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I doubt Paizo would do such a think, but honestly I really, REALLY would love to have the 3.5 era AP's updated to Pathfinder updated rules and info in much the same way that RoTRL was. They seem to contain a lot of the iconic information and development that went into Golarion that we know today.
Just grousing, since I know the devs said they were not doing more than RoTRL, but still. Pity. *sigh*
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Lisa, in your opinion (and if you feel like sharing) did the Runelords Anniversary Edition actually demonstrate those issues? Or is it something that you could conceivably do again, once in a while, when the stars are right?
I would love to see the director's cut of Second Darkness, for instance.
There's a difference between these. They've run out of product for several of the Runelords modules (for the print edition at least). They have NOT run out of any back product for any of the following APs from what I've heard. Unfortunately, part of the problem lies with the fact we're now playing Pathfinder instead of D&D 3.5 (though the company owning D&D has rereleased 3.5 rulebooks in a vain effort to lure away Pathfinder fans and increase sales) so there's less interest in those modules.
What might be interesting is if Paizo decided to craft a Conversion PDF in which fans sign a contract stating they will not seek reimbursement outside of being on the page of Thanks and Contributors and then convert the AP over to Pathfinder. The problem is that you'd STILL need a Paizo employee to look over the information, and our favorite Tyrannosaur is undoubtedly quite busy already! :)
That and a Pathfinder-converted PDF would compete then with those print products. (Though Paizo COULD in theory bundle the PDFs and print copies where if you buy the print copy you get a 50% discount on the PDF.)
I thought of the product stock issue after hitting send.. good catch Tangent.
Still, Second Darkness seems to me like the potential exception, mainly because so many have gone on record as saying it has great potential, but flaws in execution that could be fixed in a collection.
While I understand the workload issues, I am in the camp that would instantly order these if they appeared. I remain hopeful that the staff might be large enough one day to pull this off. But we may very well see a Pathfinder 2 before we see these re-released.
Here is Vic Wertz explaining why old APs going out of print and no longer being available for purchase is good for Paizo's business.
As many of you know, one of the biggest issues that lead to TSR's insolvency is the proliferation of campaign settings. When they were actively selling one or two or three campaign settings to their audience, a big chunk of their audience would buy any given book they were releasing. When they were actively selling seven or eight campaign settings, only a small fraction of the audience would buy any given release.
A similar problem exists with APs, as the typical gaming group plays only one at a time. Right now, a group looking for an AP might well rule out the 3.5 ones, and the ones that have volumes out of print, so that leaves them 7 APs to consider—or, assuming quality and appeal being similar among them, a 1 in 7 chance they'll buy the current product. If we updated the 3.5 ones, and reprinted the out-of-print volumes, the odd that they'd choose the current release drop to 1 in 12.
The simple fact is that we need to sell you what we're making more than we need to sell you what we've made, and allowing things to go out of print is therefore a necessity.
And when those out-of-print volumes go for big money on eBay, that's actually helpful in that it helps establish an upward trend for the future value of a present subscription, and underlines the fact that the best time to subscribe to our lines is "as soon as possible."
And let's be honest! They never truly go out of print so long as the PDFs are available! (That said, my idea about having fans volunteer their services to update the PDFs to Pathfinder rules and revamp the PDFs in that case is still a viable one that would have minimal cost to Paizo.)
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I thought of the product stock issue after hitting send.. good catch Tangent.
Still, Second Darkness seems to me like the potential exception, mainly because so many have gone on record as saying it has great potential, but flaws in execution that could be fixed in a collection.
And I think JJ has gone on record saying Second Darkness is the one he would most like to re-visit specifically because he has "fixes" in mind.
-Skeld
And let's be honest! They never truly go out of print so long as the PDFs are available! (That said, my idea about having fans volunteer their services to update the PDFs to Pathfinder rules and revamp the PDFs in that case is still a viable one that would have minimal cost to Paizo.)
There are already excellent fan conversions of the old APs in the appropriate AP forums. Most of them even have free HeroLab files you can download with the updated statblocks in them. Granted, they're not "pretty" with the official Paizo stamp of approval on them, but they're readily available.
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Another problem is that Rise of the Runelords was the first and the art wasn't as good as we grew to expect from Paizo, so a new edition with big revamped art was surprising and desired. By the time Curse of the Crimson Throne was lauched, the Adventure Path issues already had better art and side books.
If we focused on the business side, the best moment would be:
1- If the revisited Korvosa, the elf-drow war, or Katapesh. So new art/product awareness would be easier.
2- If something from outside brought focus on those paths, like a movie about them, a huge celebrity declared undying love for them, or a video-game about them was made, or anything that would making them marketable again.
3- They had a problem with a hardcover and needed a fast replacement and somehow someone that already started it on his free time offered to finish the job with the remaing resources from the lost hardcover.
I definitely understand this wouldn't happen. But I'd love to replay CotCT updated. It was the only AP I ever played start to finish and was hella fun to boot! I think it'd even be a good way to use some of the downtime system or Ultimate Campaign war stuff.
Sign me up for a pledge!!! Anything to get it done.
Its an odd world we've become when producing something your established patrons are clamoring to buy would be bad for business. Seems like a bigger motivation is the fact that they are making almost $150 per AP right now and they know they could never get away with charging that much for a single volume, no matter how well done. Spreading the pain out via subscriptions keeps people from realizing just how much they spend on these fine products.
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As much as I'd love a collected and updated edition of Curse of the Crimson Throne (alchemist doctors!). I think that such an item is years down the line, likely as part of an anniversary the same way Rise of the Runelords was.
Second Darkness getting rebuilt from the ground up sounds like almost as much work as just doing an entirely new adventure path, and I just don't think paizo would want to commit resources to fixing a broken AP when they can just make future APs good.
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Its an odd world we've become when producing something your established patrons are clamoring to buy would be bad for business.
Not really. The customer is usually wrong.
Well RotRL was redone for the 10th anniversary right? So maybe for the 20 year anniversary they'll update CotCT. :)
I'm hoping for the 15th. (Although I fear Second Darkness might push it's way to the front).
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One every two years would be nice, but I fear that's expecting too much.
The average budget per customer is too important of a consideration in this kind of thing. Every additional thing you put up that is a "must have" means one less "would buy if could afford" they'll be buying from you.
I tend to know roughly how much money each month I have to spend on RPG-related stuff, and the majority of it is going to Paizo right now - chances are anything other than the standard subscription items is going to mean cancelling a subscription to pay for it, and subscriptions are pretty much Paizo's bread+butter.
I can certainly see the dilution issue, but surely going from the 7 most recent APs to the 7 most recent APs and a collected hardback of an older, refurbished AP wouldn't dilute things all that much, would it?
In all likelihood it would.
To put it another way, you don't see the first, second or third generation iPhone being sold in stores. There are people who prefer them to the newer ones but for the most part those phones are scrapped or kept in small numbers for spare parts. Now if Apple were to put out "The Collector's Edition of the First Generation iPhone!" then you have a bunch of diehard Apple fans who would likely buy it. And then not have money necessarily for the next Apple product... or accessories.
There is only two ways you would see a revamping of old 3.5 modules, and that's either that Paizo runs out of stock of the existing 3.5 modules (so be sure to order them and give them to your friends so the stocks diminish! ^^) or Paizo decides to revamp the PDFs, release the PDFs as upgraded to the Pathfinder rules, and offer a bundle where you get 50% off the PDF if you purchase the print copy. I'm not sure how much that would make Paizo, so the latter is unlikely.
In addition, by doing that Paizo risks that someone might buy the older AP but not bother with a new AP instead. Thus they cut into their own profits.
For all that a vocal minority would love to see these old 3.5 APs revamped and put out in a hardcover... we won't be seeing that. And there is one last reason.
When I first started purchasing Paizo products, I bought the core books and was going to use it with Night Below. It was only when I purchased the Runelords hardcover that I learned how good Paizo's APs were... but I held off on subscribing to the AP Reign of Winter in hopes they'd have other hardcover compilations. Finally I succumbed due to the free PDFs included (and missed out by a day or two from getting the PDF for part 1 free - I bought just the PDF and not the print copy to compensate).
How many other people bought the Runelords hardcover compilation... and then have held off on the APs in hopes that another hardcover would be released? How many people would hold off on buying Wrath of the Righteous until a year or two later when a hardcover came out? It's not economical for Paizo to have both softcover APs and hardcover compilations. The softcovers make Paizo more money and is the more successful business model. In addition, the softcovers come out monthly and thus keep interest in Pathfinder all year long instead of twice a year.
Yes, I'd love for more hardcover APs. But not at the expense of Paizo going under. So the current business model will continue until it's no longer economical.
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As long as they still have stock of the original AP volumes in their store, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot to produce an new, improved, cheaper hardcover compilation because it would mean that no one would ever buy the old, inferior, more expensive option and they'd lose all their investment on remaining copies. And the sale-depressing effect doesn't even wait until a hardcover is produced or announced: If people believe that Paizo will be producing a hardcover CotCT or Second Darkness within the next x years, it makes them less likely to buy the volumes still in stock, which, ironically, makes it less likely Paizo will ever make the hardcover.
They also have to keep in mind the possibility of people dropping their AP subscription because "all the good ones will come out in hardcover eventually." And, yeah, Paizo could make it clear that a compilation is a special case not to be repeated ... but frankly, that's just what they did with RotRL, Vic going so far as to post this:
Seriously, guys, please stop asking for other compilations. It's not going to happen, and I don't want people who don't read carefully thinking it's likely to happen.
One of the main reasons for not doing this one is that just having the notion out there that we *might* do this for other APs is harmful. I'd really appreciate it if everybody would help squash that idea whenever and wherever it is raised.
This is a unique circumstance.
And yet threads like this pop up once every six weeks or so, it seems.
Personally, I'd love hardcover compilations; I'm not just here to rain on people's parades. But Paizo has made it clear that it's not in the cards and that they'd like people not even to discuss it lest people think it's a possibility because it hurts their business.
I can certainly see the dilution issue, but surely going from the 7 most recent APs to the 7 most recent APs and a collected hardback of an older, refurbished AP wouldn't dilute things all that much, would it?
Given the workload at Paizo we keep hearing about on the boards, I think it really would. At the very simplest, it'd likely be enough work to push the AP subscriptions back by a volume (at the very minimum you're looking at a designer to re-do stat blocks, an editor to rework the text, and someone to do layout. Hopefully more people than that so you can totally rewrite any sections that aren't up to today's standards or would simply be better done another way.), for a product that isn't going to guarantee as many immediate sales as the AP it'd be replacing.
My guess is the deciding factor is far more "do we have anyone sitting around doing nothing for the next month?" than it is "will this product sell?". Which means if it does happen, it would come as a big, unannounced surprise and not as a result of customer demand.
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I would kickstart the Dungeon era AP collected editions.
I would kickstart the Dungeon era AP collected editions.As cool as that would be, you'd have to talk to WotC about that. They own the right to the Dungeon-era APs.
-Skeld
I'm well aware, but a man can dream.
Lotta dreaming up in this thread.
I would love to see Second Darkness re-done.
I would Kickstart your Heart:)
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Sign me up for a pledge!!! Anything to get it done.
Its an odd world we've become when producing something your established patrons are clamoring to buy would be bad for business. Seems like a bigger motivation is the fact that they are making almost $150 per AP right now and they know they could never get away with charging that much for a single volume, no matter how well done. Spreading the pain out via subscriptions keeps people from realizing just how much they spend on these fine products.
It is not a bad business decision on their end at all to not do them. I for one realize how much I spend on all the AP's I have... but I also get the material inside each month's volume to compensate for the cost.
Now Paizo does not redo the 3.5 AP's not because of the cost issue per se but the lack of editorial staff and such to do it. They would have to either hire more people or leave off of other product to do the project you are requesting. Implying that we as subscribers are paying to much or that we are getting duped by Paizo is just plain not to true. Speaking for myself I know exactly what I am getting and I enjoy them when I get each volume. All the material makes for a fun read and having them on hand so that I can almost run them anytime I would like to as a home game is damn good in my opinion. If you choose not to pay for them that is on you.. but please do not imply that as a subscriber I do not know what I am in for or in any way do not enjoy the AP's as they are.
Thanks!
CEO
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Lisa, in your opinion (and if you feel like sharing) did the Runelords Anniversary Edition actually demonstrate those issues?
Yep, it caused all sorts of internal issues. Poor James worked 7 day weeks for a while to keep it on track. I had to even step in and help him a bit. These compilations are NOT easy. They are large and require a lot of hands on deck to get right.
Or is it something that you could conceivably do again, once in a while, when the stars are right?
I never say never. If the stars are right sometime in the future, we might do one again. I can say that right now, we don't have any plans to do another one. And those plans are firm through 2014 and are heading into 2015 right now.
-Lisa
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I think I speak for a large part of your DM-ing fan base who adore the compilation format of RotR. It is one of the finest RPG products I have seen in over 35 years of the hobby. I'm not surprised or disappointed that the Dungeon era APs will likely never see this same treatment, but one has to hope that perhaps one or more of the Paizo APs might get a look.
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Personally, and I think I speak for the majority here, I would prefer Paizo to continue to put out new well-designed products than to half-fast things so to also release a compilation hardcover in the spirit of Runelords Anniversary.
Personally, and I think I speak for the majority here, I would prefer Paizo to continue to put out new well-designed products than to half-fast things so to also release a compilation hardcover in the spirit of Runelords Anniversary.
That's assuming it HAS to be one or the other... and even if that's the case now, it won't necessarily be the case forever.
As devoted patrons of Paizo, I see absolutely nothing wrong with making it clear to the company which things we would very much like to give them money for... even if its done repeatedly to make the point.
The risk is that people will skim the thread, think compilations are a possibility and then choose not to subscribe "waiting for the compilation". That's a very bad thing for paizo.
There's also just a courtesy thing, IMO. If paizo say "please stop asking for this on the forums" it's kind of rude to just ignore that, don't you think? (Granted vic said it a while ago, so maybe things have changed).
The risk is that people will skim the thread, think compilations are a possibility and then choose not to subscribe "waiting for the compilation". That's a very bad thing for paizo.
I think the fear of this is grotesquely overblown... seriously - 'I think I will hold off on having product I want and can afford now because it might be possible that one day years from now it might be available in a compilation'?
No one's even asking for the current subscription AP's to be compiled... they are asking for the now out-of-print AP's who's rules are patterned on an older version of the game to be updated and re-released so that they can give Paizo money for them. This is a very specific niche that would in no way compete with the currently released product.
I can understand the time demands on the Paizo staff, especially with a steady array of deadlines facing them ad infinitum, and how that workload might make this an impossibility right now... but as a patron of Paizo and a fan of their products, I (and many others) will continue to give them input regarding the things I'd like to buy.
The risk is that people will skim the thread, think compilations are a possibility and then choose not to subscribe "waiting for the compilation". That's a very bad thing for paizo.I think the fear of this is grotesquely overblown... seriously - 'I think I will hold off on having product I want and can afford now because it might be possible that one day years from now it might be available in a compilation'?
No one's even asking for the current subscription AP's to be compiled... they are asking for the now out-of-print AP's who's rules are patterned on an older version of the game to be updated and re-released so that they can give Paizo money for them. This is a very specific niche that would in no way compete with the currently released product.
You may not be asking for that, however plenty of people have over the years.
And the concern is not that people will make an informed decision not to purchase a sub. It's that there are many who don't read these threads very carefully and who may jump to the wrong conclusion. That was actually a reason Paizo weighed up in favor of not producing a compiled RotRL - the fact one exists will create the impression that more might follow. No matter what they say.
I can understand the time demands on the Paizo staff, especially with a steady array of deadlines facing them ad infinitum, and how that workload might make this an impossibility right now... but as a patron of Paizo and a fan of their products, I (and many others) will continue to give them input regarding the things I'd like to buy.
Well remember that they are implicitly assuming these would be a popular product. Paizo know theres demand there. that isnt the problem. i can understand giving feedback, but why not do so privately? They've explicitly asked you not to do so on the forums, but they're always happy to hear feedback. Doesn't it strike you as a little rude to just ignore them? (Whether you think their concern is grotesquely overblown or not).
The amusing thing is... the Runelords Anniversary Edition has acted both as a form of advertisement and yet also a deterrent to the AP subscriptions at the same time.
Seriously. I purchased Reign of Winter because of the Runelords Anniversary Edition. But I held off for one reason: I was hoping for more compilations. If I knew that in a year or so RoW would be available as a compilation? I'd have waited! And I was hoping that was the case!
Seriously. The Runelords compilation costs less than each issue on its own. Why would I buy separate APs if I could wait and they'd be released in one lump sum? And I'm not alone in this philosophy! Hell, look at comic books - now that print compilations happen all the time, fewer people buy them. They wait for the compilation. (And it's the business plan for a number of webcomics - Girl Genius, for instance, has the entire archive for free online... but sells print compilations and makes its money with that.)
The compilations are bad for business. Releasing one worked because it helped draw in people like me. But if it were more common? Fewer people would bother with subscriptions because they'd want the less-expensive compilation instead.
The difference is that buying the individual APs gives you more content than he compilation. With comic compilations, it's usually the other way around.
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I don't care about the fiction and I don't need the information on the priesthoods or the like. All I need and want is the adventure itself. And I'm not alone in this. To me, the extra bits like the fiction and such? They're padding that comes along with the AP. I didn't even bother reading the one in Jade Regent.
Oh sure. I was just answering why people might buy the APs even if a compilation were available cheaper and pointing out a difference in the comic analogy (whether it applies to you specifically or not).
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So in order to get our compilations, the other APs need to sell out in their original volumes, AND the stars need to align for the Paizo development schedule.
Not likely.
So in order to get our compilations, the other APs need to sell out in their original volumes, AND the stars need to align for the Paizo development schedule.
Not likely.
But not impossible.
I do believe -- AT SOME POINT IN TIME -- CotCT and SD will be collected and/or updated. There is a demand, that much is obvious from threads like these.
I wouldn't hold my breath on it, but I think it will happen.
I think there's over 500 of each of those APs in storage at Paizo. And that might be off by +500 or more (meaning probably over 1K for the complete sets).
Mind you, a subscription to the AP path gives you 30% off of those older paper-bound APs...
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So in order to get our compilations, the other APs need to sell out in their original volumes, AND the stars need to align for the Paizo development schedule.
Not likely.
AND Paizo has to feel confident that a compilation will not significantly hurt sales/subscriptions for their current and upcoming products.
Bottom line for the OP, is that a Kickstarter will not happen, because a Kickstarter isn't necessary. Funding is not the issue. Expected sales of the compilation is not the issue.
The issue is how it impacts Paizo's current and future products.
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I know Wizards has ownership of them but what I would really love to see is Savage Tide from Dungeon Magazine done up as a book and updated. I would be all over that. It was such a great adventure path with so many chances to add in extras and stuff. I just plain love it and would love to see a Pathfinderized and gathered together in one book version. There has been a lot of stuff taking my money lately and not nearly enough money to keep shoveling out but I would cut a bunch of stuff out to own this.