You can still get in on the ground, more or less. Plus it's at least all available as pdf (and much of it is available in hard copy, still).
In a few year's time, there's going to be a lot of stuff, though, for sure. I am a superscriber so I get it all but other people will want to pick and choose which regions and general issues they care about.
From what I gather, Paizo has two bi-monthly product lines (Pathfinder Companion and Pathfinder Chronicles), which act to help fill in some of the gaps of the Golarion setting. That said, the books are only 32 pages, and are more gazetteer-like, leaving lots of room for individual GMs to tailor a region to their tastes.
So I'm looking at 12 products per year, each with 32 pages, totalling 384 pages. Plus the 12 adventure path modules per year, each of which also contains background material (Shadow in the Sky - the only Pathfinder book I own - delivers some 40 pages). In total I expect 700-800 pages of source material for Golarion per year. No, I wouldn't call Golarion a world it's easy to keep informed on.
Another point is the generic approach other people quoted as advantage. How generic can a setting be, with so much stuff being published for it?
Saying that there are elves living in the forest of Treeparadise with their Queen Beautyleaf regining from the capital of Acorntop is generic. But after publishing a 32-page sourcebook on Treeparadise, a 24-page AP article on Acorntop, and using the queen's evil cousin as major villain of an AP?
You either restrict yourself to selected sources, develop the rest on your own, thus remaining the generic apporach but possibly invalidating later publications - or you try to remain true to the official Golarion and take the contents of publications beyond the core book for granted, month for month dropping more of the genericity.
Golarion will probably develop in a way similar to the Forgotten Realms - if one omits the FR novels: lots and more sources, impossible to get a complete picture, and unwieldy for anyone not on board from the very beginning, but very detailed and probably very consistent. I just don't know whether I find this good or not.
So I'm looking at 12 products per year, each with 32 pages, totalling 384 pages. Plus the 12 adventure path modules per year, each of which also contains background material (Shadow in the Sky - the only Pathfinder book I own - delivers some 40 pages). In total I expect 700-800 pages of source material for Golarion per year. No, I wouldn't call Golarion a world it's easy to keep informed on.
The Chronicles line is monthly at 64 pages, but at least two of those are map folios.
Companion is 32 pages every other month, and two of those are going to be AP players guides.
The APs have something around 14 pages of info; in the one you list it's eight pages of a city writeup, and six pages of fiction. The rest is adventure and monsters.
Not all of those are needed though. If you're not going to play in Osirion and Katapesh, don't buy those books. If you're only interested in running games in Varistia, don't buy the book on Darkmoon Vale or Absalom.
Far easier then TSR/WotC with the Realms or Eberron. Especially considering that you can ignore any part of it that's not what you're dealing with.
Okay, I see what people are saying. But if I didn't ask the question I'd never get the answer.
Here's the best I can come up with in what I'd like to know about it:
* The locations that mimic China, the area around the Indian Ocean (savanna Africa, India, South-east Asia), Central Asia, Japan, and the South Pacific. (In that order if it's too much to do all of them.)
* A bit on the underground. (Though Hunter In Darkness did most of the work.)
* The planes, specifically the planes connected with demonic creatures and death if it's too much otherwise.
* A note on what you get on the other planets.
I'm not looking for an entire setting at the moment. I'm trying to find the best bits that I can steal for running Asian supernatural and island adventures. And as distinctly removed from Europe and cold latitudes as possible.
I'd be willing to wager you would have gotten the answer you needed if you had asked these kinds of questions on page 1 instead of playing 4 pages of "guess what I'm looking for".
I'd be willing to wager you would have gotten the answer you needed if you had asked these kinds of questions on page 1 instead of playing 4 pages of "guess what I'm looking for".
I would wager that, too, but unfortunately I didn't think about asking for them until just now. When I started this I was just looking at Pathfinder as a source for ideas whatever they might be, as I usually do.
While I don't have time right now to go into detail I can repley to some of this.
The book it's selve cover the Inner see region and the two contantes there of. You do gain about 3 pages talking of Casmaron (big land mass) a few paragraphs about Arcadia(the new world), The Crown of the World ,Tian Xia(Asia) and Sa rusan most of the book is on the Inner sea area about as big as Europe and the middle east. And covers some of the area types you are looking for
The darklands you get about 4 pages that covers it , However the into the darklands book is really loaded with that type of info
The plane set up is about 12 pages and covers the basics It lists
The 4 elemental plans, the pos and neg plans, the astral, the Ethereal, and the shadow
The Inner sphere covers
Abaddon
The abyess
Axis
The boneyard
Elysium
Heaven
Hell
The Maelstrom/Limbo
Nirvana
the book covers the basie info but again it also has it's own book
the planets you gain a few lines on each they are
*Aballon, the Horse:
*Castrovel, the Green Planet:
*Golarion:
*Akiton, the Red Planet:
*Verces, the Line:
*The Diaspora:
*Eox, the Dead Planet:
*Triaxus, the Wanderer:
*Liavara, the Dreamer:
*Bretheda, the Cradle:
*Apostae, the Messenger:
*Aucturn, the Stranger:
Really the setting has a deep pulp vib, and to me harkens back to the old grey box in FR many see a huge old school grey hawk vibe as well.
Alot of the stuff is old hat, but it is done in such a way it pays homage and brings it's own vibe and point of view to the setting. I hope this helps a bit
It's important to note that there's no monolithic conflict like the Blood War going on between demons and devils. It's much more fragmented and much more involved in Golarion's planes. It also breeds strange allies of convenience at times. For the most part its the Abyss versus everything it touches, and the Maelstrom (CN) versus the Lawful planes (but also versus the Abyss with perhaps more fury than anything else, since it and its natives -the proteans- view the Abyss as a corruption of itself, though this might or might not literally be the historical situation).
The Abyss (CE) - similar to the D&D Abyss. The layers of the Abyss connect to one another at random, constantly shifting, and when they connect to other planes they manifest as physical cracks and chasms within the borders of the Maelstrom. Populated by demons (who are the result of a daemonic experiment that vastly outstripped the daemons ability to even dream of controlling their creations), the original natives known as the Qlippoth, and others. Only one Abyssal Lord, Lamashtu the Mother of Monsters, has achieved actual godhood. But even so, she faces almost even odds versus her main rival Pazuzu, and others like Nocticula, Socoth-Benoth, Abraxus and others.
The Abyss might have been created by a heretical chorus of corrupted Proteans, or it might have simply been discovered and unwisely opened up into Golarion's reality.
Hell (LE) - Asmodeus is a deity, and Hell is quite literally his divine domain with the other archdevils as effectively the saints and cardinals of his religion. It's also the only plane that can be conceptualized as having distinct, seperate layers in the same way that they were considered in Planescape terminology. Like an evil matroishka doll full of fascist awesome. Influenced in appearance in some places by Dante, but unlike in Dante or Milton, there was no Fall in Golarion's cosmology. Asmodeus was never Good, nor did he ever fall from grace. He's one of the oldest of the true gods along with Pharasma the TN goddess of birth, death, and prophecy, and he would like nothing more than to fashion the universe in his own perfected vision of what it should have been versus what it has become.
Abbadon (NE) - Lit by the half-light of a perpetually eclipsed sky and home to the youngest of the original fiendish races, its daemons are the incarnation of death and oblivion. Unlike the yugoloths from Planescape, the daemons are intimately connected to mortals, and they exclusively form from the souls of dead, evil mortals. And it's ironic, because the fiends of Abbadon are the devourers of souls, and they would like nothing more than the eradicate the very concept of mortality. Were the capable of it, they would snuff the stars and turn the planets of the material plane into sterile husks, believing somehow that the mortals they derived from are the source of their misery, or an anchor holding them back from something greater, or that mortals aren't even their true source, that they -must- have been formed by something greater and with some profound purpose.
The archdaemons model themselves after the concepts of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War (Szuriel), Plague (Apollyon), Famine (Trelmarixian), and Death (Charon). They're also rumored to follow a fifth archdaemon,
a godlike being known as the Oinodaemon who directs their activities. In truth, the archdaemons know him as the Bound Prince, their godlike master who they betrayed, dissected alive, and bound to an altar to themselves. The only problem is, they can't kill him. They've tried. And every year they devour the parts of him that regenerate like an unholy sacrament, and from time to time his screams become lucid, and unerringly prophetic. They hate him, they fear him, they're nothing without him.
Okay, I see what people are saying. But if I didn't ask the question I'd never get the answer.
Here's the best I can come up with in what I'd like to know about it:
* The locations that mimic China, the area around the Indian Ocean (savanna Africa, India, South-east Asia), Central Asia, Japan, and the South Pacific. (In that order if it's too much to do all of them.)
As been mentioned their is not a lot of information about this yet. It is mentioned and Paizo has plans to put out more info about it. But very little so far other than a couple of pages in the campaign book.
* A bit on the underground. (Though Hunter In Darkness did most of the work.)
Shemeska just covered that pretty well. The Great Beyond book (same size and cost as the Darklands) is the book for info about planes and such. Though there is a new book coming out in August that will deal with Devils not sure how much info there will be about the plane of Hell.
Not much has been said about them yet, a paragraph or two about each is about it as was already mentioned.
I'm not looking for an entire setting at the moment. I'm trying to find the best bits that I can steal for running Asian supernatural and island adventures. And as distinctly removed from Europe and cold latitudes as possible.
Well hopefully what the others have said will help out. For what you are looking for I doubt the campaign book is what you are looking for. Though I recommend it, for it is a good setting and interesting read if nothing else.
But for what you are looking for I would say, the Chronicles Into the Darklands and The Great Beyond would have more of the information you are wanting.
Not all of those are needed though. If you're not going to play in Osirion and Katapesh, don't buy those books. If you're only interested in running games in Varistia, don't buy the book on Darkmoon Vale or Absalom.
Far easier then TSR/WotC with the Realms or Eberron. Especially considering that you can ignore any part of it that's not what you're dealing with.
Why is it easier? The sheer amount of material was comparable:
In 2006 (I picked this year to be after the publication of Eberron and before the announcement of 4E), WotC published 4 160-page books for Eberron. Three of those books (Dragonmarked, Faiths of E., Player's Guide to E.) took a global approach, one was region specific (Sectrets of X'endrik). Additionally we had one advenutre (32 pages).
FR fans were treated to two global sourcebooks (Dragons of F., Power of F.), one strange mix of sourcebook and adventure (Mysteries of the Moonsea) and one 32-page adventure.
This gives 672 pages for Eberron and 512 pages for the Forgotten Realms, in fact not much different - even each a bit less - than the Golarion stuff within a year.
And with WotC's 4E publishing model for settings, things are different anyway.
Of course I'm neglecting the novels in my argument. I long ago decided to completely avoid and disregard these books. For my games, they simply don't exist. A former Eberron and/or FR fan might be relieved when he changes to Golarion and notices that he doesn't have to read through dozens of books of dubious quality to stay abreast. For such a gamer/reader, my whole argument is void.
But hey, in this very thread James Jacobs mentioned the idea of Golarion-novels.
I don't want to bash Golarion, especially not because of quality. But this whole argument that Golarion allows players/DMs to fully get this world, because of its new development and less material being available than for Eberron or the Realms, just doesn't work out.
