Rendering all my campaign setting books obsolete? no thanks.
Frankly, I think Paizo has already won this battle. Already I am looking forward to the Advanced Class Guide more than I am to the official release of D&D Next.
Same here.
Rendering all my campaign setting books obsolete? no thanks.
They are not necessarily obsolete. They would still work for adventures set in the earlier era, or as history books.
Plus, how long do you expect your material to last? How many years will your characters adventure with no advancement or change in the world? I mean, if you adventure through a dozen APs and at least a dozen in-game years go by, do you really expect that nothing will have changed in those dozen years? So you go back to the place where you started and no one has aged, no politics have changed, nothing has changed at all?
What I am suggesting is an answer to the question: What happens 10 or 20 years later after all of your adventuring efforts have paid off?
If Golarion is going to be a living campaign setting it has to grow and change. Otherwise it will stagnate and die.
Frankly, I think Paizo has already won this battle. Already I am looking forward to the Advanced Class Guide more than I am to the official release of D&D Next.Same here.
I think the Advanced Class Guide pretty much IS their counter to D&D next. If you think about it, ten brand new base classes is pretty much the core rulebook's worth of base classes all over again. It's going to add a whole new dynamic to the game, and I'm super excited to see how it plays out.
Anniversary Core Rule Book.
Biggest surprise in it: The overhauled rogue.
Rogues now get trap sense and trapfinding anyway, plus something meaningful else.
Also they can finesse all weapons, melee and reach and have medium armor proficiency as well as more weapon proficiences. Amongst them some exotic weapons, because rogues are mean and use such stuff to be mean.
Also there are some cool new rogue tricks to use maneuvers like feint and dirty trick easier and more efficient for rogues, which also have lowered prereqs for that stuff now.
The second big surprise: Stealth.....
Dangit. You beat me to it. I was gonna say something along the lines of Ultimate Rogue, the complete book to bumping rogues to top tier better than wizards.
Frankly, I think Paizo has already won this battle. Already I am looking forward to the Advanced Class Guide more than I am to the official release of D&D Next.The first step to defeat is assuming you have already won tomorrow's battle.
He still has a point. The people who quit 4e and joined Pathfinder aren't likely to jump ship to a NEW NEW system.
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While I don't think that ACG is a "direct counter", it does serve a "Hello 5E, welcome to the market! You have <<---that--->> much of catching up with rules to do, good luck!" message.
Of course, a different interpretation of that could be that Paizo is releasing another spat adding to their system's bloat, while D&D offers a much simpler system that isn't collapsing under it's own weight.
Anyone remember back when they said after Ultimate Combat that they were essentially done with adding new classes? Guess that got vetoed.
Plus, how long do you expect your material to last? How many years will your characters adventure with no advancement or change in the world? I mean, if you adventure through a dozen APs and at least a dozen in-game years go by, do you really expect that nothing will have changed in those dozen years? So you go back to the place where you started and no one has aged, no politics have changed, nothing has changed at all?What I am suggesting is an answer to the question: What happens 10 or 20 years later after all of your adventuring efforts have paid off?
If Golarion is going to be a living campaign setting it has to grow and change. Otherwise it will stagnate and die.
Hmm. What about something like the old "Poor Wizards Almanac" books for the old D&D Mystara setting?
For those who aren't familiar with them, there was a book released each year that detailed all the events and changes in the campaign world.
That way, all the original books stay as they are, while the almanacs are used as updates. Individual gaming groups can then progress their world via the almanacs at whatever rate they see fit.
It seems to me the AP´s and PFS scenarios are already advancing the world of Golarion in their own very unique and special way.
The only cataclysm i would welcome would be the one removing humans and common as a language from the face of Golarion. Some greetings from the dark tapestry. Perhaps some would survive it underground, slowly coming back up to serve their new halfling masters. The rest would probably mix with Drow or very unlikely build some concurrence to them.
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I only skimmed this thread, so if this has already been mentioned then just add my vote to whatever is already there.
I agree that we don't need a whole new rule set. Where Paizo really shines are the setting and adventure path books. So instead of redoing their rules they should look at relaunching their setting of Golarion.
I am talking about a Cataclysm (World of Warcraft) type relaunch. Assume that every adventure path has been successfully completed. How has all of that changed the world? Then there is a "Big Event" with an epic level Adventure Path. It would start at a level where most others end. Players could pick from their retired characters which ones they would want to take on the new epic quest. At the end of the adventure path the entire world of Golarion will have changed.
After the "Big Event" Paizo can go back and revisit all of the old settings with new 1-12 or 15 level APs that explore the new situation with possible cameos from old favorites NPC (or perhaps offspring of NPCs) and familiar but now changed locations.
OH DEAR GOD NO.
You mean go the FR (and to an extent Greyhawk route)?
I always say that very little will pull me away from Paizo. The two caveats are if their product becomes too expensive for me to keep buying it and the other is if the start screwing the pooch by making changes that I really, REALLY don't like.
This thing that youre talking about? I'd drop Paizo in a heartbeat if they did this. The only other thing that I could think of that would make me leave faster is if they changed the ruleset to resemble 4E. That's not a swipe at 4E. I'm playing Pathfinder because 3.5 is my preferred ruleset and I'm not a fan of 4E. So yeah, out the door.
Well maybe people aren't ready for an update yet, but it has to happen eventually. They can't just keep adding and adding and never updating.
Bloat is a real thing, and bloat can happen in a campaign setting just like it can with rules. I would argue that they have already gone too far with the rules and they need to start removing things, not adding more. People have been suggesting adding a new continent. How many times can you do that before you just admit that the world is too big, too bloated, too unwieldy?
If Paizo thinks that there is still room for more stories in the current world AND the current time frame. Great! They would know better than I. But it can not go on forever. At a certain point things will just become so large and complex that no one (or at least not enough to support the game) will want to bother with it.
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Then you create a new set of rules with a new world.
Its the only way to avoid the obvious problems of continuity, bloat, "maximum saturation" (a marketing term), and fanboi nerdrage at changes.
Say the setting and rules are 'done', and then just walk away... its that simple. You don't move the time-frame forward with an WSE (world-shaking event), because that alienates the existing fanbase more then anything else.
This is coming, BTW, from a very disheartened/disgruntled FR fan, who hasn't made a single 4e purchase (aside from one novel) since they nuked the setting I love.
Do a 'Mutants & Mentats' rulebook, and then give us an Omega World (Gamma World) to play it in. Or something Steampunk (real steampunk - not this "there are guns over there... if you want them to be" crap), or Gothic Horror, or pure scify, etc, etc... something completely different, both in rules and setting. That could work, but re-doing the current rules or setting - especially any time soon (as in the next five years) - is just commercial suicide, IMHO. You may as well just tell your fans to go elsewhere, because they will... just look around here.
Well maybe people aren't ready for an update yet, but it has to happen eventually. They can't just keep adding and adding and never updating.
Bloat is a real thing, and bloat can happen in a campaign setting just like it can with rules. I would argue that they have already gone too far with the rules and they need to start removing things, not adding more. People have been suggesting adding a new continent. How many times can you do that before you just admit that the world is too big, too bloated, too unwieldy?
If Paizo thinks that there is still room for more stories in the current world AND the current time frame. Great! They would know better than I. But it can not go on forever. At a certain point things will just become so large and complex that no one (or at least not enough to support the game) will want to bother with it.
I concur on that. But I would also not want some cataclysmic world event to happen when they update their setting one day long away in the future. James Jacobs already said that, if and when that happens, not every AP will be assumed to have been successfully completed, meaning some of those villains will have won the day. That alone should bring enough change to the settting.
an update to a new edition of the rules doesn't require an update to campaign setting. WoTC/TSR did that...and it never really went over that well.
Really, the way the setting is set up, most of the nations/regions are independent of one another. updating the timeline is only necessary when they want to have a campaign based somewhere where they have previously run an Adventure Path. Which they did do with Shattered Star (Drow are widely known as existing, Karzoug is defeated and there is a "Thassilonian artifact" gold rush, Ileosa was defeated and their was a change in power in the city).
I suspect someday they may need to seriously consider a new campaign setting...but not for many many years.
Then you create a new set of rules with a new world.
Its the only way to avoid the obvious problems of continuity, bloat, "maximum saturation" (a marketing term), and fanboi nerdrage at changes.
Say the setting and rules are 'done', and then just walk away... its that simple. You don't move the time-frame forward with an WSE (world-shaking event), because that alienates the existing fanbase more then anything else.
This is coming, BTW, from a very disheartened/disgruntled FR fan, who hasn't made a single 4e purchase (aside from one novel) since they nuked the setting I love.
Do a 'Mutants & Mentats' rulebook, and then give us an Omega World (Gamma World) to play it in. Or something Steampunk (real steampunk - not this "there are guns over there... if you want them to be" crap), or Gothic Horror, or pure scify, etc, etc... something completely different, both in rules and setting. That could work, but re-doing the current rules or setting - especially any time soon (as in the next five years) - is just commercial suicide, IMHO. You may as well just tell your fans to go elsewhere, because they will... just look around here.
I can get behind this idea. Apparently the solution I was proposing for the problem was not really a good one. Fair enough. But the problem of bloat (I guess it is called "market saturation") is real.
So change my vote to what MarkusTay is saying.
Frankly, I think Paizo has already won this battle. Already I am looking forward to the Advanced Class Guide more than I am to the official release of D&D Next.The first step to defeat is assuming you have already won tomorrow's battle.
Well, I am a witness to and not a participant in the battle, so I don't need to do anything but watch. I am sure that the Paizo folks know better than to rest on their laurels because of posts like mine.
Still, in order to reverse the expected outcome, Wizards would have to do everything right and Paizo would have to do everything wrong. Based on past history, I would be even more shocked to see that happen than I was to see Pathfinder overtake D&D 4E.
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Then you create a new set of rules with a new world.
That would be about the one thing which would most alienate me from ever trusting a single thing Paizo does.
Anyone remember back when they said after Ultimate Combat that they were essentially done with adding new classes? Guess that got vetoed.
Remember before Ultimate Combat when they said they weren't going to do samurai or ninja because those concepts could be built with existing classes and they didn't need culture specific classes? Or weren't going to stat Japanese weapons like katana, because after all that's just the Japanese version of a bastard sword?
I've learned to take what Paizo says they are and aren't going to do with a very large grain of salt.
And I don't mind that they change their mind--usually it's one staff member stating their opinions/knowledge of what they think the direction of the game is, and different/higher up staff have different ideas and/or they decide to take fan demand into account, and as discussions of future materials go, stuff changes. I do wish they'd be more careful about saying what they believe will or won't do, however, as that can blow up if things end up not going the way they say they will.
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To the original topic... I don't think Paizo should do anything to "counter" D&D Next. There's room for both and some gamers are going to play both games and it'd be better not to force a split fanbase situation where someone feels torn between buying D&D or some all new shiny thing from Paizo. That said, I'm sure ACG or whatever is coming out during GenCon--as there always is something, regardless of what other companies are doing, will have an appropriate showing to support itself. But I'd rather see it as Paizo continuing to push its awesome game, than stir up unnecessary competitiveness.
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Everybody knows that they are saving the men of Paizo swimsuit calendar as the ace up their sleeve.
Everybody knows that they are saving the men of Paizo swimsuit calendar as the ace up their sleeve.
Now you blew the surprise...
Everybody knows that they are saving the men of Paizo swimsuit calendar as the ace up their sleeve.Now you blew the surprise...
james is December, sean is is july
james is December,
So, sultry Santa suit?
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james is December,So, sultry Santa suit?
Its a strategically placed Christmas Pudding a Santa hat, a knowing smile and a wink.
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I'm playing Pathfinder because 3.5 is my preferred rulesetIf 3.5 is your preferred ruleset, why are you playing PF and not 3.5? Just curious.
You know exactly what I meant when I said that.
EDIT: I had a less than polite response initially so I'm replacing it with this - It's fairly obvious that I equate Pathfinder with being closer to 3.5 than 4E. Hence "I'm playing Pathfinder BECAUSE 3.5 is my preferred ruleset".
You weren't asking a clarifying question. It was ALMOST an accusation. And if I'm remembering correctly you're someone who doesn't care for Pathfinder and is a 3.5 "purist" (not to be confused with that other guy...). So there's that.
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You know exactly what I meant when I said that. Dont start looking for a fight here okay?I'm playing Pathfinder because 3.5 is my preferred rulesetIf 3.5 is your preferred ruleset, why are you playing PF and not 3.5? Just curious.
I wasn't looking for a fight, I am genuinely curious. Do I take it you meant 3.x and not 3.5?
I personally prefer 3.5 and so still play that game over and above PF (I play PF for PFS only), but I can imagine others may play PF despite preferring 3.5 for a number of reasons:
They prefer the Golarion setting
They don't like to play unsupported systems
They can't find 3.5 players but can find PF players
They love the Adevnture Paths and find they are easier to run under PF than convert back to 3.5
They want to play in living campaigns and PFS is the closest they can get to a 3.5 living campaign (this is me).
I was just curious what your reasons may be - why you made the jump to PF from 3.5 if you were happy with 3.5 (or maybe you play both like me). But don't feel that you need to answer, especially if its a hot topic for you.
Thanks for reading.
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To the original topic... I don't think Paizo should do anything to "counter" D&D Next. There's room for both and some gamers are going to play both games and it'd be better not to force a split fanbase situation where someone feels torn between buying D&D or some all new shiny thing from Paizo. That said, I'm sure ACG or whatever is coming out during GenCon--as there always is something, regardless of what other companies are doing, will have an appropriate showing to support itself. But I'd rather see it as Paizo continuing to push its awesome game, than stir up unnecessary competitiveness.
Thank you for saying that.
I run Paizo adventure paths for my Saturday group, using the 4E ruleset. Right now I'm prepping a D&D Next playtest using the Dragon's Demand module. Since the latter is for mostly new players, I'm introducing them to Golarion and many Pathfinder concepts, even though I'm not using the Pathfinder ruleset. I buy a LOT of Paizo products, some by subscription and some at my FLGS - and I show them off at my FLGS - so even though Pathfinder isn't my preferred ruleset, I want Paizo to continue to succeed.
There's no need whatsoever for Paizo to "counter" D&D Next, or to help re-ignite the edition wars. They should just take the high road (as they've always tried to do), continue to publish excellent products and to provide amazing customer service, and to craft the best stories in adventure form that the industry has ever seen. The rest should take care of itself.
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EDIT: I had a less than polite response initially so I'm replacing it with this - It's fairly obvious that I equate Pathfinder with being closer to 3.5 than 4E. Hence "I'm playing Pathfinder BECAUSE 3.5 is my preferred ruleset".
You weren't asking a clarifying question. It was ALMOST an accusation. And if I'm remembering correctly you're someone who doesn't care for Pathfinder and is a 3.5 "purist" (not to be confused with that other guy...). So there's that.
Just saw your edit following my initial response.
I guess I am very specific in my use of terminology so if I use the term 3.5 I mean D&D 3.5, not D&D 3.0, not Pathfinder etc. If I want to refer to the overall ruleset more loosely I tend to use 3.x. Because I am specific in using the terms, I tend to read things in the same manner - maybe I should not do so.
Hopefully my last post provides some clarifying questions, but as I said feel free not to respond if you don't wish to.
Cheers!
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Then you create a new set of rules with a new world.That would be about the one thing which would most alienate me from ever trusting a single thing Paizo does.
And here I find that attitude really strange.
If you love what they have done so far, why would you prefer they change it all?
They WILL eventually have to do something, and I would think that moving in a new direction is preferable to destroying what has come before, and pissing everyone off with new rules and a a 're-imagined' setting for Pathfinder/Golarion.
Games are supposed to be 'finished'. You don't see people screaming for expansions to Monopoly or Risk. Why can't an RPG just be 'complete'? I am also not talking about just dropping PF/Gol altogether - just placing focus (and increased income-generation) on new projects, not re-inventing the wheel. WotC tried that with both D&D and FR, and it drove people here by the thousands.
That is the choice they WILL be faced with eventually; I've been in retail, and 'market saturation' is a very real thing. You have to always be aware of 'the numbers', and have the next, new direction already in-place (before its too late). We have to decide now if we are more willing to allow them to blow Golarion up, move the timeline forward, and deal with entirely new rules, OR have something else - a choice - of another setting and rules offered by them, that would be in every way just as good and satisfying as PF has been.
How is having this choice negatively impacting YOU? Why would you quite Paizo altogether? Everyone has to play with your preferred setting and rules or you will "take your ball and go home"?
When they blow the planet up and come out with PF2.0, you and the other 10 people still here can have fun watching the tumbleweeds blowing by....
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I personally prefer 3.5 and so still play that game over and above PF (I play PF for PFS only), but I can imagine others may play PF despite preferring 3.5 for a number of reasons:...
They don't like to play unsupported systems
Which is kind of an amusing reason, given that 3.5 has more support readily available than most systems will EVER see, and far more than any one person could hope to use in a single lifetime that isn't devoted solely to D&D.
Then you create a new set of rules with a new world.That would be about the one thing which would most alienate me from ever trusting a single thing Paizo does.And here I find that attitude really strange.
If you love what they have done so far, why would you prefer they change it all?
They WILL eventually have to do something, and I would think that moving in a new direction is preferable to destroying what has come before, and pissing everyone off with new rules and a a 're-imagined' setting for Pathfinder/Golarion.
Games are supposed to be 'finished'. You don't see people screaming for expansions to Monopoly or Risk. Why can't an RPG just be 'complete'? I am also not talking about just dropping PF/Gol altogether - just placing focus (and increased income-generation) on new projects, not re-inventing the wheel. WotC tried that with both D&D and FR, and it drove people here by the thousands.
That is the choice they WILL be faced with eventually; I've been in retail, and 'market saturation' is a very real thing. You have to always be aware of 'the numbers', and have the next, new direction already in-place (before its too late). We have to decide now if we are more willing to allow them to blow Golarion up, move the timeline forward, and deal with entirely new rules, OR have something else - a choice - of another setting and rules offered by them, that would be in every way just as good and satisfying as PF has been.
How is having this choice negatively impacting YOU? Why would you quite Paizo altogether? Everyone has to play with your preferred setting and rules or you will "take your ball and go home"?
When they blow the planet up and come out with PF2.0, you and the other 10 people still here can have fun watching the tumbleweeds blowing by....
Because Monopoly and Risk are not RPG's. RPG's live and die by their ability to immerse people into the setting, by making us feel that we are living in this world. And living, breathing settings change and evolve, like you would expect the real world to do.
Stating as a definite that the Golarion setting will never be updated rips me right out of this immersion, it shows me that I am just sitting in a pretty cage with bars in the direction of the future. I would want no part of such a thing.
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Golarion can advance. But it's up to each GM to decide how it advances, they aren't chained to something that Paizo puts out.
Exactly so.
People often get confused about what the publisher is supposed to offer vs. what the DM should be doing.
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<shrug> I prefer the publisher to do that work. They would know best on how to advance their entire world and I can always change out the details where my group did things differently.
Well Shattered Star did advance the setting...
Advancing a setting is really one necessary if you are revisiting the same storyline or nation/city/region
Also, every time the topic comes up, you get at least one person who goes into histrionics how he'll burn his books and scatter their ashes if Golarion ever gets updated. I figure I might as well do that thing once for the other side. It's not only you guys who get to threaten Paizo with its imminent doom and fans scattering to the winds. ^^
That is the choice they WILL be faced with eventually; I've been in retail, and 'market saturation' is a very real thing. You have to always be aware of 'the numbers', and have the next, new direction already in-place (before its too late). We have to decide now if we are more willing to allow them to blow Golarion up, move the timeline forward, and deal with entirely new rules, OR have something else - a choice - of another setting and rules offered by them, that would be in every way just as good and satisfying as PF has been.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks that time is now though. There is still a whole lot of Golarion that has not been given much material. Entire continents, and even regions in the Inner Sea.
My 18 years in retail have taught me that while what you're saying is often true, it is often very dependent on the target audience. I won't go into examples and the like because anecdotal evidence is the weakest evidence. But I will tell you this, I personally would rather see other areas get their due than see the same areas get a hundred years later facelift.
My ideal would be for the books to just be crunchless and just keep being released despite edition. I love the Forgotten Realms. I thought the 3.x regional books were excellent. 4e made for a good jumping off point for me, and good jumping on point for Golarion. I would have loved to see a Maztica book and a Moonshaes book, and so on. Being rulesless would have allowed that to happen without the time jump to explain new mechanics and so on. I'd prefer that approach to Golarion as well.
But maybe that is kind of what you are saying. They could always make a new edition's setting be another continent on the same world. That is in a lot of ways releasing a whole new setting along with the new rules.
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Also, every time the topic comes up, you get at least one person who goes into histrionics how he'll burn his books and scatter their ashes if Golarion ever gets updated. I figure I might as well do that thing once for the other side. It's not only you guys who get to threaten Paizo with its imminent doom and fans scattering to the winds. ^^
I've read, and contributed to, many threads on this topic to which you have been an enthusiastic contributor.
In fact, I would guess that few people on the forums have made more posts on this topic than you.
And those threads have not all involved histrionics and threats. Not at all.
Caricaturing those who disagree with you is not an especially nice thing to do. Please remember the most important rule.
<shrug> I prefer the publisher to do that work. They would know best on how to advance their entire world and I can always change out the details where my group did things differently.
I think there's a difference between updating and advancing the world, and reboots.
I have no problem with updates and revisions, just so long as they're phased in such a way that doesn't invalidate everything I spent the last few years buying.
For example, a new edition of the core rulebook that makes mechanical changes in such a way that current stat blocks are still valid enough to use comfortably (in much the same way as the difference between 3.0 and 3.5) is fine. Individual books that update and replace previous editions of the campaign setting volumes or player guides.
What would put me (and I'm betting many others) off is saying "Well, Pathfinder 1.0 was great but it's time to bring it to an end. Next month sees the release of Pathfinder 2.0 which is incompatible with all your existing material, so be prepared to switch games or buy a whole new set of bookshelves!"
One of the reasons people moved to Pathfinder was that they were fed up with reboots that invalidated huge monetary investments and left them having to buy into a whole new game from scratch.
(Of course, there's another reason: That it's just such a cool game. But we'll skip that for now.)
A lot of Pathfinder's success is down to how it was pretty much interchangeable with people's existing 3.5 material, including that for the Pathfinder setting itself. Nobody has complained about the two previous editions of the main Campaign Setting book being replaced, but there'd be lynch mobs forming if that also required throwing out your core rulebook, bestiaries, additional class handbooks, and (gasp!) APs. Pathfinder works just fine with third party 3.5 OGL modules. If a new edition broke that compatibility, you'd have a lot of the people that choose Pathfinder over 4.0 for that very reason heading for the exits.
So, choosing to start republishing Golarion setting books set 10 or so years after the current ones would be no problem at all - after all, books eventually go out of print, and the setting will eventually stagnate otherwise. There's also a lot of areas that have been partially covered in smaller volumes that could happily be collected and updated in new hardcovers that replace those earlier volumes, not to mention whole swathes of continent that have never seen anything other than a few lines of text.
On the other hand, deciding that a meteor has hit the planet and thrown the entire place into chaos, made sweeping changes to magical mechanics due to some kind of radioactive dust thrown up, left half the cities uninhabitable, and at the same time deciding to completely rework the current rules into an incompatible new system... that'd be a really silly thing to do.
Having said all of the above, I do recognize that we're already at the point where it's getting difficult to add to the existing rules, without cross-referencing 20 other volumes to ensure it works with them as well. That also makes new player buy-in a bit of a challenge as people are faced with this huge list of add-ons. Taking multiple 32/64-page volumes and replacing them with compendium-style hardcovers can alleviate the strain a bit, but yeah it'll also reach the point where the core rulebook needs to be updated and some of the bloat condensed and "absorbed", inevitably requiring simplifications and even complete rewrites/new versions to get it into a manageable amount of space. That's more of a 3.0 > 3.5 thing though - or in the case of Pathfinder, a case for Core Rulebook 1.1.
Its a strategically placed Christmas Pudding a Santa hat, a knowing smile and a wink.james is December,So, sultry Santa suit?
just wait until you see Sean's salute to the nation
Also, every time the topic comes up, you get at least one person who goes into histrionics how he'll burn his books and scatter their ashes if Golarion ever gets updated. I figure I might as well do that thing once for the other side. It's not only you guys who get to threaten Paizo with its imminent doom and fans scattering to the winds. ^^I've read, and contributed to, many threads on this topic to which you have been an enthusiastic contributor.
In fact, I would guess that few people on the forums have made more posts on this topic than you.
And those threads have not all involved histrionics and threats. Not at all.
Caricaturing those who disagree with you is not an especially nice thing to do. Please remember the most important rule.
If you say so. The threat of abandoning Pathfinder completely if the setting would ever be updated was uttered repeatedly. Maybe it's you who is dealing with selective amnesia on the topic.
If you say so. The threat of abandoning Pathfinder completely if the setting would ever be updated was uttered repeatedly. Maybe it's you who is dealing with selective amnesia on the topic.Also, every time the topic comes up, you get at least one person who goes into histrionics how he'll burn his books and scatter their ashes if Golarion ever gets updated. I figure I might as well do that thing once for the other side. It's not only you guys who get to threaten Paizo with its imminent doom and fans scattering to the winds. ^^I've read, and contributed to, many threads on this topic to which you have been an enthusiastic contributor.
In fact, I would guess that few people on the forums have made more posts on this topic than you.
And those threads have not all involved histrionics and threats. Not at all.
Caricaturing those who disagree with you is not an especially nice thing to do. Please remember the most important rule.
Yeah and I was one of the people who said that.
I'm not exactly certain what issue you have with me saying that. Especially since I prefaced this with the fact that there are very few things that would make me walk away from Pathfinder as a game and Paizo as a company. I wasnt issuing a threat of any kind, TO ANY ONE.
Listen, if a company starts making a product that I have no interest in? I should what? Keep giving them my money? Because YOU LIKE IT, I should keep giving them my money? Really?
I've walked away from both HERO games and WOTC because they started making products that I was no longer interested in supporting. I have no illusions that me walking away is going to effect their bottom line. I wasn't threatening them with what I would do TO THEM. I was saying simply what I WOULD DO. Understand?
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Golarion can advance. But it's up to each GM to decide how it advances, they aren't chained to something that Paizo puts out.
Yup. THIS.
It's one of the reasons I got really turned off to FR so early on. With the fiction and the setting books playing with certain players was impossible. It was like if you made ANY changes it was like "You cant do that!" "That's not the way it happened in *insert book here*" or "well you do know that *Insert Powerful NPC here* is in this city and would probably not allow that to happen"
I hate that. More than almost anything in RPG's. The writers and the creators of the game world aren't at the table. If I don't want Elminster or some other NPC in a game that i'm running that's my prerogative. If you, as a player, have a problem with me OT having a slavish devotion to the canon of the books? Then you're not a player I want to play with.
Part of the reason I really like Golarion is that the world is built around the players in the form of the modules and the AP's. Not because a writer or the company says THIS is what's going on now. THIS is canon. And then the fans of the setting bow their heads in supplication and curse anyone who doesn't have their game fall in lockstep with that. UGH. NO.
Yeah and I was one of the people who said that.
I'm not exactly certain what issue you have with me saying that. Especially since I prefaced this with the fact that there are very few things that would make me walk away from Pathfinder as a game and Paizo as a company. I wasnt issuing a threat of any kind, TO ANY ONE.
Listen, if a company starts making a product that I have no interest in? I should what? Keep giving them my money? Because YOU LIKE IT, I should keep giving them my money? Really?
I've walked away from both HERO games and WOTC because they started making products that I was no longer interested in supporting. I have no illusions that me walking away is going to effect their bottom line. I wasn't threatening them with what I would do TO THEM. I was saying simply what I WOULD DO. Understand?
No, no, it's okay. I've done the same, in the other direction, just a few posts up. It's an opinion diametrically opposed to mine, but those, y'know, exist. Not much any of us can do about it.
But thank you for saving me from having to hunt down one of those posts, which I indubitably would have had to do otherwise this morning. ^^
Having said all of the above, I do recognize that we're already at the point where it's getting difficult to add to the existing rules, without cross-referencing 20 other volumes to ensure it works with them as well. That also makes new player buy-in a bit of a challenge as people are faced with this huge list of add-ons. Taking multiple 32/64-page volumes and replacing them with compendium-style hardcovers can alleviate the strain a bit, but yeah it'll also reach the point where the core rulebook needs to be updated and some of the bloat condensed and "absorbed", inevitably requiring simplifications and even complete rewrites/new versions to get it into a manageable amount of space. That's more of a 3.0 > 3.5 thing though - or in the case of Pathfinder, a case for Core Rulebook 1.1.
This is what I think really needs to be done. Having all of the core rules in one book is great. Having some additional options in a few other books is nice. Having hundreds of different options in dozens of little books is frustrating.
Everything needs to be consolidated and made more easy to access. Some bad or broken options need to be removed and others need to be improved. In particular martial feats and rogue talents need to improved and this can be done in a 1.1 version that doesn't invalidate any existing material.