Areas

Social

These areas exist for the purpose of roleplay and social. A great example of Social areas are cities and towns, taverns, temples, ect. The main goal of a social area is rest, relaxation and roleplay. The norm is that social areas are “safe” and probably allow resting.

Adventure Zone

Large open-world type zones with lots of things to explore. Adventure zones are focused on exploration, points of interest, and they contain dungeon entrances. These areas are not safe “wilderness” like areas. Wherein a player can explore, find just about anything but for the most part this is where a player will find entrances to dungeons. For the most part Adventure zones are relatively balanced for one to two players, based on the theme set for the area. It's not until a player goes inside a dungeon that there is an expectation for a whole balanced party.

The most important goal of an Adventure zone is to tell a story, to be full of flavor and to set the theme/mood for all other areas it connects to.

Primarily 32x32.

Examples of Things you'll find in an Adventure zone: Random spawn monsters, rare or otherwise. Timer-based “world bosses”. Events or unique npcs. Hostile and creatures of varying difficulty.

Dungeon

Dungeons are built to the specifications, the norm is that a player will find the entrance to a dungeon inside of an adventure zone. Dungeons are very classic combat, traps and loot-related adventures. The CR varies based off builder design and concepts.

Dungeons are generally designed to be limited to players within 3 levels of the CR. Players who enter into dungeons outside of this range will not get exp, will not generate loot and will be unable to complete quest objectives.

World Map

Overland maps are availble to players to jump between zones. Instead of representing distance with dozens of empty areas, players will use world maps to jump across land masses and enter into real complete zones. The overall idea is that of the classic Baldur's Gate world map system.

When traversing across world maps, players will be required to make a survival or knowledge: local (inside of the city) check or be forced to deal with a random small “detour” area that can include an encounter, a secret or perhaps even a dungeon. When in a party this check uses the modifier of the highest available from the party members.

For those not well versed in survival or knowledge: local, caravans are available (at a cost) to skip this.

Encounters

Golarion Chronicles dungeons have a reset system that completely deletes and re-makes the area in its entirety. Because of this there is no need to use the toolset encounter system. Dungeons are designed and creatures are placed directly into the world in much the same way one would design a dungeon for pnp.

For most encounters I use the Pathfinder Challenge Rating Calculator to calculate encounter CR to match the same as is recommended by the Pathfinder dungeon master guides. Exceptions can be made at builder discretion but it is important to maintan a sense of cohesion for difficutly of encounters relative to eachother.