Pathfinder 1E Paizo Announcement and Prognostication

Dannager said:

There were other times when D&D didn't have a monopoly on tabletop RPGs - notably, the White Wolf era.

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I don't know anything about a time when another rpg company had the degree of significance Pathfinder does now. To be fair, this may simply predate my experience (started around the beginning of 3.0). White Wolf may have done some good things, but were the products in general bookstores? I admittedly don't know enough about rpg history to agree or disagree with that statement.

Games like Cortex and Dragon Age are nothing new from a state-of-the-industry standpoint.

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Maybe. I think they're higher profile than non-D&D games of days past. I also think that some of the Cortex licensed games might be expanding the rpg genre beyond high fantasy, something that has been tried many times with very little success. I think that as compared to the high days of 3e, it's much easier now to start a new rpg.

The only truly unprecedented non-D&D development has been Pathfinder. It is something new, and the gaming community is still trying to figure out what it all means

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I don't disagree with that at all. At least not the unprecedented aspect. License-wise, Pathfinder is "not D&D", but as far as the rules and the community of players it is arguably D&D.

Ahnehnois said:

I don't know anything about a time when another rpg company had the degree of significance Pathfinder does now. To be fair, this may simply predate my experience (started around the beginning of 3.0). White Wolf may have done some good things, but were the products in general bookstores? I admittedly don't know enough about rpg history to agree or disagree with that statement.

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I remember back in the 90's when many book stores had DnD shelves and White Wolf shelves of equal size. That might have been a local thing but at the time where I was it was true.

Ahnehnois said:

I don't know anything about a time when another rpg company had the degree of significance Pathfinder does now. To be fair, this may simply predate my experience (started around the beginning of 3.0). White Wolf may have done some good things, but were the products in general bookstores? I admittedly don't know enough about rpg history to agree or disagree with that statement.

Maybe. I think they're higher profile than non-D&D games of days past. I also think that some of the Cortex licensed games might be expanding the rpg genre beyond high fantasy, something that has been tried many times with very little success. I think that as compared to the high days of 3e, it's much easier now to start a new rpg.

I don't disagree with that at all. At least not the unprecedented aspect. License-wise, Pathfinder is "not D&D", but as far as the rules and the community of players it is arguably D&D.

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Once upon a time White Wolf out sold D&D with their Vampire RPG, for several years, IIRC. Only Pathfinder has any concrete evidence of outselling WOTC's D&D as an RPG, and only then for specific quarters, not a whole year.

Plus the only reason Pathfinder is not D&D is because the name on the packaging says Pathfinder instead of D&D. Inside the rules are highly identical, on purpose, to the third edition of D&D. All thanks to the OGL and SRD.

Ahnehnois said:

I don't guess there exists a similar thread of people talking about the OGL.

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Not exactly - but the fact that Paizo supports the OGL gets frequent mention. Ditto for OSRIC et ali.

That said, it's amazing what we've seen in the time of Pathfinder. Not just the renaming of one version of D&D, and it's continued widespread popularity, but the rise of other non-D&D rpgs (Cortex and Dragon Age being my personal favorites). The D&D brand name is no longer monopolozing the tabletop rpg market.

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Though the two leaders are still either D&D or a variant thereon.

Certainly, this announcement was a turning point in the rpg industry.

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That it was.
While there were naysayers predicting Doom 'n' Gloom (TM) there were also more reasoned voices. There were also folks in Paizo's corners, giving the kid a quick rub with a a dry towel, a drink of water, and handing him his mouth guard before he entered the ring, fighting! *DING*

It was interesting to see how early the edition war entered into the thread. I do wonder how many of the posters ended up switching sides, one way or another. My suspicion is 'not all that many' - that people on both sides had already started digging trenches. The folks with low post counts being the PBI trying to charge the Maxim guns.

Though some of the more ardent naysayers and enthusiastic farmboys may have been left hanging on the old barb wire the war continues, and the low post counts are still leading the charges.... (In my head the Edition War is a bit like some of the theaters in WWI - lots of fury, huge explosions, poisonous fumes, lots of injury, death, and despair, but not a whole lot of ground being taken....)

The painful part for me was seeing the enthusiasm for Necromancer providing 4e support. Like seeing a monument to the pals regiments, where the lads of an entire town had died in the trenches. (I need a new metaphor, this one is depressing the heck out of me.)

*EDIT* Replaced lyrics with video...

The Green Fields of France
By Eric Bogle (and performed by the Dropkick Murphys)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrQnnZJ68Xo]The Green Fields of France[/ame]

Dedicated to all the fallen Edition Warriors....

The Auld Grump, yeah, that's the way my brain works....

Well, I was spot on in that thread - everybody won.

(OK, I did miss one thing - Necromancer Games did not product stuff for 4E so that 4e players would get the best of both worlds.)

But as far as 4e and Pathfinder both serving their audiences - nailed it.

Paizo rules........To hell with the rest!!!

Mod Edit: That's one threadban. Next person can get a 3-day ban. ~Umbran

cyderak said:

Paizo rules........To hell with the rest!!!

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Well, as much as I love Paizo, and like buying Pathfinder (despite not playing or running, or even wanting to) I have to disagree. There is a lot of "the rest" that I like, a lot. Such as Traveller, Aces and Eights, CORTEX, C&C, Legend of the 5 Rings, Dresden Files, Eclipse Phase, Cthulthu Tech, etc...

Ahnehnois said:

To be fair, this may simply predate my experience (started around the beginning of 3.0).

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White Wolf was founded in 1991, a couple of years into the life of 2e D&D, so yes, before your time.

White Wolf may have done some good things, but were the products in general bookstores?

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Yep. With several game lines, in fact.

Maybe. I think they're higher profile than non-D&D games of days past.

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Shadowrun, and GURPS, and Hero in their earlier days were higher profile than the Cortex games are currently, I think. Certainly, the Cortex games are not even in the vague vicinity of the height of White Wolf.

Umbran said:

White Wolf was founded in 1991, a couple of years into the life of 2e D&D, so yes, before your time.



Yep. With several game lines, in fact.



Shadowrun, and GURPS, and Hero in their earlier days were higher profile than the Cortex games are currently, I think. Certainly, the Cortex games are not even in the vague vicinity of the height of White Wolf.

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IHonestly I've never heard of White Wolf outside of a small number of conversations on these boards, but I'll accept the prevailing opinion on this. Perhaps it's not the first time D&D has had competition, but certainly, it's the first time in a while.

Treebore said:

Once upon a time White Wolf out sold D&D with their Vampire RPG, for several years, IIRC. Only Pathfinder has any concrete evidence of outselling WOTC's D&D as an RPG, and only then for specific quarters, not a whole year.

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My memory is that the White Wolf thing was a one quarter event.

Plus the only reason Pathfinder is not D&D is because the name on the packaging says Pathfinder instead of D&D. Inside the rules are highly identical, on purpose, to the third edition of D&D. All thanks to the OGL and SRD.

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Absolutely, D&D is still "D&D". I'll praise the quality of the 3E ruleset any day. But, the fact of the matter is being an awesome game is a distant second obstacle. First you have to get a really big chunk of your audience giving the system a serious try and only THEN can the game sink or swim as an awesome game or not.

There are a lot of other great games out there. But no matter how great they are, the market has always left them as distant "also rans".

If 3E had sucked PF would have never happened or, if it somehow did would have simply crashed and burned. The success of PF required BOTH a solid system and a strong, creative support for keeping that system fresh. The rules provided the first and Paizo provided the second.

But, if the D&D name had not brought throngs of people to explore 3E in the first place, everything else would have been moot.