The Inner Sea World Guide

The Inner Sea World Guide acts as the campaign setting companion to Paizo's Pathfinder game line.  This book is an update to the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting (which was released before the official Pathfinder rules had been released).  Pathfinder if you aren't familiar is Paizo's updated take on the D&D 3.5 rules.  The primary world on the material plane where the action takes place is named Golarion and Paizo packs a lot onto this planet to cover many different themes and moods.

The first chapter covers races in Golarion.  These are your standard core races although there are several variations on humanity (mechanically all identical).  The racial backgrounds are a bit different especially for gnomes.  The authors don't shy away from doing things to make Golarion a little different then just a run of the mill campaign setting.  The second chapter covers the Inner Sea and this is the meat and potatoes of the book.  Here we get 4 page blurb on all the countries and regions that surround the Inner Sea.  Each section covers history, government, and has a gazetteer of key places.  All in all this gives you a decent high level view of an area that gives some places to see/investigate/avoid and enough information that a DM can extrapolate further upon with ease.  The sheer diversity of places should support nearly any type of game style/desired setting.  There are everything from communist military run nations to a nation in the midst of a French style revolution (with resurrection blocking guillotines), to a crusader kingdom, and a caliphate.  It's almost a guarantee that one of example of any common setting trope is found somewhere in the Inner Sea.  The only possible drawback is that at times this seems almost too obvious and neighbors who may share the same geography can have very different cultures.  For whatever reason this struck as a bit hard to believe.  Yes, I realize this is odd to say when it doesn't bother me that their are dragons, wizards, and magic in general everywhere!  It may also feel this way due to my initial lack of familiarity with the setting compared to say, the Forgotten Realms or Exalted's Creation.  This chapter also discusses the world beyond the Inner Sea and some previous civilizations that have long since slipped in the domain of history.

Chapter three cover major religions/gods in Golarion.  I'd argue this is the default Pathfinder pantheon.  It also covers some of the major non-deity based philosphies that dominate the land.  I found these to be pretty standard but I've seen a lot of deity write-ups so in that way I may be jaded.  I liked that there were just philosophies that are followed in Golarion though.  So many campaigns are completely dominated by gods that nothing else shows up.  This breaks that mold.  In fact there is even a completely atheist country that has banned any god based religion outright.  I don't think I had ever encountered that in fantasy campaign world before!  The religion chapter also does a brief purview of the planes and what beings live on them.  This felt quite unfamiliar to me (see also my review on the book covering that in more detail) but that owes mostly to many new planar beings that replace ones that are probably solely licensed by Wizards of the Coast.  I miss my slaads...

Chapter four tackles life on Golarion.  Not too exciting other then the technology section which is interesting because in some countries firearms and printing presses are starting to become common.  The fire arm rules are interesting.  The other technology is intriguing as it changes some of the dynamics of the otherwise bog standard fantasy world.  It's a change from that standard and I'll take it!  Chapter five introduces some major factions that are players in the politics of Golarion both good and evil.  Nothing too exciting here again.

The last two chapters cover the mechanical bits of the game including prestige classes, equipment, spells,  magic items, and monsters.  Nothing too exciting here as far as I'm concerned.

Overall I liked this book.  Artwork and production value are the standard top rate quality that you'd expect from Paizo.  The map is beautiful.  The setting is diverse if a maybe a little too obviously so.  I'd rather have too much differentiation though then not enough so it's not a huge issue for me.  Even the parts that seem fairly standard are still well written and thought out.  I'd rate this a 8 out of 10.

Available in: physical* and PDF.

Links: Amazon, Paizo, Noble Knight

Up next: Cat

The Great Beyond

Paizo's take on the planes offers a different look at the well known "Great Wheel" cosmology of 3.x Dungeons and Dragons.  The Great Beyond expands upon the cursory descriptions given in the campaign guides for Golarion fleshing out the structure of the planes and the denizens that reside there.

Perhaps the biggest drawback to this book is that it is simply too short to give a proper treatment to all the major planes (much less important/notable demiplanes) and the inhabitants within.  As a result while the descriptions of the planes do a good job evoking how a given plane looks and feels there are two things lacking: actual planar traits and statistics for common denizens of that plane.  Both of these require additional books not necessarily needed for play (GameMastery Guide and Bestiary 2) to add mechanical support to the descriptions provided.  There are a few creatures provided (roughly one for each major plane that hasn't gotten some love from Bestiary 1) so the game master does have something to go on if they don't own Bestiary 2.  The GameMastery Guide I believe contains the actual mechanics for planar traits so unless the game master has some 3rd Edition D&D references to fall back on (again requiring additional books) they will have to improvise planar traits.  This might be a plus to some game masters/players but may also be a minus for others.

That being said, the book does a good job with a small page count on detailing all the different planes including maps and describing major/notable locations within them.  Also described are the denizens and their governments (if any) that control the planes.  From a setting perspective these could keep a campaign going for years without ever returning to the material plane.  Story hooks are also sprinkled amongst the descriptions giving characters interesting reasons to go to many of the different planes (other then just that planes are generally awesome to explore!).

The book does take some time to describe some esoteric planes like the Dimension of Time and the Dimension of Dreams which opens the door for some very unusual game types.  While not really up my personal alley for things I'd want to game about there inclusion is an thoughtful step to think outside of the box.  This is a trait that Paizo seems to have in droves and while it doesn't always hit the mark with me I cannot fault that they take the risk/effort to try and implement new takes in what would otherwise be a bland fantasy knock off of D&D (also a variation of existing fantasy settings not that this is a bad thing in and of itself!).

One final issue that is entirely out of Paizo's hand is the missing "iconic" planar creatures from D&D such as slaads and aasimars.  These are likely missing because they are licensed creations of Wizards of the Coast and as a result not part of the OGL/SRD.  This books (and the Bestiaries to support it) have provided interesting monsters in their stead but I still found myself missing the slaads when reading about the Maelstrom.

So to sum up the big problem with this book is that it's too small.  It just doesn't benefit much from being one of the short little booklets that Paizo puts out on a regular basis.  The production values are the usual quality one would expect from Paizo though so as long as the reader doesn't mind referencing other books for their crunch.  I'd rate this a 6 out of 10.

Available in: Physical* and PDF

Links: Paizo, Amazon, Noble Knight

Up Next: The Inner Sea World Guide (Pathfinder)