Pathfinder 1E This is why pathfinder has been successful.

[Banshee16]

No, 3e was a very successful game because it allowed OTHER people to focus on adventure and setting. There are many settings, ranging from Arcanis to Iron Kingdoms to Arcana Evolved to Scarred Lands, to ones offs like Call of Cthulhu, Dragonlords of Melnibone, and dozens of others like Nymae, that it allowed WoTC to make rules.

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Agreed. I didn't play FR or Eberron during 3E...but I collected several of the books. The fact that other companies produced Midnight, Swashbuckling Adventures, Dragonlance 3E, Scarred Lands, Oathbound and others gave me settings that I liked, and more reason to buy D&D books, to support playing in those settings.

I haven't really found WotC to be on top of their game, setting wise, since 2nd Ed. (when it was TSR). Dark Sun, Planescape, Birthright, Al-Qadim, all cool settings that I loved. I actually spent much of the life of 3E using core books and class supplements etc. and running 3E adapted material in Planescape, since there was nothing comparable being released.

If there'd been no OGL or D20 license, and WotC *still* didn't produce much in the way of settings and adventures, and no 3rd party companies were doing so, I doubt I would have got into 3E nearly as extensively as I did.

Contrary to what WotC seems to have had as a mantra, there were other things more important to me as a customer than the holy grail of perfectly balanced encounters and characters. I'm much more interested in cool settings, interesting adventures etc. than I am in mechanics that are "perfect".

I'm now in my 30's, and just don't have time to have a core book set, and create my own setting etc. I did in my teens....but now? I appreciate a cool setting, and adventures that let me just focus on getting together with friends and playing a cool game, rather than spending all my evenings putting together encounters, and trying to think up new storylines.

Banshee

 

[Crothian]

That claim.

That was just the contrary position of the original post.

Okay, adventures first. In 3e they had what the 8 adventures that linked starting with the Sunless Citadel. Those weren't defining of the game at the time.

 

[Banshee16]

While they have extensively revised the rules, Pathfinder is still fundamentally 3e D&D, and I doubt anyone could prove that the rules are objectively better - perhaps just better tuned to the preferences of people who liked 3e.

I suspect that Paizo, given that they ran Dragon and Dungeon magazines, were in a good position to measure the popularity of system changes, new ideas etc. that were published in those magazines, and served as precursors of ideas that were eventually wrapped into Pathfinder.

At the end of the day, 3E was a popular, nicely built system that many people liked. Pathfinder may not have revolutionized things with a completely new system, but they fixed some (not all) of the glaring problems or complaints, and implemented fairly popular changes that addressed points many players had complained about over the years.

Did it still retain some of the key mechanical flaws purported to exist in 3E, like swingy combat at high levels that some people complained about? No, but it was recognizably D&D, had some cool new additions, and was well supported.

I think they executed their game plan pretty well.

4E in turn changed things so much that it made the game unpalatable for some of us who found it throwing out too much stuff that we liked. Or putting us in a position (initially) where we had to wait, and buy a whole series of books to get features we used to get in the 3 core books. I know I initially waited when 4E came out....it didn't have druids or familiars, or a bunch of other things. It was explained these items would come in later books. It *felt* like they were trying to introduce core features in later books, almost like having a suite of playing cards spread out over the purchase of several decks. Personally, I just lost interest waiting for the game to have the features I wanted, and should have been included in Day 1. I know later books tried to combine and streamline all that stuff....but it was too little too late. By that point I'd been out of the WotC product purchasing cycle for like 2 years or so.

The Pathfinder adventure paths.....those have just been awesome though. WotC/TSR used to write great adventures...the Great Modron March, Dead Gods....I had a tonne of fun with those series. Return to the Tomb of Horrors and some of those "return to the classics" style adventures were pretty cool. Somewhere along the line though, WotC just seemed to lose their way, and focus only on mechanics, and lost focus on story. Paizo never lost that focus. To me, that was part of the difference.

Banshee

 

[JoeGKushner]

That was just the contrary position of the original post.

Okay, adventures first. In 3e they had what the 8 adventures that linked starting with the Sunless Citadel. Those weren't defining of the game at the time.

There were the whole thing of fantastic encounters that came out toward the tail end, they were the ones with the double sided poster maps.

Then there was the Moonsea, which was an adventure/setting book.

Then there were the three hardcover FR adventure books that all connected to each other.

I'm sure someone could go online and link the various 3.0-3.5 online adventuers that woTC did but at this point Cro might say those don't count cause they're online or something.

 

[Crothian]

I'm sure someone could go online and link the various 3.0-3.5 online adventuers that woTC did but at this point Cro might say those don't count cause they're online or something.

Well, I've been talking about published books by Wizards. Everyone else wants to bring in this other things to support their side. But whatever it doesn't matter at this point.

 

[Reynard]

Well, I've been talking about published books by Wizards. Everyone else wants to bring in this other things to support their side. But whatever it doesn't matter at this point.

Do you accept the premise that the launch of 3.5 and the materials that followed are more analogous to the launch of Lazio than the launch of 3.0?

 

[GreyLord]

People assume that Paizo is in competition with WotC. This isn't necessarily true. They also compare the two. There really isn't much comparison in some areas between what makes Paizo successful and what makes WotC successful.

I am GLAD Paizo is successful. How many people buy their adventure paths? I think it is a big enough seller to make them money.

Let's say they have 30,000 people that are devoted to buying their adventure paths.

That pays out ~600,000 a month? That would be 7.2 million a year.

That's saying they all get the hardcopy at $20 a month.

Let's be super generous, let's say they actually have a 50,000 customer base that all buy hardcopies at $20 a month.

That's a million dollars a month? Right? That's only 12 million a year.

I think it's grand that they are being successful and I have no doubt that the statements they made about their adventure paths being a VERY important items is true.

I think they print outstanding products and I applaud everything they make. My guesses are that...PURE guesses (I'd actually think that their subscribers are LESS than the numbers I put up and not all buy hardcopy...but that amount they make is also bolstered by those who buy rulebooks and other items), but I don't think they are the contenders that everyone thinks they are.

I don't think WotC would subsist on the same items or same amounts that Paizo deals with.

That doesn't detract from my respect I have for everyone at Paizo and what they do. I think they do an outstanding job, and I think it's great that they are being successful.

But what makes an independant RPG business successful, and what would make WotC successful are two different things in my opinion.

Currently I hope that WotC is on the right track, to garner MORE support than what is seen with any game out there, and gather more players under the umbrella of one game. It's a different ballpark that WotC is playing in.

In that, I hope that people still also play Paizo games and their adventure paths and continue to make Paizo successful in their endeavors. I am glad that Paizo is successful, but I don't think Paizo is really comparable in numbers (moneywise) to what WotC was putting out at it's height. (Edit: OR what WotC needs as a goal now)

 

[pemerton]

But I'd play their APs if I could do it with the Beginner Box rules. : I'm not interested in full Pathfinder - way too fiddly. So the OP quote doesn't really make sense to me.

Here is the relevant part of the quote:

The APs need to be written for the full RPG. We need that broad range of characters, monsters, and player options to tell those stories. And that means that we need people to play the full RPG.

To be frank, the point of the Beginner Box is to bring new players to the full RPG, and to our Adventure Paths. So once people are comfortable with the basic concepts from the Beginner Box, we want them to move to the full RPG as soon as possible​

From which I infer that they cannot make APs that will sell enough copies to be worthwhile, if they confine those APs to the Beginner Box norms. And I suspect that part of the reason for this is that more of the APs they sold are read than played, and they wouldn't read so well (to the relevant customer base) if those readers couldn't get the "full" PF/3E experience from reading through them.

 

[billd91]

People assume that Paizo is in competition with WotC. This isn't necessarily true. They also compare the two. There really isn't much comparison in some areas between what makes Paizo successful and what makes WotC successful.

Assume they're in competition? Of course they're in competition. Whenever someone is deciding between a PF product or a D&D product, WotC and Paizo are in competition. The fact that some people buy both doesn't mean that they aren't in competition, particularly since many of us can't afford to buy both.

That said, they don't have to be (and aren't as far as we can tell) in rancorous competition. They don't have to use the same methods or have the same strategies to compete. And they don't have to be in competition for exactly the same market for their markets to overlap and cause them to compete.

 

[billd91]

From which I infer that they cannot make APs that will sell enough copies to be worthwhile, if they confine those APs to the Beginner Box norms. And I suspect that part of the reason for this is that more of the APs they sold are read than played, and they wouldn't read so well (to the relevant customer base) if those readers couldn't get the "full" PF/3E experience from reading through them.

That strikes me as a weird suspicion. It could be that a lot of people do get the APs to read and plumb for ideas. I've done that with many adventures and RPGs over the years. But Vic's an insider. He knows how well the main RPG sells, how well the APs sell, and he knows how well the Beginner Box sells. I think the main RPG rules, having a 2 year head start on the Beginner Box, already has a wider audience primed for APs. And the initial AP market is even 2 years older than that. They don't want to split their own market with a second, competing product line. They want to use one as the gateway to the other.

I think they'd be well off to consider some modules for the Beginner Box, focusing on those lower levels of character development, though.