Pathfinder 1E Now that Pathfinder is out, is anyone giving their setting a try?

[Wicht]

I've been running with Golarion ever since Rise of the Runelords was first published. It has a little bit of everything but mainly it has a lot of support from its publisher.

 

[questing gm]

If I'm playing/running Pathfinder, I'm playing/running it in Golarion.

 

[jasin]

I'm likely to get more use from the setting than the rules.

 

[Dilandau Kale]

I wish I could explain how they've done it. But if I knew why it worked so well, I'd be doing it too.

It's the goblins people dig the goblins.

 

[jasin]

I really like it. On paper, it doesn't sound like the kind of setting that I like. Vanilla fantasy, etc. But somehow the Paizo folks have managed to take all that oldness and tiredness and make it fascinating all over again.

Fascinating, isn't it?

On the face of it, there's precious little to recommend the setting. You have pseudo-Vikings in the north, a decadent empire, woodsy elves, pseudo-Egyptians, pseudo-Arabs, stoneworking dwarves, an undead-infested Trasnylvania-analogue... meh, right?

But it works.

I think a great part of the reason it works is that it's so unashamedly, unapologetically traditional and derivative. And truly, there's nothing to be ashamed of or apologize for. There's a reason why tradition is tradition, why cliches are cliches, especially in fantasy. Fantasy is all about the half-forgotten and the half-remembered, the emotional resonance, the archetypes. When I play D&D, I don't want a world that one guy who wrote it thinks is cool, I want a world that's like all the worlds I though were cool when I read about them, or saw them in movies. I want callbacks to Lovecraft, E. R. Burroughs, to the 18th c. gothic novel, to mythology, to Lies of Locke Lamora, and yes, even to Penny Arcade.

So far, Paizo's done very good job providing that.

 

[billd91]

I'm currently on the home stretch of Savage Tide in World of Greyhawk, but when I'm done with that my gaming group will move to Golarion instead.

Same here, except the home stretch I'm on is Shackled City. It'll be hard to leave Greyhawk behind, but we'll be moving into a good home with lots of interesting places to explore.

 

[Roman]

I don't really plan on giving it a try. I run my own campaign setting and don't plan to change that.

 

[radferth]

I am starting a new campaign using the Pathfinder rules. I have only skimmed the setting book. It seemed fine, but not so amazing as to tear me away from using Greyhawk or Scarred Lands like I usually do. As someone who has had very little contact with Paizo's adventures, a big-scale world book is not so useful for starting a new game as a smaller scale book would have been. I'll probably buy it and give it a good read at some point, as it seems like the kind of setting I like, provided that can avoid the sort of world-changing meta-plot that Forgotten Realms often had. (I know some folks like that in a setting, but I do not, especially when it makes the deities look, to me, like soap opera characters).

 

[Minicol]

All my new campaigns will be set in it for quite some time.

I love it, in the same way that I was a fan of the old FR.

 

[kitsune9]

So, it really does look like Golarion has been created to offer something for everyone. I'm more on board with the FR folks. I really loved FR and see Golarion as the "new FR" because it has a lot of the same elements that made FR so originally great.