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How will continuity from previous APs feature into the advancement of 2e? For example, Wrath of the Righteous left behind around 4 level 20+/Mythic 10 PCs. Iron Gods left behind a high level party laden down with tech and probably at least one character (*cough*wizard and/or technomancer*cough*) smart enough to replicate it and disseminate it (polytool even hints as much).
The hardest thing however is probably the Kingmaker kingdom. Depending on your players, this could either be a high-tech industrial kingdom or a Mad-Max style fiefdom of barbarian warlords. How do you fit that place into 2e without invalidating player decision by making it a Generic Medieval Kingdom or throwing the world off balance?
We've already more or less covered that by assuming the PCs "won" those Adventure Paths and have moved the timeline forward 10 years to account for it, but also stay pretty vague about things more or less at this point, so each GM can adjust their 1st edition campaign outcomes easier.
For Kingmaker, for example, we've only said something along the lines of, "This area, once known as the Stolen Lands, is now the newest River Kingdom, founded by heroes who defeated a supernatural invasion from the First World." And then pretty much just leave it at that.
We've got enough areas that haven't yet been touched by Adventure Paths to keep doing new Adventure Paths without ever having to significantly worry about overlap, in any event, just as we did in 1st edition.
For most of these 1st edition Adventure Path conclusions, then, they just sit in the background in the category of "recent events". A GM who's run several Adventure Paths will be better suited to the task of determining how those events played out at their table, and will, in theory, be able to adjust as they need. That's not work we can really do for the GM.
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On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you for all of the pathfinder products you know about that haven't been publicly announced?
(no need to spoil anything obviously, just how excited are you?)
I won't answer that for ALL of the products, but there's one in particular is a 10 that I've been hoping to get out there for nearly a decade though, and I'm hopeful that it'll finally get done.
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How will continuity from previous APs feature into the advancement of 2e? For example, Wrath of the Righteous left behind around 4 level 20+/Mythic 10 PCs. Iron Gods left behind a high level party laden down with tech and probably at least one character (*cough*wizard and/or technomancer*cough*) smart enough to replicate it and disseminate it (polytool even hints as much).
The hardest thing however is probably the Kingmaker kingdom. Depending on your players, this could either be a high-tech industrial kingdom or a Mad-Max style fiefdom of barbarian warlords. How do you fit that place into 2e without invalidating player decision by making it a Generic Medieval Kingdom or throwing the world off balance?
We've already more or less covered that by assuming the PCs "won" those Adventure Paths and have moved the timeline forward 10 years to account for it, but also stay pretty vague about things more or less at this point, so each GM can adjust their 1st edition campaign outcomes easier.
For Kingmaker, for example, we've only said something along the lines of, "This area, once known as the Stolen Lands, is now the newest River Kingdom, founded by heroes who defeated a supernatural invasion from the First World." And then pretty much just leave it at that.
We've got enough areas that haven't yet been touched by Adventure Paths to keep doing new Adventure Paths without ever having to significantly worry about overlap, in any event, just as we did in 1st edition.
For most of these 1st edition Adventure Path conclusions, then, they just sit in the background in the category of "recent events". A GM who's run several Adventure Paths will be better suited to the task of determining how those events played out at their table, and will, in theory, be able to adjust as they need. That's not work we can really do for the GM.
Look Mr. Jacobs, I understand that when all is said and done, Golarion kind of NEEDS to be the way it is in order to avoid having to write a new setting, but what you are saying is that apparently the PCs of Iron Gods/WotR and the entire kingdom of Kingmaker sat down and did absolutely nothing for 10+ years straight.
When the lightbulb was invented, did it have no noticeable effect on the world? Did the British government decide not to use lightbulbs since "they had other things to do?" At the point we are talking about, the PCs concerned are absolutely at the level where they have enough powerful connections to push what they want through. So, once again, how do these individuals and their inevitable actions feature into the world at large?
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Look Mr. Jacobs, I understand that when all is said and done, Golarion kind of NEEDS to be the way it is in order to avoid having to write a new setting, but what you are saying is that apparently the PCs of Iron Gods/WotR and the entire kingdom of Kingmaker sat down and did absolutely nothing for 10+ years straight.
When the lightbulb was invented, did it have no noticeable effect on the world? Did the British government decide not to use lightbulbs since "they had other things to do?" At the point we are talking about, the PCs concerned are absolutely at the level where they have enough powerful connections to push what they want through. So, once again, how do these individuals and their inevitable actions feature into the world at large?
Would you rather we publish in our books "Here's what your PCs did after you finished, and if you did something else, you're not canon?" I wouldn't.
We say very little about what the PCs who played through an AP did because we want each table to feel like their playthrough was canon for them rather than feel like we're trying to shoehorn them into a specific result.
One of the trickiest parts about building an RPG is that you don't get to tell the story of the main character unless you're the one playing that one game.
I'm not gonna say "this is what each hero did after they finished an Adventure Path" any more than I'm going to say "This is what all players should do during an adventure in order to be 'right'."
It will and should vary according to each table. The best way for you to find out how a group of PCs effect the world is for you to play through an AP with your friends and then go from there.
Barring that, ask around on the boards to see how other groups made it through each AP and pick your favorite.
I'm not gonna do it for you. My job is to set up a world and NPCs and all of that for your characters to interact with, not to tell you how your characters do things.
Any plans for the holidays?
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James, I'm running Age of Ashes and have players interested in some uncommon spells that I don't feel would be very disruptive, so I'm looking for what kind opportunities might present themselves in-game that would let me grant these spells.
How do you view uncommon and rare spells and their acquisition? I know some classes have feats that grant access to certain uncommon spells, and wizards might just need to track a wizard with an uncommon spell to share, as can happen in Fires of the Haunted City.
But how do you see a divine caster getting access to raise dead, as an example? Is this a reward from their deity, or are they somehow learning the spell from another cleric, or what? I understand I can choose to introduce these however I want, but I'm very curious how you envision someone finding / learning these on Golarion.
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James, I'm running Age of Ashes and have players interested in some uncommon spells that I don't feel would be very disruptive, so I'm looking for what kind opportunities might present themselves in-game that would let me grant these spells.
How do you view uncommon and rare spells and their acquisition? I know some classes have feats that grant access to certain uncommon spells, and wizards might just need to track a wizard with an uncommon spell to share, as can happen in Fires of the Haunted City.
But how do you see a divine caster getting access to raise dead, as an example? Is this a reward from their deity, or are they somehow learning the spell from another cleric, or what? I understand I can choose to introduce these however I want, but I'm very curious how you envision someone finding / learning these on Golarion.
Have the divine caster experience a vision during a prayer, perhaps. Or witness an omen. Or hear the whispers of their deity in their mind. Or receive a visitation from a powerful outsider or spirit, or even get possessed for a moment. Or discover the spell in an old rare tome. Or learn it from a reclusive priest. Or learn it from studying ancient carvings on an old temple. Etc. Can be different all the time.
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Is magic antithetical to the advancement of a society? For example, Earth ingame has very low magic and is, well, pretty much at the level of advancement Golarion SHOULD be in (assuming 1920s-30s earth) but isn't for some reason (ok maybe not the best example, but you see the point). Meanwhile Androffa had NO magic and became a utopian space-faring (slightly imperialistic) hyper-advanced civilization before the gods nuked them back to the Iron Age.
Also, if tech crafting is based off of magic item crafting, would you allow for, say, batteries to be crafted by magical means? (I recall the hybridized quality from SF seems to confirm this, but I would like to hear your views on this)
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Have the divine caster experience a vision during a prayer, perhaps. Or witness an omen. Or hear the whispers of their deity in their mind. Or receive a visitation from a powerful outsider or spirit, or even get possessed for a moment. Or discover the spell in an old rare tome. Or learn it from a reclusive priest. Or learn it from studying ancient carvings on an old temple. Etc. Can be different all the time.
Thanks! Those are the kinds of things I'd envisioned.
How are you liking Cyberpunk? I haven't played much yet but it doesn't seem to warrant some of the criticism it's gotten.
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Is magic antithetical to the advancement of a society? For example, Earth ingame has very low magic and is, well, pretty much at the level of advancement Golarion SHOULD be in (assuming 1920s-30s earth) but isn't for some reason (ok maybe not the best example, but you see the point). Meanwhile Androffa had NO magic and became a utopian space-faring (slightly imperialistic) hyper-advanced civilization before the gods nuked them back to the Iron Age.
Also, if tech crafting is based off of magic item crafting, would you allow for, say, batteries to be crafted by magical means? (I recall the hybridized quality from SF seems to confirm this, but I would like to hear your views on this)
Magic is make-believe, so it can be whatever you want it to be for the story you want to tell.
For us, for Golarion, the answer is no, it's not antithetical at all, otherwise we wouldn't have Pathfinder in the first place.
Androffa had magic, it was just forgotten. (Side note: "Androffa" is the ancient name for my homebrew setting, on which a LOT of Golarion was based, so if it exists on Golarion, it can exist on Androffa.) It was not a utopian space-faring civilization before they got "reset" by angry gods at all.
Magic can do anything, but the easier you make it able to magic up some batteries, the less fun you make technology, so I'd say that you'd need powerful magic to create technology, so that it remains easier to build that stuff via tech in a magic and tech society. For Pathfinder and Golarion, I'd say a wish or miracle or the like could create a battery, but that's it.
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Why don't Ether Spiders(2e phase spiders) have humanlike faces anymore? :O I'm surprised they got changed closer to D&D phase spiders
I'm not honestly sure, but I don't mind the change back to a more traditional look for them. That said, art for human-faced spiders seems to have a higher chance of coming out looking goofy and silly, so it might be that we ordered art for the ether spider and it came in looking ridiculous so we made a change. I wasn't part of that decision making process, and didn't notice the look for them until we were about to go to press during the approvals stage, and decided to not raise an issue with it since, again, I don't mind them (and kind of prefer them) being spiders that phase in and out of the ethereal plane, can talk, and DON'T have human faces.
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I am writing a small piece of Golarion date/time software and am wondering: does the Inner Sea observe daylight savings?
No.
Think of it as another case of us including wish-fufillment in a fantasy setting, I guess. I really look forward to a hopeful future when we can get rid of it, to be honest. Then we can move on from there to adopt the metric system, maybe. Baby steps.
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How are you liking Cyberpunk? I haven't played much yet but it doesn't seem to warrant some of the criticism it's gotten.
I'm GREATLY enjoying it. One of the most fun times I've had playing a video game in a long time. It's got rough edges, sure, but it's working pretty smoothly overall for me... no more bugs than any other huge open world PC game as far as I'm experiencing. Loving it!
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So stygira changed between editions from monstrous humanoid to creature with earth and fey traits. Earth is pretty clear trait, but why fey? They don't particularly seem like fey
Since there's no such thing as a "monstrous humanoid" creature in 2nd edition, we had to choose something, and fey seems more supernatural and magical than humanoid, and also helps to expand the category further from "happy little whimsical creatures". More variety is good.
Is magic antithetical to the advancement of a society? For example, Earth ingame has very low magic and is, well, pretty much at the level of advancement Golarion SHOULD be in (assuming 1920s-30s earth) but isn't for some reason (ok maybe not the best example, but you see the point). Meanwhile Androffa had NO magic and became a utopian space-faring (slightly imperialistic) hyper-advanced civilization before the gods nuked them back to the Iron Age.
Also, if tech crafting is based off of magic item crafting, would you allow for, say, batteries to be crafted by magical means? (I recall the hybridized quality from SF seems to confirm this, but I would like to hear your views on this)
Magic is make-believe, so it can be whatever you want it to be for the story you want to tell.
For us, for Golarion, the answer is no, it's not antithetical at all, otherwise we wouldn't have Pathfinder in the first place.
Androffa had magic, it was just forgotten. (Side note: "Androffa" is the ancient name for my homebrew setting, on which a LOT of Golarion was based, so if it exists on Golarion, it can exist on Androffa.) It was not a utopian space-faring civilization before they got "reset" by angry gods at all.
Magic can do anything, but the easier you make it able to magic up some batteries, the less fun you make technology, so I'd say that you'd need powerful magic to create technology, so that it remains easier to build that stuff via tech in a magic and tech society. For Pathfinder and Golarion, I'd say a wish or miracle or the like could create a battery, but that's it.
Wait, so what WAS/IS Androffa like then/now? Also, please clarify on the "reset" again?
On your final point, I think it might be a little overboard since level 17+ casters have better things to do than blink batteries into existence. I might allow it only if you have an enchanted crafting lab (crafting lab but MAGICIFIED). Thoughts?
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Wait, so what WAS/IS Androffa like then/now? Also, please clarify on the "reset" again?
On your final point, I think it might be a little overboard since level 17+ casters have better things to do than blink batteries into existence. I might allow it only if you have an enchanted crafting lab (crafting lab but MAGICIFIED). Thoughts?
We haven't published anything about Androffa beyond that. I just needed a name for the planet that the starship from Numeria came from, and since I "sold" big chunks of my homebrew to Paizo to become part of Golarion, it felt like a fun easter egg to do. What it's like now is pretty much like Golarion but with names and regions shuffled around and some areas that haven't yet been transposed over. I haven't made that setting all that public.
I gave you my thoughts regarding using magic to create technology. It should be super tough, as should using technology to create magic. If it were easy, they'd not be different. No thanks.
Wait, so what WAS/IS Androffa like then/now? Also, please clarify on the "reset" again?
On your final point, I think it might be a little overboard since level 17+ casters have better things to do than blink batteries into existence. I might allow it only if you have an enchanted crafting lab (crafting lab but MAGICIFIED). Thoughts?
We haven't published anything about Androffa beyond that. I just needed a name for the planet that the starship from Numeria came from, and since I "sold" big chunks of my homebrew to Paizo to become part of Golarion, it felt like a fun easter egg to do. What it's like now is pretty much like Golarion but with names and regions shuffled around and some areas that haven't yet been transposed over. I haven't made that setting all that public.
I gave you my thoughts regarding using magic to create technology. It should be super tough, as should using technology to create magic. If it were easy, they'd not be different. No thanks.
But going back to Androffa, you raised a point on how my observation on it was incorrect (ie "it was not a utopian space-faring nation before it got reset by gods at all"). What is the "correct" version?
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But going back to Androffa, you raised a point on how my observation on it was incorrect (ie "it was not a utopian space-faring nation before it got reset by gods at all"). What is the "correct" version?
At the time they launched Divinity (about 10K years ago), that was their first ship capable of that sort of deep space travel. They'd had solar system travel for a bit, and magic existed in the world but it was hidden and occulted. It was about comparable, I guess, to what you might imagine Earth will be in a hundred years or so... somewhere between distopian and utopian, on the verge of great technological breakthroughs but also on the verge of a great magical apocalypse.
If I were to set it up as an RPG setting, it'd be a near-future occult/horror/sci-fi themed setting. Fast forward 10,000 years or so into present day Golarion, it's known as Droffa (instead of Androffa) and is a world with the same sort of adventure themes and opportunities as Golarion... although more R-rated when it comes to content, I guess. A dark fantasy setting pretty much.
But again, I've no plans to publish Droffa as a setting, or Androffa as a setting, and beyond what I've said here I'm not gonna say much more. Maybe at some point in the future when I'm retired or have moved on from Paizo I'll look at self-publishing it as my own setting.
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How are you liking Cyberpunk? I haven't played much yet but it doesn't seem to warrant some of the criticism it's gotten.I'm GREATLY enjoying it. One of the most fun times I've had playing a video game in a long time. It's got rough edges, sure, but it's working pretty smoothly overall for me... no more bugs than any other huge open world PC game as far as I'm experiencing. Loving it!
Good to know! I'm looking forward to playing more over the holidays.
Another Age of Ashes question: I'm prepping Fires of the Haunted City, and had a question about getting in and out of Kovlar. The gazetteer says the northern gates are restricted and few are allowed to travel through them due to the proximity to Saggorak. The lake to the east seems entirely underground. And the path south through Farmburrow sounds like it goes further underground to caves.
How do people get in and out of Kovlar on a regular basis? Or is the city essentially isolated and mostly self-sufficient?
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How are you liking Cyberpunk? I haven't played much yet but it doesn't seem to warrant some of the criticism it's gotten.I'm GREATLY enjoying it. One of the most fun times I've had playing a video game in a long time. It's got rough edges, sure, but it's working pretty smoothly overall for me... no more bugs than any other huge open world PC game as far as I'm experiencing. Loving it!Good to know! I'm looking forward to playing more over the holidays.
Another Age of Ashes question: I'm prepping Fires of the Haunted City, and had a question about getting in and out of Kovlar. The gazetteer says the northern gates are restricted and few are allowed to travel through them due to the proximity to Saggorak. The lake to the east seems entirely underground. And the path south through Farmburrow sounds like it goes further underground to caves.
How do people get in and out of Kovlar on a regular basis? Or is the city essentially isolated and mostly self-sufficient?
It's mostly self-sufficient. There's other minor tunnels branching out here and there, but the northern gate is the main one.
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But going back to Androffa, you raised a point on how my observation on it was incorrect (ie "it was not a utopian space-faring nation before it got reset by gods at all"). What is the "correct" version?At the time they launched Divinity (about 10K years ago), that was their first ship capable of that sort of deep space travel. They'd had solar system travel for a bit, and magic existed in the world but it was hidden and occulted. It was about comparable, I guess, to what you might imagine Earth will be in a hundred years or so... somewhere between distopian and utopian, on the verge of great technological breakthroughs but also on the verge of a great magical apocalypse.
If I were to set it up as an RPG setting, it'd be a near-future occult/horror/sci-fi themed setting. Fast forward 10,000 years or so into present day Golarion, it's known as Droffa (instead of Androffa) and is a world with the same sort of adventure themes and opportunities as Golarion... although more R-rated when it comes to content, I guess. A dark fantasy setting pretty much.
But again, I've no plans to publish Droffa as a setting, or Androffa as a setting, and beyond what I've said here I'm not gonna say much more. Maybe at some point in the future when I'm retired or have moved on from Paizo I'll look at self-publishing it as my own setting.
So, out of pure curiosity, because of the nature of the place, is it like Numeria but the entire world or something more like this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcem_tutbGc
What role did magic play in Androffa's "apocalypse" and/or development, if any? Because from the printed lore it seems that Androffa was a pretty good place before those damn gods decided to use magic to destroy the culmination of their society's accomplishments, as opposed to the highly magical empires of Golarion which collapsed on their own. In this view of the situation, are you trying to convey that magic is bad and technology good?
I don't really have much more to say about the topic at this point. Sorry.
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What is the state of literacy in Golarion? I recall that knowing a language at all imparts knowledge of both writing and reading it as well as speaking it, but this would result in like a 99.9% literacy rate in Golarion's pseudomedieval society.
For contrast, a game like Numenera or Burning Wheel is very adamant that NOT everyone is literate, ie I think Numenera says only 30% will be and Buring Wheel has Write and Read as separate skills. (I understand the implicit problem with this in the very sandboxy PC centric theme park world that is Golarion being that it will require extraordinary effort to pull off if it is the assumption for the entire setting, instead of a few small isolated regions like Galt or deep Nirmathas where places are just too hard or anarchic for it).
How do you handle this? Because effectively everyone being literate in all the major nations implies a lot has happened in terms of printing presses and educational systems, like at 1890s+ level of advancement, at least in terms of how there is enough free time to BE literate at all.
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What is the state of literacy in Golarion? I recall that knowing a language at all imparts knowledge of both writing and reading it as well as speaking it, but this would result in like a 99.9% literacy rate in Golarion's pseudomedieval society.
For contrast, a game like Numenera or Burning Wheel is very adamant that NOT everyone is literate, ie I think Numenera says only 30% will be and Buring Wheel has Write and Read as separate skills. (I understand the implicit problem with this in the very sandboxy PC centric theme park world that is Golarion being that it will require extraordinary effort to pull off if it is the assumption for the entire setting, instead of a few small isolated regions like Galt or deep Nirmathas where places are just too hard or anarchic for it).
How do you handle this? Because effectively everyone being literate in all the major nations implies a lot has happened in terms of printing presses and educational systems, like at 1890s+ level of advancement, at least in terms of how there is enough free time to BE literate at all.
Most folks can read on Golarion, to the extent that it's the norm and expectation for someone to be able to read.
Are you having a nice holiday?
Do you follow D&D 5E at all?
Eggnog: rum or nah?
Most folks can read on Golarion, to the extent that it's the norm and expectation for someone to be able to read.What is the state of literacy in Golarion? I recall that knowing a language at all imparts knowledge of both writing and reading it as well as speaking it, but this would result in like a 99.9% literacy rate in Golarion's pseudomedieval society.
For contrast, a game like Numenera or Burning Wheel is very adamant that NOT everyone is literate, ie I think Numenera says only 30% will be and Buring Wheel has Write and Read as separate skills. (I understand the implicit problem with this in the very sandboxy PC centric theme park world that is Golarion being that it will require extraordinary effort to pull off if it is the assumption for the entire setting, instead of a few small isolated regions like Galt or deep Nirmathas where places are just too hard or anarchic for it).
How do you handle this? Because effectively everyone being literate in all the major nations implies a lot has happened in terms of printing presses and educational systems, like at 1890s+ level of advancement, at least in terms of how there is enough free time to BE literate at all.
But how is this possible? I mean, in medieval times almost no one could read. The fact that the world at large is as literate as you say means there is at least enough of a surplus of food and efficiency of labor to allow it. How did this come about?
But how is this possible? I mean, in medieval times almost no one could read. The fact that the world at large is as literate as you say means there is at least enough of a surplus of food and efficiency of labor to allow it. How did this come about?
Most folks can read on Golarion, to the extent that it's the norm and expectation for someone to be able to read.
Magnets.
James, how about your favorite monster or mystery on X-Files?
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Do you think 5E would benefit from a Paizo release tempo?Do you follow D&D 5E at all?I haven't played 5E for ages, but I am following it from a professional curiosity angle and from a "many of my friends work on it" angle.
They seem to know what they're doing. Not every RPG company needs to be the same.
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But how is this possible? I mean, in medieval times almost no one could read. The fact that the world at large is as literate as you say means there is at least enough of a surplus of food and efficiency of labor to allow it. How did this come about?
Because Golarion isn't Earth's medieval age. Far from it. Golarion isn't meant to be a 100% accurate to Earth simulator. It's a game, not a real world, and as such we often make choices in detailing it that make it more fun to play as a game.
And having most NPCs being able to read means we can put in letters and diaries and journals and the like as clues or handouts for adventures, which is more fun that not.
It's a high fantasy setting, which means more than just "there's magic." In many ways, Golarion is more akin to the modern world than it is to medieval Europe, which would be a too-constrictive theme to stick to for every story we want to tell (not to mention there's an entire history and entire world beyond medieval Europe to take inspiration from).
It sounds like you might have more fun/be more comfortable with a setting of your own design that's more closely associated with a single area/historical period more closely aligned to Earth, which has never been and never will be what Golarion is going for. That's fine; Golarion can't and shouldn't be for everyone, and building your own setting is a huge part of the fun as a GM.
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James, how about your favorite monster or mystery on X-Files?
Hmmm... Probably the black oil, even though that got kind of lost in the shuffle eventually.
Other fun ones include the Peacock Family from "Home," the fluke man, and the hallucinogenic giant fungus.