I’ve recently made a bunch of friends interested in playing Pathfinder 2e, so I’m building a custom 1hr One-Shot for 6 players to learn the game (yes I know that time is a lie). The lore is amazing! It’s got roughly 8 thousand years of history to create the current world of Golarion. The history is deep and rich, and some of that is because it’s based on real world cultures and histories. There’s obviously fantasy too, but a lot of nations and empires mimic real history, so it’s very believable.
Glad you’re enjoying it, it’s pretty cool (personal favourite bit of lore: Cayden Cailean, The Accidental God and the whole Ascended/Starstone thing)
If you’re writing your own one-shot, remember that you can twist and mold the lore to your hearts content. It’s like a huge toolbox: there’s bits and pieces there for almost any situation, but don’t be afraid to add to it or modify the tools to fit your needs.
Cayden Cailean is such an incredible legend. What a bro. Love that guy.
Also, canonical Russians are a favorite
Oh absolutely. The plan for this campaign is that for each level, they have to play that many hours of main quest content. The first hour is to get them hooked. The dungeon is 5 rooms, 2 encounters, 1 short rest. It’s located in the First World, but they don’t know that yet.
The First World is getting customized to have a currency called Elerium issued by the Eldest. It can’t leave the First World except by special magical means and is worthless in Golarion (to avoid the electrum problem). CP, SP, GP, and PP are worthless in the First World, except among few traders in cities near magical entrances. Everything that costs less than 1GP in Golarion costs 1EP in the First World and naturally things can cost more than 1 EP, but it’s not a universal currency and so can only partially solve equipment problems.
Once the players escape the 1st level dungeon, they’re going to exit into a pantomime of Redwall Abbey with a ratfolk Champion to represent Matthias!
Could I recommend looking at The Harrowing adventure and Stolen Fate AP for otherworldly adventure ideas? They don’t deal with the first world but have a lot of stuff you could easily fit in.
I’ll have to look into it!
More like 11 thousand if you start from Xin, plus the other 7 sets of 10,000 years thanks to Alaznist. Worth learning about the runelords just so you have context for why all their shit is still lying around.
Anyway, some fun, extremely minor facts: The Mindspin mountains are so named because, according to Orcish myth, Cayden Caylian led the greatest pub crawl ever there and it left everyone’s minds spinning. The god of Murder hangs out directly underneath the Plane of Law. Princess Anastasia Romanov, rumoured to have disappeared in the Russian revolution, is the current queen of Irrisen, and Baba Yaga’s granddaughter. One of Magnimar’s most senior Pathfinders is an awakened gorilla. There’s a 17th level wizard that lives in a tower on the Sun, and a 19th level wizard running an entire country of scientologists. There’s a god of accidental deaths whose followers create OSHA violations in the hopes of causing deadly accidents.
Okay don’t be mad at me, but I’m linking to a reddit post.
This friend right here has helped me decide settings for either backstory or my own campaigns a bunch of times. It’s also very useful to find a neat place and learn its lore so you can rattle off details to impress your friends. Like the tale of Gex and Neb. Or the king gorilla that has a huge weapons cache in the jungle.
That map is amazing! Really sums up the inner sea lmao
I’m replying to myself because I was remembering how cool it was learning about the god king of Osirion and how insanely long that empire has been going. Not to mention Absalom! I believe there’s a whole YouTube series talking about walking around Absalom like a podcast because it’s so insanely detailed.
