in because of the rough conditions of their lives and what a ork mother means to their entire culture. Their almost pack nature to stick together and look out for one another.

Paizo has a lot of breadth, a lot of things thrown out there that are kind of cool, but really really lacking in the depth department when it comes to the cultures and lives of their individuals. "Quality over quantity", is how I like my races and settings. Paizo likes to throw around a lot of stuff but none of it really gets to excellent where it feels alive. Andoran is Pathfinder America, and that's cool, but I couldn't tell you who they were friends or enemies with, any real notes of their relations with other nations. I can tell you, however, 'If you want to be a freedom fighter knight, that's a cool place to be from'.

The handgun is accurate to 30ft, which is just its first range increment, not its total range. It's full "range" is 300ft, and it's not like the projectile stops so much as it just isn't reliable enough to hit something that far.

You know, that actually doesn't make it much better. So, you're right, it's maximum range is 300ft, but even then the penalty to that attack is a neat -18. So, they can shoot a bit further than a paintball gun. A contemporary 9mm can shoot far, far further than that, and we don't have FTL travel, power armor or plasma weaponry. It is entirely at odds with the setting itself, and while it is better than I thought it was, it's still pretty bad.

And in that case, there's some bad editing going on here that needs to be addressed, and the range note needs to be added into the 'reading weapon tables' as at first glance, many players aren't going to know this.

Chaos Isaac wrote:

Then again, Paizo aren't really setting guys

Heh. This is so far away from my position I can't begin to imagine how anyone can think this. That's not a challenge, it's just that I find your comment as incredible as if you'd suggested the moon landings were faked.

The world is a big place. Thank you internet. :)

The setting is a kind of not good and Pathfinder wasn't much better at this.

Still; i'll explain to you why I don't think the setting is good, but to start why they're not good fluff people, i'll read this quote. "To understand the significance of this particular solar system, one must first understand Starfinder's history... or rather, it's lack of one."

Now, you may have never played a game with a established setting that actually has it's own thing going on, and i'll list a few of my favorites. Shadowrun, where cyberpunk meets fantasy. Warhammer 40k, where in the grimdark future there is only War. Dragon Age, a modern one that should be familiar. All of these game systems have their setting firmly planted in the books, with lore and fluff running through the entirety of them. In Starfinder... not so much.

While Starfinder is doing better than Pathfinder and actually including a setting chapter it brings up a few curiosities. Triune, is apparently a fusion of three gods. Why can Gods fuse now? Is this a new ability? Are other gods gonna fuse and become super gods? Will a evil god dominate another god in combat and then fuse to become a super not-as-evil god?

Let's talk about another important part of the setting; the Vesk. So they've dominated other species, why? Because it's what they do. (Such bold and unique writing) But.. what about those subservient races? Are none of them here? Do any of them get to join the military? Did they get to keep their names or are they Vesk-Servant Species 1? It's a shame, as playing a Veskarian servitor race who escaped would be a fun concept, that's just not supported.

Why are all of the old races a foot-note at the back of the book except for humans? Why are half-elves still social outcasts, if all of these other races have decided to get along, humans still can't accept half-elves? It's just another coat of paint that has very little difference. The only real change i've noticed from the legacy races are the elves, who decided kicking ass and being xenophobic was better than what they used to be. They can now be used, easily, as a villain race and that's not even including the Drow.

Still, I can't find much mention of the legacy races before chapter 13. A lot of the other stuff is, well, a little generic and a nice summary but not much to sink your teeth into. They bring up some interesting things, like the Idari's brainbanks, but there isn't more than surface level details.

Feats have always been the bane of making a good game in the D20 system. For some reason, feats always remove basic things that characters should kind of be able to do to make them... well, artificially necessary. Instead of making your character better at something, it made them competent at them, and maybe with five other feats you'd get real good at it.

Really if Paizo done more new things because they do their own imaginings really well, instead of regurgitating more 3.x with little changes. If you don't like how skills are kinda half useful and some of their better stuff is locked behind feats; all I can say is play a different system.

Although the setting is really bad. Far too condensed, and like a hand gun has a range of 30ft, this doesn't make sense in a setting where technology has come so far, but have the same distance of a nerf gun. Then again, Paizo aren't really setting guys, it's more crunch less fluff.

So, I was going through character creation to make a Android Soldier, and as I was attempting to decide what weapons to get, I noticed a pretty horrifying problem with the weaponry.

They all have terrible range. A tactical pistol has less range then a bow, or even a sling if you're played Pathfinder. And it's mind blowing, this means that none of these weapons are actually firing with any more force then a airsoft gun. Sniper rifles less range than a heavy weapon, unless you do a aim action. For some reason. (Should have had a move to brace to remove a -4 penalty instead.)

Going by damage, most of these weapons do the same or almost equivalent amounts of damage that i'm not seeing a real use of a 'heavy weapon' that in fact, does not hit hard. Your level 1 heavy weapons do a d10, meanwhile, a hunting rifle does a d8. The best aspect of these weapons is that they out-range almost everything else.

Not to hate on this, but almost all of these weapons have less range than a bombard soldier throwing grenades. I understand there is a mix of magic and technology, but this technology is pretty piss-poor, I imagine most of the naval weaponry have no longer range than 600ft, if we're having consistent technology.

Had been considering for a while running a Firefly styled game and was considering D20 Future or Star Wars D20 (without Force powers) about the time Starfinder was announced.

If you're insisting on a D20 system, I can't really help you, but if you want a gritty game system with good mechanics where the magic is almost so entirely removed from the rest of the game; I'd recommend the Dark Heresy 2nd Edition system. All of the rolls are either D10s or D100, so you'll only need 2 d10s to play.

If you don't want magic in your game, just ignore daemons and psykers and because magic isn't integrated with the majority of the system, it's pretty simple. It also has sanity stuff and enemies that act like reavers already prepared.