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Hi Everyone, new question on an old product...
Looking at the city map scale bar in the old Guide to Absalom product, it seems like Absalom's walls are somewhere between 450 and 550 feet thick. Is that for real and or just a error in scale?
If it's for real, are the walls mostly solid or are they filled with rooms and corridors, making them an enormous fortress in their own right? Given Absalom's origins this seems like a cool way to go, but it's not mentioned in the text that I have found...
Thanks
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I've noticed problems with that scale as well. (They were compounded when I started building my Absalom sandbox campaign a few years ago.)
What I ended up doing was putting barracks, training halls, mess halls and arsenals inside the walls. I made them a bit thicker, but even at over 400 feet thick, you could reasonably have a 300-feet-thick wall with a hundred feet of honeycombed barracks and arsenals and hallways and such. Logistically it could give lots of room for guards and soldiers to maneuver during an artillery attack.
And that also leaves room inside the grounds for non-military functions.
And it keeps the number of soldiers on-duty and the logistical protocols and the shift routines, etc., secret -- out of simple eavesdropping view.
But officially, well, until Erik Mona and Owen K. C. Stevens (or anyone else) does further work on the most needed for further development part of the entire campaign setting, you'll probably just have to make it up.
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Thanks Ray,
That's pretty much the direction I was leaning towards too. I just started a new campaign in the city. It will be mostly politics and intrigue based stuff and will go beyond the walls rarely if at all.
Still curious how other GMs are handling this and other gaps. The Guide to Absalom is a good book as far as it goes, but barely scratches the surface. The city really deserves a much much bigger book!
I don't have a link, but I remember some discussion years and years ago (when the book came out). I'm pretty sure James Jacobs made the point that Absalom is so vast, any map at that scale wouldn't show much detail (buildings, walls and such). I seem to remember there being one tavern which, if you took the map literally, was several hundred feet across.
I'm pretty sure the resolution was that the included map is meant to be read as a more representative indication rather than an actual, to scale, aerial view. Measuring individual features by the scale will lead you astray - the buildings would nearly all be tiny dots and the walls would be almost unnoticeable if they drew them to scale.
The scale was mainly there for coarser uses - like determining how far it is from one district to another or answering questions like "How long is the waterfront?"
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I remember that quote. :-)
Cool. As soon as I wrote that out I began doubting whether it had ever happened (or if I was misremembering a korvosa discussion, or something...).
Thanks for reassuring the owner of a deteriorating, middle-aged brain. :)
Nope, you're good. You got pretty close to word for word.
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I'd personally love a hardcover of Absalom. :-)
I'd personally love a hardcover of Absalom. :-)
Absolutely. My three (four) things I've always wanted since the Gazetteer were:
- Taldor AP
- Varisia boxed set
- Absalom hardcover or boxed set
- A true megadungeon
Now the Taldor AP is on the schedule, I'm hoping the next two are on the way. (I've given up on ever seeing a megadungeon - I don't think it suits Paizo's core audience, production schedule or RPG, for that matter).
You forgot "Sandpoint Boxed Set"
You forgot "Sandpoint Boxed Set"
I vacillate on that - I've opted to list the varisia boxed set on the grounds that I think that might be more scalable.
Truth be told though, my list of "things I want Paizo to make" is really kind of long. :)
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Why box set. I see this fairly regularly and am just curious. :-)
I thought Shattered Star does a spectacular job as a sort of megadungeon. Granted, they aren't connected physically but they do provide a pretty good representation of different classic dungeons. :-)
Why box set. I see this fairly regularly and am just curious. :-)
For me there was a real "Christmas Day" feeling from opening the TSR boxed sets (and other, more recent ones). Kind of digging down to find this and this and this and.... Building it oneself via picking up lots of different products just isn't quite the same.
Short answer: nostalgia, I suppose.
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For me, the Sandpoint boxed set is the 'next step' from the Beginner Box.
It allows a novice GM and players to immerse themselves in a tiny, chewable portion of Golarion with NPCs (and their pawns), monsters (and their pawns) a well-designed home city that isn't too big, good maps, detailed guidebook, and everything else you need to really understand how a tabletop RPG could work. Gold standard, if you will.
From there the group can decide whether they want to go homebrew, or get deeper into Paizo products (or some mix of the two). It allows everyone to enjoy whatever parts of rpg games they like best, and props up the parts that no one is really interested in mastering right away.
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Yeah, I don't disagree. I'd buy both.
My reason for currently preferring Varisia if I had to choose one is just that the BB already includes the idea of Sandpoint as a "base". I figure expanding the concept of RPGs to include cities and wilderness areas would be beneficial to new gamers.
I'd include a thirty two page sandpoint book in the boxed set, of course.
I like the idea of adding wilderness encounters. Not so sure about a big city. Once you do that, people will want *that* detailed instead of a smaller group of people and land. And that plunges you right into the "overwhelmed by information" problem.
There's a fair amount of material available for people who want that level of complexity. But I'm thinking of the mid-size chunk of world building that many new GMs aren't ready for. Once you go Varisian, you've got Kaer Maga, Riddleport, Korvosa, and Magnimar to detail
I'd be happy with Sandpoint and Magnimar, but beyond that it's no longer a steppingstone, it's just another country in Golarion
That's a fair point.
My thinking was that it would be a bridge product into the campaign setting (as opposed to the BB being a bridge to the CRB mechanically).
So I'd flesh out sandpoint in its own book, have some wilderness-y stuff in another book (including a Varisia bestiary for non-BB people too), a travel based module perhaps and then a "other settlements of Varisia" booklet. If people want more information from there, they can then go to the already available Magnimar, Korvosa or Kaer Maga campaign sourcebooks.
Having seen Varisia in gory detail, they could also go on to the ISWG and gradually grow their vision of Golarion.
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A big part of that is no doubt coloured by my own discovery of Golarion - the Rise of the Runelords AP, then CotCT and the awesome Korvosa book, then the gazetteer...
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the way I fell in love with Golarion is "the best" way to learn about it.
Luckily, I get the easy job of just being a fan. Nothing bad happens if I'm wrong! :)
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Ah. Perhaps. Clearly my master plan requires reprints or a hardcover compilation/update of "Cities of Varisia". :)
Like I said - I have the easy job. Untroubled by economic details!
Contributor
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What, the PDF warehouse burned down? :/
I was wondering if someone would bring this up. ^_^
The books in question are, of course, still available in PDF (electronic arson notwithstanding). But that may not be an ideal way to market these products as a followup to the Beginner Box. Ideally, in this case, you'd want something that less experienced buyers can get wherever they got the Box, whether that's an FLGS or a semi-specialty retailer like Barnes & Noble.
As it stands, the Core Rulebook, the Strategy Guide, and the Inner Sea World Guide (along with, potentially, the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path) are the most probable next step. Presumably, that's working well enough for Paizo at this time.
What, the PDF warehouse burned down? :/If people want more information from there, they can then go to the already available Magnimar, Korvosa or Kaer Maga campaign sourcebooks.I think "available" is a rather optimistic term for any of those books.
Tammy can do that!