I'm not certain I'm going to be able to make much use of Pathfinder. Here's why.
Pathfinder is essentially an adventure path that comes faster than the Dungeon adventure paths. The first Pathfinger AP is supposed to take you from 1 to 15 in 6 months of product where in a Dungeon AP that would take you to around 9 months of product.
Heck I'm still DMing the Age of Worms after a year and a half plus and getting ready to start Savage Tide. A new AP every 6 months is simply going to form a huge back log. I'm betting Pathfinder could have two full AP's out by he time I'm finished with the Savage Tide.
Do people really have enough gaming time to support a new AP every 6 months? If people start forming a back long aren't odds good that they'll cancel their subscriptions for a time?
Just some thoughts.
Shade325
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I'm with you here Shade.
I love the APs ... but ... I'm still running Shackled City. At this rate, AOW and ST (which I both want to run) are going to keep me going for like the next decade.
Now, even with future APs which I may never get around to using, Dungeon was good for all the other adventures which fit into my non AP or even non campaign games.
But all APs from here on in ... kind of a cool idea, but it has its problems. I'd really hope that the later installments could be very easily run as "stand alone" without the material that has come before. I know in theory all the AP adventures so far can be, but in practice there is a lot of assumed knowledge, backstory and motivation in the previous installments.
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...A new AP every 6 months is simply going to form a huge back log. I'm betting Pathfinder could have two full AP's out by he time I'm finished with the Savage Tide. Do people really have enough gaming time to support a new AP every 6 months? If people start forming a back long aren't odds good that they'll cancel their subscriptions for a time? Shade325
We could probably play every day and not have enough time. My group manages several PCs for both CoC and D&D. For D&D we play in Eberron (though no-one really likes that setting except me...), FR, and Grey Hawk (APs, and we're in the middle of Shackled City; and moving in time with Savage Tide). We manage a schedule of which game we're going to play each week. With Campaign Logs, which I write for each session and require my players to maintain for their individual characters, it's pretty easy for them and only slightly graduate-level work for me. I probably have YEARS of back log game material, and I am totally cool with that. I still peruse old 1E modules for hooks and ideas, so having more, to me, is better. Plus, it's not that difficult for your DM/GM/Keeper to grab up any portion of an AP and turn it into a stand-alone adventure...
The fact that my group manages so many PCs probably is off-putting to many who might read this--I think it stems from the fact that we play LOTS of CoC, where PCs rarely make it through an entire campaign...
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Do people really have enough gaming time to support a new AP every 6 months? If people start forming a back long aren't odds good that they'll cancel their subscriptions for a time?
Shade325
last year I would have loved this - we started AOW when the 7th adventure came out on newstands. two months later we had to wait to continue the path til after it came in, within 2 months we had gone through 8 adventures. (college student group at the time, we started @ 2pm or so and went til the adventre was finished at LEAST once a week, sometimes more)
plus at that point you may want to skip certain paths, you may want to take just the background information into your groups adventures.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I concur.
Adventures compete with one another. Every session you spend playing one pre-written adventure is a session you're not in the market for a new one.
Once PATHFINDER #7 comes out, there will be a whole bunch of people still working through the first $120 campaign, who probably won't be interested in buying the next $120 campaign.
(That's a good aspect of PATHFINDER: the price point is high enough to discourage casual readers / players from purchasing issues out of curiosity and spoiling the plotline for themselves.)
Not that anybody asked me, but my thought would have been: Produce the first six monthly products, then wait six months. On the other hand, this may splinter the Paizo fan base: not everybody here will be intimately familiar with all the adventures / material published. A couple years from now, some of us will have bought the psionics / mind-flayers / Far Realm adventure path, and others will own the time-travelling / wereboars / mass combat adventure path; very few will have spent the hundreds of dollars necessary to keep up with all the campaigns.
Then again, these are books, not magazines; they'll last indefinitely on the shelves at my Friendly Local Gaming Store.
Who says its us? The assumption that we are the end all and be all of gamers is kind of absurd. These APs will be good for the gamers who start in 6 months or a year from now. Especially now that Dungeon magazine is going to end, this is a really good thing. If I were a gamer coming into the community 6 months from now, I'd be kinda let down without something like Pathfinder.
Think about it: all these people going on about how cool the old Dungeon APs are, and the hard copies have all sold, and you can buy the PDFs, but that's never as good, and a lot of gamers don't actually game from their computer or can afford to print of an AP's worth of PDFs. I'd feel like the rookie who just missed the boat, and I'll never get the cool things that all the old timers got, and there won't be a cool thing for my generation to get.
Pathfinder fills that hole. Its not for you, or even for me, though I'll probably get it anyway. Its for the gamers of next month, next year, that will never get the chance to get on the wonderful ride that was Dungeon and Dragon magazines.
I look forward to catching up with the backlog of all those Adventure Paths when I'm in a nursing home.
File all those glorious issues of Pathfinder and Dungeon away--leave 'em polywrapped....and then 20 years from now when you're ready to revive your D&D campaign you'll find gaming heaven in your attic.
I speak from experience. I kept up my Dungeon subscription during almost 3 years of not gaming and then when I got back into it I had a cornucopia of gaming goodness to populate my campaign. Heck, I have Dungeon #83 still in polywrap and I don't think I'm going to crack it open.
Consider it an investment--a hedge against future gaming material bear markets.
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I look forward to catching up with the backlog of all those Adventure Paths when I'm in a nursing home.
File all those glorious issues of Pathfinder and Dungeon away--leave 'em polywrapped....and then 20 years from now when you're ready to revive your D&D campaign you'll find gaming heaven in your attic.
I speak from experience. I kept up my Dungeon subscription during almost 3 years of not gaming and then when I got back into it I had a cornucopia of gaming goodness to populate my campaign. Heck, I have Dungeon #83 still in polywrap and I don't think I'm going to crack it open.
Consider it an investment--a hedge against future gaming material bear markets.
Oh, 83 is a good one, you'll like it!
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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And when the kids are grown and I'm no longer living in the nursing home one of those Cash in the Attic shows can auction off all the gaming books and accessories. The procedes can send my great-grand-kids to college.
Even if the books are essentially worthless my heirs can make up for it in volume.
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If the new adventures prove to be as good as the old ones, you have a lot of choice for playing. You don't have to play each and every AP, you can just play the ones whose theme you like the most. Currently, you can choose between saving the world by rescuing a city outside our reality, saving the world from worm-infested undead or sailing the seas and saving the world in a pirate-themed background. It seems that the average gamer does not need more then that, but... You always need more! What if, after the runelords, an oriental-themed AP comes out? Would you be willing to chunk one of other four AP's for that? Haven't played shackled city, but you are running a homebrew at level 7? Use a level 7 adventure from shackled city. You can't have enough of these. You need more. MORE I SAY!
Oh, 83 is a good one, you'll like it!
Yes, it is. Couldn't resist..."London Calling?" (how unique!)
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Think about it like this: the more the merrier! If you refuse to buy the new improved D&D that Ryan Dancey & Monte Cook speculate about, you'll have more than enough Paizo magic to keep your 3.5 rule books busy.
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It is a valid point. We are still in SC as various RL issues keep stopping our game for a quarter at a time (breeders usually).
We are going to discuss as a group but the original plan was to finish SC, skip AoW, and go straight to ST.
It now looks like we will finish SC and then go straight to Pathfinder as I should have the entire first path by then. I don't like playing hand to mouth anyway, and we don't have the time regardless.
However SC is a hardcover, and Pathfinder is a series of books, so actually getting to store away the last of my DUNGEONs safely doesn't seem too bad :)
Going to be strange to say goodbye to GH though. Easier with FR, never even really said hello to Ebby (gave all my books to a mate so he could run acampaign for his missus and her friends).
I can see how some might see it as wasteful though.
