Golarion vs. Others

Runequest's world of Glorantha is killing my interest in Golarion.

The Pathfinder world has a couple strikes against it now, at least for me:

• A theme park world
• Appropriates Earth's cultures
• The remaster's retcons
• The world is too modern with steampunk and guns
• Sanitized, all upsetting content removed
• No savage Conan feeling, too much cute
• Art panders to social media (selfies, Day of the Dead, etc.)

I was playing a GURPS version of the 1e world, but that predictably fell flat since the world is a leveled place, like every d20 fantasy world, and converting is too much hassle. A lot of love went into the making of Golarion; there is no doubt about it. The early art is fantastic. The work done on adventure paths is excellent. But the world is less a world and more of a commercial enterprise meant to sell you adventure paths like a cereal aisle.

I would have loved for Paizo to retire Golarion and create a new world for the remaster, along with new iconic characters. Support the old world via a "legacy" content line, and maybe open that up to the community to publish for. Really, with all the new monsters, dragons, Starfinder 2 integration, and underworld bad guys, why not?

Golarion needed to be retired.

I would have loved to see what the art and creative teams could have created with a blank slate.

I loved this place. It was cool when it felt like Conan. I always disagreed with the shameless copy-and-pastes of Earth cultures here, with the Egypt area feeling tonally off completely, even in 1e. When my brother and I saw the Egypt area, we cringed and felt a company like Paizo could be more original and not have to be appropriate cultures and copy others. Looking back, I outgrew Golarion and may store my PF 1e books again since I am not playing 1e.

I had hopes for the world, but my hopes were more considerable than reality.

Nostalgia is a lie that is related to self-harm and is a form of depression.

My GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game will likely move to its own world, more focused on dungeon-crawling and hex maps and less on converting 15-year-old d20 content. If I played 1e, I would use the world. If I am not playing either version, there isn't much holding me here (except for a few thousand pawns, easily repurposed as GURPS pawns).

I was flipping through my Glorantha books and realized that in this world, I can point to a spot on a map, open a book, and read about its history. In Pathfinder, I can do that, but I need to buy the adventure path or get a brief summary in the core world guide. Golarion has a limited written history, and like many d20 worlds, people are in a place just because they are. They did not come from anywhere; the maps are mainly static, and the borders rarely change.

Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms have a few similar issues. The settings are not in active development, and they are a strange collection of random materials across decades of game editions. They don't exist in a game-neutral form written to keep history consistent and logical. Like Golarion, the worlds exist to support published adventures and novels. They were commercial concerns, meant to ship products.

But the Runequest world is fascinating. The central area has a deep history, a back-and-forth between empires and other forces, rebellions and upstarts, dragons, and the rumblings of ancient wars. The default Glorantha starting area is the tabletop RPG fantasy-world equivalent of the Star Wars original trilogy or Lord of the Rings. This is the battleground of the gods, and you start out as the simple tribespeople and farmers of the land, rising to glory.

Another world that provides this fantastic historical overview with vast layers of detail is Harnworld. The setting is game-neutral, and the writers focus on cultures, peoples, history, maps, and supporting the world. This is a deep and detailed world; you can get more out of it as you dig into it.

Runequest's Glorantha is hands-down the best Bronze Age setting. Harnworld is one age past that, the best Middle Ages setting. Renaissance settings are most D20 worlds, and most D&D settings, along with most other OSR games, fall into this category. 

I don't know a game that does Renaissance that well; most of them fall into the "adventurer class" trap and lean hard into theme parks. Warhammer FRP would be my best example of a Renaissance-like setting, but Warhammer is more in its own genre these days. Failing that, Midgard by Kobold Press is the best Renaissance-style setting, but it also does Steampunk.

I don't feel the Golarion lure anymore. Many places feel like Disney World-themed entertainment areas rather than part of an authentic culture. Egypt Land! Africa Land! Norse Land! Techno Land! Not Ravenloft Land! Asia Land! Undead Land! France Land!

When I was a kid, I thought this style of theme park world was interesting, and I had Mystara.

These days, I am outgrowing the entire concept of a randomly taped-together theme-park world, and it does not make any logical sense other than the "gods made it this way" and "it has to keep being this way just because."

The way C&C does it is superior and respects the original culture far more. Write a sourcebook in a themed setting, and don't try to shove it into a world. The world the players will be immersed in is an Egypt-like high fantasy setting. Players don't get to "opt out" of being a part of the culture by being a robot or dragon person or some silly outsider like a talking puppet or houseplant.

Or worse yet, wearing cosplay horns as a Tiefling, and cultures may see demon-blooded backgrounds as corrupted by the pits of Hell or Undead lords. Then, the game has to force a change in the original culture (that should be respected) in order to support the game's silly and random backgrounds. Of course, ancient Egypt accepts androids, were-jackals, and skeleton races! You will break the character creation system if you don't force a culture to respect every background equally.

It sounds horrible in a modern context, but to properly respect the culture, you need to consider certain things. If you made a race of "Set-like" jackal folk just because you have cool art for them, you can't force that historical culture to accept servants of the underworld as regular citizens.

Are you saying modern culture is superior to another one you are trying to recreate? That is colonialism. Before inserting your values into the equation, you must respect the people, time, and place. A lot of these games written for modern audiences are colonializing the hell out of these theme-park cultures they want to adopt and me-too for book sales.

Or do what Runequest and Harnworld do: Write a new culture that is "inspired by" instead of "stealing from." Make it so players need to learn and adopt a part of that culture for their characters instead of letting them be outsider planar saviors again and again.

Respecting a culture means players must engage with and immerse themselves in it.