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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 5182015" data-attributes="member: 20741">I agree. This is VERY true and speaks to the different ground rules and expectations under which WotC operates and how those expectations lead them to adopt a different business model than Paizo Publishing.   I would also point out that the focus upon rules also lends itself much more readily to a "revise, reset, resell" strategy that WotC has made the cornerstone of its business in how it sells Magic: The Gathering to players of that game. In contrast, a business model that focuses upon selling modules and setting material has a far longer natural product cycle, in my opinion.  This is especially so, given that the incentive to sell more rules -- when the profits are derived from adventures, just isn't there to the same degree. Having more than 80+ 3rd edition hardbacks on my shelf, (the vast majority of which I must admit I barely cracked), I can say as a DM that my love for "more and more rules" has been greatly exhausted.  I think the blunt truth is that what I really liked was buying "more and more stuff"; I got a geek thrill from purchasing and collecting RPG material for my system of choice. The cost of that in terms of $$ was something I could live with -- but the other cost?  That's something I have become very unhappy with over time. Because what was made exceedingly clear to me as the power creep extended through the late part of the 3.5 product cycle, is that the primary element of the game which suffers under this inevitable power creep is the utility of adventure material.  Every splat book in the players' hands makes published adventure material increasingly unbalanced in favour of the players -- and therefore less useful to DMs.Ultimately, I experienced in my own Age of Worms Campaign a moment where the power creep in 3.5 was responsible for DESTROYING that campaign. This experience lead me to draw this conclusion: A. Either the expanded players options in the 3.5 hardbacks had to be radically disallowed;ORB. I had to admit that the Adventure Paths I had collected from  Dungeon magazine could not be run without radically revising them. With this past experience firmly in my rear-view mirror, I am looking to the release of the Advanced Player's Guide for Pathfinder at this Gencon with a lot less enthusiasm than most people. Trepidation would be a far more accurate word. Because fankly, I'm very worried the book's release is going to begin a cycle which will break those 128 Adventure SKUS I noted in my first post. And that is something I will never permit again at my table. I would be interested to know what Paizo thinks about this issue and whether they will entertain a change in the assumptions their adventure material for PFRPG are based upon. Will the adventures Paizo intends to release in 2011 be balanced upon the ASSUMPTION that the GM and players are using the Advanced Player's Guide? If not, will they consider releasing ONE Adventure Path in the future that is premised upon the Advanced Player's Guide being in use at the table? Because it seems to me, at some point, without changing the default assumptions that are inherent in the adventure products -- power creep WILL break the utility of the adventure material published by Paizo to the DMs who buy it.</blockquote>

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