It's a wonder he hasn't been executed for that. I suspect a retcon, but I've no idea since I have neither product.
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The Paizo ethos is (as it seems to me) as thus:
1. The newest content to address a topic is the valid source of information. Older information is no longer valid.
2. Sometimes freelancers write things Paizo does not endorse/condone/encourage and it slips past the editors. These things happen, and unfortunately while not always avoidable, they will be redressed/retconned/fixed at a later date.
In this case, I believe it is in fact a retcon, to remove otherwise vulgar material. Towns of the Inner Sea is the source you should use, and consider Guide to Darkmoon Vale no longer canon for the purposes of anything to do with Falcon's Hollow or its corrupt rulership.
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Take note that some times the stats and backstory for certain characters would be modified specifically for a particular scenario, module or adventure path.
Example, a character listed as lv 6 with certain character traits in a book on a certain region, may become a lv 9 character with modified traits, if he appears in say the 3rd book of an adventure path.
(Since the 3rd book requires potential NPC enemies to be of that level to challenge the party.)
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Explicit references to sexual violence made in a "game for kids" are risky, because they can end up with you having some religious nutjob organisation running a monthly campaign of blocking your customer service line with calls about how you destroy the youth. It's Amurica we're talking about, after all.
Paizo has at some point switched to more vague language (eg. "she suffered much abuse at the hands of lustful ogres") which makes it safer in a theoretically PG-13 environment.
Guide to Darkmoon Vale is very much a book from Golarions infancy, and many things from it were ultimately retconned, such as that carousing dragon who spends his time drinking in an inn.
I'd wish Paizo would drop the kids gloves in the sexuality department (O HAI NIPPLES!), but then again I am a debauched European monster who sexually violates nuns for breakfast, so what do I know.
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[Gorbacz: You might want to edit out that last line. The mods do not appreciate that kind of joke...and it's not funny.]
I believe that it's a retcon from a very early product. Paizo no longer publishes content with strong sexual voilence; any such references are now oblique if present at all. Establishing a villain as a rapist just to make him more vile is a tired trope that's lazy writing, in addition to being offensive.
Paizo's "retcon" efforts usually take the form of no longer mentioning the thing being removed. They don't usually come out and say "we said this before but now we're saying something else".
You are completely free to use the old material if that's what you want... just that Paizo's published materials will not have any additional developments for that element.
Perhaps describe it more as droit du seigneur, if you must include it?
Creative Director
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I'd wish Paizo would drop the kids gloves in the sexuality department (O HAI NIPPLES!), but then again I am a debauched European monster who sexually violates nuns for breakfast, so what do I know.
That'd be easier for us to do if we moved to another country. Unfortunately, we live in a nipple-phobic nation. That may change some day... there's lots of big changes happening these days.
IN any event... yes, this is one of the earliest books we published, and it was one of the first that had less of an oversight by myself and Erik, since it happened at a point where the books were doing were starting to outpace our ability to have every person in Editorial look things over. As a result, some content got in print that probably shouldn't have, ranging from some unnecessary sexual violence to some unnecessary jokey content.
That said... Pathfinder is not intended to be a "game for kids."
THAT said, please try your best to avoid using phrases like "religious nutjob organization." I'd like to think we here at Paizo.com (employees and customers alike) are above that sort of name calling.
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Creative Director
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The thing that makes me wonder is that it doesn't specifically say "no, he doesn't rape people," you know? so that leaves me to wonder if I should include it in my game or not, as it might be either squicky or a good way to make him hated.
That's very much up to you. When we update a product, we usually do our best to not entirely hard-code ret cons into the thing. Instead of spending valuable time in a newer product saying "We said this before, but we're changing it to this instead, so don't use the previous words," we just focus on the new words.
This has several advantages.
1) Since the product is newer, it is the one that, going forward in time, more folks will be familiar with. And by not mentioning AT ALL the content we'd rather leave behind, we help to bury that content. Barring folks bringing up older content on boards like this, in time the older content just ends up forgotten.
2) It allows us to focus on the current game without wasting time with older stuff that isn't really worth the time spending additional wordcount on.
3) It allows those GMs who DO prefer the older content to continue to use that content in their games, without the feeling that we at Paizo tried to sneak into their books and change things in their home game.
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Creative Director
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Sorry Haladir, I'm beyond the edit window and try as I might, I can't make happy everyone all the time, sadly.
Which is why it's so important to make sure what your'e typing in a messageboard post (or an early game book, for that matter) is really what you REALLY want to say, and perhaps be remembered by, for the rest of forever. And while I agree that it's impossible to make everyone happy all the time... trying to make people sad even some of the time, if only once, is destructive and completely avoidable with some forethought.
Think thrice, post once.
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Sorry Haladir, I'm beyond the edit window and try as I might, I can't make happy everyone all the time, sadly.Which is why it's so important to make sure what your'e typing in a messageboard post (or an early game book, for that matter) is really what you REALLY want to say, and perhaps be remembered by, for the rest of forever. And while I agree that it's impossible to make everyone happy all the time... trying to make people sad even some of the time, if only once, is destructive and completely avoidable with some forethought.
Think thrice, post once.
That's probably wise and true, but I guess it will take more than one cool guy who writes fun games to erase all my bitter and painful experiences with religious organisations. Oh well, you reap with you sow.
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Creative Director
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That's probably wise and true, but I guess it will take more than one cool guy who writes fun games to erase all my bitter and painful experiences with religious organisations. Oh well, you reap with you sow.Sorry Haladir, I'm beyond the edit window and try as I might, I can't make happy everyone all the time, sadly.Which is why it's so important to make sure what your'e typing in a messageboard post (or an early game book, for that matter) is really what you REALLY want to say, and perhaps be remembered by, for the rest of forever. And while I agree that it's impossible to make everyone happy all the time... trying to make people sad even some of the time, if only once, is destructive and completely avoidable with some forethought.
Think thrice, post once.
I'm not trying to erase your experiences at all. I'm just trying to prevent you from perpetuating them onto other people is all.
In any event... this thread's kinda off topic now, and I'm not sure what else there is to say ON topic... so!
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Let's get back on the topic of ... dinosaurs ... OK, maybe that belongs in Ask James Jacobs.
As for Kreed I've ran him as a guy who has occasionally enforced his interpretation of "first night law". When my PCs arrived in Falcon's Hollow Kreed was in the midst of interrupting a wedding ceremony to announce that once the party is over, he wants the bride delivered at his door for some hot action.
The PCs blew me out of the water - instead of rolling initiative and escalating the Battle of Falcon's Hollow, the Int 8 Cha 6 Fighter kindly asked for legal grounds of Kreed's behaviour. I've ran it so that Kreed pretends that it's some extension of ancient feudal laws with the Consortium as the lord of the land and himself as the deputised official. At that point the party pointed out that since feudalism was abolished in Andoran, Kreed should go and stick the whole idea up his.
Unsurprisingly, the entire wedding was quite in favour of such interpretation. Not willing to blatantly loose his cool in public, Thuldrin retreated, and thus the PCs BECAME HIS MORTAL ENEMIES 4EVA.
I thought that worked well without hitting people in the face with the "you see a scene of sexual violence, by the way did anybody order pizza for tonight?" problem.
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Well, the author of the GtDV was pretty big on dragons hanging around everywhere and being something more of a regular occurrence ... while ultimately James and Co decided that dragons in the Inner Sea are much more reclusive and don't mingle with humanoids. As a result, several dragon-related elements of the setting (such as parts of Dragons Revisited and Guardians of Dragonfall) have faded into the Never Mentioned Again Zone, where the keep company of Darklight Sisterhood and Paladins of Asmodeus.
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Well, the author of the GtDV was pretty big on dragons hanging around everywhere and being something more of a regular occurrence ... while ultimately James and Co decided that dragons in the Inner Sea are much more reclusive and don't mingle with humanoids. As a result, several dragon-related elements of the setting (such as parts of Dragons Revisited and Guardians of Dragonfall) have faded into the Never Mentioned Again Zone, where the keep company of Darklight Sisterhood and Paladins of Asmodeus.
I love the internal phrase they use at Paizo when talking about retconning things out of the campaign: "They got fire-cancer."
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Also, even for sexually liberal societies, there is a big difference between portraying nudity or consensual sex and casual violence against women. But removing all of that second sort of content is usually good, because often the violence against women in art isn't necessary, and the constant showing it over and over can be traumatizing for people who have been attacked.
If you want an example of it being done right, the 2 season series The Fall (now on Netflix in the US) does a great job addressing the issue of tracking a rapist and serial killer of women from a feminist perspective. Gillian Anderson plays the lead investigator. It is really great, and it addresses quite a few issues without being titillating or verging into torture porn teritory.
Well, the author of the GtDV was pretty big on dragons hanging around everywhere and being something more of a regular occurrence ... while ultimately James and Co decided that dragons in the Inner Sea are much more reclusive and don't mingle with humanoids. As a result, several dragon-related elements of the setting (such as parts of Dragons Revisited and Guardians of Dragonfall) have faded into the Never Mentioned Again Zone, where the keep company of Darklight Sisterhood and Paladins of Asmodeus.I love the internal phrase they use at Paizo when talking about retconning things out of the campaign: "They got fire-cancer."
Fire-cancer? Is that a joke on "File Cancel" or something?
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Also, even for sexually liberal societies, there is a big difference between portraying nudity or consensual sex and casual violence against women. But removing all of that second sort of content is usually good, because often the violence against women in art isn't necessary, and the constant showing it over and over can be traumatizing for people who have been attacked.
Agreed ~ however you feel they ought to be used, this is what trigger warnings were invented for.
My personal issue with the material was less that they used the word "rape," or said that one of the NPCs raped people, but with the way that it was presented. I don't have my copy with me anymore (I threw it in the trash), but the scene in which Kreed raped the newlywed was portrayed as an attack on her husband, with the emphasis on his experience of it.
I shouldn't have to say what the problem with this is.
Moreover, the blurb on Kreed went on to talk about how when he's not committing casual acts of violence, he's actually not so bad and is randomly generous to people. Or something. YMMV, but I feel like this part was less of a commentary on IRL rape culture and the normalization of sexual violence, and more of a ham-handed attempt to introduce "moral ambiguity" into a game where "I kills it with my greataxe" is the default mode of interaction.
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Creative Director
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Fire-cancer? Is that a joke on "File Cancel" or something?Well, the author of the GtDV was pretty big on dragons hanging around everywhere and being something more of a regular occurrence ... while ultimately James and Co decided that dragons in the Inner Sea are much more reclusive and don't mingle with humanoids. As a result, several dragon-related elements of the setting (such as parts of Dragons Revisited and Guardians of Dragonfall) have faded into the Never Mentioned Again Zone, where the keep company of Darklight Sisterhood and Paladins of Asmodeus.I love the internal phrase they use at Paizo when talking about retconning things out of the campaign: "They got fire-cancer."
Nope.
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Moreover, the blurb on Kreed went on to talk about how when he's not committing casual acts of violence, he's actually not so bad and is randomly generous to people. Or something. YMMV, but I feel like this part was less of a commentary on IRL rape culture and the normalization of sexual violence, and more of a ham-handed attempt to introduce "moral ambiguity" into a game where "I kills it with my greataxe" is the default mode of interaction.
I think this was an attempt to show him as a deranged character : a lot of those scumbags know they are doing wrong, and cannot reconcile this with their mind, so they attempt to compensate their actions with their self glorified opinion of themselves by being ostensibly helpful now and then.