System and setting

I just finished two books this weekend; Paizo's system book Occult Adventures and the second part of the SPCM Dark World campaign; all of the first five of the first of which come in four slim books; the sixth and final coming in a single thicker book. The capsule quick and dirty reviews of them are as follows:

Occult Adventures: an interesting book if you're really into the PFRPG system. Otherwise, the book is extremely heavy on mechanics and doesn't actually offer very much other than mechanics. I'm not completely against the PFRPG mechanics; it is, after all, the spiritual (and in most cases literal) continuation of the d20 system, which I played almost exclusively for the better part of 16-17 years, would probably be happy playing again today, and didn't really mind, with some caveats. That said, it is certainly difficult to read some of those super mechanics heavy books, even when they're offering mechanics that I'm interested in potentially using, and the psychic classes and occult "system", if you will, especially as a potential replacement for "normal" D&D magic, is compelling. I still like the idea of my STRANGE AFFAIRS OF THE UNSEEN BEYOND as an alternative mini-system, or house-rule set, and does exactly that and would come with a mini-setting that is built around the concept of such. 

I probably need to redo this with the background faded a bit more...

In any case, I'm also picking up Horror Adventures to read and it'll be the hardcover book that I carry around, but I'm not actually going to read it until I read the three softcover Paizo books that are in my backback first, the next of which, which I hope to read also this weekend, is Guide to Absalom. Dark Markets: Guide to Katapesh and The Great Beyond, are also in that group, and they, along with Dragons Revisited and Dungeon Denizens Revisited complete the D&D 3.5 compatible Pathfinder Chronicles books that I have on deck to read. I'm working on finishing that little group, along with the next five stand-alone modules, and the 2-6 chapters of Legacy of Fire all at the same time, and then all three of those particular trawls will migrate from D&D 3.5 compatible to PFRPG compatible. Which, as noted above, is a bit of a misnomer, since PFRPG is largely compatible with D&D 3.5; it's just a bit more complicated and certainly noticeably over-powered from a PC perspective. 

Sandy Petersen Cthulhu Mythos Saga 3: Dark Worlds, Part 2: Nithon: Pfew, that's a lot to type. This is the third of the SPCM Mythos Sagas that I've started now. The first one was an interesting idea, but with relatively poor execution and ultimately didn't impress me very much. The second one also had execution issues, I think, but was a much more interesting idea, and I'm convinced now that when combined creatively with the Serpent's Skull adventure path (which I'm not that far away from reaching, and which I have read before a number of years ago) I'd have an absolutely bangin' campaign themed around fighting serpent people and dinosaurs and jungles and all that stuff. Dark Worlds, which I guess I'm now officially halfway through, on the other hand, I'm finding lacking; possibly even more difficult to imagine how I would use than the first one, Ghouls Island. Still, as an avowed fan of Lovecraftian themes, I'll continue to read them until I read all six, of course, and the next one, with the Tsathoggua themed stuff, I'll hope to find is better. But we'll see. The SPCM has been more miss than hit for me in general. In fact, although I know why he (they?) made the decision to do so, I'm not really convinced that making it D&D 5e compatible in the first place was ever really the right call. 

But I'm still excited about using Yig Snake Granddaddy, in spite of it's obviously stupid name. I've even got an upcoming campaign based around that very idea.

In addition to the book reviews, I've also given some thought to an interesting phenomena. Or at least, I think it's interesting. I've never really thought about any D&D as being setting intrinsic. I've always seen D&D as setting agnostic. In the past, it was overtly and explicitly so. Lately, it's only kinda sorta so. Now, non-D&D games were never intended to be setting agnostic, unless they were explicitly intended to be so, like GURPS or something. My copies of, for example, MERP, Star Wars d20, Shadowrun or Werewolf: The Apocalypse were obviously all built to come with a setting, and although the rules could be used in a different setting if you wanted to, it wasn't intended that way. D&D, on the other hand, was never like that. While possibly some early D&D stuff was implicitly set in the Greyhawk setting, the reality is that the Greyhawk setting didn't exist in a form that we would associate with the modern understanding of setting until the World of Greyhawk product in 1980, and even that's probably iffy, as it still lacked much of the detail that we expect from a setting to be useable. Throughout the 70s, Greyhawk, if it existed at all, was just Gary Gygax's home game. 1980 was, I suppose, a watershed moment, but you could also argue that it wasn't until the 1983 boxed set that Greyhawk really became a setting as we know it today. 

And while adventures were nominally set in Greyhawk and may have made offhand references to a Greyhawk geographical feature here and there, those adventures were deliberately featured to not really have any setting stuff in them other than the immediate needs and setting around the adventure site itself. The "basic" line of D&D (as opposed to AD&D) had Mystara, or the "Known World", a completely different setting, as it's implied setting, although again, there was little need to refer to any setting most of the time, until actual setting material, like the Gazetteer series, started getting published. Even then, that stuff was all very optional, and almost nothing of the modules or rules needed any of it, or even referred to it, for the most part, with the exception of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos being a kind of "sample" for overlanding in the Expert set. During 2e, of course, the publication of settings was a big deal, and they published all kinds of them; continuing with Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, which had come out earlier, and adding to it Birthright, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, and many others. But all of them were deliberately kept somewhat separated from the rules, and existed alongside it, modifying the game for use within that setting, but otherwise leaving D&D itself alone, which continued to be pretty setting agnostic (minus all of the things that were implied by the rules, of course.)

A PFRPG brawler

During the 3e era, Greyhawk was once again the default setting, but they were very explicit about not pushing that as anything other than an example, and made it as unobtrusive as possible. The only exception here may have been in many of the Dungeon adventures, and a handful of adventures that were more explicitly set in Greyhawk, but then again, 3e almost immediately published a whole lengthy Forgotten Realms line of products alongside the "regular" D&D products that established it as an alternate and popular setting, and the only official one in print for a few years, until they came out with Eberron after the launch of 3.5 and the setting search activity. Because of the OGL and the SRD, unofficial settings proliferated too, as well as even semi-official settings, like Rokugan (part of the Oriental Adventures book, and then a semi-official OGL product by Alderac Entertainment Group), but I also have settings published in this era like Midnight, Dragonstar, Sovereign Stone, Freeport, Iron Kingdoms, Scarred Lands, and more. 4e also came with a built in setting, but it was deliberately unobtrusive, and if anything, fans are a little bit upset that there isn't more information developed for the "Nentir Vale" setting and it is as lightly treated as it is. I'm even kind of one of them.

Which is why it's a little odd to me that Pathfinder and even 5e seem to be much more overtly tied to settings than anything else by D&D. Pathfinder, being a continuation of the mechanics of 3.5 meant that I would have thought that I'd just keep using it to play in whatever setting my 3.5 games were in if I wanted to upgrade. It would give me options, like if I wanted to use the aforementioned occult classes, or heck, something as cool as a brawler, as a class in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or even my own homebrew setting, well I could, because ultimately it was really just a rule system, like the older versions of D&D. And honestly, you could, of course, treat it that way, and just get the mechanics books and ignore many of the other books like the Player's Companions, the Setting/Chronicles line, or of course the many adventures. But, of course, Paizo in many ways built their entire company on adventures, and the adventure paths in particular, which were their signature type of product, and adventure paths, like any published campaign, have to be somewhat setting specific. Even the attempts to suggest that the earlier Dungeon magazine adventure paths could be adapted to not take place in Greyhawk felt kind of half-hearted, as they were more and more explicitly included loads of Greyhawk references and even foundational, bedrock setting elements. Rise of the Runelords, and the subsequent adventure paths never even made any attempt to be anything other than Golarion specific campaigns, and Golarion lore was a huge part of them, to the extent that I really think of Pathfinder as the game set in Golarion. While I could use it as a "generic" D&D, I wonder how many people do, indeed, even make any attempt to do so. I say in spite of the fact that I do have PFRPG compatible Freeport products which do, in fact, do exactly that. I know some smaller companies published Pathfinder compatible stuff, and even larger companies like Kobold Press made a lot of Pathfinder versions of stuff that I associate more strongly with 5e now, of course. But looking around at actual plays and discussions about the game, etc. I see more and more that most people just assume that Pathfinder = Golarion, even though of course it doesn't necessarily have to. But I think Paizo have kind of deliberately cultivated that attitude; certainly they haven't published anything for Pathfinder that implies any other setting (other than WWI Russia briefly during the Reign of Winter adventure path, lol) except for extremely discrete and oblique references to "standard" D&D elements like Orcus, or Lovecraftian stuff which is very lightly implied to actually take place in the real world.

5e has, of course, done the same thing with the Forgotten Realms. Although they have published a handful of Eberron products, even most DM's Guild 3pp stuff actually takes place in the FR, and most lore videos on YouTube have the annoying habit of talking about D&D and FR as if they were one and the same and not that one is a partial subset of the other.

I dunno; maybe I'm overthinking this, and it's either not a big deal, or just a perception bias kind of thing. 

As an offhand epilogue aside on a totally different topic, I was surprised to find out on Thursday that my players didn't really know what a genasi is, even though I'm actually playing one in a game that one of them was running. When I told them that genasi were to genies and other elemental creatures what tieflings are to demons, devils and other fiends, that seemed like a major reveal. I guess it goes to show you; I get a little too invested in D&D sometimes, and take for granted stuff that other players may not.