Pathfinder Campaign Setting: "Gazetteer" [RPG]

The Pathfinder Gazetteer was the first attempt by Paizo to provide an overview of the official campaign setting of Golarion.  Published in 2008, very little had previously been published about Golarion besides information on Varisia in a couple of the early adventure paths and some scattered descriptions of other lands in early modules and.  Because it was early days, it makes sense that the first overview of the setting would be comparatively short: just 64 pages.  But there's a lot packed in here!

The red dragon on the cover is amazing, and I think I just realized that Valeros and Seoni are fighting atop the Cyphergate in Riddleport!  The inside front cover shows holy symbols for the "Core 20" deities plus Aroden, while the inside back cover is the front cover art sans text.  The book comes with a pull-out four-panel map of the Inner Sea; this is doubtless the first published map of the setting, and it's gorgeous.  It's surprisingly detailed, and although a few locations have been altered over the years, it's still fun to just sit and imagine all of the adventures to be had in these places, most of which were just names at the time but are now fully-fleshed out thanks to years of supplements.  The full-color interior artwork is serviceable but certainly looks primitive compared to modern Paizo products.

The book starts with a two-page introduction.  It describes the (in-setting) Pathfinder Society, and implies that most adventuring parties will belong to it.  There's also an introduction to Aroden and the premise of the Age of Lost Omens--when even prophecies can no longer be trusted, the future is solely in the hands of the PCs!

Chapter 1 is "Characters" (14 pages).  This section describes how all of the standard core races fit into Golarion (with sidebars for the different human ethnicities).  It holds up well in terms of accuracy with current conceptions of those races in the game.  Although mostly crunch-free (this was written during the D&D 3.5 era), it also discusses the role of the core classes and provides an alternate class feature for each one--some are pretty neat, like allowing Fighters to drop a bonus feat and instead get extra skill points and class skills.  The section concludes with a description of uniquely-Golarion languages.

Chapter 2 is "Timeline" (4 pages).  Starting with -5293 and the Age of Darkness and progressing all the way to 4708 and the Age of Lost Omens, this timeline fixes important historical events.  It also discusses the Golarion calendar.  The timeline makes for surprisingly interesting reading (many events have been built on in subsequent products, but not all).

Chapter 3 is "Nations" (36 pages) and is the real meat of the book.  The section starts with a brief description of the different continents of Golarion before homing in on the various nations of the Inner Sea region.  Each country gets a page or so of description alongside some details like alignment, capital, notable settlements, ruler, government, languages, and religion.  I loved the shout-outs to Darkmoon Vale and Scarwall (locations familiar to those who played or ran some early Paizo adventures).  There are some occasional sidebars with rules elements, such as on sailing the Eye of Abendego or purchasing the Sun Orchid Elixir.  There's obviously no value in my going through each of the countries included, so I'll just say as a package I was pleasantly surprised by how rich of a history the setting has and how well the disparate countries fit together.  My very first impression of Golarion years ago was that it was just a "random kitchen sink" of different countries--and although it certainly was designed as a setting where almost any type of D&D could be played, there was in fact a lot of thought given to making it a cohesive whole.

Chapter 4 is "Religion" (6 pages) and provides just a couple of paragraphs on each of the setting's core deities (along with stuff like domains, favored weapons, etc.).  It's really only the barest introduction to each faith, but does the job of allowing new players for a cleric to skim over something quickly and pick a faith for their character.

As the product dates from 2008, there have certainly been much more detailed descriptions of the Inner Sea region published subsequently.  Hardcover books like the Inner Sea World Guide and Inner Sea Faiths devote multiple pages to topics that the Gazetteer can only touch on, and real lore-junkies can find 64-page books in the Campaign Setting Line on nations that receive only a page of description here.  For players in need of a quick overview, the Inner Sea Primer is even more compact.  All of that probably means the Gazetteer doesn't really have a modern niche, but it is really interesting to look back to the beginning years of what would become one of the most sprawling fantasy settings in gaming history.