Pathfinder 1E Things you Think WoTC should follow from Paizo

[JeffB]

THe designers from the realms are working on Paizo products. They did a great job on the realms before it was taken over by crazy rebooters, so they should do Golarion justice.

FR was handled so poorly over the past 21 years that the "crazy rebooters" @ WOTC became a necessity, and you are saying it's a good thing those former FR people are now working on Golarion??? I say that somewhat in jest, and somewhat seriously- I'm not a fan of the majority of 3E FR changes and lord knows 2E was awful. I happen to think the re-boot was a good idea that was about 19 years too late.

 

[Rokes]

Any company that refuses to pay attention to and learn from the rest of it's industry (whether they consider them competitors or not), is asking for failure.

What WotC really needs to do is ask the questions, "What does Company X do well? How are they able to grow in our market? What characteristics of that company would benefit our own business model?"

So of course there HAS to be things that WotC should learn from Paizo (I'm taking the "follow" in the title to mean "learn"). But at the same time, not everything Paizo does well makes sense for WotC to do.

 

[BryonD]

Wotc should be the exact opposite of Paizo. Paizo is trying to thrive on developing existing loyal fan bases, Wotc OTOH should try to open and reach to as much of the market as possible.
Since Wotc is the only company that has market exposure, exposure alone does not help. It must create the market, it must create the game. D&D traditions be damned Wotc should be working on a tabletop game that can compete for value with what WoW or the custom fad is offering, but always thinking for the long term. It's true that D&D is a geek's game. But I doubt it is untrue that geeks can be served by a more classic game, a game made to have a long standing presence in time. Ideas behind OD&D are present to many geek games today, including D&D 4e and WoW, so I am fairly positive it is feasible.

I think chasing trends and fads can be a risky path when you have an enduring tradition in your hands.

 

[DaveMage]

Actually, I think Wizards should be more like XRP.

You curious about their vegetable garden status?

 

[ggroy]

(And I don't mean that as a dig against Castlemourn - I helped on the development on one version of it - but it's a pretty dead end product line unfortunately and Golarion has had far better treatment in my opinion, so I'd say we don't need Castlemourn since we have Golarion.)

As much as I liked Castlemourn, it was disappointing that active development seemed to have dropped to almost nothing. I wonder if somebody who worked on 4E FR, got the idea for the spellplague from reading Castlemourn.

At the time I was hoping Castlemourn could be a viable replacement for Forgotten Realms, without all the canon baggage accumulated over the last 20+ years.

Then Golarion came along. At first I was thinking "not another Castlemourn" and largely dismissed Golarion, thinking it would be another "flash in the pan" and subsequently becoming a dead setting like Castlemourn. But after reading the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer for Golarion and the excellent crunch-lite supplements released for Golarion over the last year or so, it change my mind. These days I use Golarion for my 4E game.

 

[carmachu]

Your being "covered" implies no, but I know I've bought product for the joy of reading it without really expecting to use it at the table.

I've done the same thing. But here's the problem: 4e wotc books are NOT designed for reading pleasure. Its all crunch and little flavor. After reading PH1 and MM1 there's no joy n it.

Its like comparing 1-3 editions of shadowrun and its current incarnation. All crunch now, no flavor like the old days that made it a joy to read, even if I never used a single one.

 

[ggroy]

But here's the problem: 4e wotc books are NOT designed for reading pleasure. Its all crunch and little flavor. After reading PH1 and MM1 there's no joy n it.

With the exception of "rules lawyers".

 

[Bumbles]

I've done the same thing. But here's the problem: 4e wotc books are NOT designed for reading pleasure. Its all crunch and little flavor. After reading PH1 and MM1 there's no joy n it.

Its like comparing 1-3 editions of shadowrun and its current incarnation. All crunch now, no flavor like the old days that made it a joy to read, even if I never used a single one.

Heh, I get a rather different impression from the books. The rule sections are quite clear, and the flavor, such as it is, doesn't overpower to the point of it being all taste and no meat. Whereas the feeling I get from the Shadowrun books (And White Wolf ones) is that there's too much of an attempt to keep up appearances, and not enough on playing the game. Or to borrow an example, like how the 3E books were done in that abysmal notebook lines style that only did one thing...made them hard to read.

Different strokes for different folks.

As much as I liked Castlemourn, it was disappointing that active development seemed to have dropped to almost nothing. I wonder if somebody who worked on 4E FR, got the idea for the spellplague from reading Castlemourn.

I dunno, I always felt that the Spellplague was Time of Troubles Pt 2. Not to mention the way the Radiance worked in Mystara.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I feel the bizarre need to defend WoW. Blizzard did a ton of stuff that hadn't been done before. Alternate mana mechanics was a first for MMORPG - the rage and energy mechanics that warriors and rogues do had simply not been done before. Their art style of overexagerated cartoonishness was also something new for the genre, which subsequently allows them to make a good looking game with low specs - and is ironically still very unique, as, Warhammer Online aside, every MMORPG continues the trend of trying to look more and more "realistic." The VERY small number of classes was abnormal when it first came out (9 classes? EQ had 14. DAoC had like twenty trillion). The interface and UI wasn't just amazing, it was also fully customizable, and the amount of programming that went into allowing customization and mods was immense. And for all the crap that Blizzard gets, it's always been ten times more friendly and talkative with it's user base then anyone who came before it. The same goes for class balance - for those that whine about WoW's class balance, HAH HAH I SEE YOU NEVER PLAYED PREVIOUS MMORPGS LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT DARK AGE OF CAMELOT.

It's easy to NOW say "Oh, WoW just rehashes everything," but that's because so many MMORPGs since have tried to snatch WoW's ideas and claim them as their own. When the game first came out, it was revolutionary.

 

[ggroy]

Castlemourn

On the subject of Castlemourn, has Greenwood or anybody else officially said that it is a dead setting with no future plans for any further supplements?