Jade Regent does not count. Who here has played in Tian Xia, using the Gazetteer?
What were your experiences?
Do you feel that the Gazetteer offers enough information to comfortably set a campaign there?
I bought the Gazetteer, and started working on a campaign, but then decided to put it off a while. While I feel I COULD run a campaign using that, there's an awful lot to fill in, and I would just come up with stuff that was completely different from what Paizo will as canon in a few months/years. I guess I'd rather wait until it's better supported.
there's an awful lot to fill in,
My feeling exactly. Tian Xia is just sooo frickin huge - and we get a half-page of description for nations that are almost as big as Avistan as a whole.
I think I would have preferred a Minkai Gazetteer first - that way it would be actually playable.
Don't get me wrong: the book as is is an interesting read. But the information is way to sparse / undeveloped for it to provide a meaningful campaign background.
If I WERE to do a campaign right now, I'd have to do an inside-out design model, where I started the PCs at 1st level in one isolated province of one country whose real world correlation I knew well, and build out slowly from there. Then, hopefully by the time the PCs were high enough level to really start getting around, Paizo would have some more info out there.
As a separate campaign, it would almost be safer to do a complete asiatic home brew; at least that way, the stuff you had to develop from scratch wouldn't conflict with what Paizo puts out later.
I want to run an adventure there, but only one of my regulars is interested in playing.
I would LOVE to play in a game like that. It's been years since I played an asian themed fantasy game, and I just saw Ip Man 2 last night. Too bad I'm about 1000 miles away!
Asian games are not everyone's thing. In all honesty, I can't understand why so many gamers have such a narrow interest in settings; I love to play Sci Fi, fantasy, superheroes, spies, just about any genre. But I've had players drop me like I'm hot when I try to transition from good ole' fantasy to something else.
There's a bunch of Tian Xia themed PFS scenarios that are coming out or are out that could be used to set up a campaign and include some localized info - even if you don't use them with a PFS session.
Thanks for the info, Jeff. Sounds like a great place to start, if one really wanted to start a campaign based off the gazetteer and one or more of these scenarios. (now I'm rethinking my decision to wait...)
My players are starting a new party there soon. We're starting in Zi Ha, and will be playing a slightly reworked (for location) version of Master of the Fallen Fortress.
Went with Zi Ha because we all love the Samsarans. It... It was almost entirely because of the dress the Samsaran in the gazetteer wore that we chose to play here. Can't help it, the majority of my players (and me) are girly girls.
That picture IS wicked cool (former fashion design major).
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My group WAS going to play Savage Tide in Tian Xia (Xa Hoi to be specific), but we decided against it at the last minute purely because it would involve a craptonne of conversion work... and I don't know that much about Vietnam, and a page in the Gazetteer wasn't really enough to work with. I could probably manage a Minkai campaign, but anywhere else? There's not really that much to go on, short of a whole heap of research.
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If I was to run if I would probably due it in Minkai. We have a small gazetteer on it, one on it's capital. We have two APs there and one in the neighboring Forest of Spirits. Add in some very flavorful archetypes and I think you have enough there with out having to spend too much time filling in blanks.