Originally I was going to post this in the AP #29 product thread, but that's not really the place for it.
Here's a link to the original AP #29 thread
I also love how they snuck in a new sorceror bloodline... in the middle of the adventure!
Yup! You can actually expect to see things like this popping up now and then in adventures as we come up with new ideas to make NPCs more unusual or unique. The side benefit is, of course, that it gives GMs some cool things to give their players, either in that adventure or an entirely different campaign.
I really really like having crunchy bits in the Adventure Paths and stuff ... but it does make really noticeable the lack of a global list of what's where as more and more sourcebooks and regional books and adventure paths and modules appear.
I'm talking about something like the WoTC "consolidated lists" ... I *still* use those ALL the time.
Any plans to put up some Paizo consolidated lists?
Ideally they'd contain:
* Name (e.g. Chainbreaker or Seugathi)
* Source (e.g. Pathfinder Companion: Andoran, Spirit of Liberty or Pathfinder Chronicles: Into the Darklands)
* Status (e.g. OGC, closed)
* System (e.g. 3.5e or PFRPG)
Already I see a lot of "hey, where's XYZ" on the boards ... it would be awesome to get this off the ground early so that it's just maintenance rather than some humongous task that will never actually get started ...
On the other hand, if there IS one out there and I just don't know about it ... that's both awesome and bad, because I'd hope there'd be a reference to it somewhere on the Paizo site. All I could find was an old post from last April that pointed at a bunch of sites, none of which really has a consolidated list (except the excellent list of monsters on the Pathfinder wiki.
There was also an opinion stated that Paizo wanted the fans to step up to the plate and take care of it so that they could focus on content. Any comment on that?
Thanks in advance :)
Originally I was going to post this in the AP #29 product thread, but that's not really the place for it.
Here's a link to the original AP #29 thread
I also love how they snuck in a new sorceror bloodline... in the middle of the adventure!Yup! You can actually expect to see things like this popping up now and then in adventures as we come up with new ideas to make NPCs more unusual or unique. The side benefit is, of course, that it gives GMs some cool things to give their players, either in that adventure or an entirely different campaign.I really really like having crunchy bits in the Adventure Paths and stuff ... but it does make really noticeable the lack of a global list of what's where as more and more sourcebooks and regional books and adventure paths and modules appear.
I'm talking about something like the WoTC "consolidated lists" ... I *still* use those ALL the time.
Any plans to put up some Paizo consolidated lists?
Ideally they'd contain:
* Name (e.g. Chainbreaker or Seugathi)
* Source (e.g. Pathfinder Companion: Andoran, Spirit of Liberty or Pathfinder Chronicles: Into the Darklands)
* Status (e.g. OGC, closed)
* System (e.g. 3.5e or PFRPG)
Already I see a lot of "hey, where's XYZ" on the boards ... it would be awesome to get this off the ground early so that it's just maintenance rather than some humongous task that will never actually get started ...
On the other hand, if there IS one out there and I just don't know about it ... that's both awesome and bad, because I'd hope there'd be a reference to it somewhere on the Paizo site. All I could find was an old post from last April that pointed at a bunch of sites, none of which really has a consolidated list (except the excellent...
+1
I agree!
I have a list of all the OGC bloodlines, class abilities, domains, feats, and traits of which I am aware in my Excel-based character sheet (see my profile for a link). I don't have magic items, spells, or monsters in it (yet...). Anyone working on a consolidated list project is welcome to use it as a reference.
So ... is it me or does it seem like nobody in an official capacity wishes to comment on this? :(
Shouldn't all this already be listed in the Pathfinder srd or prd, assuming it is being kept up to date?
And this is the sort of news I was hoping not to hear. I am not going to go buy 30 AP's so I can get one piece of info that should be in a core book from each one.
:(
VERY VERY unhappy customer. Things like new bloodlines and such should be part of the core books, not spread out piecemeal in 20 or 30 adventure supplements. :(
Creative Director
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So ... is it me or does it seem like nobody in an official capacity wishes to comment on this? :(
Turns out, we DO have other job responsibilities other than posting on the boards. AKA: We can't answer every post here within the minute, or even the DAY it shows up on the boards.
Anyway!
We WILL continue to introduce new elements into our products, be they new monsters, new spells, new magic items, new feats, new bloodlines, new rage powers, new weapons, new classes, new prestige classes, and anything/everything else in our Adventure Paths, modules, Chronicles, and Companion lines. For the adventures, these new elements will be included to make NPCs more unique or unusual, or to give players of those adventures new elements. And to be honest, giving a potential buyer a reason to pick up an adventure he might not run but might want the crunch out of is one of many ways we strive to make our products as appealing and desirable as possible.
Limiting new crunch to ONLY the rulebooks is not good. It deprives us of making adventures and sourcebooks in they way we've been making them from the start. It deprives us from really ANY opportunity to create Golarion-specific rules content, which is even worse.
Paizo's not a gaming charity, nor is it a sprawling corporation with infinite resources. We simply don't have the resources (or frankly, the desire) to cull out EVERY bit of open content we create in our products and add them to the Pathfinder SRD or PRD.
Some of the content WILL make its way into rulebooks in time. That's the way this type of thing has functioned since the start of D&D, in fact, with popular new monsters and spells and classes and the like that were introduced in modules or Dragon Magazine or whatever ending up in hardcover books.
I'm sorry if us using our rules to build our world in ways that we think make Golarion a more unique and interesting location has made some people unhappy, but I'm pretty sure that amount pales in comparasion to the customers who are quite pleased and happy to see new rules content appear outside of the Hardcover rulebook line.
NOW! As for a public list of all our rules content on a searchable index type thing... we actually have something just like that here at Paizo. It's not fit for the public, and is basically just a giant excel spreadsheet, but once we have the time and resources, putting this information up online is a VERY good idea. And since almost ALL of the rules content we produce is open content, there's really nothing stopping anyone else from putting such an index up online as well, as long as they comply with the Community Use license or whatever.
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Creative Director
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And this is the sort of news I was hoping not to hear. I am not going to go buy 30 AP's so I can get one piece of info that should be in a core book from each one.
:(
VERY VERY unhappy customer. Things like new bloodlines and such should be part of the core books, not spread out piecemeal in 20 or 30 adventure supplements. :(
And again... we've been doing this since the start. Did us putting new spells or new feats or new monsters or new prestige classes in Adventure Paths or modules make you VERY VERY unhappy? Or is this something new, isolated to the idea of putting a new sorcerer bloodline into an adventure?
Because, honestly, part of the reason we DID create or expand upon so many easily expandable character subsystems like bloodlines, domains, wizard schools, rogue talents, rage abilities, bardic performances, animal companions, fighting styles, and the like was precisely BECAUSE that would let us expand the rules in ways like we did in Pathfinder #29 and its new bloodline (which really REALLY fits in well with that particular NPC's storyline).
Frankly, I'm a bit stunned and shocked to see this complaint pop up in the first place. If it's a feeling that a lot of people share, we'll ABSOLUTELY revise how we present new rules content, but up until now I've never heard the complaint that "rules should not appear in books that aren't dedicated rulebooks." Quite the opposite.
Paizo's not a gaming charity, nor is it a sprawling corporation with infinite resources. We simply don't have the resources (or frankly, the desire) to cull out EVERY bit of open content we create in our products and add them to the Pathfinder SRD or PRD.
James,
I can understand you guys not having the time or spare energy to be putting every bit onto the prd section here at paizo.com, but I thought places like the pfsrd and Pathfinder wiki sites were independently maintained and it was not Paizo that updated them. Are they not allowed to include info on those sites unless it appears in a core rulebook or can they take all the new rules from the various Paizo sources and post them there?
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Creative Director
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James,I can understand you guys not having the time or spare energy to be putting every bit onto the prd section here at paizo.com, but I thought places like the pfsrd and Pathfinder wiki sites were independently maintained and it was not Paizo that updated them. Are they not allowed to include info on those sites unless it appears in a core rulebook or can they take all the new rules from the various Paizo sources and post them there?
Those sites are indeed independently maintained (although we DO maintain a version of the Pathfinder SRD at paizo.com). There's nothing preventing anyone from taking the open content of any of our books and doing what they want with that content... again, as long as they comply with the rules of the license and all that.
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stuff about stuff
I subscribe to the AP specifically because of the stuff I find in there, both the adventure, the worldbuilding stuff, and the new rules (like Haunts, I'm still not over how awesome that idea is).
As for consolidated lists, yeah it'd be nice, but it's going to take a fan effort to make it happen.
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F
Paizo's not a gaming charity, nor is it a sprawling corporation with infinite resources. We simply don't have the resources (or frankly, the desire) to cull out EVERY bit of open content we create in our products and add them to the Pathfinder SRD or PRD.
James,
I can understand you guys not having the time or spare energy to be putting every bit onto the prd section here at paizo.com, but I thought places like the pfsrd and Pathfinder wiki sites were independently maintained and it was not Paizo that updated them. Are they not allowed to include info on those sites unless it appears in a core rulebook or can they take all the new rules from the various Paizo sources and post them there?
I can 't speak for pfsrd, but pathfinder wiki hasa strict no crunch policy, things like new traits and bloodlines may get mentioned, but only in the fluff of an articl, no stats
Keep on doing what you're doing, James.
I think there's a certain sentiment of 'people want their candy', but I think if new options for the core classes, like new bloodlines, are released with the APG, that by itself will do a lot to alleviate this issue. I don't think re-releasing every AP-specific crunch item in a setting-neutral format is at all necessary, though.
There ARE alot of great crunch mechanics that are released in APs (Haunts, for one), so I think 'combing thru' your production at some point and picking the really choice material that would enhance the game, ideally that isn't so specifically tied to the specific context of the AP it was published in, would be great. Actually, including (and expanding upon) Haunts could be a cool addition to Bestiary 2...
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Creative Director
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There ARE alot of great crunch mechanics that are released in APs (Haunts, for one), so I think 'combing thru' your production at some point and picking the really choice material that would enhance the game, ideally that isn't so specifically tied to the specific context of the AP it was published in, would be great. Actually, including (and expanding upon) Haunts could be a cool addition to Bestiary 2...
Haunts are a perfect example of a new mechanic that was introduced in an adventure and will be graduating to hardcover status (in the Gamemastery Guide, though... they aren't monsters and thus don't belong in a Bestairy).
Great to hear. I'm not so familiar with what Paizo's doing with the GMG (I had gotten the impression it was less crunch and more advice), but if Haunts are going into it, I look forward to seeing how you develop them further.
For the APG, I know more Rage Powers are in the cards, but I'm also hoping we see Class Variants, like Whirling Frenzy Barbarian, Cloistered Cleric, Skillful Fighter (ala Campaign Setting), Urban Ranger w/ distinct Skills & Spells... and Bloodlines of course. I'm actually hoping for some more PrC's akin to Dragon Disciple but for other Bloodlines, but I don't know if you have room for that...?
Frankly, I'm a bit stunned and shocked to see this complaint pop up in the first place. If it's a feeling that a lot of people share, we'll ABSOLUTELY revise how we present new rules content, but up until now I've never heard the complaint that "rules should not appear in books that aren't dedicated rulebooks." Quite the opposite.
I'm actually not surprised. As you can see I'm a happy customer. There are a lot of new customers who are used to buying hardcover splatbooks from wotc. I know paizo is a smaller company, but there is certainly a demand for larger consolidated rulebooks.
I do agree that having a 'master list' would be useful,
giving the name of whatever it is, the product and page# it's in,
and perhaps a 'synopsis' like how Feats are summarized in the Table of Feats.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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I can understand you guys not having the time or spare energy to be putting every bit onto the prd section here at paizo.com, but I thought places like the pfsrd and Pathfinder wiki sites were independently maintained and it was not Paizo that updated them. Are they not allowed to include info on those sites unless it appears in a core rulebook or can they take all the new rules from the various Paizo sources and post them there?
As Cpt_kirstov has already mentioned, PathfinderWiki has a pretty narrow scope (which is setting canon—itself a really broad definition). But for a number of reasons, including not making Paizo's OGL, setting-specific content obsolete by combining the OGL and Community Use Policy, we don't really want to serve as a rules repository or index. the d20PFSRD or Pathfinder Database, however, are excellent sites for this sort of thing. It's likely that, when someone writes an article about the NPC who spawned this new bloodline, that they will mention that s/he gets arcane power from such a source, but compiling the rules information itself is really more than we want, or have the capacity to do without completely changing what the wiki is and where we see the project going.
Frankly, I'm a bit stunned and shocked to see this complaint pop up in the first place.
Really? I'm surprised that you're surprised. I got over being surprised at complaints about a week after I started visiting the boards. Every PF product could come with a coupon for a year's extension of the purchaser's life and someone would complain about it.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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Really? I'm surprised that you're surprised. I got over being surprised at complaints about a week after I started visiting the boards. Every PF product could come with a coupon for a year's extension of the purchaser's life and someone would complain about it.
Frankly, I'm a bit stunned and shocked to see this complaint pop up in the first place.
I want to buy RPG products from mortals, not would-be gods throwing around the powers of life and death like the universe is their playground. Please NEVER offer such a coupon or you will lose me as a customer.
[Edit:]Actually, to further my previous post, and so this one isn't completely off-topic snark, PathfinderWiki could reasonably support indexes of magic items and spells, as long as the articles they indexed existed. Since all the monsters on the index exist in the setting, we have articles on them, but a new spell, prestige class, or magic item might never actually show up in Golarion or have flavor that was specific to the setting (instead of just baseline for the game in general). That's the reason we don't have an article on fireball or cure light wounds—they function the same in Golarion as they do in the baseline game. The new spells in Gods & Magic, however, have articles and could thus be indexed. What we don't want are indexes that just list things instead of serving a purpose within the wiki. Thus, an index of feats without articles on each feat (which is not what we do) would not fit. But if someone compiles a list of new magic items or spells and wants to add that to the wiki, anyone can edit or create articles *hint hint*.
Told ya. :)
NOW! As for a public list of all our rules content on a searchable index type thing... we actually have something just like that here at Paizo. It's not fit for the public, and is basically just a giant excel spreadsheet, but once we have the time and resources, putting this information up online is a VERY good idea. And since almost ALL of the rules content we produce is open content, there's really nothing stopping anyone else from putting such an index up online as well, as long as they comply with the Community Use license or whatever.
James - Unless there is an IP or privacy reason you couldn't share that spreadsheet, I could dump that into a Google Spreadsheet, clean it up, and present it on d20pfsrd.com in about 5 minutes.
In short, I'd love to host it if you care to share :)
Shouldn't all this already be listed in the Pathfinder srd or prd, assuming it is being kept up to date?
We've only got about 1/100th of the workload of Paizo and its already more than the 96 collaborators on the site can really handle. Want to help? :)
...but I thought places like the pfsrd and Pathfinder wiki sites were independently maintained and it was not Paizo that updated them. Are they not allowed to include info on those sites unless it appears in a core rulebook or can they take all the new rules from the various Paizo sources and post them there?
The reasons this list is not currently on d20pfsrd.com are...
1) I never thought of it
2) even if I did I am already spending many hours per day/week on the site.. for free, just getting basic stuff working
We can take content from virtually any Paizo book since Paizo is good enough to make virtually everything they make open content.
Now, instead of people complaining that something doesn't exist why not do something about it? We at d20pfsrd.com are basically begging for help every day here and on enworld (and even on Twitter) yet get very few responses. For the most part, most people are happy to receive but somehow rarely have time to actually help contribute. We have over 90 people who have volunteered to help but in actuality the number of people who are online consistently making fixes and helping add new content is under 10.
Anytime someone contacts me complaining that something is not on the site my first response is "well good thing you're volunteering then!" Thankfully usually people take that in the good spirit it is intended then they sign up and start actually doing what they were asking for (Nate I'm lookin at you lol).
With all of that said, anyone who wants to take on this task is welcome to. I'd love to have this on the site, I just need someone to step up and take ownership of it. If James were to hook me up with that spreadsheet we'd even have a headstart.
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Creative Director
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James - Unless there is an IP or privacy reason you couldn't share that spreadsheet, I could dump that into a Google Spreadsheet, clean it up, and present it on d20pfsrd.com in about 5 minutes.
In short, I'd love to host it if you care to share :)
If we share it, it needs to be on Paizo.com. And if it's on Paizo.com, it needs to interface with our store and the rest of the website nicely, and probably needs to be converted out of excel format and into something else. It hasn't been fully edited either.
It's not something we can share, in other words.
If we share it, it needs to be on Paizo.com.
Oh well I guess we'll just have to start from scratch then. I'm sure there's some legalese behind that reason. Not sure why that would be, but the intricacies of legalese are beyond me.
Honestly, I'm not surprised you haven't gotten a complaint about this before...
Because before you a 3PP. 3PP's have no choice but to piecemeal their creations out amongst all their books, they don't have core books.
Let me put it another way...
Let's imagine you are writing a mystery trilogy, and you put the beginning middle and end of the mystery in your trilogy, the first book the beginning, the second the middle, and the third the ending...
Now, that all seems very reasonable. But, let's say you leave out every 15th page and instead put those pages, one each, in 100 other books published by different authors.
How many people are going to want to buy your trilogy then? That's what this feels like, if I want all the core non-setting rules, I have to buy 30 or 40 books I don't want to get them all, especially since you have stated that you will not put the in the PRD.
I hate when game companies put rules into 'adventures' instead of core books. I don't buy them, I don't want them, and it feels like I'm being told 'Oh, if you want all the rules, you have to buy a dozen $20 books for 2 pages each you'll use'.
I complained about Wizards doing stuff like this, I complained about White Wolf doing stuff like this, if anyone thinks I'm not going to complain about Paizo doing this, they're nuts.
I prefer my mystery book to have all it's pages, not have to go buy 14 cook books, 12 autobiographies, and 27 romance novels and rip a page out of each one to get my complete book.
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Let me put it another way...
Let's imagine you are writing a mystery trilogy, and you put the beginning middle and end of the mystery in your trilogy, the first book the beginning, the second the middle, and the third the ending...
Now, that all seems very reasonable. But, let's say you leave out every 15th page and instead put those pages, one each, in 100 other books published by different authors.
A very interesting comparison, because this is exactly what many mystery writers (almost all writers in fact) do. Not to the degree you mention, but if you look at the fantasy anthologies of, short stories, 90% of the stories included there are featuring the one of the author's main characters.
Is this a marketing ploy, to get fans of the other authors to buy their books? Is this what the editor of said anthology requested, as these are the characters the author is known for? I don't know, but if you want to know everything there is to know about Harry Dresden, you have to buy at least 3(4?) anthologies now. If you want all of the literature of the Terry Goodkind sword of truth books, you had to buy at least one (it later came out as a novelette). I think the dark tower books by Steven King even had a short story found only in an anthology for a time (reprinted in science fiction and fantasy magazine I think)
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Creative Director
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I hate when game companies put rules into 'adventures' instead of core books. I don't buy them, I don't want them, and it feels like I'm being told 'Oh, if you want all the rules, you have to buy a dozen $20 books for 2 pages each you'll use'.
I complained about Wizards doing stuff like this, I complained about White Wolf doing stuff like this, if anyone thinks I'm not going to complain about Paizo doing this, they're nuts.
I prefer my mystery book to have all it's pages, not have to go buy 14 cook books, 12 autobiographies, and 27 romance novels and rip a page out of each one to get my complete book.
Well... I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's kind of the way the industry works. And I think your analogy is flawed. We ALWAYS include everything you need in an adventure when we use non-core crunch in a book. We don't "rip out every 15th page."
A better analogy would be to think of the core rules as being a comic book, like "Batman." Every core rulebook in the line will provide Batman content. But guess what! There are other comics out there that ALSO contain Batman content, and some of those comics will take Batman to places he'll never see in the core line. That doesn't diminish Batman, I think; it strengthens him by providing more Batman content than the publisher would be able to put into one simple line of comics.
The mention of King's Dark Tower is a great example as well. It's a self-contained story, but if you read ALL of his work, you get MORE than just that story. And that's cool, I think.
In any case, I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for more complaints along these lines, but I have my doubts that those complaints will register above those who DO want rules content in their non-core rules line.
Simple truth: If you want all the rules we publish, you WILL have to buy pretty much every game book we publish. That's the way it is. (Although even then, not really, since 99.9994% of the rules we publish are open content...)
I'll be happy if, say 70 to 80 percent makes it into a book in some form.
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I have to say I really enjoy the mix of enjoyable adventure 'fluff' and rules crunch that Paizo has put into their APs and many of their Companion/ Chronicles products. If these elements were removed it would definitely make those products less desirable for be to purchase.
I understand the desire for crunch only rulebooks but I think folks are misunderstanding what is going on. Paizo makes a product where there is a great synergy between the mechanical parts and the game world. The rules bits in these products are often things that don't make a lot of sense stand alone.
I would love to see many of these crunchy rules bits later in a compendium product but unless that product is tied to Golarian it is likely not going to make much sense. Some of the more setting neutral spells/ feats/ class features would work well in the Advanced Players Guide or future rules books and I would love to see that also.
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Not speaking for Paizo, but I get the feeling that everyone is sort of out of the loop on one basic concept that Paizo was before Pathfinder Core Rules appeared. They made something called adventures. They were fairly strong at that when they lost both Dragon and Dungeon Magazine. If you look back at their reasons for providing everyone Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, it was so they could keep making adventures the way they wanted to tell them.
Get it right, first and foremost. Paizo makes adventures. And they are damn good ones. They encourage the community to make adventures too in Pathfinder Society.
They also understand that making or adopting lousy rules will lead to lousy adventures and trouble riddled design. So they made the rules robust and exciting, so they could continue telling these excellent stories.
I see James Jacobs here trying to appeal to you guys, but really this isn't about the rules. It is about their adventures. You rules warts got it backwards. The reason why these rules appear in their adventures and sourcebooks first is that they truly augment those stories at exactly the moment they need to. And the nice thing about that is you get a pretty solid idea when to use them, because they are usually well laid out, and even used in the APs so you can get a good feel for them.
And this is done in the name of making great adventures. Not great rules or great crunch, captain! I think if you want rules and ideas, you missed out on that for the last 9 years at Wizards of the Coast. There are more rules there than anyone can use from that 3.x era of the game.
Paizo is an adventure company. They are applying a decade of crunch and making hybrid adventures of the like no one has ever seen before. If you come to Paizo liking their rules, than you should take an even closer look at their adventures. These guys aren't horsebreeders that sell their horses to millionaire speculators. They race their horses. And they win.
And ya, it would be nice to see how Cheliax Crunch and Book of the Damned Crunch and certain AP Crunch sit side by side.
What are half of you talking about?
OP is asking for a list of locations of Pathfinder content. He's not talking about the ACTUAL content, he just wants a consolidated list of where it is so he can find it.
I agree with OP, the Paizo store is a honorific jumbled mess that's hard to find anything on. A list would be fantastic.
What are half of you talking about?
OP is asking for a list of locations of Pathfinder content. He's not talking about the ACTUAL content, he just wants a consolidated list of where it is so he can find it.
I agree with OP, the Paizo store is a honorific jumbled mess that's hard to find anything on. A list would be fantastic.
James - Unless there is an IP or privacy reason you couldn't share that spreadsheet, I could dump that into a Google Spreadsheet, clean it up, and present it on d20pfsrd.com in about 5 minutes.
In short, I'd love to host it if you care to share :)
If we share it, it needs to be on Paizo.com. And if it's on Paizo.com, it needs to interface with our store and the rest of the website nicely, and probably needs to be converted out of excel format and into something else. It hasn't been fully edited either.
It's not something we can share, in other words.
The kicker is that Jason said they do have exactly what I'm looking for, and they won't give it to us. :(
Someone even offered to convert it to a web page for them and they said "no."
Again, I'd be happy to have this list on d20pfsrd.com but for whatever reasons, Paizo can't share what they have (probably a legal thing). With that said there is nothing stopping us fans from compiling such a list and maintaining it ourselves. If anyone wants to step up on this you probably know where to find me. If not, its jreyst@gmail.com.
Using PF IP is not an issue with CUP. We already have a ton of Golarion specific content on d20pfsrd.com (as Yoda8myhead has also done on the wiki), specifically in the Spells section but also including many monsters from the pre-PFRPG adventure paths. Using Paizo names and IP is not an issue so long as you do not charge others for access to the content (and you are otherwise in compliance with the other aspects of the policy).
Further, this list would not even be THE CONTENT so much as a list of where the content was. I highly doubt, in even the most paranoid world, that Paizo (or even WoTC) would object to such a list. This list would, in fact, be sort of a menu/pointer to help people buy additional products.
Sort of like "if you want rule X, buy book Y."
Really? I'm surprised that you're surprised. I got over being surprised at complaints about a week after I started visiting the boards. Every PF product could come with a coupon for a year's extension of the purchaser's life and someone would complain about it.
Frankly, I'm a bit stunned and shocked to see this complaint pop up in the first place.
How right you are. Amazing isn't it?
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James are the rules in the AP's open content? For example is the bloodline in the #29 AP open? If it is then there is really no reason for complaint as it can be added to SRDs everywhere.
If its not then there may be a small amount of reason to com plain for some. I don't particularly care as I buy all of the APs/chronicles/companions anyway. And I am not really into the "gotta catch em' all" philosophy of character options. If an option I need is not present, I make it myself.
I like the idea of a list, but I really wish you would not take the unique rules out of the APs and chronicles. Its kind of cool to use abilities on the group and them not have nay idea what they are and then use that as a starting point to introduce and try out the rules in your game.
In short don't change anything. Some clarification would always be cool but I like it the way it is personally.
love,
malkav
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I have compiled lists like that before, for my own use. Haven't gotten very far indexing Pathfinder stuff yet, but if I get some time, I'll see what I can do on d20pfsrd.com.
(I had a massive database of 3.0/3.5 stuff, everything I owned up to that point. Then lost it in a hard drive crash in early 2007. Still trying to recover mentally from that...)
I think the majority of the people (including me) are fine with things as they are ... I *like* having crunch in my books.
In fact, if the non-core material didn't have crunch, I wouldn't buy it. As interesting as the reading is, I'm not running a Golarion campaign so the fluff is at best 25% useful for me.
Again, I'd be happy to have this list on d20pfsrd.com but for whatever reasons, Paizo can't share what they have (probably a legal thing). With that said there is nothing stopping us fans from compiling such a list and maintaining it ourselves. If anyone wants to step up on this you probably know where to find me. If not, its jreyst@gmail.com.
Okay jreyst, I'll take you up on that; it can be an ongoing project of sorts, I imagine - put all crunch up in WoTC-style consolidated lists, with source listed. I subscribe to everything except the cards and Planet Stories, so I've got all the PDFs on hand, for the more recent stuff at least. Someone else will have to fill in for the older Chronicles and Companion stuff that I don't have.
This list will be invaluable, IMO - I use the WoTC one all the time, and I'm sure I'll use this one even more.
Just, please, no IFRAMEs :)
ok, gbonehead I don't think you are currently a collaborator on the site. Send me a Google ID and I'll add you in. Arazyr is already a collaborator and has indicated he might be able to help with this. As soon as I have you added in gbonehead you can feel free to work directly with Arazyr (either via email or via the d20pfsrd.com messageboards) to build the list. I'm always pleased when someone actually steps up to volunteer and doesn't just expect others to do it. Thanks you two!
So with that said, as soon as I get a Google ID gbonehead you're in.
Edit: Gbonehead/Arazyr: You could make this a Google Spreadsheet and then embed it in the site using a Google Spreadsheet Gadget. You'll see what I mean as soon as you are in the system (Arazyr you may already know what I am talking about). It's exceptionally easy so long as you are relatively experienced working with Google Docs/Spreadsheets etc.
Well... I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's kind of the way the industry works. And I think your analogy is flawed. We ALWAYS include everything you need in an adventure when we use non-core crunch in a book. We don't "rip out every 15th page."
You're misunderstanding the analogy. The mystery trilogy is the core books. The bits and pieces ripped out of core are the crunch being spread out amongst all the adventure paths. I'm being asked to buy 20 other books at $10 to $20 a pop for a single 'page' of mystery novel (a page of crunch for my core).
A better analogy would be to think of the core rules as being a comic book, like "Batman." Every core rulebook in the line will provide Batman content. But guess what! There are other comics out there that ALSO contain Batman content, and some of those comics will take Batman to places he'll never see in the core line. That doesn't diminish Batman, I think; it strengthens him by providing more Batman content than the publisher would be able to put into one simple line of comics.The mention of King's Dark Tower is a great example as well. It's a self-contained story, but if you read ALL of his work, you get MORE than just that story. And that's cool, I think.
In any case, I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for more complaints along these lines, but I have my doubts that those complaints will register above those who DO want rules content in their non-core rules line.
Simple truth: If you want all the rules we publish, you WILL have to buy pretty much every game book we publish. That's the way it is. (Although even then, not really, since 99.9994% of the rules we publish are open content...)
Again, that's my complaint. I understand why you are doing it, you need to make money. It just doesn't sit well with me to waste my money like that. And no offense, it is a waste of my money. Not because you're putting out a bad product, not because it's not a quality book, but because I get 0 (zero) use from anything other than the 1 page of crunch. Going back to my analogy, it's like paying for a romance novel to get the 1 page of my mystery. The entire romance novel is a waste of money to me, I only get any use from the one page.
I would have no issue with Paizo spreading the crunch around if they then took all the crunch they put out in a year and compiled it into a PDF and put that up for sale. Call it the Paizo Annual Supplement. Put in all the bloodlines, spells, templates, etc. It's basically just taking the PDF pages from your AP's and other locations and putting them together. That's not a huge amount of work, an intern could do it in a week. And then, you get to sell that crunch for $10 to all us non AP people. To me that's a win-win situation. But I have never seen a company do it. And the reasoning isn't 'we don't have time', it's 'if we do that we don't get them to pay for the APs'.
Again, I know it's how the business works. Doesn't mean I have to like it. And it's not about Paizo specifically, as I said, I complain about every company that does it.
You're misunderstanding the analogy. The mystery trilogy is the core books. The bits and pieces ripped out of core are the crunch being spread out amongst all the adventure paths. I'm being asked to buy 20 other books at $10 to $20 a pop for a single 'page' of mystery novel (a page of crunch for my core).
No, you are not. The Core Rulebooks are a complete "trilogy" all to themselves. There are no essential pieces missing that you have to buy an entire adventure just to find -- that's what ripping pages out of a mystery novel would be equivalent to. You can play Pathfinder just fine with only the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary. You CANNOT read a mystery trilogy and make any sense of it with pages torn out throughout the series. Your analogy is horrible and does not apply.
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While I understand the arguments being made here, I have to disagree. As someone who subscribes to every Pathfinder line, I would be sort of miffed to discover that a large portion of the content I'd already paid for was being sold to me again in another book. Paizo's flagship product is their Adventure Path, so angering people who support that line is probably not in their best interest. I imagine their position on this issue might change if another line becomes their bread and butter.
Additionally, I don't really understand why you need all the crunch. If you want it, it's available for you to purchase. If that's too high a cost for you to get another bloodline or more monsters or some new spells and magic items, then just play with the Core Rulebook and Bestiary. Any crunch on top of that is gravy.
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Again, that's my complaint. I understand why you are doing it, you need to make money. It just doesn't sit well with me to waste my money like that. And no offense, it is a waste of my money. Not because you're putting out a bad product, not because it's not a quality book, but because I...
I really have to disagree with this. The assumption you're taking is that the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Subscription gives you every single rule that Paizo makes; that assumption is false and always has been. There are and always have been feats, prestige classes, alternate class features, etc. in any of the Chronicles, Companions, APs, and Modules. The roleplaying subscription is simply a subscription to the main rules, not all rules.
This is evidenced by the fact that haunts are going to be reprinted in the GMG, updated for PFRPG (although I bet that was barely minimal). It was even mentioned that the Sorcerer bloodline might be reprinted into the APG in August.
And finally, even WotC had crunch in their fluff books. Just go look at any of the campaign specific books and you'll see bunches of feats, prestige classes, alternate features, etc. This is even taking out all the class books, environment books, etc.