User:Amethal2/User blog/Not just the kitchen sink

I have seen Golarion categorised as a "kitchen sink" setting. We have the land of pirates, the quasi-Egyptian setting, the quasi-Arabic setting etc.I think this is a fair description, and I don't think it is a derogatory term. I think the folks at Paizo wanted a setting that could handle as many different types of adventure as possible, and Golarion was the result. This is good for me - librarything.com tells me that I own 228 adventures, not counting every print edition of Dungeon bar 5 and the numerous adventures I only have in PDF format. With a few obvious exceptions (my Spacemaster adventures come to mind!) I could run almost all of them in Golarion with very little effort.

However, it was only when I started contributing articles to this site that I realised how well the various areas link together. Just reading the Campaign Setting, which presents the lands in alphabetical order, can give the wrong impression. To take a semi-random example, Molthune is followed by the Mwangi Expanse, and they have very little to do with each other. But then why would they, when they are so far apart?

When I was doing work on the Mwangi Expanse article I was often being re-directed to the neighbouring lands, especially the Sodden Lands (Jaha is now ruled by refugees from there) or the Shackles (pirates from the Shackles built Bloodcove) or Sargava (the Mwangi city of Mzali is threatening the Sargavan city of Kalabuto). Having decided that those countries would also fall within my "sphere of influence", I then found out that various monsters wandering the eastern jungle had been created in the fleshforges of Nex. You can't have Nex without Geb and Alkenstar, and it turns out that Jalmeray has pretty strong ties to Nex as well.

I took a peek at the work yoda8myhead has been doing on Rahadoum, and it turns out there's also a strong hate/hate relationship there with the Shackles.

So basically this blog post is a very long winded way of saying I love the way the disparate parts of the world have been linked together so well, and the wiki format is ideal for making those connections.