joela said:
I'm surprised no one's mentioned this.
Will the
Pathfinder Society have an impact in keeping interest in 3.x/PfRPG? Earlier D&D versions never had such support.
Errrr... wasn't that what the whole RPGA was about? I never got into it, but I gotta say, the RPGA had a pretty big influence on D&D from what I've seen over the years.
Organized Play struggled a bit in the initial stages, but Dragon kept promoting it, and people _really_ grooved on the idea. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks sound familiar? It was run as a tournament module. Which is really what the RPGA grew up out of.
While I'm always hesitant to cite Wikipedia, they've got a pretty good overview of it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPGA
Been going since 1980.
If Paizo keeps up on it, making sure that events happen at cons and all that? Oh yeah, it'll definitely help Pathfinder. It's yet one more way of establishing and building a community. It worked for D&D it can certainly work for Pathfinder.
Will it keep interest up in 3.x? That's a whole different thing. I think you might be looking at things from a slightly different perspective...
Pathfinder isn't about "keeping 3.x alive".
Pathfinder is about providing an updated version of a set of rules that folks like, while still allowing them to continue using their old books.
In other words, Pathfinder isn't about supporting an older edition or keeping it alive or whatever. It's about allowing folks to use their books with a new game.
You know how Castles & Crusades kinda tried to co-opt stuff? You know, the whole bit folks had about how you could use anything from Basic all the way through 3.5 for you C&C game? It's kinda like that.
At least, that's how _I_ see it. So from my perspective, yeah the Pathfinder Society has the potential to be all kinds of win for Paizo. Ultimately it'll be up to Paizo and the Pathfinder fans as to where it goes.
