Tanus's page

I'm sorry, from my perspective, I'm a little upset as well. Despite my personal bias (which has no place in business decisions), I can't justify stocking Pathfinder in my shop. I went from 10 subscribers to Pathfinder pre-announcement to 0 afterwards. People are ready to move on.

Here's the way things look in my area (may be different where you live)

Most of the people who don't mind dropping cash on their hobby are pro 4e. They pre-ordered their books and are gobbling up anything 4e they can find. If I had a 4e compatible Pathfinder adventure in the works, I'd already have 35+copies pre-ordered, guaranteed. There's a serious lack of 4e adventures right now, especially good ones.

Most of the anti 4e people have that opinion for one reason: money. A lot of people play RPGs because they are cheap. They don't buy anything but a PHB, instead relying on the DM to have all of the splatbooks. These are the guys who make comments in my shop like "Oh you play 4e? Isn't it just a dumbed down version of WoW for little kids?". Of course, they are 100% pro-Paizo until you ask them if they want to pre-order. "I totally support them, but I won't drop $50 on a new book"

So I can recommend 4e to people which is brand new, has an expanding player base and great advertising support or I can stock Pathfinder which caters to the people who don't want to spend, has an ever shrinking pool of players and little to no advertising at all.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the Pathfinder adventures and have been converting them for my 4e game, but it's pretty silly to stock them as a FLGS.

Coming from someone who runs a relatively large game store:

Will they make less money? Absolutely

It might not matter. It all depends on what their goals are.

Unfortunately, it seems like most of the people who aren't switching to 4e are doing it because they don't want to spend the money. It's going to be hard to sell Pathfinder to people who don't want to dole out any more cash. :(

Dishliquid wrote:

In the ideal universe, 4e will fail utterly, and Wizards will sell the D&D IP to Paizo, where it belongs.

I'm not sure they could afford it. The minis part and licenses and all that do add up.

Would be cool, though, to have several good d20 companies to take over as a joint venture or something. Won't happen, of course, but would be nice.

Still, I could actually see 4e falling onto its beak. It sounds more and more like WoW or something like that. The thing is: The more 4e will be like WoW, the more direct the competition will be. And 4e will lose against WoW. They won't be able to take many players away from WoW, but if people think that D&D has become too much like WoW, anyway, I'm sure that more than a few will abandon D&D and start WoW. Might as well go with the game that has more players and handles the rules better, so you can concentrate on the playing itself.

There is literally nothing that we've seen in 4e that is like WoW that WoW didn't borrow from D&D in the first place.

Someone asked for a scenario that might keep us doing 3.5, so I provided it.

I do not believe that that is the optimal option at this point, but it is an option.

All of the third-party companies who had 3.0-compatible products available with the release of the new edition (Atlas, Green Ronin, White Wolf) had playtest copies of the rules in advance of the release of the game. It is reasonable to expect that this will be the case, and Wizards has said as much in public.

Don't read too much into this. The best business decision is very likely to convert to 4.0 upon release of the new rule set.

But it can't be a done deal until we see the rules and the OGL, and that hasn't happened yet.

Incidentally I'll leave aside the straw man about innovation and stale conventions. The stuff we publish...

Thanks for the quick response!

Sorry, didn't mean to accuse you guys of not being innovative. I think all of the stuff you guys put out is quite refreshing and different which is why I was confused about some of your earlier statements. I guess I just read too much into them!

Thanks again for the great products!

The scenario might play out something like this:

For whatever reason, WotC is unable to provide third-party publishers with a working draft of the rules until, say, January or so. Our print schedules are so far out these days that that simply won't allow us time to measure the new game's impact on our planned storylines for the third Pathfinder Adventure Path. Even under this scenario, we'd likely publish some 4e-compatible GameMastery Modules, but Pathfinder is the flagship of our RPG efforts. I'm NOT switching systems mid-way through an Adventure Path. That would be far too disruptive to our business and our customers are practically begging us not to do so already. So it's not happening.

So if the very first installment of the third Adventure Path is not compatible with 4.0, NONE of the third...

I'm sorry Erik, and I'm sure that you are more knowledgeable than I am due to your position and history in publishing, but do you really expect 4.0 to be anything but a substantial success for WotC? Even if the reception is lukewarm, are you really prepared to cater to a player base that shrinks from month to month as more people convert?

As a new Pathfinder DM, I don't really find these statements encouraging. I had simply assumed that Pathfinder would convert to the most recent D&D toolset when it's available as it is designed to be used with the D&D RPG. Your comments on being able to play the same types of games you've been playing for 30 years don't exactly fill me with hope. I had thought that Paizo valued innovation over "sacred cows" and stale D&D conventions.

I don't really know why you expect that WotC would release a prototype ruleset to a third party competitor before it sends it off to external playtesters. I am also confused as to why you compare the future ruleset to MMOs when none of the previews indicate anything remotely "computer-gamish" aside from the elements MMOs have already stolen from earlier D&D editions.

Once again, I respect your opinions as I am not knowledgeable of the publishing business or RPG playtesting. Thanks for your continued excellence in Pathfinder! Hopefully I'll be continuing with you guys next year in 4th ED. :)