Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

[Maggan]

They also effectively killed 2E by deleting all of the forums and support content needlessly, didn't finish rolling out the promised PDFs for 2E, and are going to pull the ones they did release (though hopefully they got some integrity and decided not to go ahead with that plan). Enforcing their skewed vision of WFRP just made it that much worse. They've also yet to resolve productions issues with Warhammer Invasion.

Yeah, they deleted the 2e forums. No surprise, but still disappointing.

But they have rolled out all PDFs as far as I can tell.

and are going to pull the ones they did release (though hopefully they got some integrity and decided not to go ahead with that plan)

I'd like to write about that plan on my WFRP blog. Have any links that I can read about those plans? I'm sure they exist, but I would need verification to make a blog post out of it.

I'm a little bit sad they didn't continue the WFRPv2 legacy, but they've treated me as a customer way better than e.g Paizo, so IME I stand for my assessment of the level of service they provide.

FFG is an interesting company to follow actually. I think the WotC strategy of D&D board games is inspired by their succcess, and FFG are making some bold moves opening up a game center and going PDF with their rule books. (EDIT: and of course Pazio is a leader in the PDF development).

The big three to watch the next year is WotC (the incumbent) and Paizo and FFG, mostly for the business moves they make.

/M

 

[Maggan]

(and yes, our adventures ARE, as a general rule, profitable—the Adventure Path line is quite profitable).

Thank you for chiming in, James.

/M

 

[guivre]

Yeah, they deleted the 2e forums. No surprise, but still disappointing.

They deleted more than just the forums. All the support material was lost too. The articles, the modules (fan made included), etc.

You're trying to minimize what they did.

But they have rolled out all PDFs as far as I can tell.

Simply not true. I can see at a glance that books are still missing.

I'd like to write about that plan on my WFRP blog. Have any links that I can read about those plans? I'm sure they exist, but I would need verification to make a blog post out of it.

I went back and looked, they quietly edited that line out of the FAQ, which is good at least. Originally it said that the 2e PDFs would be available for a "limited time". Glad to see they have some shame at least.

It's still a travesty what they did to the franchise.

I'm a little bit sad they didn't continue the WFRPv2 legacy, but they've treated me as a customer way better than e.g Paizo, so IME I stand for my assessment of the level of service they provide.

Wonderful. So you have anecdotal evidence just like the other posters do about Paizo and just as relevant, or irrelevant as the case may be.

Holding up FFG as a counter to Paizo is ludicrous. FFG isn't nearly as angelic as you make them out to be. You are a victim of the same rose colored glasses you're accusing other posters of wearing.

Both companies provide a high level of service, both do some questionable things.

 

[Maggan]

They deleted more than just the forums. All the support material was lost too. The articles, the modules (fan made included), etc.

You're trying to minimize what they did.

Hmmm ... no, I'm not. I didn't think about that stuff, mainly because I've downloaded it, and also because the biggest loss were the stuff from BI. Yeah, that was a shame.

Simply not true. I can see at a glance that books are still missing.

Did you scroll down? Or did you just rest your eyes on the section saying "newest products in this section"? Cause I did the first time I looked at the page. Then I scrolled down, and I can't see any book missing, apart from the collector's edition.

I went back and looked, they quietly edited that line out of the FAQ, which is good at least. Originally it said that the 2e PDFs would be available for a "limited time".

Ok, I won't be writing about that then. Thank you for checking!

EDIT: I still think it is a real possibility that the PDFs will be pulled, so I'll keep an eye on that.

Wonderful. So you have anecdotal evidence just like the other posters do about Paizo and just as relevant, or irrelevant as the case may be.

Yes. Have I claimed otherwise?

You are a victim of the same rose colored glasses you're accusing other posters of wearing.

Have I accused people of wearing rose coloured glasses?

I think you are reading way, way, way too much into my posts, and I believe that you are bringing issues to the table that relate to other stuff than what I have posted about.

To me, answering the question "why is Paizo the best" with "it's simple, it's because they are the best at everything" is not scratching my itch for learning more about what they do that others aren't doing, and what they have done that others haven't done, and what opportunities they've had that others didn't have, and so on.

I'm not claiming cosmic wisdom, I'm offering my own opinions on the situation, after being asked to do so by Imaro.

/M

 

[Mikaze]

Needless to say, this type of customer context is utterly alien to audience (1). When I GM a module, most of the visual and verbal effort in Paizo products often comes as a hindrance, as it's not even geared towards the players at my table; 95% of the text doesn't concern the actual adventure at the table, very little is cast so as to make it easy to convert it into read-alout text (or into something I can paraphrase as such without 'reading it alout from the book'), very few pictures work as table devices since they don't just show the baddies but also some other heroes fighting them, and so on and so on.

I wouldn't put that as an absolute. I know most if not all of that fluff geared towards the GM's eyes alone has seen play in my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, both in front of the PC's and lurking in the background waiting to be found even as it has visible effects both obvious and subtle.

It really depends on the type of GM and the type of games they and their players want.

Still, I'll concur that they're definitely good reading. The last time I enjoyed simply reading RPG material this much was when Planescape was still supported.

 

[Wicht]

Aside from the picture of the ogre-kin mother in Hook Mountain Massacre, I have found most of the pictures in the Paizo APs to be useable with the players. I also have never found the extra text to be a hindrance towards my running a game. As I more or lest said said in the "What makes a good module thread," the better I understand the world, the better I can present it as a cohesive whole.

So I think it is entirely possible to please DMs who both like to read the modules and play the modules. Because it works for me even if it might not work for someone else.

 

[Imaro]

Someone brought up that post on another forum, and I decided to cross-post my response there on here.

----

It's an interesting post, if old old news, as Jacobs has said this time and again. See, what he glosses over is the context in which his "adventures are also there to be just read, not played" posts usually arise on the Paizo boards, and that is when customers point out how Paizo's simultaneously catering to the audiences Jacobs mentions, to wit

(1) GM running module as written
(2) GM stealing an NPC here, a location there
(3) GM without a group, just likes to read,

is not without problems. Just look at the first 20 pages of Burnt Offerings, Jacobs' own flagship instalment in the Pathfinder adventure path series, and you'll see what it means when an author entirely compromises the needs of audience (1) to cater to the needs of audience (3). WotC does it the other way round, all their modules are solidly geared towards audience (1) and don't give a flying about audience (3); which is, incidentally, why they sell so poorly: I really can't imagine that anyone casually browsing 4e modules in a bookstore on a rainy Saturday afternoon at Barnes & Modules gets his imagination fired away. By contrast, every Paizo module to date has had the instant effect of visually and verbally scoring a bull's eye on the casual reader. That's the legacy of Paizo running Dragon magazine, which they had to design in such a way that casual readers on news stands or Barnes & Nobles bookshelves would feel prompted to pick them up and quickly peruse them... that being the point at which Paizo (as Erik Mona once said) already considered their product a success. Needless to say, this type of customer context is utterly alien to audience (1). When I GM a module, most of the visual and verbal effort in Paizo products often comes as a hindrance, as it's not even geared towards the players at my table; 95% of the text doesn't concern the actual adventure at the table, very little is cast so as to make it easy to convert it into read-alout text (or into something I can paraphrase as such without 'reading it alout from the book'), very few pictures work as table devices since they don't just show the baddies but also some other heroes fighting them, and so on and so on.

Paizo has very clearly dedicated its efforts to writing modules for group-less GMs, which also includes GMs who have a group but not the time to run another Pathfinder campaign for them (either because they're running a campaign of their own - which is where (2) above comes in - or because they're already running an earlier Pathfinder campaign). Which, come to think of it, is 95% of all their customers. Heck, I myself got probably 3000 pages of Paizo content on my shelves with only a thin chance of using 10% of that material at my gametable in the foreseeable future.

I feel like the information your talking about is or isn't brought into the play experience by the individual DM and how much he wants to use it... which leads me to a 4th category you seem to have left out. This category runs the module with minor or major changes. This DM modifies the adventure to his heart's content and thus can easily bring in as much or as little of the information provided as he wants.

For me personally, if I can't get through reading an adventure... I don't want to run it. I know if I find it a boring, slog-fest to read... more than likely it's going to play out that way with my players as well, and I won't be excited to run it.

I also think your absolutes fall apart in the face of DM preference. For me, as a DM who does not believe the combat encounter is all important, WotC modules are very much not written for play... in fact they take major modification and many of the boring and pointless combats have to be excised, plausible motivations created, and so on... so I would be very careful with these types of sweeping generalizations.

 

[Maggan]

For me personally, if I can't get through reading an adventure... I don't want to run it. I know if I find it a boring, slog-fest to read... more than likely it's going to play out that way with my players as well, and I won't be excited to run it.

This I agree whole-heartedly with!

/M

 

[Windjammer]

I feel like the information your talking about is or isn't brought into the play experience by the individual DM and how much he wants to use it... which leads me to a 4th category you seem to have left out. This category runs the module with minor or major changes. This DM modifies the adventure to his heart's content and thus can easily bring in as much or as little of the information provided as he wants.

Ha! Indeed I left out that 4th category. Which is all the funnier because that type of DM isn't just you - it's also me. You see, when it came to hammering Second Darkness into a type of campaign that suited my group's needs, I fiddled around so much that I ended up feeling like I'm a category (2) GM - the type of GM who's ending up writing his own campaign around bits and pieces of Paizo's.

You certainly raise an interesting point, and that is that my categories (1) and (2) are merely extremes on a scale permitting many intermediaries. Part of being on that scale, of course, is to be actively involved in the GM reference threads on paizo.com for the respective modules. WotC wouldn't just need to hire authors to write them decent modules, they'd also have to bring people on board willing to invest this much time with their fans and readers (which I'm inclined to think won't happen soon). See, what Monte Cook of dungeonaday.com and Wolfgang Baur at Kobold Quarterly give their customers at a charge - treating them as patrons with exclusive rights to communicate with the module authors - is given to you at Paizo for free.

That is a key ingredient of what continues to make Paizo so special in the RPG world, and why running a campaign of theirs is so awesome at the time it's released. Just recall the forum explosion when Shackled City first got released, that was amazing.

 

[BryonD]

For me personally, if I can't get through reading an adventure... I don't want to run it. I know if I find it a boring, slog-fest to read... more than likely it's going to play out that way with my players as well, and I won't be excited to run it.

I also have never found the extra text to be a hindrance towards my running a game. As I more or lest said said in the "What makes a good module thread," the better I understand the world, the better I can present it as a cohesive whole.

There are (at least) two completely different approaches to DMing that are talking past each other here.

I recently commented that I did not agree with the assessment that modules reduce prep time. In retrospect I was kicking myself for not anticipating the response, but I was blasted by quite a few posters for making a wildly inaccurate statement.

If you want a set of ready to run set-piece encounters with a narrative sequence, then a module with just that provides everything you need. And the most demanding piece of what you need is stating out all those mechanics. That is done for you. Prep time is slashed.

The set-piece encounters and the narrative revealed by the sequence must still be interesting and cool. As Imaro says, you can have all the pieces together and still just end up with a boring slog-fest.

But, there are also people who come at it from a completely different approach. If the BBEG is an evil cleric, simply having that information and his stats, plus a narrative sequence of events revealing his terrible plan, is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are like me, you want a hell of a lot more context. The context is both broad and generalized, as well as detailed and specific. I want know a lot about the cleric's religion and the area he lives in and how it all interacts. And I want to know about how that guy became this evil cleric and what relationships he has with other key npcs.

This level of depth can really add to the play experience through fleshing out interactions and motives and even little details that may not matter to the results. But for me as a DM they also add to fun of DMing at the table. It adds to my sense of seeing not just how the PCs overcome an EL X encounter, but how they interact with the world and the significance of it. It is fun.

And a module does not need to provide this level of information. The DM can insert it into any module. But whether you are making up your own adventure, inserting your own life into someone else's adventure, or reading and learning a lot of extra information, you need to spend time and consideration making that all come together. And that is what takes time for me. It takes time to know the "whos" and "whys", and have them cold so that they flow naturally at the table.

I can run a module without bothering. And yes, that takes less prep time. But it also results in a significantly less satisfactory experience for me.

And I'm not saying that running it my way is more fun. I'm saying that that running it the way *I* enjoy it is different than the way some others enjoy it. The same pieces can be used to play two very different games, even if the distinctions may not be obvious to a non-gamer.