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But there is a downside to going that high with published campaigns: Much of the appeal of these mega-campaigns comes from the narrative arc of reaching the big bad, defeating it, and concluding the epic. But if only a fraction of groups reach than conclusion, most groups have an unsatisfying...

I don't have any data to back this up (or that I'm willing to look up at the moment), but from what I gather most campaigns last less than a year and break up by 10th level. Players leave the group, they get tired of the campaign and their PCs, a TPK wipes out the party, combats bog down and...

I'd be willing to bet that number is lower for Pathfinder players. Golarion is baked into Pathfinder. Almost every Pathfinder actual play podcast or stream is an adventure path. And again, I don't have a link, but I'm certain I've read Paizo higher-ups remark that their AP subscription is their...

I imagine it's for the same reason that back when most Christians believed in miracles, the reason they were told they still had to suffer and die was because enduring that pain was part of the plan. Also, I've always assumed that in a polytheistic fantasy world with many mutually-hostile...

Who says clerics in my games go around healing everybody, like they're physicians? My games still have sickness, pestilence, disease, injury, death.

For the same reason a world could be full of magic and not have industrial agriculture, public plumbing and sanitation, zeppelins, penicillin, modern dentistry, or smart phones: because not all us of treat magic like technology. Some of us don't have any problem reconciling technologically and...

I wouldn't expect it to affect your PCs. As you note, PCs are unusual by nature. However, in a world that lacks modern technology like reliable birth control, and where warfare and travel are muscle-powered, it may seem implausible for half the castle guards, or half a pirate vessel crew to be...

Ah, okay. Then I don't think we have enough common ground to have a meaningful exchange. I never played PF1, and my interest in PF2 is will it earn enough money to sustain an output of quality RPG books. While I believe system matters very much to you, I don't believe it matters to the great...

Paizo's hopes for PF2 lie in converting 5E players. They can't rely on PF1 players alone, because barring the kind of boom we're seeing with D&D today (which is all about Stranger Things, Critical Role, and all things nerdy being normalized, not bounded accuracy or the action economy) the...

When it comes to RPGs, I don't think system matters as much as the obsessives who post about systems on forums think. I mean, they matter. But not at the granular level that people get in spats over on forums. When D&D Next came out, system wonks shat all over it for being incoherent...

Sure. For my part, I don't think PF2 will take off until Paizo delivers a hit adventure path. Because as much as number-crunching character optimizers and systems wonks tend to dominate forums, APs have always been what drove take-up of Pathfinder, not the math behind character progression.

I don't disagree with anything you say. I'm not defending Paizo or claiming that PF2 has been a big success. I'm just pointing out that they have a very different business model from WotC and other RPGs companies, a model where it's difficult to learn much from Amazon sales ranks.

I don't have any links, but I do recall reading comments by Paizo insiders that their subscriptions account for something like half of their revenue. That was the case when they published Dragon and Dungeon magazines (obviously - all magazines earn the bulk of their money from subscriptions)...

Paizo's subscription plans are their bread and butter. That's the primary metric they'll use to gauge the success of PF2. Of course, there's no reason for them to share that information.

I wouldn't worry about what unimaginative DMs who feel everything needs to spelled out for them feel about your adventures.

The wealth of DM advice available online today is a mixed blessing. Yes, it's nice to draw on the experience of dozens of long-time DMs, or watch personalities like Matt Colville, Matt Mercer, and Chris Perkins do their thing. However, all that advice has fostered unrealistically high...

It's a much more complex system than it seems at first blush. And while the mechanics read well, and are all very evocative of Middle Earth and the source material, they do not mesh together well. The various sub-systems seem tacked together. And as a rules reference, the books were awful...

Judging by ToR 1e, at least, Crucible 7's expertise lies in making beautifully presented games that read great, but fall down at the table in gameplay. We gave it four sessions and gave up in frustration. But that's a wider problem in the hobby - outside a handful of the biggies, most RPGs...

You know about makes of vehicles because A) you've seen them on the road, and B) you've seen pictures of them on TV and the internet. Neither of those apply to monsters in my campaigns, where: A) Most people have rarely if ever seen a monster. And those only the most common. PCs begin as...

You're assuming my games are meant to evoke action movies. There are all kinds of ways to approach D&D/Pathfinder.