Pathfinder 2E How is Pathfinder doing?

[Retreater]

Roll20 is well known to not be a good measure for Paizo products due to lack of support.

I'm not a hater of PF2, and I have gone on record with my bad experience of Roll20's integration of PF2. I have also sung the praises of PF2's implementation on Foundry VTT. But I will say this...
1) The user base of Roll20 is orders of magnitude larger than Foundry VTT.
2) Clearly, some PF2 players would want to use Roll20 (because it's all they know, they have already bought into the ecosystem, they are already familiar with it, etc.)
3) If PF2 was selling gangbusters, Roll20 would want some of that money and put more stuff on there.
4) And, actually, Roll20 IS putting most current PF2 stuff on there (at least significantly more than they had)
5) Foundry also has (I'm told) great support for 5e, Call of Cthulhu, and other systems. Why do we see those doing well on Roll20?

 

[payn]

I'm not a hater of PF2, and I have gone on record with my bad experience of Roll20's integration of PF2. I have also sung the praises of PF2's implementation on Foundry VTT. But I will say this...
1) The user base of Roll20 is orders of magnitude larger than Foundry VTT.
2) Clearly, some PF2 players would want to use Roll20 (because it's all they know, they have already bought into the ecosystem, they are already familiar with it, etc.)
3) If PF2 was selling gangbusters, Roll20 would want some of that money and put more stuff on there.
4) And, actually, Roll20 IS putting most current PF2 stuff on there (at least significantly more than they had)
5) Foundry also has (I'm told) great support for 5e, Call of Cthulhu, and other systems. Why do we see those doing well on Roll20?

Im guessing the slow up take by Roll20 to support PF2 has a lot to do with it. PF2 also has a large community that is pretty big on products they like and recommending them. Its become a meme now that "roll20 lol, get Foundry dude!" is the line. Folks are likely to come back if they play multiple games and are bought into Roll20, but folks who just play PF2 will likely never come back.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And that's not counting the people who either don't use a VTT, or do things like we do and use a combination of Maptool and Hero Labs Online for our virtual needs.

 

[Justice and Rule]

3) If PF2 was selling gangbusters, Roll20 would want some of that money and put more stuff on there.

I mean, given the lack of updates to Roll20's features and UI, I feel like they are good maintaining the course and collecting what they can. But I mean, it also feels like this is kind of contradicted by point 4.

5) Foundry also has (I'm told) great support for 5e, Call of Cthulhu, and other systems. Why do we see those doing well on Roll20?

I'd say because both 5E and CoC don't benefit from the higher-level integration that Foundry offers for PF2.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd say because both 5E and CoC don't benefit from the higher-level integration that Foundry offers for PF2.

Yeah. I won't speak of 5e because I'm not qualified, but though its drifted a bit, even modern CoC is a BRP derivative; there's a lot less moving parts in that than in PF2e because, fundamentally, there's less distinction with characters and thus less things to twiddle with in play that are mechanically significant. You still have to support the basic mechanical processes and have things like some of the more combat-relevant opponents baked in, but that's vastly less than what you're talking about with PF2e.

 

[teitan]

Im guessing the slow up take by Roll20 to support PF2 has a lot to do with it. PF2 also has a large community that is pretty big on products they like and recommending them. Its become a meme now that "roll20 lol, get Foundry dude!" is the line. Folks are likely to come back if they play multiple games and are bought into Roll20, but folks who just play PF2 will likely never come back.

And until recently foundry was free and easy to import into but the person handling it had to quit while Roll20 wasn’t officially supported by Paizo and everything had to be put in by hand due to the slow implementation. Hasn’t all this been covered to death about why Roll20 wasn’t a good indicator of PF2 and it’s user base already? Some tools aren’t a good fit for every job. Just because other games use Roll20 doesn’t mean every game is going to have that level of support or even user base. The foundry meme is almost as emblematic of PF2 as “D&D does this and that is why you should play Pathfinder 2e instead” on Twitter got to be or Barrens chat with Chuck Norris jokes.

 

[dirtypool]

2) Clearly, some PF2 players would want to use Roll20 (because it's all they know, they have already bought into the ecosystem, they are already familiar with it, etc.)

Sure, but with the knowledge that there is a better functionality at Foundry that group could logically be smaller without it meaning anything about PF2's success. To say nothing of the fact that there are 14.9% of Roll20 Campaigns listed as "Uncategorized" and 11.5% listed as "Other" Any portion of those percentages could indeed be PF2 campaigns.

3) If PF2 was selling gangbusters, Roll20 would want some of that money and put more stuff on there.

Or Roll20 is quite fine with their platform seen as being the home for 5e and don't want to antagonize that relationship by courting the competition. There could be any number of reasons that they've not gone after a contract with Paizo.

I'm also unclear on your starting premise of "if PF2 was selling gangbusters" are you suggesting that it is selling poorly? It is the #2 selling game on the ICv2, if it's selling so poorly that it needs to be called out for doing so then we should pack up the rest of the hobby because the game is over.

 

[dirtypool]

And that's not counting the people who either don't use a VTT, or do things like we do and use a combination of Maptool and Hero Labs Online for our virtual needs.

A great point. Let's not forget that the initial PF player base was entrenched 3.X players who were frankly unwilling to change. Though a portion walked away, a lot of those players stuck with PF2. They can very logically be of an age group still preferring to play in person. I know because I'm one of those types of people.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A great point. Let's not forget that the initial PF player base was entrenched 3.X players who were frankly unwilling to change. Though a portion walked away, a lot of those players stuck with PF2. They can very logically be of an age group still preferring to play in person. I know because I'm one of those types of people.

By the standard of the hobby I'm old as hell. I'm more properly the age category you find in full blown Old School (as compared to OSR) proponents.

That said, I'm probably much more technophilic than many my age, and I find using a VTT in its original meaning both comfortable (in general) and useful. What I don't do, is need some of the things most commercial VTTs do; to whit, managing mechanics. At most I want a die roller if I feel a need to monitor dice rolls, but it doesn't need to do all the bookkeeping for me. All I need is a way to manage maps and positioning that everyone can see as (or, as got me started with it) or more easily than doing it in physical form.

Its one of the reason when people talk about not being able to run Game X with VTT Y because they'd have to do too much set-up and programming, I tend to give them the side-eye. That's only true if you expect the VTT to do the mechanical lifting in the first place.

 

[dirtypool]

Fair point, I was more mentioning that there is a portion of the player base that never even touches them at all. I've never played PF 1 or 2 using a VTT