Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2E's African-inspired Sourcebook

Paizo has announced Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse for June 2021, a setting sourcebook which delves into an African-themed area of Golarion. At over 300 pages, the book also includes six new ancestries -- Anadi, Conrasu, Gnoll, Goloma, Grippli, and Shisk.

It will be followed by the Strength of Thousands adventure path, where you play students at the Magaambya magic academy in the Mwangi Expanse.

 

[Nylanfs]

Just when I thought it was safe to stop purchasing more Pathfinder 2e, I must get this book too. Hopefully, this completes my purchase cycle. There is only as so much expendable income, after all.

Have you tried, you know, winning the lottery?

 

[imagineGod]

It's good to have a dream, no matter how impossible it might be

In an age before the pandemic, when Paizo was still a financially courageous company, we had options for both D&D 5th and the original Pathfinder rule sets.

Sadly, in the current age, both buyers and sellers of RPG books are taking stock of uncertainty in finance.
It is most unfortunate this new Mwangi book comes to us during the dark ages.

Still, for myself, since, I am invested in the 2nd Edition of Pathfinder, it fits perfectly with my plan to, hopefully, retire after I purchase the Mwangi book. My last milestone was the Kingmaker 10th Anniversary Edition to complete my Pathfinder 2nd Edition set.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

We've avoided dual stat books for a few reasons; here's three that come to mind.

1) We've pretty much thrown all-in on supporting 2nd edition. I'm proud of the work we did in 1st edition, but I personally feel that 2nd edition is more enjoyable to play and to write for. Its improvements and changes are the result of us trying to make a game we prefer, after all, as much as us trying to make a game for the rest of the world. We WANT to produce 2nd edition content.

2) We can't change the laws of time and space, and so if we did dual stats for our books, we'd have to either make fewer books or make them shorter. At the same time, the effort to design and edit and layout dual stat books is not twice as hard as single-stat books. And even if we did decide to simply expand the books by however many pages it would take to do include 1st edition stats, there'd be customers who would be disappointed that the pages devoted to the system they don't use are "wasted" and that we could have given them more content in those pages, so it can foster complicated customer relations.

3) It wouldn't be twice the money, but it'd be more than twice the work.

All that said, for lore-heavy books like this one, it IS in large part edition neutral, and GMs who want to expand upon the Mwangi in their games or are looking for some more lore to fill their own campaigns will find a LOT in here to be inspired by. Regardless of what game you play.

We can agree to disagree. You are a company whose job it is to provide a service to its customers, and that is to provide a game that WE want to play. And there wasn't a huge base crying for 2e, we were all content with 1e and it showed.

Honestly, the work wouldn't be that much. You're converting mechanics, you're not writing fluff. Writing the 1e stats to, say a Blood Boar, Precentor, or whatever shouldn't take much resources. Sure, you could turn around and say "Why don't you do it?" but my job is not a game designer. I have a family, and a job (and if it was a game developing job, I'd make a subsidary company whose job is to convert all your 2E products back to 1E, and I guarantee it'd sell good) and other things, because that would be your job to do and to provide for us. The customers.

If video game industries can do this, so can RPG industries. Look at FFXIV. Despite it being the latest MMO for Final Fantasy, their FFXI servers are still up and running and being maintained and even had an expansion of its own a couple years back I believe. Just make a small department whose job is to throw out 1e conversion PDFs to sell and booklets and now you have everyone who left PF because they preferred 1e with their wallets emptied for you.

At least convert the monsters for us. Least you could do to the 1e fanbase that felt utterly betrayed like what WotC did to us with the 3e to 4e switch.

 

[James Jacobs]

We can agree to disagree. You are a company whose job it is to provide a service to its customers, and that is to provide a game that WE want to play. And there wasn't a huge base crying for 2e, we were all content with 1e and it showed.

Honestly, the work wouldn't be that much. You're converting mechanics, you're not writing fluff. Writing the 1e stats to, say a Blood Boar, Precentor, or whatever shouldn't take much resources. Sure, you could turn around and say "Why don't you do it?" but my job is not a game designer. I have a family, and a job (and if it was a game developing job, I'd make a subsidary company whose job is to convert all your 2E products back to 1E, and I guarantee it'd sell good) and other things, because that would be your job to do and to provide for us. The customers.

If video game industries can do this, so can RPG industries. Look at FFXIV. Despite it being the latest MMO for Final Fantasy, their FFXI servers are still up and running and being maintained and even had an expansion of its own a couple years back I believe. Just make a small department whose job is to throw out 1e conversion PDFs to sell and booklets and now you have everyone who left PF because they preferred 1e with their wallets emptied for you.

At least convert the monsters for us. Least you could do to the 1e fanbase that felt utterly betrayed like what WotC did to us with the 3e to 4e switch.

I'm sorry you feel betrayed, but you underestimate how much work it would be and overestimate the amount of resources we have to do something like this in a way that would be worth charging money for/increasing book costs for (which we would have to do, to justify the new hires we'd need to make to be able to pull this off). Comparing a company like Paizo to a company like Square is like comparing a raindrop to an ocean. Part of the reason we chose to embrace the OGL is precisely bcause that allows other companies and gamers to expand things in the game where we cannot.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Comparing a company like Paizo to a company like Square is like comparing a raindrop to an ocean.

What follows is pure pedantry, just because I like numbers and comparisons.

James' point is still sound that Paizo is a like a hearty rosebush next to a mighty oak tree that is Square.

Square revenue 2019-20 (FY ending June 30 2020) US$5.88 Billion (US billions, as opposed to the larger historical long-scale billions). Compare that to Paizo estimated US$20 million. That's only 300x as large.

The World's ocean is about 1.35 septillion mililiters. (let's assume a raindrop is roughly = to a ml).

 

[James Jacobs]

What follows is pure pedantry, just because I like numbers and comparisons.

James' point is still sound that Paizo is a like a hearty rosebush next to a mighty oak tree that is Square.

Square revenue 2019-20 (FY ending June 30 2020) US$5.88 Billion (US billions, as opposed to the larger historical long-scale billions). Compare that to Paizo US$20 million. That's only 300x as large.

The World's ocean is about 1.35 septillion mililiters. (let's assume a raindrop is roughly = to a ml).

Excellent post. In my defense, I didn't stipulate which ocean I was comparing Square to, though. I didn't even stipulate it was an Earth ocean or a real ocean.

That said, if Paizo's resources were to increases by 300 times to match what Square has at their fingertips... I suspect that we'd be able to provide a LOT more than just 1st edition stats for products. That said... I'm not sure where you got those figures for Paizo. As far as I know we don't publicly reveal that sort of thing, but I'm a Creative Director, not a money person...

 

[imagineGod]

I'm sorry you feel betrayed, but you underestimate how much work it would be and overestimate the amount of resources we have to do something like this in a way that would be worth charging money for/increasing book costs for (which we would have to do, to justify the new hires we'd need to make to be able to pull this off). Comparing a company like Paizo to a company like Square is like comparing a raindrop to an ocean. Part of the reason we chose to embrace the OGL is precisely bcause that allows other companies and gamers to expand things in the game where we cannot.

Who converted the Pathfinder Kingmaker 10th Anniversary to both 5th Edition D&D and 1st Edition Pathfinder? Paizo staff or contractors hired just for that one job?

II am guessing it is more difficult to convert to 5th Edition since it left its 3.5 roots way back.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Excellent post. In my defense, I didn't stipulate which ocean I was comparing Square to, though. I didn't even stipulate it was an Earth ocean or a real ocean.

That said, if Paizo's resources were to increases by 300 times to match what Square has at their fingertips... I suspect that we'd be able to provide a LOT more than just 1st edition stats for products. That said... I'm not sure where you got those figures for Paizo. As far as I know we don't publicly reveal that sort of thing, but I'm a Creative Director, not a money person...

I have no idea either. I linked to my source in my post. Whoops, wrong link in post. Updated.

 

[James Jacobs]

Who converted the Pathfinder Kingmaker 10th Anniversary to both 5th Edition D&D and 1st Edition Pathfinder? Paizo staff or contractors hired just for that one job?

II am guessing it is more difficult to convert to 5th Edition since it left its 3.5 roots way back.

That process is still in the works, but we've worked with contractors to get it started and will likely need to hire more contractors to finish it up. And it's not the entire Adventure Path for those products—just monster and NPC stats that don't already exist in the associated rule set.

 

[James Jacobs]

I have no idea either. I linked to my source in my post. Whoops, wrong link in post. Updated.

Huh... interesting. Especially since they got the location wrong—we're based in Redmond, not Seattle, so I'm not sure how much I'd trust the rest of the info, although for the purposes of the discussion of which company is more prepared to fund a trip to the moon or whatever, it'll work.