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Late to the party on this thread, but I'd definitely like to see more going on in Galt. Night of the Gray Death is GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it feels to me like the climax of an AP without the five or so books of build-up and getting to know Galt and its people. A skilled GM could certainly write up a preceding campaign from scratch using NotGD as a capstone, but I certainly wouldn't be able to come up with something suitably compelling and rife with intrigue...
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Late to the party on this thread, but I'd definitely like to see more going on in Galt. Night of the Gray Death is GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it feels to me like the climax of an AP without the five or so books of build-up and getting to know Galt and its people. A skilled GM could certainly write up a preceding campaign from scratch using NotGD as a capstone, but I certainly wouldn't be able to come up with something suitably compelling and rife with intrigue...
A political AP about rebuilding a traumatized nation in the aftermath of one final revolution would be /so/ much fun.
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Late to the party on this thread, but I'd definitely like to see more going on in Galt. Night of the Gray Death is GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it feels to me like the climax of an AP without the five or so books of build-up and getting to know Galt and its people. {. . .}
Really? It felt to me like just the beginning.
A political AP about rebuilding a traumatized nation in the aftermath of one final revolution would be /so/ much fun.
And the beauty of it is, five years later, it's ready to rinse and repeat . . . Galt has one final revolution every five years or so.
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Late to the party on this thread, but I'd definitely like to see more going on in Galt. Night of the Gray Death is GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it feels to me like the climax of an AP without the five or so books of build-up and getting to know Galt and its people. {. . .}Really? It felt to me like just the beginning.
A political AP about rebuilding a traumatized nation in the aftermath of one final revolution would be /so/ much fun.And the beauty of it is, five years later, it's ready to rinse and repeat . . . Galt has one final revolution every five years or so.
Night of the Grey Death seems to mark a pretty definitive turning point. I won’t say more, but the future of Galt should look fairly different from its recent past.
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^I wouldn't be so sure. After all, that's what they keep saying about controlled fusion energy here on Earth . . . .
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I'm curious then - does Pathfinder 2e have a metanarrative, i.e., the results and endings of past APs will definitely tie into and become canon in future APs and lore books? I know the year advances to match the current year of our world in each material released.Night of the Grey Death seems to mark a pretty definitive turning point. I won’t say more, but the future of Galt should look fairly different from its recent past.Late to the party on this thread, but I'd definitely like to see more going on in Galt. Night of the Gray Death is GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it feels to me like the climax of an AP without the five or so books of build-up and getting to know Galt and its people. {. . .}Really? It felt to me like just the beginning.
A political AP about rebuilding a traumatized nation in the aftermath of one final revolution would be /so/ much fun.And the beauty of it is, five years later, it's ready to rinse and repeat . . . Galt has one final revolution every five years or so.
I think they will keep to the principle they held for PF1 : none of the current edition's APs or adventures have happened.
Till they push the clock forward in a few years when comes PF3 time.
It worked very well in PF1 and going from PF1 to PF2, so I do not expect them to change it.
I think they will keep to the principle they held for PF1 : none of the current edition's APs or adventures have happened.
True, but I don't think there is a problem with making an AP a "sequel" to another AP.
Like if they do a thing with Nex/Geb/Arazni/Tar-Baphon thing that's hanging over the setting that will probably take several campaigns to work out.
Barring some exceptions, like the Runelord trilogy.
I think I see the pattern. It's the regions. Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, and Jade Regent are explicitly between Rise of the Runelords and Shattered Star, Carrion Crown is before Tyrant's Grasp, Skull & Shackles has to be before HR/HV and Council of Thieves definitely precedes HR/HV. JR starts in Varisia and features an NPC from RotRL, and the loss of the armada in S&S had to play a role in keeping the Glorious Reclamation going as long as it had. I would imagine that any subsequent APs in the Starstone Isles will explicitly be post AC/AoE, and the possible Bright Lions AP/adventure will have to be post SoT.
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I would agree that any Bright Lions AP would follow on from the reforms to Mzali prompted by Strength of Thousands - otherwise, you’d all be forced to play as local humans.
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The thing I would be interested about the "Cortes" story is not "you are one of the conquistadors" or "you are one of the Aztecs" would instead be "you are one of the nearby peoples who allied with Cortes because the Aztecs were terrible neighbors, but then realized that the Spaniards might be worse."
So the story would be basically:
- Neighboring kingdom long suspected to be bad news, turns out to be bad news.
- People come from afar, offering to help against the bad news neighbors and bring new technology that is helpful.
- You fight with the newcomers against the bad neighbors, and go so far as to take down their entire government.
- Newcomers take over the bad news kingdom, turn out to be even worse neighbors.
- You now have to fight the newcomers before they take over your homeland too.
The thing I would be interested about the "Cortes" story is not "you are one of the conquistadors" or "you are one of the Aztecs" would instead be "you are one of the nearby peoples who allied with Cortes because the Aztecs were terrible neighbors, but then realized that the Spaniards might be worse."
So the story would be basically:
- Neighboring kingdom long suspected to be bad news, turns out to be bad news.
- People come from afar, offering to help against the bad news neighbors and bring new technology that is helpful.
- You fight with the newcomers against the bad neighbors, and go so far as to take down their entire government.
- Newcomers take over the bad news kingdom, turn out to be even worse neighbors.
- You now have to fight the newcomers before they take over your homeland too.Sounds good, but for accuracy it should be more like:
--Local top dog is being nasty with top dog status and doing an imperialism. (the Triple Alliance were indeed not very nice, though to be fair the neighbors and vassals were at best little better--such is the nature of powerful human states basically throughout history)
--Some randos from across the sea who speak a foreign language and have good weapons and armor but SUCK at basic survival skills show up. You realize they can help beat the top dog.
Corollary: Any nature-based (Ranger, Druid) or Intelligence-based classes are either entirely missing from their army, or are very low-level and severely mal-optimized to the point where it is obvious even to in-world characters that are not scholars.
--The randos blunder their way aimlessly through the top dog despite your best efforts to direct them against rival vassals and the top dog's important stuff. You win by default as the top dog collapses and have to stamp out all the other rival vassals who now want to be top dog, too.
Make sure they say really way over-the-top stupid and crazy stuff while they're doing this. It shouldn't be hard to find inspiration from completely real examples in modern times.
--The randos run off with their loot and then come back years later once the vassal war has settled into an acrimonious peace, saying "yeah we own this place now". You say "No, you don't, you were mercs, you don't own anything more than you carried away". They say, "well, we told our racist jerk King that we own this place now, so you're going to give us what we want or die". And they have an army.
Might as well have the PCs be the ones responsible for establishing the acrimonious peace (the acrimonious part isn't their fault -- they're doing all they can just to get peace at all). And they have to clean up the disease outbreaks that the randos seeded.
--You now have to fight these cocky inbred incompetent losers and their evil empire despite them having an untouchable logistics base and a massive military tech advantage (their civilian tech is mostly par, military tech is a huge advantage, their naval tech has vastly superior range and armament).
Alternatively have the randos lose by being greedy crooks (because that's what Cortez's goon squad WAS, a bunch of greedy criminals led by an especially greedy criminal who were running around with for-the-time advanced military tech and no idea what they were doing other than looting) and screwing themselves over.
This time they're back with the most performance-impaired people replaced by some people who know what they're doing, but who are still utterly evil, and they still have plenty of the more battle-hardened crazy and stupid people among them, so you have to take advantage of their infighting tendencies to play them off against each other, because you CAN'T win a straight-up fight against them. And this time they're sowing disease on purpose.
Another option that could be cool could be doing a 17th-early 18th century North America, or 8th-9th century England situation (the structure in those two situations is similar--slave-raiding logistically advantaged culture that alternately trades to the point of disrupting the economy and raids soft targets, civilizational collapse (Mississippians/Romans) roughly 300-400 years ago has led to a period of prolonged warlordism domestically so warlord coalitions keep bashing each other and the jerks from across the sea keep taking advantage of that and expanding their heavily-armed settler colonies when the warlord coalitions get into fights over the economic chaos caused by the runaway raiding and trading). Basically, fighting the Varisians (I guess?) (if it's a North America expy), or the Linnonrm Kings (if it's an England expy).
It probably wouldn't be the Varisians, if for no other reason than that they wouldn't have the organization to manage such colonization (and Korvosa, Magnimar, Kaer Maga, and Riddleport are all way too small to pull it off, and New Thassilon is too new -- even if they wanted to and had a plan for it, first they would have to consolidate control over large parts of Varisia); besides, the Varisian people aren't the ones controlling those regimes anyway. Even the Linnorm Kings would have a hard time pulling off such an invasion beyond a local scale, unless somebody united them first (that said, if they DID do this, they would have better survival skills than those mentioned above).
Cheliax would be the top candidate for this -- they have the motivation, and the navy (or at least will be rebuilding one fairly quickly), the organization, and the ruthlessness. Even Nidal would be a possibility -- although they haven't seemed to be much inclined to try to conquer their neighbors, that could change if they start running out of coal to keep their skies dark.
Any of these options would be pretty dark but it would be super cathartic to fight imperialism.
I consider imperialism to be an enema.
Oh man another really cool one would be Tupac Amaru II's rebellion. Like, a combination of Hell's Rebels and Ironfang Invasion where you lead a full-scale rebellion against an unstable imperial regime by forging a multi-ethnic coalition that seeks to end the imperialist rule and restore the glory days of a fallen native empire*.
"Make our empire great again!" . . . I've got a bad feeling about this.
Or how about an Andoran-led literal anti-slavery crusade? Like, an actual, final, ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny between Andoran and Cheliax. Full-on ACW style war between the best parts of America and the worst parts of America, with the former being a powerful industrial power and the latter being an underdeveloped wreck run by incompetent, comically evil oligarchs**. You get to lead a war effort to free the slaves and just kick the stuffing out of evil slavers. I would play the Hell out of that! {. . .}
Problem is that last time I checked, while Cheliax is utterly evil, it isn't all that incompetent: They lost a lot of territory as a result of disruption by the Chelish Civil War and its aftermath, but they are starting to recover, and as they demonstrated in Hell's Vengeance, anybody who goes to war them on their own turf is in for a rude surprise. (Also note the difference that Cheliax is Lawful Evil, while the Confederate States of America were Neutral Evil -- if nothing else, Cheliax is better organized.) In addition, Andoran isn't all that industrial, so it would be more like North vs South if the Civil War happened in the 1790s/early 1800s. If the Chelish navy hasn't recovered enough from Skull and Shackles by the time hostilities start, Andoran might have an advantage in the Inner Sea, but probably wouldn't be able to lock down Cheliax' west coast, since Cheliax controls the Hespereth Strait (and thus would also be able to cut Andoran off from Arcadia western Garund, and Varisia even as Andoran cut Cheliax off from points east). Fortunately, as a result of War for the Crown, Andoran probably doesn't have to worry about being backstabbed by Taldor for at least a few more years, although if a coup d'état happens there, all bets are off (and Cheliax would certainly seek to arrange such an event -- plot hook!).
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To be honest, Cheliax kind of got bailed out by "hey everybody, let's stop fighting each other and focus on the Whispering Tyrant since he's scarier than us." I can't imagine Thrune (or community minded do-gooders) are going to really start stuff while Tar-Baphon is out there.
Of course, "what happens in Cheliax in the interim, when nobody wants to start any big fires" is potentially an interesting story.
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We need evil regimes to stay in place so that PCs have something more complex to fight.
Cheliax, Nidal, Mzali all sound far more interesting as they are than if they were cleansed by PCs.
Razmiran seems pretty ripe for a coup though.
I expect liberating Mzali to be one of the “big deal” plots of 2e, like Hell’s Rebels of Wrath of the Righteous. It feels like they’re pretty deliberately building up to it some time down the line. It’s a story I’d love to play… hopefully after we have Inquisitors playable.
Nidal isn’t going anywhere, nor is Cheliax… but I’m more excited to see who the baddies of Arcadia and Southern Garund are, rather than rehashing them again. I do appreciate that Geb is getting some love soon.
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{. . .}
"Make our empire great again!" . . . I've got a bad feeling about this.That's a complete, borderline malicious mischaracterization/misunderstanding of Tupac Amaru II and his rebellion. Tupac Amaru II's rebellion was a multi-ethnic predominantly proletarian revolt against a distant and terrible imperial regime, not a nationalist campaign by an illiterate baboon to whip up hate against The Foreign in general to support an election campaign.
I don't know about Tupac Amaru (I or II), but the two things you describe above are not mutually exclusive -- just because the distant imperial regime really is truly terrible, it doesn't mean that your own empire is good . . . .
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We need evil regimes to stay in place so that PCs have something more complex to fight.
Cheliax, Nidal, Mzali all sound far more interesting as they are than if they were cleansed by PCs.
Razmiran seems pretty ripe for a coup though.
I expect liberating Mzali to be one of the “big deal” plots of 2e, like Hell’s Rebels of Wrath of the Righteous. It feels like they’re pretty deliberately building up to it some time down the line. It’s a story I’d love to play… hopefully after we have Inquisitors playable.
Nidal isn’t going anywhere, nor is Cheliax… but I’m more excited to see who the baddies of Arcadia and Southern Garund are, rather than rehashing them again. I do appreciate that Geb is getting some love soon.
Agreed on that.
Note that Hell's Rebels did not erase Infernal Cheliax and that the Worldwound was not an evil regime.
So, I too think we can expect a Free Mzali AP, likely not soon though, but I very much doubt it will end with the complete disappearance of Walkena and his supporters.
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The Living God Lives!We need evil regimes to stay in place so that PCs have something more complex to fight.
Cheliax, Nidal, Mzali all sound far more interesting as they are than if they were cleansed by PCs.
Razmiran seems pretty ripe for a coup though.
That is what PCs are for.
Who needs Achaekek anyway ?
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Presumably the story for Razmiran is "Razmir himself reaches the limit of his mortality because he can't manage to get the sun orchid elixir in time" and the resulting power vacuum. Like he might be dead already and the inner circle is just keeping up the illusion that the living god is still alive ("Razimir has entered a new phase and we might not see him again until February".)
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Presumably the story for Razmiran is "Razmir himself reaches the limit of his mortality because he can't manage to get the sun orchid elixir in time" and the resulting power vacuum. Like he might be dead already and the inner circle is just keeping up the illusion that the living god is still alive ("Razimir has entered a new phase and we might not see him again until February".)
Who knows who will wear the mask ?
Maybe your PC will.
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I think Nidal is fascinating; it's one of the oldest nations on the planet, thanks to the direct intervention of a god and the adoption of an alien value set. While the 'edgy' stuff does nothing for me - self-harm is a hard line for my table - I think the broad ideas of the place are really neat.
I do wanna know what's up with how Zon-Kuthon became what he is now.
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The novels and the sourcebook set in Nidal are fantastic, so I would be very interested in a story set there. There's a lot of potential threads to explore there (*something* has to happen on the Shelyn and ZK front sooner or later), and I'd be interested in exploring them though I don't know how palatable going the full-Hellraiser for the AP would be.
There's something to be said for an exploration of "pain is healthy and necessary, but not always" as a theme, and you could tie that into a "Shelyn's denial about her brother's trauma is ultimately what's preventing a reconciliation."
The novels and the sourcebook set in Nidal are fantastic, so I would be very interested in a story set there. There's a lot of potential threads to explore there (*something* has to happen on the Shelyn and ZK front sooner or later), and I'd be interested in exploring them though I don't know how palatable going the full-Hellraiser for the AP would be.
There's something to be said for an exploration of "pain is healthy and necessary, but not always" as a theme, and you could tie that into a "Shelyn's denial about her brother's trauma is ultimately what's preventing a reconciliation."
I'm so split, because on one hand, the Shelyn/ZK stuff is a plot I /definitely/ want to see developed, but I genuinely don't think I could safely read an adventure that would need to go that hard on velstrac stuff.
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I think Nidal is fascinating; it's one of the oldest nations on the planet, thanks to the direct intervention of a god and the adoption of an alien value set. While the 'edgy' stuff does nothing for me - self-harm is a hard line for my table - I think the broad ideas of the place are really neat.
I do wanna know what's up with how Zon-Kuthon became what he is now.
IIRC the Shadowcaster archetype sheds some light on this. To become a Shadowcaster, you have to get rid of your Inner Light. And that is what Dou-Bral did on his way to becoming Zon-Kuthon. The Inner Light is basically the sense of self-preservation.
Losing it does not make one Evil per se, but IMO it erases one important barrier against doing Evil.
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Presumably the story for Razmiran is "Razmir himself reaches the limit of his mortality because he can't manage to get the sun orchid elixir in time" and the resulting power vacuum. Like he might be dead already and the inner circle is just keeping up the illusion that the living god is still alive ("Razimir has entered a new phase and we might not see him again until February".)
If this is what happens, the inner circle MUST be trying to clone Razmir from his nose.
The novels and the sourcebook set in Nidal are fantastic, so I would be very interested in a story set there. There's a lot of potential threads to explore there (*something* has to happen on the Shelyn and ZK front sooner or later), and I'd be interested in exploring them though I don't know how palatable going the full-Hellraiser for the AP would be.
There's something to be said for an exploration of "pain is healthy and necessary, but not always" as a theme, and you could tie that into a "Shelyn's denial about her brother's trauma is ultimately what's preventing a reconciliation."
I haven't read the novels and I wasn't terribly impressed by what I saw of the Nidal sourcebook. TBF, I'm just not that interested in Nidal because the flavor and fluff don't appeal to me. It's like the evil dominatrix priestesses of a deity named after a Finnish pagan goddess of death and disease over in Forgotten Realms--like, what's the POINT? At least gods of tyranny and the like have an ideology to oppose.
With Cheliax, it's a kind of evil that has a POINT. I mean, it's still comically evil Fascism With Literal Hellspawn, but it's evil for more than the sake of evil.
{. . .}
Nidal by comparison just feels cartoonishly evil for the sake of it. I don't really see a "pain is healthy but not always" theme in Nidal, all I see is a teenage edgelord insisting that people call him "Fangz Deathgood" while flipping a butterfly knife open and closed on a stoop after school.
With Cheliax, the point of the suffering is to maintain absolute control over everyone else and spread it to the reast of the world. With Nidal, the suffering IS the point. (Although that brings up the question of why Zon-Kuthon and Nidal are labeled as Lawful Evil rather than Neutral Evil.) And you can find examples on Earth as well, without even having to look all that far and wide (some kids, for instance . . .).
I'm so split, because on one hand, the Shelyn/ZK stuff is a plot I /definitely/ want to see developed, but I genuinely don't think I could safely read an adventure that would need to go that hard on velstrac stuff.The novels and the sourcebook set in Nidal are fantastic, so I would be very interested in a story set there. There's a lot of potential threads to explore there (*something* has to happen on the Shelyn and ZK front sooner or later), and I'd be interested in exploring them though I don't know how palatable going the full-Hellraiser for the AP would be.
There's something to be said for an exploration of "pain is healthy and necessary, but not always" as a theme, and you could tie that into a "Shelyn's denial about her brother's trauma is ultimately what's preventing a reconciliation."
"There's something to be said for an exploration of 'pain is healthy and necessary, but not always' as a theme" -- that's the first I have heard of this about the faith of Zon-Kuthon or the Kytons/Velstracs. Both of these seem pretty adamant about pushing continuous pain to the limit, and then pushing out the limits. Maybe have the AP introduced by a former Kuthite or even an actual Velstrac who actually believed that theme too earnestly, got disillusioned with the cult, then got branded a heretic, and barely managed to escape. Now they are in hiding and trying to go clean.
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I love Nidal, and don't really see it's theme as edgy painlord much (Zon-Kuthon, yes, but Nidal itself not as much). I see it's theme as more survival and choice.
When Earthfall happened, there were no good options. They had to choose from a very few options, none of which were good, all of which would require sacrifice. They had to choose what they were willing to sacrifice in order to survive. They made their choice, and it objectively sucked, but it also objectively worked, and that's what I love about it. They survived as a group where no other group did, which gives them a form of legitimacy (at least in my eyes) that no other evil religion has. They didn't suborn themselves to an evil entity for for power or conquest (they explicitly have not moved or increased their borders in 10,000 years), they did it for survival, which is (from my perspective at least), the only acceptable reason to do such a thing.
I find choices and consequences far more engaging than an abstract good and evil paradigm.
(To be clear I don't like Zon-Kuthon at all, and agree that his perfection through pain philosophy is the worst of edgelordness. But I really resonate with Nidal and their situation. You could substitute Zon-Kuthon for most any other evil deity and and I'd still enjoy Nidal's story)
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I think Nidal is fascinating; it's one of the oldest nations on the planet, thanks to the direct intervention of a god and the adoption of an alien value set. While the 'edgy' stuff does nothing for me - self-harm is a hard line for my table - I think the broad ideas of the place are really neat.
I do wanna know what's up with how Zon-Kuthon became what he is now.
the way I've always read Nidal is that the 'edgy' stuff is what makes it noteworthy for adventurers and tourists.
honestly, the country kinda strikes me as a sorta rural, backwards place generally. Kinda like the Shire or Emond's Field... but don't go out at night.
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"There's something to be said for an exploration of 'pain is healthy and necessary, but not always' as a theme" -- that's the first I have heard of this about the faith of Zon-Kuthon or the Kytons/Velstracs. Both of these seem pretty adamant about pushing continuous pain to the limit, and then pushing out the limits.
I'm not saying we need to endorse a Kuthite perspective, but since ZK is a rare Evil god who endorses adherents even though they make a point to talk about how personally Evil he is, there has to be a way to explore the positive or necessary roles of pain. There's definitely a story about grief, catharsis, and knowing-when-to-stop here.
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ZK granting spells to LN worshippers is one of the most interesting parts of his character to me.
I'm running Abomination Vaults and one of the PCs (barbarian) is a Kuthite who has just realized, after 4 levels, that now that he's had a bunch of friends to hang out with and be happy with... He's barely prayed to ZK at all, and he hasn't even noticed.
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I'll say this: I think Strength of Thousands, Book 4, threads the needle in regards to Mzali really well. Any more than that is spoilers obviously.
He definitely comes off as an incel to some degree. Which, given my personal favorite theory for Aroden's disappearance (it was just the latest and most severe in a series of Finding Outs for Aroden ****ing around and breaking the rules, because he broke the rules to a degree that the universe itself slapped him all the way down to wandering whisper who'll take millennia to even regain sapience if he isn't outright dead), makes Tar-Baphon the creepy stalker supervillain a walking warning + punishment for Aroden. Forever.Tar-Baphon is a megalomaniac who just cannot let go of his grudges and thinks that being a god of terror is a great endgame goal.I still believe that Tar-Baphon is in love with Aroden in the unhealthiest way.
It's kind of interesting that he and Geb basically have more in common than it seems at first glance. To a certain extent, they also share similarities with Razmir (he seems to be gearing up to go after Artokus Kirran directly because he feels he's been cheated of the Sun Orchid Elixer he believes he rightfully won).