(shrugs)  Pathfinder's been very popular.  So a lot of copies have been printed.  So there are folks who don't need their copies any more and would like to get some cash for them, and there are a lot more of those copies than there are (say) used Dogs In The Vineyard corebooks.

Simple numbers.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;764975it reinforces my belief that a lot of gamers stuck with PF because it felt like D&D and 4e wasn't even close.  Now that 5e feels like D&D again, only without the huge feat trees and numbers bloat of PF and 3e, I suspect this will be a common scene

Right. While I feel certain Pathfinder will remain significant and provide the much needed prod of market competition, overbearing crunch is currently falling out of fashion and GMs are especially exhausted by Pathfinder's burden on them. Where the GMs go, most players will follow.

Things are going to get even dicier now that Paizo is contemplating a "3.85" edition, which is sure to sour some of its fans.

As much as I like the new 5e rules, I don't discount the immersive power of Wayne Reynolds' art to keep people in the PF camp.

There's Reynolds art in 5E too, though?

That doesn't look like a Reynolds to me, do you see an artist credit somewhere?

You're right, somehow I had the impression that that was a Reynolds piece, but there's no credit to be seen.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;765026Correlation not equaling causation and all that jazz but still it's VERY interesting timing.

Yes, this is absolutely correct.  It's hard to map the two events together, except perhaps in my own bad luck/timing/etc.

As for the material itself, some of it was brand new and unopened.  I snagged a pack of pawns for less than Amazon.

The rest was clearly used adventure material, and they had duplicates of some of the AP volumes.  So that's probably more than one player cashing them in...

That said, it may take a week or so for traded-in items to hit the shelves, and they pretty clearly didn't trade for 5e.

But still coincidences are fun.

As for market share itself, I'll go 5e if I can.  I play Pathfinder to play 3e D&D, and functionally, for me at least, 4e never existed.  I've tried to get in to it - posted about it here, even - but it never happened.  So 5e represents 'actual D&D' to me, even while I've been enjoying Pathfinder.

I can't be alone in that.

Quote from: mcbobbo;764961So remember my bemoaning a lack of used Pathfinder material on the shelves?

Today there's a raft of it.

Wonder what happened?  

Pity you live in Texas. I've never seen any used Pathfinder stuff in New England.

Really the company that should bring out a 4e clone is Palladium.  4e's changes already resemble Palladium in many places and at its heart Palladium's got a very nice little mechanic that would adapt well to a tactical grid.  Hit points based on con, saves based on wizard level, hand to hand skills that resemble 4e's power stacks, not that 4e's not a whole lot cleaner and more modern but heck, Palladium could use a little cleaned up and modern.

Of course, Palladium's got a bit of a reputation, but I bet a nice cool box full of old school RAFM miniatures in vinyl with a rulebook in the box would do okay.

That or I'm just trying to figure out a way to get Palladium to back RAFM's floundering kickstarter.  Who knows, I'm mercurial.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ldier-game-and

Quote from: Tetsubo;765167Pity you live in Texas. I've never seen any used Pathfinder stuff in New England.

I got a used copy of Ultimate Combat at Pandemonium in Cambridge MA, but I betcha there's more of a player base there due to population.

Quote from: mcbobbo;765166As for the material itself, some of it was brand new and unopened.  I snagged a pack of pawns for less than Amazon.

That's from distributors liquidating stock, most likely. When 4e came out, there was a sudden flood of new, shrink wrapped 3e starter sets at the local Half Priced Books.

It was a pretty sweet deal on what amounted to a box of tiles and minis.

Quote from: Spinachcat;765060The judge of 5e vs. PF will be GenCon's 2015 game schedule. Let's see the table numbers a year from now.

That is the most odd way to judge such a thing that I've ever heard.  A single convention, with massive variables based on geography, cost, promotion by individual company, space purchasing by individual company...why on earth would you use that to judge anything other than who is playing what at that Con?

GenCon is for hardcore RPGers, and the hardcore does not in general represent the larger population of gamers.  I doubt most of my players have even heard of GenCon, nor ever been to a game convention of any kind.

In fact I know that.  Of the 6 of us in my current game, only two of us have been to a game convention (myself and one other), and both of us went to GenCon purely because we were invited and GenCon paid for us.

Hard to predict how this plays out, but I'm expecting a big surge in 5E players and proportional loss of interest in PF and (especially) 4E. It is not worth arguing about which of these games most deserves to 'win' the market; I'm just thinking of the common tendency of table top gamers to hop systems every few years, and the attraction of a nicely made, well supported, easy-entry new game. Unless WoC fucks the dog on their release schedule or product quality, a lot of people will think it just sounds like a fresh, fun change for the group to give it a try. And if the product is solid and new materials hit the shelves every month, they will stick with it for at least 6-12 months. This dynamic has driven rapidly churning turnover in the rpg industry for many years. Of course there will always be devoted fans of each system. But the proliferation of new systems has always been a trend in this hobby, and I can't imagine a well done new edition of D&D staying in the back benches for long.

Don't worry. Wizards will fuck it up somehow.

Quote from: AaronBrown99;765155As much as I like the new 5e rules, I don't discount the immersive power of Wayne Reynolds' art to keep people in the PF camp.

I hate most of his art. Maybe it's just the style Paizo wants, I've seen some of his stuff that I do like, but I generally don't care for his cartoony anime style, at all.