Hey I was Ninja'd by Tangent and didn't even realize it :-)
You've learned well Grasshopper :-)
But then where's Elminster :-)
Repeating the same thing with different words isn't going to make Golarion Forgotten Realms 2.0Because it already is. ;)
Greyhawk 2.0 maybe. It doesn't resemble FR beyond being a D&D fantasy settings that has maps and books.
What about Old Mage Jatembe :-)
Creative Director
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The difference between Forgotten Realms and Golarion is that in Golarion, one of your PCs gets to be "Elminster."
We really try hard to limit the role of super-powerful good guys in the setting. When they DO show up, it's usually in the context of historical figures, like Aroden, Jatembe, Savith, or the like.
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Samy & James, hit the nail on the head! I loved Realms for D&D, as a basic setting without all the ridiculous changes WotC implemented for 4E (That's a completely different story), but as they mentioned... in Golarion the PCs are the saviors, not some stodgy old fart that multi-classed way too much and his harem of super sorceresses.
As many others have mentioned, the issue with advancing the timeline in the campaign setting is keeping up to date and the possibility of it negatively affecting a PC. My favorite PC of all time was ruined by The Last Mythal trilogy and the changes that series made to Myth Drannor.
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Of course, nothing stops one from excising the high-level NPCs from FR, which is what I mostly always did with my campaigns. Either the NPCs never existed, or they had died in battle, or they were too old, frail, or had their spirits broken so that they no longer wanted to do anything. Never had a single problem with NPCs in my campaigns, the PCs were always the heroes.
Elminster's problem is that he had so much power-creep. I remember an old 2nd edition book of FR characters that had him as a 26th level wizard who had a number of abilities that a 26th level wizard would quite reasonably
have, but he kept getting stuff like Spellfire, other class levels and a spell deflecting pipe and was RUINED FOREVER!!!1111
Drizzt also underwent Wolverine Exposure. Two scimitars? ok. Can unleash an 'X' shaped insta-kill attack? Phhhhtttt.
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Still there was never any need to get those high-level-NPC more involved in your campaign than the high-level NPCs from the Golarion setting. While they had a lot of exposition through the novel line that hadn't to mean anything for one's own campaign (And if you needed a reason why they didn't interfere in one's campaign, well it was the novels which gave it to you - they simply were busy elsewhere).
Some people here in this very thread have argued that they had problems with the realms because of new published material antagonizing what they had developed in their own campaign. That's something I never really understood. Why should I let myself get stifled by anything an author writes? One the other hand, why should the authors of a campaign setting let themselves get stifled in their creativity, because some readers could take offense with it? Because that's exactly why they thought they had to destroy the Realms and create a new version.
So, to go back to Golarion: As long as the developers don't want to advance the timeline because they feel that they still have to tell a lot of stories without the need to do so? I'm absolutely fine with that, even if I preferred otherwise.
But if they don't do it because they think it would be a bad decision businesswise (and James Jacobs hinted at that) that would really be a shame.
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You're right, in my pursuit of snark I didn't contribute, you can understand why your own continuous argument is wearing on me though :-)
I will say as soon as they start going down the road you purpose I will immediately stop buying any of their products
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I will say as soon as they start going down the road you purpose I will immediately stop buying any of their productsThey could forward the setting AND release a "galt!!!!!" AP, then you would suck it up and keep buying. :P
Ah ha! you know me well:-p
I really like how they're doing it, with very small increments
Anyway WormyQueue, no hard feelings,
And for another change, by the way read The Worldwound Gambit then check out the campaign setting book for the world wound, can't remember its name right now, Something, Something World Hurty Ow-y Thingy anyway i think you'll be pleasantly surprised:-)
Still there was never any need to get those high-level-NPC more involved in your campaign than the high-level NPCs from the Golarion setting. While they had a lot of exposition through the novel line that hadn't to mean anything for one's own campaign (And if you needed a reason why they didn't interfere in one's campaign, well it was the novels which gave it to you - they simply were busy elsewhere).
All those powerful NPCs in the Realms made it difficult to justifiably explain why they never showed up when a huge problem arose though. They were everywhere! And their driven purpose in the Realms was to affect it, both overtly and covertly. Having some great Realms-shattering storyline happening and not working these NPCs into it was virtually enough to destroy suspension of disbelief. Even those players that hardly knew anything about Realms continuity still knew about Elminster and Drizzt and the Seven Sisters and so on. If everything in Faerun was going to the hells in a handbasket, did it make sense for a few of these superpowers--namely the ones that could teleport around the world on a whim, and who were so connected with the Weave and the gods that they knew everything that was happening anywhere in the world--to not show up and do something about it? It didn't make sense.
To Paizo's credit, the NPCs they have hovering around their world aren't nearly as intrusive. Yes, there are powerful ones, but they either keep to themselves or are the big bads your characters are supposed to beat! The ones we read about in their PF Tales novels are cool, but none of them are overly powerful. The two coolest, in my opinion, are Radovan and Jeggare from Dave Gross's novels, and I've got PCs in the world that could easily walk either of them, or both of them together. That's good thinking on Paizo's part, as far as I'm concerned. They saw the problems an overabundance of potent NPCs created and learned from it.
And WQ, this is coming from a person that still enjoys reading about the Realms. I always enjoyed that world!
Some people here in this very thread have argued that they had problems with the realms because of new published material antagonizing what they had developed in their own campaign. That's something I never really understood. Why should I let myself get stifled by anything an author writes?
At one point in my campaigns, I had ten players around the table. (One thing I loved about 2E, you could run a game with these types of numbers no problem--not the same in PF!) While the majority of them were the folk I described in my post above--they had lives and other things to do other than keep up on Realms continuity, there were a couple of them that were exactly the opposite. They read every book (including ones I hadn't read!), and knew every little thing that went down in the Realms. It meant I had to try and decipher this intricate puzzle to keep everyone happy. You know how some people are! If the world's creators make it canon, how can you say it's not? Telling those people, "In this game, that and that and that never happened, but this and this did" just never really worked, because it all created the whole to them. Missing anything meant it affected everything else.
Thus, the majority of my group back in the day would argue that this bit of continuity really screwed them over, while the minority of the group would argue that that bit of continuity was crucial because, without it, these other things don't make sense! Either way, you're ruining the experience for some people or for all people.
Again, haven't had this problem in Golarion yet because they created a static world in which the players' continuity is the only thing that matters. (And what I want to do with the rest of it, of course, as it sounds like you do, WQ!) From a gaming and player perspective, this works better for us.
That's not to say I'd get all disgruntled if they did it otherwise. I played in the Realms for 15 years plus, as I stated, and we made it work. There were just a lot more complications involved.
One the other hand, why should the authors of a campaign setting let themselves get stifled in their creativity, because some readers could take offense with it? Because that's exactly why they thought they had to destroy the Realms and create a new version.
This was an interesting note you made, too, as I'd not heard this one. I do recall listening to Greenwood, Salvatore, and a couple of the developers (Baker, I believe was one of them) comment that because 4E was so drastically different mechanically, they needed to jump the Realms so the world would work mechanically with the system. The price one pays for having a world that requires adaptation to the game that's being played in it, as opposed to stories just being told via novels.
Perhaps there was a little of both going on!
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Out of all the FR modules, I have to say that the ones dealing with the Avatar Crisis were the worst. Now if the players took over the roles of the book characters that would be ok, but instead they were following the book characters around and fighting trash mobs while events unfolded. One horrible event was the fight in Shadowdale where Elminster fought Bane/Bhaal's avatar and after the resulting explosion, the PCs got the blame and were going to be hanged before Lhalo(Elminster's scribe) bailed them out.
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Having some great Realms-shattering storyline happening and not working these NPCs into it was virtually enough to destroy suspension of disbelief.
That's what I like about the Paizo approach, that there adventures aren't realms shattering in nature. A part of their world may be heavily influenced by the outcome of an AP, but the world as a whole will continue as it was. We used to play the same way in the Realms, so there was no need to include the Big Ones.
But we were also content with the knowledge that our PCs weren't/aren't the settings big shots. So yeah, there was Elminster probably saving the multiverse from an unknown danger way above our paygrade, while we cared for somewhat more mundane matters.
May have to do with the way we came into roleplaying. In the world of The Dark Eye, PCs aren't supposed to be the setting's biggest forces, so when we transferred to D&D we also didn't strive to be that.
The two coolest, in my opinion, are Radovan and Jeggare
Totally agree.
I do recall listening to Greenwood, Salvatore, and a couple of the developers (Baker, I believe was one of them) comment that because 4E was so drastically different mechanically, they needed to jump the Realms so the world would work mechanically with the system.
Never bought this argument, because most of the changes didn't have anything to do with the rules at all. They wanted a setting reset because of some mistaken impression that that was what most players wanted. Well, suffice to say quite some of those players came over to Pathfinder instead. ^^
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I found the advancing timeline of the realms a barrier - not because new books contradicted what had happened in my game but because new books contradicted what my other books said. (The merry go round of deities was the obvious example, but it doesn't have to be that high powered to be annoying to me).
If I read a new book that talks about the Queen of Korvosa and my guidebook refers to the King of Korvosa then I find myself doubting the rest of the book - what else has changed? Where do I go to find the changes?
It's not an issue if you own everything from the beginning and keep on top of stuff, but it's a definite barrier to entry for someone new - who likes the sound of a particular region, sees it referenced in a recent AP or module and then buys a sourcebook which contradicts their other reference since several canonical changes have occurred since it was written.
Night Below had an interesting way of dealing with the Elminsters of the game worlds - either have them investigating another angle and having the PCs deal with the threat from the boxed set, or have the Big NPCs be busy fighting demons and devils who are threatening that world outside of the NB campaign.
Personally, I prefer Paizo's method - there aren't a bunch of high-level uber-NPCs running around and meddling with every nation. While there are high-level characters (like Elvanna or the Queen of Cheliax), they tend to remain busy with local plots and governing, usually. At least until their plans come into fruition and they start taking over the world! ;)
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There is SO much lore spread out over the space of Golarion that I really can't be an expert in it. As such, spreading more lore over time isn't attractive to me.
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There is SO much lore spread out over the space of Golarion that I really can't be an expert in it.
And why should you? I mean, I don't need to know anything about the Mwangi Expanse, Tian Xia or Vudra because I most probably will never run a campaign in one of these locations. So spreading any lore over these locations isn't attractive to me.
Doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it, because other people are attracted by those regions who deserve to get their stuff too.
Now one could get the impression that principally this argument holds for those fans wishing for time advancement as well. ;)
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You do realize that there is a timeline on the Golarion wiki. So if you really want the timeline to advance, start your campaign 20 years earlier. The APs happen when you want them to, so you can have an AP with things happening around the world according to Paizo... it's just in the past.
Problem solved. ;)
My this has become quite the flirty thread now hasn't it.
Problem solved?
;)
;)
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We were just talking about this in my home campaign.
We have played CoT and the events of that seemed to us to set Cheliax in turmoil (from our character's stated goal) IN fact in our World Abgrogail has been overthrown and a distant nephew now rules a more Lawful...Evil Cheliax and that continuity has been playing out in our Jade Regent and most recently Skull and Shackles campaigns. We have established a continuity and progression of time that is our Golarion, not enough that future APs would not woe but some would to be looked at (Hell's Rebels being one).
Heading into Carrion Crown we are excited to see what the influence on our Golarion it will have. And we are starting to progress far enough into our future that children of previous character could start popping up in an AP or two!
Trust me once you get a couple under your belt it really is your Golarion.
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You do realize that there is a timeline on the Golarion wiki. So if you really want the timeline to advance, start your campaign 20 years earlier. The APs happen when you want them to, so you can have an AP with things happening around the world according to Paizo... it's just in the past.
Problem solved. ;)
Obviously ;)
But I prefer another solution (mostly because it's MY OWN solution^^): I'm just stealing a lot of stuff for my homebrewed campaign setting (and not only from Paizo). It's a lot more work than just perusing the Paizo material, but on the other hand I like to tinker with worlds anyway, so why not doing it with my own.
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It's not an issue if you own everything from the beginning and keep on top of stuff,
Nah. I'm a big fan of the Realms (still run 2e-era Realms [in 3.x] to this day), owned/read everything, and it was still an issue. I like the Realms despite all that timeline-advancement nonsense, not because of it. The timeline advancement damaged the setting, no question.
Timeline/campaign advancement is the DM's job, not the setting's.
AKA: Build a different, competing setting that will force customers to choose which version of the world they want and thus give them a built-in reason to stop buying our products that don't directly support the version of the setting they prefer?
That's the road that lead to the disintegration of TSR. Not all that interested in it at this time.
I think this is a slight exageration, there are quite a few brand that do evolving setting masterfuly. The Two best examples I have in mind are Legend of the 5 Rings and Shadowrun.
Legend of the 5 Rings especially is a real reference about how you handle a setting that evolve with time.
TSR "disintegrated" for a lot of reasons and DnD got beaten by Paizo for a whole of reasons too, and reducing it to the "multiple version of the world" is a mistake in my opinion.
An evolving setting can be extremely compelling if done well. But that's the thing, if done well.
If you haven't I suggest you read the Legend of the 5 rings books, even if just out of curiosity, especially the book called "Imperial Histories"
The difference between Forgotten Realms and Golarion is that in Golarion, one of your PCs gets to be "Elminster."
We really try hard to limit the role of super-powerful good guys in the setting. When they DO show up, it's usually in the context of historical figures, like Aroden, Jatembe, Savith, or the like.
On that I fully agree, you are pretty smart about not going overboard with "official overpowered good guys", this is an RPG, the Players are the stars or should always have the opportunity or the feeling that they can become the stars.
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I think Eberron allows the perfect illustration of why you shouldn't advance the timeline of a setting.
That setting is designed a few years after the end of the Last War, and the politics of the setting allow great intrigue and complexity because of it. One of the races (warforged) exist to represent sort of the shell-shocked PTDS warrior trope, but also the questionable morality of created entities, and a tinge of slavery.
If you advance the timeline after that odd, fragile moment, you close and resolve the questions. You make things... boring.
A setting done right is interesting because there is conflict, and question, and mystery, and energy. Things ARE happening, and the things that have already happened exist only to justify what IS happening. If you do the setting right, there's no need to advance a timeline. You don't WANT to resolve or close things.
In this case, you don't WANT to remove diabolism and Asmodeus from Cheliax. Sure, let it happen in an individual game, or even an AP, but the setting itself should assume adventures have not taken place. Which is what Paizo does.
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If you advance the timeline after that odd, fragile moment, you close and resolve the questions. You make things... boring.
This is simply not true. Advancing the timeline doesn't have to mean that you close and resolve the questions. Like, for example, it doesn't have to mean that by advancing the timeline you solve the riddle of the Mournland's creation. In fact, WotCs decision not to advance Eberron's timeline for me was just another nail to the 4E coffin, because with the 4E version just being a rehash of the 3.5 one, I simply had no reason to buy 4E Eberron products.
But even if it closes and resolves a question, that doesn't have to mean things get boring. Let's just assume you remove diabolism and Asmodus from Cheliax, this could lead to a lot of highly interesting new situations. You just have to look at our real world's events to see a lot of countries where overthrowing a tyrannic regime made things worse instead of better. Fukuyama's End of History was just an illusion, and I guess that the Paizo authors wouldn't do something on this scale if they hadn't a plan for the time after. History wouldn't end there either.
And you can say a lot of things about Faerun, but even the 4E realms were the opposite of boring and held a lot of opportunities for adventure.
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Bit late to this thread by had to throw in my views.
For the most part, timeline advancement as it has been done for other settings (GH and FR being my main points of reference) has worked very badly.
My main gripe with GH was that so little of the setting had actually been explored in books when they decided to tear it apart with the Greyhawk Wars. I also didn't really buy the whole world war scenario anyway as in a pseudo-medieval setting such a war would be very unlikely.
FR suffered from too many authors writing their own grand stories in the same setting. It became a setting that was dominated by events beyond the PCs' control. The Avatar series has been mentioned above but there are many many others. PCs should change a setting not authors or else what's the point of playing.
That brings me to my wholehearted support for the Paizo approach. As James says above, advancing the setting almost requires a new GM to be familiar with everything that has gone before. Authors certainly need that knowledge and so attracting new GMs, players and authors becomes harder and the setting and the game suffers as a result. I don't actually use Golarion (at the moment) as I shoehorn Paizo stuff into Greyhawk but the setting is well designed and the fiction I have read so far focusses on relatively small players dealing with their own local struggles. Advancing the setting so that APs have happened would immediately make those APs irrelevant to some players and so affect the sales of those products. Paizo is in a great place and producing great products so I think the approach works very well.
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That's a good point Kalindlara. IIRC, the baseline is that elves that have heard of drow mostly don't believe in them and that non-elves have never even heard of them and so don't have an opinion. Yet there are drow and half-drow options in a wide variety of books.
You'll find that the drow and half-drow options are pretty much entirely in setting-neutral books like the Advanced Race Guide and monster books like the Bestiaries and the Monster Codex (which is also setting-neutral, of course). They're for people who want to play games in homebrew settings with drow that are more common, people who want to adapt other settings like Forgotten Realms but with PFRPG rules, and people who want to be the One Good Drow who Escaped From The Pit and Totally Isn't Drizzt I Promise. (I kid, I kid. There's nothing wrong with playing the one good, or neutral, drow in a setting like Golarion. In some ways it's easier than a setting where people know -- and hate -- drow, since people will be confused, possibly scared, possibly curious, about the weird dark-skinned elf, but probably won't kill him on sight.)
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So Golarian is like the 40th Millennium. It's a snapshot in time before big events start happening.
Your example is terrible because 40k has been SO static for over 20 years that they've gone nowhere so much they've turned to the hours heresy....which is more popular in many respects.
I get Jacobs point but sooner or later the static feeling gets old.
Only if you stick in the same exact area forever. Shadowdale had to change and evolve. So did whatever that nation was to the south that was actually one of the "noble" kingdoms... because far too many stories and modules and the like were placed there.
Now look at Varisia. We've had what, four to five APs there? And yet... one was in Sandpoint and then moved into central and northern Varisia. One started in Riddleport, moved to western Varisia, and then left the region entirely. The third takes place in the southeast of Varisia and much of the adventure was in that one city-state. And finally, Jade Regent starts in Sandpoint and promptly leaves, going briefly to the northwest, and then much like Second Darkness leaves Varisia behind.
The ONLY AP to have really "repeated" itself was set in Magnimar, and was set after the events of Runelords and possibly Jade Regent.
If you continue more stories in Varisia, then sure you need to advance the timeline eventually. But mostly the adventures were compact and didn't impact ALL of Varisia, just small parts of it. (And for that matter, Varisia is less of a "nation" and more of a series of city-states and villages in a frontier setting.)
The events of Runelords needs not impact the rest of the world because the Heroes won. And they have regional ties to Sandpoint and could very well keep their discovery quiet - after all, if they're the only ones who can get in, and they keep quiet the exact location of Xin-Shalast, then there's not going to be a lot of looting or changes to the geopolitics. Similarly, Riddleport doesn't change because of Second Darkness. You have a rock fall from the sky, and then you go to an elvish forest and then elsewhere. The events of Runelords has no bearing on Riddleport... and similarly, Riddleport doesn't impact Sandpoint.
When you start expanding games into a wider arena... you still don't need to advance things. If YOU as the GM of YOUR OWN Golarion campaign want to have Runelords impact Wrath of the Righteous which impacts Mummy's Mask then you can, and you can do that yourself.
But if you're starting with new 1st level characters with the same gaming group... why will they care two or three months into the new AP what their own PCs are doing? It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter.
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Go Strix!
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Which makes a lot of sense, since one of the main complaints about FR was that PCs felt "upstaged" by all the high-level good guys in the world. Or alternately, that it broke immersion that the world was in peril and all the high-level good guys were sitting out.
Lets not forget the ever present uber powered innkeeper syndrome who was actually a lvl 22 arch-mage or lvl 17 ranger.
I read recently that Ed thought he needed to do this since his PC's were constantly attacking NPCS such as poor innkeepers and he got tired of moral suasion.
I doubt it will change Cheliax as whole, from what I've gathered from the information given. I read it as the city has been in a state of rebellion for years and this AP will just settle the matter.Kintargo hasn't. Pezzak, however, has.
What Paizo giveth, Paizo taketh away, the AP after Hell's Rebels is Hell's Vengeance, which is a fully-evil campaign and *probably* going to involve a good ole death squad of Hellknights going into Kintargo and fixing the ruckus the PCs an AP prior had caused.
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What Paizo giveth, Paizo taketh away, the AP after Hell's Rebels is Hell's Vengeance, which is a fully-evil campaign and *probably* going to involve a good ole death squad of Hellknights going into Kintargo and fixing the ruckus the PCs an AP prior had caused.I doubt it will change Cheliax as whole, from what I've gathered from the information given. I read it as the city has been in a state of rebellion for years and this AP will just settle the matter.Kintargo hasn't. Pezzak, however, has.
Mr. Jacobs has explicitly said that HV won't be undoing HR in any way. ^_^