Tian Xia is their ‘Asian fusion’ continent, has a lot of different regions and governments all dreamt up by a very wide cast of writers in Asia, but most seem to be from Shanghai and Hong Kong.
I am told that if you speak some Asian languages, these are very fun names to look at.
Big bads:
cw: spider
cw: spider
cw: spider
super saiyan cat
adorable forest fey
tanuki!!
racially diverse ‘western’ explorers and refugees, technically a ‘hong kongesque’ situation without brutal colonialism:
this is qin shi huangdi except the elixir actually worked
before anyone gets weirded out by the elves, all pathfinder elves look like this, even ones from ‘western’ or ‘african’ areas
fantasy korea
sassy snake deity
@Othello@hexbear.net @Pluto@hexbear.net might be of interest to /c/em_poc
pathfinder seems to have been very good with poc rep, they also have a fantasy africa continent that was done very well. main adventure there is basically not shit harry potter in fantasy timbuktu, main antagonist is an african mythological figure iirc. ap is called Strength of Thousands
Actually was gonna shout out the 2e Mwangi Expanse & Strength of Thousands before I saw your comment lol. Love the fantasy Africa analogue (big fan of the Anadi!) and how they avoided so many of the problems D&D’s fantasy Africa analogue had in its portrayals. Haven’t read anything on the east Asia stuff, looks dope though
“Latino” or “mixed” or “Turkish” analogues would be nice!
i would KILL for some MENA stuff
Pathfinder has northern Garund and Qadira and the Kelesh Empire, but I don’t actually know enough about those regions to speak about how they’re written.
The iconic cleric is a gay Qadiran woman who is married to the iconic rogue (an elf)
Pathfinder has Arcadia as its America-analog. I don’t know anything about it except that they have guns and are featured a lot in the book covering that. Seems very underdeveloped otherwise. https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Arcadia
Just to add clarity to your comment, Arcadia is the pre-colonisation America analogue, as Andoran is the USA analogue.
Developing this more would be interesting!
I think its hinted theyre going to be doing some Arcadia content soonish, its one of the regions that is very undeveloped
that would be nice
Thank you for this!
I wanna play a frog-folk/frog-kin so bad! I’ll ask my DM if I can roll one up for my backup character in the current campaign.
Froggers.
when they release the tian xia character guide in august i think frog guys are supposed to get some new feats
Chinese comrades, where you at?
theres a faction that is about overthrowing the dragon monarchy
And I’m already in it!
Chiss from Star Wars!
yeah this is a specific ancestry of humans that achieved a higher state of being through reincarnation and try to help people to reach an even higher state of enlightenment (there are holy and good creatures in the monster codex that result of this), historically have a bent towards holy actions and lawful good stuff. you can just be a normal human mother and randomly give birth to a samsaran
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Samsaran https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/uncommon-races/arg-samsaran/
Lawful good is 'ight.
In fact, I tend to like it quite a bit.
other fun things: rituals that give you free feats if you beat their ‘trial’, one of which is a ritual to create an elixir of immortality that poisons you, if you live through the poison, you become immortal, but if you break anathema and are past your normal lifespan, you die. anathema is 2-3 things you and the DM come up with that you cant do, like touching someone related to you, touching jade, eating meat, etc. if you do die in combat or something in a year youll descend from heaven and possess someone
a handful of new deities that use new weapons and spells
“Hong Kong.”
Another Hong Kong analogue?
Ah well
I’m still interested!
yeah, if it makes you feel better theyre all descendants from refugees/explorers that showed up in ancient times. basically fantasy romans went exploring and intermingled with a lot of random places
there are some actual bad white people colonies that are explicitly unholy evil devil worshipers and slavers in fantasy africa, theres a holy goddess of vengeance and anticolonialism that looks cool as hell and helps people that fight them
That’s fine by me, tbh.
I’m not that picky!
also added a bit about fantasy africa, there are actual colonies in pathfinder but all of them are founded by literal devil worshipers lol
Literal devil worshippers?
lol Literally white Devils.
yeah theres some pirate campaigns where you try to interdict the devil worshipers supply lines, stuff like that. lot of content around them, theyre basically the big bads of the setting, along with some undead empires
Oh nice, I do love “Asian” pirate lore.
Devil worshiping nazis, in fact. Cheliax isn’t exactly subtle.
There’s an old adventure path where you play a sort of resistance within the empire of Cheliax.
edit: yeah the devil part is very literal as well. Devils in Pathfinder are nuanced in that they are evil but also lawful, and it’s entirely possible to play a Faust-like character who binds them without being evil. Queen Abrogail Thrune II is not like that at all.
interesting
Queen Abrogail Thrune II
I think her full title gets the message across better: Her Infernal Majistrix Queen Abrogail II of the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune.
Oh God, I love the colors, they just pop!
Scimitars!
Curved. Swords.
Needs more spiders.
alright tho they were phoning it in on Yjae
1 dome of the rock? nah its ALL dome
Man, Pathfinder continues to just be 2000% cooler than D&D.
Whenever I see pathfinder stuff it makes me wish I still had my DND group together
the pathfinder version of fantasy China includes a parody of Maoist China lol
complete with Mao and Jiang Qing:
Following Lung Wa’s collapse in 7106 IC, the rich bureaucrats, with the aid of a corrupt clergy, struggled to control the restless populace. In this era of political turmoil, Grandfather Pei, a scholar from a peasant background, began spreading the Pei philosophy of communism. Pei preached for equal treatment of all humanoids and demanded that prosperity be shared equally among all citizens. Gathering an army of peasants, workers, and other downtrodden folk, Grandfather overthrew the corrupt government and its puppets in the clergy in the Bachuan Revolution in 7126 IC. Thus independent, Grandfather restored to Pen Wa its original name, Bachuan, as a newly reformed republic. Though Grandfather Pei intended to bring a new era of peace and prosperity to Bachuan, the Pei philosophy proved much harder to implement than planned. The strict philosophy opposed religion and the private ownership of property, and enforced state control over the production and distribution of wealth. Beneath the Sun Chamber, the infamous Ministry of Peace and Harmony operated re-education camps to force its ideology on dissenters, and in later years instituted ideological purges to root out any who were not sufficiently zealous. Pei’s failures of leadership resulted in an authoritarian government, suppression of religion, ideological purges, and the establishment of re-education camps. When Grandfather Pei died in 7168 IC, his young widow Pu Yae Men—better known as Grandmother Pei, and herself indoctrinated in Bachuan’s re-education camps—implemented an even harsher vision with a revolutionary zeal untethered to Bachuan’s troubled reality.
it even has a Deng Analog lol:
The Shui Jing reforms
Shui Jing was an oracular Tian-Shu woman who claimed to be a mathematician, and she possessed considerable social charms that quickly gained her favor among the Pei family. She united the factions long enough to propose a series of policy reforms that would change the shape of Bachuan:
The end of enforcement and official proselytizing of the Pei philosophy,
The division of Bachuan into six municipalities, one for each of the Sun Council’s factions,
Reformed property ownership laws that could encourage private ownership and foreign investment, with a decade of minimal taxation on profits.
yeah i just read it lmao
and then the magical man deng showed up and everything was better
