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

[brewdus]

Paizo making products for 4e wold be like WOTC making products for Pathfinder/3e. Not a smart business model!

 

[Pentius]

Paizo making products for 4e wold be like WOTC making products for Pathfinder/3e. Not a smart business model!

I disagree. 4e is notoriously poor in the module area. Paizo is known for being good at it. If Paizo tossed some 4e conversions our way, they'd gain subscribers. The question is, how many PF fans would abandon them for selling to 4e fans? It's one area, at least, where the edition wars aren't good for Paizo.

 

[Ettin]

Good job dismissing all the evidence. After you've got rid of all the evidence, we're left with pure mathematical probability, which gives us a 50/50 chance Pathfinder is beating D&D4

Somewhere, a mathematics major is having an aneurysm.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Somewhere, a mathematics major is having an aneurysm.

No, just weeping, quietly. Mathematicians have been through worse... much worse.

They are more hardy than you think.

I will admit, however, that if another company wanted to license and republish 4e conversions of older Adventure Paths, it might be good for Paizo, since they would not need to use their own resources in the conversions. (Crimson Throne is great in 3.5, runs well in Pathfinder, I see no reason that it would do poorly in 4e.)

It ain't gonna happen, most like, but... maybe EN Publishing? They do have experience translating between the two systems.

The Auld Grump

 

[Pentius]

No, just weeping, quietly. Mathematicians have been through worse... much worse.

They are more hardy than you think.

I will admit, however, that if another company wanted to license and republish 4e conversions of older Adventure Paths, it might be good for Paizo, since they would not need to use their own resources in the conversions. (Crimson Throne is great in 3.5, runs well in Pathfinder, I see no reason that it would do poorly in 4e.)

It ain't gonna happen, most like, but... maybe EN Publishing? They do have experience translating between the two systems.

The Auld Grump

If anyone could do it, ENworld can. The Zeitgeist path is just awesome. And the neutral path taken by providing it to 4e and PF is awesome. Gamers of every stripe deserve awesome adventures, not just those who prefer one system over another. You know what I'm sayin'?

 

[IronWolf]

Paizo's current problem is that they've married themselves to an older system and that's one of their chief aspects. If they want to expand they will have to ditch 3.5 at some point and come out with an improved system. But, in their current model, that will mean that they'll lose people that think 3.5 was Gygax's Dream System Which None Could Supplant.

Certainly seems like a problem to me. Two years of sweeping the ENnies with their products, increasing ICv2 numbers, reasonable rankings at Amazon and numerous anecdotal reports from various forums and blog postings. While you might not want to agree that they are doing better than 4e, there is certainly an indication that they are only getting stronger over the course of the past 2 years or so.

While the Core Rulebook was basically a reprinting of 3.x with some improvements or changes, the APG was a shift of adding the Pathfinder flavor to things. A subtle shift, but a shift that many, many people appear to be happy with.

And they don't need to make everyone happy. It seems certain they won't be making you happy. That's cool! It seems you enjoy 4e, so we both get to play a system we enjoy - choice is a wonderful thing and not an indicator that we need to tear the system we don't prefer down or try to announce they are doing it wrong.

You're under the very, very silly assumption that Hasbro concerns itself with WotC dealings. WotC very likely gets a carte blanche. They've got M:tG, anything else they do is icing on the delicious money cake. Hasbro likely won't get involved because WotC is a couple percentage points, at best, of their actual earnings and they have much bigger fish to fry.

This actually seems like something that if I were a big WotC fan I would find concerning.

As much as Seelah is a huge badass and awesome, her boobplate is just stupid. Yeah, she's a chick, awesome, she doesn't need her boobs outlined by full plate.

I trust you weigh these same arguments against Wizard's art as well, correct? Just in a brief visit to the site it was easy to find examples of female adventurer's in mid-riff exposed armor or shaped vestments. Fantasy art depictions of female characters is not an issue unique to Paizo.

I do not see much "new blood" in any Pathfinder Society group; it's nearly always older guys and maybe some of their kids. This has to change, and a Beginner's Box to 3E isn't the way; RPGs have to try to become more accessible to more people as they progress. This isn't bad. This is the opposite of bad, but just like people who grew up on NES you have naysayers lamenting the woes of this newer generation that just doesn't appreciate system mastery for the true artform it is.

I will refrain from engaging in debate with anecdotal evidence as I think we can both agree what you see in your area compared to what I see in mine is apt to be different and not representative of any real trend.

But the Beginner Box isn't the way followed by a statement of RPGs need to become more accessible to people? I am confused by that statement. How does the Beginner Box not make an attempt at making the game more accessible to someone new to it?

The thing is that D&D is trying to get new people into the game via Encounters and Essentials. Even though I dislike some previous seasons of Encounters and I think Essentials characters are boring in the long run, they're doing something Paizo is ignoring and actively trying to get people into the hobby via sponsored play. Even though 3E is far from my favorite system I would prefer to see Paizo trying to make it more accessible to beginners with less of an emphasis on system mastery and caster supremacy.

Paizo is ignoring sponsored play? Pathfinder Society is very well supported and present at game shops across the land and at any decent sized convention one is apt to go to. Can't make a local game or convention? There are avenues for Pathfinder Society play via VTT or PbP if those fit your availability better. Paizo puts out scenarios each month of organized play and recently release a trio of scenarios designed *just* for the person new to organized play and they are available for free download.

Frankly I think basing bringing new people to the hobby through sponsored play is a poor attempt, or at least shouldn't be one's only attempt at bringing new people to the hobby. Say I'm 12 - how exactly am I supposed to get myself to the local gaming shop every week to play reliably? And even if I can, how many parents are going to just drop me off for a few hours to play with folks at a gaming store? Sure some will, but it seems to me we've self-selected our number of players that meet that criteria down.

Something that lowers the barrier like Beginner Boxes stand to do much better for new players. They can pick the box up and play with their local friends - at school lunch, after school, during the summer with their friends that are right next door.

Being familiar with both 3E and 4E on the DM's side I will tell you that 4E is far, far easier to design for.

Your experience cannot necessarily be applied to the world at whole. I have not found the GM prep time for Pathfinder to be deterimental to the system. It simply isn't that difficult to prep for. Now I realize some might find it more time consuming, so I won't counter your argument with "Well, I've GM'ed Pathfinder and found prep to be easy, so it is easy for everyone to prep for."

And that's why Pathfinder should try and emulate something like Encounters. The hobby has to have new blood and it can't rely on random outgoing players for it; the producers must encourage it.

Again - Pathfinder Society. The biggest difference I can see is that Pathfinder Society scenarios are more the 4 to 5 hour length whereas Encounters is a shorter bite of time, right? Paizo has toyed with the idea of PFS quests that also play in a shorter period of time. These are still new and finding their place though in my opinion.

 

[technoextreme]

Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric - these have been the grok'd terms for nearly 40 years! Nothing is easier than that.

Nope. Those are classes and actually have no indication to what they do except for people who have played the game for 40 years especially with Wizard. As Darwinism correctly pointed out its the train phenomenon at its finest.

 

[IronWolf]

Nope. Those are classes and actually have no indication to what they do except for people who have played the game for 40 years especially with Wizard.

It seems odd discussing roles in a Pathfinder forum, but really - adding roles as another layer over top of classes seems like adding some complexity. Because now as a new player I need to learn about roles and still learn about classes. Now 4e may have all this covered and it may be a great mechanic for it. But trying to reverse fit roles to 3.x or Pathfinder seems silly as does trying to say because 3.x/Pathfinder didn't do roles its broken.

I know I find roles an unnecessary layer I don't really want to deal with. I know when I've taught IronPup how to play I am glad I was able to just cover classes and not get into defining roles on top of classes making things even more confusing. Again - might work for 4e since it was built with the concept in mind.

I also readily admit it rubs me the wrong way to see various posts in various social media forms saying we need a "controller" or "leader" or "striker". It always sounds like you can't play the game if you don't have the role filled. Surely that isn't true, but it is always what it comes across as which just sort of rubs me the wrong way. Again, purely my own opinion and not a condemnation of the system.

 

[sword3274]

A lot of my response is going to echo what TheAuldGrump profilaes have already stated, mainly because their thoughts most reflect what I feel is actually the case in these circumstances.

Paizo's current problem is that they've married themselves to an older system and that's one of their chief aspects. If they want to expand they will have to ditch 3.5 at some point and come out with an improved system.

I disagree. Rifts and GURPS has run the same system for 20+ years and they're not a powerhouse in the RPG market, but they've done just fine with a few tweaks to the system. White Wolf, too, has implemented minor changes to a system that'spretty much the same as it's been. Sure, PF will have to adapt some things here or there but if other systems have been able to do it then Paizo shouldn't have a problem with it either.

But, in their current model, that will mean that they'll lose people that think 3.5 was Gygax's Dream System Which None Could Supplant.

Yeah, I lost you on that one.

Are they? A single person in my group has the Rise of the Runelords books. That's it. The rest he wings, and we toss suggestions at him from people that are freely translating it. That's not a good investment for Paizo; if they had player guide for 4E I'd buy it, and if they had a 4E setting I'd buy it, but they've got zero money from me when they could easily have more if they'd just annoy a couple angry nerds and go cross-system with very little effort. Most of their stuff is just straight fluff and 4E design is far easier than 3E, what with CR being the mess of broken it's always been.

Yes, they are. They are doing absolutely nothing different and they got a 4e player to buy the RotR books. Icing on their delicious cake, as you put it, I think? There's no investment on their part. You might think that sinking money into additional printings of a 4e version might be like printing money but they don't, apparently. Like I said in my privious post, I think it's smart of them not to expand out of the PF rules - they make their money from the PF fanbase and if they get the random buyer (like your friend, for example) to buy some of their product, then it's icing on their delicious cake (isn't that how you put it?). I think, if you'd ask company heads, they'll tell you it's better to bank on the little plusses like that instead of putting money into a venture that's not guaranteed to see a return on their money. And the fact is, that is an unknown factor, no matter how many people you or I think would buy 4e-ized PF products.

Here's the thing; 3.X was not going strong. If it had been going strong, 4E wouldn't have been considered. People were playing 3.X, to be sure, but it had run its little splatbooky course.

Wait a sec. You honestly think that Pathfinder's success has nothing to do with the idea that people, after 8 years, were still enjoying 3.5 D&D and wanted more when WotC pulled the plug? Absolutely nothing? Since you've come up with some hard facts, I'd love to hear what you think it has to do with then. And please refrain from snarky answers like people wanting to play broken classes or all the PF fans are butthurt 3.5 players - that's a cop out that tries to avoid the question. Thanks in advance.

Oh and please provide actual numbers that PF is the best-selling RPG on the market or stop claiming that, thanks in advance.

These have been on every forum I've been to (WotC, RPGnet, here) with the icv2, amazon, and the other outlets sales reports. Lisa Stevens, herself, came on saying that distributors also report higher PF sales. I think that's an awful ballsy thing to do, especially being the head of the "opposition," as it were. I know many people say that "well, you can't go by Amazon numbers," or "well, you can't go by icvs numbers," and so forth. But when most of them report the same thing, it would seem that there could perhaps be some validity to the claims.

So...you're welcome in advance.

You're under the very, very silly assumption that Hasbro concerns itself with WotC dealings.

God, I hope you're wrong. Hasbro has killed lines that seemed to be doing well and made money. If it's not making a certain amount of money, I'm sure it is catching the eye of someone important. Why do you think that new editions are created, anyway? Because the designers think, "I have this new vision of the game and it needs to be shared with the world?" Heh, no. Changes within a company to their chief product is almost always motivated by one thing - money. And Hasbro knows how much money MtG makes. If it makes X amount alone, and MtG and D&D combined only makes X + 11%, if that 11% (for example) is not covering the amount it takes to run D&D, I'd bet my life that Hasbro would either demand profitability out of D&D or they cut their losses and shelve it.

 

[billd91]

God, I hope you're wrong. Hasbro has killed lines that seemed to be doing well and made money. If it's not making a certain amount of money, I'm sure it is catching the eye of someone important. Why do you think that new editions are created, anyway? Because the designers think, "I have this new vision of the game and it needs to be shared with the world?" Heh, no. Changes within a company to their chief product is almost always motivated by one thing - money. And Hasbro knows how much money MtG makes. If it makes X amount alone, and MtG and D&D combined only makes X + 11%, if that 11% (for example) is not covering the amount it takes to run D&D, I'd bet my life that Hasbro would either demand profitability out of D&D or they cut their losses and shelve it.

Hasbro cared enough, according to insiders, to change WotC's culture after acquisition and, more recently, install Greg Leeds as CEO. Based on that, I'd say Darwinism's assessment of Hasbro's concern for WotC is off base. WotC isn't and never will be a major part of Hasbro's focus, but that's a far cry from not being concerned with WotC's dealings. Hasbro has layers of bureaucracy to take care of that sort of thing even if WotC is little more than a footnote in annual shareholder reports.