I hope you don't mind a vocabulary question. I keep seeing the word macguffin thrown around on the messageboards. What does the term mean? It seems to mean some sort of villain or 'boss.'
And while I'm asking, people keep talking about the "Christmas tree" effect and the "Big Six" in terms of magic items. What are they?
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I hope you don't mind a vocabulary question. I keep seeing the word macguffin thrown around on the messageboards. What does the term mean? It seems to mean some sort of villain or 'boss.'
And while I'm asking, people keep talking about the "Christmas tree" effect and the "Big Six" in terms of magic items. What are they?
A macguffin is a plot object (though sometimes a person), like the one ring or a magic rod you need to reconstruct to stop an army or a gem that contains a god that you must recover from an ancient temple. That sorta thing.
The christmas tree effect is when a character is covered in tonnes of items, so they effectively look like a christmas tree with it's lights going.
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Do you ever plan to release a module/AP/Free RPG day scenario set in Golarion's past? Maybe during Nex and Geb feud, Pre-Asmodean Cheliax, or similar? That would be sweet. Holler at your boy if you need it written.
Secondly,
Did you see Marco Polo in Netflix, and if so what did you think?
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What would you say were the narrative themes and ideas explored in Shackled City back in Dungeon Magazine? Had I known how things were going to end up, I'd have bought the issues from my town's old bookstore before it closed down. :(There weren't really any intentional themes and ideas explored overall in that first AP. Being the first one, it wasn't really outlined and pre-planned to NEAR the extent of even Age of Worms.
Just sort of an episodic, old-fashioned tale of adventure? Those are pretty fun too!
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As usual, thanks for the answers!
1.) I've noticed a lot of APs require the players seemingly knowing the intended themes and building appropriate characters for buy-in (Skull & Shackles springs immediately to mind). Do you at your own table typically plan out what the campaign's themes and objectives will be, or play it from the hip based on what your group seems to be liking?
2.) Most APs seem to have a cut off around 13-14th level. How high do you typically go? Do you start players at the first level?
3.) From the GNS theory. Would you describe yourself as a Narrativist, Simulationist, or Gamist GM?
4.) How do you react when party members have greater loyalties to agencies outside the party, to the point where they might betray or act contrapurpose to what the other players want? Example: A LN Knight turning in a compatriot for theft for example.
Thanks again!
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4)Are Gnomes the only fey-ish playable races that Golarion has?
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary4/gathlain.html#gathlain
Technically, there are gathlain. They are fey and they have character stuff, but they aren't supported, so they are just as much "pcs" as trox are :P Which is, not really, you can create easily one, but character stats seem to be meant for npcs
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What sort of problems or challenges could a group visiting the positive energy plane encounter? Beyond the Jyoti and Ravids that is.
The information given in Great Beyond makes it sound like a very barren place, one of our group is hoping to do a side quest there, visiting the Garden in an attempt to create/steal a soul for a currently soulless creature.
Obviously the Jyoti will have a problem with that, but what is their architecture like for their cities? What class levels are their guardians most likely to have (Currently the group is of the opinion that Druid and Hungry Ghost Monk both work very well)
What sort of challenges, beyond the inherently toxic nature of the place, could people face on such a quest?
Sorry for the very open, fluff related question, its just there's not much details on the area.
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Is there a Pathfinder equivalent of Puck from the Shakespeare stories and Greek myth? I'm planning on using him for an otherworldly patron for our next campaign. Is there a supplement book that goes into detail about the First World demi powers? I need a chaotic, inscrutable power.
Creative Director
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I hope you don't mind a vocabulary question. I keep seeing the word macguffin thrown around on the messageboards. What does the term mean? It seems to mean some sort of villain or 'boss.'
And while I'm asking, people keep talking about the "Christmas tree" effect and the "Big Six" in terms of magic items. What are they?
A macguffin is a plot device; it can be anything that propels the plot forward. The briefcase from Pulp Fiction is a classic macguffin; we never find out what's IN the briefcase but it's the whole point of the movie. Alfred Hitchcock popularized it. Clicky for more info.
The Christmas Tree/Big Six refers to the six magic items in 3rd edition D&D that boost your six ability scores. We consolodated those into 2 slots from six in Pathfinder to try to free up more body slots for items.
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Notes:
English is indeed a strange language. You can pronounce 'ghoti' as 'fish'. So X can easily be pronounced 'eks' or 'zee' or 'ess'
Secondly, Practiced Spellcaster only gave you caster level +4, it is exactly twice as strong as magical Knack. It did not give you extra spells or spell slots.
==================================
Hey, JJ, read Korean mangwha at all? I've gotten sucked into The Gamer and The Tower of God. Both gamerrific.
==Aelryinth
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Creative Director
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I hope you don't mind a vocabulary question. I keep seeing the word macguffin thrown around on the messageboards. What does the term mean? It seems to mean some sort of villain or 'boss.'
And while I'm asking, people keep talking about the "Christmas tree" effect and the "Big Six" in terms of magic items. What are they?
A macguffin is a plot object (though sometimes a person), like the one ring or a magic rod you need to reconstruct to stop an army or a gem that contains a god that you must recover from an ancient temple. That sorta thing.
The christmas tree effect is when a character is covered in tonnes of items, so they effectively look like a christmas tree with it's lights going.
Hey! Get your own ask thread! :-P
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Creative Director
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Oh great Tyrant-King Thunderous Lizard in the sky please answer this humble ones questions.
1) Is it also common practice in Cheliax to summon imps into Golarion to prove your skill and power in wizardry, like it is in Korvosa? Do these imps get left in world also?
2)Do you have a name for what a swarm of imps would be called? Is it perhaps a "practice" or a "council"?
3) Since it has happened multiple times on Golarion does the death of a god cause any significant change in magic? Like was the death of the elven moon goddess by the starstone cause an increase in darkness magic or maybe not even something that specific maybe magic itself just became either more or less potent or sorcerers became more common?
4)Are Gnomes the only fey-ish playable races that Golarion has?
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule deciding the fate of worlds to answer my question.
1) That's mostly an Acadamae thing. In Cheliax, those who conjure up imps do so for other reasons, but anywhere an imp or any devil is conjured (or any THING) there's some that get free.
2) Nope. No name.
3) Not really. That's something that happens in the Forgotten Realms. We don't wanna copy that.
4) They're the only core race with fey ties, yes. There may be other zero HD fey races out there but I can't think of any at the moment.
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Creative Director
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Do you ever plan to release a module/AP/Free RPG day scenario set in Golarion's past? Maybe during Nex and Geb feud, Pre-Asmodean Cheliax, or similar? That would be sweet. Holler at your boy if you need it written.
Secondly,
Did you see Marco Polo in Netflix, and if so what did you think?
No. The past is past. Setting an adventure back then would essentially require us to rebuild the campaign setting. Not all that interested at this time.
Haven't watched Marco Polo yet.
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Creative Director
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Just sort of an episodic, old-fashioned tale of adventure? Those are pretty fun too!What would you say were the narrative themes and ideas explored in Shackled City back in Dungeon Magazine? Had I known how things were going to end up, I'd have bought the issues from my town's old bookstore before it closed down. :(There weren't really any intentional themes and ideas explored overall in that first AP. Being the first one, it wasn't really outlined and pre-planned to NEAR the extent of even Age of Worms.
It was more of an exquisite corpse style project. One writer picked up where the other left off. Near the second half, Erik and I started trying to wrap threads up but it was tricky.
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No. The past is past. Setting an adventure back then would essentially require us to rebuild the campaign setting. Not all that interested at this time.
I see what you did there then.
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Creative Director
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As usual, thanks for the answers!
1.) I've noticed a lot of APs require the players seemingly knowing the intended themes and building appropriate characters for buy-in (Skull & Shackles springs immediately to mind). Do you at your own table typically plan out what the campaign's themes and objectives will be, or play it from the hip based on what your group seems to be liking?
2.) Most APs seem to have a cut off around 13-14th level. How high do you typically go? Do you start players at the first level?
3.) From the GNS theory. Would you describe yourself as a Narrativist, Simulationist, or Gamist GM?
4.) How do you react when party members have greater loyalties to agencies outside the party, to the point where they might betray or act contrapurpose to what the other players want? Example: A LN Knight turning in a compatriot for theft for example.
Thanks again!
1) All APs require that. All CAMPAIGNS require it, unless you're doing a reactive campaign that isn't pre-planned and is instead driven entirely by PC choices. Those types of campaigns are tough to do... and pretty much impossible to publish, since we don't know your groups. Instead, we publish campaign settings for that style of play, rather than adventure paths. In my own games, I often build player's guides or tell the players what kinds of characters they should build. It helps focus the story.
2) Actaully, most APs cut off around 16th to 17th level. Which is a function of how many pages a 6 volume campaign can contain as far as encounters. In my home games, the story goes until it's done. I've run campaigns to 21st level before. My current one is at 16th level and still going.
3) Narrativist, I suppose. The APs are pretty much how I run my games, but written out in longhand for others to understand.
4) I try to encourage the players to NOT do that, since it's not a single player game; it's a team effort. I've had players do this anyway, and I've split the group up and run them side by side. It was exhausting. I'd rather not do it again.
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Creative Director
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Hey James,
Thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions!
I have three questions regarding adamantine:
Would it be effected by normal rust? My initial instinct says "no", since there's no iron in it.
What about magical? Gauntlets of Rust or a rust monster?
Lastly, would alloys made of adamantine (glaucite was the particular one my group was discussing) be able to be separated into their base components by a blacksmith?
Adamantine isn't affected by normal rust, but IS affected by magic rust.
As a general rule, a typical blacksmith wouldn't be able to separate them from their base components. If you allow that... you run the risk of breaking your economy for one thing... particularly if you use glaucite, which was invented specifically so that we could have ships in the campaign made of sci-fi metal that wasn't super expensive like adamantine. It's no fun if the adventure turns into the PCs staying in the first room and just peeling metal off the walls to go sell to a merchant. Bleh.
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Creative Director
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4)Are Gnomes the only fey-ish playable races that Golarion has?http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary4/gathlain.html#gathlain
Technically, there are gathlain. They are fey and they have character stuff, but they aren't supported, so they are just as much "pcs" as trox are :P Which is, not really, you can create easily one, but character stats seem to be meant for npcs
True... but the gathlain don't yet have a place in Golarion. They were invented as a way to show off the race building rules, without much planning for WHERE in our setting they might live. So far... they're not part of Golarion, and I'm not currently in a big hurry to figure that out yet. Maybe some day.
Notes:
English is indeed a strange language. You can pronounce 'ghoti' as 'fish'. So X can easily be pronounced 'eks' or 'zee' or 'ess'
Whenever I see a word begin with an 'X' that looks vaguely Chinese, mentally I want to pronounce the letter with a 'sh' sound. Speaking of which...
Mr. Jacobs, What's the correct pronunciation of 'Tian Xia'?
Were or are you a fan of the Stargate SG-1 series? If so, what did you think of the whole mythos surrounding Ascension, the Ascended Goa'uld Anubis, the Ori, and so on.
How many Material Planes exist? Finite or infinite size? Open or closed universe? Would a deity be able to survive a Big Crunch or a Big Rip? How about an artifact? (assuming that leaving it behind on a plane about to implode on itself or disintegrate isn't explicitly part of its suggested method of destruction.)
If there had been just enough room in the Advanced Class Guide for one more hybrid, what combo would you have liked to see added?
Not counting a deity's inner sanctum, throne room, storehouse, harem, etc, what are the top 3 to 5 most dangerous places in the multiverse for your average mixed-alignment high-level adventuring party to visit and why? (I suppose the list would be different for an evil-aligned party than for a good aligned one...so I guess generalities are best)
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Creative Director
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What sort of problems or challenges could a group visiting the positive energy plane encounter? Beyond the Jyoti and Ravids that is.
The information given in Great Beyond makes it sound like a very barren place, one of our group is hoping to do a side quest there, visiting the Garden in an attempt to create/steal a soul for a currently soulless creature.
Obviously the Jyoti will have a problem with that, but what is their architecture like for their cities? What class levels are their guardians most likely to have (Currently the group is of the opinion that Druid and Hungry Ghost Monk both work very well)
What sort of challenges, beyond the inherently toxic nature of the place, could people face on such a quest?Sorry for the very open, fluff related question, its just there's not much details on the area.
There's not much going on there. It's kind of a boring place. I've not really done much thinking on setting adventures there, as a result, so I don't have any ideas off the top of my head.
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Creative Director
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Is there a Pathfinder equivalent of Puck from the Shakespeare stories and Greek myth? I'm planning on using him for an otherworldly patron for our next campaign. Is there a supplement book that goes into detail about the First World demi powers? I need a chaotic, inscrutable power.
I seem to remember one of the Eldest might fit that role. That's more of a James Sutter question though.
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Creative Director
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1)Are there any Druids that worship Iomedae?
2)Why would a Druid worship Iomedae?
3)Are there any Druids that worship Abadar?
4)Why would a Druid worship Abadar?
1) Not really.
2) Can't think of many good reasons. Which I suppose someone out there will interpret as a PC challenge. Good.
3) A few.
4) To help ensure bastions of nature hold out in a city, or because they've got the urban druid archetype.
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Creative Director
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Notes:
English is indeed a strange language. You can pronounce 'ghoti' as 'fish'. So X can easily be pronounced 'eks' or 'zee' or 'ess'
Whenever I see a word begin with an 'X' that looks vaguely Chinese, mentally I want to pronounce the letter with a 'sh' sound. Speaking of which...
Mr. Jacobs, What's the correct pronunciation of 'Tian Xia'?
Were or are you a fan of the Stargate SG-1 series? If so, what did you think of the whole mythos surrounding Ascension, the Ascended Goa'uld Anubis, the Ori, and so on.
How many Material Planes exist? Finite or infinite size? Open or closed universe? Would a deity be able to survive a Big Crunch or a Big Rip? How about an artifact? (assuming that leaving it behind on a plane about to implode on itself or disintegrate isn't explicitly part of its suggested method of destruction.)
If there had been just enough room in the Advanced Class Guide for one more hybrid, what combo would you have liked to see added?
Not counting a deity's inner sanctum, throne room, storehouse, harem, etc, what are the top 3 to 5 most dangerous places in the multiverse for your average mixed-alignment high-level adventuring party to visit and why? (I suppose the list would be different for an evil-aligned party than for a good aligned one...so I guess generalities are best)
I say "tee-an CHA."
Nope. Was never interested in Stargate.
There's one Material Plane; it's the same as the universe. Finite, but for the purposes of practicality, infinite in possibility. Whether or not a deity or artifact could survive a Big Crunch or the like is unrevealed.
I personally think we've got WAY more than enough base classes now... but just for the sake of the argument... I wouldn't have minded seeing a bard/cleric combo. Not sure what they'd be called, though. I just like the idea of a holy bard.
The planes are all so vast that they've got all sorts of regions, and what's dangerous to one isn't to another. That said, the Negative Material Plane is probably the most inhospitable. Unless you're undead, in which case make it the Positive Material Plane.
There's one Material Plane; it's the same as the universe. Finite, but for the purposes of practicality, infinite in possibility. Whether or not a deity or artifact could survive a Big Crunch or the like is unrevealed.
Okay, so that might rule out a 'Spock with beard' type of mirror universe I guess?
Might there exist parallel Golarions afar off? You mention almost unlimited possibilities. Would this include Golarions identical in all respects, but for some small number of strange differences in historical events or the people who made those alternate histories? Or maybe these are everyone else's Pathfinder settings... :-)
In PF terms, such as Cheliax following after Zon-Kuthon instead of Asmodeus, or the chromatic dragons being red, blue, yellow, black, and white instead of the ones we know (and no gold metallics); and Irori ascending as an enlightened youth instead of on the verge of death from old age. ;)
Is there a Pathfinder equivalent of Puck from the Shakespeare stories and Greek myth? I'm planning on using him for an otherworldly patron for our next campaign. Is there a supplement book that goes into detail about the First World demi powers? I need a chaotic, inscrutable power.I seem to remember one of the Eldest might fit that role. That's more of a James Sutter question though.
Where would one find info on the Eldest and the other First World demi powers? Is there a supplemental book that I missed?
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Would "Cantor" be a good name for a bard/cleric combo?
(And if the change doesn't have to be that big, I'd just make alternate bardic performance abilities and spell lists and call it an archetype.)
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Man, these answers are really good for getting a look behind the designer's screen so to speak. :)
1. You mention your groups have gotten as high as level 21. High level play and its feasibility is a major point of contention on these forums, with some players thinking its impossible/unbalanced/etc. What are your experiences with high level play relating to the usually cited issues of (a)so-called "rocket tag,"
(b) keeping around high level outsiders (gated solars for example) as 'pets' or defacto henchmen through the use of summon spells, and
(c) demiplane assisted crafting.
2. From your disgust at the 'peeling stuff off the walls in the first room' from higher up in the thread, I can take it you also object to the 'orc boot salesman' style of adventurer who goes around doing the adventuring equivalent of tearing the copper wiring out of the wall. It makes me think of the guys who supposedly took Acerak's solid Mithril and Adamantine doors out of the Tomb of Horrors, became rich and never returned to that benighted hellhole.
How do you deal with this kind of player though? Decrease the expensive dressing in the dungeon? Prevent him being able to transport or sell the items? Something else?
3. When GMing, what character motivations gladden your heart? Make you cringe?
And for questions of a more in-world basis..
4. I'm not sure if you had a hand in this, but why do the Petitioners lose most of their memories? Also if the Remade get turned into Inevitables, where do the Axiomites comes from?
5. Does the psychopomp usher The Pale Horse have any potential relation to the daemonic horseman Charon?
6. The implication seems to be that souls in the typical Golarian cosmology arise from the positive energy plane, somehow get ensconced in a creature by unknown means, die, return as petitioners, get refined into a variety of outsiders and when these outsiders or petitioners perish or are destroyed the 'soul' seems to get reabsorbed into the positive (correct me if I'm wrong).
(a) Doesn't it seems odd that the aeons seem to have a work around in the form of the Monad?
(b) It almost seems like the outsider process is designed as a refinement to prevent souls from returning to the positive. If that's the case, why don't outsiders just find a way to direct the soul energy direct from the positive to their respective planes for refinement?
(c) Where precisely do the souls in the positive arise from, how are they transmitted?
(d) Is Golarian cosmology predicated on souls being mortal, immortal, or something vague? Daemonic capability for consumption seems to indicate the idea of a mortal soul, which would seem to automatically turn existence in the cosmology into a theological dystopia (in an infinite universe its only so long until you, your grandma and your dog are daemon chow).
(e) If souls are in fact mortal, it seems odd that Pharasma would permit/enable the ensconcement of souls as The Hunted, knowing they'll eventually turn into Daemons. When those daemons are expressly dedicated to the destruction of souls (when protection and processing of them seems to be her mandate), couldn't she just keep kicking them back into the positive until they came back not Neutral Evil?
(f) Am I over thinking this? O_o
Are their any plans to expand Player Companions for Catfolk, Lizardfolk, Serpentfolk, Ratfolk, etc? Maybe "Animalfolk of Golarion" or "Blood Of The Wild" or some such?
(sorry if this question was already asked...this is an ungodly massive thread)
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Wasn't the Dawnflower's Church half of the ruckess which nearly destroyed Rahadoum?Why does Rahadoum ban the religion of good deities whats so bad about Sarenrae's(a goddess of Redemption/the sun and Healing) or Shelyn's ( a goddess of love/art and Beauty) religion.Everyone who lives there can't feel this way or think Religion is wrong or evil or negative.My opinion? Because the rulers of Rahadoum are narrow-minded and frightened of faith of ANY type.
Thread-, er, subthread- necromancy time!
Given how exceedingly difficult it has proven to get rid of religion on Earth (with almost the only examples of success being other religions), I would like to propose another potential explanation, based upon an institution that is known to be powerful and important in Rahadoum, and that has also been known to be very hard to get rid of on Earth:
The destruction wrought by the war between faiths may have been only part of the reason for banning religion in Rahadoum, although the one that the rulers like to advertise as being the only reason. Even with the faults of Sarenrae's church demonstrated in the Qadira-Taldor conflict and Osirion, it couldn't be anywhere near as bad for people in general as the cult of Norgorber, and was very likely also more benign than the cult of Nethys (these being the other two main parties in the sectarian conflict in proto-Rahadoum). But if the Dawnflower militants were truly faithful to the ideals of Good, they would likely have tried to eliminate slavery, which is practiced and important in Rahadoum in current times, but is likely not at all new. THAT would anger and scare those who depend upon slavery even more than the murderhobo activities of the other two cults. So the slaveholders in proto-Rahadoum decided that they COULDN'T enable the easiest way out of the sectarian conflict by siding with Sarenrae against the other two deities, and instead used the destructiveness of the conflict as an excuse to ban them all. Even so, this probably wouldn't have been a fight that they could have won straight up, so they probably first played the three sects off against each other to weaken them all (which would have conveniently caused more destruction, to strengthen their excuse for banning them), and then finally finished the job themselves.
This would have had major ripple effects through the rest of the Inner Sea Region, with this major setback for the church of Sarenrae causing idealists to lose power and in many cases lose their idealism, and allowing the go-along-to-get-along faction to take over, thus explaining the present-day widespread tolerance for slavery among her worshippers, and also handing power over to the more militaristic non-idealistic factions within her church.
I think this explanation conveniently soils two stones with one bird. Thoughts?
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Creative Director
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There's one Material Plane; it's the same as the universe. Finite, but for the purposes of practicality, infinite in possibility. Whether or not a deity or artifact could survive a Big Crunch or the like is unrevealed.Okay, so that might rule out a 'Spock with beard' type of mirror universe I guess?
Might there exist parallel Golarions afar off? You mention almost unlimited possibilities. Would this include Golarions identical in all respects, but for some small number of strange differences in historical events or the people who made those alternate histories? Or maybe these are everyone else's Pathfinder settings... :-)
In PF terms, such as Cheliax following after Zon-Kuthon instead of Asmodeus, or the chromatic dragons being red, blue, yellow, black, and white instead of the ones we know (and no gold metallics); and Irori ascending as an enlightened youth instead of on the verge of death from old age. ;)
There might exist truly parallel Golarions in other dimensions or realities, I suppose, but parallel universes aren't really something we've delved into much yet.
Droffa, on the other hand, is SORT of a parallel Golarion. It's got lots of the same deities and creatures and even some of the same named cities as Golarion, along with several similar storylines. That's more coincidence born out of a distant planet going through an apocalypse at about the same time as Golarion and recovering from said apocalypse with a relatively high crosovver of core deities though.
I do kinda like the idea that everyone's home games set in Golarion constitute the parallel universes though. That's actually really cool. It does further mean we'll NEVER do stuff with those universes, of course! Which is fine with me!
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Where would one find info on the Eldest and the other First World demi powers? Is there a supplemental book that I missed?Is there a Pathfinder equivalent of Puck from the Shakespeare stories and Greek myth? I'm planning on using him for an otherworldly patron for our next campaign. Is there a supplement book that goes into detail about the First World demi powers? I need a chaotic, inscrutable power.I seem to remember one of the Eldest might fit that role. That's more of a James Sutter question though.
There's a little bit about them in the Inner Sea World Guide, and a little more in Inner Sea Gods. The article on the First World from Pathfinder #36 is the most detailed one; that's where they were first invented more or less.
Now that I'm at work... looking at the list of currently revealed Eldest... I'd say that the Lantern King probably comes closest to Puck.
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Creative Director
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Would "Cantor" be a good name for a bard/cleric combo?
(And if the change doesn't have to be that big, I'd just make alternate bardic performance abilities and spell lists and call it an archetype.)
It works, I guess, but it doesn't set me on fire.
And in fact archetypes like that DO exist. I wrote one of them for Inner Sea Magic, in fact; the Dawnflower Dervish.
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Creative Director
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Man, these answers are really good for getting a look behind the designer's screen so to speak. :)
1. You mention your groups have gotten as high as level 21. High level play and its feasibility is a major point of contention on these forums, with some players thinking its impossible/unbalanced/etc. What are your experiences with high level play relating to the usually cited issues of (a)so-called "rocket tag,"
(b) keeping around high level outsiders (gated solars for example) as 'pets' or defacto henchmen through the use of summon spells, and
(c) demiplane assisted crafting.2. From your disgust at the 'peeling stuff off the walls in the first room' from higher up in the thread, I can take it you also object to the 'orc boot salesman' style of adventurer who goes around doing the adventuring equivalent of tearing the copper wiring out of the wall. It makes me think of the guys who supposedly took Acerak's solid Mithril and Adamantine doors out of the Tomb of Horrors, became rich and never returned to that benighted hellhole.
How do you deal with this kind of player though? Decrease the expensive dressing in the dungeon? Prevent him being able to transport or sell the items? Something else?
3. When GMing, what character motivations gladden your heart? Make you cringe?
And for questions of a more in-world basis..
4. I'm not sure if you had a hand in this, but why do the Petitioners lose most of their memories? Also if the Remade get turned into Inevitables, where do the Axiomites comes from?
5. Does the psychopomp usher The Pale Horse have any potential relation to the daemonic horseman Charon?
6. The implication seems to be that souls in the typical Golarian cosmology arise from the positive energy plane, somehow get ensconced in a creature by unknown means, die, return as petitioners, get refined into a variety of outsiders and when these outsiders or petitioners perish or are destroyed the 'soul' seems to get reabsorbed into the positive (correct me if I'm wrong).
(a) Doesn't it seems odd that the aeons seem to have a work around in the form of the Monad?
(b) It almost seems like the outsider process is designed as a refinement to prevent souls from returning to the positive. If that's the case, why don't outsiders just find a way to direct the soul energy direct from the positive to their respective planes for refinement?
(c) Where precisely do the souls in the positive arise from, how are they transmitted?
(d) Is Golarian cosmology predicated on souls being mortal, immortal, or something vague? Daemonic capability for consumption seems to indicate the idea of a mortal soul, which would seem to automatically turn existence in the cosmology into a theological dystopia (in an infinite universe its only so long until you, your grandma and your dog are daemon chow).
(e) If souls are in fact mortal, it seems odd that Pharasma would permit/enable the ensconcement of souls as The Hunted, knowing they'll eventually turn into Daemons. When those daemons are expressly dedicated to the destruction of souls (when protection and processing of them seems to be her mandate), couldn't she just keep kicking them back into the positive until they came back not Neutral Evil?
(f) Am I over thinking this? O_o
wow... First off, I love your enthusiasm. Second, try not to post such giant questions... makes it a bit more difficult responding if I have to navigate a wall of text that threatens to not fit on a single screen.
1) I think one of the keys to successful high-level play is playing with a group and getting there organically. That gives the players years to learn their characters, and to learn their fellow characters, and for you the GM to get used to their powers and capabilities in easy to handle incremental steps, so that by the time you're high level, folks are familiar enough with their characters that they don't take as long stumbling around for options. Furthermore, the GM needs to be comfortable with the rules—comfortable enough to make flash rulings as needed to keep gameplay going. The players need to respect the GM enough not to argue or get in rules lawyer discussions. And perhaps most importantly, the GM needs to abandon the artificial idea that a game session MUST accomplish a preconceived amount of story progress. It's okay if a whole session is one combat, or a shopping trip, or a single complex roleplaying encounter. Only if you're up against a real-world deadline (such as a player moving away or something like that) should you perhaps consider speeding play along, and in that case, it might be better to organically work the lost player (and thus lost character) into the story somehow. In any event, I've never had to deal with rocket tag that much, and the "demiplane crafting" has never been an issue since I've never had characters into that scene (although there was one campaign where I gave the PCs a demiplane; that was planned for though). I did have an issue with one player who made a character capable of swift action conjuring creatures capable of conjuring creatures as a swift action, and that basically turned his turns in each session into 30 minute long ordeals. He was basically monopolizing the gameplay clock; no one (GM included) got to play the game as much as him, in effect. So I took the player aside, basically said, "hey, good job, you won at the creature summoning game... I need you to rebuild your character to do something else so that the game continues being fun for the rest of us," and he was mature enough to understand and did just that and kept having fun with a slightly refocused character).
2) I've never really had the misfortune of having a player whose characters are more interested in the boring parts of the adventure than the exciting ones, so I've never had to deal with it. I guess I'm lucky.
3) Motivations that tie the character into the campaign's story gladden my heart. The ones that make me cringe are the ones who don't get into story at all.
4) Petitioners lose their memories because that helps keep death a scary unknown and makes life more important, but also because if you kept your memories, then dying is a power upgrade over time. Further, keeping your memories would mean keeping your class levels, and that means that there'd be too many powerful petitioners. Further, the idea that those who DO keep their memories are special only works if the vast majority do not keep their memories. Axiomites, if I recall correctly, are built by inevitables.
5) Not really. But maybe. We've done next to nothing with psychopomp ushers so far.
6a) Aeons are odd anyway. That's their point.
6b) Who says some outsiders DON'T try that? And who says that's not the point of existence, to exhaust reality's souls? We tried to build some mystery and some uncertainty and some stuff that might even seem illogical, in order to maintain these types of questions without answers. It's more fun if we ever DO answer them to do so in the format of a big adventure or something anyway, so I'm not gonna say more about the topic here.
6c) Unknown.
6d) Unrevealed.
6e) Pharasma enforces the rules. She didn't make them.
6f) No... this particular topic SHOULD be thought over and over-thought. But realize... there might not ever be answers.
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Creative Director
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Wasn't the Dawnflower's Church half of the ruckess which nearly destroyed Rahadoum?Why does Rahadoum ban the religion of good deities whats so bad about Sarenrae's(a goddess of Redemption/the sun and Healing) or Shelyn's ( a goddess of love/art and Beauty) religion.Everyone who lives there can't feel this way or think Religion is wrong or evil or negative.My opinion? Because the rulers of Rahadoum are narrow-minded and frightened of faith of ANY type.Thread-, er, subthread- necromancy time!
Given how exceedingly difficult it has proven to get rid of religion on Earth (with almost the only examples of success being other religions), I would like to propose another potential explanation, based upon an institution that is known to be powerful and important in Rahadoum, and that has also been known to be very hard to get rid of on Earth:
The destruction wrought by the war between faiths may have been only part of the reason for banning religion in Rahadoum, although the one that the rulers like to advertise as being the only reason. Even with the faults of Sarenrae's church demonstrated in the Qadira-Taldor conflict and Osirion, it couldn't be anywhere near as bad for people in general as the cult of Norgorber, and was very likely also more benign than the cult of Nethys (these being the other two main parties in the sectarian conflict in proto-Rahadoum). But if the Dawnflower militants were truly faithful to the ideals of Good, they would likely have tried to eliminate slavery, which is practiced and important in Rahadoum in current times, but is likely not at all new. THAT would anger and scare those who depend upon slavery even more than the murderhobo activities of the other two cults. So the slaveholders in proto-Rahadoum decided that they COULDN'T enable the easiest way out of the sectarian conflict by siding with Sarenrae against the other two deities, and instead used the destructiveness of the conflict as an excuse to ban them all. Even so, this probably wouldn't have been a fight that they could have won straight up, so they probably first played the three sects off against each other to weaken them all (which would have conveniently caused more destruction, to strengthen their excuse for banning them), and then finally finished the job themselves.
This would have had major ripple effects through the rest of the Inner Sea Region, with this major setback for the church of Sarenrae causing idealists to lose power and in many cases lose their idealism, and allowing the go-along-to-get-along faction to take over, thus explaining the present-day widespread tolerance for slavery among her worshippers, and also handing power over to the more militaristic non-idealistic factions within her church.
I think this explanation conveniently soils two stones with one bird. Thoughts?
I still think it's because Rahadoum is narrow-minded and frightened. They still seem to me to be more suited toward an antagonistic region built for PCs to adventure in but not live in, along the lines of the Worldwound or Razmiran or Irrisen or Geb.
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Droffa, on the other hand, is SORT of a parallel Golarion. It's got lots of the same deities and creatures and even some of the same named cities as Golarion, along with several similar storylines. That's more coincidence born out of a distant planet going through an apocalypse at about the same time as Golarion and recovering from said apocalypse with a relatively high crosovver of core deities though.
Are there any plans to do further Droffa/Golarion crossover work? It's really interesting that the Divinity originated from Androffa, and I've always been a big fan of the height of civilization utopia crumbling and the world collapsing back into a medieval sort of world setting.
Obviously on Androffa there're dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and the other myraid classic races (unless I'm mistaken!). For Golarion, dwarves came from the earth, elves from castrovel, gnomes from the first world, and halflings have just always been there. What are Androffa's justifications for it's classic fantasy races?
My mind whirls at the idea that more than being single planet hoppers, maybe elves were once interstellar travellers. Maybe dwarves are a natural occurance from a world being forged? (Hence their belief of Torag being their 'father'). And Androffa perhaps has it's own connection to the First World?
Anyway, some further information about your homebrew is always awesome!
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I do kinda like the idea that everyone's home games set in Golarion constitute the parallel universes though. That's actually really cool. It does further mean we'll NEVER do stuff with those universes, of course! Which is fine with me!
This reminds me of this far-out theory behind Pokemon's recent game remakes, Pokemon Alpha Ruby and Omega Sapphire. I know you've said that you're not a Pokemon buff, but as a Sci-Fi buff, I think you might appreciate it as a thought exercise.
Will you give the video a shot?
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Creative Director
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Are there any plans to do further Droffa/Golarion crossover work? It's really interesting that the Divinity originated from Androffa, and I've always been a big fan of the height of civilization utopia crumbling and the world collapsing back into a medieval sort of world setting.
Obviously on Androffa there're dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and the other myraid classic races (unless I'm mistaken!). For Golarion, dwarves came from the earth, elves from castrovel, gnomes from the first world, and halflings have just always been there. What are Androffa's justifications for it's classic fantasy races?
My mind whirls at the idea that more than being single planet hoppers, maybe elves were once interstellar travellers. Maybe dwarves are a natural occurance from a world being forged? (Hence their belief of Torag being their 'father'). And Androffa perhaps has it's own connection to the First World?
Anyway, some further information about your homebrew is always awesome!
No further plans. I included Droffa primarily as an easter egg for myself, to explain in my headcanon why there's so many similarities between Golarion and Droffa. I doubtless WILL continue to port stuff from Droffa over to Golarion (in the same way I ported over the Red Mantis, Magnimar, Sandpoint, Queen Illeosa, about half the core deities, Kyonin, Treerazer, Karzoug, and lots more), but I'm not really interested in detailing Droffa up as a location you can go to. As I mention in the foreword to "The Divinity Drive," if someone wants to do more with it... make Droffa YOUR world. Just as the planet's name changed from Androffa to Droffa, it could just as easilly have changed name to you your homebrew setting.
For Droffa, the elves came from another planet, just as in Golarion. Whether these elves all came from the same planet (and whether or not that original home world is Castrovel... my suspicion is that it's not) is unrevealed. For the bulk of the other races, they were all created by the gods after the apocalypse to help repopulate the world after Androffa ended. More details under the spoiler.
Turthonir (representing law—in my setting the deity that would become Pharasma was lawful neutral and more like Greyhawk's Wee Jas): Dwarves/gnomes (which were originally one race that split into two, due to the fact that in earlier editions of the game these two races WERE thematically very close in appearance and more).
Sarenrae (representing good): Halflings
Aahl (the deity who would inspire Gozreh, representing neutrality): The Irux (which is a category that combined lizardfolk and fey into a nature-themed race)
Obox-ob (representing chaos): The savage humanoids (goblinoids/kobolds/orcs/gnolls/giants)
Shamira (representing evil): Kraken
There were also alien races: the elves, beholders, cloakers, githyanki/githzerai, and mind flayers).
And also hybrid races: Aasimar, antimok (yeti/human hybrids), derro, firbolg, half-elf, half-orc, mongrelmen, and tieflings
And races that came about via inbreeding: Yetis and Ogres
And races that were manipulated by demons: Aspis, bullywugs, centaurs, troglodytes, cyclopes, dopplegangers, ettercaps, ettins, fomorian giants, grung, kenku, lamia, manscorpions, merfolk, minotarus, muckdwellers, pugwampis, taslois, trolls, and yuan-ti)
And races manipulated by drow: Myconids and vegepygmies and driders
And races created by the kraken: Deep ones, ixitxachitl, gutaki, kuo-toa, sahuagin
And races that forsook their own and self-transformed: drow, derro, hags
And races that regressed to a more primitive nature: aboleths (regressed from the original krakens and limited mostly to the underworld)
And selective breeding: couatl (from lizardfolk), flinds (from gnolls), hobgoblins (from goblins), norkers (from orcs), bugbears (from hobgoblins)
And races that came to be after tampering with magic or psioncis, like dryands (from treants), fog giants (from cloud giants), nagas (from lizardfolk), nymphs (from dryads), quicklings (from brownies), rilshani (snow elves, from elves), satyrs (from gnomes), shilad (from gutaki), spriggans (from gnomes), storm giants (from cloud giants), treants (from trees), and wind giants (from storm giants)
Droffa has no connection to the First World; that's something that was invented specifically for Golarion. If I ever do more with my home campaign, I might expand it to include it's own version of the First World, but I've no plans to do much more with Droffa anytime soon.
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I do kinda like the idea that everyone's home games set in Golarion constitute the parallel universes though. That's actually really cool. It does further mean we'll NEVER do stuff with those universes, of course! Which is fine with me!This reminds me of this far-out theory behind Pokemon's recent game remakes, Pokemon Alpha Ruby and Omega Sapphire. I know you've said that you're not a Pokemon buff, but as a Sci-Fi buff, I think you might appreciate it as a thought exercise.
Will you give the video a shot?
I might check it out later when I'm not at work, but more likely I'll forget to do so.