| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It could be cute it Irrisen has a head start on film and puts out all sorts of weird fantasy and horror flicks.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It could be cute it Irrisen has a head start on film and puts out all sorts of weird fantasy and horror flicks.That could make a lot of sense, considering the whole ** spoiler omitted ** thing! Imagine if, like, Nosferatu and Metropolis were EVEN MORE influential on film than in our world!
Not to mention that any set you could ever imagine needing has already been built for real over in Ustalav :p
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm gonna assume keeping the countries and major cities basically all still recognizable.
Movies in Golarion face a very unusual manner of development, since film is created well after the existence of illusions. Can you capture an illusion on camera? I'm going to say probably. You certainly can't tell something is an illusion just by checking a reflection, putting on or removing glasses, or seeing if a mindless zombie wants to bite it. Most importantly, Starfinder has special cameras capable of flagging illusions as level 9 items, so it's clearly not an easy task.
Illusions are comparable to CGI, but with much faster turnaround time while also being visible to the actors, at the cost of requiring trained casters to provide the illusion, possibly for each take. Easy access to illusionists is going to be a big part of forming a Hollywood equivalent, since anywhere lacking that is going to be putting out much less flashy movies. Of the various mage schools, Taldor's Kitharodian Academy stands out. It's already focused on training bards, and being able to have your illusion-casters act when out of spells, as well as act through illusory creatures, provides some advantages over relying on wizards. That's not the only bardic school around- the Lyceum of Kaer-Maga is another, for example, but it's the most notable in the Inner Sea Region.
On a meta-level, it's also a good way to actually do something with Taldor in a modern setting.
Other notable locations for the film industry- as noted, Irrisen probably has a strong tradition for movies given the head-start on film. The climate means it's probably not becoming Hollywood, but at the same time, it'd be a very reliable place to shoot winter movies. The setting's other major bastion of illusion magic is the shadow magic of Nidal. There's probably a lot of dark Kuthite proselytizing material, internal propaganda, and Kuthite art that gets made there. I would expect them to use entirely different processes, though, creating things like magical shadow-projectors that operate by removing light.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've long thought that Rahadoum, Thuvia and Osirion collaborating to build a railway along the Northern Garundi coastline would be an interesting idea, as goods pass from Absalom to Totra, then onward to Aspenthar to Merab and then to Manaket. It also gives the chance to expand Rahadoum's Jistkan heritage - there are a lot of constructs buried under the sands to inspire a magical locomotive. Combine that with Thuvia's alchemical interests, and Osiriani backers looking for a return on investments, and that's a cool sandbox to flesh out. You can then have the train navigating from oasis to oasis as it passes into Thuvia where the Water Lords and local tribes have either decided to allow the trains to refuel and water at their oases (for a modest fee) or try their luck raiding them, with adventurers hired to guard the cargoes.
Meanwhile, Cheliax really strikes me as zeppelin territory, not sure why... :P
Meanwhile, Cheliax really strikes me as zeppelin territory, not sure why... :PBecause airships are bad and unfit for almost any purpose that isn't station-keeping?
Perhaps, but they're very dramatic :P
So.... that was a long-winded intro to asking:
In G2K (Golarion 2000), where would the equivalent of Hollywood end up, the center of the film industry? Oppara, maybe? Absalom? Somewhere in Varisia or Arcadia? Something else? Would it end up kinda like the US structure wherein movies are more Hollywood and TV is more NYC but neither of those are anywhere near monolithically true? What about a more global view (irl tehre's Bollywood, Nollywood, etc.) ~ what other centers of the film industry might exist?
How about Osirion? Egypt has a pretty big movie industry and still makes the majority of Arabic-language films. I feel like Osirion is less "fantasy ancient Egypt" and more akin to an alternate version of the modern country anyway, since local people ousted leaders of external origin in the past century and there is common knowledge of both its not!Muslim history and its antique kingdoms. The main twist of course being that a sort of pharaonic-revivalist movement takes the place of Egypt's Arab nationalism, kind of paralleling the neo-classical attitudes of the Renaissance.
There are some parts of the setting that feel more at home in the 20th or 21st century than the middle ages that people tend to associate these kinds of fantasy settings with--which is not a bad thing, I should note, as the creators have admitted to pulling on influences from all time periods. Rahadoum with its secularism comes to mind first, but so do Ustalav's Palatinates, Druma, magocratic Nex, and Vidrian (which has been likened to postcolonial South Africa). A 2000s spin on Razmiran might be fun, making it a modern-style cult of personality rather than a literal theocracy. And an industrialized version of Geb would be as fascinating as it is terrifying...
EDIT: I'd add Bachuan and (to a lesser extent) Goka as places that had modern vibes in the Tian Xia World Guide Also, I can't remember where, but at some point I made the argument that the best IRL analogue to Alkenstar might be small Gulf petrostates like Kuwait or Qatar with oil swapped for guns. Not that I think that was intentional by the writers (it's already the Wild West in northeast Africa) but I consider it a handy frame of reference.