Pathfinder 2E Is It Time for PF2 "Essentials"?

[fearsomepirate]

The 3.x system's life was ended by 5e. There was no reason written in the laws of nature why it should have lasted 15 years. It was the best-supported, most market-pleasing version of D&D right up until the day 5e dropped into consumers' hands.

IMO a splat-driven concept of a game's life is fundamentally misoriented. Buying new rules is an inconvenience for the customer, both in terms of money and time, not an excitement driver. The only reason the market wants new rules is negative: there are problems in the old rules that they want fixed. Rebooting a game because your revenue model is failing because it was based on expanding the rules is a producer-centric mentality, not a user-centric mentality.

 

[Retreater]

All this talk about "fracturing the market" from folks I guess don't understand what Essentials is or why I suggested it in the original post.
Paizo can keep producing PF2. An Essentials line would co-exist. Players/GMs can choose which version of the compatible system they wish to play (kind of like Pathfinder Unchained in 1E).
Or hell, even make a PDF of what you can cut from PF2 to simplify it. Or make a 2nd Beginner Box to cover mid-levels.

 

[payn]

The 3.x system's life was ended by 5e. There was no reason written in the laws of nature why it should have lasted 15 years. It was the best-supported, most market-pleasing version of D&D right up until the day 5e dropped into consumers' hands.

IMO a splat-driven concept of a game's life is fundamentally misoriented. Buying new rules is an inconvenience for the customer, both in terms of money and time, not an excitement driver. The only reason the market wants new rules is negative: there are problems in the old rules that they want fixed. Rebooting a game because your revenue model is failing because it was based on expanding the rules is a producer-centric mentality, not a user-centric mentality.

New adventures with new rules supplements are key to my enjoyment of the Paizo Adventure Paths and PF1. Bolting on new options is fun, exciting, and convenient for me. Rolling out a new edition is inconvenient because I need to learn a new system and possibly invest in something I wont like. Its quite easy to understand why why 3.5/PF1 lasted so long. Basically, I'm the opposite of all your findings here.

 

[Desdichado]

And yet, isn't that pretty much what happened? 3e was "upgraded" to 3.5, even though there wasn't any percieved demand for that revision? And yes, I bought both versions of some content; Sword & Fist as well as Complete Warrior, etc. And then with the "upgrade" to Pathfinder, or 3.75 if you like, I bought Ultimate Combat too. I didn't really have any demand for any of that, yet I picked them up anyway. And I've never even played Pathfinder. It's well and good to say that they were all the same basic mechanical chassis, and yet both of those "updates" reset the treadmill for most customers, to a certain extent.

Granted; I'm not saying that I regret buying this stuff, because I don't. But it argues against the idea that people aren't willing to jog in place on the treadmill. I think clearly a lot of people are willing to do that, as long as the basic system approach is one that they're happy with. They like seeing tweaks and add-ons and options, even if they never use them. Not saying that I wouldn't have preferred Pathfinder to have literally continued with 3.5, and written their bolt-on rules supplements specifically to work with that, because I would have. But... well, there you have it, I guess.

 

[Thomas Shey]

@Thomas Shey ; ah, so your position is that 1e's treadmill lifecycle was over and that they couldn't continue to find meaningful supplements to make and sell for it anymore is really the primary (or at least a significant) factor in the 1e to 2e migration. I admit, that hadn't occurred to me at all, but now that you mention it, that does seem kind of obvious, doesn't it? Now we get to have Occult Adventures, Horror Adventures, Ultimate Intrigue, Ultimate Combat, etc. all over again, but in 2e this time. Hmm...

Its a pretty recognizable pattern in the industry as a whole; every game line reaches its logical endlife. Its not hard to see some of the tail end products for PF1e as getting a little--specialized.

The indicators are that they aren't taking quite the same tact with how they're going to push out books for 2e, so you probably won't see exact duplicates of all of those; it appears they're going to be putting more regional-support books out (including mechanics specifically relevant to them) rather than quite as many broad-swatch books.

 

[payn]

All this talk about "fracturing the market" from folks I guess don't understand what Essentials is or why I suggested it in the original post.
Paizo can keep producing PF2. An Essentials line would co-exist. Players/GMs can choose which version of the compatible system they wish to play (kind of like Pathfinder Unchained in 1E).
Or hell, even make a PDF of what you can cut from PF2 to simplify it. Or make a 2nd Beginner Box to cover mid-levels.

The beginners box and a potential beginners box 2 would have been better framing of the discussion. Essentials has a ton of baggage that makes it a divisive concept.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I dont disagree with you, I was just pointing out why PF2 isnt a 5E clone. Trying to differentiate itself even further from D&D helps in this effort to offer an alternative. The question then, is there a market and is PF2 what that market wants?

In fact, I'll go as far as to say in the vast majority of cases, trying to compete head to head with an established game directly (i.e. the same style and complexity level and such) is a major mistake; the extent system is already got its market, and you somehow need to defeat that inertia and the intrinsic benefit people have at already having a pool of people who know the game. As a non-D&D-sphere example, if you're going to want to target a game at the same people who play Savage Worlds, you'd better be damn sure you have lightning in a bottle, because the market for that kind of game is already pretty well sewed up there, so you're likely to have a tiny share at best.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The 3.x system's life was ended by 5e. There was no reason written in the laws of nature why it should have lasted 15 years. It was the best-supported, most market-pleasing version of D&D right up until the day 5e dropped into consumers' hands.

IMO a splat-driven concept of a game's life is fundamentally misoriented. Buying new rules is an inconvenience for the customer, both in terms of money and time, not an excitement driver. The only reason the market wants new rules is negative: there are problems in the old rules that they want fixed. Rebooting a game because your revenue model is failing because it was based on expanding the rules is a producer-centric mentality, not a user-centric mentality.

The history of the industry does not seem to support your premise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

All this talk about "fracturing the market" from folks I guess don't understand what Essentials is or why I suggested it in the original post.
Paizo can keep producing PF2. An Essentials line would co-exist. Players/GMs can choose which version of the compatible system they wish to play (kind of like Pathfinder Unchained in 1E).
Or hell, even make a PDF of what you can cut from PF2 to simplify it. Or make a 2nd Beginner Box to cover mid-levels.

Co-existing does generally fracture the market. That's the point in why its rarely done by a company, and when it is, the consequences are not usually benign. It requires the company to basically support two parallel lines, with the dilution in effort involved and the reduction in the network effect. You can theoretically avoid most of that if the systems are close enough, but the closer they are, the more pointless the exercise is, too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The beginners box and a potential beginners box 2 would have been better framing of the discussion. Essentials has a ton of baggage that makes it a divisive concept.

It also makes a difference as to who the product is aimed at. Reviews of the BB suggest strongly its differences from PF2e are very modest, and it can function as a transition product. Its hard to see something that would satisfy people overall unhappy with PF2e while doing that.