Pathfinder 1E Paizo Annoucement!

[EATherrian]

Personally I love the marketing genius.

You get people to pay for Pathfinder Beta then 12 months later pay again for Pathfinder.

And people complained about the gap between the different versions of WotC D&D, but some how by calling it Beta instead of 1.0 and 1.5 they hope Paizo fans won't even notice.

I noticed that and wasn't happy. At least I'll have a chance to really digest 4th Edition in that time and give it the proper screed that it deserves.

 

[Dalvyn]

I noticed that and wasn't happy. At least I'll have a chance to really digest 4th Edition in that time and give it the proper screed that it deserves.

I believe you might have misread.

The PDF version of Pathfinder Beta will be downloadable for free. Only the book version will cost you something.

 

[Dragonblade]

DB, I very much appreciate the support. But that said, I really don't think Jason was being any more duplicitous than I was. (That is, not at all.) Rather, I expect that what he offered was his honest assessment of what he'd seen of 4E--and that, if anything, the opinions and gaming tastes of the Paizo staff are part of what led to this decision, as opposed to those opinions being "altered" to support said decision. Jason's always been a pretty solid guy, IME.

Well, I didn't mean to imply he was intentionally lying, just that his feelings weren't entirely "untainted", if you will, by his work Paizo's 3.5 rehash. Given what we know now, its one of those things that make you go "Hmmm..."

 

[wedgeski]

I bought the first Pathfinder series to its recent conclusion before cancelling my sub, and I'll be running it as my last hoorah for 3.5, with a whole new group, starting in a week or two. It's fantastic, a brilliant piece of work, and a fitting end to my 3rd Edition campaign days.

I wish these guys luck. They're in a nasty position and they had to make a decision of some sort. I honestly think that they should have made it weeks ago, and IMO it should have been the exact opposite of this, but I know squat about their business or their profitability, so my opinion is about as irrelevant as it gets. Having said all that, they're effectively going to monopolise the professional 3.5 market after 4ed is released... so who knows? Could be a great move.

 

[drscott46]

Having taken a little while to digest the announcement, I think I can safely say that Paizo's probably in a pretty solid place.

By doing this, they have another year to decide if 4E is appropriate to their styles and wants, and to study sales figures and patterns via their partnership with Necromancer. In the interim, they can keep publishing a successful line of adventures, and tap into the market of people who are reluctant to switch.

Now, here's the kicker. If they had said "This is our permanent decision," I'd agree it was a really bad idea. But if they intend to base their business model off of Pathfinder for, say, a year or two, and then reconsider conversion, it may not be a bad model.

And I don't think WotC would have any impetus to try to "stop" them, even if they could. As someone else said, there are already other competing systems. (Hackmaster, for instance.) I don't think this is going to hurt 4E in any way, and it may--if handled right--turn out to be a "best of both worlds" circumstance for Paizo.

As a 4e adopter-to-be, when I first read the announcement, my initial thought was that Paizo was clinging to a sinking ship because of a couple of lopsided messageboard polls (that probably represent a scant fraction of the company's actual customer base).

While I'm disappointed that I won't be able to subscribe to a 4e Adventure Path (i.e. Second Darkness) soon after 4e's release, I can see how the lead time makes that virtually impossible.

I can understand how this decision keeps Paizo's revenue flowing a lot more smoothly. They'll get paid for a year or two off the Pathfinder line, then if 4e is doing well, they can leap into the fray. A healthy portion of the same folks now trashing 4e on their forums will be switching or preparing to switch by the end of the decade anyway.

And remember that Paizo didn't even exist until 2-3 years after 3e was on the shelves. The 4e early adopters are but an early bubble in a revenue curve that will rise slowly like a wave. A small company has to wait until the water's a little deeper.

In the meantime, I guess they won't be getting much of my money- but there are, if those polls are to be believed, fewer of me than there are of them. Kind of a shame, I guess.

Memorable adventures, I think, will go a long way towards 4e's success. The new game may sink or swim based on rules and ease of use with DMs, but with players it's the output, not the input.

WotC and Necromancer- pressure's on.

 

[Kunimatyu]

The rules look good, actually. Really good, actually.

You think so?

Just skimmed the rules.

It's 3.5 with a band-aid and fresh coat of paint. Do not want.

 

[Grossout]

This decision makes me a little bit sad, as I was looking forward to using Paizo's products. I've never checked them out myself, since I skipped 3E, but they seem to be well thought of. Darn it, I'm a sucker for a good adventure module.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Hrm. I generally predict that people will, over time, eventually be producing OGL-based games that are widely compatible with 4E D&D. Essentially for the same reasons that the OGL was created in the first place ... you can copyright the words but you can't really lock down the rules. A "Daily Power" and a "Once A Day Ability" may be mechanically similar but derived in different means.

So Paizo could, essentially, run Pathfinder on 3.75 (Alpha) then move to 3.8 (Beta) and publish 3.99 (Pathfinder proper) then run the books as a loss-leader, offer up reasonably-priced PDFs, and produce something that essentially slots with 4E that runs off an older version of the OGL. As long as people, even they, produce a few step-products along the way that they can incorporate in the OGL document, they should be fine.

--fje

 

[paz]

So Paizo decided to betray 4E?
They won't get my money anymore.

Given that WotC still haven't given the GSL and rules to Erik Mona et al. (AFAIK) when there's only three months to go until the new books are released, it's more like 4E betraying Paizo.

Paizo will continue to get my money.

 

[MerricB]

Ultimately, my problems with 3e come from the underlying mathematics of the game, which suffer great problems at high levels (see the severe AC increments through basic magic items), and so a 3.75e that needs to remain backwards-compatable with 3.5e is not of interest to me.

I don't think it's a bad decision by Paizo, but it is one that keeps them irrelevant to me for the most part; I enjoyed Dungeon and its APs, but by now I have enough adventure material to not need any more 3.*e adventures. 4e APs? That I will need, and I'll get a start with Wizards first modules.

Cheers!