"Tabletop D&D Has Lost Its Way" Says Pathfinder Video Game Exec

Feargus Urquhart, one of the execs from Obsidian Entertainment, which is behind an upcoming Pathfinder-themed video game, told Polygon why the company chose to go with Paizo rather than WotC for tabletop fantasy inspired games. "One of the reasons we actually went with Pathfinder was ... how do you say it? I'll just say it: We were having a hard time figuring out how to move forward with Dungeons and Dragons." The issue, he says, is that "D&D is a part of Wizards of the Coast and WotC is a part of Hasbro" and that he would "love to see D&D be bought by someone and become what it was before... Become TSR again."

Of course, TSR went bankrupt, so I'm not sure wishing that on somebody is a kindness.

Urquhart is a long-time D&D video game exec, having worked on games like Neverwinter Nights 2; he points out that "I'm probably one of the people who has one of the most electronic D&D games that they've worked on". Now, of course, his company has moved on to Paizo's Pathfinder.

The upcoming Obsidian video games will be based on the Pathfinder games - specifically a tablet game based on the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, due in the next few months. The studio is, of course, known to tabletop RPG fans for D&D games like Neverwinter Nights 2. Urquhart did hint at non-card-game based projects, saying that "We're thinking about how can we take traditional RPG stuff and put it on the tablet. No one has solved it really."

You can read the short interview here.

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[Evenglare]

I think the people talking about WOTC's future and "vision" are right. They don't seem to have any beyond "Don't release a lot of splats". Paizo knew what they were doing with their line long before their playtest was over. They knew release schedule of their APs and their actual core rules only come out with 3 or 4 a year. Pathfinder has been around for a while now, so yes there is a lot of material but it's been over a very long span of time. The key with this is that the players have been in the know from the ground up. This is where wizards fails.
Wizards may have some grand plan but it doesn't matter if we don't know it. They need to tell us. They need much better PR. We hear bad stuff second hand then people form their own opinions regardless of truth or not. Wizards sucks at letting the fans know what's going on and I know thats hindered from the big company of Hasbro.

We don't know why the lay offs happened. We don't know why morningstar fell through. We don't know their future plans for book releases. We don't know their future plans of elecrtronic releases. We don't know what and how fan's can create things. We have no idea about any of this and it's frustrating beyond all measure. We get little more than hints and speculation. When we DO get material we have no clue where it came from. Like the Eberron stuff. Came out of no where. Came before FR stuff which surprised me. Was there some sort of poll I missed that gauged what players wanted? None of these things are awful by themselves but they keep piling up and it's getting bad.

Also what's going on with Basic? They haven't said anything about that in months. Last I heard basic was supposed to be done and over with by December. God I love 5e. and I'm critical of WOTC because I don't want to see this fail, but jesus they need to be more direct with us. ENGAGE the community please!

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Also what's going on with Basic? They haven't said anything about that in months. Last I heard basic was supposed to be done and over with by December. God I love 5e. and I'm critical of WOTC because I don't want to see this fail, but jesus they need to be more direct with us. ENGAGE the community please!

The last errata for the Basic rules was back in November. They've been on the website, free for all to access, for months.

 

[Umbran]

ENGAGE the community please!

Eh, there's a lot of risk in engaging with the community.

For one thing, if you don't engage, folks don't have expectations. They may have desires, but anything you do give them is above what they expect of you. But, if you engage, the expectations of exactly how much you're actually going to tell folks probably skyrockets.

Plus, just a guess here based on how folks post, but I would expect that WotC would have to suffer a disproportionate amount of negative feedback if they engaged. They would, quite simply, have to put up with more crap from us than Paizo. It is a lot of work to deal with that, and if you don't do it right, the whole thing backfires, and they wind up in a worse position than if they had just stayed silent, and announced products when they were ready.

 

[Evenglare]

Right, but it's not the final version right? Still at 0.2? A final version usually ends with version 1.0 etc. It's been 4 months since that dropped. Is that the final update? If so why is it still at version 0.2?

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

The DM section is at 0.3. Also, it makes sense that those are not 1.0; 1.0 is the PHB, MM, and DMG. The Basic rules are just an imcomplete release, so numbering them as a beta release would be numbered fits in with them not being the truly complete rules of the edition.

 

[Evenglare]

Eh, there's a lot of risk in engaging with the community.

For one thing, if you don't engage, folks don't have expectations. They may have desires, but anything you do give them is above what they expect of you. But, if you engage, the expectations of exactly how much you're actually going to tell folks probably skyrockets.

Plus, just a guess here based on how folks post, but I would expect that WotC would have to suffer a disproportionate amount of negative feedback if they engaged. They would, quite simply, have to put up with more crap from us than Paizo. It is a lot of work to deal with that, and if you don't do it right, the whole thing backfires, and they wind up in a worse position than if they had just stayed silent, and announced products when they were ready.

So basically its hard so why try? I'm also not a fan of the "Be quiet, we'll tell you what you want when we say so." It's a valid business practice for sure, but a game built around the community and interaction of the community it seems quite ... odd.. to take a hands off approach. They certainly can and it's their right and I have to deal with it, but I and by the looks of many others are getting wary of the tight lipped approach.

When that happens we start forming out own opinions with few facts, and that gets shared and ... well generally bad press starts to spread, regardless of truth or not. So then you have to go into damage control mode. It's a tricky situation to be sure, and they are doing it much differently than 13th age, Legend of the 5 Rings, Pathfinder, and the myriad of other companies out there. I'm just not a fan of the approach is all.

 

[Xavian Starsider]

so you can play Bioware's Neverwinter MMO or Obsidian's Pathfinder tablet app? I'm not going to lose sleep over this

 

[Coredump]

Obsidian would not have decided this lightly. I couldn't imagine more shocking news.

So, were you in on the conference calls, or are they just your golfing buddies....


People keep acting like things are obvious "of course this means..... " Obsidian is working on an iApp for a *card game* and wants to work on the PF cRPG.... so they just 'happen' to bad mouth Hasbro. Yes, it could be true, or it could just be a dig at a competitor....

 

[Jester David]

How does replying with my post with a rewording of what you bolded disproving what I said?

Edit: Also! This topic was already discussed. The info I have is accurate.

I'm very aware of the topic, where the discussed quote says that the other brands are performing so poorly that D&D's increase doesn't make up for the loss.
To me that sounds like all the brands need to do better. That they'd expect even more from D&D. Or at the least expect it to maintain, which is unlikely.
And, again, the very next quarter, they didn't mention D&D at all.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

I'm very aware of the topic, where the discussed quote says that the other brands are performing so poorly that D&D's increase doesn't make up for the loss.
To me that sounds like all the brands need to do better. That they'd expect even more from D&D. Or at the least expect it to maintain, which is unlikely.
And, again, the very next quarter, they didn't mention D&D at all.

And I didn't say that it did fully make up for their loss.

Also, while they don't mention it next quarter, they're not saying it's doing badly. Just that it's not a top earner or losing out.