Given the recent trend in PF1 books (specifically the hardcovers like Adventurer's Guide, Ultimate Wilderness and the upcoming Planar Adventures) there has been already an integration of the setting into the core RPG line of products.
Is this a message from the dev team that the rules surrounding the game are going to be coming in a more streamlined and easier to deal with FAQ, errata, and clarification infrastructure that will allow faster and easier rulings on any material? For instance, in the future if there is a release in a line of products that is not considered core line, would that product still be held to the same rules scrutiny that something designed by a dev would, and would we be able to get the rulings on it as quickly and easily as we would for core line products?
Additionally, specifically with Adventurer's Guide and with other issues, will there be nomenclature included in the releases that is more setting-neutral friendly or otherwise have names that are divorced from product identity available for those of us who either use third party websites to get information on books we have yet to own or for settings at home that are not golarion?
Is that a conversation we can have, or is it too early?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When I read the Adventurer's Guide I didn't think it was too hard to strip the fluff from the crunch for most of those organizations (except probably the Pathfinder Society which is hard to have off Golarion). So while my homebrew doesn't have the Magaambya it's not hard to fit in a college of benevolent and wise mages who revere nature and want to share knowledge if there's a place for it or someone wants to play one.
Like probably the one big SRD is going to strip all the non-OGL flavor for you, but maybe you can come up with a better name for Gorum's Swordsmanship than "Greatsword Battler".
Here's the thing. Starfinder has setting information, but when I compare it to other systems in terms of complexity, I am going to compare raw page numbers as a metric.
So PF 2e is going to be a 400-ish page complex RPG for it's core rules. Now they can either use pages for setting information or adding more rules content and either way the game will be considered roughly the same in terms of complexity.
But you've read RPG basic rulebooks before right? Without exception there's always flavor- short stories before chapters need to be set somewhere, art needs to be set somewhere, in the introductory paragraph of a class or an ancestry there's talk about how these folks generally are. So it's not like we're going to get a rulebook that's just rules.
At worst I figure there will be rules specific to the Golarion ethnicities (e.g. Kellid, Varisian, Vudrani) and it's never hard to add another ethnic group to one's homebrew setting. I often feel sheepish because I know deep down I should have already thought to include people like that.
I'm more concerned about nomenclature, and accessibility.
For years this has been a problem with finding an option I like, legally, online but not being able to track it down on paper or in a pdf because the names cannot be cited properly.
If anything, the fact that the product identity and fluff can be so easily removed leads me to assert that it shouldn't be more difficult and really shouldn't load the page count higher to have this be a feature of the game from the start to better assist players in the future without having to run into this problem 5+ years down the road or whatever.
There's also the issues with obtaining rulings, FAQ, and clarifications which I hope can all be presented under one team so there won't be so many instances of someone like Mark coming into a rules thread saying something like: "I'd love to give you an official answer on this game mechanic, but it's not my department" on the issues of a rule coming from a product identity line release and not a core line release.
We need to nip rulings problems in the bud with this edition, as it's one of the most complained about problems with the current edition that doesn't have an easy enough solution without proper articulation on our behalf.
But you've read RPG basic rulebooks before right? Without exception there's always flavor- short stories before chapters need to be set somewhere, art needs to be set somewhere, in the introductory paragraph of a class or an ancestry there's talk about how these folks generally are. So it's not like we're going to get a rulebook that's just rules.
Savage Worlds' front cover features a primitive warrior and an astronaut.
Genre specific is fine, but even that isn't necessary, let alone setting specific material.
And it would be great if 13% of book wasn't hard dedicated setting information like the 66 pages of pure setting dumb we got in the Starfinder core rules.