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Considering objectively the best AP remains Curse of the Crimson Throne
Might be up to debate and is a purely subjective matter, though. I could name some that I consider to be on par with CotC, and I'm quite content with my taste.
Yeah, there has been continuity since Crimson Throne <_< I'm kind of surprised that people keep bringing it up
I think that point has sometimes been downplayed too successfully. But yeah, it was there from the start and while I personally would prefer if there would be a stronger narrative about the Golarion metaplot, It seems that I'm in the minority and there's at least enough for me to work with to make my own "improved" version of said continuity.
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This is nothing new. We've had it before with Curse of the Crimson Throne, Shattered Star, Hell's Rebels, and Hell's Vengeance to name a few.
I was more referring to continuity and a timeline which has clearly moved forward now being something we see regularly between some AP's. This was and is a topic of contention, where some people were and are firmly against a continueing timeline and some are for it, myself included.
I know we have the caveat of "if it didn't happen in your campaign world, it doesn't matter", but I was really hoping to give my players some more sequential campaigns for years. So this makes me very happy. :)
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You know, I never really got the "Paizo/WotC/Chaosium/White Wolf/Etc... will invalidate my game" crowd.
You see, me and my group were big fans of making a difference and expanding the campaign beyond its regular borders. Take our Rise of the Runelords campaign for instance. At the end of the day with Karzoug dead and his armies defeated, instead of going back into Varisian society like the AP seems to expect you to do, my group looked around at the ruins of Xin-Shalast and all the other Thassilonian sites they had seen and decided that the Thassilonian Empire was actually a pretty good idea and decided to try and restart it minus the slavery, racism, and all the other unpleasant things about it while keeping its might and culture unchanged. They accomplished this by uniting the good and neutral inhabitants of the Leng zone, using wishcraft to restore the City of Greed to its former glory, and started a interplanar trade of magic items in exchange for raw material with Messentrel the Purple, a powerful dragon-king from Plane of Earth. Using the raw material gained from that plane, they became The Golem-Forgers of New Thassilon, one of the founding members of the Varisian League (the other one being the Celestial City of Korvosa) and all around making Varisa quite different than what later setting material would describe it as. And you know what? That is perfectly fine. Will Return of the Runelords talk about the Runelord of Charity who sends a yearly tribute of war golems to Lastwall in order to protect his land from orcs? No. Will it speak of the Immortal Angel-Knight Macarius who used the Everdawn Pool to drain the life from an invading Chelish fleet and under whose leadership has converted most of the population to the veneration of Iomedae? No. Will it speak the vast international trade network in-between the Varisian League and other place the Pc's had campaigns? No. And do you know what? That doesn't matter one bit. The moment I allowed my PCs to go and make radical changes to the setting I accepted that I would have to do more work in order to incorporate my Golarion with material from the Official version. And you know what? It. Is. Fun. It is fun to see the changes previous PCs have etched to the world. Sometimes it even makes things even more enjoyable for your group. My players wouldn't be caught dead doing anything that could be constructed as helping the Pathfinder Society, but they were all to happy to be agents of The NTE* in it's search for more relics from it's predecessor. The moment you allow your group to do something not outlined in the AP you make a Golarion the is different than anyone' else's. Only one question remains: How much work do you want to put in to make it so your players can do what they want? If the answer is not much, then you shouldn't allow them to do anything crazy. If it is a lot, then let them do as they will. It is truly a great deal of fun that way, and in ways you'll never see coming.
Just my two CP, though.
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If the setting material is a single time period then it is always history for your group and you can take it anywhere you want (like New Thassilin) but if it progresses and, for example, Cheliax takes over Xin Shalast, then you have lore, feats, archetypes, prestige classes, traits... which all conflict with your home game.
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nah, you have lore, feats, etc. that you can incorporate in your home game.
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which all conflict with your home game.
Just to comment on that topic (I generally agree with Hythlodeus): That can happen either way. As an example: If, in my RotRL game, the heroes fail and Karzoug awakens, this will most probably result in a major change regarding Varisia. So if at a later point, I get Varisia-related material, it'll probably not fit my version of Varisia at all, no matter if it officially advances the timeline or not.
So the only way to make sure that nothing like this happens is that you have to stay true to the material no matter what, and none of your campaigns is allowed to have lingering consequences. And at the end of a campaign, you basically have to push the reset button and start from anew, as if nothing had happened at all, invalidating everything the PCs did in your game (invalidating in so much as that their actions change nothing).
Which is something I find very boring and why I rather have to deal with timeline changes and the differences they bring between official Golarion and my own version of the setting, than having to deal with a complete static setting where nothing ever changes. That's just me, of course, and Paizo better do what they want to do and what's best for their business.
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You know, I never really got the "Paizo/WotC/Chaosium/White Wolf/Etc... will invalidate my game" crowd.
I think this was a bigger problem in the 90s, when campaign settings seemed to exist for their novel lines first and the gaming table second.
I remember running the Forgotten Realms as presented in the 2nd edition boxed set, for example, and getting quite irritated when people assumed the Elminster in my games was the god-banging, fourth-wall breaking character from the novel lines instead of the quasi-senile old man I was familiar with.
Yes, you can simply say, "In my version of this setting, W and X are actually Y and Z," but I find that a lot of people like published settings for the shared experience they provide. There's a certain appeal to being able to say "My group helped lead an army against the city-state of Urik" without having to detail what that really means.
The metaplots of the 90s tended to hit fast and change the setting on a yearly basis, which made finding that common ground a pain. If you wanted to run a Dark Sun campaign, for example, you then had to specify if it was the original set or revised set, both of which had very different tones. And if it was the original set, then there was a question as to how much of the Prism Pentad stuff got let in.
Basically, TSR never invalidated anybody's game, but they warped the language around the game and made it difficult to share common assumptions - and that shared experience is one of the main draws of a published setting.
IMO, Pathfinder has struck a good balance so far. There are definite changes to the canon (i.e., Xin-Shalast is often referred to as a recently rediscovered city these days), but it's easier to ignore a sentence here or a paragraph there than an entire line of supplements.
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You know, I never really got the "Paizo/WotC/Chaosium/White Wolf/Etc... will invalidate my game" crowd.IMO, Pathfinder has struck a good balance so far. There are definite changes to the canon (i.e., Xin-Shalast is often referred to as a recently rediscovered city these days), but it's easier to ignore a sentence here or a paragraph there than an entire line of supplements.
I'll second that thought and it has worked very well for my group who also has a habit of wanting to do post-AP work to tackle what they feel still needs doing.
Sandpoint, Magnimar, Korvosa, Irrisen, and Kintargo have all been (or will be if we finish them) radically changed. I haven't yet had to work around my changes in any significant way to work in any Paizo AP, and I consider that a tightrope well walked.
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You know, I never really got the "Paizo/WotC/Chaosium/White Wolf/Etc... will invalidate my game" crowd.
Likewise, I've never really got the crowd that says they need a timeline/continuity leap or they can't get immersed because the world is static, either.
Honestly, we've only been playing Pathfinder since Summer of '10, but the timeline and continuity of our Golarion has been hopping with new and exciting things from the get-go. Every story we've told has a place in the world, and they all effect the other stories in some way--even should that just be through rumors or news filtering in from other places. I don't need Paizo to create a moving timeline for my Golarion . . . my players are doing that!
So, I don't have a problem with invalidation at all. If we haven't run an AP, it hasn't happened (with one exception--Second Darkness, which has occurred off screen). If Paizo creates a 2nd Edition, or does something that contradicts our Golarion, we ignore or alter it. Some products might not be purchased because of it. I'm good with that. The world is ours. It's our characters that fuel it and live the stories within it. Paizo doesn't need to tell us how that happens with meta-story arcs. We'll create those and keep Golarion going at our table.
Let Paizo continue to give us some fantastic story chunks to drop in where we will, and let us--the players and GMs--work out the fine details of "moving the story forward." If the world seems stagnant to you, I hesitate to say you're doing it wrong, but there must be something that you're not being done right . . . because Paizo has given you numerous chances to change--even devastate--Golarion and keep that timeline rolling forward around your table!
(edit: These statements aren't directed at Malefactor, specifically, as obviously he/she does a great deal of moving and shaking of his/her world! My disagreement is simply about the world being stagnant due to Paizo not pushing a continuous timeline.)
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which all conflict with your home game.Just to comment on that topic (I generally agree with Hythlodeus): That can happen either way. As an example: If, in my RotRL game, the heroes fail and Karzoug awakens, this will most probably result in a major change regarding Varisia. So if at a later point, I get Varisia-related material, it'll probably not fit my version of Varisia at all, no matter if it officially advances the timeline or not.
So the only way to make sure that nothing like this happens is that you have to stay true to the material no matter what, and none of your campaigns is allowed to have lingering consequences. And at the end of a campaign, you basically have to push the reset button and start from anew, as if nothing had happened at all, invalidating everything the PCs did in your game (invalidating in so much as that their actions change nothing).
Which is something I find very boring and why I rather have to deal with timeline changes and the differences they bring between official Golarion and my own version of the setting, than having to deal with a complete static setting where nothing ever changes. That's just me, of course, and Paizo better do what they want to do and what's best for their business.
But, if the Varisia content you get is static then you can use it because it reflects the pre-AP world. It just enriches how things were before your AP, rather than being useless mulch.
With a subscription business this is especially important.
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Hmm, what is your opinion of Xin-Shalast article in Lost Cities of Golarion?
Also, even if setting book happened after the ap, it doesn't mean its useless :P Though you don't really have to worry about that since Paizo doesn't release "updated timeline setting books", setting books themselves do advance timeline for region, but since regions are pretty self contained it doesn't really affect aps. At most you might get setting book that features location from ap and expands it and maybe tells what is likely to happen to it after the ap.
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So late to the party but soooo excited!
Bad thing is I have to rush books 4-6 of my RotRL campaign - the first half took us two years to complete...
Ruyan.
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I took my group three-and-a-half years to get to the start of Fortress of the Stone Giants, and then the gaming group broke up.
(Admittedly, part of the problem was my ill-advised major side-quest to Kaer Maga so that I could run Seven Swords of Sin... that incorporated part or all of the PFS scenarios Rise of the Goblin Guild, The Golemworks Incident, The Shadow Gambit, and Feast of Sigils, as well as the river journey to Kaer Maga from The Asylum Stone.)
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But, if the Varisia content you get is static then you can use it because it reflects the pre-AP world. It just enriches how things were before your AP, rather than being useless mulch.
Problem being of course that I don't need that stuff anymore, because it's in the past, when what I actually would need to have is stuff about what happened after. I'm aware of the fact that that still might pose problems if and when my future of the setting deviates from that of the officials, so I might miss out in both cases. Still, saying that one is better than the other when both can have the same consequences, sounds wrong to me.
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Yeah, there has been continuity since Crimson Throne <_< I'm kind of surprised that people keep bringing it up since APs have had a form of continuity for a while already... Heck, it shows up in APs without connections to others, like Iron Gods doesn't have official start date(though since Numeria's campaign setting book has current year as 4714, its pretty much 2014 yeah), but it does have happen several years after 4709 because of what happens in that year in numeria.Here's the thing.
We DO have a very strongly implied continuity in the Adventure Path line if you look close; they happen in the order they're created, because that's the order we create them in more or less. Some of them we have planned well in advance (Reign of Winter taking place at a specific time, for example), and others are pretty self-contained, but they all are implied to happen in the order they're published.
We don't shout that from the mountaintop though because it's not something you need to know to play any one AP. You CAN play them in any order, and it's perfectly fine to start subscribing at volume 103 or whatever... you don't need to have read and played every one of them, and if we were more blatant and aggressive about the continuity, we'd have the same problem comic books have; diminishing returns due to new customers assuming that there's too much back issue stuff to read through in order to enjoy the new stuff.
i thoroughly enjoy this approach. there's little things that you can tie into the APs you are running if you've run previous ones - surviving / skipped sub-villain A from AP X shows up in AP Y - and the world doesn't collapse from continuity crises. and yeah, it's pretty cool that there are Maidens in Shattered Star and that your heroes from Hell's Rebels are paralleled by some villains from Hell's Vengeance.
but at the same time, it really doesn't matter. a group can just go run Giantslayer or Ruins of Azlant or whatever, and it's all fine that they don't know anything about Runelords or Alien Computer Gods or some tavern keeper in Sandpoint's illustrious lineage.
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Hmm, what is your opinion of Xin-Shalast article in Lost Cities of Golarion?
i didn't really care for it.
it would have been nice if it did a better job of describing the relationship between Leng and Xin-Shalast, about the opportunities for adventure in the city, and maybe hinted at some things that Karzoug THE CLAIMER had grabbed and hidden away in vaults that even he was too terrified to open.
Xin-Shalast is a really cool place for an adventure - particularly post-Rise - but that article was kinda flat for me, especially since I hadn't bought the hardcover of Rise at the time I bought Lost Cities.
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Hmm, what is your opinion of Xin-Shalast article in Lost Cities of Golarion?i didn't really care for it.
it would have been nice if it did a better job of describing the relationship between Leng and Xin-Shalast, about the opportunities for adventure in the city, and maybe hinted at some things that Karzoug THE CLAIMER had grabbed and hidden away in vaults that even he was too terrified to open.
Xin-Shalast is a really cool place for an adventure - particularly post-Rise - but that article was kinda flat for me, especially since I hadn't bought the hardcover of Rise at the time I bought Lost Cities.
Have to agree about that actually, I did more like it than "eh" it, but I had problem with it that it mostly reprinted info that is in anniversary edition of RotR too(or maybe anniversary edition reprinted info from it? I'm not sure which was first) so it mostly felt recap to me with only political events being new :'D I would have loved to learn more about the city beneath Xin-Shalast or the vaults in it or the other new stuff about it... Heck, I'm pretty sure you could dedicate the Tangle its own complete article of same size, thats how much interesting locations Xin-Shalast has by itself.
Have to agree about that actually, I did more like it than "eh" it, but I had problem with it that it mostly reprinted info that is in anniversary edition of RotR too(or maybe anniversary edition reprinted info from it? I'm not sure which was first) so it mostly felt recap to me with only political events being new :'D I would have loved to learn more about the city beneath Xin-Shalast or the vaults in it or the other new stuff about it... Heck, I'm pretty sure you could dedicate the Tangle its own complete article of same size, thats how much interesting locations Xin-Shalast has by itself.Hmm, what is your opinion of Xin-Shalast article in Lost Cities of Golarion?i didn't really care for it.
it would have been nice if it did a better job of describing the relationship between Leng and Xin-Shalast, about the opportunities for adventure in the city, and maybe hinted at some things that Karzoug THE CLAIMER had grabbed and hidden away in vaults that even he was too terrified to open.
Xin-Shalast is a really cool place for an adventure - particularly post-Rise - but that article was kinda flat for me, especially since I hadn't bought the hardcover of Rise at the time I bought Lost Cities.
I agree with both of you more or less. The trouble with Lost Cities was that Xin-Shalast probably needs it's own book. A summary in a few pages doesn't really help if I'm going to run this.
For me, this place is like Erelhei-Cinlu in the old classic module D3 Vault of the Drow. It's a skeleton outline of something that potentially could be a massive and memorable place which requires ALOT of GM work to do it justice imho. It needs the City of Seven Spears treatment and probably should have been the entirety of book 6 of RotR. YMMV.
Either way, we probably both agree that concept of article wasn't bad, execution just wasn't what we would have liked, right?
Aye.
Lost Cities of Golarion was first, published in 2011. I bought it during my first run of "Rise of the Runelords," which was the OGL version. I found some useful bits from the Xin-Shalast section of that book, but not as much as I'd hoped when I bought it.
Rise of the Runelords Anniverary Edition was published in 2012, about a year-and-a-half later.
The amount of excited I am for this is beyond description!!! The Runelords/Varisia are some of my absolute favorite parts of Golarion, so I can't wait for this to come out and shed even more light on all that glorious domination.
Sadly, despite my best efforts, I have never played all the way through Rise(furthest I got was just around the start of book 2 in my home game before the GM could no longer run it due to IRL issues).
I think I've been in about 4 attempts of a pbp here on the boards, plus in recruitments for a few others.
Maybe one day my time will come and I will play the entirety of the this oh so epic AP.
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One map I really want is Thassilon before Earthfall.Unless you were talking about something more detailed, or with the inundated lands filled in properly.
Nice map. I'd been down for more detail, including proper fill-in. :-)
I don't see Xin-Shalast on that map. Did I miss it?
Creative Director
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One map I really want is Thassilon before Earthfall.Unless you were talking about something more detailed, or with the inundated lands filled in properly.
Nice map. I'd been down for more detail, including proper fill-in. :-)
I don't see Xin-Shalast on that map. Did I miss it?
Nope; that map is incomplete, alas. It also doesn't show the land as it existed before Earthfall (we didn't have the time or resources to tackle that at the time this map first appeared).
There will be a new map of pre-Earthfall Thassilon in this Adventure Path though. Probably not until part 6.
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There will be a new map of pre-Earthfall Thassilon in this Adventure Path though. Probably not until part 6.
That is deeply into "awesome" territory. Thanks for a} doing it and b} teasing.
The Runelord adventures are some of my favorites. The only problem is that I can't run them all in the same campaign! I guess there are much worse problems to have.
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You know...that's actually an awesome idea.
So how much of that PFS scenario/season that apparently involves a runelord not encountered in a previous adventure path will those of us who avoid organized play need to understand for Return of the Runelords?
Is this a thing where "not knowing anything about that PFS season" will leave some things unexplained but is otherwise unessential?
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Creative Director
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So how much of that PFS scenario/season that apparently involves a runelord not encountered in a previous adventure path will those of us who avoid organized play need to understand for Return of the Runelords?
Is this a thing where "not knowing anything about that PFS season" will leave some things unexplained but is otherwise unessential?
No knowledge required at all. What you'll need to know will be part of Return of the Runelords.
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My group has been together for a couple years now. An online group, so a bit slower than irl tabletop sessions, but we've been steady. We're currently about halfway through chapter 5 of Shattered Star, and were thinking about what we would do afterwards. When Return was announced i pitched it the group as what to play next, since i figured that by the time it came out we'd have finished with the current campaign. One of the other players in the group pitched the idea of setting it further in the future (about 30 years after SS) after our current campaign and making a party out of the children of various PCs and NPCs. Everyone has been super stoked about it and we've already rolled our characters up. Just wanted to share that and note how grateful i am to have such a possibility because of this AP ^^
I'm also pretty excited for this AP ("cautiously optimistic" is the term I've been using; I try not to get too hyped up since nothing can survive unreasonable expectations). The gang I've been rolling with for several years now might be having some shake-ups since one of the stalwarts is leaving town for grad school before it drops, so I'm looking at PbP or some other form of online game for it.
Absolute worst-case scenario, I expect the supplemental articles will be incredibly helpful, and that's in the unlikely event that six AP authors I think are quite good, plus an entire wing of Paizo staffers devoted to making it a stellar AP, under the guidance of someone who's basically carrying their beloved brainchild to term, somehow flub it.
And like I said, I think that's probably not gonna happen. :)
The Runelords of Thassilon were what opened the door to Golarion- er, well, I guess some pewter figurines, a kobold king, and one very blood-sworn vale were also instrumental- and after all these years I guess it's time we got a final(?) say from them as well.
We'll be getting a nice whirlwind tour of some of Varisia's well-known but little-explored hot spots, and a brief dip or two into the adjacent places that once bowed to Thassilon's seven-pointed sigil, and I can't gripe too much about that.
A part of me hopes this is the AP where the final villain(s) can be (as written) defeated with words, not violence, since I really like Xanderghul and Sorshen as NPCs, but if I gotta bury them out back with all the other major villains, well, that's just the way the empire crumbles. :P
Anyhoo. Cautiously optimistic, like I said. Looking forward to seeing how it shapes up. :D
I would be extremely surprised.
However, I would not be surprised to see it close the book on Varisia, at least temporarily.
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I would be extremely surprised.
However, I would not be surprised to see it close the book on Varisia, at least temporarily.
Also absolutely not. Varisia is my favorite part of Golarion, pretty much, so as long as I'm here at Paizo you can expect Varisia to stick around and continue to play parts in stories.
Ah well, always room for hoping =)
I like the Runelords a lot but tend to otherwise look more forward not APs set in less-explored parts of the setting. Though admittedly that's just for curiosity's sake since I don't actually run my games in Golarion.
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@Mr. Jacobs: Personally, I'm glad that Paizo went this route rather than just a 'Runelords' source book like I requested in the old DM Chat some strange aeons ago.
I am also hoping that maybe you guys will consider some supporting articles for the blog with tips and suggestions on some of things being batted around here which aren't covered in sidebars. Most notably adapting RetotR for lengthier periods of delay following RotR, CoCT, & SD especially with consideration for JR (and maybe RoW just because of the 'mandatory' start of that) to have transpired. I'd love to get a clear picture of what all the awakened Runelords would do with an extra 10, 20, or 50 years to prepare before making their moves.
My personal ask would be for an article outlining how each of the remaining Runelords would respond to Numeria and Silver Mount, and what each would do with the possibilities of advanced technology which in some respects would actually be more familiar in function to the artifacts the super magical empires of Azlant and Thassilon would have had as more commonplace. I think that would likely be an avenue for some wonderful investigation by powerful archwizards. Given their own adversarial relationships and jockeying for power, I'd picture they considering the Technic League's political maneuvering like amateur hour for their level of machinations.
Also, I am curious about the potential for collaborations with other canon powerhouses within the setting. I recall several immortal beings would have interests in their return as possible allies or enemies. I know there was one demon or devil who has wanted Sorshen delivered to him or something and punished the former Runelord who failed to deliver. Finding out how the other gods, immortals, and power players in Golarion today would react to RetotR would be nice, even something as brief as the "relationships with" sections for each of the gods for the RLs would be fantastic.
{. . .}
A part of me hopes this is the AP where the final villain(s) can be (as written) defeated with words, not violence, since I really like Xanderghul and Sorshen as NPCs, but if I gotta bury them out back with all the other major villains, well, that's just the way the empire crumbles. :P
{. . .}
Before this, I've wondered about the possibility of defeating Karzoug without killing him (and same for other bosses). Speaking of which, a few APs have come out since this thread last got a psot, so some Necromancy might be in order . . . .