Introducing Natural Pengu

So is this... Buy a subscription, or if you own a book get it forever on the platform for tge price of a month subscription? Am I reading that correctly?

Ok does anyone else find the 3d models on their website a little disturbing?

How does one prove ownership of the book to get the reduced price?
Can I buy the book on amazon or my FLGS and get the discount?
How about if I buy the physical book on from the Paizo store, but don't acquire the PDF? Or vice versa?

What does "subscribing to the Player Core Toolkit" get me?
Are players/GMs required to subscribe to Pengu to play at all or is there a free to play option?

Gah. I can’t make heads nor tails of this.

Listen carefully as I am a simpleton and have trouble with complex answers. Here is my very simple question:

What if I buy the Player Core and GM Core in a physical form to learn the rules. And then want to play with my international friends on the interwebs using Natural Pengu.

Do I subscribe for @$2 a month and have access to all the rules of PF2 Remastered to use with/on Natural Pengu?

Does everybody at my virtual table also have to subscribe at @$2 a month?

With all Paizo partnerships to date, "if you own the book" means "if you bought or got the PDF through the Paizo store". Here should ne be different.
The subscription part is... confusing. Is it to USE the VTT? Does it includes systems? It's... not explained.

... but, yeah... The UI and most of the visuals, and the way they present/explain stuff is... outdated? Amateurish? Hard to explain exactly. It's very far from what we're used for VTTs and TTRPG tools in general.

Many of the assets/fonts and stuff reminds me of amateur games that use lots of free assets on itch.io or Patreon.

Anyone else think it’s weird that Natural Pengu’s blog has 2 posts in a March and then… nothing until today?

I think some more clarity and actual gameplay videos, etc would certainly be helpful to evaluate why this is "the ultimate Pathfinder virtual tabletop" over the many others available. Most all VTTs do in fact do something better than others, but it varies from one to another and user choice is often based on what they most value. Whilst more competition is almost always good and it's absolutely possible a new option like this might have some fantastic features that others lack, overall there's a real dearth of information here that doesn't help people make informed decisions unfortunately. I look forwards to another blog or a lot more information on their site, which seems rather bare bones right now, to help people see if this is the best choice for them over the others.

I think some more clarity and actual gameplay videos, etc would certainly be helpful to evaluate why this is "the ultimate Pathfinder virtual tabletop" over the many others available. Most all VTTs do in fact do something better than others, but it varies from one to another and user choice is often based on what they most value. Whilst more competition is almost always good and it's absolutely possible a new option like this might have some fantastic features that others lack, overall there's a real dearth of information here that doesn't help people make informed decisions unfortunately. I look forwards to another blog or a lot more information on their site, which seems rather bare bones right now, to help people see if this is the best choice for them over the others.

On their website, there's a video of rolls in the VTT... and... uh... Have they PLAYED with that? That just doesn't make sense to me.

It certainly seems... quite new. I assume there must have been a lot of testing and such, but without any visible forums on their site to see the feedback from all of that (at least without signing up to give them my information there doesn't appear to be), or offer such (along with feature requests, bug tracking, issue resolution, etc etc) it seems like a tough call to drop money on based on that video (unless you really like walking animations I guess?)

I think the most frustrating thing that happens with the blog is that there is sometimes no follow up, either by the partner being showcased, or Paizo. The Mirrorscape blog really had me interested, I wanted to use the system they were showing. I signed up, toyed around with it and gave up because a) I couldn’t get it to do almost anything and b) no-one showed uphere on Paizo to say…anything. I’m just not sure what the thought process is or the angle for Paizo - clearly they want to grow their fanbase and give their fans multiple avenues in which to enjoy their system and IP, and there’s a whole lot of hype, but…nothing follows. Really weird. And I’m definitely looking for a VTT I can use on my tablet…

So is this... Buy a subscription, or if you own a book get it forever on the platform for tge price of a month subscription? Am I reading that correctly?

Hello! Thanks for the comment & sorry for the late reply (time zone is my excuse... :)

So to clarify, and to add additional info, let me explain a bit more about the current options available to use Natural Pengu - Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit.

First, "To subscribe, or not to subscribe..?"
FREE (and logged in)
+ create up to three characters
- no automated dice rolls with added modifiers from the character sheet
- no access to character presets

PLAYER CORE TOOLKIT SUBSCRIPTION ($1.99/month - but with Early Access launch "Founder" discount only $0.99/month)
+ unlimited characters
+ automated dice rolls with added modifiers from the character sheet
+ character presets

Second, "To buy Pathfinder Player Core book from us, or... not?"
NO PATHFINDER PLAYER CORE BOOK OWNED
- no access to full Pathfinder Player Core rules inside the Natural Pengu Player Core Toolkit

PATHFINDER PLAYER CORE BOOK OWNED (either you buy it from us with Early Access launch "Founder" deal $21.99, or you buy the book from Paizo.com and you get the Natural Pengu Player Core Toolkit integration for only $2.00)
+ (you guessed it! ;) access Pathfinder Player Core rules inside the Natural Pengu Player Core Toolkit

I hope this helps to at least understand our pricing model a bit more. Don't hesitate to ask, if you have any more questions.

Thanks again for engaging with this blog post! I really appreciate it!

Markku
Natural Pengu

Ok does anyone else find the 3d models on their website a little disturbing?

HAHAHA! I know one or two people in the team who get some serious "uncanny valley" vibes from those characters. The problem is, I like them! (so I am the problem ;)

Thanks for the feedback though. I'll evaluate what can be done to reduce the "disturbing" factor.

Cheers & have a good one!

Markku
Natural Pengu

How does one prove ownership of the book to get the reduced price?

Can I buy the book on amazon or my FLGS and get the discount?
How about if I buy the physical book on from the Paizo store, but don't acquire the PDF? Or vice versa?

What does "subscribing to the Player Core Toolkit" get me?
Are players/GMs required to subscribe to Pengu to play at all or is there a free to play option?

Great questions @Ectar ! Thanks so much for commenting & asking! And very sorry for my late reply...

Proving Ownership
Our platform connects to paizo.com marketplace through an API. That way we get to know if you own the book already, and then all you need to pay for are the integrations with our platform.

The Paizo API is how we know. I confess, I do not know if you can register purchases made through Amazon or FLGS here at paizo.com, so that we could access that information through the API.

I'll do some research.

Physical vs. PDF
I now realize will have to do some more research on this physical book vs. PDF question as well.

"To subscribe, or not to subscribe..?"
FREE (and logged in)
+ create up to three characters
- no automated dice rolls with added modifiers from the character sheet
- no access to character presets

PLAYER CORE TOOLKIT SUBSCRIPTION ($1.99/month - but with Early Access launch "Founder" discount only $0.99/month)
+ unlimited characters
+ automated dice rolls with added modifiers from the character sheet
+ character presets

So yes, you can play for free (three free characters).

The Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit is the first of three phases of our full VTT release.

Please ask, if you have any more questions. Cheers!

Markku
Natural Pengu

Alright so...another VTT? I just dont know why Paizo keeps casting this wide net for VTTs when they have one of the best, if not the best VTT integrations on the market with Foundry VTT. There are players I play with that generally HATE playing online, but are willing to because the foundry integration is as good as it is. So why isnt Paizo using it as a major marketing tour. Instead we get almost illegible posts like this about a product I am going to dismiss out of hand because I have something that does this already.

Gah. I can’t make heads nor tails of this.

Listen carefully as I am a simpleton and have trouble with complex answers. Here is my very simple question:

What if I buy the Player Core and GM Core in a physical form to learn the rules. And then want to play with my international friends on the interwebs using Natural Pengu.

Do I subscribe for @$2 a month and have access to all the rules of PF2 Remastered to use with/on Natural Pengu?

Does everybody at my virtual table also have to subscribe at @$2 a month?

Hi OceanshieldwolPF 2.5! (loving the username!)

I'll try and give you good and honest answers.

The physical book purchase vs PDF purchase from pazio.com is the thing I need to do some more research on before I give you a complete answer.

However, we are selling two types of products in the near future:
1) Subscriptions to the platform
2) Paizo Rules and adventure books (one time fee)

If you sign up to our mailing list before November 15th, you get a chance to Early Access subscribe to our Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit for only $0.99 per month.
This will give you:
+ unlimited character creation
+ automated rolling from the character sheet
+ access to preset characters

Also, joining the mailing list gives you the option to buy the Pathfinder Player Core from us for $21.99. You can then download the PDF from paizo.com and have access to the rules inside our platform as well.
This will give you:
+ access to the Pathfinder Player Core rules inside our platform

Do these two things, and you have access to everything the Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit has to offer.

So playing with your friends via the interwebs will work (and will get better and better as we open up more of our VTT for the public to try) The Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit is the first of three phases for releasing the full fledged Natural Pengu VTT.

My answer turned out quite long, but I tried to keep it simple. I hope this helps... I'll do some more research on the "buying a physical book" from pazio.com topic.

Cheers!

With all Paizo partnerships to date, "if you own the book" means "if you bought or got the PDF through the Paizo store". Here should ne be different.

The subscription part is... confusing. Is it to USE the VTT? Does it includes systems? It's... not explained.

... but, yeah... The UI and most of the visuals, and the way they present/explain stuff is... outdated? Amateurish? Hard to explain exactly. It's very far from what we're used for VTTs and TTRPG tools in general.

Many of the assets/fonts and stuff reminds me of amateur games that use lots of free assets on itch.io or Patreon.

Hi Elfteiroh!

Thanks very much for the feedback! Much appreciated.

Natural Pengu VTT will be opened to the public in three phases. The first one out is the Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit.

The subscription now ($0.99/month if you join the mailing list) is for the Pathfinder Core Toolkit. In the future, you will get an option to upgrade to include the functionality of the following releases to your subscription plan, if you so choose.

When it comes to the UI, visuals, presentation etc. YES! We are not ashamed to say we are "level 1".

Our adventure is the extremely challenging task of creating an easy, fast and fun VTT for playing TTRPGs. We have chosen to open up our efforts for the public as an Early Access product. It is far from perfect. "Levelling up" will take a lot of work.

But we want to invite people to join our adventure as close to the beginning as possible. With your feedback we can develop the VTT to a place where you actually think it is good. Without early user feedback we are just guessing, and might end up totally off course...

Perhaps that makes sense?

Thanks again for your honest comments! Very helpful!

It certainly seems... quite new. I assume there must have been a lot of testing and such, but without any visible forums on their site to see the feedback from all of that (at least without signing up to give them my information there doesn't appear to be), or offer such (along with feature requests, bug tracking, issue resolution, etc etc) it seems like a tough call to drop money on based on that video (unless you really like walking animations I guess?)

Hi Richard!

Thanks for the comment! And yes. Certainly we are new. :)

I will reflect on your feedback, so we can build more accessible & visible structures and workflows. I see that our efforts for building the Natural Pengu VTT need to become more transparent to the wider public.

Yes, giving money to someone needs a level of trust. We need to earn that.

If you are interested, come and talk with us on discord
( invite: https://discord.gg/Tt9cgJmzEG )

Or come hang out on Twitch (link on the blog post).

Otherwise, your feedback has been very helpful. Thanks again!

Markku
Natural Pengu

I think the most frustrating thing that happens with the blog is that there is sometimes no follow up, either by the partner being showcased, or Paizo. The Mirrorscape blog really had me interested, I wanted to use the system they were showing. I signed up, toyed around with it and gave up because a) I couldn’t get it to do almost anything and b) no-one showed uphere on Paizo to say…anything. I’m just not sure what the thought process is or the angle for Paizo - clearly they want to grow their fanbase and give their fans multiple avenues in which to enjoy their system and IP, and there’s a whole lot of hype, but…nothing follows. Really weird. And I’m definitely looking for a VTT I can use on my tablet…

Hi! Yes. Sorry for my late reply! I totally get what you are saying. Investing in a platform is about trust.

Let me know, if there is anything more I can help you with.

I really want to be honest here. Ours is just another "Early Access release". NO question about it.

But, if we can build a community around Natural Pengu VTT that is willing to give us honest feedback, patient real life testing, and small means to keep the lights on at our studio, we will succeed in building something great. I am sure of it.

Anyways, hope to chat with you soon.
( Discord invite: https://discord.gg/Tt9cgJmzEG )

Markku Lorentz
Founder CEO - Pengu Studios & Natural Pengu

Anyone else think it’s weird that Natural Pengu’s blog has 2 posts in a March and then… nothing until today?

Hi!

YES! I thought it looked very weird that there was nothing there since March, so we fixed it by posting yesterday... Maybe it made it even more weird!!! :D

Thanks for noticing.

Markku
Natural Pengu

Alright so...another VTT? I just dont know why Paizo keeps casting this wide net for VTTs when they have one of the best, if not the best VTT integrations on the market with Foundry VTT. There are players I play with that generally HATE playing online, but are willing to because the foundry integration is as good as it is. So why isnt Paizo using it as a major marketing tour. Instead we get almost illegible posts like this about a product I am going to dismiss out of hand because I have something that does this already.

While I am certainly in Foundry's corner (community dev), mobile options lack official support and are not the greatest experience currently. Natural Pengu claims to be mobile friendly, which is neat....but I do certainly question the mobile accessibility of the VTT when Natural Pengu's blog is not mobile friendly. I am eager to see what they bring to the market, as competition is a good thing.

---------------

Entirely unrelated, while I am glad that questions are being answered in this blog, I do hope that the website will document all of this information more clearly and concisely. I looked at the website last night and was left thoroughly confused, and the sad reality is that these blogs often get lost in time so they shouldn't be the primary way to learn more about a product.

LordZeev wrote:

Alright so...another VTT? I just dont know why Paizo keeps casting this wide net for VTTs when they have one of the best, if not the best VTT integrations on the market with Foundry VTT. There are players I play with that generally HATE playing online, but are willing to because the foundry integration is as good as it is. So why isnt Paizo using it as a major marketing tour. Instead we get almost illegible posts like this about a product I am going to dismiss out of hand because I have something that does this already.

While I am certainly in Foundry's corner (community dev), mobile options lack official support and are not the greatest experience currently. Natural Pengu claims to be mobile friendly, which is neat....but I do certainly question the mobile accessibility of the VTT when Natural Pengu's blog is not mobile friendly. I am eager to see what they bring to the market, as competition is a good thing.

---------------

Entirely unrelated, while I am glad that questions are being answered in this blog, I do hope that the website will document all of this information more clearly and concisely. I looked at the website last night and was left thoroughly confused, and the sad reality is that these blogs often get lost in time so they shouldn't be the primary way to learn more about a product.

Thanks for all the great feedback LordZeev!

The blog should look a bit better now, even on mobile. :)

Cheers!

Markku
Natural Pengu

The initial announcement was too vague, but reading Pengu's replies has me more interested. I'd still recommend a home-page redesign that emphasizes mobile friendliness and ease-of-setup over the animated avatars, as imo those strengths have wider appeal.

Elfteiroh wrote:

With all Paizo partnerships to date, "if you own the book" means "if you bought or got the PDF through the Paizo store". Here should ne be different.

The subscription part is... confusing. Is it to USE the VTT? Does it includes systems? It's... not explained.

... but, yeah... The UI and most of the visuals, and the way they present/explain stuff is... outdated? Amateurish? Hard to explain exactly. It's very far from what we're used for VTTs and TTRPG tools in general.

Many of the assets/fonts and stuff reminds me of amateur games that use lots of free assets on itch.io or Patreon.

Hi Elfteiroh!

Thanks very much for the feedback! Much appreciated.

Natural Pengu VTT will be opened to the public in three phases. The first one out is the Pathfinder Player Core Toolkit.

The subscription now ($0.99/month if you join the mailing list) is for the Pathfinder Core Toolkit. In the future, you will get an option to upgrade to include the functionality of the following releases to your subscription plan, if you so choose.

When it comes to the UI, visuals, presentation etc. YES! We are not ashamed to say we are "level 1".

Our adventure is the extremely challenging task of creating an easy, fast and fun VTT for playing TTRPGs. We have chosen to open up our efforts for the public as an Early Access product. It is far from perfect. "Levelling up" will take a lot of work.

But we want to invite people to join our adventure as close to the beginning as possible. With your feedback we can develop the VTT to a place where you actually think it is good. Without early user feedback we are just guessing, and might end up totally off course...

Perhaps that makes sense?

Thanks again for your honest comments! Very helpful!

After my post, I did more research about you, and the initial impression I had changed a lot. I still think the presentation of the website, and the UIs do look "amateur", but it's clearly not coming from a bad place, and you seems like a very motivated bunch that is jumping into something new for you, and big. xD

I also realize that my posts can sound a bit... "mean", as text doesn't translate tone very much, and my first impression left me very confused.
I do wish you all the luck in this new venture, but a big need I can see might be to look is to polish the presentation.

@Markku/Natural Pengu:

Thanks for taking the time to clarify things. As or your graphics, at this point they don’t really bother me - it looks pretty good to me and if it works on a tablet then that is great. My biggest problem would probably convincing my extremely small group of interweb based players to slide across to your platform. I’ll keep watching this space…and yours!

I GM on VTTs since 2016, and never spent a dime. The platform would deserve some money actually. But the subscription model really puts me off. I would constantly feel obligated to a) use the time as best as I can and b) reconsider whether it's still worth it. It's not really rational, but it drives my decision.

Further, I don't find most token packs or maps an attractive offer. The art commissioned by Paizo looks better IMO, so I rather go through the lengthy process of adapting PDF content to VTT.

The only thing that tempts me so far is high-quality and exclusive content like well-made spell effects.

redeux wrote:

LordZeev wrote:

Alright so...another VTT? I just dont know why Paizo keeps casting this wide net for VTTs when they have one of the best, if not the best VTT integrations on the market with Foundry VTT. There are players I play with that generally HATE playing online, but are willing to because the foundry integration is as good as it is. So why isnt Paizo using it as a major marketing tour. Instead we get almost illegible posts like this about a product I am going to dismiss out of hand because I have something that does this already.

While I am certainly in Foundry's corner (community dev), mobile options lack official support and are not the greatest experience currently. Natural Pengu claims to be mobile friendly, which is neat....but I do certainly question the mobile accessibility of the VTT when Natural Pengu's blog is not mobile friendly. I am eager to see what they bring to the market, as competition is a good thing.

---------------

Entirely unrelated, while I am glad that questions are being answered in this blog, I do hope that the website will document all of this information more clearly and concisely. I looked at the website last night and was left thoroughly confused, and the sad reality is that these blogs often get lost in time so they shouldn't be the primary way to learn more about a product.

Thanks for all the great feedback LordZeev!

The blog should look a bit better now, even on mobile. :)

Cheers!

Markku
Natural Pengu

have you tried the pf2e mobile sheet module for foundry? It's something I'm developing, as I'm also unsatisfied with the current state of mobile support in pf2e, tho a big part of that is foundry itself not really supporting touch very well, especially since v11

Thank you for all the responses Natural Pengu, it’s great to see you’re focused on answering the communities questions and helping people understand the app! Despite the concerns I mentioned I truly do wish you the best, more competition in the VTT space is always good! I do have one last thing to suggest based on your replies which is that if this is an early access offering and not feature complete you really need to make that clear and have it front and centre, nothing seemed to say this until your comments.

The community deserve to know if what they are buying is not truly finished and has a lot of development ahead of it in case they are wanting something that is fully featured, and it also allows those who are interested in helping with feedback, bugs, etc to know this is a project they can get invested in and potentially help shape to some small degree. Whereas if people find out after purchasing that something is still in early access with a long roadmap ahead it can definitely lead to issues (this is why Steam enforces games saying if they’re early access for example).

Best of luck with it all, I look forwards to seeing what’s to come!

@Richard Lowe @OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 @Elfteiroh @redeux @OmegaRogue @SheepishEidolon @Robotic Janitor @Amethyst Tiefling @Ectar @Ragni @Grankless @LordZeev

Hi! Thanks again, all of you, for your feedback. This has been SUPER valuable. I honestly mean that!

Sometimes you are too deep in... WHATEVER... to see what really is important. You all have helped us shift our focus on things that matter most.

My absence here recently has been because we really rolled up our sleeves and started working on addressing all the issues that you took time to point out. Hopefully very soon you will see the results of that.

Cheers and a great day/morning/evening/night to you all!

(and if the language above seems a bit fuzzy, it is because it is getting close to midnight and my brain is shutting down... :) )

Markku
Natural Pengu