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

[darjr]

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".

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

Sort of. No one has to pay to play per instance of play or event. They just have to own the books that have their character options.

Also WOTC with the RPGA had a similar rule.

http://community.wizards.com/forum/rpga-general/threads/1455371

 

[n00bdragon]

It's the best selling RPG right now because D&D isn't selling anything and hasn't sold anything for years. As much as the serial numbers have been filed off Pathfinder *is* D&D. It's 3.5 with house rules. D&D is the default TTRPG for most people. In fact for most of the world D&D is the definition of TTRPG. When people get into the genre they overwhelmingly play D&D.

So new players join games that are already being played and since those games are mostly D&D those players mostly learn to play D&D, which means when they recruit new people those people play D&D. The process feeds on itself, and because the internet threw a hissy fit over 4e a lot of people switched to Pathfinder because it was still their beloved 3.5. Now the cycle keeps going. You have people joining the hobby who have never played anything but Pathfinder and so they keep playing Pathfinder, which recruits more Pathfinder players.

Regardless of whether Pathfinder is nasty haggis or the nectar of heaven people will keep on eating it because it's a social activity and everyone else is eating Pathfinder, so you better eat it too if you want to play.

Mod Note: Redacted for language. Keep it clean, folks! ~Umbran

 

[Alzrius]

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.

You're showing your confirmation bias towards neutrality.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I run 4E (and, hopefully very soon, 13th Age) and yet I keep up with the Pathfinder products for a range of reasons:

- The products are pretty good, in the main.
- There are always pieces of art, maps, and/or NPC ideas I can steal. Oh, and adventure and campaign ideas too, of course.
- I buy PDFs and Paizo kept selling PDFs when WotC's lawyers had their full retard attack and caused WotC to stop selling PDFs. (I live in a Third World country so books are not an option. And before I moved here I was dividing my time among three countries and books simply weigh too much. After you have shipped a tonne of them, literally, a couple of times you really do learn to appreciate the convenience of PDFs.)

I have no interest in the rules but I like a lot of things I read and I can adapt them to the system I prefer.

 

[Umbran]

You see what you want to see, and then confirmation bias reinforces that.

It isn't necessarily what they *want* to see. People also remember negative influences more strongly than positive ones (called "negativity bias"). Once they perceive the negative, confirmation bias then kicks in on top of it.

Wonderful things, human brains. So rational