Is Pathfinder a "fantasy heartbreaker"?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Liberty's Edge

thejeff wrote:


At a guess, because the changes they wanted to make to support the different genre were sufficient that it wouldn't actually be fully compatible. That directly mixing and matching characters and things from one into the other wouldn't work well or that ensuring it would, would have limited them more than they wanted.

I like the game flaws and all and a completist. The worst thing to be in our hobby imo. So I'm going to get it.

thejeff wrote:


And they thought it would generate enough support to justify its own adventures and other products.

I hope so. It will sell yes and well. Though I don't think it will be as huge a succcess like PF was imo. Their no anger towards wotc for dropping 3.5. They came out with a SRD. More importantly a edition that actually fixes the flaws of the game engine. 5E was both familar and different enough to warrent buying again. I'm not sure Starfinder is going to be different enough for some people to do the same. Who knows I could very well be wrong and it ends up another mega-hit.


Serisan wrote:
QuidEst wrote:
upcoming Harrowed Medium release
Citation please. You're getting my hopes up here and I can't find an associated product for that.

It's in the longer sense of "upcoming". Post here, discussion thread here.


wraithstrike wrote:
Klorox wrote:
Actually, it does break my heart because I love the psionics, and they don't and one of my favorite subsystems has been relegated to unaccepted, 3pp status.

Why is 3pp unaccepted when many of Paizo's books are written by freelancers(who also do 3pp stuff) and they borrow material from 3pp products for monsters in their AP's?

Because its a alot of work for the GM to vet 3rd party material in addition to first party material.

There is a lot of 1st party material already, and after a lot of research I know what most of the broken 1st party stuff is. Throwing in a bunch more 3rd party material is too much work for me.


Headfirst wrote:
While I agree with the overall sentiment that Pathfinder 2.0 would be a bad move at this point, I think there's room for a sort of Pathfinder Saga Edition, one that isn't compatible with the core game, but is super streamlined and has the ability to bring new players into the genre without alienating them with big, thick books full of charts and tables.

Problem is who it is actually supposed to target at.

Most new players are brought in by people who already play Pathfinder. So unless your streamlined system is popular with older players, potential new players aren't going to even know about it.

Sovereign Court

Orfamay Quest wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Besides - the TTRPG market isn't large enough to justify having both their old a new product line.
Paizo seems to think it is (Starfinder). For that matter, WotC thought it was (remember Gamma World? Star Wars Saga edition?).

I didn't say that it's not big enough for 2+ RPG product lines, but it isn't big enough for 2 D&Ds. They'd just cannibalize each-other and split their player base since players are unlikely to play both.

Gamma World & Saga Edition both had the opportunity to appeal to new players, and primary D&D players might pick it up to use occasionally for a change of pace from fantasy RPGs. Likely Paizo is thinking the same thing with Starfinder.

Totally different business strategy from having two separate D&D lines trying to sell significantly more product than one. (and they would have to sell much more since you'd be nearly doubling your costs)


memorax wrote:


thejeff wrote:


And they thought it would generate enough support to justify its own adventures and other products.
I hope so. It will sell yes and well. Though I don't think it will be as huge a succcess like PF was imo. Their no anger towards wotc for dropping 3.5. They came out with a SRD. More importantly a edition that actually fixes the flaws of the game engine. 5E was both familar and different enough to warrent buying again. I'm not sure Starfinder is going to be different enough for some people to do the same. Who knows I could very well be wrong and it ends up another mega-hit.

I also doubt it will be a mega-hit. As apparently does Paizo. Their plans for the line seem rather modest.

It's not a replacement for Pathfinder. That was the intent of 4E and 5E as well. This is different.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
WormysQueue wrote:
No matter what you might prefer, 4E was a valiant effort to innovate D&D, and they even might have experimented too much with the innovations.

Except when you have a dominant market position, making "a valiant effort to innovate" away from your flagship product is just bad business practice. They still teach about Coca-cola and the infamous "New Coke" debacle. If you have a dominant market position, you don't innovate away from it, you expand your position. Coca-cola, for example, learned well. After "a valiant effort to innovate" away from Coke (the infamous New Coke debacle), they have instead done the sensiible thing and simply innovated by expanding their line. Diet Coke was a runaway success, so when they introduced Coke Zero in 2005, they kept the Diet Coke line. Now Coke simpliciter is the most popular soft drink in the US, Diet Coke is number three, and Coke Zero is number 10. (And they're rolling out all sorts of variants as well -- [Diet] Cherry Coke, [Diet] Vanilla Coke, etc.)

Of course, this is also the strategy that Campbell's Soup has followed for years, because by flooding the market with new soup products while keeping the old ones, they can squeeze their competitors off the shelf. And it's also the strategy that Paizo has been following, because they've been innovating -- Pathfinder Card Game, anyone? Starfinder? -- but they've also been supporting their main line, which means they've got more profitable products on the market, and can start pushing for a more and more shelf space at Pegasaurus Games.

Quote:
But as far as innovation is concerned, Pathfinder is surely much nearer to a Fantasy Heartbreaker as defined by Ron Edwards than 4E ever was.
No, 4E was definitely innovative. It was just the stupidest business decision since the invention of the water-soluble umbrella.

Which is a shame, it is indeed a splendid machine, and I miss playing it... discovered Dark Sun with it, that I had missed because 2nd ed was a non playing period for me


QuidEst wrote:
Serisan wrote:
QuidEst wrote:
upcoming Harrowed Medium release
Citation please. You're getting my hopes up here and I can't find an associated product for that.
It's in the longer sense of "upcoming". Post here, discussion thread here.

I see. You had my heart all aflutter for a while there. This is a topic near and dear to my heart and I even direct messaged Mark about it. Sadly, no news beyond what I already knew.

Scarab Sages Developer, Starfinder Team

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Obviously this is an entirely subjective topic, and my opinion isn;t in any way an official company stance.

To me a fantasy heartbreaker is a heartbreaker because either the creators thought they were creating something that would be seen as entirely different from the games that largely emulate, or because fans expect the game to be entirely different. The fact that such games are often 1e/2e clones with a twist is a disappointment for someone, who has a broken heart.

My impression was that both Paizo and the Pathfinder-buying public were very clear on what Pathfinder was, and wasn't. People may or may not have liked it, but very few thought it would be something it was not.

As a result, not enough broken hearts to be a heartbreaker, which I feel requires a major expectation failure.

Liberty's Edge

Orfamay Quest wrote:


Which 3e was.

Well i'm glad you were able to take a look at Wotc financials and not base it on somnething so subjective as opinion. Unless you have for all we know it was not doing as well.

Orfamay Quest wrote:


I'm not denying it. I'm simply saying that it's not particularly relevant, since this particular "innovation" greatly weakened WotC's place in the market.

Again i'm glad you were able to take alook at wotc financial to make your opinion pass off as fact. We don't know if it was profitable or not toward the ends of it's run.

Orfamay Quest wrote:


If the best you can say about 4e is that it was "innovative,".... well, that's like telling a cook that dinner was "interesting" or "memorable."

Well your not exactly presenting any evidence that 4E was not innovative. Beyond "i don't like therefore it's not innovative".


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memorax wrote:
Well your not exactly presenting any evidence that 4E was not innovative. Beyond "i don't like therefore it's not innovative".

I never said it wasn't innovative. I said it wasn't a good idea.


memorax wrote:


Orfamay Quest wrote:


I'm not denying it. I'm simply saying that it's not particularly relevant, since this particular "innovation" greatly weakened WotC's place in the market.
Again i'm glad you were able to take alook at wotc financial to make your opinion pass off as fact. We don't know if it was profitable or not toward the ends of it's run.

Actually, we do know that. Look at the Ryan Dancey quote cited earlier.

Liberty's Edge

The thing is through your trying to pass off 4E as a bad idea as fact. When it's opinion. Personally i think that the devs conservtive approach to nothing putting major changes into PF as a bad idea. I also realize that in the short and long term they had to please the majority of the fans who wanted little to no changes.

Sometimes innovation comes from bad ideas. Putting a nuclear reactor inside a sub when they first thought about it. Seemed like a bad idea. In the long term a good idea. We don't know how a product plays out. If Wotc had held a year or two before getting rid of 3E. Who knows how it could have played out for Pathfinder or Paizo.

I just don't think the approch of saying "i don't like a product therefore it cannot be innovative or profitable" the best way to argue one case imo.


memorax wrote:
The thing is through your trying to pass off 4E as a bad idea as fact.

Which is pretty well proven by events, and also predictable from first principles.

So, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable passing facts off as facts.

Quote:
If Wotc had held a year or two before getting rid of 3E. Who knows how it could have played out for Pathfinder or Paizo.

Meaning, that if WotC hadn't made a really bad decision, things might have turned out differently?

Quote:


I just don't think the appro[a]ch of saying "i don't like a product therefore it cannot be innovative or profitable" the best way to argue one case imo.

But I'm not saying that. Even if it had been a good game, it would have been a very bad business decision to roll it out as a replacement instead of an adjunct to 3e, for reasons I articulated upthread.

What's a really bad way to argue is for you, a self-acknowledged completist, to argue that "it was innovative, therefore it was a good thing to do."

Liberty's Edge

I suppose were going to have to agree to disagree. As were probably not going to agree about 4E.


memorax wrote:
I suppose were going to have to agree to disagree. As were probably not going to agree about 4E.

Well, it would aid agreement if I knew what, exactly, I am supposed to be disagreeing with you about. I have never said that 4e was not innovative. I have said that producing 4e (and dropping 3e) was a bad decision and would have been a bad decision irrespective of the merits of 4e -- and also independent of the innovation of 4e (which is independent of the merits; it's easily possible to be very innovative and very bad).

If you think it was a good idea to eliminate 3e, I'd need to see some actual argument about why TTRPG is the one industry where it's a good idea for the industry leader in a competitive industry to drop the product that makes them the leader in favor of a new and untested product. So far, I've not seen you make that argument, and I suspect you can't. Largely because, as far as I can tell, it simply isn't true.


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Well, I would say that trying to introduce 4E without dropping 3.5 would have been even stranger.
They dropped 2E to introduce 3.0. I can't think of a single example of a RPG company releasing a new version of a game while still continuing support for the old version.

A game in a different genre, sure.


Introducing it as 4E would have been strange. Introducing 'Dungeons and Dragons, MMO Style' or whatever branding their research proved best as an alternative game, however, would likely have been a success.

Like the issue with the novel line though, it may have not been profitable enough for Hasbro's suits.


thejeff wrote:

Well, I would say that trying to introduce 4E without dropping 3.5 would have been even stranger.

They dropped 2E to introduce 3.0. I can't think of a single example of a RPG company releasing a new version of a game while still continuing support for the old version.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? They were releasing AD&D material from about 1977 to 1985, while releasing Basic Dungeons and Dragons in 1977, and then a revised edition in 1981. They also released the Expert Set in 1981, and then re-released both Basic and Expert in 1983.

ETA: I should add that this was a deliberate business decision on their part to expand the industry -- BD&D existed as a gentle introduction to role-playing and also to the idea of Dungeons and Dragons; in Wikipedia's words, "Although the Basic Set was not fully compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, players were expected to continue play beyond third level by moving to AD&D."

Which makes perfect sense if you view 4e as (tip o' the pen to kyrt-rider) "MMO D&D" and 3.5 as "FTF D&D," in the same way that you can buy Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero. As well as Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, Lime Coke, Raspberry Coke, and for all I know, they will be offering BBQ Coke and Sour Cream and Onion Coke soon....


kyrt-ryder wrote:
Like the issue with the novel line though, it may have not been profitable enough for Hasbro's suits.

Oh, of course, I'm sure that was the issue. The suits had sufficiently unrealistic expectations that no sensible plan would have satisfied them. But that just shows how bad the idea really was.

And, again, this has little to do with TTRPG or game design. If I somehow managed to get my tentacles on YKK (which has more or less 90% of the $7 billion/year zipper industry), and I threatened to eat the brains of all the executives unless they could somehow convert YKK into a $20 billion/year company,... well, I'd expect to see a certain amount of panic.

But it would still be a bad idea for YKK to walk away from $7 billion per year and release instead a completely new product that may or may not generate even $7 billion.

Sovereign Court

Orfamay Quest wrote:
If you think it was a good idea to eliminate 3e, I'd need to see some actual argument about why TTRPG is the one industry where it's a good idea for the industry leader in a competitive industry to drop the product that makes them the leader in favor of a new and untested product. So far, I've not seen you make that argument, and I suspect you can't. Largely because, as far as I can tell, it simply isn't true.

Tons of industries do similar things.

Ford doesn't keep making Model Ts despite it making them #1 - and it doesn't even support them! (Crazy talk!) They don't even make anything that looks like them with updated tech.

I don't believe that Kodak makes film anymore. Sure - they waited until it was no longer profitable, but that meant that they waited far too long to shift their focus to digital and are now a minor player in a market they once dominated.

Blockbuster had the opportunity to actually buy Netflix pretty cheap early on, but their business was profitable and they didn't want to mess with it. Their eventual shift to try to compete with Netflix was far too late, and the entire business died.

Outside of technological things (though I'm not sure if Netflix by mail even counts since it didn't use tech much different from Blockbuster at the same time), another Wizards' product, Magic the Gathering comes out with new editions consistently. Sure, they're semi-compatible with old stuff, but for the most part they push you to buy the new.


Raving Nerd wrote:

What is a fantasy heartbreaker?

Quote:
This essay is about some 1990s games I'm calling "fantasy heartbreakers," which are truly impressive in terms of the drive, commitment, and personal joy that's evident in both their existence and in their details - yet they are also teeth-grindingly frustrating, in that, like their counterparts from the late 70s, they represent but a single creative step from their source: old-style D&D. And unlike those other games, as such, they were doomed from the start. This essay is basically in their favor, in a kind of grief-stricken way.
I think Pathfinder is a fantasy heartbreaker. It tweaks the rules of 3e a bit here and there, but it's the same game under the hood. That's the intent of the rules, but it seems that Pathfinder could break away from that and becomes its own game.

What's not in your definition, most "fantasy heartbreakers" are doomed to publishing/financial failure which Pathfinder does not comply with - which describes the "heartbreaker" part of the term.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
If you think it was a good idea to eliminate 3e, I'd need to see some actual argument about why TTRPG is the one industry where it's a good idea for the industry leader in a competitive industry to drop the product that makes them the leader in favor of a new and untested product. So far, I've not seen you make that argument, and I suspect you can't. Largely because, as far as I can tell, it simply isn't true.

Tons of industries do similar things.

Ford doesn't keep making Model Ts despite it making them #1 - and it doesn't even support them! (Crazy talk!) They don't even make anything that looks like them with updated tech.

It wasn't making them the leader in 1927, which is when the Model T was dropped. Ford isn't stupid. Ford had acquired the Lincoln Motor Corporation in 1922 in order to expand their market share, and so had the Lincoln L-series in case the model A tanked. And the L-series was their moneymaker in 1927.

Quote:
I don't believe that Kodak makes film anymore. Sure - they waited until it was no longer profitable, but that meant that they waited far too long to shift their focus to digital.

And, again, when Kodak stopped making film, it wasn't the product that made them the market leader. (In fact, they weren't the market leader any more.)

Quote:
another Wizards' product, Magic the Gathering comes out with new editions consistently.

But not dropping support of the old ones.

The whole point of D&D 4e was to eliminate their 3e customers, in the hopes that "a moderate number" of them would shift to the new system. Those aren't my words, those are Mr. Dancey's. And that's not how a competently run company behaves.


That's how T$R acted back in '85 when they started the wheels to 2nd ed in a move to remove Gygax's name from the product. I guess the move was moderately successful given the number of outstanding campaign settings that were published to support those rules (FR, Dark Sun, SpellJammer...)

2nd ed seamlessly or nearly so replaced AD&D and they completely dropped Greyhawk.

Sovereign Court

Orfamay Quest wrote:


The whole point of D&D 4e was to eliminate their 3e customers, in the hopes that "a moderate number" of them would shift to the new system. Those aren't my words, those are Mr. Dancey's. And that's not how a competently run company behaves.

You're misquoting him. They assumed (wrongly as it turns out) that nearly all of their 3.x customers would shift to and stick with 4e and that "a moderate number" would use the online subscription service.

Oh - and you're right about Kodak. They weren't the market leader anymore specifically because they dragged their heels and didn't shift focus to digital.

Every product has a life-cycle. I don't know the #s, but WotC might have even been right that 3.x was on the downswing. I don't think that coming out with a new product was their downfall. Heck - their first printing of the core books sold out before launch and they needed to do a second print run - so they had momentum going in. Their downfall was just that not enough people liked 4e.

So - it wasn't a business failure. It was a development one.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:


Oh - and you're right about Kodak. They weren't the market leader specifically because they dragged their heels and didn't shift focus to digital.

And, just to stress this point, "shifting focus" does not mean "abandoning successful product lines." A properly run business maintains successful product lines, precisely because they are cash cows that can be used to fund the new focus. (As with the Lincoln L-series funding the development of the Ford Model A and the transition from the Model T.)

Or, to re-use the Campbell's example, "[t]he Campbell Soup Co. in January plans to launch Well Yes, a new soup line that will feature such ingredients as kale and quinoa. The new soup will seek to invigorate sales in the company’s Americas Simple Meals and Beverages segment, which reported a 3% drop in sales in the third quarter ended May 1." That's a new focus, but they're not getting rid of Pepperidge Farms cookies or of traditional canned condensed soups. I suspect that the traditional canned condensed soups will still occupy the bulk of the shelf space for the next several years, and only be dropped if sales continue to tank.


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
thejeff wrote:
I can't think of a single example of a RPG company releasing a new version of a game while still continuing support for the old version.

TSR, with Basic D&D and AD&D 1E/2E, come to mind.

Sovereign Court

Orfamay Quest wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:


Oh - and you're right about Kodak. They weren't the market leader specifically because they dragged their heels and didn't shift focus to digital.
And, just to stress this point, "shifting focus" does not mean "abandoning successful product lines." A properly run business maintains successful product lines,

Do you know if 3.x was still profitable in 2008? I don't. Was it profitable enough that it was worth keeping their best writers on it instead of shifting them to 4e? *shrug* Was it profitable enough that it wasn't worth the risk to push people into 4e (which actually worked pretty well initially)?


Alzrius wrote:
thejeff wrote:
I can't think of a single example of a RPG company releasing a new version of a game while still continuing support for the old version.
TSR, with Basic D&D and AD&D 1E/2E, come to mind.

I'd thought of that, but let it go for brevity.

A very different scenario, IMO. First, they were essentially released together, rather than one coming out while the other was the market leader. You'll note they didn't continue OD&D. Second, they played different roles. Whether it was the intent or not, just by being Basic and Advanced, Basic became the starter intro version. Cheaper didn't hurt either.

Scarab Sages

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Orfamay Quest wrote:
WormysQueue wrote:
No matter what you might prefer, 4E was a valiant effort to innovate D&D, and they even might have experimented too much with the innovations.

Except when you have a dominant market position, making "a valiant effort to innovate" away from your flagship product is just bad business practice. They still teach about Coca-cola and the infamous "New Coke" debacle. If you have a dominant market position, you don't innovate away from it, you expand your position. Coca-cola, for example, learned well. After "a valiant effort to innovate" away from Coke (the infamous New Coke debacle), they have instead done the sensiible thing and simply innovated by expanding their line. Diet Coke was a runaway success, so when they introduced Coke Zero in 2005, they kept the Diet Coke line. Now Coke simpliciter is the most popular soft drink in the US, Diet Coke is number three, and Coke Zero is number 10. (And they're rolling out all sorts of variants as well -- [Diet] Cherry Coke, [Diet] Vanilla Coke, etc.)

Wow, this is horribly misinformed about business. When you have market dominance, failure to innovate causes stagnation and eventual loss of market power. That's what happened to coke - Pepsi had recently innovated their formula, and was gaining market share. Pepsi was winning taste tests and, due to Diet Coke's entry into the market, Pepsi was approaching market leader status. "Expanding the line" had actually split the market between coke and Diet coke, allowing Pepsi to be seen as the dominant soft drink in the US.

Coke reformulated and came up with New Coke. Taste tests showed that people preferred New Coke to Coke. If they just released New Coke, they would continue to split their audience. Given whta they saw with the release of Diet Coke doing just that it made sense. Coke was losing market share everyday. So the replaced Coke with New Coke. For reasons unknown, this upset soda drinkers who had not been purchasing or consuming the old Coke. So they reformulated Coke, renamed it Coke Classic, and revitalized the brand. Coke Classic quickly regained the top spot, despite losing in taste tests to New Coke and Pepsi.

Coke needed to innovate to maintain its market position. It made errors in the presentation of those innvations, errors no one could see coming. But its failure wasn't in the choice to innovate.

In fact in the fast paced world of software there is even a term for innovating a new market and moving your user base into it - Pivoting. D&D 4e was an attempt to pivot away from some of the deep conceptual flaws D&D was still carrying around. As D&D 4e my gamer friends hated it. But that was just an issue with branding. Call it Gamma World and they generally enjoyed the system. Because it wasn't bad, it just failed to meet user expectations of D&D.

They needed to innovate, because D&D 3.5, the product line was growing stale. Sales were falling. Continued Market Dominance was not guaranteed. And as mentioned elsewhere, Hasbro was pretty restrictive in what they would allow D&D to consider part of their product. D&D 3.5 was built primarily on 3pp and First Party Campaign settings. Hasbro wanted neither of those. so they needed a new line.

You can see some paralells to the coke/new coke debacle in fact. Without innovation D&D was going to fall apart (because of Hasbro's interference mainly). So they rebuilt the product, and had a great idea to tie it into a series of computer products, including a virtual tabletop with rules integration. It was a great pitch. I was excited. But then people got it, and were upset it wasn't the game they had been playing for the last decade. Combined with the failure to launch most of the tools that were intended to justify the continual investment into DDI (due to the way the system was made, Rules access didn't require you to pay EVERY month), the system never caught on in any way. So the took the basic framework and once again reworked it, and created something, that while different then what people wanted, was close enough to bring gamers back in.

Pathfinder's development came down to Wizard's, or more likely, Hasbro's, decision to completely in-house development of 4e supplementary material. Paizo produced Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine. But a big con was coming up, and they had nothing to sell, because they were locked out of 4e. So they innovated. They took the binder of house rules from one of their in-house developers, and began refining them into the game we know as Pathfinder.


And frankly the biggest flaw with their "pivot" plan was the OGL. Because of that, they couldn't actually end of life 3.5. Paizo picked it up and carried it on. Without more 3.x product and support in competition with 4E, I suspect 4E would have done much better. It would have been harder for people not to transition. Some would have stuck with their existing copies of 3.5, just as some kept playing AD&D, but many more would have drifted into 4E over time.


burkoJames wrote:

Except when you have a dominant market position, making "a valiant effort to innovate" away from your flagship product is just bad business practice. They still teach about Coca-cola and the infamous "New Coke" debacle. If you have a dominant market position, you don't innovate away from it, you expand your position. Coca-cola, for example, learned well. After "a valiant effort to innovate" away from Coke (the infamous New Coke debacle), they have instead done the sensiible thing and simply innovated by expanding their line. Diet Coke was a runaway success, so when they introduced Coke Zero in 2005, they kept the Diet Coke line. Now Coke simpliciter is the most popular soft drink in the US, Diet Coke is number three, and Coke Zero is number 10. (And they're rolling out all sorts of variants as well -- [Diet] Cherry Coke, [Diet] Vanilla Coke, etc.)

I'm not claiming to know this for sure, but I've heard a legitimate argument that the entire New Coke and Coke Classical debacle was a ruse in replacing sugar as a sweetener with corn syrup, and that the taste difference between the two was significant enough that Coke fans would be able to tell the difference in taste, and essentially be a lost customer. However, by introducing New Coke, while taking existing sugar sweetened standard Coca-Cola off the shelves and allowing several months to pass before re-introducing Coke Classic which is sweetened with corn syrup and the fans wouldn't recognize the difference in taste, just recognizing it was not New Coke.

Again, I don't know that this is true, but I can believe it - its highly probable.

Thus using it as an argument to prove your point regarding introducing a new version of an existing product is a false narrative.

Sovereign Court

I think Paizo has been innovative plenty with PF. They introduce new game rules in APs and advanced campaign guide. They introduced archetypes, which may not be an original idea, but they still made it work for PF. I dont agree with idea that innovation has to be radical. I agree with others that innovation itself shouldn't be measured by success, like 4E for instance.

Fantasy Heartbreakers on the other hand, I have come to understand as gamesystems made by amateur game designers looking for their ideal system. The heartbreakers are always doomed to tiny fanbases and dark corners of the internets. PF had the opportunity to be a FHB, but its fate ended on a different path. Though I guess my perception is off of what a FHB actually is. .

Community & Digital Content Director

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Locking. Folks, this is already skirting off into edition war territory, and we'd really rather not host this stuff on our website.

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