Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

[Mistwell]

True. However, unless Paizo's leadership has been taking stupid pills, it seem highly unlikely that they'd continue to produce (and in such volume) products that don't sell.

Well, he DID say that Paizo compares to TSR

In all seriousness though, Dungeon Magazine proved long ago that adventures do sell. I think it's just a difference in format and variety of offerings within that format (magazine vs. module vs. book).

 

[mkill]

Congrats to Paizo. However, I'm really torn on this issue.

On one hand, I prefer the 4th edition rules. On the other hand, I really like quality modules, but everything I've ever seen from WotC in that regard is crap. I don't need a simple string of combat encounters with a bit of read-aloud text. Call me spoiled, but I learned the ropes on the German RPG Das Schwarze Auge, which is known for its detailed setting and excellent, plot-driven modules.

I'm pretty sure Paizo and many other publishers would LOVE to bring converted modules for 4th edition to the market, but WotC pretty much banned them from doing that. WotC shot itself in the foot here. Hard. With a chainsaw. On fire.

To add to the insult, WotC fired pretty much everyone who wrote 4th edition by now, but I'm sure the person responsible for killing their ecosystem is still working there.

Crap like that just makes me angry, because the hobby doesn't deserve it.

 

[Votan]

I saw this coming in 3.0. I picked up the 3.0 DMG and went, "What the #$!@!", when I saw PrC's. A chill of trepidation went down my spine, and I said to myself, "I hope they realize just how bad of an idea this is." I know what Monte was trying for, but the implementation absolutely sucked and with official no rules and guidelines to ensure balance things went to heck in a hurry. Of course, my idea of a 'bad idea' was something bad for the game. From WotC's perspective though, it was immediately clear that they recognized the market value of PrC's and they moved the PrC out of DM books and into player books. Really, that was the beginning of the end of the system. It wasn't long before I was hearing about various 'optimized' builds of multi-dipped synergized PrCs, usually either full-caster progression PrCs that ALSO got nifty powers on top of the already powerful Wizard build, or else full BAB progression PrCs that got the equivalent of a bonus feat every level rather than every other level. And from there, as the stuff proliferated, it just got worse. It was all I could do to hold back the tide.

I think that this also tends to be an issue for modules -- the CR that challenges a party varies (and the variance gets worse as level increases). Some of this was inherent in the system: it made a big difference if a player had teleport at level 10 (some parties would have it, some would not). Some parties had 40 books, some parties had core only. It seemed increasingly hard to write a module in the absence of specific campaign details.

This made module crafting much more difficult. What I find surprising is that Paizo manages it so well (I liked Rise of the Runelords a lot).

Now, for 4E what is more interesting is most of those issues are gone and the modules still seem somewhat flat. They make great tactical battles, though, so if the non-combat stuff could be made interesting they'd be real winners.