Matt Thomason's page

Ye gods. This place really hasn't gotten any better in the couple of years I've been away. People are still demanding employee blood because they didn't like a product.

Oh well. See you all in 2020 I guess.

Hiya,

As Blymurkla says, it's intentional design - my original design was to have every begin closed, but as there was a lot of negative feedback about that, we set certain areas to begin automatically opened-up (to appear similar to the original Google Sites version of d20pfsrd)

However, adding in some form of "memory" that remembers if you opened or closed a section is on the development to-do list over the longer term :)

Got the confirmation mail, many thanks! :)

Hiya,

Please can you remove the Inner Sea Races hardcover from this order.
(if that means cancelling my campaign setting sub and I need to set it up again, that's fine :) )

I also need to cancel my player companion subscription after this package.
Thanks!

- Matt

Perfect, thank you :D

Hiya,

Not sure if I'm asking in time, but if it's possible please can you cancel the poster map folio on this order?

Thanks!

- Matt

Hiya,

Please can you move the flip-mat from this into a separate package?

Also, please can you remove my maps subscription after this one? There's no issues with it, I just have more than enough after this for a while :)

Thanks!

- Matt

Got the confirmation, everything's great - thank you :D

Hiya,

Please can you split the map pack and flip mat in this order out into a second package?

Thanks!

- Matt

The quick and easy way would be to simply pick equivalent creatures out of the Pathfinder bestiaries, and use those versions, rather than attempt a direct conversion. If there's no direct lookalike equivalent, you can even steal the stats off something of the approximate level and abilities and "reskin" it ;) Obviously use things that are level-appropriate to the group.

Anything else such as traps, just use the Pathfinder rules and apply an appropriate DC.

Happy New Year, Paizo Peoples :)

Please can you split the Map Folio and Flip-Mat from this order into their own package?

Thanks!

Sure! This has been split, and you should soon get two updated order emails. Thanks!

Thank you Sharaya, have received confirmation :)

Hiya,

Please can you split the map pack out from this order into its own package.

Thanks :)

If this has already been covered and someone has a link for me, sweet, but, why isn't this part of a subscription?

Whenever there's a book that doesn't quite fit the normal subscription pattern it tends to not be offered as part of the subscription. In this case, I believe because there would be sufficient complaints from regular subscribers that felt it was more aimed towards beginner players and therefore of no interest to them.

Another example would, I believe, be the Emerald Spire Superdungeon which was part of the Modules line but as a larger more expensive hardcover was not automatically added (many people would have objected to the cost compared to their regular softcover module, and many others already were getting it through Kickstarter).

Not 100% certain, but Inner Sea Gods in the campaign setting line may also have not been automatically included. That's the only ones I can think of from the past 18 months.

Hiya,

Thanks for putting my subs on hold for a few days :) I'm all good now so please can you unsuspend my Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Maps, and Player Companion.

Please can you also shuffle this months maps delivery into its own separate delivery. Thanks! :)

- Matt

So what I mean is:
1. Make the PDF available now to all and sundry for $9.99
2. A person who has a PRPG sub and orders the hardback, having previously ordered (and paid for) the PDF, that person should get the hardback for $20 as they have previously paid for the PDF.

Paizo do this for people who order a PDF of a 3PP and then it comes out as a bundle at a later time.
It means everyone can get the PDF now, not next year, including subscribers who don't get charged extra. Paizo get the money earlier, too! WIN WIN!

I will be happy to wait but I know a lot of others want this ASAP.

The biggest issue with this is many of the people that want it ASAP and get the PDF may end up deciding they don't really need the print product after all, while if it had come out simultaneously they may have picked up both.

Lots of print books sitting unsold in Paizo's inventory is a bad thing, and probably far worse for business than disappointing people with a delay. Print books *have* to be shifted, while ebooks are just a nice additional profit.

That's probably the main reason there's no option to buy a PDF before the hard copies go on sale (and why non-subscribers have to wait a week or two after release to get a PDF.)

Hiya,

I need to juggle my finances a little this month. Please can you either hold my subscription order so it doesn't authorize until the 11th, or if that's not possible just suspend everything and I'll shout on the 11th to unsuspend it :)

Thanks!

- Matt

It means running a game that the players and DM call "Pathfinder". What people on the forums who arent playing the game call it doesnt really matter.

This.

When I'm playing Pathfinder, unless I've specifically used "Full CRB Rules-as-written", "CRB Only", or some other qualifier then it means "You'll find out when you sit down to play, unless you can be bothered to ask me first."

If playing with people that don't usually sit at my table, I'd almost certainly make sure to qualify it to avoid any misunderstandings.

Wiggz wrote:

You are correct that this discussion has indeed been done at length, and the presumption that updating out-of-print AP's that were released under the 3.5 ruleset would somehow negatively impact the sales of new AP's to current subscribers has pretty much been proven to be false...

You know how things work around here. If you make a claim people want proof or a verifying argument. We are waiting.

This, to be honest.

I'm still of the opinion Paizo's explanation of why it would negatively impact sales holds water, and I'm yet to hear a compelling argument why they're wrong.

It all comes down to the non-subscriber customers, and the fact that when they're faced with a selection of products, they're more likely to, say, buy the AP that interests them most than to buy them all. That's why a reduced selection works better for the books - it channels those sales towards the items Paizo want shifted out of the warehouse.

I'm not concerned. Whatever I don't like I am free to use or not. I don't get the whole worry over bloat. No one is forced to use it let alone buy more books. Unless your being threatened with physical harm. It just seems that a rpg that comes out with more new material seems to suffer from a "sky is falling syndrome" with some of the fans.

The only physical harm I'm being threatened with is that my bookshelves might topple and fall on me ;)

Thanks for the cancellation! - please send the maps right away if possible :)

2097 wrote:

It’s hard to say “If that doesn’t suit you, leave” whether as a player

or as a DM. People who have the luxury to say that must have access to
many potential players or DM:s. I don’t.
Yes, I’ve left groups. But that has never been an easy decision.

It is hard to do whether you are the GM saying it or the player. Sometimes, however, you have to make hard decisions. Kirth said somewhere upstream, perhaps eaten in the Great Purge of the Thread, something to the effect that no game is better than a bad game.

This is painfully true. I've not played for years at a stretch because I was in nowhere Texas, Mississippi and Alabama and my choices were bad and worse. Thankfully the Internet came along and crafted a solution to that, but for a while there it was not play or play in a game that either bored me to tears or made me really uncomfortable or made me dislike humanity.

That said, I'd do it again if forced into a corner. I'm older now and can find numerous ways to entertain myself; I don't need to play or run a game that makes me unhappy.

Pretty much the same story with me. In fact I find as I get older a game has to do a lot more for me to make me want to play it than it used to. Once upon a time I was happy just to sit down and play, now I want to sit down and play very specific things (which things exactly, vary with the mood I'm in.)

Someone GMing a new game will likely have to work a lot harder to sell me on their game idea than they used to.

What bad things would happen if, on matters not super-serious, the GM just accepted the player's assertion and moved on, even if they suspected it was incorrect?

I read this.

Epiphany.

What some people call "bloat", I call "ongoing support" - I don't want to see a line drawn under and a declaration that the game is somehow now finished and complete, because that tends to result in a reset back to a brand new game with a new CRB and starting over yet again, in an endless cycle.

My only real concern is with the heaviness of the core rules themselves - I'd dearly love to see a pared-down version of the CRB with more of the complexity moved out into optional books.

Note that "Pending" on Paizo's system usually means "Order placed, now pending picking+shipment" - the wording tends to catch a few people. (Personally, I feel "Order placed" would be a better term)

As it's been placed, you should get it at the agreed price when the system accepted it (or if not, poke Customer Services if you see an incorrect charge when it ships.)

Hiya,

Please can you cancel my Modules subscription. Once again I'm finding myself with far more material than I'll ever get to run and other demands on my finances, so unfortunately it's going to have to be dropped for a while :(

I've also got a currently suspended maps subscription - please can you unsuspend this and send whatever's accumulated so far?

Thanks!

- Matt

Just going to chip in here to agree with those that have stated this is more of a store issue than a publisher one. If the store doesn't order the product to put on the shelves, it's not going to be there.

It's extremely rare (although not totally unknown) for a Pathfinder hardcover to be unavailable from the distributor, but even then it's only going to affect one or two of the products - pretty much the entire hardcover range is always available from Paizo's distributors, *if* a given store wishes to stock it.

Taking a wild stab in the dark, but from recent posts I think it's likely the total weight is going over the biggest deliverable package to your location in Paizo's shipping table.

You may have more luck removing the largest, heaviest items first and ordering them to be shipped separately.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

Definitely. We are looking to find a middle ground between Paizo's Compatibility License and Monte Cook Games' Numenera Limited License.

For someone that isn't knowledgeable on the intricacies of either, could you elaborate or summarize what this means a bit please?

Paizo's License is fairly open - as long as you comply with the terms of what you are and are not allowed to use, and send a copy of the product to Paizo, you can just use it and are covered until such time as Paizo revoke it.

The Numenera License isn't. You have to send in a registration and wait for acceptance (there's also a fee if you are accepted) before releasing anything. You may possibly be told "sorry, we don't want you making products for our game." Plus, it only covers a total revenue of $2000 (any more and you have to negotiate your own license) and does not allow crowdfunded (e.g. using Kickstarter) products. It means they have a degree of quality control over who is and isn't allowed to release material, and will possibly want some more money off you if you start making serious $.

I've never really gotten into anime.

However, a friend got me to watch Log Horizon recently, and all that is about to change.

At the same time, I'm fine with players declaring, "OK-- I want to run into the bad guy and body-slam him, knocking him off the ledge. What dice do I roll for that?"

Not only this, but that's the type of player (and game, when it supports that type of play better) I prefer to play with.

Is there a particular reason why some of the Mummy's Mask adventure path books are going out of print when Paizo is getting ready to release the Mummy's Mask pawn set? I ask because I am fairly new to Pathfinder and I am interested in GMing APs that have the pawn sets. I already have RotR, but it seems like the other APs with pawns have out-of-print books. :(

Info mostly gleaned from Paizo responses to this question in the past:

Mostly, Paizo products don't go "out of print" but rather "out of stock" - they only tend to have a single print run, unless they're one of the RPG hardcovers (which sell enough ongoing copies to make reprints viable.) The paperbacks tend to be sold more in terms of a periodical (released monthly, then sold until they run out.)

If they're running out of stock, it's because they've simply sold out of the print run. The economics of printing usually make it non-viable to go back and do a second run, because they would have to print far more copies than they'd likely ever have a chance of selling. In addition to this, it would create unwanted competition between older APs and newer ones.

If Mummy's Mask is getting low on stock already, it shows something of a surge in popularity for that particular AP.

Unfortunately, the Pawn Sets tend to be released a few months after the end of the relevant AP. Your best bet for the future is probably to pick up an AP, put it aside for later, and then grab its pawn set once it is released. In the meantime, however, bear in mind that (as mentioned above) the PDFs of the APs will *always* be available, and I'd suggest snapping up copies of Mummy's Mask ASAP before they're gone :)

Thank you Sharaya :) Will be in touch in the next two or three weeks!

The two main negative effects of that idea are that 1) It would delay those orders from getting fulfilled (which is a problem if the note says "please make sure this ships in time for my cousin's birthday!") and 2) it would create a second queue that would allow people who have placed orders to get ahead of everyone else, which is not necessarily fair.

Meh, I didn't think of those - oh well, thanks for the feedback on my feedback! :)

I've noticed an increasing number of issues cropping up where customers have been trying to contact the increasingly-overwhelmed customer service about an order, just to find the order has been dispatched before anyone got around to their message.

So, here's my suggestion:
Add a field where customers can place a note against an order. Any kind of note, really, "please contact me before shipping", "please cancel this", "please combine with order #xxxx", or whatever.

Then when the system comes around to processing an order, if there's a customer note on it, the system skips processing and charging, and instead flags the order as "urgent attention required" to ensure the customer isn't charged and the order shipped until whatever needs doing has been done.

I think that'd probably solve a lot of customer hassles, as well as making it a lot easier for CS to pay attention to those flagged orders as a priority instead of trying to manually filter the urgent order-related emails.

Hiya,

Please can you suspend (not cancel) my maps subscription - will reactivate it in 2-3 weeks time.

Thanks!

By not sending one of your own minions in the first place.

You send your minion to a middleman, who passes the message to a courier, who delivers it.

Another, similar way is to use one of your "B" minions, who gets their instructions via a lieutenant in your organization and never actually gets to know where your main hideout is. They either work out of the lieutenant's outpost or are always met in a bar to get their instructions, for example.

Of course, both of those leave a trail that can be followed, but then you're into usable adventure territory rather than scry and fry.

Forgive my ignorance regarding OGL, community use licensing, and sites like d20pfsrd.

Out of curiosity, I visited d20pfsrd looking for content from Wayfinder issues and noticed there are a few entries from earlier Wayfinders (Paizo Fans United / 3pp).

For any particular issue, article or entry, why would it or wouldn't it be included?

Possibilities could include lack of time by the d20pfsrd people to copy it to their site (there is a LOT of OGL material out there, after all), or the inclusion of too much content not covered under the OGL - Wayfinder is able to use the Community Use Policy for example, allowing it to use a limited amount of Paizo IP in addition to OGL rules, while d20pfsrd is a commercial site and thus unable to.

Dale McCoy Jr wrote:

So if someone is talking about converting one of D&D's official settings to pathfinder, its going to be a "same themes" "serial numbers filed off" kind of situation.

Which is about what I expected, but for a lot of people it's apparently a massive turn-off. They either want the real thing or nothing at all, as several comments in this thread have attested.

Yeah. My issue there is that the serial numbers tend to be the very thing I'm buying that book *for* :)

If I want a conversion of stats out of a book from one game system to another, I'd do it myself, and would hope most other decent GMs could. If I want a nice, neatly organized setting book with the relevant stats right there on the same page as the setting text, I'll pay for it. Anything I have to cross-reference, however, just complicates my already overly cross-referenced game even more.

That said, books like the Pathfinder Technology Guide, which aren't really tied to any particular setting but can be used to help facilitate a number of them, are certainly appreciated. For the majority of settings though, I usually don't really need anything other than the original setting book and the Pathfinder CRB and bestiaries.

To me, this is why we even have GMs in the first place. To cover all the things the writers of the rulebook didn't think of or have room for. Otherwise you could just all be players and run a dungeon crawl with dice or cards to decide what comes up in the next room (not that I have anything against that kind of game either, <3 Advanced Heroquest :) .)

"The GM overrules the rulebook" isn't always a bad thing. If you have a decent GM, they'll do what's right for the table as a whole rather than just use it to their advantage. When you have to rely on the rulebook to bash the GM over the head with, that's not a fault in the game, it's a fault with who you choose to play with. A good GM *always* tries to facilitate rather than dictate.

Indeed, what graywulfe said. The complexity of the CRB isn't something you can "design away". Whether you accept it or not, it *is* a feature, not a bug. It's 500 pages of rules. Five hundred fricking pages of rules. You can't redesign that into twenty pages without making it a different game entirely. The problem is that it *is* 500 pages. That's not a design flaw, that's the intent. It's a complex, rules-heavy game system. And you can't make that problem go away with any amount of design, but you can lower the barrier of entry by having a product that hand-holds you as you get familiar with it.

I'd argue here that the Beginner Box shows it is possible to reduce the complexity. Whether that makes it a different game is a matter of opinion - for me it's the same game as long as the character stats are the same and the main rule is a d20 check. Everything else is just pages upon pages of options.

Lets break those 576 pages down a little.

10 pages of races - you can still learn to play the game as a human.
56 pages of classes. The fighter takes two of those.
150 pages of spells.
62 pages of GM-centric info
90 pages of magic items.

So, pull those out and you've got something that's closer to a player's handbook - something that gives you the base rules you need to play the game and a simple class for a beginning player, and assumes you are pulling any other class info from another source.

That brings the page count down to about 211. A bit of judicious editing of feats and you could fit that into an industry-standard 192 pages. That's a *much* better number for a reference book every player can have a copy of in front of them while playing. Yes, it's not the same thing as having a full core rulebook, and many players (myself included) would still want that product to exist to provide the complete experience, but I also feel that a smaller "player's reference" would be useful. I'd happily buy both, just to have a more condensed, portable volume when I'm sure the GM will have a CRB handy if I need to refer to it (or I could simply print off my extra race, class and spell info from the PRD.)

Is there anyone out there who just likes Pathfinder as it is, with what they've done so far?

Absolutely.

And one of the things I like most about it is the bit that tells you to change the things you don't like or think you can improve on. It's an RPG, not a boardgame, it's designed to be customized, to have its square pegs forced into round holes by stubborn GMs (shaving bits off to fit and gluing new bits on, where necessary) and to generally be used as a toolkit to construct the game *you* want to play with it.

Congratulations!

Yes, but a new (rewritten with clarifications and fixes, and maybe even re-done classes) edition of the rulebook, not a new version of the game.

So, because of what the majority tend to think because of the way it's been done with D&D over the years, that's a "no" in this particular vote.

I'm in between. I like both companies. :)

Easy.

^^This

I'll even happily quote the things I *dislike* about *both* product lines.

D&D - Too many editions. I'm fed up with constantly refreshing an entire library of books.

Pathfinder - Too complicated, slow, and rules-heavy.

I'm still buying the 5e core (and I've just added the first two adventure volumes to my preorder) for my collection, and to play a few games that'll look like they'll play out nice and fast.

I still subscribe to Pathfinder, because I love Golarion and the APs.

The 5e Ruleset with Paizo APs would be the perfect mix for me personally, but unlikely to happen.

I think the biggest issue, as others have mentioned, is that many people spend the best part of a year running a single AP so it's just not worth it for many customers. Releasing them individually as $1.99 bolt-on expansion PDFs could work better (maybe even add in a couple of "sidequest" encounters to bulk them up a little.)

From the Paizo side of things, the usual applies - the current product volume has them pretty much at capacity, and they really don't want to expand any further than they already have (my guess here is a combination of a manageable number of staff and being pretty certain they've reached the optimal number of monthly releases before people have to start choosing between which ones to buy, which means any extra expansion ends up with diminishing returns.)

3PP is an option, and I've seen some products that are clearly intended for use with specific APs, but of course then the issue of not being able to directly reference the AP name or most of the storyline details within comes into play.

From what I understand, it's mostly a contractual or legal billing issue. They can't charge us for the order until it's about to ship due to either the agreement with the card companies or trading laws. Making the PDF available early would then leave Paizo's system open to abuse by people cancelling orders before shipment but after the PDF is sent.

I guess they *could* charge the PDF list price on the day the PDF is sent, then charge the balance of the order price (minus the bit already paid) on shipment, but that would likely require fairly major changes to the subscription run code, as well as ending up with Paizo getting double-charged on card processing fees.

It's been brought up enough times in the past that I'm pretty certain if there was a smooth and painless way to make the PDF available on day one, they'd have done it. Of course, they might be working on something for the future but not wanting to get our hopes up by mentioning it until it's been done.

You guys seriously believe that Paizo will never do a new edition, even if they have to lay off half their staff to please you? You guys seriously believe that they can subsist on adventure related stuff alone at the level they are now?

I don't doubt there'll be a new edition at some point.

I do doubt it'll be a D&D-style reboot that invalidates all the existing material, simply to be able to re-release updated versions of every book over the following 12 months.

But a 2nd Edition Core Rulebook that drops directly into peoples existing collections, with revised versions of the core classes (possibly taking some lessons from Unchained), tweaks to the base combat rules, and an excuse to redo the entire book layout to fit in all the FAQed/errata-ed things that can't fit in right now? (And please for the love of all that's holy remove Paladin as a core class and make it a PrC instead) - I can absolutely see that happening.

I have a feeling the last Campaign Setting release was a map folio instead of a book - any chance it was that?

Whenever there's a mix of books and maps in the same box USPS seem to love shoving their own incorrect customs label over the top of the correct Paizo one, with just a single-line summary of contents instead of an itemized one.

I do kind of wish Wizards had done a CRB instead of a PHB / DMG combo. I was adverse to the CRB concept coming over to Pathfinder, but to be honest I prefer having the one book.

Although we can't be sure until we see them, I do get the feeling the PHB this time around is going to have enough content to run a game with (aside from monsters), with the DMG having more optional extras - plus anything that's 100% necessary will almost certainly end up in the free Basic Rules PDF.