Pathfinder: Campaign Setting, The Inner Sea World Guide

This is a real "keeper" of a book! It is lavishly printed and Hard-bound, and well above the usual standards of "play guides". This is a superiority crafted guide that is a pleasure to read; a compendium of illustrations and cartography, and absolutely worth having in your gaming library.The Inner Sea World Guide is a detailed overview of the Pathfinder world setting, and it covers the Cultures, and Geography, as well as history and folklore of the regions surrounding the Inner Sea, as well as some specifics that can be incorporated into RPG play. Consider it the "Lonely Planet" Guide to central Golarion (the imaginary world that is the setting for the Pathfinder RPG and ACG). There are no spoilers, because the book does not address story threads, as much as the over-arching cultural fabric.Chapter one is the Inner Sea Races (actually 12 human ethnicities, and six non-human races), Chapter Two comprises most of the book and is the description of The Inner Sea Region, including a historical timeline, and a region by region description, aspects of the social situation in each land, and the points of interest. Chapter Two is 180 of the 318 total pages, and the real content of this book. If you read it cover to cover, you can practically put your finger on the included wall map and describe something about the area.The section on Religion is 30 pages long, and covers deities, philosophies and planes of existence. Faith and Religion in RPGs are very interesting because deities are so uniquely palpable! In an RPG, if you beat up too many of Baphomet's disciples, you're probably going to end up in a face to (goat) face meeting, and this potential is not overlooked.The "Life" section covers the calendar and annual customs, weather, language and trade. And, then the book starts to really re-engage it's RPG roots with some tables in the Factions, and Adventuring sections, including an introduction to classes, spells, equipment, items and monsters, but these sections are very very brief when measured against the four volumes of the Bestiary, and the libraries of books covering the other aspects of RPG play currently out there for Pathfinder.The Pathfinder Campaign Setting Books are usually more focused on a specific campaign, and The Inner Sea World Guide is unique because so many Pathfinder campaigns takes place within the umbrella of the Inner Sea region. As a Pathfinder world primer, this book is tremendously informative.This is NOT a player Handbook or a GM Handbook. This book is an encyclopedia of information about the nature of the central region of Golarion. This book is probably most useful for a GM who may have GM'd other RPGs, and can easily and rapidly digest the game mechanic for Pathfinder, but needs to augment his or her ability to add depth and perspective to scenarios, or doesn't follow the published Campaigns, but wants to author their own, and maintain a global continuity. As a player, it is tremendously informative, and The Inner Sea World Guide can give a richness to the setting of the game, a must-read for committed role players, and a good familiarity for the setting - even if you are just playing Pathfinder ACG.

When I first started playing Pathfinder, I tried to buy an adventure path and play through it without knowing anything about Golarian (the world setting for Pathfinder). It was hard to get into it because I didn't know where to start, and I felt a lot of pieces were missing in the adventure path. My recommendation: read parts of this book, find an area that really interests you, and then find an adventure path for that area. Of course, there aren't adventure paths for every area yet, but it gives you a good idea where to start.This book also contains backgrounds for each race, religions, and a lot of history about the world. There is a plethora of information and you most likely won't need to read the whole thing to get a better understanding of the world at large. As a player, it helped me flesh out details about my character's backgrounds. As a GM it can help you understand more about the world in which your campaign takes place. Whether you decide to run an adventure path or make up something of your own, it can give you great ideas and settings to work with.Now as a disclaimer, there are very few stat blocks and math related components in this book. It is almost all story, and it won't give you much to work with in terms of game mechanics. Still, every GM knows that a good balance between story and mechanics makes the best games, especially for more experienced players. I would consider this book as important as the core rulebook if you intend to use Golarian as your campaign setting. There is enough information to get you started, and yet there are plenty of places to be creative and make up your own story within the setting.

The good: 1.) The product covers a broad range of fantasy genres. Depending on what country/region you begin your campaign, you can go from the Stone Age all the way up to the French Revolution, and anywhere in between. There are even a few nods to steampunk, swashbuckling, and even the magical equivalent of post-apocalyptic. 2.) The background and timelines for all the events that make Golarion what it is today seem to mesh well, and make sense - for a fantasy world, of course. 3.) The artwork is superb. 4.) A few new magic items and spells, but not so many as to make you feel that you've bought another splatbook.BEST OF ALL: No Elminsters! Now, I don't say this to bash another company's product, but to identify an inherent flaw in previous campaign worlds. If you already have a good, super-powerful, heroically-inclinded NPC in place, then why do you need heroes? Golarion has extremely powerful NPCs, but they are mostly evil, or at best indifferent and/or self-absorbed. This leaves your party's heroes the perfect opportunity to fill that vacuum.On the negative side: I'm not sure if it was an editing issue, or just one too many late nights at the computer, but some of the entries, especially those of the new monsters, seem to missing key pieces of information. Take for instance, the "Gillman" race. The description states that they begin to die if they do not fully submerge themselves in water at least once every 24 hours. However, it does not provide a game mechanic for it. Do they take straight hit points of damage? If so, how much and how often? Is it Constitution damage? Tell us more!All in all, it was a good investment. I plan to make use of it for my next campaign.

Pretty much a must-read for adventures in Golarion

excellent book everything you need to know about the world all in one book very handy for any pathfinder campaign

lots and lots of info on the world, as you would expect, maps, all sorts of inner sea world goodness

I bought this to get a better understanding of the game world for Pathfinder Society Organized Play. There's more than enough lore here to make great character backgrounds.

With Pathfinder, there are two major reasons for buying a book like this: One is to find background information and in-depth detail to add to existing adventure paths or design your own adventures as either side-shows or main events for your pathfinders. The other is to help you provide background information on your characters in the Pathfinder world. This book does admirably well in both functions: there is a wealth of information on each race, nation and culture, and a gazetteer overview of the points of interest in a geographical area.In addition, the last third of the book goes beyond the 'current era' and examines - albeit briefly - the area outside the Inner Sea, the pre-history of the area (I mean, what fantasy world is complete without ancient ruins and relics of lost civilisations?), deities, religions, philosophies, cosmology, calenders, celebrations, organisations and ecology. This is less important to character development but great for DMs wanting extra information on the world to work it in.As with most D&D based supplements there are extra rules - but in line with Paizo's philosophy, this section is actually very small: a few items of equipment not included in the core rulebook, a few prestige classes specific to the setting, rules on firearms, a couple of items and a few monsters making maybe 25 pages out of nearly 320 pages, much of it updated material from earlier adventure paths - in short, very little rules bloat. The index is adequate and the writing is good quality throughout. Like most of Paizo's books, I suspect some buyers will get it just for a good read.Overall, if you have some of Paizo's pre-Pathfinder RPG modules, this book will help you update them to the Pathfinder RPG standard. It's not an 'invaluable' book, you can do without it, but if you get it you won't regret it.