Pathfinder 2E The Pathfinder Subform Is Definitely Dead - So What?

[Ixal]

No surprise that there are not many PF discussions here.
In the edition war era Enworld did a pretty good job driving everyone who was not a fan of 4E away and those became the core audience of Pathfinder.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

It certainly isn't for the dark storytelling because the setting has gotten noticeably lighter in tone.

Isn't that linked to the "canonicity" of AP? I am by no mean a Golarion expert, but I feel the setting was fraught with problems for the adventurers to resolve and as the AP solved those, the resulting world is better to live in... but maybe not as appealing to adventure in. Eberron (which can also be dark) has been stuck in 998 for decades and I think it's a good thing.

If Paizo wants their game to take off they need to pivot their marketing to something that highlights the games' actual strengths. They should also consider more modern approaches to marketing, such as utilizing influencers like independent content creators more fully.

They should also rethink their website. I have a very hard time to buy their PDFs due to links to paper versions of the products being very present, and if someone has a buying impulse, finding how to get the PDF immediately should help. I know, it's very minor and not on the level of what you mention, but despite having bought PDFs from them previously, my decision to buy the of the latest AP was followed by 30 minutes (no kidding) on finding the correct link to buy PDF-only.

Controversy cows creativity:

To be blunt, there are an increasingly large number of topics I don't feel comfortable engaging with fully anymore on lots of boards, including this one. As an example, I had an idea for a Gray Corsair campaign that would revolve around disrupting the slave trade of the Inner Sea

Yes, I can see how it could turn out if discussed on Internet boards...

Adventure Paths are outdated:

What was once the core product of Paizo is now an outdated relic. The pandemic has proven that more and more players are moving to virtual tabletops. Pathfinder 2e is very lucky to have a fantastic fan implementation of it's ruleset into Foundry, but that isn't for effort on Paizos part. Paizo is still interested in being a traditional publishing company, as if any of their customers are buying their products from local game stores. The player base is almost entirely online, and Paizo should be pivoting toward catering to where their audience actually plays. Instead they release what should be single-purchase adventures as multiple installment adventure paths. Adventure Paths were great when the main movers of your product were game stores with highly active tabletop scenes that served as hubs of discussion for newest stuff. Now the internet is your main customer, and your players are all going to discord and reddit and playing on Foundry VTT. Make the adventure content in a way that enables discussion better across the internet and caters to your existing customer base, which frankly you could do by just combining adventure paths into larger campaigns.

Sure the pandemic is starting to get old, but it will end at some point. I can understand a company would be reluctant to alter its business model, based partly on subscription, which requires regular products to be published, in favor of, say, twice yearly Internet-supported campaign, only for the pandemic to stop and people getting back to a regular activity.

 

[Ixal]

Isn't that linked to the "canonicity" of AP? I am by no mean a Golarion expert, but I feel the setting was fraught with problems for the adventurers to resolve and as the AP solved those, the resulting world is better to live in... but maybe not as appealing to adventure in. Eberron (which can also be dark) has been stuck in 998 for decades and I think it's a good thing.

Partially, but Paizo also actively removed many darker or controversial subjects apart from AP solutions. Goblins are probably the most obvious example. In PF1 they were described as evil and murderous and suddenly in PF2 they were just misunderstood and are valuable members of society which can be found everywhere in cities and are equal to everyone else.
Many other monster races like kobolds, lizardmen, etc. too became "normal citizens".

 

[Staffan]

Adventure Paths are outdated:

What was once the core product of Paizo is now an outdated relic. The pandemic has proven that more and more players are moving to virtual tabletops. Pathfinder 2e is very lucky to have a fantastic fan implementation of it's ruleset into Foundry, but that isn't for effort on Paizos part. Paizo is still interested in being a traditional publishing company, as if any of their customers are buying their products from local game stores. The player base is almost entirely online, and Paizo should be pivoting toward catering to where their audience actually plays. Instead they release what should be single-purchase adventures as multiple installment adventure paths. Adventure Paths were great when the main movers of your product were game stores with highly active tabletop scenes that served as hubs of discussion for newest stuff. Now the internet is your main customer, and your players are all going to discord and reddit and playing on Foundry VTT. Make the adventure content in a way that enables discussion better across the internet and caters to your existing customer base, which frankly you could do by just combining adventure paths into larger campaigns.

Adventure paths, to me, are still one of the selling points for Pathfinder. However, it seems to have taken them a little while to figure out how to make them for PF2. I have run the first two parts of Extinction Curse, and I wasn't very happy with those because they were pretty much all dungeon crawl (and also because while the AP was framed as "the Circus AP", it's been more "the Aroden/xulgath AP with a little circusing in it"). But Strength of Thousands seems to be a lot better in that regard.

I'm also not sure all that much has moved to VTTs, particularly not long term. Our gaming group played on Roll20 for about a year and a half, but are now back at the table. I have a feeling that physical gaming tables are going to overshadow VTTs for a long, long time.

And I don't think they'd work well as single-purchase adventures, at least not without massively reducing their scope. The whole point of an adventure path is "Here's a whole campaign from level 1 to 20 in six installments*, ready to play." If you want smaller adventures, they make those too, but APs are their bread and butter. I'm not saying APs are perfect – for example, I think the "20 levels in 6 x 64 pages**" format is a bit too tight, and they'd be better off either making AP installments bigger (and of course adjusting their workflow to accomodate this), covering fewer levels, or releasing APs in more than 6 parts (which messes with their schedules). But I'm not running Paizo, so it's not my call to make.

* Recently they've been experimenting with 1-10 or 11-20 in three installments as well.
** Each AP installment is 96 pages, but only about 2/3 is actual adventure material, and the rest are things like new creatures, new magic items, or supplementary rules which is usually adventure-related but not always directly adventure-relevant.

 

[DaveMage]

The system is great, the world is awesome, the marketing is terrible:

Paizo's designers have made a truly great product in the TTRPG space, I fully believe that. Paizo has unfortunately done an awful job marketing their stellar product to the public. Pathfinder 1e directly compared itself to D&D 3.5 as it's functional replacement as well as supporting a more dark and subversive tone in the published story material. Now it's been over a decade since 3.5, D&D is well into the second replacement to that edition. Paizo hasn't adequately answered the question of what audience is in the position to benefit from PF2e the most.

I think this is a good point. As a Pathfinder 1E fan, I don't remember ever being given a compelling reason to move to 2E. In fact, all I saw through the 2E development process was how the system changes were reflecting a D&D 4e look more than anything else. (My disgust with 4e was, of course, why I went to Pathfinder in the first place.)

I'm still playing Pathfinder 1E, so I still visit the Paizo forums (occasionally) when I'm looking for info in the 1E product threads when I'm running those adventures, but I'm not making many new posts, only seeing what is already there. (No need to post Pathfinder 1E stuff at EN World either.) I will also drop by the Paizo boards when there is union talk, since I find that interesting. And I can't help but read James Jacobs AMA thread. That guy is a gaming treasure. Whatever they are paying him, it's too low.

 

[payn]

Adventure Paths are outdated:

What was once the core product of Paizo is now an outdated relic. The pandemic has proven that more and more players are moving to virtual tabletops. Pathfinder 2e is very lucky to have a fantastic fan implementation of it's ruleset into Foundry, but that isn't for effort on Paizos part. Paizo is still interested in being a traditional publishing company, as if any of their customers are buying their products from local game stores. The player base is almost entirely online, and Paizo should be pivoting toward catering to where their audience actually plays. Instead they release what should be single-purchase adventures as multiple installment adventure paths. Adventure Paths were great when the main movers of your product were game stores with highly active tabletop scenes that served as hubs of discussion for newest stuff. Now the internet is your main customer, and your players are all going to discord and reddit and playing on Foundry VTT. Make the adventure content in a way that enables discussion better across the internet and caters to your existing customer base, which frankly you could do by just combining adventure paths into larger campaigns.

I was excited to read this since I think the APs have lost a step. Then, realized its an odd complaint about APs online presence? Paizo has been an internet based store for over a decade. I have only used PDFs in F2F and now VTTs since 2009. The dedicated AP specific forums were/are invaluable to running the APs. I'm not sure exactly what Paizo is supposed to do to make APs more online?

 

[Kaodi]

I can confirm that the PF2 General subforum of the Pathfinder Discord is very lively. That is where I engage in almost all of my PF discussions even though I can probably be described as an EN World lifer. Also, while it might not seem like there is much active moderation, discussion can be heated due to strong opinions but does not really get nasty. There are regulars, just like here, and they anchor the tone.

 

[Umbran]

... which makes it a poor choice for discussion when all nuance gets stripped away from conversations by rabid internet tribes.

Mod Note:
Calling them "rabid internet tribes" is stripping away nuance, as well. And use of "tribe" for this is... interesting, to say the least.

Our inclusion policy doesn't hold with lumping disagreement into an ill-defined group name, and then dismissing it. Please don't do that again.

 

[darjr]

If anything this thread proves that people are paying attention.

 

[Parmandur]

No surprise that there are not many PF discussions here.
In the edition war era Enworld did a pretty good job driving everyone who was not a fan of 4E away and those became the core audience of Pathfinder.

A huge percentage of people RPGs big weren't even alive then.