D&D 2E Which is the better fantasy rpg and why: D&D 5e or Pathfinder 2e?

[ad_hoc]

So I can see where you might get that, untimely demise and all but the thing is 4e sold well. It outsold Pathfinder or was neck and neck with Pathfinder which is considered a success. 4e didn’t fail as an rpg product. It failed to hit Hasbro’s benchmarks in the timeframe they were given for the line to hit their goals for the budget they were given. WOTC was hampered with 4e because they weren’t allowed to include the novels and licensed material in the bottom line either unlike Transformers, My Little Pony and Star Wars. Thus the line was scuppered. For any other RPG company 4e would have been a massive success and still getting published today with the numbers they were hitting. When the deadline hit it was scuttled and fifth began development with a much smaller department and budget.

D&D 4e lost the #1 RPG sales spot to Pathfinder.

Sure, if an otherwise unknown RPG started selling as well as D&D 4e did it would be a huge success.

But D&D is supposed to sell more than other RPGs.

Picture Avengers: Endgame bringing in only $100 million. For the vast majority of movie makers that would be a huge success but for what is expected out of how well built that franchise is, it would be a monumental failure.

D&D is going to sell a base amount just because it is D&D and it has that brand recognition. It is to RPGs what Kleenex is to tissues.

It's hard to imagine a D&D edition that could do much worse than 4e did.

 

[teitan]

D&D 4e lost the #1 RPG sales spot to Pathfinder.

Sure, if an otherwise unknown RPG started selling as well as D&D 4e did it would be a huge success.

But D&D is supposed to sell more than other RPGs.

Picture Avengers: Endgame bringing in only $100 million. For the vast majority of movie makers that would be a huge success but for what is expected out of how well built that franchise is, it would be a monumental failure.

D&D is going to sell a base amount just because it is D&D and it has that brand recognition. It is to RPGs what Kleenex is to tissues.

It's hard to imagine a D&D edition that could do much worse than 4e did.

yeah it lost the spot when they announced the end of 4e. With a very slow trickle of edition neutral and nostalgia products of course they took over.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

D&D wins, since 5e is obviously 2.5x better than 2e.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Why? Oh, wait, neither of those RPGs are for Fantasy games, my bad.

Uh...what?

They’re...both fantasy RPGs.

I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’ll ask anyway.

What the heck are y’all on about?

 

[Zardnaar]

yeah it lost the spot when they announced the end of 4e. With a very slow trickle of edition neutral and nostalgia products of course they took over.

End of 2009 Paizo estimated, became official 2010.

 

[JeffB]

I mean, let's not re-write history. That was not really much more true for 4E than it was for previous editions, in terms of general rules and how they were presented (I'm not sure it was more true than 3.XE at all). It's not even much more true than 5E (though it is).

Ok. "sole" focus was probably too strong of a wording, but it emphasized combat significantly more than previous editions and the modules reinforced this emphasis, mostly being a string of combat encounters. The rulebooks went through the basics of combat and powers before ever getting to character classes, races,, skills, etc. it differed significantly than previous, which ( I believe) was a mistake in presenting the game to new and old players alike.

I don't think we are necessarily talking about the same thing, but it was 4e's presentation (or graphic design) that brought me back to D&D. I couldn't stand the look of the 3e books and most of the core 2e style books. 4e brought me back with a presentation style that range true to my design roots.

My aging eyes loved it compared to 3.X. Bigger fonts- white pages. I also left the game by the time 3.5 was out (still bought it, but). 4E also brought me back to WOTC D&D- though I've pretty much wandered off and have only play 5E sparingly over the years because I prefer other games.

It's funny, basically the same thing was said about Hero, above, as well, and neither is the case anymore than it is for virtually any other RPG - certain no more true than it is of 5e & PF2, to sorta at least nod to the actual thread topic. It's exact same the kind of superficial misperception that the mainstream tends to have of D&D (and the broader hobby, which isn't much viewed separately from D&D), and, you're right, it probably does have something to do with presentation.

Maybe it harkens all the way back to TTRPGs breaking out from TT Wargaming? Just some of the organization/presentation/expectations have never shifted entirely away from that?
Maybe it's lack of familiarity - when you're looking at a TTRPG from the outside, it seems like it's all about combat, as it has a lot of rules, stats, & page-count devoted to it.

And, while no d20 game has been effects-based to a degree remotely comparable to Hero, 4e is perhaps not as far over in the alternate list-based domain as most, while it resorts to long lists of powers, they're mechanically organized and presented like they might be had the system let players build them up from effects, themselves, and, further, have the 'fluff' segregated and, as in an effects-based system, mutable to meet the players' concepts.

I guess "presentation" can encompass a number of things, graphic design and page layout and fonts and the like could be part of it. So can organization and tone. For instance, games that use 'you' all the time create a conversational tone. Games that are organized into lists, concept-first, read differently and feel different from games that are organized around mechanics and at most give examples of concepts. Games can be written to flow and even entertain, when read cover-to-cover, or to be efficient reference books or manuals.
It's a matter of preference which works best for a given gamer, but it seems to color opinions rather strongly. And, an unfavored presentation style can mean a given gamer never groks the game, at all, and forms a more superficial opinion of it, as downright outsiders tend to.

This is all good stuff. I think one of the funniest things during the 4E edition wars was the backlash against terminology- this is a presentation issue

Healing Surges
At Wills
Encounter/Daily powers

BOOO! D&D IZ WARCRAFT

But change the terminology to...

Hit Dice
Cantrips
recover after a short/long rest

and now it's the best D&D ever.

Presentation matters.

 

[generic]

Uh...what?

They’re...both fantasy RPGs.

I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’ll ask anyway.

What the heck are y’all on about?

I don't know if others were being serious, but I was being humorous. So, what I meant by that is nothing really.

 

[Stormonu]

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the sheer size of PF2’s rulebook, so D&D wins for me. I used to like 3.5E D&D, and enjoyed PF1’s expansion and revision of the game, but I came to realize that I enjoyed 5E’s simplicity so much more - especially the move away from the churn of the advancement treadmill. For example, the players in my current 5E game only have couple magic items as potions, and they’re having a blast without worrying about acquiring a list of magical gear to be effective.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Uh...what?
I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’ll ask anyway.
What the heck are y’all on about?

Eez joke.

They’re...both fantasy RPGs.

D&D is often defended as capturing it's own self-referent sub-genre of fantasy, and PF2 might well be restricting itself to that same sub-genre.

Ok. "sole" focus was probably too strong of a wording, but it emphasized combat significantly more than previous editions

The exact opposite, really. No other edition even tried to promote non-combat challenge to even theoretical equality with combat encounter, but 4e did - SCs were worth the same exp as encounters of the same level.
SCs also provided a structure in which the whole party would participate outside of combat, to avoid 'netrunner syndrome' (non-combat challenges tending to only one PC, something named after a type of character in cyberpunk, but going all the way back to the 0D&D Thief).

Both innovative, new things for D&D to try, both abandoned by 5e - and, AFAIK, not taken up by PF2?

But change the terminology to...
Hit Dice
Cantrips
recover after a short/long rest
and now it's the best D&D ever.
Presentation matters.

To be fair, more than terminology changed: at-will, encounter, & daily powers weren't just renamed cantrip/short/long rests, they were taken away from martial characters, short rests no longer equated to encounters (about every-other, according to the guidelines, but, really, a campaign could run entirely on long rests and not strain credulity at all), and the number of dailes (spell slots) ballooned. Similarly, HD are comparable to Surges, but don't silo healing from offensive/utility spellcasting as much.

 

[Neonchameleon]

D&D 4e lost the #1 RPG sales spot to Pathfinder.

Sure, if an otherwise unknown RPG started selling as well as D&D 4e did it would be a huge success.

But D&D is supposed to sell more than other RPGs.

Picture Avengers: Endgame bringing in only $100 million. For the vast majority of movie makers that would be a huge success but for what is expected out of how well built that franchise is, it would be a monumental failure.

The problem with your analogy is that you are comparing position to numbers here. So let's take a strong selling franchise that's still running. The Fast and The Furious. Just because the MCU overtook it doesn't make it non-profitable and just because

As for editions that did worse - the big thing companies care about is profitability and the bottom line. And by that standard I'm pretty sure that D&D 4E, D&D 5E, and Pathfinder all did better than D&D 3.5. And probably better than D&D 3.0 (and certainly better than 2e).

Why? Subscription models. In order to make any money D&D 3.5 had to sell you a nice solid hardback which WotC had to print. The costs for that were high and there was a significant chance if they overprinted of WotC making a loss; the margins were not great and the risk was significant. How many copies of e.g Shining South or Dragons of Eberron were sold and how much do you think they made? Did they even make a profit? (We know the TSR equivalents didn't).

4e had D&D Insider, 5e has D&D Beyond, and Paizo has its Adventure Path Subscriptions. And frankly these things are a license to print money - there is no risk to them because you know how much people are making. I can't find much information on how much money Paizo makes - the only thing I can find is a very sketchy estimate of about $10 million/year. Which would make them one of the biggest RPG players around by an order of magnitude. We know from Ryan Dancey that the goal of 4e was to hit $50 million/year to be a Hasbro Core Brand - and that it failed at that. We also know that D&D Insider subscriptions continued after the launch of 5e - and we could find out the number still going by looking at the WotC forums until they shut them down in 2015 as the D&D Insider forum had membership numbers. D&D Insider was either $10/month or $70/year (and yes this is two or three times the cost of D&D Beyond). From memory at the time of shutdown of the forums in 2015 (long after the 5e launch and more than two years after new material stopped coming out) 4e was still making millions of dollars a year from DDI - and all of it basically pure proft.

And that's why people want you on subscription models - it's the Gym Membership model. Get a sub and keep paying it - the gym makes more money if you don't go than if you do.

And in my current 5e group as far as I'm aware between us we have one copy of the 5e PHB (there might be two), one copy of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and a copy each of the Stranger Things and Rick & Morty boxed sets. That's ... not a lot of profit for WotC. The volume of players is high, but with two whales at the table and most of us with quite a bit of disposable income WotC has made pennies.