Nidal will be interesting, when I complete my story. Not gonna get into crazy detail, just know it's about a character I created and played within several campaigns. Any-hoo, considering all the criticism about the country, which real life country would best resemble Nidal? I've seen a reference to Cheliax resembling Italy(not sure if it's accurate), would it make sense to refer Nidal as a neighboring country of Italy? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Nidal needs a book to justify why it exists when we have the Darklands and Nex and Geb. Personally, I think it could be very interesting, but it's got to do something none of those other places do.
It's totally different than Nex, Geb and especially the Darklands to me although I dig all of these.
For material on/for Nidal there's Legendary Games Legendary Villains: Dark Druids, that Boomerkid's awesome Tumbler(with lots of evil Nidalese stuff, and Ultimate Evil which I hear contains some stuff from the tumbler...
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Nidal will be interesting, when I complete my story. Not gonna get into crazy detail, just know it's about a character I created and played within several campaigns. Any-hoo, considering all the criticism about the country, which real life country would best resemble Nidal? I've seen a reference to Cheliax resembling Italy(not sure if it's accurate), would it make sense to refer Nidal as a neighboring country of Italy? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
18th century Venice: masques, conspiracies, secrets.
That would be my closest off the top of my head.
I'd go more with a nastier, pseudo-medieval version of East Germany.
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here's the easy out on tech advancement: WIZARDS, ELVES, TARRASQUES!
disbelief is already suspended. moving on.
The point wasn't about disbelief, but in the fact that many people seem convinced the course progress took in this world is the one it should take in every imaginable world. Which is terribly narrow-minded, even without fantastic elements.
And then, there are fantastic elements. And they change everything in reasonable ways, not just "duh, magic".I've seen a reference to Cheliax resembling Italy(not sure if it's accurate)
As an italian: we do have devil-worshippers in the ruling caste, are currently governed by people who imposed themselves as rulers without any actual right, and host a diabolical church that goes out of its way to appear angelic.
Looks like there actually is a resemblance, although I get the feeling that Asmodeous' church is more "honest" and doesn't try too hard to look nicer than it is.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ha. You just zeroed in on two of my least favorite things about Golarion: The apparent lack of technological advancement in a world over thousands of years and Nidal.
Mankind has been on this planet for 30 to 70 thousand years in it's present species. The bulk of it's progress has only been in the last few centuries.
The magic that suffuses the world may actually hinder technological development, or a least the impetus for it.
^Draculan Transylvania sounds more like a remix of Geb and Ustalav . . . .
During my group's adventurers, Nidal was nearly wiped out when zealous Kuthites stumbled upon a trap riddled, magma filled cavern in the Mindspin Mountains and ended up finding a red dragon egg and bringing it back to Pangolais. The egg belonged to a particularly powerful mythic great wyrm red dragon who had been slumbering in said cavern and was not at all happy her egg was stolen. I'll leave you to imagine what happened next. ;) :D
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I do agree that Golarion's timeline as a whole does appear to be a bit odd, given how magic should have sped up technological innovation rather than slow it down (mainly because it reduces certain limitations that humanity had to abide by for so long, thus resulting in the fits and starts of development mentioned by other posters). The only potential reason why nobody has used magic to kick-start advancement is because of social suppression. But that's actually quite unlikely, as many of the cultures listed on Golarion have cultures that focus on equitable distribution of resources, or are wealthy enough to try (like some parts of the main Keleshite empire). In a world where instantaneous communication, fine-tuned perceptions of reality, and access to the minds and observations of beings literally present when the universe began, science should have exploded loooooooong before Golarion hit the 4000's mark post-Aroden. Heck, the Azlanti had interstellar travel and their history (while the length is rather obscure) is implied to be somewhat shorter than the modern period. The fact that Numeria exists, Technic League not-withstanding, means that somebody might have been able to, if not reverse engineer, than at least finagle understanding of complex mathematics and engineering.
Nidal, comparatively, is incredibly easy to understand. Their cultural stasis is mandated and upheld by a divine being. In a world where magic exists, and the populace willingly signed their entire country away to a god, that makes sense.
I would say that magic slows advancement, if only because it muddies the physical and mundane. Amazing things are possible and picking out the baseline from those is probably a bit difficult.
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I would say that magic slows advancement, if only because it muddies the physical and mundane. Amazing things are possible and picking out the baseline from those is probably a bit difficult.
That's a common trope, and yet, having access to spells like divination or even augury would reduce years, or even decades, of research to prove theories to 'pay a cleric of Brigh a tiny fraction of the money we'd spend on a research team to ask if this is gonna work, which will cut our R&D time down from six to eight years to under a minute.'
And I picked cleric of Brigh, because that's one of many gods who'd be uninterested in holding things back for whatever reason, and likely be full steam ahead on the technological revolution. Other settings have their own gods, like Gond, in the Realms, who would likely be nodding in approval when a cleric asks a question about their new combustion engine concept.
In a godless world, where arcane magic is limited to sorcerers with their bloodlines and wizards with their years of study and book-learnin,' I could see arcane casters rallying together to suppress non-magical innovation, because it gives power to the 'little people' who don't have years of training, or specialer-than-thou bloodlines, just as crossbows and firearms (and the ability of any untrained yob with an index finger to kill a knight in platemail who was born to privilege and has spent years learning how to murder uppity peasants) eventually led to the collapse of feudalism. Once the hoi-polloi have easy access to power that doesn't require a special family or years of advantage, the wizards and sorcerers big advantage goes the way of knights and kings.
But even then, nothing is 100% lockstep, and there'd be arcane casters willing to buck tradition, either because they are genuinely not-jerks and want to help lift all the boats, or because they are short-sighted enough to want to arm *their* peasants to give them an advantage over the neighboring muckety-mucks and their helpless unarmed peasants.
Someone, somewhere, would be using magic to advance science. And they'd end up way ahead, so that when their culture met with those using arcane magic to suppress science, they'd be so much further advanced, that the encounter would end much like the introduction of Europeans to North America. (Not happily for the less-scientifically-advanced culture, in other words...)