Pathfinder 2E Is It Time for PF2 "Essentials"?

[S'mon]

It doesn't matter how objective it is if its measuring the wrong things. As noted, Paizo is set up so a rather lot of their book sales are done in-house, so that's a whole swath of sales the Amazon numbers aren't showing.

Well I quoted Roll20 Q1 2021 play numbers there. Pathfinder 1e 4.49%, D&D 3.5 1.36%, PF 2e 1.23%. Admittedly on reflection it's possible lots of people are hitting the 'Pathfinder' tab without realising there is a a Pathfinder 2e tab. Otherwise those conversion/uptake numbers look really bad to me.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I'm talking about how you communicate your product to potential customers. The first thing most people interact with is your visual presentation. If your game is about a Madmaxian post-apocalyptic wasteland or spacefaring fighter jocks blasting frog-people back to the black hole they came from, presumably, your box art will not feature a bearded dwarf wielding an axe against dragon.

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What's this say to somebody who doesn't know anything about Pathfinder? It says, "I'm a knock-off of Dungeons & Dragons." If I'm already happy with D&D, I'm uninterested. If I'm not interested in D&D, I'm definitely uninterested. If I'm unhappy with D&D, depending on why I'm unhappy, I might still be uninterested (I might be sick to death of gangs of medieval murderhobos killing ogres and dragons). The presentation screams that this is is a product designed to appeal to sophisticated RPG consumers who already know who Paizo is. This boils down to people who already love Paizo and will buy whatever they make if it's any good, and people who love D&D themes and want a new mechanical twist on them. It's extremely limited, because the market of "D&D fans who feel like the latest game from WotC completely lost the plot and fails at meeting basic expectations" ain't there no more.



This sounds like a commercially terrible idea that sold horribly. [Reading your next sentence, it was.]



I don't think VtM was viewed as a D&D clone in the 1990s. Granted, a lot of people saw it as "goobers reading poetry to each other between dice rolls," but it was definitely different than spelunking dungeons to get loot.



Starfinder interested me right up until I found it was going to be, thematically speaking, Off-Brand Forgotten Realms in space. I'll allude to something else I said. Go back to when D&D got big, and you see it's riding a wave of sword & sorcery popularity that is as much fueled by everything from Conan the Barbarian to Masters of the Universe as anything TSR was doing. VtM was successful for the same reason; you had that kind of dark, gloomy ethos everywhere in the 1990s, whether we're talking about Trent Reznor tearing up the charts, or movies like The Crow. I think if you were going to try to build success off something truly different, you'd try to build off current pop culture trends.

I don't think the art conveys anything you're projecting onto it, its a cool looking picture of some adventurers fighting a dragon in some ruins. Its colorful, vibrant and exciting art that invites the reader to open it up and see what's inside. To have the impression that its just off-brand DND requires having some serious baggage about DND as some kind of premium brand and you don't want to be tricked into the wrong thing.

The game appeals to many 5e fans who are looking for a game that is still relatively streamlined, but with more options and character customization, as well as better balance. That market might be smaller than the overall market that 5e can tap, but its currently an underserved demographic by WOTC, and its one that has plenty of profit in it if Paizo does a better job.

The game is in fact, chugging along quite successfully.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As to Starfinder, I dunno. It doesn't interest me, but I suppose it's gotta interest some people as it seems relatively popular. Beyond Star Wars, what other setting are out there that might be doing better? Traveler? Phase Eclipse?

SF and space-fantasy games have always been in a weird place; at one time Traveler was probably as close to you got to something with a big footprint, but I don't think outside of OSR folks that's been true for a long time. The next closest, was probably the various Star Wars games (which probably exceeded Traveler during the WEG period).

But at the end, I think all these "PF2 should become more like 5E" calls always miss that we already have a 5E, and trying to become closer to that is just going to get you eaten up by 5E: the fewer differences, the fewer reasons to convert over from the biggest thing out there, while people who want differences go to something else.

Yeah, this is the point I made about people who keep wanting the Hero System (a game who's peak life has definitely passed) to be more like other games; all it would do is sacrifice its market distinctiveness to be trying to fight in the same pool as another game that already has itself well situated.

 

[S'mon]

Well I quoted Roll20 Q1 2021 play numbers there. Pathfinder 1e 4.49%, D&D 3.5 1.36%, PF 2e 1.23%. Admittedly on reflection it's possible lots of people are hitting the 'Pathfinder' tab without realising there is a a Pathfinder 2e tab. Otherwise those conversion/uptake numbers look really bad to me.

Sorry I see now that was Q1 2020. Here's Q4 2020, which also gives a idea of change over time - not much, but 3.5e seems to finally be in decline.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well I quoted Roll20 Q1 2021 play numbers there. Pathfinder 1e 4.49%, D&D 3.5 1.36%, PF 2e 1.23%. Admittedly on reflection it's possible lots of people are hitting the 'Pathfinder' tab without realising there is a a Pathfinder 2e tab. Otherwise those conversion/uptake numbers look really bad to me.

It certainly wouldn't the first place the first and second edition gets conflated.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Surely Amazon sales or Roll20 % played, while far from being precise measures of success, are at least objective measures. Which you can hardly say about a company's own reports of how well it's doing.

This is well tread ground, Roll20 is infamous in the Pathfinder 2e community for supporting the system badly. People who google "Pathfinder 2e VTT" have a list of links pointing them directly to foundry, and discussion posts discussing how bad Roll20 is for it, and also suggesting Foundry. The entire community, as a whole, has rejected Roll20.

In summary, the Roll20 data is specifically bad for a measurement of Pathfinder 2e's success, because Pathfinder 2e players, as a rule, don't use it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

@Thomas Shey That’s a huge maybe. And if you’re trying to tell me they are selling a significant amount of core books compared to Amazon you’re going to have to have something, anything, to back that up.

When it comes to a company that has a process to encourage people to regularly keep buying books and direct people to their own storefront given any chance--my reaction to your reaction is "You first."

 

[Justice and Rule]

I'm talking about how you communicate your product to potential customers. The first thing most people interact with is your visual presentation. If your game is about a Madmaxian post-apocalyptic wasteland or spacefaring fighter jocks blasting frog-people back to the black hole they came from, presumably, your box art will not feature a bearded dwarf wielding an axe against dragon.

View attachment 133722

What's this say to somebody who doesn't know anything about Pathfinder? It says, "I'm a knock-off of Dungeons & Dragons." If I'm already happy with D&D, I'm uninterested. If I'm not interested in D&D, I'm definitely uninterested. If I'm unhappy with D&D, depending on why I'm unhappy, I might still be uninterested (I might be sick to death of gangs of medieval murderhobos killing ogres and dragons). The presentation screams that this is is a product designed to appeal to sophisticated RPG consumers who already know who Paizo is. This boils down to people who already love Paizo and will buy whatever they make if it's any good, and people who love D&D themes and want a new mechanical twist on them. It's extremely limited, because the market of "D&D fans who feel like the latest game from WotC completely lost the plot and fails at meeting basic expectations" ain't there no more.

No, the product screams "This is a fantasy RPG" because people want fantasy RPGs. This whole thing is premised on the idea people will think it's a D&D clone when people think all RPGs are D&D clones. D&D is a byword for TTRPGs. Acting like changing the focus would change sales misses that if that were the case, then there would be plenty of other products that would have already filled that gap.

We are not lacking for fancy RPGs with lots of cool settings. But fantasy RPGs remain the most common and generally the most popular of all. This is a case of the titan of the industry shaping demand rather than demand shaping it: people get into RPGs to play fantasy. I'd say that's most people. If that wasn't the case, then we'd be seeing insane growth from one of the many RPGs that don't cover that, like Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Tales from the Loop, Legend of the 5 Rings, Traveler, or a dozen other ones.

This whole thing reeks of being in too much of an industry bubble and overthinking how this stuff works.

This sounds like a commercially terrible idea that sold horribly. [Reading your next sentence, it was.]

"Commercially terrible" compared to what? What other games are getting massive growth that would hint at a new genre becoming ascendant. Right now we have such a wide range of games that there's practically no niche that isn't catered to.

I don't think VtM was viewed as a D&D clone in the 1990s. Granted, a lot of people saw it as "goobers reading poetry to each other between dice rolls," but it was definitely different than spelunking dungeons to get loot.

By who? Regular people use D&D as their guidepost for RPGs. You can explain how its different and they'll change that, but the first thing you're going to get when you say "We're roleplaying" is going to be "You mean like D&D?" It doesn't matter who you start talking to, that's going to be the initial response until you explain it in further detail.

Starfinder interested me right up until I found it was going to be, thematically speaking, Off-Brand Forgotten Realms in space. I'll allude to something else I said. Go back to when D&D got big, and you see it's riding a wave of sword & sorcery popularity that is as much fueled by everything from Conan the Barbarian to Masters of the Universe as anything TSR was doing.

I dunno, Starfinder seems to have a bit of Guardians of the Galaxy in the aesthetic and look, but it doesn't do it for me.

VtM was successful for the same reason; you had that kind of dark, gloomy ethos everywhere in the 1990s, whether we're talking about Trent Reznor tearing up the charts, or movies like The Crow. I think if you were going to try to build success off something truly different, you'd try to build off current pop culture trends.

I mean, given that the RPG industry was way smaller, Vampire's success back then doesn't seem really comparable to what's going on today. It just became a notable alternative when there weren't notable alternatives to D&D around. Nowadays there's such a flood that you can basically find any sort of RPG you want, rather than having to settle with the small amount of industry options that you had previously.

If they prioritise having their own system over making money, well that's up to them I guess, they're not a public company with shareholders to account to AFAIK. But in business terms forcing people to convert to your house system as a point of pride doesn't seem like the best approach, and is a bit odd considering they've always ridden D&D's coat tails - and done well doing so.

I mean, given that Paizo is a company that got burned because they relied on someone else's product changing without notifying them before, it seems smart for them to control their own path rather than opening themselves up to that again.

 

[Green Onceler]

its a cool looking picture

Ugh. I really don't like many of the new edition's covers. The CRB and the Advanced Player's Guide covers both look significantly worse than their PF1 iterations to me. It's one of the many factors that make this new edition entirely unlovable for me.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Ugh. I really don't like many of the new edition's covers. The CRB and the Advanced Player's Guide covers both look significantly worse than their PF1 iterations to me. It's one of the many factors that make this new edition entirely unlovable for me.

To each their own I guess, neither of those are my favorites, but I really love the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, The Character Guide, The Society Guide, and the Bestiary 2 cover wise.

I like them more than 5e's covers (which I reference since it was the game I played previously) but I think that's because they feature more expressive characters and a pulpier aesthetic.