So, I have recently announced the 52-in-52 Program, which will give customers a new pdf a week, every week, in 2020. Each of these products will be provided in four formats, one each for Starfinder, Pathfinder 1st ed, Pathfinder 2nd ed, and 5e.
All written, or developed, by me.
So, that's 52 new Starfinder products you can pre-order now! If you want an idea of what those products will be (Mecha! Runes! Magical Girls! Titan Knights!), you can check out the FREE catalog now. It gives the title and short description of every one of the product, and much of the cover art. (And it links to the preorder page).
And if you preorder now, you also get a 500+ pdf megabundle immediately.
The preorder is only at these links, and runs at least through the end of the year. After that the 52-in-52 program will go up to its full price, and the bonus megabundle will no longer be included.
Having read your reason for doing this (again), I'm curious. Do you have any method to judge actual demand for each of the four systems you're spending time writing for? It'd be a shame to spend a year of your life converting to X without knowing if that effort is being undertaken for a tiny portion of the buyers.
That's a GREAT question, and it has a fairly complicated answer. But, since you asked:
I do, directly through Rogue Genius Games and indirectly through Rite and discussions with numerous other 3pp, have some feel for what is and isn't selling well. I also have a lot of tabletop industry experience, and can do research for some other relevant information when choosing game systems I believe to have large third-party friendly audiences.
So, for example, top third-party 5e sellers definitely do well. Will I be a top seller? That I can never know, but there's a big pie there, it's up to the quality of my product, reviews, marketing, and networking to decide how big a slice of the pie I can get.
And... look D&D was my first love as an RPG. I've designed for official releases in 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, and 4th edition. I am fascinated by and have very much enjoyed 5th edition. If I want to hit a broad range of gamers, spending some time back with my rpg roots makes sense.
Then, having decided I wanted to do multiple game systems to multiply the potential reach of this program and increase it's chance of being seen my lots of potential customers, I immediately decided on Pathfinder second edition as the next system.
Now, sales data on third-party PF2 products are really limited right now. It's only be out since august, so we have less than a year of sales data to look at. And my experience as a 3pp with other game systems tells me that for the first 6-9 months, people aren't looking at 3pp products much yet. They're still absorbing the core game, looking at the first official expansions, and so on.
So when launching a year-long program, I can only use my gut and experience from previous game systems to determine if PF2 is going to be popular enough to justify the effort. And my gut says yes.
I have FAITH in PF2.
It's not my project, but it's a game I got to watch (and LISTEN to) some very smart, very talented people work on literally for years. I can see deep into the framework of its mechanics and flavor to see how it can be used for different things. It's flexible, robust, expandable, and intuitive in how its subsystems mesh. I am gambling it's going to stand the test of time.
And I like my odds.
But NOT everyone is going to adopt it immediately, and I want everyone's attention NOW. So, a huge part of my personal fanbase and core audience are hardcore 1st ed Pathfinder fans. And, suddenly, I am not competing with Paizo for their 1st ed Pathfinder budget.
I've been designing for 1st ed Pathfinder literally since before the book was released. And the roots of my career go back to the roots of the game engine it's built on. I've written more than a million words of Pathfinder 1st-ed material. So I am extremely comfortable designing for it, and if I have already tackled 5e and Pf2 versions of a concept, the additional effort to make a PF1 version is much less than if I was to, say, add Fate or Savage Worlds versions.
Now, there are people who felt that was enough and advised me to leave it at that. Those three systems all trace back to the same roots, and they cover a lot of the same concepts. But, Starfinder IS my baby. My contribution was only part of what an amazing team put together, but having been one of the Core Rulebook's main creators and the system's Design Lead for two years, it remains very comfortable to me, and very close to my heart.
And if I have 5e and PF1 and PF2 rules ironed out? Doing Starfinder at that point is going to be much less effort, again, than if I wanted a Fantasy AGE edition or somesuch.
So, between my best estimates of where the money is, my predictions on where the trends are going, and my faith on how much effort each edition will add overall, I settled on those four game systems.
These look so very impressive. I am not sure how well I could use them as I am new to Starfinder and don't play D&D or PF. I definitely am not ready to start running any time in the foreseeable future. Will there be an option to buy separate parts later?
I assume we'll sell them as individual PDFs in 2021, each a year after it's available as part of the 52-in-52 program. But I could be wrong.
But the only guaranteed way to have access is is to pick up the whole program, which is currently just $29.95 for more than 550 total pdfs.
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These look so very impressive. I am not sure how well I could use them as I am new to Starfinder and don't play D&D or PF. I definitely am not ready to start running any time in the foreseeable future. Will there be an option to buy separate parts later?I assume we'll sell them as individual PDFs in 2021, each a year after it's available as part of the 52-in-52 program. But I could be wrong.
But the only guaranteed way to have access is is to pick up the whole program, which is currently just $29.95 for more than 550 total pdfs.
If I hadn't just been hit with 3 major Kickstarters [Starship 4, Clan Invasion and Reaper Bones 5] I would have grabbed it!
If I hadn't just been hit with 3 major Kickstarters [Starship 4, Clan Invasion and Reaper Bones 5] I would have grabbed it!These look so very impressive. I am not sure how well I could use them as I am new to Starfinder and don't play D&D or PF. I definitely am not ready to start running any time in the foreseeable future. Will there be an option to buy separate parts later?I assume we'll sell them as individual PDFs in 2021, each a year after it's available as part of the 52-in-52 program. But I could be wrong.
But the only guaranteed way to have access is is to pick up the whole program, which is currently just $29.95 for more than 550 total pdfs.
There's still time! :)
Well the preorder is over, but the [url=https://www.opengamingstore.com/collections/all-products/products/52-in-5252-in-52 Program[/url] still exists!
We've released six Starfinder products in six weeks, release week 7 tomorrow, and have another 45 weeks of products you can look forward to for the rest of the year!
(All also provided for all program members in PF1, PF2, and 5e versions, in case you play more than one game!)