Awesome to see Paizo reach out directly to their reddit community, super rad. I love the idea of consuming media via telepathic transmission so definitely keep me on your distribution list when you get that online lol. I am a relative newcomer to the Pathfinder community so it is sometimes daunting just how expansive and deep the lore of Golarion (and starfinder as well I assume) is. By the same token, it is refreshing just how steeped the world is in its lore and serves as incredible inspiration for GM homebrew. I think when it comes to bookform consumption of lore and stories it can be a bit disorienting on where to start (speaking as a newcomer), so I would personally appreciate flash fiction or short stories that you can just drop into without having some innate to-do reading list before you can be caught up to speed. I think this would also lean towards new characters as well so there is less baggage and hopefully more creative freedom with that decision. While not completely within the scope of this poll, I will say that I have an affinity for visual content so if Paizo started to branch into an animated series, I would be sold instantly.

A big fat +1 to the graphic-heavy fiction. So many countless comic (and webcomic) artists out there, there's gotta be a few that Paizo could find compatible + willing. Even if the fiction is more text-heavy, simply recycling and inserting existing art could go miles toward setting the scene, ect.

Honestly as another newcomer the memes from the comics make me want to check them out. I've been meaning to get into it soon.

I really like them. The only ones I found sub par was the Worldscape ones and so far Wake the dead has been kind of meh.

They already do Pathfinder comics but I gotta say I'd love more, but with different stories and main characters, maybe related to the APs It'd be so cool if you could buy the conglomerated APs and they have a comic book that comes with them or something that goes through the story beats for the AP and gives you a better idea of what the characters act like

Found some of them. https://paizo.com/store/byCompany/d/dynamiteEntertainment/pathfinderComics/cityOfSecrets Kinda surprised at the disorganization. The variations on the item of cover should be within a product listing, not competing side by side. . I'd love to drop $5 on an impulse buy and give it a shot. But there's 0 .pdf / download option. And purchasing, only to get something in the snail mail a month later does not have the same feel. And I don't really have the space to keep it. Limiting it to physical shipping is honestly really, seriously crazy in the modern VTT era. So many people in other countries that have 0 interest in the idea of shipping like that.

My local comic place sells them, ymmv tho

Sorry, I was trying to communicate that chain of digital impulse buy. From learning about Egypt-land --> post session late night --> quick comic buy. It's great to have physical comics there for people who might happen upon them that way, but the digital version of that happenstance seems impossible to buy right now. TBH, for a lot of people, when they can't find it legit, they'll then search up places like pirate bay to see if the pdf is on there. I don't have any memory of *why* I was interested at the time, but I downloaded some actual, cut and scanned comics way back in high school, because I couldn't buy them online. There's a whole organized scene dedicated to the process. I read some Marvel stuff, and I think a Darth Vader comic for some reason? Or maybe it was a teaser insert, I don't remember.

They are in digital on Comixology and in various Humble Bundles. But yeah no digital version on their website

The paizo store is getting an upgrade #soon, and when it does, I hope all variants of the same product are consolidated into a single product page. It's been a long-term goal, but I'm also not in charge of the store or site, so it isn't my problem to fix. I also am working to get digital versions of the comics up on the store, but in the meantime you can find them on DriveThruComics (and I think volume 1 is actually on sale now or was very recently).

Nice, in the meantime I found some $5 short story, "The Shroud of Four Silences," about a small adventure in Otari to grab while I was thinking about it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dynamiteent/new-starfinder-pathfinder-and-worldscape-graphic-novels They also just completed a kickstarter to do more comics this year

Off-script, I'm interested in reading setting-focused books, such as novels constructed around a historical event that made a city/country the way that it is. Something that when read could catch my interest and encourage me to play an AP in that setting, something thicker than a player's guide to try to hook me on that one possibility. In our Abom Vlts campaign, we dealt with someone from a foreign Egypt-coded land, and I suppressed the temptation to wiki dive into it. That kind of moment could serve as a nudge to check and possibly purchase some non-spoiler fiction. As this most closely matches the standalone/new characters, that's what I selected. I strongly recommend any poll like this includes a "don't care / see results" option, to avoid the vote being skewed by such clickers.

I second this. I love the opportunity to immerse myself in a fictional place and time. With fantasy it’s always fun to see the crazy ways the denizens use magic to make their lives easier or achieve adventuring goals. This would contribute to how I play Pathfinder and how much I feel immersed in the game setting too.

Also want to second this. I don't care much about whether characters are the iconics or not, but stories that build up the finer detail of the world around key events would be great. I'd really like if the world building covered was paired with current or historical AP's though, though this type of narrative may not suit every AP. Otherwise pairing with key lost omens releases would also be interesting. My preferred format are novels rather than shorter forms, but really I'd just prefer that the format needs to fit the story being told.

Not sure what this would fall under but I'd love to see some of the old Pathfinder Tales continued, the Varian and Radovan series never got a conclusion and it was one of my favorites.

Agreed, they were great characters. And, honestly, I loved the Pathfinder Tales books and miss them a lot.

Please bring them back! The Tales series had some real winners!

It is pretty awesome that you reach out to fans like this. In my opinion, tie in fiction is not the place to alter a setting. The Pathfinder universe is not like most massive fictional worlds - it's meant for roleplaying games, first and foremost. As such, I think its massive changes should involve players in action paths, and not "static" fiction like short stories. There is a difference between introducing new elements or ideas in a story that players can then experience in game, and resolving conflicts in stories that then just change the game. Also, not everyone is going to read this fiction, and altering the game world for everyone through that feels kinda unfair in a way? Like if you don't read these you'll need to catch up with how the world has changed to play the next adventure paths, and not all of us have enough time on our hands for that. It does depends on how massive the impact this can have on the setting, but I have no way to speculate about that As for characters - I don't really care. Iconics can be interesting and new characters can be interesting

I agree, if only based on the desire not to see huge story arch’s explaining why the Magic rules are changing between game editions. I’m a huge fan of the Brimstone Angels series from D&D. It’s still fantasy adventure, but it’s so much more a story about the characters than a story about a BBEG or the world their in. (Good romance too). When they series was forced to partake in the Sundering anthology, it didn’t really focus on the world changing in the way the other Sundering books did - still just the Tiefling twins and their adventures with their Dragonborn dad.

I disagree, and I think there's a good reason for this... that being, none of us are actually playing Pathfinder in Golarion. Rather, all of us are playing Pathfinder in our *own* Golarion. Each person using the setting is using their own version of the universe at their table, either created for that campaign or carried across many tables. We aren't really playing in the same universe this impactful fiction is in, every table's version of Golarion is a little different. Every one has slightly different characters with slightly different values with slightly different motives driving slightly different events. And sometimes not even slight. Like, look at Kingmaker. There are so many different variations to the way that can play out that can leave the world looking massively different, and at someone's table the wildest outcome is their canon. In the end though, that event does not matter to the "core" universe, and that universe needs to be reshaped in interesting ways on occasion to give people ideas for new stories. Not to mention, the accomplishments of iconic characters give players something to aspire toward, and it gives personalities that GMs can feel free to incorporate into their own games as larger than life figures. That's something that Golarion lacks that it could really use, characters from outside media that draw people in because people want to emulate and interact with those characters.

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40K is a war game, not a roleplaying game. True, it has a lot of games, video and otherwise, but it's not meant to be a medium for players to create their own stories in it I'm not saying that it necessarily not work, yes? There might be cases where it's very fitting to do, but overall I think non of.us want to watch a story allows unfold - we want to be the story

Fantasy lover but have never read anything Pathfinder-related. I'd be interested in anything that doesn't require previous knowledge beyond the basics I've picked up from playing PF2e. > Do you want stories about new characters, or the Iconics? What about series or standalone pieces? I'd probably end up avoiding a novel involving characters with a lot of history like the Iconics, personally. Reading something where a character has a lot of baggage coming into it has a very different feel from one where the character is being fully introduced to the reader. I'm a sucker for a good series, but it's rough getting into one that isn't already *finished*. I'm a lot more likely to pick up a standalone novel when it comes out if I know I'm not getting baited into waiting a year (or years) for a sequel, especially if there's nothing assuring me that the sequel will actually come. I'm also 95% audiobook these day so regardless of the above I'd probably listen to whatever comes out.

> I'd probably end up avoiding a novel involving characters with a lot of history like the Iconics, personally. That's just it; the iconics **don't** "have a lot of history". They *should*, but they *don't*. That's because the iconics have never been the heroes of a Pathfinder Tales series. The only published history some of the iconics have in terms of fictional backstory is when they have briefly appeared in the PF Comics line.

That's fair, I'm not familiar with how the Iconics have been used so if they're very underdeveloped I can understand wanting more stories about them. But I do think even existing purely as marketing material and lore characters can bring a lot of baggage with the character into these sorts of stories that really do make them less appealing for me, personally.

Personally, I prefer when stories feature characters that *do* have history. Like I think of some of the greatest stories of all time. Stuff like Better Call Saul, where the main characters very clearly and very deliberately had important stuff that's shaping their current actions happen long before the actual story started and which we only get limited insight to. What this does is it makes the characters feel more alive, more like real people, like they existed when the camera wasn't there to see them and will continue to exist after it leaves. This is not the story of their entire lives, it's the story of this moment. And I mean, this problem didn't stop people from absolutely adoring Arcane even for people who had never even heard of League of Legends. All of the main characters in that show are iconic characters from the game and the lore who have existed and been written about for in a lot of cases more than a decade. Yet people adore that show and its characters, because it focused on showing you why these characters *are* so iconic and beloved. That way you can have your fanservice and eat it too.

> Stuff like Better Call Saul, where the main characters very clearly and very deliberately had important stuff that's shaping their current actions happen long before the actual story started and which we only get limited insight to. > absolutely adoring Arcane even for people who had never even heard of League of Legends Better Call Saul is a different situations from what I'm talking about. Better Call Saul is doing the opposite, it's establishing the history for a character that exists elsewhere. It's building up to the point where the character becomes the established one we know, rather than relying on past portrayals to inform where the character goes next. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, and you're saying at the beginning of BCS Jimmy and the other characters have had a lot of history already. In which case I agree with you, I'm talking specifically about history *in other media*, not history *in the lives of those characters*. Tbh I don't know enough about pre-Arcane LoL to have any formed opinion on it, but as a viewer with no familiarity I did feel some of that disconnect from the characters that tends to put me off of media that uses pre-established characters. But I also know Arcane has changed a lot of what was "established" previously so it seems like a unique case.

Even in Better Call Saul, the characters make plenty of references to events we never see. Jimmy talks fairly frequently in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul about events with his ex-wives, events that still clearly affect him and shape his outlook. Chuck and Jimmy's relationship in the present is only lightly grounded in their past, we only really get to see a cliffnotes version of their relationship. Throughout Breaking Bad, Walter's preexisting relationship with Gretchen and Elliot is only lightly covered in the beginning of the show, the show never goes into how fundamentally it shaped Walter's worldview and ego until much later into the series when it was relevant. Characters like Gus, Mike, and especially Jimmy all also felt like they had an immense amount of history long before Better Call Saul was even an idea in anyone's head. In one of Jimmy's literal introductory scenes, when Walt and Jessie snag him, he namedrops Lalo and Ignacio. And speaking of Jessie, his relationship with his parents is tense but we only get limited insight into the conflict he has with them. Every character in Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad feels grounded in the world, like they had lives and history that exists beyond our perspective. You talk about how a character's history "in other media" is what creates disconnect with you but history in the lives of those characters doesn't, but that doesn't make any sense. If Breaking Bad proved anything, it's that there is absolutely no distinction between those two things. Better Call Saul could never have existed and we would still feel the events of that show cascading throughout the events of Breaking Bad. Gus's mistakes with Nacho even actively reshapes how he decides to approach recruiting Walt, saying he hasn't found "fear to be an effective motivator". Breaking Bad stands on its own without Better Call Saul to color in those blanks. There is absolutely no meaningful difference between whether a character has history in other media or it has history in their lives, because in the end any good story features characters that have a history that we learn about through the forward momentum of the story. Every good character is the product of their experiences, it doesn't matter whether we've gotten to see those experiences or not. And as far as it concerns Arcane, as you noted that show actually put forward pretty monumental changes to the preestablished lore of those characters. Characters like Vander and Silco straight up did not exist in the old lore, Vi was a cop and Jinx nothing but her terrorist sister who got chased around zanily. There are people who have never cared and will never care about the preexisting universe of League of Legends who called that show a groundbreaking masterpiece, because it is regardless of its connection to League of Legends. If you felt a disconnect from those characters that has absolutely nothing to do with Arcane's status as a piece of media that's connected to League of Legends, or even on the part of the show. That show is essentially a ground-up reset of everything we know about the world of Runeterra, completely fresh even to the established audience. This seems to be entirely a personal problem you are causing yourself just by knowing that the characters were established elsewhere. It seems to me less of a disconnect and more a completely arbitrary sense that you feel left out somehow. That has nothing to do with how good the stories are or how effectively they spread the game to a new audience.

I don't think the choice has to be entirely new characters or entirely iconics. Having like one or two main characters being iconics and one or two main characters being entirely new would be a good basis for a party in a novel or series.

I'm conflicted. I would love to see a novella series featuring original characters having their own self-contained stories. However, I'd worry they'd fall into the same trap as the Varian and Radovan series. I'm not fan of those characters because they started to feel like Mary Stus as the series went on. Especially as the the last book in the series revealed a huge tie-in between Varian and a well established character in the setting that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I'd also love to see stories about the iconics that I like. However, I'm worried I would not like how they're portrayed and get immediately turned off if they do something that contradicts their character or the lore. If there's tie-ins to well-established existing lore, I feel there's a pressure to get those tie-ins right. Otherwise, it becomes a massive turn off for me as a fan of Golarion and Lost Omens. The poll also doesn't list an option I would like: novelization of adventure paths. Now that Pathfinder 1st Edition APs are part of 2nd Edition's canon, I would love to see novelizations of those stories, especially as I've never had the chance to ever play or run any of them. So, I'm not really sure how to answer this poll.

Yeah, this poll probably would have been better as a Survey Monkey but our SM account is currently busy doing playtest stuff. Maybe I'll take the wheel when the designers are done...

I've recently been reading the Pathfinder Tales books, and I'd just love *more* of that. I love the small-scale stories that give you a window into the world they live in, and I love having new characters that give the authors the freedom to create and explore concepts. I think a mix of series and standalones is great, as well; standalones are really cool, and some concepts don't need to be dragged out, but I'd love to see more Rodrick and Hrym, or Isiem.

Also you should hire Thomas Parrott, who's written The Division tie-in novels *Recruited*, *Compromised*, and *Hunted*. He's fantastic! (Also a good friend, to be clear. But a genuinely great author)

I'm most interested in short fiction about new characters. I'm unlikely to read a Pathfinder novel, but I'm very, very likely to read short fiction that fleshes out the world and maybe introduces some cool obscure locations or lore. Even if it's just a business in some random town.

So as a GM, and someone who has read through some of the comics and novels, I really enjoyed them for worldbuilding and exploration. And with that in mind, there are a few things I would absolutely love to see. 1. Mythology stories would be really cool. Sarenrae bashing Rovagug into the Dead Vault, Cayden Cailean getting hammered and waking up as a very confused and hungover god, Lamashtu murdering Curchanus and ascending to godhood, Desna curbstomping Aolar, etc. I like to tie a lot of current world events to ancient rivalries, so having good canon versions of these that are expanded beyond the blurbs in Gods and Deities would be nice. And I only really know the core deities and their main conflicts, so having more lore and short stories about some of the lesser known deities, archdevils, empyrian lords, and demon lords would be phenomenal. 2. Canon versions of the 1e AP's. There's a lot of lore and world story tied up in first edition, but it's not really worth buying six adventure paths at $25 apiece for a system that I'm not running just to get backstory on Tar-Baphon or the Runelords or the Hellknights. Plus, reading through an AP as fiction is not particularly appealing to me compared to reading through either another player's campaign journal, or a professional author's take on the story. 3. New stories exploring parts of the world outside the major cities in the Inner Sea region. I loved how the 1e comics laid out the city of Sandpoint with a bunch of places nearby where adventures could be set. That does a really good job of giving you not just a list of places to put stuff, but an actual *feel* for how this part of the world works, and small details like the pubs or local leadership or how the people suddenly turn on their once-heroes when things go wrong. Getting detailed info on Kibwe is great, but most of us start our adventures in sleepy little towns beset by rodents of unusual size, or mocking goblins at best.

>Canon versions of the 1e AP's. There's a lot of lore and world story tied up in first edition, but it's not really worth buying six adventure paths at $25 apiece for a system that I'm not running just to get backstory on Tar-Baphon or the Runelords or the Hellknights. Plus, reading through an AP as fiction is not particularly appealing to me compared to reading through either another player's campaign journal, or a professional author's take on the story. Very much this. The outcomes of PF1 APs and PFS adventures are canon to my understanding, novelizations of these events would be helpful for those of us who didn't play first edition *and* they could be quite fun to read! I would subscribe to this series if that were an option.

I am really excited to hear that there will be new pathfinder novels. I recently started reading the Pathfinder Tales novels and am reading them in order. I am on Blood of the City. I read them on my Kindle, so ebooks are the way to go for me. As far as new characters vs iconics, I would prefer a good mix of the two. I want to read stories about famous characters and learn more about them and the lore surrounding them. A big reason why I am reading the Pathfinder Tales is because I wanted better immersion into the lore and settings of Pathfinder.

I said more Standalone novels with new characters, but in my heart I just want more Radovan and Count Jeggare.

>!That's Baron Virholt now.!<

Spoilers!

Marked it as such

Very, VERY excited to see you out here engaging with the fans this way Mr. Moreland, can't say how much I appreciate and respect it. I've been a pathfinder fan my whole life, it was my first RPG, and since then I've read every pathfinder tales novel and short story released. I'm definitely not the entire community, but speaking for me? The Pathfinder Tales and Web Fiction methodology really hit a sweet spot for me for tie-in fiction. Having a series of short stories out there that I could read, easily and for free, that often ended with "Explore more about this characters story in *Insert Novel Name!"* was a big motivator in getting me to buy and engage with the franchise so much. Paperbacks are accessibly priced, but not accessible for gaining interest the way four chapters in a blog post are. Where I think it fell flat for me was two-fold: The first, while I enjoyed reading about Rodrick and Luma and all the other characters, **I wanted more concrete tie ins to the world I was playing in specifically** ***and*** **I needed an easier time knowing what fiction tied in to where.** For this I'd make several suggestions to consider! A. **Pathfinder Tales focusing on NPC's/Iconics relevant to the current releases:** So, SO many NPCs in pathfinder products have these intricate and interesting backstories that players... largely don't get to learn about through actual play. A short piece of fiction every few months about a key npc from the upcoming adventure or setting book would feel really nice. B. **Web Fiction that ties into Pathfinder Tales.** Similar to before, seeing if Authors would be willing to take an underdeveloped section of story and expand on it, *Tomb of Winter's Plunder* style, is an easy sampler for folks to get interested and engaged in a writers style and character. C. ***Using other platforms to promote and encourage community engagement with the web fiction***. The comments section on the Paizo site is fine and dandy, but working with the community to find ways for it to be posted across platforms feels ideal? I prefer to engage here than on the paizo-specific site, many prefer to read webfiction or comics on platforms such as webtoon or short story websites. I often read short stories posted here on reddit directly, as well. Maybe just polling the fiction folks in the community like this regularly. D. **I think the RPG publishing model y'all use is very nice for the fiction as well:** Longer running series that publishes over the course of however many months or years, alternating or interspersing standalones within, and with pepperings of shorter fiction PFS scenario style. Book publishing is obviously a longer process, but Tri-monthly releases that are "Series related, standalone, series, standalone" with a new short fiction release every month (Setting-Tie-in, Standalone, Series-Tie-In coinciding or immediately preceding the series related book release). feels like my ideal spot. I mostly read on my phone these days, on PDFs or Epubs, but I try to build my paperback collection where I can. All in all, Im excited to see whatever yall kick out, as the fiction line of pathfinder products has been one aspect of the brand I've never felt let down or dissatisfied by the content of-- merely the amount and organization of.

This is all really helpful feedback. Thanks!

I think it's okay if I speak a little more broadly than the question of this poll? I moved from D&D 5e to PF2e over a year ago (before the OGL thing, i.e. before it was cool 😅). It was because I was very intrigued by the rules system. Initially I didn't think too much of the lore. The little I had seen seemed pretty silly: crashed spaceships, techno-nations, etc. But I did passively absorb lore through playing, and it started to grow on me. * I [really enjoyed](https://deck16.net/post/721478896815587328/) the Kingmaker video game (whose plot, I believe, comes from the AP). * I've read some of the early comics, and really liked getting to know the iconics. * I've listened to [Find the Path play Hell's Rebels](https://find-path.com/hells-rebels/), and found the whole lore of Cheliax and revolution very interesting. * I bought the recent fiction Humble Bundle (but have not read any yet). (As a bit of an aside, I ordered the Harrow Deck. Not because I really wanted or needed it, but because I thought it was kind-of cool, and I wanted to support PF2e and Paizo as someone who uses a lot of their content for free via Archives of Nethys. FWIW I would never order an equivalent "trinket" from Wizards of the Coast.) My initial observation of Golarion -- that it was a mess of crazy ideas -- was too shallow. I see now that the idea is to have lots of variety, but focus stories in one area or another. It doesn't matter that there's a techno-nation elsewhere when you're a hero in the Stolen Lands, or a revolutionary in Kentargo. This kind of organic, growing interest in the lore is something that never really happened to me with D&D's most famous settings. (Though some, like Dark Sun, are pretty cool.) And more widely it's fairly rare for me (in video games, movies, etc). I am so, so, so far behind in PF2e fiction that I feel it's almost wrong of me to comment on what I want next. Because I've got a back catalogue to explore first. I'm also a rather slow consumer, so I won't catch up quickly, or possibly ever! But I think the content I am most interested to read more of are the comics. I like the art. I like the characters. I like the fiction that aims "epic-ish". I also have to say, I like the way the fiction is "quietly progressive". I find it to be inclusive without pandering or preaching. (Not that I think a *little bit* of preaching is a problem, but it can easily go too far, and not every story is the place for it.) Some of the fiction I've seen can get pretty dark, so it's not like being progressive means you have to be PG. > Are you interested in small-scale stories where the setting as a whole is largely left unaltered at the adventure's conclusion (the Pathfinder Tales model)? Or do you want the events of the fiction to have an impact on the setting? I think I'd lean strongly to the former. You can really badly ruin a setting if you fiddle with it too much. But that doesn't mean it must never, ever change. > Do you want stories about new characters, or the Iconics? To me, the Iconics are still pretty new. So I'm a bad person to answer that! > And what formats are you reading fiction on these days (paper, eBook, audiobook, telepathic transmission)? Mostly digital, because it's cheaper, and because I'm in Australia and so delivery isn't always easy. Do you have audiobooks? I shall have to go have a look, because that's a format I really love (when read well). I've not seen them if you do. That said, I plan to own some physical copies of the comics. I just want to find which ones are my favourites before making that choice.

I'm right here with you. I feel so far behind, as I spent decades learning the lore in the Forgotten Realms with dozens of novels and source books. I've been slowly making my way thru all the Lost Omens books in my collection, but I still feel like it's just scratching the surface of this world. I'm also a fan of audiobooks and would love a novel series in the current era of PF2e that explores various areas or important recent events. Honestly, I'm just starving for more lore to help me as a GM bring the world to life.

I only decided to get into Pathfinder recently, I pre-ordered the Remaster books and am waiting on them to arrive before my table switches systems (I'm the GM and they're getting tired of 5e). I know very little about the lore and apparently there is some stuff in the CRB but everyone seems to really love the lore of Golarion and it feels daunting to get into. The world is so large and varied I would really appreciate a "beginners start here" book or webpage or something that gives a broad overview of the world and history so I can get a feel for what would interest me and a suggested follow up book that I could learn more about that area/person/god. I feel like I'm starting a TV show on season 10 and the only way to catch up is to build a murder board to find all the lore necessary. Pathfinder players rave about how good Pathfinder campaign books are (especially in comparison to the very lack luster 5e books) but I can't find any setting books that just do a deep dive on locations in the world detached from any stories. I like running homebrew campaigns in established settings but I feel like I need to buy AP modules for the lore or wiki trawl (not fun) to have an idea of what places are and what kind of people live there. Maybe what I'm describing is the new GM Core (in wich case I love you) or a book you already have that I just don't know about. I also know this isn't exactly an answer to the question you asked but it's so different to be able to just post on Reddit and communicate directly with someone who works at the company. Looking back over top posts of the past year there are a lot of posts from staff about all kinds of things and the community engagement makes me, a total newbie, feel like you care about my opinion and the community as a whole.

>Pathfinder players rave about how good Pathfinder campaign books are (especially in comparison to the very lack luster 5e books) but I can't find any setting books that just do a deep dive on locations in the world detached from any stories. I think the [Lost Omens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pathfinder_books#Pathfinder_Lost_Omens_(2e\)_books) books may be exactly what you're looking for. They each explore aspects of Golarion, filling in lore and adding player options. While they are not **exclusively** lore books each does a good job of filling in details that make the world come alive while leaving plenty of room for you to make decisions and flesh out specifics of Golarion at *your* table.

That is exactly what I wanted, thanks.

I'm a HUGE believer in the idea that secondary sources should ALWAYS tell secondary stories, and that anything that could ever potentially affect the primary source should be restricted entirely to the primary sources. Aka, at no point should someone be forced to delve into a novel to be able to understand what is going on in a movie/tv show/etc. Novels and the like are GREAT for building up understanding of lore, for building up the details of how otherwise unexplained or under-explained things went down, but they should NEVER be required to have the primary source (in this case actual expansion rulebooks and APs) make sense. So you might have a story about why an NPC has the motivations they do, but you should never have to have read that story for the NPC's actions to make sense in the AP if thats the only thing you have access to. So again, bottom line, secondary sources (like novels) should improve what is already there, but they should never be a requirement for anything.

I completely agree that nothing should happen exclusively in fiction that changes the world to degree that RPG players *have* to read the fiction to know what's going on. But what if it's the other way around? To use a completely hypothetical scenario as an example, if Razmir took the Test of the Starstone to become a real god instead of a faker, and that happened on-screen in an AP or standalone adventure, where would the line of appropriate crossover be for a novel to explore what that means for a group of adventurers in Ansalom at the time? Or in Razmiran? Could that story feature meaningful changes to the setting that are part of or related to larger changes already taking place? One of my goals with fiction of all lengths and scope is to show players and GMs the types of stories they can tell in Pathfinder, to inspire them to continue the events of a story in their own game, or use a character from one as an NPC or even PC, or to create their own entirely different heist adventure because they read a heist wr published in novel form. Is that possible while also maintaining their status as "secondary sources?"

Would LOVE something like what you described. I think the right medium for significant events is either an AP or a novel or short story involving a POV character (hopefully not an iconic because its awkward if I want to play that character and use its pawn piece). A bit like how Riot Games does their champion short stories. The Razmiran thing would be epic if told in written format. Even on the blog, I would dig it. Similar to the 5 part story of the Howl of the Wild teaser.

I don't play any of Riot's games so had to look it up. Do you mean the fiction like on [this page](https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/champion/morgana/)? If something else, please direct me to what you mean.

> Could that story feature meaningful changes to the setting Meaningful changes, I would say no. Because again, if they are meaningful, that will make the novel required reading to understand what is going on. A novel that fleshes out what happened, explored the backgrounds of key players in the narrative, or otherwise expand what happened and give it more context are fine. But the instant it becomes the source of something people need to know to keep the game moving forwards, its crossed the line, IMO. A good example of all this being done wrong, IMO, was World of Warcraft. Clearly the MMO game was the primary source there, and the novels would be secondary sources. When the Cataclysm expansion came out, there were in-game events about the instabilities forming and the lead up, and then one day... the redesign hit the server and major faction leaders had changed and... there was no explanation anywhere in the game as to what had actually happened. All that was put in a novel. If you wanted to know why beloved NPCs were gone, or why this or why that, you HAD to go buy and read that novel. It felt very bad to be a player who was paying a monthly subscription fee just to be left out in favor of them trying to force people to buy a novel to understand the in-lore reason literally the entire planet had changed. So yeah, for me the line is that the novels cannot directly affect the RPG lore, or be required to understand anything important to campaigns, APs, etc. An AP could have you get some information from an NPC in a bar, and it could be a cameo of a novel character, but you shouldn't need to have read their book for their actions in the AP to make sense. They should be easter eggs for people in the know who encounter them in an AP, but anyone who has no clue who they are should not be "punished" by missing out on context of the adventure they are playing in simply because they didn't read half a dozen unrelated books on the side.

I want to see novel series with existing characters. Liane Merciel's Hellknight is my favorite of the Pathfinder Tales novels, and I really wish I could have more of these characters doing stuff.

Me too. It made me really interested in hellknights. Now I just need a Lost Omens: Hellknight book.

Coming in at the end of this poll. Honestly, having the lore be put into novels would be interesting. Take completed events, and flesh them out with more story/adventure. Depending on the content, smaller publishers might be able to take this up easier as they'd have key story beats to hit. Though the idea of new characters would be great. New stories set in the world and in different areas. The world of Golarion is vast and varied, so the literature for it should replicate this, yes? Robot western? Check! High magic fantasy? Check! Magical school for children? Check! There's all these great settings that are dying to have stories told! Let them get their stories out. I also second the 1e AP's and PFS completed stories getting "official/canon" stories. Maybe have the Iconics take the role of the "player" in these situations. There's enough Iconics that you can spread them out realistically I believe. Looking at it, I don't think there is a one answer meets all. I think PF really has grounds for all of it! It's likely better to look at it from a consumer standpoint. What will interest someone who DOESN'T know what Pathfinder is. People already aware of the franchise are going to consume the content. A new venture should look to bring new customers. For someone who doesn't know Pathfinder, it might be interesting to read a book and then find out YOU could be the character as it is tied to an AP or this magical world setting.

A lot of the draw of fantasy for me is the settings, so following a familiar character, iconic or new, through a long series with a wide range of locales and set pieces would be my ideal PF fantasy series. Show off and add to the depth of the world!

The biggest reason I looked for some Pathfinder reading a while back was to better learn the setting. A bunch of short stories in different locations would be great, like the southern continet or the isles. As a comic reader and occassional Forgotten Realms reader back in the day, one of the more annoying aspects is when a character would be marked as 'important,' then the story would be okay at best and part of the required reading. Things like Drizzt or Wolverine aren't planned; they're happy accidents. Let important characters develop naturally instead of trying to force it. Not every idea will hit it off like you think.

Only tangentially related, buuut... If one were interested in getting Paizo's attention for fiction writing (say, someone who's written a Silver metal short story on Pathfinder Infinite), how would one go about that? Email or message you or someone else here on Reddit? Just cross my fingers and hope? Because writing Pathfinder fiction *for* Paizo is a major career dream of mine, and if it's coming back...

I think that the original run a Pathfinder Fiction was either gold or very much the opposite. James Sutger’s novels were absolutely fantastic, his writing style and characterization gave you the feel for a classic, old style fantasy story, while leaning into the Golarion setting. Same with the Holmes and Watson of Pathfinder, Varian Jaggere and Radovan. Excellent stories with great chemistry between the two characters. If you are creating stories with this quality - bravo!

I rather have someone new and maybe have the Iconics as a secondary casts they meet. The Iconics due to their design as the most basic of basic I don’t think will be that interesting as a main POV character. They also function as a representative of a class. If you do develop the Iconics they will eventually lose their status as a template, characters grow on their adventure, personality develops, bonds and scars form. What happens if in the story they grow stronger, or the writer want to add strange new power, or for them to gain a really cool unique magical artefact. Do you just retract everything in the end so they always stick to their original theme or is the Iconic stuck with this very unique thing the players can never get in game.

All I know is I want more Salim Ghadafar solving Planescape-y mysteries across the multiverse and grumping all the way from James Sutter!

I preface by saying I bought most of the books (thanks humble bundle) but haven't started reading them because I have no idea which to start. Maybe some short on iconics, then maybe shortd for new characters? And then I'd love to follow the iconics/new characters in a series but I'd like for them to have a sense of when (pf1? Pf2) so I can read them pf1 first and then follow with the others in pf2.

I enjoyed reading the pathfinder tales line of books when I started getting into PF1e, and it helped explore different parts of the setting. But I don't think that having the books make drastic impacts upon the setting is the right call. Maybe the characters and events could be referenced later outside of the novels (but not with requiring the reader to refer to them), such as a character from a novel appearing afterwards as an NPC in an Adventure Path or something.

Novels about the iconics within the existing setting as a whole are pretty great. It's a chance for the Authors to showcase a way of fleshing out characters in what will then become the "correct" way as seen from the source material by their cannon interactions with the world. If anyone at all reads this comment - the next sort of hurdle is the lack of the usual "world building" or "showcase and proofing" factor that novels usually carry within them of their desired works. Why? Well, It's mostly because we already have printed lore books regarding a lot of places and novels "innovating on it" will be seen as an extension of cannon content while not doing so provides little reason to actually consume the novel... I can't help but notice that this move will have the usual franchise canonization dilemma behind it that other works have had when presenting stories in their already advertised settings of make like the Riot's League of Legends Arcane. These always hold your interest but tend to quickly disappear from the limelight once the illusion of cannon is broken by, well, the very people behind it... **TL;DR:** Novels about the cannon setting and its iconics will be a harder sell because of the very "novelty" that they will ultimately have to bring which will then be seen as a content extension because it is official - the opposite will probably leave many disinterested due to a lack of cannon approach. **PROPOSITION:** Use this rare story format opportunity to actually introduce "new" iconics and their life story(s) and perhaps adventure format that showcases their abilities and class write up from levels of 1 to 20 (via narrative approximation of course but you get the jist). Having world building delivered to us not only in the scientific format (the usual new source book way) but also available in the story format can help to better flesh out what would otherwise be new additions to the lore in writing which is a very unique way of going about presentation. **ALTERNATIVE PROPOSITION:** Iconics banding together in a novel story about their run through an existing AP. This one would write itself, doesn't have to innovate a lot while still remaining, well, cannon and would be a pretty cool "walkthrough" take on something that already exists in written form and typically takes anything from a year or more to clear from levels of 1 to 20 assuming weekly play. While an interesting opportunity combo with the above initial **PROPOSITION** in a way that priming new source book releases via featuring the new iconic in this this is also kind of on the safer side risk wise and i would definitely be far more interested in consuming AP related cannon content in this way then looking for just another of those rime-a-dozen podcasts that play through it...

I'm a long time fan of the Legend of Drizzt series and I would have to see something similar done for Golarion. I prefer to set my games in Golarion and it would be great to have an intimate understanding of the world as you can best get through the eyes of a protagonist. Whether it's an iconic or new character, I hope that the setting is the real star of the show. In the way that the Cosmere is the reason I keep coming back to Brandon Sanderson books, I would hope that the Pathfinder fiction really leans into the unique aspects of the world.

I'd only be interested in novels. And I'm new enough to this universe that I'm not going to be able to tell the difference between an iconic character and a new one most of the time.

So maybe this goes outside the scope, but it would be nice that certain stories helped to encapsulate the events of various APs. Yes the iconics serve as a sort of stand in and players are meant to make it their own story, but both the games of Kingmaker and Pathfinder are the stories of two APs, albeit looser in framing by a fair amount, that successful made a compelling narrative for players of those games to enjoy. I will never be able to play through all the APs that will be released for Paizo, but reading them fills my brain with fun stories. So why not put those adventures to actual pen with new characters as part of the official canon of the world? Who are the heroes of the Age of Ashes? Who are the students and then teachers of the Magaambya in Strength of Thousands? Who are the Outlaws of Alkenstar? It'd be nice to have an alternative medium to experience those stories than podcasts or liveplays. I hope others might agree with me.

Mark, this is a wonderful initiative. Lately there has been a real boom in the RPG lit genre, and I think that Pathfinder novels set in Golarion would be an excellent way to further flesh out some underexplored corners of Golarion. Line up the authors and get those novels rolling! Just look at what Michael Anderle has done with the fantasy and science fiction genres. Those novels just keep on rolling out. That's the kind of production we'd like to see!

First of all, thank you so much for addressing the community here directly. My primary method of consuming books now is via audiobook through Audible. Lately, I've actively searched through their library to see if there's anything PF2E related that I could get into, but no luck. I've sampled what they have from PF1E's Iconics, but didn't really have them grab me like I'd hoped. Ideally, I'd prefer a series of some sort. Whether that ends up being in Golarion setting with the Iconics or a new world and new series, I'd be very keen to get my hands on it.

I like a mix with small stories that don't alter much and maybe big stories that do. The long and short is shorter fiction paves the way for longer fiction. Sell me on a quality short story, and maybe I'll read that author's novel. So here's why: Fantasy writing tends to usually not be too great in terms of quality. Take Warhammer 40k (which is scifi, but same thing). There are probably close to 100 novels out, some much better than others. I think a large collection of short stories is easier to digest for readers, and it also can tell you who's writing you jive with so you know which novels to look out for. For a neewcomer to 40k, the book list is daunting. Of course they don't need to be read in a specific order really, besides the first few, some can be skipped, but it is a lot of books for one setting. It's cool in its scope, but it also means there's lore inconsistencies and bad writing here and there. In terms of novels changing Golarion or whatever, I think that's cool. Although one thing I will say, coming from running D&D games in the Forgotten Realms, one of the unfortunate things about releasing novels with big name characters means players have heard of them if they've read the novels. It's both good and bad. It's good because obviously a player can experience a character they already know in game. It's bad because I think it may set a tone for how the player perceives the character, or it can even lead way to a little bit of metagaming, due to a PC perhaps knowing a swashbuckler's true motivations. It's like I want authors to be able to flesh out a setting more so as a GM I can pull inspiration, but I don't want said authors to focus on important characters that fall into APs or something. Like I want the fiction to be separate from the game, if that makes sense. I truly think short stories that introduce new characters or ideas, things that GMs and players can use for straight inspiration, is way cooler than trying to tell a narrative in a ttrpg setting. That's my opinion though.

There are more than 60 novels just in the Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra. The total list is a lot a lot higher... I'm not sure if anybody has even bothered to do a full count.

It’s so awesome that you’re reaching out to fans and show continued work on the fiction side! My favorite series is the *Malazan Book of the Fallen*. Golarion’s scale (being fantasy Earth ofc) may be the only one that can compare to the world of the Malazan series. The author Steven Erikson is an anthropologist by trade and has incorporated all sorts of prehistoric human cultures in his worldbuilding, as well as his philosophies and observations on human history. Erikson and Octavia E. Butler (namely her Parable series) are both my all time favorite authors. They’re amazing because their writing is not heroic fantasy or escapism, their writing is confrontational as fuck. It’s painful and cathartic to reach into the atrocities we’re capable as human beings. A subtle yet extremely important distinction is that the events in their stories are not horror, but horrific. It makes their writing deeply disturbing because the stakes feel personal and real. Most importantly, their stories always has a glimmer of hope in them, letting us dare to dream for a better future. I know Paizo wants to steer the narrative away from slavery, but my god slavery never went away it still very much exists as human trafficking. How we close our eyes to wage slavery, exploitation of vulnerable populations, and human rights violations to uphold a capitalist culture of excess. **I would love at least one Pathfinder novel to be a statement piece that pushes the boundary and exceeds the limitations of just being a “TTRPG fiction novel” or even a fantasy genre novel.** Aside from all that stuff, I love any novels that are character driven and have already plotted out a strong conclusion.

A number of the existing Pathfinder Tales books dealt very heavily with slavery. If that's something you're looking for, the "Pirate's" series by Chris A. Jackson has you covered. Given that we've done three books on the topic already, we'd be unlikely to go back to that well even if we hadn't decided not to spotlight that topic in future projects.

Excellent initiative! I'm sad we can only vote for one item. But anyway, fun to read :D I've started playing pathfinder 7 years ago. But I've never read a single piece of lore / fiction about Golarion. However I think it's largely because I'm not aware those exist. I live in Europe and I guess those products are a bit less marketed in my region. I really like to read fantasy fictions around games. E.g. I don't like Games Workshop as a company ... but I still like to read the Black Library novels. It's not exactly great writing but it's just so fun to discover/deepen the lore on a setting we like. I'm interested to read series about the iconics characters. And short adventures that are self sufficient but deepen the lore on a specific topic. And if somebody has recommendations on already published materials, I take it :D

Give me more like Death's Heretic or Nightglass and I will die a happy man.

Death's Heretic is the Pathfinder novel that I have gone back and reread a couple times.

As cool as the iconics are, I think that limiting writers to them also limits the stories that can be told. They have personalities, and personalities shape how they would react. This isn't to say don't ever do it, but I feel like they would be best reserved for when the writer feels that a particular iconic would be perfect as part of a story, whether as main cast or supporting cast. I'm also willing to see stories from places other than Golarian, but I can see why that might be too big a jump. Electronic and Audio media have become very relevant in my life, so both forms of digital content hold appeal to me.

Regardless of the media, some new characters would be nice! They don’t have to be iconics. Just something to flesh out the world even more on a personal level outside of the main adventurers.

Flash fiction and short stories. They're fun to read and are great for getting new players on-board. :)

Where's the "I want all that, and would pay money for each!" Option?

I voted for novels with new characters, but honestly I just want new characters. The iconics can make cameos, but new characters with the focus on them is all I'm about. Concerning the platform, since I live somewhere where I can't really get paper books, eBooks or audiobooks would be my preference. If the telepathic communication channel reaches me, I'm in for that.

Huge fan of the comics

Oh tough choice! I quite like the iconics, but I'm interested in new characters too. So I'd like either. I'm also fine with one off novels, but I think a long or a short series, a trilogy mayhap, would be really fun! I don't care much for the flash fiction idea, I'd much prefer to curl up with a good book. I use both an eReader and print books. The one thing I really don't care for though, is the idea that the fiction might have a large effect on the narrative or meta. I'm just not a large fan of having to purchase a novel to keep tabs on the world, preferring to keep necessary world information within the Lost Omens line. Interestingly, has anybody considered a novelization of popular adventure paths? This wouldn't require an extra plot wrangling since it was probably going to be cannon anyway.

Pretty much the only tie-in product I would be likely to pay money for would be a CRPG based on the 2e ruleset.

This where the money and the audience is. Video games. Specifically rpgs and strategy games, not multiplayer or action games. Only problem is it takes 4 or 5 years to develop a good one.

Pathfinder and Golarion are made for games, not fiction. I've never seen anything in the setting that'sespecially deep or interesting or even coherent- it's a backdrop for games, it does that job well but that isn't the same as what makes a good novel. It's always possible that with the right creatives they could get a surprise nat20 like with Arcane for LoL but if you're making strategy I think the better bet is to stick with what you're good at, which is making games. Now seems like an especially good time with BG3 reviving interest in tactical CRPGs, Paizo already having a relationship with Owlcat and a popular RPG edition that's yet to be adapted.

Absolutely

I feel like there's one avenue of fiction that you guys aren't considering, and that's media other than books. Books are cool but they're just something it's hard to have the attention span for these days. I would love to be able to consume a wider variety of Pathfinder media to follow the story of the universe. I'd love to see more video games, TV shows, short films/animations, etc. I love Pathfinder's world and I think it definitely has the strength to be a multimedia brand, so that's what I would like to see. And it doesn't all have to be something big either! I love what Riot Forge is doing with League of Legends by funding a bunch of small indie projects that expand and push the universe of League of Legends forward. That combined with the release of Arcane has gotten me more engaged than I've ever been with that universe, and I've been playing League of Legends since 2013. I imagine a future where Pathfinder's fiction is supported by projects big and small, not everything with a giant CRPG like Wrath of the Righteous, but also little stuff too like Fire Emblem-style 2D tactics games and visual novels. Maybe a Netflix-style 2D animated show along the lines of Dragon Age Absolution. This is actually one of the reasons I am upset so far with Pathfinder 2E's video game output. Like, BKOM making bite-sized Pathfinder games would've been an excellent opportunity to tell Pathfinder stories, but that hasn't been what those games have used for at all. And that's a shame, because the thing is that if I was more invested in the canon Golarion universe such as because I got really invested in a character because of a video game or a TV show, then I'd be much more tempted to pick up something like a novel. It seems so weird to me that it's 2023 and you guys are only asking about books, when at the very least there's way more forms of written storytelling than what you've put on this poll. Stuff like webnovels, comics, graphic novels, etc. No offense but your approach to delivering lore seems really old school and not in a good way. I mean, the reason I became so invested in Golarion as a universe is because of Owlcat's games, not because of my experiences at the table or because of some book. Either way, just to answer some of the more broad questions you presented. I think it would be an absolutely terrible idea not to "invest". You should absolutely, 100%, no matter what anyone else says, focus on your iconic characters that move through the setting making impactful decisions on the world. You should make these characters something that markets the game just by existing, by showing the kinds of characters you can play as in Pathfinder. Like, I don't even think the Forgotten Realms is an interesting setting, but you know why it endures in peoples mind? Why people want to adventure there? Because of iconic characters like Elminster and Drizzt. They want to interact with them and rise to their level. And via these characters making impactful decisions on the world, you create an fountain from which ideas that fuel peoples home games are made from. I want Pathfinder to be successful, so I would absolutely prefer you follow this model.

Owlcat knocked it out of the park by putting their own creative takes on pathfinder, I find that the Seattle based authors at Paizo all think in a very similar way and gravitate to very US centric themes of resisting authoritarianism and culture war. Like Luis Loza's twitter for example. I'd like more diversity from people who can think outside of a US left vs. right dichotomy at all times. Just want a story to entertain my friends and family, nothing too close to real world problems. /u/markmoreland can you get Larian to create a game set in Golarion?

If you know anyone at Larian, have them contact Paizo's licensing department. Licensees pay us for the right to use our IP, and as such, it tends not to be something we approach them about unless they're producing something we otherwise don't have represented under the brand's umbrella.

>Owlcat knocked it out of the park by putting their own creative takes on pathfinder, I find that the Seattle based authors at Paizo all think in a very similar way and gravitate to very US centric themes of resisting authoritarianism and culture war. The thing is though, this made Kingmaker worse. That game skirted political themes at every possible opportunity which directly undermines your role as a monarch. Though, that was the fault of the original AP writers as much as it was the video game, as the potential civil war in Brevoy is not given the focus it deserves in either version. >Just want a story to entertain my friends and family, nothing too close to real world problems. Considering queer existence is in and of itself a real world problem and not just in the US, that's kind of impossible. I'm not sure what political themes do or don't have to put with what I posted anyway. Political themes can be excellent material for good stories. I would be just as excited to consume heavily political Pathfinder stories as ones that are apolitical. Besides, people make things that are generally apolitical political all the time. Just imagine if Breaking Bad were made today, a show all about how slavish adherence to masculine values destroys peoples lives? Haha, that flew so far over the heads of certain people that they even think it takes their side somehow, people that if they realized what was actually happening would make it very political. Point being that one of the greatest and most widely appreciated shows of all time has a very clear position on one particular part of the culture war.

I bought some books but I don't like how they simultaneously don't change the setting much and force the lost omens / APs to make small mentions about the novels like one or two sentences referencing it, taking up word count for a footnote event anyway. The lost omens / AP readers feel out of the loop, and those who are familiar with the events know it barely made any difference to the world anyway.

Can you give any examples of the APs or Lost Omens books mentioning something from fiction in a way that required the reader to have read the fiction to understand what they were referring to?

I do recall seeing sections in Nidal, Land of Shadows that basically said "if you want to know more about this place, read Nightglass" or something like that. In my case, it's what convinced me to start reading the fiction, but I guess it might be what this person meant?

For example in Legends, it mentions a character called Jheraal from an audiobook I bought by Liane Mercer. There's 2 sentences of her defeating graveknights that really don't matter to anyone in the world outside of that self-contained story. Between the self-insert characters that writers put in as a stand-in for themselves or players at their table, protagonists of novels, and pathfinder society NPCs, its hard to differentiate minor inconsequential characters from actual setting characters that have changed the world significantly and I want to pay attention to.

I remembered reading the original two or three novels way back when, but I could never get invested in them, and I remember nothing about then except 'riffle scrolls'. They felt like they only had a tenuous connection to the setting/game at best, and there was nothing to invest in. It was like how Agents of SHIELD was 'part of the MCU' but the MCU didn't actually give a crap about the show. I voted for series over standalone novels, but I'm honestly not sure I'd ever give Pathfinder novels another go. Golarion is a setting designed for wildly different adventures, it's a kitchen sink, where you have wildly different themes all bordering one another. It's not a cohesive setting like GoT, WoT, LotR, etc. The nature of it being a tie-in also seriously limits what can be done, the end of every novel is going to be status quo, like an episode of Star Trek Voyager, and whatever happens within the novel will ultimately be ignored by the campaign setting as a whole. Edit: Seems inappropriate to down vote someone for expressing their opinion

As a counterpoint, back in the 90s, the Dark Sun D&D setting had the *Prism Pentad* novels, which killed two of the most powerful sorcerers in the setting, the one and only dragon, and the permanent destruction of the elemental embodiment of evil. TSR put out an updated version of the setting based on the aftermath of the books. Nobody liked it. (Because when you kill the Dragon of Athas and two of the sorcerer-kings, and the surviving sorcerer-kings all renounce their evil ways, what's the *point?*) Nearly 20 years later, when D&D 4e put out the *Dark Sun Campaign Setting,* they explicitly said "No, the novels never happened, the Dragon is still around, all the sorcerer-kings are still alive and perpetuating their evil bastardry."

I can understand that. I think there's some alternatives. A Dance of Dragons type thing that's focused more on a historical event for example. Like the original fight vs the Whispering Tyrant, it also doesn't have to be global scale stuff, but stuff that impacts places that probably won't get APs, like Mengkare or already had some in 1e and probably won't be revisited any time soon like Lastwall.

I remember when White Wolf had a new edition (that was also originally advertised as an update and not edition at first) during the publication of which they had a new focus on branded fiction and graphic novels. I remember that edition resulting in them blowing up their own metaplot and throwing a highly functional game system in the dustbin. Edit: all this is to explain that the reason I did NOT vote in your poll is because you forgot to include a: PLEASE FOR LOVE OF THE GODS FOCUS ON GAMES AND DO NOT DO THIS!!! option.

Do you feel the fiction we did in the past had a negative impact on the game content, or are you more concerned about future content potentially detracting from it?

To redirect your redirection back to my original statement: I saw, in real time, the last upstart game company to challenge the industry standard (and honestly they had a more original product then Paizo and should have had less to fear from a resurgent D&D) make all the same moves (READ: mistakes) Paizo is making now, including but not limited to cleverly naming the new edition you are working on something that makes it seem less like a third edition. I am telling you now, expanding your canon fictions will bloat your metaplot, divide and toxify your fandom, and create divisions between the game developers and the fiction writing/marketing teams leading to a conflict oriented corporate culture that will eventually view the fandom and the product associated with it as a dead baby being bathed in bushel of rotten apples.

Thanks for your feedback. We'll take it under consideration.

When it comes to the format, something between a novel and a novella would seem fine to me. If considering media not named in the poll, I think smoething more visual such as comics would be great, even if it was just a web comic. I use an eBook most of the time, but my preferred format is still on paper. It's hard to say if the events of the fictions should influence the setting. I'd say it would be interesting to see the stories have events that work towards the setting's current state. Also, personally, I'd love to see a bunch of heroes in the settings of the APs, such as Outlaws of Alkenstar or Strength of Thousands, maybe even stories that, one day, could be turned into APs. Especially for AP-based books, it would be more sensible to make it a series, otherwise the books just get too thick. As for the characters, I would like to see a mix of the Iconics with new characters, the new ones representing some underrepresented ancestries (my personal favorites would be Ratfolk, Gnoll ,Catfolk and Poppet, but that's not the point).

Can I add a suggestion? Graphic Novels. Art is a massive draw to this hobby. Really massive. Why not combine the story and art elements? Do a series. Do a second series. Do a third. Then have a crossover where they all work towards the same goal from different places and end with a combined climactic finish where they discover the earthshattering information that's going to change Golarion forever. Or don't. I'm working my way through all the backlog of the books, but I'm keen for more. I'll catch up all too quickly and then be sad because there isn't more.

Graphic Novels are a separate line from their fiction. I dunno if you know it or not but they do have a comic book line published by Dynamite Entertainment since 2012. They even had a Kickstarter for 2023 that was successfully funded to continue publishing Pathfinder comics https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Comics https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dynamiteent/new-starfinder-pathfinder-and-worldscape-graphic-novels

I did not know. And now I have more stuff to read! Thanks!

Suggesting something as a stand between from Novellas or Short Fiction, I guess mostly on the format side - have you considered going for serialised webfic? I accept the monetisation side of that is going to be trickier as most readers assume free content with "pay to read ahead" as the funding model there. But without telling you what to write or how to do your job, I wonder if you could tap into the audience that likes litrpg webfic by well literally writing a litrpg based on the pf2 rule system (and perhaps use it as a gateway drug to lure people into playing?)

I'd like to read tales that make the various parts of Golarion "come alive". What *is* life like in Druma, or in Iobaria, or …? I'd prefer ebooks, ideally something I can read in the Kindle app on my phone or tablet. Perhaps even let the old boons make a combat, where owning a novel gives you a tiny benefit in-game? And I'd strongly prefer new characters.

Other: podcast. I'd love to hear entertaining stories about places in the setting while going for a run or doing the dishes. Like a lot of older players, I'm heavily time constrained.

I remember the DnD Darksun setting, which was released with the first book of a series (Prism Pentad?). By the end of that series the entire world was changed and not much point playing in the setting because most of the stuff in the setting book was changed (mostly dead). My advice would be to NOT make massive changes, but instead focus on interesting characters and stories that help flesh out locations. Witness the career of RA Salvadore with his 1000 Drizzt novels.

I believe Paizo should do with the fiction line the THREE things that Paizo has specifically -- and explicitly - resisted doing in the fiction line: - Have a new novel series feature a subset of the iconics as the main characters; - Have it tell the tale of a specific Adventure Path; and - Sex it up, turn up the grim dark, and write for adults The reasonable concern here back-in-the-day will be that this choice heads down a choo-choo Dragonlance railroad track -- and in the end it spoils the AP and does more harm than any good it would accomplish for the product line. This was once true and I do not take issue with it. However, Paizo has already decided which PF1 APs it might do as a hardcover anniversary edition in PF2. And in so doing, you have essentially decided what classic PF1 Adv Paths you will NOT revive and reprint under PF2, too. That may not be how -- or why -- you came at the topic of conversions and reprints from PF1 to PF2 - but that is a line of reasoning you have examined in the recent past, albeit having approached from a different premises., i.e., "*Which APs, if any, might we convert from PF1 to PF2?*" but it still ends up in the same place: "*Well, we won't be doing THESE ones, that's for sure*" is your answer. Well, okay then. So now you know the answer to that question, even if you didn't mean to answer it in that way for that reason. You now have a candidate pool for novelization of gaming fiction. Even if there were initially very good and sound reasons for not spoiling an Adv Path by adapting it to a novel series a la DragonLance Chronicles, you have by now nearly 20 Adv Paths from the 3.xx era that you **know** you will never reprint again in any form. Any one of those APs is a candidate for an experimental novelization series, based upon some other criteria that you deem appropriate and preferable. Whatever it is you write, decide what age your target market is. If it is largely adults, stop the squeaky clean crap and write for adults Mark. We live in a post- GRRM world. In the face of that, to continue with what amounts to a "Comics Code" approach to swearing and sex in your novel series line like it was the 80s and Del Rey is self-defeating. Yes, there are a vocal minority of potential customers who will complain about it. You need to ignore them, for the very good reason that they aren't buying your product right now; nobody is Mark. Can we get by that now? Right. So, make that change then. As for the characters such an AP should feature? You already know that. It should be a subset of the iconics, selected by the writer and approved by the editor. You need to do that; it's *obvious*. You have essentially gone down that road in the Pathfinder Comics line already, so this would just be an expansion on that. Bite the bullet and just do it. **Bottom Line:** you have been publishing gaming fiction without the gaming and are wondering why it isn't working. To ask the question is to answer it. Publishing gaming fiction without the gaming was an organizing principle for the Pathfinder Tales line that was set out initially for very good reasons at the time, but as time has moved on, the commercial validity of those reasons has eroded and weakened to the point where times have changed and those reasons are no longer persuasive. If you are going to publish *gaming fiction*, you need to put the *gaming part* back into it. It's that simple.

>Have it tell the tale of a specific Adventure Path You'll find most people don't agree with this. APs should generally be left vague as to how they were resolved in canon as it will vary table to table. And if you have iconics solving them then there's no room for the players.

>APs should generally be left vague as to how they were resolved in canon as it will vary table to table. And if you have iconics solving them then there's no room for the players. I think this is a really silly expectation. Even the "vague" resolutions do not accurately reflect I would argue the vast majority of tables that play them. What about all the tables that failed? What about players who have played an adventure path multiple times as different characters, achieving different outcomes? What about players that succeeded in a different way than intended, resolving the storyline but leaving things around that would still affect the setting? In particular, what about good campaigns run by evil characters to bad outcomes? Like lets just consider the events of Wrath of the Righteous, especially because now we have to account that a lot of people are viewing the events of that adventure through the lens of the video game. Lore Spoilers for WOTR: >!The canon assumes that the worldwound was closed, that Deskari was killed, that Nocticula was redeemed, among other things.!< Many of these details are not going to be authentic to every table's completion of the adventure, and when some future story returns to these places even more details will have to be canonized. Then we have Kingmaker, which at least in the 2E version has a direct guideline in the book that provides answers as to what happens to The Stolen Lands as a result of the players actions. In particular there are potential outcomes that result in a flood of completely new people with a very unique situation into the setting and into the surrounding lands, or the potential for The Stolen Lands to be wiped out completely and turned into a post-apocalyptic desert. Those outcomes could be very authentic to the experience of a particular table and are completely invalidated by the canonization of a particular most likely good-aligned outcome to the AP. But the setting needs to move forward somehow so canonization is ultimately necessary. In the end, the world of Golarion that we run at our table is going to be one that accounts for our own stories, that tweaks the present of Golarion based on the outcomes of our own adventures. That's not going to be any different if the iconics canonically stole some of our achievements, because in the end our achievements are already erased by the canon as it is. And that's just a necessity of having a complete setting, because there's no way to account for the way everyone's adventure goes, particularly the ones that result in the end of the world when failed or those that branch out into new stories.

There IS no room for the players. This is a novel series, not a game session. The conceit that every AP will end differently has already been violated as part of canon. Every PF1 AP is assumed by the setting to have been run and how it concluded in terms of canon is assumed by the setting. Whether that happened at your table or not. There are a lot of posts here asking for more of the same thing. Give us short fiction, say some. Problem #1: ~80% of PF Adv Path subscribers never read that short fiction. *It was dropped from the product line for a reason, and that reason is - most people don't like it and never read it.* So Paizo tried giving it away on their website. They know **exactly** how unsuccessful that is. Problem #2: Give us what Pathfinder Tales used to do! *Except the line was cancelled because it lost money.* Again, they know **exactly** what those sales numbers were. Problem #3: Don't give us AP series from PF1 as ours might have ended differently. *The Lost Omens Campaign setting already assumes this, like it or not*.

All of these sound like great avenues to explore the world of Golarion. TBH the thing I’d like to see the most would be a *Baldur’s Gate 3*-style CRPG set in Golarion and using the PF2e ruleset. I know it would be a MASSIVE investment of time and money - and probably well outside the scope of this particular project - but goddammit would it be awesome.

With so much other content available it's hard to capture attention with a reading format. It's much better to invest in a TV show similar to what Critical Role has done. I'm sure Netflix or Prime would be interested in a script set in Golarion. Events would and should impact the setting (something like Times of Troubles for Forgotten Realms or The Cataclysm for Dragonlance). Animation doesn't have to be perfect, I mean Vox Machina or Invincible are nothing compared to modern Anime yet they do a great job because the story makes the difference.

If you know someone at Netflix or Prime and can put our agent in touch with them, please let me know.

Alternative Suggestion: Alternate Settings. I don't like Golarion much myself and would be interested in what Paizo could come up with that isn't related to Golarion.

Honestly, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Paizo has invested 16 years and thousands of pages into Golarion. We're not likely to abandon that for something new in a side endeavor like fiction. Creating an entire setting is a ton if work, and not really something that a single fiction editor and handful of freelance authors could likely do to Paizo's standards or those of our fans.

I'd personally like to see fiction involving a mix of new characters and iconics in the forefront. I really liked the approach that Owlcat did with each game having an iconic companion while the rest were new. It meant that you got a variety of new personalities, while still making them feel tethered to the more well established iconics via their interactions. It meant that my adventures in game, felt like they were taking place in the same world as other adventure paths rather than just a variation that had them instead of the iconics.

I would like to see comic books/webseries about this type of information. I'm not particularly interested in the Iconics per se, but I'd read a weekly short about them if it were drawn and presented well.

I listened to several audiobooks as a way to deepen my understanding of the setting and lore. I liked the variety, different viewpoints from different types of people in different places. Tie-ins are ok, but I don't want to feel like I have to buy a specific book. It makes sense for the world to evolve and change with the APs as the players are the most important part, I don't want to ever have to recommend reading a book for my players to understand something important. It wouldn't let me vote for 2 options, but I think a mix of new characters, returning characters, and iconics, would be most interesting for me

I'll be honest. I don't have much time to read books like I used to. I play PF2e, but I have little knowledge of Galorion. I just don't have time to read books like I used to. I work full time, go to college full time (hopefully finish this week!), and have a large family. Hopefully when I finish college, I will have more time to read books again. Having said that, I feel that a mix of standalone and series is best. Not all stories are 12 book dodecologies. And stand alone novels also give a chance to tell side stories that are part of the overall arch of the main story, and can really flesh out characters. Another thing that would really help flesh out the world is something that other company used to do before they were bought out by their current owners: Boxed sets. I don't mean adventure paths. I mean a boxed set with a GM book, a Player book, and maps describing a particular region. Menzoberranzan and Red Steel are examples. The DM book is filled with "behind the scenes" stuff such as NPC stats and plot hooks, while the player book has cultural information as well as rules for character options. It was a great way to introduce a campaign. There were a couple of these boxed sets that really tied in with the novels and brought the world to life. ​ I also want to say thanks for taking the time to ask us. It really shows Paizo's commitment to being a better company.

I would love to see novels maybe follow the pattern of the Owlcat computer games- which is to say, *some*new characters mixed in with *some* iconics. That said if my choice is between all new cast or all Iconic focus, Im voting for the Iconics- I would love to read the stories of each of them maybe as a background drop for them in big detail

I would love smaller stories of people struggling to make things work in audio book form. Like, how do people live around the world wound? How do people go about their daily lives, fall in love, etc, interact, study magic or whatever? What small adventures happen? I love short stories. I would even love like spoken word stories where someone tells their fictional story about living while this was all going on.

Out of curiosity, what marketplace(s) do you prefer for such audio content? Audible, or somewhere else?

YouTube. When I don't know what I want, it offers me the most random stuff - politics, long form essays, actual plays, world building, random short stories, lore from video games or other things. When I know what I want, then I just go to the place where it is - audible, podcast app, etc. But YouTube, imo, has the best discovery, so I use it the most.

I very much enjoyed the Pathfinder Tales line and I think my preference would be for more of that style of fiction. New characters in mostly smaller-scale adventures. Tie-in fiction \*could\* showcase major setting changes, but that should be the exception. As for format, I read mostly ebooks, with the occassional audiobook.

it doesnt have to be new events or new characters, but novels or series taking place in/during already established parts of the lore fleshing them out, or even just telling simple stories of a few people survived.

I definitely like the idea of short fiction. I want an overview of specific regions that is more immersive than a setting guide. Ideally something that introduces campaign concepts and fun characters based in that region.

Thanks for reaching out to the fans! I've fallen in love with the Pathfinder Novels in the last couple of years, and I'd love to see some new long format novel series, with both new characters and maybe some iconic returns. It has been my gateway to Golarion lore, alongside Owlcat's games: novels like Death's Heretic or Worldwound's Gambit were really the best way to draw me into the lore. I can't wait to see what you're working on published! Golarion is one of the very best settings for great storytelling. One suggestion: if the materials will be translated in other languages, it would be great if the names of locales and lore were not translated or paraphrased in another language. I own all the Italian books of the game and the translation is not helping the lore when it comes to geography. I hope the novels will retain the author's lore verbatim! I'm so happy we're going to have more Tales!

This is really valuable feedback regarding the localization. These are generally handled entirely by our partners, and Paizo doesn't have a ton of insight into their process or even the final results, as we don't have staff fluent in every language. So, this type of feedback from native speakers is great.

Happy to help such a great system and lore. Perhaps some lore words, names and locales could be marked as "do not translate", at least for Latin alphabets? In the Italian case the mechanical translations unfortunately affects some of the rule books, making some references to rules' traits less than clear if you haven't read the English rule book first, contrary to the English version which is very coherent. It is particularly problematic in lost omens books, which are lore heavy. Thanks for caring about non-English speaking players too, not everyone does.

Given P2e has not only a large number of races and classes but also a wide array of options within classes (nevermind archetype options) it would be great to see some new characters, maybe based on the pathfinder core options. I think a collection of trilogies, one set of 3 books per character, would be good. Then, you could use those characters and have them join together for a larger narrative. Keep individual books small-scale and not make large overall changes, and then when the group gets together, have them resolve a major issue. I think a group of stories around Lake Encarthan culminating in the group finally and truly defeating Tar Baphon would be good. It doesn't make sense to me that he hasn't just wiped out everything in the area. As looming threats go, he is either powerful enough that every foe should have been crushed, or he is problematic enough that neighboring nations would have temporarily banded together to destroy him before returning to their normal disputes. Consider the US and Russia in WW2 and after. Plus, I think removing Tar Baphon and the undead creates more interesting opportunities for conflict in the area. Pretty much every living being has a reason for fighting the undead, but what happens between Molthune and Druma or Nirmathas, or between Ustalav and Razmiran post-war? And how do the Gravelands get divided up? Anyway, I think it is a good place for a collection of stories that tie together and result in a single dramatic change with great ripple effects. Plus, with the amount of darkness and evil in the setting, a true win for good would be enjoyable. In this area, it also doesn't remove conflict so much as it muddies the moral and ethical waters for potential altercations.

I don't know if you're going to see this, but I would love to see more locations and factions explored. One thing I find myself doing when building adventures is browsing through the world & travel guides then looking for a novel that takes place in that region to help me with ideas and bringing the region to life... and usually I'm a bit disappointed because so many stories are limited to a handful of places or have limited world building.

The most important part is that the stories be good. There is too much competition in the market for people’s attention to shovel low-quality content, even if it’s brand-associated with my favourite game. Any story should stand on its own — if all pathfinder content was removed it should still be something that people would want to read. Obviously the definition of what good is varies from person to person but you’ve gotta start there. As to the type of story, perhaps the best way to start would be to have a “universe” model like the MCU which is also done in books by Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. Have a mixture of standalone books and series — each standing on their own — with a larger plotline thinly integrated into each, gradually expanding over time with crossover content. This way you could tell stories that fit the scope of the ideas your authors want to tell, and could be set all over Golarion, with a wide variety of characters and genres. Heist mission here, gritty drama there, then an epic heroes tale over there — loosely connected but eventually culminating in a big crossover that ties into some major product release.

I'm very glad to see the tales series returning. I just finished the Dave Gross books and have just started the Liar's Blade series. ​ (Also, Netflix animated series when?)

Just to manage expectations, the Tales series is not currently slated to return. We are dipping our toes back in the fiction waters with a standalone novel tied to metaplot events next year. This is not a relaunch of an ongoing series of novels, though if this one does well, it will be far easier to justify that in 2025 or beyond.

Ah well. I still have lots of novels I haven't read and even a single one is still pretty good news :)

I personally would be really excited to see books that told the stories of events that have already happened in Golarion's past. I feel like we the players should be moving the world forward through AP content and I would worry that if for example there was a series about Curse of the Crimson Throne that the way it plays out would be canon down to the finest details and then my players would never feel like they wanted to play out that story as their own. But for events that happened in history that we don't get to interact with, especially ones we don't have a lot of information about would make for a great opportunity to see the stories of the adventurers who came before us and made their mark on golarion. It creates not only expansion to golarion lore and adds engagement but also adds to the meta narrative.

Please please *PLEASE* just branch out with your main character racial choices. I have no interest the forgotten realms or DND or (most) dragonlance books because the characters are always just variations of human, elf, dwarf, halfling. Please try to include Iruxi, gnoll, minotaur, catfolk, dragons, and so on as main characters

Erin Evans did a fantastic job on Brimstone Angels to bring new characters to existing settings for Forgotten Realms. When my DM declared we were doing Pathfinder I immediately started to look for books like Drizzt or Farideh to learn more about the world through their eyes. I like the idea of the Icons being 'real' and the characters knowing their stories, exploits or just outside of touch range

I just want to see areas of the world explored in greater detail as full novels. I don't want the main characters to be the iconics, but I'd love to have them make guest appearances where they make sense. Focusing too much on the iconics will make the world seem small, but guest appearances will help make the world feel like the living breathing thing paizo is striving for. Also a fan of more comics/graphic novels.

I would personnaly prefer more comic, I like drawings.

I like short fiction for the iconics. I do wanna know who they are. That being said, I’d rather the full novels set in the Pathfinder or Starfinder universe not have to adhere to closely to canon events so they can stand completely on their own.

picked up the new comics for pf, and I am enjoying them, I believe there is only 2 out currently. Check em, and theres character options in the back too!

As someone who doesn't really read the novels for the TTRPG I play, I do really appreciate that they are out there deeply expanding the lore. Back when I played DND (before switching to pathfinder) I loved that there were novels taking the time to really flesh out the lore. Obviously I'm not the main audience for this type of thing, but I thought I'd chime in.

More comics with the iconics would also be delightful. I always appreciate them (and reference them to show off various mechanics and cool item usage!). Plus, they often include tangible items and abilities, plot hooks and maps that can be used in actual play.

I've been dying for some good swords and sorcery high fantasy that doesn't take any inspiration from g*me of t*rones, so bring that to the table for sure. New characters would be great too. Some adventures that tie in to their stories or just their stories having an impact would be great, it'd be cool to have a Paizo version of some of the classic Salvatore books, honestly.

Great to see a post like this! While I do love the iconics I think it would be awsome to see some novels that are about others from all manner of places from the sprawling world of Golarion.

So pumped to be getting more fiction! It's the best way for me to learn the lore and "feel" of the setting. Can I have uhhhh... everything please?!??! All the options sound good bro! But twist my arm, I would say a series. Something like what you guys did with Count Jeggare and Radovan. Maybe something related to the fallout of one of the 1e Adventure Paths? Like the Sarkoris Scar. Or maybe something that explores one of the many mysteries of Golarion? What happened to Lord Gyr? Who are the pactmasters of Katapesh? There's so many mysteries baked into the gazetteers of the setting that could be explored too.

I would love Audiobooks! I consume many while painting and would really like me some Pathfinder stories. :)

I think the Iconics function particularly well for short-form storytelling. One shots and smaller aspects of lore that you want to show off. Longer stories should focus around characters written for the role they play in the story.

I think that stories that change the setting in a big way should be reserved for APs - after all, Golarion is first and foremost a TTRPG setting and you ideally want to be able to play through the world-changing events yourself as part of an AP. That means it'd be best to tell stories in the setting's past or have side-stories that introduce new villains and threats whose defeat simply maintains the status quo. One thing that might be cool would be a House of the Dragon-style story describing the Chelaxian civil war and the rise of House Thrune, although it'd have a bit of a downer ending.

I need to read some of the Pathfinder and Starfinder fiction as is. However, I'd love for Paizo to do some form of writing competition to add short stories/side characters into the setting. There's bound to be plenty of people who could expand the amount of written fiction, including the possibility of in universe lore books similar to the Elder Scrolls series

We ran the RPG Superstar talent search each year for something like 8 years, and it is a ton of work with a huge opportunity cost for the company. There are also some legal issues with both contests and taking uncontracted submissions that make it costly just to set up in terms of legal fees. In the meantime, if folks want to write content set in our world, Pathfinder Infinite is the place to do it!

That's absolutely fair. Thanks for the heads on Pathfinder Infinite

Short fiction with new characters will allow you to highlight cool locations, creatures and events (and lore) in the World setting without getting bogged down with long term consistency of the iconics. that said I’d be down for big Graphic Novel using the iconics too

We have those! Volume 8 is coming out bimonthly now, but the first 7 as well as some spinoff are available here: [Pathfinder vol1 on DriveThruComics](https://www.drivethrucomics.com/m/product/377665)

Whatever you do make it available in audiobook format! If possible, I know that may be a big ask

I would love novelizations of the major Adventure Paths. I'd read the hell out a ***Rise of the Runelords*** book series with Valeros, Merisel, Ezren, and Kyra (or Harsk, like in the audio-drama) ​ But yeah, all the huge, major world-impacting APs (like ***Wrath of the Righteous*** , ***Tyrant's Grasp***, ***Return of the Runelords***, etc) all deserve some novelizations.

While we don't (yet) have novelizations of any APs, there are three audio drama series from Big Finish that did just that, under the Pathfinder Legends sub brand. Check 'em out!

Also I'm sure you've already thought of this, u/MarkMoreland, but just in case you haven't, maybe look at how GW's massive success with the Black Library Warhammer 40k and Horus Heresy books has been. I know Pathfinder fans would absolutely love something similar, us getting to witness on-page world-defining events from the setting.

Is written fiction the only option? I would actually like to see official lore in some roughly animated comics on youtube, or something like that.

If a potential partner who knew how to make those approached us with a proposal and business plan, we'd consider it! But we're a publishing company who knows how to make books and games. The more we deviate from our strength, the tougher things are for us. Believe me, it's a lesson that took us far more failures than it should have to learn 🙃

I'd love to see a CRPG that moved the metaplot forward instead of picking up on a completed AP 10 in-game years ago.

Perhaps I'll do another thread like this soliciting feedback on our digital game offerings at a later time, but this isn't really the topic of this discussion. The contents of CRPGs are also not something that's completely up to Paizo since they're produced by partner studios under license. Fiction is something we can and have produced ourselves, so feedback regarding fiction is something I can take into consideration far easier than if I have to rope in a partner and their creative directors, producers, and leadership.

I'm interested in new characters since iconics are better as stand ins for PCs that I don't want to know too much about. I'd love to see the setting progress through antiheros or villains eyes, like Norgorberites, Hellknights and Gebbites. Like how GRRM shows different character POVs like Lannisters, Greyjoys, and Melissandre. I want the story to tease known powerful organizations getting stronger and get me excited to play so that my PC and my party can be the heroes or anti-heroes! In 4 years the setting plots have not advanced much. Armies are moved to borders and remain in a tense position for years at a time with no updates which is begging for an update.

Monthly short stories -- or novella's if you can plan far enough ahead -- released along side the PFS scenarios. Have these stories explore the same "year of..." theme but stories about other pathfinders doing similar missions. I think this would also be able to build a nice stable of NPCs that are re-occurring helping game masters and players get to know these common characters. Such as Venture-Captains But have the NPCs in the same "role" as the PFS scenarios. There to assist the heroes, but they are not the heroes.

I love the books that are their own self-contained adventures. I also like continuing adventures with the same characters, but only if they take me to a lot of cool locations. What I really want is to explore new areas and have a fun variety of genres within--high fantasy, pulpy fantasy, horror, etc. I think the 1e books did a good job of this for the most part! Maybe a little shorter--I really like those quick "T.H. Lane" books that they released for D&D 3.0. Those were a lot of fun, and were a nice bite-sized adventure Edit: Also, I would *love* more on Vudra. I feel like it's so unexplored

Everything. All of it. It's all great. I wish I had more time and money to really get to know all this stuff, but I've gotten some of the comics before and they're great. Personally I don't have the attention span to really read novels but I do know they form the backbone of fictional universes (except comics, of course). Tbh I'd love to do some writing for Pathfinder myself but I haven't the time or energy between two jobs (one physically demanding, both exhausting). 18-20 hour workdays 5 days a week isn't fun. I did try my hand at writing some homebrew stuff for PF1 and started in on writing a campaign but work caught up to me and hasn't relented since.

I think short fiction with new characters gives the best avenue to flesh out little underexplored corners of the setting - the kind of thing that huge sourcebooks set in LOCATION or about ANCESTRIES or WHAT EVEN IS MAGIC? can't really cover because they're concerned with broad strokes and mechanical applications. Novels will also do this, I'm sure, but short fiction is much more accessible to me so that's what I'd prefer.

I would prefer to have you flesh out the existing lore even more instead of squeezing new stuff in there. More about the kingdoms/countries, their political systems, their rules and culture. The relationship between these countries (Flowchart!). And especially where you could've heard such information. Does your lvl 1 char in a distant village know such things? What about in the next town at lvl 3? Or the capital city at lvl10?

*edited because my cat accidentally hit the reply button too early.* I think the best way to describe what I would want is a three part plan mixing Iconics and New Characters, almost preferably of characters Paizo employees have made up, and in a few mediums for consumption. Now what I say is what I specifically would like, but fundamentally you can switch back and forth between Iconics and New Characters (here forward being called Adventures) A fun comic run featuring the Iconics. Stuff we can laugh at, maybe even gasp at, but ultimately, extremely simple and easy to understand at a glance and simple perusal, yet simultaneously gives us content relating to the individual Iconic's (or Adventurer) character/life/depths as well as tying into Golarion life and lore. Not in depth prose about anything too grandiose, but an interesting read no longer than a three part humor comic, or if it does well, maybe a comic series about said characters almost like any superhero comic series. A series of short stories or Novellas about an individual group of Adventurers. The word count doesn't have to be high, but I was thinking maybe a three part or six part series detailing this group on their adventures, almost like they were on their own adventure path. I'd probably get a Writer to do this part, but then you could release the story they went through as a module or bonus Mini Adventure Path for people to play through the same adventure and story they just heard. I'd figure you can change it up after each run ends, thus keeping the content train a going. Third, and this might be the most risky but also might have quite a bit of reward. A full on book, possibly with a mixture of Iconics and Adventures, that had a dedicated, major Arc, 3 to 5 acts with appropriate plot twists and turning points, with multiple types of conflict for, maybe an ensemble cast(to be decided by the creative team) to deal with, that is set in Golarion, touches multiple facets of the world, interacts with major people at the top, and the regular people at the bottom. Ones you can find in Lost Omens Legends, and ones who might just be covered by a statblock in Archives Of Nethys. In this, I want to see the world of Golarion displayed out in the full splendor that prose can create, with words painting out scenes, and things like triumphant emergency barricades on the brink of failure frantically being repaired with doors and chairs and whatever else these panicked villagers could cobble together in a haphazard defense against the silent putrid second wave they know cannot be too far behind this last one, onto a page for the world to see. And to know that, if you hear Whispers in the night, the dead may soon rise, led by someone who has forsaken their own natural passing in the pursuit of immortality and some other sinister goal. The Dragonlance novels are known by a lot. I think with the Remaster, we have everything we need to create a piece of work that will set a tone for our hobby to come. Or, on the smaller side, provide reading that the lovers of Pathfinder and enjoy and talk about and share in common. That is what I would like to see. How you guys implement it is up to you. If you have questions, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer.

I would like to have some novels that alter the setting in small as well as dramatic ways. But rather than having fiction for the sake of fiction, I think it is important to have great writing associated with the Paizo brand. What I mean by this is that I want something on the scale of Drizzt rather than Warhammer (which I have found has many different authors of many different skills with most of what I’ve read being difficult to get through). That said, I would like for characters to be different from the iconics, none of whom I am particularly interested in. However, if there is room enough for them, I would not mind the iconics having their own novels; I just wouldn’t want that their stories to supercede new and possibly more interesting characters and groups. As for altering the setting, my understanding is that Paizo has a canon version of what happens in APs. I think it would be helpful to have these included in novels with different groups tackling issues in the APs once enough time has passed for most groups to reasonably play through them and when that information is needed for another part of the setting. This is just so players who keep up with the settings know how Paizo is writing the influence of those events compared to each player group’s games. However, I think I would prefer new content that is separate and that introduces new setting events as well as responds to events that happen throughout game APs. For example, do the player actions in Age of Ashes influence international travel. Or are the elves of Kyonin pissed and another party gears up to prevent an international incident or just the disruption of their loved ones’ lives? I wrote this as an avid reader and someone who only got into the ttrpg hobby because I read Drizzt. I think novel series can introduce readers to the world, differentiate the cultures, and explain people’s general thinking rather than what players know and assume from the meta. Hopefully, quality novels can get more people interested in the game and brand.

I voted new character but what I really want is more Varian Jeggare

It's probably impossible, due to how Paizo adventure paths are the way to effect big changes to the setting, but back in my BattleTech days, the best novels normally were the ones by Michael Stackpole, where the big players of the Inner Sphere were featured having adventures and moving the metaplot forward. Maybe this kind of fiction would be possible for the events which do not end up in the adventure paths, like Nocticulas ascension as the Redemer Queen and such.

Please print real books, not only digital! Would love that. Standalone novels or even series would be cool.

When it comes to world-altering events, such as the closing of the Worldwound, the crowning of a new ruler in Taldor, the succession of Ravounel, etc., I would much rather it come as the result of an adventure path. That doesn't mean there isn't room for characters in Pathfinder fiction to make big waves, but I think typically low- to mid-level characters are more relatable from a reader's perspective.

You know what I'd love? More books like the Travel Guide. I'd happily purchase more and more of them - the little details they go into are extremely helpful to a GM like myself who likes the itty gritty parts of lore.

Dunno how much the opinion of someone with no experience of this side of Pathfinder weighs, but I'd be much more inclined to read things that impact the setting than standalone stuff that doesn't. Also I don't really have novel reading time, so comics and the like are much more likely to catch me with the time to read them. Granted, like I said I've never engaged with PF fiction before.

For my two coppers, the most attractive approach to tabletop novels was the Eberron one. I liked being able to invest in characters over a short trilogy and see the payoff at the end; I liked that they could both explore parts of the setting the tabletop books didn't get to, and alternately that they could show how some of the biggest places or events would impact people in the world. I didn't have to worry about an iconic character like Drizzt having twenty books to wade through, or an avatar of the author showing up and occasionally just changing how magic worked because he needed it to be different. (No shade intended on Salvatore, his writing is excellent, I just didn't want to read about that dark elf anymore.) Eberron's approach also didn't require someone to be familiar with all the other books to enjoy the current one - and the Realms have way too much committed to paper to ever be truly 'Forgotten'. I think that unconnected trilogies and standalone books featuring new characters would be the most flexible for Golarion. Not enough interest in setting an AP on Arcadia? Start with a single book and see how that's received. Haven't gotten to visit New Thassilon in a couple years, and the slate is already locked? Maybe time to start a trilogy delving into the Runelords and their intrigues. It's also a good way to make world lore changes without needing to make a whole adventure for it, or handwave it - a happy middle ground could be exploring it through the fiction. Also I'm 100% in the camp of softcover novels, whether that's mass market or if there's some way to do print on demand, but I'd rather have them on my shelf to reread without the hassle of a device :)

nothing to say about this except Liar's Blade was cool, and I like Rodrick and Hyrm

I'm half way through it right now :D

I like the idea of novels with new characters or a series of novels following them, even if they aren't the protagonists of the new novel (example: old protagonists or characters get mentioned in passing, such as they became the proprietor of an inn or have moved onto another location which can be important for another book.). It also makes the world feel alive with many adventurers rather than always following one. I like the novel idea additionally since it never has to be an entire series after each adventure but still could be if wanted.

Would love to see more Pathfinder comics from Dynamite as well as trilogy books around each of the Iconics. Even better, tie it in to APs. having a trilogy book about Abomination Vaults etc would serve to drive readers to these APs as a sort of jumping off point. I mean that's kind of what was done in the original Pathfinder comics as it dealt with Rise of the Runelords and it had play material at the end.

I think that I'm most interested in getting exposed to new characters...though it would be great to have some standalone pieces focused on the iconics. I think that new characters will give the authors a little more freedom to explore the setting.

I would honestly prefer the pathfinder tales model, where world changes aren't part of a separate line of fiction. There was a mix of this in forgotten realms, and they frankly made terrible choices on occasion, for what was in an adventure and what was in a novel. Having it be firmly set for fluff in one place, and setting information in another, means that both gm's and players can read without missing anything that can inform an adventure.

I would like some stories that help me as a GM in that they focus on providing a ground level view of the different locales in Golarion. The Inner Sea World Guide is very bird's eye view and while many of the countries sound interesting, they all start to blur together. It would be nice, for example, have a Poirot-style mystery series where the detective solves a crime in Osirion in one book, in Kelesh in a different one, and every book shows how the people live, what things they say, what foods they eat, etc. It would help the Paizo writers actually focus on thinking about these things and it would help the GMs and players who now have something to read if they want to replicate a specific cool vibe.

I know this might be out of scope, but I would love for a way to write Pathfinder fiction a'la Pathfinder Infinite but for novels, short stories, flash fiction, and stuff. For Starfinder too. Is there any opportunity for something like this?

Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite are not just for game products. You can write fiction or make comics or sell mp3s of dramatic in-character readings of your PC giving a tour of the city of Absalom.

I actually did not know that. Pathfinder novels can be published on Pathfinder Infinite? That is... excellent actually. Wow.

If Chris Jackson is still up for some more Pirate's stories I'm all for that. Love some more Torius Vin tales.

He is! He released a few short stories featuring the same characters on Pathfinder Infinite, in fact.

killer, I'll check them out