Phil Mitchell's page

Phil Mitchell wrote:

Were I in your shoes I would be not only trying to identify 4.0’s viability within the market, but looking for other systems that will take the forefront if 4.0 is a dog.

Unfortunately, we can't do that. We don't know what 4e looks like, yet, and we are running out of time.

To be first out of the gate? Not to be snarky, but who cares? I know you have long lead times in the publishing world, but I think 2008 is still the year of 3.5 for you guys. From the bits and pieces I've seen the challenge for Paizo is how to cover itself in the "no man's land" between now, the launch of 4.0 and when you could legitimately get a new product to market. Isn't supporting the die hard 3.5ers the way to go for the short term? So rather than try to predict the outcome of the launch, buy yourselves more time. Seems to me that at the time the 4.0 books come out you'll be lagging sales wise anyway until the shiny newness wears off those new rule books.

Maybe you can offer anyone that purchases the new Pathfinder a 4.0 conversion PDF for free once available. I know, conversion won't be easy, but you're not going to tell me that you won't be able to figure something out.

BTW, you guys are killing me. Here I am goofing off at work, but I'm discussing brand launches... which is what I do for work! Stop it!

Now if this is really, really, really about deciding if you should launch a Paizo version versus 4.0 (rather than 3.5 vs. 4.0) then I think you absolutely need to survive through 2008. You cannot go head to head against the launch of 4.0. The only way to succeed with that plan is to develop your version and wait for the furor of the 4.0 launch to die down enough for you to grab some of the attention. Either way 2008 seems to be the year you focus and move to the top of the initiative round in 2009.

I like Paizo so here’s my honest profile and feedback in the hopes that it plays a small part in helping you prep for 2008 and beyond.

I have not converted to Pathfinder purely on price. I used to subscribe to Dungeon for $40ish per year (I think) versus $168 ($14ish dollars per month) for Pathfinder. I’ve heard the argument about the volume of content on a dollar basis being similar, and I am confident that it is high quality. I also know that it is not a direct “apples to apples” comparison, but Pathfinder is one Adventure Path versus what I used to get being one AP plus 2 other adventures each and every month. I am explaining this not to open a debate about the benefits of Pathfinder, but to illustrate who I am so you can potentially disregard my comments. Like I said, I think Paizo is a good company with talented folks and I hope you’re around for years to come. I seem to be in the minority on my assessment of Pathfinder and if Pathfinder has been doing as well or better for you financially then you should probably ignore me and listen to these other folks.

I have been playing D&D since the 70s. I play with a core group of friends from childhood. Mostly we play D&D, but we also play Mutants and Masterminds. We actually play a bastardized version of D&D that is a mix of Iron Heroes, Arcana Evolved and 3.5 rules. We don’t care about continuity in the official D&D world at all. Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron… none of that is important to us. If it works for our game we use it. I’ve never run a module 100% out of the box – massive alterations are made to everything I run in order to tailor it to my group.

If 4.0 looks good and I personally think it will, I’m going to switch. I think Iron Heroes does a lot of things right so having Mike Mearls working on 4.0 is a huge plus for me. Version 3.5 is good (so much better than AD&D) but not even in the ballpark of perfect.

4.0 is not about Tieflings as a core race or Succubae as devils or demons or whatever. It is not about the “points of light in the darkness” concept. That is as important as the cover art in my opinion. Cover art is nice and helps to spur the imagination, but the best cover art on the planet does not make a good game. The game is a system that helps us referee our adult version of make believe. If it does that better than my crazy hobbled together version of 3.5 then I am onboard.

The value of Paizo for me equals the value of Dungeon Magazine (may she rest in peace.) You bring story and inspiration, backed up with time saving stat blocks, maps and NPCs. Creativity and Time. In application, those are the two most important elements for the RPG gamer.

I think your smallness is the key to your success. Stay flexible. I believe you need to hedge your bets. There are enough die hard 3.5ers in your customer base that you should support them no matter what for a coming year or two, but you must be ready to jump over to 4.0 if it takes off. You will be left in the dust if you don’t.

Aren’t there parallels to the D&D 2.0 era? If 4.0 flops like that it won’t be about 3.5 living on, but about a different system jumping in and taking over the market buzz the way White Wolf did with the storyteller system. Were I in your shoes I would be not only trying to identify 4.0’s viability within the market, but looking for other systems that will take the forefront if 4.0 is a dog. Or, perhaps your proposed 3.75 system will be that alternative.

I wish you guys the best of luck and hope you come out on top of the current upheaval.

Any openings for a 30 something gamer? :)

I'm full for now with three games - Meetup.com has an Online D&D forum. Might be worth a look.

I'd say players are more dependable online than in person: No snow storm keeping you from going, car troubles not as pressing, had one player take his laptop on vacation so he could play.

This has been my experience as well - although my players tend to lose their connections during snowstorms.

The below link gives you a nice comparison of the existing virtual tabletop software.

http://www.iconvention.org/vgtcomp.php

I also highly recommend Skype for voice as an alternative to IM type communication.

For the moment, I believe Fantasy Grounds is the leader, but Wizards is supposed to be putting forth a virtual tabletop as part of their 4E digital offering.

Also, on Meetup there is the Online Dungeons and Dragons group - they use RPTools and it looks like a good way to join an existing game online.

Good luck.

I play IH almost exclusively now. My group and I love the rules and Mike Mearls involvement in 4e is what makes me sure to at least grab the new PH for review.

If someone came out and said that 4e was built off Iron Heroes with a well integrated magic system... I'd be very happy. It's not perfect (nothing is) but it addresses three critical issued I have with D&D:

1. Armor class - it grants a Base Defense Bonus that improves with level advancement and remands Armor to damage reduction where it belongs (imho)
2. Support Characters - there are none, everyone is a star. No one is stuck as the buff class or the healer - everyone has a distinct role, but everyone kicks butt. Some classes are broken, but Mearls gets an A++ for effort.
3. Christmas Tree syndrome - you are the hero, not the meat puppet for a horde of magic items. I have never ever enjoyed the D&D necessity for magic items.

And I too am seeing more and more cool IH stuff creeping into the rules announcements for 4E - naturally I get indignant on IH's behalf, "That's not new, I use that in my game every week!"

Will there still be drow?

Yes, but only those Drow who agree to forsake the Underdark by moving to the surface world as heroes who fight to repent for the sins of their whole race while using names with apostrophes and too many consonants.

C. Not nearly enough information yet.

Very cool idea. From the books, the Daemons impacted social interactions as well. For example, when two people meet, they can shake hands with each other and their Daemons could do the same, but if you touch another person's daemon that was a major no-no.

There were scenes in the book where one Daemon would restrain another Daemon and therefore restrain the person, but other than some specific scenarios it did not seem that daemons could be injured. Overall, I think that Daemon's should not be combatants, but rather personification of the individual that provide insight into their personality and state-of-mind.

I am reminded of the nature and demeanor qualities from White Wolf's games. It was the contrast between those two elements that helped to illustrate the character's personality. In The Golden Compass, often the Daemon's were contrasted to illustrate a character better. For example, the villainess was this beautiful woman (played by Nicole Kidman in the movie), but her Daemon is this nasty Monkey.

There is a ton of potential here to better illustrate the non-physical attributes of a character and layer another dimension to the role play. Good idea!

Some of the player expectations for super-high stats may come from the 1e/2e modifiers, vs. those in d20. If you focus the players' attention on the modifiers, not the number, they'll see that a 17 Str in 1st ed. is equivalent to a 12 or 13 in 3.x ed., and they'll be happier with the 12. Otherwise, they'll want the 17.

Just had a flashback to the old +3hit/+6damage from an 18.100 strength - crazy :)

This is a great thread. My current group has insanely high stats: 20,17,16,14,14,11 would be about the norm. I think everyone's spoiled now and I'm wondering if I'll be able to have a more reasonable array of stats in the next game.

We've also done point buys for the past few years or so and I am curious to include some randomness back into the character creation process. I have not seen a method that I like (4d6 drop the lowest seems the most common). I don't like to see a character with anything below a 9. We're just too into the escapism concept to play someone below average in anything. And I don't want to see one person with a couple of 18s and another person with a high score of 14. Are there any systems out there that really deliver a range of 10-16 with scores of 18 and 8 being rare?

True enough about not using all the options. One of the issues has been technology though. The more complicated online gaming tables require more up-to-date PCs (one of my guys has a 4-5 year old laptop and it's like he just walked out of the stone age) and port forwarding/ hosting issues have plagued us from day one. My hope was that there was a simple online solution without all the bells and whistles, under the assumption that the lack of bells and whistles would mean a lower bar on the system requirements.

If anyone is reading this thread and does not have my "grumpy old man" type issues, a great source of virtual tabletop comparisons can be found at:

http://www.iconvention.org/vgtcomp.php

Someone mentioned Maptools and I had not checked them out so I will do so - thank you.

As for the 4E online component, I watched a Youtube video and it looked very impressive. I guess there are more of us online tabletop players than I thought.

As one of the more helpful/ friendly boards I’ve seen, I thought I would avail myself and throw out a question. My group is older and scattered across the country. We play online one night a week for a few hours using Skype for voice and jpeg maps plastered on excel files. It’s like playing bingo, “I move from K5 to K9…” and then everyone adjusts their maps.

What we are looking for is very simple. We had been using Screenmonkey with great success, but it started getting spotty and not working.

We have looked into Fantasy Grounds, Battlegrounds, etc… but it’s all too much. We do not need a built in rule set, character sheets, even dice rolling. I just want a map function that we can all share, the DM can hide what needs hiding and everyone can move their “miniature.” Does anyone have a similar situation and how did you solve it?

Thanks!

Iron Heroes is awesome. I've been using it for about a year and had a chance to play a game run by Adam Windsor (owner of the system) at Gen Con on this past Friday morning and it was the most fun I had. Granted it's all about combat, but what works so well are the number of exciting options you have at any moment in combat. Very cinematic. There's an excellent overview on Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Heroes

I converted an Ebberon adventure, "The Lightning Rail" to regular D&D without even really trying. I had to alter some races (Changelings - don't even know what that is), adjust one of the main adversaries (Gendry was some kind of mechanical wizard dude)and add some additional setup to explain the actual rail system and how it fit into my game. Overall it was pretty easy and the players enjoyed the slightly different texture of the module.

I can't speak to Shackled City - I've seen some of the adventures, but I never played them. I started AOW just as STAP was coming out. I got through the first two just as the actual Isle of Dread stuff was coming out and made a spot decision to integrate them. So in essence I'm doing both of them, kind of.

Whispering Cairn is an outstanding intro module and Three Faces of Evil is something that really sold my PCs on need to fight against the "forces of evil" involved in the pending Age of Worms. From there I adjusted Sea Wyvern's Wake from STAP (lots of adjustments, but I think that can be kind of fun) and all my old time players get a kick out of how we'll be sailing near, but not going to the Isle of Dread (of course not, thank goodness we won't be forced to make landfall there!)

The key difference seems to be that AOW is more traditional dungeon sites whereas STAP is more free form/ event based. My group likes to mix it up so that's what I'm doing.

Hasn't D&D been dead before? It dropped off my radar for almost a decade before version 3.0 was released. I'm just happy that the OGL is out there or we would have no recourse but to subscribe to this digital magazine WOTC mentioned.

I received the email from Paizo just as I was starting my gaming session last night. We hadn't played for a few weeks (my wife and I just had our third child and that tends to crimp game night) and we were in the midst of that fifteen minutes of BSing that comes at the top of every session. Forget about getting the wind knocked out of my sail, we were hulled man!

Dungeon is the single most impressive monthly publication I have ever seen. Literally it made it possible for me to continue DMing (three children!) and playing the game and for me that means quality time with some of my oldest and dearest friends. It is no less than that important.

I can only imagine how difficult this has been for the talent at Paizo over the past few months or more. If my guess is right, you've known about this for some time and looked upon those "what will the next AP be?" threads with great sadness. You've probably been channeling that energy into the Pathfinder product.

I'd be lying if I said I did not have sticker shock at the price of the Pathfinder series. Despite that I will give it a try, as someone said earlier on the board, "follow the talent."

Best of luck.

The back of some massive other-dimensional critter in "Beast of Burden." It's basically a walking encampment with a bunch of Gnolls using it as a mobile base of operations.

Yes, I agree that the modules are too long. I cut entire sections of dungeon out of all of them. And mostly I am cutting out sections that, while fitting in the reality of the scenario, are dramatically confusing. For example (*spoiler warning*), in a recent adventure called The Lightning Rail (I think)there is a Sphinx sitting in one of the cars. The module explains why they are there, but I knew that when the players got to this point it would break down into a discussion of how this Sphinx fits into the greater story - except it didn't. It was just there as added security. As a fix, I leaked it to the players in the beginning that the wizards running the rail were using a Sphinx as added security. This way, they knew it was there and why and the challenge became more about avoiding it than being surprised by its presence.

I'd never considered backing off the XP system, though. Mostly I throw in small sidetrek encouters to get the characters at the appropriate level. That's something to mull over.

All of that being said, I don't think I would recommend shorter modules. Rather I think the designs should allow for easier cuts. The modules in Dungeon are the single best tool I have at my disposal because I can custom make them into what my group needs/ enjoys. I love when the adventures are designed in sections so I can keep the stuff I like and discard the rest. Figuring out how to maintain story integrity with those cuts is a big part of my creative contribution.