What do you want from a Lost Omens: The High Seas?

[PossibleCabbage]

The High Seas are not just "the open ocean and what's beneath" it's also "literally every relatively isolated island" which is sort of the broadest fantasy palette you can paint with. Like if you need to posit the existence of something somewhere on Golarion "put it on a remote island" is just about the most frictionless way to fit in *anything*.

[keftiu]

Lost Omens books have always been fairly light on mechanics, so I would gently caution folks hoping for ship combat to lower those expectations.

Undersea stuff is fun! Do we have anything like Sahuagin in the post-OGL setting?

[Veltharis]

keftiu wrote:

Lost Omens books have always been fairly light on mechanics, so I would gently caution folks hoping for ship combat to lower those expectations.

Undersea stuff is fun! Do we have anything like Sahuagin in the post-OGL setting?

I believe they've been renamed to Sedacthy.

[Zoken44]

Sailing ships and vessels from various cultures throughout Golarion (more than just European age of discovery style galleons)

[zimmerwald1915]

Zoken44 wrote:

(more than just European age of discovery style galleons)

Good news—nobody actually has these! The GM Core "sailing ship" is far too short and requires far too small a crew to be such a ship. And even if such a ship existed, it would be badly outmoded and rapidly driven from the seas by models appearing in Battlecry! (ironclad, icebreaker, combat catamaran) and the Tian Xia World Guide.

[PossibleCabbage]

The development of especially large, primarily wooden ships intended for combat on Golarion was probably impeded by the presence of both gunpowder and wizards, but one wonders what kind of ships that major economic powers use to transport large amounts of trade goods, since "I'm going to haul grain, textiles, and oil across the ocean" is something that benefits greatly from economies of scale but you still need to survive all the depredations of pirates and various magical hazards.

[CorvusMask]

Nice to have high seas book even if I just found it now because I have had trouble browsing site ever since of redesign :'D (well that and general depression meaning I've been very withdrawn)

[zimmerwald1915]

In 1E, there were galleys civilian and military, and some kind of brig (a so-called "sailing ship," but one bigger and with more sail and crew than the GM Core "sailing ship"), but also no galleons.

[Sarcedor]

I'm interested to know if anything has changed in the Mordant Spire since Godsrain with Acavna and all. I'd like to see enough aquatic content in the book because an AP build arround the Alghollthu would be interesting since i don't think they've had a significant role in 2e.

[Perpdepog]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

The High Seas are not just "the open ocean and what's beneath" it's also "literally every relatively isolated island" which is sort of the broadest fantasy palette you can paint with. Like if you need to posit the existence of something somewhere on Golarion "put it on a remote island" is just about the most frictionless way to fit in *anything*.

Yep; this is why Roll for Combat made their default setting, The Indigo Isles, well, isles. You can always drop another island into the chain of an archipelago and keep the adventure going.

keftiu wrote:

Lost Omens books have always been fairly light on mechanics, so I would gently caution folks hoping for ship combat to lower those expectations.

Agreed, though I could see them attempting a port of SF2E's cinematic ship combat rules over for naval combat; that could be pretty neat.

Also put me in the camp of hoping for more vessels. I really like reading vehicles for some reason. Don't think we've ever used a single one in a game, I just like reading them.

[vyshan]

I wonder what regions will get details. Obviously the shackles are one and I imagine Minata also will be there. would be interested in seeing some stuff about Arcadia and the Linorm kingdoms and Vudra.

[TheTownsend]

vyshan wrote:

I wonder what regions will get details. Obviously the shackles are one and I imagine Minata also will be there. would be interested in seeing some stuff about Arcadia and the Linorm kingdoms and Vudra.

Sorry to dissapoint, but "High Seas" is not broadly the oceanic regions of Golarion, but a specific meta-region of the Inner Sea Region. You can find a more bare-bones summary in World Guide, which descibes Hermea, Mediogatli Island, The Shackles, and the Mordant Spire, along with Azlanti Ruins, the Eye of Abendego, and various "Undersea Realms" all in and around the Inner Sea.

Still, a genuine question which will get the most detailed writeups in a full-book expansion, and how much detail will be put into relevant nearby areas like the Ironbound.

[PossibleCabbage]

In the broadest sense the "High Seas" meta-region should be the area you access by "sailing outwards" from the Inner Sea so I would expect the book to focus entirely on the Arcadian and perhaps a bit of the Obari ocean. We're not likely to talk about any of the large land masses on the other side, but we might talk about some of the associated islands.

[FallenDabus]

Given that Ruins of Azlant and Shades of Blood are both things, I would hope Talmandor's Bounty, the Azlant islands, and the Aracdian Wake get a good chunk of this book.

[TheTownsend]

As time goes on, I'm increasingly curious about the writeup on post-AoA and post-WoI Hermea. It was pretty pointedly left out of the High Seas descriptions in Player Core and GM Core to not put a cannon ending on the AP right away, and War of Immortals only gives a brief update, namely that

A) The Godsrain messed with Mengkare's stuff to spontaneously generate what's probably one of the largest Dragonblood minorities of any nation in the world, in a population that probably had a fair degree of human chauvinism beforehand, given it was effectively one big eugenics program, and

B)

Age of Ashes Spoiler:

Established that the official story is that Mengkare got dragged off by Otilazian authorities, which feels like it's deliberately attempting to leave narrative room for either option at the end of the AP: either your AoA party redeemed Mengkare, and this was him willingly facing the concequences of his actions; or you killed him and this was the story you sold the populace on, which is hilarious.
"Noble adventurers, what has become of our great leader Mengkare?"
"He… Got arrested."
"…Arrested?"
"That's right. Nobody would say why but he just got dragged off."
"…By whom?"
"…Dragon Cops?"
"…"
"…"
"Draconic Emissaries of Otilaz, dragon god of death and justice?"
"Yeah, those are the ones. They definitely mentioned Oat and Less."
"Otilaz."
"That's what I said."

[Dire Mosasaur]

Sea monsters! Big ones :)