barnabyssjones's page

barnabyssjones wrote:

Hmm well if the comments are being read and input is being taken, I would request or suggest that older AP’s where half or more than half of the parts are out of print be POD as compendiums or grouped together like Wrath of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne (not totally rewritten like these two, just compiled together.) This way people can get a physical copy and the people that have spent a lot of time and money trying to track down this stuff can have a little something collectible that is identical in function, with only a difference in aesthetic. I would think everybody wins with this. Carrion Crown, Kingmaker, Skull & Shackles, Legacy of Fire, Jade Regent, and Wrath of the Righteous come to mind. Those were/are all rather expensive and hard to track down, and it’s not like they have a “single hole” that people need to patch, so grouping them together would make sense. It wouldn’t require people to spend a lot on a whole AP to just get a missing part. Examples of good AP’s to sell piece by piece would be Iron Gods, Mummy’s Mask, and Shattered Star (Serpent’s Skull?). Reign of Winter, Council of Thieves, and Return of the Runelords were good plays in this regard. All you have to do with these is start printing the first part again. I’m interested in feedback from the community too on this. Would there be a difference to most of you all if this route was taken? It’s not like AP’s part by part are easier to read or something. This solution seems like it takes everyone’s circumstances into account.

Do you use these books for gaming, or are you just paying too much to have something look nice on your shelf?

I use pdf’s personally. A lot of these SEEMED kind of collectible. Which I suppose they’re not now. Also whether or not I’m paying too much is reliant on whether paizo prints more, which actually seemed rather unlikely…so they only cost too much in hindsight. I’m assuming that you would find it super annoying if they printed, say, Legacy of Fire as a single book?

Hmm well if the comments are being read and input is being taken, I would request or suggest that older AP’s where half or more than half of the parts are out of print be POD as compendiums or grouped together like Wrath of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne (not totally rewritten like these two, just compiled together.) This way people can get a physical copy and the people that have spent a lot of time and money trying to track down this stuff can have a little something collectible that is identical in function, with only a difference in aesthetic. I would think everybody wins with this. Carrion Crown, Kingmaker, Skull & Shackles, Legacy of Fire, Jade Regent, and Wrath of the Righteous come to mind. Those were/are all rather expensive and hard to track down, and it’s not like they have a “single hole” that people need to patch, so grouping them together would make sense. It wouldn’t require people to spend a lot on a whole AP to just get a missing part. Examples of good AP’s to sell piece by piece would be Iron Gods, Mummy’s Mask, and Shattered Star (Serpent’s Skull?). Reign of Winter, Council of Thieves, and Return of the Runelords were good plays in this regard. All you have to do with these is start printing the first part again. I’m interested in feedback from the community too on this. Would there be a difference to most of you all if this route was taken? It’s not like AP’s part by part are easier to read or something. This solution seems like it takes everyone’s circumstances into account.

I think I would have placed money on Carrion Crown or Reign of Winter becoming a collected 2e conversion before POD, but the problems of Kingmaker may make them unwilling to do a conversion right now (the collected AV being a different beast with a much lower amount of development needed).

My thoughts on Kingmaker in particular would be that they wouldn’t bother with a 1e POD because they were working on a conversion.

Did they, a company that prints books, sometimes multiple printings, ever say they were never ever gonna print these books again? No.

They did not mention it explicitly. They simply didn’t print them or mention them again or at all for 6-10 years before moving on to 2e and removing all focus from 1e. It’s still my fault for assuming, but them starting to print these again I think we can at least agree is unexpected. Unexpected is the right word. Not unprecedented. I wasn’t careful enough here.

On the one hand this is nice, but as a collector, I actually spent a lot of money on out of print books (Carrion Crown and Kingmaker cost me a TON of money.) I have every single out of print AP and have probably spent close to $1300 on amassing them over time. Knowing that was futile or might become more futile if you print certain ones has me totally gutted. It feels like I got conned kinda… like I feel super dumb. I could have done so much else with that money. It’s great other people without skin in the game can get them now..I just wish I knew this was a possibility because I never would have started collecting them, and would have just waited. I wasn’t exactly stoked to need to pay what I paid, but I love the company and don’t collect anything else.

EDIT: . I want to clarify that when I say I feel I got conned, I’m not talking about feeling like Paizo in particular conned me. As a matter of fact the sellers didn’t con me either. This is all just highly unexpected, and I severely misread the likelihood of an event like this. As I mentioned in another post, these AP’s haven’t even been mentioned in 6-10 years, and with 2e as the focus I thought it was safe to assume that these would stay PDF’s.

So as we know Paizo doesn’t continue printing old adventure paths, but I’ve noticed a trend of the first parts always being listed as out of print in the store, whereas many other parts are listed as “unavailable” or for sale. This isn’t always the case of course but it’s common. Does anyone know why that is? What makes the first parts so scarce? Is it just people wanting to start a path and not as many finishing it so more get purchased?

Ezekieru wrote:

keftiu wrote:

barnabyssjones wrote:

So I don’t know how much work this would take, and it would probably not be a good idea if the amount was super significant, but official conversions of 1E AP’s to 2E I would buy in a heartbeat. My dream is to have all that stuff readily available on a VTT, but that entire process is a lot of work for them I think. There’s sooo many 1E AP’s I still want to run.

I think that Paizo has indicated they have the manpower to either so conversion work or make new content, not both. I can’t also think of how things have gone with the Kingmaker update.

Yeah. James Jacobs basically worked on nothing but Kingmaker for almost a whole year, with some freelancing room for Malevolence. I wouldn't want to wish that on him or anyone else again, especially while we're still dealing with COVID.

I'm sure those over at Legendary Games are happy they're done with that project and they can focus their efforts on their own new content for PF2E, PF1E and D&D 5E.

Note: My freelance work, which over the last year and a half was mostly focused on "Malevolence" and on "Ruins of Gauntlight," but also a few smaller projects here and there, was not "on the clock." It's off the clock, on personal time, when I'm specifically NOT doing the on-the clock job. AKA: Being able to freelance doesn't really impact my ability to work on my day job, or vice-versa, any more so than it should for any of our freelancers—the trick there is knowing your own schedule and capability and being realistic with your own limitations as to what you can accomplish in a given amount of time.

That said, Kingmaker is the fourth "Update an adventure path to hardcover" project I've done (Shackled City, Rise of the Runelords, and Curse of the Crimson Throne being the other three), and I can guarentee you that the job is not one that can be done quickly. I see no future in which we ever update every 1st edition Adventure Path to 2nd edition. Even if we quit producing 2nd...

Thanks for the input! Super cool to see you active in the forums. I sort of suspected that this was the case, so for now 1E to 2E conversion will be community-sourced. Fortunately there are resources and communities focused on these projects, so it’s not the end of the world. Creatively speaking I can certainly understand not wanting to spend a lot of time rehashing old content. I can think of certain AP’s (some from before Paizo really hit their groove) that would probably be a nightmare to rewrite because of certain flawed or particularly underwhelming sections. Serpent’s Skull, Council of Thieves, Second Darkness, and I guess maybe Jade Regent seem like they would need to have a bunch of additional story things added or parts rewritten if this route was actually taken.

So I don’t know how much work this would take, and it would probably not be a good idea if the amount was super significant, but official conversions of 1E AP’s to 2E I would buy in a heartbeat. My dream is to have all that stuff readily available on a VTT, but that entire process is a lot of work for them I think. There’s sooo many 1E AP’s I still want to run.