Creative Director
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I'm not sure what version of the map you're looking at but to me, there's plenty of variation along the coastline; nothing looks like it was drawn with a ruler to me. Sorry it doesn't work for you, but it obviously works for us here at Paizo.
That said... the Inner Sea wasn't created by continental drift. It was created by a tremendous meteor impact at its eastern end that caused a canyon type effect to radiate to the west (and there were probably many other smaller meteor impacts along the length of the inner sea at the same time). There's not really a real world analogy to what happened to create the Inner Sea... at least not in modern historical times.
Look at Faerun. You have the giant half island of chult or the extremely varied coastline of the sea of fallen stars or the southern coastline. This I call "not straight" contrary to the coastline of the both continents of Golarion which border the inner sea.
I have to disagree. Chult may be a little different but from Calimshan all the way to Icewind Dale, the coast of Faerun is about as straight as you get, with the one exception of the peninsula in northern Tethyr (Velen?). Not to say that the shape of Golarion's continents are the best I've seen, but I would hardly hold up Faerun as the example of what should be.
That said, straight(ish) coasts aren't geographically impossible. People tend to only compare fantasy continents to Europe, but look at the western coasts of North and South America. South America has a bulge but not much else, and North America's west coast is pretty straight from Northern Mexico through the continental US & Canada until you reach Alaska.
Why is no one thinking about the fjords???
The funny thing is that this is the second time people complain about plain coastlines.
You guys are all nuts XD!
Not nearly as nuts as me, but still.
There's not really a real world analogy to what happened to create the Inner Sea... at least not in modern historical times.
Wouldn't the Caribbean impact (theory/hypothesis/whatever) be the closest thing? Cause in geological terms, that'd be pretty new.
As designers of Golarion, most of us at Paizo share a formal education in English literature, writing, literary criticism, publishing, (musical theater,) and related liberal arts. We've even have a few anthropologists, architects, and chemists. And while our loves of and experience with other mythical worlds, fantasy literature, and varied other nerdoms has lead us all to develop our own sub-expertise and pet peeves, none of us should be considered professional physicists, historians, sociologists, geologists, economists, biologists, evolutionary scientists, aeronautical engineers, astronomers, astrologers, occultists, linguists, spelunkers, or experts in any of the myriad fields our jobs might call for us to fake on any given day. The most we can do to skirt out scholarly deficiencies is go on frequent crash courses to try and suss out a realistic feel, do some hand waving, and put together something we think looks and feels both plausible and cool. Most of the time I think we hit the mark - in this specific case I think we hit the mark - but that isn't always the case. Yet, for as long as the need to produce fantasy stories on a deadline trumps the need to have every real world particular spot on - and probably even after - things that real world experts or just folks with contrary tastes can and will pick apart will continue to slip through into our world. We try to avoid it, but it happens. If you feel strongly about something, go ahead and change it how you like for your game - I promise we won't come to your house and try to stop you. If you don't feel that it affects your game, though, and you can get down to the business of slaying goblins and rescuing damsels even despite our admitted imperfections as behind the scenes deities of Golarion, great, happy to have you along and hope you continue to enjoy what we put together!
As designers of Golarion, most of us at Paizo share a formal education in English literature, writing, literary criticism, publishing, (musical theater,) and related liberal arts. We've even have a few anthropologists, architects, and chemists. And while our loves of and experience with other mythical worlds, fantasy literature, and varied other nerdoms has lead us all to develop our own sub-expertise and pet peeves, none of us should be considered professional physicists, historians, sociologists, geologists, economists, biologists, evolutionary scientists, aeronautical engineers, astronomers, astrologers, occultists, linguists, spelunkers, or experts in any of the myriad fields our jobs might call for us to fake on any given day. The most we can do to skirt out scholarly deficiencies is go on frequent crash courses to try and suss out a realistic feel, do some hand waving, and put together something we think looks and feels both plausible and cool. Most of the time I think we hit the mark - in this specific case I think we hit the mark - but that isn't always the case. Yet, for as long as the need to produce fantasy stories on a deadline trumps the need to have every real world particular spot on - and probably even after - things that real world experts or just folks with contrary tastes can and will pick apart will continue to slip through into our world. We try to avoid it, but it happens. If you feel strongly about something, go ahead and change it how you like for your game - I promise we won't come to your house and try to stop you. If you don't feel that it affects your game, though, and you can get down to the business of slaying goblins and rescuing damsels even despite our admitted imperfections as behind the scenes deities of Golarion, great, happy to have you along and hope you continue to enjoy what we put together!
Rawr!!
Goblin Frenzied Berserkers FTW!! ^_^
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I posted a similar thread a little while ago discussing this, my opinion is that the main problem is a lack of islands, barrier islands, etc. Hopefully this is something that can be taken care of when they delve into smaller scale maps for Absalom, Cheliax, Andoran, Qadira, etc.
Honestly this is my only complaint as well, but at that scale I would not expect to see too many examples. Some, yes. I really like islands for some reason. Greek islands I think is my inspiration.
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The coast lines seem fine to me, even something like the mushfens makes sense if you can think of it in context.
The only thing that nags me is the River Kingdoms. I'm having trouble understanding the way they appear without reconciling the whole thing as a giant swamp.
Of course, we're talking about a planet with a permanent hurricane...
Well said. But its not a question of personal taste. The "straightness" compared to other fantasy worlds is a fact.
Just a quick note: The geological accuracy of speculative worlds has, historically speaking, has always been a non-issue. In Middle Earth, Tolkien created a mountain range shaped into 3/4th of a square. Howard created the Hyborian Age without any knowledge of tectonics (30s, after all), and thus has some rather dubious explanations for the shape of his continent. (Likewise, he operates under some fallacious ideas of how evolution actually works.) So with that being said, Pathfinder is keeping with some fine company indeed.
However, the Inner Sea is as it should be. The coastlines may be (relatively speaking) straighter than most completely made up fantasy worlds, but they are shattered, reflecting their violent births as the result of a terrifying, colossal impact. While I personally believe that RPGs are by far the most undervalued cerebral pastime in our culture, they are not by default didactic tools, but rather storytelling tools.
Thus, it is not that most people "do not know" (as that word choice is an implicit and perhaps not-so-subtle form of self-aggrandizement by its user, not to mention patronizing), it is that they have, what we in the literary world like to call, "a willing suspension of disbelief."
Now, as Wes said, most of us have our degrees in the Humanities, but I do know that one of the Paizo staff has his degree in geology, and I'll probably have this discussion with him just for fun (if he can even be bothered with such trivium, that is).
I'd be curious what your conversation yields, Hank. Every time I go to draw a game map of a significant scale, I feel my geological ignorance. The rub with "willing suspension of disbelief" is that it hits different people in different places. Depending not only on a person's tastes, but also on her knowledge areas, one might not be willing to suspend disbelief if one's particular sensibilities are too outraged by a given appeal. (Huh...maybe I'm happier being geologically ignorant?)
I'd be curious what your conversation yields, Hank. Every time I go to draw a game map of a significant scale, I feel my geological ignorance. The rub with "willing suspension of disbelief" is that it hits different people in different places. Depending not only on a person's tastes, but also on her knowledge areas, one might not be willing to suspend disbelief if one's particular sensibilities are too outraged by a given appeal. (Huh...maybe I'm happier being geologically ignorant?)
Well point being that one not need be ignorant in order to enjoy a geologically erroneous map (probably depends on the ratio of one's willingness to disbelieve vs. one's OCD, heh). ;) And I have no problem with people taking umbrage with such issues, just as long as they realize that they are not championing some sort of righteous cause (or rather, that people who do not necessarily care are somehow performing a great disservice for the edification of gamers everywhere).
Why should the geologists be better off than practically everyone else?
It is a fact that the average human, while usually having his area of expertise, is a dabbler at best in everything else.
And a lot of the time, the area of expertise of the people who provide us with entertainment is - exactly - providing people with entertainment.
And while it would totally rock if entertainment would be created by a big team of specialists who collaborate on it to make it realistic, it's not really practicable - unless you're willing to wait a lot longer for your entertainment and/or pay a lot more for it.
So if the geogolists among us would kindly overlook the fact that Golarion's coastlines could not work that way in our world, the rest of us will not voice their complaints, either.
P.S: Plus, it's Fantasy! No one really says that the rules that apply on earth have to apply there, too. There's fantasy worlds - and real world world views that have stuff like the sun being a flaming ball of dung pushed around by a dung beetle, or the world being a disk resting on the back of giant elephants, and some are convinced that a giant space goat will one day devour the world. I also remember something about a primeval cow involved in creation myths.
Really, compared to all that, a straight coast-line isn't that much of an eyebrow raiser, is it?
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I may well be wrong, I don't really know much about geology, but don't several continental edges line up with tectonic boundaries?
The west coasts of both North and South America are flush with their respective tectonic plate boundaries, and the split between the Eastern edge of South America and the Western edge of Africa lines up pretty well with the (mid-atlantic) boundary between those two plates.
The complicated crinkly bits of north-west Europe and north-east US are all mid-plate.
So if you feel a "real" explanation is needed then just assume that the West coast is close to a tectonic plate boundary.
As has been mentioned, most games designers have degrees in silly fluffy subjects rather than sensible crunchy ones :) so when it comes to matters of, say, geology, economics, astronomy, or engineering they can't as quickly and easily mock up a convincing fake as could somebody familiar with those areas.
The flaws fortunately tend to be in areas that don't matter too much to gaming (D&D economics is a mess, why is the planet Verces tidally locked, etc) whereas the areas the things they are stronger on are the ones that matter more to gaming (story-telling, communication, related creative arts), so you could find situations where a (relatively) large amount of work could be undertaken to make a modest improvement that only a few people would notice/care about (eg make Aballon tidally-locked rather than Verces) rather than do a (relatively) small amount of work that would be of benefit/interest to many (writing evocative prose, creating interesting NPCs, etc.).
I'm not sure what version of the map you're looking at but to me, there's plenty of variation along the coastline; nothing looks like it was drawn with a ruler to me. Sorry it doesn't work for you, but it obviously works for us here at Paizo.
That said... the Inner Sea wasn't created by continental drift. It was created by a tremendous meteor impact at its eastern end that caused a canyon type effect to radiate to the west (and there were probably many other smaller meteor impacts along the length of the inner sea at the same time). There's not really a real world analogy to what happened to create the Inner Sea... at least not in modern historical times.
I have no complaints, although when I first saw Varisia I thought that it smacked of someone trying to fit a believable coastline onto a square sheet of paper in order to optimize the adventuring fun to printing cost ratio, which_is_fine_by_me.
Dig that Erik Mona underscore emphasis.
The shape of the Inner Sea region of Golarion has been reminding me of Hyboria since the beginning. The difference is that Robert E. Howard decided to make the Mediterranean smaller and got the river Styx, and Paizo decided to make it bigger and ended with the Inner Sea.
For the sake of those island-lovers that have posted before, I'd like to observe that Hyboria seems to have less islands than the Inner Sea region of Golarion, and straighter coastlines. This can be because Howard wanted to reflect a more primitive world more basic in shape. Like that of a block of marble before the artist has finished sculpting a statue out of it. I find that evocative.
Finding similarities with our world like those found in Howard's works makes me wonder if Paizo has thought about some relationship between them. Like Hyboria and Oerth were described by their authors before.
Could always run Second Darkness and have a few meteors pepper the coastline, break it up a bit for you. :)