Pathfinder 1E What's after Golarion? (and what's the future of Pathfinder?)

The entire point of Golarion, and to a lesser extent Pathfinder as a whole, is so that they don't have to do this for a very, very long time.

They've told some good stories in the Inner Sea region, but it's only a tiny fraction of the stories there. When you add in other locations on Golarion, the solar system, and the planes... they've got enough to keep going for a long, long time.

And, for each AP, there'll be some companion products for the areas and concepts it touches on. For example, we'll be getting our first in-depth look at Numeria around GenCon next year because that's where the winter 2014 AP is set. But there hasn't been an AP set in Isger or Galt or Rahadoum or a dozen other countries, so only a handful of those have books about them.

The real question is why they'd risk splitting their playerbase by releasing a new setting.

Jan van Leyden said:

This leads me to the question of how Golarion is handled: is there some sort of ongoing history or is it a static world? Do the many APs leave their mark on the world?

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Basically static. The APs don't leave a mark unless you run them and decide they do for the purpose of your campaigns.

Which makes sense. Otherwise, you'd have APs conflicting with the setting ("The queen is acting strangely." "You mean the one the setting books say got killed by a party of adventurers last year?").

@GreyLord is right that Shattered Star assumes you've run some earlier ones (mostly Rise of the Runelords). But the setting as a whole doesn't assume any of those are done already.

Cheers!
Kinak

Nah. The Inner Sea region is just the continent of Avistan (Europe) and northern Garund (Africa). They still have the rest of Garund, Casmaron (central Asia), Tian Xia (east Asia), Sarusan (Australia) and Arcadia (the Americas) to map out.

TwoSix said:

Nah. The Inner Sea region is just the continent of Avistan (Europe) and northern Garund (Africa). They still have the rest of Garund, Casmaron (central Asia), Tian Xia (east Asia), Sarusan (Australia) and Arcadia (the Americas) to map out.

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I hear that, but as I said in the OP, the further you get from "Europe," the more the law of dimishing returns sets in.

Don't get me wrong - I like non-European settings and hope to see Paizo detail the world further - but at some point you've got to wonder how many people are going to set campaigns in "fantasy Indonesia." Not many, I imagine.

That said, from the responses I can see that there's a lot still to explore, even within the Inner Seas Region, and I don't expect Paizo to scrap Golarion any time soon.

But what about the other question - any speculations as to the direction of Pathfinder as a whole?

Mercurius said:

But what about the other question - any speculations as to the direction of Pathfinder as a whole?

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Personally, I think Mythic Adventures is a good preview as to what kinds of mechanics that they might be looking for in Pathfinder 2.0. And the advanced class guide just could be a preview of how they want to update certain problematic classes, like Brawler for Monk and Investigator and Slayer for Rogue.

Mercurius said:

But what about the other question - any speculations as to the direction of Pathfinder as a whole?

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This one's a bit more open to question, but I'd be surprised to see Pathfinder 2 anytime soon.

Personally, I wouldn't mind it, but I think they're going in a good direction for now. The last several hardcover books (Advanced Race Guide, Ultimate Campaign, Mythic Adventures, Bestiary 4, and the upcoming Advanced Class Guide) have a strong thread of "here's this sweet niche product, use it if you want."

We're used to that signaling the end of an edition, because of D&D's history.

It's possible Pathfinder will be the same, but I don't actually expect it will because of the AP model. Paizo doesn't typically throw hardcovers out there anymore than they toss out setting books. A few are just random neat things, but most exist to support the Adventure Paths.

Mythic Adventures came out at GenCon because Wrath of the Righteous (an Adventure Path they didn't feel they could do justice with the existing rules) came out at GenCon. Similarly, Ultimate Combat introduced the samurai and ninja to support Jade Regent. Newer APs draw off a variety Bestiaries to keep things fresh. Things like that.

Creatively, this means a lot of room for niche products. Financially, people that might not be excited about Mythic Adventures might grab it because they are excited about Wrath of the Righteous. And as long as they stick to the current model and people keep buying APs, the rest of the line will follow along nicely.

Cheers!
Kinak

Mercurius said:

But what about the other question - any speculations as to the direction of Pathfinder as a whole?

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No idea. They've thrown me for a loop time and time again.
I was not expecting the Advanced Class Guide and I'm actually not that thrilled by the book. 2014 seems like a dead year me as I don't need the Strategy Guide or Inner Sea Gods. I don't fault them for the latter two books as they certainly have an audience, but I'm not included Paizo fan as I am.

I keep expecting a reprint of the Core Rules to take advantage of the graphical and format changes of the line.
This would include things like adding archetypes to the core book, making the layout prettier, making the book easier to search, etc. But likely keeping as much of the text and art as possible to keep costs down. This would be the place for any needed rule tweaks and revisions (small ones only, mostly clarifications).

Normally the APs are the place to look for future books. Ultimate Combat happened so they could have the SE-Asian classes for Jade Regent and Mythic Adventures happened for Wrath of the Righteous.
But I don't see much Numeria/Iron Gods support in Advanced Class Guide. But 2014 might be an off year in reaction to 5e, releasing a book for "new" players to keep people coming to Pathfinder as an option ahead of 5e's launch, and a book aimed at experienced players who don't want a fresh simple system but like the rules heavy crunch.
Where they go in 2015 is really up in the air...

We've got a LOT of room left in just the Inner Sea region to keep us busy for years and years to come. Heck... we've gotten well over a year out of one region in the setting—Varisia—and even that only scraped the surface of what we can do with that one realm.

I'm not worried about running out of stuff to expand upon in Golarion anytime soon.

And I wouldn't call our 2014 schedule an off year at all... We're releasing more in 2014 than we ever have before!

Thanks James last product I bought was Ultimate Campaign. Finding it hard to play 3.x games these days though- customer since 2002 and ye olde Dragon/Dungeon.

James Jacobs said:

We've got a LOT of room left in just the Inner Sea region to keep us busy for years and years to come. Heck... we've gotten well over a year out of one region in the setting—Varisia—and even that only scraped the surface of what we can do with that one realm.

I'm not worried about running out of stuff to expand upon in Golarion anytime soon.

And I wouldn't call our 2014 schedule an off year at all... We're releasing more in 2014 than we ever have before!

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Thanks for chiming in!

Now that you mention it...

What all is planned for 2014 that we DON'T know about yet...

We've got PLENTY planned for 2014. We haven't said much at all about what's going on in the second half of the year at all yet, in fact.

We haven't announced them yet though... but stay tuned!