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I'm sorry that I am post-bombing this, but there is a subject that has just ruined my day, that I do not see enough people complaining about. (At least not yet.)
I assume from the announcement, that "Golarion-Infused" means that, as with Starfinder, the lore and setting will be in many ways inseparable from the core rules beyond a simple mention of the setting's gods in the cleric section.
What a horrible idea this is. This is the biggest turnoff of Starfinder and the reason why I've yet to run a game.
I love you Paizo, but Golarion is tedious for a lot of us, and so is separating fluff from crunch in order to get a simple home campaign going.
Vanilla is best. Core books should be resources, not advertisements or novelizations.
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I'm with you. I'm seriously disappointed. This is the way to break my Pathfinder addiction I suppose.
I'm done. Out. Finito. Not investing in another Pathfinder book.
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Same.
I'll buy the books I missed that I still want from First Edition years later on ebay when they are cheap.
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I also prefer setting-agnostic rulebooks, but I'm not 100% against it.
I definitely would like Pathfinder 2.0 to make it explicitly clear from Day 1 which bits of flavor/setting are considered Paizo IP and which aren't. It'd make it much simpler for 3PPs to fully support PF2 without stepping on any toes.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Give it a look before you pass judgment. It's not so nasty as you think, I assure you. We're also being very careful about this in part for the OGL reasons Slaad mentions.
I am giving every single bit of Golarion lore in this book a VERY hairy eyeball.
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Give it a look before you pass judgment. It's not so nasty as you think, I assure you. We're also being very careful about this in part for the OGL reasons Slaad mentions.
I am giving every single bit of Golarion lore in this book a VERY hairy eyeball.
I favorited that and moved on, but have reconsidered. The following is a thought inspired by, but not directly related to the above. (As in, I don't mind the idea of Golarion-inspired anything).
I've got a tiny bit of worry in my mind that within Paizo, there might be a sentiment (even subconscious) that Pathfinder is Golarion, in the sense that as long as PF2e has a bunch of Golarion in it, it's still Pathfinder.
Maybe I'm off in that vague unease, and I might be wrong in my opinion that the setting isn't the game. Keeping the setting is fine, but know that I don't play Pathfinder for the setting. I play it for the rules.
Maybe knowing that is useful. Maybe not. But maybe it's a good question while designing PF2e: does a particular rule change dispose of the nature/spirit/style of the game?
If you want to make Game Played On Golarion 2.0, that's fine. But recognize you're doing so. Pathfinder 2.0 should evoke recollection and familiarity with the D&D 3.5e rules that birthed 1.0, or it's not Pathfinder.
Just some philosophical food-for-thought. Which could be out to lunch, I admit.
Thank you.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I also prefer setting-agnostic rulebooks, but I'm not 100% against it.
I definitely would like Pathfinder 2.0 to make it explicitly clear from Day 1 which bits of flavor/setting are considered Paizo IP and which aren't. It'd make it much simpler for 3PPs to fully support PF2 without stepping on any toes.
We've already been doing this with Starfinder, so you can expect a callout that looks a lot like this one, from the Starfinder Core Rulebook:
Product Identity: The following items are hereby identified as Product Identity, as defined in the Open Game License version 1.0a, Section 1(e), and are not Open Game Content: All trademarks, registered trademarks, proper nouns (characters, deities, locations, etc., as well as all adjectives, names, titles, and descriptive terms derived from proper nouns), artworks, characters, dialogue, locations, plots, storylines, trade dress, the historical period called the Gap, the term skyfire, and the Drift (the official Open Game Content term for which is “hyperspace”). (Elements that have previously been designated as Open Game Content, or are exclusively derived from previous open game content, or that are in the public domain are not included in this declaration.)
Open Game Content: Except for material designated as Product Identity (see above), the game mechanics of this Paizo game product are Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Game License version 1.0a Section 1(d). No portion of this work other than the material designated as Open Game Content may be reproduced in any form without written permission.
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Franchise Manager
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I've got a tiny bit of worry in my mind that within Paizo, there might be a sentiment (even subconscious) that Pathfinder is Golarion, in the sense that as long as PF2e has a bunch of Golarion in it, it's still Pathfinder.
Maybe I'm off in that vague unease, and I might be wrong in my opinion that the setting isn't the game. Keeping the setting is fine, but know that I don't play Pathfinder for the setting. I play it for the rules.
Honest question: are you opposed to providing background about dwarves that explains their racial hatred of orcs (like just a mention of the Quest for Sky)? What about background of gnomes coming from the First World to explain mechanics related to the Bleaching? Or saying "half-orcs are often found in the lands bordering the orc homeland of Belkzen" in the information about the race? Where's the sweet spot between "these are context-less generic fantasy RPG mechanics" and "I didn't read all of Dave Gross's Varian and Radovan novels so I have no idea what this spell does?"
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I honestly much prefer core rulebooks being infused with setting, its not that hard to remove flavor of setting when you go for homebrew setting :P
Heck, generic books ALREADY imply a setting: For some reason, dwarves have hatred trait vs orcs. That IS a setting and if you want to do game where dwarves get along with orcs(who aren't mostly chaotic evil) you have to change that. Advanced race guide has info on every race, even without any setting specific names mentioned, that makes a some sort of setting. Its kind of like how Villain Codex creates its own generic setting just by detailing how villain organizations work and perhaps how they affect each other.
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Honest question: are you opposed to providing background about dwarves that explains their racial hatred of orcs (like just a mention of the Quest for Sky)? What about background of gnomes coming from the First World to explain mechanics related to the Bleaching? Or saying "half-orcs are often found in the lands bordering the orc homeland of Belkzen" in the information about the race? Where's the sweet spot between "these are context-less generic fantasy RPG mechanics" and "I didn't read all of Dave Gross's Varian and Radovan novels so I have no idea what this spell does?"I've got a tiny bit of worry in my mind that within Paizo, there might be a sentiment (even subconscious) that Pathfinder is Golarion, in the sense that as long as PF2e has a bunch of Golarion in it, it's still Pathfinder.
Maybe I'm off in that vague unease, and I might be wrong in my opinion that the setting isn't the game. Keeping the setting is fine, but know that I don't play Pathfinder for the setting. I play it for the rules.
I know I'm not the person who this was directed at, but I do come from a similar place of setting-agnosticism support.
The sweet spot for me is how things are in the existing core line up to (I think) Horror Adventures. I'd much rather just have the mechanics with a 2 sentence generic fluff explanation, and figure out the rest myself in my own campaign setting. Gnomes "coming from the land of the Fey" is fine. Almost every setting is gonna have some Fey land because it's built into the rules. Fey is a creature type.
"Half-Orcs can be found near Belzken" is too far. Only Golarion has Belzken, and it's a pain to have to tell my players "here's the rulebook we use, but ignore all of this fluff". It's also a pain to pay for pages of a book that I'll never use, (here's looking at you Dead Suns #3. One day I'll pay $15 just to get Necrografts. Today is not that day.)
One of my favorite things about Pathfinder is that the core stuff is mostly setting neutral. I was willing to put up with it in things like Book of the Damned and Adventurer's Guide, since I had a bunch of solid setting-neutral core line rulebook to work with still. When I handed someone the core rules to learn how to play the game, I never had to worry about them showing up with an elf from Kyonin, or a gunslinger from Alkenstar, when my elves come from Agendor and my gunslingers from Ammerstrad.
The lack of setting agnosticism was actually the biggest obstacle to me using anything outside the core line. For several years I never touched a player companion because I didn't want to have to scrub off the Golarion fluff to fit those mechanics into my world. I eventually came around, but it's still frustrating to have to rename and refluff some things.
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This sounds a bit like a mountain out of a molehill. It shouldn't be that hard to tell your players "ignore all the fluff, this is a homebrew campaign".
It shouldn't be hard to avoid the problem entirely either, by simply printing setting-agnostic core rulebooks
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Not hard for the GMs and Players that use their own stuff, but can be odd for playing in Golaruion and finding where things fit, if they do, and also frustrating and probably exhausting for the Designers who have to keep everything split, so there's a lot of unnecessary work there that could be put to better use making more stuff for everyone to enjoy ^w^
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The best RPGs are intrinsically linked to their settings. Can you imagine
Traveller without the Imperium?
Runequest without Glorantha?
Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s?
WOD without the WOD?
D&D without Greyhawk?
Please keep Golarion as core to the game.
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The best RPGs are intrinsically linked to their settings.
The best systems are enjoyable without depending on a setting.
Can you imagine
Traveller without the Imperium?
Runequest without Glorantha?
Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s?
WOD without the WOD?
No. That is one of the reasons I don't play often most of those games.
D&D without Greyhawk?
Yes, easily. Which is one of its strong points, when it comes to fascinating, powerful different setings, like Eberron, DarkSun, Ravenloft...
Several of those games have published settings/eras that aren't the one you're associating with them. Even CoC and WoD are that way, with 1890s and Dark Age versions. None are as intrinsically linked to those settings as Pendragon or Yggdrasil or Shadowrun.
I'm not saying you can't have other settings for RPGs. My Palermo by Night campaign (for WOD Dark Ages) was a thing of beauty. But it never have taken place without the dozens of supplements based on the original setting, How did Cthulhu by Gaslight go? Not bloody well!
I thought of adding Shadowrun to my list but I never played it (owned a fair bit though). Wish I remembered Pendragon. Don't know Yggdrasil. It does seem that you are supporting my argument though.
I can totally see PF 2.0 being like Warhammer Fantasy has been since like forever - the rulebooks are setting-specific, but decoupling the mechanics from the setting isn't really hard at all.
That's true, but who knows someone whose running WF independent of the setting (which was always the best thing about the game)?
Being easily setting strippable is a good thing, but the setting maketh the game.
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I mean at one point to you have to ask what is part of the setting and what isn't dwarfs being short stout and good with metal? elves liking trees and shooting bows. Some setting aspect are pretty innately tied into the game. Just a matter of degrees.
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I mean at one point to you have to ask what is part of the setting and what isn't dwarfs being short stout and good with metal? elves liking trees and shooting bows. Some setting aspect are pretty innately tied into the game. Just a matter of degrees.
Not really.
"Fantasy" is a genre, "Golarion" is a place.
This is a clear cut difference
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It is not a clear cut difference just look how much trolls vary over different fantasy games. Just because it tends to follow one over another more often then not does not mean it is established that all fantasy has to work this way. Its not black and white its shades of grey.
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Honest question: are you opposed to providing background about dwarves that explains their racial hatred of orcs (like just a mention of the Quest for Sky)?
Not in the slightest. I play in Golarion, so the OP's concern about embedding Golarion content in the rules isn't mine.
What I was asking about was the (possible) conflation of Golarion with Pathfinder. Put simply, our preferred setting was Eberron. When WotC went 4th, we migrated to Golarion because converting settings was more attractive than converting game systems. If PF2 is significantly different from PF1, the setting will not hold us. That's what I wanted to say, without being specific.
We seem to enjoy PF1 because it's complex and rich. Not entirely because of the vast array of content published so far (though that helps, certainly), but because the Core itself was rich. The tactical complexity was a selling point for us. If PF2 is simple - as it's being marketed as - then it (possibly/probably) won't feel like PF1, regardless of the setting. Having Elves, having rangers isn't enough. For us, feeling like PF1 means being rich. I'll be honest and say that we've been dabbling with SF and find it playable but significantly less rich.
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It is not a clear cut difference just look how much trolls vary over different fantasy games. Just because it tends to follow one over another more often then not does not mean it is established that all fantasy has to work this way. Its not black and white its shades of grey.
But it's so easy to distinguish black from white:
"As soon as you start naming places, events, organizations and important people"To support just how easy is to distinguish black from white, I will refer to the OGL rules:
If it's OGL, it's white. If it's intellectual property, it's black.
It is extremely simple, straightforward and streamlined. That is why we can use it as a guideline for legal purposes, to decide without any shades of doubt what is OGL and what is not.
Now, imagine breaking copyiright laws by mentioning Golarion deities in your product, and then using "There are shades of grey" as a defense... doesn't sound that solid does it?
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I am more disappointed that there is even going to be second edition then that it is going to be campaign setting specific. But I can understand how you feel about it.
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The best RPGs are intrinsically linked to their settings. Can you imagine
Traveller without the Imperium?
The early editions of traveller which I played with and used had no reference to the Imperium in core books. Not until Megatraveller is that featured.
Runequest without Glorantha?
The later versions of Runequest (3rd and later) no longer include Glorantha as a core setting and indeed the iconic system for Glorantha is now Heroquest.
Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s?
Yes . I run Cthulu in the Roman, Medieval, Victorian and modern worlds , never ran it in the 1920's . Again more recent versions of the rules support other periods, and in any case this is a Real world set game so setting is not a big thing , the mythos lore which is timeless (often outside of time) is the important thing
WOD without the WOD?
I concede on this one, although which WOD setting there are at least 2 and they have used the system for exalted and I think others. I hate the system so did not bother following that up
D&D without Greyhawk?
Incredibly easy D+D(Basic and related) were set in Mystara. AD+D 1st and 2nd editions were setting nuetral and the big world for them was forgotten realms anyway. 3.0 and later have very little of the world setting in them.
Please keep Golarion as core to the game.
Despite the fact that 80% of your examples are wrong I actually agree with you. I find changing generic flavourless references in a background to match whichever setting I am using at least as much hassle as changing a world specific reference and in general the world specific stuff is more inpiring to the authors as far as I can tell. Neither of my last 2 pathfinder campaigns have been Golarion based and the huge quantity of setting specific stuff I have works well.
Still not going to bother buying 2nd ed anyway but not because of setting links in the core books.
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The best systems are enjoyable without depending on a setting.Well that's a well supported argument...not. Why don't you offer a single example to support your claim?
Why don't we start with Pathfinder.
The core rules are setting agnostic and there are literally dozens of 3PP settings available, from Midgard to Rathan Athuk to homebrew.
Or even AD&D: while Greyhawk may have had a substantial number of modules and secondary material printed the rules themselves were setting agnostic.
You could just as easily have run your campaign from Lankhmer or The Vulger Unicorn ... there were even published stats for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
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If Starfinder is an example of "lore-infused" rules then I can't really understand why people are upset.
Starfinder is relatively setting agnostic. File off a few rough edges about the Drift and Absalom station and I don't really know of too many mechanics that depend on setting that aren't easily replaced.
If Pathfinder 2.0 follows suit, I can't imagine their being a problem.
Does anyone have examples of particularly lore dependent options (in Starfinder)? There are actually many many many examples of lore dependent options in the current incarnation of Pathfinder (not in the core rule book, but across the various rule books).
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As somebody who primarily runs a homebrew, I think putting Golarion in the core book is still a good idea.
First of all, going off of Starfinder as what I presume the model of "setting in core" would be, it wouldn't be that obtrusive.
Second of all, if Paizo's main bread and butter is still the adventure paths, it means that newcomers to Golarion don't have to digest a bunch of extra material to get up to speed with the setting. If everybody is familiar with the Core Rulebook, they have a general understanding of what makes Ustalav different from Varisia, for example.
Third of all, a lot of the best RPG products that I've seen have some simple, unobtrusive world info in them. The D&D Rules Cyclopedia is one example. The Pathfinder Beginner Box is another.
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I can imagine quite a lot of worse ideas, actually.
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So, I'm actually one of those in favor of setting-specific stuff in Pathfinder.
I have plenty of game systems that are setting-agnostic. Heck, one of the games I play the most often has it's generic-ness right there in the name.
I play Pathfinder because I like Golarion. I play Pathfinder because I don't want to create a world - I want to have a setting to play around in.
I've never found it hard to strip the rules from the fluff. But I don't want to have to buy a whole different set of books to get the setting stuff.
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The biggest problem that I see in Golarion-infused rules (and personally it'a really big problem for me) is when character options are gated behind setting specific fluff, i.e. prerequisite for a feat is worshiping a specific god. Then some people tend to have difficulty in allowing those specific options to general population, or even worse, think that worshiping a god is THE balance point of the feat.
Beside that I don't have a problem with Golarion-infused rules, even though I consider Golarion too kitchen-sinky and generic to enjoy it.
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Why is this so bad? Can someone explain the issue?
If you have to look at your bookshelf filled with thousands of dollars of Paizo books, 3.5 magazines and third party supplements, then perhaps the notion of why buying it all over again is bad will become crystal clear.|
Then there's the hundreds of dollars dropped into Hero Lab. Will that be supported? What will be its fate?
If I never bought books or PDFs, I wouldn't care either. New edition for me to illegally download or read the PRD online. Yay. But I buy products that I want to see supported.
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Put it this way: one does not go out of one's way to intentionally buy a chocolate chip cookie full of raisins just so one can have the "privilege" of picking them out one by one.
LOL
That's the simple, funny way of putting it.
The TL/DR version of the more complicated part of it is that I think highly creative people like to feel some sense of "ownership" in what they create. The more derivative a thing is forced to be, the less ownership we feel, and that lessens the sense of accomplishment and lessens investment (read: love) in the thing.
Additionally, other IPs act as roadblocks to the creative process. Writing around them becomes cumbersome and depending on depth of IP/crunch infusion, can require unhappy rules changes.
I think some of the latter is unavoidable when you are publishing third party material that is very genre specific. But somebody should not have to do that sort of extensive writing just to play his home campaign on his own table.
Rules as vanilla as Pathfinder currently is, avoid this issue naturally. Infusing fluff into the crunch creates this issue without exception, in my experience.
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The best RPGs are intrinsically linked to their settings. Can you imagine
Traveller without the Imperium?
Runequest without Glorantha?
Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s?
WOD without the WOD?
D&D without Greyhawk?
Please keep Golarion as core to the game.
The finest RPG I've seen in a long time, Savage Worlds, is entirely setting and genre independent without companions or setting books.
Core rules should be core rules, it helps with have flexibility.
Our group will probably never play a Starfinder game because each campaign is in a new setting and I've already used that setting with a Savage Worlds campaign.
If SF wasn't married so heavily to it's fluff we would be WAY more likely to try it eventually.
Setting fluff in the core rules limits a game's utility artificially. A cool setting could sell books by itself. But is that the goal going forward?
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The best RPGs are intrinsically linked to their settings. Can you imagine
Traveller without the Imperium?
Runequest without Glorantha?
Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s?
WOD without the WOD?
D&D without Greyhawk?
Please keep Golarion as core to the game.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
The last two especially. They used WOD rules for Street Fighter of all things, and I know I'm not the only D&D player who never actually played in the Greyhawk setting. D&D prided itself on having a ton of different first-party settings over the years, and an enormous percentage of campaigns were homebrew.
Keep Golarion--it's an excellent settign--but don't make it difficult for everybody else.
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I’m referring to having Lore intergraged into the rules. Why is THAT such an issue?Why is this so bad? Can someone explain the issue?If you have to look at your bookshelf filled with thousands of dollars of Paizo books, 3.5 magazines and third party supplements, then perhaps the notion of why buying it all over again is bad will become crystal clear.|
Then there's the hundreds of dollars dropped into Hero Lab. Will that be supported? What will be its fate?
If I never bought books or PDFs, I wouldn't care either. New edition for me to illegally download or read the PRD online. Yay. But I buy products that I want to see supported.
Depends on the degree of integration. If it's easy to divorce one from the other, all we're "losing" is space for additional features, which might be worth it--Paizo lore is excellent and it helps people get into the gaming mindset. If the rules literally make no sense without the setting, though, integration actually damages people's ability to play outside of the default setting, which is bad for people who, you know, want to play outside of the default setting. Which is a lot of people.
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Can you imagine
Traveller without the Imperium?
Runequest without Glorantha?
D&D without Greyhawk?
Yes. Easily. In each of those cases, I rarely played those games in those settings. We almost always used something else.
Now, Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s ... well that setting is Earth, so I'd have to say that every Call of Cthulhu game I've seen took place on Earth, but not all of them was set in the 1920s.
I don't care if they keep Golarion on their books so long as they don't make it impossible to separate the game from Golarion.
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Our group will probably never play a Starfinder game because each campaign is in a new setting and I've already used that setting with a Savage Worlds campaign.
If SF wasn't married so heavily to it's fluff we would be WAY more likely to try it eventually.
Setting fluff in the core rules limits a game's utility artificially. A cool setting could sell books by itself. But is that the goal going forward?
Can you please explain? Because my viewpoint, playing in a current Starfinder game is exactly the opposite of what you're saying.
Relatively little of the core game is specific to the "Future Golarion" Universe that I see it as a problem. Can you provide examples of what you mean please?
I want to know more about exactly what "Golarion-infused" means. But I don't see how having a bit of the default setting flavor makes it impossible to use the system and re-skin stuff to suit personal tastes and homebrew campaigns. I daresay that almost all D&D versions and other RPGs have some of default-setting stuff scattered through. Even something like GURPS -- universal and setting agnostic by design -- has a default assumed time-travel/alternate history framework scattered through. And there are plenty of good and successful 3PP settings that have used the Pathfinder 1E chassis just fine.
So. Want to know more about what "Golarion-infused" means. But until then, not going to feel any angst.
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I run almost exclusively in the World of Greyhawk and I have run entire adventure paths there, such as Reign of Winter and Kingmaker. This is hard to do with adventure paths since they are so interconnected with the names of places and people, but it can work. I just do not want the core rules to the point where I must use Golarion. I do for PFS, but for little else.
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Being setting agnostic and rule heavy are to me, mutually exclusive features in a tabletop ruleset. And DnD/Pathfinder really is rules heavy.
Here is my line of thought. What is a rule? It is worldbuilding. When you make a rule such as "all characters have strength value which decides this and that" you are already making context on the rule based on some sort of world setting! You just decided that physical strength is important and that it varies from being to being. Why, what if I run a setting where there is no concept of physical strength? Or physical bodies all together?
And that is just one stupid nitpick. We got swords, vancian magic, goblins, the whole lot. Always something that HAS to be given a context for.
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Our group will probably never play a Starfinder game because each campaign is in a new setting and I've already used that setting with a Savage Worlds campaign.
If SF wasn't married so heavily to it's fluff we would be WAY more likely to try it eventually.
Setting fluff in the core rules limits a game's utility artificially. A cool setting could sell books by itself. But is that the goal going forward?
Can you please explain? Because my viewpoint, playing in a current Starfinder game is exactly the opposite of what you're saying.
Relatively little of the core game is specific to the "Future Golarion" Universe that I see it as a problem. Can you provide examples of what you mean please?
Mainly the weight of the book. So many pages are devoted to setting material. It implies a certain chunk of the game you bought is meant for that setting.
Solarians aren't really a Sci-fi fantasy archetypical concept. They are pretty setting specific.
Drift being default rules tie ships to that setting. Ships not having a price pulls it towards the specific setting because that doesn't make sense in many settings. Not being able to have reusable cybernetics doesn't make sense in other settings. Item level only makes sense in a setting that assumes that concept as being a thing. Other settings may have gun control.
The technomancer/mystic divide is pretty space-D&D specific rather than Sci-fi fantasy specific. Psionic stuff is only an archetype.
From the ground up, the game is hard to port even to other Sci-fi fantasy settings that don't have all the same cultural assumptions as Starfinder.