Pathfinder 1E Elephant in the room/thread Forked Thread: Pathfinder - sell me

[carmachu]

This has nothing to do with their APs. This is about expanding and taking money that is very likely there to be taken.

I don't buy that 4e doesn't allow them to tell the stories they want. It's an acceptable public excuse and nothing more. Companies that leave money on the table generally don't do well in the long term. Paizo is a lot smarter than that. My prediction holds.

Which requires the GSL, which they dont particularly like. As the SRD doesnt allow them nearly the same freedom to create stories and classes and other items they want.

They dont like 4e's method and rules. It doesnt allow them the same freedoms.

Care to make the gentleman's wager on that prediction? Because I doubt paizo is going to do their AP's, their world, and their adventures for 4e.

They might allow others to partner and run with it in 4e, most notiable perhaps Necromancer. But I'm certain that Paizo itself isnt jumping into the 4e pool.

 

[billd91]

Hmmm. I don't think Pathfinder has ANYTHING to do with GSL or the mangling of it therein. The OGL was in full effect, they could've continued to make (as they have until now) 3.5 compatible material until 4e was better primed (revised GSL material), then switch with great fanfare.

I think that Pathfinder has more to do with the folks at Paizo disliking 4e's direction and creating a way to create new stuff for a old system.

Paizo people have said, on more than on occasion, that the lateness of the original license forced them to commit to a direction that excluded 4e for 2008. I think the success of that direction and disappointment with 4e's direction and the GSL supported their decision and extended it.

Saying that GSL issues, in this case the lateness of it, has nothing to do with PF is skirting awfully close to calling Paizo staffers liars. It's not the whole reason they're doing PFRPG, but to say it didn't have anything to do with it runs contrary to their own statements.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Paizo people have said, on more than on occasion, that the lateness of the original license forced them to commit to a direction that excluded 4e for 2008. I think the success of that direction and disappointment with 4e's direction and the GSL supported their decision and extended it.

Saying that GSL issues, in this case the lateness of it, has nothing to do with PF is skirting awfully close to calling Paizo staffers liars. It's not the whole reason they're doing PFRPG, but to say it didn't have anything to do with it runs contrary to their own statements.

It's not close to calling them liars, it pretty much is calling them liars. I'm fairly certain that James Jacobs and / or Erik Mona have explained thier reasons both here and on the Paizo site more than once.

 

[Elephant]

Ahem? What's this about me being in the room?

 

[smug]

Hmmm. I don't think Pathfinder has ANYTHING to do with GSL or the mangling of it therein. The OGL was in full effect, they could've continued to make (as they have until now) 3.5 compatible material until 4e was better primed (revised GSL material), then switch with great fanfare.

I think that Pathfinder has more to do with the folks at Paizo disliking 4e's direction and creating a way to create new stuff for a old system.

They had to make the decision miles in advance, really, because of the lead time for their APs. The GSL was way too late and when it came it out it was poisonous (so they were right not to wait for it). The revised GSL was laughably late and has restrictions on content that are not there in the OGL.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Ahem? What's this about me being in the room?

I'd prefer not to talk about it.

 

[rounser]

I don't buy that 4e doesn't allow them to tell the stories they want.

Why not? It doesn't let me tell the stories I want; the implied setting's all wrong, for starters, with an all-core grab bag that includes some seriously goofy PC races and at least one contrived class that doesn't fit the core. Then there's the implausible mundane abilities and the unmagical magic, clerics who hit to heal, one HP demons, guys who can kill you by insulting you, and "healing surges", all design conveniences that don't necessarily make sense in a story context.

There's plenty to potentially alienate the storyteller and worldbuilder who liked earlier D&D in 4E. Even details like adventuring parties being some sort of weird mobile war are all wrong and silly from an earlier edition D&D point of view, IMO.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Why not? It doesn't let me tell the stories I want; the implied setting's all wrong, for starters, with an all-core grab bag that includes some seriously goofy PC races and at least one contrived class that doesn't fit the core.

Which class is that?

Then there's the implausible mundane abilities and the unmagical magic, clerics who hit to heal, one HP demons, guys who can kill you by insulting you, and "healing surges", all design conveniences that don't necessarily make sense in a story context.

I assume you mean the Bard's "Vicious Mockery". I thought that was weird, too, until I learned that there's a mythological basis for it. In Irish myth bards supposedly had the power to make people sick just by saying negative things about them.

 

[Krensky]

I don't buy that 4e doesn't allow them to tell the stories they want.

Considering how much they're redefined and changed the fluff for, well, pretty much everything combined with the adult nature of a lot of things in the APs and modules I don't see how they could.

 

[rounser]

Which class is that?

The "warlord". Doesn't fit an adventuring party where there are no soldiers to order around, name not appropriate to level or definition of term "warlord", no D&D archetype except if we redefine D&D conceptually as no more than a skirmish wargame, undermines the independence of other PCs and the nature of the D&D hero and adventuring party by giving orders like they were underlings rather than peers, is magically wiser at the specialists role than the specialists, and is just plain a bad idea.