Pathfinder 1E Paizo = Play WoTC = Pay?

[JoeGKushner]

Just some random thoughts on how the comapnies operate and nothing about the game systems.

Paizo has a huge focus on adventurers.

Paizo has their own living campaign.

Paizo sells the core books for a ridiculously low price in PDF.

All of these things to me, combine to say, "Play". Pick an adventure path, grab a core book, and play. Their focus on 'power' books is relatively low with one big book on Advanced Player's Guide, one for the GM (which was more advice than rules), and a monster book, with a lot of setting stuff. Once again, setting stuff to me, = play. Don't want to make up your own world? Here's ours. By the way, all of our products are set in it.

WoTC?

DDI does handle some of the whole adventure thing, but it's not for everyone. Nor is the whole PDF thing.

Minimal amount of adventurers. This seems to be slowly changing. and when I say adventurers, I mean print adventurers.

Huge focus on getting players to buy as many power up books as they can. Huge.

Settings? Fire and forget.

supported play? Dropped for FR this year.

To me, it speaks of a vastly different focus on where the company is coming from. Lot more effort on the GM's part for WoTC since so much of the material is aimed at the players. A lot of the DM stuff is all purpose. One adventure path of nine adventurers, and another one starting with a few hardcovers of various assorted material. Compared to Paizo... not that impressive.

Opinions?

 

[malraux]

supported play? Dropped for FR this year.

And moved to Encounters.

There's 2 full adventure paths, the H-P-E series and the Scales of War. I haven't looked but the Chaos Scar stuff looks like it will eventually morph into an AP.

 

[RangerWickett]

Paizo has a huge focus on adventurers.

WoTC?

Minimal amount of adventurers.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I like Paizo's style, stories, and presentation better. I like WotC's gameplay better. I do wish we could get the gatekeeper and the keymaster together, though I doubt that will happen.

Bear in mind, WotC is a larger company. They have a lot more products in big book stores, which means they're motivated to sell high numbers of each book. Putting out lots of small flavorful products might be bad business for them.

Paizo, which probably gets a lot of its sales through hobby stores and online, is nimbler, better able to produce a bevy of small adventures.

That still doesn't explain to me why Dungeon magazine these days doesn't have (in my opinion) the same quality as Pathfinder. But since I make almost all my own adventures (or get ideas from folks on EN World for just $3 a month), I don't mind.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Agreed. while I see the hardcovers of Paizo at Borders, I do not see the softcovers. I can easily see why WoTC would seek to avoid that issue.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I like Paizo's style, stories, and presentation better. I like WotC's gameplay better. I do wish we could get the gatekeeper and the keymaster together, though I doubt that will happen.

Bear in mind, WotC is a larger company. They have a lot more products in big book stores, which means they're motivated to sell high numbers of each book. Putting out lots of small flavorful products might be bad business for them.

Paizo, which probably gets a lot of its sales through hobby stores and online, is nimbler, better able to produce a bevy of small adventures.

That still doesn't explain to me why Dungeon magazine these days doesn't have (in my opinion) the same quality as Pathfinder. But since I make almost all my own adventures (or get ideas from folks on EN World for just $3 a month), I don't mind.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

WoTC?

DDI does handle some of the whole adventure thing, but it's not for everyone. Nor is the whole PDF thing.

Minimal amount of adventurers. This seems to be slowly changing. and when I say adventurers, I mean print adventurers.

Huge focus on getting players to buy as many power up books as they can. Huge.

Settings? Fire and forget.

supported play? Dropped for FR this year.

To me, it speaks of a vastly different focus on where the company is coming from. Lot more effort on the GM's part for WoTC since so much of the material is aimed at the players. A lot of the DM stuff is all purpose. One adventure path of nine adventurers, and another one starting with a few hardcovers of various assorted material. Compared to Paizo... not that impressive.

Hah hah. What.

DDI lets you easily create characters or encounters at whim with minimal effort needed.

Players are encouraged to get new books as they have new archtypes and new types of characters to play as.

Adventures are in encounter format to push for, well, encounters.

Settings are created, expanded a bit, and then moved on, to ensure they neither stagnate nor grow overwhelming so they consistantly remain playable.

Protip: both companies want you to play their game, and another protip because I'm so nice, both companies would rather you spend money on their product to do so. The difference between the two companies is that you like one product and not the other.

 

[Nifft]

All of these things to me, combine to say, "Play". Pick an adventure path, grab a core book, and play.

Adventure Paths can be "grabbed" for free? Cool.

- - -

An equally inflammatory -- and equally, but differently, inaccurate -- portrayal might be:

Paizo = RAILROAD. Get on the approved adventure path, don't you dare think or improvise, you are LOCKED IN for the next 20 levels. Sucker.

WotC = Creativity! Grab some tools, you are invited to make a world to share with your friends!

(Did I mention that the above is both inflammatory and not accurate? Because it is, as is your characterization of the companies. WotC and Paizo are both trying to make good products, and both of them enjoy earning profits.)

Also, I'm not at all convinced when you say:

Lot more effort on the GM's part for WoTC since so much of the material is aimed at the players.

4e is an absolute breeze when it comes to the making efficient use of the GM's prep time. I say this as someone who ran 3.x for years, at a fairly high level of play. 3.x can be murderous if you want to do anything creative with high-level monsters or traps or NPCs... or, hell, even if you don't want to be creative, but you happen to pick a monster that casts spells, or has more than 10 spell-like abilities, and you want to use more than one monster in a fight.

Cheers, -- N

 

[MerricB]

DDI does handle some of the whole adventure thing, but it's not for everyone. Nor is the whole PDF thing.

And yet, just a few paragraphs ago you were praising Paizo for their low-cost rule PDFs...

 

[JoeGKushner]

And yet, just a few paragraphs ago you were praising Paizo for their low-cost rule PDFs...

Certainly. For those that aren't going to be interesting in the DDI, I'd imagine that they may not be interesting in the Pathfinder rules in PDF format either.

But some may find a difference in buying the rules in PDF format for use of referfence, at an ultra low price, as opposed to not even having that option to buy the rules in a book format. The DDI compendium is a vastly useful tool as long as you've got net.

Neither company, in my opinion, is fully utilizing the PDF format though. Unless the Dungeon adventurers have changed since I last looked, you're still not getting full scale maps. And that's ditto for Paizo too last time I looked. The PDF should take full advance of the fact that the customer is printing the product, not the company. the fact that several end users have pointed out methods for end users to do just that proves that it can be done and probably done better on the front end.

but like I said, that may have changed radically.

I apologize if I sound inflamatory towards WoTC. I play 4e and steal a lot of ideas from Paizo as well as other game companies. I find both produce some great products but both seem to have completely different ends in mind.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Adventure Paths can be "grabbed" for free? Cool.

- - -

An equally inflammatory -- and equally, but differently, inaccurate -- portrayal might be:

Paizo = RAILROAD. Get on the approved adventure path, don't you dare think or improvise, you are LOCKED IN for the next 20 levels. Sucker.

WotC = Creativity! Grab some tools, you are invited to make a world to share with your friends!

(Did I mention that the above is both inflammatory and not accurate? Because it is, as is your characterization of the companies. WotC and Paizo are both trying to make good products, and both of them enjoy earning profits.)

Also, I'm not at all convinced when you say: 4e is an absolute breeze when it comes to the making efficient use of the GM's prep time. I say this as someone who ran 3.x for years, at a fairly high level of play. 3.x can be murderous if you want to do anything creative with high-level monsters or traps or NPCs... or, hell, even if you don't want to be creative, but you happen to pick a monster that casts spells, or has more than 10 spell-like abilities, and you want to use more than one monster in a fight.

Cheers, -- N

those are interesting points and it might be what WoTC is counting on. I agree with you that the ease of creating encounters in 4e is much easier than it was in 3.5. Paizo is slightly easier, but my experience there is limited.

It coudl be I'm entirely underestimating the number of home brewed adventures that people run when thinking of the advantages of not only the adventure paths Paizo puts out, but also the regular adventures.

 

[Wik]

Yeah. This thread is going to be a fun one. What a loaded initial post! The funny thing is, I happen to like both companies... is that a bad thing?

I'm actually fully on Nifft's side, with one minor point: while I love Paizo's layout and approach, I actually dislike their stories - they are, put simply, far too complicated. I actually ran a couple Paizo adventures using Savage Worlds, and while they were easy to run (thanks, SW!) I had a very hard time following the plot... even with multiple read throughs.

When I realized that I was putting more prep work into running a pre-made adventure than I use for my own games (which, by the way, were more enjoyable at our particular table) Paizo got the dump.

Admittedly, WotC has dropped the ball with adventures at times, with quite a few duds and only a few halfway decent releases (the Slaying Stone springs to mind, and I also really liked the first book of Sceptre Tower of Spellgard). They do focus on "Splatbooks" more than Paizo, sure. But you're missing the real issue, here.

Wizards is the primary producer of 4e, and will be for a long time. There is not much in the way of third party support. Regardless of how one feels about that particular issue, it is a fact, especially in comparison to the previous edition. WotC is a finite company - it does not have unlimited resources (Despite what we may think). Naturally, they will focus on the most profitable products, and history has shown us that adventures, even well made adventures, sell less than splats. This goes back to the 1e days.

Paizo, by contrast, is the premier company in a very flooded market. While that market has died down recently, it is still a market awash with splats - some high quality, others... not so much. Paizo comes from a background of adventures - that is where the talent started. Its reputation is BUILT on adventures, which explains why they focus in that area. They don't produce many splats because... they don't need to. They don't want to compete against that market, and instead want to focus on what has drawn fans to them in the first place: adventure paths, and campaigns.

This isn't a 3.5 vs 4e argument. This is a company versus company argument. But it's not Coke versus Pepsi, as it might initially appear. It's more like Coke versus Gatorade. Both are beverages, but they're aimed at different audiences.

(sorry if my argument sounds half-formed... this is what happens when I post while tired!)