What's Paizo's most recent Darklands material?

[Douglas Muir 406]

PF1 had _Into the Darklands_ (2008) and then _Darklands Revisited_ (2015). Has there been anything since then?

I see from this thread here that the OGL-ORC transition is going to result in a bunch of changes, since a lot of the Darklands stuff was OGL. That discussion was at Paizocon back in May of this year. So, there probably hasn't been time for any ORC stuff.

But is there any pre-ORC 2E Darklands stuff? Splatbooks, a module, PFS scenarios, anything?

Doug M.

[Perpdepog]

I'd advise checking out Sky King's Tomb, a dwarf-focused Adventure Path product. It's not expressly Darklands, but it does cover some stuff in Darklands-centric articles in the back.

You might also check out the Lost Omens book Highhelm, a sort of companion book that goes into dwarven culture, mostly around the titular settlement.

[Calliope5431]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

PF1 had _Into the Darklands_ (2008) and then _Darklands Revisited_ (2015). Has there been anything since then?

I see from this thread here that the OGL-ORC transition is going to result in a bunch of changes, since a lot of the Darklands stuff was OGL. That discussion was at Paizocon back in May of this year. So, there probably hasn't been time for any ORC stuff.

But is there any pre-ORC 2E Darklands stuff? Splatbooks, a module, PFS scenarios, anything?

Doug M.

Well, there are a few modules I might suggest...

Ironfang Invasion:

Volume 4 of Ironfang Invasion (2017), "Siege of Stone", has a lot of adventuring in the upper reaches of the Darklands

Age of Ashes:

Volume 4 of Age of Ashes (2019), "Fires of the Haunted City", takes place in a dead dwarven settlement in the Darklands. You get there via elfgate.

Extinction Curse:

An entire module of Extinction Curse, "Lord of the Black Sands", takes place in the Darklands, in the Vault of the Black Desert (also mentioned in Mythic Realms, for the record)

[Ectar]

Perpdepog wrote:

I'd advise checking out Sky King's Tomb, a dwarf-focused Adventure Path product. It's not expressly Darklands, but it does cover some stuff in Darklands-centric articles in the back.

You might also check out the Lost Omens book Highhelm, a sort of companion book that goes into dwarven culture, mostly around the titular settlement.

In particular, the third book of Sky King's Tomb, Heavy is the Crown, has a backmatter article called "Return to the Darklands". I haven't personally read it, but James Jacobs mentioned it during the most recent Paizoconline as being the first place they were able to give a kind of primer about the OGL->ORC changes regarding the Darklands.

And here's the VOD of said panel if you haven't seen it, yourself:
Into the Darklands

edited to add speculation: Several Hyringar (formerly duergar) are statted in Book 2 of Sky King's Tomb: Cult of the Cave Worm. There may or may not be something there.

[James Jacobs]

We haven't really done a significant update to the Darklands since the "Into the Darklands" book was published many years ago—a book that itself predates the Pathfinder RPG itself and was written as a 3.5 OGL product. It's well past time for us to return to the Darklands and update things, I think, but the time hasn't been right to do so.

That time ambushed us when the whole OGL situation happened earlier this year, as a significant portion of the Darklands relies on 3.5, pre-Pathfinder RPG lore (as one would expect from a product written before the Pathfinder RPG existed). We had to step in and do an update, but putting a whole Darklands book out was not an option.

That's the main reason I wrote the "Return to the Darklands" article for the third volume of Sky King's Tomb—it's a quick and brief update to the state of the Darklands and will hopefully serve as the starting point for us to do something more expansive with the Darklands in the future—no such products are on the schedule yet though.

So in the meantime, you can expect us to continue doing small steps to continue to explore the Darklands here and there in the context of adventures and Adventure Paths.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Just went back and looked at _Into The Darklands_ again, for the first time in years.

It actually holds up pretty well! Putting aside the OGL stuff and the slightly edgier 3.5 ambience, the ideas are good and the writing is very solid. And most of the content still works just fine. Dividing the Darklands into three big regions was a good idea in 2008, and still is. The majority of the locations were cool, and still are.

There are a bunch of different ways you could slice this -- splatbooks on particular locations, or races, or whatever. But most of this content looks still relevant and usable.

Doug M.

[James Jacobs]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Just went back and looked at _Into The Darklands_ again, for the first time in years.

It actually holds up pretty well! Putting aside the OGL stuff and the slightly edgier 3.5 ambience, the ideas are good and the writing is very solid. And most of the content still works just fine. Dividing the Darklands into three big regions was a good idea in 2008, and still is. The majority of the locations were cool, and still are.

There are a bunch of different ways you could slice this -- splatbooks on particular locations, or races, or whatever. But most of this content looks still relevant and usable.

Doug M.

Thanks! While Into the Darklands was written for 3.5, we knew at the time that we'd be moving to the Pathfinder RPG so a big part of that book was meant to be "edition neutral" so it's good to hear it holds up. I'm pretty proud of the work Greg and I did for it, and to be clear, my goal updating to 2nd edition is to retain as MUCH of that content as possible. But since so much of it is based on 3.5 monsters (moreso than most other locations in the setting, as a side effect of the long tradition that this environment has in D&D—longer than the Forgotten Realms, all the way back to the start even before AD&D came out), it needs some creature swap outs.

And I can't take full credit for dividing the Darklands into 3 regions—got inspired to do that from H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Mound," which he ghost wrote for Zealia Bishop. (In fact, a LOT of the Darklands, and the Underdark before it, is inspired by Lovecraft's stories between this one and the underworld of the Dreamlands, what with the game having mind flayers and ghasts.)

[BookBird]

Would adore to one day see some "big Darklands book" in the Lost Omens line, especially with Sekmin taking over the role Drow held previously. Understand it's not on the horizon though. Perhaps we'll get some looks on it from other products, maybe some of those "haunted Clockworks" in Tian Xia.