I've wondered for a while about the origins of the races as well as the origin of Golarion itself, but I am not well-versed in the lore of the setting.
Whence came humans, elves, and dwarves? The lizardfolk and the Aztlanti? And what cause the world itself to come into being? The universe? The gods?
Creative Director
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I've wondered for a while about the origins of the races as well as the origin of Golarion itself, but I am not well-versed in the lore of the setting.
Whence came humans, elves, and dwarves? The lizardfolk and the Aztlanti? And what cause the world itself to come into being? The universe? The gods?
Depends on whose origins mythology you ask. We've been deliberately coy and contradictory on this because it's more exciting for that to be mysterious, in my opinion—this also lets each GM decide what works best for his version of Golarion, but ALSO doesn't force us to go with a specific prehistoric genesis at some point later if and when we decide to do something with the topic.
Depends on whose origins mythology you ask. We've been deliberately coy and contradictory on this because it's more exciting for that to be mysterious, in my opinion—this also lets each GM decide what works best for his version of Golarion, but ALSO doesn't force us to go with a specific prehistoric genesis at some point later if and when we decide to do something with the topic.
Those are certainly valid metagame justifications, and I know that you're in the business of creating a flexible and open-ended setting, but it seems awkward to me. Not as a GM; I can obviously change whatever I want.
I mean that from a creative standpoint, it's a strange idea to me to create all of these deities and people and their motivations and behaviors with no view to where they came from or why they believe they exist, what they believe the point of their lives is. A race as ancient as the Elves must have given some thought to teleology.
The implication is that it doesn't matter. It also leaves a continuity-minded GM in the tough position of trying to reverse-engineer an origin story that is in keeping with the behavior of the deities, who presumably have asked the question themselves and have some ideas.
Everything that is being written is not coming from a central, common understanding of origin, but haphazardly. At some point a PC or NPC is going to ask who created the gods, even rhetorically, and I'm going to be stumped. Not because I can't make something up on the spot, but because I can't make something up on the spot that will mesh well with all of the currently-existing lore. It's like trying to build a foundation under a house that is already completed, and on uneven ground, at that.
EDIT: And while I'm here, I'd just like to thank you personally for being so involved in the community. It means a lot and it's very cool.
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Creative Director
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Those are certainly valid metagame justifications, and I know that you're in the business of creating a flexible and open-ended setting, but it seems awkward to me. Not as a GM; I can obviously change whatever I want.
I mean that from a creative standpoint, it's a strange idea to me to create all of these deities and people and their motivations and behaviors with no view to where they came from or why they believe they exist, what they believe the point of their lives is. A race as ancient as the Elves must have given some thought to teleology.
The implication is that it doesn't matter. It also leaves a continuity-minded GM in the tough position of trying to reverse-engineer an origin story that is in keeping with the behavior of the deities, who presumably have asked the question themselves and have some ideas.
Everything that is being written is not coming from a central, common understanding of origin, but haphazardly. At some point a PC or NPC is going to ask who created the gods, even rhetorically, and I'm going to be stumped. Not because I can't make something up on the spot, but because I can't make something up on the spot that will mesh well with all of the currently-existing lore. It's like trying to build a foundation under a house that is already completed, and on uneven ground, at that.
EDIT: And while I'm here, I'd just like to thank you personally for being so involved in the community. It means a lot and it's very cool.
NOTE: Us not putting in print the origin information is NOT the same as saying "I don't know."
In fact, I do have a pretty solid idea about the origin of all that, and at some point in the future if it makes sense for an Adventure Path or something, I'll relinquish that information. For now, though I'm not willing to spill those beans. It's in the same category as "what killed Aroden?" Answers to which I have a pretty good idea what they are, and thus can engineer our products to make sense internally with hints and implications, but not to which I have any plans on revealing anytime soon. If ever.
We simply Can NOT put all of our continuity out at once, so a continuity-minded GM is going to have to be comfortable with the fact that he doesn't know everything about the world. If the PCs ask, then phrase the responses in the form of an NPC's response. That way, in the relatively unlikely event that we DO reveal that information, if it's different than what that NPC said, you can say to the PCs, "That guy just guessed."
Ah, my mistake. I thought you were saying that your writers didn't have a common foundation upon which to build.
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Creative Director
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Ah, my mistake. I thought you were saying that your writers didn't have a common foundation upon which to build.
They do.
We provide detailed outlines of our books to our authors, and when/if they're working on something that touches a topic we haven't talked much about in print, we communicate with them about that topic.
More often, though, if a section of a book requires extensive knowledge about a topic on which we haven't said much, we just write that section ourselves or heavily revise what the author did in their first draft.