Pathfinder 1E Where does Pathfinder go from here?

The other day the thought occurred to me: Pathfinder has been out for a pretty good while now. We're really digging into fairly esoteric rules supplements by now. Campaign setting supplements are now starting to repeat themselves (another Osirion book? What's wrong with the older Osirion book?) Adventure paths are, as always, probably a self-perpetuating notion that can go on indefinitely.

But is Pathfinder going to reach the point sometime soon where there really isn't any point to creating more rules for the system, or more details for the setting? Don't you get to a point somewhere where your players are saturated in both and the concept has run its course and can't be supported anymore?

Whether or not you believe that time is now, past, or impending (which I guess would be part I of my question): assuming for the sake of argument that such a point is reached, what would you want to see Pathfinder/Paizo do next?

Hobo said:

But is Pathfinder going to reach the point sometime soon where there really isn't any point to creating more rules for the system, or more details for the setting? Don't you get to a point somewhere where your players are saturated in both and the concept has run its course and can't be supported anymore?

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You do, yep. Paizo has managed to elongate that process by selling few big rulebooks, and lots of adventure path and campaign material, but it'll happen eventually; they won't be immune. When that is is anybody's guess (I imagine they internally have a date in mind, but I don't think it's yet).

Then they can just move to the next continent over.

As far as rules go, I'm far more interested in the rules stuff they're putting out now than the stuff they were putting out a few years ago. Ultimate Magic/Combat? Meh. Occult Adventures and Pathfinder Unchained? Tell me more.

Setting-wise, there are huge chunks of the Inner Sea that have little to no detail. And that's not counting other continents, planets, or planes.

As long as they stick to using the setting material to support the APs, they shouldn't run into any problems until they run out of APs... which isn't a looming threat by any means.

If they reach the point where rules material stops selling, I'd personally just want them to stop doing rules material. If that isn't economically feasible, I trust them to stay in business without being total jerks.

Cheers!
Kinak

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with Pathfinder Unchained.

However, I am at the point where I really they would rather use the rules (setting stuff, etc.) than create new ones. The only exception is epic rules, which I would like to see from Paizo. The Mythic rules are too exponential for my liking.

It sounds more like Unearthed Arcana for Pathfinder than anything else, but maybe they'll go more out of the box on that.

Part of what sparked this line of thought was the old dichotomy between D&D--which was a line of boxed sets (B/X and then BECMI) that was--in theory--more rules lite and more catering to roleplayers, etc. vs. AD&D which was (in theory) more rules heavy and more catering to dungeoncrawling and tournament-worthy gaming, etc., yet were both more or less compatible with each other.

Since Pathfinder is pretty much the epitome of rules-heavy gaming, I wondered if there was a market for a variant on the system that was more rules-lite, yet compatible with existing material, or something like that.

Of course, the prevailing wisdom was that splitting the player base was a bad idea for D&D, but then again; once you have a saturated customer base, you have to do something different.

Clearly some folks think that we're a long way away from saturation, but I'm running out of products that I'm interested in on the forecast.

Hobo said:

The other day the thought occurred to me: Pathfinder has been out for a pretty good while now. We're really digging into fairly esoteric rules supplements by now. Campaign setting supplements are now starting to repeat themselves (another Osirion book? What's wrong with the older Osirion book?) Adventure paths are, as always, probably a self-perpetuating notion that can go on indefinitely.

But is Pathfinder going to reach the point sometime soon where there really isn't any point to creating more rules for the system, or more details for the setting? Don't you get to a point somewhere where your players are saturated in both and the concept has run its course and can't be supported anymore?

Whether or not you believe that time is now, past, or impending (which I guess would be part I of my question): assuming for the sake of argument that such a point is reached, what would you want to see Pathfinder/Paizo do next?

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Pathfinder, as RPG, has been out for 5 years as of this past August. People were claiming when it launched that the system was "done" from a design standpoint. Five years later, we've got archetypes, new classes that weren't earlier edition re-treads, mythic rules, kingdom-building rules, downtime rules, additional bestiaries that aren't getting stale, Sci-fantasy rules, etc. Paizo stated a while back that they wanted to get the "main" books out that would facilitate telling the stories that they hoped to tell as early as possible, thus the APG. Paizo wants to explore other areas of fantasy, "esoteric" or not.

PF Unchanged & Occult Adventures are a continuation of that theme. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure at some point, it'll be time for a PF 2nd edition, but I expect it to be a 2nd edition like the rest of the universe does - a refined, tighter edition rather than the D&D "nuke from orbit and rebuild" approach. I'm sick of edition treadmills.

I didn't know I wanted Ultimate Campaign until it was announced and then it was a must-have. I've always hated Epic rules & play assumptions but found myself intrigued by Mythic. You, get the idea.

Paizo continues to open up new design space within the existing system. May that continue for many years.

Oh, and Eric Mona has cited for multiple years in a row that PFRPG core rule book sales continue to rise each year. What Paizo needs to avoid (IMO) is trying to be WotC and follow the D&D edition treadmill model.

Hobo said:

Since Pathfinder is pretty much the epitome of rules-heavy gaming, ...

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I take it you haven't seen the latest Traveller yet?

billd91 said:

I take it you haven't seen the latest Traveller yet?

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Heh. No. I have a fair number of Classic Traveller and Megatraveller supplements still, and I bought T20 kind of on a whim. But I didn't realize that they'd even moved past GURPS Traveller.

Then again, for all I know and for all my connectedness, GURPS itself may have been gone for years by now.

Hobo said:

Since Pathfinder is pretty much the epitome of rules-heavy gaming

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This does not seem to be stopping any time soon either. We are playing Pathfinder and have been sin ce it came out but it is getting too much rules complexity for what we want. There are too many rules and rule options even for a game that does not seem to print that many rule oriented books. They are more sneaking about it hiding them in all those setting books I like.

Clearly some folks think that we're a long way away from saturation, but I'm running out of products that I'm interested in on the forecast.

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I think Pathfinder Unchained is going to tell us a lot. They had the new class book come out this summer but it was not as big of a change as I was expecting. The Adventure Paths and setting books though are still of great interest to me. I think a lot of people feel that way as I see and hear of groups that are running Pathfinder AP in different systems. I know that's what I want to do now.