As a player, what type(s) of PC backstories to you prefer submitting to your GM (e.g. merely a sentence or two, a summary paragraph, a short-yet-moderately-detailed backstory, a long write-up with the more details the better, etc.)?
What is the relationship (if any) to the name of the Castrovin Sea and the planet Castrovel?
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Will 2E be introducing Subdomains for divine casters?
No plans to do so. With domains working pretty differently in 2nd edition, the solution for adding more domain options to deities we've got going forward, which will be introduced in Gods and Magic, is different and, I think, better.
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As a GM, what type(s) of PC backstories to you prefer receiving from your players (e.g. merely a sentence or two, a summary paragraph, a short-yet-moderately-detailed backstory, a long write-up with the more details the better, etc.)?
Ones that provide at least one interesting hook for me to expand upon in the campaign to give that player character a personal quest, but that aren't so enormous that it'll take days to read through. I've found that a 100 word summary paragraph is my preference.
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As a player, what type(s) of PC backstories to you prefer submitting to your GM (e.g. merely a sentence or two, a summary paragraph, a short-yet-moderately-detailed backstory, a long write-up with the more details the better, etc.)?
I prefer to submit a summary paragraph, but generally have a lot more information about the character in my head for their motivations. These days, I prefer to NOT write those deails down before hand, and have a lot more fun organically growing a character's personality and goals and history as I interact with the other players and the story. For example, in the Starfinder game I'm playing in, I didn't know that my character, Zeru Zinzi, was a big fan of Strawberry Machine Cake until the adventure began and she learned they were releasing a limited edition single on physical media, and decided at that point that this was a BIG DEAL and raced out to buy a copy. That lead to Zeru also buying a SMC t-shirt, which triggered in my head that Zeru has a huge collection of weird t-shirts and thus wears them all the time, with fun little logos and sayings on them (not all of which are appropriate to post here, but as an example—she has one t-shirt that's got a picture of an undead donkey with the phrase ZOMBIE DONKY below it, and it's got its mouth open and it's saying "BRAAAAAAYYYYYYYYNS!" Ha.)
And then soon after that, I got critically hit for a LOT of damage and it ruined my brand new Strawberry Machine Cake shirt and that was a big deal, so before we left for the next mission I had to go out and buy a lot of t-shirts for spares, and that ended up being a good choice since we spent weeks in the jungle and if I hadn't brought that many shirts the clothing options would have gotten SUPER RANK instead of just rank by the end.
None of that character stuff was in my head when I first created the character, but now my character sheet's got all sorts of t-shirt logos and designs scribbled on it, and that's pretty cool.
Mr. James Jacobs,
Would I be correct in thinking that you are indifferent to Dragonlance, OK with Lord of the Rings, but feel the genre has grown past it, and dislike the Wheel of Time?
If I am incorrect in this assessment, what are your feelings towards these book series?
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What is the relationship (if any) to the name of the Castrovin Sea and the planet Castrovel?
No relationship, other than I suspect that both names were invented by the same person (I believe Erik was the one).
One of the interesting elements of this job is that you end up naming HUNDREDS of NPCs and locations, and when you do so, you start realizing you have specific styles for how you mix up the letters to make nonsense words. It's like an artist's signature style or technique.
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Dear James Jacobs,
What was the reasoning for having Absalom decide to ban slavery again in the city? I must have missed that...
What is the relationship (if any) to the name of the Castrovin Sea and the planet Castrovel?No relationship, other than I suspect that both names were invented by the same person (I believe Erik was the one).
One of the interesting elements of this job is that you end up naming HUNDREDS of NPCs and locations, and when you do so, you start realizing you have specific styles for how you mix up the letters to make nonsense words. It's like an artist's signature style or technique.
Have you ever turned a coincidence like this into something bigger?
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Dear James Jacobs,
What was the reasoning for having Absalom decide to ban slavery again in the city? I must have missed that...
Becasue slavery is evil and we'd rather tell stories about it being a criminal enterprise than a legitimate business in the city we're focusing on and which is the home-town of the Pathfinder Society campaign and we wanted Absalom to feel more welcoming and less evil and more diverse and less awful.
So, if a Skinsaw cultist wanted to screw with the Red Mantis by committing their murders with sawtooth sabers ("What? I saw skin! It's a sawtooth saber! It's perfect!"), how would one best publicize the deeds to make sure the Mantis heard about it?
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Have you ever turned a coincidence like this into something bigger?What is the relationship (if any) to the name of the Castrovin Sea and the planet Castrovel?No relationship, other than I suspect that both names were invented by the same person (I believe Erik was the one).
One of the interesting elements of this job is that you end up naming HUNDREDS of NPCs and locations, and when you do so, you start realizing you have specific styles for how you mix up the letters to make nonsense words. It's like an artist's signature style or technique.
Yeah. Runelord Aethusa comes to mind. That's a name I accidently used twice for different people, and building that into a new storyline with a THIRD runelord Aethusa who claims to be a reincarnation ends up being something bigger.
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Mr. James Jacobs,
Would I be correct in thinking that you are indifferent to Dragonlance, OK with Lord of the Rings, but feel the genre has grown past it, and dislike the Wheel of Time?
If I am incorrect in this assessment, what are your feelings towards these book series?
I'm a HUGE fan of Dragonlance. I bought each adventure and novel as they came out and devoured them and played the hell out of the setting. I was often frustrated with how some things in Dragonlance were named different (halfings became kender, Tiamat became Takhisis), but the setting was an immense influence on my homebrew gaming.
I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings novels, and feel like Peter Jackson's version of Lord of the Rings is pretty much an across the board improvement of the original, but that his version of the Hobbit is awful. I don't think the genre has grown past it, but I do think that there's more to the fantasy genre than the Lord of the Rings. As proven by Game of Thrones, The Dark Tower, Harry Potter, etc.
Not a fan of Wheel of Time.
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So, if a Skinsaw cultist wanted to screw with the Red Mantis by committing their murders with sawtooth sabers ("What? I saw skin! It's a sawtooth saber! It's perfect!"), how would one best publicize the deeds to make sure the Mantis heard about it?
By dressing up in their armor, using their weapons, and murdering a king.
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Who would I reach out to if I wanted to ask about Southern Garund material? I know different writers tend to hole sway over different parts of the setting, and I wanted some input (and yes, I know things aren’t canon until they hit a book) on such a cool spot.
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Who would I reach out to if I wanted to ask about Southern Garund material? I know different writers tend to hole sway over different parts of the setting, and I wanted some input (and yes, I know things aren’t canon until they hit a book) on such a cool spot.
No one in particular at this time, which is to say most of us would be able to talk about it. Southern Garund is an area that pretty much all of the developers and myself are eager to explore more of.
Personally, I'm eager to explore more of the lizardfolk nation of Droon, the anadi people, Holomog, and in particular the nation of Dehrukani, which is a nation of azata worshipers who build crystal towers.
Also, is there anywhere technology-y like Numeria on other continents?
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Who would I reach out to if I wanted to ask about Southern Garund material? I know different writers tend to hole sway over different parts of the setting, and I wanted some input (and yes, I know things aren’t canon until they hit a book) on such a cool spot.No one in particular at this time, which is to say most of us would be able to talk about it. Southern Garund is an area that pretty much all of the developers and myself are eager to explore more of.
Personally, I'm eager to explore more of the lizardfolk nation of Droon, the anadi people, Holomog, and in particular the nation of Dehrukani, which is a nation of azata worshipers who build crystal towers.
This is where I say “I hope we can go there* as soon as possible,” right? :p
How different are the lizardfolk of Droon from the Iruxi we’re about to get in the Character Guide, who are (I think) from the Sodden Lands?
What’s the cool pitch for the anadi’s culture outside of how cool they are as an Ancestry, being adorable spiderfolk illusionists?
Any thoughts on Murasseth, the catfolk/amurrun nation?
EDIT: *And Arcadia, too!
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Who would I reach out to if I wanted to ask about Southern Garund material? I know different writers tend to hole sway over different parts of the setting, and I wanted some input (and yes, I know things aren’t canon until they hit a book) on such a cool spot.No one in particular at this time, which is to say most of us would be able to talk about it. Southern Garund is an area that pretty much all of the developers and myself are eager to explore more of.
Personally, I'm eager to explore more of the lizardfolk nation of Droon, the anadi people, Holomog, and in particular the nation of Dehrukani, which is a nation of azata worshipers who build crystal towers.
This is where I say “I hope we can go there* as soon as possible,” right? :p
How different are the lizardfolk of Droon from the Iruxi we’re about to get in the Character Guide, who are (I think) from the Sodden Lands?
What’s the cool pitch for the anadi’s culture outside of how cool they are as an Ancestry, being adorable spiderfolk illusionists?
Any thoughts on Murasseth, the catfolk/amurrun nation?
EDIT: *And Arcadia, too!
We haven't really done much more than drop a few names here yet, so there's not really much more to "preview" about Southern Garund that wouldn't just be me making stuff up on the spot, but there's a bit of info about anadi in Age of Ashes...
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Also, is there anywhere technology-y like Numeria on other continents?Not on Golarion. Numeria is a pretty special case.
Actually, with Iron Gods presumed completed, and therefor the Technic League is broken, what keeps technology from flowing out of Numeria into the neighboring regions?
Were you excited to see the Hanakan in Alien Archive 3?
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Actually, with Iron Gods presumed completed, and therefor the Technic League is broken, what keeps technology from flowing out of Numeria into the neighboring regions?Also, is there anywhere technology-y like Numeria on other continents?Not on Golarion. Numeria is a pretty special case.
Actualy, that wouldn't mean that an entire new nation of lasers and robots would spontaneously spring up beyond the Inner Sea Region. There's more tech leaking into the neighboring areas like the River Kingdoms and Ustalav, but that's a far cry from "other continents".
Thanks anyways for the replies! I’m so lookin forward to going beyond the Inner Sea in 2e
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Were you excited to see the Hanakan in Alien Archive 3?
I wrote the yithian, the hound of Tindalos, and the tripod for Alien Archive 3. Beyond that, I've not had much of a chance to look through the book more than a first glance through...
(slides across room to grab my office copy; checks out the Hanakan)
Ah; right. The raptor people. I'm honestly kind of meh on the proliferation of animal races in Starfinder. I generally prefer playing humanoid characters in RPGs. I'd rather have a velociraptor pet in a game rather than BE a velociraptor in a game.
As a player, what type(s) of PC backstories to you prefer submitting to your GM (e.g. merely a sentence or two, a summary paragraph, a short-yet-moderately-detailed backstory, a long write-up with the more details the better, etc.)?I prefer to submit a summary paragraph, but generally have a lot more information about the character in my head for their motivations. These days, I prefer to NOT write those deails down before hand, and have a lot more fun organically growing a character's personality and goals and history as I interact with the other players and the story. For example, in the Starfinder game I'm playing in, I didn't know that my character, Zeru Zinzi, was a big fan of Strawberry Machine Cake until the adventure began and she learned they were releasing a limited edition single on physical media, and decided at that point that this was a BIG DEAL and raced out to buy a copy. That lead to Zeru also buying a SMC t-shirt, which triggered in my head that Zeru has a huge collection of weird t-shirts and thus wears them all the time, with fun little logos and sayings on them (not all of which are appropriate to post here, but as an example—she has one t-shirt that's got a picture of an undead donkey with the phrase ZOMBIE DONKY below it, and it's got its mouth open and it's saying "BRAAAAAAYYYYYYYYNS!" Ha.)
And then soon after that, I got critically hit for a LOT of damage and it ruined my brand new Strawberry Machine Cake shirt and that was a big deal, so before we left for the next mission I had to go out and buy a lot of t-shirts for spares, and that ended up being a good choice since we spent weeks in the jungle and if I hadn't brought that many shirts the clothing options would have gotten SUPER RANK instead of just rank by the end.
None of that character stuff was in my head when I first created the character, but now my character sheet's got all sorts of t-shirt logos and designs scribbled on it, and that's pretty cool.
Very cool! I tend to write longer, more detailed backstories myself, although I do it knowing the GM can change any/all of it, and I happen to have had patient GMs over time.
If you're ever interested in seeing examples, including five Golarion-based characters of mine, you can find them over on the Sample Character Backgrounds thread on the Homebrews and House Rules Paizo message board.
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Question: What do you think of the Mystara campaign setting?
Mr. James Jacobs,
Would I be correct in thinking that you are indifferent to Dragonlance, OK with Lord of the Rings, but feel the genre has grown past it, and dislike the Wheel of Time?
If I am incorrect in this assessment, what are your feelings towards these book series?
I'm a HUGE fan of Dragonlance. I bought each adventure and novel as they came out and devoured them and played the hell out of the setting. I was often frustrated with how some things in Dragonlance were named different (halfings became kender, Tiamat became Takhisis), but the setting was an immense influence on my homebrew gaming.
I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings novels, and feel like Peter Jackson's version of Lord of the Rings is pretty much an across the board improvement of the original, but that his version of the Hobbit is awful. I don't think the genre has grown past it, but I do think that there's more to the fantasy genre than the Lord of the Rings. As proven by Game of Thrones, The Dark Tower, Harry Potter, etc.
Not a fan of Wheel of Time.
Why do you dislike it? If you don't mind my asking.
What religions would be popular in Sorshen's (besides Nocticula) and Belimarius' new kingdoms?
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Creative Director
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Why do you dislike it? If you don't mind my asking.Mr. James Jacobs,
Would I be correct in thinking that you are indifferent to Dragonlance, OK with Lord of the Rings, but feel the genre has grown past it, and dislike the Wheel of Time?
If I am incorrect in this assessment, what are your feelings towards these book series?
I'm a HUGE fan of Dragonlance. I bought each adventure and novel as they came out and devoured them and played the hell out of the setting. I was often frustrated with how some things in Dragonlance were named different (halfings became kender, Tiamat became Takhisis), but the setting was an immense influence on my homebrew gaming.
I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings novels, and feel like Peter Jackson's version of Lord of the Rings is pretty much an across the board improvement of the original, but that his version of the Hobbit is awful. I don't think the genre has grown past it, but I do think that there's more to the fantasy genre than the Lord of the Rings. As proven by Game of Thrones, The Dark Tower, Harry Potter, etc.
Not a fan of Wheel of Time.
Just found it to be boring, and Jordan's writing style bothered me.
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What religions would be popular in Sorshen's (besides Nocticula) and Belimarius' new kingdoms?
That's the main pone in Sorshen's half. No real single one is yet "popluar" in Belimarius's half; there's certainly worshipers of Lissala and Desna in there, as well as a few others; you can see a bit of temple stuff going on in part 5 of Return of the Runelords, for example.
Dear James Jacobs,
Does having everyone question your every move make you more angry or less angry?
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Continuing with updating the Lost Omens setting is a “where are they now” Lost Omens NPC Codex a product that might interest you?
Going over the fates/current status of characters from APs and such like Shensen, Ayavah, Ameiko, Nualia, and Carrius for examples?
Yes, it would interest me. Would it interest anyone else is the question.
Hey James - in the Sandpoint setting book what do the red and yellow dots mean on the map (pg 71) that shows the underground tunnels below Sandpoint? I can't seem to find out what they are.
I'm getting ready to start GMing a Sandpoint game with my friends. Three half orcs and a goblin is what the PCs chose. Should be interesting.
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Hey James - in the Sandpoint setting book what do the red and yellow dots mean on the map (pg 71) that shows the underground tunnels below Sandpoint? I can't seem to find out what they are.
I'm getting ready to start GMing a Sandpoint game with my friends. Three half orcs and a goblin is what the PCs chose. Should be interesting.
They're exit points from the tunnels. One of them indicates an obvious entrance/exit, and the other color indicates a secret entrance/exit. It should be obvious which is which once you read the text and compare to the nearby zoomed-in maps. I THINK the red ones were secret ones, but I can't remember for sure without looking at the map, which isn't here for me to easily reference without going through the trouble to download to my personal computer from my online paizo account, which I'm too lazy to do at this moment.
How do you envision Edicts and Anathema being prioritized?
Example 1, Sarenite: able to strike down a certain non-specific evil, but in so doing would have to leave a sick/wounded to die. Failing to do the former is an Anathema, but protecting the latter is an Edict
Example 2, Iomedaen: Challenged by an equal, but in accepting, would be unable to protect an ally in need. Either case, an Anathema.
Question: What do you think of the Mystara campaign setting?I love parts of it, but not so much other parts. I enjoy things like the Isle of Dread and the Desert Nomads and so on, but not a fan of the goofy stuff that started creeping into the setting.
What do you consider to be the "goofy stuff" of the Mystara campaign setting?
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How do you envision Edicts and Anathema being prioritized?
Example 1, Sarenite: able to strike down a certain non-specific evil, but in so doing would have to leave a sick/wounded to die. Failing to do the former is an Anathema, but protecting the latter is an Edict
Example 2, Iomedaen: Challenged by an equal, but in accepting, would be unable to protect an ally in need. Either case, an Anathema.
The GM needs to interpret intent as well as action. Edicts and anathema are guidelines, and the more you treat them like hard and fast rules, the more players will try to game the system.
That said, players who game the system and push limits should pretty much be treated as if they broke the edicts and anathemas, since they're not meant to be "Get as close as you can to these without going over a line" but more like "Follow these rules and try to avoid getting close to the line."
GMs should avoid putting players of characters who have to follow edicts and anathemas into traps where there's no way to "win." Making the right option a tougher one to follow is fine, but don't make it impossible so you force a player to make the wrong choice.