D&D 2E What PF2E means for D&D5E

[Jacob Lewis]

All the posters who are upset with 5E will quit 5E, join the Pathfinder Populace and send me all their 5E stuff.

Well the good news is that no matter how small your shelf is, you'll be able to fit every book on that shelf. (Sorry, I already sold mine a while back.)

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Well the good news is that no matter how small your shelf is, you'll be able to fit every book on that shelf. (Sorry, I already sold mine a while back.)

Seems good to me.

Quality > Quantity.

That and I'm not spending 30 bucks every other month so I can get a +1 on my ability checks.

 

[jasper]

"These are not the books you are looking for.

ALL RIGHT EDDIE, MARIA, LC what ever your real name is stop with the Jedi mind tricks, I am tired of looking for the wandering monster charts and my pencils every Friday night during the game.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As much as I didn´t like PF for its glorifications of my personal beefs with 3.5, i think not basing it on 5e is the right move.
I think it really does try to make it a good experience for people who stayed with pathfinder and did not switch to 5e. Actually from the first read over I could imagine playing pathfinder 2e because it tries to also get rid off 3.5 faults while making it a good experience for people who like tingling with fiddly parts (note here: i do like that too sometimes and I am looking forward to have a look at the playtest dokuments).

 

[Jer]

All the posters who are upset with 5E will quit 5E, join the Pathfinder Populace and send me all their 5E stuff.

I do seriously wonder if PF2 is trying to attract the players who feel that 5e is lacking in the crunch and published products areas. I already think of Pathfinder as the mega-crunchy version of D&D[*], so I guess I'm a bit biased in that regard, but it does seem to me that there is probably a market for a version of D&D with lots of support for new spells, classes, feats, etc. and a monthly publication schedule but that isn't quite as "third edition" in flavor as Pathfinder is. It may not be enough of a market to support a division of Hasbro, but it might be big enough that if a smaller company could tap it they could support a game line on it.

[*] A slot previously held in my rankings by Fantasy Hero for Champions 4th edition, though for a different definition of "mega-crunchy" I suppose.

 

[Jer]

The problem is that gamers don't live forever, and I don't think even the most devout PF fan would say that it is easy to get new players into it and up to speed. More importantly, DM's don't live forever, and PF isn't the most fun game to DM (at least in my experience). I suspect that if we ever got our hands of PFS records, we would see that "core only" PFS games were rising rapidly and the traditional "everything but the kitchen sink" PFS game is on the decline.

That's what I assume is going on here too. And you're right about PF being a pain to DM - it's basically like DMing 3.5 D&D - neither of which I will go back to again. I'll happily DM BECMI or 4e or 5e games, but I just can't sit down and DM a Pathfinder game. Even though I spent years running 3e D&D I just don't enjoy doing it anymore.

The question is "is this the right time to do this?" I am not sure. It is a big roll of the dice, and timing is important. My gut says the main thing they got from looking at 5e was that WotC isn't going to substantially increase the complexity of 5e (the "big mechanical expansion" of XGtE didn't really make any existential changes), that there is a market for more complexity than 5e, a substantial part of that market has no emotional connection to 3x, and that PF1 is too 3x for people without that emotional connection to get into.

I think this might be true, but I think they need to be careful. What they're proposing for PF2 looks to be as big a shift in that game engine as the shift from AD&D 2e to 3e (or for those who think the shift from 3e to 4e was bigger, that one - I personally think 2e to 3e was the bigger shift but mileage varies on that question). They're the experts and they can do what they want but to me that seems a bit wrongheaded - it seems like it would have to alienate the existing player base that you need to evangelize for you. This has played out badly at least twice in the history of RPGs that I can think of - first when White Wolf shifted from their original WoD to their new WoD and changed everything at once - setting and rules. And then when D&D shifted from 3e to 4e and did the same. They lost the biggest advocates for their game by doing so - the players - and it took a long time for both games to win people back. (Of course both companies also had a patronizing "we know what you guys really want - you don't know what you want" tone to their marketing around their edition changes as well, which likely didn't help them either. And I say that as someone who likes 4e as a game engine - the community relations around it were not well handled.)

The only major switch I can think of on this order that has worked is the switch from 2e to 3e - and 2e was in a state as a product line where it had shed players, the company that had managed it had run it into the ground (and themselves along with it), and there was an audience hungry for D&D and were willing to try something substantially different as long as it wasn't "too" different. In that environment making a major change to game between editions makes sense because either it works and you get a successful game line out of it or it doesn't and you haven't really lost anything other than your development work.

Pathfinder seems to have a large enough player base that that kind of shift seems risky. It would definitely seem like a streamlining of the game might be in order - but more on the order of the shift from 1e to 2e than a wholesale set of changes. Maybe the 3.5 engine just can't be streamlined that way without changing it substantially to something else, but still it's a big risk.

 

[Arilyn]

PF2 still seems pretty PF to me, and it has been 10 years, which is a long run for a F20 system. There's always risk, true, but Paizo has said they are keeping PF1 in print for players who don't want to shift, and even the most dedicated players probably still have plenty of old material left to purchase. By not eliminating the older material, if PF2 fails, they can always back pedal. Honestly, though, I think they'll do fine with their new version. If there is anything particularly hated in the playtest, it will be removed for the final version.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

That's what I assume is going on here too. And you're right about PF being a pain to DM - it's basically like DMing 3.5 D&D - neither of which I will go back to again. I'll happily DM BECMI or 4e or 5e games, but I just can't sit down and DM a Pathfinder game. Even though I spent years running 3e D&D I just don't enjoy doing it anymore.



I think this might be true, but I think they need to be careful. What they're proposing for PF2 looks to be as big a shift in that game engine as the shift from AD&D 2e to 3e (or for those who think the shift from 3e to 4e was bigger, that one - I personally think 2e to 3e was the bigger shift but mileage varies on that question). They're the experts and they can do what they want but to me that seems a bit wrongheaded - it seems like it would have to alienate the existing player base that you need to evangelize for you. This has played out badly at least twice in the history of RPGs that I can think of - first when White Wolf shifted from their original WoD to their new WoD and changed everything at once - setting and rules. And then when D&D shifted from 3e to 4e and did the same. They lost the biggest advocates for their game by doing so - the players - and it took a long time for both games to win people back. (Of course both companies also had a patronizing "we know what you guys really want - you don't know what you want" tone to their marketing around their edition changes as well, which likely didn't help them either. And I say that as someone who likes 4e as a game engine - the community relations around it were not well handled.)

The only major switch I can think of on this order that has worked is the switch from 2e to 3e - and 2e was in a state as a product line where it had shed players, the company that had managed it had run it into the ground (and themselves along with it), and there was an audience hungry for D&D and were willing to try something substantially different as long as it wasn't "too" different. In that environment making a major change to game between editions makes sense because either it works and you get a successful game line out of it or it doesn't and you haven't really lost anything other than your development work.

Pathfinder seems to have a large enough player base that that kind of shift seems risky. It would definitely seem like a streamlining of the game might be in order - but more on the order of the shift from 1e to 2e than a wholesale set of changes. Maybe the 3.5 engine just can't be streamlined that way without changing it substantially to something else, but still it's a big risk.

This is why I am glad I am not the one making the decision, unless there is some big glaring issue or metric that we can't see that is pushing it now.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

That's what I assume is going on here too. And you're right about PF being a pain to DM - it's basically like DMing 3.5 D&D - neither of which I will go back to again. I'll happily DM BECMI or 4e or 5e games, but I just can't sit down and DM a Pathfinder game. Even though I spent years running 3e D&D I just don't enjoy doing it anymore.



I think this might be true, but I think they need to be careful. What they're proposing for PF2 looks to be as big a shift in that game engine as the shift from AD&D 2e to 3e (or for those who think the shift from 3e to 4e was bigger, that one - I personally think 2e to 3e was the bigger shift but mileage varies on that question). They're the experts and they can do what they want but to me that seems a bit wrongheaded - it seems like it would have to alienate the existing player base that you need to evangelize for you. This has played out badly at least twice in the history of RPGs that I can think of - first when White Wolf shifted from their original WoD to their new WoD and changed everything at once - setting and rules. And then when D&D shifted from 3e to 4e and did the same. They lost the biggest advocates for their game by doing so - the players - and it took a long time for both games to win people back. (Of course both companies also had a patronizing "we know what you guys really want - you don't know what you want" tone to their marketing around their edition changes as well, which likely didn't help them either. And I say that as someone who likes 4e as a game engine - the community relations around it were not well handled.)

The only major switch I can think of on this order that has worked is the switch from 2e to 3e - and 2e was in a state as a product line where it had shed players, the company that had managed it had run it into the ground (and themselves along with it), and there was an audience hungry for D&D and were willing to try something substantially different as long as it wasn't "too" different. In that environment making a major change to game between editions makes sense because either it works and you get a successful game line out of it or it doesn't and you haven't really lost anything other than your development work.

Pathfinder seems to have a large enough player base that that kind of shift seems risky. It would definitely seem like a streamlining of the game might be in order - but more on the order of the shift from 1e to 2e than a wholesale set of changes. Maybe the 3.5 engine just can't be streamlined that way without changing it substantially to something else, but still it's a big risk.

This is why I am glad I am not the one making the decision, unless there is some big glaring issue or metric that we can't see that is pushing it now.

 

[Shasarak]

Seems good to me.

Quality > Quantity.

That and I'm not spending 30 bucks every other month so I can get a +1 on my ability checks.

I dont really see the problem in spending $4 per week on my hobby. Heck I spend more then that on food for game night..