Paizo To Make Kingmaker Bestiary... For D&D 5E!

We had camel camel camel for a while and if I remember correctly the stsrfinder book did about as well as one of the earlier supplements of 5e on Amazon. Anybody know another sales tank aggregater?

lyle.spade said:

Interesting observation, or perceived observation. We can also tend to be a bit manic...everything is awesome and spotless, or all is lost.

That aside, there is plenty of room in the market for a few big players, but 5e has really pushed aside most all other systems, and it starting to spread in a manner somewhat like during the d20 era, although I think overall the quality of third party work is much higher than 15+ years ago.

Click to expand...

Agreement with both parts. As to the latter, I think this is for two reasons, mainly: One, improvements in publishing technology; two, fewer people publishing "my kewl campaign setting I've always wanted to publish."

zztong said:

Perhaps. But I think it is more the notion that "business is war" and this is the discussion of the spectators and fans. That isn't unique to the USA. I want to say it is probably shared with parts of Asia, but that's not my field of study and I could be... well am... usually full of it.

Click to expand...

It is not unique to the US, but the US has been most successful at it, for the most part. At least thus far - that is changing. But it is more of a mentality - and yes, it is "business is war," an extrapolation of social Darwinism.

FYI - the Kingmaker crowdfunding campaign is open and the support they are offering for 5e - they are also offering the exact same support for PF 1e. Both have an option for the Bestiary. So, they are supporting 5e and PF 1e the exact same amount.

Also, in regards to D&D & CR becoming mainstream, last night the official Chuck E Cheese twitter account was replying to Krystina Arielle (cosplayer and in a couple streaming D&D games, I think), and asked if Matt Mercer could DM a game for them. Yes, the corporation known for kids' birthday parties, pizza, games, and animatronic singing animals is requesting a D&D game with Matt Mercer. We are beyond D&D just being a small niche for nerds.

And can you just imagine a game of D&D with a bunch of fully costumed corporate mascots??? (Sure, there's the crass capitalism involved, but make it for a children's charity or something.) It would be surreal to watch Chuck E Cheese, Ronald McDonald, the Burger King, and such sitting around the table rolling dice!

Morrus said:

Successful doesn’t mean “the single biggest” — there’s more than one successful company or person in the world. Successful means achieving the goals of the company.

Click to expand...

Thanks Morrus, I guess I still need to learn some English ropes

Azzy said:

Eh, I don't see that. It's not that "being different" is popular (any more than it's ever been given the history of counter culture), it's that geekish delights have just become mainstream—it's like in the 90s when everybody started liking "alternative" music and alternative became the new pop (much to the chagrin and morbid fascination of those that had been listening to said "alternative" bands before everyone jumped on the bandwagon—hipsters are not a new thing).

Click to expand...

I guess we are around the same age then (almost 42 here). Here's my assumption; I think nerds (not popular) became geeks (popular) because in the pre-internet ages (oh my god, I can't believe I'm that old already..), only nerds could know how a computer would work. Now, everything needs Internet. Being geek (nerd) is cool now and geeks play TTRPG. It might be that our generation got their freetime back with kids growing and we want to get back to our fondest memories of TTRPG, thus, DnD, but we aren't the industry backbone anymore, the 18-25 is and they like DnD5E. As far as I know, it's easier to play and this generation don't have the time (nor the focus) needed to learn the 3.5/PF rules.

Even if Paizo thinks it could make a ADnD with PF2, I don't think it will work unfortunately. That being said, I really hope that I'm wrong because we really need competition. In a world where WotC is totally dominant, the consumer will suffer.

Parmandur said:

I'm given to understand that Starfinder is fairly successful?

Click to expand...

I don't think so, but that's only on my observation. Here in Quebec City, there's a big hobby shop called Imaginaire where they sell pretty much everything TTRPG related, I'm pretty sure it's the biggest in eastern Canada as I didn't even find a store that big in Toronto. They have bookshelves of TTRPG stuff, DnD5 and PF1 are almost equally covered (tens of books each) but only one or two Starfinder books. There's ten times more books of Star Wars stuff. There's more books of Adventures in the Middle Earth or other 5E supplements.


In my book, Starfinder could have been a PF1 scifi crossover and it would have been more succesful.

Mercador said:

I guess we are around the same age then (almost 42 here). Here's my assumption; I think nerds (not popular) became geeks (popular) because in the pre-internet ages (oh my god, I can't believe I'm that old already..), only nerds could know how a computer would work. Now, everything needs Internet. Being geek (nerd) is cool now and geeks play TTRPG. It might be that our generation got their freetime back with kids growing and we want to get back to our fondest memories of TTRPG, thus, DnD, but we aren't the industry backbone anymore, the 18-25 is and they like DnD5E. As far as I know, it's easier to play and this generation don't have the time (nor the focus) needed to learn the 3.5/PF rules.

Even if Paizo thinks it could make a ADnD with PF2, I don't think it will work unfortunately. That being said, I really hope that I'm wrong because we really need competition. In a world where WotC is totally dominant, the consumer will suffer.




I don't think so, but that's only on my observation. Here in Quebec City, there's a big hobby shop called Imaginaire where they sell pretty much everything TTRPG related, I'm pretty sure it's the biggest in eastern Canada as I didn't even find a store that big in Toronto. They have bookshelves of TTRPG stuff, DnD5 and PF1 are almost equally covered (tens of books each) but only one or two Starfinder books. There's ten times more books of Star Wars stuff. There's more books of Adventures in the Middle Earth or other 5E supplements.


In my book, Starfinder could have been a PF1 scifi crossover and it would have been more succesful.

Click to expand...

My personal theory is that people didn't want to seem weird for liking stuff like Lord of the Rings or Spiderman, but now feel free to let it all hang out knowing they are not alone.

I don't see how Starfinder could have been more successful: it's off-brand Star Wars using off-brand D&D rules. Of course D&D and Star Wars are more successful in the same field.

Matrix Sorcica said:

Maybe, as long as you don't use official adventures/APs. The last many of them are bloated with monsters from late bestiaries, not to speak of the npcs who have classes, abilities and feats many people haven't even heard about. Sure, it's online for free, but a real pain to use.

Click to expand...

This is a key point. It's very hard to ignore the extra content when the official adventures use a LOT of it.

Cheers!

TheSword said:

Paizo’s release schedule was punishing. I do believe there is an issue with too much choice.

Click to expand...

Sincere questions. I see this complaint made about Pathfinder and even more so when people talk about 3/3.5 and the d20 "glut."

What is stopping you from just sticking to the core rulebook? You don't *have* to buy every book that comes out. Right?

If a player has an class they want to play, they can petition their DM for it. Then the DM needs to know core + player's class.

Even with 5e, I don't bother to attain even familiarity with every race and class, just those in my games.

Is this mentality due to organized play? Or is our hobby really dominated by completionist collectors?

If the core rules are hard to learn that's a valid criticism. But complaining about too many options and bloat seems unfair. You don't like them, ignore them.

This is something 5e has done well. Even as they've release more options, you can still pare the game down to the Players Handbook without feats.

Heck, in my first 5e campaign, I limited race and class selections beyond what is available in the PHB or Basic Rules. Partly to create a theme, partly to make it easier for me to ease back into DMing.

If you allow third-party material into your game, you can make 5e quite crunchy and customizable. Most people choose to ignore most third-party stuff. Here's a secret: you can ignore a most of the "official" material as well.

Mistwell said:

I've written about this concept a lot before, but the short answer is no.

The longer answer is that nobody is an island in a group game like this. Particularly if you are the DM, and you're playing with friends who buy stuff they like, it becomes increasingly difficult to say no to everything, to test everything and see how it works with everything else, to anticipate how things will be used, etc..

Bloat impacts most people, even if they don't buy the books with those books. It usually creates unpleasant peer pressure if you are not willing to look at new stuff - and if you are willing to look at new stuff, that is itself a burden on you. And then if you say no, that's an additional (often frequent) burden dealing with the friends who asked. There is also a culture surrounding a game, not the least of which is this very message board, and opting out of new stuff sometimes means opting out of that culture and conversation with your peers.

The more stuff out there for a game, the more it impacts you.

Click to expand...

MNblockhead said:

Sincere questions. I see this complaint made about Pathfinder and even more so when people talk about 3/3.5 and the d20 "glut."

What is stopping you from just sticking to the core rulebook? You don't *have* to buy every book that comes out. Right?

If a player has an class they want to play, they can petition their DM for it. Then the DM needs to know core + player's class.

Click to expand...

Objection, asked and answered

Mistwell said:

Objection, asked and answered

Click to expand...

Sorry, replied before getting through the thread.

I don't understand how PF gives NPC and monster stat blocks. For a monster, I could see just giving the name and parenthetical letting you know which bestiary you need. But for NPCs, are they built like characters? Wouldn't they be treated like monsters and just have a description of their abilities in their stat block? If not, ouch! Yes, that would suck.

I also wasn't thinking of the poor game designer who would have to take into account all of the official classes and feats when designing an adventure.

One could always just run their own home-brew adventures...but that is a lot of work, which will turn away a lot of people from being game master for the system.

I concede the point.