Will Paizo Explore the Planets in Second Edition?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


Over in the 1E section, there's a bit of discussion about what we would've liked to see in Pathfinder First Edition. Various ideas came up for expanding Distant Worlds into a series of softcovers, one or more hardcovers, or an AP that leads PCs on a "Grand Tour" throughout the Golarion system.

All of these ideas could be implemented in Second Edition, but I expect Paizo has already mapped out the next several years' worth of 2E releases. Even so, it would be great to know if there's any interest in this sort of product for 2E, and whether anyone at Paizo is considering a return to other worlds in the Golarion system.


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J. A. wrote:

Over in the 1E section, there's a bit of discussion about what we would've liked to see in Pathfinder First Edition. Various ideas came up for expanding Distant Worlds into a series of softcovers, one or more hardcovers, or an AP that leads PCs on a "Grand Tour" throughout the Golarion system.

All of these ideas could be implemented in Second Edition, but I expect Paizo has already mapped out the next several years' worth of 2E releases. Even so, it would be great to know if there's any interest in this sort of product for 2E, and whether anyone at Paizo is considering a return to other worlds in the Golarion system.

I doubt that there is much of a reason or demand to explore many other planets currently or even to go beyond Golarion's solar system, especially since a couple of these aspects have been covered in PF1.

Iron Gods and Strange Aeons Spoilers:
(Iron Gods is very much about exploring and discovering alien elements, but only on Golarion, and high-level Strange Aeons covers interplanetary adventuring)
Also, back during those softcover releases, we didn't have Starfinder yet and I doubt that PF2 wants to step too much on SF's toes thematically, so I would be very surprised if we'd see much of that in PF2. Additionally, it seems like Paizo is focusing at the moment on the regions and continents on Golarion that haven't gotten much love during PF1, which leaves great blank spaces to be filled.
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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'd expect to see some small sprinkles of planetary stuff and references in the first few years of PF2, but for now, Paizo's focus seems to be the Inner Sea and particularly the city of Absalom and the surrounding Isle of Krotos.

But knowing how well Distant Worlds was received and how it led to Starfinder, I wouldn't be surprised to see more "out of space" material, just likely few years down the road.


Distant Worlds is a great book.
That's the thing... all the PF1 PDFs are available and, afaik, always will be available. So any source someone needs for fluff is available. And as far as stats, you can wait for a PF2 strange aliens and planets book down the road. Or do what everyone else is doing and convert the creatures yourself with the incredibly simple creature guide in the GMG download (or full book when it's out).


There's a transition between PF & SF (and I don't just mean The Gap) where planets changed. Main themes hold true and some mysteries carried over, but there are plenty of mysteries that ended unanswered.

Of course, we'd need an intriguing story arc other than "let's hop from planet to planet", one which would resonate with a Golarion PC. It may take several years to circle back around to such an AP, but SF hasn't stripped out all the solar system stories.

That said, I'd like such an AP, though wouldn't be interested in revisiting technology. I avoided those scenarios in PFS when I could.


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A 2E book on other planets and technology could be a fine entry in the Lost Omens line... but it is niche enough that I would expect there to always be a better option for the next book, which is useful to more groups, for at least the first year or two.


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I think one other PF1 AP had planet hopping aspects. So that's 3 out of 24? I think PF2 will follow the same pattern -- world hopping when it makes sense for the story they want to tell. I don't think they'll say 'lets make a world hopping AP', but they won't reject a story that lends itself to it.


I think the challenges are largely about "don't step on Starfinder's toes too much" and "let's not make this into a laser-gun battle thing, since most of our classes can't do that very well."

It seems like they're more likely to do an AP where you visit one or two other exotic locations than an "all exotic locations, all the time" AP. The other planets are just competing with places like "the Maelstrom" and "the Akashic Record" and "the First World" and "the Shadow Plane" and anything else the writer can imagine in terms of exotic places to visit.


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And I feel the Windsong testaments are opening up a LOT of very interesting adventure hooks for planar adventures. Doubt they'll get to all of them, but the sheer number of very interesting hooks that have come out of those bits of short fiction are mind-blowing.

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The other planets are certainly a possibility, but if we do explore them, it'd have to be from a Pathfinder stance and not something that would work better with Starfinder. We had planetary influences in the playtest adventure, Doomsday Dawn, and while that story's told I've got a LOT more in my head that I wanna do with the Dominion of the Black, for certain, which needs other planets to play roles. As a potential example.


I wrote an adventure for level 20 characters for PF1 that was on... Akiton? I think. (Obviously not to sell or anything, since that's a copyrighted location.) The Distant Worlds book, as well as the article from Second Darkness, were a great help.
If I ever update it to PF2, I'll probably reference the same books again.


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I doubt we'll see too much in the way of planet-hopping for PF2, at least for awhile. Eventually, they'll probably sprinkle it in here and there like they did in PF2.

Though personally, I'd love an AP involving ye olde Verces.

[edit: ninja'ed, I see]


Always good to hear from James Jacobs. It sounds like there isn't anything planned for the foreseeable future. Is there any chance of an AP, perhaps involving Dominion of the Black?

As for Verces, that's one of the more interesting items in Distant Worlds, for the variety of environments and the ever-present threat of extreme lifeforms wandering into the habitable belt along the terminator.

(Even though I can't convince myself that Verces could be tidally locked....)


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I kind of want to go to Eox before it decides to play nice with the rest of the solar system.


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Meraki wrote:

I doubt we'll see too much in the way of planet-hopping for PF2, at least for awhile. Eventually, they'll probably sprinkle it in here and there like they did in PF2.

Though personally, I'd love an AP involving ye olde Verces.

[edit: ninja'ed, I see]

Gah. Meant PF1 in the latter bit there. Didn't catch it on the edit, of course.


I could see the Church of Sarenrae mounting a full-scale crusade against Eox.

Backed up by Iomedae, with the Caydenites along for the ride.

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J. A. wrote:

I could see the Church of Sarenrae mounting a full-scale crusade against Eox.

Backed up by Iomedae, with the Caydenites along for the ride.

Sarenrae? Why? She is the patron of the Kellesh Empire, and they've not taken out Geb. Why would she care about Eox? Can those undead be redeemed? She dislikes undead, but it isn't high up on her to-do list

Pharasma is the who would take on Eox. And I bet she is. Crusades don't seem to be her style. I imagine she is important to the surviving Elebrians ,just like she is with the living in Geb. But I would guess her worship is prohibited by the Bone Sages. I can imagine a Pharasma and Norgorber pantheon focused on quietly killing the undead.


J. A. wrote:

I could see the Church of Sarenrae mounting a full-scale crusade against Eox.

Backed up by Iomedae, with the Caydenites along for the ride.

If such a thing was done, it failed. According to Starfinder lore, Eox is ruled by Bonesages in modern (Starfinder) times.


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I love the planets, but I’m not sure they need more content than Distant Worlds and Starfinder, especially when there’s several continents with hardly any content on our home world already. I’d take an Arcadia or Garund book over one on space any day of the week.


More likely an Eox adventure would involve "some group of bone sages on Eox are up to something really bad, and the PCs have to intervene." People from Golarion aren't going to rule the whole planet (it has no atmosphere) and presumably there would be a faction of the undead who would be at least tentative allies of the PCs.


I would be very surprised to see anything about other planets in Golarion's solar-system in between the top-level information in Distant Worlds and a single adventure site. They likely don't want to do the type of medium-scale description that would potentially mess with what's going on in Starfinder.

So, an adventure that has you go through an elfgate and do something on Castrovel: yes. A Castrovel sourcebook: no.


I've always been intrigued by a couple of the illustrations in Distant Worlds

p. 51 - an organic looking Dominion of the Black craft (combined with the material on Shipminds in Iron Gods)

p. 52 - a steam-punk looking flying craft with Kyra standing in an open door


In his post yesterday James Jacobs mentioned the need to avoid stepping on Starfinder's toes. I don't know much about Starfinder; I would assume that the other worlds could be built out in the Pathfinder age without too much overlap with Starfinder, but I could see how that would be complicated from a continuity perspective.

And pjrogers, I do like that illustration of the Dominion vessel, although to me it very closely resembles some of Wayne Barlowe's designs.


I think the way you avoid stepping on Starfinder's toes is that certain things are prologue in Starfinder (e.g. Triune Exists, Eox is allied with the other Pact Worlds for mutual defense, etc.) So if you have an adventure on Aballon before the Anacites create Epoch, or visit Eox while the Bone Sages are still hostile to all life, that's something you can't really do in Starfinder (without time travel.)


The Triune payoff for the scattered lore on Casandalee and Epoch is genuinely one of the most satisfying “oh, the pieces fit together!” nerd moments ever. I’d certainly enjoy something poking at Epoch’s ascension, especially given that we have Casandalee clerics now.

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Waterhammer wrote:
J. A. wrote:

I could see the Church of Sarenrae mounting a full-scale crusade against Eox.

Backed up by Iomedae, with the Caydenites along for the ride.

If such a thing was done, it failed. According to Starfinder lore, Eox is ruled by Bonesages in modern (Starfinder) times.

Until they officially come out and state otherwise, I’d consider Starfinder an alternate reality/possible future, rather than the actual future of the setting.


Even if Starfinder is the actual canonical future of the star system containing Golarion in Pathfinder times, there's an essentially unlimited number of years between the two that anything that happens in a Pathfinder adventure could have changed by the time Starfinder rolls around.

Like, even if the PCs were to wipe Eox clean of the Undead in Pathfinder times... it still lacks a breathable atmosphere and is incredibly toxic so it's not like non-undead people are going to want to colonize it. Some bone sages could have just gone into hiding and waited until the offworlders leave (one thing liches have no shortage of is time.)

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I'm pretty sure it isn't, because I seem to recall Nocticula still being a demon lord in Starfinder.


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From a Pathfinder (rather than Starfinder) perspective, the thing other worlds are really good for is pulpy sword and planet goodness- but to really catch the vibe of those sword and planet stories, you need to kind of, er, address the, shall we say, dated aspects of those stories.

While Paizo has started to tackle some of the more clear-cut cases (*cough*Lashunta*cough*) there are other conceptual hurdles to channeling what works about that kind of story without bringing along the baggage.

Also, it's kind of important that settings not just be wallpaper. I could re-skin Rise of the Runelords to run on Akiton if I wanted to, or make Tyrant's Grasp an Eoxian incursion on Castrovel, and so forth, but if there's no impetus to do so beyond a cosemtic choice, then expecting Paizo to sink paid staff time into it is a bit much.

The Directorsaur has mentioned a Dominion of the Black story concept that would need other worlds- cool, that's one.

But I think we'll see more when there is more.

(Verces is also a weird one for Pathfinder because the tech jump seems the smallest from Pathfinder to Starfinder- Verces isn't like Numeria where local "primitive screwheads" are fiddling with stuff they don't full understand, those folks basically know what they're doing.)

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Cydeth wrote:
I'm pretty sure it isn't, because I seem to recall Nocticula still being a demon lord in Starfinder.

Also this, but I couldn’t find the source for it so I didn’t bring it up.

Glad I wasn’t imagining it.

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Rysky wrote:
Cydeth wrote:
I'm pretty sure it isn't, because I seem to recall Nocticula still being a demon lord in Starfinder.

Also this, but I couldn’t find the source for it so I didn’t bring it up.

Glad I wasn’t imagining it.

I went hunting for the information, since I remember it coming up within a few months of Starfinder's release, and I found one reference to Nocticula as a demon lord. She has a single reference in the Pact Worlds book, from what I can tell. Definitely not as a goddess, with the mention of pleasure cults.

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Cydeth wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Cydeth wrote:
I'm pretty sure it isn't, because I seem to recall Nocticula still being a demon lord in Starfinder.

Also this, but I couldn’t find the source for it so I didn’t bring it up.

Glad I wasn’t imagining it.

I went hunting for the information, since I remember it coming up within a few months of Starfinder's release, and I found one reference to Nocticula as a demon lord. She has a single reference in the Pact Worlds book, from what I can tell. Definitely not as a goddess, with the mention of pleasure cults.

*nods*


Since undead don't sleep, they seem to be able to get a lot more done in the same amount of time as real people.

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Right now all I want is 2E Androids and some basic gear like firearms, weird artifacts from Numeria, etc. All of which could be covered in a oddities of Golarion book.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Skimmed.

I would like to see a book for 2E just to help people who like that niche from PF1 something like Technology of the Inner Sea: Alkenstar, Numeria, the mana wastes and beyond.

The beyond section could have advice for if in your game technology has become more common and add base proficiencies or free archetypes to some classes.

The Technomancer and the Savage technologists from the tech guide are super fun and I would like to replicate them somehow in 2e. Also all the archetypes in the Construct Makers Handbook were allos thematically fun especially the Summoner and Bard.

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