Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2E's African-inspired Sourcebook

Paizo has announced Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse for June 2021, a setting sourcebook which delves into an African-themed area of Golarion. At over 300 pages, the book also includes six new ancestries -- Anadi, Conrasu, Gnoll, Goloma, Grippli, and Shisk.

It will be followed by the Strength of Thousands adventure path, where you play students at the Magaambya magic academy in the Mwangi Expanse.

 

[James Jacobs]

Would love to hear from @James Jacobs on how Paizo will be handling this particular concern.

My expectation is Paizo will be using a combination of internal resources, freelancers, and cultural consultants. But the cultural mix of those folks? I hope they have plenty of folks well versed in Africa. I will also continue to remind myself that Mwangi is NOT Africa; even though it's very clearly inspired by, or an homage to Africa. (And more specifically, central Africa; since the desert areas of the north are covered by Thuvia and Osiria...)

We've handled it by hiring a lot of POC to write the book, and by making sure that we get more POC working on sensitivity reads and editorial passes. That was always a primary goal for this book, and making sure we got the right people for the job is part of why we're putting the book out next year instead of this year—we took extra time to make sure we did it right and got the right authors.

(We talked a bit about how the book came together on our PAX seminar a week or two ago, which I believe you can catch over on the YouTubes these days?)

 

[James Jacobs]

I think Legendary Games (or at least some of their staff) were involved in the conversion?
If you are looking for more PF1 content, I believe Legendary Games and Frog God Games are still in the business of that. Show the 3PPs some support to keep PF1 alive, if you're a fan of that system.
As for me, I am currently GMing and enjoying PF2 (along with 5e, OSE, & Swords and Wizardry). The rules systems are just tools for me to get the experience I want for each game, on a case-by-case basis.

Yup; we hired Legendary Games to do the first pass. We're deep in the second, internal dev pass for all of this now, and will likely be calling in more contractors in the future to help with the final edit/dev pass for the 5E stuff (we've got plenty of in-house 1E experts already).

 

[1988Sander31]

We've handled it by hiring a lot of POC to write the book, and by making sure that we get more POC working on sensitivity reads and editorial passes. That was always a primary goal for this book, and making sure we got the right people for the job is part of why we're putting the book out next year instead of this year—we took extra time to make sure we did it right and got the right authors.

(We talked a bit about how the book came together on our PAX seminar a week or two ago, which I believe you can catch over on the YouTubes these days?)

Great to here. Hope they as divers as other places In Golarion so there is some diversity with Asian and Arabian or Indian styl people mixed in the larger city scapes

 

[TheSword]

We can agree to disagree. You are a company whose job it is to provide a service to its customers, and that is to provide a game that WE want to play. And there wasn't a huge base crying for 2e, we were all content with 1e and it showed.

Honestly, the work wouldn't be that much. You're converting mechanics, you're not writing fluff. Writing the 1e stats to, say a Blood Boar, Precentor, or whatever shouldn't take much resources. Sure, you could turn around and say "Why don't you do it?" but my job is not a game designer. I have a family, and a job (and if it was a game developing job, I'd make a subsidary company whose job is to convert all your 2E products back to 1E, and I guarantee it'd sell good) and other things, because that would be your job to do and to provide for us. The customers.

If video game industries can do this, so can RPG industries. Look at FFXIV. Despite it being the latest MMO for Final Fantasy, their FFXI servers are still up and running and being maintained and even had an expansion of its own a couple years back I believe. Just make a small department whose job is to throw out 1e conversion PDFs to sell and booklets and now you have everyone who left PF because they preferred 1e with their wallets emptied for you.

At least convert the monsters for us. Least you could do to the 1e fanbase that felt utterly betrayed like what WotC did to us with the 3e to 4e switch.

Can you point to any successful dual system products? I recall some of the L5R stuff for d20 that also had conversions for the AEG system but other than that I’m not familiar with dual rule books. Products which have conversions I’ve seen such as Frog God usually print entirely different versions which is not the same thing.

I mean if that is the case why not produce Paizo products with 5e stats... and make far more money than they would printing for 1e... probably because it undermines their own product.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'd say give the calls for 1E stats a rest. Like it or not, Paizo has moved on.

 

[Fergurg]

We've handled it by hiring a lot of POC to write the book, and by making sure that we get more POC working on sensitivity reads and editorial passes. That was always a primary goal for this book, and making sure we got the right people for the job is part of why we're putting the book out next year instead of this year—we took extra time to make sure we did it right and got the right authors.

(We talked a bit about how the book came together on our PAX seminar a week or two ago, which I believe you can catch over on the YouTubes these days?)

I do not believe that melanin comes with inherent knowledge of historical Africa or more of a right to write about a fantasy version of it. What I want to know is: what research and knowledge do the authors bring to the table?

 

[Fergurg]

Can you point to any successful dual system products? I recall some of the L5R stuff for d20 that also had conversions for the AEG system but other than that I’m not familiar with dual rule books. Products which have conversions I’ve seen such as Frog God usually print entirely different versions which is not the same thing.

I mean if that is the case why not produce Paizo products with 5e stats... and make far more money than they would printing for 1e... probably because it undermines their own product.

I remember those L5R products. I also remember, in "The Hidden Emperor" that they were no longer doing it because the extra time and expense had no payoff.

 

[James Jacobs]

I do not believe that melanin comes with inherent knowledge of historical Africa or more of a right to write about a fantasy version of it. What I want to know is: what research and knowledge do the authors bring to the table?

Wow. I'm not going to "justify" any author's credentials to some random person on the internet. Regardless of who they are or what the project is. You only get to know that the authors are the right people for the job because we felt that they were the right people for the job, so we hired them to write the book. If that's not good enough for you, there's plenty of other RPG books out there to spend your money on.

 

[Fergurg]

Wow.

I noticed that is not an answer to my question.

 

[James Jacobs]

I noticed that is not an answer to my question.

Try again, after I adjusted my response once my frustration and anger at your post cooled down enough for me to see my keyboard again.