Recon

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Perils of Pathfinder: World Creation Process


So I'm finally getting things going on my Pathfinder game.  Basically I'm set up with 2 different player groups on different days, once per month on each.  Player level 4, mostly human party, a lot of first timers, nothing groundbreaking.

Most of my previous campaigns have not strictly even had a setting; it was just my bastard psychopath PC's wandering from one burning town to the next.  So this was really my first time creating my own setting that would have a persistent state beyond the current adventure.  So I was basically starting from zero, but there is a surprising amount of good information in the DMG on the mechanics involved and I haven't had any major problems so far.

The first image that came to mind for me was the skyline.  I could see a big lighthouse on the southern end of some little island on a wide river, with a big arched bridge connecting it to a little rural hamlet and palisade fort.  It developed a little further when I realized that the palisades were made of petrified trees, far stronger than they should be, and thus the region was named the "Stonetree River Delta."  It is a vast swampy area based off of turn of the century New Orleans, dotted with rivers and lakes and mysterious islands and some buried sins.

Anyway, I more or less built it from there, adding bits of libertarian propaganda (Oh yeah, the PC's are going to have to pay taxes and HOW THEY WILL HATE IT BWAHAHA) and background story until I had it ready for what amounts to my final test.  I looked over the info I had at the time and wrote down 99 adventure hooks as fast as I could.  It must be a pretty good setting because I had all 99 in less than 45 minutes.

Anyway, that's the muthafuckin' happenings on my Pathfinder game.  We go live with the tutorial dungeon in about a week.  I'll let you know how it goes as time progresses.