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Dear Paizo and fellow Golarion fans
This is a post in place of one of my players who just recently took the mantel of the GM and came up with his own campaign on Golarion in Tien Xia of all things.
We both loved Jade Regent but never really peeked into Tien Xia after that up to this point. Most of the stuff in there is fine but as with Andoran I believe we will be needing some PF chronicles/companions to just fill some really nasty blanks that I think were left off for very important reasons because some kingdoms there don't really make sense.
Like Bachuan, Goka, Jinin.
Me and my player both respected writers that sat and thought that both Garund and Avistan are still too young for capitalism and thats saying something because I still think that the history of Andoran with its geographical placement is very farfetched, but thats apparently not the case with people from Tien Xia because they do not need industrialism and factories and can just skip that and go straight to capitalism and randian utopia.
For a year I run a campaign with an elven paladin born and raised in kyonin and we very carefuly threaded trough Elves of Golarion and any elven lore because elves there were so unique and interesting in comparison to what you usually get in fantasy settings. As I now run Second Darkness I am thrilled to show my two new elven players how elven society differs from their vision of dancing faeries in the sun and thats why I cannot understand how ancient elves since Age of Darkness could so easily intermix with human society and culture. On top of that that elves are chaotic in nature and samurai are bound by human interpretation of honour, which differs from the elven one, on top of being lawful. One of my players joked that if a winter court member would explore Jinin and spoke about what he saw his peers would not believe him and had to see it for themselves. They could just build a giant crystal ball and show the Jinin land and its people in the royal chamber and there wouldn't be any talk about too extreme actions against such behaviour.
Finally Bachuan. I have nothing to say about Bachuan. I just want to hear how exactly this communistic vision was born and why the hell did they battle the clergy because we are both dying to hear that.
Please if someone would anwser these plead and contribute we and other people playing in Tien Xia would be very greatful for this contribution.
I am interested in what you say about Goka and Bachuan, and wish to learn more. You may have convinced me to pick up said Gazetteer.
That said... nothing in capitalism requires industrialization.
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Goka is a single city, and a trading hub. Much like, oh, say Venice, it can easily make it's living almost entirely by trade. You need something a lot bigger than a city before lack of technoogy starts getting in the way of capitalism.
Jinin...uh, Elves went from CG to CE and became Drow over the same period of time (and same circumstances). That's two Alighnment shifts, same as CG to LG. Elves being Chaotic is a deep-rooted cultural tradition...but there's little evidence it's bred into them in any genetic sense, and even were it, the Jinin Elves have been a separate and isolated population for the same lengh of time as the Drow.
Bachuan. Well, if you'll recall, Bachuan was founded by a particular guy who came up with the philosophy (totally possible)...and that due to there being a state religion, their only experience with religion was pretty bad. Very plausible, really.
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Well this is a very political post, what with "capitalism and Randian utopia". But anyway, as for Bachuan, it's clearly based on historical China (with bits of North Vietnam and North Korea mixed in). They've bundled Chairman Mao (peasant) together with Sun Yatsen (philosopher) to create peasant-philosopher Grandfather Pei, who also has a few of the attributes of Ho Chi Min and Kim Il Sung. Even the country's banner has a sun on it like the Republic of China's white sun on a blue background. Also following the historical Chinese theme, under the leadership of Grandfather Pei (Chairman Mao) the brutally oppressed peasants and workers overthrow the greedy and corrupt ruling class and all end up better off than before. Then, just as in communist China, religion is suppressed and some people sent to re-education camps ("Re-education Through Labor"!). Even the mention of the politically-scheming 6th wife Pei Yae Men is modeled on Chairman Mao's 4th wife, Jiang Qing, who tried to take over the government after Mao died. So, sadly, Bachuan is just another country in Golarion which is basically a rip-off of a historical country. Just like Galt is a direct rip-off of France during its revolutionary period.
It makes sense given the slantings of the game designer's politics, but Andoran fits more with progressive ideals than Objectivist philosophy. If any nation comes close to Ayn Rand's utopian dream, it is Druma.
But... the OP was talking about Goka, not Andoran. And that seems to me like an analogue of Hong Kong or Singapore, which may be economically very free but are very draconian in terms of civil liberties.
What we really need is a Dragon Empires World Guide hardcover...
Goka is Shanghai c. 1920. Freewheeling port city with lots of foreigners.
Hong Kong and Singapore are Amanandar. Goka does have an actual Perfumed Harbor though, unless that was just a joke my DM threw in because he knew I would get it.
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Oh and: Garund and Avistan may not be industrialized (not that this would be a necessity for capitalism) - sorry I can't find an english article on medieval trading capitalism ATM, but too young for it?
Do me a favor and compare the timeline from Golarion with the history of civilization in our world. You might be surprised...
Most of the foundational writings on capitalism predate the industrial revolution, do they not?
A few things, a lot of golarion is probly 16th centuryish which means its philosophically advanced enough to have many of the ideals expressed in the books turn up. But ideas need a time and place and either appear all in spurts or don't at all because the conditions are not there.
Capitolism does not require knoweledge of capitolism to work, many of the concepts come naturally to humans in natural supply and demand cycles. It can basically happen or not happen like ideas even if 9 out of 10 conditions are met but without condition 10 it might fail.
The only thing really is in fantasy games how long these cycles last.
It was called mercantilism in medieval times.
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Good Sirs and Madams
This post of mine was simply to highlight some of the less stellar aspects of how Golarion is being build trough the pages of books that we are buying.
What I believe is the process of setting building in some cases looks like this:
Galt
Idea: Revolution- peasants on top off barricades THE END
We are given information that peasants in Galt got angry and rebelled against the nobles. Yes indeed its a rip-off from French revolution but lacking logic and vital informations. In France the peasants were aggited by the bourgeis or the middle class if you will because they got frustrated that nobility had better laws than they did and were not able to rise in power if the 'ancient regime' was still used.
The same is with other countries across golarion who have 1-4 pages at best covering them and thats it. The problem here lies not in how this could happen. The problem is that we do not know how this happened, the book just says it happens and it happens. Thisidea of setting building leads to making the world look like a ragged doll, sewed with a lot of loose ideas, set into motion by the wills of its creators rather than a living breathing organism which can stand on its two legs.
As for countries in Tien Xia. We are talking about a 67 page book where each country got 1 page worth of text. We are bound to get mistakes and I hope this are mistakes because mistakes can be corrected with companions but thats not the case with lazy writing.
Capitalism as we know it is not mercantilism, however mercantilism is part of the aspect of capitalism. Mercantilism in Venice strongly focused on goverment regulating and influencing the market which basicly made Venice a poor trading partner as the time went by, as free market did not exist at that time. Capitalism on the other hand, after XIX century focuses on people making their own decisions and therefor a lot of self-conciousness and knowledge, from all of the people not just a group, is needed. Capitalism as we know it is mostly the product of the industrial age when you were able to produce large amounts of good therefor creating the concept of supply and demand. If Goka is based on Singapur 1920 then please tell us how did it happen because Singapur and Hongkong was build mostly by the English. I think that paizo writers made a bad decision when they wrote the word Capitalistic becuase its a very loose term. Merchant's republic of Goka would be much better as its not based on Singapur 1920 but Venice 1602.
I also apologize for my statement as Goka is "Randian Utopia". I was very agitated at that time and I am sorry that I missled some people.
As for Bachuan I do not deny its a great place to have adventures but it shares similar problems as the other two above. The origins are poorly written. Peasants and their knowledge was very poor in Europe, their lifestyle was lowest of low in some countries even worse than the slaves in Rome. When you compare western peasants and eastern peasants, the european ones were Wizards compared to Chinese or Japanese ones. Life as an Chinese or Japanese peasant focused on 3 things: sleeping, breeding and rice gathering. Now take this guy and convince him to take up a very controversive idea of freedom and equality. Europe needed the enlightment age to introduce this type of thinking. Can Tien Xia people do that? I dont know. Before communism spread there were people who took Marks works and read them to the working class, mostly because they didn't know how to read. Slowly the conciousness of the working class was being build this way and it took 100 year to achieve change but even with the fameous speech made by Lenin in Moscow(5th May, 1990) communism was still not fully embraced by the people. It took millions of deaths and forced conscription to the army for people to feel betrayed. Not to mention hyper inflation, starvation etc. The same was with germany after WWI. So now we get this guy, Grandfather Pei, a 20th level Monk who got enlightened and build communism in 1-2 years just wow. He basicly with one qucik swoop pushed the intellectual development of Bachuan people hundred years forward. Truly he is Aroden reborn.
As I end my very long post, please do not use this topic to dicuss what is capitalism, mercantilism or communism. There are a lot of very good economic oriented forums out there. I am no economist or a student of economics just a curious nerd like most of you Golarion players and I like to play in Golarion despite its flaws but I want to make it better not worse. So please if you really want to know more about various political and economical systems out there use wiki because here we should talk about Golarion and how it can get better.
It was called mercantilism in medieval times.
Mercantilism and capitalism are two different things. The former has to do with old notions of trade being a zero-sum game, and described a national policy of trying to increase exports while limiting imports to "win" that game. The latter is a system focusing on private ownership of the means of production for profit, and has nothing inherently to do with national policy.
Capitalism has existed as long as private property and trade have, though the term wasn't used until Marx coined it to compare against socialism.
Good Sirs and Madams
This post of mine was simply to highlight some of the less stellar aspects of how Golarion is being build trough the pages of books that we are buying.
What I believe is the process of setting building in some cases looks like this:
Galt
Idea: Revolution- peasants on top off barricades THE END
We are given information that peasants in Galt got angry and rebelled against the nobles. Yes indeed its a rip-off from French revolution but lacking logic and vital informations. In France the peasants were aggited by the bourgeis or the middle class if you will because they got frustrated that nobility had better laws than they did and were not able to rise in power if the 'ancient regime' was still used.The same is with other countries across golarion who have 1-4 pages at best covering them and thats it. The problem here lies not in how this could happen. The problem is that we do not know how this happened, the book just says it happens and it happens. Thisidea of setting building leads to making the world look like a ragged doll, sewed with a lot of loose ideas, set into motion by the wills of its creators rather than a living breathing organism which can stand on its two legs.
As for countries in Tien Xia. We are talking about a 67 page book where each country got 1 page worth of text. We are bound to get mistakes and I hope this are mistakes because mistakes can be corrected with companions but thats not the case with lazy writing.
Capitalism as we know it is not mercantilism, however mercantilism is part of the aspect of capitalism. Mercantilism in Venice strongly focused on goverment regulating and influencing the market which basicly made Venice a poor trading partner as the time went by, as free market did not exist at that time. Capitalism on the other hand, after XIX century focuses on people making their own decisions and therefor a lot of self-conciousness and knowledge, from all of the people not just a group, is needed. Capitalism as we know it is mostly the...
So if I understand your complaint, it is that the writers of the setting are focusing on playability and familiarity, rather than historical accuracy and textbook-long descriptions?
Honestly, I have *never* seen a setting that was not "rag-doll" in some ways, because game developers aren't social scientists.
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Setting building is never final, every player contributes to how Golarion is build. I have no complaints about Taldor, Cheliax, Kyonin, Riverkingdoms. They are all fine, but if we really want to rip-off grand historical settings, lets do it right. becuase people will build upon it after you create it.
Imagine you being a Paizo writer. CEO gives you a job.: Galt Companion or Bachuan companion. You read about it, agree then you start researching and you just found yourself writing an expansion in a setting that makes little sense. Why nobody wants to do Galt? Is it not interesting enough? Or an Andoran adventure path? Is it because Cheliax molicoddled Andoran up to this point for one of the greatest secessions since the one Cheliax did to Taldor.
On top of that there is something called 'suspension of disbelief'. I can believe that there is a country with extensive arcane knowledge led by a giant gorilla or that the biggest most expansive country in the world changed its religion to diabolism because its fantasy. but communis, capitalism, french revolution. These are things people are taught extensivly in schools, you know about french revolution, capitalism, communis, how it developed and what impact it had, its not that kind of knowledge you just make up.
I have a game called Deadlands, now Im not American but I was taught about the Civil War between South and North. What the writers of Deadlands wrote was that just after the war poeple from the South realized that the value of the person is not about their skin but about abilities and courage they posess. Remember that you are writing about people who were willing to go to war and die to defend their right to own slaves just few years ago. Now this is just offensive and pathfinder never stroke me as offensive and I hope it never will but this is how I see the idea of lazy written rip-offs
I honestly don't see anything inherently illogical in the setting as far as social history goes. Golarion is not Earth, although the writers do model it somewhat off of that. It's fully plausible that the inherent differences in settings (Gods that are real and communicate with worshippers, magic, other sapient species, many with much longer lifespans, contact with alien worlds/planes, etc) can fully explain setting differences.
As for setting descriptions, they don't have a a lot of space in there to detail to provide a complete history of the world, just give an overview that highlights possible conflicts and the flavor of the realm. Realistically there probably is neither the audience nor resources to produce a 10 part 300 page history of Galt.
Also, to a certain degree, they like to make the underlying causes and development of certain things vague enough that a GM can use the setting to run whatever story he wishes. Hence why things like the collapse of the last major Tien dynasty are left undetailed.
Finally I would just sit back and relax. It's a fantasy game. I am a zoologist by background, but I don't let the existence of Piranhas and Jaguars in the African analogue, or unrealistic ecologies top heavy with predators, force me to throw my book against the wall.
China had a great economy while Europe was still content with watching gladiators killing eachother in arenas. It was only with the advent of the industrial revolution that Europe's economy managed to overtake that of China.
So I see nothing odd with a chinese-equivalent area of Golarion having more advanced economics than other parts of Golarion.
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Good Sirs and Madams
This post of mine was simply to highlight some of the less stellar aspects of how Golarion is being build trough the pages of books that we are buying.
Dear Esteemed Sir!
Salutations! Always so happy to see a fellow intellectual on these boards. I was in the middle of writing a six page essay dealing with points you were so kind to raise, but my typewriter broke down and the cat spilled hot coffee over the manuscript and so alas, the text is no more. Henceforth I shall give a brief and verbose approximation of the point I was attempting to get across:
"Dude, it's a fantasy game."
Sincerely Yours,
The Bag Wit Teeth, PhD
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Most of the foundational writings on capitalism predate the industrial revolution, do they not?
It depends what you consider the beginning of the industrial revolution which is vague but certainly prior to large scale use of factories and machines. Wealth of Nations was written in 1776. Textile factories are not really comming on line until the 1780's-1790's in England and not until after Napoleon's defeat on the continuent.
That being said modern capitalism originated in the Netherlands during the age of exploration, 1500's, and allowed the Dutch to create a large but short lived trading empire. That is certainly many centuries before the industrial revolution.
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As for Bachuan I do not deny its a great place to have adventures but it shares similar problems as the other two above. The origins are poorly written. Peasants and their knowledge was very poor in Europe, their lifestyle was lowest of low in some countries even worse than the slaves in Rome. When you compare western peasants and eastern peasants, the european ones were Wizards compared to Chinese or Japanese ones. Life as an Chinese or Japanese peasant focused on 3 things: sleeping, breeding and rice gathering. Now take this guy and convince him to take up a very controversive idea of freedom and equality. Europe needed the enlightment age to introduce this type of thinking. Can Tien Xia people do that? I dont know. Before communism spread there were people who took Marks works and read them to the working class, mostly because they didn't know how to read. Slowly the conciousness of the working class was being build this way and it took 100 year to achieve change but even with the fameous speech made by Lenin in Moscow(5th May, 1990) communism was still not fully embraced by the people. It took millions of deaths and forced conscription to the army for people to feel betrayed. Not to mention hyper inflation, starvation etc. The same was with germany after WWI. So now we get this guy, Grandfather Pei, a 20th level Monk who got enlightened and build communism in 1-2 years just wow. He basicly with one qucik swoop pushed the intellectual development of Bachuan people hundred years forward. Truly he is Aroden reborn.
To refer to Earth history:
You forget that peasant uprisings were common in China and big enough to topple dynasties and give rise to new ones. And there were sects in China that preached what was very communist-like ideology since hundreds of years. In real world they always ended being suppressed, but managed to create small (when comparing to Imperial China as a whole) domains that remained independent of Imperial rule for a few years in XIX century. Here we have movement that succeeded, IIRC, thanks to collapse of imperial government.
Early communist ideology also appeared in Europe since IX or X century and sparked many peasant revolts and religious sects too. Or more often was incited and spread together with various starins of heresies.
So the successful peasant revolution that forces some weird ideology upon populace is not implausible. Deliberate duplicating circumstances of real world politicians as a direct wink towards the readers is more of a stretch.
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The way I see Golarion is as a world with many different campaigns embedded within it. If you want to make a Gothic horror campaign you would set it in Ustalav. Or to use one of your examples if you want to live in a bloody revolution it would be in Galt. Of course the revolution is unrealistically long. Its meant to end when you the GM decides it ends. Golarion is not a realistic world in any way but it is by far the most fun sandbox I have ever seen. I am pretty sure that was the intention.
If you want realism I recommend Kindoms of Kalamar. The authors had a attention to detail that was almost unreal. I believe they even made the climates realistic. But I almost found that realism boring. I had to read the books several times before I began to appreciate it. In contrast when I got the Pathfinder campaign book every kingdom made me exited.
I am glad that Golarion is not a simulated realistic world. It is after all fantasy.
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It has been said somewhere on these boards that the Gazetteer was a test. They wanted to gauge the interest first before actually expanding it into a hardcover Campaign Setting book.
As with any other part of Golarion, it all started like this, small and covered in a page or half a page... It is up to the GM to take what is offered and see if he can find a spark to run with. I like to see the works of creative GMs that take a kernel and develop it into a living, breathing nation.
Just my opinion.
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It's a game. If something happens you don't understand, a wizard did it.
And, snark aside, there's literally reasons for funkiness in places like Galt. The revolution is 'unrealistically' never ending and 'doesn't make sense' because there are forces at work keeping it going and keeping the hoi-polloi all riled up and pointing them at those they want to be next to be discombobulated.
The anemic descriptions we've gotten of the nation thus far don't spoil for us who or what is behind the unending 'Terror,' or what their endgame / agenda is (assuming the unending Terror isn't an end to itself...), but that just means that a GM who wants to play with that area can create his own reason.
Is it the church of Norgorber (or Rovagug, or some random Great Old One, or Zyphus, or Groetus)? Is it servants of some shapechanging human-hating hags or rakshasa or aranea or dopplegangers?
Is it daemons, who show up to drain the harvested souls from the guillotines, like we would show up to take the change out of a soda machine?
Is Cheliax behind-the-scenes maintaining the endless Terror so that they can point to it as a propoganda tool whenever their provincial citizens get a wild idea about equal rights and freedom and similar nonsense, and say, 'See, see what happens when you abandon tradition and a rigid class system, and get the blasphemous and unnatural idea that filthy stinking unlettered peasants should be allowed to decide stuff for themselves?'
There's something hinky going on, and until it's spelled out in canon, we get to decide what. It's not supposed to 'make sense' that the revolution just keeps going on and on and on.
Meaning no offense, I think the original poster is of the type who enjoys sitting with his friends and getting riled by the books.
I feel like nothing I say to him will assuage his concerns, because he is only here to escalate his own distaste in the products. That's not a very good way to get a return on your entertainment dollars.
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From what I understand of talk radio and cable TV, getting outraged (whether sensible or not) is the preferred form of entertainment of a great many people.
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Meaning no offense, I think the original poster is of the type who enjoys sitting with his friends and getting riled by the books.
I feel like nothing I say to him will assuage his concerns, because he is only here to escalate his own distaste in the products. That's not a very good way to get a return on your entertainment dollars.
+1