|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As much as I appreciate and enjoy Golarion canon, I will not hesitate to throw chunks of it out the window as soon as it interferes with the campaign I'm running or the story I'm trying to tell. When you GM in an established world, you have to be willing to do that or you will make yourself crazy (as you've discovered).
-Sleld
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
My favorite Golarion cannon was stolen by apes. :(
As much as I appreciate and enjoy Golarion canon, I will not hesitate to throw chunks of it out the window as soon as it interferes with the campaign I'm running or the story I'm trying to tell. When you GM in an established world, you have to be willing to do that or you will make yourself crazy (as you've discovered).
-Sleld
I always to like imagine that most of the setting books were written in-setting by members of the Pathfinder Society. The setting line was originally named Pathfinder Chronicles after all. Because of that, any discrepancy with canon as written and what is actually occurring in our games can be explained as a mistake or an exaggeration on the chronicler's part.
|
I am from Brazil. We are a really confusing melting pot of cultures from all around the world, as we love the new, exotic and strange. The real medieval Europe is as distant and exotic to us as is middle-earth (more or less like people don´t know the history of the southern hemisphere countries before they were "discovered" and just make things up).
Somethings are beyond our comprehension (Why people wear so many clothes ? Why these people are building so many things under the ground ?), somethings we probably understand better than you (we still have multiple polytheistic religions around living right alongside another and there are places around where you can be eaten by giant monsters and people still live there).
The point is, each of us have different experiences and comprehension about things and think that is hard to merge that with canon. But that is it, the magic about RPGs is that each personal campaign is unique, each GM has his own set of perceptions and ideas that none other can make. Settings like Golarion are like sparks that burn in your mind, and only the resulting fire matter.
Others people fire can even burn brighter or hotter, but you can only live from your fire, so learn to understand it and it will grow.
I really can´t give any players playing in my campaign, any sort of true medieval european experience because i haven´t lived in there or had any insight into a peasant life, but in my world i try to make up by building in my others experiences and conflicts to show a world that i can understand. Of course that studying and trying new experiences are worth, but worrying to much will make you less human, as there is a entire world of very different GMs out there, that lack a lot of skills that you have and still make wonderful campaigns of their minds.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My favorite Golarion cannon was stolen by apes. :(
Cthulhudrew, you changed your avatar:) i like it
|
A Paladin of Erastil would probably be your best bet for a Shoanti. Not all paladins are mounted, fullplate clad knights of the realm. Some are just regular men, imbued with strength of character and filled with holy purpose.
Heck, the paladin I'll be playing in WotR will never where more than a Mithral Shirt, will have a stealth modifier that puts many rogues to shame and have a dex of 32 by the end of the campaign if everything goes as planned. She'll never have a horse, but she'll be a demon killing machine. She's only going to average 532 points of damage a round against demons...
Cthulhudrew, you changed your avatar:) i like it
:)
Thanks! Seemed like time for a change.
Heck, the paladin I'll be playing in WotR will never where more than a Mithral Shirt, will have a stealth modifier that puts many rogues to shame and have a dex of 32 by the end of the campaign if everything goes as planned. She'll never have a horse, but she'll be a demon killing machine. She's only going to average 532 points of damage a round against demons...
A Paladin of Erastil would probably be your best bet for a Shoanti. Not all paladins are mounted, fullplate clad knights of the realm. Some are just regular men, imbued with strength of character and filled with holy purpose.
This sounds interesting. Any chance of getting a PM with a build concept?
|
It's almost as if they want you to answer those questions yourself to suit the needs of your own game.
This. And just learn to roll with the punches. Also, you said you haven't actually played in years...is it really worth getting this stressed over an interpretation of a setting that you aren't even using?
|
PFS is a single campaign set in Golarion. Its internal canon is canon ONLY for that campaign. It's a very COMPLEX campaign, and since it's the official organized play campaign for Paizo, that means that it has some ripple effects on the world itself... we treat it like any campaign that anyone plays. AKA: It's canon for itself but NOT for the baseline world.
That makes me feel better, but doesn't make me any less confused when people here on these boards reference them and make it seem like it DOES effect what will be in books later down the road?
Similarly, each and every AP we publish is its own canon. The point at which any Adventure Path starts is assumed to begin at a baseline of the world canon as presented in the Inner Sea World Guide and the vast majority of our Campaign Setting products. This allows you to play the Adventure Paths in any order—you can play Kingmaker before playing Runelords and then play Skull & Shackles and then go back to do Legacy of Fire and there's nothing in the basic setup of the world as presented in the Inner Sea World Guide that should trip you up. By the point you get to Legacy of Fire in the above setup, you'll have developed your OWN world canon for your campaign, and you'll be the expert on that.
That's interesting but what about the advancing timeline? If I remember correctly, each AP corresponds to the year it was released, so if I played Council of Thieves, which takes place in 4709 (released in 2009), then that assumes the events of Rise of the Runelords have already happened, as those events officially occurred in 4707.
Pathfinder Society is treated no differently, but it can be non-intuitive to think of Season 0, which launched several years ago, as being the baseline for the entire campaign up to this day. But that's how we treat it.
If you try to envelop the events of the Pathfinder Society into your homebrew game, you are going to encounter the same type of problems you would get by trying to incorporate ANY home game into your own home game's canon and history. There ARE going to be contradictions, because no two campaigns, be they PFS, an Adventure Path, or a GM-designed homebrew campaign will be alike.
Folks who want to try to absorb the world's canon should basically "quarantine" the events in ANY adventure, in other words, because Adventures are how we advance the world clock, essentially, and we don't assume those adventures advance the world clock in any order at all UNLESS they are deliberately strung-together adventures, as you get in an AP or as you've seen...
That makes sense from a meta standpoint, but it doesn't solve the issue of the timelines. To make the timeline sync with my own game, I'd basically have to play every module and AP in the order in which they were published...
It's almost as if they want you to answer those questions yourself to suit the needs of your own game.This. And just learn to roll with the punches. Also, you said you haven't actually played in years...is it really worth getting this stressed over an interpretation of a setting that you aren't even using?
I've spent almost all my non-essential funds on Pathfinder stuff. I don't want to have wasted my money, so I want to use it as fast as possible, but I don't have everything to satisfy my attention to detail and perfectionism, so I feel like I'm either going to make mistakes, which I dread, or bankrupting myself, which I also dread...
That's interesting but what about the advancing timeline? If I remember correctly, each AP corresponds to the year it was released, so if I played Council of Thieves, which takes place in 4709 (released in 2009), then that assumes the events of Rise of the Runelords have already happened, as those events officially occurred in 4707.
The events of Rise of the Runelords don't really reach to Cheliax in general or Westcrown specifically. Nothing stops you from running Council of Thieves in 4706, or running it in 4709 and then running Rise of the Runelords in 4711.
That's interesting but what about the advancing timeline? If I remember correctly, each AP corresponds to the year it was released, so if I played Council of Thieves, which takes place in 4709 (released in 2009), then that assumes the events of Rise of the Runelords have already happened, as those events officially occurred in 4707.
The Adventure Paths (with the exception of Jade Regent and Shattered Star) do not assume that previous Adventure Paths have been completed, successfully or not.
|
|
And Paizo has not advanced the timeline. James has said that IF they do, then they will sit down and write out canon endings for the APs that have occurred by the date they advance the timeline to. He also said that the heroes will not have won every time. But that's something that will only be done when and if they advance the timeline. For now APs only happen as you play them, and the only APs with canon endings are the ones referenced in Shattered Star: Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Second Darkness
Now when I look at fan-works I get disgusted. I mean, it's not like people insert original characters into Howard's End to romance Helen after the end, or ship Gilgamesh and Enkidu!)
You've obviously been reading different fan works than I have. FWIW, I recall a fairly major comic mini-series back in the 80s by one of the Big Names in comics, that put the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu through a "Last Son of Krypton" filter, and made the subtext full-on text. For that matter, when it comes to fanfic, I suppose you don't like Shakespeare. Fir turning the Prince of Denmark from an action hero to a weepy philosopher? Or how about that Homer? The Odyssey is totally Odysseus fanfic.
Sure Sturgeon's law is in full force, and he was probably an optimist; but that's not an excuse to denigrate fan works. Or an excuse to not be creative in your own. Depending on canon is a crutch, and I cannot comprehend the mindset that it's sacrosanct.
Sure Sturgeon's law is in full force, and he was probably an optimist;
Surgeon's Law can be applied recursively.
Creative Director
|
PFS is a single campaign set in Golarion. Its internal canon is canon ONLY for that campaign. It's a very COMPLEX campaign, and since it's the official organized play campaign for Paizo, that means that it has some ripple effects on the world itself... we treat it like any campaign that anyone plays. AKA: It's canon for itself but NOT for the baseline world.That makes me feel better, but doesn't make me any less confused when people here on these boards reference them and make it seem like it DOES effect what will be in books later down the road?
Just keep in mind that what folks might post here isn't the same as Paizo's philosophy on retaining the Inner Sea World Guide as a stable "ground zero" for all of our other products to launch from.
Similarly, each and every AP we publish is its own canon. The point at which any Adventure Path starts is assumed to begin at a baseline of the world canon as presented in the Inner Sea World Guide and the vast majority of our Campaign Setting products. This allows you to play the Adventure Paths in any order—you can play Kingmaker before playing Runelords and then play Skull & Shackles and then go back to do Legacy of Fire and there's nothing in the basic setup of the world as presented in the Inner Sea World Guide that should trip you up. By the point you get to Legacy of Fire in the above setup, you'll have developed your OWN world canon for your campaign, and you'll be the expert on that.That's interesting but what about the advancing timeline? If I remember correctly, each AP corresponds to the year it was released, so if I played Council of Thieves, which takes place in 4709 (released in 2009), then that assumes the events of Rise of the Runelords have already happened, as those events officially occurred in 4707.
The concept of an AP corresponding to the year it was released is NOT an indication of an advancing timeline. It's merely a set of "recommended" start dates for the APs. In the case of Reign of Winter, that one DOES have to start in 4713 AR... but that's an exception to the rule. And frankly, if you want to fudge that date a few years to start it earlier or later, that's fine as well. For the bulk of our APs, the start date is meaningless; the idea of each one having a corresponding start date tied to the year it was published in is merely a handy way for us to track when previous dates, if we need to include them in the adventure, work out. The events of ANY adventure path do NOT occur if your group doesn't play that AP... unless you want them to occur off screen of course. Totally up to you.
That makes sense from a meta standpoint, but it doesn't solve the issue of the timelines. To make the timeline sync with my own game, I'd basically have to play every module and AP in the order in which they were published...Pathfinder Society is treated no differently, but it can be non-intuitive to think of Season 0, which launched several years ago, as being the baseline for the entire campaign up to this day. But that's how we treat it.
If you try to envelop the events of the Pathfinder Society into your homebrew game, you are going to encounter the same type of problems you would get by trying to incorporate ANY home game into your own home game's canon and history. There ARE going to be contradictions, because no two campaigns, be they PFS, an Adventure Path, or a GM-designed homebrew campaign will be alike.
Folks who want to try to absorb the world's canon should basically "quarantine" the events in ANY adventure, in other words, because Adventures are how we advance the world clock, essentially, and we don't assume those adventures advance the world clock in any order at all UNLESS they are deliberately strung-together adventures, as you get in an AP or as you've seen...
Exactly. And you'd have to make sure the players finish them in 6 months each. That's OBVIOUSLY not doable. One of the reasons we set each AP in a new region or city or location, by the way, and generally don't have crossover with other locations, is because of this. The two big exceptions so far are the start of Jade Regent (if you play this before Runelords, you'll need to change a few things in "Burnt Offerings" regarding the Kaijitsus) and Shattered Star (which assumes Runelords, Crimson Throne, and Second Darkness all took place in the previous 5 years). All other APs are self-contained and do not really interact with other AP locations or plots.
But yeah... this is EXACTLY why we don't hard code the APs into an advancing timeline, and why we DON'T have an advancing timeline in the first place. Your game is the only advancing timeline that matters.
what we're doing in regards to Jade Regent, Rise of the Runelords and Shattered Star is they've made a PC for each AP where they are almost all related; example my daughter made a catfolk ninja for jade regent, her older sister (a wizard) for RotRL, and a slightly younger sibling for Shattered Star.
now, we started JR first (didn't have RotRL or obviously SS when we started) so when they got done with book 2 of JR (which coincided with Desna's holiday, the swallowtail festival) i flashed back to that eventful day five years previously when the goblins attacked SandPoint, and BAM! started RotRL right there, worked flawlessly! and as a bonus they become more invested in sand point , being mostly locals and all (there is a dwarf from Kalsgard in JR party, his younger brother is in SS but playing a varisian fighter in RotRL) we havent started SS yet but i'll time that to take place during the trek across the pole.
as a plus they get to imagine how their JR PCs looked 5 years previous, its not for everyone but is working excellent for us