Forked from: The 3.5 renaissance!
I was just thinking about this last night. I was at a large Borders bookstore, and then went to a decent sized Barnes and Noble. The B&N didn't have any Pathfinder books, but had all the books for 4e. The Borders had a surprisingly large selection of various RPG's, and exactly one Pathfinder book, the campaign setting one for Golarion.
I agree with the point someone made in the forked-from thread that CURRENTLY the best way to get new players into a particular system is to game with them in that system. However there is still an aspect to getting new players to your game which involves basic marketing---getting the books on the chain stores' bookshelves in such quantity and with such a display presence that people stop to look at them, and hopefully pick them up.
Call me crazy, but I'm one of the nutjobs that thinks that Pathfinder in 5 years can have a bigger active gamer base than D&D 4.x or 5.x, if they play their cards right. A lot of that assumption depends on how I think Hasbro/WOTC will play its cards, granted, but if they fold on the tabletop RPG market, as I think they will, Pathfinder could potentially take up the lionsshare of the market if they set themselves up with enough of a presence now.
I think that beyond producing the great products they currently make, PF needs to more aggressively get themselves into the big chain stores and hobby shops. If it has enough shelf space, people are more lilely to stop and look just to see what it is that has its own standalone spinning rack/3 blinged-out devoted shelves.
If any Paizo folks are reading this thread, are you guys doing anything to get more of a presence at these places? Is it part of the gameplan?
Wulf Ratbane said:4e will outperform 3e/Pathfinder-- simply on the basis of 4e being available in Barnes and Noble-- in the same way that mass market CDs sitting on the shelf in Wal-Mart have an advantage over mp3s and other new media forms of self-publishing.
I was just thinking about this last night. I was at a large Borders bookstore, and then went to a decent sized Barnes and Noble. The B&N didn't have any Pathfinder books, but had all the books for 4e. The Borders had a surprisingly large selection of various RPG's, and exactly one Pathfinder book, the campaign setting one for Golarion.
I agree with the point someone made in the forked-from thread that CURRENTLY the best way to get new players into a particular system is to game with them in that system. However there is still an aspect to getting new players to your game which involves basic marketing---getting the books on the chain stores' bookshelves in such quantity and with such a display presence that people stop to look at them, and hopefully pick them up.
Call me crazy, but I'm one of the nutjobs that thinks that Pathfinder in 5 years can have a bigger active gamer base than D&D 4.x or 5.x, if they play their cards right. A lot of that assumption depends on how I think Hasbro/WOTC will play its cards, granted, but if they fold on the tabletop RPG market, as I think they will, Pathfinder could potentially take up the lionsshare of the market if they set themselves up with enough of a presence now.
I think that beyond producing the great products they currently make, PF needs to more aggressively get themselves into the big chain stores and hobby shops. If it has enough shelf space, people are more lilely to stop and look just to see what it is that has its own standalone spinning rack/3 blinged-out devoted shelves.
If any Paizo folks are reading this thread, are you guys doing anything to get more of a presence at these places? Is it part of the gameplan?