Pathfinder 1E Could Pathfinder take D&D's place...

[prosfilaes]

Wrong.

A bald assertion, made with no evidence or even argument.

You're talking about what you like versus what you don't like.

No. When I'm talking about Pathfinder sales versus D&D 4e sales, I'm talking about how to find, correlate, and interpret a collection of data of varying reliability and generality. I'm talking about the real world. That's interesting.

 

[Pentius]

The answer to the last question is duh. Successful lines are going to have more support. Unsuccessful lines are going to have less support. How many games have really keep going for a decade? Two? The best way to make sure we have a 3.x-style version of D&D in a decade is that Pathfinder poses a serious challenge to spot #1 and stays there.

PF doing well will of course lead to more PF(and more power to Paizo, I am enjoying their APs, even if I play them via 4e), but I think the #1 spot means little, so long as the game is profitable. WotC supports 4e, Paizo PF. If one is #1 and the other #2, both are making profit and both will be supported. Since each is made by a different company, they don't really compete for design resources.

 

[PaizoCEO]

I don't think Pathfinder will ever have the visibility or mass market penetration of D&D. It's great at what it's doing right now but I don't think it will ever have anything near the kind of awareness D&D has.

Just marking this comment so we can all come back to it in five to ten years.

Having been part of the team who made Vampire: the Masquerade and Magic: The Gathering famous, I think Pathfinder could very well be widely known in five years or so. Maybe even up to the 90th percentile in 10 years. Especially if we play our cards right.

So I wouldn't say never. Especially with me working behind the scenes.

-Lisa

 

[PaizoCEO]

"Make no mistake, it's Ryan's business model we're following."

What I was talking about with that quote wasn't a reference to the OGL per se, but rather, the business plan for D&D 3e that Ryan, myself and our team came up with. The plan was to only come out with 3 to 4 hardcover books a year. We also planned to try to create adventures that became iconic for the line. Adventures that everyone who played D&D 3e would point to as amazing gaming moments. We also had the plan to embrace 3rd party publishers and their ability to cover the niches that we weren't going to cover. THAT is the plan that we are using right now for Pathfinder.

Why didn't WotC follow that plan? Well, because the team that came up with it either left the company, got laid off, or got moved to other parts of the company before leaving. So with new staff in place within a year of launch, the vision changed to what we ended up with.

So now we get to see how our business philosophy plays out with Pathfinder.

-Lisa

 

[Crispy Critter]

What I was talking about with that quote wasn't a reference to the OGL per se, but rather, the business plan for D&D 3e that Ryan, myself and our team came up with. The plan was to only come out with 3 to 4 hardcover books a year. We also planned to try to create adventures that became iconic for the line. Adventures that everyone who played D&D 3e would point to as amazing gaming moments. We also had the plan to embrace 3rd party publishers and their ability to cover the niches that we weren't going to cover. THAT is the plan that we are using right now for Pathfinder.

Why didn't WotC follow that plan? Well, because the team that came up with it either left the company, got laid off, or got moved to other parts of the company before leaving. So with new staff in place within a year of launch, the vision changed to what we ended up with.

So now we get to see how our business philosophy plays out with Pathfinder.

-Lisa

I like this plan. Especially the adventures part. I've found that the memorable modules are the shared experience of the D&D community. Meaning if I started a thread with "Remember X in the Tomb of Horrors...." you could have thousands of people relating their experiences playing through that module. It's a little tougher to do that with no or poorly made adventure support and folks playing their various home brews.

Hopefully this will be true of Pathfinder. Maybe in 20 years threads will be created with titles like "This happened to us in Harrowstone Prison..." or "I played the lead role in the Six Trials of Larazod...".

 

[technoextreme]

(Let me explain, then. You seemed to be brushing off any criticism of WotC as pure bias. While I'm certainly not going to call WotC an "evil faceless corporation," they do come off as...well, somewhat more impersonal than Paizo. Whether or not this actually has anything to do with WotC's being a subdivision of Hasbro—a larger corporation that's not focused primarily on tabletop RPGs—is anyone's guess. But even so.

See?)

Are you kidding me? I only know of Paizo because of Wizards of the Coast. Someone who has never played a roleplaying game in his life is going to have is going to have a greater chance of learning about D&D than Paizo can ever hope to achieve.

 

[brewdus]

Are you kidding me? I only know of Paizo because of Wizards of the Coast. Someone who has never played a roleplaying game in his life is going to have is going to have a greater chance of learning about D&D than Paizo can ever hope to achieve.

I don't think this is an issue, because it seems to me Paizo's target audience, right now, is existing gamers. With the release of the Beginner Box they may be trying for a broader customer base, but current gamers remain their main customer. On the other hand, I think it's pretty clear with 4e, WOTC was going for a wider audience!

 

[Androrc]

Are you kidding me? I only know of Paizo because of Wizards of the Coast. Someone who has never played a roleplaying game in his life is going to have is going to have a greater chance of learning about D&D than Paizo can ever hope to achieve.

I... don't see how your post relates much to what he said?

Did you understand by "faceless" that Wizards is not notable? That isn't what he probably meant - he probably meant that Wizards' treatment of fans isn't as personal as Paizo's.

 

[billd91]

Are you kidding me? I only know of Paizo because of Wizards of the Coast. Someone who has never played a roleplaying game in his life is going to have is going to have a greater chance of learning about D&D than Paizo can ever hope to achieve.

...ever hope to achieve? I don't know about that. That's the kind of thinking that has General Sedgwick saying "They can't hit an elephant at this distance" before being killed at Spotsylvania.

It may be a difficult goal to achieve and they may never achieve it. But I'm never going to say that it's more than they can hope to achieve.

 

[prosfilaes]

Are you kidding me? I only know of Paizo because of Wizards of the Coast. Someone who has never played a roleplaying game in his life is going to have is going to have a greater chance of learning about D&D than Paizo can ever hope to achieve.

Sic transit gloria mundi. Ludum te esse memento! Memento mori!