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I have just been re-reading my PF Gazateer and it indicates that the in game year will increment along with the real world year, i.e. when the Gazateer was produced in 2008 the in game year was 4708 AR, and now in 2011 the in game year should be 4711 AR.
So presumably some events will occur in game that will progress the game world - and I am curious how much impact that has had so far and how that relates to Adventure Paths and Pathfinder Society.
For example, are the events in certain APs now assumed to have happened? Are any of those events particularly world changing (or at least nation changing)?
Is there even much of a metaplot in Golarion?
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I have just been re-reading my PF Gazateer and it indicates that the in game year will increment along with the real world year, i.e. when the Gazateer was produced in 2008 the in game year was 4708 AR, and now in 2011 the in game year should be 4711 AR.
So presumably some events will occur in game that will progress the game world - and I am curious how much impact that has had so far and how that relates to Adventure Paths and Pathfinder Society.
For example, are the events in certain APs now assumed to have happened? Are any of those events particularly world changing (or at least nation changing)?
Is there even much of a metaplot in Golarion?
Not really, at least not in an intrusive way that I can think of off the top of my head.
All of the adventure-related events are always, no matter the year, considered as being on pause or not having happened yet in the gameworld.
For example, Curse of the Crimson Throne is set in 4708. The current year in Golarion is 4711, but the official stance is that the events of Crimson Throne haven't happened. Yet.
Non-adventure related stuff, like the new details added in the timeline, like that scorpion-bot sighting in 4710(or 4709) probably do fit into the pool of what's considered to have happened.
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All of the adventure-related events are always, no matter the year, considered as being on pause or not having happened yet in the gameworld.
With a few exceptions, such as the Falcon’s Hollow Saga (Hollow's Last Hope -> Crown of the Kobold King -> Revenge of the Kobold King -> Carnival of Tears -> Hungry are the Dead) or the Price of Immortality trilogy (Crypt of the Everflame -> Masks of the Living God -> City of Golden Death), which form mini-APs/campaigns of their own.
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Yep, and the Osirion duology too(Entombed with the Pharaohs, Pact-Stone Pyramid). Hope that goes up to full trilogy someday.
scorpion bot? do tell!
Some scorpion-like mechanical beast, most likely this guy appeared somewhere in Numeria in the past few years, tore up a settlement, grabbed a bunch of people, and crawled off and disappeared somewhere. No one has seen it since.
Just one of those seeds thrown to GMs and players to mess around with. :)
How do the novels fit in? Are they considered canonical?
Like APs and modules, they're considered canon but don't impact the timeline.
Creative Director
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We don't want to self-obsolete any of our adventures or supplements by hard-coding those events into the world's history. As a result, with the exception of events in APs themselves or within multiple-module arcs, none of the events in any of those products (including novels) are assumed to have taken place yet.
This lets you play the adventures in any order you want, but more importantly doesn't turn every adventure into a constantly evolving world-canon overload.
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While metaplot might be cool and all, it's also brought settings low. Remember Forgotten Realms? Wizards nuked it to get RID of the continuity-wank.
Yes, something is lost when you dont have a grand, overarching metaplot told through books and supplements, spanning years of real-world time, culminating in huge changes and world-shattering events. It's great stuff...for a book series. not so much for a campaign setting.
Darksun's metaplot got pretty silly eventually, didnt it? What's more, one of the best settings of recent years, eberron, is explicitly frozen at one specific date, and the world takes off from there how the GM wants it to.
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Thanks for all the replies. So just to confirm, the events the PCs would be involved in in an AP, adventures (bar the Falcon's Hollow stuff), PFS scenarios and novels are not considered to have happened in the timeline and theoretically will not (so they are effectively not canon really).
Stuff in APs that are background has happened in the timeline, yes?
Stuff in sourcebooks such as Orcs of Golarion os something are considered to have happened in the timeline.
Thanks! Its not as bad as I feared, having come from Shadowrun where sourcebooks play off the events that happened in novels that reference adventures it all would have been confusing if I wasn't a completionist.
With Pathfinder I am far from a completionist (I only have the gazateer and some of the players guides to a couple of APs) and so wanted to make sure whilst playing in PFS that I would get confused by something.
As an experiment, Lost Cities of Golarion assumes that Rise of the Runelords has already happened and that
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Creative Director
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Thanks for all the replies. So just to confirm, the events the PCs would be involved in in an AP, adventures (bar the Falcon's Hollow stuff), PFS scenarios and novels are not considered to have happened in the timeline and theoretically will not (so they are effectively not canon really).
Correct. Those events are canon only in the context of those products and books.
Stuff in APs that are background has happened in the timeline, yes?
Correct.
Stuff in sourcebooks such as Orcs of Golarion os something are considered to have happened in the timeline.
Correct.
While metaplot might be cool and all, it's also brought settings low. Remember Forgotten Realms? Wizards nuked it to get RID of the continuity-wank.
Yes, something is lost when you dont have a grand, overarching metaplot told through books and supplements, spanning years of real-world time, culminating in huge changes and world-shattering events. It's great stuff...for a book series. not so much for a campaign setting.
Darksun's metaplot got pretty silly eventually, didnt it? What's more, one of the best settings of recent years, eberron, is explicitly frozen at one specific date, and the world takes off from there how the GM wants it to.
This bears repeating. Over and over and over.
I like the Forgotten Realms, and still use it today. But that's despite the craptastic novels (and metaplot) continually mucking up the setting, not because of it.
We don't want to self-obsolete any of our adventures or supplements by hard-coding those events into the world's history. As a result, with the exception of events in APs themselves or within multiple-module arcs, none of the events in any of those products (including novels) are assumed to have taken place yet.
This lets you play the adventures in any order you want, but more importantly doesn't turn every adventure into a constantly evolving world-canon overload.
I've said it before, but I think this is one of the major selling points of the campaign setting.
My group loves detailed settings (e.g. Forgotten Realms) but hates playing in the shadow of the developer's PCs (e.g. Forgotten Realms). The fact that Golarion has virtually none of this is the best thing to happen to a campaign setting ever.
It's funny.
I dislike execution of metaplots as done in the past, but I don't dislike the idea of a metaplot, in of itself.
As it's been pointed out, they don't put the PC's central to the story. They PCs are relegated to being ancillary characters or crummy 'helpers'.
However, the notion that the PCs could influence events in a meaningful way is pretty attractive. HOW exactly you do that is something I don't have an answer for.
Rather than forbidding Paizo from doing something (through strong negative feedback), I'm inclined to outline the issues with how it's been done in the past... and challenge them to do it better.
Because that's what Pathfinder is all about. Taking what hasn't worked, and trying it in a new way that does work.
:) But I suspect it will be too threatening to too many people to be considered seriously.
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Creative Director
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It should be noted that we DO have metaplots. They're just contained in an Adventure Path or in the Pathfinder Society.
The metaplot of the Pathfinder Society DOES assume advancing of overall plot arcs, but not necessarily the advance of specific scenarios. It's a little weird... but then, continuity for a massive org play campaign is weird from the outset since you're always going on new adventures with different characters, some of whom might have the same supposedly unique treasures or boons that you might have earned in previous adventures. So in the scope of an org play game... "metaplots" are relatively fluid.
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It should be noted that we DO have metaplots. They're just contained in an Adventure Path or in the Pathfinder Society.
The metaplot of the Pathfinder Society DOES assume advancing of overall plot arcs, but not necessarily the advance of specific scenarios. It's a little weird... but then, continuity for a massive org play campaign is weird from the outset since you're always going on new adventures with different characters, some of whom might have the same supposedly unique treasures or boons that you might have earned in previous adventures. So in the scope of an org play game... "metaplots" are relatively fluid.
Actually is there anywhere that the PFS metaplot can be caught up with by someone who hasn't played since season 0? If I want to find out all about the Shadow Lodge happenings where would I go, besides playing an entire seasons worth of scenarios?
--Lucky ShamVrock
The current Season is not over yet and the Shadow Lodge plot will not be resolved til either the June or July scenarios are released. And even then, it will still not be canon for PFS play, otherwise a huge number of scenarios would be rendered unplayable for all the people who have not been through them yet.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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The current Season is not over yet and the Shadow Lodge plot will not be resolved til either the June or July scenarios are released. And even then, it will still not be canon for PFS play, otherwise a huge number of scenarios would be rendered unplayable for all the people who have not been through them yet.
Unless we've accounted for that ;-)
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Hmm? See sometimes a metaplot can be a draw for the Storytellers as opposed to the Power Gamers. How did the end of Season 1 resolve between the Factions? Questions I'd love to know!
Half of the reason I loved the Planescape campaign setting so much other than the weird vistas and strange creatures was the overall metaplot. I bought every single product in the line because there were hidden gems strewn throughout. To date no other product has quite captured my attention or my dollars like that did.
--Vrock'em Sock'em robots
We don't want to self-obsolete any of our adventures or supplements by hard-coding those events into the world's history. As a result, with the exception of events in APs themselves or within multiple-module arcs, none of the events in any of those products (including novels) are assumed to have taken place yet.
This lets you play the adventures in any order you want, but more importantly doesn't turn every adventure into a constantly evolving world-canon overload.
Except:
Xin-Shalast is written up in Lost Cities of Golarion (complete with spoiler on the Back Cover) as if the events of Rise of the Runelords have already happened.|
Creative Director
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We don't want to self-obsolete any of our adventures or supplements by hard-coding those events into the world's history. As a result, with the exception of events in APs themselves or within multiple-module arcs, none of the events in any of those products (including novels) are assumed to have taken place yet.
This lets you play the adventures in any order you want, but more importantly doesn't turn every adventure into a constantly evolving world-canon overload.
Except:
Xin-Shalast is written up in Lost Cities of Golarion (complete with spoiler on the Back Cover) as if the events of Rise of the Runelords have already happened.
Correct. That's also something of an experiment we decided to try out as well. I'm still trying to decide how it all worked out, honestly.
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Hmmm, not sure how I feel about all this, it seems a bit hit and miss actually as to what is metaplot if there are exceptions (e.g. Xin-Shalast).
Out of interest what benefit does Paizo feel they are getting by having an advancing timeline if most AP, PFS and other scenario events are not included? It sort of means that no APs can have any world altering effects because if they do it would break with the advancing timeline.
I wonder whether it may have simply been better to do as WotC did with Eberron and have a static start date for the campaign.
I think it would be nifty is somehow the PFS faction points were tallied and that effected the world.
It would certainly add another incentive to join/participate in the Pathfinder Socieity. ;D
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Creative Director
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Hmmm, not sure how I feel about all this, it seems a bit hit and miss actually as to what is metaplot if there are exceptions (e.g. Xin-Shalast).
Out of interest what benefit does Paizo feel they are getting by having an advancing timeline if most AP, PFS and other scenario events are not included? It sort of means that no APs can have any world altering effects because if they do it would break with the advancing timeline.
I wonder whether it may have simply been better to do as WotC did with Eberron and have a static start date for the campaign.
So, the reason we did what we did with Xin-Shalast is as follows:
We already detailed the HECK out of Xin-Shalast in Pathfinder #6. It's a fully detailed adventure site for very high-level characters. When we decided to do a book called "Lost Cities of Golarion," it seemed silly to not include the lost city that had had the most coverage and the most info about it up to that point—Xin-Shalast. But we didn't want to simply reprint the section about Xin-Shalast from Pathfinder #6, since that'd be dull and a bit TOO spoilery. Also, it would have broken our goal of providing material for all levels of play for the lost cities, since the pre-Runelords version of Xin-Shalast is NOT a safe place for low or even mid level characters.
So we decided to take a look at what Xin-Shalast might be like after it was discovered and the most dangerous foes removed by high-level heroes.
Folks who want the pre-discovery version can still get it via Pathfinder #6, and can still play it out in that adventure path's context... but if they want to use the material in Lost Cities to help build upon a previous campaign that they've played, that works too!
We'll probably NOT do many of these types of experiments in the future beyond possible sequels to adventures.
I like the way the metaplot is being handled by Paizo. I even like the occasional look at how things might change after certain events when they are encapsulated in secondary products (Xin-Shalast, or modules with sequels.) I think Paizo has done this very well.
I can give my players the Core books, Inner Sea Primer, and Inner Sea World Guide and run any AP or module I want published to date. That is the perfect way to handle "metaplot".
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@James Jacobs - Thanks for the explanation, I guess it does make sense in terms of Xin-Shalast.
It seems basically I don't have to worry about Metaplot really - there isn't much of it and it shouldn't affect PFS games I play in. In effect I can keep treating everything in game as if it is still the year in game is 4708 and not miss out on much.
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Creative Director
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In effect I can keep treating everything in game as if it is still the year in game is 4708 and not miss out on much.
Exactly. That's precisely the point.
We advanced the year to 4711 in the Inner Sea World Guide just to keep consistency's sake, but from an in-game perspective as far as adventures are concerned, there's no real difference between 4708, 4711, or any dates in between. Or dates for a while to either side, frankly.