Kazred's page

I'm about midway through running my first AP, and I'm considering going homebrew for the next campaign. We still have a long way to go in the AP, but I figured it would be better to get started early.

I'm looking at running a sandbox campaign, set in one of the larger cities in Varisia. This would be a Lankhmar-inspired urban campaign, set 90% in town. I have a copy of the ISWG and Birthplace of Legends. Besides the book for the specific city (currently leaning toward Magnimar), what other resources would you recommend? Most of my group are veterans of Golarian, so I'd like to start off as close to canon as possible.

Here's a list I made

Oooh, not sure how I missed that thread.

Hail Eris!

On that note, I recommend allowing a local prince to pick.

So my players are going to be exploring a ruined city in a few weeks. In addition to the normal loot, I want to include some very minor magic items, specifically items with no combat application of any kind. My thinking is that a highly magical society would produce items for a variety of uses -- entertainment, vanity, housework, etc. From a metagame standpoint, they're really just there to be sold -- but if I could inspire some spontaneous RP, that would be fantastic. Some examples:

• A whistle that attracts dragonflies -- almost a small swarm but not enough to provide any kind of concealment

• A hand mirror that allows the user to speed up the growth of facial hair

• A decanter that can change soup into wine and back

• A clockwork songbird that predicts the weather

I really want to create a sense of the strange and unusual, without giving the players any kind of immediately obvious practical advantage. Minor curses/drawbacks might be fun though. Anyway, I'm sure someone has tried this. If you could share ideas, it would be much appreciated.

I think that another one of FR's problems was the large changes that were frequently made that affected the setting as a whole. I've never really followed it, but it's my understanding that at a minimum, each edition changed was accompanied with major changes in the setting, and even in between edition changes they made changes that could vastly affect campaigns that tried to stay within the canon (such as killing off large numbers of gods).

That's about the shape of it. In fact, you describe exactly what happened to my campaign back in the day. I drifted away from D&D after 2nd edition, but my understanding is that the jump from 3.5 to 4.0 was even more extreme. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think Faerun suffered a Thundar-style apocalypse.

I don't really see Paizo blowing up Golarion that way. I get the impression that even if they made huge changes to the Pathfinder system with PFRPG 2nd Edition, they would leave the flavor material of Golarion pretty much as it stands now.

Given the history of the Pathfinder RPG, I expect that Paizo would be smart enough to never attempt a full-on 2nd edition. Likewise, I really hope they never try to inflict a reboot on Golarion. The Inner Sea region is a small enough section of the world that there's room for new sub-settings to co-exist peacefully with the old.

@Kazred: Yes and no. Golarion's definitely modular, but that's not exactly it. I have no trouble treating Greyhawk/Realms as modular. Greyhawk/Realms are traditional fantasy settings, and if that's what you're looking for they're great. Golarion has a lot of modular microsettings, and if any/some of those appeal to you then great. Since I'm looking for a traditional fantasy setting, I'd have less work making Greyhawk/FR "my own" than making Golarion "my own". I can see that if you were looking for something more like some of the microsettings, Golarion would be less work (understatement).

I agree with you regarding Greyhawk. By happenstance rather than by design, Oerth is as much of a blank slate as Golarion. If I felt the itch to convert an old school setting to PFRPG, Greyhawk would be at the top of my list.

As you pointed out, Krynn and Middle Earth have basically the same issue. The canon heroes loom so large, that the setting simply can't withstand their removal. I experienced this first-hand trying to run MERP back in the day. It ended up feeling like crappy fan fiction. I don't really feel this way about Pathfinder's Iconics. They seem more like examples than actual in-canon characters, and I suspect this is intentional.

With FR, the issue is less the canon characters than it is the canon itself. It moves and changes independently of individual campaigns, which makes any attempts to keep things relatively in-canon impossible. The setting has become over-documented, and has been retconned far too many times across too many different editions... there's no white space left for individual GMs.

Golarion's advantage over the Forgotten Realms may simply arise from the fact that it's a far younger setting. As Paizo continues to support Golarion, it's entirely possible that it will eventually have the same problems with over-documentation. But right now, I believe it's far more GM-friendly than any of the old-school D&D settings.

There's no reason that there has to be an Elminster (who's probably a quest NPC or a source of exposition anyway), a Drizzt, or a Tanis in your home version of another campaign setting either.

Of course. A GM can do anything he or she wants. If I want an army of machine gun wielding Ewoks to raze Greyhawk, then that's what happens in my campaign. Excising the official cannon is always possible.... but at some point, rewriting cannon becomes more work than just starting from scratch.

Using a published setting is already a compromise as far as I'm concerned; in a perfect world, I'd have the time and energy to home brew a setting from scratch, and my players would have the time to learn about that world before sitting down to play. Unfortunately, that's just not the case these days. Out of the box, Golarion is just easier to make one's own; it was designed that way. The whole thing is modular -- if there's a particular country I dislike (I'm looking at you Andoran), it's simple to ignore it. It's not someone else's world that I need to adapt for my game, it's a toolkit for building my own.

This theory is still my favorite.

I'm a little late to the party here, but this is my favorite too. :)

Seriously though, I really hope they never reveal it. I like that there are intentional omissions in the setting -- it makes it more fun to GM in Golarion.

On the other hand, if Paizo did decide to let the cosmic cat out of the bag, and some random poster on the forums had guessed correctly well ahead of the reveal, I think that poster should get a prize.

I don't think there's a lot of published material on Galt. Personally, that's one of the things I like about it, but YMMV. I would recommend reading up on the French Revolution, particularly the Reign of Terror.

Golarion isn't particularly interesting (to me) when it comes to fiction, but as a setting specifically for games, it shines.

The OP mentions Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms. Both of those settings have played out across novels, comics, RPGs, computer games and pretty much any other medium you could name. They're incredibly detailed, with canon that has been built up (and torn down in some cases) over decades. And that's the problem: a tabletop game is supposed to be about the players, not about the characters from a tie-in novel. In Golarion, there's no Elminster, no Drizzt, no Tanis. The players are the heroes and what they do matters. Likewise, having a setting that evolves over time is not a plus for a commercial RPG setting. I don't want to have to adapt my campaign to the current events in Waterdeep or Shadowdale, as detailed by the latest sourcebook -- I want a jumping off point and nothing more. The events in a campaign should center around the actions of the players.

Is Golarian a superior setting from an artistic point of view? Absolutely not. But let's be honest, neither are Faerun or Krynn. If you're looking for artistic merit in fantasy world-building, read J.R.R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Michael Morcock, H.P. Lovecraft, or any of the other authors from whom game publishers so liberally borrow.

Golarion works exactly because it's a blank slate. I can run any kind of game I want there without having to do the heavy lifting.

I'm late to the conversation here... just a few thoughts. I believe that EVE's plex system is an excellent model for several reasons. First, it allows for sanctioned exchanges of real money for game currency. You may not like it -- I know I don't like it -- but gold sellers have been present in every MMO from the start. It's unavoidable. Bringing it in-house allows GW to control it, and it keeps the flow of money going one-way. As soon as people start playing to "cash out," the game becomes something other than a game. Exchange rates are controlled by the players and inflation is a non-issue, since no money is being created.

Other than that, I really would rather not see any other micro-transactions in PFO. No horse armor, no monocles, no special hair-styles. If I'm expected to pay a monthly subscription (something I have not done for quite a while), I want the entire game. That's not a complaint. I believe that PFO will be well worth the price. Most subscription MMOS fail because the players are simply not getting $15 worth of content every month. $15 may be the cost of a trip to Starbucks, but it's also the cost of an entire indie game on Steam. Sandbox MMOs are different beasts. Your subscription isn't paying for the latest raid or quest hub -- you're buying access to a simulation. The content is infinite because it's created by the players.

Cash shops weaken that value proposition by adding elements that are external to the simulation. If, for example, a player's character is a clothier and there's a special cash shop hat that he can't create, then the simulation has failed for that player. Too much of that kind of thing, and the whole point of the game is lost.

This is close to my personal theory. Aroden killed himself specifically to break fate. There are a number of hints (mainly literary and religious allusions) that the Golden Age of Humanity would be followed by the release of Rovagug and the end of the world. With his death, Aroden prevented the Golden Age and therefore (maybe)the apocalypse.

Ironically, the free will granted by the end of prophesy could very well result in the foretold Golden Age anyway.

Just some ideas off the top of my head:

-All non-central NPCs should have NPC clases only. In other words, the priests at the temple are Adepts, not Clerics. The town guard is made up of Warriors, not Fighters. Characters with PC classes are rare, and always a big deal.

-Limit purchasable magic items to minor items, if that. Maybe even cut it off at consumable magical items like potions.

-More powerful magic items should always come with a drawback.

-Purchasable spellcasting should be likewise limited -- keep it 0-1st level, or from the Adept list. Real Wizards live in isolated towers, not in towns.

-Add in quest elements to magic item creation. If the players want to make a wand, they'll have to go find a whisker from a manticore or a dryad's tears.

-Critical hit tables. Nothing says low fantasy like a good old fashioned permanent injury.

-Play up disease. If the players are in town and drinking the water, they should have a chance to get sick. Don't go overboard -- just have it happen often enough that they don't forget that a medieval-era world is a pit of filth without common magical healing.

Glad to hear that this is the "default" for Golarion.

Whatever helps you guys sleep at night...

And now for the blasphemous, unutterable truth: if you were to but glimpse the eldritch, non-Euclidean stat blocks of the Outer Gods, you would descend into gibbering madness. The dreaded .pdf version, with its cyclopean Javascript, has also been known to cause Windows to blue screen.

Another vote for 7-zip. It does everything Winzip and Winrar can do. I've been using it for years and it has never once tried to extort money from me.

I've only played a few PFS sessions, but I've already noticed that most people pack a bag of utility magic items for things like healing and traps. That's probably the best solution to the OP's question actually.

I generally don't build encounters at all because I run APs or PFS. Players are responsible for their own choices. If they want to play 3 rogues and a wizard, then they can put on their big boy pants and figure out how to deal with encounters given the ample capabilities they have. Players are smart and figure out ways to make things work.

Fair enough. I think we have very different styles of GMing though -- my private games are very sandboxy. Even when I run APs, I tend to use them as a rough framework.

But really, that's beside the point -- if the APL lines up with the CR, classes shouldn't matter. Tactics matter, of course, but healing can come from any number of sources.

IMO, it's on the players to figure out what capabilities they need and have them. I always recommend to my players to talk about group roles beforehand. If they don't have a healer, that's their problem, not mine.

It's a two-way street. A GM has the responsibility to tailor the game to the players' preferences. If you have three rogues and a wizard, you build encounters that will be challenging but winnable for three rogues and a wizard. Being subjected to constant TPKs isn't fun -- and neither is being forced to play a class or role you don't enjoy. And if the players aren't having fun, it most certainly is the GM's problem.

I run a group with two players, neither of whom are inclined to play divine spellcasters. Really, it hasn't been an issue. I make healing potions relatively cheap and available, sneak healing wands into the treasure, and frequently include NPC clerics as henchmen. Even so, it's more about keeping things moving than making the fights easier, since 90% of the healing takes place after a fight. I refuse to design encounters around the tank/healer/damager "holy trinity," so they rarely if ever need someone in the back ranks flinging healing spells.

His lack of intellect and desire to be accepted led to his exploitation by Vezzini. His naïvité stopped him from realising the harm he was doing until the events of The Princess Bride.

Inconceivable!

You're not giving the big guy enough credit. He had no problem killing someone for money, as long as it was done sportsmanlike. I stand by my assessment: Fezzik was never motivated by benevolence -- he was a mercenary for 2/3 of the film. Later, he is motivated by loyalty to his friends. Admirable yes, but not moral.

Inigo and he joined the brute squad in the middle of the film because they were at a loose end.

Inigo wasn't a member of the Brute Squad... he was rounded up by them.

It's a cute idea, but trying to shoehorn these nine characters into the nine alignments was always going to fail. : )

Alignment being what it is, no quick explanation is ever going to be perfect. As a GM, these characters fall into my personal interpretation, more or less. No one ever agrees 100% on alignment, which is why I can't resist these threads.

It's always nice to be reminded of my favourite film though. Sorry to put a crimp in your style. I thought it fitting, considering the rocky terrain...

Naturally, you must expect me to attack with Capo Ferro... What's funny is that I've been using this comparison at the beginning of campaigns for almost 15 years and Fezzik is never the one that people argue with me about. :)

Got to call foul on Wesley being CG. I seem to recall he was probably the #1 rules lawyer of the movie. Cannot see him being chaotic, with that personality. Wesley may have been LG. Buttercup was definitely Good, but was she Lawful? She basically just did what everyone told her to do. I think that makes her NG (Naive Good). Andre the Giant may fit the CG niche, he was definitely good natured, but was rather a free spirit.

I knew I was going to have to defend this. To give you a fighting chance, I'm typing this post with my left hand. :)

Wesley was a (spoiler alert?)pirate. No lawful character would engage in piracy. He lies, steals, cheats, and nearly overthrows a monarch. Regarding his being a rules lawyer, you're talking about the marriage, right? He was hardly arguing points of law -- he was BSing Buttercup to get her to feel better about running away with him (see below). The character was a combination of Zorro, Robin Hood, and Captain Blood -- any of which could be held up as the very model of CG.

Regarding Buttercup: As you said, she does what people tell her to do -- it may be naive but it's also the definition of Lawful. She agrees to a marriage out of obedience rather than love. When Wesley rescues her (the second time), he has to convince her that her marriage wasn't valid. Only a lawful character would let a coerced sham-wedding stop them from from being with their True Love.

And Fezzik is LN all the way. He's a joiner and doesn't care about the morality of those in charge. First it was Vizzini and later it was the Brute Squad. He believes in fair-play and he's loyal to his friends. Good-natured, sure, but Good-aligned characters don't sign on as muscle for murder/kidnapping plots.

I'm running S&S right now, and it's really not kid-friendly. There's hookers, booze, torture, dismemberment, undead hookers, suicide...

NPC building is something I find incredibly tedious. Since switching to PF, I just pull stats from the Game Mastery Guide and NPC Codex. Re-skin/fudge as needed. All my NPCs cast spontaneously, even if they're wizards or clerics. Sometimes I'll tweak stats in the middle of a fight if things seem too lopsided either way. My players never know the difference.

Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen any fluff regarding the Dark Ones. Even "Into the Darklands" doesn't say much beyond the fact that they're around and they're bad. Either way, you're safe doing whatever you want with them. If one of your players tries to contradict you, throw a D20 at his head.*

*Edit: I'm officially kidding and therefore accept no moral or legal responsibility for injuries inflicted. Also, make sure that the lid on your coffee is secure. And call your mother, she'd love to hear from you once in a while.

Here's how I actually explain it to my players:

LG: Buttercup
NG: Miracle Max's Wife
CG: Wesley
LN: Fezzik
N: Miracle Max
CN: Inigo Montoya
LE: Prince Humperdinck
NE: Vizzini
CE: Count Rugen

It was a bid deal in my last campaign that the DM was heavily enforcing alignment but early on it was "oh anything is okay". When he was threatening to change someones alignment to good against their will for not actively letting teammates die, and told me it wasn't nuetral good to kill sentients in a warzone

Wow... just... wow. It sounds like your GM didn't understood the concept of alignment at all. I hope he was better with other parts of the game. In that situation, no one could blame you for gaming the system a little -- I would have done the same.

What if... There were multiple ways to play alignment. What if most everyone was okay? What if it was always okay as long as no one else at the table has a problem with it? Crazy I know...

Spoken like a true Chaotic Neutral. I approve.

Get out of jail free cards are needed with some DMs though. Some have a greatly different idea of alignment than you, and that little C in your alignment goes a long way to compromise.

Of course, alignment is subject to interpretation, but it's something that a GM should discuss with the players before starting a campaign. Bad role-playing to make up for a bad GM isn't an ideal situation.

True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral are probably the most mis-played alignments. Both are often used as "get out of alignment free" cards.

I see TN as more detached than wishy-washy. A player who chooses this alignment should have something in mind that's more important to the character than morality: e.g. an alchemist who is obsessed by research, a monk who would prefer to meditate on top of a mountain, etc.

CN is often played as "chaotic stupid," or Evil with an Excuse. I agree with the OP's take more or less. My PFS bard is CN: he's a charming rake, more concerned with a wine, women, and song than anything else. He joined the Pathfinder Society to see the world and find material for his latest epic, not to be a hero. But, at the same time, he wouldn't harm anyone unless (in his opinion) they really deserved it. He might pick a rich man's pocket or steal his wife, but he doesn't go out of his way to cause harm to others who haven't harmed him. When Evil with a capital E rears its head, he's as willing as the next person to stand against it, but he's suspicious of anyone who claims to know what's best for others.

Thank you for the shockingly quick response.

I don't think I need to bother anyone about it if it really doesn't matter. I just didn't want to accidentally break the rules (or give the appearance of it).

I just finished my last level 1 session. Before I lock everything in and move on to second level, I'd like to change my character's faction. Can that be done? Do I get to transfer my PP to the new faction if I change before my next session? I tried to change my faction in my account, but the old one is still listed under my reported sessions.

There are also incredibly beautiful people who lack any sort of personality. For examples, see any televised interview with an underwear model (of either gender).

Butterfly swarm.

Superman does it all the time, so I'd say it's 100% paladin friendly.

instead of adding +1 every level, should skillful classes (or all classes) have an ability where they can add half their level to the roll? i.e Rogue could add half thei level to hide in shadow, pick a luck or disable a trap, a ranger or a druid could add this bonus to find comestible berry, or to make sure they don't leave any trace in a forest, etc.

You're still severely handicapping those classes. In a RAW game, a typical skill-based class is going to add one rank every level to their most important skills. So, for example, a rogue would (de facto) be adding his entire level to stealth rolls, plus the +3 class bonus.

Any kind of scaling bonus really defeats your purpose. All you're doing is removing the player's ability to customize their character as they level up. I think there's too much baby in this bathwater.

You could probably accomplish the same thing by broadening the skill definitions a little -- PF has already done this to a degree, compared to 3.5. You could probably tweak it a little further if you find it too restrictive. The only other option would be completely rewriting about 3/4ths of the classes to give them compensating abilities.

I will be playing in S&S as an Elven Rogue who's already a pirate but won't handle slaves. Apparently, S&S is 'sandboxy', so I'm wondering if being a privateer for Andorra is feasible. Mostly so my character can snigger that a bunch of do-gooders grant (restricted) license to commit robbery.

Would Andorra issue Letters of Marque? Would the Pirate Lords accept privateers within their confederation? Are privateers outside the sandbox of S&S?

I'm pretty sure Andoran does sponsor privateers, particularly against slave-trading powers. Either way, you can easily make this work due to (spoiler edited out -- I just realized that you're a player and not a GM, sorry).

More edit: I'm not sure how much you'll be traveling north of the Eye of Abendego, so you may never make it as far as Andoran -- a lot depends on how long a leash your GM gives you. I'm letting my players go wherever they want, even if it knocks us off the AP for a while. Getting through the Pillars of Aroden isn't going to be easy though. Even if you never make it official, there are plenty of abolitionists in the Shackles that might appreciate your scruples.

I think if you exist long enough, everything will become boring. Even demons and angels have to eventually get exhausted with the drudgery of everlasting sentience.

I can think of a few things that wouldn't get old. I'll keep it "family friendly," but imagine eating and never getting overfull, drinking without getting getting sick, dancing without getting tired... it all sounds pretty good to me.

Even so, I'd imagine that the deceased would experience the passage of time differently than the living do. I imagine it would be more like a vivid dream (or nightmare) than day-to-day mortal existence.

Don't overthink it. You can do future tech without venturing beyond the PRD. Ultimate combat has rules for firearms as well as vehicle rules that could easily be adapted to trains, cars, or airships. There are clockwork monsters in Bestiary 3 and custom race rules in Advanced Race if you want automatons or androids. Everything else can be done with simple descriptive re-skinning, e.g. sunrods become flashlights, iron golems become warmechs, etc.

I've been pronouncing "Dhampir" with the "D" but I just saw, in the Pathfinder Society "Additional Resources" doc., "an dhampir" indicating a silent "d." Is the "d" silent?

Regardless of whether it's "dam-PEER," ham-PEER," "tham-PEER," or (my personal fav) "hamper," using the indefinite article "an" in front of a consonant is wrong. So the typo hypothesis is a solid one.

My guess would have been Ohio.

You're good. Armed conflict ended over a century ago, just before the beginning of the Age of Lost Omens. The rivalry is entirely economic and rhetorical at the moment.

Another interesting coincidence: in the Old Testament, the location given for the beginning of the End Times is the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4). It's a real place, just to the east of Jerusalem. Built into the side of the Mount is a tomb called The Pillar of Absalom.

While this is an interesting thought the parallel kind of breaks down after a point. After Satan is released he is defeated, thrown back in, and all is well forever more. The prophecy of Aroden's return makes no mention of this sequence of events or even hints at darkness to come. Just a golden age of humanity.

I didn't mean to imply that Rovagug is literally Satan -- only that Golarion's mythology contains deliberate allusions to Christian eschatology. It could've been done just for flavor, but I think there's more to it.

The prophecy of Aroden's return makes no mention of this sequence of events or even hints at darkness to come. Just a golden age of humanity.

There wouldn't be any overt mention -- hence all the hinting around. It's meant to be a mystery.

My theory is that, like others, he chose to die to prevent some other sequence of events from happening. One idea that's been bobbing in my head is that he chose to die to break prophecy and thus prevent Groetus from triggering the end of all things.

That's a really great idea. I agree. :P

It was suicide.

Seriously. Here's my thinking: According to the Starfall Doctrine, Aroden's return was supposed to kick off the Age of Glory -- a 1000 year golden age where Aroden was going to personally lead the human race to greatness. That sounds an awful lot like something I read before:

6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison --Revelations 20

(first two stanzas omitted for brevity)

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Aroden knew that the Age of Glory prefaced Rovagug's release. In order to stop the prophesy, he had to destroy prophesy itself. His death was the only sure way to accomplish this -- the preordained sequence of events could not occur from that point forward. This is why prophesy stopped being accurate afterward -- fate itself was broken. This is also what caused the cataclysmic events of 4606 AR; the Eye of Abendego, Worldwound, and Shatterfield are scars in the fabric of the universe, left behind by a mass reconfiguration of reality itself. It was like trying to divide by zero.

The details can't really be known -- I prefer to think that Aroden just put a metaphysical gun to his own head for the good of humanity. It's possible that he engineered his own murder, Sandman style, and deliberately let his guard down at the right moment (Asmodeus is my prime suspect, but there are certainly others).

The more I mull this over, the more convinced I am that I'm right (Mr. Jacobs, please feel free to disabuse me of my pretension).

Not knowing any details other than what you supplied, I think you're justified. If you offer the BBEG a chance to repent/surrender/stop the madness and he refuses, what are you supposed to do? Scowl at him? Of course, I'm assuming that something Really Bad will happen if you don't stop him. If his plan is to drive up the price of grain or ruin a picnic, you might want to hold back on the ultra-violence.

Goading innocents into attacking is a different story, as is killing the BBEG after you've subdued him. Don't believe him if he promises that your hate will make you powerful.

It is sad to hear that the campaign setting books can vary so much though. I've never actually run any pre-printed adventures before(or bothered with splatbooks/gazetteers, or touched any published settings) so I was hoping that they would all be the way you describe Heart of the Jungle. I could handle something like Isles of the Shackles too, because if I've got a main region map I can at least get a feel for the area. City maps can be vaguely described and drawn up as needed, which is typically how I've done things in the past. But with a pre-existing setting the more information I have on hand to start with, the better. At least that's the way I figure it.

Don't get discouraged. You're trying to swallow it all in one bite and you don't have to. As I mentioned earlier, all you really need is the ISWG. It's fairly comprehensive. You can always drill down on a particular region later.

Easy.

The briefing has so much detail that it takes 20 hours to read/listen to. The verbal version is done in the GM's best Ben Stein voice. Will save (DC 25) to stay awake each hour. Also, your wish is to receive the briefing, not to have access to the briefing. Sounds to me like you're going to get your daily briefing whether you want it or not. Looting a ship? Exploring a cave? Visiting with one of the lovely priestesses of Calistria? *poof* You're back to the briefing room to hear Ben drone on about how many different kinds of mackerel are in that fishing boat 80 miles away.

I would try wishing for something akin to the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter instead.

Understood. That's the sort of stuff I look for as well -- I probably wasn't using the terms "crunch" and "fluff" correctly. By "crunch," I meant things like feats and new magic items. City stats, local maps and the other things you mentioned are exactly what I want from a gazetteer.

For what it's worth, I was in exactly your situation a few months ago. My homebrew world wasn't coming together and I just didn't have the time or energy to flesh it out like I wanted. I put the same question to my players that you plan to, and they chose the "Skull & Shackles" AP. To prepare, I picked up gazetteers for the surrounding area: "Isles of the Shackles," "Sargava the Lost Colony," and "Heart of the Jungle."

Comparing those three books really highlights the difficulty of trying for a complete view of the entire setting. Isles of the Shackles, for example, has tons of background and hooks, but almost nothing in the way of maps. It doesn't have city stats or even a map for the region's capital. Most of that kind of material ended up being in the AP books though, but I didn't know that until I got them. The Lost Colony didn't have much in the way of detail either -- most of the book is taken up by new feats etc. There's almost nothing there that will make it to my table. Heart of the Jungle, though, is by far my favorite PF setting guide: it has all the city stat blocks and tons of local details and maps. I could probably run an entire campaign on the fly with just this book and the ISWG.

Part of the issue is due to the fact that Paizo seems to dislike repeating themselves when it comes to setting material. If a particular settlement is detailed in AP X, it will generally get glossed over in Gazetteer Y later on. I actually appreciate this approach, since it avoids "Forgotten Realms" syndrome where old material is constantly being overridden. But it does make things difficult if you're a completest on a budget.

All in all, doing the AP + local guides ended up being the best approach for me. You don't even need to buy all the AP books at once -- unless your group likes to rush through things, each chapter could take a dozen sessions to complete.

If you're strictly looking for information about the world ("fluff" if you must) all you really need is the ISWG. I went a little nuts buying up all the regional guides and found that most of them focus too much on crunch at the expense of things like local maps, current events, history and adventure hooks. The newer 64-page guides are better on the whole, but you can skip them if you don't expect to spend a lot of time in the areas they cover.

I think the simplest solution is to roll back all age-related bonuses and penalties and be done with it. I love twisting wishes as much as the next GM, but this one seems pretty straightforward.

Good in theory until you start interacting with spells that impact alignments differently. IE- Chaos Hammer

Yup, there are a few spells that I'll need to modify or restrict. Nothing game breaking really.