Pathfinder 1E Details on Paizo's GameMastery Line

[Keith F Strohm]

::frowns::

That's unfortunate. I like metal miniatures and all, but you're going to be competing directly with Reaper Miniatures' multiple lich, dark elf, even ape sculpts. In order for these to work, you'll need to produce sculpts that are just as good as many of the pewter miniatures companies. I'm thinking that could be difficult.

Reaper does have a really cool range of minis, there's no denying that. I think that once you've seen the hot sketches by Wayne, you might reconsider. Also, we have Bob Watts, whose been in charge of companies like Grenadier, Target/Heartbreaker and Games Workshop U.S. overseeing the production. The quality of these minis will be apparent.

And, as another poster mentioned, this is far more than just a packet of miniatures. As the name statees, it's a complete encounter all in one package. So, if the party heads off in a direction you hadn't planned, you can pull this product right out of the package and go.

Even then, these days I tend to prefer painted plastic when it comes to monsters, as I rarely have time to paint, they're easy to store, and don't fall apart/get scratched when they hit the floor.

The advantages of pre-painted plastic minis are apparent. The main business disadvantage is that the initial production investment just to get off the ground is significant. Before you've spent that, you need to take a look at your potential sales and see if you're likely to recoup your investment. For a company Paizo's size, pre-painted plastic figures just didn't make sense.

With really good plastic miniature designs, you could probably have sold these encounter sets for 19.95, maybe even higher. As it is, you've limited your market to people who paint metal minis -- and in the post D&D Miniatures world, that number is even smaller than it used to be.

It's also quite possible that since you can get 8 minis for 9.95 in D&D boosters, customers would balk at a 19.95 price point for 3 or 4 minis (even if we doubled that number, it wouldn't make sense to pre-painted consumers).

The unpainted metal miniature market is smaller, but the relatively low production costs and the ability to spin minis to order, make it a good investment even given a customer base an order of magnitude smaller.

Keith Strohm
Chief Operating Officer
Paizo Publishing, LLC

 

[Felon]

Very exciting stuff. So let's talk about the maps. These are made to one-inch scales for miniatures, right? What are they made out of it? How many are we getting in a pack?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Do people who don't use minis want to spend 15.95 when they could be spending 9.95(probably closer to 4.95) to get the same thing without the minis?

I can't speak for "people," but I will be. To me, miniatures are things you have on your bookshelf to annoy your wife and keep her out of the study.

 

[Simplicity]

Man, that gorilla king one sounds exactly like a campaign I ran not that long ago...

Poor King Orokoko. Made intelligent by his former master (a powerful mage), he tried to establish a kingdom in the jungle. He read books on other kingdoms to figure out the best methods to use in governing, but his clumsy hands never got the hang of writing. He was unable to bring his wild bretheren into civilization, and the PCs found him crumpled over on his throne, his head bashed in by one of his "lords".

 

[Nightfall]

Sweet...

Intelligent gorilla king! Perhaps I could make him a vassal of Demogorgon...

 

[Erik Mona]

Very exciting stuff. So let's talk about the maps. These are made to one-inch scales for miniatures, right? What are they made out of it? How many are we getting in a pack?

They're scaled to a 1-inch grid for ease of use with miniatures. They are heavy cardstock, so you can put them together to make a large map area (I don't have the dimensions in front of me, but they're similar in size to the D&D Miniatures cards).

There will be four full-color map cards in each set, possibly double-sided.

--Erik Mona

 

[Treebore]

Sign me up! But don't double side the maps, I hate that!

Edit: Unless you are 95% certain a DM wouldn't be using both maps at the same time! Like I can see me using a map of a castle, village, and maybe internal buildings at the same time. Meaning I have them up on the table for the PC's to transition from one to the other easily.

 

[pogre]

I'll be buying all of this - very cool stuff. The only maybe is the campaign notebook.

 

[Erik Mona]

As it is, you've limited your market to people who paint metal minis -- and in the post D&D Miniatures world, that number is even smaller than it used to be.

Me, i question that logic. I'd be interested to see if the advent of D&D minis has negatively impacted the sales of, say, Reaper. It seems to me that the cheap, pre-painted minis make it more likely that "on the fence" gamers now use minis in their game. Does this type of player _only_ buy pre-painted minis, or does he sometimes buy a metal miniature when what he's looking for isn't available in plastic?

Compleat Encounters are not meant to represent rank-and-file villains like orcs and kuo-toa. We know there are several inexpensive options for those types of critters. Rather, our products focus on a dynamic encounter with memorable NPCs, and for that metal seemed the absolute best route to go.

If nothing else, the better sculpting options for metal makes it easier to pick up the wonderful detail Wayne Reynolds is providing us in his sketches so far. A lot of that detail will be lost in a plastic mini (although the Wizards ones are getting really, really impressive), so we're confident metal was the right choice.

We'll see how it goes, of course.

--Erik Mona
Paizo Publishing

 

[JoeGKushner]

[Shameless Plug]

The real question is will the En World staff reviewers be receiving these to spread the word about their quality and overall utility?

[/Shameless Plug]