Inner Seas little island off the coast of Cheliax

[laraqua]

Well, if any of my players are reading this ... No! Bad players. You know my username so you know this is me.

Now I've gotten that out of the way, I was wondering if anyone knows what the climate / temperature / flora / fauna of Cheliax is. Basically, I'm creating this little island about 40 miles off the coast of Cheliax, midway between the edge of Andoran and Westcrown. I already know what the various enemies will be that they'll face but am keen to get any information I can on making it feel suitably Chelish. I've heard Cheliax is temperate, the map makes it look like the coast is hot / dry, but I've also read in some of the books that Westcrown (or was it Corentyn?) snows in winter. Any advice would help!

[BEGS]

i guess like the isle would have a climate much like malta/cyprus

[W E Ray]

Sorry, mate, Paizo seems steadfast in its policy on not publishing anything like that; I can't imagine why.

What I was thinking when Paizo announced they were gonna design a new Campaign Setting that wasn't gonna be like FR where every SQUARE INCH is detailed, was that we'd get a good amount of this generic advice, guidelines and guideposts -- plus some specific sites like "City A" or "Forest B."

I wish they would publish what life and living is like in Andoran, for example, and the weather and climate in Cheliax, and the local flora & fauna around Lake Encarthan, and how sparse or dense small towns & villages are in Galt & Taldor. That way we'd have enough info to run a game in a place (ie. an island off Cheliax) that hasn't been specifically designed somewhere -- without the risk of having ours become obsolete or grossly incongruous when Paizo does design the specific locale.

These kinds of generic tidbits can be used by anyone, Home DMs and Paizo designers alike, to make sure that however Cheliax's southern shores are developed, there won't be too much a difference between our Homebrews and the future published version.

As it stands now, well, I see southern Cheliax as having a Houston-Brownsville-Beaumont climate. I would better like to describe it as southerly Spain but since I've never actually been to Spain....

But you never know what Paizo considers the climate, there. The one thing you can be sure of, however, is that when Paizo does design something around there, there's a good chance it's gonna make whatever you design for your Homebrew incompatible with canon.

What a shame.

[Gorbacz]

W E Ray wrote:

Sorry, mate, Paizo seems steadfast in its policy on not publishing anything like that; I can't imagine why.

What I was thinking when Paizo announced they were gonna design a new Campaign Setting that wasn't gonna be like FR where every SQUARE INCH is detailed, was that we'd get a good amount of this generic advice, guidelines and guideposts -- plus some specific sites like "City A" or "Forest B."

I wish they would publish what life and living is like in Andoran, for example, and the weather and climate in Cheliax, and the local flora & fauna around Lake Encarthan, and how sparse or dense small towns & villages are in Galt & Taldor. That way we'd have enough info to run a game in a place (ie. an island off Cheliax) that hasn't been specifically designed somewhere -- without the risk of having ours become obsolete or grossly incongruous when Paizo does design the specific locale.

These kinds of generic tidbits can be used by anyone, Home DMs and Paizo designers alike, to make sure that however Cheliax's southern shores are developed, there won't be too much a difference between our Homebrews and the future published version.

As it stands now, well, I see southern Cheliax as having a Houston-Brownsville-Beaumont climate. I would better like to describe it as southerly Spain but since I've never actually been to Spain....

But you never know what Paizo considers the climate, there. The one thing you can be sure of, however, is that when Paizo does design something around there, there's a good chance it's gonna make whatever you design for your Homebrew incompatible with canon.

What a shame.

Reality check: this would require for Paizo to put out a hardcover book of 256+ pages on every region. Check back in 50 years, shall we?

[W E Ray]

No it wouldn't.
Not even remotely.

Generic info like that would equal about as much text as what's in each "Government/ History" section in the Inner Sea Guide,
less even in many cases.

Maybe I'm not doing a good enough job articulating what I mean.

[James Jacobs]

The climate of Cheliax is about the same as California or the Mediteranean... depending on where you're at. Italy is a good generic reference for the most part.

And while I know you've been plenty vocal about what WASN'T in the Inner Sea World Guide, W E Ray... if I had to do the book all over again, I'd still make the same choices. Information like climate and the like is important, but so is government and history stuff... but the MOST important thing, I decided, for the nation/region entries, was to detail adventure sites. That's why the Gazetteer section takes up so much room for each.

We do PLENTY of other books—and adventures as well. I don't expect anyone and everyone to own every book we publish... but we DO include things like climate and ecology stuff in a lot of books.

And asking for clarification on these boards from us is a GREAT way to get that information if you don't want to buy and/or read everything we publish...

...even if it does sometimes take a day or two for me to notice a thread and answer it.

And as for your concerns about us making things incompatible with homebrew games... that's just a fact of reality when you choose to run a campaign in a published setting. You have to go into that comfortable with the knowledge that some day, the publisher might publish something that contradicts what you've done for the setting, and you have to be comfortable with either ignoring what the publisher did or changing what you did to match.

[Trinite]

I think it would be super awesome to have an Atlas of Golarion (or Atlas of the Inner Sea) - very little block text, almost all maps, climate charts, and maybe tables of common wildlife in various regions.

Basically, geographical information presented in dense form through maps and tables.

Given good design -- and that is a given with Paizo! -- I think it would be possible to pack a whole lot of information into a very small space.

[Trinite]

James Jacobs wrote:

The climate of Cheliax is about the same as California or the Mediteranean... depending on where you're at. Italy is a good generic reference for the most part.

So think the island of Capri!

[laraqua]

Cool. That gives me a great starting point. Thank you, James. I'll go potter around wikis and stuff and find out some cool flora / fauna to show as, understandably, most of the flora / fauna thus far described is less the 'interesting five-petalled flower, nothing special' and more along the lines of 'interesting five-petalled flower, eats you / is a drug / attracts demons' or what-not.

Actually, lol on the last bit. I now must create a flower that attracts demons due to its smell!

I can only imagine what it'd smell like....

[Morbus Iff]

Trinite wrote:

I think it would be super awesome to have an Atlas of Golarion (or Atlas of the Inner Sea) - very little block text, almost all maps, climate charts, and maybe tables of common wildlife in various regions. Basically, geographical information presented in dense form through maps and tables.

Want to help out on that? ;) I'm in the process of working on an interactive Google map of the Inner Sea, and it does support info windows that could contain this sort of information. Alternatively, you could add the data yourself to pathfinderwiki.com, which will be a source of data for the map too.

[Trinite]

Morbus Iff wrote:

Trinite wrote:

I think it would be super awesome to have an Atlas of Golarion (or Atlas of the Inner Sea) - very little block text, almost all maps, climate charts, and maybe tables of common wildlife in various regions. Basically, geographical information presented in dense form through maps and tables.

Want to help out on that? ;) I'm in the process of working on an interactive Google map of the Inner Sea, and it does support info windows that could contain this sort of information. Alternatively, you could add the data yourself to pathfinderwiki.com, which will be a source of data for the map too.

Alas! I wish I had time to. But the main reason why I suggested an atlas is because I don't know any of that information myself. ;)

That Google map sounds like a really neat idea, though. Could you perhaps private message me about it as soon as it's up and running? I wouldn't mind contributing some stuff here and there, if I could.

[SirGeshko]

Morbus Iff wrote:

Trinite wrote:

I think it would be super awesome to have an Atlas of Golarion (or Atlas of the Inner Sea) - very little block text, almost all maps, climate charts, and maybe tables of common wildlife in various regions. Basically, geographical information presented in dense form through maps and tables.

Want to help out on that? ;) I'm in the process of working on an interactive Google map of the Inner Sea, and it does support info windows that could contain this sort of information. Alternatively, you could add the data yourself to pathfinderwiki.com, which will be a source of data for the map too.

Great googly moogly I was wishing for such a map the other day, and going to research how to start that project.

I'm going to PM you, and hopefully I can help! ^_^