Jojiro's page

Please keep alignment relevant to the game. I hate how everyone is trying to scrub alignments out, they are an important part of D&D and should remain an important part of Pathfinder. I want them MORE relevant than they were in Pathfinder. Keep Paladins Lawful Good.

Also - Please scrap the Proficiency System... That is exactly what you described for skills... I LIKE putting points in my skills as I level. I don't want to have my skill points spent for me.

Alignment was important when it was just the Law vs. Chaos linear axis, when Paladins were effectively a prestige class rather than a normal class, and when you would transition from Paladin to fighter if you didn't act Lawful, or from Antipaladin (in supplements) to fighter if you didn't act Chaotic.

Alignment was important when alignment languages mattered (those are gone?), when alignment impacted reaction rolls (those are gone?), and even then, the law vs. chaos didn't like, really impact behavior, right. They existed as a way of influencing which followers/hirelings you could nab (this is also minimized in modern games).

The only behavioral prescription they had was for druids and paladins, and even then, it was fairly loose. In the B/X conception, the biggest restriction to being a paladin was the low rolls you had, not the alignment. Once you got the rolls, alignment only mattered if you violated your precepts utterly (which you can do without alignment). The restriction on druids was you'd be removed from the Order...and I haven't seen a Druidic Order that a druid was supposed to report to ever, in Pathfinder or D&D 5e.

Like, if you want those back, or some variant of those things, then sure. Alignment is great.

But which of those do you want back? And why? Or, if not those things, why not, since those were more fundamental to its implementation?

The Outer Planes and Outsiders *Of Pathfinder*

Right. And I'd contest that "if you strip away alignment you can still have a basic understanding of good and evil, and thus generate a meaningful roleplaying experience."

We don't suddenly lose our ability to understand morals when the gameworld's magical planes lose their labels.

I think it'd be fine and completely healthy without alignment, as again evidenced by everything I've mentioned above.

Jojiro wrote:

The fact that alignment will cause debates is a constant in D&D and D&D-esque games.

At the end of the day, I've never seen a person who plays a non-D&D game sorely ache for alignment, so I'm skeptical it's core in any way or for any reason except tradition.

I suppose they'll have to use surveys to tell.

It's interwoven into the Outer Planes, lots of aligned Outsiders, and the alignment detect/smite spells. Also, the Paladin (though making that any good would be fine with me), and Deities+Divine Casters.

So? The Greeks had Planes which didn't require alignment. Angels and Demons in fictions easily convey their identity without alignment. Paradise Lost was written successfully without alignment. So was Faust.

Alignment doesn't exist in The Strange, which has many planes. It doesn't exist in Tales from the Loop, which has at least a few Outsider equivalents.

It's really habit and tradition and the tropes which cause folks to so desperately claim that it's necessary.

Alignment was originally conceived from Three Hearts and Three Lions, before any of this planar stuff existed. And that's fine. But if a modern game doesn't pay tribute to that book, then to me, that's good riddance.

Snip.

To the unhappy folks:

The tabletop RPG market has innovated so far beyond Pathfinder's core rules that it isn't even in question. Play even a fantasy heartbreaker, the ones that TVtropes makes fun of, and you can see that Pathfinder is married to a lot of outdated concepts.

People say that innovation has hurt D&D, but even among the grognards who enjoy the B/X versions of D&D, there have been innovations in the modern OSR movement.

The fact that Paizo recognizes it is time for surgery, which is their own terminology for this change, is to their credit. Change is hard to stomach. You see this when YouTube channels change their filters or cameras, when TV series get a new director, when ships get a new captain, when companies get a new CEO.

Trust is a lot to give to a company. But I say give it. They've served you well so far, haven't they?

But to Paizo:

Change is also a beast to weather.

If Pathfinder is changed too much, you'll lose the player-base you accumulated in hemorrhaging numbers. If it is changed too little, you won't gain a worthwhile fraction of a new market. And most of that new market won't be commenting here or engaging in the play-test, so you have at least a sizable (I don't want to overstate this, either) blind spot as you develop this second edition.

My own view is that integrating the world with the core rules is going to hurt both your sway over older players and over newer players. Lore is a barrier to entry to anyone who doesn't love it, and it's beloved by folks who are already in the choir, so to speak.

The fact that 13th Age, Symbaroum, and SotDL sold well may convey that lore is good - but I offer the suggestion that they sold well on the merits of their mechanics, and also because their lore was so easily consumable. I mean, those settings are chock-full of blank creative space, unlike Golarion, which has the weight of a proper, fully fleshed-out setting. A setting which due to its weight is cumbersome to those who do not wish to use it.

Overall, I must say I'd challenge you guys to have more of a vision, though, not less, in the face of all this community insecurity. I don't mean that as a veiled insult - excellence neither needs nor makes excuses for itself, and Pathfinder has had excellent presence in the marketplace.

But at least within the first hours of this new announcement, all I can see is that you still selling second edition as a game. Not just that, but a game with disclaimers (don't worry) and reassurances (it's still the game you love) attached. I mean, come on.

You're the only competitor that can give freakin' WotC a run for its money in terms of production quality, and you're selling this like you're doing a yet another tabletop RPG?

In the LED industry, folks get told that they are not selling lights. They're told that they're selling a life experience.

I want that. I want the experience ahead, not reassurances that stuff behind us will still be okay (though this is hyperbolic to help me make my point. Yes, I acknowledge that PR work is important.)

How will this kick D&D's arse?
How will this bring new gamers into the fold?
What online tools will 2e use?
What streams will incorporate it?
What events will kick off its release?
What excites each individual dev most about the new edition?
What makes you guys go to work and grind at this thing?
What opportunities does this provide for 3rd party publishers?
Who are you partnering with among 3rd party publishers?
What innovative graphic design projects are you commissioning?
Who are your consultants outside-of-house?
Who are your cartographers?
What will the first true adventure be?
How will this radically change the RPG world?

...what is groundbreaking about this huge new announcement, if anything at all?

That is the direction of the visionary, right? Go big or go home.

This is copy-pasted, but isn't intended as spam. I meant to post them on the stickied thread and then proceeded to fail at this hilariously by mis-remembering which post was which.

Thoughts from Episodes 1 & 2 of the Playtest Podcast

1. If Pathfinder is making its own brand, is there some value in straight up taking Intelligence and turning it into Knowledge? So many Intelligence-based checks are already colloquially called "Knowledge checks" by the Pathfinder community.

Such a departure from D&D's tradition would achieve three things, one for newbies, one for GMs, and one for marketing. For newbies, it completely and instantly solves the problem of "what is the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom" which has existed every edition, ever since Gygax chose those unfortunate names.

For GMs, it solves players using Intelligence checks to avoid critical thinking. Without any ability score that represents logic/critical reasoning, players will have to solve puzzles themselves rather than just rolling to bypass those. None of the weird standoffs as players attempt to "skip" those moments with "Intelligence arguments" about how their character is smarter than they are. The character can have more knowledge and can be more aware (a la Wisdom), but can't be smarter.

From a marketing perspective, it indicates Pathfinder is willing to boldly claim its own brand in any way that would improve the game's clarity, even if it means departing from tradition. We've seen ALL D&D clones mirror the Intelligence/Wisdom divide, but all it does is perpetuate this lack of clarity for reasons entirely bound in tradition. Such a change still keeps all Pathfinder rules compatible with 1e-5e modules, so you don't lose anything, and gain clarity.

2. Initiative with Tactics is quite an innovation. I approve of the idea of innovation.

However, I humbly offer that this procedural method destroys what Initiative does at tables. Initiative is a meme at this point - it unites the attention of players in a moment of tension. Creating a mini-game for the GM to figure out initiative removes this memetic aspect, the increased complexity, slight as it is, doesn't add to the player experience. Few people play RPGs for Initiative. Once the combat starts, after all, initiative isn't particularly meaningful.

To quote Robert Schwalb:

>>>If determining initiative produces a continuous turn order for the combat—you are locked into the same point in the round for the duration of the scene, initiative only becomes important during the first round of the combat. The whole point to initiative is to determine if the PCs can chip away at their opponents before their opponents get to do the same to them.

There are changes to initiative which are interesting while preserving the qualities I mention above. I realize that once players get used to the rule, this meme will be preserved, but it means every time a new player comes, it will be suspended.

Also, even slight complexity added to initiative disincentivizes hit-and-run tactics. For folks who view combat as war rather than sport, this gets in their way.

3. Perception as not a skill is excellent. "Roll Perception" is the most-quoted thing in 3.5-forward D&D, and over the course of a campaign this takes so much time. Great.

4. The unification of actions with a price sounds neat. I really hope you have a graphic designer make a very clear infographic to showcase how this works, rather than simply explaining it in words like every other tabletop RPG. Having a clear infographic in Fragged Empire really makes action economy come across as elegant, rather than challenging, to new players. Plus! It allows you to print something and give it to players.

5. Circumstance bonuses are still around, I see. I suppose they do help set up situations tactically that aren't available when you take them out, though I do wish there was something more elegant there. Are advantage/disadvantage intellectual property, or just too much of a copycat? They do create a quicker explanation and are quicker to execute, because they're a keyword that everyone gets, rather than a bonus you may need to explain.

6. At 1:18:08 of podcast episode 1, you have one of the common aspects of tabletop RPGs which is never covered in the ruleset, but honestly should be, even if by one line: your character should know stuff automatically that they would know sensibly. This is similar to what background features grant in 13th Age. Just by *being* from a village or helping wizards out, you should get free info from them. It shouldn't be dependent on checks. Like, the rules should literally say "don't use checks for this", or at least explain this sort of situation in an developer note like "in John's games, he tends to offer such information for free, as the dice don't add any meaningful stakes and in fact distract from what would be sensible in the fiction".

7. I'm not sure why explicit "modes" are necessary for players to "go into". If you want to organize GM advice that way, go for it, right. But the more modes you have which are distinct game moments, the harder it is for players to immerse as roleplayers. They are instead rewarded as "gamers", doing game-designed actions rather than actions which make sense if they were in the situation.

8. Goblins/Alchemists as core expands the scope of the game for sure, and as I understand it this is a big selling point to the game community. I want to comment that this makes it a bit trickier to run medieval and swords & sorcery Pathfinder. It'd be neat if there were a developer's note addressing this, like "verily tis cool if you expand or reduce the options to fit the game that most suits you and your players". Without such notes, players can use the rulebook as a hammer against GMs (and oh have I experienced this before).

9. Wizards seem to really need to read up on their spells to use them, with components even more important than before. I'm wondering if this is critical. It increases the texture of spellcasting (good) but it means if you have a party with a spellcaster, those games will be significantly slower, even more so than spellcasting *already is*.

10. If Light is a cantrip and thus "free", it may be valuable to reduce folks with darkvision. ACKS for example has as a design principle "what if nobody has darkvision", and it *greatly* increases the texture of the game without being harder for newbies (cuz we understand light as important intuitively) or being harder to run. One of the odd aspects of D&D 5e is that so many races have darkvision, so when the GM narrates "oho it is dark" players often say "whatever". This is even true for the podcast - in episode 2, the GM says "it's so dark that you have trouble navigating" and it's only player etiquette that prevents them from dismissing this.
Other benefits: it makes torches matter more, you can hire torchbearers, and of course folks appreciate magic light more.

11. Nerfed Detect Magic is incredible as a tool for GMs. It allows GMs to utilize many tricks that were made unavailable to them with a more powerful Detect Magic.

12. Fifteen gold to start! Promising. Economics remains something which matters, then.

13. Armor affecting movement is good for texture, but I wonder if that texture does in fact again enhance the gameplay experience. When I play games where armor doesn't inhibit movement, I don't find myself missing out on anything, right? Plus, it slows character creation, AND historically most armor wouldn't significantly hinder you in combat. So I'm not sure if it's worth preserving. It seems purely to maintain video game tropes...which are a questionable virtue in tabletop RPGs. If armor encumbrance is compelling of course, or attached to class balance, then lovely! If not...well. I respectfully question their inclusion.

14. Bulk works in Starfinder and works well here too. Lovely way to simplify things.

15. Just general kudos to the GM, haha. He's quite the enjoyable narrator!

16. I'm noticing that while actions are simplified, you still have a lot of options, like grappling, disarming, etc, that seem not to be class abilities, but just general abilities of any old player. Again, I hope this gets graphic designed rather than merely presented as text. That way, the graphic can be printed and held at the table. Newbies always tend to not really get the disarm/grapple options, and never go for them.

17. George Takei reference (episode 2) makes all games better.

To answer the question "Why a new system (2.0) is being created?"

I think they've been pretty clear about that in the FAQ.

```
When we created the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game back in 2008, we'd already built up a decade of professional experience with the 3.0 and 3.5 rules and had a pretty good idea how they could be improved to make the game more fun, easier to teach, and better at telling the kinds of fantasy stories we like. Ten years later, we've had similar experiences with our own game, with a similarly long list of things we can improve upon.

Archetypes are a good example of what we mean. Introduced in the Advanced Player's Guide a full year after the release of the Core Rulebook, archetypes have gone on to become a much-loved and fundamental part of the Pathfinder experience. We generally assume that just about everyone uses them, yet they appear nowhere in the Core Rulebook. Now, we could have just opened the Core Rulebook files and added a chapter about archetypes sometime in the last decade, but we've always maintained that, basic errata aside, if we're going to "open the patient," we might as well perform surgery on as many problem areas as possible. Finally, our list of things we wanted to change (often inspired by our own games or feedback from fans at conventions and on our forums) grew to the point that it was worth opening up the patient and performing surgery. And we need your help to make sure we don't get too crazy with the scalpel!
```

I also think that Pathfinder has become the legacy of the old guard, and is no longer at all an attractive game for a new audience, unless they are inducted by a Pathfinder-player. Making a game that's exciting for both new and old players is a pretty important evolution, even if it's painful to transition.

The fact that alignment will cause debates is a constant in D&D and D&D-esque games.

At the end of the day, I've never seen a person who plays a non-D&D game sorely ache for alignment, so I'm skeptical it's core in any way or for any reason except tradition.

I suppose they'll have to use surveys to tell.

1/3/4/7. These are all excellent. All references which help GMs on the fly aid player experience regardless of where you come from on the gaming spectrum, something which I hope Paizo recognizes.

2. There are enough games which aren't about treasure and more about narrative that I don't think this is tenable. *At best*, this could be a variant rule. It would cause an exodus if it were core.

5. This is something which I think is great, but will invariably be a split in Paizo's community of customization junkies. I say that with utter respect for both perspectives, I just think it's a really contentious point. I'd love to have both, somehow.

6. I've never understood the non-linear modifier argument. Even in earlier D&D-esque games, there were disagreements on how much ability scores should matter. I think the amount they matter at the end of the day has to do with how the GM runs the game, and is GM-side, rather than the math of the system (that is to say, system-side), unless some rather dramatic, system-wide changes are made. Simply doing this single change doesn't really alter the game for the better or the worse, is my view.

Trust me on this—it's not the same thing. Actually, no, don't trust me: check out the Glass Cannon Podcast and see... er... hear for yourself!

Some thoughts from the two podcast episodes.

1. If Pathfinder is making its own brand, is there some value in straight up taking Intelligence and turning it into Knowledge? So many Intelligence-based checks are already colloquially called "Knowledge checks" by the Pathfinder community.

Such a departure from D&D's tradition would achieve three things, one for newbies, one for GMs, and one for marketing. For newbies, it completely and instantly solves the problem of "what is the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom" which has existed every edition, ever since Gygax chose those unfortunate names.

For GMs, it solves players using Intelligence checks to avoid critical thinking. Without any ability score that represents logic/critical reasoning, players will have to solve puzzles themselves rather than just rolling to bypass those. None of the weird standoffs as players attempt to "skip" those moments with "Intelligence arguments" about how their character is smarter than they are. The character can have more *Knowledge*, and can be more *Observant* (a la Wisdom), but can't be smarter.

From a marketing perspective, it indicates Pathfinder is willing to boldly claim its own brand in any way that would improve the game's clarity, even if it means departing from tradition. We've seen ALL D&D clones mirror the Intelligence/Wisdom divide, but all it does is perpetuate this lack of clarity for reasons entirely bound in tradition. Such a change still keeps all Pathfinder rules compatible with 1e-5e modules, so you don't lose anything, and gain clarity.

2. Initiative with Tactics is quite an innovation. I approve of the idea of innovation.

However, I humbly offer that this procedural method destroys what Initiative does at tables. Initiative is a meme at this point - it unites the attention of players in a moment of tension. Creating a mini-game for the GM to figure out initiative removes this memetic aspect, the increased complexity, slight as it is, doesn't add to the player experience. Few people play RPGs for Initiative. Once the combat starts, after all, initiative isn't particularly meaningful.

To quote Robert Schwalb:
<If determining initiative produces a continuous turn order for the combat—you are locked into the same point in the round for the duration of the scene, initiative only becomes important during the first round of the combat. The whole point to initiative is to determine if the PCs can chip away at their opponents before their opponents get to do the same to them.>

There are changes to initiative which are interesting while preserving the qualities I mention above. I realize that once players get used to the rule, this meme will be preserved, but it means every time a new player comes, it will be suspended.

Also, even slight complexity added to initiative disincentivizes hit-and-run tactics. For folks who view combat as war rather than sport, this gets in their way.

3. Perception as not a skill is excellent. "Roll Perception" is the most-quoted thing in 3.5-forward D&D, and over the course of a campaign this takes so much time. Great.

4. The unification of actions with a price sounds neat. I really hope you have a graphic designer make a very clear infographic to showcase how this works, rather than simply explaining it in words like every other tabletop RPG. Having a clear infographic in Fragged Empire really makes action economy come across as elegant, rather than challenging, to new players. Plus! It allows you to print something and give it to players.

5. Circumstance bonuses are still around, I see. I suppose they do help set up situations tactically that aren't available when you take them out, though I do wish there was something more elegant there. Are advantage/disadvantage intellectual property, or just too much of a copycat? They do create a quicker explanation and are quicker to execute, because they're a keyword that everyone gets, rather than a bonus you may need to explain.

6. At 1:18:08 of podcast episode 1, you have one of the common aspects of tabletop RPGs which is never covered in the ruleset, but honestly should be, even if by one line: your character should know stuff automatically that they would know sensibly. This is similar to what background features grant in 13th Age. Just by *being* from a village or helping wizards out, you should get free info from them. It shouldn't be dependent on checks. Like, the rules should literally say "don't use checks for this", or at least explain this sort of situation in an developer note like "in John's games, he tends to offer such information for free, as the dice don't add any meaningful stakes and in fact distract from what would be sensible in the fiction".

7. I'm not sure why explicit "modes" are necessary for players to "go into". If you want to organize GM advice that way, go for it, right. But the more modes you have which are distinct game moments, the harder it is for players to immerse as roleplayers. They are instead rewarded as "gamers", doing game-designed actions rather than actions which make sense if they were in the situation.

8. Goblins/Alchemists as core expands the scope of the game for sure, and as I understand it this is a big selling point to the game community. I want to comment that this makes it a bit trickier to run medieval and swords & sorcery Pathfinder. It'd be neat if there were a developer's note addressing this, like "verily tis cool if you expand or reduce the options to fit the game that most suits you and your players". Without such notes, players can use the rulebook as a hammer against GMs (and oh have I experienced this before).

9. Wizards seem to really need to read up on their spells to use them, with components even more important than before. I'm wondering if this is critical. It increases the texture of spellcasting (good) but it means if you have a party with a spellcaster, those games will be significantly slower, even more so than spellcasting *already is*.

10. If Light is a cantrip and thus "free", it may be valuable to reduce folks with darkvision. ACKS for example has as a design principle "what if nobody has darkvision", and it *greatly* increases the texture of the game without being harder for newbies (cuz we understand light as important intuitively) or being harder to run. One of the odd aspects of D&D 5e is that so many races have darkvision, so when the GM narrates "oho it is dark" players often say "whatever". This is even true for the podcast - in episode 2, the GM says "it's so dark that you have trouble navigating" and it's only player etiquette that prevents them from dismissing this.
Other benefits: it makes torches matter more, you can hire torchbearers, and of course folks appreciate magic light more.