I buy it as well but it is too bad about the sales.
Clearly it means we need to buy more of the Dragon Empires books. Tell your friends!
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It's not all about the sales. It's about the fact that we have a VERY limited number of hardcover books we can produce in a year, and far more ideas and desires for hardcover books to produce in a year than we have available hours in the year to work on them.
I'm sympathetic to reduced hardcover count, don't need 1 or 2 a month like wotc, but I hope at some point Tian Xia gets the big hardcover treatment like the inner sea has.
I Have never heard about the sales thing before (although from that perspective, given it selling out within a year, Distant Worlds might be a better bet for a hardcover).
Wasn't Distant worlds the only softcover campaign setting book they reprinted?
I would love a Distant Worlds hardcover book on the planets, moons, etc. of Golarion's solar system. But I would also want hardcover books for the other continents of Golarion as well. I don't see reason that this may happen one day, I would give up any hardcover book(or groups of softcover) in a year for any of these except a Bestiary(and maybe psionics book).
I know there is already a soft cover gazetteer for Tian Xia but what about making soft cover books based on countries or regions, ex. Lands of the Linnorn Kings, Irrisen, etc?
Well, we already have softcover books on the regions you mentioned Andru...do you mean hardcover books?
Oh, no. I meant those to be examples. Since there are softcover books that detail countries and regions such as Land of the Linnorn Kings and Irrisen, is it possible to give the same treatment to Tian Xia countries and regions like Minata or Xa Hoi. My bad for lack of clarity :)
Creative Director
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Wasn't Distant worlds the only softcover campaign setting book they reprinted?
I would love a Distant Worlds hardcover book on the planets, moons, etc. of Golarion's solar system. But I would also want hardcover books for the other continents of Golarion as well. I don't see reason that this may happen one day, I would give up any hardcover book(or groups of softcover) in a year for any of these except a Bestiary(and maybe psionics book).
One of the few we reprinted, but hardly the only one.
And again... sales isn't the only factor. Capacity to actually MAKE a hardcover is a huge factor.
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Well James,
you guys have been doing a great job making Hard covers. I think you have hit the "goldilocks" number for well at least me. There is enough new stuff coming out so i have books to look forward to, but not so much that i feel I'll have trouble keeping up.
Thank you James and up the good work!
Myles Crocker
I just hope we can get hardcover books for the other continents and distant worlds before they start doing Pathfinder 2nd edition.
Given that every time the subject of Pathfinder 2nd Ed. gets mentioned, the Paizo staff come out to unequivocally shoot it down, I suspect that is a safe bet, Dragon.
Yes, but that doesn't mean we will get those hardcover books either. But who knows what the future will bring.
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Creative Director
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In fact, I can say this—we're QUITE pleased wiht how the Dragon Empires Gazetteer sold, so that's actually a good thing for the likelihood of more continent type books in the future. They're just really hard to do and pull off is all, so the timing has to be Exactly Right.
And chances for hardcover books on those subjects diminish even more.
'Oriental Adventures' was my all time favourite AD&D book.
Kara-Tur was a great boxed set, and I really dug the material quite deeply.
Not once did I ever get to PLAY either, as they are a bit 'hipster', most people firmly sticking to the maintstream, so I get the concern with pushing it as a harcover release.
'Oriental Adventures' was my all time favourite AD&D book.
Kara-Tur was a great boxed set, and I really dug the material quite deeply.
Not once did I ever get to PLAY either, as they are a bit 'hipster', most people firmly sticking to the maintstream, so I get the concern with pushing it as a harcover release.
I always had the issue of people whining about it being too "weeaboo" for the setting.
I suppose when these came out there was no such thing as Weeaboo, it was just a 'oh thats pretty cool' from all of us kids growing up on 'The Samurai' and 'Monkey Magic'. Our key problem was there wasn't really a lot of module support, and there was a lot of "Is the Samurai class just as dumb as the Paladin typically is, and twice as stubborn?".
I'd say module support was probably the main killer, as we just didn't have the chops to make our own back then with quite the same skill.
Well, when you guys have the time to do the book, you can count on me to buy it. I really liked what I saw in the two softcovers.
I guess I feel lucky being the 3PP developer behind Kaidan the setting of Japanese horror by Rite Publishing, because I know I needn't worry because I have a dedicated audience (even if it's a small one), and we are in no way limited to what we can produce.
While the setting guides for the GM and Player are still in development for a proposed Oct/Nov 2013 release, we continuously pump out supplements, one-shot modules, map/encounter supplements, on top of our existing intro trilogy AP to Kaidan. I can easily see a production schedule of releases going strongly into the next 2 years.
Kaidan will never be the standard 3PP setting and single module, like many small company produced game settings. Arguably it's still in it's infancy, yet Kaidan has the intro trilogy AP (Curse of the Golden Spear), 3 one shot modules, 3 race guides (more to come), 2 class/faction guides (more to come), 1 haunts guide, and the recently released Haiku of Horror series of mapped encounter locations - I have plans for 24 releases for that series over the next few years! We even plan to get a Kaidan bestiary created, though since that will be art heavy, we'll need a Kickstarter to pay for it, and at the moment we want to release the setting guides from the last Kickstarter before we start a new one. And I have plans to eventually release a full AP set in Kaidan.
This means Kaidan already has more released material than OA 1e - 3x, Kara-Tur, Rokushima Taiyoo, Tian Xia or any D&Desque oriental setting ever made (and as stated, there's no end in sight).
I don't see a problem from management telling me to stop creating material - so in that, I feel lucky. Nothing seems to depend on the previous products sales. We'll just keep producing until people stop buying them altogether - which could be never.
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Since James has dropped by, I wanted to offer some customer input here... as Tian Xia is a topic that could sell products to me. Not just hardcovers; I'd totally go for mini-PDFs (say, $2 to $4 USD apiece? Let's put these in the 'impulse buy' price range) on individual nations. I'm totally interested in a piecemeal approach to giving Tian Xia more detail if it doesn't justify a hardcover based on your limited resources.
However, I have a long-standing critique on what I've seen of Tian Xia in other products so far. Specifically, it seems like the authors have basically no grasp of the languages they're using. I'm not asking for them to be native speakers or spend a decade learning the language(s), that's unreasonable... but the problem is they regularly come up with nonsense names that make it hard to take the story seriously. Even a very early Japanese student can tell you names like "Atsui Kaijitsu", "Mizu Ki Hikari rebels", and "the Teikoku Shogunate" translate to really silly things. Native speakers I've shared these with agree, and they start laughing. That's not a good thing.
All I'm asking is that when you're using Asian names in a product, please run them by a proficient or native speaker of the relevant language. It should only take a minute or two for them to verify that the names sound reasonable and don't translate to something embarrassing. If they indicate the name is ridiculous, ask them to provide something more reasonable that conveys the idea better. It's quick and easy, and it really helps one's 'story immersion.'
The above probably sounds harsh, but I truly mean it as constructive criticism. I like Paizo, I buy your products and I've stood up for you in a recent thread where someone got angry about you having a company-wide screening of the new Star Trek movie; I'm on your side! I just want your Tian Xia products to live up to the same quality other Golarion/Pathfinder products show, and in this case it's very easily done. A few minutes of name-checking really will translate into me buying more of your product.
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Creative Director
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Since James has dropped by, I wanted to offer some customer input here... as Tian Xia is a topic that could sell products to me. Not just hardcovers; I'd totally go for mini-PDFs (say, $2 to $4 USD apiece? Let's put these in the 'impulse buy' price range) on individual nations. I'm totally interested in a piecemeal approach to giving Tian Xia more detail if it doesn't justify a hardcover based on your limited resources.
However, I have a long-standing critique on what I've seen of Tian Xia in other products so far. Specifically, it seems like the authors have basically no grasp of the languages they're using. I'm not asking for them to be native speakers or spend a decade learning the language(s), that's unreasonable... but the problem is they regularly come up with nonsense names that make it hard to take the story seriously. Even a very early Japanese student can tell you names like "Atsui Kaijitsu", "Mizu Ki Hikari rebels", and "the Teikoku Shogunate" translate to really silly things. Native speakers I've shared these with agree, and they start laughing. That's not a good thing.
All I'm asking is that when you're using Asian names in a product, please run them by a proficient or native speaker of the relevant language. It should only take a minute or two for them to verify that the names sound reasonable and don't translate to something embarrassing. If they indicate the name is ridiculous, ask them to provide something more reasonable that conveys the idea better. It's quick and easy, and it really helps one's 'story immersion.'
The above probably sounds harsh, but I truly mean it as constructive criticism. I like Paizo, I buy your products and I've stood up for you in a recent thread where someone got angry about you having a company-wide screening of the new Star Trek movie; I'm on your side! I just want your Tian Xia products to live up to the same quality other Golarion/Pathfinder products show, and in this case it's very easily done. A few minutes of name-checking really will translate into...
It's true. No one at Paizo speaks Japanese, and so the names we invent aren't very accurate Japanese names. But they're not MEANT to be Japanese, any more than Taldan names are meant to be English or Osirion names are meant to be Egyptian or Linnorm Kingdom names are meant to be Scandanavian. They're meant to SOUND like it.
If they don't sound right to someone who speaks the language, the best bet is to change the names. We do our best, and that may well not be good enough for someone who speaks a language on which a fantasy nation we invent is based. In such a case, you'll just have to grin and bear it, and make changes to the names when you run the game.
And believe it or not, we DO take the steps to mane check things and do try to make sure they're on target, but the fact is that if you don't speak a language and can't write/read it, you can't do a perfect job. It's hardly "quick and easy." If it were, we would have done it, after all.
Frankly, the fact that we don't have native speakers of Japanese was a significant factor I had to weigh. I'm a HUGE fan of Japan's culture, mythology, and history, and I've wanted to do Jade Regent for a long time, but part of the reason it took so long to get it off the ground was the significant hurdle that I'm hardly the most well-versed student on the topic. I'm more well-versed than the average gamer, but no where near versed enough to be an authority to those gamers who are.
It was enough of a factor that for a while I didn't want to even try it, since I knew that, since Asian history/culture/mythology is a topic that so many gamers are so passionate about that I feared that the best we could do is to make something that would only fuel disappointment. The same goes for nautical stuff (Skull & Shackles) and guns. Fans of gaming and these other topics are very demanding, and it's hard to get it right.
In the end, though, we made the decision that "it's hard to do right" is lazy, and so we did our best to make it as great as possible.
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I suppose that's fair enough. I get jarred by it because they don't just 'sound Japanese' or 'sound (other Asian language here)'... often the names end up using actual Japanese words with specific meanings ("Mizu Ki Hikari rebels" for example comes out to something kinda like "Water Life-Spirit-Energy Light rebels", I believe?). Still, if there's only so much to be done for it and you're at least aware of the issue, that's fair enough.
Between your Skull & Shackles example (I don't know much about nautical topics either) and general leeway to 'name substitute' if it's really an issue, it seems there's both a fair example of how this is a recurring (and somewhat unavoidable) problem as well as a solution.
I appreciate the thoughts. This sort of civility and willingness to admit the company isn't perfect puts you (and Paizo) in far higher esteem with me than some companies I've dealt with in the past (many of which will turn openly arrogant and hostile if you point out genuinely damaging flaws in a product), and it's very cool to see. Thank you!
Contributor
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Heh, at least Paizo doesn't have the problem that Iron Crown did when I was writing for them on Lindon. I had to basically learn Quenya and Sindarin (but I am interested in linguistics, so I was willing). I ended up doing linguistic edits on on the manuscript for the Grey Havens and the author was kinda upset, because his good-faith efforts to create "Elvish" names were so faulty.
At least with Vudra, the placenames that were Sanskrit that did end up in the CS weren't actually embarrassing. But Sanskrit is a bit easier to look up and check than Japanese or Chinese names.
We saw a similar problem with the Malebranche - the satirical names Dante gave them sound a lot better to a non-Italian speaker.
Maybe this can be taken somewhat humorously - I mean, have you seen how English is used in Japan?
We can't require Paizo writers or editors to be linguists. That would be ridiculous.
It would also be sad to avoid cool and imaginative settings because they aren't analogues of cultures whose languages we know.
You'll find very odd translations for a LOT of Asian-inspired names used by Western audiences. Indeed, even material that is natively Asian typically translates to ridiculous things if done literally (check out the translations of Street Fighter moves like Hadouken - Vacuum Wave Punch is one I've heard for it, Shoryuken and the like). They may be a little less silly sounding, but they're certainly a mouthful (but then, it's all mostly subjective).
I would absolutely purchase any and all Tian Xia materials, be they hardcover, softcover, quick little impulse-buy PDFs...anything to add to that part of Golarion. I generally prefer non-AP stuff (I prefer to create my own adventures), but bought Jade Regent (all) and Tournament of the Ruby Phoenix just to support anything Tian Xia with the hope the sales help push for some setting material instead of just APs.
My preferences lean much more heavily towards Japanese/Chinese/Korean-inspired material, but any additional details to expand Tian Xia would be absolutely welcomed (like some serious attention to Tian Xia inspired class archetypes and to a lesser degree, prestige classes).
The 3PP published products are doing an excellent job adding some options (using bits and pieces from Heroes of the Jade Oath, just wish they'd done a lot more proofing), but I'd like some truly Tian Xia material.