Pathfinder 1E So the question is... why is pathfinder selling so well?

[Mistwell]

As a side note, EN World is definitely considered rabidly for 4E, anti-4E, for 3E, anti-4E, for PF, anti-PF, and so on, depending on the observer.

How they perceive it says more about the observer than about the nature of a large generalist forum, which will tend to the average by definition.

Today I got an email from someone declaring they were leaving this forum because it was rabidly pro-Pathfinder and anti-D&D. Ironically, I post this in a thread started by a guy who claims we're rabidly anti-Pathfinder. This has been repeated a thousand times on each possible angle. You see what you want to see, and then confirmation bias reinforces that.

I heard EN World was anti-N.E.W./O.L.D..

 

[Morrus]

I heard EN World was anti-N.E.W./O.L.D..

Y'know, it's a conundrum. Hard to handle. If everyone thinks you're anti-their-game, you're obviously well balanced. Problem is only you know that. Everybody else just thinks you're anti-their-game. The real solution is to just pick one and simply lose the others, but that takes a leap of faith!

 

[Mistwell]

Y'know, it's a conundrum. Hard to handle. If everyone thinks you're anti-their-game, you're obviously well balanced. Problem is only you know that. Everybody else just thinks you're anti-their-game. The real solution is to just pick one and simply lose the others, but that takes a leap of faith!

Five websites: ENOSR, ENPF, EN3e, EN4e, and EN5e. Balkanize the tribes. Don't even let people automatically have a login ID at all of them, make the register for each one they intend to use.

 

[Morrus]

Five websites: ENOSR, ENPathfinder, EN3ednd, EN4ednd, and EN5eDnd. Balkanize the tribes.

I honestly considered that back in the depths of the edition wars.

 

[CM]

To address OP's question (and some of these were already mentioned):

• It's human nature to want to build on/improve things you like. If people *weren't* arguing about Pathfinder, I would find it more odd. I'm a diehard 4e fan and I know it has plenty of flaws, so I strive to fix them.
• Even though it's large, ENWorld is still just a tiny fraction of the gaming community as a whole. Tempest in a teapot.
• Confirmation bias
• Pathfinder rulebooks are only a portion of the entire product line. Many of Paizo's Pathfinder products are edition-agnostic or can be adapted to other systems. I was daydreaming the other day about running a steampunk-style Fullmetal Alchemist type game using 4e. I'd certainly look into Pathfinder's gunslinger to mine for ideas.
• Finally, you're sounding a little defensive. Lighten up.

 

[Morrus]

• Even though it's large, ENWorld is still just a tiny fraction of the gaming community as a whole. Tempest in a teapot.

Though I agree with you that his conclusion is incorrect -- ENW has a statistically significant population. It honestly doesn't take all that much, and we have a LOT more than it needs. Selection bias is certainly an argument, but size is not.

 

[CM]

Though I agree with you that his conclusion is incorrect -- ENW has a statistically significant population. It honestly doesn't take all that much, and we have a LOT more than it needs. Selection bias is certainly an argument, but size is not.

Maybe I should've phrased that better. The people actively participating in the types threads OP is citing are a tiny fraction. What is it, 30 people tops? Usually they boil down to a half dozen people arguing semantics after page 10.

 

[pogre]

Pathfinder is popular, because Pathfinder is popular.

Once PF broke through and WOTC stumbled, PF became the go to and most available game.

It is a fine game made by a fine company. Just not my game of choice currently.

However, if I was in a new community and wanted to get a game going I would post a 'players wanted' for a Pathfinder campaign. It is by far the easiest system to find players for.

 

[pemerton]

So, it seems that pretty much every thread on here devolves into how irredeemably awful and broken beyond repair pathfinder is. So why is it the most successful product in the tabletop RPG world right now?

By and large, the people who decry it as "irredeemably awful and broken" are not the people buying it in droves.

What delericho says seems sensible to me.

You anywhere you go be it Wizards forums, Paizo's forums, /tg/, here at enworld, gamefaqs' tabletop forum people are discussing similar issues about the brokenness of the game.

Besides what [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] says, I get the impression that a lot of PF players don't use mechanics in the same way that I do. They also have a different attitude to PC-building and what that is for. I assume that, for them, the game isn't broken.

Pathfinder Society also plays an important part. I think it plays a big part.

<snip>

It drives sales because for every option the player with that character must own the book with that option and be able to show it at the game. With all the options available to look at for free and publicly available, that drives users to consider adding those options to their characters, and when they do they'll then need to buy the book.

Really? The PRD doesn't count? Man I could see WotC being raked over the coals for trying something like this.

Isn't this the M:tG strategy? To play the game in the "official" events, you must have actually purchased an item.

What I think is interesting is that it works! Apparently people are prepared to pay quite significant amounts of money in order to be "official".

Traveller has 4 - I presume in those games you just make a PC and not play

I wanted to XP you for this but sadly I couldn't.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Ideas, not Form

Pathfinder is selling well (for an PRG product at least) since it is the only significant in-print D&D version on the market.

This.

If you want to play D&D, and you look around, it is the only choice that is readily obvious. I play the occasional PF game, but pretty much just because it's a default that everyone I play with can play.

D&D was overwhelmingly popular during the 3.0 / 3.5 era, so most gamers played and know the rules to at least some extent. When 4e came out, those who didn't like it moved to PF. When 4e support died, those people generally either retreated to PF or picked up something new. It's the default game.

I read a great book "understanding comics" recently, and one argument made there is that there is a split between people who want to explore the form as opposed to those who want to use the form to convey ideas. In comics, the former are people who experiment with how the comic appears; the latter those who decide on a form and use it to explore ideas(*). I would not be surprised if there is a similar split in gaming. I like to explore different forms, so I play many games and try new systems. Other people don't care as much about the form, and instead want to settle on a system and use that to tell amazing stories.

For those people, there is really no compelling reason to do anything but pick a system that is solid, if not spectacular, that reaches as large an audience as possible, and that they can get good support for as they develop their ideas in that form.

Sounds like Pathfinder to me.

(*) Gross generalization; the book says it much better