Ways I tweaked the Pathfinder setting
Feb. 26th, 2022 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThere are ways I love the main Pathfinder setting, Golarion in the Age of Lost Omens.
You have a planet that has seen so many apocalypses that any given inch of it is in a different stage of post apocalypse, they layer on each other, and everything you build is on the ruins of something else, but you still build.
Travel is so difficult that tech levels vary wildly, and magic is so varied you dont always have access to it, let alone any one strand of it.
Move through time by moving through space, go from ancient Osirion to moden Alkenstar, and the differences make sense because of the history, because of the isolation and repeated destruction.
(... enough sense)
What I do not love is that the writers are pretty clearly working from a shared set of default settings about How Societies Work, and their efforts to make it, for instance, less sexist, kind of amount to Evil Queens and the one new Linnorm 'King' who surprises everyone.
Even when the game mechanics make no differences for sex or gender (good!) so it makes no sense to have power distributed on gender lines.
They also clearly have a point of view when they're describing races, assumptions about who needs explaining, who is foreign and who is other.
... the kingdom of literal hell worshippers are not the most foreign. no indeedy. by a long way.
But you can use in universe parts and pieces to explain these biases.
In universe, 'Common' is the language of scholarship and trade, and also of Taldor and Cheliax. Taldor conquered enough of the world it lefts its language behind everywhere the story goes so far. Cheliax broke away from Taldor. And Cheliax became the next (evil, deal with the devil) empire.
So the biased sexist stuff that talks about uncivilised races and unconquered lands?
We're clearly reading it in Common.
Also! Taldor was where the god Aroden led his people after one really big apocalypse. Aroden is the god of humans, and is a racist. He teaches humans will spread out and bring civilisation. That's canon fact, there's a quote about it from his holy book. Aroden founded the empire that gave us Common, Aroden founded the huge metropolis that the Pathfinders are based in, and temples of Aroden were the civil political structure of the 'civilised' world.
Until Aroden died. That screwed up everyone's plans.
So now we're in the Age of Lost Omens, and the world went abruptly from being dominated by Aroden, to being the fractured thing it is now.
And free.
So if Aroden built this world, the racism and bias built in to the structures? That's all Aroden. We can blame him for it. He spread that everywhere his church went, his church enforced it, everything too familiar looking is giving us a glimpse of the dead god's rules.
And now he is gone, and we can get other perspectives reasserting themselves.
So that's fun.
But it also leaves room for saying the rule book? That's the Common view. That's the Empires talking. So we can take what we get and run with it in an assortment of directions, just on the assumption the Common viewpoint is wrong.
... tis stepping several steps away from the text for sure. But.
Everywhere the story goes has patriarchal patrilineal first born son in matrimony matters kind of Kingship. Except two countries doing democracy, one badly, and a few places like the Linnorm Kings doing their own things (like, if you kill a dragonish Linnorm and want to call yourself a king, go ahead, seems fair.)
But you dont get that kind of monotony in social and government systems here, and we only have one sentient species (that we know of) being in charge at once.
So! Blame Aroden.
Tis the Common way, not the only.
So say Shoanti are matrilineal. In the fic I've been writing I didnt use the word Shoanti because Common shows a tendency to over translate their names (unless Shoanti name themselves in Common, which, no.) So in Common they're called Highlanders, as it is well known they live up mountains and on the plateau. Except that is well known now because the Imperials turned up and killed them until they went away? So that isnt how they lived 300 years ago, and it isnt how they want to live.
So I'll say the Skull Clan live in the places the dead need guarding, and travel between the other clans to see to their needs between times. This isnt an obligation, you can join other clans even if you're born there. Other clans join in with the Skull Clan in their guard duty, but it isnt hardly safe and the point is to not overburden any one clan, so they rotate in and out on some kind of shift pattern, possibly seasonal. They live in such different parts of Varisia they probably have different ideas of when it would be more comfy to head for the coast.
Kinship patterns are matrilineal and matrifocal. Because why not? And because people move around a lot, so why imagine they settle down in the same patterns?
Brothers expect to help raise their sisters kids. They father children, but those kids go with their mothers clans when they move on. A sisterless man or one with a great many brothers might marry out, but if one leaves a sister brotherless, that's a scandal as big as divorce. Meaning variably big, depending.
Imperials looked at this and decided brothers marry their sisters. Because Imperials have no interest in actually understanding anything. (An over generalisation, sure, but, they built their city on burial grounds, they really seriously arent interested in understanding things necessary to their own survival. Korvosa has such a problem with undead, and it isnt even kicking off bad yet.)
Also, that over translation issue probably stems from using translation magic, but, you hit the limits on that at times.
I was looking up languages that distinguish between paternal and maternal uncles, like its built in to the words. Old English does. Which is cool. But English, and so thus far Common, does not. So what does the translation spell do? Add paternal and maternal, sure, but, add the understanding of the roles that go with it? Not likely.
I looked up on the paizo boards and Shoanti were apparently inspired by scottish highlanders and native americans. But I am not sure which parts.
They wear a lot of animal skins and face paints in the arts.
... I say a lot of animal skins, they're doing the usual Conan thing where the colder it is the less they wear.
The writing says they usually shave their heads, but the art has long hair guys too.
There's not a lot to work with.
And it's an rpg, so they're just there to be a Hat for your character and an Inciting Incident for your game.
But still.
Not really sure how ethnicity mixes with any of the other things this game or my made up stuff does.
Feel like one should invite people to write about their own lightly fictionalised cultures?
Also feel it is somewhat important to know where anyone is getting their food from.
On the coast is much fishing. Fair enough. Useful as far as it goes.
But what about everyone else?
Most places just say what's trying to eat you, not what you try and eat.
... are you mostly eating what tries to eat you?
... you possibly are in the Kingmaker xbox game...
But the thing where magic changes everything would apply to food technologies so much. As an adventurer if you want to keep fresh food in your corpse bag until you need it for its intended purpose, it is handy, but not a game changer.
As a civilisation, if you can make bags where the contents is preserved potentially for ten thousand years... the food storage would be better than freezers. I mean you can definitely build magic items that preserve the food exactly as it was when it was prepared, including the temperature.
... the things these gentle repose spells do to thermodynamics I dont much know how to think about...
plus any extra dimensional space maintains a constant temperature even if you leave the bag or door open.
... and you really need to, since you can't open it from inside.
but what does it do to the survivability of the world to have a bag you can just get in and be safe from external conditions?
The spells actually intended for Endure Elements, the way you can make boots that make wandering the arctic ice just a bit nippy, all the applications of magic to survival...
... their world ought to be way more different to ours.
It is in no way an alternate medieval (stone age, age of sail, starship crash)
It's a completely alternate technology path
that simply does not need to care about power sources
as long as magic can work
(which it some places does not.)
Looping around to the social impacts of magic takes a lot of work
and obviously is outside the scope of a game that mostly gives you a series of targets to hit
until they stay dead.
But the assorted religions they come up with
whilst apparently existing mostly to give your spell sets a different flavor
would change the world in so many ways!
I cannot imagine a society where Desna is the primary goddess and where they give a monkeys about monogamy or heterosexuality. Seeing as their goddess is neither.
Same with Sarenrae and Shelyn.
Shelyn the goddess of love and beauty is going to have such different social institutions evolve to support her priorities.
Yet things are way too samey all over.
So, I blame Aroden.
And want to do things Differently here.
The other thing I found out from finding an FAQ on the paizo site is
you can and probably should Take 10 on Spellcraft checks to make magic items.
Which means you just choose to roll 10, consistently, because it's calm and you're not under stress.
Also absolutely every prerequisite is subject to the just add 5 to the difficulty class rule, where applicable.
So for Wondrous Items, a lot more things are possible to reliably craft at a much lower level than I thought.
I mean I redid my assumptions for a 13th level character from this story, and they can craft CL20 items when lacking up to 3 prerequisites, which is every item I could find.
So the limitation is time and money, and inclination of the crafter, not skill as I had thought.
So magic items being this common makes more sense
not that rpg economics ever make sense.
The rules for Scavenging magic items say scavenged parts count as the prerequisite spell for whatever spells went into making them.
So if you've got two pairs of boots and want to have one pair with the properties of both, you'd Scavenge them and be able to do it, with enough money to make up the difference, as long as you could meet the basic CL+5 spellcraft check.
... the boots I was thinking of often have several spells worked in at once.
But if you want to be both dry and warm, in the book you need two sets of boots and to swap.
Or to craft your own weird hybrid item.
which there are pricing rules for.
The extreme price difference between ordinary buy it for gold you earn for wages economy and extraordinarymagic economy is probably a lot of why their world isn't more changed.
It's like, sure our world lets people fly, but if the price point was always 'buy one of those military cutting edge fighter planes, each'... bit rarer.
Figuring out where a wizard gets the money to train to be a wizard though...
... well once they can do Prestidigitation they can make money doing laundry, but it wouldnt be everyone that wanted to spend gold on dry cleaning...
Figuring out where people got their starting equipment is always a Story though.
Okay, have run out of further things to say today, feel like I'm repeating myself anyway.
Onwards.
You have a planet that has seen so many apocalypses that any given inch of it is in a different stage of post apocalypse, they layer on each other, and everything you build is on the ruins of something else, but you still build.
Travel is so difficult that tech levels vary wildly, and magic is so varied you dont always have access to it, let alone any one strand of it.
Move through time by moving through space, go from ancient Osirion to moden Alkenstar, and the differences make sense because of the history, because of the isolation and repeated destruction.
(... enough sense)
What I do not love is that the writers are pretty clearly working from a shared set of default settings about How Societies Work, and their efforts to make it, for instance, less sexist, kind of amount to Evil Queens and the one new Linnorm 'King' who surprises everyone.
Even when the game mechanics make no differences for sex or gender (good!) so it makes no sense to have power distributed on gender lines.
They also clearly have a point of view when they're describing races, assumptions about who needs explaining, who is foreign and who is other.
... the kingdom of literal hell worshippers are not the most foreign. no indeedy. by a long way.
But you can use in universe parts and pieces to explain these biases.
In universe, 'Common' is the language of scholarship and trade, and also of Taldor and Cheliax. Taldor conquered enough of the world it lefts its language behind everywhere the story goes so far. Cheliax broke away from Taldor. And Cheliax became the next (evil, deal with the devil) empire.
So the biased sexist stuff that talks about uncivilised races and unconquered lands?
We're clearly reading it in Common.
Also! Taldor was where the god Aroden led his people after one really big apocalypse. Aroden is the god of humans, and is a racist. He teaches humans will spread out and bring civilisation. That's canon fact, there's a quote about it from his holy book. Aroden founded the empire that gave us Common, Aroden founded the huge metropolis that the Pathfinders are based in, and temples of Aroden were the civil political structure of the 'civilised' world.
Until Aroden died. That screwed up everyone's plans.
So now we're in the Age of Lost Omens, and the world went abruptly from being dominated by Aroden, to being the fractured thing it is now.
And free.
So if Aroden built this world, the racism and bias built in to the structures? That's all Aroden. We can blame him for it. He spread that everywhere his church went, his church enforced it, everything too familiar looking is giving us a glimpse of the dead god's rules.
And now he is gone, and we can get other perspectives reasserting themselves.
So that's fun.
But it also leaves room for saying the rule book? That's the Common view. That's the Empires talking. So we can take what we get and run with it in an assortment of directions, just on the assumption the Common viewpoint is wrong.
... tis stepping several steps away from the text for sure. But.
Everywhere the story goes has patriarchal patrilineal first born son in matrimony matters kind of Kingship. Except two countries doing democracy, one badly, and a few places like the Linnorm Kings doing their own things (like, if you kill a dragonish Linnorm and want to call yourself a king, go ahead, seems fair.)
But you dont get that kind of monotony in social and government systems here, and we only have one sentient species (that we know of) being in charge at once.
So! Blame Aroden.
Tis the Common way, not the only.
So say Shoanti are matrilineal. In the fic I've been writing I didnt use the word Shoanti because Common shows a tendency to over translate their names (unless Shoanti name themselves in Common, which, no.) So in Common they're called Highlanders, as it is well known they live up mountains and on the plateau. Except that is well known now because the Imperials turned up and killed them until they went away? So that isnt how they lived 300 years ago, and it isnt how they want to live.
So I'll say the Skull Clan live in the places the dead need guarding, and travel between the other clans to see to their needs between times. This isnt an obligation, you can join other clans even if you're born there. Other clans join in with the Skull Clan in their guard duty, but it isnt hardly safe and the point is to not overburden any one clan, so they rotate in and out on some kind of shift pattern, possibly seasonal. They live in such different parts of Varisia they probably have different ideas of when it would be more comfy to head for the coast.
Kinship patterns are matrilineal and matrifocal. Because why not? And because people move around a lot, so why imagine they settle down in the same patterns?
Brothers expect to help raise their sisters kids. They father children, but those kids go with their mothers clans when they move on. A sisterless man or one with a great many brothers might marry out, but if one leaves a sister brotherless, that's a scandal as big as divorce. Meaning variably big, depending.
Imperials looked at this and decided brothers marry their sisters. Because Imperials have no interest in actually understanding anything. (An over generalisation, sure, but, they built their city on burial grounds, they really seriously arent interested in understanding things necessary to their own survival. Korvosa has such a problem with undead, and it isnt even kicking off bad yet.)
Also, that over translation issue probably stems from using translation magic, but, you hit the limits on that at times.
I was looking up languages that distinguish between paternal and maternal uncles, like its built in to the words. Old English does. Which is cool. But English, and so thus far Common, does not. So what does the translation spell do? Add paternal and maternal, sure, but, add the understanding of the roles that go with it? Not likely.
I looked up on the paizo boards and Shoanti were apparently inspired by scottish highlanders and native americans. But I am not sure which parts.
They wear a lot of animal skins and face paints in the arts.
... I say a lot of animal skins, they're doing the usual Conan thing where the colder it is the less they wear.
The writing says they usually shave their heads, but the art has long hair guys too.
There's not a lot to work with.
And it's an rpg, so they're just there to be a Hat for your character and an Inciting Incident for your game.
But still.
Not really sure how ethnicity mixes with any of the other things this game or my made up stuff does.
Feel like one should invite people to write about their own lightly fictionalised cultures?
Also feel it is somewhat important to know where anyone is getting their food from.
On the coast is much fishing. Fair enough. Useful as far as it goes.
But what about everyone else?
Most places just say what's trying to eat you, not what you try and eat.
... are you mostly eating what tries to eat you?
... you possibly are in the Kingmaker xbox game...
But the thing where magic changes everything would apply to food technologies so much. As an adventurer if you want to keep fresh food in your corpse bag until you need it for its intended purpose, it is handy, but not a game changer.
As a civilisation, if you can make bags where the contents is preserved potentially for ten thousand years... the food storage would be better than freezers. I mean you can definitely build magic items that preserve the food exactly as it was when it was prepared, including the temperature.
... the things these gentle repose spells do to thermodynamics I dont much know how to think about...
plus any extra dimensional space maintains a constant temperature even if you leave the bag or door open.
... and you really need to, since you can't open it from inside.
but what does it do to the survivability of the world to have a bag you can just get in and be safe from external conditions?
The spells actually intended for Endure Elements, the way you can make boots that make wandering the arctic ice just a bit nippy, all the applications of magic to survival...
... their world ought to be way more different to ours.
It is in no way an alternate medieval (stone age, age of sail, starship crash)
It's a completely alternate technology path
that simply does not need to care about power sources
as long as magic can work
(which it some places does not.)
Looping around to the social impacts of magic takes a lot of work
and obviously is outside the scope of a game that mostly gives you a series of targets to hit
until they stay dead.
But the assorted religions they come up with
whilst apparently existing mostly to give your spell sets a different flavor
would change the world in so many ways!
I cannot imagine a society where Desna is the primary goddess and where they give a monkeys about monogamy or heterosexuality. Seeing as their goddess is neither.
Same with Sarenrae and Shelyn.
Shelyn the goddess of love and beauty is going to have such different social institutions evolve to support her priorities.
Yet things are way too samey all over.
So, I blame Aroden.
And want to do things Differently here.
The other thing I found out from finding an FAQ on the paizo site is
you can and probably should Take 10 on Spellcraft checks to make magic items.
Which means you just choose to roll 10, consistently, because it's calm and you're not under stress.
Also absolutely every prerequisite is subject to the just add 5 to the difficulty class rule, where applicable.
So for Wondrous Items, a lot more things are possible to reliably craft at a much lower level than I thought.
I mean I redid my assumptions for a 13th level character from this story, and they can craft CL20 items when lacking up to 3 prerequisites, which is every item I could find.
So the limitation is time and money, and inclination of the crafter, not skill as I had thought.
So magic items being this common makes more sense
not that rpg economics ever make sense.
The rules for Scavenging magic items say scavenged parts count as the prerequisite spell for whatever spells went into making them.
So if you've got two pairs of boots and want to have one pair with the properties of both, you'd Scavenge them and be able to do it, with enough money to make up the difference, as long as you could meet the basic CL+5 spellcraft check.
... the boots I was thinking of often have several spells worked in at once.
But if you want to be both dry and warm, in the book you need two sets of boots and to swap.
Or to craft your own weird hybrid item.
which there are pricing rules for.
The extreme price difference between ordinary buy it for gold you earn for wages economy and extraordinarymagic economy is probably a lot of why their world isn't more changed.
It's like, sure our world lets people fly, but if the price point was always 'buy one of those military cutting edge fighter planes, each'... bit rarer.
Figuring out where a wizard gets the money to train to be a wizard though...
... well once they can do Prestidigitation they can make money doing laundry, but it wouldnt be everyone that wanted to spend gold on dry cleaning...
Figuring out where people got their starting equipment is always a Story though.
Okay, have run out of further things to say today, feel like I'm repeating myself anyway.
Onwards.