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Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: JongWK on July 02, 2013, 01:52:39 PM
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Never had any idea about it until last week, other than "it's a d20 remake by Paizo." Now it looks like I'll be running a campaign with it. :p
What should I expect, as compared to 3e and 3.5e? What sourcebooks would you suggest? What stuff would you not suggest?
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If you have the material, you'll have little trouble. It runs like 3.x for the most part. There are numerous mechanical differences, and some of them make little sense. It's a little like running 3.5 the first time after being really familiar with 3.0. There are enough things that are different that you'll probably stumble into them, but if you run them in the 'wrong' way, you won't break the game.
Pathfinder attempted to 'balance' the base classes of 3.x with later 'splat classes' and claimed 'backward compatability' as a goal. In general, I'd recommend running just 'core Pathfinder' and not allowing 3.x splats - while they might work, they need some careful review, and that's really only possible if you're familiar with the system.
Just as in 3.x, casters remain supreme. They have new ways to be even more awesome. Forget about trying to 'reign in' the casters - you're going to have make challenges based on their abilities and try to help everyone else keep up if it looks like they're falling behind.
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DeadDM pretty much covered it. A word of advice, people typically bump CRs by one or two when running 3.5 material for PF characters. Almost all of the changes made the PCs more powerful.
Another odd one - cantrips are infinite, and there's a damage dealing one.
If you're looking for material, I can recommend the Rise of the Runelords adventure path.
Finally, pfsrd is an amazing resource.
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Just as in 3.x, casters remain supreme. They have new ways to be even more awesome. Forget about trying to 'reign in' the casters - you're going to have make challenges based on their abilities and try to help everyone else keep up if it looks like they're falling behind.
.....or you could play PF basic and not worry about all that stuff.
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DeadDM pretty much covered it. A word of advice, people typically bump CRs by one or two when running 3.5 material for PF characters. Almost all of the changes made the PCs more powerful.
Ohhhh, this I actually like... *evil maniacal laugh* :teehee:
Finally, pfsrd is an amazing resource.
I saw the website today. Impressive, though it was a bit overwhelming at first not knowing what is from the core book and what is a splat.
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.....or you could play PF basic and not worry about all that stuff.
By "basic" you mean the Beginner Box?
At least that was my thought, and would be the only version of PF I could see myself DMing. (In fact, I just gave it a try a few days ago.)
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If you have the material, you'll have little trouble. It runs like 3.x for the most part. There are numerous mechanical differences, and some of them make little sense. It's a little like running 3.5 the first time after being really familiar with 3.0. There are enough things that are different that you'll probably stumble into them, but if you run them in the 'wrong' way, you won't break the game.
Pathfinder attempted to 'balance' the base classes of 3.x with later 'splat classes' and claimed 'backward compatability' as a goal. In general, I'd recommend running just 'core Pathfinder' and not allowing 3.x splats - while they might work, they need some careful review, and that's really only possible if you're familiar with the system.
Just as in 3.x, casters remain supreme. They have new ways to be even more awesome. Forget about trying to 'reign in' the casters - you're going to have make challenges based on their abilities and try to help everyone else keep up if it looks like they're falling behind.
In d&d the casters were always overpowered anyway, at least from AD&D 2ed onwards (never played anything older than this).
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Another odd one - cantrips are infinite, and there's a damage dealing one.
I'm not sure if you are seeing this as a positive or a negative. Honestly I can't see how it would matter. They are all 1d3 damage and require a ranged touch attack at least. (exception being the undead only one that is 1d6 and still ranged touch).
A sword or crossbow is (effectively, in the case of the crossbow you have ammo but still) infinite, and does more than 1d3 damage.
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Pathfinder jacks up the power of PCs through higher HD (for all but fighter classes) more racial ability boosts andmore feat slots (now ever odd level). Most also get some nice extras in their class descriptions. From memory the Sorcerer, Bard and Fighter are the biggest winners.
They also rationalized skills much like 4E did.
Apart from that its essentially the same game as 3.5.
I don't mind PF but I'm disappointed they didn't take the opportunity to fix or simplify more things.
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I'd call the skill system an improvement on 3E in some respects (you only get x1 skill points, but +3 on class skills) since this fixes the thing where rogue1/fighter1 and fighter1/rogue1 have very different numbers of skill points, and half-orcs, half-elves and barbarians seem to suck less. Traits (Advanced Player's Guide IIRC) are kinda cool, as are some of the new classes (e.g. I like the alchemist, gunslinger and magus). Occasionally you'll find a positive rule change like cold iron being only 2000 GP and not having extra enchantment costs, but as some one else said a lot of the changes are kinda lolrandom, like giants now being affected by charm person or Manyshot being rewritten. I'm not personally a fan of super skill consolidation either (i.e. the Paladin is the one you send into seedy taverns to gather info because that skill got rolled into Diplomacy).
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If you're looking for material, I can recommend the Rise of the Runelords adventure path.
I would like to second this
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When I ran Rise of the Runelords, it was for 3.5; it wasn't until the Adventure Path after Second Darkness that they switched to Pathfinder rules (iirc).
Rise of the Runelords
Curse of the Crimson Throne
Second Darkness
Pretty sure those were the adventure paths released (outside of Dungeon) before they made the official switch.
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There's an anniversary edition of Rise of the Runelords that is for Pathfinder specifically.
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When I ran Rise of the Runelords, it was for 3.5; it wasn't until the Adventure Path after Second Darkness that they switched to Pathfinder rules (iirc).
Rise of the Runelords
Curse of the Crimson Throne
Second Darkness
Pretty sure those were the adventure paths released (outside of Dungeon) before they made the official switch.
Legacy of Fire was the last 3.5 AP they released (for a total of 4 before PFRPG became a thing).
If you liked 3e/3.5e, then you'll probably like Pathfinder.
-Skeld
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Hey Jong, what brought on this sudden interest in Pathfinder?
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Speaking of Pathfinder...
Is anyone going to PaizoCon this weekend? Ill be there. Its actually the only time I get to play Pathfinder (I do have a sporadic Pathfinder campaign I am running though).
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Hey Jong, what brought on this sudden interest in Pathfinder?
Had a campaign idea for a long time, suddenly got enough players for it, and some of them suggested I should take a look into PF. I liked what I saw.
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I'm not sure if you are seeing this as a positive or a negative. Honestly I can't see how it would matter. They are all 1d3 damage and require a ranged touch attack at least. (exception being the undead only one that is 1d6 and still ranged touch).
A sword or crossbow is (effectively, in the case of the crossbow you have ammo but still) infinite, and does more than 1d3 damage.
Oh, it's both, but more than positive or negative, it's just different. It's actually a criticism I have of their world, Golarion. See, a place where there is absolutely no limit on the magical output of every petty acolyte should probably be a 'high magic' setting, but it's not. For example, when acolytes can summon infinite water, why are there deserts?
Other versions of D&D made you worry more about your spells, particularly at the lower levels.
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I like to think of it as "practically unlimited" rather than literally unlimited. My view is that you can't literally cast infinite orbs of acid all day, but you can cast so many that its not a concern to keep track of.
But then again, that's just my rationalization.
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Another option would be to use the Trailblazer "system optimizer" rules in conjunction with 3.5. Its pretty cool and can also be used with Pathfinder.
Cheers
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Oh, it's both, but more than positive or negative, it's just different. It's actually a criticism I have of their world, Golarion. See, a place where there is absolutely no limit on the magical output of every petty acolyte should probably be a 'high magic' setting, but it's not. For example, when acolytes can summon infinite water, why are there deserts?
Because what makes a climate a desert or not a desert is more than the factor of "just add water."
JG
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Ah, but it's enough power to minor terraform at least. Acid orb away limestone caves for the air conditioning... Empires would know a power and a threat when they see it.
:p
But then French Revolution land and Dinosaur land and Robot land and African Savannah land and Ancient Egypt land all so close together kinda got on my nerves from Inner Sea Guide.
:)
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But then French Revolution land and Dinosaur land and Robot land and African Savannah land and Ancient Egypt land all so close together kinda got on my nerves from Inner Sea Guide.
The good thing about Pathfinder (and every edition of D&D, even 4e) is that the setting is not hard-coded into the rules, and you can always make up your own world.
Try that with Earthdawn, Sovereign Stone, Das schwarze Auge, Exalted, Warhammer, Iron Kingdoms...
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Yeah, I remember how in White Wolf's old World of Darkness the different game lines didn't play all that well together...
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The good thing about Pathfinder (and every edition of D&D, even 4e) is that the setting is not hard-coded into the rules, and you can always make up your own world.
Try that with Earthdawn, Sovereign Stone, Das schwarze Auge, Exalted, Warhammer, Iron Kingdoms...
There's a recording from a talk at Paizo Con out there somewhere where Lisa explains why Golarion is a mishmash: they assume setting-fracture is what killed TSR.
See one of her duties as the part of WoTC that absorbed TSR was to make sense of their salee data. She found that each new fork of D&D (Spelljammer, Al-qadim, etc) actually lost them gross. So she decided that for her setting, they wouldn't fracture the playerbase but would just tack on.
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How can adding to your settings reduce your gross? I mean net I can see, but gross? That just doesn't make any sense to me...what am I missing?
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That doesn't make much sense to me either, but I suppose the paradox of choice might factor into it: presented with far too many settings to choose from, people just didn't buy any of them and kept using their homebrew.
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On top of that, there may be a factor of the more you disperse the talent amongst different settings, the lower the average quality of products for those settings gets. If you let the talent concentrate on a single setting or limited number of settings and really get to know it you're going to have better results than bouncing people around different settings where they have to learn a different local paradigm each time.
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The good thing about Pathfinder (and every edition of D&D, even 4e) is that the setting is not hard-coded into the rules, and you can always make up your own world.
Try that with Earthdawn, Sovereign Stone, Das schwarze Auge, Exalted, Warhammer, Iron Kingdoms...
Never experienced any issues with making my own settings with Earthdawn.
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On top of that, there may be a factor of the more you disperse the talent amongst different settings, the lower the average quality of products for those settings gets. If you let the talent concentrate on a single setting or limited number of settings and really get to know it you're going to have better results than bouncing people around different settings where they have to learn a different local paradigm each time.
I think that's what she surmised as well, but it was only a guess. She said the pattern was clear, though. Each new boxed set put them further and further in the red, and no one at TSR was doing the analytics to see what worked and what didn't.
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She found that each new fork of D&D (Spelljammer, Al-qadim, etc) actually lost them gross. So she decided that for her setting, they wouldn't fracture the playerbase but would just tack on.
They are also very liberal about selling and supporting third party products from a merchandising perspective, such as Midgard. They can basically get variety without any strategic effort.
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When WotC releases a Creatures of Faerun book, mostly just people who like the Forgotten Realms will buy it. When you release a setting neutral monster book, very few people who are committed to a particular setting will buy it.
You now have to release twice as many books to capture the same sales you could previously achieve with one.
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I still regard Pathfinder as 'adventure paths first, rules system second', though I understand that sales wise the situation may have changed by now.
I haven't followed the splat releases closely, but seem to remember from a couple of reviews that they are really hit and miss. Especially the Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, etc. splats seemed at times shoddily designed, and incurred a torrent of disappointed posts and reviews aimed at Sean K Reynolds among others.
The core book has seen so many errata that you want to make sure to buy the latest printing. But it seems that, after two years or so (?) the dust has settled and Pathfinder core is now regarded as fairly solid.
I wouldn't invest in the system beyond core, but instead opt for an adventure path - which is an easy choice, Runelords Anniversary - and then on Paizo equipment like the flip mats or tokens. I think such things solidly and repeatedly contribute to the experience at the game table more than splatbooks, which by definition have you pick and choose few things from them.
And oh yes, as a GM you'll have a complete monster database online, and it's much more convenient to print out the stat blocks than lump 3 MMs to the table.
It's also my distinct impression that the print and paper quality of Paizo hardcovers is MUCH much worse than their adventure paths during 3.5. Sadly that's also true of their updated Golarion setting book, which is otherwise a top purchase.
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Yeah, I remember how in White Wolf's old World of Darkness the different game lines didn't play all that well together...
Yes, I remember that well. It was bad when they did adventures mixing vampires and werewolves. But it got absolutely ridiculous with Mages, to the point where they had to release errata to avoid the "I turn the Antediluvian vampire into a lawn chair" scenarios.
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I think that's what she surmised as well, but it was only a guess. She said the pattern was clear, though. Each new boxed set put them further and further in the red, and no one at TSR was doing the analytics to see what worked and what didn't.
The last part of that sentence we already know.
JG
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That doesn't make much sense to me either, but I suppose the paradox of choice might factor into it: presented with far too many settings to choose from, people just didn't buy any of them and kept using their homebrew.
They also likely suffered from what I refer to as "collector burnout".
Some product lines (and particularly geek-oriented product lines) benefit from the fraction of the market that wants to own everything produced. These customers will buy everything you release, even if they don't have an immediate need for it (and possibly even if there's a good chance they will never have a need for it). But that only remains true up to the point where they can't afford to keep their collection complete: Once you start releasing product at a pace faster than they can afford, there's a dramatic "snap back" where they go from buying everything to buying little or nothing.
As a personal anecdote, I did this with Star Trek novels when I was kid: I had bought every Star Trek novel that had ever been published (when that was still something that was actually achievable) and to keep my collection complete I would buy every book published by Pocket Books each month. Until Pocket Books quadrupled the number of titles they were publishing each month and I couldn't justify $50/month the way I had justified $12/month. I went from buying everything they published to buying literally nothing that they published.
This happened rapidly with D20 products: Within just a couple of months the market had exploded with more product and stores were reporting that their completist collectors were simply walking away from all D20 products.
Marvel reportedly saw something similar happen with the X-Men titles in the early '90s (although the survey data always seemed a little hazy on that one). They hit a certain number of X-titles and people just dropped all of them instead of continuing with whatever moderate number they were buying before. (This was probably exacerbated by the incessant crossovers between the titles.)
TSR almost certainly saw this happen with AD&D in the '90s: Every campaign setting received a new supplement each month. Which meant every campaign setting they released not only fractured their customer base, it also made the complete game line ever more expensive for the completists.
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Interesting tidbit about Paizo's business model- Up until roughly last Gencon, they didn't pay artists until AFTER the publication of the product which contained their art. That is very bush league, but it shows how Paizo was doing things very carefully. Lisa Stevens is a genius though- White Wolf, Mtg, Pokemon, 3e, d20 SW, Paizo and now MMORPG (also very rich!)
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They also likely suffered from what I refer to as "collector burnout".
Some product lines (and particularly geek-oriented product lines) benefit from the fraction of the market that wants to own everything produced. These customers will buy everything you release, even if they don't have an immediate need for it (and possibly even if there's a good chance they will never have a need for it). But that only remains true up to the point where they can't afford to keep their collection complete: Once you start releasing product at a pace faster than they can afford, there's a dramatic "snap back" where they go from buying everything to buying little or nothing.
For sure.
This also happens in some less geeky/nerdy type niches too.
I use to buy a lot of vinyl records of thrash metal bands, back in the mid-1980's. In those days due to how small the indie record companies were and the lousy distribution, not many thrash records were released and they were not easily found at local record stores. At the time, it was possible to keep up with the new thrash vinyl releases every month from indie record companies like Roadrunner, Combat, Metal Blade, Megaforce, etc ...
By the time it was the late 1980's (after bands like Metallica, Slayer, etc ... became very popular after being signed to major record labels), the market for thrash records became flooded with all kinds of new releases from "me too" indie record labels signing numerous "me too" bands that sounded like Metallica or Slayer.
At that point due to the high volume of new releases and a subjective decline in quality, I largely stopped buying any new thrash metal records. (After that, I spent the next several years replacing most of my vinyl collection with the cd versions).
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Justin's proposed explanation that makes way more sense than DeadDMwalking's to me
Okay, now THIS I can see, as well as understand how it coud create an actual drop in gross. It'd be interesting to know how much of the market this group represents. Presumably it's the same portion that Paizo banks on having buy and read every adventure in their multiple adventure paths.
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It'd be interesting to know how much of the market this group represents.
I've heard this explanation before and I am extremely skeptical that "the obsessive collectors" constituted a large enough group to materially affect gross sales that badly.
I'm starting to think that the use of the word "gross" in the OP might have been a mistake. Net sales going down as product lines increase is easy to comprehend.
I'm also wondering if the problem ultimately wasn't just TSR assuming the bubble would last forever and producing more product than their demographic could afford to buy regardless of desire.
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I've heard this explanation before and I am extremely skeptical that "the obsessive collectors" constituted a large enough group to materially affect gross sales that badly.
This has me really wondering. I know I've seen reference several times to the idea that Paizo's adventure paths (as a fer' instance) are bought primarily by collectors for reading, and that this came from a Paizo staffer on their boards. Haven't seen a link to it, so who knows? But if this kind of thing is true, it makes that collector burnout a real possibility.
I'm starting to think that the use of the word "gross" in the OP might have been a mistake. Net sales going down as product lines increase is easy to comprehend.
Exactly, and that was my first assumption as to the original intent of the statement. But that could be as simple as production costs outweighed the bump in revenue from increased market share. I also seem to recall Dancy claiming that TSR was actually losing money on every boxed set (which I also had trouble believing).
I'm also wondering if the problem ultimately wasn't just TSR assuming the bubble would last forever and producing more product than their demographic could afford to buy regardless of desire.
Also distinctly possible. I'm also wary of these kinds of analyses unless I have access to the data and methodology. I've seen far too many occasions where the forest was missed for the trees, as the tendency is to believe that if it isn't in your spreadsheet, it's not a factor.
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I've heard this explanation before and I am extremely skeptical that "the obsessive collectors" constituted a large enough group to materially affect gross sales that badly.
I wouldn't characterize them as obsessive collectors, but Paizo has said the foundation of their business is subscriptions to their adventure paths. Given the near-impossibility of playing out an AP as fast they're published, it's fair to assume a lot of those folks read but don't play - or at least they don't play every AP. And I bet this is the case for a lot of RPG game lines.
You see a similar approach with tabletop historical wargames. The business model of publishers is built around pre-orders by several hundred hardcore collectors. It's a more or less open secret that most wargames are opened, read, maps and counters admired, but rarely played (it's not hard to find opened but unpunched copies of games on ebay). However, everyone in the hobby recognizes that without the collectors, the niche-hobby of historical wargaming simply wouldn't be viable.
RPG publishing may have already that same state, though people in this hobby seem much more reluctant to admit it.
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I also seem to recall Dancy claiming that TSR was actually losing money on every boxed set (which I also had trouble believing).
I can very much believe this. Printing costs were much, much higher back then, especially for colour, and don't forget the highest line item in any budget - salary. If you consider only the sales from the boxed set, then the salary of everyone who works on that set has to be paid for out of the gross revenue. ISTR TSR had dedicated line developers and line managers, so you're not getting economies of scale.
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I can very much believe this. Printing costs were much, much higher back then, especially for colour, and don't forget the highest line item in any budget - salary. If you consider only the sales from the boxed set, then the salary of everyone who works on that set has to be paid for out of the gross revenue. ISTR TSR had dedicated line developers and line managers, so you're not getting economies of scale.
I completely understand all this...but to not realise it over that many boxed sets?! That's what stretches credulity.
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I'm starting to think that the use of the word "gross" in the OP might have been a mistake. Net sales going down as product lines increase is easy to comprehend.
I was using rough language, to be sure. Here's the podcast itself:
http://www.35privatesanctuary.com/podcasts/auntielisa.mp3
The other tracks from that con are here:
http://forum.35privatesanctuary.com/viewtopic.php?t=1278&sid=11d51f8261fb9c64f9898cef99bac846
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I don't suppose you can point to the relevant spot(s) in the timeline so we all don't have to listen to the whole thing?
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And here I thought I was being useful by Googling it for you...
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And here I thought I was being useful by Googling it for you...
The first one alone is 2 hours long. My time is actually of value to me.
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The first one alone is 2 hours long. My time is actually of value to me.
But strangely my time has no value.
Please feel free to dismiss anything I've said as hearsay, as it certainly is. I haven't listened to those tracks since 2011 and barely remember where I parked my car. Unfortunately I failed to pull a transcript out of my ass for you, so I guess you're just SOL.
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But strangely my time has no value.
Please feel free to dismiss anything I've said as hearsay, as it certainly is. I haven't listened to those tracks since 2011 and barely remember where I parked my car. Unfortunately I failed to pull a transcript out of my ass for you, so I guess you're just SOL.
What are you on about?
How was I supposed to know you hadn't listened to them for years? You linked them, suggesting their relevance as the source of your claim, hence my thinking that you knew the content. You could've just said you don't know instead of being an obnoxious twit about it.
For anyone else interested, the relevant portion in the first link appears to begin around 22 minutes in. So far, nothing about their gross declining.
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Around the 27 minute mark Lisa starts talking about fewer products making them more money, as suggested to her by Dancey. They are most definitely talking net, not gross. They are basically making a point similar to the one DeadDMwalking made. I think the analysis is a bit simplistic, as it assumes that the market is static, and there are no products you can release that actually expand said market, but it illustrates the inherent difficulties in doing so.
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They also likely suffered from what I refer to as "collector burnout".
Some product lines (and particularly geek-oriented product lines) benefit from the fraction of the market that wants to own everything produced. These customers will buy everything you release, even if they don't have an immediate need for it (and possibly even if there's a good chance they will never have a need for it). But that only remains true up to the point where they can't afford to keep their collection complete: Once you start releasing product at a pace faster than they can afford, there's a dramatic "snap back" where they go from buying everything to buying little or nothing.
More generally, this type of "collector burnout" can also happen in niches which do not directly involve buying anything. (Both geek/nerd and non-geek/non-nerd niches).
For example, there's so much good stuff on television (including cable, network, netflix, etc ...) that I want to watch, that I just don't have the time to watch much of it. If I were to regularly follow everything that I wanted to watch on tv, then I would literally be watching the telly 24 hours a day without any breaks, sleep, etc ...
The times I attempted to "catch up" on watching my huge backlog of tv shows (in recent years during xmas breaks, summer vacations, etc ...), I was glued to the tv during my entire waking hours for an entire week or two. After such week-long binges and subsequently going back to my regular daily routines, I found that I was just too "burned out" to watch and follow any further television shows. (Even tv shows that I really liked).
So I ended up just dropping my entire tv schedule, and not regularly watching anything for several months afterwards. It actually felt "liberating", in not following any tv shows.
In regard to a "compulsive completionist" aspect for tv shows, I find that I have a compulsion to want to watch every single episode of a show. (Even the crappier seasons). For example, when I was really into watching the original Law & Order a few years ago, I wanted to watch every single episode of all 20 seasons, whether on cable reruns/marathons, then-current first run episodes, dvds, etc ... (Same story with tv shows like CSI, CSI:Miami, NCIS, Cold Case, etc ...).
More recently, I've been watching tv shows like Defiance and Zero Hour, which don't seem to be written very well. Despite the lackluster writing, for some reason I want to continue watching them, largely to see what happens in their finale episodes (ie. when the show's mcguffin "powers" is finally revealed).
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I completely understand all this...but to not realise it over that many boxed sets?! That's what stretches credulity.
I'm consistently amazed at the number of companies I've worked at where the bottom line of "How are we making money?" is actually forgotten.
I worked in a print shop, for example, where we actually losing money on virtually every single print job. The company as a whole was still profitable because on a fraction of the print jobs we ran we were also billing customers for expensive assembly and fulfillment services, but this was entirely accidental. This wasn't discovered until the company was bought up by a larger conglomerate which cleaned up the financial department and then said, "Why is the print shop consistently a net loss?"
The reason for this was complicated, but it basically boiled down to the way inventory was handled within the company: The print shop would pull paper from the warehouse. We would print stuff. Our finished products would be placed back in the warehouse.
But while the print shop was charging the customer for the paper they used, those costs were not actually reflective of how much the paper cost the company to purchase in the first place. The print shop wasn't responsible for how much the paper cost. The warehouse was only responsible for shipping out finished products out to the customer. And no one in the print shop actually cared to analyze "how much money did this job actually make the company?" because it wasn't their job: Their job was to process orders from sales; get them into production; and deliver the finished product to the warehouse so that it could be shipped to the customer.
So, to sum up, I can absolutely believe that nobody at TSR cost-to-profit analysis on each individual product. It's even quite likely that TSR had instituted internal policies and systems which made it difficult or impossible for anyone to perform that analysis. (In the print shop I worked in, it would have required four different departments to collaborate in order to run that analysis on a single product.)
Okay, now THIS I can see, as well as understand how it coud create an actual drop in gross. It'd be interesting to know how much of the market this group represents. Presumably it's the same portion that Paizo banks on having buy and read every adventure in their multiple adventure paths.
It's absolutely the same group. And look at how clever Paizo is in systematizing and managing their "addiction".
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I've heard this explanation before and I am extremely skeptical that "the obsessive collectors" constituted a large enough group to materially affect gross sales that badly.
Depends on how far you've spread out the rest of your customer base. The impact on the sales of any given product may be quite large if you start knocking out the collectors who provide a consistent base of sales across all products.
For example, let's say you need to sell 10,000 copies of a book to break even on it.
Imagine you're producing 6 books each year. You've got 120,000 customers who are buying an average of 3 books each year and you've also got 5,000 uber-fans who are buying all 6 books. Total sales: 390,000, averaging 65,000 copies per book. Profitable copies sold: 330,000.
Triple the production to 18 books each year. Assume that the extra books convince your regular customers to increase their purchases by 33% (because there's more stuff that looks interesting to them), so now they're buying an average of 4 books each year. The uber-fans are still here. Total sales: 570,000, averaging 31,665 copies per book. Profitable copies sold: 390,000.
From a casual inspection, it looks like you can just keep increasing the number of titles you sell and increase your profits.
But if remove the uber-fans from both years: Now the total profitable copies sold are 300,000 in both cases.
When you break the math down further, it quickly becomes apparent that if you have a number of uber-fans sufficient to cover the basic production costs of a book then you can basically crank up your company's profits indefinitely by simply increasing your production: Costs will always be covered and you're likely to convince at a least a fraction of your existing customer base to spend a little more money by increasing the number of options they're interested in.
And you can keep doing that right up to the point where you lose your uber-fans: Which might be due to producing more products than they can afford (creating the snap-back effect). Or allowing them to specialize their collection (by creating multiple product lines). Or by suffering a PR disaster. Or by simply producing crappier products that disillusion your fanbase.
TSR was doing pretty much all of that simultaneously.
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As a personal anecdote, I did this with Star Trek novels when I was kid: I had bought every Star Trek novel that had ever been published (when that was still something that was actually achievable) and to keep my collection complete I would buy every book published by Pocket Books each month. Until Pocket Books quadrupled the number of titles they were publishing each month and I couldn't justify $50/month the way I had justified $12/month. I went from buying everything they published to buying literally nothing that they published.
I can understand.
The only way I was able to justify buying a lot of Star Trek novels awhile ago, was finding a ton of them at book fairs, thrift shops, etc ... for 50 cents each (or less). (So far I have almost every Star Trek novel published before 1999. The stuff published after 2000, seems to be harder to come across at book fairs, thrift shops, library discards, etc ...).
There's no way I could have justified paying $50/month back in the 1990's or early 2000's for the same titles.
This happened rapidly with D20 products: Within just a couple of months the market had exploded with more product and stores were reporting that their completist collectors were simply walking away from all D20 products.
I can imagine this was case if softcover splatbooks were $10-$15 a pop (or more), and if hardcovers were $25-$30 each (or more).
I only started picking up d20 glut stuff, when they were already showing up in the bargain bins, such as: $2-$3 modules, $5 (or less) softcover splatbooks, $10 (or less) hardcovers, etc ... (I went on a binge picking up stuff like Scarred Lands, Dungeon Crawl Classics modules, Malhavoc, Green Ronin, Bastion, etc ...).
In hindsight, I'm glad that I wasn't playing any rpg games when the d20 3pp market was in overdrive. I only started playing D&D again after 3.5E was released, and the d20 market was already in decline. (I didn't buy much at the time).
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The good thing about Pathfinder (and every edition of D&D, even 4e) is that the setting is not hard-coded into the rules, and you can always make up your own world.
Try that with Earthdawn, Sovereign Stone, Das schwarze Auge, Exalted, Warhammer, Iron Kingdoms...
Well, you can do WFRP in just about any pseudo-earth type of setting.
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Around the 27 minute mark Lisa starts talking about fewer products making them more money, as suggested to her by Dancey.
That's odd - I jumped off the Pathfinder train precisely because they're releasing so much damn stuff. They're up to 8 or more releases each month.
http://paizo.com/paizo/about/schedule
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I jumped off the Pathfinder train precisely because they're releasing so much damn stuff. They're up to 8 or more releases each month.
Same here.
Despite my fondness for Dungeon Magazine and their subsequent monthly adventure path books, I didn't see any point in buying it regularly when I wasn't really DM'ing anymore. (I jumped off the Paizo treadmill after getting the Inner Sea poster map folio, but didn't bother buying the updated edition of the Inner Sea campaign guide. By then, largely superfluous to me).
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That's odd - I jumped off the Pathfinder train precisely because they're releasing so much damn stuff. They're up to 8 or more releases each month.
http://paizo.com/paizo/about/schedule
Their release schedule is what it has been since Pathfinder's launch more or less.
1 AP installment, 1 Chronicles (now Campaign Setting) book, 1 Player Companion per month. Occasionally a paperback gets published out of this rotation, as well as I think a stand alone module every other month, and only 3 hardcovers per year, one of which is always a bestiary.
So unless you feel compelled to buy map packs, flip mats, card decks, pawns, novels, et cetera the release schedule hasn't changed at all.
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Their release schedule is what it has been since Pathfinder's launch more or less.
Kind of - there are two player companions per month in three of the four months on their current schedule.
I think that any gain they made in cutting back on hardcovers was swallowed up by releasing more of everything else.
In any case, if the schedule you describe is where they started (and it sounds right to me), it has definitely increased over time.
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This is funny - based on what was announced at Paizocon, it looks like they're cutting back on releases.
None of the books they announced are written by their staff designers. I wonder if PF 2e is in the works right now.
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Well, you can do WFRP in just about any pseudo-earth type of setting.
You are right. I did GM three different WH1 groups and as many own settings, but that was when WHFRP was very new and virtually unknown in Germany.
Maybe I should have worded my post differently: If a setting is hard-coded into a rule system (WHFRP, Earthdawn, Elric!, DSA/TDE, etc.), and a considerable part of the rulebook, most players who like the system in fact like the setting (or the rule/setting combination).
Looking for players for a WHFRP game that is not set in the Old World usually yields blank stares, as if suggesting a Paranoia campaign set in Mega City One, or a (non-mythos) Call of Cthulhu game set in prohibition Chicago.
Some games have become synonymous to a particular play experience that includes their official setting.
Pathfinder is still close enough to a generic fantasy game even if all official modules are set in Golarion.
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This is funny - based on what was announced at Paizocon, it looks like they're cutting back on releases.
None of the books they announced are written by their staff designers. I wonder if PF 2e is in the works right now.
They have a bunch of new adventure paths in the works, plus Mythic and Bestiary 4 and a Pathfinder Card Game. Seems like a full load to me.
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Maybe I should have worded my post differently: If a setting is hard-coded into a rule system (WHFRP, Earthdawn, Elric!, DSA/TDE, etc.), and a considerable part of the rulebook, most players who like the system in fact like the setting (or the rule/setting combination).
I'd agree with that, yes.
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I'm finding Pathfinder's sweet spot is Corebook with APG and only light hints from the Ultimate books. Some of the extra material reminds me to much of the bad old days of 3.X.
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There's a lot to be said for building a base/default world into a system without hard coding the rules to it. Adaptability is a key survival trait and every RPG is a meme
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You are right. I did GM three different WH1 groups and as many own settings, but that was when WHFRP was very new and virtually unknown in Germany.
Maybe I should have worded my post differently: If a setting is hard-coded into a rule system (WHFRP, Earthdawn, Elric!, DSA/TDE, etc.), and a considerable part of the rulebook, most players who like the system in fact like the setting (or the rule/setting combination).
Looking for players for a WHFRP game that is not set in the Old World usually yields blank stares, as if suggesting a Paranoia campaign set in Mega City One, or a (non-mythos) Call of Cthulhu game set in prohibition Chicago.
Some games have become synonymous to a particular play experience that includes their official setting.
Pathfinder is still close enough to a generic fantasy game even if all official modules are set in Golarion.
Actually, I think you could run a pretty good western with slightly modified WFRP 2e game mechanics, and run a prohibition Chicago game using CoC rules. But what do I know? Maybe I'm just crazy.
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I'm finding Pathfinder's sweet spot is Corebook with APG and only light hints from the Ultimate books. Some of the extra material reminds me to much of the bad old days of 3.X.
That's pretty close to my experience. I'm not running PF at the moment, but a GM in our gaming circle does, and uses precisely that.
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Actually, I think you could run a pretty good western with slightly modified WFRP 2e game mechanics, and run a prohibition Chicago game using CoC rules. But what do I know? Maybe I'm just crazy.
Of course you could. You are not crazy. The problem is that you need players for that.
When most players hear "Warhammer" and decide to play they want all the "baggage" that comes with it - Old World, Chaos, Beastmen. For many that is the whole reason of wanting to play Warhammer. (And for some people it's the rules that is the "baggage" that comes with the setting...)
There is a reason why virtually no one used Das Schwarze Auge as a generic fantasy RPG in Germany. It's always set in Aventuria.