My group’s been playing Second Darkness for over a year now, and if there’s one weakness we’ve found in the Golarion campaign setting, it’s religion.
The setting is geopolitically diverse, with the same sort of kitchen-sink-of-cultures approach that made Greyhawk our go-to setting for so long. But what it lacks are gods.
My gaming group entered Book 4: Eternal Night of Paizo’s Second Darkness adventure path this weekend, officially taking us past the midpoint of the campaign. All along the heroes have been battling the drow, including a massive fight to take back Celwynvian.
It was a good Christmas for my Pathfinder campaign, as I got two of the new game master-friendly books released by Paizo — Ultimate Equipment and NPC Codex — and one player-friendly book, the Advanced Players Guide. I’ve had my eye on Ultimate Equipment since it came out; one of my frustrations with my Second … Read more
In the real world, our gaming group’s seen numerous weddings (and will see yet another this fall), but in the game world our heroes never got hitched. Until tonight. Over the last year of our Second Darkness campaign one of the characters, Skender, has been seeing a priestess of Calistria named Carlila Zalteri at the … Read more
A new RPG system, a credit card and iPad are a dangerous combination. Especially when the game is Pathfinder, the company is Paizo, and the PDFs are priced at $9.99 a piece. I didn’t have this problem with Star Wars: Saga Editon. While I bought all the books in the line — 13 source books … Read more
It’s been a year and a half since we started Paizo’s Second Darkness adventure path. The first two books — The Shadow in the Sky and Children of the Void are done. The characters are 5th level and the third book — The Armageddon Echo — is on hold while they level up to the … Read more
The Inner Sea World Guide is Paizo’s third iteration of its Golarion campaign guide. The first was released when D&D 3.5 was still Wizard of the Coast’s flagship fantasy game; the second came with the release of Paizo’s own 3.5-derived Pathfinder RPG. The latest iteration reflects the growing maturity of the Pathfinder product line. Within its pages players will find that redundant material – such as class write-ups now included in the Pathfinder core rulebook – removed in favor of extended write-ups on the world itself.
And what a world it is. While evoking spirit of World of Greyhawk, Golarion excels at tweaking standard fantasy formula. Within its pages – including 64 pages of new content – you’ll find Cheliax, a kingdom that embraced devil worship in order to save its empire, as well as Galt, a country that threw off its imperial Cheliax masters and descended into a never-ending bloodthirsty revolution. There are the mountaintop citadels constructed after the dwarves completed their quest for the sky, and a frozen kingdom ruled by the daughters of Baba Yaga. It’s a setting that feels familiar and new at the same time, and like Pathfinder itself, it’s a worthy successor to the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons.
I did something I’ve never done before in September: I kicked off someone else’s campaign. Ok, technically it’s still my campaign, but material belongs to Pazio. The campaign is the Second Darkness adventure path, and if all goes according to plan, it will see our seven freshly-minted heroes face the ancient hidden evil of the … Read more
In hindsight, we played Dungeons & Dragons for too long. Our World of Greyhawk campaign lasted 12 years, included dozens of characters, hundreds of plots, and forays into Castle Greyhawk, the Temple of Elemental Evil and our own homegrown creations. It spanned the 2nd and 3rd editions of the game and saw us buy hundreds … Read more
It’s Game Day, and for the first time in years I’m running Dungeons & Dragons. Well, technically I’m running Pathfinder, but in all the ways that matter it’s the thematic and mechanical successor to the flavor of D&D my group liked best. This session is a long time coming. I’ll save the story of the … Read more