Pathfinder 2E Is it time for a new Pathfinder Setting?

[zztong]

Golarion's strength is that it provides a spot for you to put whatever cool idea you think up. Its weakness (at least for me) is that it does not have a strong inherent theme that inspires me to come up with something for the setting the way e.g. Eberron does.

I agree completely. I run as part of a shared game set in Golarion. I had to make my own continent to get a consistent theme. I couldn't "build" next to much of the Paizo material.

 

[Parmandur]

That may be, but personally I am not interested in it. a few other posters on this thread have commented that they haven't switch to PF2 because of Golarion. I just imagine there is some market for PF2 in another setting. It may not be feasible for Paizo, but I thought it was interesting to ask. Thank you for your response.

PF1E was generic in Setting, with Golarion stuff being optional in books (similar to 3E and Greyhawk/FR but with one single Setting).

Paizo seems to see the current market for PF2E as a ruleset and Golarion as a Setting being identical, hence why they tied the Setting more firmly into the rulebooks. That may be an artificial limit they've placed in themselves, but 9ther than TSR and WotC, historically RPG companies have not tended to support multiple Settings per ruleset in great depth.

 

[Parmandur]

There team is significantly larger than the D&D team at WotC, so it doesn't seem like it would be impossible.

Looking at the credits for the past few D&D books, that might not be the case anymore.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm hand crafting it into Roll20 as an exercise in trying to learn the system and challenge myself. Looks like a good one though I don't know when I'd realistically get a chance to run it.
That's me. Just doing a bunch of unnecessary prep. Haha

Theoretical prep is a legitimate subhobby.

 

[Parmandur]

FR is significantly more... I guess "coherent" is as good a word as any. Forgotten Realms has a core region that's pretty much "standard D&D", basically the north-west corner of Faerûn (the Vast, Cormyr, Sembia, the Dalelands, the Moonsea, the Dragon Coast, and the Sword Coast (previously known as the Western Heartlands and the Savage North)). Beyond that, you have some outlying regions that do different things, like Mulhorand. But each country in Golarion is basically its own little sub-genre — gothic horror in Ustalav, vikings in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, wild eternal revolution in Galt, and so on. That's pretty different from the Forgotten Realms.

I don't think Golarion is Paizo's equivalent of the Forgotten Realms. It's their equivalent of Mystara.

The core of the Forgotten Realms was grown organically for decades as a personal piece of self-expression by Greenwood before it was even considered as a commercial product. I think it is impossible for any Setting devised as a product to replicate that (even if Greyhawk, Mystara, and Golarion do have roots in home games, it's not quite the same level of intense craft that Greenwood brought over an extended period of time).

 

[Staffan]

The core of the Forgotten Realms was grown organically for decades as a personal piece of self-expression by Greenwood before it was even considered as a commercial product. I think it is impossible for any Setting devised as a product to replicate that (even if Greyhawk, Mystara, and Golarion do have roots in home games, it's not quite the same level of intense craft that Greenwood brought over an extended period of time).

Sure, but we do know that the Realms-as-published is not the same as the Realms Greenwood had in his home game before publication. For example, the Great Glacier was bigger in the Greenwood-Realms, but they shrunk it to make room for Vaasa which was needed for the Bloodstone modules to fit into FR. I'm just not sure how much of the peripheral parts were Greenwood and how much were Grubb and others.

But that wasn't really my point. My main point was that at least the parts of FR to the north and west of the Sea of Stars are fairly coherent and fit together reasonably well. Golarion mostly does not. Each nation is essentially its own sub-setting with some things in common with the rest of the world, but mostly being its own thing. You likely wouldn't run a "Golarion" campaign, you'd run a Cheliax campaign, or a Varisia campaign, or a Numeria campaign (unless you do the Age of Ashes thing and teleport all over the place). That's similar to the way Mystara has the Adventuring Kingdom next door to the Byzantine Empire kingdom, which in turn borders the Viking Lands.

Many other settings are built to be more coherent. For example, Eberron has the core premise of the Kingdom of Galifar that covered (sort of) the whole of Khorvaire, but splintered in a civil war that just ended. This permeates the whole setting, and pretty much everything on Khorvaire fits into this vibe. If Eberron is a painting, Golarion is a picture formed from someone taking pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and fitting them together.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure, but we do know that the Realms-as-published is not the same as the Realms Greenwood had in his home game before publication. For example, the Great Glacier was bigger in the Greenwood-Realms, but they shrunk it to make room for Vaasa which was needed for the Bloodstone modules to fit into FR. I'm just not sure how much of the peripheral parts were Greenwood and how much were Grubb and others.

But that wasn't really my point. My main point was that at least the parts of FR to the north and west of the Sea of Stars are fairly coherent and fit together reasonably well. Golarion mostly does not. Each nation is essentially its own sub-setting with some things in common with the rest of the world, but mostly being its own thing. You likely wouldn't run a "Golarion" campaign, you'd run a Cheliax campaign, or a Varisia campaign, or a Numeria campaign (unless you do the Age of Ashes thing and teleport all over the place). That's similar to the way Mystara has the Adventuring Kingdom next door to the Byzantine Empire kingdom, which in turn borders the Viking Lands.

Many other settings are built to be more coherent. For example, Eberron has the core premise of the Kingdom of Galifar that covered (sort of) the whole of Khorvaire, but splintered in a civil war that just ended. This permeates the whole setting, and pretty much everything on Khorvaire fits into this vibe. If Eberron is a painting, Golarion is a picture formed from someone taking pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and fitting them together.

Yes, exactly.