It's a bit of an odd wrinkle for the current campaign setting and all its deities etc to just 'vanish'.
Wouldn't it be nicer to just have Golarion and the star system it's in just be another visit-able place in the greater galaxy/universe setting that Starfinder will establish?
Unless they do it really well Starfinder risks trivializing all the Golarion lore. Even if they do do it well it'll always be hard for some people to accept that all their Golarion adventures are kinda 'meaningless' as the whole planet just ups and disappears.
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I like the sound of it for a couple reasons:
1) It adds an Aroden-level mystery to the setting which can help drive adventures.
2) It gives Golarion-native characters a Titan AE-style scenario where their world is just gone and nobody really knows why.
From a game perspective, it's probably a good chance to help differentiate the settings a bit. Having Golarion be a prominent part of the game increases the chance that folks see this as just another Pathfinder setting, when it seems like Paizo is trying to make it distinctly different.
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Well it's well established that the 'futuristic world' already exists outside of Golarion hiiamtom. That's why Numeria is what it is as is Desna. It'd be great if Starfinder instead was describing the wider galaxy and treated Golarion as just another planet in just another solar system.
As it is, Golarion APs will continue to be created for a planet in Pathfinder that vanished from existence in Starfinder. That's where my disconnect happens.
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More pragmatically: If Golarion still existed, then any resources developed for Starfinder that exposed information about Golarion history would run the risk of revealing (or conflicting with) plotlines or mysteries in other Pathfinder materials. They'd eventually have to explain what happened to all of the current nations, for example, so we'd know what eventually happens to Razmir, whether Rovagug busts out, if the world is overrun by undead, etc. Better to just take Golarion off the table, so to speak, and have the worlds explored be entirely distinct, new cultures, that don't directly tie into the greater lore related to Golarion.
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You see Golarion is actually an ancient form of the Gallifrey.
And now everything should make sense.
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whew, I think they said that Starfinder is backwards compatible so all Pathfinder monsters can just be dropped into Starfinder with no issues.
I guess it depends on where in the Golarion timeline does it disappear. Millions of years in the future? Hundreds? Right after Strange Aeons?
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Also, with Golarion gone, they don't have to provide rules to convert all of the monsters to the new system.
Except lots of monsters and creatures live on other planets or other planes, such as all outsiders, all elementals, elves, lashunta, selkies, behirs, wytchwirds, shoggoths, drakes, dragons, triaxians, gnomes, adlets, etc.
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Elves escaping Golarion for space is also canon when things got bad. So now the numerous space ships buried in Golarion are the ark that saves what's left and they have to face the hardships of the rest of the solar systems.
I don't think the elves escape Golarion this time, since humans are the only Pathfinder core race that remains a core race in Starfinder. That would suggest that, at the time of Golarion's disappearance, most elves were on Golarion, with just enough of them on Castrovel to avoid their complete elimination from the setting.
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If they were going to end Pathfinder and start Starfinder then the "Golarion disappears! Replaced with DeathStar Absalom!" approach makes complete sense but since they're not doing that (I hope!) then they've got to explain how both RPG settings are continuing when one has vanished in the other.
I guess 'Golarion is in a pocket universe going about its PFS/Module/AP business oblivious' is a way of keeping the two settings 'separate' and consequential but still in the same 'reality'. The Starfinder people wondering what the heck happened to a whole planet while Pathfinder people just keep going on with their business living on Rovagug and wondering what happened to Aroden. Hell maybe the Gods shoved Goalarion into a pocket universe so that if Rovagug does escape he's escaped into just another prison. That would be pretty neat.
In any case I'm really interested in how the Paizo folk are going to thread this needle and if they provide a satisfying resolution.
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It's also possible they have become xenophobic and Castrovel is under lock and key. There are a lot of directions it could go.
I think that is unlikely. Would they really pass up the chance for players to explore modern Castrovel? I could see Castrovel collapsing into anarchy, but not becoming off limits as an adventure setting.
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I think that mostly exists simply so that nothing Starfinder does will impact continuing AP's and other books that will be created for Pathfinder. This whole thing happens hundreds (thousands?) of years in the future timeline for Golarion; They are not retiring Pathfinder for Starfinder.
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No need to depict future versions of the various regions in Golarion, and no need to spend a bunch of time going in-depth on a single planet when the focus is on FTL travel.
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they've got to explain how both RPG settings are continuing when one has vanished in the other.
From the main Starfinder page:
Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future,
Everything happening in the Pathfinder line (including all future APs) is ancient history to the Starfinder line.
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My first question is, how long ago did Golarion vanish? Is it within the lifespan of anything current?
Given that immortality is a thing in Pathfinder, I'm betting it is. However, it won't matter: there's a significant swath of time missing from basically the entire universe (no records, no memories, etc.), during which period Golarion vanished. It isn't even known how long the gap of missing time is.
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they've got to explain how both RPG settings are continuing when one has vanished in the other.From the main Starfinder page:
Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future,Everything happening in the Pathfinder line (including all future APs) is ancient history to the Starfinder line.
Ah. Thanks Joana. That explains it.
Sad that Paizo only has a few thousands of years worth of AP planned though :_(
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they've got to explain how both RPG settings are continuing when one has vanished in the other.From the main Starfinder page:
Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future,Everything happening in the Pathfinder line (including all future APs) is ancient history to the Starfinder line.Ah. Thanks Joana. That explains it.
Sad that Paizo only has a few thousands of years worth of AP planned though :_(
except "thousands of years" doesn't necessarily equal "a few thousand", from what i understand, they're removing Golarion from the setting so they don't have to limit APs and other pathfinder products to a set timespan.
EDIT: the announcement also mentions that it's a "possible" future, so it's not set in stone as the eventual future of Golarion.
Given that immortality is a thing in Pathfinder, I'm betting it is. However, it won't matter: there's a significant swath of time missing from basically the entire universe (no records, no memories, etc.), during which period Golarion vanished. It isn't even known how long the gap of missing time is.My first question is, how long ago did Golarion vanish? Is it within the lifespan of anything current?
Ultimately... even immortals die...just ask Me. Immortality that's magic based may cease when the tide of magic ebbs below a certain level. Immortality based on Science, ultimately yields to entropy.
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It's a bit of an odd wrinkle for the current campaign setting and all its deities etc to just 'vanish'.
Wouldn't it be nicer to just have Golarion and the star system it's in just be another visit-able place in the greater galaxy/universe setting that Starfinder will establish?
Unless they do it really well Starfinder risks trivializing all the Golarion lore. Even if they do do it well it'll always be hard for some people to accept that all their Golarion adventures are kinda 'meaningless' as the whole planet just ups and disappears.
The absolute lack of Golarion's presence will help Starfinder establish an identity of it's own with a lot less baggage attached to it. And what many seem to forget is that leaving something out now also leaves the possibility of adding it back in later. After all for the first several years of New Dr. Who, It was an "accepted" fact that the universe no longer had a Gallifrey.
Don't expect everything to be revealed at once.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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They mentioned in the seminar that not only has Golarion disappeared, but that there's a gap in history, both memories and records universe wide (other planets and systems, other planes, everything and everyone), and a side mystery is what's going on with that, especially since different planets have slightly different times where the gap occurred. So that on Castrovel it might have been 300 years ago, but on some other planet it might only be 298 years ago, and if you explore a new planet and it's only 297 years ago, getting their records of the extra year is a goal to start piecing together missing bits of history.
If they were going to end Pathfinder and start Starfinder then the "Golarion disappears! Replaced with DeathStar Absalom!" approach makes complete sense but since they're not doing that (I hope!) then they've got to explain how both RPG settings are continuing when one has vanished in the other.
That's only true if the only focus that Starfinder would have would be the absence of Golarion. One would assume that the planet's absence being ancient history, that there would be more timely present things to focus about.
After all aside from a Time Lord or Dalek, would people still be asking about Gallifrey after it's been gone a billion years or two,or even as few as a couple of thousand? The answer is no, because there are other things to more relevant to worry about, like the Rutan crossing your backyard and the Sontaran nuking your house to get at it.
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I wonder how Groetus is doin'.
Groetus is finding a new definition of pain and suffering, as It is slowly digested over a thousand years.
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they've got to explain how both RPG settings are continuing when one has vanished in the other.From the main Starfinder page:
Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future,Everything happening in the Pathfinder line (including all future APs) is ancient history to the Starfinder line.Ah. Thanks Joana. That explains it.
Sad that Paizo only has a few thousands of years worth of AP planned though :_(
This doesn't mean that Golarion APs end after a few thousands of years. It just means that in a few thousand years, Pathfinder meets Dark Sun.
IF Golarion disappears, maybe I'll have no choice but to go back to D&D 5e. Well, probably not- I still haven't forgiven WotC for 4.0. I'm not a fan of the science fiction based game genre: and I have enough Pathfinder material to keep running games for years to come.
If you manage to make it through enough time to go through the thousands of years of APs before Golarion disappears, you should be celebrating . . . And good luck finding anyone who still plays D&D 4th/5th Editions.
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IF Golarion disappears, maybe I'll have no choice but to go back to D&D 5e. Well, probably not- I still haven't forgiven WotC for 4.0. I'm not a fan of the science fiction based game genre: and I have enough Pathfinder material to keep running games for years to come.
... they're not ending Pathfinder, they're gonna keep producing it alongside Starfinder at the pace they have been.
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Imagine that every Adventure Path happened at the same time, imagine if they all failed at the same time. The gods have their reasons. There are some pretty spectacular ways for it all to hit the fan in some of those adventure paths, the ones we have now, and the ones yet to come.
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Maybe it...
-Took earth's place when earth got destroyed.
-Fused with earth to create a whole new world.
-Is lost in another dimension.
-Is in an alternate universes.
-Is frozen in time.
-It was destroyed by Rovagug.
-It was swallowed by the cosmic whale.
-Is lost somewhere else in the universe.
-Aroden finally came back and...
The Gods are (for the most part) still around. It's the planet itself, and all information on every plane and every edge of the galaxy about all events that occurred during an indeterminate amount of time, that's missing.
Given the number of powers running about the setting, that seems... unlikely and hard to swallow. What are the benefits (to Starfinder as a game) of such a weird decision? It just seems an easy weak spot for nitpickers to constantly hound you about
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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The Gods are (for the most part) still around. It's the planet itself, and all information on every plane and every edge of the galaxy about all events that occurred during an indeterminate amount of time, that's missing.Given the number of powers running about the setting, that seems... unlikely and hard to swallow. What are the benefits (to Starfinder as a game) of such a weird decision? It just seems an easy weak spot for nitpickers to constantly hound you about
It was explained in the seminar that this was to make it so nothing in Starfinder will ever "reveal the future of Golarion". I don't see why it's unlikely, since a) it's been said that that's exactly what happened, and b) it doesn't seem any more or less unlikely than things like Pharasma handles judging souls for the entire universe, despite there being powers all over the multiverse who may have an interest in doing so for their pantheons, etc.
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The Gods are (for the most part) still around. It's the planet itself, and all information on every plane and every edge of the galaxy about all events that occurred during an indeterminate amount of time, that's missing.Given the number of powers running about the setting, that seems... unlikely and hard to swallow. What are the benefits (to Starfinder as a game) of such a weird decision? It just seems an easy weak spot for nitpickers to constantly hound you about
If Golarion wasn't uniquely special because of Rovagug's prison (and maybe the Vault Builders) I'd agree, but I don't have a hard time tying a multiverse ending threat related to his escape to something mysterious and far reaching that all the gods would agree to (or be overpowered by a big majority) in order to keep things going.
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I am guessing that Rovagug is missing too, since otherwise we would have his escape as a clue as to what happened to Golarion.
It was explained in the seminar that this was to make it so nothing in Starfinder will ever "reveal the future of Golarion".
It, uh, kinda fails there, doesn't it?
Magic Eight Ball says the future of Golarion is...it disappears.
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I can think of plenty of reasons, many of them already stated above. But another is that it lets them use the outline in Distant Worlds but also allows it to be a brand new setting. If Golarion was there, people would just want more details on Golarion in the future setting. This way, they can keep the people of Golarion (based on Absalom Station) but focus on the stranger, more alien worlds they've created.