Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

[firesnakearies]

That's our misison statement on the Yet To be Titled Pathfinder Podcast.

Sounds like an awesome podcast. I'll listen to it for sure.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Sounds like an awesome podcast. I'll listen to it for sure.

Well, I don't know how awesome it will or won't be. I hope so

I can only assess what I want in a Podcast in terms or my own personal tastes to start out. There are a very large number of podcasts on the Internet when it comes to RPGs and all of them bring something to the table. I like some of them -- and I don't like some of them. Everyone's tastes are different.

The more narrow the focus you place upon the topic matter of the Podcast, the more necesarily restricted your target audience ends up. Still, the very nature of Podcasting is that it's free. We're not making money off of it. So if we can make a few hundred Pathfinder GMs (and maybe, someday a few thousand) interested and engaged in the discussion of an adventure product at a level of granularity and detail that is not often seen in RPG podcasts - that's fine by me.

That doesn't mean that players are unimportant and we'll do some more player inclusive things as well for all PFRPG enthusiasts. Still, Ryan already serves that audience on his own podcast, so I don't think people would be well served by our just trying to do the same thing.

It's pretty clear to me that what Paizo is most interested in making is game products that are aimed squarely at GMs -- or at least at people who enjoy reading game products from a GM's perspective. I think it is overwhelmingly clear that's who Paizo sees as their principal market. Discussing the nuts and bolts of adventures and adventure design, what each of them offers -- and what they don't -- seems to me to be an entertaining (though narrow) subject matter to those of us geeks who enjoy that sort of thing.

Hopefully it will all work out. It might not. "We'll see."

 

[Beginning of the End]

Well, that's sort of my point - as written, this is not something the goblins do. You can, as a DM, use a bit of foresight to anticipate that the information given isn't enough to give the PCs an idea of what exactly was going on, and then embellish or add interactions to compensate, but this is not something that the adventure itself explicitly encourages. This is a clear example of something being written for the reader, rather than for the DM or player. The PCs experience the barest shell of this interaction and are unaware of the full story. The DM does not have the chance to explain (without stepping out from behind the 4th wall) what exactly has occurred, but the reader knows all of it.

I generally hate adventures where:

(a) The reader/DM has this really amazing sequence of events playing out; but

(b) The players are only experiencing an essentially random series of encounters that they have no way of comprehending.

I just don't understand the methodology: If you're designing this really nifty stuff, why not take the relatively minimal effort necessary to let the players know about it?

OTOH, this pickle-encounter doesn't qualify for me. Paizo's goblins are wacky little trouble-making imps. Having pickles fly randomly out of windows is, in fact, just part of the module's larger establishment of the goblins as whirling dervishes of chaotic destruction. In addition, the module does include a patently obvious way to figure out what the goblins are doing: Curious PCs can simply go to that room and interrogate the goblins. (Is there every chance for that interrogation to turn into a wacky comedy of fang-baring desperation? Yes. Yes, there is. But that tone was pretty well established as soon as we said 'pickle thieves".)

Hell, knowing some of the people I've played with over the years it wouldn't shock me if I somehow ended up with players offering to help the goblin chieftain out by tracking down his pickle thieves in exchange for getting what they want from the tribe.

Rather than being a detail that the players can never learn, this kind of detail is exactly the kind of rich texture which allows the PCs to chart their own course instead of following the railroad tracks.

 

[darjr]

This blog entry at the Quest For Fun Black Diamond Games official blog seems to come in at an opportune time. I've linked back to this thread and wondered if the success that Paizo see's and WotC doesn't on adventures has a bit to do with the difference in the FLGS focus of both companies.

What with WotC being more hyper focused with FLGS and Paizo being more subscription/pdf model based.

The blog entry essentially says that adventures don't sell nearly as well and also don't make nearly as much profit. Though he does point out that the Paizo adventure path subscription is more than just adventures, there is supplement content in those books as well. Note though that this is from his store's perspective.

 

[jmucchiello]

OTOH, this pickle-encounter doesn't qualify for me. Paizo's goblins are wacky little trouble-making imps. Having pickles fly randomly out of windows is, in fact, just part of the module's larger establishment of the goblins as whirling dervishes of chaotic destruction. In addition, the module does include a patently obvious way to figure out what the goblins are doing: Curious PCs can simply go to that room.

I don't know the module. Is it a 10 foot square room with a goblin and a pickle? Oddly, that sounds familiar.

 

[Dark Mistress]

This blog entry at the Quest For Fun Black Diamond Games official blog seems to come in at an opportune time. I've linked back to this thread and wondered if the success that Paizo see's and WotC doesn't on adventures has a bit to do with the difference in the FLGS focus of both companies.

What with WotC being more hyper focused with FLGS and Paizo being more subscription/pdf model based.

The blog entry essentially says that adventures don't sell nearly as well and also don't make nearly as much profit. Though he does point out that the Paizo adventure path subscription is more than just adventures, there is supplement content in those books as well. Note though that this is from his store's perspective.

Interesting blog post from the view of one shop owner.

 

[darjr]

Interesting blog post from the view of one shop owner.

I do think that his exp may be more typical of other FLGS.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Paizo has a relationship with its customers that is very different that the relationship other game mftrs have. This is as a consequence of:

1 - being a general online RPG shop; and
2 - having a history of being the publishers of Dragon and Dungeon and developing that subscription delivery model directly with their customers.

The best customers of Paizo's Adventure Path are people that this FLGS store owner is never going to see. And Paizo's profit per unit by selling directly to the customer is at a level that is much larger than the profit he makes.

If you count the sale of oranges at retail, in an attempt to measure the profitibility of Paizo's apple production -- and don't even see the sales levels from the hardcore apple purchasers, almost by definition?

My guess is that your orange count, while it may have something significant to say about the overall volume and profit of fruit at a retail level -- is not a great measure of the profitability of a specific apple grower.

 

[darjr]

Paizo has a relationship with its customers that it very different that the relationship other game mftrs have.

I agree. Nice way to put it. I think it's a contributing factor, not to take away from Paizo and what Gary Ray of Black Diamond games says "writing the absolute best adventures I've ever read" about Paizo's adventures.

 

[BryonD]

What does the most successful part of 4E and Paizo's general strategy have in common?

A: Subscription