While the Player Core has straightforward prices for what it costs to hire someone to cast a spell, I've always struggled with what it would cost to hire ritual casters.

After all, rituals have rather big differences from ordinary spells:

• They take a lot longer to cast
• They usually require multiple casters
• Unlike with most spells, success is not automatic (and the more casters you need, the more difficult it will be to succeed)

So how do you price hiring NPC ritual casters? It would make the most sense to scale their daily fee depending on their skill bonus, but what is appropriate here?

And do they get paid for "time and material", or do they only get paid for successfully casting the ritual? The latter is far easier to calculate, while the casters will require a considerable "risk premium" for their service, and they might refuse to even make the attempt if the ritual is particularly difficult.

What are your thoughts on this?

Let's share some fantastic, bizarre, and weird real world locations that would make perfect fodder for #ttrpg !

My own contribution is "Christ of the Abyss", a bronze statue of Jesus that was deliberately sunk into the ocean off the coast of Italy in 1954. Two other statues were cast from the same mold later on, and sunk at Grenada and Florida.

I find the very concept of religious statues being sunk into the ocean fascinating - and, of course, in fantastic worlds people might have an easier time visiting such statues. Perhaps they have acquired some magic that allows them to breathe water for some time, or perhaps they are naturally amphibious. Or natural water breathers - perhaps there is some trade deal with surface dwellers where land-based religious items are created for aquatic civilizations that they cannot manufacture themselves.

What other such weird locations do you know of?

Biomes - environments that fall into a certain category - are a great way to set the atmosphere for a specific adventure. We all know of deserts, forests, swamps, mountains, and so forth, and each of these biomes have their own iconic adventures and adventure sites.

But the real world is full of obscure, unique environments that aren't known to many people - let alone #ttrpg players, which makes them a great option to bring variety to a game - and fantasy and science fiction has come up with all sorts of further biomes that aren't known on Earth. So what are your favorite obscure biomes?

Personally, I am fascinated by so-called "Cloud Forests" ever since I heard of the concept. They are usual tropical or subtropical forests which, due to their geographic locations, are shrouded in fogs for much of the year. In RPG settings, forests often hide many dangers due to their low visibility - and so does fog. It's two great tastes that go well together!

Share some cool historical details you've learned that just beg for inclusion in an RPG!

My contribution is the Man Engine, a sort-of mining elevator I learned about when I visited the Mining Museum in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the Harz Mountains in Germany, where this contraption was invented.

Basically, early in the 19th century the mines in the Harz Mountains were the deepest in the world at the time, with the Samson Pit in Sankt Andreasberg reaching a depth of 800 meters. This meant that the miners had to spend one hour climbing down the mine until they reached their place of work - and two hours climbing up again, carrying their pit lamps in one hand the entire time.

And, unfortunately, this was considered unpaid commuting time, not paid work time - so three hours each day were gone climbing those damn ladders. It became so bad that some miners even asked if they could simply sleep down there - in the damp, humid air, at the permanent 8°C of the deep underground.

But then a foreman and a mechanic hit on an alternative. You see, all those mines needed massive pumps to keep the groundwater out of the mines (a detail that is curiously neglected in most portrayals of mine-themed fantasy dungeons). These pumps consisted of a series of parallel, oscillating wooden beams.

And the innovation was that they installed small wooden platforms on these beams. In this way, instead of climbing, the miners could simply step back and forth between the platforms, using their vertical oscillation to get up or down (they still needed to hold their pit lamps in one hand, though). And thus, the travel time was cut down to a mere 20 minutes in each direction - a saving of 2 hours 20 minutes each day!

Needless to say, I absolutely must use this technological marvel if the PCs explore some dwarven mining complex...

So, what cool historical tidbits do you know that would make for awesome #ttrpg fodder?

I am running a fantasy campaign (using the Ptolus setting), and the PC just looted a "conspiracy board" from the hideout of a rather unhinged creature.

I've added a bunch of elements that might or might not be relevant for the campaign. And the element with the most strings to other elements was "beer price increases".

And I'd like to mess with the minds of the players some more. Thus, I could use some ideas for sinister reasons why the beer prices in a city might have increased.

Any suggestions?

I am running a fantasy campaign (using the Ptolus setting), and the PC just looted a "conspiracy board" from the hideout of a rather unhinged creature.

I've added a bunch of elements that might or might not be relevant for the campaign. And the element with the most strings to other elements was "beer price increases".

And I'd like to mess with the minds of the players some more. Thus, I could use some ideas for sinister reasons why the beer prices in a city might have increased.

Any suggestions?

What are your top three Pathfinder Adventure Paths, from either edition - and why?

As a reminder, here is the full list:

Pathfinder 1E:

• Rise of the Runelords
• Curse of the Crimson Throne
• Second Darkness
• Legacy of Fire
• Council of Thieves
• Kingmaker
• Serpent's Skull
• Carrion Crown
• Jade Regent
• Skull & Shackles
• Shattered Star
• Reign of Winter
• Wrath of the Righteous
• Mummy's Mask
• Iron Gods
• Giantslayer
• Hell's Rebels
• Hell's Vengeance
• Strange Aeons
• Ironfang Invasion
• Ruins of Azlant
• War for the Crown
• Return of the Runelords
• Tyrant's Grasp

Pathfinder 2E:

• Age of Ashes
• Extinction Curse
• Agents of Edgewatch
• Abomination Vaults
• Fists of the Ruby Phoenix
• Strength of Thousands
• Quest for the Frozen Flame
• Outlaws of Alkenstar
• Blood Lords
• Gatewalkers
• Stolen Fate
• Sky King's Tomb
• Season of Ghosts
• Seven Dooms for Sandpoint
• Wardens of Wildwood
• Curtain Call
• Triumph of the Tusk
• Spore War
• Shades of Blood
• Myth-Speaker
• Revenge of the Runelords
• Hellbreakers-

I buy a lot of digital RPG books - the shelf space in my apartment is ultimately limited, while the space on my hard drive is far less constrained (despite current storage prices). Furthermore, while the reading experience is still slightly better for physical books, I have a color e-ink reader which comes close enough for my purposes.

However, I do have a pet peeve with some RPG publishers: They refuse to give the files proper file names. Paizo is the worst offender among them, though not the only one.

I mean, I don't mind if the file name includes the product code. It's fine if a "PZO13008E" somewhere in there.

But please, for all that is unholy, make the file name "PZO13008E Hellfire Dispatches" instead of just leaving it at that! When I am making large purchases of multiple books - which I do frequently - I have to go on a renaming orgy:

1. Open the file
2. Check what product this file represents
3. Close the file
4. Rename the file

If the file name included the actual product title, I could skip steps 1-3.

While fantasy is a many-varied genre, religion in fantasy RPGs is often some mix-up of polytheism with Christian notions - including of the afterlife. The common assumption seems to be that while there are a multitude of gods, if you dedicate your life and belief in that god in particular you will end up in the specific afterlife of that god.

In Christianity, the situation is of course a bit more complex than that. One major precondition for entering the "good afterlife" (i.e. Heaven) is that you need to get baptized. For a long time, this left a rather awkward question mark for what happens to the souls of infants who died during or soon after birth - before they could receive a baptism. Folklore sometimes comes up with its own answers for that, but this was certainly a thing that people worried about.

RPG fantasy religions tend to deemphasize baptism since it's such an iconic Christian rite - but this only further emphasizes the question of what happens to the souls of children who died before they could actually express faith in a particular deity. Does any particular deity claim these children then? Perhaps a deity worshiped by a parent - and if so, of which parent (are there "afterlife child custody" court cases)?

Of course, a fantasy setting does not need to have an afterlife people believe in. But if there are multiple afterlives maintained by different deities (or at least, if people believe that such afterlives exist), then people will worry about that.

The practice of using fantasy counterpart cultures - cultures and societies that are very similar to real world cultures of specific times and places - has a long history in fantasy in general, and fantasy RPGs in particular.

And, in truth, there are good reasons for that. Fantasy worldbuilding is a major task, and fantasy worldbuilding for RPGs in particular requires that not only the GM understands any given culture, but the players as well - but understanding a culture requires a lot of effort, and there is only so much time everyone at the table has available for that.

Thus, using familiar elements is a great time saver. The main reason we see the same Tolkien ancestries over and over again (elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs...) is that most players of fantasy RPGs are already familiar with their basic concepts, and thus only have to learn what is different from the norm. But you create fantasy ancestries from scratch, you need to convey all that information to the players.

The same applies to fantasy counterpart cultures - if you have a vague familiarity with the real world culture, then familiarizing yourself with a fantasy culture will be a lot easier.

However, there's also a lot that can go wrong with using fantasy counterpart cultures. Misrepresentation is always a danger, especially with marginalized groups and if the developers did not consult with members of that culture. Likewise, if you are building a fantasy counterpart culture of a nation that has some ugly history, then you risk whitewashing that history.

So what are your thoughts? Do you like to have fantasy counterpart cultures in your settings, or do you prefer to avoid them? And what are some good examples of fantasy counterpart cultures done right?

Any long-running published setting is going to have a couple of warts - ones where parts of the audience are going to say: "What the hell were they thinking?"

The same is true for Golarion. For the most part, I love the setting, but there are a number of setting elements I find problematic. One of these is Andoran. The best way I can describe it is as:

"A fantasy counterpart culture of the post-Revolutionary War United States of America - as retconned through American propaganda."

So while the real world American Revolutionary War was allegedly about "Freedom", but at the same time reinforced the system of slavery and exploitation of the First Nations - something commonly glossed over in American history - Andoran simply leaves out these ugly aspects and says that Andoran's revolution was really about fighting for Freedom and Democracy - which they now seek to export to the rest of the world.

I mean, I am not opposed to democracies in fantasy settings, or groups of people fighting slavery. But it's the mixture of these elements with tropes of the nascent USA that really bothers me.

What are your thoughts on this?

Fantasy RPG settings have almost always drawn inspirations from real world cultures, including real world folklore and mythology. This also includes fantastic creatures, which are a staple of monster manualy since the earliest days of D&D.

And in recent years, there have been more and more efforts to draw TTRPG inspiration from non-European sources - a trend I approve of, since we can always use more diverse sources of inspiration.

However, I am curious how you all use creatures from different cultures in your fantasy campaigns and worldbuilding. I could see a few different approaches:

Do you assume "counterpart fantasy cultures" for your world? I.e. is there a Not!Europe, Not!Asia, Not!Africa, Not!Mesoamerica etc., each of which has "culturally appropriate" supernatural creatures? In such a situation, supernatural creatures would largely stick to their "home region", and occasional "guest stars" in other regions would be noteworthy. This works well, but it does mean you are usually limiting yourself to a "culturally appropriate" subset of the creatures in the books.

Alternately, you could try to integrate these creatures into whatever cultural region your campaign focuses on. In my view, this would require some rewriting in how these creatures are portrayed and/or named - if your region has a culturally English or Germanic slant, then having creatures that are called "Sramana", "Betobeto-san", or "Tzitzimitl" (to pick three examples from the recent Monster Core 2 for Pathfinder) will seem strange.

I feel there is no "right" or "wrong" approach to this, but I am curious how you are tackling this issue.