A little ways back, I did a review of the Lost Omens Tian Xia World Guide, and now it’s time to look at it’s companion book, the Tian Xia Character Guide!
NOTICE: an electronic copy of this book was provided to me by Paizo for review purposes.
Background
With the OGL 1.1. scandal’s fallout rapidly unfolding and with us all wondering what direction Pathfinder would go, Paizo announced that the Tian Xia sub-setting would be released in two books. They were fresh off the success of the Mwangi Expanse book, and had clearly learned that large setting areas needed more space to be properly laid out for players and GMs to explore. The first book in the Tian Xia set was solid, but the need for a companion book was clear.
The Good
Carrying on in the tradition established by TXWG, the art in this book showcases a wider spectrum of Asian influences. As I’ve made clear before, I’m not an expert on Asian cultures, but even I can recognize that they’re drawing on multiple cultures for the art. Impressively, the non-human peoples aren’t made into caricatures either, they have “Asian-esque” and Asian inspired aspects without outright coding them as “culture X”. I also appreciate the use of colour, a lot of fantasy art gets mired in earthtones and sadness, so it’s nice to see artists being able to bring the full palette to the table.
This book was made to be inter-operable with the recently released Player Core 2 book and the rest of the remaster series. This is good but also important as this is the first big setting expansion following the remaster launch of 2nd edition. It straight up directs you at times to where you can find details on things in other books. This is the type of inter-connectedness that I like to see because it adds value to other books.
So much player facing stuff. Ancestries, backgrounds, feats, options. It’s there and in full force. Combined with the art and direction from the previous Tian Xia book, it feels complete. I’d go so far as to say that it’s a more complete feeling than the previous Lost Omens setting books as a result of the additional space Tian Xia had to work with page wise. They also did some nice work integrating existing non-humans into the sub-setting, and offering Tian Xia variants of the standard ancestries.
The Bad
Tian Xia feels detached from the narratives and lore of Golarion. There’s a lot of cosmic level stuff that impacts the Inner Sea and regions immediate to it, stuff that tracks into the cosmology of the Pathfinder universe. And it’s absent from Tian Xia. I get the drive to present Asian themed/inspired cosmology concepts, they make Tian Xia feel different. But they also act to make it an anomaly, a borderline irrelevant place in the scheme of things. I think that more thought needed to go into integration into the setting’s lore and overarching narratives. However, this also really highlights the problematic aspect of using real world western mythology/religious figures and names in the Inner Sea region, because it limits their use in areas without European coding. Essentially, Paizo painted themselves into two corners at the same time.
ARMOUR! New books coming out for Pathfinder seem keen to provide us with tonnes of new weapons, weapon traits, items, spells, and so on. But this was literally a golden opportunity to offer up some Asian inspired armour and equipment past the weapons loadout and Paizo again declined to do it.
The Ugly
Just to get it out there, it’s my standard complaint about the Lost Omens pdf editions: there’s no links in the documents. There’s no excuse for this, and it degrades the usability both online and at the table.
Atomistic world building. This was a problem in the Mwangi Expanse book as well. Essentially what it boils down to is that while they succeeded in making a sub-setting that’s a place that players what to have their characters be from and then adventure in and not just visit, the connections to the larger world are weak at best. Yeah, there’s some cool Hobgoblin stuff happening, and the Shory live on there, but in a world of high magic, it’s essentially cut off from the larger world save for limited contact points.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to like here and I think the book is well written and worth picking up. It’s a solid Rank A book. But there are some trends developing in Pathfinder 2nd Edition that I’m not liking too much. Like the atomistic world building habits, the odd priorities in the new equipment sections, using real world mythology/religious names/characters, and the continued lack of links in pdfs. I think that Paizo has found its groove with the edition, I think the two book format for sub-settings is perfect for a world as complex and active as Golarion is, but I think they need to break some of these bad habits before they really start hampering the setting’s development.
Lost Omens: Tian Xian Character Guide is available now and more information is available here!
