ZEITGEIST Post-Zeitgeist Setting and Adventures Discussion (Spoilers!)

[EarthSeraphEdna]

I think it is fine as well. I am still hoping for more of a spiritual sequel than a same-world sequel.

Can you interpret the adventure path as having most setting changes be localized to the party, and relatively played-down? Absolutely.

Does the adventure path in its GM advice sections go to great lengths to convey the vastness of the consequences of the party's actions and encourage the GM to come up with more material, even grander? absolutely.

 

[efreund]

I'm jumping into this conversation kinda late, but I wanted to voice my opinion before it closes entirely.

I love Zeitgeist. I deeply, truly admire it, and I make a point of promoting it whatever gamer venue I find myself in (which admittedly constrained to the West Coast).

One of the things I love about the setting and the adventure is how wide open it is. This is a setting made to be destroyed by the players. This is an adventure where the players can sculpt the world into their own vision. And I'm not just referring to the mind-blowing playing-god climax. I'm referring to smaller-scale stakes too (I'm currently running adv5, and my group is trying to figure out if they can uproot Lorcan Kell and replace his influence with police presence, or if they want to hand the underworld over to The Family). This is a game where, throughout Act II, the players get to decide the course of scientific advancement! That's awesome. I've never seen that in a PnP RPG before.

I once described the ZG setting to a players as "everything is Chekhov's Gun." If it's mentioned in the Player's Guide, there is a great chance it will start to explode in the player's faces, and they'll have the opportunity to reshape it according to their will and vision.

Let me segue for just a moment to mention what I dislike of other published campaign settings. I particularly hate Golarion (of Pathfinder fame), but this criticism can be broadly applied. In a developers' desire to "preserve" their campaign setting, nothing ever permanently happens. Namely, the focus of most-every Paizo AP is that a great evil threatens to rise up and destroy something, and the chief goal of the PCs is to preserve-or-restore the status quo. The end of most APs is just to reset the setting. No mark left on the world. Zeitgeist takes a devil-may-care approach to this. Malice Lands get cured. One of the five foundational Fey Titans dies. A goddess's seminal death is overturned (maybe). Perhaps whole cities and cultures are destroyed (ah the swinginess of adv11). It's refreshing and wonderful. It reminds me of the extreme audacity of the mid-game twist of Final Fantasy VI (which ZG cites as an inspiration). It's just not afraid to break things. Ok, segue over.

Now, don't get my wrong, I'd love to "get to know more of Zeitgeist." I'd love to more about the history of the Yerasol Wars. I'd love to know more about the districts of Slate and Clover, and how they magically interrelate to each other. I still don't really understand what most of the Bleak Gate is like (I guess there's darklings?). I would love a John Carter -style guide to each of the planets, so we can each be Rock Rackus (the tastes we got in adv12 were amazingly enticing). It'd be awesome have a backlog of previous casefiles that the RHC has done. A catalog of various Malice States. A proper writeup of Cherage. A proper writeup of the hierarchy (and gods!) of the Clergy. A glimpse into what Berian history was like under the Tyrants. And of course, my pet-obsession: a clear explanation of what exactly happened with Avilona/airmagic in this world.
So the idea of a setting guide for Zeitgeist sounds awesome. Sign me up!

But .... I deeply and truly fail to understand the desire to set it after the event horizon. There have been maybe 9 groups that have finished the adventure path. That's a pretty small market-audience. And then - and here is the greatest and deepest tragedy in my view - some new players will buy up this masterpiece of a campaign setting, fall in love with it, and then ask "is there an AP set here?" ... and the only answer will be "yes, but it's all been spoiled for you by the book you just fell in love with." This boggles my mind. The 3-volume AP (which only targets GMs) shouldn't be used to sell the 1-volume campaign book (which targets mass market). The 1-volume mass market setting book should be the hook, which then funnels that group into signing up for the AP. And the only way to make that work is to set the campaign setting book at 500 AOV.

Now, I'm no marketer. (Though I do work in what's basically marketing company, I'm not in a marketing role, and I can't do what they do.) But for the love of Zeitgeist, please think of the sales funnel. You have a great - I will say masterpiece - AP on your hands. Don't render it obsolete by releasing a post-AP campaign setting book to mass market. Use the campaign setting book to sell the AP! And don't kneecap the greatness of your magnificent AP by providing canonical answers to the great questions of the adventure. The beauty of the Arc of Reida is that the future is unknown, and the world must change. No skyseer can see beyond its frosted edges.

Thank you for reading my screed. I wish you the best in your endeavors.

 

[EarthSeraphEdna]

I agree with you. That is, you raise some fairly valid concerns there, and they echo some of my own. I hope that whoever is chosen for the writing project is able to integrate some of said concerns into the sequel setting in a way that can satisfy most audiences.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

A long time ago I got annoyed then various RPG settings I was interested in with ongoing metaplots published material which 'invalidated' the results of my game or how I thought things should have gone (Shadowrun,Traveller, Battletech,World of Darkness, Dragonlance, Earthdawn, etc). This is similar to a Zeitgeist book detailing the aftermath of the campaign but I have learned to get over it.
Many times the game which was 'invalidated' was never going to have a sequel anyway or the player group moved on , other times I just took what I liked from the new material and changed a few bits of history so that in any campaign I run some historical events happened differently or some new feature from the histroy never happens.
For Zeitgeist I can see a lot of other stories besides the one of the AP which could be fun to tell and a setting book will give me more information to help me decide if I want to do that or inspire my ideas. Wether I set these stories before, after or during the AP will depend on my feeling for what is dramatically appropriate.
The Secret history of the Clergy, the Reistance against the Dragon Tyrants, the founding of Risur, the Demonocracy, Risur without the Fey, The Planar invasions all of these are worth a story although making them as dramatic and world changing as the AP may be hard.