Erik Mona on Paizo Releases and D&D 5E's Impact

Paizo's Erik Mona spoke to ICv2 while at the GAMA trade show about a range of subjects. Much of it is release schedule stuff we already know about (Pathfinder Unchained, Occult Adventures, Hell's Rebels adventure path) but there's also some interesting commentary on the market and the impact of D&D 5th Edition. (thanks to Merric for the scoop!)

Here are the key points. You can read the full interview here.

• Erik refers to the market as a "post-5th Edition paradigm".
• D&D 5th Edition has not negatively impacted Pathfinder sales.
• The general RPG market has been lifted by 5E.
• May sees the release of Wrath of the Righteous for the Adventure Card Game. These will be more than once a year, but less than two a year.
• The Strategy Guide is designed as an entry point to the game as a companion to the core rulebook for new players.
• Pathfinder Unchained is this month!
• Occult Adventures at Gen Con; "our answer to Psionics".
• Hell's Rebels in August, an urban AP featuring revolutionaries overthrowing tyrants.
• 2015 has a similar release pace to 2014.

Pathfinder Unchained -- It’s a treasure trove of optional rules letting the Pathfinder RPG design team loose to do whatever they want, damn the consequences. Here’s an alternate version of combat; here’s a different way to increase your character’s level, really a lot of experimental stuff that players can pick and choose what they want to implement. So maybe you like Pathfinder but you feel it takes too long to make encounters or make monsters, there’s a streamlined version of how to do that in this book.

There’s also revisions on four classes so there’s a revised rogue, revised monk, and a revised barbarian. Now that we’ve done almost 30 classes and we’ve got several years behind us and people think in retrospect, maybe the rogue and the monk are not powerful enough vs. some of the stuff that’s come since, so we’ve retuned those classes and given people an optional version if that’s a concern of theirs. Also the summoner, which is a class that we put out in the Advanced Player’s Guide, very, very powerful class, perhaps even unintentionally so, this is a new version of that brings its power in line with everything else. So that’s a big, huge trove of optional rules, cool alternative takes on different things that people can add to their game.

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[Rygar]

Not really surprised that Pathfinder is still doing okay. They had half the year to themselves, and lots of people are still likely finishing Pathfinder campaigns or buying both to see which game they end up sticking with. And Paizo has some ardent fans that are likely to happily keep buying, especially for the story.
It helps that the D&D release schedule is so much lower, so it's very possible to buy both games.

The catch will be in a few months or a year, when people setting into 5e games and stop buying the Pathfinder releases.

Paizo's full of smart dudes. So they'll probably work to make their big releases as "must buy" as possible. But I imagine a lot of the smaller releases will see less action. Things like the Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines that come out super often and regularly (for reasons of subscribers) but are running low on content.

Still... I can't think of many books in the works that I'd buy now. My Pathfinder collection feels near complete, more content than I need. Setting specific options excluded.

That's a pretty huge assumption, there's at least equal chance that in a few months or a year people will stop buying 5e releases. 5th is a fair bit content starved, especially in comparison to Pathfinder's adventure support. Nevermind the absence of setting support and their choice to default to Forgotten Realms.

5th edition is by no means a certainty yet.

 

[Jester David]

That's a pretty huge assumption, there's at least equal chance that in a few months or a year people will stop buying 5e releases. 5th is a fair bit content starved, especially in comparison to Pathfinder's adventure support. Nevermind the absence of setting support and their choice to default to Forgotten Realms.

5th edition is by no means a certainty yet.

Pathfinder doesn't do a lot of support for more than one setting. Why should WotC? And there's of room for "must have" books for 5e still. Sparse content works in its favour as new books are more special and desired and less disposable.
Pathfinder has a lot less design space left. They can go strong with their APs for some time, but there's fewer big rule books left. Future releases seem much less like needed expansions and more content for the sake of content (like the Advanced Ckass Guide[/I).

It sounds like Paizo is releasing more content in 2015 then they did during 2014, only now they have competition, and I hope that doesn't end up hurting them.

 

[Obvious_Ninja]

Traditionally? Huh? Pathfinder Unchained sounds like Unearthed Arcana to me, which was not a precursor to any new edition in its various incarnations.

The late 3E Tome of Battle WAS a precursor to the 4th edition, but isn't really all that like what Pathfinder Unchained seems to be . . . IMO, of course.

Paizo has said repeatedly that Pathfinder Unchained is not a precursor to a 2nd edition...

Also, I too am excited for the map reprints. There are several I need....

 

[DaveMage]

5E might not impact Pathfinder negatively at all since the release philosophies are so different. In the last 8 months there have been 7 D&D RPG products. There have been 25+ Pathfinder RPG ones. If Pathfinder has continued to thrive despite the release of new D&D *core* books, Paizo will benefit tremendously from D&D because (if history is any indication) no 5E D&D RPG products released EVER AGAIN will be nearly as popular as the initial release of the core books. People hungry for quality D&D-ish RPG content - even for their 5E game - are likely to check out Pathfinder products.

So, WotC gets to grow the brand outside of the D&D RPG and Paizo gets D&D 5E players starving for content buying their stuff. Everyone wins!

 

[turkeygiant]

Paizo has said repeatedly that Pathfinder Unchained is not a precursor to a 2nd edition...

Also, I too am excited for the map reprints. There are several I need....

They keep on saying that and I will but into the fact that Pathfinder 2e might not be right around the corner...but I don't think it is that far away either. Just the fact that they can write a entire book full of major revisions shows that they are at least contemplating the flaws of the system, and I can see how the next logical step is to move away from band-aid fixes into a new edition with baked in changes.

 

[Staffan]

Pathfinder doesn't do a lot of support for more than one setting.

While Pathfinder doesn't have support for multiple settings, the one they do support is... highly varied, I guess you would say if you were feeling positive. A more negative slant on it would be "patchwork."

It's very similar to Mystara that way, where each country is basically its own setting, except you can move from one to the other without using portals. This definitely has its strengths, in that it allows Paizo to make basically any adventure they can think of, and find a place where that adventure belongs. It's a setting that can accommodate both a traditional adventure like Rise of the Runelords, science-fantasy like Iron Gods, exploration/building like Kingmaker, gothic horror like Carrion Crown, and demonic war like Wrath of the Righteous. It does make the setting feel a bit weird though.

 

[Rygar]

Pathfinder doesn't do a lot of support for more than one setting. Why should WotC? And there's of room for "must have" books for 5e still. Sparse content works in its favour as new books are more special and desired and less disposable.
Pathfinder has a lot less design space left. They can go strong with their APs for some time, but there's fewer big rule books left. Future releases seem much less like needed expansions and more content for the sake of content (like the Advanced Ckass Guide[/I).

It sounds like Paizo is releasing more content in 2015 then they did during 2014, only now they have competition, and I hope that doesn't end up hurting them.

WOTC invested a substantial portion of its customer base in a variety of settings, and so they have established feelings about the settings. If someone didn't like FR for the first 40 years, "Everything is set in FR" isn't a feature. I myself for example, there's no way for them to sell adventures to me, I hate FR. So at present the total amount of money I will spend on 5th edition is limited to the Core 3 books, while Pathfinder is getting at least $20 from me each month. For 2015 I will spend at least $240 on Pathfinder product, and $0 on D&D product, because there's only one setting which I grew to dislike decades ago.

As far as sparse goes, I disagree. Especially with sparse adventures and no real Dungeon/Dragon, I suspect they're limiting their market to only those dedicated and capable of developing their own material. D&D doesn't get big by relegating itself to only those with ample free time and strong imagination/storytelling abilities. There's a reason why D&D's high points coincide with plentiful pre-written adventures.

WOTC also has a lot of room to shoot itself in the foot. What constitutes a "Must have" book? If WOTC's book support is extremely sparse and their first book or two favors some specific playstyle heavily again, it is extremely likely they'd have a mass exodus of customers. If the plan for support is to have a sparse release schedule a misstep early on can and will kill the product line. Especially since they already have a customer base which includes a pretty large number of people who were burned previously.

Honestly, I'm far more worried for WOTC than I am Paizo. Months after release there's only 1 campaign setting supported, they've effectively killed Dungeon and Dragon for a pretty substantial portion of their customer base, and there's 0 information about future settings. It's almost to the point where their product is unsupported while their competitor has ample support.

Think of it like the video game market. The Nintendo/Super-Nintendo/Genesis did incredibly well because they had ample content, the Jaguar died because it had very little content in comparison. While not directly comparable because RPG's enable you to make your own content, the issue does exist that for the portion of the market who bases their play on purchased content is likely to behave in a manner similiar to the video game market.

 

[Jester David]

While Pathfinder doesn't have support for multiple settings, the one they do support is... highly varied, I guess you would say if you were feeling positive. A more negative slant on it would be "patchwork."

It's very similar to Mystara that way, where each country is basically its own setting, except you can move from one to the other without using portals. This definitely has its strengths, in that it allows Paizo to make basically any adventure they can think of, and find a place where that adventure belongs. It's a setting that can accommodate both a traditional adventure like Rise of the Runelords, science-fantasy like Iron Gods, exploration/building like Kingmaker, gothic horror like Carrion Crown, and demonic war like Wrath of the Righteous. It does make the setting feel a bit weird though.

Or Greyhawk, which is pretty patchwork as well. Or parts of the Realms I guess... There's no shortage of kitchen sink settings...

WOTC invested a substantial portion of its customer base in a variety of settings, and so they have established feelings about the settings.

TSR was the one making settings, and it didn't work well for them, splintering their audience.
And even if they released two campaign settings a year, it'd be over six years before we saw them all. Even WotC tried to have a setting each year and changed their plans after three years, returning to the Realms.
But, if you dig their old settings, chances are you already have the books. While I'd *like* more Ravenloft and Dragonlance, I likely already have 10x the setting material that I need. Nothing has changed in Greyhawk or Mystara or Birthright since those worlds ceased receiving books. There's nothing that an Eberron book could contain that you couldn't do with the free PDF and a copy of the 3e or 4e setting book.

If someone didn't like FR for the first 40 years, "Everything is set in FR" isn't a feature. I myself for example, there's no way for them to sell adventures to me, I hate FR. So at present the total amount of money I will spend on 5th edition is limited to the Core 3 books, while Pathfinder is getting at least $20 from me each month. For 2015 I will spend at least $240 on Pathfinder product, and $0 on D&D product, because there's only one setting which I grew to dislike decades ago.

But, if you hate Golarion, it's just as bad. A lot of people dislike Golarion, finding it "patchwork" and "generic".

As far as sparse goes, I disagree.

And I disagree and am ecstatic to have an edition that isn't churning out content 5x faster than I can use it. But I guess we'll see in a few years...

 

[EthanSental]

And I disagree and am ecstatic to have an edition that isn't churning out content 5x faster than I can use it. But I guess we'll see in a few years...

I'm in agreement with this. I stopped buying the monthly AP's after the 3rd story line since none captured my interest and I had plenty to run by then. The mythic AP has about ruined my fun with pathfinder at the moment, what a terrible system.

And I take Eric's statement with a grain of salt since this isn't the 80s...since now where every thing he says now is instantly displayed in numerous forums, twitter feeds, blah blah blah. He HAS to make it sound like everything's fine and dandy. Besides how do you take this statement? "I’m sure that some people who used to play Pathfinder are now playing 5th Edition but we’ve been picking up new people as well so we’re not seeing deleterious drops in our sales." -
especially the last part? So they are seeing drops in books sales, just not harmful drops.

 

[Jester David]

I'm in agreement with this. I stopped buying the monthly AP's after the 3rd story line since none captured my interest and I had plenty to run by then. The mythic AP has about ruined my fun with pathfinder at the moment, what a terrible system.

Mythic was a great idea. An excellent alternative to the epic rules and way to change the tone of the game. But it needed far, far more play testing than a month and a half.