Site Redesign & New Content

As I prep for a new campaign using the Pathfinder 2e Remaster rules, I find myself updating, rearranging and sometimes completely changing some of the setting information for Riadus. The updated content has a more organic feel to it, particularly the list of deities which now no longer are linked to alignments. The continent map is also getting a reboot, with new nations/territories being added and the political relationships between some areas getting updated.

I’m hoping over the next few weeks I’ll have the majority of the updated content up, which will include full rules for the wulfen ancestry and the half-goblin heritage.

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Pathfinder 2nd Edition Updates

The 2nd edition of the Pathfinder RPG has been out for nearly 2 years now and we’ve been spending that time debating on whether to update Riadus. Short answer is: yes we have. The much longer answer is the purpose of this update.

2E isn’t just an update to the rules, but a complete re-imagining of them. While still basically a d20 system, where you roll your d20 and add a modifier and hope the total equals or exceeds a target difficulty class, those modifiers, their sources, and how that DC is calculated has drastically changed. Even more, the rules for races (now ancestries) and classes is extremely different.

Change is hard, and often frightening, but just as often a good thing. The new rules have streamlined the game in a way that couldn’t be accomplished with a simple update, clarification or FAQ. Ancestries now grow with additional feats as you level, classes now have their secondary features as feats which you select as you level, and most classes has a sub-class or built in archetype choice which determines some of your class features. The options traits system from 1st edition has been replaced with a much more robust Background which grants characters some skills and an associated feat. As you level you can select both Skill feats and General feats in addition to your Ancestry and Class feats to further define and specialize your character.

And then there are the Archetype feats which can allow your character to further specialize in a particular aspect of the game, diversify their skills and abilities into those of another class, or even alter some of the standard features of their selected class in similar way that archetypes worked in 1st edition.

Feat selection is essentially what drives character build and development in 2nd edition.

Unfortunately, that huge amount of feats has been a significant deterrent and challenge in updating Riadus to Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Every one of our custom races (soon to be ancestries) such as half-goblin and wulfen need to be defined not by a few ability score adjustment and features you get once at 1st level, but by a selection of heritages which describe variations of the base ancestry and also a dozen or more ancestry feats which allow each ancestry to develop further as the character levels up. Even standard core rulebook ancestries need some attention, as heritages such as tribal humans, tribal and civilized goblins, and effectively all varieties of elf need to be available.

Archetypes should also be brought into the update to represent various factions and organizations. Certain bloodlines for sorcerers should exist based on the ancient history of the world and where magic comes from. A “road druid” is absolutely necessary. And of course each and every deity would need to have defined edicts and anathema and likely a new selection of domains (not to mention some new domains may need to be created to fill some gaps).

This is going to be a long but worthwhile journey and we hope all our players enjoy the results.

Thank you.

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Races Update

The Races have been updated to reflect the current list of deities as well as the non-existence of gnomes in the campaign setting. Included in the list of races are now goblins and half-goblins.

Also updated is the Forum to include the current Kingmaker campaign as well as better organize previous posts.

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Mapping the World

The Riadus Campaign Setting has been around for a while now, and in that time I’ve gone through 2 revisions of the setting map. The latest version is currently around 2 years old, and I’m finding a few things I don’t really like about it.

For one, it’s (almost) randomly generated. The original map was created using a system of randomly mapping from an old AD&D supplement. The idea was to divide the world into sections, randomly determine what the ratio of land to water was in each section, then squiggle in some coastlines using the neighboring areas as a guide. Well, this really sounded good at the time, and in a way it still does. It helps to create a world. Not necessarily a realistic world, but a world good enough for a fantasy campaign. But it bothers me that what I created was more random than realistic.

Another issue I’m having is plausibility of the map I have. In the 2nd revision I move around many of the nations to more neatly fit into the natural boundaries the geography of my map presented. In the 3rd, I completely redrew the map from the point of view of where I wanted each nation and created the boundaries where I needed them. This created a much more realistic map, but created a different problem for me. I now had a bunch of nations all crammed together on a large continent that seemed to lack enough waterways to support them.

In the real world two major factors (among others, I’m sure) influenced the growth and advancement of civilization. Access to the sea for travel and access to other people for trade. Some may say these are the same thing as interrelated as they are. In the real world, our modern civilization (in the West) sprang out of the cultures that developed along the cost of the Mediterranean sea. The sea allowed contact with nearby people, and as a result their shared culture allowed everyone to develop rather quickly. Quickly as compared to the nomadic people of North America at the time. North America had too much land and not enough water and people.

I want my world to be more like the Mediterranean area. More water, more people and more travel. I don’t really want a high-seas campaign setting, but a setting that allows for high-seas adventure in addition to the other things I want would be great. I want the feeling that people from far off lands need only hop on a ship to get where they’re going. I want the further inland one goes to represent a frontier that’s been all but ignored in favor of the bountiful lands nearer the sea.

So, with that lengthy and likely unnecessary explanation, I’ll be reworking the geography of my campaign world. My goal (other than as explained above) is to maintain the various nations I currently have, and hopefully maintain their geographic relation to each other. What I have now is a large land mass the size of Europe which I want to shrink down to about a third its size. I want all the major nations to be coastal, so that one can sail from from to another with relative frequency.

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Second Darkness Campaign

This up coming Sunday marks the start of a new campaign using the Riadus Campaign Setting. The campaign is to be based on the Second Darkness adventure path published by Paizo.com. For ease of use I’m keeping as much of the applicable setting information from Second Darkness intact, though many changes are necessary. The world of Pathfinder is not the same as the world of Riadus.

Warning, spoilers ahead. If you are playing in any Second Darkness campaign, not just mine, you might not want to read ahead until after, or at least well into the campaign.

One of the major changes I’ve needed to make concern the drow. For one, Riadus doesn’t have any. Never has, and never will. Granted, neither did the Pathfinder setting until this adventure path was published, and in fact this path involves the sudden appearance of the drow as a new discovery. That’s fine for Pathfinder, but not for Riadus. I just don’t want any “evil elves” in my campaign world. Even though they are based (at least partially) on Scottish folklore and are considered open content (which allows Paizo to use them in its own material), I consider the drow to be almost exclusively part of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. This is mainly due to one extremely popular character who doesn’t need to be named here. Having drown in my campaign setting would feel too much like stealing (which is completely unlike using the city of Riddleport, which need not exist anywhere outside this campaign).

So I need to use a different, but equally ominous, evil people for my villain. I have some ideas, but I’ll leave their discussion for another time.

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Updated Feats

The list of Feats have been updated to reflect the alternate rules found in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and for greater clarity.

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There Be Gods!

There is now a list of deities, complete with their alignments, portfolios, available domains and favored weapons. Unfortunately that’s really all there is right now. I’ll have a short description of them up in the next week or two, but at least the list is up for use when making characters, particularly clerics.

Now I just need to plug the info into PCGen and I’m all set to start the campaign!

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Updated Races, Classes & Feats

The Races section has been completely updated with current information, including updated racial traits which conform to the new Pathfinder standard. The races allowed or the upcoming campaign are Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves, Gnomes, Goblins, Humans and Wulfen. Sorry, no halflings or half-orcs. If you really want to play a halfling, play a goblin instead. Goblins are funner!

The feats on the Classes and Feats section have been updated as well. A new feat, Spontaneous Domains, allows a cleric to spontaneously cast spells from his domain list the same way he does with cure spells.

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Up to Date… Sorta

While I still have a lot of updating to do, all of the content now available on the riadus.net website should now be up to date with my current campaign. I still need publish detailed information for the available races, and (hopefully) get some information about the campaign world published (or in the case of Canthelon, republished).

I’m completely reworking the list of deities and the world’s cosmology, so unfortunately updates in this area will be a bit slower in coming. I’m hoping to find out if anyone will be playing a cleric before too long so I can narrow it down to what I need information about first.

And of course, along with updated content comes an updated site design. I hope everyone likes it.

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Rewriting the Setting

I’m rewriting the Riadus Campaign Setting… again.

Well, this time it’s not a total rewrite. I’m keeping most of the information from my previous revision, including most of the history, nations, places of interest, etc. I’m primarily updating the races, particularly those available as player character races, and a few house rules. I’m using the Pathfinder RPG rather than D&D 3.5, so some changes were unavoidable, so I figured it would be a good time to get as much done as possible.

The site will be updated as I consolidate information. At the time of this post, most of the content has been taken down for revision.

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