Has Paizo ever talked about releasing their adventures in 5E format?

pogre · Apr 12, 2019

Jester David said:
What? That sales of their Pathfinder Core Rulebook would suffer?
I don't buy that. It seems like a stretch.

I agree with Morrus that it is about brand. It is clear we just need to agree to disagree on this point.

Jester David said:
I think you’re overestimating the number of Pathfinder & Paizo fans that are edition warriors. That’s a small, small subset of the audience typically localized to message boards.

Also, if the fans are that fickle and willing to abandon Paizo the SECOND they publish something for 5e, then they're probably not the most reliable fans. It’s not good to cater to an audience willing to blackmail you like that.
They’re not the people you want championing your game. Is that the kind of gamer you want representing your game in game stores? Being the face of your system to newcomers?

Paizo would be better off without fans like that.

...But 5e Paizo adventures are a must-buy.

It would be a must buy for me too. But, as someone pointed out below, they are trying to get their community to convert to a new edition. Releasing 5e could very well be a death knell to their core rules and place them a precarious long term market position. I disagree about it being a small minority - it seems to be a strong sentiment among their event organizers (organized play folks). Obviously, neither of us have the actual numbers or market research - so who knows who is right.

pogre · Apr 12, 2019

zztong said:
No doubt. They've got every right to play the game of life as they see it and

Well there's "backlash", I'll say consequences, for every change. I'm looking at a 50% conversion rate to PF2 with my local, tiny, sample of games.

Game 1 involves around 8 players, of which 3 buy PF1 rules and 1 buys APs; 2 plan to buy PF2 rules and 1 plans to buy APs.
Game 2 involves 6 players, of which 5 buy PF1 rules and 2 buy APs; 0 plan to buy PF2 rules, but 2 may purchase APs if easy to convert to PF1.

Net change:
8 PF1 Rules Customers => 2 PF2 Rules Customers
3 PF1 AP Customers => 3 PF2 AP Customers if AP easily converted to PF1 or 1 if not.
None of the games are planning to convert to D&D 5e, though Game 1 has some D&D 5e players.
The local game store only has 5e organized play.

This is why I think selling Paizo APs to PF1, PF2, and 5e customers is the way to go. The PF2 brand is already weak.

I would see it as just giving up on PF2E. You may be right, but they cannot abandon ship yet.

CapnZapp · Apr 12, 2019

I agree with Morrus' take on Paizo's position.

I think Paizo is making a mistake however. It might make sense from a corporate point of view.

It is when you look around at RPGs that aren't D&D you realize this condemns Paizo to being yet another small-time bit player.

The Pathfinder brand isn't nearly as strong as Paizo needs it to be from the corporate dog-eat-dog perspective.

If Paizo would instead accept that all their success is predicated upon living in symbiosis with the D&D brand I could have been much optimistic about their future.

Jester David · Apr 12, 2019

amethal said:
Are you proposing they convert the whole of the adventure path in return for your ten dollars, or would it be ten dollars per instalment?

I just pulled a number from my head as an example. $5 per book or $20 for everything sounds reasonable...

amethal said:
Since (I assume) most of the monsters in Carrion Crown do not currently exist in 5th edition then they might as well release a 5e bestiary while they are at it.

What they could do is task people to update the APs and then compile the monsters from those into a physical monster book after a few months of updates.

amethal said:
There's no chance of anything at the moment, since they are quite busy with pathfinder 2, but who knows what they might do in the future.

The PF2 core rulebook is out the door. That's done. I imagine they're finalising the Bestiary next.But here's the thing: they could do both.They'd almost certainly need to rely on 5e freelancers for the job. As the in-house staff knows squat about 5e. So while the internal staff do PF2, and army of freelancers converts. It would need an internal editing pass and in-house layout. But they have more than enough staff.

pogre said:
I agree with Morrus that it is about brand. It is clear we just need to agree to disagree on this point.

But is the brand the rules? Or the world and the story?If the Pathfinder brand is the game mechanics, that's weak as it's literally a copy of another game.If it's the world and NPCs and factions and iconics then a 5e update that sells like the warehouse is on fire.... that strengthens the brand.

pogre said:
It would be a must buy for me too. But, as someone pointed out below, they are trying to get their community to convert to a new edition. Releasing 5e could very well be a death knell to their core rules and place them a precarious long term market position.

How?Do you think there is a strong audience overlap between the potential audience of PF2 and 5e? That the only thing keeping people from jumping ship from Pathfinder to 5e is the absence of official sinspawn or rules for the Runelords?

pogre said:
I disagree about it being a small minority - it seems to be a strong sentiment among their event organizers (organized play folks). Obviously, neither of us have the actual numbers or market research - so who knows who is right.

I'm trusting Mike Mearls with this. He did have the market research which showed that only a small percentage of players were edition warriors. It is probably a little higher between D&D and Pathfinder. Sunk cost fallacy and all. People feel the need to justify their choice. But, again, if people are willing to walk away from Paizo just because they published an extra book that was focused on 5e... then those are the kind of gatekeeping judgemental individuals that game really doesn't need. Honestly, it might be better for their audience if Paizo does a 5e book. Anyone who stays is a true fan, doing so because they love Pathfinder and not just hate 5e.

pogre said:
I would see it as just giving up on PF2E. You may be right, but they cannot abandon ship yet.

Was launching Starfinder them abandoning PF1?They can do both.

Green Onceler · Apr 13, 2019

zztong said:
The PF2 brand is already weak.

Well, it hasn't been released yet.

Expecting a product to have a "strong brand" 4 months prior to its release seems a little unreasonable.

MockingBird · Apr 13, 2019

Does Paizo see them selves as WOTC's equal? Did the short tenure at #1 inflate an ego? How do these questions play into the decision not to produce 5e material? Does it even play a role?

Kurviak · Apr 13, 2019

MockingBird said:
Does Paizo see them selves as WOTC's equal? Did the short tenure at #1 inflate an ego? How do these questions play into the decision not to produce 5e material? Does it even play a role?

Based on the things I’ve read from Paizo’s staff they are aware that they are way smaller than WotC and their business model takes that in consideration. At least that’s what I get from the comments I”ve read.

Morrus · Apr 13, 2019

Jester David said:
What? That sales of their Pathfinder Core Rulebook would suffer?
I don't buy that. It seems like a stretch.

That implies that people are buying and playing Pathfinder rather than 5e because they want to play Pathfinder adventures but find conversion too hard.
Yeah... Nope. Just running Pathfinder is significantly harder and requires more prep than converting adventures to 5e.
Or it implies there's an audience that loves Paizo but is holding off switching to 5e because they want Paizo's permission & approval. Which seems even more unlikely…. Yeah, people are fans and like to support their team, but they're not likely to keep playing a game they're not enjoying just to support a company.

People buy the CRB because they want to play Pathfinder. Not because they don't have options.

And, again, this would be a potential investment. Doing conversions of new adventures would encourage people to buy those, increasing sales of those products that—unlike the CRB—would still be trying to recoup their cost.
And it gets money from people who already swapped over to 5e and bought the CRB. I'm debating converting Carrion Crown to 5e and running that sometime. But if I could just drop $10-20 and get a slick PDF from Paizo that did all the work for me, I would. Happily.

I think you’re overestimating the number of Pathfinder & Paizo fans that are edition warriors. That’s a small, small subset of the audience typically localized to message boards.

Also, if the fans are that fickle and willing to abandon Paizo the SECOND they publish something for 5e, then they're probably not the most reliable fans. It’s not good to cater to an audience willing to blackmail you like that.
They’re not the people you want championing your game. Is that the kind of gamer you want representing your game in game stores? Being the face of your system to newcomers?

Paizo would be better off without fans like that.

Plus, this is also overlooking the many members of the Pathfinder community who reluctantly stopped buying Paizo products because they weren't selling anything they wanted. I loved giving my money to the company, because they were this great open, friendly, and accessible community that seemed focused on improving the industry. I'd love to buy more stuff from them, but I'm not a charity. I've bought too many gamebooks I'll never use (with a good four or five big $40 hardcovers from Paizo alone). But 5e Paizo adventures are a must-buy.

Well, you clearly know better than me, the people who run Paizo, and plenty of other people. Why are you sharing this expertise for free? There’s money to be made, man! Email Lisa Stevens right now and offer to save her business!

Jester David · Apr 13, 2019

Morrus said:
Well, you clearly know better than me, the people who run Paizo, and plenty of other people. Why are you sharing this expertise for free? There’s money to be made, man! Email Lisa Stevens right now and offer to save her business!

So instead of actually responding to my question and offering a counterargument, you just have condescending and insulting sarcasm? C'mon Morrus, you're better than that.Yeah, I'm not a business genius. Yeah, they probably have a lot more experience than me. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong or that there isn't a huge market for conversions of Pathfinder modules and monsters. Goodman Games seems to be doing quite well doing that very thing for 1e, and those are much, much easier to convert and don't require as much monster creation.

Jester David · Apr 13, 2019

But don't take my word for it.
Let's actually look at the numbers.

Someone was converting Rise of the Runelords to 5e: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...fyGcotrIu7xuHUjF8/edit#heading=h.zdv649y4xlskThe wordcounts are 8500 and 5000 for parts 1 and 2. Now that book likely converts more than necessary, it's also pretty simple. So we'll go with 9000 words.
At Paizo's $0.07 per word ( http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2301-What-s-a-Freelance-RPG-Writer-Worth ) that's a cost of $630 for the writer. It's as little as 15 pages or as much as 20 with art.
I tend to charge $8 per page for my development/design editing passes, but I'm sure Paizo pays more. Maybe $10 a page. So that's another $150 pages. So the cost to freelancers is $780.

Plus layout, which they have people on salary to do. This shouldn't be much more difficult than laying out a Player's Guide, which they give away. But we'll add an extra $125 for one day's work doing InDesign, as all the art assets, fonts, and the like would be done. Formatting should be quick for an experienced staff member.

That's a grand total of $905 in expenses.
Because, again, all the art has already been bought and paid for. All the text of writing the adventure is done.

At $5 per book, if they sell more than 181 copies, they're in the black. That's a tiny number of books. Or they could do a lump product that has conversions of full APs, at a cost of around $5500. Selling those for, oh, $20 moves the break-even number to 275. Still a tiny number, but you don't have to worry about people not buying the 5th or 6ths part of the AP.
275 copies is nothing. Even for this industry. That's a little more than a Electrum seller on DMsGuild/ DriveThru. And when Kickstarters can sell 10,000 copies, 275 is nothing. Even if they only move 1000 copies, which is a pretty small number, that's over $14,500 profit. But they reach a potential audience of 5,000 to 10,000 people. That's as much as $194,000 dollars.

That's all in addition to sales of the AP themselves, which might sell additional copies to interested 5e players who would otherwise skip them.

Has Paizo ever talked about releasing their adventures in 5E format?

pogre

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Jester David

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Morrus

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