Paizo has launched a blockbuster Kickstarter for Pathfinder 2E: Infinite Worlds, a campaign book promising ‘decolonized’ settings and ancestries that shatter traditional Eurocentric fantasy tropes. Blasting past its funding goal in under an hour, the project underscores a hungry RPG community embracing narratives that reflect a more pluralistic world—much like the real-world push for reckoning with colonial legacies in education and media.
The campaign, detailed on Paizo’s blog and live on Kickstarter’s tabletop category, offers backers digital PDFs, print-on-demand options, and immediate playtest materials. At its core is a reimagining of Golarion’s lore: ancestries drawing from Indigenous, African, and Asian-inspired cultures without the baggage of conquest narratives, alongside mechanics for infinite world-building. Community buzz on r/Pathfinder2e is electric, with fans hailing it as Paizo’s boldest step yet in inclusive design.
This isn’t just game design evolution; it’s a microcosm of America’s ongoing culture wars. While Wizards of the Coast grapples with backlash over diverse D&D characters—echoing the same voices that decried ‘woke’ Bud Light ads—Paizo’s grassroots triumph via Kickstarter feels like a David slinging stones at corporate Goliaths. In an era where Florida’s book bans target ‘critical race theory’ and decolonization debates rage from university curricula to Hollywood remakes, Infinite Worlds asks: why should fantasy worlds mirror outdated imperial myths?
Paizo’s track record, from non-binary gods to labor-friendly union support, positions them as progressive standard-bearers in TTRPGs. Yet success here signals more: player demand for stories that amplify marginalized voices, akin to the indie media boom post-#MeToo. Is this sustainable amid consolidation threats, like Hasbro’s grip on D&D? Or does it prove RPGs can be a sandbox for social progress?
As Infinite Worlds expands the multiverse, it invites us to ponder: in a nation wrestling with its own infinite divides, can tabletops model the decolonized futures we crave?
While the ‘Infinite Worlds’ Kickstarter’s rapid funding is impressive, the headline’s “decolonizing fantasy” framing oversimplifies Paizo’s lore updates, which primarily expand ancestries like geniekin and sprites via mechanical revisions in the Remaster rather than a wholesale ideological overhaul. True decolonization would require dismantling core Eurocentric tropes in Golarion’s cosmology—Azlanti empires and Chelish devil-worship—yet these remain intact. Let’s focus on the RPG innovations, not culture war rhetoric.