I'm impressed that people can actually play a Pathfinder AP at the rate they're published.
I've played in a Skull & Shackles game that I joined in book 2. We're near the end of book 5. I joined it two years ago.
My Reign of Winter game is about 1/4 - 1/3 of the way through Book 6. It's been going for 3 years.
APs have come out at a rate far faster than I can play and GM them, even doing more than one in parallel.
My group meets every two weeks for about 4 hours ; we are just now hitting book 6 of Hell's Rebels, and we started the very month it was released in August of 2015. Unless someone is playing 30 or 40 hours a month, i'm hard pressed to understand how someone is getting through one book of an AP in a month. Not saying you can't, I'm just having a hard time visualizing it.
Even then, there's plenty of resources to work in side quests, GMs to expand the material presented, etc. Unless the Starfinder APs are drastically shorter than the PF ones, my group will probably be just fine.
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I personally accepted the slower release schedule because Paizo doesn't want to go the same way TSR did, releasing too many products lines that ended up competing with each other.
After 10 years of doing Pathfinder they are doing their first separate product line and being smart about it.
I'm impressed that people can actually play a Pathfinder AP at the rate they're published.
I've played in a Skull & Shackles game that I joined in book 2. We're near the end of book 5. I joined it two years ago.
My Reign of Winter game is about 1/4 - 1/3 of the way through Book 6. It's been going for 3 years.
APs have come out at a rate far faster than I can play and GM them, even doing more than one in parallel.
My group meets every two weeks for about 4 hours ; we are just now hitting book 6 of Hell's Rebels, and we started the very month it was released in August of 2015. Unless someone is playing 30 or 40 hours a month, i'm hard pressed to understand how someone is getting through one book of an AP in a month. Not saying you can't, I'm just having a hard time visualizing it.
Even then, there's plenty of resources to work in side quests, GMs to expand the material presented, etc. Unless the Starfinder APs are drastically shorter than the PF ones, my group will probably be just fine.
I ran a table of four through Hell's Rebels, meeting on the same schedule generally as your group, and we routinely finished enough content to level every session. One of the players has ADD and is a teenager, so he had difficulty focusing if we didn't stay on the rails. We averaged 3-4 sessions per book.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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It's totally reasonable to take a month to complete an AP book, playing once a week. Every group I'd played with or ran for has completed books in 3-5 weeks of play. That means- at least for every group I've played with since 2009- we'd have to do something else for 3-5 weeks in-between books, which sucks.
In the two AP I've played, we completed 6 books in 2 years to 2.5 years.
In all the other stories of locals completing an AP, they all took over a year and most took 2 years or more.
In both of these examples above, the groups played weekly.
I can't comprehend completing a book in 3 weeks. How is that possible? Is the GM walking you through it?
Ok, that was a fun combat. You search the room and find with your passive perception the clues you need to learn these were not the real baddies. The real one is over there. You rest. You go over there. Roll initiative!
Is that how your games go?
No product in memory floods the market with books before they get a PROVEN customer base. Proven, as in, people buying their books.
Maybe I'm too old, but I well remember TSR's Birthright campaign... as in I remember the products taking up large portions of the shelves at the local Hastings, but I don't remember anyone actually buying/playing any of them...
If Starfinder is a balls out success then Paizo has time to adjust. It's not like there are four other space opera RPGs that will swoop in and steal Starfinder's thunder.
I really hope they keep the product lines restrained though as Pathfinder is overwhelming. A much better way to 'ramp up' would be to increase the size of the AP and bring it out faster maybe.
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This isn't a video game.
Launch with an adventure path, 3 scenarios, and quest. That looks to be about 40 hours of game play AT LAUNCH. I'm frankly quite pleased with the amount of material that exists. If you need more than that, consider yourself fortunate to be able to get a group together that frequently. Also, write your own adventures if needed.Most first person shooters with a single player or co-op component (or any storyboarded game for that matter) are designed to aim for X number of hours cumulative from beginning to end. Game designers also have to balance complexity and problem solving (make it too hard and you will lose future sales, too easy and the player may feel cheated of a challenge). Unless there's a multiplayer component, if the game is really well made, you can expect maybe up to 36 hours of unrepeated content from a product that costs at least $50 or $60 at release. With mission packs/addons the content time is even less.
I'm not entirely sure what the goal of this post was, but just gonna point out that by its very nature Starfinder is going to have that multiplayer component that gives it infinite replayability.
It's totally reasonable to take a month to complete an AP book, playing once a week. Every group I'd played with or ran for has completed books in 3-5 weeks of play. That means- at least for every group I've played with since 2009- we'd have to do something else for 3-5 weeks in-between books, which sucks.The thing that bugs me most is the AP books being released every other month. That's insane. Paizo is effectively asking people to put their campaigns on pause and wait in-between books, or hold off on playing it at all until most of it is out already.?
They already do that with their once a moth schedule for Pathfinder APs.
yeah, i miss the the good old days, when we played once a week :(
Sadly it comes down to once every 2 months now.
Maybe I'm too old, but I well remember TSR's Birthright campaign... as in I remember the products taking up large portions of the shelves at the local Hastings, but I don't remember anyone actually buying/playing any of them...
I loved that campaign but never got to play it but one time. It did not fit how most people played in my group.
I am glad I am not the only one that is glad Starfinder is releasing slower than Pathfinder.
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Maybe I'm too old, but I well remember TSR's Birthright campaign... as in I remember the products taking up large portions of the shelves at the local Hastings, but I don't remember anyone actually buying/playing any of them...I loved that campaign but never got to play it but one time. It did not fit how most people played in my group.
I am glad I am not the only one that is glad Starfinder is releasing slower than Pathfinder.
If there are lucky people out there who can play as often and fast, they can play many other RPG games (Pathfinder included) in the mean time, or write their own adventures. For my group, even if we could play every week I know for sure that it would take morae than one month for each AP. They really like going deep and slow on the details, role playing and social interactions aspects of the game.
The funny thing is that just over a year ago we were busily assuaging people's fears that all the Starfinder stuff we were working on was going to make Pathfinder suffer.
Face it Vic,
You all managed to create quite a buzz. I really hope Starfinder proves to be as profitable as PF and gets the same kind of attention. You've already sold me... The rest of my gaming table is still a little less informed but optimistic. Keep working that Paizo magic.
I echo nuttallfun. Just make the AP larger Paizo peoples! Pathfinder honestly kind of intimidates me with all the different lines that come out for it.
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I echo nuttallfun. Just make the AP larger Paizo peoples! Pathfinder honestly kind of intimidates me with all the different lines that come out for it.
That's the reason I subscribed to Starfinder, because it looks way more reasonable to fit in my budget at that pace. Pathfinder release speed is way too intimidating.
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Beyond all the other valid reasons people have listed for Paizo to have a more reduced release schedule for Starfinder compared to Pathfinder....do they even have the staff to run the Starfinder line at the same production rate as Pathfinder? It seems like they are just barely able to handle the current workflow, and IIRC they just lost at least two major longtime staff members recently.
Paizo really does produce an amazing amount of high quality product for the number of folks they employ. But they are still human...
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Beyond all the other valid reasons people have listed for Paizo to have a more reduced release schedule for Starfinder compared to Pathfinder....do they even have the staff to run the Starfinder line at the same production rate as Pathfinder? It seems like they are just barely able to handle the current workflow, and IIRC they just lost at least two major longtime staff members recently.
Paizo really does produce an amazing amount of high quality product for the number of folks they employ. But they are still human...
I dunno, Chris is a Robot.
It's totally reasonable to take a month to complete an AP book, playing once a week. Every group I'd played with or ran for has completed books in 3-5 weeks of play. That means- at least for every group I've played with since 2009- we'd have to do something else for 3-5 weeks in-between books, which sucks.In the two AP I've played, we completed 6 books in 2 years to 2.5 years.
In all the other stories of locals completing an AP, they all took over a year and most took 2 years or more.
In both of these examples above, the groups played weekly.
I can't comprehend completing a book in 3 weeks. How is that possible? Is the GM walking you through it?
Ok, that was a fun combat. You search the room and find with your passive perception the clues you need to learn these were not the real baddies. The real one is over there. You rest. You go over there. Roll initiative!Is that how your games go?
We do about 1 book per month.
We play weekly, about 5 to 6 hours per session. Sometimes we make a marathon session, like 8 to 10 hours, but those are not common (maybe 1 every 2 months or so)
Another thing that helps, is removing the XP, and just leveling up when the AP says you that you should level up (like, "The characters should be level 5 before they go to the Whatever Tower in Whocares Island")
That way, we can ignore many of the "this encounter is here just to give you XP" encounters that bloat many AP, with "random encounter like" scripted encounters with low threat creatures with no relationship with the plot, who are there just because you need to fill an XP budget. We do only the combat encounters that I (the GM) find interesting, or related to the story.
Being old school enough to remember how to play without grid also helps. "Low threat" combats are done without a grid, and it helps a lot, because I find that often you spend more time drawing the corridor with the 2 gobling guards, that killing the two gobling guards.
I echo nuttallfun. Just make the AP larger Paizo peoples! Pathfinder honestly kind of intimidates me with all the different lines that come out for it.That's the reason I subscribed to Starfinder, because it looks way more reasonable to fit in my budget at that pace. Pathfinder release speed is way too intimidating.
Same here. Having just two subscriptions (one for each system) is already enough to strain my wallet. I appreciate the slower pace of Starfinder releases.
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...And Cosmo is a Friendly Neighborhood Eldritch Horror.
I run a good PR campaign ^w^