Pathfinder 2E Is It Time for PF2 "Essentials"?

[fearsomepirate]

My impression is that Pathfinder 2 is doing sufficiently well, though not quite as well when Pathfinder 1 came out and just dominated the D&D market for years. There's a couple of measures for that, but one thing I thought telling is the sort of missing support from OGL publishers who've historically strongly supported Pathfinder during 1e. E.g. Kobold Press. I recently took a look at their Midgard World Book and would have bought it, but then realized that Kobold Press isn't supporting Pathfinder 2. Don't know why, maybe they're just in a wait and see position. I have no idea. I do suspect, however, that if Pathfinder 2 had a large enough OGL market, then publishers like Kobold Press would jump to support it. Same for other big OGL supporters of Paizo back during its 1e era, e.g. Necromancer / Frog God Games.

Paizo during its 1e era had about the same market share as WotC, and of course, WotC's 4e license was extremely restrictive, so that hardly any 3rd parties bothered with it. Today, D&D alone is something like half the total market, and P2e's share appears to be in the single digits. If you're a small publisher making 3rd-party product, the potential payoff from using your limited resources to make another 5e product rather than translating it to PF2e product seems like a no-brainer.

The main problem with PF2 is that it is not a role-playing game. It is a tactical wargame with role-playing elements. And its not even a good board game - it is way too complicated for that. This is the same problem 4E had. Paizo stopped supporting DnD when they went to 4E - I just can't see why they then made a version of 4E themselves. This is the error from which most other errors stem.

I noticed the same thing. It seems that in trying to solve the problems of the 3rd edition system, they ended up backing into a lot of the same solutions Heinsoo et al came up with.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I'm still just utterly baffled by the people who think PF2 isn't a roleplaying game. It's such a weird, foreign idea to me, like creating rules to adjudicate situations suddenly eliminates any sort of roleplay possibilities.

 

[Teemu]

Apparently 5e is also a board game because PCs and NPCs don’t follow the same rules.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I'm still just utterly baffled by the people who think PF2 isn't a roleplaying game. It's such a weird, foreign idea to me, like creating rules to adjudicate situations suddenly eliminates any sort of roleplay possibilities.

Well a lot of people who went to PF1 said the same thing about 4e, and it was equally wrong then too.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Apparently 5e is also a board game because PCs and NPCs don’t follow the same rules.

They do follow the same rules. You can create them differently if you want, but you don’t have too. I think it is the same in PF2

 

[kenada]

I'm still just utterly baffled by the people who think PF2 isn't a roleplaying game. It's such a weird, foreign idea to me, like creating rules to adjudicate situations suddenly eliminates any sort of roleplay possibilities.

It’s obvious that PF2 isn’t just a “wargame” given the effort put into exploration, which is more developed in PF2 than it is in PF1 or any edition of D&D released in the last twenty years. Which seems to be the problem. The issues being attributed to PF2 are also things that classic D&D did. 3e was generally unique in its approach to that stuff.

 

[Retreater]

This weekend I played 4 Pathfinder Society games through a virtual convention. I can say it is a role-playing game - not just a "tactical boardgame."
Did we do investigations? Yes, in every one of the sessions.
Did we use skills to overcome non combat situations? Multiple times every session.
Did we handle scenes not on a battle map? Yes, in cases when the situations warranted it.
Did we roleplay with among the party, NPCs, and make decisions to suit our characters? Yes, in nearly every moment of the game we did those things.
Did we loot, gain experience, interact with a story? Yes.
Did we each customize characters with a variety of options including ancestry, background, and class (with countless options of further customization)? Absolutely.
So what makes this experience not a role-playing game, aside from your preference level of tactical play? Nothing. It's a roleplaying game. You might not like it, and that's fair. But it's not a boardgame, the same as 4e isn't a boardgame.

 

[Teemu]

They do follow the same rules. You can create them differently if you want, but you don’t have too. I think it is the same in PF2

Not a single officially published NPC in 5e uses the PC creation rules. They don’t get feats or ASIs, they don’t get XP, they don’t have inspiration. All built with the “monster” creation rules.

 

[Aldarc]

So what makes this experience not a role-playing game, aside from your preference level of tactical play?

"I like it" = RPG.
"I dislike it" = Not a RPG.

 

[Windjammer]

(Sorry, double post)