| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
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 Pathfinder 2e products you can pre-order now! If you want an idea of what those products will be (Mass combat rules! Artificer! Magical Girls! Talking Animal Ancestries!), 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.
I will definitely be taking advantage of this. Sitting in my basement at the moment so will probably nab it at work tomorrow when I have my wallet handy.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
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.
I will definitely be taking advantage of this. Sitting in my basement at the moment so will probably nab it at work tomorrow when I have my wallet handy.
Thanks for your support!
I picked this up this morning. In case anyone is not quite convinced, Open Gaming Store sweetens the deal even more by giving you another free PDF for spending $20 dollars on their site.
Owen, I look forward to seeing your upcoming products. In the meantime, I have 501 PDFs to submerge myself in.
Lastly, are you fine with me sharing this deal on the Facebook Pathfinder 2nd Edition groups I belong to?
I picked this up this morning. In case anyone is not quite convinced, Open Gaming Store sweetens the deal even more by giving you another free PDF for spending $20 dollars on their site.
Owen, I look forward to seeing your upcoming products. In the meantime, I have 501 PDFs to submerge myself in.
Lastly, are you fine with me sharing this deal on the Facebook Pathfinder 2nd Edition groups I belong to?
100%
I appreciate it, in fact. Getting the word out to people is one of the trickiest parts of being an independent creative.
Gamers sharing this deal with folks is a HUGE help!
Man, I spent tons of time pouring through the free PDFs from this deal this weekend. I have to say, I am very impressed with the quality of these materials.
Initially, I thought they would be simple scrap PDFs. Not even close. I am pleased with this purchase without even getting the first installment of the actual product or opening the additional PDF I received for spending 20 dollars on the Open Gaming Store website.
If you have any interest in third party materials for the Pathfinder universe, buy this.
I made the plunge and am looking forward to seeing what you come up with next year.
I'm in for January alone.
Super excited to pick this up and can't wait to get my paper copy in 2020! This is such a cool product!
Thanks!
Good morning Owen. I was just wondering now that we are into 2020, will we be notified by the Open Gaming Store when the new PDFs are available for download? It gives the first date as yesterday, but I haven't seen or heard anything yet.
No complaints if it is behind. I was more interested in seeing how this works and will patiently wait to get my hands on the new materials as they are released. Thank you!
I didn't receive the notification via email that the first product was available. When searching the store for Runecaster it just points me towards the 52 deal. My account only shows the 52 deal mega bundle available for download. I've emailed them for support, so hopefully that gets sorted out. Sigh, not a great first experience with this store.
Look for an email with subject Start Getting your 52-in-52 files now. It should explain what you need to do to get the item from the store, which will allow you to download them.
I got my email on Jan 3rd. I haven't stepped through the steps yet myself, and was at first confused by what it was saying and why, but in retrospect it made sense for me, since pre-orders got an extra bundle.
You might verify that your OpenGamingStore account has the proper email address you expected, or if there are any emails from an account out of @d20pfsrd.com that might have gotten thrown in junk email.
They responded to my email and it has been sorted out. I must say I'm impressed with the rapid response.
I'm really liking the second entry, Sword of Kings. I might just try to find a way to introduce this to my Age of Ashes campaign.
I just purchased the 52-52 deal and am really excited about the contents coming up throughout the year. I have only received the MegaBundle thus far, so I'm not sure how long I will wait to access the new January material. Even though a lot of the material in the megabundle is not relevant for my gaming, it is good quality. If the 52 products are similar in quality, this will be a GREAT investment!