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IIRC PF2 Kingmaker took far more work than expected. I can see this wrecking havoc on their schedule when added to everything else.
And this is a product that people paid for a long time ago and have not seen yet, so Paizo putting it as highest priority would be really respectful of their customer base.
Not just Kingmaker. Absalom broke the pipeline as well, and Dead God's Hand.
I actually have some misgivings about that. It got pushed back a year to add 400 new stat blocks that probably most wouldn't have noticed if they weren't included. I do not question their passion for the project, but "perfect is the enemy of good" keeps repeating in my mind every time I think about all that extra effort in the middle of a pandemic.
Maybe I'm wrong and the product makes or breaks on those new NPCs. I just keep wondering if that page space could have gone towards an NPC codex and the original version of the city guide went out as scheduled.
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I actually have some misgivings about that. It got pushed back a year to add 400 new stat blocks that probably most wouldn't have noticed if they weren't included. I do not question their passion for the project, but "perfect is the enemy of good" keeps repeating in my mind every time I think about all that extra effort in the middle of a pandemic.
Maybe I'm wrong and the product makes or breaks on those new NPCs. I just keep wondering if that page space could have gone towards an NPC codex and the original version of the city guide went out as scheduled.
Are you talking about absalom's book? If so, the npcs were referenced not as statblocks but as vignettes for use to flesh out the feel of a city and its surroundings.
They were also not stated to be the reason the book was delayed, but something that was larger than they expected and a point of boasting.
Now whether the book benefits from it or not, we won't know till next year. But let's not start criticising lore books for being lore/fluff heavy, it is pretty much their primary job.
It's hard to say they owe us anything other than what we paid for, but a lack of communication, and seemingly no rules clarifications for a year, is not encouraging. 2E can be something great (especially if they un-ruin magic), but I don't think a "publish and forget" process is a good way to go about it.
Community feedback is essential, if people "shut up and vote with your wallet" like some suggest, a company will never know why sales drop or stagnate. Doesn't mean the company has to comply, but still. The promise of errata and FAQ is like a warranty on a RPG system, it is important and given the cost of investment for us GMs it can be necessary to protect the value of that investment (read: retain players, store interest and so on)
Saying errata is coming, then delaying also stops people from putting together community errata in any decent capacity.
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In this day and age when you buy a tabletop game you expect them to fix anything that is wrong in it with errata. Maybe not having errata was okay years ago but nowadays it just isn't. If you don't release errata to fix your game then you are behind the times and your games aren't worth buying. I know paizo is working on the errata but the more they push back it's release without saying anything the more and more resentment they build within the community.
To what TTRPG games are you comparing Pathfinder 2 when you refer to “this day and age?”
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In this day and age when you buy a tabletop game you expect them to fix anything that is wrong in it with errata. Maybe not having errata was okay years ago but nowadays it just isn't. If you don't release errata to fix your game then you are behind the times and your games aren't worth buying. I know paizo is working on the errata but the more they push back it's release without saying anything the more and more resentment they build within the community. It doesn't take long to just say "Hey, we had to push back the release date for the errata but we are still working on it.", and that is the only thing many of us are asking for not just an immediate errata. Just to be kept in the loop a little bit and not be left in the dark. People can defend paizo or whatever all they want but this is definitely a sore spot for many people as evidenced in this thread.
They also have one of the most active and best organized play systems I've seen, which makes errata even more valuable to the brand. Leaving things broken or weird and still having that chug along just makes it grind along with broken wheels.
Are you talking about absalom's book? If so, the npcs were referenced not as statblocks but as vignettes for use to flesh out the feel of a city and its surroundings.
They were also not stated to be the reason the book was delayed, but something that was larger than they expected and a point of boasting.
Is the Lost Omens Ancestry slated for January or March? What happened the Lost Omens Absalom book and the big city map?Both products are currently delayed. I messed up and didn't assign enough pages to the Absalom book to do it right, so I'm holding it back until it's as awesome as we can make it. James Jacobs and I have added about 20 additional locations to the manuscript (the city now has a temple for every core god, for example). We've also been working on an NPC appendix that has short summaries of more than 300 inhabitants of the city. So when you go to a shop, you can cross reference the shopkeeper in an NPC appendix and find out who she is friends with, who she is plotting against, and how all of it might play out into an adventure hook to lure the PCs into adventure.
We're hoping the book will be out by the end of the year. If not, it will be very shortly thereafter. The map folio will come out at the same time as the hardcover.
It'll be in 2021, more or less for sure.
I screwed up big time trying to juggle major additions to Absalom and this adventure at the same time, and unfortunately this adventure is second in line.
I am sorry. On the other hand, all of the additional writing is now done for Absalom and that project should be moving forward again soon, so the big logjam is cleared, and we'll all be 400 NPCs richer for it. :)
I will concede that they are apparently not stat blocks. I thought he had said that during the Paizocon panel where he apologized for the delay, but obviously I misheard. I wish I could link it for you, but that doens't seem to be one of the ones still available on either twitch or youtube.
Edit: well, I couldn't find it because it was a Gencon panel. The "I misheard" part still stands though.
Link. Yes I know it is bing, I don't fight my computer's whims
Paizo 2002 & Beyond Q&A panel, approximately 35:45 into the stream.
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Even if we never got errata it would hardly have an impact on my games. Most of the things people are calling for errata on I wouldn't even be aware of if I wasn't on these forums.
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I really dislike that Paizo isn't commenting on this, but I also don't think it would make a massive difference if they released one to be honest. an errata would be nice but its not like it's affecting my group's games.
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I'd say it was generous to say that one in five RPGs I've purchased (even recent ones) ever got errata.
Most games get errata, very few get it in an ongoing basis, and almost none get it on the timetable people seem to expect Paizo to provide errata in.
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Even if we never got errata it would hardly have an impact on my games. Most of the things people are calling for errata on I wouldn't even be aware of if I wasn't on these forums.I have come across so many of the things that are up for debate and it can be annoying having to house rule them when they all come up again. I know not everyone is clamoring for errata but these things do come up both as a dm and player. Some of them may be pretty clear when using RAI but RAW they do something completely different and need to be addressed.
I know for myself, I see a LOT of different tables/games so things with ambiguous stuff, like battle medicine and hands, comes up quite often. I can understand it being less important if you play in a home game only where everyone agrees on how the rules read.
As someone else mentioned, you've been very privileged in what games you've purchased. I'd say it was generous to say that one in five RPGs I've purchased (even recent ones) ever got errata.
Most of the games I've played have had FAQ's or errata in some form, going back as far as Marvel Super Heroes and d&d's sage advice. Even Rifts puts out errata every blue moon and those books still seems to be printed out on a copy machine...
I know for myself, I see a LOT of different tables/games so things with ambiguous stuff, like battle medicine and hands, comes up quite often. I can understand it being less important if you play in a home game only where everyone agrees on how the rules read.Even if we never got errata it would hardly have an impact on my games. Most of the things people are calling for errata on I wouldn't even be aware of if I wasn't on these forums.I have come across so many of the things that are up for debate and it can be annoying having to house rule them when they all come up again. I know not everyone is clamoring for errata but these things do come up both as a dm and player. Some of them may be pretty clear when using RAI but RAW they do something completely different and need to be addressed.
Yeah, I suppose that makes sense, I've played with the same 4 people for a couple years now so we just make a decision and move on.
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Like I said, if a game doesn't issue errata nowadays it isn't worth buying. It isn't a privilege that I want something I spend my money on to contain as few errors as possible and if there is an error that it is rectified with an errata.
If the bar is “issuing errata” then it is a bar that was cleared by Paizo a year ago.
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and almost none get it on the timetable people seem to expect Paizo to provide errata in.
Bit of a correction: This isn't a timetable people have pulled out of thin air to demand of Paizo, it's the one Paizo put forward themselves.
and almost none get it on the timetable people seem to expect Paizo to provide errata in.Bit of a correction: This isn't a timetable people have pulled out of thin air to demand of Paizo, it's the one Paizo put forward themselves.
Bit of a clarification to your correction: this specific instance is indeed an estimate given by Paizo and not delivered on. Looking back at the classic version of this thread as we have encountered it repeatedly in the past, that is usually not the case.
If that one errata had fixed all the problems then this thread wouldn't even be necessary but there are many more things that have to be addressed by paizo in order for the core game to be error free. There are many, many threads on this very forum that are raging in debate about a number of issues and it is causing problems within the community. Depending on who your gm is a vast number of things can be different in pf2 simply because it is up to the gm to figure out what the intent is for certain rules as paizo left the them ambiguous or the rules don't cover every situation. This is the responsibility of paizo to fix and I cannot in good conscious recommend pf2 until they fix their game.
Your expectations are wonderful, and you mentioned earlier that they are based on the model of other contemporary TTRPG’s. Which games are these?
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The obvious example would be the RPG dominating the market atm. One could object by pointing out that numerous conflicts exist in the off-the-cuff Sage Advice answers, but some answers are better than silence, and they did, I think, compile numerous errata pdfs fairly regularly.
They would be a bad example given the contradictory Sage Advices as you mentioned coupled with the fact that Wizards released their first errata for the PHB in November of 2015. At the exact same point in 5e’s release schedule that PF2 is at today, errata 1.0 would be weeks away from release while PF2’s is nearly a year old.
This is my main point. Threads like this state that players expect Paizo to hold to a standard that is more stringent than what the rest of the industry is currently doing. Yes they said back in July that it was imminent, but there were threads in this forum demanding to know where errata 1.1 was as early as January of this year (2 short months after the release of 1.0.)
The “where is the errata?” thread pops ups pretty routinely, regardless of whether there is an announced update in the pipeline or not
As Greystone said, even 1 answer per month would be better than the nothing we've gotten for the past year. How many battle medicine threads is enough to warrant a clarification?
They clearly do not want or are not able to do that kind of update. If they were, they would be providing it already. Why should your expectations of how they should provide things to you be more important than theirs? Particularly when the standard you claim they should be held to is in some ways one they have already exceeded.
But it's not even just the errata. There seems to be very little interaction at all on the forums.
There used to be a lot of interaction on the forums, then the posters started to treat that communication as a license to express their expectations of how things should go. It got toxic. Fans treated devs terribly so by and large the devs left. Few return and they don’t stay for very long.
I mentioned Jalmeri Heavenseeker being a broken archetype in one post, and someone responded that someone from Paizo said it was on their to-fix list. But said where? Hunting down comments in a discord or twitch stream is a lot more difficult than having a single place to go (the forums, or blog posts, or FAQ page).
Why do you need to have confirmation of where someone said they’re fixing your pet issue with the game? What value is there in having that yes in writing in a forum post?
Maybe the errata drops tomorrow, maybe a year from now.
Which is situation normal for this hobby. WOTC didn’t announce their erratas were upcoming over the summer, they just dropped them. And might I add they dropped those erratas this summer covering products that were released over four years ago.
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It's so strange to me that requesting some simple communication from a company when it misses it's own publicly announced timelines (by a lot) is viewed by some as an unrealistic and inappropriate request.
It's so strange to me that requesting some simple communication from a company when it misses it's own publicly announced timelines (by a lot) is viewed by some as an unrealistic and inappropriate request.
Where was the release publicly announced? It was commented on in a stream, but I don’t recall an official announcement.
We’re in the midst of an industry altering pandemic and they are experiencing staffing issues, you’d think a little patience could be exhibited when they don’t deliver on a vaguely stated timeline.
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Where was the release publicly announced? It was commented on in a stream, but I don’t recall an official announcement.
You don't consider a comment from the lead designer on their main GenCon announcement stream to be "public" or "official?" I do.
Please just let people civilly express a little disappointment and suggest a bit more communication without harassment. It's just constructive feedback because we love the game.
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It's so strange to me that requesting some simple communication from a company when it misses it's own publicly announced timelines (by a lot) is viewed by some as an unrealistic and inappropriate request.Where was the release publicly announced? It was commented on in a stream, but I don’t recall an official announcement.
We’re in the midst of an industry altering pandemic and they are experiencing staffing issues, you’d think a little patience could be exhibited when they don’t deliver on a vaguely stated timeline.
Here's the thing: they are likely finished actually making this round of Errata. The next printing is already ordered, and they tie errata to the new printing. Even if all they had time for was minor clean-up and typo-fixing, quite possible with the aforementioned pandemic, whatever changes they're going to make would have already gone to the printer.
It looks like they estimate that print will arrive in November, so I would assume we'll get errata at that time.
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It looks like they estimate that print will arrive in November, so I would assume we'll get errata at that time.
I hope you're right. That would be fine.
Are you talking about absalom's book? If so, the npcs were referenced not as statblocks but as vignettes for use to flesh out the feel of a city and its surroundings.
They were also not stated to be the reason the book was delayed, but something that was larger than they expected and a point of boasting.
Is the Lost Omens Ancestry slated for January or March? What happened the Lost Omens Absalom book and the big city map?Both products are currently delayed. I messed up and didn't assign enough pages to the Absalom book to do it right, so I'm holding it back until it's as awesome as we can make it. James Jacobs and I have added about 20 additional locations to the manuscript (the city now has a temple for every core god, for example). We've also been working on an NPC appendix that has short summaries of more than 300 inhabitants of the city. So when you go to a shop, you can cross reference the shopkeeper in an NPC appendix and find out who she is friends with, who she is plotting against, and how all of it might play out into an adventure hook to lure the PCs into adventure.
We're hoping the book will be out by the end of the year. If not, it will be very shortly thereafter. The map folio will come out at the same time as the hardcover.
I will concede that they are apparently not stat blocks. I thought he had said that during the Paizocon panel where he apologized for the delay, but obviously I misheard. I wish I could link it for you, but that doens't seem to be...It'll be in 2021, more or less for sure.
I screwed up big time trying to juggle major additions to Absalom and this adventure at the same time, and unfortunately this adventure is second in line.
I am sorry. On the other hand, all of the additional writing is now done for Absalom and that project should be moving forward again soon, so the big logjam is cleared, and we'll all be 400 NPCs richer for it. :)
Yeah? So supporting quotes of what I stated, yes NPC were a part of what they worked on, but it isn't the only thing that was mentioned here "20 new locations" stands out.
But again, the core point of my argument is it is a lore book, providing lore content.
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Yeah? So supporting quotes of what I stated, yes NPC were a part of what they worked on, but it isn't the only thing that was mentioned here "20 new locations" stands out.
But again, the core point of my argument is it is a lore book, providing lore content.
Which wasn't at all what I was talking about. I wasn't objecting to lore in a lore book, I was questioning if it was wise to have basically 2+ lore books in there.
Like, please point to where I objected to the book being about lore?
On the stream I linked, they said the NPC section alone could have been a 120 page book. Also on the stream, he literally says "what I decided was it needed significantly more work on the NPC section" when he is asked about the delay to the book.
I'm not sure what other conclusion besides "they decided to delay the book so that they could add to the NPC section" I'm supposed to draw from that.
I'm a little dubious about your first line, honestly. I've certainly seen a number of RPGs that never got any errata at all as best I can determine. Its possible that number is less than I think (because a lot of games that are mostly PDF focused these days will just update the PDF).
Most companies simply that began in the traditional don’t announce errata at all and treat it as the ongoing work of print run maintenance like the rest of the traditional print industry. White Wolf/Onyx Path/Paradox for example has almost never released a separated document version of their errata - simply releasing it with the next print run of the book. So it would appear as if their WoD line wasn’t errata’ed until two people with two different print run copies notice a rule change and have to track the printing number to verify the difference in age.
Just because you never saw public facing comments about it doesn’t mean that companies weren’t just following the old model of allowing it to happen in the background.
What games are you thinking of?
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You do realize MSH was still produced by TSR, which was the biggest RPG manufacturer with the best penetration at that time? And even Palladium, chaotic as their approach to things is, was still a pretty big player compared to most, then or now?
I wasn't commenting on company size but WHEN it happened: it was back in the day before the internet was big and you got errata in paper form. In those days, errata was in no way guaranteed. Palladium Fit because I wouldn't be surprised if they said their equipment was steam powered...
in the case of people who only buy physical books, if true that's really unfortunate; its worse in its way than not doing errata at all.)
The situation I described to you is the errata process as it has existed in the print industry for centuries, originally it was to fix errors in the type setting of the print block and new print runs of the book simply included the newest version of the text. An itemized listing of changes made from one edition to the next was incredibly rare and usually only for reference materials that needed to benefit from currency.
I think the proximity of this gaming industry to the video game industry has led to a bit of cross talk where now some people think that errata for a TTRPG is the same as a patch applied to a video game - this isn't exactly the case.
Errata is correcting textual errors, typography, missing text. Sometimes this includes revisions, but not always. Sometimes this includes rules fixes, but not always.
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in the case of people who only buy physical books, if true that's really unfortunate; its worse in its way than not doing errata at all.)The situation I described to you is the errata process as it has existed in the print industry for centuries, originally it was to fix errors in the type setting of the print block and new print runs of the book simply included the newest version of the text. An itemized listing of changes made from one edition to the next was incredibly rare and usually only for reference materials that needed to benefit from currency.
I think the proximity of this gaming industry to the video game industry has led to a bit of cross talk where now some people think that errata for a TTRPG is the same as a patch applied to a video game - this isn't exactly the case.
Errata is correcting textual errors, typography, missing text. Sometimes this includes revisions, but not always. Sometimes this includes rules fixes, but not always.
In modern TTRPG games an Errata is expected to be a patch, yes. Patches in video games also include fixes for textual errors, typography, and missing text btw.
Errata for TTRPG (and wargames) is the equivalent to Patches for video games.