Pathfinder 2E What is needed in a non-Golarion setting?

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I love making settings, and have one that I had been planning to running next campaign, fairly unique in the type of game I can run in it.

However, one group that I'm in that I will likely be inviting a number of the players from are a year into a PF2 remastered game and enjoying it, and just getting to terms with the mechanics since not one of us had played any PF of any edition. The group was previously a long running D&D 5e group and continued in the shared world of the earlier campaigns.

During play I found that there's a lot of mechanical and character-building support for Golarion woven into the rules. i quite like that from a design point -- rules that actively encourage engagement with the setting are a positive thing.

That said, I'm more attached to the campaign ideas in my homebrew setting then running Golarion. It may be worthy, but it's not what I'm passionate about running next, and if I can't fit the rules to it I'll pick a different RPG to run it in.

So, what things in Golarion do I need to incorporate into my homebrew in some form to get the support of the rules? For example, there are things based around the deities, around certain cultures or geographical places, specific planes, etc. Simply saying something like "you can take all uncommon options" loses the flavor of the connection into the world and therefore makes the PF2r rules less appealing, though I may do that in some limited aspects.

I need decide how to incorporate them (or intentionally not, which is way different from accidentally not) into the homebrew. I'm looking for specifics, not just a "don't forget the regions" because I have no idea what the regions are, or where they hook into the character rules.

I'd like to use the mechanics as-is so I can take advantage of the excellent Foundry integration, which will require taking on some Golarion aspects, I need to identify which.

BTW, if there are already lists point me to them. My googling brought me to a bunch of places, especially reddit, but no actual lists of what I would need to put equivilents of in my homebrew in order to couple it to the PF2r rules. And I know next to nothing about Golarion to make any guesses.

TL;DR: Looking to take advantage of all the mechanical & character creation hooks to Golarion from PF2r into a custom setting, need lists of what needs to be recoupled to my setting.

(Note: I'm not going to get into the details of my custom setting. First I don't want to distract from the question with discussion about it. Secondly this post will be more useful for others in the future if it's not tied just to my homebrew setting, but any of them.)

 

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During play I found that there's a lot of mechanical and character-building support for Golarion woven into the rules. i quite like that from a design point -- rules that actively encourage engagement with the setting are a positive thing.

There is, but a lot of that really is flavour based. The requirements for some backgrounds are based in Golarian, so if you wanted players to access those mechanics, you'll need to rename areas to match your homebrew and what makes sense in your world.

Could you expand on this point further to help clarify? I've GM'd Pathfinder 2e for a while only actively in Golarian; so I likely have blindspots that are making me miss specific Golarian-tied mechanics that aren't region based requirements, etc.

For changing things in Foundry, I think you can get away with finding the rules elements in the compendium in Foundry VTT, cloning the ones you need to reflavour, and then making notes to your players on which elements are allowed or not. You can filter out sources in Compendiums if needed, but I don't know how exactly that works when it comes to individual elements and if that filtering affects players too.

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I think the first thing you and others will need to decide when using a custom setting with Pathfinder 2e is deciding the scope. Since you don't want to go into your custom setting, I'll keep these guidelines general.

What's actually in your world? What are the themes, the tropes, the ideas you want to play with in your fantasy?

One of the most notable things about Golarian as a setting is that it really is a kitchen sink, and it doesn't always play to realistic expectations, i.e. Numeria is a place where science fantasy tech just lies buried, while being surrounded by more traditional fantasy areas; Aikenstar, a place of clockwork technology and little magic, hasn't exported all that technology to Golarian yet, and is surrounded by a nation of the undead and necromancers and a magic kingdom missing its immortal king. So there's a lot of themes and ideas - and thus mechanics - explored you might not want in your setting.

Because of that, it's important when deciding scope is to decide which sources you'll use and curate that for your party.

If you don't want clockworks, constructs, guns, etc., then you should leave out Guns and Gears altogether and make a note for your party that items similar in theme won't be allowed. You'll need notes for that as well for any creatures you want to avoid.

I think once you've decided a lot of the general things you do or don't want, a lot of the next set of work is coming up with the most important set of things to translate or adopt for your setting.

If deities are important, you'll either need to make new deities, following how a diety statblock is laid out, or reflavour the closest match deity in Golarian and make the changes to edicts and anathema, names, etc. as needed.

Planes are trickier; though there are defined rules for these, and you can reflavour as needed.

Where things get trickier is deciding what's common, uncommon and rare in your world. There are a lot of potential Feats, Archetypes, Spells and Items we're talking that you might want to mix up and decide what's easily accessible to players or not. Example: you might want Teleportation to be more common or even rarer than Golarian, where it's uncommon. That's just one more thing you'd need to note. That really applies for creatures as well, as that affects Recall Knowledge mechanics.

Really, with a lot of this work outside of deciding the sources you'll use and what to curate, and what elements inside them to curate, I think to help save time you need to decide what you have to convert and change before play and what you can get away with for leaving for during play and prepping before a session.

Talking with your party will probably help you figure that out, and so giving them a good list of what's available in terms of ancestries, backgrounds, classes etc. for your homebrew is a good first step; but also talking to them about what they'd like to play will help too. Admittedly, this depends on how much of your world is already defined.

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Here is an example of a Pathfinder 2e conversion of Eberron. It's not exactly what you're asking for, as far as I can tell, but I think it's a good example as I can find, as it lists out:

• Regions of the world
• Deities
• What works as a baseline with it - i.e. the 'base Pathfinder 2e rules', which I assume means a minimum of the four core rulebooks (Player Core 1 + 2, GM Core, Monster Core)
• Some specifying of what is or is not allowed - for example, mentioning how guns may or may not be suitable for Eberron, mentioning ancestries unique to Eberron that are allowed, etc.

Obviously there's a lot of custom stuff in there and a lot of detail you might need - but putting together a doc similar in structure for players could be quite helpful, and also useful for something to look over for yourself that can help guide you on what's important.