Pathfinder 1E What's after Golarion? (and what's the future of Pathfinder?)

[AbdulAlhazred]

And it killed TSR stone dead. If anything, TSR showed Paizo exactly what not to do.

I'm not entirely sure the right conclusion has been drawn from the most relevant aspects of TSR's demise. The fact is that TSR was a VERY badly run company on almost all levels in that time period. Their market research was poor, their product development was pretty haphazard and capricious, and they certainly did create FAR too many SKUs. Whether it was 'too many settings' per-se, or just too many products that they produced far too many of and didn't manage their stock properly is the real question. DS, FR, WoG, Planescape, Ravenloft, and SpellJammer were all very well-received settings that had good support and are all still highly regarded by their various fans (not to mention DL). Of course it might have served them better to have trimmed one or two, and they certainly did invent a lot of minor settings in the course of things, but how much did they really invest in things like Birthright and Hollow World? IMHO maintaining 2 separate lines of D&D rules was less wise than maintaining 5 or 6 good settings. If they'd planned effectively as a business I don't think the number of settings would have been a problem.
[MENTION=23937]James Jacobs[/MENTION]

I'd call Golarion a 'kitchen sink' in much the way that FR is one too. There is of course a lot of scope in a large world to explore some different settings, but then there is also some certain unifying world-concept that all of Golarion or Faerun shares across all its bits and pieces. That was one of the real attractions of Eberron for instance, that it has different conceits. DS particularly shows a sort of genre that is hard to just attach to an existing game world. Nothing against Golarion of course. At some point though doesn't it get hard to really provide some level of distinctness to this kind of setting? I mean in essence Golarion, Greyhawk, FR, Midgaard, there's a sort of fantasy soup, it can be hard to really say that anything sets them apart much beyond the moderately arbitrary turns and squiggles of one map vs another. You can invent specific plots, characters, and elements, but in essence wouldn't most anything that can fit into Golarion also fit into say Faerun equally well, albeit some details would change. In a sense you WANT that, as the whole idea is to allow material to be reused as people see fit.

In some sense 4e's appeal was that there was at least SOME difference in basic assumed world concepts relative to previous editions.

 

[Morrus]

I'm not entirely sure the right conclusion has been drawn from the most relevant aspects of TSR's demise. The fact is that TSR was a VERY badly run company on almost all levels in that time period. Their market research was poor, their product development was pretty haphazard and capricious, and they certainly did create FAR too many SKUs. Whether it was 'too many settings' per-se, or just too many products that they produced far too many of and didn't manage their stock properly is the real question. DS, FR, WoG, Planescape, Ravenloft, and SpellJammer were all very well-received settings that had good support and are all still highly regarded by their various fans (not to mention DL). Of course it might have served them better to have trimmed one or two, and they certainly did invent a lot of minor settings in the course of things, but how much did they really invest in things like Birthright and Hollow World? IMHO maintaining 2 separate lines of D&D rules was less wise than maintaining 5 or 6 good settings. If they'd planned effectively as a business I don't think the number of settings would have been a problem.

It's nothing to do with being well-received, liked, or highly regarded. It's just mathematics.

A product costs the same to produce whether 1 person buys it or a thousand. It's a fixed cost. Two different products cost twice that, three cost three times that, and so on. Now, if your products are addressing competing subsections of your customer base (i.e. you're fragmenting your customer base) you end up spending the same amount of money per product for a fraction of the customers.

You end up in a situation where you make less profit selling two products to 7,500 people each than one product to 10,000 people, despite having 150% the total sales.

Now increase that to, say, 7 competing lines. You're now spending 7x the money to produce the suckers, and each is selling to 1/7th of your customer base. Each one is now losing money. And when all your component parts lose money, your entire company loses money.

Now, sure, some folks are completists or collectors, and they'll buy everything. But not many, and not enough to make a difference.

If they'd planned effectively as a business I don't think the number of settings would have been a problem.

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If they'd effectively planned as a business, they wouldn't have had all those settings. They'd have looked a lot more like Paizo does now. Multiple settings compete with each other for sales. That's the problem, and that's why the mathematics does what it does.

You might be able to persuade all the folks to buy all the stuff for two settings (though you'd have to be clever about it - I imagine most would pick the one they like and buy that stuff). Not for five or seven, though.

The fact is that TSR was a VERY badly run company on almost all levels in that time period.

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Sure. That isn't the only thing that contributed to its demise, for sure. It's just one example - a fairly major one, though!
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[aatwood]

AbdulAlhazred

Forgive me for being slightly off-topic, but when I see Abdul Alhazred walking unacknowledged in the marketplace I just have to shout over the din "I've read your book, you magnificent bastard!"

 

[Mercurius]

We've got a LOT of room left in just the Inner Sea region to keep us busy for years and years to come. Heck... we've gotten well over a year out of one region in the setting—Varisia—and even that only scraped the surface of what we can do with that one realm.

I'm not worried about running out of stuff to expand upon in Golarion anytime soon.

And I wouldn't call our 2014 schedule an off year at all... We're releasing more in 2014 than we ever have before!

Thanks for the input, James.

One thing I've noticed is that there is no definitive "Varisia Guide." Instead there is material in different APs and specific campaign books (e.g. Magnimar). Is it possible that we see a Varisia Book at some point, even a hardcover?

 

[steeldragons]

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] is this what you mean? I don't have it/haven't read it, just seen the image. But it looks like it should be a "definitive Varisia Guide."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's nothing to do with being well-received, liked, or highly regarded. It's just mathematics.

A product costs the same to produce whether 1 person buys it or a thousand. It's a fixed cost. Two different products cost twice that, three cost three times that, and so on. Now, if your products are addressing competing subsections of your customer base (i.e. you're fragmenting your customer base) you end up spending the same amount of money per product for a fraction of the customers.

You end up in a situation where you make less profit selling two products to 7,500 people each than one product to 10,000 people, despite having 150% the total sales.

Now increase that to, say, 7 competing lines. You're now spending 7x the money to produce the suckers, and each is selling to 1/7th of your customer base. Each one is now losing money. And when all your component parts lose money, your entire company loses money.

Now, sure, some folks are completists or collectors, and they'll buy everything. But not many, and not enough to make a difference.



If they'd effectively planned as a business, they wouldn't have had all those settings. They'd have looked a lot more like Paizo does now. Multiple settings compete with each other for sales. That's the problem, and that's why the mathematics does what it does.

You might be able to persuade all the folks to buy all the stuff for two settings (though you'd have to be clever about it - I imagine most would pick the one they like and buy that stuff). Not for five or seven, though.



Sure. That isn't the only thing that contributed to its demise, for sure. It's just one example - a fairly major one, though!
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I hear what you are saying. OTOH I think a lot of people DID buy material for more than one setting, and you do broaden your offerings. There are people that might not buy WoG no matter what, but they might buy DS. Obviously there's a point where one product is just cannibalizing others, but its not clear exactly where that point is. Its a matter of doing the market research, and I think we can conclude that TSR in the 90's was not really doing that very well.

We can look at recent WotC and see that multiple settings can be worthwhile, 4e has FR, DS, and Eberron, which are all pretty distinct and one would presume they determined that it was worth providing some support to each one, with 'PoL' providing a fairly generic default. One could question whether FR and PoL were really significantly different, but I think WotC clearly felt that a 'classic' setting was a necessity. Clearly they also weren't interested in large overlap which might have existed with say also republishing WoG or even DL. It seems to me the lesson is you need to do your homework, but there's room in a large product line for 3-4 settings.

Forgive me for being slightly off-topic, but when I see Abdul Alhazred walking unacknowledged in the marketplace I just have to shout over the din "I've read your book, you magnificent bastard!"

Well, getting devoured by demons in Cairo was the downside

 

[Mercurius]

Yes, but that's only a "player's companion" book - just 32 pages. I was thinking more along the lines of a full treatment, either a 64-page (DM's) campaign book, or even a full hardcover. It does seem to be the default starting area for Golarion, so it deserves a larger treatment, in my opinion.

Still, I should pick up that pick anyhow!

 

[James Jacobs]

Thanks for the input, James.

One thing I've noticed is that there is no definitive "Varisia Guide." Instead there is material in different APs and specific campaign books (e.g. Magnimar). Is it possible that we see a Varisia Book at some point, even a hardcover?

That's absolutely possible! (And yeah... I assumed you were asking for a 64 page GM-focused book...)

 

[Zardnaar]

Multiple setting are probably fine but you only want to support 1-2 with any regularity IMHO. 4E probably had the right idea in that regard with just the core settings books and not trying to do a novel line, adventures etc like TSR tried.

 

[Kinak]

One thing I've noticed is that there is no definitive "Varisia Guide." Instead there is material in different APs and specific campaign books (e.g. Magnimar). Is it possible that we see a Varisia Book at some point, even a hardcover?

I've been piecing things together myself, but it'd be nice to have it all in one place.

For now, I'd agree Birthplace of Legends is a good overview. It doesn't have the depth you'd get in a GM product, but there's a travel time chart that's way handier than it has any right to be, a great player-safe map in the middle, and some information on the individual Shoanti tribes I've found useful.

If you don't have the Magnimar book, though, I'd grab that first. Maybe convince one of your players to get Birthplace of Legends

Cheers!
Kinak