Roll20 publishes Game Percentages... Pathfinder at 25%

[gamerprinter]

Pathfinder is free, too, and has a lot more material in its SRD. Is there that much application support for 3.5 that Pathfinder doesn't have?

That was going to be my point too. The SRD exists, but then as now, it is only the Core and a few other books, most of 3.5 content is not on the SRD, whereas everything PF by Paizo, and many 3PP PF rules are a part of the free d20pfsrd. Back when I was playing 3.5, I hardly ever looked at the SRD. And now despite having most of Paizo's books in PDF form at least, and many 3PP PDFs, I use d20pfsrd.com every week as my primary tool for game prep. If I have a PF question, I generally don't look at my PDFs rather I go online at d20pfsrd.com. This also means that PF gamers who have access to the internet, reasonably don't need to purchase anything from Paizo in order to play Pathfinder - the rules are entirely and freely assessable.

 

[prosfilaes]

Well, to be fair, none if this is useful. At least not to us. We're just gossiping, really. It's entertainment, not research.

And if I were gossiping, I'd say the same thing to anyone who was counting the number of celebrities by rehab by astrological sign. It's not entertaining to make random correlations.

 

[Cherno]

For you maybe not, I enjoy this discussion, wether or not it has any kind of factual basis; It's just make-believe!

 

[Morrus]

And if I were gossiping, I'd say the same thing to anyone who was counting the number of celebrities by rehab by astrological sign. It's not entertaining to make random correlations.

It's not entertaining - to you. Plenty of folks enjoy taking data and seeing what information they can squeeze out of it. Sometimes they do it well, sometimes not so well, but when it's just a bunch of us on a gaming messageboard chatting away, it's harmless fun. Hell, when I was a teenager, for reasons unknown, I derived entertainment out of entering all of FASA's Star Trek ship stats into a spreadsheet and exporting out various graphs just for the fun of it. Hey, Romulan ships are on average faster than Klingon ships! Hey, Gorn ships have 1.8 x the superstructure on average that Federation ships of the same size have. And so on - all in the name of entertainment. No practical use whatsoever!

The only point where it becomes problematic is when (a) an actual company does it badly and makes poor business decisions or (b) when people start wielding it as a weapon to try to one-up one another. But there's no harm in chatting away on a messageboard, or in being wrong on a messageboard.

 

[billd91]

That's a pithy soundbyte, sure, and we all know that, but I was more specifically referring to the corporate marshaling of tribalism. That's particular manifestation of the phenomenon is more recent.

OK, so it's as old as the chariot races of Rome.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, I'm actually surprised by how quickly new Pathfinder games are dropping while new 5e games are rising just as quickly. Pathfinder is in no danger though. It may not be number one in the 4th quarter (in terms of sales), but it's still a great game with loads of players.

Indeed. And part of the reason I expect PF will continue to well for some time is because of the adventure paths. There is enormous demand for them on the online game boards.

 

[Umbran]

Sometimes they do it well, sometimes not so well, but when it's just a bunch of us on a gaming messageboard chatting away, it's harmless fun.

It is harmless fun, just so long as everyone recognizes what you are doing.

A great many things in the real, technological, scientific world depend upon our culture learning how to manipulate data *properly*. Doing it improperly where it doesn't matter is okay, so long as it doesn't become your habit at other times. Using crappy data or methodology to discuss niche hobby game companies is nothing. But it becomes an issue if you do the same things with, say, public health data to discuss policy. Some of us speak up when things like this come up as a sort of... intellectual preventive maintenance.

 

[prosfilaes]

It's not entertaining - to you. Plenty of folks enjoy taking data and seeing what information they can squeeze out of it.

I spent a a few hours counting up the most popular RPGs on LibraryThing once. So I enjoy taking data and extracting information from it, but I try not to do anything too ridiculous, and if someone wants to call me on some limitation of the data, I'll be happy to discuss it. What's not entertaining is when people throw out absurd calculations and then get defensive when someone wants to argue their validity.

Hell, when I was a teenager, for reasons unknown, I derived entertainment out of entering all of FASA's Star Trek ship stats into a spreadsheet and exporting out various graphs just for the fun of it. Hey, Romulan ships are on average faster than Klingon ships! Hey, Gorn ships have 1.8 x the superstructure on average that Federation ships of the same size have. And so on - all in the name of entertainment. No practical use whatsoever!

Sure, but it sounds like all valid calculations. If we were discussing it, the issue would be if all the Gorn ships had the same superstructure as Federation ships except for one that has way more, so the average would be misleading.

 

[Jhaelen]

It's not entertaining to make random correlations.

Wait a second, so you think it's a random correlation to group players of any edition of D&D? Wow.
Having played every edition of D&D from 1e to 4e I never had the impression of playing a random assortment of rpgs. Odd.

For some strange reason, they're even share the same name. But that's probably just a coincidence.

 

[prosfilaes]

Wait a second, so you think it's a random correlation to group players of any edition of D&D? Wow.

Yes, I think that Pathfinder is on one hand more similar to D&D 3.5 then any other member of that group, as a simple matter of mechanics. On another hand, its players are most similar to D&D 5's as customers of an in-print game, and thus likely not the source of people who are a steady stream of money for the company that can supply their chosen game.

For some strange reason, they're even share the same name.

Actually, they don't, as you lumped in AD&D. As long as we're focusing on the minutia of labels, we might as well be careful about doing that.