7) Too much content bloat happened, where most adventurers were playing as extremely bizarre combinations of classes, archetypes and so on from fifty different sources of "power".
Boy, I hope notIt's a game built around magic as a basic assumption. Taking it out or drastically limiting it is going to be stressing the system pretty heavily. You're not doing what it's intended for. How do we know it's "built around magic"? As far as I'm aware, magic isn't sidelined in Starfinder, but mundane technology exceeds it in prominence and usage.
For me anyway, I'd just up and say that Earth was completely taken over by the Dominion of the Black, with Cthulhu as a source of energy that they harvest. Humanity finally began to expand out to other planets somewhere in the 22nd century but for one reason or another was annihilated by the Dominion. Baba Yaga, in essence, becomes the last human to have originated from Earth in the entire multiverse. Thousands of years later, it's just another planet-wide fleshfarm with its continents completely re-arranged and its oceans long drained, with the only indication that it's Earth being the fact that Cthulhu still lives on it.
Failure of the game design is failure of the game designer. oh no i made the bad game
They flee.These are PC's though, right? I'd want to try and release the poor enslaved deity. They would, if they were high enough level. Unfortunately, the game breaks up before they reach level 10 due to scheduling conflicts, and the game is never played again.
Bio Apocalypse?Pretty much. While I'm not a fan of completely 100% grimdark settings where nothing you do matters, I also like cosmic horror, and this being Earth's fate in my Starfinder game hammers home the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, Earth never stood a chance against the Dominion of the Black. Oh and they can enslave what we consider to be Eldritch Abominations. Cthulhu with biomechanical augmentations is way more terrifying than just the big squid himself. I don't think I'd ever throw Cthluhu towards the party as a thing to fight, whether he's converted by the Dominion or not. It's more the horrific idea that the iconic Great Old One was simply turned into a tool by something that weren't gods themselves. Plus it reinforces the fact that the Dominion and the forces of the Mythos are not friends, which is a mistake way too many people make in the setting. That being said, I completely support the idea that adding dangerous things onto already dangerous beings is bloody awesome. A balor demon? Horrifying. A balor demon with cybernetics and a rocket launcher attached to it? Well now...
Long story about what I'm probably going to make happen to Earth in my Starfinder setting. This is making a lot of assumptions about Starfinder's canon, but since were any of us bound of "official" canon? The party has found some rather interesting information, recovered in of Absalom Station's deepest data crypts. Long ago, on the legendary world of Golarion, the nation of Irrisen was ruled by Anastasia I, who was the nation's first truly benevolent and loved queen. She had made peace with Irrisen's neighbors, both by diplomacy and by war. Irrisen's eternal winter ended, and the realm was propelled forward into a golden age. Curiously, Anastasia did not come from Golarion at all, but was a native of another, distant world. The legend says that this was the same homeworld of Baba Yaga, the Queen of All Witches, who had seemingly disappeared a long time ago. The party decides to investigate this world. Surely the homeplanet of both Baba Yaga and one of Golarion's most legendary rulers would be an interesting discovery? The Mystic communes with his mysterious patron, a cosmic entity he calls the Tachyon King. After some time and some mental negotiation, the mystic receives the coordinates to this planet. He also receives something else: a cryptic message from his patron: beware. the grave does not contain the dead. nor undeath. something else. The coordinates are punched into the ship's navcom. The ship spools up its FTL drive and disappears, hurtled halfway across the galaxy, farther than anyone has ever gone from Absalom Station. Their ship exits warp, on the edge of the star system. The world they're looking for is the 2nd planet from the Sun. Mercury has vanished. Immediately, the ship receives very strange readings from Earth. There are signs of life...on 97.4% of the surface. Very, very large signs of life. There is so much life the planet must be thriving And it is thriving, as the party soon discovers. ---
Oh what a investment this harvest was! This planet was not only rich in biomass, but also contained a chained entity that was positively thrumming with purpose and life, even as it fitfully slept in its tomb-city under the ocean. It put up quite the fight when we designated it as a prime candidate for phenotype integration. Much more of a fight than the humans. But in the end, the Drowned God worships us. It is put to much better use now. Much better use than the humans. Such a fragile and remarkably uninteresting organism. Most of them were given over to the [intellect devourers]. The more genetically interesting specimens were shipped off-world for gestalt re-assignment, converted into servitors, or became decorations here on their homeworld. I daresay that once humans shed their humanoid form, they have a lot more uses!
The party discovers that Earth has been converted into something terrible: a fleshfarm for some unknown power. They discover that Cthulhu has been enslaved by this planet's new masters. They discover that no living human exists anywhere in the solar system outside of their ship. They flee. And try to forget what they saw, and pray that they were not detected or followed. Unfortunately, their prayer was not enough. And as they'll soon discover, the entities that rule Earth remember everything. They know exactly what happened to Golarion. And they want their property back.
Welp, time to start speculating what class Lovecraft will be when the PCs inevitably fight him. ...Ninja, right? Clearly a ninja.
Speaking as someone who prefers 5th edition over Pathfinder, I really don't think Pathfinder needs an entirely new "edition". At least not something that would make everything they've published obsolete or difficult to convert over. And I freely admit that Wizards is really losing my interest with its focus on Forgotten Realms, which for me is a very uninteresting world. And they only give token support for cool things like the Eberron and Dark Sun settings, firearms, and psionics. Pathfinder, meanwhile, has a setting that allows for a whole range of genres and kinds of games: gothic horror, science fiction, Egyptian adventures, expeditions to notAsia (though come on Paizo, where's your full AP set in Tian-Xia?), and so on. So while I prefer 5e's system over Pathfinder's, I still buy Adventure Paths and supplements from time to time, if only to mine them for ideas. My 2 copper rant!
Biggest changes I made pertain to Numeria and the ship that crashed into it. First off, the Rain of Stars happened 900 years ago, not 9000 years ago. Androffa is not "Golarion 2.0" as I call it, ie a fantasy setting where Golarion's deities are worshiped with a sprinkling of elves and dwarves. The "Shoal" were a group of godlike entities that ascended to a higher plane purely by technological means. Both the Androffan humans and androids were created by them for some unknown reason. It's also equally unknown why the Shoal decided to attack Androffa and devastate the planet. More Golarion-relevant stuff: -Worship of Sarenrae is outlawed in Taldor. In practice, some towns are more tolerant of it, but they're the exception. -Aroden was a Veiled Master. What this means for the deities that ascended via the Starstone is not known, but it's deeply unsettling to those who know the truth. -Anastasia rules Irrisen.
What, and miss out on all the arbitrarily banned stuff like the Nanite-blooded Sorcerer or all of the firearm-related archetypes of the classes? And Dreamscarred Press's awesome psionics? God no.
And something tells me that unless Paizo delves into AIs again, which is extremely unlikely, it will be unrevealed forever :v
Kinda off topic and I know this is a subject that's sensitive for obvious reasons. But now I'm curious about the religions of Earth in the context of Pathfinder's universe. Are we to assume that the current active religions of 1918 Earth are all true to some extent? How I run it in my games is, since this is one of those worlds where magic and the supernatural is all but vanished, Earth's deities simply can't or won't directly speak to their worshippers or give them divine power. Deities known on Golarion are basically unheard of here (with notable exceptions like Asmodeus, Lamashtu, Egyptian deities). I know Paizo wouldn't say which religion is "right" or which are actually worshipping a different aspect of a deity worshipped in Golarion, but since it's specifically canon for our home world to exist in the exact same Material Plane as Golarion, I can't help but be curious.
All right let me elaborate on what I said. Wasn't trolling or baiting I promise. So for a long time our group thought shields did force damage, and apparently force damage can affect ghosts. Thinking about it now the conclusion was that that's really dumb because a) shields do bludgeoning damage, and b) ghosts can't be affected by non magical sources.
DSP is why I am hesitant to abandon pathfinder. If I abandon pathfinder, I couldn't play DSP psionic classes. I've been contemplating banning all arcane and divine classes alongside magic items for my homebrew setting (investigators and alchemists are the sole exception, I just re-flavor them as super-science) and replacing them with psionics and possibly the occult stuff. I also was contemplating having firearms be considered Martial weapons and use these rules for firearms. Still debating whether its worth it to even use Pathfinder at this point, but I realize that DP's psionics is one of the biggest reasons why I haven't tried converting this setting to another system...yet.
I really, really want to play an e7 game and just enjoy the game while it's fast and leave high level magic to rituals as discussed in Occult Adventures. The thing is I rather enjoy high-level Pathfinder gaming since that's really when people's concepts of their characters start to shine. I wouldn't really want a game that only sticks to lower levels and compensates for never advancing beyond that with stuff like extra powers or mythic tiers. I guess the thing I really don't like about higher level Pathfinder games is just how ridiculous they can get. Maybe if I ran a game where magic items were extremely rare, compensating for Unchained's Automatic Bonus Progression...I dunno.
*Sigh* I don't know anymore. Everyone where I live plays it and insists on playing it, though in recent months that's been changing with folks willing to try other stuff, even non-d20 systems. I keep telling myself that I'm sick of the system. I hate how combat is so goddamn slow, I hate how the higher levels you go, the slower everything seems to be, how people seem to focus purely on doing one thing game-breakingly well and ultra-specialize in doing a few neat tricks rather than making a, well, character. If you read that and thought, "that sounds a lot like the problems come primarily from the people you game with", then you'd find that I now realize that. However, there's this content out that I find really hard to ignore. Iron Gods and all the sci-fi goodness was the first step. Then I discovered Dreamscarred Press's psionics and realized that the people who told me that psionics is "broken" was based off of pure hyperbole and 3.5 experiences and that DP's psionics was fraking awesome. Pathfinder Unchained gave some really cool options for making my life easier as GM. And now this Occult stuff is out! So I guess in a nutshell I'm getting sick of how people I game with play Pathfinder. I want to try running it how I want to play games: where combat is fast, narrative>rules, people aren't obsessed over builds and how to "beat" Pathfinder rather than telling a cooperative story. That kinda stuff.
How do you approach it?About as much as I approach other forms of masturbation. In other words, I don't. Oh I got the joke! It's funny and thought provoking because...no. Anyway, it depends on the game. Transhumanism plays more roles in media than most people realize, since at its core its all about fundamentally altering the human condition. Not necessarily into something unrecognizably human---that's posthuman---but providing augmentations, whether they be physical or mental, technological or magical, to improve humans or human-esque races. Any sci-fi game I run is bound to have some elements of transhumanism in it but I don't really tend to bring them up unless they become crucial to the plot or one of the players wants to explore those themes. High or heroic fantasy games, particularly Pathfinder, tend to have a lot more of those themes than they let on, such as sorcerers and a few others, so I don't really bring up that term because it's pretty much already there.
Highly opinionated, but here goes: Pros -Breaks the mold. Seriously, I can't state enough how much 3.5/Pathfinder is beginning to bore me, and no amount of new feats, classes, spells, archetypes and so on really helped with that. Psionics, however, is a fresh breath of air. At least, it was for me. -Surprisingly balanced (Dreamscarred Press's version, that is). When I was first introduced to Pathfinder my first GM hated psionics and thought them to be ridiculously overpowered. I took him on his word until, looking at it a few years later, realized that it's not really that bad and, in my experience, has integrated well with traditional Vancian magic. I'm curious to see how Occult Adventures mixes in with all this. Maybe Psionics, Psychic Magic, and Arcane Magic can all be a thing? Okay enough personal musings... Cons -...Can't think of any. Honestly. This is all my personal opinion, of course. I do believe that if you have a player you know you can trust will not munchkin or try to break the game and asks to try out psionics, there's no harm in letting him or her try. The rules for it aren't terribly difficult to learn, both for GM and player.
I just wanted to share with you guys the drastic changes I made to a lot of the lore relevant to the Iron Gods Adventure Path. I found myself dissatisfied with the canonical fate of Androffa: essentially turning it into Golarion II. I know it was originally James Jacobs’s setting and I think that’s a pretty clever way on having your old homebrew game in a popular, established product, but I still wanted to ramp up the sci-fi and lower the fantasy. Kinda a long post (okay it’s more than kinda long) but I’m curious what those of y’all who chug through it think. It's not finished and there’s still some details I need to flesh out, so keep that in mind! Androffa doesn’t exist. Nor do Androffans. At least not in the way the people of Golarion understand. Long ago, a civilization of humanoids (the “first” humans perhaps?) ascended to a higher state of existence, effectively becoming gods. What was unique about their ascension was that they were the first in the Material Plane to do so entirely by technological means. Yet they do not expect to receive worship and do not grant any spells to anyone who tries to, without exception. This is either because they can’t because of how they ascended or because they won’t. They existed in this post-singularity, god-like state for quite a long time. More specifically, they function as disembodied minds hosted in large megastructures made of computronium and are capable of great feats of engineering: dyson spheres, matrioshka brains, jupiter brains, stellar engines, and more. They use star clusters as people on Golarion might use fields or rich mineral veins. (If you guys are familiar with the Kardashev scale, they exist firmly as a Type III civilization.) These entities eventually desired to return to the Material Plane inside physical “platforms”. Holdouts against this continued to exist, and there was considerable disagreement on what forms they should take, from biological to synthetic to humanoid to insectoid. Most of the thoughtmind came to a single consensus: human. Thus they set out to create the first of these bio-shells. Their first attempt at this was a miserable failure. Their platforms simply became another type of human. The problem with these empty shells is that souls sprung up in them almost immediately. Worse, they were able to reproduce . Eventually the thoughtmind (the placeholder name we'll give these post-singularity entities) threw these humans onto a planet and promptly ignored them. These humans called themselves the Pytharans, and their world, Pyth. These Pytharans are the humans that Golarians think of as the “Androffans”, and Pyth as “Androffa”. Most, but not all, alien technology found in Numeria is Pytharan. Their second attempt was better, mostly. The creation of a purely biological humanoid template that was hardwired to better house their souls in. Many from the thoughtmind transmitted their souls into their new meat bodies. These platforms are what Golarians know as “androids”. The problem with these androids is that at some point they, too, began to spontaneously become host to a non-thoughtmind life force. Increasingly impatient, the thoughtmind exiled the androids who “awakened” with a random soul and jealously kept the ones that they were able to successfully inhabit. So where does the starship Divinity come in? Basically the Pytharans and exiled androids allied against their thoughtmind creators, who became increasingly unstable and eventually lashed out at their creations. The resulting war was vicious yet short, with the Pytharans and rebel androids barely holding out against terrible weapons of war (hurling red giant stars at solar systems tends to be bad for morale). Long story short, a peace treaty was signed when the thoughtmind(s) further became fractured on the destiny of their creations. A particular “cluster” of the thoughtmind, in fact, encouraged cooperation. We know so much about the universe, this cluster said. We know of energies that no race yet has names for. Yet how much do we truly know of the tiny bacterial specks that are the various races and cultures that orbit stars? This cluster offered a cooperative with the Pytharans. They wanted to build a ship. A ship that would go out into the stars, explore other races, uplift them to civilization if possible. Explore, cooperate, science ! This cluster of the thoughtmind was known as the Androffan Cluster. And the name of the ship they proposed: Divinity. The Androffan Cluster created the Divinity Drive and offered advice on the construction of the ship, along with providing a few key personnel. The Pytharans made up most of the crew, and the ship was to be captained by one of their own. The Unity Interface was jointly programmed, modeled off of a Pytharan (ie human) brain. And the rest kinda sorta comes back into “canon” Pathfinder. 25 years pass of exploration and adventure, then the Dominion of the Black attacks the ship to get a hold of some neat-o wormhole technology (the thoughtmind is the only civilization the Dominion leaves alone out of caution, but they still can’t resist nabbing some of their super-tech for themselves, ie the Drive). Then boom, crash on Golarion after limping through its solar system. Sooo yeah. Kinda long, still has some unfinished details and thoughts, and I feel weird posting it here (would belong on a blog maybe), but assuming any of you read it, what do you think?
I hope we get to visit Aucturn in the kinda sorta confirmed adventure path that deals with an alien incursion from the Dark Tapestry. We need a good, honest to god H.R. Giger horror adventure path dag nabbit, and Aucturn is perfect for it. Carrion Crown didn't even come close to scratching that itch for me, and Iron Gods only sort of.
While I'm not a fan of Wheaton for a few reasons, I gotta say he makes for a great GM, and the setting sounds absolutely killer.
James, how do you feel about Call of Cthulhu games that closely sticks with the source material (ie your insignificant characters will go insane or die no exceptions, nothing you do will ever impact the evils of the world, other nihilistic themes) vs. Lovecraft Lite (ie, you destroy the cult that was entrenched in the city, slay their pet horror from the stars, and still come away with your sanity and health damaged but intact)?
I'd probably suggest a different system entirely: Savage Worlds. It's a very flexible system and runs on the "Fast! Furious! Fun!", high action sort of game. Just a word of advice: while there's lots of options for Savage Worlds, if you and your group come from Pathfinder you'll immediately find that it is nowhere near as in-depth and characters are not as customizable as they are in Pathfinder, and that turns some people off. There IS lots of customization...it just pales in comparison to Pathfinder's hundreds of feats and spells and dozens of classes. Anyway, Savage Worlds is great because it can support all kinds of settings, including cyberpunk, science fiction, fantasy, and many more. There's also many fan-made conversions for other settings, Shadowrun included. If you want, take a look at the free basic rules here. If they're to you and your group's liking, then (last link, I promise!) you can buy the core rulebook for under ten dollars. No joke.
Incorrect. Because people so happen to like including sci-fi themes in their fantasy. If you're going to distill the reasoning of including certain elements on covers as "because it sells", you might as well apply that to ALL covers Paizo has done.
Just gonna say this now; while I have warmed up to the idea of this dual Cheliax AP, even the evil PC thing, I would absolutely despise a Goblin AP. Six months of that? Nope.
Statting out the Greys is probably the best thing to have ever happened in the entire observable universe
So my initial reaction to this was "meh". But the more I think about it, the more I'm kinda interested in both adventure paths. The thing that turned me off the most is the idea that you're working for Asmodeus, but working for House Thrune proper? That would be interesting. I'll judge when I learn more details. I know people felt the same about Iron Gods, which is my baby AP, so I can't "meh" at anything until I learn more. ...Of course this could also mean that, after a dual adventure path set in the Inner Sea Region, maybe afterwards we get an AP that's set outside the area? Whether that be another Golarion nation or another planet... Also, Hell's Vengeance's theme song is this. Completely.
I never quite got why people choose to provide in-game reasons as to why certain elements of Golarion don't exist in their home games. It's already a kitchen sink setting so in my opinion there's no real need to have, say, Cheliax sinks into the ocean if you don't want it in your game for whatever reason. Isn't it sufficient to just say "no, all firearms are banned, and everything in Numeria-related products are banned" and have neither of those elements ever show up in your game? Of course it's your game, and I don't mean to come off as nosing into what you prefer and don't prefer, just curious.
I, too, have found it a bit unbelievable that anything will be working at all in 9,000 years. But then I realized this is a setting where bards can use the power of song to make buildings explode, where wizards control the fabric of the universe by making gangster signs and speaking gibberish, and where people can get god powers by touching a giant magical rock from outer space. Yes, those examples are all distinctly non-technological and has everything to do with magic. The point is that if a setting already has that kinda stuff in it, I think I can overlook alien technology somehow still functioning even after a massive span of time. Your mileage may vary of course. That's just how I see it.
Well they did technically return. One of them anyway. And not Karzoug. If you don't know what I'm talking about then good, spoiler alert. Anyway I am getting my Distant Worlds AP regardless! It might be in 2017, it might be in 2045, it might be in the grim dark future 40,000 years from now but damnit I will get it!
I for one welcome our brain-sucking overlords. The hidden message (as with all APs) in the final book, by the way, was "keep watching the skies". Distant worlds/Dominion invasion AP confirmed! Helps that James Jacobs said he had a Dominion invasion AP plot slushing around in his dinosaur brain for awhile too :D
*rolls eyes* Of course you would.
Iron Gods, by far. None of the other APs have gotten my adoration and love more than this one.
If you've watched Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, or read the manga to the end, you could probably get some inspiration from Father begging Truth to tell him what he did wrong after he is finally defeated. Yeah, that entire speech I've gone over a hundred times in my head when applying it to Unity. Like Father, Unity's inability to comprehend a certain aspect of something (ie faith) is not his fault, and he could seem genuinely sad at why this upstart group of heroes is rejecting what he considers a perfectly legitimate means of becoming a god and gaining followers. "If fleshlings can gain divinity just by touching a magic rock, why can't I achieve omniscience through science? What is wrong with making my worship contagious? The end result is the same: they worship my glory, the same as gods of 'good' or 'evil'. The only difference is that so-called 'traditional' means of spreading faith is hideously inefficient and slow."
Can anyone tell me what rift boots are? I can't seem to find them anywhere.
I'm the exact opposite of a few people above: I subbed for iron gods but I'm gonna unsub for this one. Don't mean I'm not gonna get it at some point in the future though :>
Players getting extremely upset and moody the minute they fail a roll or don't play "optimally". Yes, you rolled a natural one. It's dissapointing, but you do not need to rant on for five minutes about advanced dice physics or be a grumpy iguana about it. Also players who come up with asinine plans and are upset that they don't happen. Player: "I use ice and fire as a wizard to make this metal door brittle. Me: No. Player: why not? According to metallurgy... Cue rant about the properties of metal and its relation to cold and hot temperatures. Still won't fly. That is not going to open up a gigantic metal door, especially since they're cantrips and thus low level.
I'm gonna guess (read: hope) it's a rocket launcher
I like slow build-ups to stuff, and the inevitable face-off with the Technic League is no exception. In the first adventure in my game, their presence was limited to Sanvil and a League delegation that came to Torch shortly after the heroes re-lit the fire. They had impressive firepower and the PCs knew it---from their cybernetically enhanced horses to the eerie-looking weapons they possessed. As one character was an ex-League member, and another, an android, has a nasty history with them, this ramped up the tension considerably, but nothing happened. But having them directly face Technic League members before Starfall, at least for my group, would have thrown away that tension. Their presence will be limited throughout the AP---when the group arrives in Iadenveigh, I'm going to have it where Furkas was not the only guy who found and messed with the techno-dungeon below the town, which would tie to at least two of the PCs' backstories. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I'm personally a-OK with the role of the League being off-screen threats for the majority of the adventure so the PCs aren't too spooked.
Mr. Daigle, this Adventure Path is only halfway out and you guys shattered the bar I put up there.
It is TORTURE waiting for this Adventure Path. I'm curious just how much of the Dominion will be revealed. Obviously not every single aspect of it, but hopefully enough to pay off for all that foreshadowing in previous prints.
Worst adventure path ever, there are no lightsabers and having Sci FI tech in my pure medieval fantasy world breaks my immersion. 0/10 *sees cover for Divinity Drive* Is that a space dragon fighting a party in a room with holographic planets and the party has a chain sword and a rocket launcher?
due to the widespread (and overly simplistic and kinda racist) beliefs that Japanese media and entertainment is much more sexually daring and explicit than American or European media. As someone who has lived in Japan I can say that this has a grain of truth to it. It's not much more daring or explicit, but it wouldn't be racist to say that it is more out there, especially (but not exclusively) in the anime department. It doesn't make the entire nation a country of perverts (which is what a lot of people like to say), it's simply a culture thing. So in other words it's a lot more complicated than what people believe it to be, but it's not entirely wrong to say that they are more sexually daring and explicit.
Thats what she said! :|
I was worried that Divinity Drive wouldn't be very interesting aesthetically speaking, since you go on a crashed spaceship in at least two books. How could Silver Mount be any different and interesting beyond just bein yet another crashed spaceship? Then I saw that space dragon. And those holographic planets.
Im gonna guess it exists in a state whereby it had a global cataclysm and exists in a pre-industrial state with super advanced tech remnants lying all around, and has remained like this for 9,000 years (ie eerily similar to Numeria or your own Unspeakable Futures...). Yeh don't gotta answer this, of course, but Im calling it now! Although on the third question...is it because they're too alien for her to deal with, or are they just not worth the trouble in her eyes? Or is she perhaps unnerved by them? ...nah, can't be that :P
This is a related thing, but I have to ponder: what are the conditions supposed to be on any given world where magic could flow in abundance or be completely non-existent? Earth, for example, had a period in its history, long long ago, where magic was at least as common as it was on Golarion, but by the present day it is all but extinct. You also have the culture that created the starship that crashed in Numeria. As far as we know, the Androffans were completely unaware of magic (given the reaction robots give to spellcasters in Iron Gods). Which leads me to another train of thought: does magic actually hinder a civilization in terms of technological and, perhaps, cultural progress? See it like this: Golarion: its history is bathed in magic, from mighty spellcasters to arcane and divine scars on the land. Most of Golarion is largely in a pre-industrial age, even if socio-economic conditions are somewhat better than it was in Medieval times in Europe. Still, most of it is dominated by monarchies or theocracies and slavery is legal or at least accepted in much of the Inner Sea region, even if it is frowned upon by many people. Earth: Magic was once a powerful force but has vanished. Advances in technology by World War I is light years ahead of what most of Golarion has access to. Many nations are advanced forms of government like republics or have some system of parliament. Androffa: No magic at all, the Androffans are capable of utilizing nanotechnology, interstellar travel, artificial intelligence, mind uploading, and so on. Government type is unknown, but we can assume some sort of federation of worlds. Maybe pure coincidence, but it's an awfully interesting one. Also note that Iron Gods spoilers:
Androffans are humans, and humans are the dominant race on all three worlds. Sometimes I wonder if Paizo actually has this all figured out or not.
Obviously major spoilers, look no further if you plan on playing IG as a PC! Spoiler:
So I know Divinity Drive isn't even close to coming out yet, but I had an idea for how the final battle against Unity could go down. It's an extremely rough idea since nothing is known about Silver Mount's interior or how Unity can even be defeated. Regard this as nothing more than a spontaneous idea I got while staring blankly ahead in a bus. While exploring Silver Mount, Unity, in the visage of an angel, appears to the PCs, similar to Hellion. But there are two key differences: he does not appear in monitors, he appears directly as a hologram. Also, Unity does not insult the PCs for being meat puppets or puny insectoids and speaks with a quiet, contemplative voice; but his insanity is still quite clear, which is all the more disturbing when his calm demeanor and his maddening taunts mix together. In the final area, the PCs find Unity's central core, and the upgraded, mythic-infused annihilator robot he is inhabiting. But thanks to a powerful prismatic hologram field, partially infused with Unity's divinity, the entire room looks like a serene garden, which completely throws the PCs off. Unity's core looks like a gigantic tree, while Unity himself, in the annihilator robot, appears as a towering, angelic being. During combat, every time Unity attacks or otherwise directly interacts with the PCs (except for speaking), the hologram in the whole room briefly flickers away, and Unity's true form is revealed. For example, the angelic being brings down its mighty sword on a PC. If the PC parries the blow, the PC sees himself bringing up his own weapon to block the giant angel's sword, but the hologram will briefly fade and the PC instead sees a giant metallic claw bearing down on him, while the annihilator's single red eye burns menacingly, before the holograms jump back to life. Unity's ranged attacks could be represented as a hail of arrows that strike the PCs; yet again the hologram flickers for a moment as the PCs instead see the arrows as hundreds of bullets from the annihilator's twin machine guns. The plasma cannon could be Unity releasing a brilliant beam of heavenly light, while the PCs briefly see instead the reality; an angry, red-white beam of plasma from the robot's tail. Yet the strangest thing is when Unity casts a spell. When he does this, and the hologram in the room flickers back to reality, Unity actually appears as an angel outside the hologram rather than an annihilator in an eerie juxtaposition. This only lasts while he is casting the spell, yet this shows just how close Unity is to achieving godhood! Every time the tree is attacked, the serene garden becomes more and more stormy, reflecting Unity's anger. Finally, when the tree (Unity's core) is destroyed, the angel's wings are brutally torn off (in reality, the robot took a tremendous hit as all of Unity's processing power needed to be transferred to it) and the hologram flickers off completely. Cue the PCs eventually besting Unity in the annihilator, cue a sad, epic speech worthy of the ending of Blade Runner. I dunno if I'd actually implement this or not since I need to read how the final encounter actually plays out. But what do you guys think? Also sorry if this doesn't warrant its own thread, but I'd feel kinda awkward posting in the Divinity Drive GM Reference thread this early...
If the final art for this is not released soon I will unsubcribe from all of my subscriptions and never buy another product from Paizo again. *Meanwhile, every single lie detector across the United States goes off simultaneously*
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