Pathfinder 1E Ryan Dancey Predicts Pathfinder RPG in '06

[SSquirrel]

So far the thing about another system eating D&D alive is the only one I've seen him be wrong on. Someone in this thread also claimed that he meant much more drastic changes to the core of D&D than even what we're seeing w/4E for that prophecy to come true, but Ryan hasn't piped up on his own yet.

 

[crow81]

Hey if I can dream about the lottery I can dream that Pathfinder will blow the doors off 4e in terms of sales. There is little chance of either but the dream gets me through the day.

And If do hit the lottery I could spend my days pursuing the other dream

 

[Odysseus]

Hey if I can dream about the lottery I can dream that Pathfinder will blow the doors off 4e in terms of sales. There is little chance of either but the dream gets me through the day.

And If do hit the lottery I could spend my days pursuing the other dream

Well the pathfinder RPG is free , and if there is a RPG thats going to blow the doors of 4E, I think a free want stands a better shot

 

[dmccoy1693]

Well the pathfinder RPG is free , and if there is a RPG thats going to blow the doors of 4E, I think a free want stands a better shot

No, the alpha test and the beta test PDFs are free. The full version to be released next year is not.

 

[Archade]

Re-checking the dates Paizo has released so far, I think you're correct. However, I honestly do expect them to be supporting 4e as soon as it's feasable for them to do so. Right now? I understand that Paizo can't commit, and will make significant short-term gains by appealing to 3.5 fans. However, I don't think it's a good long-term strategy, for the reasons I noted above.

I doubt this. For a number ofreasons.

1) They have whipped their customer base into an enthusiastic frenzy by releasing PF as an open playtest, giving them an emotional and concrete investment in the new edition of the rules. They would alienate a fair number of customers if they switched at any point in the forseeable future.

2) Paizo is not a big company. They are dedicating a LOT of their resources over the next year to developing and producing 3.P. It would not make sense to dedicate the majority of their development time to a new edition of the rules over a year, and then drop it shortly afterwards.

I would say that 3.P will be the focus of Paizo for at least three years, barring lack of sales, economic disaster, the fabled GSL being released *and* being something we haven't predicted, or something of that magnitude ...

 

[King of Old School]

So far the thing about another system eating D&D alive is the only one I've seen him be wrong on.

He was wrong about Organized Play. He was wrong about Rolling Thunder. He was wrong about the OGL leading to refinement of the D&D rules (Wizards has flatly refused to incorporate anyone else's developments into D&D). He was wrong that the OGL/STL would arrest the decline of the RPG industry... for that matter, he was wrong about the OGL in general. He was wrong about GAMA. He was wrong about every single industry prediction he made for 2007.

The one thing that he was right about -- namely, that if given the choice many people would choose to make products compatible with what is overwhelmingly the most popular game in the hobby -- wasn't exactly a brilliant bit of unique genius, was it?

KoOS

 

[dmccoy1693]

(Wizards has flatly refused to incorporate anyone else's developments into D&D).

Except Unearthed Arcana and MMII. And that was a change in Wizards policy, not a failure of the OGL. Dancey had nothing to do with that.

 

[Jackelope King]

I doubt this. For a number ofreasons.

1) They have whipped their customer base into an enthusiastic frenzy by releasing PF as an open playtest, giving them an emotional and concrete investment in the new edition of the rules. They would alienate a fair number of customers if they switched at any point in the forseeable future.

The only reason I disagree with this point is the demographic that Paizo is selling to. In theory, the big selling point for Pathfinder is that it's going to keep 3.5 alive. One of the big reasons why many people want to stick to 3.5 is their sunk cost: they're well-invested in a healthy 3.5-compatible library. If Paizo wants to market to people interested in still heavily using this library, they need to strike a very difficult balance. Pathfinder needs to be unique and good enough that people want to replace their tried-and-true 3.5 PHBs with Pathfinder. The good I'm not worried about: whatever I think about the result in terms of being unique enough, Paizo will put out a good product. However, the uniqueness is the key. If it's not unique enough, then what's the point? It'll be more akin to Monte's Book of Experimental Magic: a nice little aid you might pull houserules from (and for 3.5, there are some nice ones in there). Alternatively, they make it unique enough to justify being an independent game. In that case, you start to run into problems with compatibility with a lot of the back-materials that 3.5-fans want to keep using. The class changes in particular alter the assumptions behind how a lot of supplements work in very fundamental ways.

The people who are going to convert to Pathfinder from 3.5 are the hard-core Paizo fans (whose support Paizo has more than earned with their years of absolutely excellent products). But how many of those are just going to be "protest votes" against Wizards of the Coast and not true support for a new system? We just don't know. And I'm also a little worried about the 4e fans of Paizo who won't be getting any adventure paths drifting away from the company: tying one of their flagship products to a new system rather than D&D is a gamble. Further, as I mentioned above, the compatibility issues with adventure paths for people still playing 3.5 could be annoying, especially if the paths come to rely on Pathfinder-exclusive features.

The real difficulty is going to be whether or not Paizo can find that magical balance where the game will be different enough to justify being a separate product (enough so that people will be playing Pathfinder and not 3.5 with Pathfinder house rules) and still manage to allow direct or near-direct portability of their 3.5 supplements. If Paizo can do both of these with Pathfinder, it will be extremely successful. If not, I worry that it'll be a passing fancy.

2) Paizo is not a big company. They are dedicating a LOT of their resources over the next year to developing and producing 3.P. It would not make sense to dedicate the majority of their development time to a new edition of the rules over a year, and then drop it shortly afterwards.

How much of their resources are being devoted isn't something I'm familiar with. But considering that the project is being opened, I expect the process to be a little less resource-intensive than a closed-development might be. But this is just pure guess-work on my part. Paizo seems to be keeping their options open in terms of how they'll approach 4e, which at this point is good business sense.

I would say that 3.P will be the focus of Paizo for at least three years, barring lack of sales, economic disaster, the fabled GSL being released *and* being something we haven't predicted, or something of that magnitude ...

I'd honestly be very happy if you were right: I'm probably converting to 4e for my games, but having a strong team like the one at Paizo helping to establish the Open Gaming market as independent and sustainable even without the 800 lb. gorilla is a dream come true. I want them to succeed, and succeed wildly enough to prove that open gaming works. I'm just not sure if Pathfinder is the game to do it.

 

[Ourph]

My comment was more a general observation than a specific one. The origin was the reference to 2/3rds of a poll saying the name D&D mattered so much that if you gave a completely different system the name D&D they would play it just because of that name. And a similar percentage would not play D&D if you renamed it to give the name D&D to another game.

I was just remarking that it reinforced my observation that relatively few people act like humans rather than livestock with thumbs.

I think that's a rather short-sighted interpretation of the results. It seems to me what we've got here is a Nash equilibrium based on a situation very similar to the classic Prisoner Dilemma game.

Given the situation where the D&D brand name is applied to a completely different game, players are left with two choices, play the new game (now branded D&D) or play the old game (now OOP). Assume, for the sake of this construct, that "new D&D" will garner many new players, while "old D&D" will mostly just retain the current players who decide not to switch. In a situation with two players, A and B, who currently play in each others games there are four possible combinations of choices. If A and B both switch to new D&D, both get to play (both with each other and probably with new players). If A and B both do not switch to new D&D, both get to play (but only with each other). If A switches and B does not, A gets to play with new players and B does not get to play at all. Vice versa, if B switches and A does not.

A rational player in this game will always choose to switch, because the consequences of not switching are more costly than the consequences of switching, on average. Switching is the only choice that guarantees the player will get to continue playing, independent of what his "opponent" chooses. Given that most people understand that brand names DO influence people's buying decisions, the choice to follow the brand rather than the ruleset is completely rational.

 

[SSquirrel]

Funny, Monte Cook was just talking on his website forums recently about how the OGL was only good for WotC. WotC has included refinements from other games into D&D, many aspects of 4E I have seen in other games released under the OGL. I have no idea what he said about Organized Play, Rolling Thunder or GAMA or what he said about 2007. The OGL did arrest the decline of the RPG industry and seemed to do so until WotC pulled the trigger on 3.5 earlier than originally planned, which hurt the other companies producing OGL material badly. 3.5 was where the shakeout of the OGL industry really began in earnest.