It's snowing today in Washington State, and I was wondering...are there seasons in Golarion? I don't know if this has been discussed in a Companion or in the campaign setting, I was just wondering.
The obvious answer might be, "Why wouldn't there be?" But be assured I do have an explanation. On Earth, our seasons are determined primarily by the 23.4 degree axial tilt of our planet (without a tilt, seasons would remain constant). However, as far as I know, there is no mention of a tilt on Golarion. As most of the solar system around Golarion is mapped out already, I would think that this should be addressed.
If, indeed, there is a tilt, and there are seasons, what does that imply? How severe are they? Does it snow in Osirion? What about the Mwangi Expanse? Do the River Kingdoms dry out in the summer?
So...does Golarion experience seasons? Does it have a tilt? And if so, how severe?
It's snowing today in Washington State, and I was wondering...are there seasons in Golarion?
I believe the official Paizo line on this is that if not explicitly stated somewhere, Golarion works like Earth in terms of planetary size, gravity, length of the solar year and lunar month, axial tilt (and thus seasons and placement of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn), etc. etc. simply because the game designers aren't astrophysicists, geochemists or the like and don't want to be.
Keep in mind that one of the explicitly indicated differences is the Inner Sea Region map itself, which may provide some hints to your questions: Does it snow in Osirion? If there are tall enough mountains it will snow at high altitudes.
I believe small bits of canon are, or are about to become, self-contradictory. I think months were once indicated as being uniformly 30 days in length but that will change with the publication of the Inner Sea setting book next year. I believe Golarion does have leap years but only once every 8 years, which means it's going to be out of sync with the Earth calendar at some point in the near future.
Personally I'm fine with a game world's calendar being out of sync with Earths but in that case I'd make it either a nice even 360 days to facilitate 30-day months, or 364 days to give exactly 52 7-day weeks a year and make the moon's phases that much more predictable. Golarion does neither.
The original materials that we got on Golarion (read: the Rise of the Runelords player's guide) did indeed state that there were 30 days in a month, but that has been retconned so that there are 365 days a year and the 31 day months will be as ours is (with a leap year n' all). Pretty sure this will get cleared up in the upcoming World Guide: The Inner Sea, though. :)
The original materials that we got on Golarion (read: the Rise of the Runelords player's guide) did indeed state that there were 30 days in a month, but that has been retconned so that there are 365 days a year and the 31 day months will be as ours is (with a leap year n' all). Pretty sure this will get cleared up in the upcoming World Guide: The Inner Sea, though. :)
But the leap year is every eighth year instead of every fourth, unless that's changed, correct?
It's snowing today in Washington State, and I was wondering...are there seasons in Golarion? I don't know if this has been discussed in a Companion or in the campaign setting, I was just wondering.
The obvious answer might be, "Why wouldn't there be?" But be assured I do have an explanation. On Earth, our seasons are determined primarily by the 23.4 degree axial tilt of our planet (without a tilt, seasons would remain constant). However, as far as I know, there is no mention of a tilt on Golarion. As most of the solar system around Golarion is mapped out already, I would think that this should be addressed.
If, indeed, there is a tilt, and there are seasons, what does that imply? How severe are they? Does it snow in Osirion? What about the Mwangi Expanse? Do the River Kingdoms dry out in the summer?
So...does Golarion experience seasons? Does it have a tilt? And if so, how severe?
Mr. Jacobs recently wrote on this forums that Golarions size, climatic zones, axial tilt, distance to sun etc. are all essentially the same as with earth.
See this thread:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/campaignSet ting/general/scaleOfWorldMap
There was fairly developed info in the old Pathfinder Campaign soursebook :)