Pathfinder 1E Golarion: I'm very impressed

[Treebore]

It isn't a bad book by any means, but its of noticibly worse binding compared to the excellent job they've done with their other two hard backs.

I'm glad to see I am not the only one to think the Golarian books binding seemed loose? Weak? and that the cover seemed noticeably thinner.

Yeah, I might be interested in a new printing thats updated. Hard to say though, since I don't even play Pathfinder.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I think Golarion is an impressive book. My group usually likes to play Forgotten Realms. This is one of the first times we felt someone put out a product on par with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book with the right balance of fluff and crunch. I'd certainly like a fully updated and compatible campaign setting as part of my book repertoire. I loved the old boxed sets and individual books about world bits. I hope Paizo does some of that as they build up momentum.

 

[Nikosandros]

I'm glad to see I am not the only one to think the Golarian books binding seemed loose? Weak? and that the cover seemed noticeably thinner.

Yes, the binding is definitely different, it's rather loose. I hope it isn't actually weaker.

Until know, I thought that there was something wrong just with my copy...

 

[JediSoth]

The setting is growing on me. Looks like I might need a sizeable shoehorn to stuff Ptolus into it, though, since the City by the Spire faces east and Golarian is mostly right-justfied (i.e. faces west).

Still, I will probably put all my Pathfinder campaigns in Golarion. I like Earth-analogue cultures.

 

[Desdichado]

Easy, there!

Oh, I'm easy already. Er... that's not what it sounds like.

Sounded like you weren't, though.

The setting is growing on me. Looks like I might need a sizeable shoehorn to stuff Ptolus into it, though, since the City by the Spire faces east and Golarian is mostly right-justfied (i.e. faces west).

East coast of Garund has tons of locations you could fit it in. In fact, I think it'd fit really easily in some of those locations.

Still, I will probably put all my Pathfinder campaigns in Golarion. I like Earth-analogue cultures.

Me too. It's a big part of why the Hyborian setting always worked so well. Fellow pulpster Lovecraft used to criticise Howard for making obvious earth-analogs, but he never really "got it" why that actually worked very well.

 

[Erik Mona]

Here's the situation.

Back when we were doing the Beta, we certainly did not have any plans to revisit the Campaign Setting book with a new edition. We had plenty of stock left, and while we knew we'd eventually have to do something, it seemed like that stock would last us a couple of years.

Well, it turns out this Pathfinder thing is more popular than we would have dare hoped back then, when we were really struggling to survive in our second major "transitional" period in as many years.

Fast forward to today, where we've churned through two print runs of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and are preparing the third. I thought maybe, just maybe, if all the cards fell our way, we'd have sold out that first print run by the end of December. Instead, it was gone before the book's formal release in August. We were happy with that (beyond happy, really) but we didn't really plan for it, and we didn't have any idea what the increased popularity of the system would mean for our other product lines.

Happily, it has meant increased interest in ALL the Pathfinder lines, but the place where it has had the largest impact is the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting. (It probably didn't hurt that the setting won two consecutive "Best Setting" ENnies, either.)

So book stores and game stores that have been having huge success with the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary have also stepped up their orders (and sales) of the Campaign Setting hardcover, and our supplies of the book are now dwindling to the point that I do not honestly expect them to last to the end of next month.

That means we either reprint a book with a few errors that drive us nuts and a lot of pages of rules jukes that don't work perfectly with the final Pathfinder rules and a dearth of "crunch" anyway because we didn't know what system we'd be supporting when we wrote it, or we go back and do a revised edition that fixes the errors, adds some cool new stuff, and makes it work seamlessly with what is now pretty much unquestionably the second most popular fantasy roleplaying game currently on the market.

So that's what we're in the process of figuring out how to do.

Back when our Customer Service team told you we had no plans to update the book they were speaking the absolute truth. We did not, at the time, have any plans to do this. We didn't even have plans to do this this last August, when we released the Core Rulebook. Only the increased depletion of our Campaign Setting print run has forced us to look at this more seriously, and that's only happened in the last five months.

Which is yet another reason why "that's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem" was my official catchphrase for 2009.

I'm still working on 2010's.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing

 

[Votan]

Back when our Customer Service team told you we had no plans to update the book they were speaking the absolute truth. We did not, at the time, have any plans to do this. We didn't even have plans to do this this last August, when we released the Core Rulebook. Only the increased depletion of our Campaign Setting print run has forced us to look at this more seriously, and that's only happened in the last five months.

Thank you for the helpful and candid explanation of what happened here. it makes total sense how this would happen and it really was out of anybody's control.

But, as you note, it is a good problem to have.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

Thanks for clarifying, Eric. As I said earlier, I'm a huge Paizo/Pathfinder fan and would buy the revised edition of the campaign setting without hesitation.

 

[dead]

Is there a basic outline map of the entire globe of Golarion in the campaign setting? (Like in the Greyhawk Gazetteer where there is a fold-out map of the Flanaess then down in the bottom corner there is a small outline of the entire globe of Oerth.)

 

[James Jacobs]

Is there a basic outline map of the entire globe of Golarion in the campaign setting? (Like in the Greyhawk Gazetteer where there is a fold-out map of the Flanaess then down in the bottom corner there is a small outline of the entire globe of Oerth.)

There is not.

But a world map like this is something I would LOVE to get into the 2nd edition of the book!