Which Pathfinder books aren't Golarion specific?

Question

Paizo has published a large number of sourcebooks for Pathfinder. But it's hard to tell which ones are tied to their world of Golarion as opposed to being more general game aids. Aside from the Corebook, Bestiaries, Ultimate Books, and Advanced Guides what are the other source books that don't revolve around the Golarion setting?

I am running my own setting based on the most recent versions of the main settings from first edition (Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Mystara) using the Pathfinder game system and I am only slightly familiar with it based on my experience with 3rd edition D&D. I am also avoiding books that refer specifically to areas, places and people of Golarion (Numeria, ____ of Golarion, _____ of the Inner Sea) and looking for more generic resources (Mythic Adventures, Technology Guide that sort of thing.) So any help would be appreciated; thank you.

Answer 1

Paizo divides their game books up into lines that help delineate what's rules vs what's campaign setting material. Let's go look at the landing page at http://paizo.com/pathfinder.

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game line is "all rules, all the time." This is where the Ultimates and Bestiaries and many other books, usually hardcovers, live. This'll be your primary source for pure rules content. There are (at the time of this writing) 41 products in there so it should keep you busy for a while.

The Pathfinder Adventure Path line is all 6-part campaign adventures. These are all set in Golarion but can be changed, though with a fair amount of difficulty because they tend to interweave setting, plot, and characters in a holistic manner.

The Pathfinder Modules line is a bunch of small adventures, which are generally easy to set in some other setting, you just need a lost city or lippy count with a keep or whatnot to sub in.

The Pathfinder Campaign Setting line is all Golarion info. So you probably don't want any of this.

The Pathfinder Player Companion line will be your other source for rules content. They crank out a supplement a month with crunch content for players. These are about 50% Golarion based and 50% general (general-ish, just like a 3e priest book would put in stuff for Pelor because they have to hang their hat on some kind of core gods, but you can sub in your pantheon easily). You can tell the difference easily - they are either named after a country ("Taldor, Echoes of Glory") or say "Inner Sea" if it's Golarion heavy content. If it just says something like "Undead Slayer's Handbook" it will probably have Golarion mentions but in the way a 3e/3e.5e D&D book does, nothing you can't easily ignore or reskin.

The other lines are all minis and comics and doohickeys.

In terms of other sources - third party Pathfinder content is all non-Golarion specific because it's not allowed to be (it may be tied to that 3pp's setting however).

Also, all Golarion info is stripped from all the OGL content on the SRD - if you just want "more classes" or whatnot just go to the d20PFSRD and browse.

Answer 2

The answer from @mxyzplk was accurate when it was posted, but starting around May 2017 Paizo explicitly stopped excluding Golarion lore from the Pathfinder RPG product line. This started with the Adventurer's Guide, which described several Golarion-specific organizations for players, and continued with the line's subsequent releases (Book of the Damned describes evil planar locations and creatures previously limited to the canon lines, Ultimate Wilderness added canon setting fey and First World content, and Planar Adventures included the setting's core deities and canon planes and demiplanes).