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Do you have any ideas on the fate of the Key of Geb that was mentioned in AP #141 now that Gallowspire is gone? It feels like a very big loose thread that was set and hasn't had any follow up yet.
None at all. First I've heard of that, in fact, since I didn't work on that Adventure Path.
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James,
Have you given any thought to publishing further elements from the "Whispers in Ravounel" campaign that gave rise to the Malevolence adventure?
I'm specifically thinking of details on Crook(ed) Cove and the wilderlands around that area.
We're looking at playing Malevolence when our current campaign runs its course and it feels like it would work better if there were some support for actions outside the manor.
I'm assuming that none of these details have made it into print, so I'll have to homebrew anything I want to use, but thought I'd ask nonetheless.
Not really.
Here's what happened: I was running "Whispers in Ravounel," and the need to create the town of Otari NOW NOW NOW happened—it had to be done in a few weeks with very little heads-up, so that we'd have a strong baseline to build off of the Beginner's Box AND Abomination Vaults AND the "Troubles in Otari" adventure.
The task of creating Otari fell to me, with a mandate of "Make a new 'Sandpoint' to serve as a starting town for 2nd edition.
With only a few weeks to get it done in time for the other writers to use to do their products, I ended up scavenging a lot of NPCs from my homebrew game set in Crookcove, so a LOT of the NCPs you see in Otari are exports from Crookcove.
The ones that didn't either didn't fit Otari's theme, or more to the point, were parts of more mature storylines (I tend to run R-rated campaigns).
I've thought about doing some sort of "here's Crookcove" product as something for Infinite, though, and might still, since there's a LOT more stuff there that didn't get picked up for Otari... but that (plus the fact that I just had no room for that content in "Malevloence") is why I set up the village as abandoned.
Thanks for the quick reply James.
In keeping with the creepy atmosphere of Malevolence, I could see Crook(ed) Cove as a *mostly* abandoned town, fallen into ruin, but with a few denizens clinging to those ruins. Like an innkeeper/hunter who also happens to be a werewolf, and isn't above eating his "guests" if they demonstrate their weakness. Or a small community of ghouls lurking in the ruined churchyard, starved for conversation as much as fresh flesh. Or other spooky inhabitants.
Do let us know if and when you release any "Whispers in Ravounel" content.
Have you seen the new Prey teaser trailer? Thoughts?
How does reincarnation interact with the River of Souls and Pharasma's judgment? Do some souls just get sent back into the material plane before judgement? As part of their judgement? Is this something that is sometimes granted on request (say a soul comes from a culture that believes in reincarnation)?
Or is this all just the sort of thing where Pharasma is very mysterious and doesn't explain why she does things and it just sometimes happens?
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How does reincarnation interact with the River of Souls and Pharasma's judgment? Do some souls just get sent back into the material plane before judgement? As part of their judgement? Is this something that is sometimes granted on request (say a soul comes from a culture that believes in reincarnation)?
Or is this all just the sort of thing where Pharasma is very mysterious and doesn't explain why she does things and it just sometimes happens?
It's part of their judgement. And part of their destiny. Those two things are the same.
And it's not explained. Because this sort of thing is beyond mortal comprehension. And by not giving a specific set of rules detailing EXACTLY how it works, we keep it mysterious and prevent it from turning into nothing more than an optimization theorycraft.
It's part of their judgement. And part of their destiny. Those two things are the same.
And it's not explained. Because this sort of thing is beyond mortal comprehension. And by not giving a specific set of rules detailing EXACTLY how it works, we keep it mysterious and prevent it from turning into nothing more than an optimization theorycraft.
But does this happen often enough that people who come from cultures who believe in reincarnation have a valid reason for believing the way that they do? It's not like a one in a million thing for a follower of Sangpotshi.
Like one of my sensitive points on games having the metaphysics spelled out in great detail is when you can rule out entire systems of belief as "incorrect." As in "you shouldn't worship your ancestors, they lost their memories when they became petitioners", that kind of thing. I just want every culture to have a valid reason for believing what they do.
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It's part of their judgement. And part of their destiny. Those two things are the same.
And it's not explained. Because this sort of thing is beyond mortal comprehension. And by not giving a specific set of rules detailing EXACTLY how it works, we keep it mysterious and prevent it from turning into nothing more than an optimization theorycraft.
But does this happen often enough that people who come from cultures who believe in reincarnation have a valid reason for believing the way that they do? It's not like a one in a million thing for a follower of Sangpotshi.
Like one of my sensitive points on games having the metaphysics spelled out in great detail is when you can rule out entire systems of belief as "incorrect." As in "you shouldn't worship your ancestors, they lost their memories when they became petitioners", that kind of thing. I just want every culture to have a valid reason for believing what they do.
It happens quite often, yes. Adjust as you need in your game if you have players for whom this issue is problematic.
I've said before—one of the main reasons we have souls lose their memories when they transition to petitioners and on to outsiders is because Pathfinder isn't meant to be a game where suicide is viewed as a power up... which would be the result if you kept your memories. A fair number of people would want to kill their characters to come back as angels or demons or whatever. That's a fraught element of game play that we want to avoid, but also the game needs death to be something scary, not something you strive for. We could certainly have taken a stance of leaving death mysterious and not detail any of that stuff at all, but then we'd lose out on all the story opportunities the Great Beyond offers.
You can still worship your ancestors. That's 100% viable, even if they have gone on to be judged and are now something else. Ancestor worship is less about worshiping your ancestors as if they were gods, and more about worshiping their memory and legacy and traditions and all that.
Remember also that the people who live in Golarion don't have access to all the books we publish, and things like "what happens after you die" in world is mysterious, complicated by different people telling different stories, and muddied by liars and tricksters.
And further remember that the TIME it takes for a soul to be judged is flexible. It can happen instantly. It might take eons. When we first created this element in 1st edition, due to the fact that resurrection had a limit of 10 years dead per character level, we had to have a variable time in there rather than say "You're always judged in 1 month or 1 year" or whatever. Time is fluid and flexible once you get into that sort of metaphysicality.
You, as the GM, get to decide how long the judgment process takes as works best for your game. Or we as the creators of the stories make those decisions as makes sense for the story we're telling.
One thing you could do, for example, would be that as long as an ancestor is honored and worshiped, they remain unjudged and exist as a soul with memories, anchored to the living realm by the prayers and support of their descendants and basking in that warm glow and feeling welcomed and loved for as long as it lasts (or in the case of a hated/reviled ancestor, tormented and all that in a grueling afterlife). In this way, a culture's faith in their ancestors is also what provides the soul of the departed a "heaven" or "hell" and once they stop worshiping, or once no living ancestors remain, those souls move on to whatever comes next.
And keep in mind as well that not every culture in the world has what we might view a "valid" reason for belief. Not every faith and philosophy and belief system and all that is healthy, worthy, or helpful. Some of them are toxic, self-destructive, and should go away. That's one of the ways a storyteller—be it an adventure writer or a GM or whoever—can introduce drama into their tales.
As ALWAYS, you know your table's interests, limits, and comforts. Play the game the way you are comfortable with, first and foremost. I'll try to answer questions like this as best I can, but when you see me say something like "it's mysterious" that's me trying to give you, the GM, some room to make the game comfortable and safe and interesting for yourself and your players.
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My friend and I are having an argument over Evolution Surge in Pathfinder 1E. In it, the spell states "The eidolon must meet any prerequisites of the selected evolution." With those evolutions, is the summoner level requirement considered a prerequisite for the purpose of Evolution Surge, allowing for example a 4th level summoner to cast Evolution Surge, Lesser to give their eidolon immunity to acid damage?
Even when I had my head deep in 1st edition rules, the intricacies of summoner abilities was not something I spent a lot of time looking at. And furthermore, when I see "...having an argument..." about rules, that's a red flag to me to not step in, because every time I have before it's made things worse.
If you're looking for feedback and advice, my suggestion is to post on one of the 1E rules threads here on the boards and seek input from fellow gamers, whose advice won't be taken by the internet or other Paizo employees as "James trying to stealth errata rules" or whatever.
AKA: I generally don't answer rules questions in this thread; sorry!
There don't seem to be a lot of hobgoblins native to Osirion, so how did a hobgoblin get to be a Living Monolith? I'm referring to LT Govrey, (Knights of Lastwall, page 34), who is a member of the Charcoal Battalion of Oprak, currently serving with the Knights. Looking at the Living Monolith archetype, it seems to me to imply a pretty intimate connection with Osirion.
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There don't seem to be a lot of hobgoblins native to Osirion, so how did a hobgoblin get to be a Living Monolith? I'm referring to LT Govrey, (Knights of Lastwall, page 34), who is a member of the Charcoal Battalion of Oprak, currently serving with the Knights. Looking at the Living Monolith archetype, it seems to me to imply a pretty intimate connection with Osirion.
By being exceptional and unusual and unique.
As with PCs, specific NPCs don't need to be limited only to areas where their ancestries are common. By choosing an ancestry that isn't common for a region, you can build in some instant story and lore and theme to build off of.
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James this has probably been asked before. but everyone who dies in the Martial plane goes to the Boneyard including beings that live on Non-Golarion planets?
like a chaotic evil space slug goes to the Abyss?
and since Earth is part of the Material realm when people their die they go to the Boneyard too? that has some interesting implications.
i guess this is covered in StarFinder but i’m not in to science fiction.
No matter where one dies, their soul goes to the Boneyard. That includes all planets in the Material Plane, but also all other planes. That includes Earth, in the setting.
The Outer Planes are VERY vast. There's plenty of room for alignment-based planes out there that aren't those we cover in the context of Pathfinder, I suppose, but for the context of this game, we need to limit those things so that we can have at least a chance of giving those planes some detail.
That does mean though if in your homebrew you want other planes, there's more than enough room for you to add them. It also means that if we decide at some point to add more planes to the Great Beyond, there's room for us to do so as well.
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oh so oh. say alien beings with a utterly foreign concept of mortality and who can’t be judged under the alignment system go tot heir own weird alien afterlives?
I presume that the main Pathfinder deities of Golarion hang out with alien gods from the Circinus galaxy?
I presume that different gods focus in different worlds. amd that their are some that focus on different planets. and like on Golarion. aliens can become deities like what Irori and Nethys did?
i think this is answered in Starfinder but I want to be sure.
also you mentioned way earlier that none of the formerly mortal deities ever had any children when they where mortal. I presume it’s a meta thing. but it’s quite interesting that no one who ascended to divinity that we know of where parents.
That sort of alien life would need a different game to model. Pathfinder isn't intended to be the one-stop-shop for all your RPG world-building needs. If you want to involve creatures that "can't be judged under the alignment system" you'll want to use a different game, or at the very least significantly alter the Pathfinder rules to suit your game's needs.
We haven't done much to explore deities worshiped on other planets we haven't invented. We don't have time to cover all of reality, so we limit it to a scope that we can manage.
Different deities can indeed focus on different worlds. Or even on different continents, for that matter. Tian Xia, for example, has plenty of its own deities but does include a few from the Inner Sea region.
Whether or not formally mortal deities had kids and what their lives were like before they became deities is largely not covered in our lore. Iomedae and Aroden have a bit of info, but large family trees and geneology isn't something we've done much with yet... mostly because the stories we've been focusing on haven't needed that info, and we don't want to paint ourselves into a corner by setting things in stone unnecessarily. And at the same time, that's time management that lets us actually finish the parts that we DO need to work on.
We can't detail all parts of every reality.
Hey James! I am gming my group through Strange Aeons, and we are having a blast so far. We are in book-2 and I was wondering if you had a favorite NPC or encounter or storyline from that book that stood out to you?
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have you noticed the lack of major positive queer male characters and are trying to to fix it?
Yes. Getting more queer representation is important to me.
I've been including positive male queer characters from the start. Check out the gazetteer for Sandpoint in the first adventure for Pathfinder, Burnt Offerings. On the iconic front, the investigator, Quinn, is gay. There's a significant gay couple among the allied NPCs in Wrath of the Righteous. Gozreh is, of course, gender fluid. I have long seen Cayden Caliean as pansexual, although I don't know that we've said as much in print. I believe Seltyiel was intended to be pansexual, although like Quinn, we haven't explored those stories with him yet (maybe in the comics?)
The primary reason that Desna and Sarenrae are presented as queer is because they're exports from my homebrew, and they've been queer there for several decades, so those stories are brought forward into Pathifnder.
There'll be more positive queer male characters as well, but I've been working to build a diverse set of characters in the books I write and develop for a long time; it's important to me, since I'm a queer male myself (whether or not I'd be called a "positive" one is, I guess, not up to me, but I try to be and hope I am).
Note that PART of the issue you're seeing is that for most of Pathfinder's history, the vast bulk of our character work has been tackled in the format of adventures, and adventures skew toward presenting villainous NPCs rather than "positive role" NPCs, simply because of the nature of such a product.
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Hey James! I am gming my group through Strange Aeons, and we are having a blast so far. We are in book-2 and I was wondering if you had a favorite NPC or encounter or storyline from that book that stood out to you?
I don't. I outlined that Adventure Path in anticipation of being the one to develop it, but I was taken off of the project to work on Curse of the Crimson Throne instead, so the actual development of NPCs in that Adventure Path was handled instead by Adam. I still haven't had the opportunity to read the Adventure Path, in part because I hoped at some point to play a PC in it and wanted to avoid spoiling myself.
From the outline itself though, the thing I was most excited about was the inclusion of some characters from Chambers and Lovecraft later on in the adventure. And I don't know if she actually shows up in book 2, but the cover character there, Ariadnah, is one that I had planned on working into the plot in a very "Blair Witch" sort of mythology but as seen through a Keziah Mason lens... but again, I don't know how she finally ended up in the campaign.
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I always pictured Cayden as pansexual too. speaking of it. I remember someone making a joke about how Geb and Nex and Tar-Baphon and Aroden have “no heterosexual explanation” was their ever a romantic aspect of Geb and Nex’s relationship?
Nope, not that I'm aware of. As far as I know, Nex and Geb have hated each other from the start.
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by romance i mean the thing Lex and Superman or Joker and Batman sometimes show
That's not a definition of romance to me. I'd use the phrase "grudging admiration or respect" instead.
In any event, please keep posts here to questions for me. In order to keep this thread manageable, I prefer to avoid setting up back-and forth discussions.
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ok got it.
Thanks! Also, try to limit questions to one per post. I don't mind seeing LOTS of posts here, but it's easier to answer questions when I am able to reply without having to spend extra time indicating which answer I'm replying to.
what happens to animals when they die? do they recarnate tell they build up enough Karma to become a sapient being?
All living creatures have souls, but only sapient ones can make choices of morality and ethics, and thus only sapient souls have alignments other than plain old Neutral. Animals and other creatures that aren't sapient still have their souls move on to the afterlife, but once they're "judged" (which takes an equally nebulous time, because we don't want to hard-code how long you have to resurrect your pet), the soul might reincarnate as a new non-sapient creature somewhere in the multiverse (and could potentially even come back as a sapient creature), or it might get turned into quintessence somewhere in the multiverse.
did Desna’s mentor take them because he was the god of Beasts?
Nope.
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does Pharama turn some of the good puppers and Horseies into pyscochamps?
canids are associated with the underworld in many religions. see Anubis, Cerberus, the guide dogs in Aztecs myths.
and since your a Pokémon fan James what Pokémon would the deities have/be assioated with? Nethys is a Morepeka
Animals almost never turn into psychopomps, or angels or demons or whatever, for that matter. It's possible, but even less likely than an animal reincarnating as a human. It's firmly in the category of "it happens as often as you want to tell the story." I don't believe we've done something like this in any of our adventures yet, but I could be wrong.
I'm not a Pokemon fan, so I can't really speak to that.
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James to make this easier what about the Pathfinder setting wasn’t inspired by your campaign or official DnD lore?
A lot of it. I don't know that wording it that way makes it easier. I'll list the first 10 things that come to mind that weren't significantly inspired by my homebrew or by official D&D lore... but both of those things have been a part of me for nearly 40 years now, so it's very difficult to separate out in those categories.
I guess the BIGGEST one is goblin personality (so big that I totally forgot that I'm the one responsible for getting that going, with a MORE than inspiring assist from Wayne Reynolds, of course). The way they're presented in Pathfinder, starting with "Burnt Offerings," is very much NOT from my homebrew or from D&D.
Here are the next 10 that come to mind as things that are pretty much ONLY in the Lost Omens campaign setting and did not play a significant role in either my homebrew D&D game or official D&D lore. Note also that I'm limiting this list to things I've had a strong hand in creating, developing, and utilizing in the projects I've been directly associated with—there's SO much more in this category beyond my small contributions.
Anyway, here goes:
1) Lovecraftian monsters/Great Old Ones/Leng (I used them in my homebrew, but their inspiration is not from there—it's instead from Lovecraft himself, who predates my homebrew by half a century).
2) Dominion of the Black (James Sutter got this ball rolling, if I remember correctly, but I've done a lot with it)
3) Monsters based on real-world cryptids (such as the Sandpoint Devil, chupacabra, sasquatch, lake monsters, mothman, hodag, etc.; had a STRONG assist here from Wes Schneider, who is the one who came up with the Sandpoint Devil idea, based on the Jersey devil)
4) The First World (This was created by James Sutter, but I've done a lot to explore and expand it as well)
5) The Forsaken
6) Alchemist class & Gunslinger class
7) Xhamen-Dor and Nhimbaloth
8) Donkey Rats
9) The three-tiered Darklands model (particularly the Vaults of Orv, but this was also inspired by Lovecraft's short story "The Mound")
10) Demons being associated with mortal sins
BONUS: A fair amount of the content of Technology Guide as well, although the BASIC idea of "sci-fi in fantasy" is for sure inspired by D&D's "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks".
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Was Desna inspired by Morhra from the Godzilla movies?
and was the whole Abyssal episode with Aolar inspired by the plot of the first Mothra movie. where Mothra loses her s#*@ and makes a wave of destruction to rescue her two worshipers?
Not originally. Desna's first inspiration was the Greyhawk god Celestian, the god of stars, space, and wanderers. When I first started building my homebrew, I used Greyhawk as a template, using its "DNA" if you will to build my own campaign setting. I was intrigued that Greyhawk had a god of outer space when there was very little stuff in the rest of the game that supported outer space—if something wasn't from the world in the game, it tended to be from other planes or dimensions.
Desna was the third "deity" I named in my setting (the first two being Treerazer and Yamasoth), and the first good deity. While she started out as a re-named and gender-swapped Celestian, she quickly grew into her own thing, bringing luck into the mix. During that time, she was basically an elf with butterfly wings. The idea of her taking on this humanoid form recently and previously having a different form is something that didn't really get into things until years later—I can't remember if that got invented for Pathfinder or was a late development in my homebrew.
The Aolar storyline isn't based on anything in particular specifically. It's just a story I came up with to give Desna some more pathos and personality, building off the Ghlaunder incident a bit and trying to set her up as a classic chaotic good "damn the rules this needs to be fixed for the good of everything" anti-hero who breaks with tradition in order to try to save people without fully thinking through the ramifications or fallout of her actions.
Mothra is a delight, but she doesn't really figure into Desna's original creation at all. It wasn't until the night herald showed up in the second Rise of the Runelords adventure that giant moth stuff started working its way into her storyline.
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how do you decide when amd what to take “artistic liberties” with the folklore you use as inspiration?
like how Tzitzimitl in Nathaul myths wanted to destroy the sun and also helped protect pregnant women. kind of like how you kept Pazuzu protecting fetus’s from Lamusthu out of his hatred tored her.
in general mesoamerican folkloric creatures where while being scary monsters could sometimes help you. to use a Pathfinder example think of every “supernatural” creature god/monster as Nethys being able to help and harm.
like the water dog things whose name i forgot. they where said to be responsible for drownings. but the people they drowned would go to the glorious afterlife ruled over by the water god.
rarely in mesoamerica folklore are Tetols a word which means the supernatural. clearly good or bad.
of course sometimes artistic license can make folkloric creatures more interesting. but the goal should be to make monsters more interesting not less.
It's a combination of choosing what would make for enjoyable game play, what would help to fit in and build world lore, and being respectful to the real-world roots of the folklore. This last one is often the trickiest one—consulting with experts, using sensitivity readers, and just doing our best not to misrepresent or culturally appropriate something.
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are you planning more about Arcadia? i’d love to see a Mesoamerican fantasy setting that has basic cultural sensitivity. one of the most positive portrayals of a Mesoamerican inspired fantasy culture is the freaking Lizardmen from Warhammer Fantasy.
i’d like it if you make the deities more nuanced where every “Teotl” often translated as god but means something more nuanced. more like mana in Polynesian context. or vaugue forces.
like take Tezcatlihpoca the god of slaves and trickery. one of his titles was “He who we are all slaves too” which at a first glance appears to be a stereotypical evil fantasy god. but his “god of slaves” title means he considered enslaved people to be his protectorate and would sometimes intact vengeances on those that mistreat slaves.
sorry for this being rambling and conversational. but Mesoamerican culture is something i’m passionate about.
also on another note why are Zon-Kuthon and Urthgotha considered alliesin the lost omens Gods and Magic book? are they dating?
I'm relatively sure we'll do more about Arcadia at some point.
Zon-Kuthon and Urgathoa are not dating. They're allies because there's some strong thematic crossover between darkness and undeath.
Are there any gods/goddesses associated with parenting / child raising?
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what part of copyrighted/trademarked DnD lore/concepts would you have like to be OGL and be able to be added to Pathfinder.
At this point? Nothing. I'm more interested today in doing new content for Pathfinder rather than bringing forward D&D content.
The OGL is great, but so is having your own identity. Whether that's Pathfinder having content that's not in D&D, or D&D having content that only D&D can have.
I'm finally entering the final book of Rise of the Runelord's with the group I'm GMing (been having a blast the whole time, btw.)
One question that I expect to come up is how the city could have been a thriving metropolis with inhospitable conditions and while being so difficult to reach. How would you go about hinting at such answers without explicitly stating them?
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I'm finally entering the final book of Rise of the Runelord's with the group I'm GMing (been having a blast the whole time, btw.)
One question that I expect to come up is how the city could have been a thriving metropolis with inhospitable conditions and while being so difficult to reach. How would you go about hinting at such answers without explicitly stating them?
That's a result of...
How has preparation for Paizocon gone this year?