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With the crashed spaceship ruins in the south, I'd prefer a more Dragonstar type of campaign. Spelljammer was neat back in the day, but doesn't quite fit what the Paizo guys have hinted at in the Gaz.
Red Planet = Akiton
Green Planet = Castrovel
It's been implied that the Akiton is Barsoomian in nature, while Castrovel might be the location of psionic goodness. :)
With the crashed spaceship ruins in the south, I'd prefer a more Dragonstar type of campaign.
The ruins are in northern Avistan, in Numeria.
How about this. Wait till Pathfinder #14, and then ask this question again.
How about this. Wait till Pathfinder #14, and then ask this question again.
Lost colony of Golarion Giff?!
How about this. Wait till Pathfinder #14, and then ask this question again.(Crosses fingers) Please be giant space hamsters. Please be giant space hamsters.
Or maybe the crimson throne is really a spelljammer helm...
heh. I haven't thought about giant space hamsters in years. Now I have to go unearth my Spelljammer stuff.
Red Planet = Akiton
Green Planet = CastrovelIt's been implied that the Akiton is Barsoomian in nature, while Castrovel might be the location of psionic goodness. :)
Cool!
How about this. Wait till Pathfinder #14, and then ask this question again.
Woo hoo!
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I am hoping this post was sarcasm... Somethings are better as memories... and sadly these memories were not even that good...
(Crosses fingers) Please be giant space hamsters. Please be giant space hamsters.
You probably don't even alow miniature giant space hamsters in your game!
Even if it's just a skyship, I'm all for Spelljammer in Golarion. I've got to finish that Savage Tide/Spelljammer crossover.
Even if it's just a skyship, I'm all for Spelljammer in Golarion. I've got to finish that Savage Tide/Spelljammer crossover.
Actually, I think Crucible of Chaos might have already had a kind of skyship in it. I don't have the module right here so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Airships were something brought up and shot down when we were originally concepting Golarion (just because we didn't want them flying all over the place like in Final Fantasy). While no one we know about yet in Avistan or Garund are big airship makers, I think there's totally room for them somewhere in Golarion.
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I despise and loathe spelljammer as much as I do the first Dungeons & Dragons movie. I would rather watch a Wayans brothers marathon, while drinking yak blood, than play in a setting that has spaceships made of wood filled with hippopotami packing matchlocks. Just my opinion.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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*sigh* some things are better left buried :)
No way dude, Spelljammer Rocks!
Given some aspects of it were a bit cheesy (**cough**Giff**cough**Scro**cough**Giant Space Hamsters**cough**) it did give us the Neogi, who I quite like.
On the whole though I thought it was an interesting concept and a nice connection counterpoint to the planes. With a little more planning and a little less "cheese" it could have been a lot better.
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I despise and loathe spelljammer as much as I do the first Dungeons & Dragons movie. I would rather watch a Wayans brothers marathon, while drinking yak blood, than play in a setting that has spaceships made of wood filled with hippopotami packing matchlocks. Just my opinion.
You know Taliesin I have to admire your passionate hatred of Spelljammer. (Even though, for some reasons I cannot fathom, I really like the setting)
I also have to shudder... yak blood.... *shudder*
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Yeah, the neogi and their umber hulk slaves rock.
*Raises a glass of freshly acquired yak blood*
Long live Spelljammer!
Spelljammer had its cheezy aspects, but I always liked some of the concepts. I actually thought the Scro were great, it was the first time anyone had portrayed an orcish race as more than a bunch of killable mooks. The fact that they had gone all organized and smart tickled my creative bone. I always wanted to run a game that was fairly normal, but with the local orcs suddenly organizing well and raiding the human lands systematically. When the characters investigate they find a shadowy group of uber orcs in control. The big fight at the end would feature a Scro warship and transition into a Spelljammer campaign. Never did it though ...pity
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I always wanted to run a more modern spelljammer game.No crystal spheres but systems, You could only jump into the polly outside of a system. Kinda like jump space.Air would be controlled and re filtered by the helm.More steampunk then cheese. Airsuits,muskets,arcane magic. A group making there first flight out into the great darkness of space.I may one days still run such a game. Time will tell
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I always wanted to run a more modern spelljammer game.No crystal spheres but systems, You could only jump into the polly outside of a system. Kinda like jump space.Air would be controlled and re filtered by the helm.More steampunk then cheese. Airsuits,muskets,arcane magic. A group making there first flight out into the great darkness of space.I may one days still run such a game. Time will tell
I have often argued that Planescape and Spelljammer should be merged into one game concept. I too would drop the crystal spheres. Star gates would connect the shadow plane which intern could be navigated to another Star gate (I actually called them Dragon Gates) to another system.
Mmmm... 4th adventure path will have "out of Golarion" modules? Don't you think it is too soon?
I certainly did not say that. Pathfinder #1 has a big ol' article on Thassilon after all and you never actually go to Thassilon. We've just really started getting a stable grasp on Golarion and the nations and peoples in it. We've got no plans to rush away from all that hardwork any time soon.
If I had to wager, Second Darkness will involve other planets in Golarion's solar system. There are some tantalizing hints in the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer; namely, rumors of a series of interplanetary gates that link all the worlds together.
It DOES doesn't it. And who's to say that folks on Golarion are the only ones who might be interested in going on interplanetary fieldtrips?
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You know, I still own the original Spelljammer box (or actually its content, as the box itself has turned into dust long ago) and I enjoyed it very much. And I know many old time players have found memories of it.
But I think Spelljammer has its place somewhere. Which is not necessarely mixed up with other settings. Yes, I did crossover campaigns before! One of my longest campaigns involved players out of Forgotten going to the Rock of Bral after several (real-time) months of game. And they were quite surprised by it.
Giant Space Hamsters, Hippopotami with flint-lock guns, penguin warriors, space whales and killer planets... THATS Spelljammer. But mixed up with other settings, especially when "out of the blue" (in players' perpective) may be quite annoying
When I first read about Numeria, I was quite a bit "eh" about the supposed alien crash site, robots and such. And that from someone who once made a "dungeon crawl" adventure inside a crashed ship envolving Aliens, a pissed off Predator and an android
Oddly enough, thats now how I felt about Katapesh (which I too saw as a touch of Arcane). Maybe its how it was depicted.
On a side note, I know that it was a marketing decision to have Pathfinder accept all kinds of campaign for all types of players
And, finally, while I might be a bit "eh" about adding spelljammer or even hard sf officially into Golarion, I find the idea of the "stargates" connecting planes and worlds quite interesting and, considering the elves have their own gates, that should show up somewhere in Second Darkness
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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The only reason crystal spheres even existed (IIRC) was to allow the constellations in Krynn's skies to change without throwing the entire galaxy into chaos. If you simply say each star system is vastly distant from each other (ie, thousands of light-years) then there's no real issue there.
I was under the impression that the crystal spheres were a strong reference to actual medieval beliefs that the solar system was encased in a perfect crystal sphere.
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The only reason crystal spheres even existed (IIRC) was to allow the constellations in Krynn's skies to change without throwing the entire galaxy into chaos. If you simply say each star system is vastly distant from each other (ie, thousands of light-years) then there's no real issue there.I was under the impression that the crystal spheres were a strong reference to actual medieval beliefs that the solar system was encased in a perfect crystal sphere.
That was the inspiration for the whole concept, but the reason for it was to accommodate the changes in Krynn's constellations. One of the designers was looking at old medieval woodcuts and was like "Oh!"
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Contributor
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I was under the impression that the crystal spheres were a strong reference to actual medieval beliefs that the solar system was encased in a perfect crystal sphere.That was the inspiration for the whole concept, but the reason for it was to accommodate the changes in Krynn's constellations. One of the designers was looking at old medieval woodcuts and was like "Oh!"
How do you guys know these things? Impressive. Most impressive.
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Took me a while to find the actual source. First page of the Spelljammer box set's Lorebook of the Void
The design directive for the SPELLJAMMER supplement was simple: Take the AD&D game into outer space...
...But if space functions normally, how (for example) do the constellations of Krynn move around without messing up other planets?
Zeb Cook pulled out some medieval woodcuts showing a traveler passing through the spheres of the world to discover the sun and planets on tracks, and with that the idea of crystal shells was born.
Edit: In short, an obsessive collecting habit, a near-eidetic memory, and next to no life. :)
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Spelljammer had its cheezy aspects, but I always liked some of the concepts. I actually thought the Scro were great, it was the first time anyone had portrayed an orcish race as more than a bunch of killable mooks. The fact that they had gone all organized and smart tickled my creative bone. I always wanted to run a game that was fairly normal, but with the local orcs suddenly organizing well and raiding the human lands systematically. When the characters investigate they find a shadowy group of uber orcs in control. The big fight at the end would feature a Scro warship and transition into a Spelljammer campaign. Never did it though ...pity
Ah! I once ran such a game, and it was excellent. I had drow instead of orcs, and it transitioned to Planescape instead, but it was great fun for the characters to fulfill the "mystified visitors" role. On PS and Spelljammer, I think both are great, but I would hesitate before integrating them into mainstream Golarion. Whilst good, they are very different beasts, and ruined spaceships can only turn up so often in high fantasy before the paint begins to run...
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Spelljammer had its cheezy aspects, but I always liked some of the concepts. I actually thought the Scro were great, it was the first time anyone had portrayed an orcish race as more than a bunch of killable mooks. The fact that they had gone all organized and smart tickled my creative bone. I always wanted to run a game that was fairly normal, but with the local orcs suddenly organizing well and raiding the human lands systematically. When the characters investigate they find a shadowy group of uber orcs in control. The big fight at the end would feature a Scro warship and transition into a Spelljammer campaign. Never did it though ...pityAh! I once ran such a game, and it was excellent. I had drow instead of orcs, and it transitioned to Planescape instead, but it was great fun for the characters to fulfill the "mystified visitors" role. On PS and Spelljammer, I think both are great, but I would hesitate before integrating them into mainstream Golarion. Whilst good, they are very different beasts, and ruined spaceships can only turn up so often in high fantasy before the paint begins to run...
Actually Dragonstar would seem to be a better fit. Not a really good fit but closer
The interesting thing about Spelljammer as a setting is that it opens up every world as a possibility for when the players are elsewhere and get banished.
Spells don't say "you get sent back to your specific planet". they say you get bumped back to your original plane.
When Spelljammer and plane hopping collide, players have a very real chance of getting sent /very/ far from home.
Weee.
-S
Why o'why did Glassteel nosed Whale ships always intrigue me?..
maybe one day I'll soar the skies again...
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I mean Earth's solar system only has like, what, 20 planets or something right?
Uh, are you including the "ort belt" in that "20 something"? Because last I checked, what with Pluto being recently redefined, we now only have 8 ACTUAL planets...
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
and Neptune
(Again, Pluto being redefined as a "planetoid")
Just curious... ;-p
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
Even if it's just a skyship, I'm all for Spelljammer in Golarion. I've got to finish that Savage Tide/Spelljammer crossover.I'd love to see what you have done!
You have no idea how much that means to me. I shall redouble my efforts to get everything I am working on on one website.
Creative Director
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I think we deserve some concrete answers about Golarion's *universe*.
Fair enough. I'll give it a shot, although some of these answers will be vague and/or subject to change if we think about it more and decide to go another route. SO! Here goes!
-Roughly how many galaxies does it have?
Enough to encompass any ideas that we (as in us at Paizo, our writers, and all of our customers) come up with. There can be thousands of galaxies if we need them. The Material Plane is as big as our own universe, in other words. Earth's probably out there, for example (in a swath of space with low magic), as is any other campaign setting you want to stick in there.
-How close is the nearest star (not including Golarion's sun)?
I'd guess somewhere between 4 and 5 light years. Which brings up a good point... for all things astronomical, if you guess a number that's relatively close to the analogous number in the real world... that number's pretty close for Golarion.
-What is the real nature of dark matter/dark energy, or is all the universe's gravity accounted for by other means?
This one I'd like to keep mysterious, just as in the real world. That said... I'm pretty sure that the "Dark Tapestry" (the dark spaces between the stars) has some pretty crazy Lovecraftian elements to it.
-If dark matter is a material substance, can my Fighter dual-wield two bastard swords made out of it?
Chances of dark matter being material and/or safe enough to handle by a person are remote at the best. I'd say the answer to this is no.
-Is "time" an artifical concept that depends entirely on perception, or is it a concrete, measureable variable? In the latter case, is it the 4th dimension? Is time cyclical? If it is cyclical, how would you explain a timestop spell?
Again, I'd rather keep this one mysterious. If I had to nail it down, I would say that yes, time is a dimension (not necessarily the fourth one, though). Time stop, in any event, doesn't actually STOP time... it actually just speeds up the caster super fast so that, by the caster's perception, time has stopped. (This bit is actually in the rules, even.)
-Are there quark stars in Golarion's universe? Can my epic Wizard develop a spell that can shoot quark stars at his enemies, perhaps first uttering the mystic phrase "Kamehameha!"?
Yes, there are. Shooting a quark star at an enemy would require an epic spell of the likes that nothing in Golarion has ever been able to achieve, though. Shooting a relatively small meteorite or asteroid is an entirely different matter... but no. No shooting quark stars or dwarf stars or black holes or quasars or anything like that.
Also, I have a related question about Azatoth, HP Lovecraft's blind idiot god at the center of the universe. Since he has been confirmed to exist in Golarion in the Crucible of Chaos module, is it possible that Azatoth is really just an enormous flumph who has been flipped over for so long that he's just plain gone nuts? I think this is the most logical explanation.
This is not possible. And if next morning you wake up in an empty world devoid of life or death or material or thought, and are cursed to drift in the everything of nothing until time begins... it's not my fault. I tried to warn you.