Personally I think it would be best if it was left up to the DM to decide exactly what happened. Also bonus question: do people in Starfinder even remember Golarion at all? Or do the just have a vague feeling like "didn't there used to be a planet there? I can't quite remember.."
My hypothesis is explaining the Gap includes explaining its economic history, a minefield that Paizo see no need to risk.
Someday perhaps...when Paizo decides it needs to kill Starfinder.
Any possible answer they could give would ultimately be as unsatisfying as the conclusion of Lost.
The gap exists so the Starfinder history doesn't have to cover Pathfinder era APs and say that they didn't' turn out the way your group of players remembers things.
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It's the central 'mystery' of the system, and it provides some good back stories for long-lived creatures. I just got to GM one undead NPC that was a temple guardian, and had him describe his experience to the party of waking up after the Gap. He know hundreds of years had passed, because the stars had changed. But his temple was still there, so he still had a mission and a purpose. He shrugged, and kept working.
I have enjoyed using the consequences of The Gap in my story telling. It's made for some great moments of wonder and role play.
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The gods have said that golarion is somewhere and it's safe.
The only thing the gods have ever cooperated on is sealing up ravagog, and given that "the devourer" has appeared with some very ravagog like tendencies there's probably some relationship there.
I want to see theories about the gap beyond the vanishing of Golarion. From other solar systems forgetting to the far that raged in the pact worlds at the time. Sure, the main planet from a pathfinder perspective vanishing is fairly big, but the events of the gap go well beyond that..
The thing that ties Golarion to the gap isn't just that it's a big event that occurred during the lost time (surely other big events happened, surely destroyed planets, maybe even missing ones), but also that (1) a god imprisoned there seems to have vanished from the perspective of its worshipers, even though the planet itself allegedly still exists, (2) the only other god we know of that disappeared in a similar way during that time (Torag) seems a thematic match for fighting or guarding that imprisoned underground god, and (3) that Triune transmitted drift engine plans exactly three years after the (Golarion local) end of Gap, and at least two of those three component gods originate in the Golarion system (Brigh was worshipped on Golarion, but I'm not sure her origin was ever explained).
(1) and (2) make the disappearance of Golarion special and possibly provide a reason why memory loss is associated with its disappearance (if Rovagug escaped and is now guarded by or accidentally co-imprisoned with Torag as part of his reimprisonment the gods might have devised or accepted the gap as a nice way to avoid people trying to rerelease him), but (3) is a direct tie to the Gap temporally that makes Golarion system itself important. Too much of a coincidence for all those important things to happen in the same place.
Starfinder Design Lead
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Also bonus question: do people in Starfinder even remember Golarion at all? Or do the just have a vague feeling like "didn't there used to be a planet there? I can't quite remember.."
The existence of Golarion, prior to the Gap, is well known to people in Starfinder. At least in the Pact Worlds, where it's "local" news. It might be a more academic issue in the Veskarium, but it's certainly not a secret.
What occurred BEFORE the Gap is as well understood as any ancient history. It's what happened during the Gap, which includes whatever happened to Golarion, and where Absalom Station came from, that's apparently unknown and unknowable, as far as anyone can tell.
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I really like how Starfinder memories of Pathfinder-era Golarion were used actually. Like, people wake up after the Gap with big gaping holes in their cultural identity, but with records of ancient cultures. So they reassemble those into new identities. We get New Hellknights, Jatembe Park, a Starfinder Society and so forth.
Compare this to White Wolf who recycled a bunch of names from Old World of Darkness into New World of Darkness as well - but those campaign settings have no ties at all, they're a completely new universe. There, recycling names for things that aren't quite the same feels either lazy or jarring. Here, it feels appropriate, showing how people in the setting are trying to cope with the Gap by emphasizing a (rather wished-for) continuity. Behaving like real people.
I think it's more a gap of convenience. Rather than have to keep Starfinder lore consistent with an ever-expanding amount of Golarion lore, put a curtain between them.
There are some other ideas here if you like.
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I recall that various Paizo devs have stated that they regret giving Pathfinder era golarion such a long history spanning so many thousands of years before the "current" era where the game's being played. The pathfinder game mastery guide even advises GM's who create their own setting to keep the time scale considerably shorter than what the paizo devs did.
In addition to preventing them from having to establish a hard canon for how certain adventures turned out make decisions that leave pathfinder players feeling dejecting in a 'well it was all for nothing' way if their favorite country got conquered or the planet got blown up, which get avoided in a 'it still exists & is safe but it's just isolated' scenario, the Gap also means that they don't have to worry about covering the thousands of years of history between Pathfinder & Starfinder for the other worlds, either. History for Starfinder extends back 300 years and that's all they have to worry about.
I recall that various Paizo devs have stated that they regret giving Pathfinder era golarion such a long history spanning so many thousands of years before the "current" era where the game's being played. The pathfinder game mastery guide even advises GM's who create their own setting to keep the time scale considerably shorter than what the paizo devs did.
In addition to preventing them from having to establish a hard canon for how certain adventures turned out make decisions that leave pathfinder players feeling dejecting in a 'well it was all for nothing' way if their favorite country got conquered or the planet got blown up, which get avoided in a 'it still exists & is safe but it's just isolated' scenario, the Gap also means that they don't have to worry about covering the thousands of years of history between Pathfinder & Starfinder for the other worlds, either. History for Starfinder extends back 300 years and that's all they have to worry about.
James Jacobs mentioned in his thread that if he had the chance to do it all over again, he'd cut the expanses of time by a factor of 10, considering 10,000 years between the fall of Azlant/Thassilon and the current day (Give or take) is a LONG time especially in real life terms. Like, 10,000 years ago we were cave dwellers just getting the hang of pottery and people were really starting to get into agriculture and animal domestication.
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Well, long-lived species like elves kinda complicate things. You don't really want the elf in the party to have heard the Runelords backstory from his grandpa who was there.
I'm not a huge fan of the Gap but it serves its purpose. My main gripe is that the Drift Signal came so very fast after it ended. I would have preferred that there'd been about a century of "historical" awkward exploration before easy FTL became available. That sets you up for stories for example about previously-distant colonies that are suddenly much easier to reach, leading to a shakeup of political relations and thinking about independence.
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I like the Gap as a universally acknowledged and built-in plot hole. It has an air of mystery around it I haven't seen in any other kind of fiction, so I'm glad it exists. It's cheesy and I'm not the biggest fan of it, but you can spin so many stories with it as its origin. Need to explain an inconsistency? Gap. As long as it's not an overused excuse, I see it working perfectly as-is.
