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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5734333" data-attributes="member: 82106">I don't think it is so much a radically different basic goal as it is a rather different overall product strategy. As Steve said, Paizo has pretty much zip brand recognition outside the gamer community and their retail presence is pretty much restricted to game stores. Few and far between are the people who aren't gamers who will know what Pathfinder is or associate it with D&D, nor are they likely to have kids asking for a PF product for Christmas etc. BB is aimed at people who know what PF is. They will likely be buying it for kids or maybe as an entry for themselves into playing PF. The RB was clearly designed instead to trade on the D&D brand name and act as an impulse buy where the buyer knows what D&D is, probably remembers the old RB, and picks it up as a way to intro their kids to what they played back in the day. Someone wanting to get into 4e that plays RPGs will likely buy some of the other Essentials books, which gets them basically what the PF BB would give them.Looking at myself, if I were buying one of these products for some kids I'd be pretty tempted to go with the less expensive and simpler RB. OTOH if I was buying a PF item for myself to get into it or my sister, who likes to run E6 3.5, I'd clearly want to be buying the PF BB. In terms of which strategy is going to work best from a business standpoint for WotC and Paizo I think we really can't answer that. Clearly if WotC had made an intro product with an MSRP of $35 like the PF product then I think it is safe to assume it would be a more substantial product. Would it be 'better' or 'worse' than what Paizo produced? Heck if I know! We could as easily ask if Paizo would have made as good a product as RB at MSRP $20? We don't know that either.I think it would be cool if WotC did revise and re-issue their RB. Clearly it can at worst be cleaned up a bit rules-wise. I don't think it was some sort of stunningly brilliant product, but I've looked at it, it isn't crap either. It is just the minimum amount of D&D stuff you can put in the cheapest possible box and still have a playable game.</blockquote>

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