I've been thinking of running an XCrawl campaign, but instead of using the alternate, magical version of Earth presented in XCrawl I've been thinking of setting in a future version of Golarion. So I'd like to figure out what might happen in Golarion's future, from perhaps 300 to 600 years in the future.
What nations will thrive and which will decline? What nations might cease to exist and what new nations might replace them? What cultural changes will the various peoples undergo? Since I'm assuming that the future of Golarion will lead to something resembling modern earth in technology as well as culture how do these technological advances come about and how do they effect the course of history? How does XCrawl fit into this?
So no one has any speculation of how Golarion's future might play out?
I have not seen XCrawl, what's it like?
Basically it's set in a dystopian, fantasy version of the real world with the various D&D races and monsters. The XCrawl itself is a sort of death sport that is modeled after dungeon crawls. That's not very important, though, since I expect XCrawl to not be as important a part of the setting as in the original XCrawl setting.
I have not seen XCrawl, what's it like?
Take your standard dungeon crawl. But instead of your party of four being run through a maze created by a mad wizard to house his experiments, the dungeon was created as part of a long-running gladiatorial TV game show broadcast worldwide and your party is one of several teams trying to beat each other to the prize.
Throw in several Blood Bowl-inspired mechanics about notoriety, cheerleaders, celebrity endorsements, etc... and set the whole thing in a fantasy America ruled by a decadent Roman Empire that never fell and you've got X-Crawl.
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What nations will thrive and which will decline?
- Rahadoum in my thoughts would fail. Cheliax would expand again. Taldor would have a costly expanse to the river kingdoms and take the southern bit. When Razmir finally dies, or becomes a lich, this country will fall.
Numeria I think would be a leading country.
Nex would be very interesting if they expand west and take over the Mwagi expanse. Same with Geb.
Nidal and Isgar would be swallowed back up either by Cheliax or Belkzen.
Where to run:
- Absalom would be the perfect place to start. They would run thru all the old siege towers for nostalgic feel.
- Nex or Geb.
Jalmeray would be a fantastic set up.
Numeria would be fun as well.
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The future of Golarion? I've been tempted to write up a long post and start a new discussion about that.
In a few hundred years, especially thanks to the Pathfinder Society's focus on history and research, Golarion will become a wacky magi-tech wonderland as Azlanti technology will be recovered, while Alkenstar's engineers, Arcanarium graduates and members of the Technic League will be able to study magic and science while combining them. They'll eventually be able to reverse-engineer the Silver Mount.
If an industrial revolution ever happens, culture will be changed forever as soon as they can build a cost-effective Wayfinder that can cast Sending. People will be able to brew Sun Orchid Elixir in their basement grow-ops, and when enough people and gods are able to fully analyze the Starstone, there could be a reliable way for people to shed their physicalities and ascend into omnipresent energy beings. The people of Golarion will be able to stare right at the Great Old Ones and firmly say, "Piss off." Maybe one day they'll even be able to finally introduce Rovagug to Groetus?
As communication becomes easier and permanent Teleportation Circles become governmnet-funded mass public transportation systems, the Pathfinder Society itself could either wind up as an outmoded old gentleman's club, a worldwide research institute, or even a mega-corporate NGO, especially if it ever manages to monopolize information about the Starstone. If there isn't already a way to achieve reliable immortality, the Decemvirate will likely have kept it to themselves first.
Cheliax would be all over Xcrawl methinks.
Hasn't Cheliax outlawed bloodsports though?
I'm late to this discussion but here's something for the original poster to consider: put the Xcrawl game on one of the other worlds besides Golarion.
Three groups might enjoy dungeon crawling as a public sport: The Augmented caste of Verces, the bone sages of Eox, and perhaps some of the larger cities on Akiton, where the upper crust can make money entertaining the rabble (and distract them from their hard lives on that wasteland of a world). Akitonese xcrawl won't have the tech but it will have everything else needed for a bloodsport to flourish: the talented and experienced contestants, the enthusiastic audience, and the cheapness of life.
Putting the birthplace of the bloodsport offworld can help explain its absence (or very low profile) on Golarion.
Problem with Xcrawl is that while it just screams camp like our pro wrestling, it plays the world history perfectly straight. The beginning of the book has a very dry history of the world before you hit the good stuff. Perhaps far better to just make it more generic so it is easier to drop into various settings.
In a homebrew campaign I ran once, I took the concept of the crawl and made it the popular sport of a modern-day earth that was taken over by evil aliens. The invaders brought knowledge of magic to a planet which had been 'magic dead' for most of human history, where the strongest living human 'naural' magic users might barely qualify as low-level adepts.
Among the nonhumans, only spell-like and supernatural abilities worked on Earth until a faction of good aliens tried to help earth in advance of the invasion; they 'terraformed' it to allow true spellcasting to work normally. They tried to raise up an army of magic-using elites, based on the 'adventuring party' model of squads of five or or so adventurers each, one of each archetype (two tanks, a healer, a specialist, and a caster). Certain humans were also pproved for gene therapy to grant them Sorcerer levels and spells, whichever bloodline was deemed the most compatible.
The resistance movement started too late and didn't do enough. The earth was overrun by the invaders and divided between the occupying powers. The good aliens fled and saved whoever they could.
The evil aliens had dungeon crawling as a sport and often had their kind fight through 'dungeons' with humans as the low level fodder, plus anything else from the monster book within reason. Humans adapted the sport and made it less lethal, and called it Xcrawl. Eventually lethal human divisions sprang up. The aliens kept tight controls on the hardware of course, for their own safety and security.
Starfinder would be a perfect backdrop for an XCrawl campaign. You don't even have to handwave the magical camera equipment because the mundane technology already exists.
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I see Numeria running out of batteries as the technic league experiments on them and breaks the toys. This leads the pathfinders or aspis to take the country over for the useless artifacts making it more desolate than it already is as they strip mine the silver mount and cart the artifacts off to be studied in other countries. On the plus side PFS characters might then get the technologist feat for free....
Take a look at the worldscape comics... it is a similar idea
Someone wold have risen to power in the river kingdoms and pushed out the others (most likely kingmaker players)