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Far from a waste. It's one of those details thrown out at the reader to inspire them.
You'll see that a lot in various books. Evocative names of people and places, half-hinted at events in the timeline with no follow-up, and tons of other mysteries seeded throughout the larger picture. I love those, they get the creativity flowing and encourage us to shape and make the setting our own.
Basically, the Lost Mines are whatever you want them to be!
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And go back and look at the FRCS and notice the number of things on the map that have no information in the book, that is how every campaign setting book ever written looks like.
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If you look at the full map of Golarion, you'll find whole continents only briefly sketched in.
The point of having things like lost mines mentioned is so that, if the GM wants to run a mine adventure, he has an easy place to put one, and if he doesn't, he can easily tell the players that the mines are lost, and while it's a perfectly decent quest to find them, if they were all that easy to find, they wouldn't have the reputation they do.
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There's also the fact that Paizo has stated that they might want to do APs in locations such as those, and since APs describe in intricate detail places and things like that, that's what you should be hounding for...
Inner Sea Guide was meant more to create the background in as much detail as physically possible, but leaving enough obscure so that they could create more detail about it later in other products, or, and I can't stress this enough, so that GMs could look at the book, get to know the culture/history/etc. and then make them what they want it to be. To go into further detail wouldn't be sketching out an entire setting, it would be sketching out particular adventures. They couldn't give you enough description to run one solely based on that info anyway...no book that isn't a module or AP does...
I think of the inner sea world guide more as an enclyopedia like book rather than a textbook specilized in history and geography of a specific subject. If it had details of everyplace in the gameworld do you know how long it would be and how much it would cost.
Also more detailed settings would be crossing the streams with APs and modules.
And go back and look at the FRCS and notice the number of things on the map that have no information in the book, that is how every campaign setting book ever written looks like.True, but Forgotten Realms also had a ton more places filled in with infomation. Hell there are towns detailed in the realms to the point you can find out what the innkeepers name is. Thats the kind of detail that I want. As I said in my review they shouldn't have called it a campaign setting they should have called it an outline of a campaign setting or "The Inner sea fill in the blanks campaign setting"
Its a pretty book, I just wish it was more substance.
And how many books did it take to get to that detail? That level of detail does not exist in a main campaign setting book and it seems really silly to expect it in one book.
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It doesn't have anything official connected to it according to my research for RPG Superstar (it would've been my round two organization HQ). Feel free to play with it if you like!
--Vrockslide
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Well actually they did it in one book in 2nd edition. The 2nd edition FR handbook picked some of the main towns represented on the FR world map and detailed them. Thats all I wanted, just detail 1 town in each country, that would have been a big help.
Have you taken a look at Cities of Golarion. The PDF is only $14.
And how many books did it take to get to that detail? That level of detail does not exist in a main campaign setting book and it seems really silly to expect it in one book.And go back and look at the FRCS and notice the number of things on the map that have no information in the book, that is how every campaign setting book ever written looks like.True, but Forgotten Realms also had a ton more places filled in with infomation. Hell there are towns detailed in the realms to the point you can find out what the innkeepers name is. Thats the kind of detail that I want. As I said in my review they shouldn't have called it a campaign setting they should have called it an outline of a campaign setting or "The Inner sea fill in the blanks campaign setting"
Its a pretty book, I just wish it was more substance.
Well actually they did it in one book in 2nd edition. The 2nd edition FR handbook picked some of the main towns represented on the FR world map and detailed them. Thats all I wanted, just detail 1 town in each country, that would have been a big help.
Some Gazette's maybe on PDF to fill in the some more detail whould be great.
Sorry, I own the 2E campaign setting, and that kind of detail was not in there either. All the setting Box did was outlining the world and giving here and there a close up view, you asked for detail on a mine system and not on a town.
The inner Sea World guide is an overview for the DM over the world and not a close up view of every nitpicky detail. for the detail you need a specific setting book, like the Lands of the Linnorm kings etc. Even in the FR, Waterdeep had its own setting book.
And now compare Golarion with the FR and see how many years the FR existed and how much books there were for the FR in all those years...
He is actually referring to the Forgotten Realms Adventures HC book. Which is sort of a campaign setting book and mostly a here is how you change the rules we just put out so that you can continue to run your 1st edition FR game.
The problem with using that book as a point of reference though is that it does detail several cities in the Realms, but only cities that were involved in the Time of Troubles.
So what is funny about his comment is he is comparing the ISWG to an incomplete campaign setting book and complaining that the ISWG is an incomplete campaign setting book.
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Personally, I am pleased that Paizo has included locations which aren't fully expanded, as it gives them room to grow the world with details of places as they go forward. (In the 3.5 main setting book, it was disappointing to look for cities mentioned in modules or adventure paths, only to find they weren't on the map.)
As I said in my review they shouldn't have called it a campaign setting they should have called it an outline of a campaign setting or "The Inner sea fill in the blanks campaign setting"
This (version) of the book doesn't contain "Campaign Setting" in the title, nor does it promise to be a definitive reference. Rather, the text "Campaign Setting" is part of the product line. I can see that this isn't a clear distinction, especially if your did not order through the Paizo web store. It should be noted that there are other books in the Campaign Setting line which do a close detailing of cities/areas.
I would note that an "outline" is essentially what Paizo has advertised the book as. The back-of-the-book text (which is also on the product page) explicitly states that the book contains "gazetteers," thus containing directories or indexes for the geography rather than detailed location backgrounds.
Its a pretty book, I just wish it was more substance.
It would be difficult to add more material without adding more pages, which would increase the price. To that end, there are many other products under the Campaign Setting line which do add more substance, (adding to the total pages you are buying, but also increasing the cost).
Well I appreciate what they are trying to do, but as an adult with a job and a life, I only have limited time to prepare weekly adventures for my group and the reason I bought the campaign setting was so I could work on the adventures, not fill in a world.
I think that perhaps your best course of action would be to ask the boards about what your situation is and what it is you are looking to do. I would guess you are location for a location based adventuring setup, but I'm not sure what kind of plot style (open "sandbox" vs. closed "railroad") you want.