NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maldin" data-source="post: 5137342" data-attributes="member: 27170">Ok, my earlier post in this thread was more tongue-in-cheek, but this is a serious topic, and therefore requires a more serious post as well.I have to agree with alot of the things people are saying about Paizo's past and present. So far its been an amazing run, and I add my voice to the chorus of kudos for Lisa.While there were a few things that Ryan Dancey did that I didn't agree with, when he and his team (including Lisa) created the d20 license and the new 3E philosophy... he took a company, and from it created an industry. That was nothing short of brilliant. We as fans watched with horror (certainly unmatched by the horror of being on the inside), as wave-after-wave of layoffs devastated the design side of D&D. All people whose creativity would have been lost forever to the hobby. However with the license, suddenly the best and brightest could do what they could never do before... continue producing post-WotC  what the fans wanted most. High quality publications. I won't bother listing the award-winning companies that people have already listed, however this changed the RPG landscape forever. Paizo has become the shining star of that landscape.Part of TSR's problem was mismanagement. For example, the insistance on continuing the Buck Rogers black hole, for reasons that had nothing to do with the company's health. Rule books were profitable, non-rules materials (adventures, settings) were not. Rather then figure out how to fix it, the quick post-TSR business decision was to cut out the non-rules material and concentrate on what they knew made them money. It was a quick (and understandable) fix to save the company financially, but that philosophy unfortunately continued even after the company was healthy again. With the d20 license, it was my impression (and correct me if I'm wrong) that WotC thought they could continue churning out the profitable rules products, and hoped that the burgeoning d20 community would take up the less profitable (yet just as necessary) adventure market. Guess what? That community recognized that rule books were more profitable, so they produced that instead, and left 3E players with a general (though not absolute) lack of material they could use all those rules books for.Now that WotC's profit margin is as dependant on rules as a vampire is on blood, they must re-invent the game continually to keep selling rules. Planned obsolescence is a tried and true business model. Is it one the public likes? Not particularly, and hence the backlash by a non-trivial subset of their market every time D&D goes to a new edition. There is another business plan that also can work... quality and support that lasts. If you can pull it off. WotC could do it, but they seem to periodically purge themselves of the necessary talent. Where does the talent go? You guessed it. The d20 (and successor) companies. Create a tried and true rules set... leave it alone! (well, feel free to have rules expansion products) and produce material that feeds the hunger CREATED by the rules... campaign setting material, stand-alone adventures, and (Paizo's specialty) adventure paths.WotC is the behemoth. They will always be successful no matter what they do. The Microsoft of the industry. Ok... within reason - its always possible to eventually bleed to death if you keep cutting yourself, but I don't really see that happening. Although the GSL is certainly a major wound.I think if Paizo wants to continue to grow, they have to keep doing what they are doing... the things that WotC is NOT doing. When WotC goes to a new edition (and they will, its their business model), does that mean Paizo must also? No! I disagree with GVD on this. Pathfinder is successful because people didn't want to move to 4E and start over from scratch again. Any chance Paizo's market is gonna jump to 5E? NOT A CHANCE. Moving PF to an all-new edition would fly in the face of everything that has made Paizo successful. What? New players? Why should someone new to the hobby choose 4E (or 5E) over PF 3.5E? The only reason is subjective belief imposed by advertising and market penetration. Nothing to do with the actual rules set. People, this is not high technology! Despite a whole lot of really goofy, self-important, self-congratulatory editorializing about 'modern, state-of-the-art design'. It's a verbal, pen and paper table game! Any balanced, effective set of rules is a good set of rules if you like it. Why do you think there is still a huge population of players still using ALL of the past editions.If Paizo tries to play WotC's game of constant rules re-boots, they'll lose. The competition is daunting. If Paizo continues to stress adventures and setting, they'll win. There is little (major - I'm not going to count all of the small-print-run companies out there) competition there, and thats the market that will continue to flock to PF. The key is to expand market penetration by advertising the hell out of yourself as the place to go for settings and adventures - the things that actually make the game fun.You can't out-crunch the crunch-monster. You can easily out-fluff them.I am shocked to hear that Paizo's publisher is not already making a 6-figure salary, however! Shocked, I say! Paizo's CEO should definitely see about fixing that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Denis, aka "Maldin"Maldin's Greyhawk <a href="http://melkot.com" target="_blank">http://melkot.com</a>Edition-independent Fluff-central for the World of Greyhawk... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics and more! Most recent update: <a href="http://melkot.com/locations/underdark/underdark-region.html" target="_blank">Greyhawk's Underdark</a></blockquote>

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