Pathfinder 2E Will the OGL fiasco increase third party support for Pathfinder?

[Velderan]

No only a few people will switch over. D&d is much easier to play and better for mass appeal . Pathfinder would have to come out with version 3.0 and literally d&d would stop selling at Barnes and noble etc.
other than here most local gamers aren’t even aware of 3rd party publishers

The cleaned out shelves at stores in my area, as well as online sellers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble either having delayed shipping or just being sold out would seem to indicate you might be mistaken.

And let's be real, that's good for people who stick with 5e because WotC will have to put out better products if they lose enough market to Paizo.

 

[SteveC]

According to Paizo's Twitter, their entire print from of the Core Rulebook 4th printing sold out. It was released in December. I think there may be a few people trying it out.

 

[SteveC]

I loved Pathfinder but I find it really hard now to go back to the maths. Leaving bounded accuracy behind as a DM is a wrench once you have it.

One of the best things about Pathfinder 2E is the math, which works incredibly well and is not at all what they did with 1E. And if you like Bounded Accuracy, they actually have it as a rules option.

Enough PF2 advocacy for me, though: I'm starting a new 5E campaign tonight which I'm stoked about.

 

[ScYork]

According to Paizo's Twitter, their entire print from of the Core Rulebook 4th printing sold out. It was released in December. I think there may be a few people trying it out.

Good!

 

[Kichwas]

D&d is much easier to play

The people I know who have played both tell me the exact opposite.

Then again I'm playing online through VTTs. But even without them - the actual math in play seems shockingly simple in large part because it's repetitively consistent.

To add to some of the stats above, we're now also being told that the Humble Bundle which has the rules and more sold over 100,000 copies BEFORE it was extended. Now what I don't know is if they're cheating that stat or not - if by 100,000 sales do they mean the bundle, or the individual items in it totaled up?

That said, even if they did "cheat" the number and count each individual item as a sale (meaning my one purchase was about '20' in that stat rather than '1' - it would still be a very impressive number of sales in so short a period of time.

I'm getting the impression we're seeing a wave right now.

That said, if you're doing VTTs and in any place other than Foundry it might look dead - because any sane online GM moves their game to Foundry as soon as they can afford the thing, and once they do it starts to look like PF2E is a nearly dead game if you're only counting somewhere like Roll20 where PF1E is still played.

Another side effect of all the sales Paizo has had and the Humble Bundle is that it might look quieter in some local shops than the actual activity is even in that community. I guess that begs the question of do PF2E players need to make a push to support their local shops more or am I just imagining this based on responses in this thread alone?

 

[wicked cool]

The people I know who have played both tell me the exact opposite.

Then again I'm playing online through VTTs. But even without them - the actual math in play seems shockingly simple in large part because it's repetitively consistent.

To add to some of the stats above, we're now also being told that the Humble Bundle which has the rules and more sold over 100,000 copies BEFORE it was extended. Now what I don't know is if they're cheating that stat or not - if by 100,000 sales do they mean the bundle, or the individual items in it totaled up?

That said, even if they did "cheat" the number and count each individual item as a sale (meaning my one purchase was about '20' in that stat rather than '1' - it would still be a very impressive number of sales in so short a period of time.

I'm getting the impression we're seeing a wave right now.

That said, if you're doing VTTs and in any place other than Foundry it might look dead - because any sane online GM moves their game to Foundry as soon as they can afford the thing, and once they do it starts to look like PF2E is a nearly dead game if you're only counting somewhere like Roll20 where PF1E is still played.

Another side effect of all the sales Paizo has had and the Humble Bundle is that it might look quieter in some local shops than the actual activity is even in that community. I guess that begs the question of do PF2E players need to make a push to support their local shops more or am I just imagining this based on responses in this thread alone?

My local flgs stopped selling pathfinder minis and maybe most books. Same with book stores like barnes

 

[nevin]

They got a huge boost from the initial reaction to the OGL. I know several people that ordered PF2e books but none of them are playing it.

I think thier numbers will drop back to pre OGL but I'm sure the big boost of selling out their books will help the company.

I don't see many people in my area looking for 2e groups and the gaming stores usually have a few rulebooks and nothing else.

 

[Retreater]

I really like PF2, but I don't see it getting wide support from FLGS or 3PP. Like Chris Pine, Pathfinder is yesterday's jam.

 

[Kichwas]

I really like PF2, but I don't see it getting wide support from FLGS or 3PP.

Maybe not from FLGS'. But I'm not convinced that's the important metric.

I haven't really used local shops since the early 2000s. I can't be alone in that.

The thing about all these people buying PF2E right now is that they're still doing it. That Humble Bundle is flying off the digital shelves.

If you go on Roll20 - "nobody" is looking for or offering PF2E games. But not because it's dead, because that's a bad place to look - it's poorly implemented there. Flip over to Discord and there are groups looking for players to play on Foundry or Discord or pretty much anywhere but Roll20 that often fill out a whole table in minutes.

Right now the big issue is a shortage of GMs.

People "just got" the books - a pattern I see repeated over and over on Discord is "hey I just got PF2E and am going to run a game if anyone's interested" followed by some 20 responses before I can even manage to get my fingers to my keyboard.

If someone says "hey I just got PF2E and am looking for a game to join" they get met with that 'cowboy movie noise' as a tumbleweed rolls by across their screen because there's just not enough GMs.

In person would make sense to be even worse. At a local shop you're always pulling from a smaller pool of people - and until one of the GMs out there feels comfortable running a game, it's gonna be tumbleweeds rolling across the table. Local shops can't compete against folks buying the Humble Bundle or wanting to 'support the ORC' by buying direct.

For the end consumer it is smarter to buy PF2E direct from Paizo with the subscription - you get a PDF and print book for just the copy of a print book. So PF2E buyers start to appear to 'vanish' from the perspective of local stores. I know a lot of people would consider that a bad move on Paizo's part. Maybe it is, but I got it anyway. Better than buying off Amazon, and I've not had the 'local shop' option in a few decades.

I don't think PF2E's yesterday's game. I see discussion of it all over the Internet, albeit not much here - which is kind of why I've not been tempted to return to this site for some time. The fandom here is moving one way and I'm moving another and right now we're in a brief moment of PF2E hype that has us intersecting but I will probably blow away with the next rush of Tumbleweeds. Not for any reason against folks here. Just this isn't the hangout spot for Pathfinder players.

I don't think PF2E has any chance right now of dethroning D&D again. It might once OneD&D hits - all depends on what that ends up being. But right now too many D&D folks would prefer to pretend the last 2 months didn't happen, because their current game still meets their needs.

BUT I don't think PF2E is suffering. Six months ago I might have thought so, but not now. A lot of people, even fans like me, had a misinformed impression of the game thanks to a select few YouTubers, and that really hurt the game. But now it's in 100,000 more hands that it was just a few days ago, and people are ramping up to play it.


Third Party folks will notice numbers like that, so books will start showing up there as well. Though maybe most of them will be sold as PDFs only.

 

[SteveC]

I think there is a lot of wishful thinking on both ends of the spectrum. There are clearly a lot of people looking at Pathfinder at the moment from the OGL issue but also from word of mouth. Clearly some of these people are going to like the game and keep playing. That's helped tremendously by the Foundry VTT and Beginner's Box module, which are excellent. And the Abomination Vaults gives them a full campaign to go and do next.

So I don't really get anyone who says "meh, interest in it is just a fad." Yes, much of that interest is going to be that, but many people are going to like PF2 because it gives them the kind of game that they want and that 5E does not. There's been a lot of people saying that and to be fair I am one of them (although I am also playing a 5E game, so I continue to be a gaming Daywalker). Pathfinder may not be the game for people talking "fad" like this, but to deny that it does things that people wanting more crunch or customization in their game are looking for is just silly.

And on the other hand, anyone who is saying PF2 is going to supplant 5E (or 6E for that matter) are also certainly mistaken. It would take another monumental gaming mistake or somehow returning to the ideas that caused the OGL problem in the first place for anything like that to happen. Honestly I haven't seen a lot of those comments, but I'm sure there are some people like this out there.

So yeah, it's a good time to be Paizo, but I wouldn't buy that Paizo Goblin yacht quite yet.