Pathfinder's survivability as a game system


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Grand Lodge

I still get use from GURPS supplements :) LOVE them!

How does True20 and Conan help?

Well, during the 2nd Ed days RPGing was in decline. Anything that keeps the industry alive and viable helps.

and during the days of 2nd Ed, I will give that D&D had the single largest share of any company, maybe 25% of the market on the generous side, probably closer to 15-20%, as compared to 50-75% today (if not higher). Remember that WW and GURPS and Gamesworkshop and a slew of others were big competitors and had some share of the market. All those shares added up a lot.

And the early 3PP did help. Some it may have been crap and yes every sleezy guy in a basement was a publisher (hey wait-I take offense to that!) but the fact is they got face time for WOTC. They took up shelf space and made people take notice of D&D again. You couldn't just walk past the d20 section without noticing how HUGE it was compared to everyone else. WOTC could not have done that on their own.

I am NOT saying that OGL and 3PP were the only reason for D&D's success (Hasbro's money ahd a lot to do with it). What I am saying is that the 3PP and OGL helped in ways WOTC could not do alone. I amsure that D&D would have done fine without the 3PP but I think they increased exposure that seriously helped an ailing line.

The Exchange

I'd have to agree here with what Krome is saying. As a player and DM, 2E was not interesting to me. I played many other games during the 2E timeframe because the 2E stuff I saw on shelves was IMO inferior. I liked what I saw in 3E and bought the core books, but then could not find decent adventures and tried to walk the road of creating everything from scratch. Got burned out and was frankly pretty close to giving up on 3E as well, until I discovered some of the third party stuff out there, especially Paizo. Because the 3PP adventures kept me interested, I ended up filling my shelf with several WOTC supplements that I would never have purchased had my interest in 3E gone away.

The OGL definitely helped WOTC in my case. I cannot believe I'm alone here. And having gone through that process once, I'm not doing it again with 4E, especially since their release of the GSL. Paizo will keep getting my money unless I end up really despising PRPG. As long as those rules improve the 3E play experience and don't cause me alot of additional work in conversions, PRPG definitely has staying potential from my perspective.


Bleach wrote:
Again, how does M&M, True20 and CONAN (especially) which while they use a d20 are pretty much new games in of themselves.

Because the companies making them were successful and still putting out a significant amount of products that also supported D&D.

Let's turn it around. How does the GSL improve the situation?

Now, even their staunchest supporter among the 3PPs are pulling products that would have supported 4E to support other systems.

So instead of having "competitors" that are also supporting your own system with their time, effort, and creativity, it's somehow better to create a license where they put all that effort into truly competitive systems?

It's an old cliche, throwing the baby out with the bath water, but it's entirely appropriate. If their goal was to reduce competition with the GSL, they have achieved the opposite effect.

Paizo Employee CEO

Bleach wrote:

A couple of points.

Even when TSR was going belly-up, D&D still had a larger market share than WW. If WW couldn't supplant D&D then, there's no chance of D&D just fading away.

Actually, in the mid-90's when TSR was going belly-up, the World of Darkness products had about the same market share as D&D. How do I know this? I as the person at WotC who had to delve into the past records and figure out what happened to D&D and present that to the team so we could fix things. There were even a few months where White Wolf outsold TSR. Now, just because D&D had another game become its equal for a time doesn't mean it was in any danger of fading away. D&D doesn't need to dominate the market share to be nicely profitable.

-Lisa

Jon Brazer Enterprises

Lisa Stevens wrote:
How do I know this? I as the person at WotC who had to delve into the past records and figure out what happened to D&D and present that to the team so we could fix things.

*lets brain run on these thoughts for a few moments* Ummm... and now you're the CEO of one of the strongest names in RPGs. *Wonders how long it will be before Paizo surpasses White Wolf in market share*

Grand Lodge

heck White Wolf... I am hoping Paizo is able to buy the D&D line from Hasbro!

I keep saying it and I hope Lisa and all are looking and having those strategy meetings...


Krome wrote:
heck White Wolf... I am hoping Paizo is able to buy the D&D line from Hasbro!

Ehh... Wizards has quite a bit of momentum right now. There is a good bit of angst out there but there are also tons of people buying. 4e has the advantage of being 'new'. I think 4th edition will be profitable and plenty of people will keep putting money into the system to buy up all the supplements which will no doubt be cranking forth from WotC on a regular basis. Don't look for the D&D brand to be for sale anytime soon.

The big wildcard is whether Wizards can maintain the quality of product from the first release throughout the 4th edition. How soon will it become corrupted and bloated the way they let 3.5 become? Given their history of focusing on quantity of output rather than quality... I give it 2 years. Then maybe market share will start to dwindle.


Pathfinder will survive. The question is how well it will prosper.

Pathfinder will survive because 1) it is well positioned to leverage 3x, the OGL and the 3x gamer who, for one reason or another, is not jumping aboard the 4e bandwagon and 2) it is creating an interesting world to wrap around the rules that will spin off products and keep people engaged. Games have managed 2 before but 1 is an entirely new phenomenon. Paizo has wisely recognized this and has moved adroitly to capitalize upon the opportunity.

How well Pathfinder will prosper is an open question. Certainly, Paizo is doing everything it can to maximize the upside - open playtest, organized play etc. There are, however, factors outside of Paizo's control, the largest of which is how Wotc manuvers within the market. 4e's launch is suboptimal on several fronts and Wotc may or may not be willing/able to manuver in choppy seas they believed would be far calmer. It is my opinion that Wotc will be forced to play catchup for the entire product cycle of 4e. However, they may choose not to play at all.

I believe there is a reasonable chance that, if 4e remains suboptimal, Wotc may look to cut its losses, either bringing 5e to market more quickly (say 2013) or by essentially giving up the roleplaying business of D&D (perhaps licensing this end of the business) and focusing on expansion of the D&D brand. In my estimation, the roleplaying end of the D&D brand has fewer revenue opportunities than brand expansion. If Hasbro is paying attention, I think they will see the same thing. If Hasbro is not paying much attention, then I think it will be 5e in 2013. Either way, if Paizo is paying attention, Pathfinder can prosper very well.

I see Pathfinder faceplanting only if 4e more than recovers after stumbling out of the gate. For Pathfinder to fail to prosper, 4e must not only recover but then succeed over and above. I don't see such a scenario as likely and I think Paizo will skillfully guide Pathfinder to sustained prosperity at least through 4e's product life - Round 1. 5e in 2013 (most likely scenario, IMO) will be Round 2.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Bleach wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
Bleach wrote:
How was the OGL good for WOTC when it produced things like True20 and Conan?

Well, I can lay out an alternate future where it *could* have been good for WotC, but they chose not to go that way.

One of Ryan Dancey's hopes for the OGL was that third parties would improve upon SRD mechanics and create new content that would then be incorporated by other SRD publishers, including Wizards. So if, instead of rewriting 4E from the ground up, WotC had chosen to derive their new edition from OGL materials, they could have taken some of the best OGL content from those games to make their game better.

Ah, So you're belief is that 4E doesn't incorporate any OGL material even though the Encounter system is basically a revision of the Bo9S and that was influenced by Iron Heroes?

I know little about such things, but I do know that the OGL does not provide for transfer of copyrights, so if Wizards were using any copyrighted OGL content for which they were not the copyright holder, they'd have to at least provide proper attribution. (And I have doubts that they could even legally use another company's materials published under the OGL in a non-OGL product such as 4th Edition... but I'm totally comfortable leaving that question to other people.)

Sovereign Court

RPG market Punditry. And I thought I had too much free time. :-)

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

Vic Wertz wrote:


I know little about such things, but I do know that the OGL does not provide for transfer of copyrights, so if Wizards were using any copyrighted OGL content for which they were not the copyright holder, they'd have to at least provide proper attribution. (And I have doubts that they could even legally use another company's materials published under the OGL in a non-OGL product such as 4th Edition... but I'm totally comfortable leaving that question to other people.)

See Cease and Desist Order, Fantasy Grounds ;-)

Liberty's Edge

Lisa Stevens wrote:
So I went to Lucasfilm and made my pitch to them. They finally decided to cosponsor a big survey of Star Wars customers along with Hasbro. What they found out shocked the heck out of them! Like they thought, about 70% of their customers were kids, but those kids only spent about $45 per year on Star Wars. The collectors, on the other hand, spent closer to $300 per year. So when you looked at their total volume of dollars coming into their coffers, the collectors made up for 75% of it! Ever since, they have done a lot more product aimed at the collectors and it has been a good time to collect Star Wars.

Stories like this blow my mind. Hasbro is a corporation worth millions, yeah? And the guys who run it are MBAs and whatnot, with like educations right?

So how come I, an art-school dropout, know about the pareto principle (80% of sales come from 20% of your customers), and the guys running Hasbro don't? I mean I don't need a study to tell me that most of any product or service or stores sales will come from a small fraction of its customers. And it doesn't take more than a few brain cells to figure out that if your audience consist of young kids bugging their parents for toys, and adults (you know, people with jobs) who have made collecting your toys their freaking hobby are probably driving your sales. I mean duh.

Like I can pretty much bet you that 80% of paizo's sales come from the one in five members of these forums with various "Subscriber" tags in their headlines.

And yeah, if I've gleaned anything from 20 years of gaming, it's that the DM spends about five times what players spend, if not more. DMs are definitely the pareto consumers of the gaming world.

Jon Brazer Enterprises

Gailbraithe wrote:
Like I can pretty much bet you that 80% of paizo's sales come from the one in five members of these forums with various "Subscriber" tags in their headlines.

I'd actually suspect the number is higher then 20% of the customers (maybe 25-30%) here at Paizo given the availability of the makers, the approachability of every staff member and contributor, and the cult-like following they inspire.

(Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare my knees for bowing before I lick some pages in Pathfinder #10.)

Grand Lodge

DMcCoy1693 wrote:

(Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare my knees for bowing before I lick some pages in Pathfinder #10.)

What is it with Kobolds and licking? You things are whacked!

Jon Brazer Enterprises

Krome wrote:
What is it with Kobolds and licking?

Osmosis, the best way to absorb information!

The Exchange

Lisa Stevens wrote:
I think the same discrepancy exists between DMs and players. Except I bet the dollar difference is even higher! But I'm sure WotC knows this because we used to talk about it all the time while I worked there. It was great to have a product that appealed to players and DMs, because you would sell a heck of a lot more of those, but the bottom line is that DMs make up a disproportionate part of your sales.

Reading this (and the comments before) made Me look at My collection of 3.5 material a bit differently, and I begin to see why WotC is doing what they are with the GSL, but also why I'm not supporting 4th edition. I'm the DM of My group, which plays every Monday right in the middle of the local coffee shop (yes, we do it in public).

~I subscribed to Dragon magazine. Wizards took that away in a form that I can/will use, so now, I've subscribed to Kobold Quarterly.

~I've copies of the PHB and DMG, and the Rules Compendium.

~The books other than those that get the most use in My pre-work and the game table:
The Book of the Righteous, Green Ronin Publishing
The Pirates Guide to Freeport, Green Ronin
The d20 Freeport Companion, Green Ronin
The Quintessential Halfling, Mongoose Publishing
The Quintessential Chaos Mage, Mongoose
The Book of Erotic Fantasy, Valar
plus any random issue of Dragon or KQ that someone found something interesting in

~The only other WotC books I have are the Magic Item Compendium, and Frostburn.

The choice to use these non-WotC products has nothing to do with an anti-corporate streak, but because these other groups of writers were making the kind of material I wanted to use in our game, in the world I've created.

Reading the 4th edition rules, I don't like them. It's not the style of game I like to run. There's a few good things in there, as there are in Pathfinder, and there's a GOOD chance I'll buy the core Pathfinder book(s) when they come available.

Wizards shot themselves in the foot, three times. First, they opened up the game rule system to other publishers, and created a brand loyalty in Me to Paizo, for their excellent publishing and Gamemastery products, and in Green Ronin, for their incredibly flexible and complete drop-in additions to My game (Freeport, and the pantheon from book of the righteous). But after this, they recoiled and tried to close out some of these other publishers, while also having created a game I don't like, but due to shot one, I've now seen more options of what's available in the game world, that I wouldn't have known of before, so I have a place to go.

Thanks Paizo, for what you do, and for supporting people like Wolfgang Baur to fill the gaps.

~Donald

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