Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Adventure Path: How Successful?

[Grymar]

I'm not a subscription kind of guy, so not before with Drag/Dung mags and not now.

But seeing as I am not moving to 4e now or in the foreseeable future, Pathfinder is a great system to look into. We are right now using that with some of the 3.5 added classes in my Eberron campaign and I do not see any campaign of mine in the future not using Pathfinder.

My next campaign may be an AP, I'm not sure. If I do choose to do an adventure, it will be from Paizo.

 

[James Jacobs]

(I don't know if Mr. Mona or other Paizo people are willing to confirm or deny this).

I'm under the impression that Paizo is taking the approach of designing their adventures and setting products from scratch under the guise of "what TSR/WotC could or should have done" during the 2nd ed AD&D and 3E/3.5E D&D eras, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and competent management.

Imagine if WotC remained an independent company without the corporate greed (ie. Hasbro), or for that matter, TSR actually having competent management back in the early-mid 1990's.

Not really; we're basically designing adventures and setting products to be the type of games that we at Paizo enjoy (and by extension, the type that our customers seem to want, based on feedback and messageboard posts and the like). We're not consciously trying to do "what TSR/WotC could or should have done" at all, since everyone here at Paizo is a huge fan of D&D in the first place, otherwise we would probably be working in different industries and getting bigger paychecks...

As for 4th edition content—yeah; we've pretty much 100% committed to the Pathfinder RPG/3.5 from here on out. We don't have the experience, time, resources, or frankly the interest in producing 4th edition content. Any 4th edition stuff we WOULD do would, as a result, be sloppy and riddled with errors, and that's not the type of product we're interested in putting out and not the type of product 4th Edition deserves to have out anyway (as in, they're the market leader in tabletop RPGs, so they should and do have some of the best products out there). Fortunately, the industry's big enough for both games. Plus Call of Cthulhu. And Champions. And GURPS. And Traveller. And Metamorphosis Alpha. And whatever else comes along!

Anyway, thanks for all the great feedback, and keep it coming!

 

[James Jacobs]

Much has been said about psionics on the Paizo message boards but I get the feeling James Jacobs really has no interest in it at all. I know he says he likes psionics but it needs to be his way or the high way. He is in charge so I suppose it's his call. If he can make it better fantastic but the bar is set pretty high depending on who you ask.

Close, but not exact. I'm probably one of the biggest fans of psionics at Paizo, actually, and the flavor and concepts of psionic powers has always intrigued and fascinated me across all editions of D&D. But I've also had some pretty bad experiences with psionics in play... and ALL of those are basically the result of the GM not knowing the system well enough to know how to adjust the game play style to accommodate for psionics, often complicated by the fact that the player of the psionic character knows the psionic rules (and the places where they're broken) better than the GM. I include myself in the category of GM who didn't realize how to accommodate a psionic character, in fact—but I learned a lot about how to roll a psionic character into a largely non-psionic group from my experiences in that particular campaign. Alas... no one's taken the bait in a game I run to try out a new psionic character yet so I'm not sure if what I've learned works...

Anyway!

Psionic rules and Epic rules are certainly two of the (if not THE two) most-popular and most-requested areas for rules expansion from the PFRPG system. I'm 100% positive that we'll tackle both at some point in the future (assuming that PFRPG is successful enough to get us to that future, which it is looking like it will be!). Both would need to attach to PFRPG much more elegantly than they did to 3.5 D&D, though, before I'd be interested in publishing something for it. We have the advantage that both Epic and Psionic rules have been in play in public for many years now, of course, which gives us a lot of playtest information to work with.

Whether that means we ditch the 3.5 model for psionics entirely to do something new or embrace the 3.5 model but fix the problems with it remains to be seen. One thing that I do NOT want to do, though, is to produce something that estranges current fans of psionics. I don't want to "fire" the fans of psionic rules in the hopes of finding some new group of psionic fans that may or may not exist. Whatever we do needs to be something that current fans want and like AND something that non-fans won't rebel against. Which is a pretty tall order, and not one that I currently know how to fill (mostly since most of my brainpower's been focused on launching the core game and the bestiary while keeping Pathfinder Adventure Paths, modules, chronicles, and companions afloat).

 

[sckeener]

When the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon magazine died, Paizo gave subscribers the option to subscribe to the Pathfinder Adventure Path, a monthly publication that comprises two story-arcs per year.....

What I'm curious to know is how popular these are/were? Did you subscribe? And for how long?

My subscription rolled over as you describe and then I thought I would get some notice that my subscription was expiring. I didn't and it lapsed for about a month. As soon as I noticed, I resubscribed. I suspect the lack of a notice was because of something WotC did in the termination contract, but I'm not sure.

Since Paizo took over Dungeon and Dragon Magazine, I've enjoyed everything they produced. Their Pathfinder material is the best I've seen in gaming in years and for me Pathfinder is the new D&D.

I'm still a subscriber and as long as they keep the quality up, I will continue to be a subscriber.

If paizo was a publicly traded company (well, Hasbro would buy them and close them), I would invest in them. Their 'hit to win' ratio is much higher than WotC. They have to be otherwise they'd go out of business. WotC just sells more because they are bigger and have better links into the retailers.

 

[ggroy]

Not really; we're basically designing adventures and setting products to be the type of games that we at Paizo enjoy (and by extension, the type that our customers seem to want, based on feedback and messageboard posts and the like). We're not consciously trying to do "what TSR/WotC could or should have done" at all, since everyone here at Paizo is a huge fan of D&D in the first place, otherwise we would probably be working in different industries and getting bigger paychecks...

Thanks for replying.

I didn't think anybody would have answered such questions.

Hopefully the present management has the wisdom to maintain a good thing, without degenerating into the corporate greed, incompetence, and corruption reminiscent of post-1985 TSR.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Been subscribing to Dragon out of habit from issue #76 right up to the time it ended, mostly just for reading enjoyment. Subscribed to Dungeon since issue #1 till the end, and I heavily mined it and used it every issue.

I decided to give the AP's a try since my subs were running into that anyway. They blew me away and I became an instant fan and kept all my subs there. With Paizo committing to 3.5 I chose to follow them and every month I'm reinforced that I did the right thing for me and my group.

I actually haven't brought any other company's products since 4e was announced.

-DM Jeff

 

[Arnwyn]

While I'm not technically a "subscriber", I voted as such since I buy each book in each AP (from Amazon.ca) on a monthly basis. I've been a very long-time subscriber of Dungeon (by far my favorite D&D product ever), and a semi-long subscriber of Dragon (leaving only for a year or so during 3e when it was still in WotC's hands).

I'll keep buying the APs as long as they are easily convertible to other (standard) settings, like FR or GH, etc. So far, so good! (Other than the blip that was Second Darkness.)

 

[Mistwell]

Paizo seems like the "We're anti-4e" company. Whether that perception is justified or not, it sure seems to be positioned that way by many people who support Paizo.

If I perceived the AP's to be 4e-friendly, I would reconsider my decision to not buy them. Right now, based on their fan-base, I am not interested in them because I assume the products are not 4e-friendly.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Maybe I am misremembering your like of DMing 4e? I could be confusing you with another that has talked about their experiences as a 4e DM.

And being a 4e DM and not subscribing to or trying DDI seems odd, since it has proven to be such a valuable tool to most other 4e DMs I know and many that post here with regularity.

I do DM 4E, but I am not convinced that DDI is necessary for that. A lot of people do like it, and seem to find it useful, but over the 30 years I ahve been DMing, the books have been fine for me, and WOTC has yet to convince me that DDI is worth 3-4 physical books a year.

Plus the whole temporary access thing to online content rubs me raw. Once I stop paying for it, I lose not only the new content, but whatever I had previously paid for.

Nah, physical books are good enough for me.

 

[Dannager]

Plus the whole temporary access thing to online content rubs me raw. Once I stop paying for it, I lose not only the new content, but whatever I had previously paid for.

Currently this only really holds true for the Compendium. Your PDFs of the magazines won't suddenly disappear when you unsubscribe, and your copy of the Character Builder will still work, with all of its updates, as long as you don't uninstall it.