Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[Parmandur]

I believe Call of Cthulhu is also extremely popular overseas, in Korea. It's popularity might only be tangentally related to CR.

CoC has had a continuous following across four decades, surely. I don't think it is just CR, but I think the online streaming crowd found out in the past year and a half that CoC 7E is amenable for streaming show purposes AND very different from D&D, which has put some skip in Chaosium's step, in terms of sales and VTT metrics

 

[Parmandur]

But that wasn't quite like the box sets from B&G and also not really ALL IN for 5e.

I've been told a lot that Paizo's strength was their adventure paths and their story telling. Is it still? I know hindsight is 20/20 but I think I said it before that maybe they should have embraced 5e AND been more supportive of PF1 and released things that tweaked 5e so they COULD tell the stories they wanted to tell. Though I still don't quite get why they couldn't tell the kind of stories in their past adventure paths using 5e.

I haven't really heard much chatter about new Paizo APs since they did a Giants one, and that was a few years ago...

 

[Jester David]

But that wasn't quite like the box sets from B&G and also not really ALL IN for 5e.

It was pretty damn comprehensive.
And it could be paired with a case of the Runelords minis released at the same time for a more all-in experience than B&G.

I've been told a lot that Paizo's strength was their adventure paths and their story telling. Is it still? I know hindsight is 20/20 but I think I said it before that maybe they should have embraced 5e AND been more supportive of PF1 and released things that tweaked 5e so they COULD tell the stories they wanted to tell. Though I still don't quite get why they couldn't tell the kind of stories in their past adventure paths using 5e.

The APs were the flagship line for the first few years. They put out accessories because they were needed to tell the APs they wanted to tell. (That's how we got Mythic Adventures. Because they wanted to tell Wrath of the Righteous.)
But a couple years in that really shifted and they did become the crunch company designing products for optimization. They still had APs, but they didn't seem to be the focus and forefront of their releases. Even the miniature line stopped really stopped supporting the new APs and was as much about classic figures.

Ironically, I think the shift came when they became the #1 RPG. So they stopped focusing as much on making adventures for the #1 RPG and instead started focusing on being the #1 RPG and making products designed to sustain and grow the industry. Stuff to attract new players like The Beginner's Box or the Strategy Guide.
When ranking their APs, the best are far and away the early ones, and they released some stinkers in the middle of PF1.
I think another factor was the popularity of the game and the setting. Because there were so many homebrew games, they became more reluctant to tell world shaking stories that changed large swaths of the world. Because that might upset people's homebrew. Meanwhile, each staff member had a region "dibbed" but because everyone was so busy doing rulebooks, those regions couldn't be touched or impacted.

And, as you say, if they had really been an Adventure company they might have embraced 5e and done some support or conversion guides. I was asking for those back in 2014 and 2015 as I wanted to keep supporting Paizo but was double-burnt-out from 3e and super happy with 5e.
In theory they have a 5e book coming out sometime in 2020, paired with the PF2 update of Kingmaker. But it's being released by a 3rd Party so there's nothing even approximating a hard deadline.

 

[BryonD]

The whole "Pathfinder" name comes directly from their legacy.
They were mostly a magazine company early on. Maybe more, but I don't recall much.
They did Amazing Stories for a bit, and I think they did a Star Wars gaming bit.
But their big thing was when they got the rights to run Dungeon and Dragon magazines for WotC.
Dungeon had some challenges and was lagging, but they started "Adventure Paths" with Shackled City and Age of Worms (another?) They became a really big hit.

Then WotC yanked the license NOT because anything was bad, but because they had a grand new unified plan for 4E.

The conversation to the now famous monthly adventure path publications was an attempt to perpetuate that success over from Dungeon magazine. It was considered a success. Though it was fairly controversial at the time.

I actually don't recall the timing on the APs vs the announcement of the Pathfinder RPG. But they didn't start publishing APs specifically for "Pathfinder" until issue #25. Before that they were all 3.5.

All of the above is pretty much from my memory of 13ish years ago. So don't trust it.

 

[Jester David]

CoC has had a continuous following across four decades, surely. I don't think it is just CR, but I think the online streaming crowd found out in the past year and a half that CoC 7E is amenable for streaming show purposes AND very different from D&D, which has put some skip in Chaosium's step, in terms of sales and VTT metrics

VTT metrics are a little skewed, as Roll20 is grouping all editions of CoC, really boosting numbers.

But CoC and inSANe are apparently huge in Korea, which likes it's horror and one-shots.
(I forget where I heard that though...)

I haven't really heard much chatter about new Paizo APs since they did a Giants one, and that was a few years ago...

Giantslayer was notoriously not good, but they've done some others since then that have been somewhat popular.

They did two very setting specific ones in Cheliax, with one being the "evil AP". They did another horror one, with a Lovecraftian feel that was apparently well received by those who like that sort of thing. And Iron Fang Invasion, which was the "war" story with hobgoblins (which was weird as it was set in the nation at war but didn't involve that nation's conquest of its neighbor).

Really, looking at their APs for 2016 onward, they are all setting specific. Which makes them a harder generic sell. There's no "pirate adventure" or "underdark adventure". That might have them a harder sell.
Or it could just be everyone's distracted by 5e and the classic APs...

 

[BryonD]

VTT metrics are a little skewed, as Roll20 is grouping all editions of CoC, really boosting numbers.

I think one could quibble here. Has there been any game that ever came close to producing new editions with less change in the actual game?

 

[Parmandur]

I think one could quibble here. Has there been any game that ever came close to producing new editions with less change in the actual game?

Most RPGs other than D&D and Pathfinder, actually.

 

[Parmandur]

VTT metrics are a little skewed, as Roll20 is grouping all editions of CoC, really boosting numbers.

But CoC and inSANe are apparently huge in Korea, which likes it's horror and one-shots.
(I forget where I heard that though...)


Giantslayer was notoriously not good, but they've done some others since then that have been somewhat popular.

They did two very setting specific ones in Cheliax, with one being the "evil AP". They did another horror one, with a Lovecraftian feel that was apparently well received by those who like that sort of thing. And Iron Fang Invasion, which was the "war" story with hobgoblins (which was weird as it was set in the nation at war but didn't involve that nation's conquest of its neighbor).

Really, looking at their APs for 2016 onward, they are all setting specific. Which makes them a harder generic sell. There's no "pirate adventure" or "underdark adventure". That might have them a harder sell.
Or it could just be everyone's distracted by 5e and the classic APs...

Yeah, I know they've been going on, I just don't hear anyone talk about them locally for the past few years.

CoC across every edition, from what I've heard, is pretty intercompatible, so it makes sense to lump it all together. Didn't know that about Korean gaming circles, that's interesting.

 

[BryonD]

Most RPGs other than D&D and Pathfinder, actually.

Well, scale is a thing.
GURPs 4E is much closer to GURPS 3E than anything D&D/PF post AD&D 2E. But there are still some significant differences. WHFRP has changed a million times (well, maybe 3 or 4). Don't even start on Traveler.
Vampire is pretty similar, but different.
Does Star Wars even count? Thats more like a theme that has hosted 13 different games....
Eh, there are certainly a lot of games I just don't know.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, scale is a thing.
GURPs 4E is much closer to GURPS 3E than anything D&D/PF post AD&D 2E. But there are still some significant differences. WHFRP has changed a million times (well, maybe 3 or 4). Don't even start on Traveler.
Vampire is pretty similar, but different.
Does Star Wars even count? Thats more like a theme that has hosted 13 different games....
Eh, there are certainly a lot of games I just don't know.

• GURPS has edition changes, and while the differences aren't nothing, they are about the same as CoC.
• WHFRP is mostly the same across editions, with the exception of the FFG narrative dice version (IIRC, and I may not).
• Traveller has a plethora of republications that are mighty heady, but...except for the oddball 90's Moment that was "The New Era" (which went over worse than 4E D&D), it's all pretty much the same as CoC in terms of changes (I don't count the setting material for other games: GURPS, HERO and d20 Traveller).
• Vampire is about the same as CoC on that count.
• Star Wars is definitely a series of totally different games that happen to utilize a common setting.
• Similarly with Star Trek games
• HERO had like 6 editions, about as different as CoC editions.
• RuneQuest and BRP various editions are even largely identical to CoC, let alone each other!
• RoleMaster and MERP had some edition changes, in the same ballpark.

But, yeah, you have a point about the scale for D&D being different.