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Turns out, most people that play RPGs find it easier to identify with humans or half-humans than with ageless butterfly-scorpions with 7 arms. Totally surprising.
Meh. My first PC ever was inhuman gargoyle black knight.
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I'm not an oldschooler, so I don't have much of anything to compare it to. So my take is about what I find enjoyable, not about what I might prefer about it over other settings.
I like the in-depth details. I like the proliferation of plot hooks. I like the staticness of the setting -- stuff I learn about it isn't going to become irrelevant any time soon. I like the variation between different regions and nations.
I like how one can fit just about any kind of campaign into it (I've run pirates in the Shackles, gothic horror in Ustalav, noir private eyes in Absalom, and a long journey through lots of central Avistan). I like how my *players* can learn something about the setting in one campaign, and can then remember it when it comes up in completely different context in another campaign.
I also like that it's flexible enough that I can homebrew some of my own changes (dwarves have a weird economic system, fey have strange politics, there's a village of psionic mutants...), and it doesn't mess up the whole setting or destroy the whole canon.
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Oh, and also, this conversation:
Player: "I was thinking I want to play a cleric of a god similar to Yog Sothoth. Does the Pathfinder cosmology have anything like that?"
GM: "Yeah, how about... Yog Sothoth."
Player: "For real?"
GM: "Yep."
I actually like both Golarion's and Eberron's pantheon, because it allows for some interesting styles of worship beyond just being a general cleric. Mystery cults (for Golarion) and the worship of the Undying Court (for Eberron) are my two favorites.
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I realized the attractiveness of Golarion when I was first introducing it to my players at the beginning of a Kingmaker game. I pointed them to Brevoy and the Stolen Lands, and told them that Brevoy had a Russianish flavor to it. I started telling them about the other things...
...the pirates...
...the devil-wosrhipping country that was a major political power...
...revolutionary France....
...revolutionary USA, only without slavery...
...the genie-summoning Arab lands...
...the Vikings...
...the permanent hurricane...
...the rift in the world out of which spew demons...
...the crashed spaceship...
...space elfs...
...the island raised from the sea by a proto-god that has a cathedral on it you can go to in order to try to become a god yourself....
They loved it; it's just got a lot of shiny in it. It's a little ridiculous, you have to admit, but it's like gamer-candy. It's got all the cool things in it that you'd want to have. You can interact them as much or as little as you want. It's not a coherent single world with a single narrative the way Tolkien's Middle Earth is-- although there are clearly some important narratives that shape the world (Earthfall, the Death of Aroden probably being the two highlights on that list).
When I mentioned the starstone cathedral, one of my players said, "Really? It's been my goal for every character I've ever had to become a god!" I'm kinda hoping that post-Kingmaker AP, I end up having to figure out how to run the Starstone for him.....
I always scratch my head a little bit when people seem to imply that Golarion is supposed to be another psuedo-medieval Europe setting. It's got some of that in there, yes, and it grew out of the D&D classes that are supposed to be pseudo-medieval. If I had to pick a single era that Golarion was most like in our history, I'd say it's more around the time of the English Renaissance, but even that doesn't exactly fit. (The old Roman empire in decline is still hanging around too, we just call it Taldor.) It's not just the guns; it's the French and American revolutions, it's the abolitionists, it's the tone of the place. But it's better than history, because women can be equal to men in Golarion.
It's a great kind of place to set roleplaying games in, where you want your stories to have meat and not be all jokes, but you don't want to take it all too seriously.
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I always scratch my head a little bit when people seem to imply that Golarion is supposed to be another psuedo-medieval Europe setting. It's got some of that in there, yes, and it grew out of the D&D classes that are supposed to be pseudo-medieval. If I had to pick a single era that Golarion was most like in our history, I'd say it's more around the time of the English Renaissance, but even that doesn't exactly fit.Its quite a mixed bag.
The southern nations (Cheliax, Andoran, Galt, Molthune) are basically C18th Europe without gunpowder.
The northern nations (Irissen, Brevoy, Lastwall) are more medieval kingdoms.
While the far northern ones are nations of primitive barbarians.I suppose that is not too unrealistic. C18th England was going through the industrial revolution while Russia still remained a medieval-type nation of serfs. Meanwhile up in Lapland and sub-Arctic Russia there were still primitive tribal reindeer-herders.
Yes, sometimes it's good to remember how "unrealistic" the real world sometimes is. :)
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I love Golarion because:
1. Of how well that Paizo fleshed it out.
2. It isn't a carbon copy of either Greyhawk or Faerun.
3. It has a darker more realistic tone. Not all is good. Good had its reign, but now much has fallen because of Aroden's death.
4. There is more of an explorer and mercenary feel to it.
5. The inclusion of a pirate realm and lots of natural disaster areas.
6. A necromantic nation that isn't all evil. It is a thriving nation that helps its neighbors.
7. The Mwangi Expanse. It is one of the best jungle nations since the Isle of Dread in the 1st Edition D&D.
Thanks Paizo staff!
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Are you kidding me? Eberron and Forgotten Realms are not as humanocentric as Golarion.
Greyhawk might be, but that's one out of three. I do not recall Dark Sun being very humanocentric either.
Just a small correction here...
FR in 1st and 2nd edition was completely and uterly humancentric.
The Elves were in a full Retreat....they were all running wiuth their tail tucked behind their legs to Evermeet.
The Dwarves were a dead race pretty much with a couple of small kingdoms(really Citystates) their numbers dwindling from a very low birth rate and constant warfare with orcs and the gobliniod races.
Gnomes were a footnote race.
Halflings were so attached to Humans it were not even funny.
While that did change slightly with 3rd edition with the dwarves recience the Thunderblessing from their god( which increased the number of twins borned) and the Elves recieving a slight resurgence...it was really very humancentric. And the above themes...were understated in 3rd ed.
Eberron Elves....a bunch of psuedo-necromancers pretty much staying on a island...or a cross of corrsacks/Mongolian elves in a desert...I really did not see them having that big of a impact on the setting.
As to Golarion having so 'few' non human areas...well to be fair the Inner Sea is alot smaller than the area covered by FR or Ebberon(which actualy a few non human areas as well)
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With the Azlanti playing the 'dying elder race' angle, and the Elves having just returned and beginning to rebuild, there's potential for Golarion to move beyond the more typical fantasy stereotype we've more or less been stuck with since Tolkein, of elves being a 'dying race.'
If the elves weren't so tied up in the Treerazer business and their own secret war with their darker-skinned kin, there'd be some ripe potential for elf-on-human conflict, as the elves have returned to a Golarion in which humanity has exploded in all directions and utterly surrounded them and taken pretty much every bit of territory that isn't the heart of their former forest kingdom (which is somewhat convenient for the elves, since humanity took over pretty much every other place).
I'm reminded of the Romulans in the Next Generation, who commented that they turned away to deal with some internal matters, and when they finished sorting that out, it seemed like the Federation had expanded all around them and boxed them in...
Generally, in this sort of fantasy / D&D ish setting, elves are aloof and more or less obsolete and fading into obscurity, having literally zero impact on surrounding human kingdoms, but with the situation on Golarion as it is, it would be a neat twist if the newly returned elves are expansionist and vibrant and not at all going gently into any good night.
If the elves former capitol / homeland was actually in the Barrowood or Whisperwood, and the Chels had utterly taken them over, or in the Verduran Forest, and been jointly taken over / settled / razed by Taldan and Andoran settlers, and the elves were stuck in Kyonin, a former provincial city considered something of a backwater, because most of their former empire was now in the hands of humans and / or destroyed, that might make for some interesting tension between elves and the human kingdoms that some see as 'squatting' on ancestral elven lands.
As for 'too humanocentric,' that's probably one of the easiest things to fix in a home game. All Ulfen are dwarves. Literally nothing else about them changes. Same attitudes. Same Linnorm Kings. Same horny Viking hats and carved scrimshaw rune-magic and dragon-prowed raiding ships and drunken meadhall nith contests. The Varisian ethnicity is Halfling by race, although many gnomes, half-elves, humans, etc. are welcome to join their nomadic caravans or semi-permanent communities and are considered as much 'Varisian' as the Halflings among them (with Desna, a patron of luck, now being the patron of the 'lucky' halflings, and a patron of liberation, being a patron of a race that all-too-often finds itself enslaved...). All Shoanti are half-orcs (with the occasional orc or human, considered a 'half-breed' among the 'pureblooded' half-orcs!), bred for strength and versatility by their former Thassilonion masters, and now roaming free. Nothing cultural needs to change, for entire human ethnicities (or, at least, large numbers of them) to be swapped out for fantasy races.
It doesn't have to change the nature of the Ulfen, Shoanti, Varisians, etc. to have them be fantasy racial divides, and not just faux human ethnicities.
Taking it a step further and having the dominant race of the Mwangi expanse be dark-skinned elves, or the peoples (or just a notable sub-class?) of Osirian be animal-headed agathion and / or peri-descended aasimar (or similar animal headed peoples, such as tengu, catfolk and / or gnolls?), could be a logical progression, or a step too far, depending on your tastes. :)
Not a big fan I must confess, although Paizo have done a great job it dosn't really float my boat.
There are some parts I like- Mwangi expanse and shackles/sodden/eye area, Katapech, Varsia and the hold, Chelix, Linorm Kings and worldwound- but that's about it really.
I really don't care for the mana wastes and the crashed spaceship and I really dislike the androids. IMO the regions are too diverse and close together to make it feel real, its almost as if its how much diversity can we cram in in one continent in the world but I can see why they decided to do it this way.
Having said that I like the feel of the world and how as others have said they have steered away from the Tolkien style and are slightly more gritty, emerging firearms works for me too. The work they have done on the Gods and outsiders is amazing and I like the adding of the mythos to the world.
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If the elves former capitol / homeland was actually in the Barrowood or Whisperwood, and the Chels had utterly taken them over, or in the Verduran Forest, and been jointly taken over / settled / razed by Taldan and Andoran settlers, and the elves were stuck in Kyonin, a former provincial city considered something of a backwater, because most of their former empire was now in the hands of humans and / or destroyed, that might make for some interesting tension between elves and the human kingdoms that some see as 'squatting' on ancestral elven lands.
Those human kingdoms would probably include Druma, Razmiran, Numeria, Galt, Brevoy, and the rest of the River Kingdoms. Everything else to the south was the domain of the Azlanti, Osiriani, Jitskans, etc., Iobaria was under the Cyclops, and the west was the domain of the Azlanti and Thassilonians.
I've seen several posters here say you can 'make Golarion your own'. But I've seen several posters elsewhere saying how they changed some things around and their players were enraged. Orcs not always evil? "How dare you!" A dwarven kingdom near the Inner Sea? "That's not canon!" I just wonder how to deal with this.
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Orcs not always evil? "How dare you!" A dwarven kingdom near the Inner Sea? "That's not canon!" I just wonder how to deal with this.
In these particular cases, the [hypothetical?] players are just wrong. Orcs are not always evil, and as of the Inner Sea World Guide the Five Kings Mountains are under the control of an independent dwarven polity.
Orcs not always evil? "How dare you!" A dwarven kingdom near the Inner Sea? "That's not canon!" I just wonder how to deal with this.In these particular cases, the [hypothetical?] players are just wrong. Orcs are not always evil, and as of the Inner Sea World Guide the Five Kings Mountains are under the control of an independent dwarven polity.
Actually, these are real reactions from players people on this board have said they had. But that's interesting about the Five Kings Mountains. I'm mostly complaining about players who feel the DM needs to be straight-jacketed by canon when the DM just wants to change some things.
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Actually, these are real reactions from players people on this board have said they had. But that's interesting about the Five Kings Mountains. I'm mostly complaining about players who feel the DM needs to be straight-jacketed by canon when the DM just wants to change some things.Orcs not always evil? "How dare you!" A dwarven kingdom near the Inner Sea? "That's not canon!" I just wonder how to deal with this.In these particular cases, the [hypothetical?] players are just wrong. Orcs are not always evil, and as of the Inner Sea World Guide the Five Kings Mountains are under the control of an independent dwarven polity.
Well, that's not a problem with the world, that's a problem of the players being willing to work with the GM and vice versa. There is literally nothing Paizo can do about it other than not putting out a setting at all, and we're far, far too late for that option to still be possible.
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I've seen several posters here say you can 'make Golarion your own'. But I've seen several posters elsewhere saying how they changed some things around and their players were enraged. Orcs not always evil? "How dare you!" A dwarven kingdom near the Inner Sea? "That's not canon!" I just wonder how to deal with this.
Yeah canon lawyers are 100% worse than rules lawyers at times.
One of the best way to deal with this is to be up front as possible with the changes you are making. I would even suggest writting up the changes from canon and handling it to these players. Than give them a very clear message that your housecanon trumps book canon.
As for posters on the boards...ignore them.
I'm a canon lawyer, but I'm also the GM in my regular game so it works out for me. I really like canon though. If some new piece of canon comes out to contradict my home game, I would likely try to retcon my home game so it fits with the new canon. That hasn't happened yet though.
The biggest problem I have is one of my players really likes the Greyhawk racial pantheons and he refuses to use Torag as the god of dwarves or Gorum as a principle orcish faith, insisting Moradin and Gruumsh are the only right racial deities for dwarves and orcs, respectively. He played once as an orc unarmed barbarian who, since Gruumsh isn't a Pathfinder deity, followed a secular Orcish philosophy based around a philosopher named Gruumsh. He was basically like "I'm going to follow Gruumsh even if he's not a god!" Of course we both knew that he made that character to use for one session, so it wasn't too a big deal. And the only dwarf he ever played was a non-religious dwarf fighter in someone else's campaign.
I think I said this already, but I love the Golarion pantheon. Forgotten Realms pantheon used to be my favorite, but I like the Golarion pantheon more. I still like Sharess better than Calistria as a pleasure goddess, but I think Calistria is way better than Corellon Larenthian as a primary deity of the elves.
And I love Golarion's Ustalav as an alternative to Ravenloft that actually exists in the setting with all the rest of Golarion. I love aspects of Ravenloft, but there are some things I don't like. The worship of concepts/abstractions, and the severing of the gods from the realm being pretty central.
I love the Classic Monsters/Classic Horrors/Undead/Dragons/Fey/Mystery Monsters/Giants Revisited books, which ARE in the Campaign Setting line. (Though I was annoyed a bit that some fey were given lifespan length information in Fey Revisited. I still may treat all fey as Eternal.)
The biggest problem I have is one of my players really likes the Greyhawk racial pantheons and he refuses to use Torag as the god of dwarves or Gorum as a principle orcish faith, insisting Moradin and Gruumsh are the only right racial deities for dwarves and orcs, respectively. He played once as an orc unarmed barbarian who, since Gruumsh isn't a Pathfinder deity, followed a secular Orcish philosophy based around a philosopher named Gruumsh. He was basically like "I'm going to follow Gruumsh even if he's not a god!" Of course we both knew that he made that character to use for one session, so it wasn't too a big deal. And the only dwarf he ever played was a non-religious dwarf fighter in someone else's campaign.
I should have encouraged him to worship Rovagug as an orc. I might have been able to sell him on Rovagug over Gruumsh, and I think more orcs worship Rovagug than Gorum anyway. But I suppose I need to read up on Golarion's orcs again.
I'm just glad he's back to playing his faithless mad-scientist alchemist again.
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The setting AND the APs have this delicious Pulp Fantasy vibe going though out it. Rather than be scared by the Kitchen Skin world it embraces it in strange ways. Any other setting and half the things in Golarion would freak out the locals. Here? It's Tuesday.
And the Pathfinders and their ilk eat it up.
I've seen several posters here say you can 'make Golarion your own'. But I've seen several posters elsewhere saying how they changed some things around and their players were enraged. Orcs not always evil? "How dare you!" A dwarven kingdom near the Inner Sea? "That's not canon!" I just wonder how to deal with this.Yeah canon lawyers are 100% worse than rules lawyers at times.
One of the best way to deal with this is to be up front as possible with the changes you are making. I would even suggest writting up the changes from canon and handling it to these players. Than give them a very clear message that your housecanon trumps book canon.
As for posters on the boards...ignore them.
I agreee totally. The only Cannon that should matter is the one for the game being played. Cannon has some relevance in Society play since there has to be cross table continuity.
I've played for over 30 years and honestly never used a purchased setting before. I guess I'm getting old and busy so I was looking for a setting that had enough material to support it so that I wouldn't be searching around for stuff on the web. I had never used modules before. However, even in my own campaign, if a player came up with a concept that fleshed out the map, and added to the world I went with it. In my last campaign in one of my homebrews, I had a player come up with a concept for proto-elves that held to old animisitc beliefs and lived as tribal nomads in the far northern desert of the land. Changing cannon just to change it is probably not great, but if it makes part of the story that is being played out it makes all the sense in the world.
So I love Golarion because of all the source materials at hand. I've been running RotRL. When we needed to go to Magnimar in #1, I was able to get the source material. I have maps that I didn't have to draw (I'm a terrible artist), and the AP's give great storyline adventures to run, and the modules can be used to fill in time and gaps where wanted.
The variety of settings makes for a great range of story options, and a platform that I can use without having to find another world for that type of adventure.
I'll be moving from Cannon as my players shape the history of Golarion at my table. It really allows you to have the info you need easily to flesh it out, and make a solid base for you to build your version. You have the option to use a little or a lot of the material, and either will work beautifully. Basically they've built a world where you have to do little, or can choose to do a lot, and either way it should work for you and your players.
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I'm an Old School player by most accounts and I've always hated D&D, I found it dull and while I love Fantasy D&D never did it for me (but that old cartoon was great) for some reason. If I think about it, it's because D&D was a bunch of cliches to me and nothing was really all that interesting for me.
Many many years later I had a friend say, "You should run Curse of the Crimson Throne!"
...what's that?
"It's Pathfinder. It's a new game based on 3rd.."
No.
"...it.."
NO! No damn D&D I hate...
"Read it. Just read it..."
I was sold. I have not ran anything but Pathfinder since the printing of CotCT #3.
It was not Pathfinder that did it or the slight tweaks to the system (they helped!) or even the commitment to Roleplay over Roll Play (a HUGE win) but it was Golarion. It also allowed me to figure a big part of what I did not like about D&D. In D&D I do not exist. Not really, as a Black male I am an after thought in D&D. A whole world and I'm Bigfoot, yeah you might fins a pic of me here and there but they guy that took it is drunk or the pic is blurry or I might be a bear Ha!
Pazio gave me a world "I" could exist in. People I know can exist in this world. It's a real world with people from nearly all walks of life. Many many cultures to pick from. many shades of skin tone but again CULTURES to go with them. Men who love men, women who love women and now Half-Orc women who love human men who who felt like human women trapped in the body of human men that, through the power of love and lots of cash become human women.... BEST THAT AD&D!! HAHAHA
So in a nutshell... Golarion is wonderful because of many reasons one of them is that it's not Planet Euro in the Conservative Star Cluster.
I unfortunately don't love it. It seems like they tried way to hard to mishmash everything someone could potentially want in a world at the cost of the world itself.
However, there are many things I do very much enjoy about it. I like the human racial diversity and combining them with real world archetypes that allow you to get a quick sense of understanding. I enjoy the pantheon a great deal and some of the inventive rework of old school monsters and elements. I also absolutely adore what they've done with their work on AP's and the excellent story behind them.
Ultimately however...it's Paizo's products I enjoy moreso than their world of Golarion. I like old school fantasy...if I wanted to play swashbucklers with guns I'd play 7th Sea. Similarly if I wanted futuristic elements and robots etc...I'd play Gamma World. Trying to combine three archetypes into one world simply does not work for me. I still love several aspects of the world...Pathfinder Society and Aspix Consortium etc...but I find I way too often want to pick and choose a select couple of countries and ideas and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist because of how the mix mash of elements takes me out of moment.
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Golarion isn't particularly interesting (to me) when it comes to fiction, but as a setting specifically for games, it shines.
The OP mentions Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms. Both of those settings have played out across novels, comics, RPGs, computer games and pretty much any other medium you could name. They're incredibly detailed, with canon that has been built up (and torn down in some cases) over decades. And that's the problem: a tabletop game is supposed to be about the players, not about the characters from a tie-in novel. In Golarion, there's no Elminster, no Drizzt, no Tanis. The players are the heroes and what they do matters. Likewise, having a setting that evolves over time is not a plus for a commercial RPG setting. I don't want to have to adapt my campaign to the current events in Waterdeep or Shadowdale, as detailed by the latest sourcebook -- I want a jumping off point and nothing more. The events in a campaign should center around the actions of the players.
Is Golarian a superior setting from an artistic point of view? Absolutely not. But let's be honest, neither are Faerun or Krynn. If you're looking for artistic merit in fantasy world-building, read J.R.R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Michael Morcock, H.P. Lovecraft, or any of the other authors from whom game publishers so liberally borrow.
Golarion works exactly because it's a blank slate. I can run any kind of game I want there without having to do the heavy lifting.
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Kazred gets it. :)
And that's the problem: a tabletop game is supposed to be about the players, not about the characters from a tie-in novel. In Golarion, there's no Elminster, no Drizzt, no Tanis. The players are the heroes and what they do matters.
There's no reason that there has to be an Elminster (who's probably a quest NPC or a source of exposition anyway), a Drizzt, or a Tanis in your home version of another campaign setting either.
And that's the problem: a tabletop game is supposed to be about the players, not about the characters from a tie-in novel. In Golarion, there's no Elminster, no Drizzt, no Tanis. The players are the heroes and what they do matters.There's no reason that there has to be an Elminster (who's probably a quest NPC or a source of exposition anyway), a Drizzt, or a Tanis in your home version of another campaign setting either.
Of course, but even if the whole party agrees on that, it is insidiously difficult to banish them entirely. This is true of any established setting really. These characters make up a part of the vocabulary for that world.
They have already worn a track through the setting, and its influence persists even if you try to blaze your own trail. This can be a good thing, but more often than not, it turns out badly. Usually because of self-indulgent writers/developers making pretty amateurish mistakes (see Elminster appearing in published adventures.)
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That it gives a perhaps realistic depth to the resident Fantasy Counterpart Cultures rather than have them be pure cliches.
And, by the same turn, takes the everpresent eurocentric clichés and gives most of them a twist that we haven't seen before.
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There's no reason that there has to be an Elminster (who's probably a quest NPC or a source of exposition anyway), a Drizzt, or a Tanis in your home version of another campaign setting either.
Of course. A GM can do anything he or she wants. If I want an army of machine gun wielding Ewoks to raze Greyhawk, then that's what happens in my campaign. Excising the official cannon is always possible.... but at some point, rewriting cannon becomes more work than just starting from scratch.
Using a published setting is already a compromise as far as I'm concerned; in a perfect world, I'd have the time and energy to home brew a setting from scratch, and my players would have the time to learn about that world before sitting down to play. Unfortunately, that's just not the case these days. Out of the box, Golarion is just easier to make one's own; it was designed that way. The whole thing is modular -- if there's a particular country I dislike (I'm looking at you Andoran), it's simple to ignore it. It's not someone else's world that I need to adapt for my game, it's a toolkit for building my own.
Of course, but even if the whole party agrees on that, it is insidiously difficult to banish them entirely. This is true of any established setting really. These characters make up a part of the vocabulary for that world.
They have already worn a track through the setting, and its influence persists even if you try to blaze your own trail. This can be a good thing, but more often than not, it turns out badly. Usually because of self-indulgent writers/developers making pretty amateurish mistakes (see Elminster appearing in published adventures.)
Thing is, this is about the player relative to the setting rather than an inherent property of the setting itself.
Well, straight off the bat, I'll say I don't love Golarion like I do/did Krynn, the Realms etc. There is a "but" coming, however...
I got into RPGs by reading the first Dragonlance book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, in '91, when I was 10 or 11. The very last page of the book had an ad for AD&D, where you could play a game in which you were Tanis, Raistlin, etc. This blew my mind.
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Around the turn of the millennium, I'd read tons of DL and FR books, and had run games in both. But it became so hard. Canon was huge, and I felt like there was little space for me to create stories with my group that could compete with the epicness of the tales I'd originally fallen in love with without completely altering the realities of the worlds I'd likewise fallen in love with (this extended to ICE's MERP as well). What a paradox! I loved these universes so much that I couldn't bring myself to run/play in them because by creating legendary stories I might mess them up!
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As Broken mentioned, Golarion feels like my world. It doesn't thrill me in the narrative sense that DL and FR did, but that means I can do whatever I want with it. Destroy the Acadamae? Can do. Overthrow House Thrune? No probs - I've largely created my own version of House Thrune, so I can do what I like.
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TL;DR: I can do whatever I want in Golarion without destroying an object of my fanboy affection. That's why I dig it.
My story is very similar... except everywhere he writes "Krynn/The Realms" replace it with "Middle Earth", and everywhere he writes "Golarion" replace it with "Greyhawk/The Realms". I couldn't game in Middle Earth because Feanor, Luthien, Bilbo, Frodo, et al. have already done everything, and it wouldn't be Middle Earth if someone else did grand things. But writing Drizzt out of the Realms doesn't bother me one iota more than replacing Seoni etc. with LittleHewy's group's own characters bothers him.
@Kazred: Yes and no. Golarion's definitely modular, but that's not exactly it. I have no trouble treating Greyhawk/Realms as modular. Greyhawk/Realms are traditional fantasy settings, and if that's what you're looking for they're great. Golarion has a lot of modular microsettings, and if any/some of those appeal to you then great. Since I'm looking for a traditional fantasy setting, I'd have less work making Greyhawk/FR "my own" than making Golarion "my own". I can see that if you were looking for something more like some of the microsettings, Golarion would be less work (understatement).
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For me it's Taldor. Huge selling point for me, I love knights, and intrigue, beasties, and empires in decline. There are so many kinds of things you could find just in Taldor alone. White Dragons in the Fog Peaks, Ghouls in a dilapidated farmstead, the capital is built upon an ancient ruin if i'm not mistaken.
Also, the opportunity to unleash a monty python skit on the players! Taldor for all it has, feels like england in the middle ages, with giants, dragons, and all manner of beasts added in. Don't forget the Norwegian Blue Parrot! Sure there are other elements, but how can you go wrong with jolly old Taldor?
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For many others I think the big initial reason was the strong desire to support Paizo at the beginning of the Edition Wars. Paizo had been the company that had been putting out the quality material for the previous four years while WotC had been putting out glut and sub-standard material, and people wanted more Paizo -- especially since their business was all the sudden in jeapordy.
-- And once you look at a new setting for a while, well, even the average-quality ones will grow on you (we are hungry gamers,) -- and Paizo is dramatically better than "average quality." Plus, considering their great customer service (and WotC's poor reputation for the same), it's obvious why we were initially drawn to Paizo's new setting. And then fell in love.
For me, I love the Pathfinder world because of its differences from GH & FR -- the other great basic Campaign Settings. While I'll always love GH for its raw, "old-school" and nostalgic feel, and FR for it's high magic atmosphere, largely populated areas and, most especially, the half-dozen novels I've read that made it become the "story-setting" for me -- Pathfinder is different:
It's regions have enough real-world-inspired (sometimes grossly, sometimes subtly) motifs and geographical, cultural and atmospheric veins that it's easy to learn, easy to teach and easy to start playing in.
It's perfect -- and a great new idea. Yeah, "new." Sure FR has Mulhorandi and a god named Tyr -- but that's not the same as Osirion, Mwangi, Tian, Linnorm Kings, Ustalov, Azlanti & Arcadia, and several others. In Pathfinder, it's the norm -- nay, the standard. And that makes us all want to apply other real-world motifs to the non- (or less-) obvious regions: "What's Galt?" "Where are the Romans?"
When I want old school grognardia I am All-In for GH. (not Mystara!)
When I want high-magic, heavy story & rich background, I am All-In for FR. (Hell no, not Eberron the Dumb!)
When I want a specific, no-explanation-needed cultural background & motif, I am All-In for Pathfinder.
Finally, Pathfinder is current; we can buy and get new material. It's a live setting (In the "Dead Languages" definition; FR & GH don't have anything new coming out.); Pathfinder has a new release being published.
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@Kazred: Yes and no. Golarion's definitely modular, but that's not exactly it. I have no trouble treating Greyhawk/Realms as modular. Greyhawk/Realms are traditional fantasy settings, and if that's what you're looking for they're great. Golarion has a lot of modular microsettings, and if any/some of those appeal to you then great. Since I'm looking for a traditional fantasy setting, I'd have less work making Greyhawk/FR "my own" than making Golarion "my own". I can see that if you were looking for something more like some of the microsettings, Golarion would be less work (understatement).
I agree with you regarding Greyhawk. By happenstance rather than by design, Oerth is as much of a blank slate as Golarion. If I felt the itch to convert an old school setting to PFRPG, Greyhawk would be at the top of my list.
As you pointed out, Krynn and Middle Earth have basically the same issue. The canon heroes loom so large, that the setting simply can't withstand their removal. I experienced this first-hand trying to run MERP back in the day. It ended up feeling like crappy fan fiction. I don't really feel this way about Pathfinder's Iconics. They seem more like examples than actual in-canon characters, and I suspect this is intentional.
With FR, the issue is less the canon characters than it is the canon itself. It moves and changes independently of individual campaigns, which makes any attempts to keep things relatively in-canon impossible. The setting has become over-documented, and has been retconned far too many times across too many different editions... there's no white space left for individual GMs.
Golarion's advantage over the Forgotten Realms may simply arise from the fact that it's a far younger setting. As Paizo continues to support Golarion, it's entirely possible that it will eventually have the same problems with over-documentation. But right now, I believe it's far more GM-friendly than any of the old-school D&D settings.
I love basically everything Golarion. Yeah, it's a mashup crazy world/setting, but that's what is so great. Then you have a company that is constantly churning out more info about said setting, and churning out more crunch for said setting.
Honestly, how many books were published (not novels) for FR? GH? Now, how many for Pathfinder?
New to Golarion but loving each moment of exploration. (Im ashamed to admit how much money Ive spent in the past month building a library)
It holds enough information to save me hours of creative work yet lends itself wonderfully to additional detail and fleshing out. Ive begun our campaign in Taldor and have chapters of additional information, color, maps and detail already.
My Golarion wont have gunpowder or sci-fi elements (major reworking required there) and most of what I read will require some small tweaking but its a wonderful platform to work from. Awesome awesome awesome.
My previous campaign was run in Hyboria and I spent literally weeks trying to make sure each adventure background was at least very close to canon. Here I dont feel that pressure and can run with it!
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Golarion's advantage over the Forgotten Realms may simply arise from the fact that it's a far younger setting. As Paizo continues to support Golarion, it's entirely possible that it will eventually have the same problems with over-documentation. But right now, I believe it's far more GM-friendly than any of the old-school D&D settings.
I think that another one of FR's problems was the large changes that were frequently made that affected the setting as a whole. I've never really followed it, but it's my understanding that at a minimum, each edition changed was accompanied with major changes in the setting, and even in between edition changes they made changes that could vastly affect campaigns that tried to stay within the canon (such as killing off large numbers of gods).
I don't really see Paizo blowing up Golarion that way. I get the impression that even if they made huge changes to the Pathfinder system with PFRPG 2nd Edition, they would leave the flavor material of Golarion pretty much as it stands now.
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I think that another one of FR's problems was the large changes that were frequently made that affected the setting as a whole. I've never really followed it, but it's my understanding that at a minimum, each edition changed was accompanied with major changes in the setting, and even in between edition changes they made changes that could vastly affect campaigns that tried to stay within the canon (such as killing off large numbers of gods).
That's about the shape of it. In fact, you describe exactly what happened to my campaign back in the day. I drifted away from D&D after 2nd edition, but my understanding is that the jump from 3.5 to 4.0 was even more extreme. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think Faerun suffered a Thundar-style apocalypse.
I don't really see Paizo blowing up Golarion that way. I get the impression that even if they made huge changes to the Pathfinder system with PFRPG 2nd Edition, they would leave the flavor material of Golarion pretty much as it stands now.
Given the history of the Pathfinder RPG, I expect that Paizo would be smart enough to never attempt a full-on 2nd edition. Likewise, I really hope they never try to inflict a reboot on Golarion. The Inner Sea region is a small enough section of the world that there's room for new sub-settings to co-exist peacefully with the old.
I agree with you regarding Greyhawk. By happenstance rather than by design, Oerth is as much of a blank slate as Golarion. If I felt the itch to convert an old school setting to PFRPG, Greyhawk would be at the top of my list.
As you pointed out, Krynn and Middle Earth have basically the same issue. The canon heroes loom so large, that the setting simply can't withstand their removal. I experienced this first-hand trying to run MERP back in the day. It ended up feeling like crappy fan fiction. I don't really feel this way about Pathfinder's Iconics. They seem more like examples than actual in-canon characters, and I suspect this is intentional.
With FR, the issue is less the canon characters than it is the canon itself. It moves and changes independently of individual campaigns, which makes any attempts to keep things relatively in-canon impossible. The setting has become over-documented, and has been retconned far too many times across too many different editions... there's no white space left for individual GMs.
That's fair. While you can make FR anything you want, if you do that things won't work right out of the box any more.
I started D&D last year, 3.5 with the group I was in. Only the DM didn't want to use FR because some dude some years ago was a fan boy and gave him a rough time about everything not 'cannon'. So we started out in a world the characters lived in, but had no real idea of what was *in* it, or about where they lived, or the type of culture or background they had, or any of that. I didn't much care for it. It was, to me, a homebrew without a home.
I looked at alternative RPGs, I found out how "Pathfinder" was considered the logical progression of 3.5, and then I started getting hooked on Golarion. I am pleased that with Hero Labs, you can have Golarion 'stuff' in the 3.5e game setting, and you can have Eberon, Greyhawk and other world settings in the Pathfinder game setting.
Golarion has much to offer, and I'm pretty sure that as a newb, I could explore Golarion for a very long time before I ran out of interesting things to poke at. Sure, it's a mish-mash, but let's be honest. So is gold-ol' modern day real-life Earth. Sure, you have to travel and those areas are isolated. But adventure is out there! If Golarion has parts I don't wish to include, the world is big enough I can avoid going there and still find plenty of fantastic adventure.
I'm certain the other world settings have things to offer. Just, as a newb, I don't know what those things are, and I'm happy to not worry about that quite so much at this time.
As for the "human-centric" ... the one thing I would want of the Golarion world setting is that Paizo would take The Noble Wild by Lee Garvin and rework it into a Campaign Setting book. Noble Wild doesn't "feel" Golarion as is, even though there is a version with Pathfinder rule adjustments in it. But that is the one thing Golarion doesn't offer 'out of the box' and I wish it did. I don't think any OTHER world setting offers it either, as such.
So... perhaps because it is my 'first and only' published world setting experience, still I love Golarion for what it is.
1. I like how there are countries modeled after real world locations and other literary sources. If I wanna run a Lovcraftian/Gothic horror game I go to Ustalav, traditional AD&D I go to Varisia, If I wanna go Steampunk I go to Alkenstar, Sci-fi/Aliens I go to Numeria, etc.
2. Details on the solar system and lands based off ancient Asia.
3. They simplified the outer planes. Each Alignment has it's own plane and that's it.
4. The inclusion of classic Lovcraftian horror and the ability to be powerful enough to actually fight and defeat their cosmic horror.
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They simplified the outer planes. Each Alignment has it's own plane and that's it.
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Not to get off topic (the Thread's OP is passed its lifespan anyway) but,... just out of curiosity, was the "complexity"(?) of The Great Wheel an actual problem?I always thought it was a great idea: each Alignment gets a Plane and inbetween each of those nine is a "middle" Plane. 17 Planes seemed great to me in that regard. And I've never really heard anyone bothered by it, but you know, that's what the Boards are for: broaden your mind.
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One thing I really love about Golarion is that it's got plenty of grime to it, without it venturing into Warhammer-style grimdark territory. Slavery is an accepted fact of life in many parts of the setting, rulers are often cruel or incompetent, crime and corruption eat at the heart of even the good-aligned nations, the gods are distant and sometimes difficult to understand, and genuinely unsettling acts of violence and cruelty take place all the time.
At the same time, however, there are genuine heroes, good and honest men and women, and virtuous leaders even in most of the "evil" parts of the world. There's hope as well as despair, light as well as darkness, and I feel like the writers have done a good job of striking a balance between the two. The imperfectness, for lack of a better term, of both good and evil in the setting, and the fact that the writers drew inspiration from the crimes and cruelties of history as well as its wonders and exoticisms makes Golarion feel more real to me.
Dot for later.
I love the setting for pretty much all the reasons said above. The various settings, the way some races were made new, etc. But while I loved FR and DL, they had an annoying (to me) habit of forgetting some spells or artifacts exist. It's nice to see a setting where people in the world acknowledge that some artifacts exist and will use them. Example, group of soldiers having all agreeing to draw from a deck of many things till one of them gets a fortress, people actually casting resurrection on someone, and powerful wizards actually remember that they have a wish spell. It's mainly flavor fluff, but I can still appreciate it.
Sorry for the above
I like Galorian b/c of the variety, just in the inner sea there is a huge amount of differing landscapes & there is a whole massive world beyond that not to mention other planets in the solar system. You can do just about anything & the go to someplace in the world & do something completely different.
Add in the vast & robust history (I love backstory) & it is a world that is more than the sum of its parts.
