Brian E. Harris's page

This thread so far has been calm despite you putting words into people's mouths. Can you take your complaints about the other threads and talk about them in those other threads, or better yet, flag the posts your talking about and move on.

I've so far enjoyed the civil discussion, speculation and people's opinions. The most provocative comments being made in this thread are actually yours memorax, sorry to say. I haven't seen anyone dooming and glooming, but anyone has a right to say their interest is lessened due to Monte suddenly leaving. I have not seen any major 5e bashing in this thread, or 4e. No ones trying to start an edition war or flaming but i'm as entitled to say "I didn't like 4e and i'm not as excited about 5e after hearing Monte is leaving" as you are to tell me your own opinion.

And though I may not agree with it, it will no doubt be interesting to read and I will respect it.

I never realized I played in such hardcore games, but after reading this thread I feel like most people play games with way, way more training wheels than we do.

Just the idea that the GM should enforce the idea of no intraparty conflicts seems so ridiculous to me that the first couple times I read it, I assumed y'all were being sarcastic.

I just had a thought -- my character in a game I'm in presently is loaded with gold, and I started thinking about how much it would cost to purchase or construct a dwelling. Perhaps we could see something like this in Ultimate Equipment? Price listings for houses, towers, palaces and the like, and/or the time and resources required to build one?

Alright not sure if this has been covered or not, but if James Jacobs and/or someone with more intimate knowledge of the book COULD answer this one for me:

I realize this book is about EQUIPMENT. However will it, in any detail, deal with say, special materials? You know something other than Mithril, Admantine, Cold Iron, etc?

And while Im sure you looked into your options, I cant help feeling that a different medium might have been a better choice.

We keep going over this ground. The other choice is "don't make minis". The difference between random and non-random is literally the make/break decision. There isn't a third option.

Ideal or not, viable for you or not, this product line wouldn't exist were it not structured as it is. I have compassion for your position and need to budget and that you may not get the minis you want, but the reality of the costs involved won't change because of that compassion.

Please start giving out more previews/pictures and or a list of the 40 miniatures in the set. I am interested in buying a case (or more) however I want an Idea of what I am purchasing.
I want the breakdown of the Commons, Uncommon, and Rares as well as the make up of monsters to "Heros" and if there are any miniatures I am very interesed in getting, or ones I have no intrest ing getting. If I don't want half of the set I want to know that Before I pre-order a case, so as to make an informed purchase, currently I can not make an informed choice and have not pre-ordered.

It seems that this is not quite how WizKids operates. They don't reveal all the information this quickly.

Actually, neither did wizards with DDM, at least not at the time I was buying them. There are previews, but complete listings come very late.

With a cut off date of October 1st to get in on the pre-order Dragon, with no information as to what is in the set, it seems very shaddy to make someone put up $275 not knowing, What they are getting, other than the chance to buy a dragon, at a price point we don't even know yet either.

It's not shady, it's just how it is. I don't think the cut-off date is a fixed, arbitrary limit. It's more that these incentive dragons are somewhat limited, and they can't guarantee you that you'll get one if you wait with your pre-order until late November or something like that. If you pre-order before October, they think they can guarantee that you get one, but after that, they can't promise anything. But they're not saying "Effective 2011/10/01 00:00:01, nobody gets to have a dragon."

You can always wait and test your luck about the dragon.

The purpose of an incentive is to incite you to do something. In this case, pre-order early.

What fun does the rest of the party have when the wizards spellbook gets targeted and takes up valueable game time. Couldn't other players end up getting bored?

The fun of the quest to recover the spellbook.

By that logic, what fun is it when a player dies? So we should never kill players, because it's not fun.

Part of the game is the challenge. Part of the challenge of a wizard is the fact you have to keep and maintain a spellbook.

And penalizing people for small spaces just drags the game out when they stop bothering to crawl through small spaces. Or if forced to will just shield rush there way out. Making that small space a pointless waste of time.

Your instance on riding through the small space because it must be the only way forward is like some bad game shouw where the GM takes you through a conveyer belt of encounters.

That there is not enough robustness in the campain, nor wits on the part of the players to adequately come up with multiple approaches to solving a problem is about as lightweight and boring an idea as watching re-runs of 1980's gameshows from which they have drawn their inspiration.

I reckon you may as well hang up your Fantasy RPG and simply play Mousetrap or Hungry Hungry Hippo.

See, two can point and say badwrongfun, but it's not really helpful

What's valid fantasy physics and what isn't?

I'm going to assume that you play D&D/PF, and under that assumption, I am going to further assume that you can fully visualize in your mind's eye, a dragon flying overhead, or a full sized giant walking by...

Pretty easy stuff I imagine (no pun intended)...

How then, can you imagine a sword that is say 4 1/2 or 5 feet in total length begin effectually wielded by a person who is 5 or 6+ feet tall in a space that is no more than 3 or 5 feet in height and width??

I can't! At least not without hand waving solid matter so that the sword somehow magically passes through the tunnel walls (and that seems pretty silly to me)...

That is how I define what is and isn't fantasy physics...

-That One Digitalelf Fellow-

Seems like this game would be a lot more fun if it weren't for the players.

Matthew,

As to the Binder, I have to recommend the excellent Secrets of Pact Magic and Villians of Pact Magic, from Radiance House and available on this site. It takes the Binder and turns him up to Eleven. There's also a free Pathfinder conversion guide.

For the Duskblade, I recommend either the Magus, Super Genius games' Vanguard and Archon, or my own Damascarran*. All are the 'stabracadabra types' with different takes.

For the Factorum's flavour, I also recommend the latest issue of Kobold Quarterly.

*

Matthew Shelton wrote:

I love Pathfinder as what 4th D&D was "meant to be", and the true spiritual successor to D&D 3.5.

[expletive deleted] like this is why the damnable edition war will never end. Why can't you just be happy with Pathfinder without feeling the need to rip at 4E?

Crap like this is the real reason for the continuation of the edition war.

Someone has an opinion (like "I don't like 4e, it doesn't feel like D&D to me, but Pathfinder does") and people have to make it a declaration of war just so they can attack the person for not liking what they like.

Especially if the very first thing they have in their reply is an insult.

Why can't you just accept that some people have a negative opinion about 4e?

This time the guy apologised, but the next might feel attacked (and he wouldn't be wrong) and hit back.

So if you don't like others talking bad about the game, why not just ignore it, or tell them about it without the flame bait?

Pretty much this. It's hard to present a cohesive world setting when you've got stone-age tech all the way up to space-age tech (Numeria). Just doesn't sit well.

You realize that you have just described Earth, right?

-Kle.

If you think "rules focused accessory" means "board game for 13 year olds" then great - Paizo has carte blanche to send out whatever they want. They're lucky to have you as a customer.

And you have carte blanche to cancel your sub to avoid getting any products that you don't want to receive, while those of us that do want the "board game for 13 year olds" can enjoy it along with its free pdfs. Win win! :-)

Quality looks great and I don't mind random, but not at that price. $1-2 for small-medium and $4-8 for large is about my max. As it is, you're charging more for random minis than Games Workshop charges for multi-piece, posable (albeit unpainted) plastics. That's not the side of that equation you want to be on.

We already had this discussion; you may want to check out posts like this one, as well as it's neighbors.

Personally, I'm pretty well satisfied with exactly which side of the equation we're on, as I think many people value "painted" a lot more than you might.

Alright people, you don't like a thread?

Don't post in it.

Don't like a posters attitude, or feel they're insulting others?

Don't reply to it.

Some troll trying to stir up the edition wars again?

Don't answer.

A thread can't continue without replies. A troll can't flame in no one responds to him. And posting to a thread you don't like won't kill it.

Flag it however you think appropriate. And shut up about it. Telling someone you flagged them defeats the purpose of the flag system.

You can't change people's habits through vigilante posting. The only people here that can inflict sanctions are the mods.

Let them handle the policing. And have a nice day.

But we're just not going to make an ignore function. Maybe we're too touchy-feely hippy-dippie about our hopes for the quality of discourse on our boards.

I think you're down-right oblivious to the problem. Either that or totally apathetic.

Some posters keep insulting others, and there don't seem to be any consequences. Not veiled insults. Not thinly-veiled insults.

But the part of Paizo's culture that says we can be both good and successful, that says we can make money by being honest and straightforward with our fans, the part that says make good products and provide a place for people to talk about them, that's the same part that tells us an ignore function would send our community down a path that I don't think is very good for what we're trying to do here.

You mean it would be worse than the frequent shouting matches, and the apparently spreading reputation of hostility these boards seem to have?

Even if there were a downside to an official ignore function - which I won't believe until I hear some good arguments - I doubt they would be worse than letting some people rage without being held back.

In OTD, Politics and Religion has the higher ratio of GRARR activity, generalizations, and prejudice compared to the rest of the contents. Sometimes, I don't get why people want to stir the pot for either topics. This is a role playing game board; there are other Internet sites and URLs that are better suited for such discussions. Unless you want to go to Fox News or Huffington Post and complain about Pathfinder broke the cleric because he lost his free heavy armor proficiency in a random comment thread to one of their news articles? *shrug*

If not the ignore feature because there's some hypothetical dark road that could be traveled with its installation into the source code, would it not be a simpler task to create a sub-section religion / politics / GRARR forum?

The expected response would be "we don't want to do that as we don't want to have that as section that draws attention to those as they are not the primary theme of this overall site, which is a role playing game board."

And my response to that? "Exactly."

Agreed. And to me that response about a separate GRAR forum makes about as much sense as saying, 'Pooping isn't the main theme of our family, so we don't want to dedicate a separate room for it, lest visitors think all we do all day is sh!t. Use the living room!'

Kruelaid, I've turned off the OT/Politics because those are not topics that I want to concern myself with while browsing the forum. It has nothing to do with posters themselves. That's a subtle, but important difference.

It's an interesting observation that you associate OT as Politics. Perhaps some of us would like to see Politics as a separate forum section from OTD so we can shut Politics down in the same fashion that you manage to shut OTD down from your viewing.

EDIT: Interestingly, so did Daigle.

You know, I used to LOVE the OT section of the boards.... but with all the political b%*#*~+%, I slacked off of it.

Focus is a step-up, but it's a passive-aggressive way of approaching an ignore feature because I lose out on the new threads I haven't read yet and will not appear if I remain with that option enabled.

In OTD, Politics and Religion has the higher ratio of GRARR activity, generalizations, and prejudice compared to the rest of the contents. Sometimes, I don't get why people want to stir the pot for either topics. This is a role playing game board; there are other Internet sites and URLs that are better suited for such discussions. Unless you want to go to Fox News or Huffington Post and complain about Pathfinder broke the cleric because he lost his free heavy armor proficiency in a random comment thread to one of their news articles? *shrug*

If not the ignore feature because there's some hypothetical dark road that could be traveled with its installation into the source code, would it not be a simpler task to create a sub-section religion / politics / GRARR forum?

The expected response would be "we don't want to do that as we don't want to have that as section that draws attention to those as they are not the primary theme of this overall site, which is a role playing game board."

And my response to that? "Exactly."

I think a better question for this thread maybe do we really need political and religious discussions on a gaming website? I think some of the rules discussions get bad enough to drive away people from the boards, especially newbies, but I can't see any good coming out of the religious or political discussions.

I'm fairly disappointed by this thread. The OP made a reasonable request for a forum feature that is available on a number of other forums. In response he was ridiculed and mocked by a whole slew of posters. There's a whole bunch of people in this thread who are breaking the "don't be a dick" rule of the Paizo forums and it definitely does not reflect well on any of them or the forum as a whole when viewed by an outsider.

I also understand the OP's frustration with people joining a thread and deliberately attempting to kill or ongoing discussion. On some forums this is considered an anti-social form of behaviour and cause for infractions/thread bans. On Paizo forums it appears to be a valid tactic for killing threads you do not agree with.

The last time I commented on that sort of behaviour, one of the more well known posters here told me there were lots of other forums on the internet if I didn't like what's customary here on the Paizo forums.

I may still be a poster on these forums, but that pretty much concluded any illusions I had that I particularly wanted to be considered a part of the gaming community here.

That's strange, because every other mini-manufacturer and retailer have figured it out somehow without turning buying minis into playing a slot machine. I'm not playing a CCG or Heroclix, I'm trying to play D&D.

Really?

Name them.

Put up or shut up time. Start naming companies and their product lines.

Indeed, now that there is a Favorite button, you can make a simple +1 without wasting space with a new post.

Personally, I could easily envision myself wanting to post a quote and a +1, rather than adding a post as a favorite. Suppose I marked as a favorite some post that was made weeks ago, and hundreds of posts ago? It's very possible that no one will notice.

It's completely empty noise to post +1, especially with a full quote. It's been bad conduct on online messageboards for longer than USENET has existed. If all you have to say is "I agree with this post," then you just don't have anything to say.

What's fundamental is that there's no crying in baseball.

Because clearly someone else's opinion is worth more than my opinion because you agree with them and are a fanboy of the company.

Oh, Carty. I've already refuted your alleged points many times over. As have others. Sure, there's an actual argument underlying what you're saying, but you don't have any data to support it other than your over-inflated sense of self-importance. It's sad really. Reminds me of the old chestnut about being silent and letting everyone believe you are a fool instead of speaking to remove all doubt.

And yet, you keep speaking. Each time with nothing to offer except your unfounded, self-serving beliefs about the operation of the hobby market. A topic about which you have no background, authority, or credibility. Worse, you somehow believe that the volume and constant repetition of your Very Important Opinion renders you a greater expert than the company that has been most successful at marketing PPMs because of some minor distinction in the type of product. I imagine you also believe you are better than Apple at selling tablet computers with blue plastic cases because Apple only has experience selling tablet computers with white or black plastic cases.

You've lost, the home auidence knows you've lost, why not just admit defeat and quit backing yourself into illogical and indefensible corners based on your "understanding" of what price point constitutes an impulse buy for any particular set of consumers. You don't know anything of substance about this topic and, while neither do many of the others posting on this thread, we at least have the humility and self-awareness to acknowledge the limitations of our expertise.

Frankly, given your view on the Pathfinder rpg's lack of merit, and it's astounding success, I'm somewhat surprised that you haven't grown more cautious in spouting off. Maybe constantly being wrong has made you numb to the sensation. Maybe the wonder of the myopic universe you inhabit allows you to ignore reality. Or, maybe you just live to annoy other people, and these forums allow you an outlet for that. I guess everyone needs a hobby.

I suggest Pathfinder. It's a fun game.

I'd like to see some of the different lamias that Paizo developed. And some Rune Giants. Sinspawn. Other monsters from the APs. More centaurs. More giants. A BIG F!*&ING GREEN DRAGON!

Just to make sure!

I assume it does but just to make sure is the new pathfinder minis are "sized" to fit the pathfinder rule?

I mean by that do we have tiny, small, medium, large and even huge figs?

Yes. No Tinys as of yet, but so far we have minis planned for all of the other categories (and maybe even some bigger stuff...)

Me as likely as WizKids since WizKids' business is selling collectible miniature game figures.

Well, it was a good run, but I can't in good faith hold on to this award for the biggest ego on the Paizo forums. Here, good sir, treat it well. We all look forward to the launch of your Best Win Fun edition of d20 and the corresponding line of Super Awesome Everyone Wins Minis.

Wait. $4? Really? Wow.

For $4 someone will drill into the crust of the earth, pump crude oil to the surface, transport it to a refinery, put it through a bunch of chemical processes to convert it into injection plastics, hire a professional artist to design a sculpt, commission a tool & mold shop to cast a metal mold (which involves a bunch of metal processing behind the scenes), then someone melts the source plastic, injects it, waits for it to cool, removes it, moves it through an automated painting system which in turn requires interesting materials inputs plus exquisite PLC logic to control, then the final product is shoved into a plastic and cardboard box (requiring still more source materials and processing), a human being sorts the product and loads it into bulk packaging (bricks) for shipping, using specific instructions regarding "randomization".

That costs $4? Seriously?

Where's the extra zero? Really, it's amazing to me that such a thing doesn't cost far, far more.

Have some perspective folks, regarding how ridiculously spoiled we are as a culture.

I AM SO TERRIBLE!! I AM THE CAUSE OF ALL THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS!!! HASP(*RF&YG@H(PU$FGB@#_&({FUB&_@#CBH@H+#U(+{()YHFGIO!!!!!!

I am confused why my questioning of Lisa, or my questioning of their transparency in their marketing plan, makes me bad, or a conspiracy theorist. I work at a huge, national company, and I see how our marketing goes. That's what marketing IS.

Your company might lie to their customers. We don't.

Okay, it's a pack of lies entirely fabricated to make me feel better about the product because I'm not smart enough to parse a simple explanation and compare it to my own experience, education, and reasoning.

Whatever floats your boat. I'm fairly indifferent to contrary opinions and ultimately secure in my own correctness.

Um....you have got to be kidding me. I looked forward to this product with an open mind and open wallet. All I kept saying to myself was "please, please learn from WOTC...anything but random." Then we get this...just....plain....wow....

This reasoning is complete nonsense.

No, it's not. You pretending to have even the barest understanding of the realities of this business is nonsense. Read the thread. If you want to argue against the model, you have to actually understand the model first, and you plainly do not.

Here's an idea: do enough market research and target groups at...oh I don't know a major convention (or two) and produce what people actually want. That way you don't have to worry about some figures not selling well enough.

THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT.

Dear lord, people.

It's not about producing minis that people don't want. It's about being able to produce minis that everyone wants ten of while at the same time being able to produce minis that everyone wants one of.

Which here's the translation on that: "You may pay your hard-earned money and get something you absolutely, positively have no use for...but hey we have to make the lich an extra sparkly color purple, so here's your fourth goblin stalker or whatever."

If you absolutely positively want a specific mini and can't stand the random packaging, buy it on the aftermarket from either Paizo or your local retailer.

Here's an amazing idea...make a quality product and charge what you need to make a profit for it...done.

Congratulations, you've solved every business problem, ever. Why do people even bother getting MBAs, again?

I am all for the visible product and like many people if you put all 40 in one box and slap $199.99 on it I'll buy it.

And then you'll have one lich and one goblin, and you'll kick yourself for suggesting such a myopic product model the first time you try to run an encounter featuring more than one goblin.

Way to go.

But I'm not spending $4 a pop for random stuff anymore- enough is seriously enough. I was a MTG player for a decade and there was nothing like the sinking feeling of popping a booster to get "thoughtlace" as your rare. WOTC recreated that feeling when you pulled a chain golem (or whatever mini you personally have no use for) as your huge figure in the mini's line.

Now we get to enjoy this all over again....no thanks.

Welcome to the real world - the random model is required in order to get the minis line you're used to. Deal with it.

By the way, your reaction is not that of someone with an open mind or an open wallet. Just because you tell everyone that you have an open mind doesn't make it so.

For those of you not working for Paizo reading this: When the uber rare X=$45 {Huge Demon #7} is out of stock again and you think I'm wrong, CREATING a market is what a marketing department does, and Paizo has one of those. Their jobs are to make you WANT, and RARITY is how you make a nerd covet....

Some people refer to this arcane system in which prices and demand drive production as "capitalism". You see, under a capitalist economy, if a good costs more to produce than to sell, it will not be made. So, in order to have a good on the market, you need to price it above what it costs to produce.

Now, I understand that this may be difficult to comprehend given your substantial experience negotiating manufacturing and licensing agreements, but sometimes, just sometimes, people in a particular business (say, a company that has long manufactured and sold plastic pre-painted miniatures) understand the economics of their business and can make well-informed decisions about what price/production level is appropriate to create a product that sells enough units to even be worth making. It's not that the choice is random v. non-random (despite your uninformed and constant assertions to the contrary), it's that the choice is random v. none. Or so the experts (other than you, obviously) tell me.

Also, sometimes, a product will be produced at a price above what a particular consumer would be willing to pay for it. In fact, some economists belive that not all people need to be willing to buy a product for it to be successful!

nobody needs any more town guards, dwarf fighters, elf bowmen etc

That's great, thanks. Saves me the trouble of checking out my minis to see what I need to get. It also saves anyone new to the hobby from buying stuff like dwarves and elves they're never going to encounter in game.

BTW, I don't buy the Players Companion line. From this I can infer that nobody else does, so can Paizo stop doing them?

Oh, wait.

In my opinion WIZKIDS is price gouging here and Paizo is letting them. WIZKIDS has seen the demand from the pre-orders and based their price off that. $4 is alot. The CAPCOM Street Fighter boosters that are coming out are pretty much the same format as the Pathfinder Mini's and they are only priced at $2.25 each. A set of 6 goes for 12.99.

Paizo fans are getting hosed here and Paizo should have fought for a better price for their customer base.

Dont get me wrong Paizo is still a great company but the price is steep for many fans. I can afford it but others may not be able to. We should look at expanding our game by making our products as affordable as possible to increase the player base ( and customers).

At the very least they defintely should be included as a monthly subscription. (I ve stated this in a previous min's post)

In my opinion, some people have no perspective as to the actual cost of manufacturing things. When I say "some people", I really mean to say most people. See, people assign seat-of-the-pants price/value estimates based on a couple things.

The first factor people generally use is "what have I paid in the past for a similar item".
The second factor is "what portion of my available cash does this represent relative to what I get?"

Basically neither are useful, and both will mislead. The first leads (for instance) to comparison of price between these minis and WotC's sets. Sorry, but economy of scale is completely different here. I strongly expect that WizKids will sell in the general realm of one third WotC's sales (per unique model). Maybe one tenth, maybe half, but ultimately we all know the exposure for this product will very likely be smaller than that of Wizard's releases. As has been mention repeatedly, there are fixed setup costs which are distributed over mass production. Less mass, less spread of costs, higher price. So discard the comparison test. It's not useful.

In the second instance, personal income is relative while product pricing is not. Someone with more disposable cash isn't going to balk at a higher price than someone with less disposable cash. While $4 for a mini may seem to some like an unjustifiable luxury (especially when they want [far] more than one), to others at that price the Paizo/WizKids minis are a must-have. The point is that the wallet's emotional impact again hasn't anything to do with the proper price of the product.

Allegations of gouging are based on what? A comparison to a different product line that likely has different licensing rates, reportedly has different quality-control, and has an unknown financial model is... vague. We don't know if - for instance - the CAPCOM products are perhaps subsidized... a lost-leader. We just don't know.

So hey, a little more faith in Paizo's ability to choose a business partner might be called for since while the knee-jerk "I don't want to pay that" reaction is entirely understandable, it's not an educated reaction.

Final words: I don't know the actual costs/mark-up any more than you. I just refuse to assume that a} WizKids are thieves and b} Paizo didn't notice or care.

We as a community complain WAY TOO MUCH about pretty much everything.

Or they could use a little brainpower, realize that some minis will obviously need to be stocked more than others and the rest can be ordered. I'm not going to spend 4 dollars for a mini I might not even need because distributors and retailers are lazy.

Take your own advise, seriously.

The reasons for the things you complain about are even in this very thread.

It has nothing to do with "laziness". It has to do with the fact that 40 products instead of 2 are simply more expensive. 40 products means shelf space for 40 products. And shelf space costs money. And that cost will be relayed to the customer, like every single cost a business has.

And yes, it means more effort to order. Again despite your claims, this has nothing to do with laziness, and everything with the fact that effort costs money. Refer to the last paragraph for where that cost goes.

And then there's the fact that if you sell them non-random, you can't just sell them in equal amounts. Some minis will be really well-liked, so they sell a lot. Considering that plastic figure have high fixed costs (read the rest of the thread for why that is), those figures will naturally have a low per-piece cost, which means they can sell it cheaper.

However, the less you sell a miniature, the less units you can split the fixed costs over, so the per-piece cost rices. That means the price will have to rise. Might be that they won't be done at all, because the more expensive you make those figures, the less you will sell. Vicious circle. People will wonder why the more popular stuff is cheaper to boot.

Either that or they'll just keep the prices flat across all figures and make more off the more popular ones.

And this "less popular figures" stuff isn't about the two-legged crocodiles and weird psionic insects thing nobody likes. It's about everything that isn't the most popular stuff.

In my fantasy world where I'm a trillionare and can socially engineer the RPG world to my whim, I'd envision a landscape where everyone would have a tablet computer and there were no more books. The PDFs and SRD would be a "living document" that would receive regular updates much the way software gets patched, and thus would continue the 3.61, 3.69... and so on updates. When a new update occurs everyone is alerted to the update and then they can grab it at their leisure via a download.

There would be a rules governing body that would oversee the updates, with various sub-committees that would focus on various problematic areas of the rules, or a committee focused just on cleaning up terminology, etc.

A software modeling program would be written up where any combination of combats could be modeled, and run millions of times so that clean and precise data could emerge that would show the statistical trends of various combinations and reveal what is truly overpowered and what is not. From that data adjustments could be experimented with until the sweet spot is found within a range of play variance.

Every few years the governing body would survey the player base to get their feedback on what works, what doesn't and where the system ought to evolve. This rules council would then take the player input and sift through it and then create an agenda of rule changes that the council would then vote on. This would be conducted somewhat like the US Supreme Court, where for each vote assenting and dissenting opinions would be written up explaining the rationale on the changes. That way a body of rationale would be available to the public. Perhaps an evolution might emerge, but it just has not gained enough sway yet within the larger gaming community, but over more cycles a dissenting opinion eventually alters into an assenting rule change.

God, no. I have no desire to have some faceless internet based mobocracy changing the rules constantly. In something as complax as a paper and pencil RPG just downloading the changes wouldn't do squat to help you implement a constant stream of changes. You could "freeze" your game at some point (and listen to your players whine about not having the latest "fix" / update) or just go old school paper. I like having a professional development team, closed and open playtests and talented amateurs popping up with ideas. That works for me. I don't use or agree with every decision they make but the "slow pace" of paper and pencil gaming allows me to adapt as I wish.

The one-hour edit window is there so you can fix typos and whatnot. After that your words should stand for themselves. We have been toying with the idea of long-term-editable "reference posts", which would probably be the first post in specially designated threads which the original poster could edit.

Three cheers for Lisa...Paizo just upped the print run a great deal. We are partnering on this (offcial news coming soon from Lisa and Jeff) on the Pathfinder version only. Lisa wanted to ensure that more people would have a shot at getting one--and she stepped up and helped make it happen.

It will still be a one time only print run, but the Paizo store will have copies of the Pathfinder version. To be clear, ONE PRINT RUN EVER, just printing a more copies for direct sale through Paizo. Essentially, Paizo placed an order for the books. Once again the company that saved our game steps up.

The SW version remains gone, gone, gone, and once the Paizo store is out, so are the Pathfinder versions.

Lisa and I discussed pricing, and my understanding is that she will honor the pre-order price and the pdf copy w/ orders as well.

I cannot say enough how much these guys do for the hobby.

Bill

The OP can set me straight (I haven't read through all the kabillion posts) but I think you're providing advice he/she doesn't need. To turn your quote around, I suspect the OP's response might be...

"I say this to Paizo: give me a reason to turn me into a loyal profit base for you. You exist to serve me. I do not exist to provide free advertising for you. You need to provide me a reason to push your product."

Just my 2 cents.

I think Brian and Shifty have the customer side of any response to this covered.

On the business side: I can only wish that there was a business model that existed where you opened your doors and methods for making money rained down upon you from the vendors you chose to work with. As that is a fantasy, I will continue to work at attracting a customer base and providing reasons for them to shop with me. Part of that work will be picking products I hope they like. Happily, Paizo (and many others like them) make that part easy.

Yeaaaah. That kind of mentality is what creates an LGS, not an FLGS.

No it creates a new 'dollar store' where the old FLGS used to be :P

It's useful for those of us waiting for refunds or news.

Exactly - and we are willing to wait and keep hoping that something will be resolved. Yes, we gripe and complain now and again, but still we hope for some type of news or a resolution.

To Sissyl - here's an idea - why not lock YOURSELF out of this thread and leave the rest of us "whiners" alone? How about that?

Jeranimus Rex wrote:

wizoroc wrote:

So unless a real study on marketshare or sales is made public, I just don't see this.

I actually heard from somewhere that Pathfinder and D&D now have a roughly equal share at the moment.

Afraid not.

Scott is totally right here. Pathfinder has surpassed D&D in most of the markets that I check.

Thanks for ninja'ing me Scott!

-Lisa

Aubrey the Malformed wrote:

I note that ShinHakkaider's frothing attack on Scott Betts has had seven people so far flag it as a favorite. Is this the level to which Paizo has sunk? Even if you don't like Scott's posts on 4e, a personal attack on the man is in your favorites? I'm disgusted that the people on this site have sunk to this.

Let's not blame all of Paizo. Remember, there's a very easy way to see which members of the community have decided to support personal attacks against someone they disagree with.

Personal Attack?

A personal attack would be calling a poster stupid or ignorant.

I favorited his post because he showed great restraint in dealing with a person that likes to troll the forums not understanding why people don't like what they like.

Q: I want rules for Pathfinder that don't rely on gear, have systemic equality for martial and caster characters, portray wounds and combat realistically, and include a skill-based magic system instead of vancian magic (yuck). Can Paizo just publish some easy rules to make this possible?

A #1: Pick any other RPG system released in the last three decades and run that instead.

A #2: Learn to love gear-dependent pseudo-medieval super-heroes and vancian casting.

I offer this one with no special enmity for the query... I get like this sometimes too. But the simplest answer in this case is the above, I think.