Creative Director
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But regardless, my entire problem with the issue is intellectual, not emotional. I don't understand why you would use an emotional argument about this. It is a social engineering construct, not an emotional one. So can you explain your thinking here?
Because emotions make us human, and because I'm empathic toward all humans, not just toward half of them. I'm not really interested in justifying my thinking any more than that, since to me, it's really that simple.
It's not up for debate, and you're not going to change my mind, so let's just count the question as answered and move on to the next question, please.
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Quick aside.
James, you're a good man.
The empathy, concern, and interest you show even to complete strangers is exemplary--and it shows up in the game and game world you've worked so hard to help put together for all of us.
Anyways. I have no question to ask at this time. Breaking the rules, I know. I just hope you can end this tough year and look forward to what admittedly will probably be another pretty tough year for us all, aware that you are appreciated and admired. This thread too is a testament to your quality as a human, in my opinion.
Have a wonderful New Year's. Hope your 2021 is f!&~ing excellent.
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Creative Director
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Quick aside.
James, you're a good man.
The empathy, concern, and interest you show even to complete strangers is exemplary--and it shows up in the game and game world you've worked so hard to help put together for all of us.
Anyways. I have no question to ask at this time. Breaking the rules, I know. I just hope you can end this tough year and look forward to what admittedly will probably be another pretty tough year for us all, aware that you are appreciated and admired. This thread too is a testament to your quality as a human, in my opinion.
Have a wonderful New Year's. Hope your 2021 is f@+$ing excellent.
Thank you for the kind words. Always good (and bolstering to morale) to hear this type of thing regardless of the year, but lately in particular.
I'm hoping things start looking up for all of us in 2021, but I don't attach any special significance to the year 2020 as being the cause of all the ills in the world—those ills have been building in some ways long before culminating in 2020, and they aren't just going to stop in 2021. But hopefully we've seen a turn toward a better world. We'll know in time, I guess.
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So, given that pf2 has a drastically different gameplay from pf1, do you think paizo will explore various different gameplay styles in the future, or just stick with a focus on one at a time?
New editions of RPGs will happen, but not until we feel they're needed. At this point, we'll be sticking with this for some time to come.
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Does that mean you, or paizo, disagree with the idea that rpgs as a concept will continue to split into various different styles with different foci that are equally current?
No. Different companies will continue to iterate on types of games and develop new RPGs as time goes forward. Paizo will too, in time. But that's not something we intend to do on a monthly or even yearly basis.
We may try something else out at some point. I would love to. But it's not the driving force to continue to try to do new things. It's important to take your time and enjoy the games along the way rather than try to "obsolete" them as soon as you make them.
It just means that we and I are not in a rush to do so.
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.
I remember one of the funny jokes about a "real life" medieval setting was how the PCs were extraordinary just for having the extra calories to leave the farm :)
Back to the point, however, how would you feel about including other modern elements, like skyscrapers (ie 10 story or more buildings), steamships (not necessarily steam powered) and indoor plumbing? Would this damage the verisimilitude of the setting?
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Back to the point, however, how would you feel about including other modern elements, like skyscrapers (ie 10 story or more buildings), steamships (not necessarily steam powered) and indoor plumbing? Would this damage the verisimilitude of the setting?
We already have some of that. But those elements are exceptions rather than commonplace.
Back to the point, however, how would you feel about including other modern elements, like skyscrapers (ie 10 story or more buildings), steamships (not necessarily steam powered) and indoor plumbing? Would this damage the verisimilitude of the setting?We already have some of that. But those elements are exceptions rather than commonplace.
A more specific question would you let it be as common as literacy (maybe a little below that, like mostly govt. owned)?
Because 99.9% of the population being literate is a BIG DEAL; it leads into the aforementioned advancements becoming more common, not to mention the rise of print, etc.
Also,-- where is the steam ship/skyscrapers/indoor plumbing described?
If magic crafting is so closely related to tech crafting, would it be possible through special tools and methods (ie the magic equivalent of industrial production machines) to mass produce magic items like tech items? I think SF confirms this, but I would like to hear your opinion.
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Creative Director
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Back to the point, however, how would you feel about including other modern elements, like skyscrapers (ie 10 story or more buildings), steamships (not necessarily steam powered) and indoor plumbing? Would this damage the verisimilitude of the setting?We already have some of that. But those elements are exceptions rather than commonplace.A more specific question would you let it be as common as literacy (maybe a little below that, like mostly govt. owned)?
Because 99.9% of the population being literate is a BIG DEAL; it leads into the aforementioned advancements becoming more common, not to mention the rise of print, etc.
Also,-- where is the steam ship/skyscrapers/indoor plumbing described?
I wouldn't. Again... this is not earth. The presence of magic takes things off those historical rails in whatever way you want.
We had an elemental-powered "steam ship" in an old adventure, "River Into Darkness." We have "skyscrapers" here and there in the form of towering megastructures—two examples that come to mind are the tower at the end of Rise of the Runelords, and also the Spire of Nex not far from Absalom's walls. And as for indoor plumbing, that's something that shows up in most high-end noble households in most cities.
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If magic crafting is so closely related to tech crafting, would it be possible through special tools and methods (ie the magic equivalent of industrial production machines) to mass produce magic items like tech items? I think SF confirms this, but I would like to hear your opinion.
That's for Starfinder, not for Pathfinder. You can certainly have hybrid items (as in Starfinder) that could blend the lines between tech and magic like this. That's the whole point of hybrid items. They exist in Pathfinder, but are rare enough that they don't have any impact on society as a whole.
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I don't mean a linear progression of games, but rather having multiple side by side games. For example, one that is focused on your AP style of semi-linear storylines full of combat encounters, then another for dungeoncrawls, then one for sandbox games focused on player agency, and another focused on collaborative storytelling, etc. Each of these have different requirements.
That's a lot harder to do, and a lot less efficient, and a lot riskier. I'd rather handle those different types of themes with one game rather than four.
Is there some kind of qualifier that determines whether a creature gets the -folk title.
Like Girtablilu are referred to as Scorpionfolk, Ysoki are Ratfolk, Kitsune are Foxfolk. (Within their flavour text)
So could/would Tengu be referred to as 'Ravenfolk'?
Sure, I guess. But I wouldn't. In fact, I'd rather the "-folk" names for ancestries some day be regulated to tertiary roles in describing ancestries... or even get dropped entirely from the game.
The "-folk" portmanteau is not great. It's kinda reductionist and marginalizes the creature by speaking about them with a name that they didn't create for themselves. It'd be like aliens coming to Earth and calling humans "primatefolk" instead of humans. It's better to respect a culture by referring to them by the name they refer to themselves as, and as such in game, it's more interesting to give these ancestries their own names as well.
Where it gets complicated is when we pick up creatures from the OGL, so we often have to come up with variant names for them. But when something is generic (like ratfolk) or from mythology (like kitsune or tengu) there's much less of a need for this.
It's further complicated by the fact that for a fair amount of the first several years of us working on Pathfinder, we didn't really realize the value of not using "-folk" constructions instead of giving these ancestries actual names, so there's a legacy we built for ourselves in trying to self-correct. It's tough to do that in the middle of an edition cycle, but with the edition change that was a great place to start getting those names in print so that the baseline products will have that information.
As for why "-folk" and not "-man"? It's gender neutral.
Well, most cultures refer to themselves as "people" in their native tongues, but you went with Kitsune ("Fox" in Japanese), Tengu ("Heavenly Dog" or "Heavenly Sentinel" in Japanese), Android (Greek roots for "In the likeness or form of a human male"), Orc (derived from old English for "monster", "ogre" or "demon"), etc. Additionally, most cultures refer to their neighbors with some variant of "differentiator"-"people", like mountainfolk, northerner, "fair folk", etc.
I would see the point if you wanted to make the setting trademark friendly or to give more verisimilitude to the setting, but if the issue is respecting the dignity of fictional people I really don't see the point of inventing new English words while letting technical racial slurs.But back to my point, does the existence of the in-game words "Girtablilu", "Ysoki", "Kitsune", "Tengu", etc. referring to people and their respective languages means that you have a general guideline for grammar and/or phonetics each of this specific languages?
Humbly,
Yawar
Is there any plans to change the name of the were-beasts (etymologically male-beasts) to zooanthropes or something more inclusive?
Is the term "humanoid" considered offensive or ethnocentric in-game? Does it translate to something etymologically different in Common?
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I second this. For example, if ratfolks are now ysoki, does that mean that they have a kind of oriental/japanese flavor in them?
Eeeh, Ysoki doesn't really sound particularly japanese. Maybe if you spell it as Isoki, but its still kind of a stretch :p
Anyhoo, I wanted to ask, do you have personal favorite monster mechanics wise(in either Pathfinder editions) and if you do, which one is that? I have too many monsters which's mechanics I like, lot of awesome ones to choose from
How was your near year, did you also have neighbors setting off fireworks (including aerials)?
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How would you handle the mutually contradictory requirements? And would Paizo ever bother (since they clearly aren't even trying this right now)?
When we did this very thing with Starfinder, we had to reallocate the entire staff and hire up a few more employees over time to handle the increased load.
That said, there's lots of publishers out there doing RPGs. We don't have to try to break our backs doing every single type of them.
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Hello James! I have a question regarding the setting: in Pathfinder 1e Varisia was fleshed out quite a bit throughout various APs, would you say that Return of the Runelords is kind of the last chapter of the adventures in this region for a while? I thought about this when I read that you don't intend to come back to areas where PCs have played important roles in the past 10 years because anyway you have a lot to tell about other places in the world. I just want to know since I love paizo canon but I also have my own divergences after playing and mastering APs mainly in Varisia and I'd like them to be mainly ok with the official line. Of course, as it is now, it's perfecf since you just outlined very general outcomes.
Thanks for your time! Your patience in this thread is immense ;)
I've got plenty more stories I'd like to tell about Varisia, so no, I wouldn't say Return of the Runelords is the last chapter.
In fact, there's not any location on Golarion that I'm comfortable saying "We'll never go back there." If you want to build your own canon for your game, which you absolutely should, you should lean into it and be comfortable with your version of the game. That's a big part of what makes tabletop RPGs so much fun! :-)
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But back to my point, does the existence of the in-game words "Girtablilu", "Ysoki", "Kitsune", "Tengu", etc. referring to people and their respective languages means that you have a general guideline for grammar and/or phonetics each of this specific languages?
Yes.
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I second this. For example, if ratfolks are now ysoki, does that mean that they have a kind of oriental/japanese flavor in them? Of course communities in the Inner Sea don't necessarily have it but maybe their ancestors moved from Tian Xia or something like that? Of course it's not like Ysoki MUST be a "japanese" word inside the setting, but it looks and sounds like it. I think it's a right choice for Starfinder (because of the cyberpunk-ish feeling) but not really for Pathfinder. Still of course it's just a minor thing.
It's the choice we made and we won't be changing it during this edition. It's not really up to a vote, since it's already in print.
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Is there any plans to change the name of the were-beasts (etymologically male-beasts) to zooanthropes or something more inclusive?
No. Werecreature is the name we use for them in 2nd edition, rather than lycanthrope. If we talk about a specific type, we'll just call them werewolves or weretigers or whatever, and if there's a mixed group, they're werecreatures.
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Anyhoo, I wanted to ask, do you have personal favorite monster mechanics wise(in either Pathfinder editions) and if you do, which one is that? I have too many monsters which's mechanics I like, lot of awesome ones to choose from
My favorite monster mechanic I have now is the overall way that 2nd edition monsters are built.
A personal favorite I like from one I created is the seugathi's ability to pick and choose confusion effects.
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At what point would you consider people as being too thin-skinned?
Never. Calling someone "thin-skinned" is used too often on the internet as a way for a bully to justify their actions as being the norm.
I've found that when someone calls someone "thin-skinned" on the internet, or conversely says that someone should "grow thicker skin," that they're trying to justify or minimize their own behavior rather than addressing their behavior to be less antagonistic and more friendly.
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Gotcha! Without disclosing details that you can't or don't want to for obvious reasons, would you say that there is a possibility to play around runelords as enemies in the future? Something like Belimarius being the last bad one of them, since Sorshen is kind of redeemed. And will we see more of Korvosa? :)
Yes. New Thassilon is set up to enable all sorts of new runelord-related stories. Be they Belimarius or Sorshen or someone new, like Aethusa.
No personal plans for Korvosa, but we could well go back there, sure. If it's something I'm doing, it's MUCH more likely to be in the west.
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So another bit random question: My currently favorite Mythos creatures are Flying Polyps because of Strange Aeon, but I'm kinda wondering what is basis of flying polyps? Like lot of different creatures from Lovecraft's stories seems to be based on his anxieties, but I'm not sure what flying intestine like beings that control winds could have been inspired by
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Creative Director
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So another bit random question: My currently favorite Mythos creatures are Flying Polyps because of Strange Aeon, but I'm kinda wondering what is basis of flying polyps? Like lot of different creatures from Lovecraft's stories seems to be based on his anxieties, but I'm not sure what flying intestine like beings that control winds could have been inspired by
Lovecraft never gave these creatures an actual name—the "flying polyp" name is as much descriptive as anything else. He invented them in his story "The Shadow Out of Time," alongside the beings of Yith. I'm not sure exactly what inspired him to create them other than that they're another example of an unknowable strange entity. Not everything needs to be based on an anxiety, in any event.
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So you don't think it is possible for someone to take offense at something that they should not take offense from?
I think it's possible for someone to be disingenuous and fake at being offended just to troll someone, but that's not what you were asking.
Other people don't get to decide what any one person is offended by. That's not how it works. If someone is offended by something and they tell me that thing is offensive to them, I'll believe them and adjust how I interact with them. And if it's something that is just fundamentally about me that offends them, then maybe I shouldn't be hanging out with them.
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Basically, you don't believe that how someone takes something is in part, their choice?
I'm not sure where you're going with this line of questioning, or what purpose it serves, but I believe that what offends a person is a result of their personality and life experiences and beliefs, and that those things can shift over time.
So I guess in part it's their choice, since all the choices a person makes is what creates life experiences to a certain extent, but that doesn't make what offends them any less offensive, so it doesn't make it okay to offend someone.
If someone tells you something you did/said was offensive, believe them and apologize.
And even if a person 100% gets to choose what they're offended by, that STILL doesn't mean that the person doing the offending gets to decide if that's true or not.
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If people have at least some choice over whether they take offense, then wouldn't it be possible that someone can make bad and unfair choices in this regard?
I suppose so, but it really sounds like you're trying to dodge blame when offending someone when you start to ask questions like that.
Better to spend that time and energy working on being a friendly and good and empathic human, I think. Don't worry WHY someone is offended by something you did. Instead take actions to not offend them going forward. If we all did this, then the ones who are offending you would also try to correct their choices as best they could as well.
Understanding and empathy has to start somewhere.
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but it really sounds like you're trying to dodge blame when offending someone when you start to ask questions like that.
One of the most interesting things about your answers is that you consistently skip my actual intent and jump to what you believe emotionally drives the question, which seems to often be shaped by previous questions even if the new question jumps to a new topic entirely and wasn't intended to be connected at all with the previous one. For example, when I shifted from gendered noun derivations to asking about bringing emotional arguments to an emotionless discussion, you replied with a response that implied that we were still discussing gendered nouns and that you thought my question was about justifying my emotions behind my assumed opinion. But I saw them as separate topics and neither was motivated by emotions at all.
Does this make sense, or do I sound like I'm talking gibberish? (Also, will there ever be a gibberish language in pathfinder? That'd be interesting.)
It's starting to sound more like gibberish to me, sorry. I think we might be talking past each other, so it's probably best to move on to an entirely new topic.
All right, here's one I find amusing-
In general, I find film remakes a losing proposition.
But then you have examples like John Carpenter's masterful remake of The Thing From Another World where the remake elevates the material.
Can you think of any movie where you would actually like a remake?
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All right, here's one I find amusing-
In general, I find film remakes a losing proposition.
But then you have examples like John Carpenter's masterful remake of The Thing From Another World where the remake elevates the material.
Can you think of any movie where you would actually like a remake?
LOTS of them. The Dark Tower and Event Horizon both come to mind.