Building a complete Golarion on a budget

[Unruly]

If one were to try and build the most complete picture of Golarion that they could, including general ecology/geography, nations, religions, race relations, etc, while spending as little as possible, what would be the books that are essential? I know the Inner Sea World Guide is a definite must-have, but what other pieces of material would I need to get a really good picture of the world? I would prefer to use only the directly for PFRPG materials rather than 3.5 stuff, unless the stat-related items in the 3.5 material doesn't require any actual conversion to PFRPG rules.

[prosfilaes]

Complete and on a budget don't usually work well together. Everything but the Inner Sea Guide is focused on one land. I suppose if you wanted the whole world, you'll want the Dragon Empires Gazetteer. If you're using it as gaming material, I wouldn't worry about complete and focus on the books for the areas you're interested in .

[Jeven]

There are two series which cover the nations in more detail.

The older ones are smaller books on Cheliax, Andoran, Taldor, Qadira, and Osirion.

The other set are larger books which cover Irissen, Land of the Linnorm Kings, Mwangi Expanse, The Shackles, Katapesh, Absalom, Ustalav, the River Kingdoms, Darkmoon Vale, 3x Varisian city-states.

For ruins and history try Lost Kingdoms, Lost Cities of Golarion.

Its a lot so maybe just focus on the corner of the world that sparks your interest. Best to buy and read the Inner Sea World Guide first and then decide what you want to delve into further from there.

[Unruly]

I probably shouldn't have used complete, now that I think about it. I should have probably said "comprehensive."

What I'm looking for is a collection of books that, added together, would allow me to put together a modern-style atlas. So I could have a map of the world, regional maps, national maps, a rundown on the politics of the different regions, a bit of history regarding the individual nations as well as a rundown of their current status(rulers, important organizations, etc), lists and locations of major cities/landmarks, a breakdown of the religions and where you're most likely to encounter which ones, etc.

[ferrinwulf]

Then I would say that the Inner Sea Guide, the primer, the Dragon Empire and its primer and maybe Distant Worlds too is pretty much all you need then. The Inner Sea guide has everything you listed. The only part of the world other than the Inner sea that has been given a book is the Dragon Empire, the rest is still waiting to be fleshed out but are mentioned in the guide. So you won't have a complete picture of the world yet anyway.

[martinaj]

The Inner Sea World Guide is a must. After that, several of the player companions, though focused on a single nation, can offer you some pretty solid insights into other areas. You need to selectively choose those nations which are actively involved with other governments, because the sections on foreign relations can give you some scope beyond that of the book. To that end, you're going to want books on the major hubs. Cheliax, Andoran, Taldor, and Ustalav are probably your winners for Avistan, and for Garund, the Mwangi Expense has had an enormous impact on the region.

Even though it gets a lot of attention, I'd warn you away from books on Varisia, because it's so diverse those books tend to be highly specialized to a single city, and the companion on Varisia as a whole just tends to point you towards other products.

If you want some historical context, then the Lost Kingdoms book has some solid material for you as well.

[Kajehase]

I'll add one thing to what those above has said: The Pathfinder Wiki has loads of world information, and since it provide sources for everything, it can be used to figure out which books will be most useful for a particular campaign or reading direction.

[Enlight_Bystand]

Gods and Magic is 3.5, but the crunch isn't too strong, and gives a detailed overview of the religions. Same for the Great Beyond for the planes - in fact the vast majority of the rules content in tGB is monsters at the back, most of which have been converted.

[Lloyd Jackson]

Definitely add Distant Worlds to the list. It helps you understand where elves come from and how the history of the world fits together.

[Kazred]

If you're strictly looking for information about the world ("fluff" if you must) all you really need is the ISWG. I went a little nuts buying up all the regional guides and found that most of them focus too much on crunch at the expense of things like local maps, current events, history and adventure hooks. The newer 64-page guides are better on the whole, but you can skip them if you don't expect to spend a lot of time in the areas they cover.

[Unruly]

Well, I don't want solely fluff. Stats for major cities would be nice to have as well. To put it somewhat simply, I'm wanting to move my game to Golarion and ditch my half-formed homebrew setting because I don't think it's working out very well. My brain just isn't as good at making stuff up as it was back when I was in high school, and my group doesn't really seem to be feeding off of the setting much.

However, before I make the switch I want to be able to tell my group who the major players in the world are, where the major cities are, explain what the Pathfinder Society is, etc. All that general orientation stuff that anyone living in the world would already be at least remotely familiar with. On top of that, I want to have maps to reference and numbers to use for when the party decides that they want to go off on a tangent and go to somewhere on the other side of the continent and chase down an artifact or something. I want to be able to look at the stats for major cities along their route and interpolate that "Random Village A" would probably have <racial distribution, wealth, religions> based on its proximity to "City 1" and "City 2" and how they would influence it, with some random stuff thrown in by me to give it flavor and help distinguish it from "Random Village B".

Whenever my group gets together again(we're kinda randomly scheduled), I'm going to give them the options of continuing my homebrew, switching to an AP, or just having someone else take over the DM job if they want it. If they choose to switch to an AP, their choices are going to be Reign of Winter, Carrion Crown, or Rise of the Runelords AE. I might offer Shackled City as an AP too, but I'd have to buy it first. If they want one of the other APs, I might buy it, but I haven't decided yet because I'm on a budget and buying an AP all at once is expensive.

Maybe waiting until I find out if the group wants to switch to an AP, and then which AP it is, and then buying the stuff surrounding that particular area is the better option. But I still want to build a picture of the whole world for the players to get to know it. It just adds a lot more to the game, and I know that at some point we're going to be moving to Golarion even if it is sometime down the road.

[ferrinwulf]

I think you are going to be pretty disappointed then sorry. I don't think you will find what you are looking for a budget as most of it has not been written yet. If you want that kind of detail you will need to spend a lot of money.

You're best bet is to buy the PDF or physical copy of the Inner Sea guide or check out Pathfinder wiki if you don't want to spend much money, read it, look at the campaign guides and player guides that paizo offers and see if anything there is what you are looking for.

As a quick guide for you, the Inner Sea is only part of one continent of 6 or 7 nothing else apart from the Dragon Empire is written out in detail. There are about 40 regions in the Inner Sea and so far not even half has been fleshed out beyond the campaign guide. The idea is that its a work in progress I think.

Map wise in detail there is only the Inner Sea, The crown of the World (10 pages in book 3 of Jade regent ap) and the Dragon Empire. Detailed individual maps of regions are in their corresponding book.

You won't find info on every major player, every single city in the world, as the information is just not available yet.

The campaign guide is a really good place to start though as it does have pretty much everything you are looking for, just not in the detail you want. Its a really good book too

[Kazred]

Understood. That's the sort of stuff I look for as well -- I probably wasn't using the terms "crunch" and "fluff" correctly. By "crunch," I meant things like feats and new magic items. City stats, local maps and the other things you mentioned are exactly what I want from a gazetteer.

For what it's worth, I was in exactly your situation a few months ago. My homebrew world wasn't coming together and I just didn't have the time or energy to flesh it out like I wanted. I put the same question to my players that you plan to, and they chose the "Skull & Shackles" AP. To prepare, I picked up gazetteers for the surrounding area: "Isles of the Shackles," "Sargava the Lost Colony," and "Heart of the Jungle."

Comparing those three books really highlights the difficulty of trying for a complete view of the entire setting. Isles of the Shackles, for example, has tons of background and hooks, but almost nothing in the way of maps. It doesn't have city stats or even a map for the region's capital. Most of that kind of material ended up being in the AP books though, but I didn't know that until I got them. The Lost Colony didn't have much in the way of detail either -- most of the book is taken up by new feats etc. There's almost nothing there that will make it to my table. Heart of the Jungle, though, is by far my favorite PF setting guide: it has all the city stat blocks and tons of local details and maps. I could probably run an entire campaign on the fly with just this book and the ISWG.

Part of the issue is due to the fact that Paizo seems to dislike repeating themselves when it comes to setting material. If a particular settlement is detailed in AP X, it will generally get glossed over in Gazetteer Y later on. I actually appreciate this approach, since it avoids "Forgotten Realms" syndrome where old material is constantly being overridden. But it does make things difficult if you're a completest on a budget.

All in all, doing the AP + local guides ended up being the best approach for me. You don't even need to buy all the AP books at once -- unless your group likes to rush through things, each chapter could take a dozen sessions to complete.

[Unruly]

Well, if I'm buying an AP, I want to buy it all at once simply because I prefer physical copies due to my lack of a tablet/reader. With the way that Paizo doesn't reprint things, that can be problematic if I want to buy a part 3 months down the line and all I can get is the PDF. Unless I want to spend an exorbitant amount through some third-party to get something that I'll have no clue what condition it's in, of course. It's also a large part of the reason I made a thread asking about hardcover compilations of splatbooks, despite knowing the most likely answer is "No."

It is sad to hear that the campaign setting books can vary so much though. I've never actually run any pre-printed adventures before(or bothered with splatbooks/gazetteers, or touched any published settings) so I was hoping that they would all be the way you describe Heart of the Jungle. I could handle something like Isles of the Shackles too, because if I've got a main region map I can at least get a feel for the area. City maps can be vaguely described and drawn up as needed, which is typically how I've done things in the past. But with a pre-existing setting the more information I have on hand to start with, the better. At least that's the way I figure it.

[Herbo]

Inner Sea World Guide, Distant Worlds, The Great Beyond, Into the Darklands. The Darklands and the Great Beyond are 3.5 Golarion, but they are setting books, and haven't been retconned too hard (that I'm aware of).

That gets you the star system, the world, the world below, and the planar cosmology of Golarion.

Into the Darklands (3.5) -- $17.99
The Great Beyond (3.5) -- $19.99
Distant Worlds (PF) -- $19.99
Inner Sea World Guide (PF) -- $49.99

Total retail price (books): $107.96 + S&H

If you don't need physical books you could go with PDFs: $50.96

[Kazred]

Unruly wrote:

It is sad to hear that the campaign setting books can vary so much though. I've never actually run any pre-printed adventures before(or bothered with splatbooks/gazetteers, or touched any published settings) so I was hoping that they would all be the way you describe Heart of the Jungle. I could handle something like Isles of the Shackles too, because if I've got a main region map I can at least get a feel for the area. City maps can be vaguely described and drawn up as needed, which is typically how I've done things in the past. But with a pre-existing setting the more information I have on hand to start with, the better. At least that's the way I figure it.

Don't get discouraged. You're trying to swallow it all in one bite and you don't have to. As I mentioned earlier, all you really need is the ISWG. It's fairly comprehensive. You can always drill down on a particular region later.

[LazarX]

Unruly wrote:

Well, I don't want solely fluff. Stats for major cities would be nice to have as well. To put it somewhat simply, I'm wanting to move my game to Golarion and ditch my half-formed homebrew setting because I don't think it's working out very well. My brain just isn't as good at making stuff up as it was back when I was in high school, and my group doesn't really seem to be feeding off of the setting much.

However, before I make the switch I want to be able to tell my group who the major players in the world are, where the major cities are, explain what the Pathfinder Society is, etc. All that general orientation stuff that anyone living in the world would already be at least remotely familiar with. On top of that, I want to have maps to reference and numbers to use for when the party decides that they want to go off on a tangent and go to somewhere on the other side of the continent and chase down an artifact or something.

Some nuggets for thought.

1. The average Golarion native is not going to be as globally informed as a veteran of the Pathfinder Society. For that matter, neither will Pathfinder Society Trainees.

2. The skilled GM is the one who guides his party onto his adventures while still preserving an illusion of free will. In other words, give your characters good reasons for choosing the direction they want to go and they'll go. Basic Marketing 101.

3. You can't have everything and "stick to a budget". Everything means having everything. What you can do is keep your campaign focused on a particular region, and expand as it grows. Again if you keep your players goal focused on your current story arc, they won't have any reason to suddenly go across the world. (If you keep their money tight, they won't be able to afford to either. :)

So decide on a campaign locale, a focus, and what association, if any, the characters will have with the Pathfinder society. Those answers will determine your initial purchases. (and if you've got to save money, buy the PDF's instead of the dead tree editions)

[Adam Daigle]

While I'd love for you to go back and buy all of our books, I fully understand that is a daunting and potentially bank-draining task. :)

The suggestions given so far are solid. What I'd do if I were in your situation is start with the Inner Sea World Guide and then fill in some of the blanks with the Pathfinder Wiki. Then, once you determine which regions you want to know more about or which places you're most likely to place a campaign or places your players are most interested in, get the book that deals with that region/topic. Each of the pages on the wiki have citations to where the information was pulled from, so you can more or less use the wiki as an outline that can take you from the general to the specific.

[Vigil]

For your players, the Inner Sea Primer is a 32 page book that basically cover everything the average person living in the Inner Sea region knows about the Inner Sea. It's made to get your players into the world painlessly.

[LazarX]

Unruly wrote:

Well, if I'm buying an AP, I want to buy it all at once simply because I prefer physical copies due to my lack of a tablet/reader. With the way that Paizo doesn't reprint things, that can be problematic if I want to buy a part 3 months down the line and all I can get is the PDF. Unless I want to spend an exorbitant amount through some third-party to get something that I'll have no clue what condition it's in, of course.

You could always buy it at a FLGS especially New York's Compleat Strategist which tends to put the things on shelf.

[Unruly]

LazarX wrote:

You could always buy it at a FLGS especially New York's Compleat Strategist which tends to put the things on shelf.

I might have to check out the only shop near me again, but I wasn't impressed with them in the past. I went there during their first year open and all they dealt in was WHFB/WH40k, D&D 4E, MtG, and Pokemon. The WH40k and MtG stuff took up most of their gaming section, and since I had given up on MtG years before I felt no need to ever go back to there. Maybe they've changed and expanded their selection in the few years it's been since I was there, but I won't be holding my breath.

[P33J]

Adam Daigle wrote:

While I'd love for you to go back and buy all of our books, I fully understand that is a daunting and potentially bank-draining task. :)

The suggestions given so far are solid. What I'd do if I were in your situation is start with the Inner Sea World Guide and then fill in some of the blanks with the Pathfinder Wiki. Then, once you determine which regions you want to know more about or which places you're most likely to place a campaign or places your players are most interested in, get the book that deals with that region/topic. Each of the pages on the wiki have citations to where the information was pulled from, so you can more or less use the wiki as an outline that can take you from the general to the specific.

You're awesome. This is just great customer service and you guys do it so often that it can sometimes be overlooked.

I just wanted to say thanks.

[Haladir]

To the OP: What Mr. Daigle said. That's exactly what I've done over the past two years I've been GMing in Golarion.

I'm running the Rise of the Runelords AP, so the entire campaign takes place in the land of Varisia. Consequently, the campaign guides and players companions I've bought are pretty much all for locations in Varisia.

In my case, I have...

Inner Sea World Guide (The first campaign supplement I bought.)

I don't remember the order in which I bought them, but I have acquired...

Campaign Settings:
Inner Sea Magic
Magnimar, City of Monuments
City of Strangers (the guide to Kaer Maga, where I set a long side-quest)
Lost Cities of Golarion
Lost Kingdoms
Into The Darklands
Distant Worlds

Players Companions:
Varisia, Birthplace of Legends
Cheliax, Empire of Devils (The PCs never went there, but one PC was from Kintargo, and the player wanted more detailed background info on her homeland.)

If I decide to send the PCs to either Korvosa and/or Riddleport, I'll pick up the Guide to Korvosa campaign setting and/or the Second Darkness Players Guide respectively.

Obviously, if I was running Skull and Shackles, I would have picked up a very different set of supplements.

[Oh, and I did buy all of these on PDF (with the exceptions of Distant Worlds, and Emprire of Devils, which I found at the local used bookstore). I like having them available electronically. I have access to free B&W printing as a job perk, so I have hardcopies of them as well. They just don't look as pretty on the bookshelf.]

[Unruly]

Well, I bought myself a copy of the Inner Sea World Guide for right now. When my group decides what they want to do, then I guess I'll start looking at what books I'll need to fill in the surrounding area.

It would be really nice to have a hardcover that expands on the rest of the stuff, though. I can definitely understand Paizo's concerns about unwanted/dead stock, but once the books go out of print and all the existing stock is sold I wish they would look into it. PDFs are nice and all, but nothing beats an actual physical copy. And while I have my own color laser printer and can print PDFs if I have to, a 3-ring binder is nowhere near comparable to an actual bound book. And toner isn't cheap either, especially if you want the good stuff and not cheap, unpredictable, knock-offs/refills.

Maybe I just need to knuckle down, save money, and finally buy a tablet. The Nexus 7 looks really nice, and is cheap enough, I guess.

[Adam Daigle]

P33J wrote:

I just wanted to say thanks.

Thanks! Quite welcome!

[Mike Dalrymple]

Unruly wrote:

Maybe I just need to knuckle down, save money, and finally buy a tablet. The Nexus 7 looks really nice, and is cheap enough, I guess.

My iPad changed the way I play. I carry less books and never worry about books being out of print. I print up maps and hand outs when I need them and have all my books at my finger tips.

While I still love my physical books, nothing beats having your collection weigh less than 2 pounds and fit in a back pack pocket.