One of my favorite marketing guys is Seth Godin, known for writing a lot of different books on marketing, my favorite of which is called Tribes. (If you're interested, you can learn more about him here: About Seth Godin)
Anyway, I've subscribed to his newsletter and in today's letter he writes this:
"People are moved by stories and drama and hints and clues and discovery."
That got me thinking about the wonderful fans we've got and made me curious. What do you love about Pathfinder? What stories have you created with your group? What keeps you coming back for more? What's your Pathfinder story?
Hyrum.
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I was attracted by the fact that a lot of the Pathfinder guys did some quality work on my tried and true favorite setting ever: The Forgotten Realms. The rest of the story just involves me spending money on Pathfinder products, playing the game, and posting my excellent and goodly opinions here on the boards.
Production values.
Art.
Good story.
I liked the "look" first and was very pleased with the thought and creativity in the first AP. Paizo has the best writing, hands down, in rpgs.
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The most effective character I ever played. An Aldori Duelist. When I read the setting, I immediately fell in love with the history of the Aldori. So my first PFS character was an Aldori Duelist. I've gotten better rolls with him than any character I've ever played.
And I've gotten some great lines out of PFS play also:
"If it is on the board I can hit it with my hammer!"
To party Alchemist "Bet you can't blow up this boat." (He did!)
I first stumbled upon Pathfinder after I accidently knocked off the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting off the shelf at my local game store and it hit me in the head (the same thing happened to me with the Eberron Campaign Setting as well).
While I was rubbing the fresh lump on top of my head, I decided to give the book a look and quickly fell in love with it. The world was well designed and made me want to play in it immediately. After that, I became a Pathfinder devotee, and the rest is history.
They make my game.
I really liked the last couple years of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, so I figured i'd give the game a shot. We play tested 4e and PFRPG side by side for a few months, and really just preferred PF for flavor and crunch. It "felt" like the game we had always played in a way that 4e just didn't.
My friends were all very experienced with playing 3.5. They would play it all the time, but didn't seem to want me to play because I didn't know the rules. Too lazy to teach I guess, but I still don't think that it's any excuse.
So one day I decided to go to my local game shop and see if they had the 3.5 Player's Handbook. They didn't have it, but I had no idea that it was out of print. I asked the shop owner if they could order some in, but he claimed that the book only existed on ebay anymore. I was very disappointed. I didn't really have the money to buy a used book on ebay for 200 bucks. He told me that it was going to be OK though, there was a company that was trying to "keep 3.5 alive."
He handed me the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and told me to thumb through it. He said that it was completely compatible with 3.5, but that I probably wouldn't want to go back. The book had everything I wanted, and the artwork and layout was amazing. I bought it, and the Bestiary, and immediately went home and converted all of my friends.
Now the kid that didn't know the rules has been running a Pathfinder game once a week ever since.
We knew 3.5 was ending as 4th edition was announced, and like most players, our group was intrigued (and nervous) what Wizards was going to bring us for the next edition.
When 4th was released, several us picked up the Players Handbook, and without going too much into it (as I know it's frowned up here), we didn't like the changes at all and knew it wasn't in the route we wanted to go.
A little while later, our DM indicated he saw something online about 3.5 being continued with Pathfinder as a fan-made project (Heh, a little off from that) and was referred to as "3.75".
I didn't look at it at the time as we were still going strong with our 3.5 books. But I would say about 6 months ago or so, I finally did the plunge and googled up "Pathfinder 3.75" and brought me to Paizo's website. When I saw that, I thought "Um, a little more than a 'fan-made' project."
The more I read about it, the more I got excited as I saw the work and involvement that was put into the game, nevermind it was being done by Paizo, one of the premiere developers/publishers in the gaming industry. I immediately ordered the tome of the Core Rulebook and then showed it to my DM and he really liked the changes. But it was just finally recently where we started up our own campaign and have been loving it so far.
They blew up the world.
Seriously.
Of all the things that could have been done from a writing/story standpoint, that single decision to have it end like that was such an amateurish method of closing things that I could no longer support them.
I heard about PF and showed up in late Alpha, and have been here ever since.
I was working at a FLGS during the last couple years of 3.5 and I had been reading Dragon pretty religiously since 2004 or so. I also had a great amount of respect for Paizo because of the game aides they were producing for 3.5, like the gamemastery loot cards and crititcal deck. When I heard 4e was coming down the pipeline I wasn't immediately dismissive, but I also heard that Paizo was going to soldier on with the current edition.
Played 4e over a summer, with a completely open mind, and just grew to loathe it. It wasn't the game I grew up with, it wasn't the type of game I wanted to play. Early last year another DM brought up the Pathfinder Beta and we started playing that. Pure awesome. Haven't looked back.
Thanks for some great stories! Keep 'em coming. :)
Hyrum.
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Let's see, how to coach this response so it doesn't seem to much like I'm disparaging 4e?
It's tough.
OK, we were dedicated 3.5 Forgotten Realms players. The group was playing 3.5 Eberron when I joined them 5 years or so ago (it was right at the beginning of Eberron), and I quickly talked them into playing FR. Personally, I had been playing FR since the grey box days, how long ago that was, I don't even know anymore.
So anyway, we have a guy in our group who is what I would call an "early adopter". He was all over the concept of changing over to 4e ASAP - I'm not entirely sure why, I think it was mostly the marketing. "We fixed grapple" and that sort of thing. So, we all did switch over, and we got the FR campaign setting book ASAP, bought every sourcebook for the first 6 months or so - totally NOT with an open mind, which I say because we weren't just trying it out or whatever - we kept waiting to LOVE it. It just never happened. There's a lot more I could say on that topic, but I won't.
So, the fella that was the keenest on adopting 4e right off the get go was also the first to decide it wasn't for him. He's a very action-oriented guy, so he went out immediately to find something else for us. Somebody on a messageboard somewhere had mentioned Pathfinder, so he looked into it (the beta was out at the time) and he liked it, so he immediately began the MOST AGGRESSIVE GRASSROOTS MARKETING CAMPAIGN EVAR! You can imagine our skepticism - yeah, Vince, we just spent $500 in the last 6 months on 4e, and now you're selling us WHAT? But, the fact that the beta was free and we didn't have to buy anything really convinced us to give it a shot. And once you give Pathfinder a shot, you'll quickly realize you're playing the greatest RPG invented to date.
Pathfinder is my anti-drug!
3.5 kept expanding and expanding, and we wanted a way to use it. Rummaging through all the books to find what you wanted and then building something to do it got tiresome. Arround the time Tome of Battle came out, my GM created a system for turning 3.5 into a semi-point buy system where you could pick and choose class features more easily. Assigning features from varrious books eventually got to us all. The system worked fairly well, and everyone was overpowered. We finnished the campaign arround the time the Beta rulebook came out. Wanting to try something a little simpler for a little while, we tried 4e for a game and no one was impressed. It just wasn't the same game. Someone decided he would try GMing Pathfinder for the first time while our normal GM took a break.
It was great, even if we TPKed. Core classes had abilities and we didn't have to go hunting. The glut of abilities was brought down to a managable level, and there was less broken. The handful of things we thought we might miss we saw could be easily added to the classes. In the end, we still haven't bothered because we don't miss them. None of us provided significant feedback, and it wouldn't have really mattered because of how late we came in, but we loved the fact that it was open content and players were encouraged to participate in the design process.
The APG beta-testing brought a couple of us into the Paizo community, and I know I have loved participating. I miss doing the ballance annalysis on games that I did in college.
Because Paizo impressed us consistently with a quality product, I decided I would try out one of your adventure paths. Everything in Kingmaker I have enjoyed. If you keep producing such a quality product, you will have a consistent customer in me. I tell everyone I know who is looking for something to move to after 3.5 that Pathfinder is a quality game that is similar on many levels.
Been playing DnD style fantasy games since 2nd ED "Black Books" and enjoyed it, but as a player wanted more options. Spells and Options came out and I lol'd...it was to 2nd Ed what crack was to a normal human, it created a chaotic, meth induced experience. Shortly thereafter 3rd ed came out and was exactly what myself and others in my gaming group were looking for: player options within a defined set of core mechanics, but needed work...3.5 seemed to bring more into what we wanted, we liked all of the changes, but still something was missing. I and others hoped that 4th ed would be the crowning cap on what was a series of creative gaming ideas...and it SO wasn't. Thinking I had spent a great deal of money over the last few years on a dying game, I wasn't happy. I read though in message boards for another game system about Pathfinder, and there was a link to the fighter. I was entranced!
I immediately forwarded the link to my buddies, and we read and marveled at the changes that seemed "no brainer" fixes to 3.5! The core classes were playable! You actually wanted to play them for 20 levels with out looking for a PrC!! When the core rule book was published I immediately bought the .PDF and got the hardback shortly thereafter. We have been playing this game ever since. Everything meshes better, the skill consolidation was perfect...I could go on, but we all know the awesomeness that is PFRPG. Thank you Paizo!!
That got me thinking about the wonderful fans we've got and made me curious. What do you love about Pathfinder? What stories have you created with your group? What keeps you coming back for more? What's your Pathfinder story?
These are all pretty different questions:
1) What I like the most about Pathfinder is that it continues the legacy of the original fantasy RPG, remains cognizant of the traditions, but expands on them and innovates in refreshing ways that jibe well with the original. For example, it might seem like a small detail, but I like the fact that names of many new monsters Paizo introduces are based on real world mythology, legends or religious references, rather than being made up from scratch. I also very much like the fact that Pathfinder has not decided to make a complete separation between rules and flavor. Rules, after all, have a flavor of their own. ;)
2) The stories I have created for/with my groups are novel-length now. :) Yes, I do love them and think they are amazing stories, but I would, wouldn't I? :D
3) The Pathfinder RPG provides a base that keeps with the traditions of the original fantasy RPG and enables me to modify it as I see fit to tell the stories I wish to tell.
4) My Pathfinder story is one of search for a system that would serve as a base/platform for my storytelling and for RPG fun/bonding with my family.
Is there any one of these you would like me to elaborate on futher?
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I played 3E from literally the day that the 3.0 Player's Handbook came out. I dutifully bought the 3.5 books as soon as I knew about them. For most of my teenage years and all of the way through college, 3E/3.5 was more of a constant factor in my life than anything else other than my legal name, gender, and hair color. From 2000 to 2008 I was playing in at least one weekly 3E game at any given time, and likely dreaming up another.
By 2008, I was getting kind of sick of it. I knew all of the issues with the system. Xmas tree effect, the power gap between the classes, power attack math, broken save-or-die/suck spells, CoDzilla, Invis./Knock/Find Traps making Rogues obsolete...I really wanted to like 3E, but I couldn't play it without some issue or another coming up that ruined all of the promised fun. There are other western fantasy games out there, but the effort of converting things like Eberron, Mind Flayers, or Beholders to another system was too much work for one fanatic like me to do.
4E promised a fix, but my group tried playing it for three sessions and then quit. We were used to the casual realism of 3E and the gameplay-first design philosophy of 4E didn't sit well with us.
I was browsing the web (I think it was EN World) when I found a link to Paizo's site. I downloaded the Beta for Pathfinder and liked it so much I tracked down a print copy and started a campaign. My players were willing to give it a chance because it meant being able to keep all of the beloved 3E settings, monsters, and classes. I liked it because it fixed almost all of the issues I had with 3.5. By August, there was no question that I would be ordering a PFRPG core book. It's still the best $50 I have spent in years.
I taught a new player the game using the PF Beta, and another new player using the PF Core. I've GM'ed epic, back-to-back battles, and I've gone weeks without a weapon being drawn. Three characters, of the same class, in one campaign, were so different in flavor and mechanics you could not guess that they had something so fundamental as a character class in common. All without having to give up those 8 years of sourcebooks, learning, and memories from 3E.
I am one happy customer!