Pathfinder’s Asian-inspired Tian Xia World Guide is absolutely stacked with talent

19.03.2024 - 13:01 / polygon.com

Last year’s controversy surrounding the Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License not only damaged Wizards of the Coast’s relationship with its biggest fans, but also helped to turbocharge the sales of competing game systems. Chief among them was Paizo’s Pathfinder, which sold through nearly a years’ worth of stock in just a matter of weeks. Now the Washington state-based publisher is throwing some serious funding behind its marquee fantasy role-playing franchise. It’s next effort, Pathfinder Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide, boasts a team of more than 40 authors. Polygon sat down with senior designer James Case to learn more.

Tian Xia is a massive Asian-inspired continent in Pathfinder’s fictional world of Golarion, home to 26 distinct nations and kingdoms. To help bring them to life, Case said it was important to team up with writers who could speak to the Asian experience.

“Almost everyone on the book is Asian, or part Asian, or from the diaspora,” said Case, who is also of Asian descent. “I think a lot of the othering tropes in fantasy come from taking a very monolithic view of a culture, or a fantasy race, or a time period, and I think it’s clear looking at some of the work that we’ve been doing in [Pathfinder Second Edition] have really tried to set the viewpoint from within the nation itself, [and asking] how would the people describe themselves, rather than this sort of assumed view of coming in from outside.”

Case’s co-authors include the following: Eren Ahn, Jeremy Blum, Alyx Bui, Banana Chan, Connie Chang, Rick Chia, Hans Chun, Theta Chun, Hiromi Cota, Dana Ebert, Basheer Ghouse, John Godek III, Sen H.H.S., Joan Hong, Michelle Jones, Joshua Kim, Daniel Kwan, Dash Kwiatkowski, Jacky Leung, Jesse J. Leung, Monte Lin, Jessie “Aki” Lo, Luis Loza, Adam Ma, Liane Merciel, Ashley Moni, Kevin Thien Vu Long Nguyen, Andrew Quon, Danita Rambo, K Arsenault Rivera, Christopher Rondeau, Joaquin Kyle “Makapatag” Saavedra, Kienna Shaw, Philip Shen, Tan Shao Han, Mari Tokuda, Ruvaid Virk, Viditya Voleti, Grady Wang, Emma Yasui, and Jay Zhang.

That diversity of experience, Case said, paid dividends in unexpected ways all throughout the manuscript — which includes everything from new and refreshed regional deities, to a bestiary brimming with new monsters.

“We have [...] one author who was very experienced with Chinese traditional medicine,” Case said, “who gave us a look into how we might look at the medicine skill in the game, and how that might better align to sort of an Asian view of things. We have some people with archaeology degrees, we have some people who are based overseas and living [in Asia who] brought a lot of very nuanced cultural knowledge to the game. And of course, these are also people who are