There are not enough kingdoms using magic as tech on a wide and infrastructure centric scale.
I haven't found the Spainish Dons/Aztec/New World done well.
The "Always CE" races get tiring.
I can't remember if I have posted in this or not but:
1) While I think they have done a good job on elves, gnomes, and goblinoids, other races feel like more an afterthought. There isn't much really unique or interesting about Golarion's kobolds, orcs, gnolls, or dwarves
2) The always evil tendency of some mortal races. For that matter, how hardwired alignment is into the rules system/setting.
3) Lack of support/variety in non-evil outsiders
4) How the afterlife works
Mostly I like what they have done with the setting, including incorporation of parallels to earth cultures and being relatively humanocentric.
They have done more for Dwarves and Orcs then they have for Halflings.
I agree about the lack of support/variety of non-evil outsiders.
Not big on any humanoid race (almost)always being evil myself though when it comes to non-native outsiders, dragons, and some other monsters I like the 99% set alignment.
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I actually think Paizo did more with halflings than most settings I've seen. That's not to say that they couldn't be more developed, but being an oppressed underclass is better than "also, there's hobbits." At least they found an interesting way to explain in-setting why so many halfling adventurers are rogues.
yeah I like the halflings.
I mostly don't like the orcs and dwarves because I feel so little has been done with them. Compared to the other races, they feel generic with no particular novelty to them to distinguish them from Dwarves and Orcs in other campaign settings.
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I'd dearly love to see more variety and nuance for orcs beyond what they've been so far, for a long list of reasons. Something other than "Always Chaotic Evil, Again".
Dwarves at least have the Ouat, but even in the dwarf book they've yet to be explored. So far the only thing we know for certain is that they have Osirion roots and they shave.
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Dwarves at least have the Ouat, but even in the dwarf book they've yet to be explored.
After reading there was a Dwarven 'Ouat caste,' I didn't stop laughing long enough to take them seriously.
But yeah, they sound way interesting, like the Ptahmenu dwarves of the Hamunaptra setting (worshippers of the dwarven god of artifice).
I'm also intrigued by what the elves that live in the Mwangi expanse would be like, as well as the Mordant Spire elves.
One of the downsides of having played A/D&D/d20 since the '70s is that I'm a bit bored with the traditional dwarves and elves, which makes unique spins on them (like in Dark Sun, or Eberron, or Hamunaptra) kinda fun. I totally get that this isn't a problem with a Golarion, but a problem with me being an old grognard who is always looking for something new and wriggly under the same old rock.
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That's part of what makes me sad about those dwarves. Last I heard, it was the potentially punny name alone that was discouraging their further use. If so, it's a real letdown because those were honestly the most interesting dwarves in the setting thus far. Heck, even if it means giving them a completely different name, I'd love to see the dust brushed off those folks.
And yeah, having just read and played D&D material since the 90's(and having read the 70's/80's material at the same time), I'm in no hurry to "go back to the roots" of many of these races either, especially when many of those "good old days" were something I really wanted to leave behind even then. (paladins being human-only was a bizarre concept for me even back then)
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What bugs me about the setting? That Elves exist
Good point. Never was a bad word. Sublimation would ever-so-slightly mitigate the effect.
Instead of being buried under 7000 ft. of snow after 1400 years of endless winter, Irrisen would probably only be buried under 5000-6000 ft. of snow. :)
(The weight of the snow compacting the lower levels would also take off some height from that number, but not actually do anything towards making the country more livable.)
Would it also act as a moisture trap? I.e., would the surrounding areas be wetter or drier as a result?
Not to mention that the extremely cold air does not stop at the borders. The entirety of Avistan would be chilled by the extreme temperatures of Irrisen - all the way down through the Cheliax-Gault line.
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Irrisen's extremely cold air actually does stop at the borders - the peasantry who live on the Gullik River on the eastern border can look across the river and watch the normal progression of the seasons over at the Realm of the Mammoth Lords.
Actually expanding the effect of Irrisen's weather requires expanding the borders through conquest. One of the old queens actually did that for about four years before the Mammoth Lords pushed her back to Irrisen's original border. The eternal winter effect immediately covered the newly conquered lands, and was then driven back along with the winter witches.
Irrisen's weather operates in complete disregard to the laws of the natural world.
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Lovecraft, Lovecraft, Lovecraft.
GM: You see [a monster], make a Will save."
Me: "Is it a Su ability"?
GM: "Nope."
Me: "... Ex?"
GM: "Nope, you just can't handle seeing tentacle face over there, the fact that something like that exists is too much for you simple human brain."
Me: "So the hordes of the dead rising and unseelie fey creatures trying to steal our skin we already faced had no effect, but an overgrown jellyfish from space is just too much? Okay then."
I mean, Call of CtuSpaceSquidlu is probably a pretty fun game for people who are interested in a horror game that they are all but destined to lose because their poor human character's tiny brains will eventually shatter because they're forced to view something 'other', but that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me, and I hate that it randomly pops up in the middle of published adventures.
"Tentacles, all hope is lost!" is bad enough, but the man himself was an extremely racist, homophobic bastard on top of it.
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Clearly, there's an eternal winter spell which consumes vast quantities of snow as a material component. :PIrrisen would probably only be buried under 5000-6000 ft. of snow. :)
(The weight of the snow compacting the lower levels would also take off some height from that number, but not actually do anything towards making the country more livable.)
that was my take on it. It's clearly recycling the snow that's already there.
==Aelryinth
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Lovecraft, Lovecraft, Lovecraft.
GM: You see [a monster], make a Will save."
Me: "Is it a Su ability"?
GM: "Nope."
Me: "... Ex?"
GM: "Nope, you just can't handle seeing tentacle face over there, the fact that something like that exists is too much for you simple human brain."
Me: "So the hordes of the dead rising and unseelie fey creatures trying to steal our skin we already faced had no effect, but an overgrown jellyfish from space is just too much? Okay then."I mean, Call of CtuSpaceSquidlu is probably a pretty fun game for people who are interested in a horror game that they are all but destined to lose because their poor human character's tiny brains will eventually shatter because they're forced to view something 'other', but that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me, and I hate that it randomly pops up in the middle of published adventures.
"Tentacles, all hope is lost!" is bad enough, but the man himself was an extremely racist, homophobic bastard on top of it.
I had a player join my game a few months ago (filling in for a missing player) who was playing a dwarf. The first thing he saw when he went down in a dungeon was a festrog (an undead) tearing out and eating the guts of another festrog that had been slain in a previous battle. He commented about how if it were Call of Cthulhu he'd have to make a sanity check for that. So I flipped to my rules from GameMastery Guide on sanity and madness and had him make a save, since he wanted to. His dwarf developed a phobia of being eaten. He was quite happy with his new phobia.
You know, the assumption that only tentacled monstrosities require sanity checks is a false one.
I don't have any complaints I can make about Golarion off the top of my head. I actually like the Golarion pantheon better than the Faerunian pantheon.
I suppose I would prefer if carrionstorms were non-hostile to worshipers of Kabriri and Zura, and other fiends associated with undead, in addition to being non-hostile to worshipers of Urgathoa.
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You know, the assumption that only tentacled monstrosities require sanity checks is a false one.
I'm referencing a certain AP* where the need to make sanity checks doesn't pop up until you end up in HP Fauxcraftsmouth halfway or more though the AP. After already facing all manner of horrors throughout.
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Lovecraft, Lovecraft, Lovecraft.
GM: You see [a monster], make a Will save."
Me: "Is it a Su ability"?
GM: "Nope."
Me: "... Ex?"
GM: "Nope, you just can't handle seeing tentacle face over there, the fact that something like that exists is too much for you simple human brain."
Me: "So the hordes of the dead rising and unseelie fey creatures trying to steal our skin we already faced had no effect, but an overgrown jellyfish from space is just too much? Okay then."I mean, Call of CtuSpaceSquidlu is probably a pretty fun game for people who are interested in a horror game that they are all but destined to lose because their poor human character's tiny brains will eventually shatter because they're forced to view something 'other', but that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me, and I hate that it randomly pops up in the middle of published adventures.
"Tentacles, all hope is lost!" is bad enough, but the man himself was an extremely racist, homophobic bastard on top of it.
I don't get it.
What part of it can I explain better?
Where is the Lovecraft beyond one book of one AP and some random stat blocks in random monster books.
I get that SAN systems apparently are not your thing but I haven't seen them in PF. By the same token, PF is nothing like CoC because in CoC there are reasonable assumptions about the world and natural order. In PF magic has made everything strange and random already. Energy and matter are not conserved, scholarly progress isn't a thing, there are no stable assumptions because everyone knows that reality might crap out some random demon/thing from another plane at any point. If gravity turns around, well duh, it's a seventh level wizard spell, no big deal, won't last more than a couple minutes, totally normal.
Going further, the Lovecraftian style of horror is much harder in PF because it's an explicitly not nihilistic universe, reality itself kind of loves the PCs and has made them more than mortal men.
Aside from it popping up in modules/APs, my big issue is that the entire human civilization in Golarion basically stems from Aboleth (tentacles!) influence, they rose humans up from barbarism, they created Azlant, they are the ones who called down the starstone, ect ...
Even Rovagug is just an overgrown Aboleth, IIRC ...
I don't like how woven in to the origins of the setting it is.
I dunno, I love it when humans are pathetic.
Because you know, they kinda are like that in real life.
It's why I prefer anything BUT a human when I play D&D or Pathfinder.
See, I'm not seeing that much connection between Lovecraft/Call of Cthulhu and Pathfinder having some cuttlefish-monsters acting to move the destiny of the PC races.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2i5sr?Aboleths-and-the-Cthulhu-Mythos
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Lovecraft, Lovecraft, Lovecraft.
"Tentacles, all hope is lost!" is bad enough, but the man himself was an extremely racist, homophobic bastard on top of it.
I hate to ask this, but was H.P.Lovecraft "racist" or "homophobic" by the standards of his time?
Aside from it popping up in modules/APs, my big issue is that the entire human civilization in Golarion basically stems from Aboleth (tentacles!) influence, they rose humans up from barbarism, they created Azlant, they are the ones who called down the starstone, ect ...
Even Rovagug is just an overgrown Aboleth, IIRC ...
I don't like how woven in to the origins of the setting it is.
IIRC, Rovagug is connected to the daemons.
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I hate to ask this, but was H.P.Lovecraft "racist" or "homophobic" by the standards of his time?Lovecraft, Lovecraft, Lovecraft.
"Tentacles, all hope is lost!" is bad enough, but the man himself was an extremely racist, homophobic bastard on top of it.
Yes, I believe that he'd be considered racist, even for his time. You can google "Lovecraft racist poem" [warning for racist language] if you want to get a bit of insight on how he thought.
IIRC, Rovagug is connected to the daemons.Even Rovagug is just an overgrown Aboleth, IIRC ...
I don't like how woven in to the origins of the setting it is.
I can't be certain, but i was under the impression that Rovagug is an ascended Qlipphoth...
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Rovagug IS an ascended Qlippoth.
Granted the Qlippoth have a somewhat lovecraftian vibe, but it's really hard to find much in horror that doesn't draw from H.P. Lovecraft. I don't see it as too much of a problem. As others point out, even Conan fought Lovecraftian monsters, so there is a long history of their use in fantasy.
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Lovecraftian influence goes beyond just sanity and tentacles. It's sort of a troupe in itself, referring to "unknown/unknowable" horrors, the protagonist(s) really not having an impact on the world even though they may be doing some really epic things, (little really changes), the concept of al of your actions and endeavors are actually what the big bad was banking on you (or someone, it doesn't matter who) doing anyway and all part of the bigger plan, strange cults, a lot of fish and under water/sea related monsters, and a strongly implied sense that a lot of the true history of the world (or what came before it) is simply something that will never be known or revealed. Lovecraft was specifically noted as a key element in the design of Golarion, and basically all of these elements have strong presences throughout, from no one really knowing anything about the world before, (Azlanti or even concepts like the 1st World, the Darklands, the place the Orcs and Dwarves lived in before the quest for sky, etc. . .
Metaplot-wise, (and understandable, as well as not really being something only Paizo is guilty of), there are no real changes after the AP's, not in the world. The Whispering Tyrant does not wake up, you do not have the option to finally close the Worldwound, free Irrisen for good by destroying the Winter Witches, their mother, and finally breaking the curse. The fact that pretty much all organization in the game walk in the grey lines, and are host to corruption, morality isn't a huge part of the game, (sort of, I guess it's less about good vs evil and more focused on grey vs grey) is extremely Lovecraftian. The idea that something is fundamentally broken in the world, so prophecy is off/wrong, but could be true(ish), the whole aberration creation/Azlanti prehistory, that most of the deities are uncaring/uninterested/unresponsive to events in the world most of the time, that the world is filled with strange things that are not understood, (such as the test of the starstone), and even the prevalence of the Dark Tapestry (Aberrant Sorcerer, Oracle of the Dark Tapestry, Fleshcrafting magic, the Plane itself, etc. . .)
There's also the idea that regardless of their individual morality, most of the time the characters are assumed to be working for an unknowable, extremely morally questionable (read evil without being smitable) world-spanning organization (read secret society), whose propaganda is to discover the hidden mysteries of the world, but who in reality tramples all over religious and cultural values, goes out of it's way to steal away and lock up all of the important findings so only the highest of the high inner circle can ever truly understand it, and is well know for their methods of breaking the law, murder, theft (particularly of religious and culturally valuable historical objects and information, (they have actively stolen away some of the holiest relics and person property of both Sarenrae and Iomedae and kept them from their rightful champions, just because), and gone out of their way to keep the world in the dark and encourage political instability for personal gain), grave-robbing, treason, and basically most of the most vile crimes that most communities care about, while penning themselves as the heroes and other organizations that are at least more honest and straight forward with their goals, (the aspis consortium), or even more altruistic as the bad guys.
Not saying it's bad, but its clearly there.
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Yes, I believe that he'd be considered racist, even for his time. You can google "Lovecraft racist poem" [warning for racist language] if you want to get a bit of insight on how he thought.I hate to ask this, but was H.P.Lovecraft "racist" or "homophobic" by the standards of his time?Lovecraft, Lovecraft, Lovecraft.
"Tentacles, all hope is lost!" is bad enough, but the man himself was an extremely racist, homophobic bastard on top of it.
Holy Crap! You can even quote/link the title.
No, he doesn't even deserve a pass for being merely a "creature of his time."
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So, if we are saying that we can't have influence from an author because they were racist or homophobic, then prepare for the repercussions.
The Norse and Germanic tribes were quite racist. There goes a good number of fey and a few cool outsiders...
Japan isolated itself, mostly from a "Eww, westerners," standpoint, which is fairly racist. There goes almost all the oriental influences.
In the middle ages in Europe and a few places in the middle-east, you could be burned at the stake for being a homosexual. There goes... Well, everything else.
Racism and homophobia are everywhere, so that argument isn't entirely valid.
I think your problem is more "oh, look, more tentacles," which even as a Lovecraft fan, I admit I get sometimes with Paizo's stuff, especially if it's not in the context of horror or anything like that.
Fair or not, I take a different view of racism from someone who lived in the same century as me in the same country. But, you're correct, I don't really care for the subject matter of his work; it holds little appeal for me so his social views are just a sort of rancid icing on the cake.
For me, personally, I never read Lovecraft (at the persistent, unending insistence of some friends that I would love it in spite of having never much cared for the horror genre) until I was in my early 20s. Before reading I did a little research on him, which is how I stumbled across his social views. I don't know if I would have picked up on it as much otherwise, but it was hard for me to not feel like a good bit of his beliefs had a a strong influence on his work.
But I understand that many people take a "venerate the art, not the artist" approach or may be unaware of his views in these areas, and I'm not at all trying to claim that anyone who does love/venerate his work harbors any of the same beliefs.
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Lovecraft was racist for his time, more importantly, he is racist in ours. On the other hand, such views can also be found in Conan and if I recall, about half of the books listed as the influences for D&D, also so much misogyny etc.
Going back to Pathfinder, the world is not Lovecraftian. The lack of metaplot is not the same as a lack of agency on the players part. Even though the Dark Tapestry is meant to be creepy etc, it only is if the players want it to be. Otherwise it's some abilities/powers that are balanced against most others.
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I think your problem is more "oh, look, more tentacles," which even as a Lovecraft fan, I admit I get sometimes with Paizo's stuff, especially if it's not in the context of horror or anything like that.
Not even porn? What is the point then?
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Mostly the kitchen sink - a country for each theme - approach, that makes the various regions seem disconnected, with clear borders between the orc and monster federation, the gothic horror people, the high tech robots and the medieval Russians and so on...
It's gets a bit better further south, where there are actual relationships detailed between the various - clearly political - entities, including a history and all that.
This extends to throwing in the Cthulhu Mythos and other such inclusions, it makes it all feel inorganic and unfocused, a patchwork without a real history and net of relationships to hold it all together.
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Fair or not, I take a different view of racism from someone who lived in the same century as me in the same country. But, you're correct, I don't really care for the subject matter of his work; it holds little appeal for me so his social views are just a sort of rancid icing on the cake.
For me, personally, I never read Lovecraft (at the persistent, unending insistence of some friends that I would love it in spite of having never much cared for the horror genre) until I was in my early 20s. Before reading I did a little research on him, which is how I stumbled across his social views. I don't know if I would have picked up on it as much otherwise, but it was hard for me to not feel like a good bit of his beliefs had a a strong influence on his work.
But I understand that many people take a "venerate the art, not the artist" approach or may be unaware of his views in these areas, and I'm not at all trying to claim that anyone who does love/venerate his work harbors any of the same beliefs.
Lovecraft's racism was extreme even for his time not just because he thought various ethnic heritages made people inferior (which, sadly, was fairly common), but because he seems to have been horrified by their very existence, and revolted by their physical differences.
That said, while I'm not a fan of his work (dude used up his adjective allowance in, like, the first thing he wrote, few of the climaxes of his works justify the dread he's been trying to build, and his style in general is amateurish and clumsy, IMO), I think the enduring popularity of his work among other writers -- and game designers -- stems from the possibly unparalleled world-building toolbox he put together:
--the idea that there have been inhuman influences on the development of human culture, and that those influences may not have been benevolent
--conscious archaism
--mixing real archaeology with fiction to create an alternate history that seems plausible (see Elizabeth Hand for an example of a contemporary author who does this amazingly well)
--the idea that encounters with creatures that are alien enough threatens human sanity (this idea is certainly present in various religions' forms of mysticism, e.g. a Jewish parable about four sages who ascended through the realms of heaven and gazed upon the merkavah, the divine chariot -- one died, one became an apostate, one went mad and only one retained his sanity and his faith; Lovecraft expanded this idea and took it in a more sinister direction)
--the whole "forbidden knowledge" trope
--the idea that the past, rather than being a paradise of innocence, was more horrifying than the present (and the idea that the horrific past exists everywhere -- for Americans, looking with a bit of envy at the long and mysterious history of much of Europe, the idea that we can have our own archaic scary cults hidden under all our new construction is a seductive one; it puts the ancient horror trope right in our backyard, so to speak)
--the idea that there are gods, and they're at best indifferent and at worst actively hostile to humanity
--the use of intelligent, educated, rational protagonists whose rationality is worn away over the course of the story (making the horror easier to believe because it has convinced someone who raises the same objections that, presumably, the reader would)
--etc.
Even if you find the figure of Cthulhu more comic than scary (which I do), and reading anything by Lovecraft makes you lunge for your red pen, that's a powerful suite of tools for eerie world-building.
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Lovecraft's racism was extreme even for his time not just because he thought various ethnic heritages made people inferior (which, sadly, was fairly common), but because he seems to have been horrified by their very existence, and revolted by their physical differences.
It's really only racist through the modern lens, and to say that he was even more racist than the majority of his peers at the time is a pretty big stretch. Darwin's theory (which is pretty full of ethnically inferiority of all but most white people) is going strong at the time, and that is a prevalent scientific truth for the time.
At the same time, what little Lovecraft I have read does also tend to show negro individuals as playing to some of their ethnic strengths at times, both in their ability to survive common ailments because they where more acclimated to living that way, physical strength, and sometimes the ability to scratch the surface because of a sort of occult superstition.
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Lovecraft's revulsion toward the physical differences of non-Caucasians isn't just racist through a modern lens--it's uncommon even in the writings of his contemporaries. There's a big difference between seeing someone as inferior and being horrified that they exist at all.
It might had been be result of his alleged intense xenophobia (and handful of other phobias as well).
Creative Director
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There is, of course, a LOT more to Lovecraft than his racism, which was an unfortunate and blatant character flaw that certainly can't be completely explained away as it just being a sign of the times he lived in. For what it's worth, his views were softening slowly but surely as he grew older.
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I dare anyone to try and read Medusa's Coil with a straight face.
I have to say, as a xenophile(not that kind*), I've always disliked the severity of Lovecraft's impact as far as reducing the unknown and alien to something to be feared and reviled. And then you get down to just how many of his themes revolve around OH GOD interracial relationships. :O
Unfortunately, while later writers ditched the worst elements that stuck out, a lot of the baggage still hangs around. How often do we still see examples of "mongrel" and "degenerate" races/ethnicities turn up in that same vein even now?
(to be honest, I also really dislike how often Lovecraftian themes hijack sea life, cephalopods in particular. One of the things I've loved about Cerulean Seas is that most of it is free of that sort of appropriation)
*Haha I lied. srsly NASA what's the holdup?
It's really only racist through the modern lens, and to say that he was even more racist than the majority of his peers at the time is a pretty big stretch. Darwin's theory (which is pretty full of ethnically inferiority of all but most white people) is going strong at the time, and that is a prevalent scientific truth for the time.At the same time, what little Lovecraft I have read does also tend to show negro individuals as playing to some of their ethnic strengths at times, both in their ability to survive common ailments because they where more acclimated to living that way, physical strength, and sometimes the ability to scratch the surface because of a sort of occult superstition.
Darwin's Theory has nothing to do with racism. Just evolution by selection in nature. Those more fit for an environment are more likely to survive to have descendants and pass on their characteristics. Social Darwinism does have to do with racism / cultural bigotry. Social Darwinism was the application of Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest to human beings and human societies. Don't blame Darwin for the popularization and misuse of his theory.
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Page - 138-139
Darwin on monkeys and Negroes-
“For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descended from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions”
Page - 642-643
Darwin, on the future of Negroes and Australian Aborigines-
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla”
Please actually fact check yourself. While Charles Darwin himself both donated to various charities to aid poorer countries/cultures around the world and also supported missionaries whose goals where to teach and aid those less advanced countries, his writing clearly show that he viewed certain groups of people as less than human, ethnically inferior, and in the worlds best interests to be eventually exterminated. He was not racist in the sense that he hated people for the color of their skin, their nationality, (well to a point, he also clearly believed that white Europeans where the pinnacle of evolutionary and cultural achievement at their time), but he did believe that those individuals where inferior based on the circumstances of their birth, and in a way set this as the standard scientific approach.
** spoiler omitted **
Please actually fact check yourself. While Charles Darwin himself both donated to various charities to aid poorer countries/cultures around the world and also supported missionaries whose goals where to teach and aid those less advanced countries, his writing clearly show that he viewed certain groups of people as less than human, ethnically inferior, and in the worlds best interests to be eventually exterminated. He was not racist in the sense that he hated people for the color of their skin, their nationality, (well to a point, he also clearly believed that white Europeans where the pinnacle of evolutionary and cultural achievement at their time), but he did believe that those individuals where inferior based on the circumstances of their birth, and in a way set this as the standard scientific...
Interesting. I'm not acquainted with "The Decent of Man", only "On the Origin of Species". If he had only been a cultural bigot he would have been ahead of his time. I may have to give it a read. I'm curious to see why he placed some groups of "inferiors" below others. The ruthlessness of nature / natural selection I suppose. Kind of depressing too, but thanks for the information.
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The Earth wallpaper thing. Just silly and kills the verisimilitude for me. There is an analog of most major historical cultures....only here they exist at the same time. I also don't find the gods engaging on any level. I love Paizo and the Pathfinder game, but the setting is something I don't care for.
I get this, but to a certain extent, if you use Earth-analogues - and you have to to play standard PF, since it's really an imaginary medieval/early modern setting, at least culturally, it's difficult to construct a world that doesn't share significant geographic similarities and end up with a lot of the same results.
The clothing, foodstuffs, technology, cultural isolation/cosmopolitanism, and underlying mythos (that always exists in tension with the RW - we enjoy things, or don't - like Osirion - based on the ways that it is or isn't the RW) all demand certain similarities.
Europe developed the way it did in part because of geography. Asia also. Varying that in significant ways has significant effects. Tian Xia is more isolated than RW Asia, and that makes sense in how it's depicted. One thing that's clearly not going to happen in Golarion is the Eurasian plague and nomad invasion corridor, even with that festering region over in Iobaria and the steppes of Casmaron, because part of that engine is China. But, if, for example, you place "Japan" next to "Spain" things go out of whack. I think a more fantastic and less RW myth-based planet is a great idea, but sometimes, one wants to be a knight, a samurai, or a yogini, and not having that choice is a downer.
Hence, that's more of a 3pp bag.
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Interesting. I'm not acquainted with "The Decent of Man", only "On the Origin of Species". If he had only been a cultural bigot he would have been ahead of his time. I may have to give it a read. I'm curious to see why he placed some groups of "inferiors" below others. The ruthlessness of nature / natural selection I suppose. Kind of depressing too, but thanks for the information.
First, I apologize. I hadn't meant that "please fact check yourself" to come off that way. More along the lines, of "please check the facts".
The Origin of the Species isn't free from it either, but to be honest, that was not unheard of concept in that time. He was against slavery and very much a humanist, and like I said, he did devote a lot of resources it's said to helping people all over the world, but this is also a period when science and psychology hold that both men and women have different brains and humors, and that even more so the European man and the African man, and the colonial American, also have completely different brains and other organs. The lens that shows one group of people as superior is fairly common, with Europe looking down on it's partially civilized colonies, who in turn all look down at the Irish for murdering/eating their own children, who in turn look down on the Asians for being strange and extremely different, who in turn look down on the Africans and Australians for being savage, as ethnically and culturally inferior stock. European, that is to say white people where at the top of technological, scientific, and cultural advancement because something about their genetics had set them above everyone else, and they had had the luck to utilize it. So, with that in mind, it's not really very accurate to say that Lovecraft was a racist, when that was the way that things where understood at the time. Not in the sense of he hated blacks, Mexicans, or whatever just because.
That being said, we should probably get back on topic. :)
Interesting. I'm not acquainted with "The Decent of Man", only "On the Origin of Species". If he had only been a cultural bigot he would have been ahead of his time. I may have to give it a read. I'm curious to see why he placed some groups of "inferiors" below others. The ruthlessness of nature / natural selection I suppose. Kind of depressing too, but thanks for the information.
First, I apologize. I hadn't meant that "please fact check yourself" to come off that way. More along the lines, of "please check the facts".
The Origin of the Species isn't free from it either, but to be honest, that was not unheard of concept in that time. He was against slavery and very much a humanist, and like I said, he did devote a lot of resources it's said to helping people all over the world, but this is also a period when science and psychology hold that both men and women have different brains and humors, and that even more so the European man and the African man, and the colonial American, also have completely different brains and other organs. The lens that shows one group of people as superior is fairly common, with Europe looking down on it's partially civilized colonies, who in turn all look down at the Irish for murdering/eating their own children, who in turn look down on the Asians for being strange and extremely different, who in turn look down on the Africans and Australians for being savage, as ethnically and culturally inferior stock. European, that is to say white people where at the top of technological, scientific, and cultural advancement because something about their genetics had set them above everyone else, and they had had the luck to utilize it. So, with that in mind, it's not really very accurate to say that Lovecraft was a racist, when that was the way that things where understood at the time. Not in the sense of he hated blacks, Mexicans, or whatever just because.
That being said, we should probably get back on topic. :)
I didn't take it "that way". Nothing ever comes across quite the way it's meant on message boards. Learning, although it's a cliché, is life long and I appreciate the information. The late 19th century isn't my period, but Darwin's seminal book, On the Origin of Species, is hard to miss. I'll have to look into the Descent of Man now, my curiosity is working overtime. Sometimes I can read right past attitudes that reflect the time because they don't really surprise me. I'm reasonably informed on most (I teach history) periods and am used to differing cultural values and beliefs.
And yeah, the topic is waiting... :)