Pathfinder 2E How is Pathfinder doing?

[Lucas Yew]

It's not available for free, but Legend (which is a variant of RuneQuest) is available for $1.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

Ah, when I said "free" I meant it more in the likes of "being free of getting sued if you casually throw stat blocks built with said game's rules on free/cheap short fantasy stories you've written on the Internet" kind of thing.

Apprently I heard the infamous TSR in its latter half did just that (and will never do so with GURPS stats, otherwise my favorite level of granuality, as I am quite scared of how SJG might react)...

 

[Campbell]

Ah, when I said "free" I meant it more in the likes of "being free of getting sued if you casually throw stat blocks built with said game's rules on free/cheap short fantasy stories you've written on the Internet" kind of thing.

Apprently I heard the infamous TSR in its latter half did just that (and will never do so with GURPS stats, otherwise my favorite level of granuality, as I am quite scared of how SJG might react)...

I don't think that's a big deal anymore, but if it's something you care about Legend is OGL.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Huh, the BRP system was "simulationist" in that regard?
A shame I never got to know about it beforehand, as I usually tried to look for legally free rules firstmost when searching for simulationist rule systems... (and I don't like the cosmic horror atmosphere for its most popular version, CoC...)

Arguably most BRP games lead into simulationist approaches in general. Certainly that was true with RQ in its early days (and as I used to know Steve Perrin quite well, it was not at all accidental). There were things about monsters that were not available to PCs and vice versa in a few cases, but fundamentally, attributes were on the same (not really linear) scale, things that were done with skills were done with skills, and there was really no great attempt to balance among the typically played nonhuman and human types (Gloranthan trolls were, for the most part, just better (in terms of being bigger and stronger while having no particular weak spots other than the intrinsic ones in being big) than humans, and the reasons for not playing one if you cared about such things were practical and social in the setting rather than numerical).

But BRP games were also much more built to a common metric than games in the D&D-sphere, so the fact that everything had the same attributes and the like didn't make NPCs particularly difficult to manage, because there was far less special casing to keep track of.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

On the subject of this thread, Michael Sayre posted this thanks to the community on reddit, following up on Pathfinder winning that recent award, it talks about some of the struggles the company faced during COVID and how PF2E's strong sales have helped to keep the company afloat.

Separately from anything said by Paizo people, there's also been an influx of new players recently that we've noticed has been coinciding with announcements elsewhere in the TTRPG space-- the sub just recently had some jumps and is now 50k strong, and we're getting a lot of new player threads daily over there.

I'm just happy to share that my favorite game is still doing well, here's hoping we have more years of growth ahead! I think it's very possible with the way the TTRPG space has grown in the last decade.

 

[Teemu]

It’s very interesting to hear that Pathfinder 2e is Paizo’s best selling product line ever. We now have official confirmation that it’s become more successful than Pathfinder 1e.

 

[Staffan]

It’s very interesting to hear that Pathfinder 2e is Paizo’s best selling product line ever. We now have official confirmation that it’s become more successful than Pathfinder 1e.

I think it's part of the "rising tide" of D&D. 5e brought a LOT of people into RPGs, and some portion of those people would eventually get bored with the relatively flat mechanics and look for something else. And Pathfinder has been very well positioned as "D&D but more".

It's a bit of a shame that their early adventure paths have had some rough patches and design that doesn't work well with the system, or it could have been even more successful.

 

[Retreater]

It's a bit of a shame that their early adventure paths have had some rough patches and design that doesn't work well with the system, or it could have been even more successful.

Yeah. If they'd started with the beginner box, then picked up with Abomination Vaults, I think it could've been a stronger start.
Those early APs soured several groups I know from the system entirely.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Theoretically, the reason the Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults were as great as they were was because of the feedback and criticism directed at those early Adventure Paths; for the Beginner Box especially, it may have been a blessing to have had those early rough patches to allow them to know what to avoid for an introductary adventure. It is somewhat a chicken and the egg scenario.

It does appear at-least that Age of Ashes with tuning can be a lot of fun as I have seen some later groups express happiness with it from reading various things online. The balance issues of earlier APs might actually be a lesser issues than the thematic issues of Extinction Curse , which I have heard does not stick super well to its circus theme, and Agents of Edgewatch - which was quite controversal in the community* as it launched very soon after George Floyd was murdered by police officers and presented the police as capable of no wrong and able to straight up murder suspects. That AP also did not stick super well to the idea of being a police member in Abaslom.

* I have always suepcted that Agents of Edgewatch contributed to Paizo unionising as it seemed several writers and staff members at Pazio only let the Adventure Path release because it would have been financially ruinious not to.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Age of Ashes was a good AP in a way--but I'd not wanted to have played it with a four person group that was not hybrids, which our group was. There were some serious rough spots.

 

[payn]

Theoretically, the reason the Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults were as great as they were was because of the feedback and criticism directed at those early Adventure Paths; for the Beginner Box especially, it may have been a blessing to have had those early rough patches to allow them to know what to avoid for an introductary adventure. It is somewhat a chicken and the egg scenario.

It does appear at-least that Age of Ashes with tuning can be a lot of fun as I have seen some later groups express happiness with it from reading various things online. The balance issues of earlier APs might actually be a lesser issues than the thematic issues of Extinction Curse , which I have heard does not stick super well to its circus theme, and Agents of Edgewatch - which was quite controversal in the community* as it launched very soon after George Floyd was murdered by police officers and presented the police as capable of no wrong and able to straight up murder suspects. That AP also did not stick super well to the idea of being a police member in Abaslom.

* I have always suepcted that Agents of Edgewatch contributed to Paizo unionising as it seemed several writers and staff members at Pazio only let the Adventure Path release because it would have been financially ruinious not to.

A little nit-pick on my part, but I dont think Abomination Vaults was popular because Paizo figured out how to write a good PF2 AP. I think it was popular because it had been ages since a non-linear path without experimental systems had been attempted. It was sold as an old school dungeon crawl (which I think PF2 does poorly) and only went to level 10. I think it would actually do very well in a 5E conversion.