‘Pathfinder: Howl Of The Wild’ Takes Us On A Thrilling Journey Across Golarion

Welcome to the table,

In the landscape of tabletop role-playing games, there are libraries worth of books, magazines, PDFs, and zines. All of these mediums showcase the vivid and wonderful imaginations of the creators who work in this space.

I love to dive into offerings that showcase a world from the perspective of the inhabitants who live there. My fascination with these kinds of ecologies started back in my younger years at the table. Publications like Dragon magazine offer thoughtful deep dives into the way creatures that fill the various monster manuals and fiend folios interact with each other. These gave me the lore on monsters, demons, devils, and more that continue to inform my stories and gameplay.

I’m always chasing that flavor of perspective, like some kind of dice roller who is obsessed with the deeper workings of the creatures who inhabit these vast worlds we explore at the gaming table. When I discovered Pathfinder: Howl of the Wild from Paizo, it was an absolute delight to find that it was exactly the kind of book I’m always looking out for.

Howl of the Wild is one of the newer offerings in the Pathfinder 2nd Edition library, and is nothing short of a love letter to the creatures, and the individuals who explore them in the always fascinating world of Golarion.

Out of the gate, Howl of the Wild brings the feeling of exploration to life in a way that almost feels like the reader is a passive player in a solo TTRPG, traveling along with the crew of the exploratory air shop Zoetrope and its charming crew. This brilliant mix of journal entries from Baranthet Zamendi, a iruxis naturalist, one of the lizard folk of the Pathfinder setting, and traditional game mechanics that showcase all manner of creatures and creature adjacent items, and oddities, really showcases how much work the Paizo team on this book put into this project.

The core of the book never strays far from the narrative of exploration. That serves as the foundation on which all other parts of the book build from. When new game mechanics arrive to enhance your characters at the table, they are all presented in a way that does not detract from the ever unfolding story of the Zoetrope. The core of the book never strays far from the exploration that serves as the narrative foundation. The new game mechanics enhance your characters at the table. They are all presented in a way that does not detract from the ever unfolding story of the Zoetrope.

This book is stuffed with new things to enhance your game play. As someone who’s favorite character to play at any gaming table has been a house cat who just so happened to be a wizard through no fault of its own, the Awakened Animal player options really dig into spaces that I love exploring.

There is something about playing an animal that gains sentience rather than a mystical creature who just happens to look like a normal animal that really pushes some of the boundaries of role playing at the table. That’s one of the really stellar things about Howl of the Wild. The ideas presented within its pages are done so well it never wandered into that territory where concepts like a talking cat or a detective bear come off as cringy or sloppy. There are plenty of opportunities for the player and the storyteller to put their own spin on things, but the team on this book did such a fantastic job with Ancestry Feats and Beliefs that it give both players and storytellers a whole toolbox of possibilities to explore.

There are six new playable ancestries in addition to the Awakened Animals, along with new archetypes for werecreatures that rival my favorite Advanced Dungeon & Dragons Van Richten’s Guides.

Mechanically, there are plenty of opportunities for rangers, druids, and other player characters who are nature-based, or even nature-adjacent, to find things to explore. Those include untamed morphs for barbarians, the new ranger feats, and the new witches cantrips that really enhance the ever growing and diverse world Pathfinder has been building on for years now.

The ever expanding world is one of the coolest things about this book. It brings the reader along on a trip that crosses over multiple cultures, societies, and facets of this fictional landscape really providing a tone that fosters adventure and discovery at the gaming table.

There’s a feeling of being in the open air, the wild spaces, not trapped by walls and stone, or digging through some deep dungeon trying to stop some foul thing wrecking a city or town. It’s another kind of feeling that I think often gets lost in in play. It’s a specific feeling we get together to just discover something, find something, learn something new.

As a storyteller, injecting that kind of mystery and lore learning into a game is one of my favorite things. Howl of the Wild feels in a lot of ways like a grant of permission to storytellers who may have not been bold enough to embrace that type of storytelling at their table. It also empowers players who may have not thought about the rails of expectation that could have placed upon them by emulating others they have watched play on streaming or shows.

If you play Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I strongly suggest you pick up this book. If you don’t play Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I strongly suggest you pick up this book. If you like to reach about strange worlds and fantastic spaces, I suggest you pick up this book.

What I’m really trying to nail home here, dear readers, is that if you come to the gaming table in any way shape or form, Pathfinder: Howl of the Wild is one of those super solid gaming books that transcends systems and settings and truly delivers an experience that inspires and delights a wide variety of audiences.

A fact that further nails home that the team over at Paizo is doing everything it can to bring everyone to the table and showcase as many cultures and societies as they can in their ever expanding world narratives.

Until next time, you can find your own copy of Howl of the Wild at the link.