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Vive la Revolution.
Swashbuckler archetypes, guillotines, Scarlet Pimpernel, a Bastille-like prison, and Marie-Antoinette's toy farm. All of that sort of thing, please.
However, given recent Adventure Paths (Wrath of the Righteous is about the Worldwound and Demons, Mummy's Mask is about Pharoahs and liches, Iron Gods is about robots and barbarians... From Space) we might be getting a more 'down to earth' adventure as Paizo like to balance things.
Therefore, why not Galt? It's quite relatable and it would allow for a heady campaign of political intrigue. Plus, because it isn't an exact historical analogue, it can have semi-related signifiers in the setting, like musketeers or Bolshevik revolutionaries.
I like the idea of calling it something like Fraternité, ou la Mort! (Fraternity or Death!), a variant on the famous tripartite motto.
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I agree.
That is all.
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Vive le Galt!
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I would say I second this motion, but clearly, I cannot - rather, I 9th it!
Remember to include a well-hidden Paris Commune, an up-and-coming Napoleon, a fellowship of brilliant and courageous alchemists and necromancers who use their own execution as opportunities to advance the magic and science of death, and a distinguished visitor from Andoran whose observations lead him to reach radical conclusions regarding the nature and origins of injustice and tyranny.
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Here is my old Galt campaign, comrades. Alas, it didn't last very long.
Vive le Galt!
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I for one would like to see, in a Galt based advanture, a male NPC is who is a powdered wig wearing Half-Orc wearing make-up and dressed like a garish dandy. Think of the character of Béarnaise from Mel Brook's History of the World Part 1 (you probably know him as the associate to Count de Monet, or Count the Money as he was called, in the French Revolution part of the film).
Now dress a Half-Orc man up in that style and have him speak the same way.
Hilarity ensues!
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I've been saying this for YEARS. Paizo has not listened.
At this point, I think the only thing that will work is a revolution! Blood in the streets! May unclean blood water our fields! To arms, citizens!!!
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I've been saying this for YEARS. Paizo has not listened.
At this point, I think the only thing that will work is a revolution! Blood in the streets! May unclean blood water our fields! To arms, citizens!!!
PETITION TO REVOLT DENIED. REVOLUTION IS ILLEGAL UNDER ARTICLE I, SECTION 13, SUBPARAGRAPH A.
UNCLEAN BLOOD MAY NOT BE USED TO WATER FIELDS. UNCLEAN BLOOD VIOLATES CLEAN WATER ACT OF 1342. ONLY CLEAN BLOOD MAY BE USED.
Well, you ever heard the first thing you do in a revolt, LAWYER GOLEM? =)
Well, you ever heard the first thing you do in a revolt, LAWYER GOLEM? =)
IF LAWYER GOLEM IS THREATENED WITH DESTRUCTION BY REVOLTING CITIZENS, LAWYER GOLEM WILL FILE RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST SAID CITIZENS. CITIZENS ARE BOUND BY LAW TO STAY 500 FEET FROM LAWYER GOLEM.
Keep telling yourself that. :-)
I always ask myself how a country which has spent 60 years in perennial revolution can still survive.
Interesting question. I think I'd consider the 100 years war to be a similar situation. Then again England wasn't even a nation state at that point. Maybe the Galtans just take things slow and easy?
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I always ask myself how a country which has spent 60 years in perennial revolution can still survive.
1) All government is a consensus illusion - this only becomes a problem when people forget and, over time, settle into a stupefying groove and start believing it's real, a "higher power" that is somehow independent of real living thinking beings, and when the truth politely knocks on the door from time to time, people panic not because Chaos is really anything to fear, but because it's like withdrawal from a drug addiction (I'm reminded a little of the "pre-Riker beard" Star Trek: The Next Generation) episode "Symbiosis" where the people of a planet have been kept addicted to a drug pushed by a sibling planet for so many generations that they've been successfully convinced they suffer from an incurable species-wide terminal disease that can only be kept at bay by the "medicine" only the sibling planet can provide).
2) The modern concept of representative democracy is supposed to be precisely that - "perennial revolution." That's the premise behind regularly scheduled elections.
3) The real world is full of countries that are assumed uncritically to have "functioning, stable governments," yet are choc-a-bloc with violence (check out the per capita murder rates of the world's nations - The United States is no better than the middle of the pack, and is out-civilized by, among others, frickin' Somalia).
4) Most human beings can and will adapt and submit to almost any condition of living. People usually hail it as some wonderful virtue. I, on the other hand, have...qualms.
Is there a god of revolution? A Chaotic Neutral one?
Milani is Chaotic Good, and that's really the only alignment that works for a deity of revolution - Chaotic Neutral doesn't care for the system, but lacks the motivation to go to great lengths to change it, and while it's possible for a revolutionary individual to descend into Chaotic Evil if their cause forces them into too many unwinnable moral dilemmas (you don't strictly have to, but certainly have plenty of room to, look at Vladimir Lenin this way), Chaotic Evil of any other sort isn't interested in revolution, especially not against any regime that deserves it - you'd be taking away their favorite toy in the whole wide world: the one that makes a nice crunching sound when you break it, rebuilds itself to be even crunchier than before, and never, ever learns!
I'd be interested to see what Milani's current take on Galt is - the article says that her church specifically does not celebrate All Kings Day, because she "loathes the Red Revolution of Galt and its associated tyranny and violence."
On the other hand, it says that her church is still popular in Galt. I could almost see a Cult of the Dawnflower sort of thing, where her teachings are popular, but the emphasis is on the wrong thing.
I used to know this off the top of my head, but I like to think that Milani was totally down with Darl Jubannich and Hosetter, but not so much with some of the governments that replaced them.
In my ended-way-too-soon campaign, the underground church of Milani was intertwined with the Conspiracy of Equals which was going to overthrow the present government and let the PCs out of Camp Vyshinsky.
But, alas, my players are terrible tacticians. :(
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My problem is Galt seems so unstable it's surprising it hasn't been conquered by neighbours or ripped by monsters.
Experience seems to indicate that instability and lack of structure is, if anything, a very good defense against being conquered - congratulations, you've marched in and declared yourself in charge. Now what? Unless the invader is vastly superior in the "guns, germs, and steel" department, and morally inferior enough to say, "exterminate most, enslave the remainder, bulldoze what was here and replace it with an extension of Us," the most likely way an invading army is going to stabilize a nation is by providing the natives with a common enemy for the sake of whom they'll overlook grievances among themselves at least enough to rout the invaders. No conquest-loving society launches a campaign with an end-game like that in mind, so if they have any brains at all, they'll just have to steer clear.
A Chaotic Neutral can be a pure anarchist, consider all systems, from paternal monarchies (Lawful Good) to corrupt cleptocracies (Neutral Evil) are inherently evil. I don't think Lenin could be considered Chaotic.
Certain specific types of Chaotic Neutral, perhaps (I'm thinking of Magneto, who, in spite of being driven by a relentless moral jihad, oscillates so wildly between Good and Evil because if it that he nets as Chaotic Neutral). Among other reasons which I won't go into because there are only so many hours in the day and this is not the first and will not be the last time I have/will spoken at great lengths on the subject of alignment, I think of Lenin as Chaotic because he was a brilliant and independent thinker who abhorred signature Lawful values like nationalism and loyalty, defined his efforts by a long-term vision rather than a set of rules (and my observation is that, among the many ways in which people can be divided into two types, one of the best is: those who are driven by a visionary goal and view rules as subordinate, disposable, and ultimately illusory tools that exist only so long as they remain useful and relevant to achieving ends, and those who, lacking such vision or self-determined purpose, coast through life depending on a set of rules made up by someone else - and joke's on them, because those rules inevitably wind up being traced back to the mind of someone from the first category), and ultimately stood apart from the mob even when he was trying to utilize them. Also, bear in mind that the alignment a person thinks they are and the alignment they actually are are not always in sync.
Chaotic Evil revolution is only interested in destroying existing order. So the evil and strong can rule.
"Strong rule the weak" AKA "might makes right" AKA "fascism" AKA "bullying" AKA "your high school gym class for all eternity" is actually Lawful Evil, not Chaotic. Chaotic Evil understands, among other things, that in the so-called "state of nature" imagined by Thomas Hobbes (which is what you're talking about, and in spite of having been debunked by sociology as the "true state of things" since then, maintains a point that is relevant here), there remains an indelible fundamental element of fairness and equality, since in the absence of debt, loyalty, heirarchy, groupthink, or any other Lawful hallmarks, there's nothing to stop even a "weak" person from slitting the throat of those who've wronged them while they sleep, and thus the notion that "I can treat you however I want without fear of consequences because I'm BIGGER than you" is revealed to be a delusion.
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Yeah, I'm a Bolshevik and I'm a paladin. It says so on my character sheet.
Comrades, comaradesses !
You've seen the light. please join us in worship of the Eternal Rose !
You know you want it ! St Aroden is proud of you !Join us in prayer at the secret meeting ground at Midnight !
We have cookies too.
Brothers and sisters, you are being robbed! You are being lied to!
You are....oh, cookies? Thank you so much!
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I always thought bolsheviks were more Lawful. They wanted a new order, but a radicaly diferent order.
I understand, but A) as I said, an individual's actual alignment may or may not match how they perceive themselves (think of the endless parade of talentless trash presently being churned out and passed off as "musicians" or the pathetic wannabe-pimps you might have been unfortunate enough to be surrounded in high school, who think they're Chaotic but are actually Lawful, or individuals like H. P. Lovecraft, Don Quixote, or The Tick, who might have thought of themselves as Lawful but were actually Chaotic), B) the spirit of "communism" is a completely different thing in the minds of different people who may think, because they agree "communism is a good thing" on a superficial verbal level, that they actually agree on a conceptual/values level when in fact they don't at all (for those of you who had been paying attention to this important subplot in the last 30+ years of United States politics, think of how long it took liberal/mainline/moderate conservative Christians to wake up to the fact that Far Right/fundamentalist/Dominionist Christians, whom they'd too long assumed to be "Good People/Nice People/One of Us" on the grounds that "we're all Christians," were in fact insane, vile monsters whose beliefs and goals would be considered too ridiculous for comic-book villains), and especially in the early years of the Russian Revolution and the founding of the USSR, the character of "communism" changed rapidly and drastically - read The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within by Geoffrey A. Hosking, especially the first few chapters, which include the memorable passage: "The archetypal Communist was no longer a shabbily dressed intellectual, but rather a leather-jacketed commissar with a Mauser at his hip...", and C) I'm talking about Lenin as an individual, and based on what I know, he was the kind of person who stood apart from the mob even as he led them - think of the famous anecdote where he listens to Moonlight Sonata in his study while people are butchered in the streets outside, or his enthusiasm for (and evident talent with) a bizarre new instrument: The theremin, which would take the kind of curiosity and xenophilia we can feel assured neither Hitler nor Stalin would have greeted such a thing with. Lenin was actually kind of a Jack Skellington figure, except less "since I am dead, I can take off my head" scary and more "Man's Inhumanity to Man/Newton's Third Law" scary - come to think of it, however, the "EUREKA! I've got a wonderful new idea! Oh no, they don't seem to get it...OH NO. It's all gone so HORRIBLY WRONG" spiel turns out to be amazingly consistent (and I just figured this analogy out as I was typing this).
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I think Galt is very far down the list of places that will get a 32-page write up. First off, the main ideas of the place have already gotten print - soul sucking guillotines, grey gardners, and a module called Flight of the Red Raven.
It is a great place to have a character background from, but making the jump from that to 32 pages is huge. How much more do you need to know above and beyond the 4 pages in the campaign setting, the 2-3 pages in Red Raven, the prestige class grey gardner and the magic items listed in the Ultimate Equipment?
This is just my opinion and I rolled a 10 on my scrying attempt for the future, so it is anyone's guess what will really happen. I don't think we need a 32 pager, but the folks at Paizo can disagree with me if they so desire.
Either way, I would buy the product if they printed it. I like Galt and have run (3) 1-time adventures in the country.
CC
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The novel, Plague of Shadows does more to describe Galt than Flight of the Red Raven. That module was so disappointing for having taken place in Galt. It was a wilderness trek, not the political intrigue that many of us would like. Not a bad module, but it could have taken place anywhere.
I agree that it could have taken place anywhere. I had to add some content to give it the Galt Feel. And I didn't think a frost giant trapped away in a hidden frozen area was Galtish...
I will check out Plague of Shadows. Thanks for the info.
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Im torn really. Im one of the ones that has no interest in things like Numeria, (or Osirion or Egyptian stuff really), but I do have a lot of interest in Galt. But, and probably because of that, Im not sure I want an official deeper look into the nation to disappoint me when it invalidates a lot of my ideas for it, as most nation books tend to do. So a Galt AP would be cool, I would actually hope that they would not do a Galt book or put much setting canon into it.
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Im torn really. Im one of the ones that has no interest in things like Numeria, (or Osirion or Egyptian stuff really), but I do have a lot of interest in Galt. But, and probably because of that, Im not sure I want an official deeper look into the nation to disappoint me when it invalidates a lot of my ideas for it, as most nation books tend to do. So a Galt AP would be cool, I would actually hope that they would not do a Galt book or put much setting canon into it.
It is a guarantee that if they make an AP in galt, it will be accompanied by a 32 and a 64 page book. 32 for players, 64 for GM's (mostly). Althogh I have seen the 64 pagers being like an advanced players guide to the county (in the last 6-12 months). That really works for people like us, Beckett, who use the written material to beef up the strength of the backgrounds for NPC's and PC's alike.
Since I have only run 1-time adventures in Galt, the adjustments I would have to make for my playing group would be minor when compared to a GM that is running a current or past campaign in the country.
CC
Never really been into Galt before, but then my players decided to up and head that way! Wish I had some info on it now!