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I must admit, I cannot understand this.
The old adventure path issues are still on sale on this web-site.
After all the work that was done producing them in the first place, and the relatively small amount of work that conversions require, and the revenue potential for all those players relatively new to Pathfinder to then go and buy this wealth of pathfinder material, surely it would make *economic* sense for Paizo to provide pathfinder conversion notes.
Wouldn't it?
Richard
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Some one would have to go through and rework everything, some ablitys have changed all the stats, all the skills, wording as what page ya go to as it's a diff book.
Your looking at alot of work, work away from making products to sell
Creative Director
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Several reasons, listed in order of importance.
1) The 3.5 modules are pretty compatible as they stand. One of the main reasons we went through the trouble of making the Pathfinder RPG as compatible as we could with 3.5 was so that it would still work with our relatively large backstock of 3.5 products.
2) We still have plenty of stock for our modules, and reprinting is expensive—since those modules remain compatible with PFRPG, there's no real need to reprint them as long as they remain in stock. We don't reprint products until they're sold out AND they're "evergreen" products. (Evergreen products are books like the core rules, the campaign setting, and other products that folks will ALWAYS be buying, as opposed to most adventures or sourcebooks which have a much narrower customer base.)
3) We're pretty much operating at capacity keeping our current product lines on schedule, and time taken out to update a 3.5 adventure to PFRPG would take too much time out of what we need to keep going forward, for a minimal reward in the end.
4) Folks who bought the 3.5 versions would assume that if we DID do lots of updates that their old adventures are not compatible, which would be an incorrect assumption but would be one people would make anyway. I really REALLY doubt everyone who bought a 3.5 version would shell out the same amount of money for a PFRPG version, since they'd be so close in content. But the amount we'd have to sell to justify the reprint would not change. Basically, we'd lose a LOT of money reprinting them, I fear. It's not economic sense at all.
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Your looking at alot of work, work away from making products to sell
The thing here is: It's not a lot of work to do, but it is a lot to do it "right".
I put right in quotation marks, because it might not be the (well,) right word to use:
It's easy to do it quick and dirty, an option that takes little effort to accomplish but yields great results. It's not perfect, but very playable. Actually, there are probably several versions of this method, which are on a sliding scale from "no work at all" to "complete rework". On the low side, you might do nothing more than do a quick CMB/CMD calculation (CMB: Grapple, as adjusted to the new special size modifiers. CMD: CMB+Touch AC+special size modifier). Slightly more elaborate is adding the advanced template (fast version) to all NPCs to get them back to their CR, and add HP for those critters and classes that get better HD now. More elaborate methods would add class abilities.
All good ways to "fix" them while you run them.
The problem is: You can't do anything like that if you publish it as an updated version! If you put the book back on the shelf, with a "now updated to PF" sticker, you can't just say "just add +X to all numbers you see" or anything like that - you'll have to redo all stat blocks. A lot more work than the other method.
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Also, to the original poster ... While all the points James made are perfectly valid and logical, the truth is that you as a GM can easily convert whatever adventure you happen to be running on the fly. It's cake really. No need to make a big thing of it - in fact there is lots of great advice right here on the message boards to help you out if you feel you need it.
MUCH better to have Paizo focus on bringing us great new stuff. We can convert older stuff easily if we need to!
Edit: Or just follow KaeYoss' advice above!
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I really REALLY doubt everyone who bought a 3.5 version would shell out the same amount of money for a PFRPG version, since they'd be so close in content.
This right here.
Paizo might be able to convince me to buy a Pathfinder RPG conversion of D0, D1, D1.5, and D4 in a compilation book. But that's about it and since we know Paizo doesn't want to do compilation books, they'll never have a reprinted module I'd be interested in rebuying. :)
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I think Paizo would do a fabulous job if they reworked their early stuff to be Pathfinder-ready out of the box, but the truth is that nothing is ever going to be perfect for all players at all times.
Just before running Kingmaker for my current group, we did a converted version of Demon Within that was fun at first but rapidly proved that an all-demon module is either incredibly hard or incredibly easy depending on whether the players KNOW that it's an all-demon module. I did my best to update challenges for the group, but it was all for naught. My only casualties were a player who wasn't there to plan his own actions and a player who was accidentally fireballed by a member of her own party. The longest battle with the least certain conclusion was one in which I abandoned all attempts at balance and threw a slew of 3.5 Monster Manual IV and V demons at the group in an extended siege.
As they play Kingmaker, I updated most challenges to accommodate a larger-than-normal party of six and left them that way when the group shrank to four players. So far, no one has been particularly imperiled by the decision because these are 20-pt characters built by seasoned players.
Bottom line: even if Paizo did update their earlier adventures, it would be a poor substitute for any conversion a good GM could do. Turin the Mad and his version of Savage Tide are a prime example of how to run a campaign. If you're dealing with players who expect close calls and deadly foes, it's up to the GM to provide them, not Paizo. It's up to Paizo to deliver quality stories with some meaty stat blocks and they continue to do that in spades.
I think Paizo would do a fabulous job if they reworked their early stuff to be Pathfinder-ready out of the box, but the truth is that nothing is ever going to be perfect for all players at all times.
Just before running Kingmaker for my current group, we did a converted version of Demon Within that was fun at first but rapidly proved that an all-demon module is either incredibly hard or incredibly easy depending on whether the players KNOW that it's an all-demon module. I did my best to update challenges for the group, but it was all for naught. My only casualties were a player who wasn't there to plan his own actions and a player who was accidentally fireballed by a member of her own party. The longest battle with the least certain conclusion was one in which I abandoned all attempts at balance and threw a slew of 3.5 Monster Manual IV and V demons at the group in an extended siege.
As they play Kingmaker, I updated most challenges to accommodate a larger-than-normal party of six and left them that way when the group shrank to four players. So far, no one has been particularly imperiled by the decision because these are 20-pt characters built by seasoned players.
Bottom line: even if Paizo did update their earlier adventures, it would be a poor substitute for any conversion a good GM could do. Turin the Mad and his version of Savage Tide are a prime example of how to run a campaign. If you're dealing with players who expect close calls and deadly foes, it's up to the GM to provide them, not Paizo. It's up to Paizo to deliver quality stories with some meaty stat blocks and they continue to do that in spades.
Many thanks for the kind praise oh Constructed Tamer of Shrubbery! :)
I would much rather see them making new stuff and developing ideas in newer directions. Plus I don't think its cost effective, got to be more valuable things to do with their time, like develping new stuff.
The conversion is REALLY simple, Add the Advanced Template, calculate CMB, ding. Done...Classed characters Add Improved Initiative at low levels, then add Toughness at mid-level, or vice versa.
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Thank you for all the answers. Let me just take this a bit further, though:
When I suggested it would be economic to do conversions, I should have made it clearer that I wasn't suggesting any sort of re-print. What I think would be a good idea would be for Paizo to produce a free, or maybe minimally charged, download with conversion notes.
In terms of the effort taken to do a conversion, although minimal conversion "works" it basically misses out on all the fun new features of PFRPG. I would imagine a "proper" conversion might take 1/2 a day to 1 day for an AP module. Your return on this would be the purchases made by those new pathfinder players who had never run the AP as 3.5 in the first place and who don't now want to go back to 3.5.
Obviously even then you're not going to want to do a re-print even of the old 3.5 AP modules, but you do have "endless stock" in terms of PDF downloads. This is ultimately where your pay back would come from.
Those old APs really were very good. It seems a shame, now, to consign them to the dust-heap.
If you (James/PAIZO) are, in any case, working to capacity, would you consider allowing a third party to produce and publish the conversion notes. I've seen plenty of third party material at around the $2 to $3 mark, which is around what I would be prepared to pay per module to save me the hassle of doing all the conversions my self.
Richard
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Why should Paizo go through all the trouble of writing conversions, when fans do so and post their work for free?
Check this out. Obviously it's not complete, but it should help.
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Fan conversions are fine as far as they go, in much the same way that any other sort of fan produced material is great too. Commercial releases, whether from Paizo or a third party, are better.
I do not, personally, believe that producing conversions for the old APs would remove purchases of the new. With its new APs Paizo appears to be experimenting with "different" styles of adventure. This is great, however it means that those customers who would like to run some more traditional APS (as was largely speaking represented by the first three APs) cannot do so without some conversion effort on their part.
I honestly believe that those early APs still have commercial potential.
Richard
You can still use them (I am), but mostly it's about $. The number of new sales compared to how much it would cost to edit and reprint them. If it's not about $, then they should just do it, any scrub can convert them.
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Creative Director
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Fan conversions are fine as far as they go, in much the same way that any other sort of fan produced material is great too. Commercial releases, whether from Paizo or a third party, are better.
I do not, personally, believe that producing conversions for the old APs would remove purchases of the new. With its new APs Paizo appears to be experimenting with "different" styles of adventure. This is great, however it means that those customers who would like to run some more traditional APS (as was largely speaking represented by the first three APs) cannot do so without some conversion effort on their part.
I honestly believe that those early APs still have commercial potential.
Richard
Anything more than a fan conversion would require us to spend time looking over the work, proofing it, developing it, editing it, making sure the work was up to Paizo's standards, and likely laying it out in a trade dress that matches our production standards. It's not a simple task, and it would involve MANY different employees, and the time they spent doing that, quite frankly, would be better spent working on our current projects.
As for our APs, we've always experimented. Kingmaker is a particularly HUGE experiment, but with Serpent's Skull we're actually reigning in that stuff and presenting a pretty traditional series of adventures.
Now, all that said... some day I suspect we WILL reprint and update older adventures or adventure paths. But that has to be fully integrated into our schedules. The real thing that we don't want to do is simply drop revision projects haphazardly into an established schedule. We're doing that already, in fact, with the core hardcover campaign setting, actually, and it's tough to get that done while keeping the regular schedule going.
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Fan conversions are fine as far as they go, in much the same way that any other sort of fan produced material is great too. Commercial releases, whether from Paizo or a third party, are better.Still, you may also want to consider these. (This is different from the one I already mentioned, here.)
Thank you.
I'm actually running RotR and CotCT at the same time - about half way through now. I have conversion notes for all but the last two of the former and the last of the latter. If you or anyone knows of conversions for these last three modules then please let me know.
All the best
Richard