Paizo Ends Pathfinder Adventure Path Softcovers, Switching to Quarterly Model

Paizo is ending its line of monthly Pathfinder Adventure Paths, with a new quarterly hardcover replacing the long-running product. Paizo announced the change yesterday on its blog, with the shift beginning next year. The new hardcover Adventure Paths will be a minimum of 256 pages and will have a retail price of $79.99, which is cheaper than the cost of purchasing four softcover adventure paths. Paizo also stated that they'll release one Adventure Path starting at Level 1, another ending at Level 20, with the remaining two falling somewhere in between. Each Adventure Path will cover 9-10 levels of play.

The first two Adventure Paths announced for this format are Hellbreakers and Hell's Destiny, which both cover the upcoming war between Andoran and Cheliax.

The Pathfinder Adventure Paths series started as an evolution of Paizo's monthly Pathfinder magazine series. To date, Paizo has released 222 Pathfinder Adventure Paths. Early Pathfinder Adventure Paths were for campaigns that lasted six issues and typically encompassed Level 1-Level 20 play. However, more recently, the Adventure Path structure has shortened and grown more flexible, with shorter length campaigns with more variable levels of play.

 

[AlwaysMerlin]

Definitely had a knee-jerk upon seeing this, but honestly the change isn't that big. They've been doing smaller APs for awhile now and while I'm not exactly sure of the rate of release 4 of these a year sounds about right.

I'd love to see them release some more module length content though too. Level 1-5 or 6-10 type stuff. My friends and I are a busy, its a hard sell on a full length or even half length AP sometimes.

They still have the standalone adventures line that are shorter and sounds like exactly what you are looking for. Usually spanning 3 to 4 levels. For example: Clash of the Tyrant has three mini adventures that spans 3 levels each across levels 1-20. Other books are shorter and just have a single adventure.

 

[Cergorach]

End of an era!

Yeah... It really differentiated Paizo in the D&D-esque space, a sort of a monthly magazine for running adventures.

They're $30 monthly, so $80 every 3 months saves you $10 off the existing price, saves you 2 shipping charges (~$15 for me), and you get a hardcover instead of a softcover. IMO that's a huge upgrade all around and something I asked for when they had a survey not too long ago asking for feedback.

It might be an upgrade, but the monthly adventures were a unique format, each clocking in at 96 pages, you could just buy one and never run the rest. Also 3x 96 = 288, not 256.

How does this differentiate from a WotC D&D adventure? Besides playing in Golarion, with the PF2e rules, and being about 1/3rd more expensive then the D&D offering? Vecna: Eve of Ruin was also 256 pages and only $60 MSRP. If people are willing to pay $80 for such a hardcover adventure, it's a good business move! But I suspect that eventually these kinds of books will go from 4 per year to 3 to 2, etc...

Don't get me wrong, I paid $120 for the Kingmaker adventure path as a Foundry VTT module, but that is based on a 640 page book that's still sold for $100.

Of course, I still just want Dragon and Dungeon back...

I still have a LARGE Dragon and Dungeon collection, I will probably not part with that. But would I buy a new Dragon and/or Dungeon magazine physically? Not likely, and would I really subscribe to a DND Beyond monthly magazine without PDF? Probably not. And would I pay for a PDF subscription, I don't know honestly... I stopped subscribing to monthly magazines quite a while back (no more White Dwarf, computer or art magazines). They take up a TON of space and not everything is great and often irrelevant after a (short) while. Still love my nostalgia collection of Dragon, Dungeon, Challenge, and White Dwarf magazines!

As a reminder, Adventure Paths used to be 6 books long where each softcover book was $19.95.

Yeah, when I read the announcement, I thought: "Weren't they $20 a piece?". But apparently the price has gone up to $30, which isn't surprising as I haven't bought one physically beyond the very first two APs.

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Not ChatGPT output - I'm just like this.

 

[payn]

Initial reaction was shock, but times have been a changing. I got off at PF2 launch so I dont have much room to criticize to move one way or another. Though, if it saves a little on shipping and cost, but still comes with a PDF(?), this seems like a good move.

 

[sevenbastard]

Back when they canceled Dungeon Magazine they gave me the option of a credit to the store or transfer the subscription to the AP softcovers.

I did neither. Maybe I should follow up and see if I can get it transfered to this?

 

[Velderan]

Initial reaction was shock, but times have been a changing. I got off at PF2 launch so I dont have much room to criticize to move one way or another. Though, if it saves a little on shipping and cost, but still comes with a PDF(?), this seems like a good move.

PDFs are included if you have a subscription, so that hasn't changed. I'm pretty sure they mentioned one of the goals of the new website is to let customers manage their own subscriptions so they can skip products they don't want. I wish they would just throw in the free PDF if you buy directly from them like some other publishers do and drop the subscription requirement. It's definitely something I appreciate when I buy stuff from Chaosium.

 

[payn]

PDFs are included if you have a subscription, so that hasn't changed. I'm pretty sure they mentioned one of the goals of the new website is to let customers manage their own subscriptions so they can skip products they don't want. I wish they would just throw in the free PDF if you buy directly from them like some other publishers do and drop the subscription requirement. It's definitely something I appreciate when I buy stuff from Chaosium.

With this change im wondering if that policy will also change? A monthly sub up incentive makes much more sense than a quarterly one will.

 

[Velderan]

It might be an upgrade, but the monthly adventures were a unique format, each clocking in at 96 pages, you could just buy one and never run the rest. Also 3x 96 = 288, not 256.

This is addressed in the blog if you take the time to read it..

A three-part Adventure Path consists of 96 pages of content split over three books, for a total of 288 pages in all. The new format will start at 256 pages. On its face, reducing overall pages by 32 would seem to reduce the amount of content you get in each Adventure Path, but that’s not quite accurate, since a single volume is more efficient in several ways. We don’t have to print multiple tables of contents or multiple ORC pages, and the number of back-of-the-book advertisements overall will drop from 8 to 12 to potentially as few as 2. Adventure Toolboxes will be more efficient, and we’ll have greater flexibility in what sorts of support articles we want to include. In the end, you’ll still have the same amount of actual adventure content in a 256-page hardcover as you did in three 96-page softcovers, but it’ll cost you less overall!

 

[Ringtail]

They still have the standalone adventures line that are shorter and sounds like exactly what you are looking for. Usually spanning 3 to 4 levels.

I'm aware, but they don't publish nearly as many adventures in this range. There are some notable gaps in the 1-20 level range. I'd like to see them publish more.

 

[Velderan]

With this change im wondering if that policy will also change? A monthly sub up incentive makes much more sense than a quarterly one will.

I would think they'd mention that if that change was happening, since it would undoubtably piss off a lot of people. The thing with the free PDF being included with a subscription is it also gives you a discount on the Foundry VTT module and with so many people playing on Foundry, there would definitely be backlash over that.

I guess we'll see when they release finalized plans for their new webstore.

 

[payn]

I would think they'd mention that if that change was happening, since it would undoubtably piss off a lot of people. The thing with the free PDF being included with a subscription is it also gives you a discount on the Foundry VTT module and with so many people playing on Foundry, there would definitely be backlash over that.

I guess we'll see when they release finalized plans for their new webstore.

Ah! Further incentive to keep it up then.