Maybe we can all just drop this derail and talk about the digital future of Pathfinder rather whatever this is about?
As you wish. Even ignoring the last several posts, I just don't see much in the way of digital for Paizo. Again, the potential is there, but it's not used really well. For example, in the user profile there are clearly signs to 3rd party integration, but I've not seen much in the way of partnerships. Maybe these were only vestiges of short experiments and not meant to be full blown partnerships, but it clearly inspires the mind. I've seen others ask in the feedback forum about things like APIs and being able to update Pathfinder Society info from other tools or working with PFS scenarios more naturally through Roll20. Sadly, I've not seen any hope of that happening. Would be really cool though.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Leaving aside any specific potential arrangement, there is a downside with making it too easy for community members to utilise Paizo's IP - namely quality control.
There are no doubt very talented, creative and professional members of the community without a proven track record who would be able to take that IP and build some fantastic digital tools.
However, I'm betting there are many more who would start something, put up a buggy, not-quite-finished application and then move on when they didn't get the return they hoped for, lost interest or had their priorities shift in some other, unexpected way.
Making it easy to access the IP would help the proliferation of decent software, but it would also make it easier for poor performing or useless stuff to get out. There's both an upside and a downside to creating barriers through their licensing structure.
I think you see this at work in the DM Guild - WotC have provided a very generous and easy-to-use licensing regime, all bundled up in a ready-made promotional and distribution platform (albeit there are some commercial downsides, not always appreciated). It has resulted in some extremely good, professional looking and innovative product being produced for 5E. However, it has also resulted in a lot of poorly written stuff getting out there.
It seems to me there are pros and cons to being either restrictive or open when it comes to such things. It's hard for us on the outside to understand all the various factors coming into play when judging where to set the dial of openness.
Leaving aside any specific potential arrangement, there is a downside with making it too easy for community members to utilise Paizo's IP - namely quality control.
There are no doubt very talented, creative and professional members of the community without a proven track record who would be able to take that IP and build some fantastic digital tools.
However, I'm betting there are many more who would start something, put up a buggy, not-quite-finished application and then move on when they didn't get the return they hoped for, lost interest or had their priorities shift in some other, unexpected way.
Making it easy to access the IP would help the proliferation of decent software, but it would also make it easier for poor performing or useless stuff to get out. There's both an upside and a downside to creating barriers through their licensing structure.
I think you see this at work in the DM Guild - WotC have provided a very generous and easy-to-use licensing regime, all bundled up in a ready-made promotional and distribution platform (albeit there are some commercial downsides, not always appreciated). It has resulted in some extremely good, professional looking and innovative product being produced for 5E. However, it has also resulted in a lot of poorly written stuff getting out there.
It seems to me there are pros and cons to being either restrictive or open when it comes to such things. It's hard for us on the outside to understand all the various factors coming into play when judging where to set the dial of openness.
All valid points. There are several licensing regimes though. There's also the app store approach where you control distribution. You could also provide provisional licensing that is contingent upon approval before it gets released. You could also accept open submissions but only grant any kind of licensing, provisional or otherwise, to those that pass a quality check. Again, hearkening to the app store model, you can even charge for this. There many ways to skin this cat.
The App Store model is kind of an apples to oranges comparison. You’re getting the license to use the architecture to create the app of your choosing, be it Angry Birds or Snapchat. With creating digital materials for Pathfinder you’re getting the license to a complete product that you are attempting to translate into a different form - as if you were licensing Angry Birds to create an Angry Birds Recognition Guide app that catologues all the various birds in the editions of the game.
That implies to me, correct me if I'm wrong, you think there are only a couple types of products that could be made for Pathfinder. Is that correct? Or were you simply saying the total potential design space is smaller?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One factor in how PF2 will be digitized is that most stuff is tagged in some way, and that the tags are meant to be used in order to manipulate what is and is not common once it hits your table. While certainly you can do that work out of a book or PDF, that seems like something that would lend itself more to a database application.
That implies to me, correct me if I'm wrong, you think there are only a couple types of products that could be made for Pathfinder. Is that correct? Or were you simply saying the total potential design space is smaller?
Neither. I’m saying that one is an intellectual property with a trademarked world setting, races, classes, an art aesthetic and trade dress and the other is a sales platform/design architecture and they’re literally two different things. Apples. Oranges.
It is disingenuous to say they’re the same thing and that Paizo could just choose to follow the same model as a completely unrelated platform.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
All valid points. There are several licensing regimes though. There's also the app store approach where you control distribution. You could also provide provisional licensing that is contingent upon approval before it gets released. You could also accept open submissions but only grant any kind of licensing, provisional or otherwise, to those that pass a quality check. Again, hearkening to the app store model, you can even charge for...Leaving aside any specific potential arrangement, there is a downside with making it too easy for community members to utilise Paizo's IP - namely quality control.
There are no doubt very talented, creative and professional members of the community without a proven track record who would be able to take that IP and build some fantastic digital tools.
However, I'm betting there are many more who would start something, put up a buggy, not-quite-finished application and then move on when they didn't get the return they hoped for, lost interest or had their priorities shift in some other, unexpected way.
Making it easy to access the IP would help the proliferation of decent software, but it would also make it easier for poor performing or useless stuff to get out. There's both an upside and a downside to creating barriers through their licensing structure.
I think you see this at work in the DM Guild - WotC have provided a very generous and easy-to-use licensing regime, all bundled up in a ready-made promotional and distribution platform (albeit there are some commercial downsides, not always appreciated). It has resulted in some extremely good, professional looking and innovative product being produced for 5E. However, it has also resulted in a lot of poorly written stuff getting out there.
It seems to me there are pros and cons to being either restrictive or open when it comes to such things. It's hard for us on the outside to understand all the various factors coming into play when judging where to set the dial of openness.
Yeah, I'm not really arguing (I don't think any of us are in a position to know what Paizo need out of a licensing partner). My point was just that there's pros and cons with any approach - there isn't really a right way or a wrong way, it's more which good things do Paizo want to get and which bad things are they willing to put up with.
Sure, they can implement some kind of quality control on licensees - but that's extra work (and depending on how widely that remit is, it might end up being quality assurance for a third party - do they check for bugs in the software? Imbalance in any game mechanics introduced? Clashes with canon? It's not an easy thing to draft without knowing the full scope of all potential license arrangements and it could easily suck resources away from QA on paizo's own products).
Sure breadth of offerings would expand if they relaxed their licensing regime, but so would the risk that some Pathfinder themed product would have offensive or inappropriate content out in the wild before they caught it.
I guess my point was that it's wrong to characterise the "we only license to established businesses" approach has having no upside - it's a relatively easy and transparent filter that lets them focus their attention in time-effective ways. There's a downside, but there's bound to be upsides (and many of them are probably not clear to those of us who don't work there).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It appears the licensing argument that wouldn't die has essentially killed this thread (which is unfortunate).
I've been playing RPGs since the '80s and am a hybrid when it comes to analog/digital.
I absolutely love physical books and will carry hardcovers to games in which I am a player. I do not use electronics at the game, except using my phone to take photos of the miniatures and excellent hand-made terrain my GM makes. While I prefer electronic character sheets, especially those that are form-fillable and calculate certain things for you, I will print these out and write on them during sessions, updating and re-printing as my character levels up. For spellcasters, I use spell cards to track my spells, so I rarely need to reference a book during play. I still have them though because, as has been said above, there is a certain je ne sais quoi about having a physical book that a digital reference alone simply cannot replace. Though I must say that I love having PDFs of the books so that I can read them at the office surreptitiously when I have some downtime.
As a GM I use both types; whichever tool fits my needs is the tool that I use. I have a laptop at the table to run Combat Manager, play Syrinscape soundboards, lookup rules online and also to manage the projector that I use for displaying maps on the table. I also use printed PDF copies of the adventure placed in a binder, along with opponent quick reference sheets that I make. I like to highlight certain portions of the adventures and would never do such to the original book, thus the printed PDF is perfect here. I like the physical copies also as I find taking notes during play is easier to do in writing, which I do either on the printed adventure itself, the opponent reference sheets or blank pages in the binder. I will later transfer these notes into an electronic form and print them for use at the next session.
So, to sum up, I absolutely hope more and more digital tools are available for me as both a player and a GM, but at the same time if physicals books ever go the way of the dodo I think this hobby that I so love will lose something near and dear to me.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I use both in SF.
I was completely digital in PF because it was cheaper.
However, I enjoy sitting at home and flipping through books as I design my characters or my worlds.
At the game table, being able to find obscure things quickly using digital content is a boon.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Personally, I find looking up rules to be easier in a well tabbed book but looking up options like feats and spells I find easier through digital sites like the play test easy action library
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Personally, I find looking up rules to be easier in a well tabbed book but looking up options like feats and spells I find easier through digital sites like the play test easy action library
Putting this in a more general sense:
*If you know what page of what book the thing you want to look up is on, a physical book is easier*if you do not, digital is easier
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It also depends on what sort of information you have when you start looking.
If you know *the name of the spell* then, yeah google and control+f is your friend. If all you know is "It's in horror adventures and lets you remove your own head without dying" then cracking the book to the spells chapter is going to be a lot faster.
Mm, the way the PRD is organized makes looking up a concept easier digitally (edit: for me at least). But as MaxAstro says, if you have a page reference (like out of an adventure), the PDFs and physical books are easier. Since, you know. The PRD doesn’t have pages.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find looking up rules to be easier in a well tabbed book
Even an untabbed book over time can become much easier to find things in without having to memorize anything. Spine wear compounds to the point where frequently referenced material is easier to find again.
I can unerringly open my copy of the CRB to the Feats chapter.
To that point, the location bar at the right of the Playtest book that lets you flip right to "Classes" or "Feats" was very helpful. I wish all books had those.
If I were looking for something and I didn't know *for certain* what book it was in, then fuhgettabout it.
If I have a rough idea of what something does, but not the name, a quick google search will give me the name faster than perusing books where I think it might be. Especially if I have to go to my bookshelf first.
Also, a personalized SRD that saves recent searches is better than a book that sometimes flops open to a commonly used section.
What's more, AI assistants are going to get so good I could conversationally ask it to bring up a variety of rules, with or without exact names, as I set up the board and sketch a map.
Heck, I could ask my app to bring up rules I'd like to compare against the rules I'm currently reading out of a physical book, as I sip artisanal craft beer.
Customer Service & Community Manager
|
| 14 people marked this as a favorite. |
Both physical and digital copies of books have their uses. There's definitely a venn diagram of people who like the physical books and people who like the PDFs with a healthy overlapping group in the middle. I do not currently see a near future in which we get rid of either.
There are a lot of gamers that like digital stuff, but I would really caution folks to proceed with caution if you start assuming that the popularity of internet based products, social media groups, or seeing ipads and laptops at conventions means print is dead or dying. The paizo.com forums are great for connect with people, but its is not representative of the entire community by any means.
One of the reasons I love Gen Con is the number of people I get to interact with who have very little idea what "Paizo" is. They get Pathfinder, Starfinder, or the Adventure Card Game from their local game store. They do not have regular internet access. They do not have an account with paizo.com and many have not even heard of paizo.com or have ever been to the site. There's a whole section of the Paizo community of gamers that I get to see at that show that I would otherwise never get to meet. But as far as people playing our games, even Gen Con isn't entirely representative of the community because there are plenty of folks who cannot afford to go to that show, are unable to travel or otherwise attend conventions.
There is a whole wide world out there full of folks who are gaming and are completely unplugged from online activities. By definition, these folks aren't going to be on paizo.com talking about the importance of the print copies of books so the conversation occurring online about digital vs print is going to be fairly self-selecting.
As for PDFs, they've got their own benefits, many of which are noted in the thread already. Different people are definitely going to have different metrics for determining a particular format's value to them so in general, there's no objectively better format. Additionally, there's really important accessibility issues for both formats.
I find its easy to think of my own experiences as normal because I like to think they are good decisions and make sense. But for every person who might have similar buying patterns as I do, there is another who does not.
If it wasn’t clear I was talking about a societal trend that goes well beyond just gaming. I started typing one of my rants about internet being a poor tax but I will save everyone that bit.
Personally I'd love to hear it if you want to PM me, though I suspect we might already be on the same page about it.
As far as other digital products go, we have relationships with Roll20, LoneWolf (HeroLab Online), Fantasy Grounds, Owlcat (Kingmaker), and others, and we've had aps for the critical hit and fumble decks. I think it's reasonable to assume the future of Pathfinder (and Starfinder and the PF Adventure Card Game) includes digital products. However, since they're licensed, my knowledge there is limited. As far as acquiring new licenses go, I do not want to further derail the thread, but our licensing manager is Glenn Elliott.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I will say I have not yet encountered a device that would make sitting down to read a full color PDF as pleasurable as reading the dead tree version of the same. While for traditional print (e.g. novels) there are non-backlit e-readers that are easy on the eyes, these are generally explicitly e-readers that don't handle PDFs well (and are poor for reference material.)
I know I had a hard time just sitting down to read the playtest rulebook as a PDF, whereas sitting down to read a whole RPG book from cover-to-cover has been a great pleasure of mine since a young age (I distinctly remember one day in my childhood being home from school sick, while I read the entire Monster Manual 2 and drank Hi-C).
To that point, the location bar at the right of the Playtest book that lets you flip right to "Classes" or "Feats" was very helpful. I wish all books had those.
Quoting to add my appreciation for this layout decision. I do hope this feature has carried over to the PF2 CRB and will continue in the rest of the rules line at least.
|
On side note, I do prefer reading fiction books and books whose only colors are black and white on physical format :p Because latter makes my eyes hurt and former because I can at same time walk around and read the book.
But yeah rule books? I only read them physically outside of games, reading them during games is hard since unless you can't ctlr f search if you need to find specific rule you don't remember
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I use books all the time, when gaming. I love books and spend far too much time by the screen when I'm working.
For me, getting away from screens is a big part of why I love gaming:-)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
For a small enough game system - say three books or less - looking things up on the print version is faster than doing so on any pdf, website or app IME. PF2 is definitely going to start that way but it won't stay that way unless it fails horribly.
|
1000 pages from the very start. Digital will definitely help me begin my path to mastery.
BTW, digital makes it easier than print to start reading a chapter that is in the middle-to-end part of a big book before earlier chapters.
The weight of pages tends to favor reading a big book in the order of its layout.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I love Paizo, but they aren't a technology company, and they have limited resources. They couldn't do a digital tool justice. It's better for them to concentrate on what they do best, and keep the door open for both partners and the wider community to take that and run with it.
That said, I do miss the old PRD. It had a cleaner, more professional style than the Archives of Nethys.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I’ve always wondered why they didn’t have a summer intern keep the PRD updated. That’s exactly the kind of low priority and mostly mindless drudgery that can pay in experience, or at least not much above minimum AND experience/class credit.
I don’t know the ins and outs of how that works of course, so I’m sure there’s a good reason (probably several). I’m just curious what the reason is.
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Because it's 2019 and the days of young people doing mindless drudgery and not getting paid for that are fortunately behind us.
Also, mindless drudgery is ... no, wait, actually, calling any work "mindless drudgery" is disrespectful. Anyway, "work interns can be asked to do" is maybe cleaning the warehouse or ordering invoices, byt certainly not updating a customer-fronted database where every mistake will result in nerdraging opinionated "fans" running around screaming about how a free service doesn't meet their standards.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people at Paizo viewed "updating the PRD" as "why would we pay someone to discourage people to buy our books, particularly given that there are at least two other people doing this who we don't have to pay."
So just having AoN do it now is probably good.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
byt certainly not updating a customer-fronted database where every mistake will result in nerdraging opinionated "fans" running around screaming about how a free service doesn't meet their standards.
That part I won’t disagree with. The rest of your post I do, but it’s not worth the argument.
Edit: upon reflection, I’ll also agree that invoices is an appropriate task for interns. The idea of an (probably low paid and almost certainly not-career-track) intern doing something as critical as filling warehouse orders is actually kind of alarming to me, but I say that as a logistics professional, so that might be my own bias.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with AnimatedPaper. Gorbacz, I usually agree with your posts and appreciate your sarcasm but unless I’m misinterpreting your post I have to say that the first part of your post is willful ignorance. I admit that I know little about internships but a parallel to it that I do know is that we as a society are not behind horrible jobs that do not pay a living wage. I have worked somewhere in the realm of 2 dozen jobs in the last 10 years and less than a handful made a living wage on their own. And “mindless drudgery” isn’t disrespectful, that is what the majority of them were.
But then maybe I am misinterpreting your post. The job market, income disparity and technological progress leaving a large and underrepresented portion of the population behind because it’s less affordable than the more societally vocal that can afford it realize, are all torches I carry.
Sorry, I’m not honestly looking to start an argument but as stated these are issues that effect me and that I deeply care about so I had to say something.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We seem to be teetering on the edge of a debate about the job market et al and the level of respect afforded to “work” of various degree as launched by a question about college internships. Two of the three commenters so far have stated that they don’t know much about internships and are proceeding from a place of taking about the general job market.
Before anyone says anything else, maybe we should all agree that the conversation as presented so far is about internships and we do not have enough information to continue forward on that track. As such we should maybe agree to not go any further and risk offending anyone unintentionally.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And besides, he disparages everyone else that needs it. I phrased myself badly enough that I certainly earned it in this case.
I think it's a US vs Europe thing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean I do think there has been an uptick in people realizing that most internships (especially unpaid ones) are essentially exploitative even in the U.S.
Winding back to the thread's topic, has AoN said they'll host the PRD in a manner oraganzied like Paizo has it, or organized the way AoN is now, or both? Or have they not been specific yet?
Both ways of organizing have their uses, but I'd miss the way the PRD is organized, where the books are more or less posted online with links between chapters and heading. Calling back to when we were discussing looking something up in a book versus checking for it online, the way Paizo has the PRD makes it a lot easier to search within a title, while AoN is easier to just browse feats, spells, classes, etc across all the books at once.