City of Revolution

TLDR: My fellow DM and I made a urban/intrigue game setting. The issues at paizo.com has had me considering a move. We have a rich setting with lots of text, so no matter what we decide, I hope its cool to offer it to fellow GMs here.


The Meta-History of Galt
A friend and fellow gamer came to us, saying he was going to start an intrigue game based in Galt. For those unfamiliar, Galt is a nation in the Pathfinder RPG Setting of Golarion, and is fairly sparse in terms of development, at least compared to some other nations. In terms of an analogue, Galt could be simply described as a non-stop French Revolution. Lethal politics, secrecy, subjective morality; we were excited for this.

With character’s rolled up and (extensive) backgrounds created, we were unsurprised to have the first session date pushed back. The setting was large, after all, and the GM wanted more time to develop it. Then the second start date got moved, and then the third. With each delay, my character developed more and more. As the fourth attempt to get started finally drew close, we got the news we’d feared for some time: the GM didn’t feel he could run the game.

We were pretty devastated at that news. As someone who’s manned both sides of the screen, I know what it’s like for a GM to bite off more than they can chew. I’ve also had games that I’ve been excited for, but never get off the ground. I was not at all upset with the GM, but I was still sad.

When I took up Golarion as a setting, I remember reading about the nation of Galt, and being excited at the possibilities. Of course, a repeatedly war-torn capital was fertile ground for intrigue games. I was not ready to give up on this idea.

It wasn’t until a few months later I was chatting with another player from my table game, who was also looking forward to playing in Galt. We agreed that the setting work would need to be complete to a certain degree before we could accept players, and that only by working together could we achieve what a single GM could not.

What we came up with was very odd indeed: a series of PBP games where the players alternate between working alone and working as a team. Players could explore their secret lives, but still team up for common cause when the need arose. Best of all, we would run as a pair of GMs, creating the setting together, and running the one-on-one games concurrently.

Isarn took over 4 months to create. We meticulously (and as far as we can tell, successfully) integrated EVERYTHING of Paizo’s cannon into our setting. The few ruling councils mentioned, the geography, and the current political climate are all reflections of the country described in every published mention of Galt we could find. We worked hard to add hooks for almost any type of character background. Even some staples of Golarion, such as the deities, were viewed in different and interesting ways within Galt. Few of the traditionally popular deities are worshiped as they commonly are, and some uncommon deities have more sway than normal.

When our game launched, we got a lot of positive feedback from the paizo.com play-by-post community. The number of people who wanted to play in our city was more than we could reasonably take, but it encouraged our thoughts that the materials we made for the campaign could be disbursed to other GMs. One of our applicants made mention of this site, and I've been looking over your community as a possible alternative, in the wake of paizo.com's issues this week.

I'm always eager to share with interested parties, so as I migrate our wiki, please have a look and inquire about anything if you feel inspired to.

-Le Quatrième Voile