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Whether you play in Golarion or a homebrew world, I feel like most GMs do this. For example, changelings. In my world, they're created when a child is unnamed until their first birthday. It's unclear why this is. Some believe it's a curse on mortals by an ancient hag, while others believe it's a blessing from ones of the gods.
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All Dwarves grow beards, but surface Dwarven culture considers it acceptable for women to shave their faces. Not all do, and the practice is unheard of in subterranean Dwarven culture.
Some Elves who live alongside humans have started "reinventing" themselves about once every human lifetime. They take on new common names (but keep the same private elven name) and often change careers, fashion sense, and sometimes even gender identity. They then act effectively as a new individual in the human society, only reflecting on their previous life in private (or among other elves).
I have transplanted most extraplanar characters into my homebrew setting, but have messed with their positions a bit.
My setting has its own 21 gods, and anyone outside that is usually a demigod, but I love Urgathoa and Norgober so much that I wanted them to have a place in my world.
I also am not the biggest fan of the designs for the Daemon Horsemen, so I killed two birds with one stone by replacing them - in my setting, Urgathoa, Norgober, Ahriman and Orcus are the daemonic horsemen (pestilence, death, famine and war respectively). I also wanted undeath themed demigods to be mostly associated with Abaddon, hence the move for Orcus.
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- Nocticula has sexuality in her portfolio after ascension. Tying that to the "old evil Nocticula" really didn't sit well with some of my group.
- Kobolds are more likely to have trade arrangements with local settlements. They're petty LE jerks for the most part, and have a lot of customs that outsiders aren't aware of, like the significance of the cleanliness or dirtiness of coinage.
- Rakshasas have a bigger focus on hedonism and cannibalism. Establishing a steady, reliable stream of wealth, luxuries, slaves, and people to eat is generally their main goal, with bringing others to ruin more of a personal amusement than a primary objective.
Alignment generally has a reduced role, to varying extents depending on campaign and players.
Multiple liches are keyed to assault the world with their world domination plot in the year 5017 AR, directly tied to bargains my PCs made wherein the lich traded enough time for the party to live a happy life in exchange for a favor.
Forlorn elves are not so distant with the mystics of Nex, because Nexian magic includes ways of greatly extending human life that are required education in the nexian universities after a certain point (usually something for wizards after getting their fantasy-PhD not something taught early).
The whispering way had no influence in the Impossible Lands. Geb doesn't want a rival undead dictator to hold a cult in his land, Nex cannot permit undead creation for practical concerns, it is dumb to practice magic in the mana wastes/Alkenstar, and Jalmeray is morally opposed to undeath.
I have a canon death of Aroden in mind for each campaign I run, usually a different one, in case the party decides to go poking around that mystery. I guess this might not be a change in the lore for one of them, but I suspect James Jacobs has a more satisfying answer than any of mine.
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There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
Oh, I remembered another one. Morality is subjective, however alignment works a bit differently. Every creature's alignment is from the perspective of the main deity in my world, who decides which afterlife everyone goes to. He's also Lawful Good to such an extreme point that it kind of loops back around to being evil.
My GM added a whole continent to Golarion, which we ended up placing in the northern part of the ocean between Tian Xia and Arcadia (as it had to be near the Crown of the World). That continent is the location of his first campaign, which was originally a homebrew world but later retconned to be in Golarion's past, a century or two after Iomedae's ascension.
I've been creating a family lineage tree for the house of Thrune. This has required me to if not alter the lore, at least make some of my own.
I'm running a mixed version of Giantslayer and Ironfang Invasion APs together in the region of the Forgotten Realms between Narfell and Samara, which is coincidentally the Giantspire Mountains. It's my original setting where we've been playing in for 28 years, so everything comes back to this setting.
However, I do intend to run the 3 Rune Lord APs as is in Golarion proper.
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I had a campaign where a big theme was that the magic used to contain Rovagug inside Golarion is an ever-present world-wide magic that magic detection spells have all been calibrated to ignore, and a secret method was developed to use the binding energies of that magic to control other people. This let the big bad control political targets with an undetectable, uncounterable magic.
I also had a Rovagug prison self-defense mechanism spawn an avatar shaped like Asmodeus who's purpose is to hunt down and end people siphoning magic off of the seal, or assist those who's purposes align.
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Race relations are definitely different in my worlds.
In one world, there are two continents. On one continent, humans and elves live in peace, and half-elves are actually the plurality of the population. On the other, humans actively hunt the minority elves. This creates some nice geopolitical tension.
Whether you play in Golarion or a homebrew world, I feel like most GMs do this. For example, changelings. In my world, they're created when a child is unnamed until their first birthday. It's unclear why this is. Some believe it's a curse on mortals by an ancient hag, while others believe it's a blessing from ones of the gods.
Interesting. For my own setting, I'm planning on trying to tie Changelings a bit more into some of their original myths - making them swapped into another child's crib as a baby. The parents don't realize they're raising a Changeling until the child hits puberty and awakens to their heritage, which involves one of their eyes permanently changing color and making everyone aware of what they are (often resulting in impossible demands to return the original child and ostracizing the Changeling).
I have similar plans for Vishkanya being influenced by their real world myths - removing paizo's serpentine aspects and turning them into a sort of artificial race originally created by raising human children on a diet of poison as part of a risky ritual.
My setting has its own 21 gods, and anyone outside that is usually a demigod, but I love Urgathoa and Norgober so much that I wanted them to have a place in my world.I'm a fan of this kind of thing, too. Ever since the days of TSR, published material always ended up having way too many different divine creatures; it just got to the point of the absurd. Lots of the "gods" were incredibly niche that were only created because of a writer's desire for some unique god for some specific adventure or other publication, and those gods almost never have any sort of internal cohesiveness between them.
To me, I always thought that was immersion crushing when it's supposed to be on a world where gods physically exist. I mean, it makes sense for one god to be worshiped under a variety of different names among different cultures, but it's eye-rolling for every single culture to have it's own God of X.
Funnily enough, I'm the opposite and always love to see more deities with more complex relationships between each other.
For my own setting, I basically explain some of the overlap as being due to the gods not agreeing on things while they were putting the world back together (long story), and thus self-segregating among different regions of the world (including making different afterlife systems). Then add in some mortals ascending to deity status, deities migrating from other planes, and existing deities taking on additional roles within their region to cover for a gap.
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Oh, a few other things that I have changed is Duergar. Instead of being evil dwarves that live in the underdark, I have changed them to "Iron Dwarves" a militaristic society of dwarves that live near volcanoes whose skin has been darkened by the fact that they live in cities where there are open lakes and rivers of magma. They are more militaristic and industrialized than other dwarves, and live in the geologically active, warmer climates, but aren't "dwarves but evil".
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On a small scale, I changed Yamasoth to be a Great Old One and the Qlippoth to be his spawn, instead of being proto-demons. I did this because one of my players is uncomfortable with a lot of demons or devils in the game. The occasional fight or reference is fine, but this was going to be a half-an-adventure length dungeon centered around Qlippoth. And the campaign was going to have more about Old Ones stuff anyway so it made sense.
On a larger scale, My friends and I have run about half a dozen APs and have been keeping a persistent world to reflect what has happened in the APs. Most famously, Karzoug won at the end of Rise of the Runelords, and Cheliax annexed the Shackles. We’re playing Shattered Star now as a response to Karzoug winning and one player is an apprentice of my character from the Wrath of the Righteous campaign we played.
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My biggest change to Golarion is more use of non human races.
The Ulfen ethnicity is dwarven. There are humans in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, but the population is 90% dwarven, and all of the current Linnorm Kings are dwarves.
The Varisian ethnicity is primarily halfling. There are entire 'Varisian' caravans made up of half elves, humans or even gnomes, but the original ethnicity was halfling, and remains so to this day, despite being open to all sorts of other races (even a few oddballs like tengu or goblins have snuck into various caravans or communities as Varisians, although there are no 'all-tengu caravans' of 'Varisians').
70% of Taldor, Andoran, Ustalav, etc. are human, but the rest are mostly halflings. They occupy a weird sort of separate-but-equal status in Taldor, and are technically legally equal to the human population, but tend to be treated patronizingly, like children playing at being grown-ups, a situation that they tolerate.
The upper crust of Taldor consider their blood 'special' and reinforce that 'special' quality by inviting elven men to join their households for a couple of years every generation to 'freshen up' the bloodline. Few Taldan nobles have sufficient elven blood to be mechanically half-elves (and those that are tend to be looked at askance), but nearly all of them have a smattering of elven blood, due to this practice.
Shoanti are half-orcs. Pretty much all of them. The Thassilonians bred them as slave-soldiers, and they have since gone on to form their own communities and customs, breeding true among themselves. (The occasional fully human or fully orc child results when two half-orcs mate, but more rarely than Mendelian genetics would predict, and they are, in most quahs, treated no differently than those who are mechanically half-orcs. There are exceptions that abandon, give away, exile or even kill at birth such children...)
In non-racial changes;
Irrisen was a land of eternal winter, but not just one winter after another, but the same winter, every night, for all eternity. The snow didn't really accumulate, so much as it fell again and again. The people did not age, but were cursed to live forever in this place, and if they ever managed to escape it's borders, the years caught up rapidly and they died within days (which some regarded as worth it, compared to a life of backbreaking labor serving the winter witches until finally being eaten by an ice troll or winter wolf, none of which *needed* to eat in Baba Yaga's ageless eternal winter, but still would anyway, because, evil...).
The wardstones around Mendev prevented demons who have passed through the Worldwound from teleporting outside it's borders. The Worldwound itself acts less like a gate, and more like a giant summoning effect, so the demons that pass through it into Golarion are sharply limited, as by summoning, and can't just summon a bunch more demons, or bop over to the Pit of Gormuz and free Rovagug for giggles, or spend a night 'painting the town red' en masse in Absalom.
Razmir is a sorcerer, not a wizard, and quite possibly the most powerful known sorcerer on the planet (as opposed to being 'powerful wizard #12').
The gods (no PC will ever need to know, and so it remains unclear/undecided/in a quantum Schrodinger's Cat sort of state);
Sivanah may or may not be backing Razmir's play, mostly because A) she finds it amusing, as deception is kind of in her wheelhouse, and this is the grandest of deceptions, and B) in the wake of the Starstone's appearance, she's genuinely curious if a mortal can bootstrap themself into divinity the 'old-fashioned way' like Irori, Nethys and Urgathoa did, back in the day.
Desna may or may not be a Great Old One, who likes mortals in the same sort of way that a crazy old cat lady likes cats.
Norgorber may or may not be four halflings in a trenchcoat, who beat the Test of the Starstone together, as a party (Father Skinsaw - barbarian, Reaper of Reputation - bard, Blackfingers - alchemist and The Gray Master - rogue).
There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
That sounds kind of fun, actually.
There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
That's not really how stars work.
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I guess ravingdork is lucky their games aren’t set in real life, but rather a fantasy world with magic and eldritch horrors from beyond space.
That's not really how stars work.There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
Having stars not work how stars normally work is pretty common in fantasy. My world takes place in a dream, and stars are holes in the edge of the universe from the dreamer slowly beginning to wake up.
That's not really how stars work.There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
You haven't been to Hollywood recently.
That's not really how stars work.There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
They were never really stars to begin with. >8D
Long ago a great hero defeated an ancient foe, saving the world. A giant statue was erected of him. Thousands of years later, after the village around the statue had declined and vanished, to be replaced anew by another village, then another, and another, and finally, a kingdom. After a time, none remembered the hero's name, or what he was known for. Nevertheless, due to the statue's apparent indestructibility and unnatural immobility, it became a symbol of protection and strength for the kingdom, which would later become an empire.
In the "modern age" of our heroes, the empire had gone to war with its neighbor. By this time, the heroes had already completed several harrowing adventures and had begun to make a name for themselves. So when the neighboring kingdom invaded, the heroes were called upon (some would say conscripted) to assist in repelling the enemy force from the empire. Though the empire was strong, their enemies had powerful magic that, up that point, had never been seen by the Empire of Man, and so they were able to push through to the imperial capital.
Over the statue, a team of enemy war wizards and the imperial heroes clashed with such power that the statue, for the first time in its existence, was damaged.
Though the war wizards were defeated and the invaders forced back, dread, terror, and unrest soon began to blossom among the people of the empire. Their symbol of hope had been forever tarnished. And with every passing day, the small crack in its once unblemished stone would grow slightly larger, and with it, the people's superstitious fears of ill omen too grew greater.
Great masons and mages alike were unable to repair the growing damage. Since they had indirectly caused the damage to the statue, the heroes were once again called upon to find a solution, to repair the statue before it crumbled and to heal the hearts of the people.
The party paladin knew of an ancient artifact of light and life that he thought might help mend the problem: a glowing orb, held in the bows of a great tree that grew at the heart of a mystical land of giants.
The paladin had perished years before, sacrificing himself to stop a powerful demon from destroying the heroes' home town. He was brought back to life in the land of the giants by the giants' seers, using the healing powers of the ancient artifact.
The seers foresaw that the paladin would one day bring their isolated nation to ruin. Though the paladin swore he would never do such a thing, the kindly seers claimed that it was inevitable. They believed that preventing it was not only impossible, but morally wrong. One does not mess with the fates or with the will of the gods. So they used the orb's magic to return him to life, per their prophecy.
Not all the giants agreed with their beliefs however, and though the paladin was hailed as a guest and friend by most, assassins were sent by an evil warlord to dispatch him. The warlord loved his people, and their place in the world, and wished to prevent the end of his culture. The paladin slew the giant assassins, then trekked across miles and miles of plains, swamps, and mountains (facing many monsters and hazards) to reach the warlord's mountainous keep. Hoping to put an end to the unrest and prevent a civil war among the giants, he infiltrated the warlord's throne room and bested the warlord's personal bodyguards.
Upon seeing his immortal myrmidons destroyed by one so small, the warlord surrendered. He then tricked the paladin. The warlord offered to give up his mad quest to save his people, ending the violence, if the paladin would allow the warlord to use his magic to send him home, never again to return. After all, if the paladin was gone from their lands, he could not bring ruin to the giants, and there would be no more need for such turmoil. And so the paladin rejoined his companions in his homeland.
For a time, the giants once again knew peace as the warlord resumed his role as rightful ruler of his people and reconciled with his council of seers. The seers continued to believe that the fate of their lands was inevitable, just as their ruler believed it had been averted.
Then the heroes came to the land of the giants, using knowledge of its location bestowed upon them by their paladin who--holding to his word to never return--did not join them on their quest. When the heroes of man arrived, the seers were already expecting them, and had prepared for their arrival. They showed their visitors the way to the artifact and gifted it to them. As the heroes thanked them, and were in the process of promising to return it to its rightful place one day, they were attacked by the new ruler of the giants, the son of the former warlord.
In the years since the paladin's resurrection, popular opinion had swayed against the seers, and so a great force fell upon them. The seers were murdered, giving their lives to allow the heroes to to complete a traveling ritual and escape with the artifact.
Though the heroes and paladin never knew it, the healing orb was the heart and strength of the giants, and without its presence in their lands, their mountains crumbled and shrank, their great lakes dried up growing shallow, their massive crop lands and forests diminished, and their once great people became in every way small again.
Upon their triumphant return to their homeland, the heroes found that their beloved emperor had prepared a great celebration and parade, hoping that it--along with the repair of the statue--would uplift his peoples' spirits.
Amidst the massive celebration, the heroes ceremoniously placed the artifact into the great statue's hands. It fit there as it did in the great life tree of the giants, as if it had always belonged there.
The artifacts healing magic immediately and dramatically went to work. The crack mended itself, slowly at first, but then ever so quickly as the people cheered all around.
But the magic worked too well. Once the crack had disappeared, the statue began to shrink as its stone turned to the flesh of a living man. In front of thousands of witnesses, the ancient hero dropped the orb, collapsed to his knees and cried out in a great booming voice rife with anguish:
Before collapsing into incomprehensible despair.
Then the stars fell upon the world.
Within minutes, great flashes of light enveloped much of the empire, and indeed, much of the rest of the world as well. The explosions of light--the impact sites of the falling stars--laid waste to all it touched. For many, it was the last light they would ever see.
The celebration immediately turned to one of chaos and terror. At the edge of the imperial capital, where a star had fallen, came great and terrible creatures unlike anything anyone living had seen before (think flying, air-breathing aboleth). They rushed the capital, killing and enslaving all in their wake as they attempted to steal the orb. However, upon touching it with their foul tendrils, it burned them, and so they called upon terrible machines of war (think retrievers) to recover it for them. These "star gods" and their monstrous servants skirmished with the heroes briefly, before their retrievers were able to escape with the artifact.
In the coming days darkness ruled all the world. Before the ancient hero succumbed to despair and death, he was able to impart to the imperial heroes (through largely lunatic ramblings) that the stars had never been stars at all, but an invasion force of ancient immortal beings from beyond the black, come to destroy the world. The beings' efforts were stymied when the ancient hero used a powerful artifact to trap them in their ships in the black.
In so doing, the power of the artifact left the ancient hero forever petrified. In time, the orb's magic became linked with the stone that grasped it, growing it in size and durability. At some point in the distant past, the statue and the orb became separated, and it came to rest in lands far across the sea, creating the nation of giants.
In the unending darkness, the monsters came. First it was the immortal star gods, then their machines of war. Their efforts were aided by slaves and human allies who had turned against their own in their despair. Among the traitors of humanity was the Church of Stars, a once benevolent organization that was corrupted by misleading prophecy and the belief that their infallible gods now walked among them.
Then, less than a year after "The Fall," mutant abominations of animals and man began to appear. The corruption of the black had begun to grow the invaders' numbers (in some cases "rewarding" loyal servants thought to have been defeated by the heroes with terrible new forms) to topple all the remaining empires of the world.
Everything after that has been about saving people where possible, fighting the alien menace and their servants and monsters, finding and recovering the orb, and using its power to again vanquish humanity's ancient foe.
Alignment, my Homebrew setting of Pantheon uses a variation where Good is about emotional openness and positive emotions, while evil is about emotional closedness and negative emotions- its much more conducive to antiheroes and such, since being driven fear, hatred, despair can still lead to conventionally good ends (though there's obviously an emotional cost to letting such things drive you.)
I've made sorcerers people who are linked with a spirit bound to them, based off 'bloodline' some sorcerers are part of entire clans that have such spirits voluntarily bound within them (to some purpose, or bind them for power, or have it placed into them after cutting a deal with a more powerful spirit their spirit serves, and etc.
This let me merge the 5e concept of a warlock, with the sorcerer to cover those ideas, as well as the traditional sorcerer ones.
My world also features very low tier gods that are essentially conventional monsters, but with a special template (that template carries particular narrative implications as well)
They were never really stars to begin with. >8DThat's not really how stars work.There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
Cool story! So what happened to the Sun to leave them in "unending darkness"? (And is everyone now starving from lack of crops, or what?)
Cool story! So what happened to the Sun to leave them in "unending darkness"? (And is everyone now starving from lack of crops, or what?)They were never really stars to begin with. >8DThat's not really how stars work.There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
The sun remained in place, as did the rest of the stars. It was the ash fallout created from the "falling stars" that blackened all of the skies and made day into night. It was the Church of the Stars and their abberant masters, as well as the lunatic ramblings of an addle-brained mad-man, who lead much of humanity to believe that the actual stars had fallen. And yes, it created much strife for the surface life of the planet.
This terrible event would in the far future come to be known as Earthfall; the terrible period of time after, the Age of Darkness. The great artifact orb of light and life would eventually evolve into the Starstone. The once great cyclops empire of Ghol-Gan would never recover from the loss of their holy artifact. The alghollthu empire as we know it today are the degenerate remnants of the original invasion force that nearly ended it all eons past. In the deepest sea of Golarion, they still guard the petrified remains of the band of heroes who so long ago foiled them, where they yet plot their revenge against humanity.
This terrible event would in the far future come to be known as Earthfall; the terrible period of time after, the Age of Darkness. The great artifact orb of light and life would eventually evolve into the Starstone. The once great cyclops empire of Ghol-Gan would never recover from the loss of their holy artifact. The alghollthu empire as we know it today are the degenerate remnants of the original invasion force that nearly ended it all eons past. In the deepest sea of Golarion, they still guard the petrified remains of the band of heroes who so long ago foiled them, where they yet plot their revenge against humanity.
"Pretty sneaky, Sis!"
That's not really how stars work.There are no stars. The PCs brought them crashing down years ago with the misuse of a powerful artifact.
The immeasurable devastation, unending darkness, and eldritch horrors that were released from the fallen stars have long since turned the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland of survival horror.
It is now up to the PCs to somehow undo the calamity they brought forth upon the world. Their actions are opposed by the once benevolent and world spanning Church of Stars, now corrupted into fanatical death cults that have seen their gods' true forms.
Not yet ...