The Worst Idea Imaginable


Prerelease Discussion

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My preference for a book would be agnostic for rules with the setting in a separate book. I submit that things are changing and that this is better for the future too. I've realized I no longer buy rule books. I buy data sets for Hero Lab.

Obviously I cannot get setting details from Hero Lab. Game mechanics in a PDF or printed on a page don't help me. I don't "read" those books so much as refer to the mechanics. Automation helps me.


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MR. H wrote:

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.

I mean sure, some pages of the core rule book are devoted to setting. As someone who wants to use the Future Golarion setting, I would have been upset if they didn't have at least some setting material for me to work with. But none of the information that they provide has much of a mechanical effect on anything else.

As well, just because Solarions don't quite fit with your view of sci-fi, Solarions are basically Jedi to me. And there's nothing of the Solarions mechanical abilities thats tied to the setting. I mean, I guess you could say that the photon or graviton powers are tied to the setting, but you could just as easily call it the light side and dark side of the force (or anything else) without trouble.

I will give you that drift travel is very setting specific, but honestly it would be very easy to change "hyperspace" travel mechancis to be whatever you wanted to fit with your universe. Drift travel and it's relation to Absalom station are the only mechanics tied to fluff that I can think of.

As far as ships not having a price...that's not a setting specific issue. That has nothing to do with the setting of Future Golarion. It is the mechanics of Starfinder, which doesn't want players to be able to buy or sale Starships and either have too strong of ships at the expense of PC power or too strong of PCs at the expense of ship power. However, this is in no way tied to the setting. It is a failing of the mechanics if you were looking for that sort of thing.

The other issue you bring up, are again not lore/setting specific issues. They're all purely mechanic issues that exist, but have nothing to do with the Future Golarion Universe. I can agree that they can pose problems when you want those mechanics to be different, but that are at the end of the day mechanics that work with or without the setting. How well these mechanics might reflect a specific setting you want to create is the issue.

And now I think I understand your ultimate issue. You want the rules to support the mechanics you want to make, and currently there are a lot of gaps or things glossed over that don't allow you to craft the world setting you want. It's not that you can't run Dune using Starfinder rules (which is a bad example because it probably does Dune well) but it's that you can't simulate a pirate campaign where you focus on salvaging other Starship for profit because you don't have mechanics for it.

This isn't a campaign setting issue at all. The mechanics simply don't exist for what you want.


When you have a baked in setting, things can work the way they do because all assumptions are being made by you.

A sense of vermislitude in Space Golarion is different than if they focused on just the genre of Sci-Fi Fantasy.

Same with focusing on Golarion rather than Fantasy or even D&D Fantasy genres.


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Envall wrote:

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.

Agreed entirely. So much is already implied and codified by the way the rules work. Vancian magic is probably the largest example. Sure, you can rip it out and replace it with something else that better represents how magic works in your setting (see: Spheres of Power), but it's a rather extensive overhaul.

Not just that Vancian magic exists, but that all the spells exist and work as described in the rules. The existence of Gate and Summon spells requires the existence of Outer Planes. If you want teleportation, divination, or shapeshifting to work differently in your setting, you're going to have your work cut out for you tracking all the related spells down and making them work the way you want.

D&D has never been a good choice for a setting-agnostic system.


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I am in the agnostic for rules with the setting in a separate book. I always hear from the design side we had some great ideas for X but they had to be cut. I want pages for more, rule explanations, feats, spells, classes and more material to actually play with. For world keep them to their own books and the APs. There is already a ton of Golarion material out there and it will all be useable still.


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My hopes for the setting content is that the dev teams working on the different products will come together when it comes to rules content, FAQs, and errata. This will make the process of getting rulings for home games, PFS, and everything else much easier since there will be one umbrella covering everything.

From there, either maintain the status quo of the rules content being setting neutral, or include the setting neutral versions ala Adventurer's Guide and make sure you incorporate that vehemently into the design of the game so third party websites that cannot cite product identity (like d20PFSRD) can cite actual game terms which cuts down on search times and can even reduce the need to run their own PRD for 2.0 since they already seem to be behind on it for 1E.

It's good if this is our direction, this is what we want. Erik this is how you get my money.


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MR. H wrote:

When you have a baked in setting, things can work the way they do because all assumptions are being made by you.

A sense of vermislitude in Space Golarion is different than if they focused on just the genre of Sci-Fi Fantasy.

Same with focusing on Golarion rather than Fantasy or even D&D Fantasy genres.

Still though, what fluff options are you noting that are tied to mechanics?

I agreed with you about drift, but everything else you mentioned isn't about the setting or fluff. It's mechanical problems with the system not doing what you want, for various reason that does make it unsuitable for types of campaigns you might want to run. But it has nothing to do with being set in Space Golarion, it's just short comings of the system. It happens, no system is perfect.

Is the space ship build point system at all believable? No.

Do I care? Not really. Sure I can't run certain campaigns, but it means that I don't have to worry about players trying to munchkin the heck of their strengths by selling space ships and buying crazy powerful gear.

Every system is going to have rough edges. Starfinders are a little more obvious in my opinion. It's not a perfect system, but it does do exactly what I want it to. That doesn't mean it's perfect for you, and it's okay for you to look for another system that will better fit what you want.


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I will never run a game set on Golarion - so I supposed there is no reason for me to even check out the next edition of Pathfinder.

The Exchange

Terquem wrote:
I will never run a game set on Golarion - so I supposed there is no reason for me to even check out the next edition of Pathfinder.

Well I guess you can at least take a look at the Playtest document to find out if there's really too much Golarion-infused material in it. Might be just some names dropped here and there, after all, similar to what 5E did with their PHB.


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Even if you ultimately don't play PF2e, the playtest might give you some ideas about new houserules for PF1e (or D&D 5e, or whatever).


I thought that was already a thing?

People are aware that the reason that D20PFSRD name their stuff differently and remove the flavor text is to avoid problems with Paizo, right?

Archive of Nethys actually shows how "golarion-infused" everything is as all names and references remain intact.

D20PFSRD Archetype Example: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo-fight er-archetypes/child-of-war-fighter-archetype/
Archive of Nethys Archetype Example:Child of Acavna and Amaznen

Or how about a really easy example:

D20PFSRD Trait Example: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/social-traits/princess-female/
Archive of Nethys Trait Exmaple: Keleshite Princess

On a glance of the d20pfsrd version it looks the same for. But when you visit the link its title is Prince/Princess. It also doesn't require you to be a Qadiran Keleshite like the original version.

Also no, neither of these examples had a reprinting.

If you are that miffed by the fact that a background, trait, feat, archetype, setting, adventure, etc is "golarion-infused" then just remove the context and get on with it.


I know it's different people making those claims (for the most part).

But the vibe I get by reading the forum is:

1) Paizo should not make new core books, that's money grabbing. They should make money from Adventure Paths.

2) Golarion sucks, Paizo should not make books with golarion things on it.

Seeing how APs are Golarion based, I fail to see a business model that both keeps the forumites happy, and generate revenue for Paizo.

Liberty's Edge

gustavo iglesias wrote:
I fail to see a business model that both keeps the forumites happy, and generate revenue for Paizo.

I dunno, the current model seems to have worked pretty well for them. They said that their sales are very healthy and that 2e is not a panic move forced by any money issues. So if they just kept going like they have (maybe add Herofinder 2-3 years down the line), that seems perfectly workable.


gustavo iglesias wrote:

I know it's different people making those claims (for the most part).

But the vibe I get by reading the forum is:

1) Paizo should not make new core books, that's money grabbing. They should make money from Adventure Paths.

2) Golarion sucks, Paizo should not make books with golarion things on it.

Seeing how APs are Golarion based, I fail to see a business model that both keeps the forumites happy, and generate revenue for Paizo.

Honestly? You can't please them all anyway, just keep working on stuff that pleases the most people and keeps the business afloat.

After all, what we see on the boards is a small fraction of the player base and this is true for any game.

Paizo Employee Franchise Manager

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Brew Bird wrote:

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.

First, thanks for the lengthy, detailed response. It's exactly the sort of insight I was looking for.

Regarding your homebrew setting, when you hand a player the Core Rulebook, how are they supposed to know to make their elf from Agendor and their gunslingers from Ammerstrad? Don't you have to disseminate that information to them regardless of whether the Core Rulebook mentions Kyonin or Alkenstar?


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Samy wrote:
gustavo iglesias wrote:
I fail to see a business model that both keeps the forumites happy, and generate revenue for Paizo.
I dunno, the current model seems to have worked pretty well for them. They said that their sales are very healthy and that 2e is not a panic move forced by any money issues. So if they just kept going like they have (maybe add Herofinder 2-3 years down the line), that seems perfectly workable.

It has worked well, yes.

My point is, it has worked well, with Golarion infusing every AP, which seem to be the base of their business model. Also Starfinder has sold pretty well, and it's Golarion infused (but in Space!). If I recall correctly, Distant Worlds also sold pretty well. Another Golarion infused book.

I don't think putting a few names in the core book will ruin that, but that's just me. Just because a feat is called "saerenrae's dervish" for example does not mean you can't use it in a non-golarion setting. Change the name, and be done with it.

However, the opposite is much harder. I'm making changes to Starfinder. Lots of fluff won't work the same in my game. But having a big bunch of fall-back material I can rely on is really helpful. Like, maybe I'm changing Veskarium to be fit in Triaxus, and removing all gods and changing them for godless religions (like Jedis, for example, but with different philosophies). There's a bunch of stuff in the book I'm not using, and if a player asks, I'd say to them "that does not work that way in our game".

But if players suddenly go to a neigbourhood in Absalom, I can pull the book and have a description for it that I can use. I can pick a couple of names for NPC and have them ready to play. That's helpful for me. Adding all those names, plot hooks, creating a full story from scratch would be a tough work for me. Changing a few things, removing what I dont' like, etc, is way easier. For me, it's worth the trade-off.


Samy wrote:
gustavo iglesias wrote:
I fail to see a business model that both keeps the forumites happy, and generate revenue for Paizo.
I dunno, the current model seems to have worked pretty well for them. They said that their sales are very healthy and that 2e is not a panic move forced by any money issues. So if they just kept going like they have (maybe add Herofinder 2-3 years down the line), that seems perfectly workable.

We don't have all the information they have. One issue is waiting for your sales to tank to come up with a new strategy is not exactly a good way to keep your staff happy and your company going. The other is simply design space for new material. At some point you either have to keep scaling back new materials or start producing ever more niche/risky products. Niche products might fail to turn a solid profit, while scaling back material may cause people to lose interest.

I am not...completely happy with the idea of a new pathfinder, but ten years is a pretty good one for a system.

Paizo Employee Franchise Manager

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Claxon wrote:
MR. H wrote:

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.

I'm putting together a Guardians of the Galaxy Starfinder reskin game for PaizoCon this year, and I'm not finding it particularly difficult to cut the default setting out of things. Am I using solarians and mystics? No, because none of the Guardians have those powers, but if I were doing Sentry or heck, even Captain Marvel, I might use Solarians. I'd certainly use mystics to represent Doctor Strange, the same way I made him an arcanist in the past few Marvel reskins I've run. It has taken me no more time to make Star-Lord than it would take me to stat up any Starfinder character using the default setting.


Mark Moreland wrote:
Claxon wrote:
MR. H wrote:

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.

I'm putting together a Guardians of the Galaxy Starfinder reskin game for PaizoCon this year, and I'm not finding it particularly difficult to cut the default setting out of things. Am I using solarians and mystics? No, because none of the Guardians have those powers, but if I were doing Sentry or heck, even Captain Marvel, I might use Solarians. I'd certainly use mystics to represent Doctor Strange, the same way I made him an arcanist in the past few Marvel reskins I've run. It has taken me no more time to make Star-Lord than it would take me to stat up any Starfinder character using the default setting.

If I have to cut out classes from a game that has comparatively few to Pathfinder to make a different setting work, I feel that I should probably stick to the base setting if I want to play that game.

I should also mention that our group has 7 players and one GM. Many players get antsy about two people playing the same class or even seeing the same classes too many times between campaigns. So If I have cut even one class (of 7) to move off setting, my group is upset.


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However, Mark did not remove Solarians and Mystics because they "don't belong to the setting". But because he was doing specifically the Guardians of Galaxy set of PCs and NPCs. Solarians and Mystics still exist in his re-skinned Guardians of Galaxy-starfinder hybrid. Specifically for Sentry/Captain Marvel and Dr Strage.

Shadow Lodge

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I did like the setting-agnostic 1E core book, as it provided a generic starting point for anyone to fill in their settings with it.

I also liked Starfinder's chapter on the official setting, which explained how everything was going to work for Paizo-published modules. If I wanted to make up my own setting, then I'd just tell players to ignore all that because this adventure wouldn't begin there, it'd begin here instead.

A chapter on Golarion, place names and cultures and stuff would be helpful for people who are new to TRPGs, new to the fantasy genre, or who just want handy examples for their characters or other ideas. If I want to make up another setting, I'll write stuff about it for my potential players.

So, my only suggestion to the designers would be to make Core accessible to people like the OP, by getting rid of the preface to the Golarion chapter telling all PCs & GMs everywhere that this is the ONLY acceptable setting and MUST be used for every adventure EVER!
It might also free up space in the book as well.


Claxon wrote:
MR. H wrote:

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.

I mean sure, some pages of the core rule book are devoted to setting. As someone who wants to use the Future Golarion setting, I would have been upset if they didn't have at least some setting material for me to work with. But none of the information that they provide has much of a mechanical effect on anything else.

As well, just because Solarions don't quite fit with your view of sci-fi, Solarions are basically Jedi to me. And there's nothing of the Solarions mechanical abilities thats tied to the setting. I mean, I guess you could say that the photon or graviton powers are tied to the setting, but you could just as easily call it the light side and dark side of the force (or anything else) without trouble.

I will give you that drift travel is very setting specific, but honestly it would be very easy to change "hyperspace" travel mechancis to be whatever you wanted to fit with your universe. Drift travel and it's relation to Absalom station are the only mechanics tied to fluff that I can think of.

As far as ships not having a price...that's not a setting specific issue. That has nothing to do with the setting of Future Golarion. It is the mechanics of Starfinder, which doesn't want players to be able to buy or sale Starships and either have too strong of ships at the expense of PC power or too strong of PCs at the expense of ship power. However, this is in no way tied to the setting. It is a failing of the mechanics if you were looking for that sort of thing.

The other issue you bring up, are again not lore/setting specific issues. They're all purely mechanic issues that exist, but have nothing to do with the Future Golarion Universe. I can agree that they can pose problems when you want those mechanics to be different, but that are at the end of the day mechanics that work with or without the setting. How well these mechanics might reflect a specific setting you want to create is the issue.

And now I think I understand your ultimate issue. You want the rules to support the mechanics you want to make, and currently there are a lot of gaps or things glossed over that don't allow you to craft the world setting you want. It's not that you can't run Dune using Starfinder rules (which is a bad example because it probably does Dune well) but it's that you can't simulate a pirate campaign where you focus on salvaging other Starship for profit because you don't have mechanics for it.

This isn't a campaign setting issue at all. The mechanics simply don't exist for what you want.

Well, to be fair, Jedi can essentially cast spells, and the Solarion can't, so....


You know... I just figured out something that I don't like about including (much) setting information in the Core...

Word-count.

If Core is 400 pages, it's already basically 2/3rds the size of PF1. There's an extra class. There's an extra ra...ncestry. Throw in setting details and we're talking about a game that is significantly smaller than PF1. It has to mean fewer selectable feats, spells, options.

I'll be really honest. We're finding Starfinder frustrating at 6th level, for lack of choices we want to pick. I'm playing an armor storm soldier, and I have to say it was rough finding a combat feat I wanted to take at 6th. I'm dreading say... 12th. I mean, sure, Improved Initiative is a great feat... if you want to go first. Same thing for gear boosts. I mean, sure, brutal blast is good, but... I'm melee 99% of the time, by design. But there's only really two boosts in the book that fit my character's role in the party. Everything else is stuff that helps me do things I don't want to do.

That's the sign of not enough choices. I shouldn't be shrugging my shoulders knowing my second (and last) boost that relates to my build gives +1 to AC. Not when monsters still hit on rolls of like 6 on the die.

We need more words. Not less. Even if the wordiness of things are being condensed. Sure, dispel magic could probably be simplified down to two paragraphs. And detect magic.

I'm perfectly fine with Golarion content in the book. But... that should be maybe on pages 600 through 800. Or, if you've reduced overall wordiness, pages 400 through 600.


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Anguish wrote:

You know... I just figured out something that I don't like about including (much) setting information in the Core...

Word-count.

If Core is 400 pages, it's already basically 2/3rds the size of PF1. There's an extra class. There's an extra ra...ncestry. Throw in setting details and we're talking about a game that is significantly smaller than PF1. It has to mean fewer selectable feats, spells, options.

I'll be really honest. We're finding Starfinder frustrating at 6th level, for lack of choices we want to pick. I'm playing an armor storm soldier, and I have to say it was rough finding a combat feat I wanted to take at 6th. I'm dreading say... 12th. I mean, sure, Improved Initiative is a great feat... if you want to go first. Same thing for gear boosts. I mean, sure, brutal blast is good, but... I'm melee 99% of the time, by design. But there's only really two boosts in the book that fit my character's role in the party. Everything else is stuff that helps me do things I don't want to do.

That's the sign of not enough choices. I shouldn't be shrugging my shoulders knowing my second (and last) boost that relates to my build gives +1 to AC. Not when monsters still hit on rolls of like 6 on the die.

We need more words. Not less. Even if the wordiness of things are being condensed. Sure, dispel magic could probably be simplified down to two paragraphs. And detect magic.

I'm perfectly fine with Golarion content in the book. But... that should be maybe on pages 600 through 800. Or, if you've reduced overall wordiness, pages 400 through 600.

We also don't know what all will be in the final release though. The playtest version may be lacking a lot of language to define things, or even may have whole sections of the game missing that simply aren't being tested publicly.

Then there's the matter of formatting and inserting the artwork that probably hasn't even been commissioned yet.


Quite frankly, I want a smaller core book. my 600-pg PF1 hardback is already having distinct spine problems simply from the sheer weight of the thing.


In the Know Direction podcast, Erik Mona said that while the design team is allowed to change things up a fair bit, he will not allow the book to be bigger than the PF1e Core Rulebook.


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Mark Moreland wrote:
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?

A big 'yes!' to all of them.

Why does dwarves racial hatred of orcs need to be in the core rules? Is every single dwarf ever born on Golarion raised in the exact, 100% identical culture? Add it in later as an optional racial trait in a campaign setting book if you like, but keep it out of the core rules. Why do core races need to be hard coded with fascism?
Likewise, I'm not sure how much of the bleaching stuff really needs to be in the core rules, as it doesn't really affect characters in play.
And last, where a race lives has absolutely no reason to be in the core book - it's rulebook, not an atlas!

Vidmaster7 wrote:
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.

Or you just remove the purely cultural aspects from the core rules. Why are humans super diverse, but every other race is basically one tiny village when it comes to culture? There are humans who try to be in touch with nature, and humand who live in high technology and don't see a try most of their days, so why can't elves or dwarves be like that? I know flexibility is mankind's shtick in Pathfinder, but non-human cultures should still be diverse.

­

Black Jimmy wrote:
I’m referring to having Lore intergraged into the rules. Why is THAT such an issue?

Try GMing a campaign not set in Golarion and you know why.


I would like to add my voice to the ones that prefer setting-agnostic hardcovers. I think Golarion is ok, but it's not for me, I use Pathfinder rules with Greyhawk, not Golarion, and I don't like my players thinking they'll be able to select Golarion gods, foe example.

Mark Moreland wrote:
Anguish wrote:

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?"

Well, the gnome part kinda bothers me because elves don't get the same fey treatment as gnomes do, and I'd like for both races to come from Faerie or the "First World". I know this isn't possible because as far as I know this is already decided for Golarion, but I'd like to be able to choose which races come from where and get which flavour without the Core Rulebook impinging that on me.

Of course, as Erik suggested I'll wait to see the playtest book before passing judgement on that.


Derklord wrote:
Black Jimmy wrote:
I’m referring to having Lore intergraged into the rules. Why is THAT such an issue?
Try GMing a campaign not set in Golarion and you know why.

The only issue I've ever had doing that in the past is that PCs have a tendency to worship gods who aren't part of the pantheon of the world I'm running.

I doubt Pf2e will be much worse.

The players I know tend to skim past the lore/flavor elements to the mechanical effects anyway.

If I'm trying to run a game set in, say, Westeros, the biggest problem isn't the lore, it's the game mechanics giving players options and abilities that don't fit the setting.


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Derklord wrote:
Mark Moreland wrote:
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?

A big 'yes!' to all of them.

Why does dwarves racial hatred of orcs need to be in the core rules? Is every single dwarf ever born on Golarion raised in the exact, 100% identical culture? Add it in later as an optional racial trait in a campaign setting book if you like, but keep it out of the core rules. Why do core races need to be hard coded with fascism?
Likewise, I'm not sure how much of the bleaching stuff really needs to be in the core rules, as it doesn't really affect characters in play.
And last, where a race lives has absolutely no reason to be in the core book - it's rulebook, not an atlas!

Vidmaster7 wrote:
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.

Or you just remove the purely cultural aspects from the core rules. Why are humans super diverse, but every other race is basically one tiny village when it comes to culture? There are humans who try to be in touch with nature, and humand who live in high technology and don't see a try most of their days, so why can't elves or dwarves be like that? I know flexibility is mankind's shtick in Pathfinder, but non-human cultures should still be diverse.

­

Black Jimmy wrote:
I’m referring to having Lore intergraged into the rules. Why is THAT such an issue?
Try GMing a campaign not set in Golarion and you know why.

Although I agree with you wanting a more setting agnostic Core Rulebook I disagree on all the other points. Dwarves hating orcs and goblins might be a historical thing in Golarion that might not be true in other settings, however it is dwarven flavour that harkens back to Tolkien and which has been adopted by D&D and most fantasy settings since, and to me that flavour is very important. Nor do I think that dwarvens having a racial hatred towards orcs and goblins is hard coding them with fascism. It just means that dwarves have been fighting against those races for millenia in Golarion and in most other D&D-like fantasy settings. Maybe the problem is the word "hatred" in the racial trait's name, and that could be easily removed in the next edition, however that doesn't mean that every single dwarf hates orcs and goblins, it does mean that most of them will have a bias towards those races, and that's great for dwarven flavour and roleplay. I don't believe that that makes dwarves less varied than humans, quite the contrary it builds the race's personality if compared to humans. If you don't like that I'm sure 2ed will give you ways to trade the orc hatred trait for something else just like 1ed did. But sacrificing classic dwarven flavour that exists not just in Golarion is not the answer in my eyes.

You say you want the other races, or rather ancestries in this new edition, to be as varied as humans. Well, I understand that, I'm a big fan of non-human races. However I love the classic feel of those same races, and I think the so-called human "diversity" actually makes humans very vanilla compared to elves and dwarves and gnomes. And I don't want that human "variety" to be ported into other races just so all of them seem bland like the human is to me in 1ed. I want elves that are naturally and ancestrally good at arcane magic, dwarves that have the classic feel of master smiths and miners, and gnomes to be classically good at mining, gem-cutting, illusion magic, and crazy steam- and magic-powered contraptions.


Patrick Newcarry wrote:
Well, to be fair, Jedi can essentially cast spells, and the Solarion can't, so....

I'm not sure about this. Plenty of the "spells" the Jedis can "cast", such as Jedi Mind Tricks, Telekinesis, and such, can be done by a Solarian.

Solarians have the ability to pull people, grab them in the air, run by walls, sense things to have a glimpse of future, disarm people with telekinesis, etc. They can also do all those things as much as they want, they don't "spend" spells, which is something we don't see in Star Wars.

Solarians can also pick different skills, which are not Jedi-based (like exploding like a Nova), but you CAN build a Solarian with Jedi-like powers.


Yeah bringing Golarion into the CRB book to a greater degree than the original, to me personally is a deal breaker. I don't want the extra hassle of throwing out mechanics of a setting, that I have no intention of ever playing ever again. I would play even dragonlance before touching golarion again. That being said it does not matter that I do not like golarion, if it was any other setting I would feel the same way.

Now if you have some minor lore stuff, that is fine. But keep it out of the mechanics. I am willing to put money down to get rules written for me that are good enough for my purposes. I can devote enough time to create a setting that is suited for my needs or pick one that I like. I do not have time to create an RPG rules system that would be perfect for my purposes.(nor good enough, assuming starting from scratch) The other issue is that if you tie the rules too tightly to one setting it means that other GMs are likely not gonna trouble themselves to change it for a different setting, or those that do will be marginal minority. That means that for every player that refuses to play in said setting is a lost customer.


I assume that by integrating Golarion into the game system, they are not referring to have a chapter on the Inner Sea or anything like Starfinder does. Since...well there is already a Inner Sea hardcover for folks to refer to, most of which is system agnostic.

I assume it's more sentences here and there referencing specific nations int the ancestry, and stuff like that.

Dark Archive

The Purity of Violence wrote:

The best RPGs are intrinsically linked to their settings. Can you imagine

Traveller without the Imperium?

Yes. I've seen Traveller used to play in other settings. Actually, I'm not sure I've ever been witness to a Traveller game that did use the default setting.

Runequest without Glorantha?

Yes. Hello Mythras!

Call of Cthulhu with the 1920s?

Really? OK, lets ignore Invictus, Dark Ages, Gaslight, the End Times, and the Dreamlands.

WOD without the WOD?

I don't have a lot of experience with WoD, but from what I do know, it's probably the closes you've come to making your point. The "fluff" is pretty ingrained into the WoD books.

D&D without Greyhawk?

I'm not even sure WotC remembers that Greyhawk existed. Hell, it had become an afterthought by 2nd edition.

Please keep Golarion as core to the game.


Naw WOTC totes remembers Greyhawk its still in their. Grey hawk is so intrinsically dnd its hard to separate the two.

Also yeah WOD would not be WOD without its setting They never would of taken off in the first place without their setting.

Silver Crusade

Vid... why did you necro a month old thread? :3


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If it's infused as much as 5th Ed is with Forgotten Realms, that's groovy, it's a fine-line.


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Huh that is weird I wonder why it jumped up on top of the feed. I didn't even look at the dates. I swear though It was at the very top and I just clicked on it.

Its to late now to undo my mistake!!!!!!!

Silver Crusade

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*scratches head*

Someone might have posted than deleted their comment so it still jumped up.


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Things have been doing that to me lately that and when I click on next page sometimes it just takes me right back to the first page instead. I 'm gonna call it a website glitch.


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Forum jump occasionally jumps to second, third or 8th page at random.


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HA I am vindicated!

Silver Crusade

Ah, they have been doing that too, yeah.


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Personally, I'm all for setting tie-ins to material, if it can double the opportunities to deepen the setting in a game-relevant way, then that's great by my book. The idea that half of Paizo's material isn't very informative about how it really works in Golarion game (the reason they made their own RPG system to begin with) seems baffling to me. In all honesty, I'm not particularly worried these tie-ins would prevent any other-setting use, I mean not more than what is arbitrarily intimated by norms of "setting neutral" ruleset like 3.x or D6. Generally speaking, the vast majority of RPG systems are setting-affiliated, and those are also the ones voted by public as most award winning RPG systems (Ennies etc). As it happens, it seems tying rules to setting seems to find critical and public acclaim, as if it helps focus gameplay to best shine a light on narrative dynamics appropriate to a given setting. I.e. best helps deliver a certain gameplay experience.


I think that you should tie Pathfinder to Galarian. Not because I like it. Not because I have used it. Not because I will used it (I likely never will). But because you need a default setting for people to use.

It will always be easy to strip a setting. What is very hard is having to come up with your own any time you run a game. I do, but expecting everyone to have to is too much.

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