Cergorach's page

$60 isn't cheap, but as always, you get quality with this product. The absolutely stellar FVTT products are the reason why I've been buying Paizo products again.

The Character Gallery app itself is awesome doubly so that it works in D&D, tripply so because you can add your own stuff if you're willing to do some text file editing.

Wishlist:
- Integration with both other token packs.
- A UI to add your own stuff.
- A system where you can add your own stuff that a module update won't break.

It of course totally depends on where you live and what you do, that $60 is a steal compared with if you had to do all this yourself (from the pdfs you already own), with the added bonus of the Gallery app.

I just bought it, pretty neat 1200+ tokens.

Now don't get me wrong, how much $60 is to you depends on the region in the world, what kind of work you do, your experience, and a whole lot of luck. But...

Looking as you already spent $60 on Foundry VTT and got the whole PF2e rules system for free with it, spending another $60 on getting all the monsters illustrated and tokenized in style X isn't that unreasonable. Especially when normally people pay $100s for the stuff Paizo gives away for free via their SRD. Unless you bought the bulk of your collection of Paizo PDFs via Humble Bundle (like I did)...

I expect to do a ton of these manually anyway because I want tokens for editions/products that are no longer mainstream or supported. Looking at what my time is worth, that $60 is very little compared to the time I'll spend making these. Can and will I setup a more efficient workflow, probably, but that also takes time to design, test, run and QA. Not to mention getting all the resources organized and then in a workable/deployable format. People who can do this in a weekend generally get an hourly wage that's multiples of this product...

Paizo is getting their license fees (as they provide all the artwork, I suspect that this is not insignificant).
Foundry is getting their cut (keys).
The people working on this get their hourly wage (generally upfront).
IF anything is left after that, that is profit for whomever runs this project. But generally working in the RPG business doesn't earn you the big bucks. A common joke in the gaming business is that if you want to make some money in this business, you better start with a LOT of money. That has a kernel of truth to it!

And the funny thing here is, I'm not currently running Pathfinder, we're currently playing a 5e campaign and this has a file that maps some of the monsters to 5e equivalents. After figuring out how to make which product/artstyle leading, it works great for 5e!

Can you do a LOT of this yourself? Absolutely! But you would only do it yourself if you don't value your time.

There might be contractual limitations, Paizo might have a contract with Wizkids (for example) that gives them the exclusive rights to produce miniatures. You could argue that 3D files would fall under this.

But... Using the art from the bestiary and the iconic PCs/NPCs to create high quality 3D models for 3D printing, would be an evergreen product imho, that isn't edition depended. It would only take a small bit of digital storage and no physical production effort (like physical miniatures). Sourcing that out to a 3rd party is imho throwing away money.

I agree that Android OS will probably run right past iOS, but that has more to do with it being cheap (no license fee) and every hardware manufacturer has access to it, then with it being the 'better' OS.

I do think that Android is quickly catching up with iOS in regards to user-friendliness and feature set. But it still has a way to go. Also individual implementations can vary wildly, just because a piece of hardware uses Android doesn't mean it's a great implementation of Android. There are many new Android products out there that are crap because they used a really old version of Android, or the removed everything that makes Android a 'free' platform.

Imho, the only advantage that Android currently has over iOS is that it's not locked down and is based on Open Source software. I have very little issues as a user with the locked down nature of the iPhone/iPad. I have never had a piece of hardware that is as easy to use in daily operation as the iPhone/iPad.

As in regards to using iOS apps, I prefer to use the iPad at the table then the iPhone4, it just has more screen real estate. There's currently nothing that really compares to the iPad in Android country, but I'm sure that's going to change soon.

While some would dismiss me as a rabbit Apple fan, I'm not. I like their smallest iPod, the iPhone(4), and the iPad. I absolutely hate iTunes, I de-installed it asap and only install it for firmware updates once in a blue moon. I have a mac mini, but it primarily runs windows(7), it was the only piece of hardware that I could find that was as small, powerful, low-heat, and low-power (at a reasonable price) I could find. And the MacOS is useful for when a customer asks me a mac specific question (about once a year). MacOS just isn't for me, I have to work on a daily basis in Windows environments, so I see no reason to work in a different OS when there's no advantage to me in it. And I have serious trust issues with their large computer monitors or their repair centers (when we get three 30" monitors in a row with the same issues, we return it and go for HPs ;-).

Are you confusing BB OS with Palm's webOS? Because if you meant to say webOS, I can agree with you there that it does look appealing and the TouchPAD is very appealing. I watched the HP show yesterday and I got the impression that it could be a viable competitor in this market.

I was talking about QNX, the stuff that is running on the new Playbook, and will run exclusively from the BB7 onwards.

Cergorach wrote:

I don't know what kind of demographics your looking at, but as far as US stats are concerned (and I'm guessing that this is Paizo's main market), iOS market share has until recently been significantly bigger then Android. The stats of December 2010 indicated that iOS was still a little bigger then Android, and I guess that they are now about equal, but there's also Black Berry. Black Berry, iOS, and Android have about the same market share in the US.

If you have different stats, please post a link to them.

Gartner Report as of February 9, 2011 wrote:

"In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, ''Android grew 888.8 percent in 2010 and moved to the No. 2 position. Android sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 continued to be driven by broad availability of many high-end products from HTC (Desire range, Incredible and EVO), Samsung (Galaxy S) and Motorola (Droid X, Droid 2).

Symbian’s market share dropped further in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 32.6 percent or 32.6 million units. This allowed Android to overtake Nokia's Symbian unit sales during the fourth quarter of 2010. However, the Symbian OS is also used by Fujitsu and Sharp as well as in legacy products from Sony Ericsson and Samsung. “This aggregated volume kept Symbian slightly ahead of Android,” said Ms. Cozza.

The wider availability of the iPhone 4 helped Apple to maintain its share of the smartphone market to 16.0 percent in the fourth quarter 2010 and led the iPhone OS platform to reach the No. 4 position in 2010. "As a platform, iOS is in excellent shape," said Ms. Milanesi. With every iPad and iPod Touch sold, Apple increases the profile of iOS with potential iPhone buyers and strengthens its developer ecosystem..."

Full Report Here

Those are the sales for 2010, not the actual amount of units active using the aforementioned OSes. Those are also global stats, don't know how many units Paizo is selling in China or Africa, but I suspect it doesn't compare to the number of units sold in the US. Then you use the number of units in actual use and not the sales for the last year. One does not count a countries citizens based on the number of newborns, you take all the people in circulation into account. iOS has been around for 3.5 years, Android for only for 2.2 years, the Black Berry for over a decade.

As you can see the sales for 2009 were abysmal compared to what they are now. Android is sprinting to catch up to the competition, it's curious to see if they keep on sprinting. BB OS is getting replaced and to be honest that is looking good as well, especially their new tablet (the first use of their new OS).

Was the 'defect' so big that it was a 'show stopper'? If not, why not release it and bug fix it in a newer release? You can't throw a dragon and hit a 4E iOS app, not so much for Pathfinder. Any hints on what the apps do? That way we might hold of buying apps that might do what we want with a little bit of work.

Snore. Call me when there's an Android app, as there are more Android phones out there than iPhones.

I don't know what kind of demographics your looking at, but as far as US stats are concerned (and I'm guessing that this is Paizo's main market), iOS market share has until recently been significantly bigger then Android. The stats of December 2010 indicated that iOS was still a little bigger then Android, and I guess that they are now about equal, but there's also Black Berry. Black Berry, iOS, and Android have about the same market share in the US.

If you have different stats, please post a link to them.

I'm curious what kind of App this is going to be...

PP are right, miniatures is where the money is, cheaper to develop, cheaper to make (white metal allows for short production runs, books do not), and most miniatures folks want to have more then one of (what would you want of two of the same adventure).

Did PP really translate IK to D20 or was it made with D&D in mind? They could have easily gone the Spycraft route if they wanted deeper changes, would have sold as easily as any of the other D20 products at the height of the D20 era. But I would like to point out that before there was Warmachine, there was IK D20, we're talking about years (RPG 2000, Warmachine 2003).

The reason PP started with IK D20 instead of WM is because at the time the D20/OGL was at it's hight, If you made the right products, your books could just as well have been made from gold leave. I don't know if it was enough of a success to finance WM, but at the time it might not have been the best time to launch a new miniature game, all the eyes were on D&D/D20/OGL and Magic in 2000, not to mention that the biggest player on the market (GW) was bussy with the LotR miniature game.

I love IK, it's a shame that my old RPG group didn't like Steampunk. I now also enjoy WM. Would like a PF version for IK, even if it only was a well made fan conversion.

You know that and I know that, but Amazon at least has been touting the security of the Kindle in regards to preventing piracy to the publishing industry. And the barrier to piracy IS higher, so that might be enough.

Vic mentioned to me that there was a company at a recent trade show who was touting a way to display PDFs on your screen and searching through them without the ability to copy text or download the file. This kind of tech could allow the PDFs to be shared via the DDI in a way that would make them almost as useful as the PDF version while again putting up a barrier to piracy. Of course, once your sub expired, so would your access...

-Lisa

People like to talk about 'raising the barrier for piracy', a barrier assumes an obstacle that everyone needs to cross. 'Piracy' is like piercing a balloon, when you pierce it once, it blows. And everyone can get at the contents.

Why isn't there a 'pirated' copy of Arcane Powers available yet? 'Pirates' thought that they could get the pdf version, they can't now. But that announcement was only made a few days ago, so the old scanners aren't yet up to speed yet. Not to mention that it's not yet out everywhere (it's not even at the distributors yet around here).

Essentially you have one dedicated nutcase with a scanner and it is all over. Sure the first draft will be a picture only, big ass file, but the second one will have text under it and will be search able, the third one will almost be inseparable from the pdf the printers got. How fast you'll get from version one to three depends on the demand for the book, D&D4E books will be in high demand.

I think WotC and many others have priced themselves out of the market with the high pdf prices. To many promises of digital versions of the book when you buy a physical book have been unfulfilled. When WotC started the digital initiative way back when they where still scanning and converting 2E D&D material into text selectable PDFs, the price of any PDF was $2.95. I've bought hundreds at that price, even though I already had a lot of the physical books, I wanted text search able versions of them. And even though $2.95 adds up quickly if you buy a few hundred, it was a small price to pay for the convenience and the ability to support the project (which was an significant investment at the time). Then you had the 3E pdfs, they still had the original layout files for the printers to create the pdfs from, literally a few clicks of a mouse button away. And they asked full cover price for it, no way I'm going to pay that price for a pdf of a book I already own. And I own a lot of books (~2000 RPG and wargame books), looking for something particular in that mess will take a lot of time, searching through a bunch of pdfs is very easy and very quick (and then picking up the physical book at the relevant page is easy).

An online service like Marvel.com is great and if WotC could do something similar I would be very happy, 5000 available comics with dozens added each week (43 last week), all for $60 a year. But I seriously doubt that WotC can come up with that amount of content for that price point...

I actually overlooked that part of the skills, I personally think it's a very good move. In my experience distributing skill points was always a process that resulted in a lot of wasted time, frustration, and errors. While I agree with Psion that there isn't as much flexibility in PC development as with the 3.5 rules, it is a very small price to pay for streamlined play.

Pros:
- Streamlined generation/leveling.
- Easier DMing, players either have the skill or they don't. Making creating adventures that much easier and generating DCs on the fly less challenging.
- Gaining a new skill every two levels.

Cons:
- Less flexibility for PCs.
- The possibility of having certain classes knowing to many skills at higher levels (does the dumb barbarian that's afraid of horses really need 10+ skills).

Question for Psion:
What kind of situations do you imagine for PCs that make these new skill rules inflexible?

Let me start by congratulating Paizo with this bold move!

Moving on to the important stuff:

Having a Skill called Acrobatics and a Feat called Acrobatic is going to get... problematic (people are going to get confused). I would suggest changing the skill name to something else (suggestion: Stunts), or you could keep the old name, Balance.

All the feats that only add +2 to two skills are incredibly boring, they really need some love. I would suggest adding an ability to the feat that isn't incredibly strong but still unique to the feat, this would motivate folks to choosing these kinds of feats. An idea might be to add the ability to have critical successes with these feats, if you throw a 20 while performing a skill check you score a critical success (if you confirm it, same as with combat critical hits). Alternatively, if rules are already in place for critical successes for skills (or are added) increase the threat range by one for the relevant skills. What the exact results are for each critical success are of course skill dependant, but think along the lines of faster completion of a task, or additional bonuses on Opposed checks or bonuses to future/next attempts.