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Did 3.5 bury 3ed? If yes, then PF is burying 3.5. If not, then PF isn't either. Let's remember that 3.5 was backwards compatible with 3ed as well.
Good point. I still use all of my 3rd edition stuff with 3.5, so I never considered 3rd edition 'dead' while playing 3.5. I will use both editions books with PF as well.
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I think this deserves summing up (again):
1) Wizards announces 4th Edition and leaves 3PP in the dark for a year for a system licence.
2) Wizards stops publishing 3.5 material (and eventually the pdf sales).
3) Paizo prints a massively successful line of 3.5 products. They cannot wait a year for 4th Edition.
4) Paizo develops their own system which fills all of the void created by the above. It must differ from 3.5 enough to sell books now, but must also maintain sales in future years so Paizo can continue to produce products.
5) So gamers of the future can continue to use Paizo's older products without access to the out-of-print 3.5 books, they make the system backwards compatible.
Ok, I'm late to the game and we're 4 pages in, but let me see if I got this straight:
1. WotC is no longer publishing 3.5 material. Hence, it will be out-of-print at some point.
2. d20 & OGL material has been in print for years and is designed to be mixed and matched according to the desires of individual gaming groups.
3. Paizo, less-than-thrilled by the direction of 4e and the (then at least) heavy-handed GSL decide to write their own version of the 3.5 rules.
4. Paizo delivers its RPG, which for all intents and purposes is an OGL game with as much/or little compatability with othe 3.x/d20/OGL material as any other d20/OGL book on the market.
5. In doing so, a "spiritual successor" to 3.5 remains in print, attracts new fans & preserves old fans thereby increasing the likelihood that every Fantasy RPG gaming group WON'T say "We only play 4e" all while maintaining enough backwards-compatability and OGL interoperability to keep gaming libraries of 3.5 & OGL in active use for years/decades(?) longer than if the Pathfinder RPG had never been written.
...and this is a bad thing?
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooookay. Who'da thunk?
...and this is a bad thing?
It depends on your perspective.
For the gaming community as a whole, I think it's great. More choice, more ideas, more products, more active gamers buying products. However, individual publishers now have to make a decision on which system(s) to support (and to what extent), instead of just printing OGL products. This decision, especially for small publishers, may determine success or failure (in either the short or long term) and there's no way to tell right now how this will affect the gaming market over the next several months or years.
We can make (hopefully educated) guesses, but publishers are betting their companies' future existence on getting it right. Having the overall economy in poor shape at the moment is increasing the stakes, since there is probably a lot less flex/cushion in the market (and financial reserves).
While I don't dismiss that publishers have some decisions to make, it's a far cry from the decision that they had to make with 4e & the GSL.
Even if they go with 3.x - it's still largely backwards compatible with PF. If they go PF-compatible, it's still largely compatible with 3.x. If they go 4e, it's only compatible with 4e.
There always seem to be 3 camps in these discussions: the WotC-only gamer, the 3rd-party publisher fan gamer, and the 3rd-party publihers.
The OP seems to fall into the 1st camp as having "official" 3.x games being run is more important than having some form of 3.x/OGL in use.
I'm squarely in the 3rd-party publisher fan group. I wouldn't have BOUGHT, let alone run, 3.x without having seen that 3rd-party publishers were filling in the gaps, and in some cases, producing superior products to WotC.
For publishers, you've got larger RPG companies and smaller RPG entities, some of which are one-man shows publishing primarily via electronic formats.
If I'm a larger publisher, I'm probably putting in-progress 3.x stuff out the door as 3.x. I'm probably testing the PF waters to see how a PF supplement will sell. I'm probably not negatively affected either way in all reality.
If I'm a smaller publisher doing print, perhaps I can take a wait-and-see approach that a larger operation with employees, offices, etc. can't afford to do. Or I can publish under the OGL or PF license as I wish. If it doesn't see, perhaps I reissue under the other license. Probably not high table stakes in any case.
Let's face it, for over a year I've been reading how 3.x/OGL is dead and no one's going to print anything for it. Paizo (with Pathfinder), Green Ronin (with re-branded 3rd Era), and a few other publishers have been bucking that "conventional wisdom" for the past year.
I still fail to see the down side.
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I agree somewhat with the original poster - I predict that games run using the 3.5 rules will diminish in favour of games run using the Pathfinder RPG rules. Yes, many of those games may continue to use 3.5 material but they will be run using PF rules. This is what I take the OP meant by 3.5 "tables".
As PF becomes more and more successful those players seeking to GM and / or play in games using 3.5 rules will potentially "suffer".
I got into D&D (with 3.5) purely for the network externalities - I wanted to be able to go to a convention and be assured of getting a game using a system I was familiar with. Before this, when my weekly gaming group played D&D3.5 I didn't attend as I am not a fan of playing in games where I don't know the rules.
Now I love D&D3.5, and especially the Eberron setting, I have a decent grasp of the rules and feel comfortable running games - indeed I have run a number of season zero PFS games. I play & GM 3.5 at conventions, in my weekly group and in a monthly group I host.
Now my two D&D GMs in my weekly group are going to switch to PF, indeed one has already been using Beta. That will be two 3.5 tables lost to PF.
Now I could go back to my previous status of not attending, but PF is close enough to 3.5 that I will likely play. However, unless I buy and read the PF rules to identify all the little tweaks and changes, I will likely not enjoy it as much. I will have to borrow rulebooks at the game table, have to ask for clarification over whether certain rules have changed, look up stuff where rules have changes (grappling seems just a complicated / simple as 3.5, but in a different way and so will require effort re-learning).
So yes, 3.5 for those two games will be "buried" in favour of PF.
My fear is now that when I go to conventions I won't get many takers for any 3.5 games I offer to GM, because people will be looking for Pathfinder games. I hope that fear is unfounded.
Also, I won't be GMing PFS anymore, and maybe won't be playing in it anymore (the fact that the PRD exists is the only thing making me think I might). In fact I am re-examing whether to try out Living Forgotten Realms instead.
When i first heard the PF was going to be created I thought it would literally be a re-print of the 3.5 SRD with necessary changes for Product Identity. Paizo had till then made their money off supplements and Adeventure Paths and so I thought the PF RPG would simply be an enabler and that Paizo wouldn't expect people with the 3.5 core books to buy it.
However as things moved on I recognised PF RPG would be an evolution of 3.5, a 3.75 if you will. But for someone happy with 3.5 I didn't then see enough change to make it worth my while (I would want greater changes similar to the scale of changes made in D&D4e) - unfortunately it seems that I may be in the minority and many 3.5 players will switch happy with a 3.75 which is largely, but not totally, compatible with their old 3.5 supplements.
Also I have noted that 3rd parties who were still producing 3.5 stuff even after WotC dropped it (i.e. LPJ Design, Adamant Entertainment) are now producing Pathfinder stuff. So in that sense PF has again somewhat "buried" support for 3.5.
This is not to say that Paizo are bad people or anything - they have made some smart decisions and seem to have gained a decent amount of the previoous 3.5 market, unfortuantely those remaining 3.5 players will see those network externalities diminish even further.
Maybe it depends on the convention, but throughout the late 80s thru to 2000, I worked the RPG section of the three Strategicon conventions in Los Angeles. And there were First Edition games being run through all those years, despite there being no truly new material being made, and it being 10+ years since Second Edition had hit the shelves.
Yes, the RPGA was only 2E, but they weren't the only game table in town.
3.5 might become less seen, and the Paizo and Wotci tourneys are going to be using PRPG and 4E for their tables, but as long as folks wish to run a game, any well run convention is going to give them table space.
The hardest part will be when a particular well run game in any older, out of print (meaning they are not printing them anywhere) edition gets folks interested, and you have to tell them to go hunting for the game rather than being able to go down to the dealer room to nab a copy for themselves ... but that's been going on as long as their have been Cons. I have games on my shelves that I cannot replace without remorgaging my home, and if I introduce them to folks because I love playing them, they are faced with only being able to play them with me.
Buried? No. Hard to find? Yes.
The hardest part will be when a particular well run game in any older, out of print (meaning they are not printing them anywhere) edition gets folks interested, and you have to tell them to go hunting for the game rather than being able to go down to the dealer room to nab a copy for themselves ... but that's been going on as long as their have been Cons. I have games on my shelves that I cannot replace without remorgaging my home, and if I introduce them to folks because I love playing them, they are faced with only being able to play them with me.Buried? No. Hard to find? Yes.
Back in 2003 (the last time I made it to Gen Con), I ran a V&V game. Submitted the event early enough to make it into the pre-reg materials. Had no trouble getting players.
There's a demand for older and out of print games. That demand isn't as broad as it used to be, but that only seems to inflame the passions of the interested players all the more. And they're particularly happy to be able to play their game of choice.Now, I'll agree that finding casual players in your hometown will likely become harder. But that was the case as soon as WotC stopped printing and selling the 3.5 rulebooks in favor of their own new edition. I think PF may help maintain a body of players who are at least playing something highly compatible, akin to the situation we had when 2e was out but 1e players could still participate without a lot of fuss.