Meta:Dragonfall

Retcon

Content about dragons in the GameMastery Module Guardians of Dragonfall, including and particularly Dragonfall, was retroactively removed from the Pathfinder campaign setting by official clarifications from Paizo staff. The module was the result of an aborted attempt to produce setting-agnostic adventures,¹ and production issues and miscommunications resulted in an erroneous depiction of dragons and related subjects.²

Despite mentions of it in some subsequent canon works, Dragonfall as described in Guardians of Dragonfall is not considered part of the setting canon, and the location has not been mentioned outside of that context.

See also the PathfinderWiki:Canon policy FAQ, which specifically addresses Guardians of Dragonfall as an exception to the PathfinderWiki canon policy. -Oznogon (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

References

↑ "This one and Crucible of Chaos, the adventure that came out just before this one, were a very short-lived experiment by the standalone adventure team to try doing 'world-neutral' adventures that were as self-contained with the lore as possible so as to make it easier for customers to fit into the setting of their choice. The experiment didn't last long, obviously, in no small part due to the fact that for any adventure if you're going to use any proper nouns, it's easier to draw upon a shared world already available rather than to make things up on the spot and then either have to contextualize them (which eats up wordcount) or just leave them unexplained (which confuses people).

While we ended up keeping much of Crucible of Chaos, and indeed that one helped us get things rolling with the Shory, the elements in Dragonfall about a dragon graveyard simply didn't really mesh with what we wanted to do with Golarion. ... While the art mixup didn't really have much to directly do with this adventure being set in a generic fantasy world, it did factor into our methods of quality controlling what we publish; something we were still adjusting to and figuring out for ourselves as we built a world from scratch while simultaneously not missing a beat on publishing things to a monthly subscription model." James Jacobs. (November 14, 2023). Comment on "GameMastery Module J2: Guardians of Dragonfall (OGL)", Paizo Store.
↑ "Significant parts of the adventure had to be rewritten at the last moment due to miscommunications with the author and insufficient guidance and advice on our end.

As a result, J2's probably the only module we've done that doesn't really mesh as well as it should with Golarion. It still works fine as an adventure, but Dragons Revisited should be considered the primary source on dragon lore for Golarion." James Jacobs. (May 28, 2009). Comment on "Which modules are about Golarion?", Paizo messageboards.

[1] "This one and Crucible of Chaos, the adventure that came out just before this one, were a very short-lived experiment by the standalone adventure team to try doing 'world-neutral' adventures that were as self-contained with the lore as possible so as to make it easier for customers to fit into the setting of their choice. The experiment didn't last long, obviously, in no small part due to the fact that for any adventure if you're going to use any proper nouns, it's easier to draw upon a shared world already available rather than to make things up on the spot and then either have to contextualize them (which eats up wordcount) or just leave them unexplained (which confuses people).

While we ended up keeping much of Crucible of Chaos, and indeed that one helped us get things rolling with the Shory, the elements in Dragonfall about a dragon graveyard simply didn't really mesh with what we wanted to do with Golarion. ... While the art mixup didn't really have much to directly do with this adventure being set in a generic fantasy world, it did factor into our methods of quality controlling what we publish; something we were still adjusting to and figuring out for ourselves as we built a world from scratch while simultaneously not missing a beat on publishing things to a monthly subscription model." James Jacobs. (November 14, 2023). Comment on "GameMastery Module J2: Guardians of Dragonfall (OGL)", Paizo Store.

[2] "Significant parts of the adventure had to be rewritten at the last moment due to miscommunications with the author and insufficient guidance and advice on our end.

As a result, J2's probably the only module we've done that doesn't really mesh as well as it should with Golarion. It still works fine as an adventure, but Dragons Revisited should be considered the primary source on dragon lore for Golarion." James Jacobs. (May 28, 2009). Comment on "Which modules are about Golarion?", Paizo messageboards.

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