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In recent years it's been Paizo's policy to de-emphasize many of the more odious social elements that were established in Golarion's younger days. I understand and for the most part support the reasoning; many of Paizo's customers seek escapist fantasy and don't wish to be reminded traumas that they or their ancestors or kin may have experienced. Nevertheless...
I and most of my players seek a more cathartic style of play. We process our traumas and assorted modern angsts by facing truly visceral evils and an imperfect, flawed world, and stabbing them with a +3 sword. Would that I had the time to plan more of my own games, but the popularity of the Adventure Path line shows I'm not alone there. Therefore, I'm asking to see what sort of support there might be for Pathfinder Dark, or Pathfinder Classic if you will, an run of games with more mature themes, independent from the main line.
As others have mentioned, some of us want to free slaves, and to face drug dealers, bigots, imperialists. Why not a step further, with an adventure where the PCs are slaves and have to save themselves and their fellow downtrodden, rather than be rescued by others? Or morally murky adventures where one has to infiltrate vile criminal organizations in order to dismantle them from within? A long-running Galt adventure, where one had to balance the desire for true reform while staying in the favor of a mob that only seeks to perpetuate a cycle of violence and blame?
Pathfinder made its mark initially not only through a superior level of writing, but its darker, grittier world that held true, non-cartoonish evils, and felt like a realistic world, warts and all. I know some people here miss that feel, often at length. The original Dragon Age held the same sort of appeal for me, and I don't think I'm alone in my willingness to shell out my income for 'low fantasy' stories. Although one could hardly call it low fantasy, I always loved Exalted for its depiction of a fallen, Bronze Age world that needed fixing. It's a pity the ruleset is such a train-wreck (or three separate train-wrecks, by edition).
It should be clarified that I'm not asking about a line of evil adventures. Hell's Vengeance never held much appeal for me. Crushing realistic evils, not glamorizing them, that's the sweet spot for me. I understand that can be a fine line to avoid, given the sort of fanbase that might be attracted otherwise, but think that it would be worth it to try.
What do we think?
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Paizo's writers, staff, and editors have expressed their disinterest in writing about these topics.
What you're asking for is for Paizo to go out of their way to specifically hire, train, and retain people at all levels of their organization with the only requirement being that they enjoy writing about edgy stuff.
There isn't a big enough market for that, and honestly, would likely result in catastrophic organizational problems.
You can also use all those elements in your home games to your heart's content, so I don't know why you'd need Paizo to go out of their way.
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Paizo's writers, staff, and editors have expressed their disinterest in writing about these topics.
What you're asking for is for Paizo to go out of their way to specifically hire, train, and retain people at all levels of their organization with the only requirement being that they enjoy writing about edgy stuff.
There isn't a big enough market for that, and honestly, would likely result in catastrophic organizational problems.
You can also use all those elements in your home games to your heart's content, so I don't know why you'd need Paizo to go out of their way.
Did they express that? Alas. Maybe an independent creator browsing the forums will notice.
As I mentioned before, I have very little time to write my own campaigns, these days. Work and parenting barely leave time to show up for sessions, much less build them.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have little doubt that you'll be able to find 3rd party content that suits your needs!
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I understand what Wonky Chewbacca is saying even though I'm fine with Paizo's output (and I certainly don't want anything like The Hook Mountain Massacre.
Honestly, I think Pathfinder Infinite really is the way forward here, especially if they use content warnings responsibly. Certainly there's a niche and a demand for the sort of content Paizo no longer publishes.
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One of the basic issues here is that there's a significant chunk of the user-base for whom things are non-optional. Specifically, if you walk into a PFS game, then you have no recourse but to deal with everyone else who walks into that game and who is following the posted rules. PFS is apparently a notable chunk of the userbase, and I'm quite certain that it serves as an important entry point for new players. It's important for Paizo as a viable company that that place, at least, be kept welcoming, and that it also reflect the overall game (and the Golarion setting) pretty well. So it's not just that they have reason to avoid confronting those themes directly in Adventure Paths. They have reason to adjust the world such that edgelord trolls can't justify backgrounds (or "gear" selections) that are actively toxic to their fellow players as a way of driving others out of the fandom... and with the way they're running Golarion as a living world where the APs actually matter and have long-term effect, they also can't really publish an AP and then tell PFS to ignore it or something similar - Golarion either is that way or it's not.
Then there's the simple fact that Paizo throughput is limited in a number of ways, in a number of places. Not least of these is that it's limited in its overall playerbase. PF2 only has so many players, who only have so much willingness to playtest and so much money that they can be convinced to spend. There is real cost for Paizo in trying to publish anything that's not "main line", in that whatever they publish could have been more core, and thus advanced the world as a whole more fully. White Wolf managed to pull it off with Black Dog Games for a while, but they were larger, they were less coherent overall, and their chosen brand was already edgy in a way that having an even darker, edgier product line within the product line supported. From what I can see, Paizo started out with "let's push the boundaries" theme, which did indeed wind up with an edgier world, but it also wound up with a significantly more inclusive one. The "inclusive" part of the brand rapidly became the more important aspect in a number of ways, and we're now at a point overall in the world where "inclusive" and "edgy" are rather at odds in some ways. Admittedly, the fact that Cheliax, Geb, and Nidal exist at all suggests that it's an edgier world than many even now, but there's a lot of ways that leaning into that too hard could damage their current core selling points... and it's not like they're so flush with money that they can really afford to do that, even if they were inclined to.
So... what kind of solutions might there be?
- First and simplest, Paizo does offer some pretty robust 3rd party licensing. If there are enough people out there like you, who crave the dark and gritty heroism version of Golarion where you spend a lot of time doing terrible things to terrible people, and there's a third party publisher who's willing to support it, then that could get you what you need. I don't know how likely that is to happen soon, though, and the quality might not be as high, depending on who was writing the thing.
- You might be able to convert an older adventure path from PF1, if there's one out there that fits your needs thematically, but that your players have not read. It would involve a fair bit of conversion on your part, which would be a hassle, but it should at least be less hassle than writing the thing from scratch, and I understand that manual encounter balancing in PF2 is smoother, easier, and simpler than manual encounter balancing in basically any D&D-derived game previous. Admittedly, there's a decent number of ifs and caveats here.
- Paizo might produce... maybe one new adventure path that fits your needs. "Inclusive" and "dark and gritty" are not entirely opposed, after all. There is space to have an AP that is both. I wouldn't necessarily expect more than one, though, unless it was surprisingly popular. Fitting an entire AP into that particular space is going to be kind of tricky, and it'll wind up theming the AP pretty hard. We don't tend to have APs with strong theme repeats (at least, as far as I can tell). I'd think that the best thing you could do to encourage this outcome would be to provide more feedback. What exactly are you looking for? What kinds of encounters and narrative beats do you crave? How could an AP land solidly on those without trampling over the kinds of hot-buttons that Paizo might prefer to avoid? Admittedly, this might not actually be possible. If "murder rapists and slavers" is actually on your list specifically... well, I totally get where you're coming from, but we're unlikely to see it in an official Paizo product.
- Crowdsourcing. If you can accumulate a community of like-minded individuals, focused on building out a "Golarion Dark" variant setting, it's possible that you might eventually get an adventure path or two worth of playable material out of it, without having to put in more than a fraction of the effort yourself. Alternately/additionally, you might manage to attract the attention/interest of one or more other GMs who share your interest, but do have the time to write adventures for themselves, and might be willing to share their notes. This is a bit of a longshot, though, and it certainly won't be free. On the bright side, if you do go for this one, and it gets any real traction at all, it does make the "3PP" and "Paizo might make one" options a bit more likely, from demonstrating overall interest, if nothing else. Still... not cheap in initial startup effort. Also remember to budget for the effort necessary to keep things from descending into a hellhole of toxicity. It definitely seems like the sort of place that would require a fair bit of moderation to keep it from melting down, one way or another. I'd suggest that coming up with a robust set of forum rules is something that you ought to do before you start trying to attract interest.
That's about all I have, unfortunately. I don't think there are necessarily any really good, easy answers for the position you're in.
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Just a reminder : shock value is no great writing. It is rather lazy actually and can easily be disgusting to other people, even those you think you know well.
...but what he's asking for isn't shock value. He's asking for the opportunity to stab rapists and slavers in the face, because he and his playgroup find the experience of stabbing rapists and slavers in the face to be cathartic. He's also not particularly asking that this be inflicted on anyone else. He and his playgroup want it for themselves, and express a belief (not unreasonably) that there are others out there like them.
Let's try not to classify "murdering terrible people (because they're terrible)" as badwrongfun. I mean, if you can't feel good about murdering rapist slavers, who can you feel good about murdering? (...and if you can't feel good about murdering anyone, then why are we playing a game that has spells like Power Word Kill?)
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Good points, all, particularly SanityFaerie.
I do have great hopes for Pathfinder Infinite, as that swings into gear.
I've considered converting older PF1 titles, though I've been waiting for the selection of items and monsters to grow more robust and save me time in that respect (I suppose with the Grand Bazaar and 3 Bestiaries out it may be time to get cracking on Legacy of Fire).
While doing terminal things to terrible people is pleasing, I also love the opportunity for being faced with terrible situations with no obvious 'best' choice. I loved War for the Crown for its murkier situations and need to compromise in the face of situational realities. Kill the murderous spider baron, even if he's mostly a jerk under a nasty curse, and you'll probably have to kill his retainers in the process, who are just trying to cope in a messed-up situation that their loyalties won't let them out of? (Mind you, it was all the sweeter when the party decided to dump a bunch of money into a trio of Break Enchantment scrolls and risk life and limb playing interference while the invisible bard tried to get off a sufficient UMD check, but figuring out how to direly risk life or limb taking an unexpected third option is part of the 'lesser of two evils' scenario.)
I'll have to look into 3pp. I've always hesitated because Paizo's writing is, by and large, stellar, and they've spoiled me, but if their market demographics have shifted that is where their first priority needs to be. I still love much of what they're coming out with (any AP that goes to Mars or gives me tundra nomads on megafauna would be okay in my book regardless, really). The last time I glanced in the direction of 3pp was back in 3.0, and so much of that was rubbish. Still, that's been... never mind how many years. I'll do some research into that angle.
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If Paizo makes a book like The Book of Vile Darkness - Golarion edition, then I'd expect such an AP, yet find it unlikely outside of that. Yet even that would need the "shiny, happy" option for heroes, even as they stab the most rotten of villains. So there'd likely need to be a companion book of utmost good (or at least utmost anti-evil...perhaps the Inquisitor?)
There could be sidebars on how to sanitize a severe AP or ramp up the severity on a standard one. Skull & Shackles, IIRC, had advice for different flavors of piracy. I think (hazily) one of the 3.X APs (maybe in Dungeon?) had an evil option where the sidebars helped with reframing the story arcs to appeal to evil PCs.
Personally I don't think it'd be that hard to recast current APs in a darker light. Simply add "And he does X" or "They also run a slave ring/drug cartel/etc." and feature appropriate items and victims.
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Darker, grittier and "classic" PF can easily turn into shock value IMO. Even just so that you can show how your villains really are horrible beings worthy of your worst. Hence my warning.
It's a fair warning to keep in mind, to be sure. Hook Mountain Massacre was... excessive, no argument, there.
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I don’t want this, the devs don’t want to write this, and it wouldn’t be usable in Society play. I really don’t think this is gonna happen. As others have said, this sort of thing is why Infinite exists.
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Darker, grittier and "classic" PF can easily turn into shock value IMO. Even just so that you can show how your villains really are horrible beings worthy of your worst. Hence my warning.
Ah. Fair point. It is a potential pitfall of the subgenre. That's true.
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I don’t want this, the devs don’t want to write this, and it wouldn’t be usable in Society play. I really don’t think this is gonna happen. As others have said, this sort of thing is why Infinite exists.
Yes, it definitely wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea, but I thought there'd be no harm in asking.
Amusingly (to me), the absence of much support for the idea suggests to me... how to put this...?We've had a lot of people complaining about judging older historical periods by modern moral standards, and decrying the sanitization of the setting for a variety of claimed reasons. Since the only reason I can think of to portray evil is to overcome that evil, maybe I've stripped some of the ambiguity from my view of their claims.
(No surprise to most, I'm sure. Apologies, my persistent tinnitus keeps me from hearing higher pitches.)
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I don’t want this, the devs don’t want to write this, and it wouldn’t be usable in Society play. I really don’t think this is gonna happen. As others have said, this sort of thing is why Infinite exists.Yes, it definitely wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea, but I thought there'd be no harm in asking.
Amusingly (to me), the absence of much support for the idea suggests to me... how to put this...?
We've had a lot of people complaining about judging older historical periods by modern moral standards, and decrying the sanitization of the setting for a variety of claimed reasons. Since the only reason I can think of to portray evil is to overcome that evil, maybe I've stripped some of the ambiguity from my view of their claims.
(No surprise to most, I'm sure. Apologies, my persistent tinnitus keeps me from hearing higher pitches.)
Or, alternately, there's been yet another thread on roughly the same subject developing in parallel to mine, that's been keeping people busy. That's what I get for being such a slow typist.
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I'll have to look into 3pp. I've always hesitated because Paizo's writing is, by and large, stellar, and they've spoiled me, but if their market demographics have shifted that is where their first priority needs to be. I still love much of what they're coming out with (any AP that goes to Mars or gives me tundra nomads on megafauna would be okay in my book regardless, really).
In that case, why not just add the sorts of story beats that you want into official Adventure Paths? APs are built to be modded, it's easier than writing your own, and you still get to enjoy Paizo's writing.
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Also: A lot of 3PP content is made by Paizo contributors.
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Also: A lot of 3PP content is made by Paizo contributors.
Do you know of a good/easy way to filter the 3PP content made by Paizo contributors (or made in part by Paizo contributors) from that which is not? Or is it just a matter of knowing who the various Paizo contributors are by name? Because I gotta tell you, I am terrible with names.
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Yes it is a good idea for people to explore such themes. I think you'd find your market is fractured, and you'd be screamed at by the procensorship elements. But main stream movies are doing it these days so it must be viable.
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Yes it is a good idea for people to explore such themes. I think you'd find your market is fractured, and you'd be screamed at by the procensorship elements. But main stream movies are doing it these days so it must be viable.
Calling what we’re talking about “censorship” is laughable.
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Mainstream movies are hardly a role model, and that strikes me as a very thinly thought-out set of reasonings...
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I'm working on Dance Halls of Golarion but I'm not sure if that's edgyxxxx enuff.
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PATHFINDER DARK: FOR WHEN THERE'S ALREADY A WHOLE SETTING, BUT YOU ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEE
(I hope people remember monster truck commercials)
Contributor
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Also: A lot of 3PP content is made by Paizo contributors.Do you know of a good/easy way to filter the 3PP content made by Paizo contributors (or made in part by Paizo contributors) from that which is not? Or is it just a matter of knowing who the various Paizo contributors are by name? Because I gotta tell you, I am terrible with names.
At the moment on Pathfinder Infinite, the Infinite Masters products are basically products made by folks who have already freelanced for Paizo. So that is one easy filter, right there.
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PATHFINDER DARK: FOR WHEN THERE'S ALREADY A WHOLE SETTING, BUT YOU ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEE
(I hope people remember monster truck commercials)
Well, if I can advertise it like that, I might drop the whole 'job' thing to pursue writing modules full time.
Also: A lot of 3PP content is made by Paizo contributors.
I did not know that. I haven't touched 3pp since the old Book of Feats slagged my old 3.0 Epic Level Handbook game to glass (although that might be the fate inherent to all ELH games), but if it's more of an Ink Monkeys thing, I could well be described as down.
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Just a reminder : shock value is no great writing. It is rather lazy actually and can easily be disgusting to other people, even those you think you know well.
If that's the kind of stuff you're looking for, it's hardly shocking. And like people keep telling me: just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's bad.
Like I learned back in highschool, some people play Tau, some people play Dark Eldar. There's enough room on the board for both of us.
As for a darker take on pathfinder, I'd definitely check it out if something was made. Nidal is my kind of place. There's a market, if they're ever in the mood to make it.
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Just a reminder : shock value is no great writing. It is rather lazy actually and can easily be disgusting to other people, even those you think you know well.If that's the kind of stuff you're looking for, it's hardly shocking. And like people keep telling me: just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's bad.
Like I learned back in highschool, some people play Tau, some people play Dark Eldar. There's enough room on the board for both of us.
As for a darker take on pathfinder, I'd definitely check it out if something was made. Nidal is my kind of place. There's a market, if they're ever in the mood to make it.
W40K is an entire setting where being edgy is the main theme - even the Tau (usually considered the least edgy faction) are warmongering expansionists with a creepy orwellian/communist vibe who enforce a rigid caste system and use mind control helmets to enslave an entire species (the vespids).
W40k is a terrible example in this case - Pathfinder is not part of the Grimdark genre - with 40k Grimdark is what you signed up for, with Pathfinder Grimdark is only a thing that exists in small doses and isn't something you implicitly agree to be subjected to just by engaging with the game.
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Generally splitting a game into two different flavours causes a lot of problems - you potentially split the playerbase, in this case you would need to create a second set of guidelines/etc for the flavour (as it's edgier content wouldn't fit with existing guidelines), would have to find writers who want to write this stuff, and you would probably need some kind of tagging system in places like AoN to separate this stuff out.
Its a good idea for independent/pathfinder infinite type stuff, not great for the company itself.
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Whether it's good for the company or not, I'll leave to the company to decide. They know their capacity better than us.
I just think there's enough of us that'd enjoy it that they might want to consider it.
You miss the point. It's also about not forcing people to read or play Grimdark PF if they do not want.
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I didn't even know what Pathfinder Infinite was or that existed until this post. Now that I know it's there, they could (if the market was demanding enough) create a "PG+" or whatever section that has more... explicitly gritty items for sale. I just don't see mainline Paizo publishing anything like that. I won't throw the W word around, because it doesn't fit, but they have softened in what they do and don't enjoy writing about, and I can't fault them for that. After all, you write about heavy stuff a lot, it gets to you. BUT THIS IS WHAT THE FREE MARKET IS GOOD FOR, SO 3PP DO YO THANG! Also, have you tried the pf2 homebrew subreddit? They've got some... intense stuff on there from time to time. The mods aren't heavy handed with what they allow on there, so it's pretty wild west at times.
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I'm on the edgy bandwagon here, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Hook Mountain Massacre back in the day and I wish for more shock value in my adventures.
People point towards PF Infinite as the potential outlet for this, but can it really work? To my understanding, PF Infinite content must still be rated PG-13 and it has the following content guidelines:
"Neither your Work nor any promotional material, including blog posts or press releases, may contain racist, homophobic, discriminatory, or other repugnant views; overt political agendas or views; depictions or descriptions of criminal violence against children; rape or other acts of criminal perversion; or other obscene material"
What I don't like about this is that it means these things aren't even allowed to be put in the context where they are clearly evil; they simply cannot be mentioned. And the vagueness of "repugnant views", "criminal perversion", or "obscene" makes it easy to retroactively ban content with the ebb and flow of the zeitgeist.
And also let's not forget that Paizo gets 50% of sales from PF Infinite; so the moment someone publishes a remake of "Scourge of the Slavelords", there will be a twitter wave of "Paizo still indirectly profits from things it promised to stop publishing" and the ban list will swiftly expand in response.
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People point towards PF Infinite as the potential outlet for this, but can it really work? To my understanding, PF Infinite content must still be rated PG-13 and it has the following content guidelines:
In that case, if they don’t even want people tangentially associated with them to publish these themes, I don’t really think it likely that they will do so themselves.
3pp seems to be the way to go, then, but perhaps this energy could be spent pushing open the parameters of PI. I’m ambivalent myself; I have zero interest in this content but it doesn’t bother me to read it. Given that I opt in and out of subs all the time; I would almost certainly skip an edgy AP. Just no interest in paying money for it, unless the hook (like evil AP) is compelling.
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I feel like content that tries to force dark edginess onto itself often misses the mark and becomes grotesque and cartoonish. Maybe it's just me. But some of the old pathfinder lore about certain topics feels like it goes far enough into the edginess of the horrors it is trying to portray that I stop thinking I'm supposed to both enjoy reading it and take it seriously. Evil things become garish jokes either mocking the monsters' absurd cruelty or their victims' absurd suffering, or the reader's discomfort. It's not all of the old pathfinder lore, lots of the old stuff does appeal to me and there are plenty of monsters and characters that fascinate and enthrall me, I just feel like the older style of dark-and-edgy fantasy writing went far enough to come out the other side of horror into comedy. Only without being intentional about who is standing at the end of the punchline.