There were intersections into the Darklands within the module. The idea that there was all kind of adventure in the town added to the tapestry, as I like to call it, of the place.
The whole idea of the Darklands is actually one I am rather glad that Paizo preserved in Golarion.
The Underdark emerged first from Gygax's hand in
GDQ1-7. But the Underdark as a feature of Greyhawk didn't take on as a massive world spanning thing. It was still somewhat....localized, it always seemed to me,
It was the recreation of the Underdark in the Forgotten Realms where the idea crystallized into something unique, to the point where it began to overshadow the world above. Something started by Gygax seemed to become the plaything of Ed Greenwood -- until he lost it too. Then, little by little, all the designers and developers at TSR and later WotC lost control of the Underdark as well. It achieved a new definition apart from the control of D&D's designers.
The problem is, the whole Drow matriarchal society, the nature of Menzoberranzan and all the rest of that ...novel baggage... accumulated in sedimentary layers, until it began to obscure the singular
coolness that the original idea of the Underdark represented.
Which of course, bring us to Drizzt.
Now, I know that Drizz't has his fans. Bob Salvatore developed one of the strongest characters in all of "gaming fiction" with the Dark-elf Ranger. But he has his detractors as well. Love him or hate him, I don't think you can argue that the many novels of Drizz't served to force people into thinking about the Drow and the Underdark into a straitjacket -- that it could only be "this way" b
ecause that's the way the Underdark is.
Whenever you get a series of gaming fiction novels that so utterly dominates an idea like the Underdark, it necessarily restricts the GM from playing with new ideas; it interferes with building his or her own "vision" of what their Underdark is all about.
So that's what I like about the Darklands. It's a reboot on the Underdark concept and one which I hope Paizo develops moderately with a different flavor and feel. And I hope it's not just a return to a Greyhawk flavored version of the Underdark. There is room to make it something else, too, if that's what Paizo wants.
Something that is as quintessentially COOL an idea as the Underdark needs to give GMs some elbow room to reinterpret the core concept and take it in another direction, should they wish to do so. Otherwise, it just becomes a flavorless rehash; a place we have all been to before.
Not sure if Paizo will look at world-shaking events in the future to further build on that sense of tapestry, either via its Pathfinder Society adventures or its APs...
This is another issue with Golarion and one which Paizo and its fans will get a handle on over time.
One thing is clear: already, the sheer number of products available for a world barely three years old is becoming very daunting. That's a remarkable thing after only three years.
I do think, however, that the APs and modules is not where the "story" of the official world setting advances as such. After all, there is nothing that says those APs have yet occurred in a given GMs version of Golarion. These modules and APs are essentially theme park rides that have not necessarily been turned on in a given world setting. It's a maybe -- not a must.
The place where Golarion will develop as a world setting is not only through its various adventures and modules, imo, -- but I think primarily it will develop as a living world through its fiction. It is the Pathfinder novel line and those characters which will impart to Golarion a sense of the dynamic "now".
All sort of areas can be depicted in the various
Pathfinder Chronicles books, sure. Those books serve to detail areas, provide plot hooks and -- more than anything -- fill in the holes in Golarion's history.
However, it seems to me that the present, apart fom the actions of the PC heroes, will be written across the sky in the novels, not the adventures which have (yet) to occur in the game world.
