Creative Director
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Starfinder is a separate game, with a different creative director in charge of it. They both draw from the same common source of lore, but they take that lore in different directions.Ooh, that makes sense!
When you make new content for your homebrew games, the great part of that is that YOU get to decide what's canon for your setting. You get to pick and choose what parts of published materials are part of your game, and what you make up. That sort of decision isn't one I'm comfortable making for you, nor should I be.So... you say you don't know or "It's prohibited"?
I say that you should choose what's cool for your game. Take what we publish (and anything anyone else publishes for that matter) and have fun!
But for Pathfinder and the Lost Omens campaign setting, a technology or media themed azata isn't thematically appropriate. Which is why we did that monster for Starfinder instead.
Why do birds suddenly appear, everytime you are near?
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Creative Director
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But for Pathfinder and the Lost Omens campaign setting, a technology or media themed azata isn't thematically appropriate. Which is why we did that monster for Starfinder instead.And that's why Starfinder staff came to my thread in community use category. Um... thanks?
No problem! But do try to limit posts here to questions for me; it's a giant thread that's been going on for years, and keeping it free from back and forth comments is one of the ways I've been able to manage it that long. ;)
How seriously should we treat the concept of Meta-Regions from the Lost Omens World Guide? Is it something you anticipate using on other continents?
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Creative Director
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How seriously should we treat the concept of Meta-Regions from the Lost Omens World Guide? Is it something you anticipate using on other continents?
The reason we built metaregions for 2nd edition is simply to throttle the scope of things. In 1st edition, when we wanted to talk about the Inner Sea Region's various nations, we had it broken down into individual nations and realms—and that was over 40 entries. Even if we did a one page entry for all of those, it'd take up a significant amount of room in a larger book, and one page per nation is barely enough to cover anything (see the 64 page version of this book, or Dragon Empires for that matter, for proof of that).
By gathering them into 10 regions, we were able to organize things in a way that allowed us to cover the Inner Sea Region elegantly in the Core Rulebook by spending 10 pages, while giving each region a half page of lore rather than, if we did it by nation, would have given the illusion of greater depth but in fact would have been so much more superficial, since we would have had to limit our descriptions to a single sentence.
It also lets us organize larger hardcover books more elegantly as a result, and helped support our shift from 640 pages of world lore in the form of 10 64 page books a year into a much more manageable 400+ or so pages a year (minimum) of lore content in the form of the hardcover lore books. Since we're doing fewer books in that line, but bigger books, having bigger "chunks" of the setting to focus on is helpful.
I'm not sure what you mean by "how seriously" folks should take it, though. It's not a big thing in-world, really. It's not like the Saga Lands have a shared concord or alligances or anything else that they use to go against Old Cheliax or the Broken Lands. It's pretty much a thematic shorthand we created. But it IS the way we're organizing our campaign setting at this point, so I guess you should take it as seriously as us putting goblins and alchemists into the Core Rulebook. AKA: It's a core, underlying structural support feature of 2nd Edition.
We might do this sort of thing when we focus on other continents, but we also might do something different. Since the scope of what we had to encapsulate for the Inner Sea Region included over a decade of products, we HAD to simplify and refocus. For a different continent, there's so much less to gather up and so much room to do new stuff that we have a lot more freedom in how we decide to explore those regions.
For the moment, those explorations will likely continue to be short articles like the one we did for Vudra, though.
Building up an entire new contient is akin to building an entire new campaign setting. It's a HUGE lift, and it's not something we're going to do lightly. We'll need years to get it done right. Building the Dragon Empires Gazetteer was one of the hardest things I've had to do for Paizo, and while I'm proud of how it turned out (considering it had very little time to go from concept to print, and had an author list that had to be scrambled together at the 11th hour from over a dozen different writers in order to stay on schedule, and which took me off of developing Jade Regent while keeping Rob, who DID develop that Adventure Path, from being involved in the Dragon Empires book), a new version, given the proper time, resources, authors, and attention it deserves is something I've wanted us to do for nearly as long as the words "Tian Xia" existed.
Side Note: The original Dragon Empires Gazetteer was outlined to be a book the same size and scope as the 320 page hardcover Inner Sea World Guide, and I had an outline mostly going for that book before it became apparent that we had to cut it down to 64 pages and fit into the softcover line, since doing a 320 page book would have meant having to sacrifice other projects, like Ultimate Combat, which we couldn't.
(Appreciate the thoughtful reply, and raking this opportunity to ring the bell for any and all Arcadia content you can spare!)
In Second Darkness, is that horns or just a hat on Alicavniss?
Hi, what is Hedvend IV surname? Or more precisely, what is the Isgeri "ruling" family surname? I was able to find 2 noble family names (Sarini and Iyis), but nothing on the main family.
Thanks in advance,
Yawar
What would you do for a Klondike bar?
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Creative Director
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What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Reach out and pick one up if there was one there that was mine or was given to me, but I'm not particularly into Klondike bars at all. They're pretty generic to me as far as ice cream treats go.
My favorite ice cream treats would be a tie between mochi ice cream and It's-Its.
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Creative Director
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Hi, what is Hedvend IV surname? Or more precisely, what is the Isgeri "ruling" family surname? I was able to find 2 noble family names (Sarini and Iyis), but nothing on the main family.
Thanks in advance,
Yawar
I have no idea. Often, when we make up a name for an NPC and we don't make up their surnames, they just don't HAVE a surname. Other times, it just never occurred to the writer that there should be a surname involved.
If/when we do a book about Isger, we might reveal more about Hedvend IV, but coming up with one off the cuff here in this thread is only gonna confuse you, since it's 99.99999% likely that if/when we do that book, the writer and developer of that book won't know to search this thread for his name.
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Creative Director
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Will Paizo ever make a new campaign setting for Pathfinder, other than Golarion? If so, what is some speculation? A steampunk world? A gothic world?
Anything is possible, I guess, but for now and the immediate/near future, the answer is certainly no.
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Creative Director
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Is there an Inner Sea nation that the team has tried really hard to set APs or modules around, but can't find the right story for it? This is a separate from nations that haven't had an AP yet because there isn't a lot of interest around it.
Nope. When we built the Inner Sea, we worked hard to ensure that at least one campaign idea could be set there with minimal effort.
The hard part is that with 45 or so regions and us traditionally only doing 2 Adventure Paths a year, picking and choosing where to go next is tough. Even before you factor in other elements where we want to do sequels or tie-ins or things like that.
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Creative Director
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Any chance you guys could ever make a supplement on gambling and various in-character games? something that could also factor any character's ranks in 'Profession: Gambler' and 'Sleight of Hand' into its various subsystems?
We do this now and then as smaller parts of larger books, but a book solely focused on games your characters play while you play the game your characters are in? Probably not.
You mentioned an article on Vudra earlier - where can that be found?
I have a soft spot for depressing and tragic stories of unrequited love and self-sacrifice motivated by romantic affection. Could you recommend any novel(s) with those themes whose stories take place in a fantasy setting?
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Creative Director
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I have a soft spot for depressing and tragic stories of unrequited love and self-sacrifice motivated by romantic affection. Could you recommend any novel(s) with those themes whose stories take place in a fantasy setting?
I honestly don't read much fantasy at all, so no suggestions come to mind, other than there's a little bit of everything, self-sacrifice and unrequited love included, in the Song of Ice and Fire novels.
Have you watched Gareth Marengi's Darkplace?
Are you happy?
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Creative Director
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Question about the asura ranas. Given that Geryon ate a lot of them at what was presumably a time when they were more powerful...that seems to imply Geryon dwarfed the other ranas even then in power. Is that accurate, or did Geryon manage to do away with most of the ranas by other means besides raw power and maybe a bit of surprise?
We haven't delved into deeper details about those events yet, but you don't have to "dwarf" others in order to destroy a bunch of them. Mostly, that stuff is handled through story and not rules, in the same way we handled a pretty similar situation on the other side with Nocticula being a demon lord who assassinated a lot of other demon lords over the eons.
You mentioned an article on Vudra earlier - where can that be found?I believe it was in part 3 or 4 of "Agents of Edgewatch." One of the middle volumes, in any event.
(Volume 2 - and it has a map!!)
This is a silly question. My wife is drawing a portrait of Belcorra for our SECOND GROUP running through Abom Vaults, and I need your input: when you thought her up, what hair colour did you have in mind?
Also, once again, thank you for such a great adventure.
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Creative Director
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This is a silly question. My wife is drawing a portrait of Belcorra for our SECOND GROUP running through Abom Vaults, and I need your input: when you thought her up, what hair colour did you have in mind?
Also, once again, thank you for such a great adventure.
I didn't think her up; that was Ron Lundeen.
I always imagined her with black hair though.
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Creative Director
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I've had a long discussion with one of my players today.
So, if you choose "Divine Source" and take the "Fate" domain, you will get Miracle as a SPA. Now we wondered, the Miracle would not require any components, but what about the spell it duplicates? If he would use the SPA miracle to replicate a resurrection - would you need the diamond worth 10,000gp or not, since it's more than the 100gp the miracle would allow? There are multiple opinions on that and I am lost which rule I should use.
It's a miracle, so no, it wouldn't require components for the spell it duplicates, but it's still a miracle and as such the GM gets to decide details on how it might work depending on your deity, what you ask for, and other circumstances. As with all wish type stuff, there may be side-effects or unexpected payments or repercussions of a non-gp type. That said, using miracle to do something to keep the game going when you're a devout worshiper of that deity should never backfire on you in that way.
Miracle, wish, and other similar spells are by their nature better in play when the GM is less strict on adhering to rules, I feel. In particular, if a character has been a devout and devoted worshiper of a deity for an entire campaign, then miracle should work more often than not and often even have extra benefits as boons and perks from the deity... but if a worshiper relies on the spell too often, that deity might get frustrated that their worshiper is getting lazy or constantly putting themselves in positions where they are overstepping their ability.
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Would Paizo ever have a adventure path with a recurring villain where they fight the same person with additional levels and magic items at the end of each adventure?
With the options of using clone, raise dead, simulacrum or renaming them as a relative to keep bringing back the villain if the players manage to kill them.
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Creative Director
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Would Paizo ever have a adventure path with a recurring villain where they fight the same person with additional levels and magic items at the end of each adventure?
With the options of using clone, raise dead, simulacrum or renaming them as a relative to keep bringing back the villain if the players manage to kill them.
Probably not, since that sort of thing is really hard to pull off without frustrating the players by cheating at letting the villain escape 5 times before they can finally defeat them for real in the sixth adventure. Repeated resurrection and clones and all that is thematically the same thing as letting them get away over and over, and would strain verisimilitude AND game play, since players know that if you have a PC who gets killed over and over and comes back, they tend to have a struggle to "keep up" rather than getting more powerful with each return, which is what a villain who keeps coming back would have to do.
The closest we've come to this is probably Hell's Rebels...
Are you happy?Currently I'm playing Pathfinder with friends and sipping some tea, so yeah, I'm currently happy.
What were you playing (PC and campaign type)?
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Creative Director
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What were you playing (PC and campaign type)?Are you happy?Currently I'm playing Pathfinder with friends and sipping some tea, so yeah, I'm currently happy.
A human rogue with a free gunslinger multiclass archetype named Lizzie Arden. The campaign's a Weird West one set in a fantasy version of the wild west.
Are you a fan of MST3K? Have you seen their new kickstarter?
How would you use a psychic vampire in a campaign?
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Creative Director
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Are you a fan of MST3K? Have you seen their new kickstarter?
I've been a fan of MST3K since I first saw it on Comedy Central back in 1989, and that appreciation has only grown through the decades. I backed their latest Kickstarter pretty much instantly as soon as they alerted me it was happening.
Rifftrax too, for that matter!
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Creative Director
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How would you use a psychic vampire in a campaign?
As a wolf in sheep's clothing that hid its nature, both as a predator disguised in a society, and as a vampire from the players so that they'd have to investigate things more than if it were just a normal vampire.
And by drawing upon my favorite "psychic vampire" horror movies and tropes, of which "Doctor Sleep" is one of my favorite recent examples. Lifeforce (the movie) is a guilty pleasure in this category, and is also a shining case of how much better the book is than the movie.
And of course, can't forget Colin Robinson!
Oh, thanks to Kelsius for bringing the KS to my attention!
I remember watching Gamera on MST3K years ago and being surprised that there was this whole kaiju series I'd never even heard of. James, what are your can't-miss classic kaiju movies? I'm sure this has been asked before but oh well.
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Creative Director
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Oh, thanks to Kelsius for bringing the KS to my attention!
I remember watching Gamera on MST3K years ago and being surprised that there was this whole kaiju series I'd never even heard of. James, what are your can't-miss classic kaiju movies? I'm sure this has been asked before but oh well.
Godilla (1954)
Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out AttackTarantula
Cloverfield
Godzilla (2014)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Shin Godzilla
Godzilla vs. Destroyah
Godzilla vs. Biollante
Gamera 2: Attack of Leigon
King Kong (1933)
Underwater
Godzilla vs. Hedorah
Destroy All Monsters
Godzilla 2000
Godzilla vs. Gigan
Godzilla: Final Wars
It Came From Beneath the Sea
Monsters
20 Million Miles to Earth
Them
The Host
Dogora
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
Q: The Winged Serpent
Mothra (1961)
The War of the Gargantuas
That feels like a pretty solid start.
