Pathfinder 2E The playtest is here!!

[Arakasius]

I am of the opinion (as a professional RPG writer) that rules reference is different than reading and should be treated differently. Books (or portions thereof) written to be read should inspire and entertain. Books (or portions thereof) meant to serve as rules reference should be succinct, direct and unambiguous. It isn't an either/or situation.

This is a playtest document. Look at their bestiary here. No fluff. Same for the class skills and such. Compare the PF1 rule book with the playtest rulebook. Expecting that the PF2 release rulebook is going to be the same language as what they release it as seems silly. We’re not here to test the entertainment of inspiration of the rulebook. We’re here to test the rules to make sure the game has a solid mathematical underbelly for future expansions. Fluff at this point is pointless and detracts from testing of actual game mechanics which is the important part. It’s also why I won’t judge them on the playtest adventure. We all know Paizo can write those as well as good splat books. What we need to do is make sure the basic rules and math in it are fun and work and scale.

 

[Henry]

Critical Role was Pathfinder when it was a homegame, for the two years before the stream started. It was never streamed as Pathfinder. They switched to 5e for its faster play.
CR has too good of a relationship with WotC to switch back now, and D&D Beyond is a major sponsor.

Pathfinder has done a few attempts at streaming.
Know Direction has one: http://knowdirectionpodcast.com/category/podcasts/kd-adventurous/
And there is an official Paizo Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/officialpaizo But few games are streamed there. They did apparently do a playtest game: https://twitter.com/JasonBulmahn/status/1025252371205697536

If a podcast of an hour or so is something [MENTION=467]Reynard[/MENTION] is looking for, Glass Cannon Podcast is a very good one to check into, and it’s officially Paizo sponsored.

 

[Henry]

Paizo does seem to be getting crucified by some on the Paizo forums as if this playtest IS 2nd Edition Pathfinder, final product, cradle and all; however, given the level of detractions, I do feel like there are some major changes in store.

Hopefully, organization will be one of them; even having followed the playtest blogs closely, it took me almost two hours to put together a dwarf wizard, because I kept feeling like I was missing things.

 

[Chimera]

Been looking over the Playtest Rulebook today.

I'm sorry, I'm just not impressed so far. It's too different a game. I'll likely try a playtest session to see how it goes, but so far my impression is that it is not the game for me.

I've been developing a homebrew world for a while and I can't imagine trying to modify it for this version.

Like Henry, I had a bit of a problem putting some things together. Wait, no BAB table? Not in index under different names? Ok, then how? What? Oh, under proficiencies. GFG.

 

[Staffan]

Ugh. That seems silly. "Your spell repertoire is exactly the same as your spells per day, minus 1 1st level spell." That's way too much of a proud nail.

You also get a 1st level spell from your muse, which makes them match exactly.

Its basically a half ream of paper and a IDK how much of an ink cartridge to print it.

That was pretty much their entire justification for selling a printed version - it's probably cheaper for them to print it and sell it to you than it is for you to print it yourself.

 

[Jester David]

That was pretty much their entire justification for selling a printed version - it's probably cheaper for them to print it and sell it to you than it is for you to print it yourself.

It isn't 2005 anymore.

From LightningSource.com, to get a black-and-white softcover copy of the rulebook and bestiary bound together is $18. Including shipping to New York.
Cheaper than the paperback from Amazon.com and the official one from Paizo.com. Neither of which include the monsters. And that's the full-sized book: you can drop down to smaller digest size if you want.
(Shipping knocks it up to $30 for me, but I'm in Canada. So more expensive than Amazon but still cheaper than Paizo.)

Selling a printed version themselves is fine. But it also meant Paizo treated this like a regular print product, and delayed the release of the rules (the PDF) until they could get the books into stores and ship to people's homes. They wanted to sell as many copies of the rules as possible. They very much wanted to sell this as an actual product and get money, offsetting the cost of developing the rules by selling people the rules twice.
Which I honestly can't fault as they've spent two years of development time losing money and need to recoup that somehow. And Paizo is still a pretty small company...

But let's not remotely pretend that the only options are a) printing it yourself or b) getting a book from Paizo.

 

[MoonSong]

It isn't 2005 anymore.

From LightningSource.com, to get a black-and-white softcover copy of the rulebook and bestiary bound together is $18. Including shipping to New York.
Cheaper than the paperback from Amazon.com and the official one from Paizo.com. Neither of which include the monsters. And that's the full-sized book: you can drop down to smaller digest size if you want.
(Shipping knocks it up to $30 for me, but I'm in Canada. So more expensive than Amazon but still cheaper than Paizo.)

Selling a printed version themselves is fine. But it also meant Paizo treated this like a regular print product, and delayed the release of the rules (the PDF) until they could get the books into stores and ship to people's homes. They wanted to sell as many copies of the rules as possible. They very much wanted to sell this as an actual product and get money, offsetting the cost of developing the rules by selling people the rules twice.
Which I honestly can't fault as they've spent two years of development time losing money and need to recoup that somehow. And Paizo is still a pretty small company...

But let's not remotely pretend that the only options are a) printing it yourself or b) getting a book from Paizo.

I can print them together in full color for about $15. Of course shipping costs would be double that or even more.

 

[Jester David]

I can print them together in full color for about $15. Of course shipping costs would be double that or even more.

I imagine that entirely depends how much you have invested in a printer.

But since there’s no printer friendly or lite version of the playtest, it will chew through toner.

 

[MoonSong]

I imagine that entirely depends how much you have invested in a printer.

But since there’s no printer friendly or lite version of the playtest, it will chew through toner.

Well, the whole thing is OGL complaint. So it's possible someone could make one.

 

[Parmandur]

Critical Role was Pathfinder when it was a homegame, for the two years before the stream started. It was never streamed as Pathfinder. They switched to 5e for its faster play.
CR has too good of a relationship with WotC to switch back now, and D&D Beyond is a major sponsor.

Pathfinder has done a few attempts at streaming.
Know Direction has one: http://knowdirectionpodcast.com/category/podcasts/kd-adventurous/
And there is an official Paizo Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/officialpaizo But few games are streamed there. They did apparently do a playtest game: https://twitter.com/JasonBulmahn/status/1025252371205697536

Building on this a bit, it seems that most of the big streamers fall into three broad catagories:

- Actively employed by WothC (Chris Perkins, Satine Phoenix)
- Corporately related to WotC in sponsorship and deals (Critical Role, Acquisitions Inc, etc; WotC actively sponsors and hosts dozens of separate games weekly, they have gone all in with that crowd and creating a collaborative set of relationships)
- Playing something simpler than 5E when they wanted a break from all of the rules complexity (Adventure Zone moving on to Monster of the Week)

I don't see streaming as a breakout field for PF2, but it'd be interesting if that takes off. The one PF Critical Role episode, the Goblin One-Shot, was painfully involved in crunch minutiae.