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I was at the 2012 and Beyond seminar at Gen Con last week, and as the Paizo staff was listing out all the wonderful toys we will be getting over the next year and a half, my mind started going to a strange place. See if you can follow along with me.
Right now, Pathfinder is probably at its zenith. Maybe not yet, but almost. Everything we're getting right now is solid gold. The game is going in fantastic new directions that we would have scarcely thought possible 5 years ago. And the game is only going to get better and better.
Five years from now, Pathfinder will be almost 10 years old. There will be more than twice the number of Pathfinder books than there are now. The game that once seemed so vibrant and elegant will be bloated with too many options. It'll be harder to get people into the game because there will be so much to catch up on.
In addition, D&D Next will most surely be out by then. It'll be about 3 years old. I think Wizards of the Coast has something special there. Even if everyone reading this board remains a diehard Paizo fan, I think some of you will be looking at D&D Next and saying "That game has some really neat ideas. I wish those things were in Pathfinder."
In short, it's the type of environment when most companies would start thinking about a second edition of their game.
Five years may seem like a long time to most of you, and it is, but time has a way of catching up with you when you least expect it. I don't think it's unrealistic to start thinking about it now. I think with some planning and foresight, we can avoid the pain of another edition war.
That's all I have to say. I'm sure I sound like drunken doomsday prophet yelling on a street corner, especially when everyone else is all excited about Mythic Adventures right now. But I'm not predicting doomsday, just reminding everyone how it usually goes and suggesting, hey, maybe we can break the cycle here. What do you guys think?
I'll worry about that later.
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I think no. The only cycle I want to see broken is the one with bringing out new editions.
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Unless WotC manages to produce quality campaign content as consistently and awesomely as Paizo does with the Adventure Paths, they won't be seeing any of my money.
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I agree I think 10 year mark will be the 2nd edition Pathfinder book. So I full expect Jason to begin work on it at the 7 year mark as a side project. Then start play testing in house after 8 years, then a open play test at the 9 year mark.
Of course I could totally be wrong but a 10 year run for a game I find reasonable and in another 7 years I imagine I will be ready for Pathfinder 2E. Keep in mind the Pathfinder RPG is currently only 3 years old as of this month.
If Adventure Path quality does not diminish, I think Pathfinder is safe from a new edition. They can certainly improve on the game, but I play for the APs more than the rules. I'm excited about DnD Next as well, and Wizards has at least as much money as it costs to purchase the three core rulebooks, but if Wizards doesn't have anything to compete with the APs, that's all the money they're getting. Even if I prefer that system, I'll still buy APs and convert them, so Paizo and Pathfinder will still get the bulk of my money.
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Right now, Pathfinder is probably at its zenith. Maybe not yet, but almost. Everything we're getting right now is solid gold. The game is going in fantastic new directions that we would have scarcely thought possible 5 years ago. And the game is only going to get better and better.
Five years from now, Pathfinder will be almost 10 years old. There will be more than twice the number of Pathfinder books than there are now. The game that once seemed so vibrant and elegant will be bloated with too many options. It'll be harder to get people into the game because there will be so much to catch up on.
In addition, D&D Next will most surely be out by then. It'll be about 3 years old. I think Wizards of the Coast has something special there. Even if everyone reading this board remains a diehard Paizo fan, I think some of you will be looking at D&D Next and saying "That game has some really neat ideas. I wish those things were in Pathfinder."
In short, it's the type of environment when most companies would start thinking about a second edition of their game.
Five years may seem like a long time to most of you, and it is, but time has a way of catching up with you when you least expect it. I don't think it's unrealistic to start thinking about it now. I think with some planning and foresight, we can avoid the pain of another edition war.
That's all I have to say. I'm sure I sound like drunken doomsday prophet yelling on a street corner, especially when everyone else is all excited about Mythic Adventures right now. But I'm not predicting doomsday, just reminding everyone how it usually goes and suggesting, hey, maybe we can break the cycle here. What do you guys think?
One of the things which has made me direct more and more of my RPG money Paizo's way is their ability to continue to experiment, improve and generally keep their products fresh. I've given up thinking "Well, this is going to be the best we see from them for a while. I bet the next book is disappointing." because it never is. It's not that everything keeps getting better, but they have a real talent for switching attention between different facets of the game or (more relevantly to me) the world of Golarion.
.Rules bloat is an inevitable fact of life. Starting a new edition doesnt actually help - the same number of books keep getting churned out, it's just new versions of old rules. You still run into the problem of people who arent there at the beginning facing a big barrier to owning a complete set of books.
I think the key for us as customers is to reconcile how we deal with it - buy everything and ignore what you dont like, buy selectively, stick to core... There's never going to be an ideal answer for the market as a whole because some people think there's no such thing as too many options and others think any game you cant hold in one book is too much. The powers-that-be at Paizo no doubt have their own preferences in that regard, but they also have to balance popular demand and commercial needs.
Even if a decision one way or the other way made - a 'second edition' is problematic. Should it be incremental and backwards-compatible or should it be iconoclastic and revolutionary? D&D:Next is an interesting phenomenon in terms of how it impacts on Paizo. I'm glad it seems to be quite different from 3.5/PF, just as I'm glad 4E was different. If they do decide to revise PF, I suspect they'll at least be informed as to the changes D&D adopts.
I have confidence in Paizo getting the timing of that decision right (if they ever end up making it) because I see a proven track record of quality and deft decision making.
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Unless WotC manages to produce quality campaign content as consistently and awesomely as Paizo does with the Adventure Paths, they won't be seeing any of my money.
A-yuh.
I agree I think 10 year mark will be the 2nd edition Pathfinder book. So I full expect Jason to begin work on it at the 7 year mark as a side project. Then start play testing in house after 8 years, then a open play test at the 9 year mark.
Of course I could totally be wrong but a 10 year run for a game I find reasonable and in another 7 years I imagine I will be ready for Pathfinder 2E. Keep in mind the Pathfinder RPG is currently only 3 years old as of this month.
Double a-yuh.
DDN must compete directly with Pathfinder's 1) APs and 2) system type (complexity, detail, general power level, overall feeling).
Right now it competes with OTHER systems, the most similar being DragonAGE. And it's still not winning, by a far shot.
Then again, planning the lifecycle of a game system in terms of "editions" in precalculated time spans, is the kind of mistake that has been done before.
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I was at the 2012 and Beyond seminar at Gen Con last week, and as the Paizo staff was listing out all the wonderful toys we will be getting over the next year and a half, my mind started going to a strange place. See if you can follow along with me.
Right now, Pathfinder is probably at its zenith. Maybe not yet, but almost. Everything we're getting right now is solid gold. The game is going in fantastic new directions that we would have scarcely thought possible 5 years ago. And the game is only going to get better and better.
Five years from now, Pathfinder will be almost 10 years old. There will be more than twice the number of Pathfinder books than there are now. The game that once seemed so vibrant and elegant will be bloated with too many options. It'll be harder to get people into the game because there will be so much to catch up on.
In addition, D&D Next will most surely be out by then. It'll be about 3 years old. I think Wizards of the Coast has something special there. Even if everyone reading this board remains a diehard Paizo fan, I think some of you will be looking at D&D Next and saying "That game has some really neat ideas. I wish those things were in Pathfinder."
In short, it's the type of environment when most companies would start thinking about a second edition of their game.
Five years may seem like a long time to most of you, and it is, but time has a way of catching up with you when you least expect it. I don't think it's unrealistic to start thinking about it now. I think with some planning and foresight, we can avoid the pain of another edition war.
That's all I have to say. I'm sure I sound like drunken doomsday prophet yelling on a street corner, especially when everyone else is all excited about Mythic Adventures right now. But I'm not predicting doomsday, just reminding everyone how it usually goes and suggesting, hey, maybe we can break the cycle here. What do you guys think?
I think that you're thinking that Paizo is WotC - a company where rules splatbooks are the primary business, with settings and adventures being a secondary addition that has little attention paid to. There, new editions are pretty much mandatory every few years, so that the income stream gets refreshed.
Paizo is different. It's the APs and setting books that are primary products and revenue sources, with the rules existing as support. In their case, there's no need to re-release the rules every 5 years or so, because it's not the rules books that float Paizo's boat.
I think that there is some stuff which can best be resolved in a new edition, but OTOH new editions mean hundreds and hundreds of Euros in new books, not to mention that the old edition has to go somewhere and there is always the potential for a new edition to be actively worse than the prior version.
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My hunch is that a new edition of the rules will grow out of the Beginner's Box. Instead of Paizo telling their current customers that we must upgrade to a new edition, they will reach out to the people who want to play Pathfinder but are daunted by the size and complexity of the Core Rulebook.
I see a market for an Introductory Rulebook with a simplified archetype of the character classes and explanations of the rules rewritten for clarity and ease of play. Perhaps they will use the Standard+Move wording of the Beginner's Box rather than the Full Action wording. The Introductory Rulebook will be compatible with the Core Rulebook and the existing modules, but it will change a few rules that are overdue for simplification.
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There is still 3/4ths of the world of Golarion or so that is untouched, not to mention most of the Distant Worlds and other Planes. I think we come to a slowing point on new rules in the next year or so, and see an increased emphasis variations and optional rules vs new core type rules.
They will have released an NPC guide, Mythic Adventures, Ultimate Campaign, and probably a psionics book if they are ever going to do one. It is likely that somewhere in there will be a another Inner Sea Guide or two, possibly of Casmaron or Tian Xia area. Of course a couple more bestiaries.
I could see them doing something along the lines of a Spell Compendium or a compiled book of archetypes or something possibly as well. But I think the majority of the crunch that is coming is already out there.
Above all else, so far history shows that Lisa and Co. rarely makes a huge wrong turn. I expect whatever direction Paizo takes will be well thought out and probably ground breaking, as opposed to 4E-ish in nature.
I have a good number of the Pathfinder books but in general I only had included a tiny bit here and there from the rules that they offer. It was my experience with 3.5 that once you start bringing in the splat books and tweaking the maingame then it has already become to bloated.
When it comes to a second edition of Pathfinder I can only think about what would need to change? I loved 3.5 and found that the changes made by Paizo to Pathfinder made it a perfect rule system. I have rarely encountered moments that made me scratch my head in frustration as most everything is clear and consice. I honestly can't think of anything that I would want to see revised into a new edition. If anything, what I would prefer to see is splat books that are released that don't add any new rules to the game. Just new PrC's, spells, and feats that don't require knowing something from that text. While things like grit or new combat manuevers are not all that hard to know and include, it is just a pain in the backside to have to account for it. As a DM I often forget to award grit back to the gunslinger because it is just one more rule in there to keep track of and I keep overlooking it. It would be so nice to have an addition to the game that does not require me to remember that much more, and instead allows me to focus on the story of the game.
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Hell a book overhauling thecore rules an still be compatable with existing rules would be nice. Basically errata and remove the broken seppls and class abilities.
Most of the comments here are geared toward the general level of excellence of the APs and the world of Golarion, which I actually find quite surprising. I have never really looked at any of the content outside of the core rules (just a little peek at Kingmaker) and I am starting to wonder just how much I am missing out on. What are a couple of good books to check out if I am interested in learning about the world of Golarion and where would be a good place to research the various APs--beyond the stuff here on Paizo that is advertising them.
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Most of the comments here are geared toward the general level of excellence of the APs and the world of Golarion, which I actually find quite surprising. I have never really looked at any of the content outside of the core rules (just a little peek at Kingmaker) and I am starting to wonder just how much I am missing out on. What are a couple of good books to check out if I am interested in learning about the world of Golarion and where would be a good place to research the various APs--beyond the stuff here on Paizo that is advertising them.
The best source of information on Golarion is the Inner Sea World Guide but for a quick overview the Inner Sea Primer is a good bet.
As for the AP's the best source of information on that is a bit tricky. There are many threads on these boards discussing the best/least best AP's and opinion varies a lot. That said the AP discussions on these boards give you a lot of information. I would start there.
I am not a participant in the Golarion setting, or in the APs. Everthing in my campaigns is homebrew. For me, it is the rulebooks that I love. Rules bloat in pathfinder is a tiny fraction of rules bloat in 3.5 There are 19 base classes in PF after three years, and more than a few more (if any more at all) is not to be expected. When 3.5 was done, there was something like 50 or 60 base classes, and new base classes+prestige classes were the core of new 3.5 content. It was crazy and daunting. PF is also way more balanced, an important advantage over 3.5.
I love the rules themselves. They are constantly creating and innovating, working with a truly excellent set of rules. Pathfinder allows an incredible degree of flexibility with what you can create--if we can just get that dedicated shapeshifter, everything will be ok. The fact that Paizo consistently releases a steady, but not overwhelming, stream of high-quality and creative crunch is the key, and this could easily go for more than five more years.
Virtual reality gaming will essentially obsolete all of these tabletop games except for the case of a few dusty old grognards who insist that nothing can replace the feel of real paper in your hands.
That's the "far future" of Pathfinder and D&D. How "far"? Ten years? Twenty?
There will be a tipping point reached when the virtual reality experience surpasses the tabletop experience so thoroughly that it will essentially replace it overnight. I don't know what that tipping point will be, but I suspect we are far closer to it than Pathfinder and Hasbro game designers realize.
Read "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke for an interesting take on virtual reality gaming. The first chapter begins with the characters walking through what seems to be an underground dungeon, but it is revealed that the experience is all in a virtual reality projection.
The book was written about 60 years ago. Long before Gary Gygax thought about role playing games...
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Virtual reality gaming will essentially obsolete all of these tabletop games except for the case of a few dusty old grognards who insist that nothing can replace the feel of real paper in your hands.
That's the "far future" of Pathfinder and D&D. How "far"? Ten years? Twenty?
There will be a tipping point reached when the virtual reality experience surpasses the tabletop experience so thoroughly that it will essentially replace it overnight. I don't know what that tipping point will be, but I suspect we are far closer to it than Pathfinder and Hasbro game designers realize.
Read "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke for an interesting take on virtual reality gaming. The first chapter begins with the characters walking through what seems to be an underground dungeon, but it is revealed that the experience is all in a virtual reality projection.
The book was written about 60 years ago. Long before Gary Gygax thought about role playing games...
And we will all be eating protein pills and driving flying cars.
Until a VR machine can totally replace everything that can be done at a tabletop then we will have pen and paper games. The chance of what you are suggesting happening in 20 years is massively remote because the technology and will to use said technology just isn't there.
Virtual reality gaming will essentially obsolete all of these tabletop games except for the case of a few dusty old grognards who insist that nothing can replace the feel of real paper in your hands.
That's the "far future" of Pathfinder and D&D. How "far"? Ten years? Twenty?
There will be a tipping point reached when the virtual reality experience surpasses the tabletop experience so thoroughly that it will essentially replace it overnight. I don't know what that tipping point will be, but I suspect we are far closer to it than Pathfinder and Hasbro game designers realize.
Read "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke for an interesting take on virtual reality gaming. The first chapter begins with the characters walking through what seems to be an underground dungeon, but it is revealed that the experience is all in a virtual reality projection.
The book was written about 60 years ago. Long before Gary Gygax thought about role playing games...
And we will all be eating protein pills and driving flying cars.
Until a VR machine can totally replace everything that can be done at a tabletop then we will have pen and paper games. The chance of what you are suggesting happening in 20 years is massively remote because the technology and will to use said technology just isn't there.
Roughly twelve years ago, on a pre-WWW system called "usenet" I was a member of the amateur photography newsgroup. At that time digital cameras were mere toys being purchased by housewives to snap blurry photos of their children at soccer games.
I predicted that within a decade the very film that amateur photographers use would become difficult and expensive because digital photography would replace the massive market for film which allowed for monstrous chemical plants that produced film by the billions and billions of frames. I predicted that digital cameras would have replaced not only housewife cameras, but the cameras used in the Superbowl as well as most cameras purchased for amateur photography.
I got a similar response from them to what you just posted.
So we'll check back in say, 2024 and see who's right.
Deal?
Sounds horrible. :(
Sounds horrible. :(
Heh, well, I guess we know which group you'll be in Steve.
Frankly I'm looking forward to it. I've been trying to figure out where the tipping point will be for the last decade or so. I've decided it's not going to require full immersive virtual reality, but will require far more flexible and granular capability than current MMORPGs have.
My best guess right now is that we are between 7 and 10 years away from that tipping point.
But it might be longer.
If it makes the grognards here feel any better, I'm pretty sure it will also obsolete the current model of MMORPGs.
I can't understand the concept of a computer game "surpassing" the tabletop experience anymore than rock music "surpassing" classical. To me they're different things.
If you're right, you're also right about which group I'll be playing in. Then again, I still use a phone directory to look up numbers rather than the Internet. :/
I am not sure what you mean by "Virtual Reality Gaming" as it seems to me you are describing something completely different from a tabletop RPG experience.
By your logic should pen and paper games not have been replaced by MMORPG's and video games already?
If you propose that we are 22 years from walking into a machine that takes us into a fantatical world that can be anything we can imagine, alongside our friends and it allows us become an avatar of our own design then I am somewhat excited.
I also don't think thats anything like sitting round a table and playing pathfinder...
I am not sure what you mean by "Virtual Reality Gaming" as it seems to me you are describing something completely different from a tabletop RPG experience.
By your logic should pen and paper games not have been replaced by MMORPG's and video games already?
If you propose that we are 22 years from walking into a machine that takes us into a fantatical world that can be anything we can imagine, alongside our friends and it allows us become an avatar of our own design then I am somewhat excited.
I also don't think thats anything like sitting round a table and playing pathfinder...
We might well be 22 years from that. But I'm not predicting that.
MMORPGs are not granular enough and are too simplistic to replace tabletop games. Until you can say "I pick up this pebble and throw it over this cliff" computers won't replace tabletops. It's that sort of thing that will achieve the tipping point. Plus a lot more I'm just not inclined to try to lay out here since it's all just my own speculation anyway.
My hunch is that a new edition of the rules will grow out of the Beginner's Box. Instead of Paizo telling their current customers that we must upgrade to a new edition, they will reach out to the people who want to play Pathfinder but are daunted by the size and complexity of the Core Rulebook.
I see a market for an Introductory Rulebook with a simplified archetype of the character classes and explanations of the rules rewritten for clarity and ease of play. Perhaps they will use the Standard+Move wording of the Beginner's Box rather than the Full Action wording. The Introductory Rulebook will be compatible with the Core Rulebook and the existing modules, but it will change a few rules that are overdue for simplification.
Personally I think this is a good product idea for the future. (And would actually stay true the actual historic meaning of "edition.")
I like it because it grows organically out of a need that has naturally evolved. Third Edition was also a natural step forward because Second Edition had lost steam, people were more bothered by its limitations, and everyone at the time was looking for something new. Fourth Edition, in contrast, was created when interest and enthusiasm in 3rd Edition were still high.
So long as the decision to make a new "Edition!" (as in, non-backwards-compatible edition) of Pathfinder is made because of the natural evolution of the game and fans want and expect it, versus as a naked money grab, I will be happy.
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The point is that what you are asking for is a VR environment where you can do exactly what you can do with pen and paper and make it better.
Not going to happen.
Basically to do this you would need to create a persistent environment whereby a GM can create a world populated by believable characters who react naturally to any question posed to them by players and can hold a natural conversation. Also you would have to create a world that is fully adaptable to player exploration and allows the players to interact with it in any way a normal person could. You would have to detail every rope, every flower, every piece of grass and write code to reflect people ripping, cutting, burning, lifting and interacting with these objects in any of the hundreds of ways a human can.
In short you would have to create an environment populated by NPC's who pass the Turing test, that is as large as our world and is adaptable to an almost infinite number of variables.
In short you want a holodeck.
In 7-10 years.
Zero chance.
I'm hoping for a large alternate rules book to balance out aspects of the game and a way to digitally make characters at a fair price. For the most part the system is pretty solid, the art is fantastic, the organization is great, and content is great. Sometimes the editing is a little iffy, but they are becoming very responsible with their errata and faq's that I feel it's not a huge deal. The support Paizo has shown is just fantastic and I'm glad that I moved from 4e to pathfinder.
I could see some sort of "newish" version of pathfinder in 5 or so years, but I expect it will be a tweaking not a complete overhaul, maybe combining intergrating elements of mythic rules for instance more into the ruleset. A drastic overhaul for them is dangerous for the same reason it was for the 3.5 to 4 transition; the existing rule base is out there for someone to keep doing the pathfinder system after Paizo no longer supports it. If a new version appears, I might expect it to be more like the 3.0-3.5 version transition really.
But honestly, as other people have said, Paizo makes it's money off of Golarion, not the pathfinder rules. It's more likely they will run out of ideas for safe profitable CS books before they need to feel the need to start heavy modification of the rules.
The point is that what you are asking for is a VR environment where you can do exactly what you can do with pen and paper and make it better.
Not going to happen.
Basically to do this you would need to create a persistent environment whereby a GM can create a world populated by believable characters who react naturally to any question posed to them by players and can hold a natural conversation. Also you would have to create a world that is fully adaptable to player exploration and allows the players to interact with it in any way a normal person could. You would have to detail every rope, every flower, every piece of grass and write code to reflect people ripping, cutting, burning, lifting and interacting with these objects in any of the hundreds of ways a human can.
In short you would have to create an environment populated by NPC's who pass the Turing test, that is as large as our world and is adaptable to an almost infinite number of variables.
In short you want a holodeck.
In 7-10 years.
Zero chance.
Camelot, the fact that you don't understand what I am trying to say doesn't alter the direction of technology, nor the direction of the marketplace. Like I said, this sounds so much like the photography forum where people snickered about my predictions a dozen years ago. Those snickering folks are all either using digital cameras now or whining about their obsolete $40K of film camera equipment.
There will be a tipping point. When that tipping point happens, the pen and paper tabletop market will be reduced to a tiny fraction of what it is today. That will happen when people find it more convenient and fun to use technology than to use pen and paper. It is coming faster than you think. And it won't take a "holodeck" to do it. What it will take will be a combination of technology and an RPG "killer app."
I don't dispute that it might happen as you envisage, but as I mentioned, there is a break in the analogy. Digital cameras and old fashioned cameras produce the same thing - photos. At this stage at least, computer games and tabletop games are sating a different (though related) need.
There will be progress, of course, but I'm not convinced that the technological innovation is going to happen the way you think - the industry might devote most resources in a different direction. Because we can do something doesn't mean we will (we could all have our personal jet packs with todays technology if there was sufficient demand).
Predictions of future technological trends and developments can go wrong in both directions. That's why it's possible to both make and lose a fortune on tech stocks.
Actually, sometime before immersive gaming, there will be usable virtual tabletops, where the computer doesn't try handling the game and all its detail, but just replaces face-to-face interactions (and probably most of the usual props) well enough that most people won't miss the difference. Of course, there will be a lot of the same complaints that accompanied phones, email and all other forms of long-distance communication (killing interpersonal skills, etc.). I wouldn't bet against that being ready in 10 years.
Edit: This really has nothing to do with tabletop gaming. The same technology follows from video phones, telecommuting and virtual conferencing. Gamers will just adapt that technology and continue to play their existing games. (People will probably still play ADnD with it.)
Edit again: Replacing the DM will require quite a bit more than an immersive environment. The two main roles of a DM are running all the NPCs (which would require either a ton of content development or stronger AI) and building scenarios (which would be like making a whole new game, but might be shifted to AP developers).
Actually, sometime before immersive gaming, there will be usable virtual tabletops, where the computer doesn't try handling the game and all its detail, but just replaces face-to-face interactions (and probably most of the usual props) well enough that most people won't miss the difference. Of course, there will be a lot of the same complaints that accompanied phones, email and all other forms of long-distance communication (killing interpersonal skills, etc.). I wouldn't bet against that being ready in 10 years.
Edit: This really has nothing to do with tabletop gaming. The same technology follows from video phones, telecommuting and virtual conferencing. Gamers will just adapt that technology and continue to play their existing games. (People will probably still play ADnD with it.)
Edit again: Replacing the DM will require quite a bit more than an immersive environment. The two main roles of a DM are running all the NPCs (which would require either a ton of content development or stronger AI) and building scenarios (which would be like making a whole new game, but might be shifted to AP developers).
The GM will be the last thing replaced. But you are on the right track. Think of the game not as a simple virtual tabletop but as an extended virtual tabletop which also includes seamless integration with smartphones, padcomputers and 3D goggles and you will have some idea of what I envision as the first major step away from the current concept of RPGs. The main difference will be the interactive nature of the game, with things like scrolling maps, automatic lighting, statuses and automatic checking of all stats and attributes.
Another major paradigm shift will be the extension of actual characters into a much larger virtual universe where they can move between campaigns and even do things like craft items for sale in virtual marketplaces. Some of those virtual marketplaces will have exchange rates for real world cash. Some people will be employed in game terms.
There will be a time when some people spend more time on their fantasy virtual alter egos than they do with their real lives.
And it won't require holodecks before that happens either.
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Virtual reality gaming will essentially obsolete all of these tabletop games except for the case of a few dusty old grognards who insist that nothing can replace the feel of real paper in your hands.
That's the "far future" of Pathfinder and D&D. How "far"? Ten years? Twenty?
Pffft. Both you and I will be long dead.
Actually, sometime before immersive gaming, there will be usable virtual tabletops, where the computer doesn't try handling the game and all its detail, but just replaces face-to-face interactions (and probably most of the usual props) well enough that most people won't miss the difference.I've read theories that our loss of face to face time is being increasingly detrimental to our happiness; that as a tribal species, we need interaction with others of our species, and nothing but face-to-face really counts.
Maybe true, maybe part of simple cultural evolution that will change.
But wholly irrelevant to the discussion.
Pffft. Both you and I will be long dead.Virtual reality gaming will essentially obsolete all of these tabletop games except for the case of a few dusty old grognards who insist that nothing can replace the feel of real paper in your hands.
That's the "far future" of Pathfinder and D&D. How "far"? Ten years? Twenty?
Again, I'll check back with you in 2024 and see what you think.
Dunno.
Im trying to figure out what this DnD next is. Havent seen much of a comprehensive answer so far.
http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679620/dungeons-dragons-next-creators-look-to- simplicity-open-development-to-regain-lost-gamers
This indicates a system build from participation. Not so different from pathfinder. There would have to be something new and revolutionising, not just "we seek to copy paizo". Im referring to method as opposed to content here incase someone is confused with that line.
That said, something new would have to be introduced.
Im looking squarely at the magic bloat here. Requiring a loss of 1 CON for each magic item sure would slow down the process. Especially if staying semi-logical, so we can forget all about swords +1.
Instead the magic items would be rings of telekinesis, vorpal sword and such big hitters. No sane crafter would bother to make anything less. Well, except wands, scrolls and potions and such that wouldnt send the caster closer to death.
Similarily id dump the notion of goldcoins for crafting, and instead require tears of a lich, the heart of a dragon and the roots of a mountain. Be lucky to find enough for one or two craftings during a whole AP.
Gold would instead find itself spent on castles, mead and wenches.
Spells themselves could use some rework. The Warlock approach wasnt half bad. A blasting base ability aided by some charms/dimensiondoors/etc. While keeping spells and spell-like abilities to a minimum. Yes, appropriate for a demonlord.. but not for your average specialised expert, or other lesser creatures.
At lvl 15 youd be a grand master warrior absolutely weighted down by excess magic if you have a vorpal sword +3 and a belt of strength +6! Almost the equal to a dragon. Almost. Either of the two would be quite the big thing for a 15th level fighter.
Each magical item as legendary as a artifact of old.
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AD: Film cameras were replaced because digital cameras did everything a film camera did without the hassle of film. That's how these things work things get replaced when a better system comes along with all the advantages of the previous system and fewer of the disadvantages.
For what you are saying to actually happen you would need to replicate all of the advantages of tabletop gaming in a virtual environment whilst making the experience better. I don't see how you replicate the advantages of tabletop with what you are suggesting.
What you are saying is that tabletop will be replaced by something different when in actuality things only get replaced when they are the same but better.
AD: Film cameras were replaced because digital cameras did everything a film camera did without the hassle of film. That's how these things work things get replaced when a better system comes along with all the advantages of the previous system and fewer of the disadvantages.
For what you are saying to actually happen you would need to replicate all of the advantages of tabletop gaming in a virtual environment whilst making the experience better. I don't see how you replicate the advantages of tabletop with what you are suggesting.
What you are saying is that tabletop will be replaced by something different when in actuality things only get replaced when they are the same but better.
Im guessing full virtual reality wherein one cannot easily tell if its real or not. All full neural interfaces..
Yeah, thats what the Borgs do in their alcoves, play DnD with each other :D| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We use only the Core and the APG. My gaming group is trying to avoid the bloat of 3.5.
This is amazingly similar to the digital photography thread.
Let's just reconvene in 2024 and see where things stand, eh?
I don't think that a new edition is what will ultimately keep the "Pathfinder brand" fresh. In fact, this brand is built on the opposite principle. There's no reason these rules will need revision in 5, 10 ir even 20 years. Heck, some groups still play 1E.
Instead, I would imagine that the Pathfinder brand will eventually need to go beyond Golarion. A new world with new races, classes and adventure types should keep a lot of the old rules material relevant without the company falling under the weight of its own writing.
This being said, it will have to be something truly original. Something that uses the monsters, spells and races of the brand in a totally different context.
Paizo, if ever you are in need of such a product, I'll be happy to write and illustrate it for you. ;)