Pathfinder 2E Paizo Officially Supporting Foundry, Free Content Ending

[Retreater]

Am I in a parallel universe where we're supposed to celebrate a company re-selling us content? Like I should dance like NoNat?
It's one thing to admit we were spoiled. One thing to admit that things were probably too good to continue like that were. But come on! This isn't good news. It's merely that the good news has ended and we're being hit with what we should expect.

 

[Blue]

@Retreater , think of this as two steps.

1. FryGuy is retiring. There is no more free content.
2. Instead of there no being any source of that content, Paizo will make it (for a cost).

So it's not that it's going from free to at-cost and people are celebrating. It's that it was getting dropped, but instead of no option there will be a high quality option for those who want to pay.

 

[Retreater]

@Retreater , think of this as two steps.

1. FryGuy is retiring. There is no more free content.
2. Instead of there no being any source of that content, Paizo will make it (for a cost).

So it's not that it's going from free to at-cost and people are celebrating. It's that it was getting dropped, but instead of no option there will be a high quality option for those who want to pay.

I heard about #2 before I heard about #1, which came right on the heels of the Nexus announcement, Pathbuilder's access ending on Foundry, etc.
But, no, it's not "good" news for players or fans. I'm not going to dance about it.

 

[JThursby]

Man, this hate on the Foundry support just goes to show there's literally nothing Paizo can do to please some people.

-Paizo doesn't release paid content for Foundry = Paizo ignores Foundry users and is too stupid to make money.
-Paizo does release paid content for Foundry = Paizo is exploiting fans and is too greed for money.
-Paizo sticks with PF1e = Paizo is a one trick pony that can't change with the times.
-Paizo moves on to a 2nd edition = Paizo is abandoning it's core fans.

And so on, with so many issues. Out of all the hate-sinks in this industry, Paizo is perhaps one of the least deserving but most receiving targets.

You do realize nothing is stopping people from doing what Fryguy did right? There was no legal action or backdoor threat that made him step down. That module drove lots of sales towards the AP PDFs so people could use them easily, why would Paizo want it shut down? So people can do literally the same thing again if anyone wants to do more of that work, and in general people can still post their homemade maps and assets and whatnot. And the assertion that you have to re-buy everything is only really true of Abomination vaults. Every other official Foundry adventure has parity with the PDF price. You either get the PDF for free when you buy the Foundry version, or the Foundry version is discounted by the price of the PDF if you already own it. Only reason it doesn't work with AV is because the Foundry version is based on the Anniversary edition.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I am waiting for the scraping of D&D Beyond to end as well.

 

[Retreater]

Man, this hate on the Foundry support just goes to show there's literally nothing Paizo can do to please some people.

FWIW, I guess you can take comfort in the fact I'm the only person in the world complaining about this. Others are making dancing reaction videos on YouTube and making kissing noises at Foundry and Paizo. (Not exaggerating... )
Maybe it will be okay, if...

• Content is available to buy after PDF to Foundry stops working with the newest release of Foundry. I don't want to lose the stuff I'm actively running. If I have to pay a surcharge to get it to work - if I'm already running it - I'll begrudgingly do it. (I'm concerned that they've announced Beginner Box, Abomination Vaults, and the next AP - Alkenstar? The next thing I was planning to run was Troubles in Otari, which might have compatibility problems by the time I get around to running it.)
• They don't make us pay through the nose for it. And the compendium packs are still available. Speaking of which, what sort of discount are we getting? I just bought Bestiary 2 , is it going to be $59.99 (discounted with the $15 I spent on the PDF)?

I am waiting for the scraping of D&D Beyond to end as well.

DND Beyond is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. But that's a hot take for another day.

 

[JThursby]

If I had to guess, based on previous deals with Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, the Foundry versions will cost the Hardcover price. That's just speculation, mind you, but that's how they've priced it before for the Adventure Paths.

As for the rulebooks and token art and whatnot, they've already said they're skeptical about reselling their entire catalogue on a platform that has most of the rules content for free under the community use policy. There's no indication that there will even be a way to buy the Bestiaries on Foundry, since everything but the images are in the compendium. If their goal was to just do a lazy cash in on their art assets they would have done that already. IMO they should just let the Foundry team use whatever images are on AoN already for free and call it a day on tokens, especially since PDF to Foundry already has a way to map Bestiary images to tokens.

 

[kenada]

This is anti-fan and probably a start of things to come as can begin shutting down other PF2 fan content (Archives of Nethys, Pathbuilder, etc.) to encourage other digital subscriptions (Nexus?)

Paizo is one of the most permissive publishers when it comes to the OGL. For them to stop Archives of Nethys from hosting new content, they would have to abandon it for all content going forward. I can’t see that’s happening. That would be a huge change for them and have implications beyond just its affect on the home of the PRD.

 

[payn]

Is it that difficult to take the AP PDFs and put the content into Foundry yourself? (Honest question, I'm doing it for Traveller right now myself and find its pretty easy while being a little bit of a time sink)

 

[Retreater]

Is it that difficult to take the AP PDFs and put the content into Foundry yourself? (Honest question, I'm doing it for Traveller right now myself and find its pretty easy while being a little bit of a time sink)

It was a nightmare on Roll20 (because it didn't have access to the NPC and monster stat blocks) - if you recall I put Abomination Vaults on there, and probably put in 80ish hours to get the first two books put in.
On Foundry, it wouldn't be as bad, because at least you have access to the monster stats from the compendia. I do think it's more time intensive to create tokens and maps on Foundry than Roll20, but at least you've got stat blocks.
But if it came down to that point, I would just write my own adventures.
Pathfinder is a different beast from Traveller. You have a lot more combat, with more detailed stat blocks, unique magic items that have to be entered, etc.