Pathfinder Golarion again
Dec. 4th, 2019 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSometimes Varisians are born with tattoos.
Full color. Fancy ones.
I realise this is a world with magic
but I'm still having a moment to wrap my head around
sometimes Varisians are born with tattoos.
In the description they're things like swords and mysterious runic inscriptions and maps
and it explains they start blurred and get clear with adulthood
so clearly these are more quest hooks than soulmate marks.
... but still.
... sometimes Varisians are born with tattoos.
Quest marks assigned at birth is pretty cool though. And adventure party soulmates are real easy to fit with that.
Varisians are... well they're an ethnicity, known for being caravan travellers who never settle down, except in the country with many vampires. And they have a reputation as thieves and con artists, and there are indeed extensive criminal organisations. They also wear layers of scarves and much bling and are known for their exotic dancing.
... I'm finding the description a bit ethnically problematic honestly.
And I mean, you could respin it easily enough, because Varisia is one of the many layers of magically corrupted failed empire, and the vampire place didn't start that way, and these seem like reasonable reasons to be a wandering people who do not particularly want to return to their ancestral homelands because vampires. But that isn't the way up it's told.
And once again, I know it's written to be full of plot hooks and conflict and reasons to get in bar fights
but still.
Also, how can so many of these 'races' be 'beautiful, exotic' peoples when they're, you know, the people what live around there? I mean, exotic isn't the word for the people whose country it actually is. Whose point of view is it from that makes anyone exotic? And for why is it the default view?
I should mention there's a newer edition now, I just started buying the original stuff and didn't feel like getting a second rulebook.
But they might have changed the phrasing or tweaked stuff.
I don't know yet.
Also, I'm trying to get a sense of scale, never my strong point, and I think Varisia alone is bigger than Britain.
And the audio adventures sent people diagonally across all of it in a couple lines of narration.
I think their sense of scale and travel times is different than my own.
I also keep being creeped out by the distinction baked in to the game between humanoids and monsters. Entire intelligent races are listed in the Bestiary books. An area ruled by giants is a wilderness beyond civilisation. Because giants don't count. And it's not just the fact of having intelligence scores associated with different species, though that bakes in some assumptions about how to treat them that are... not kind. It's that every wilderness and cavern is assumed to be an adventure waiting to happen, and one mostly made of combat. You never just have neighbours. An area that hasn't been colonized is just waiting for the right adventurer to come along. Pushing humans into more places is the default, a varied ecosystem full of beings bitier than we are is considered the problem.
Which is just the kind of game it is, but, is so not my speed.
Orcs are like Klingons, waiting to make alliances when we understand them.
That's my baseline.
It does not appear to be the game's.
Full color. Fancy ones.
I realise this is a world with magic
but I'm still having a moment to wrap my head around
sometimes Varisians are born with tattoos.
In the description they're things like swords and mysterious runic inscriptions and maps
and it explains they start blurred and get clear with adulthood
so clearly these are more quest hooks than soulmate marks.
... but still.
... sometimes Varisians are born with tattoos.
Quest marks assigned at birth is pretty cool though. And adventure party soulmates are real easy to fit with that.
Varisians are... well they're an ethnicity, known for being caravan travellers who never settle down, except in the country with many vampires. And they have a reputation as thieves and con artists, and there are indeed extensive criminal organisations. They also wear layers of scarves and much bling and are known for their exotic dancing.
... I'm finding the description a bit ethnically problematic honestly.
And I mean, you could respin it easily enough, because Varisia is one of the many layers of magically corrupted failed empire, and the vampire place didn't start that way, and these seem like reasonable reasons to be a wandering people who do not particularly want to return to their ancestral homelands because vampires. But that isn't the way up it's told.
And once again, I know it's written to be full of plot hooks and conflict and reasons to get in bar fights
but still.
Also, how can so many of these 'races' be 'beautiful, exotic' peoples when they're, you know, the people what live around there? I mean, exotic isn't the word for the people whose country it actually is. Whose point of view is it from that makes anyone exotic? And for why is it the default view?
I should mention there's a newer edition now, I just started buying the original stuff and didn't feel like getting a second rulebook.
But they might have changed the phrasing or tweaked stuff.
I don't know yet.
Also, I'm trying to get a sense of scale, never my strong point, and I think Varisia alone is bigger than Britain.
And the audio adventures sent people diagonally across all of it in a couple lines of narration.
I think their sense of scale and travel times is different than my own.
I also keep being creeped out by the distinction baked in to the game between humanoids and monsters. Entire intelligent races are listed in the Bestiary books. An area ruled by giants is a wilderness beyond civilisation. Because giants don't count. And it's not just the fact of having intelligence scores associated with different species, though that bakes in some assumptions about how to treat them that are... not kind. It's that every wilderness and cavern is assumed to be an adventure waiting to happen, and one mostly made of combat. You never just have neighbours. An area that hasn't been colonized is just waiting for the right adventurer to come along. Pushing humans into more places is the default, a varied ecosystem full of beings bitier than we are is considered the problem.
Which is just the kind of game it is, but, is so not my speed.
Orcs are like Klingons, waiting to make alliances when we understand them.
That's my baseline.
It does not appear to be the game's.