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Looking for any settings that people think are really good for Pathfinder, besides Golarion. I'm looking either for stuff that is designed for Pathfinder, or stuff that is Rules Agnostic, which I can use with any system, (but would still makes sense if run with Pathfinder).
I picked up Obsidian Twilight and it wasn't quite my cup of tea. It had some good stuff in it that I may use elsewhere though. NeoExodus looks interesting.
Does anyone have any other suggestions?
If it comes in hard copy, or has a large amount of content, that's a bonus.
Cerulean Seas is a awesome setting with a Core Setting book, three supplement books (Waves of Thought, Indigo Ice, and Azure Abyss) , and even its own Bestiary. It has at least one more source book on the way (Viridian Something), as well as an adventure path along the way.
All of this material also comes in both PDF form and colored books (The Core and Bestiary are hardcover); you will find few settings with as much support as Cerulean Seas.
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I had a blast with the Slumbering Tsar. Honestly, if it's got a picture of a frog on the cover, it's good stuff, though you'll need an adamantine-reinforced bookshelf to handle it.
There's a plethora of material for my setting up on this tumblr. :)
Relevant
That's missing Dragon Kings. Though Dragon Kings rules book only just now got sent out to the backers.
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I'm totally biased, but beyond Golarion (or a WotC setting) I don't know that another setting has as much supporting material as Midgard. There is the campaign setting book. There are ~41 Pathfinder adventures published for it which are easily available, ~10 regional/planar/historical gazetteers, 8 race guides, 5 player guides...it's just got an enormous range of material for GMs and players.
-Ben.
If you mean the Advanced Race Guides, they're up to 11 now.
RelevantThat's missing Dragon Kings. Though Dragon Kings rules book only just now got sent out to the backers.
Main thread stipulates that the list covers things that are publicly available for sale. I will add it once it goes live to the public :-)
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Kaidan, Cerulean Seas, and Thunderscape Aden are my personal favourites.
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To be honest compared to 3rd ed era there aint a lot of settings availible. I have tried looking myself but its slim pickings. Whole world settings or continents are almost non-existant.
Midgard is the biggest, there is a fair amount for that and its pretty good too. I fact I really like it.
The rest are either just plug ins to any camapign setting (eg Lonely Coast by Raging Swan) or very specific one book or so settings such as Pure steam etc.
Frog God games a setting book comimg out soon but I doubt wether it will be out until next year (The books/adventures so far realsed are just single settings like Razor Coast with some background material for the rest of the world but its very thin on the ground at the moment.
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@Simon: I beg to differ. The link I posted earlier shows that there is a lot of fantastic material out there.
During my time at Little Red Goblin Games, we have produced:
Necropunk. It's got a lot of supplemental books produced in support of it and they number is only growing!
As well as a number of "Campaign Inspirations" (provide rules, lore, and mechanics in a small book while still leaving a lot open to the GM).
Dragon Tiger Ox also has some setting info included, though it is not expressly the focus (more tools to allow you to do an wuxia setting.
Some interesting things there thanks, I missed those. :)
However, I still think that actual world settings (not plug ins for established settings or small 1 book guides less than 100 pages) are still very thin.
Admittadly wizards did the majority during 3rd era but off the top my head we had Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Eberron, Rokugan, Scarred Lands and Midnight, amounst others. All these had multi-book setting materail that fleshed these worlds out mush like Golarion. The only other setting I have seen produced in this way for a bog standard fantasy game for Pathfinder has been Midgard (There may be a few others but they are very niche I think Like Neo Nexodus). But not to say any of the 3rd party settings are not good, im sure they are but they just lack the supplements and fleshing out the 3rd era books had. Im sure most of it has to do with cost though. Most 3rd party companies are small and im sure if they had the money we would see more.
Paizo I dont think will ever have another world or setting as they are focusing on Golarian. So if you are looking for a big new setting much like this you have Midgard and the up and coming Lost Lands (which im excited about BTW).
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I actually picked up Necropunk a while back, specifically for its Social Conflict rules (which are not to shabby, I might add).
The setting itself didn't much appeal to me though. It seemed a bit too Warhammer 40k for my tastes, and that sort of grim dark science fantasy thing just doesn't do much for me.
"Campaign Inspirations" are definitely less good than proper settings, but I can see them as being good for testing the waters, or if you want to do a one off of something and aren't planning to support a whole setting. And in many cases, that's all White Wolf released for their New World of Darkness stuff (which was a major gripe of mine - give me the full setting, not 12 books of just "Ideas", dammit! - Also, give me APs. - But I don't really play WoD these days, so the point is now moot).
@Scott, I think the reason threads like this pop up is the barriers to entry when it comes to 3pp. Sure, the content can be quite good, but there's just so much to go through, and the production values are often very low (Which I understand; Artists and professional Graphic Designers are not free, and many of these things are produced on a shoestring budget); however, a product with a drab or ugly cover IS less likely to grab my attention. So when it comes to the 3pp content, Reviews and Personal Suggestions are very very helpful.
Dragon Tiger Ox looks really neat though, as do Odyssey and Equinox
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Preamble
I am not a marketing expert by any means, but I have done some graphic design work, and a bunch of web design work for companies, and I took visual art for a while with the intention of becoming an illustrator before switching career paths. I've also taken some U/X software courses. So while I'm not claiming to be an expert, I do know a thing or two about visual appeal and graphic design and usability.
Obviously as publishers you're welcome to ignore any of my suggestions, but this is advice on things that would be more likely to grab my attention and make me check out your product in more detail. Will it guarantee a sale? No, but if you've convinced me to spend more than 1/2 a second looking at it, that sure gets you closer to a sale.
As mentioned above, a drab/ugly cover is less likely to get my attention. However, while a classy looking cover helps, you don't necessarily have to hire a pricey artist to make your cover look appealing.
Content
Not everything needs fancy art like LPJ or Kobold Press put out (though they certainly help if you can manage proper graphic design and a professional artist). Raging Swan's Stuff looks good and stands out next to any product with low-polished graphic design and art. The solid colors even make it stand out next to full illustrated pieces.
Whatever you do, I think you should definitely take the time to HAVE a cover though. The ones that have no cover, and the screenshot is a little piece of art over some text, don't give nearly the impact that a bold B&W Art cover, or full color cover does. For an example (not meaning to pick on anyone), #1 with a Bullet Point Witch Hexes. It's surrounded by #1 with a Bullet Point Dwarven Questing Feats and Halfling Burglar Feats. My eyes immediately jumped to the other two, and glazed over the witch hexes.
A cover really helps. A better cover goes much further than an ugly cover, and no art/graphi design goes further than bad art/graphic design (I feel there are many PDFs on DTRPG with ugly covers which give a negative first impession). Rather than point out ugly covers (and risk hurting someone's feelings, I think I will just point out a few different types of good looking covers that grab my attention in different ways.)
Raging Swan Press: All their covers look the same, but they look classy, and at least don't turn me off. No ugly headache inducing colors, no muddied artwork where I can't make out the details or actively bad art, just the title, in white and on black, with their logo. You could do a bit of graphic design to have your own style you use for all your releases, or your could use some sort of background, but just be careful not to pick an ugly one.
If you're not sure what you're doing, and don't have anyone to doublecheck it for you to make sure you don't have an ugly cover, It's pretty hard to screw up a black and white cover page of just the title. It always looks pretty decent, and it won't cost you anything.
Here are some other ones that grabbed my attention in a good way: Legendary Games, Mythic Magic Advanced Spells - It looks oldschool with the kind of borders they selected, but it looks professional. Notice how they used the Pathfinder Compatibility logo without an ugly white box, and integrated it into the cover. Good Job, and I've now added it to my wishlist to consider later.
Green Ronin Advanced Bestiary - It looks modern, again they've included the compatibility logo in a way that looks deliberate and professional, and they've got some professional art. I don't like the font on the subtitle because I find the font a bit hard to read, but all in all, nice cover, and I've now added it to my wishlist to consider later.
Dreamscarred Press Path of War Again, Pathfinder Logo looks professional, they've got their own "Path of War" logo, some commissioned artwork; it looks good.
Fat Goblin Games Forgotten Foes Top notch looking product, though if I didn't know everything on the page was pathfinder compatible, I would not realize it in the thumbnail with how small the pathfinder compatibility logo is.
For something else simple, that looks good, All of FGG's Amazing Races look pretty good. It would have looked better if the PF logo didn't look like a sticker though.
I can't find much LPJ has put out where the thumbnail has a negative impact on my first impression (I did eventually notice some of his older stuff looked less than great, though still not too bad). The artwork (when present) is consistently of good quality (if not as detailed as Paizo's covers), but even if you look at something without art He manages to make it look visually appealing with some nice lean lines and textures. It does suffer from the ugly sticker logos that are so prevalent for PFRPG stuff, but the rest looks good enough to make up for that.
Rogue Genius Games #1 With a Bullet Point Hellfire Feats has a few things I think could have been done better (The title could look a little more cleaned up, I'm not so sure about the black box, and the Pathfinder Logo would look better if they integrated it more like it was supposed to be there rather than as a white sticker in a box; And you could totally put it there in black and white in a printed copy, which would look best), but all in all, it looks pretty good. Your cover can still draw my attention quite well with a good looking pencil sketch in black and white. It's also much cheaper than commissioning detailed color pieces, and will often be cheaper than commissioning color pieces without shading.
Kobold Press' Stuff looks pretty good for the most part. Some of their older stuff looks a bit ugly, but some of the old stuff also looks good. Book of Drakes looks excellent, as does Divine Favor: the Druid For instance.
Some of the publishers I mentioned above, or that others have mentioned in this thread, have released some things with ugly covers as well, and I'm surre I am missing lots of publishers who have excellent looking covers.
Summary/Conclusion
I'm not meaning to be preachy or pushy or anything like that, but I guess to sum up, what I'm saying (with some examples) is: "If you can give your good product a decent cover, you're more likely to ensure I notice it and take the time to look into it further, without needing to rely so much on suggestions and reviews."
I almost purchased a book based on the cover alone. It was one of the Dark Heresy books, IIRC.
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I almost purchased a book based on the cover alone. It was one of the Dark Heresy books, IIRC.
Exactly my point.
A good looking cover goes a long way. I had a similar reaction to the new DH Books, and then I realized: "I will never play that. I don't like the WH40k Setting; if I want a good d100 system I already have a couple of those (RQ6, Legend, MagicWorld, BRP); and if I want to run a SciFi Game I already know I will use Edge of the Empire; I would only be buying it because it looks pretty."
It does look pretty though. Now imagine if that was how I reacted to most Pathfinder 3pp; rather than like 5-10%% of them.
I imagine the ones with good covers get significantly more sales; it would be interesting to hear the actual stats on that though.
Added
I'm a fan of Oathbound from Epidemic Books. It has a huge corebook (Oathbound 7) plus a massive domain book (Eclipse) and a big bestiary for pathfinder and a ton of regional sourcebooks from 3.0 and 3.5 when it was put out by Bastion Press and DragonWing Games. Its a high powered high fantasy non gothic horror ravenloft style D&D of grabbing in things from other worlds for lots of D&D diversity. I am very partial to the Wildwood wilderness continent/setting in the world with the ranger/druid demigod overlord.
I also like Green Ronin's Statless Pirate's Guide to Freeport which has a Pathfinder conversion book. It has a bunch of supplements and d20 adventures. Urban island D&D trade city with pirates and underlying Cthulhu themes.
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I'm a fan of Oathbound from Epidemic Books. It has a huge corebook (Oathbound 7) plus a massive domain book (Eclipse) and a big bestiary for pathfinder and a ton of regional sourcebooks from 3.0 and 3.5 when it was put out by Bastion Press and DragonWing Games. Its a high powered high fantasy non gothic horror ravenloft style D&D of grabbing in things from other worlds for lots of D&D diversity. I am very partial to the Wildwood wilderness continent/setting in the world with the ranger/druid demigod overlord.
Hmm. I apparently purchased Oathbound 7 a few years back. I recall reading through it and not being grabbed by anything, and I have not used it for anything meaningful since then. I was unaware of the regional books. Are they still for sale anywhere?
So I understand it's a non-gothic-horror Ravenloft type thing. What does it have to make it desirable over just not playing up the horror in the ravenloft setting, or the slightly-creepy places in Golarion?
I also like Green Ronin's Statless Pirate's Guide to Freeport which has a Pathfinder conversion book. It has a bunch of supplements and d20 adventures. Urban island D&D trade city with pirates and underlying Cthulhu themes.
This type of thing is always good. I have the Freeport adventure compendium for 3.5. I'm also a huge fan of statless campaign settings. Those are an excellent idea. If you make it statless, then I get much more mileage out of your setting book even when I change systems. Maybe my players are in the mood for a "D&D 5e" game, or maybe they want to play a game of "RuneQuest"/"BRP"; or "RoleMaster" (Okay, I would never be willing to run Rolemaster, but I have a friend who likes it enough to run it). But I could totally see myself trying out "Edge of the Empire" or "Shadowrun" with a few modifications to run a fantasy game.
I'm a fan of Oathbound from Epidemic Books. It has a huge corebook (Oathbound 7) plus a massive domain book (Eclipse) and a big bestiary for pathfinder and a ton of regional sourcebooks from 3.0 and 3.5 when it was put out by Bastion Press and DragonWing Games. Its a high powered high fantasy non gothic horror ravenloft style D&D of grabbing in things from other worlds for lots of D&D diversity. I am very partial to the Wildwood wilderness continent/setting in the world with the ranger/druid demigod overlord.Hmm. I apparently purchased Oathbound 7 a few years back. I recall reading through it and not being grabbed by anything, and I have not used it for anything meaningful since then. I was unaware of the regional books. Are they still for sale anywhere?
So I understand it's a non-gothic-horror Ravenloft type thing. What does it have to make it desirable over just not playing up the horror in the ravenloft setting, or the slightly-creepy places in Golarion?
Its a grab things from other worlds setting (the way the darklords do), not a horror one.
The premise is seven demigods each rule/are imprisoned on a section of the high powered extraplanar prison world of Oathbound. They have the power to grab things from other worlds, individuals, whole armies, whole cities at a time. They do so for their own purposes. It is a planar prison and things can get in but not out. There is a lot of darwinism with dangerous things being thrown together into potential conflicts and thriving and gaining power rapidly plus a lot of death. The whole world is filled with power and life advances quickly with animals and plants growing to maturity quickly creating large populations that are ever changing. High level quickly advancing humanoids are common of various races and cultures.
The settings are diverse, loosely designed by the Seven for their themes, one is wilderness, one is war, one is political might with a giant metropolis built over thousands of years of prior levels of the city that have collapsed into unstable underground network of tunnels.
A great setting for having PCs of any background and encountering a wildly diverse panoply of D&D esoterica and mixing genres in a high magic D&D/Pathfinder game and have in game reasons for a lot of D&Disms.
I ran a game in Wildwood for a long time where the major races were elves, goblins, and dover (dogmen). The only humans were from the PCs dragged in from offworld and the only metal was what they started with. There was tribal and religious issues plus the module I overlayed into the setting.
I beg to differ. The World Book has been for sale for quite some time already, and the Pathfinder Rules Supplement for Dragon Kings is free. (So is The Gazetteer, but that's beside the point).RelevantThat's missing Dragon Kings. Though Dragon Kings rules book only just now got sent out to the backers.Main thread stipulates that the list covers things that are publicly available for sale. I will add it once it goes live to the public :-)
(Looking forward to it though!)
Thanks for posting those links. I never knew the PF PDFs would be available for free...
Hmm. That does sound pretty interesting.
Do you know anywhere I can currently find the region books, or would I have to amazon/ebay them?
Studio 2 seems to have them for sale here.
So I've been carefully eying this topic, and I'm intrigued. Are you interested in 3pp settings that are compatible officially with 3.0 but easily convertible to Pathfinder? Sword and Sorcery Studios "Scarred Lands" is pretty amazing, and their Creature Collections and Relics and Rituals supplements are some of the best 3pp stuff I've had the privilege of using.
Also, does Oathbound 7 by chance have a dead tree version? I can't seem to find one, and I hate getting PDFs.
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So I've been carefully eying this topic, and I'm intrigued. Are you interested in 3pp settings that are compatible officially with 3.0 but easily convertible to Pathfinder? Sword and Sorcery Studios "Scarred Lands" is pretty amazing, and their Creature Collections and Relics and Rituals supplements are some of the best 3pp stuff I've had the privilege of using.
Hmm. I'll at least look at them. I heard they're making a PF Version. I find most 3.5 stuff isn't as useful with Pathfinder as people claim though. The classes end up being underwhelming and undepowered, or simply boring because they have a bunch of dead levels etc, and the numbers are usually off significantly - the "Spine" of Pathfinder is different than the "Spine of 3.5", to borrow a term from Bad Axe Games / Trailblazer / Wulf Ratbane.
Does Oathbound 7 by chance have a dead tree version? I can't seem to find one, and I hate getting PDFs.
I haven't seen one available, but the PDF comes with a regular & printer friendly version. If I knew I wanted a hard copy, I would probably print that out in B&W. The normal people approach would probably be to print it coilbound or put it in a binder, and do the cover up in color; but I think I would want to print it on 11x17 paper so I could do up 4 page thick (16 page count) sections, and take a stab at making something by hand that looks like a Print on Demand title. But - that would require significant efforts in bookbinding, as well as the ability to print on 11x17 paper.
Huh, didn't know about the remake of Scarred Lands. That's pretty cool. I honestly don't know that I've ever used the classes and whatnot specific to Scarred Lands, but the setting itself is very interesting.
Ick, too bad. I love me some dead tree stuff.
I haven't seen an Oathbound 7 in print but there is Oathbound Eclipse 224 page setting book of the Eclipse continent/domain in Oathbound in Pathfinder.
Ooh. Neat.
So: Legacies of Oathbound and Oathbound Domains of the Forge. IS that stuff reprinted in Oathbound 7?
Wildwood looks really good, and Arena doesn't look too bad either.
Oathbound was the huge core world book plus a big in depth focus on the domain of Penance for 3.0 I believe. Penance got two more sourcebooks, Wrack and Ruin about the undertunnels and underdark domains of the Penance city, and Plains of Penance about the surrounding non city areas.
Oathbound 7 is a PF update of the world that also advances the timeline somewhat, I believe. I have bought it but have not read it in depth. I don't know if it covers Penance the same way Oathbound did or if it includes the tidbits from Legacies.
I read Arena and Wildwood cover to cover and really love the huge wilderness Wildwood setting. Arena is shorter and has more of a warlord and mass combat focus which is not the focus I run games at so it did not grab me as much, but there are a lot of neat desert mini-settings where multiple warlords are fighting over super rich mine resources and there is a good supplement for it called Mysteries of Arena with interesting things to explore.
So I've been carefully eying this topic, and I'm intrigued. Are you interested in 3pp settings that are compatible officially with 3.0 but easily convertible to Pathfinder? Sword and Sorcery Studios "Scarred Lands" is pretty amazing, and their Creature Collections and Relics and Rituals supplements are some of the best 3pp stuff I've had the privilege of using.Hmm. I'll at least look at them. I heard they're making a PF Version. I find most 3.5 stuff isn't as useful with Pathfinder as people claim though. The classes end up being underwhelming and undepowered, or simply boring because they have a bunch of dead levels etc, and the numbers are usually off significantly - the "Spine" of Pathfinder is different than the "Spine of 3.5", to borrow a term from Bad Axe Games / Trailblazer / Wulf Ratbane.
Classes I generally agree on, most would need to be pathfinderized to the slightly higher base of PF and fill in dead levels if you want them to be comparable to Pathfinder classes for PCs. But setting material, spells, and monsters in particular fit in mostly without problem and using 3e unconverted classes for NPCs is not a problem (warlocks are useful quick arcane opponents). Spells that were fine in 3e are still fine in Pathfinder.
I've run 3.0 and 3.5 modules in Pathfinder and thrown in older edition monsters with only converting grapple and poison as needed and its been fine.
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I agree with you regarding setting material, and spells.
As for the rest of it; sure, it CAN be used; however, 3.5e Classes, Monsters, and NPCs are almost always underwhelming in Pathfinder, due to the higher power curve (and in the case of classes, due to all the dead levels of boringness).
As for monsters/NPCs, yes, you can run them in Pathfinder without much trouble, but they typically don't pack the punch that Pathfinder Monsters/NPCs of the same CR would. Which is to say, if I were running a 3.X monster in Pathfinder, I would either want to increase its numbers, or determine how much to lower the CR of the monster (because they ARE easier).
Oathbound 7 advanced the timeline. The setting's fluff is glorious and Eclipse is a superb setting book. Their bestiary is also great. HOWEVER: Oathbound's crunch is BROKEN and unbalanced - with regard to core-races: Understandable. However, balancing among oathbound races is just as horrid... And there are more issues.
And I hate being the bringer of bad news, but don't cross your fingers for more PFRPG-Oathbound. Epidemic Books unmistakenably posted that they'd stop supporting PFRPG on their Hp and would go with their own system...which was when I stopped looking, mainly since I have all the old stuff and don't want to get the stuff again and learn a new system for it.
Still, might have to bite the bullet sooner or later...Oathbound is such a cool setting...
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Oathbound 7 advanced the timeline. The setting's fluff is glorious and Eclipse is a superb setting book. Their bestiary is also great. HOWEVER: Oathbound's crunch is BROKEN and unbalanced - with regard to core-races: Understandable. However, balancing among oathbound races is just as horrid... And there are more issues.
And I hate being the bringer of bad news, but don't cross your fingers for more PFRPG-Oathbound. Epidemic Books unmistakenably posted that they'd stop supporting PFRPG on their Hp and would go with their own system...which was when I stopped looking, mainly since I have all the old stuff and don't want to get the stuff again and learn a new system for it.
Still, might have to bite the bullet sooner or later...Oathbound is such a cool setting...
Really? Wait. Why are they making a new system for it? Have they said they have something particularly innovative for it or something? Or are they just making their own system based on the assumption that the setting will sell it for them?
IMO, at this point, if you're not making something very different mechanically from what's currently offered (like WHFRP/EoTE did, introducing the advantage/drawback axis on results) - particularly for fantasy; I don't understand what you gain by not making your fantasy stuff compatible with Pathfinder (High Magic + Classes), 5e (Med Magic, Classes), or BRP (Med-Low Magic, Classless). I wouldn't want to set myself up as a competitor to D&D or Pathfinder, and BRP has an OGL License (MRQ1, OQ1, OQ2, AOS) that could be built into something custom if I want to do really low magic stuff.
I guess if they're convinced they can do it "Better" I'm willing to take a look, but I sortof doubt it.
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I'm totally biased, but beyond Golarion (or a WotC setting) I don't know that another setting has as much supporting material as Midgard. There is the campaign setting book. There are ~41 Pathfinder adventures published for it which are easily available, ~10 regional/planar/historical gazetteers, 8 race guides, 5 player guides...it's just got an enormous range of material for GMs and players.
-Ben.
Agreed 100%
In fact, Southlands, the sourcebook (or books) is Kickstarting right now:
Lost empires! Cursed tombs! Dinosaurs and djinn! A Pathfinder RPG compatible sourcebook for adventures in the deserts and jungles.
You can find more info here
Kaidan, Cerulean Seas, and Thunderscape Aden are my personal favourites.
Kaidan seemed very interesting, but all I can really find about it are some APs. I did find an old kickstarter page for a full campaign setting; is that out now? Asking because a basic searche (i.e. me looking at the top 5 google results for it) led me to nothing.
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Hey everyone! For those interested in the Midgard campaign setting from Kobold Press, there is currently a rather wildly successful Kickstarter going on to bring you an all new, updated and vastly expanded Midgard!
So ...
Be sure to check out the Midgard Campaign Setting: Dark Roads & Deep Magic kickstarter!!.