Tone of the Pathfinder Chronicles

[Judge Monroe]

I always get the vibe that the Pathfinder Chronicles are a kind of stuffy scholarly thing and that that Pathfinders are themselves sort of stuffy and scholarly.

I like to imagine them, though, as similar in tone to the lurid midcentury men's adventure magazines ("Weasels Ripped My Flesh!") crossed with similarly-themed Fortean publications of the same era ("Dark Magic Of The Desert Tombs Revealed: Does This Clock Count Down To Apocalypse?").

Are the Chronicles written to educate ("A Numeration of the Species of Darkland Bat And Their Diets") or titillate ("I Narrowly Escaped A Drow Orgy!")? I feel as though Pathfinder has a kitschy, pulpy foundation, so I want it to be a little of both.

Are there any pulpy Pathfinders, or do they leave that sort of untoward behavior to the "adventurers"?

[Cevah]

As reading one can give a +2 for a day on some skill check, they are clearly designed for a purpose.

My understanding is that they are the diary of a pathfinder who has been on an adventure. That then gets cleaned up and published. You can get the romantic breast pounding seduction type as easily as the dry almost unfeeling account of a terrifying raid described as a spot of trouble.

Since anyone can be a pathfinder, you will have all sorts of writing styles.

I think of them mostly as old American western big-little books. Adventure with < 100% truth, but much wisdom if you can parse it out.

/cevah

[Deadmanwalking]

The first 4 APs have Pathfinder Journals as their fiction (the first three by Eando Kline). They aren't dry, but I wouldn't call them precisely pulpy either.

[Mudfoot]

Are those 4 AP journals available anywhere except through buying the (mostly 3.5 and out-of-print) APs?

[Deadmanwalking]

Mudfoot wrote:

Are those 4 AP journals available anywhere except through buying the (mostly 3.5 and out-of-print) APs?

The first three are available here.

[Mudfoot]

Thanks.