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On their latest Kickstarter Frog God Games posted about the Future of Frog God Games using Pathfinder. Still trying to understand what exactly it means. Any insight from anyone?
Here is what they posted:
The next issue, Pathfinder material from Frog God Games, has been mentioned a number of times, it is best summarized and presented in the comment by KS backer Wise1 (scroll down to read it). Here is the best answer we can give right now.
There will be no immediate Pathfinder version of City of Brass from Frog God Games. For all the reasons stated in the post by Mike Badolato below, our decision is based on the annual sales trends in the Pathfinder market for about 2 years now, it was not based on the PF 2.0 announcement at all (though we were as surprised as everyone else about it). Pathfinder 2.0 might very well become a popular and viable system and if it does Frog God Games will support it enthusiastically, including converting books like the City of Brass and Rappan Athuk to the system. Until we have certainty of that we just cannot take the business risks involved. The opportunity cost presented for any PF content immense. We just cannot expend the production resources (or the physical printing costs) on the very small number of units we predict will sell for us.
But....
Frog God Games is very aware that we exist as a company thanks to the genius decision to create Pathfinder by Paizo, Inc. as well as the many fans, friends, and customers bought, played and extolled the releases that made us known and successful in a difficult industry. These releases supported, especially early on, share one thing which tied connected them to each other- the Lost Lands Campaign Setting.
After listening to longtime customer comments on Kickstarter, social media, email, and, for a few of you, Bill's mobile phone; we have made a preliminary decision to make sure you get the Pathfinder specific material for the Lost Lands, likely in a PDF, PoD, or softcover companion book. We, as a company, feel we owe you, our long-time Pathfinder customers, this release. Thus, as of last night, Bill and I started the process to make this happen with the Lost Lands Bible material from Greg. That is all we can say about this now, except thank you for your support and we hope you understand why we had to make the difficult decision to shift resources away from Pathfinder for awhile at least.
What I understand of Zach post is that they will try to make an exception for the Lost Land campaign Setting as it's what link every past Lost Land product.
For other products like City of Brass it seems very unlikly
Maybe I miss something however
I’m the poster he had mentioned (Wise1). You have gist of it. Bill Webb plays Oed D&D so Sword & Wizardry is always going to be in print. 2nd edition is far too new to start devoting resources, and the have some precedence with not wanting to jump in too early like Starfinder. Greg Vaughn has literally been working on the Lost Lands Campaign Set for years. With him gaining his MD, the massive amounts of work on Richard Pett’s The Blight, and other factors, it was not nearing completion till this year. When Pathfinder 2 was announced it was as much a surprise to the Frogs as to me, so they went into reassessing their business and reported to continue to see a sharp drop off of sales for Pathfinder, with Bill posting that S&W was outselling it two to one. They reported they killed one book and the Lost Lands Campaign Setting was moved to system neutral. The recent posting is regarding FGGs commitment that they will in fact release all of the work Greg did at the same time as part of the Campaign Setting. Bill and others have stated they would consider Pathfinder 2, but needs to see how it will do. Personally, I am incredibly thankful they were willing to consider releasing his material.
Maybe I didn’t explain it well enough. The book will be system neutral. For those who want the information that Greg spent years on, it will be offered as a side purchase. It’s the best of both worlds. Those who only want system neutral, and those who want the addendum of Pathfinder material get that too. Oh, and as far as massive books, have you seen Frog God’s physical products? I believe they hold the record for the largest role-playing book and they continue to come close to breaking it. I had a bunch on a table before a role play session and all a friend could say when he walked in was “tomes, massive tomes!”
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If you ranked the product sales by ruleset, 5e clearly outsold the other 2. Even S&W outsold Pathfinder. The Starfinder KS had to be cancelled due to low support, and other products meant for that product line became system neutral.
Given the low sales of their PF products, coupled with the whole PF1 vs PF2 factions, a system neutral type of book is the best hope going forward for Pathfinder players unless PF2 (and 3PP for it) takes off and products get revisited.
The PF2 previews have been "meh" for me, so I'm looking forward to taking a break from buying Pathfinder stuff once PF1 new products end from Paizo. However, I do intend to keep playing it for quite some time, and I will certainly be buying the Lost Lands Campaign Setting (with the Pathfinder PDF), although that just might be the last physical FGG purchase I make.