I know Monte has been peripherally involved in the Pathfinder RPG and Pathfinder is currently sponsoring his Dungeon-a-Day project. These are all signs of the great goodness.
But the very best product Paizo could create for Pathfinder Chronicles would be a Ptolus conversion book. Yes, I know this would require licensing from Monte. But if there were any way to have Ptolus "officially" adopted into Golarion with Monte's blessing and the Paizo touch, that would be all the more awesome.
Ptolus, for me at least, is the quintessential 3.5 setting. Properly marrying that with the Pathfinder Campaign Setting would not only allow Ptolus to live on, but eliminate the perpetual shoehorning involved in homebrewing the combination.
I can easily imagine that Monte is not interested, but it wouldn't hurt to ask, would it? :-)
I second the motion. All in favor?
On the other hand, I'm lukewarm at best on the idea of adding litorians (say) and other Ptolus-specific stuff to Golarion.
Director of Brand Strategy
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Reprinting the monster Ptolus tome is probably not likely, nor is editing it and redoing it to fit in a different campaign world. If it were just a supplement listing ways to "officially" adapt Ptolus into Golarion, that product would isolate anyone who doesn't have a copy of Ptolus, which is a lot of people that I know. It'd be making a canon part of the world inaccessible to anyone who either didn't already have Ptolus or couldn't afford the $100+ price tag it brings on eBay or other second-hand stores.
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Creative Director
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Although I'm a HUGE fan of Ptolus (and Freeport, for that matter), we won't be officially placing either of those cities in Golarion. There are implications in each city about the makeup of the world surrounding it, and while it's a relatively easy thing for someone to place either city in Golarion, in doing so you'd either have to change some fundamental things about Golarion (such as adding new races or increasing the presence of firearms) to make the city work, or vice versa by changing something fundamental about the city to make it work in Golarion. In either case, you basically have to adapt one of the settings to fit the other.
We'd rather let customers decide which one gets adapted, so that everyone can retain the world flavor that they prefer, rather than making that decision for them, which is what would happen if we officially placed either city in Golarion.
On the other hand, I'm lukewarm at best on the idea of adding litorians (say) and other Ptolus-specific stuff to Golarion.Really? Litorians the Lionmen? I like them. I could imagine that there is a native culture of litorians on another continent of Golarion or in Vudra.
I guess I don't mind putting litorians on another continent, but I wouldn't be crazy about just saying: "Ptolus is in Taldor, and there have always been lion-men in Avistan -- we just forgot to mention it before."
But I wasn't just talking about litorians; I also meant shoal elves, harrow (?) elves, the Ptolus gods, and all of the other culture-specific stuff from Ptolus.
EDIT: James expressed my opinion pretty well above.
Although I'm a HUGE fan of Ptolus (and Freeport, for that matter), we won't be officially placing either of those cities in Golarion. There are implications in each city about the makeup of the world surrounding it, and while it's a relatively easy thing for someone to place either city in Golarion, in doing so you'd either have to change some fundamental things about Golarion (such as adding new races or increasing the presence of firearms) to make the city work, or vice versa by changing something fundamental about the city to make it work in Golarion. In either case, you basically have to adapt one of the settings to fit the other.
We'd rather let customers decide which one gets adapted, so that everyone can retain the world flavor that they prefer, rather than making that decision for them, which is what would happen if we officially placed either city in Golarion.
I figured as much, but still, it was worth a shot to ask, right?
While I'm still a little ways from showing it to anyone, I'm putting together some ideas on the various options on how to integrate Ptolus into Golarion.
Can I add one more suggestion then?
I know Paizo will likely continue to publish chronicle books about the larger Golarion world and planets (and you should!), could you still leave at least some corner of the world as officially unexplored? That way it is at least a bit easier to drop in cities or even countries from other 3.5 settings without shoehorning it too much.
Oh, and James, many thanks for taking the time to actually answer my crazy proposal! :-)
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Creative Director
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I know Paizo will likely continue to publish chronicle books about the larger Golarion world and planets (and you should!), could you still leave at least some corner of the world as officially unexplored? That way it is at least a bit easier to drop in cities or even countries from other 3.5 settings without shoehorning it too much.
It's pretty likely we'll NEVER get around to exploring every corner of the Inner Sea region; heck; we spent a year and a half in Varisia in the APs and haven't even explored every corner of Varisia itself! There'll always be parts of the world left open for GMs to build on as a result!
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It's pretty likely we'll NEVER get around to exploring every corner of the Inner Sea region; heck; we spent a year and a half in Varisia in the APs and haven't even explored every corner of Varisia itself! There'll always be parts of the world left open for GMs to build on as a result!
The Inner Sea is large. It's interesting to take it and place it one a modern map of the earth to give you and idea of the scale. The Inner Sea is significantly larger than the Mediterranean, for example.
While we're on the subject...
At the moment, my favorite choices are to either have Ptolus and the surrounding world of Preamal be on the far side of the World's End Mountains or to drop Ptolus on the Isle of Terror.
In the first case, the World's End Mountains thus line up with the Cherubar mountains and you can drop Monte's setting in pretty much as-is. It's effectively a world away anyway. Still, it does offer some chance of allowing characters to travel between settings.
However I'm starting to like the idea of using the Isle of Terror even more. Ptolus is actually a fairly new city built on the ruins of two evil empires. The Isle of Terror fits well as Ghul and Tar-Baphon become the same character. Eslathagos Malkith (the Dread One) is so ancient, he can be set as-is during the Age of Darkness. The isle is remote enough one can take a lot of the Ptolus setting directly (including Litorians). You can also place Dretas Phantas as a city taken from the shores of Kyonin.
Of course, I'm a late comer to Pathfinder and I'm still getting up to speed with the setting, so perhaps there are some better locations I'll find later.
Those are good ideas. If I ever use Ptolus in Golarion, I intend to put it on a completely different continent though.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Speaking as a 7-year player in Monte's personal Ptolus campaign, I think the best thing to do would be to replace Geb as a concept with a city-state based on Ptolus. Switch out the ghost Geb for Ghul, and go to town with it. I'd basically dump the Osirion-colony part of Geb's backstory, play up the international trade element to make it less monocultural, channel the Gebbite undead stuff into intrigue in the city's graveyard, and off you go.
A Ptolus campaign is not really about the world beyond the city. It is by definition an urban campaign based in the city of Ptolus. The rest of the world is simply the background, and as such you can place the city anywhere you wish.
Heck, another easy idea is to swap it out for Magnimar in Varisia, and make all of the major ancient players Runelords.
Ptolus is meant to be modular, so it's easy to fit it in just about everywhere. Even in Golarion there's some weird stuff like litorians and sibbecai along the coast of Garund (which is why I suggested Geb). If you don't like those elments even in Ptolus, they are easily ignored.
All that said, James is correct when he says we will not be "officially" adding Ptolus to Golarion.
Ptolus is a setting in and of itself.
Honestly, the easiest way to merge settings like this is just to stick on a really, really far away continent. Maybe have there be large storm systems around it to explain the near-total isolation between it and the Inner Sea region we're familiar with in Pathfinder.
Or, if I remember correctly some of stuff in the Second Darkness issues of Pathfinder, there is precedent for world-linking portals in Golarion. It's a bit of a plot device, but you could have someone have just recently found and reactivated a portal that leads to another planet that contains Ptolus. Thus, the two settings could have developed in isolation and later meet. On a similar path, we could start pulling out Spelljammer, Dragonstar, or Planescape to link them together if we want to get really complicated.
Ptolus is meant to be modular, so it's easy to fit it in just about everywhere. Even in Golarion there's some weird stuff like litorians and sibbecai along the coast of Garund (which is why I suggested Geb). If you don't like those elments even in Ptolus, they are easily ignored.
Don't want to hijack the thread, but will we see something "official" in Pathfinder products, namely PRPG-products about litorians and sibbecai? Hopefully I will someday start LoF and I see these two races in it. So will there? :)
Speaking as a 7-year player in Monte's personal Ptolus campaign, I think the best thing to do would be to replace Geb as a concept with a city-state based on Ptolus. Switch out the ghost Geb for Ghul, and go to town with it. I'd basically dump the Osirion-colony part of Geb's backstory, play up the international trade element to make it less monocultural, channel the Gebbite undead stuff into intrigue in the city's graveyard, and off you go...
Heck, another easy idea is to swap it out for Magnimar in Varisia, and make all of the major ancient players Runelords.
Thanks for the great ideas Erik. I've put these thoughts on Ptolus in Golarion (3 options) in a public Google Doc.
And let me add another vote to Aureus for official Litorian support.
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Creative Director
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Ptolus is meant to be modular, so it's easy to fit it in just about everywhere. Even in Golarion there's some weird stuff like litorians and sibbecai along the coast of Garund (which is why I suggested Geb). If you don't like those elments even in Ptolus, they are easily ignored.Don't want to hijack the thread, but will we see something "official" in Pathfinder products, namely PRPG-products about litorians and sibbecai? Hopefully I will someday start LoF and I see these two races in it. So will there? :)
Nope. Golarion's got its races pretty much set in stone at this point, and adding new races to that mix has to be done carefully so that you don't have something where a huge populace appears out of nowhere. Home games, of course, can put any races they want into the world, but the ones we've established right now are pretty much the ones we're sticking with and like the most.
What about honoring Ptolus by creating an urban campaign for one of the Golarion cities? Could we see this someday? Then everyone would have access to it.
I said:
Don't want to hijack the thread, but...
and meant it! So I continue on the topic of litorians and sibbecai in Golarion here.
I guess I don't mind putting litorians on another continent, but I wouldn't be crazy about just saying: "Ptolus is in Taldor, and there have always been lion-men in Avistan -- we just forgot to mention it before."
Nah. I don't like that, either.
But what about this:
One day, Erastil gets the hots for Desna and engages in some weird ancient courtship ritual where he sends Abadar ahead to sing his love songs to her for him. But then Abadar starts to like her himself, and when Erastil finds out, he decides that tradition demands nothing less than killing Abadar. Shocked, Desna for some reason moves in with Shelyn.
And Norgorber somehow manages to kill Nethys and destroy magic as we know it, and grief-stricken old Erastil (who had to kill his old chap Abadar over a misunderstanding) will punish Norgorber by putting him under house arrest (because murdering the god of magic and unleashing a terrible chain reaction isn't nearly as bad as looking at your hoe in the wrong way, right?).
From all this freak magic thing which kills millions of people, a dozen other gods, and drives everyone over level 15 stark raving mad, the ground splits up and up comes Ptolous, and somehow, also cat people become a part of Golarion because of all this.
Edit: No, forget that: I told it to my 5-year-old neighbourhood boy, and he thought I was out of my mind for suggesting something that dumb.
Remember: Always tell your bright ideas to 5-year-old boys. If they immediately tell you that you're talking crazy talk and nonsense, better do some serious rethinking (or trash the idea right there).
Apologies for simply interjecting...but KaeYoss....
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Creative Director
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What about honoring Ptolus by creating an urban campaign for one of the Golarion cities? Could we see this someday? Then everyone would have access to it.
We did so once already with "Curse of the Crimson Throne." The next adventure path, "Council of Thieves," is even more of an urban campaign than was "Crimson Throne."
Nah. I don't like that, either.
But what about this:
*KaeYoss says stuff about Tymora, Sune, Tyr, Helm, Mystra and Cyric*
All of that sounded so familiar but I just can't place it.