I really like the various setting books that tell us about the nations of Golarion/etc. What I was wondering was how their borders play out.
In 'real life' security is potentially strict around borders, but I'm imagining in the golarion setting, despite an even higher threat level, it's even harder to maintain a permanent 'guarded' border.
Do you consider borders to be a bit more fluid than the map boundaries we have, with settlements and areas with strict patrolling being more firm, but otherwise its "as far as either side thinks they can get away with".
Do you guys play with border patrols or checkpoints, with checkpoints at 'natural' choke points around border areas.
Passage between nations? As adventurers its pretty common to go wherever whenever, and have the power to back it up, but could someone from Varisia freely wander down through Nidal then into Cheliax, or require some travel papers/passport/etc.
In that light, when you've got a Higher level (or mythic, or both) PC party which is like...a mini-Justice League in terms of power in comparison to most of the 'regular world' do even higher tier nations like Cheliax decide to not push it too much when the 6 dudes of the f-ing apocalypse decide they want to trek to Andoran or something?
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I really like the various setting books that tell us about the nations of Golarion/etc. What I was wondering was how their borders play out.
In 'real life' security is potentially strict around borders,
Real life varies tremendously. The U.S./Mexican border has fairly strict controls. The West/East German Border in Berlin used to have concerete walls/barbed wires, and people who would shoot at folks trying to leave the Eastern side.
In comparison, the U.S./Canada border runs through towns, and even individual houses, yet I'm sure that the residents don't have to produce a passport to access the bathroom.
One example. Galt has a lot of people wanting to leave the mess that is their country. On one particular border, Galt doesn't stop anyone from leaving, but the Elves of Kyonin are very good at stopping people from entering.
To their credit, the Elves do help by providing humanitarian aid to refugee camps on the Galtan side of the border, and none of the factions seems to be trying to stop that.... this week.
Defensible borders in Golarion are probably the exception rather than the rule. If two nations have a mountainous border, the passes through the mountains might provide easily defensible chokepoints that either side could watch and guard. River borders are clearly marked but are easily violated by anyone with a raft -- but massive invasions with enormous siege engines would probably be rather difficult to pull off.
It depends entirely on the nations, for example lastwall might be more cautious with travelers entering its borders because of what its been charged with keeping, but Varisia isn't even a unified country so you could enter with ease.
depending on where your setting your campaign you mind need to do some reading, but alot of the books about the counties dont go into alot of detail about borders so you might need to think about it for awhile
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I think a very important point here is that Golarion is not the modern 21st century Earth. Borders in our world are - for the most part - well-defined by treaties and mapped out with modern cartography such that you can draw a line and say "this side belongs to me, that side belongs to you". Historical borders did not work like this. At all.
First of all there was the matter that historical cartography wasn't nearly as advanced as what we have today. Maps were difficult to draft and their accuracy was pretty terrible by modern standards. This meant that even when there was a treaty you could still end up with both sides disagreeing over where exactly to draw the line in the physical ground when they got there. As an example, the surveyors who defined the Canada/US border had technology far more advanced than what exists in Golarion, and if you actually look at a satellite photo... it isn't nearly as straight as the maps make it out to be. Drawing a straight line across an entire country with 19th century technology is much harder than it sounds, and most borders in Golarion are draw up with less advanced technology and less cooperation between the two neighbours.
Then you have the issue that different nation-states would often have competing territorial claims. You could very easily get situations where both sides strongly believed that they were the rightful owners of a piece of land, and this easily lead to border disputes. Both sides might even have historical documents to bolster their claims. Sometimes the people who lived there might themselves have a different opinion altogether. Historically the Pope often acted as a neutral party for such disputes between Catholic European kings, but Golarion has no such equivalent. Speaking of Golarion, monster-infested wildernesses are something that they have that our world doesn't, and those complicate borders even more by creating an uncertain "no man's land" which might fall within a country's claim but in practice they can't provide security for.
Bottom line, don't think of borders as a solid line you can draw in the sand. That's going to be the rare exception, usually in cases where the border is delimited by a clear and unambiguous landmark (a river, a mountain, the coast, etc). Much more common it's going to be a nebulous area between countries where it's not entirely clear who owns the land, and you'll get different answers depending on who you ask...
Rather than deal with discrepancies between maps and terrain and confusion/disareement inherent therein, borders can be fixed based on terrain markers themselves e.g. stone blocks or stelae etc., probably within line of sight of each other.
On the other hand, D&D and Golarion is an anachronistic setting, so limiting yourself to medieval practice is kind of absurd. Overall: decide what works, which can vary from country to country, and use it. Paizo just doesn't go into the details of most things, the entire setting is built so you can use your own assumptions to flesh it out.
I'm also envisioning that unlike the real world, which has enough of a unity of nations (such as it is) that it supports things like Passports, individual nations probably just make up their own rules when non citizens cross their borders....
and its probably easier (barring Detect Lie) to pretend you're actually a native of the region, assuming you've got a decent enough Knowledge (local stuff) rating...
Plus, how do you really monitor 'borders' when you've got things that can fly or teleport or the like :)
The political and territorial details would come to the fore. In ancient desert areas, holding the oasis/water was what mattered and control was only needed there. Out in the desert, was the equivalent of open sea.
More formal nations would extend control as far as they dared, natural boundaries being preferred. A mountain range might seem a good border, but D&D mountains are where all manner of things thrive! With access to flight and other transport, I fell back on the control of a point with influence beyond the walls.