Straight_from_the_oldschool's page

BPorter wrote:

also don’t understand the desire to perpetuate the edition treadmill in ever-shrinking cycles. To me, having to purchase a new set of rules and learn what’s changed is a bigger barrier to customer longevity and a greater detriment to the health of the hobby than the initial barrier of admission of a core rulebook.

The cycles haven't been shrinking. Its actually about time to start looking at doing a moderate rules update/major errata, if history shows anything. Every version of d&d has had one introduced on mostly regular cycles:

1974 OD&D
1978 AD&D
1985 Unearthed Arcana
1989 AD&D 2nd Edition
1995 AD&D 2nd Edition was revised, and players options manuals released
2000 3rd edition
2003 3.5
2007 4th
2011 4th ed: Essentials

So about every 4 (3 to 7, most 4) years a major revision was introduced. It was shorter between 3.0 and 3.5 because there were a number of things that were flat out broken about 3.0 that needed fixing. With a 3 year production cycle for both 3.0 and 4th ed, and Pathfinder being out for 2 years, it is not unreasonable to start having discussions about what we would like to see improved upon in the next release, which will likely still be 3 years away.

The other thing to consider is that most customer are not long term customers. You will have the average customer for only so long (my guess is ~5-8 years). Life gets in the way. The people who stick with the game are the exception, not the norm. You need to keep new blood cycling through the hobby. If you can keep people, its good, but its the new blood you sell the majority of your products to. Too large of a collection of rulebooks, and you start to alienate new players. The rules become to large to reasonably gain expertise in without institutional knowledge (knowledge from the begginning of the process). This leads to people not picking up the beginner books because there are too many advanced books that overwhelm them and they feel the need to master it all. People avoid tasks that are too...

I usually don't post on the boards, guys, but I have to weigh in.

I stuck to Pathfinder because it WAS NOT 4E. I didn't like the way the game had gone. I like one or two aspects, like minions, but those are largely unnecessary to make "official." If Pathfinder strays too far from what it is now, I jump ship on it. Period.

I also don't think the prospect of Pathfinder 2E needs thought about at this point, because there is a lot of untapped potential with what it is right now. Just look at Archetypes and what they've done for the game, eliminating endless prestige classes (thank you, Paizo staff).

I'm not going to war for my favorite edition here (if I did that I'd start talking about Original and Basic Edition). I'm just saying the reason I've bought EVERY SINGLE hardcover in the Pathfinder line is that it is still the game I know and love, as I've played 3E since its inception and like it quite a bit. If it strayed too far, I'd be out. Just saying.

I'd like to see some different genre books - much like the mini-settings/games that came out in the crossed-over Dungeon/Polyhedron issues several years ago. I still use the Spelljammer one. And go old school - a sword and sorcery genre supplement, tailored to the genre for feel, would be AWESOME. I liked what WOTC did with the D20 Modern splats - 96 pages of toolkits for emulating a certain setting without being specific. Guys like me, who write their own settings, don't want someone else's setting. I'd rather have bits I can use and tie together myself.

As far as additional material goes, I'll buy every Bestiary product, EVER. Keep them as good as the past two have been and I'm in. Do not just add levels to the monsters, I want new monsters that I personally can tinker with, not just advanced versions (unless they get some new powers that I can mess around with).

Additional core classes once in a while - but keep them original and the power creep to an absolute minimum. I would much rather have those than prestige classes. Just how my campaign is geared is all. I can always use a good alternate martial-oriented base class to work in.

How about villain design? Tons of options for the bad guys, and only the bad guys - in other words, things to torture hapless PCs with. Not necessarily statted NPCs (I think the Gamemastery Guide did well enough with that to almost call it done).

Take the game in new directions once in a while - I know we want to play it sort of safe with what the folks who like Pathfinder (like me) want, since we stuck with a 3.5 based system instead of jumping onto 4E, but a new idea tossed at the game as an optional rule might be cool, instead of just more class features, etc. Unearthed Arcana for Pathfinder. Just a thought.