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In open-source software development we call that a 'fork'. So the biggest problem that I see with it... Rapidly diverging rules.
Merging a forked project back together again is a difficult process. What would you suggest for merging the two PF2 rule sets back together again? Or would it simply require a separate dedicated development team to support the digital content once it diverges so far that it is no longer compatible?
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Spoken like a programmer. Devops?
The quick and dirty answer is that in reality there is no such thing as a strict environment in TTRPG's anyway. Well, setting aside PFS or other organized games anyway. Everything is up to GM interpretation at the end of the day.
If there happens to be something you dislike about the game, you can easily rollout or rollback whatever changes you'd like.
Also, Archives of Nethys sort of fits some of that criteria. It tends to be up to date with errata, at least in a reasonably timely fashion, and is much easier to keep up than physical print versions of the rules.
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The problem with any attempt at super-fast errata would be the time commitment the design team would need to dedicate on top of their work with new publications. The design team already have years worth of content they need to help put out, and also help the developers keep most of their content relatively balanced VS current options. To ask them to prioritize their time to errata right out the gate might just be too much for them.
That being said, I would like for an overall faster turn-around rate for FAQ and errata for PF2E in general. Waiting 2 years for the APG errata to drop only for a few minor corrections to be fixed and nothing to address the major complaints levied at the book (the issues some have with Witch's hexes, Swashbucklers feeling strapped with skill increases, etc.) soured my anticipation for it, tbqh. And knowing it'll be just as long, if not longer for similar issues for SoM, G&G, and BotD has me feeling a little on the frustrated side.
I just don't know why Paizo bothered to revamp their online FAQ/errata page, and have extensive online tool partnerships formed with folks over at AoN and Pathfinder Nexus, only to limit themselves wholely to re-printings, ESPECIALLY with printing release dates being so unreliable for a while now and not expected to improve anytime soon.
Even more baffling is how there's actual FAQ entries for Starfinder, and even errata up to the most recently released hardcover book, but Pathfinder 2E can't manage to do the same. And even when some clarifications are done, they're done on How to Play's YouTube channel exclusively, and not at all reposted on the FAQ page.
It's all just a bit much.
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“There are two Pathfinder Second Editions that are nearly identical” is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a while. You’re begging to split the fandom, arguably as badly as an edition change would, but with remarkably little benefit, and also making print - and all the retailers who move print product - a second-class of community.
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I posted then deleted a comment, because it seemed kind of jerking, but it’s important to keep in mind that Paizo is primarily a magazine publisher that also has a game they make, not a game company that sells adventures to keep the coffers full.
Different mindset and structure, and not one that would be conducive the proposed idea. That would take a monthly rules subscription with a quarterly adventure path hardcover, not the other way around.
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“There are two Pathfinder Second Editions that are nearly identical” is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a while. You’re begging to split the fandom, arguably as badly as an edition change would, but with remarkably little benefit, and also making print - and all the retailers who move print product - a second-class of community.
Have you looked at how bookstores and comic shops are doing since the turn of the Millenium? If you have you'd see that printed media is already second class to the audiobook and pdf. You might not like the trend, but things are moving to digital distribution and living systems with frequent hands-on development even for thinngs that were traditionally single print run products.
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“There are two Pathfinder Second Editions that are nearly identical” is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a while. You’re begging to split the fandom, arguably as badly as an edition change would, but with remarkably little benefit, and also making print - and all the retailers who move print product - a second-class of community.Have you looked at how bookstores and comic shops are doing since the turn of the Millenium? If you have you'd see that printed media is already second class to the audiobook and pdf. You might not like the trend, but things are moving to digital distribution and living systems with frequent hands-on development even for thinngs that were traditionally single print run products.
Paizo's entire business model is print subscriptions and they frequently speak about how essential brick-and-mortar stores are to how they stay afloat, but by all means, act smug about it for no reason.
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I fail to see why "Paizo updates their game regularly to fix problems" is a better solution than "I, the GM, solve problems via house rules."
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Paizo's entire business model is print subscriptions and they frequently speak about how essential brick-and-mortar stores are to how they stay afloat, but by all means, act smug about it for no reason.
Then they need to rapidly change that model because it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain going forward. Even large companies dominating their fields are moving towards having a substantial digital footprint. Some examples are WotC investing heavily in MtG Arena and digital content for D&D, Games Workshop moving to frequent balance updates and Warhammer+, and even smaller companies like R Talsorian games investing heavily into digital releases. The future is digital, it's app-based, and it's having your character sheet on your phone or tablet. Companies that aren't already working on these products will have a hard time in the years to come and no amount of conservative grognards will change this.
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I fail to see why "Paizo updates their game regularly to fix problems" is a better solution than "I, the GM, solve problems via house rules."
I fail to see why "Riot games makes frequent balance changes" is a better solution than "modding the game and using private servers". The company that makes the product is the one that should fix it. Period.
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I don't think that a divide is inevitable with more thorough errata through online means. I doubt changes would create a fissure big enough that the physical copies become fossils. As long as they don't completely disregard reprints, It should be fine.
I remember 3.0 and going online and printing off errata and FAQs and slipping them into the front cover of books. It wasn't ideal but it got the job done.
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I fail to see why "Paizo updates their game regularly to fix problems" is a better solution than "I, the GM, solve problems via house rules."I fail to see why "Riot games makes frequent balance changes" is a better solution than "modding the game and using private servers". The company that makes the product is the one that should fix it. Period.
Who is Riot Games and why should I care about them?
Like it's incredibly disingenuous to compare the expense and difficulty in "maintaining your own server" for whatever it is you're talking about, and "talking to your players and figuring out solutions to problems that come up in the course of play."
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Who is Riot Games and why should I care about them?
Like it's incredibly disingenuous to compare the expense and difficulty in "maintaining your own server" for whatever it is you're talking about, and "talking to your players and figuring out solutions to problems that come up in the course of play."
Just an indie studio that came from nothing to running one of the largest e-sports leagues in the world because they weren't afraid to invest in what was working and cut what wasn't. Hosting your own server is easy, you do it unknowingly when you play a fair number of online games that use the P2P server model rather than dedicated servers.
As for talking to your players and making house rules, how does that work for PFS players or pay-to-play players who have a strict GM that doesn't want different rules for each game they run? More importantly, how does Paizo not handling errata properly make the game better for the player?
Paizo isn't your friend, you should be holding their feet to the fire to make the best game possible and not accepting second-rate work because they're running on a tight budget and working within an outdated business model. To those that think I'm being too harsh, I'm more critical of the company I work for than I am of Paizo. Don't get me wrong, I like my company just fine, I just think that my staff and our customers deserve the best instead of our best, and am willing to fight for that change.
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Paizo has built an incredibly modular and transparent system, so that it's easy for me to implement whatever changes I see as necessary without unforseen consequences. Fundamentally, I'm just not that concerned with what's going on at tables that aren't the ones I'm playing at. The whole point of these games for decades has been "you take the words on the page and make them work for the sort of game you want to have." Stuff being vague, unbalanced, or broken now isn't fundamentally more concerning to me than stuff being vague, unbalanced, or broken in the 80s.
Like my bright line standard for roleplaying games is "you can play one without electricity or internet." I'm just not interested in anything that needs a login, a screen, or that I can't play during a power outage.
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As for talking to your players and making house rules, how does that work for PFS players
As I see you're not a PFS player or GM, I'll tell you that it works just fine. It's encouraged by Leadership, actually. Otherwise you'd be unable to finish a game everytime there was a missing DC, a typo, or a player thinking outside-the-box about a solution to a problem.
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One disadvantage with a lot of houserules (I noticed this while hosting 5e games) is that it gets really confusing, you constantly mix up the houserules and the real rules and it is even worse if you play at multiple tables and you frequently run into situations where three different GMs have three different sets of houserules which you need to remember.
Lots of times I thought there was a house rule applied but it was a different GM who had it instead.
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To those that think I'm being too harsh, I'm more critical of the company I work for than I am of Paizo. Don't get me wrong, I like my company just fine, I just think that my staff and our customers deserve the best instead of our best, and am willing to fight for that change.
This statement is meaningless. You don't name the company you work for. You also haven't proved you are more critical of it than Paizo by any measurable yardstick. So why even?
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Paizo's entire business model is print subscriptions and they frequently speak about how essential brick-and-mortar stores are to how they stay afloat, but by all means, act smug about it for no reason.Then they need to rapidly change that model because it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain going forward. Even large companies dominating their fields are moving towards having a substantial digital footprint. Some examples are WotC investing heavily in MtG Arena and digital content for D&D, Games Workshop moving to frequent balance updates and Warhammer+, and even smaller companies like R Talsorian games investing heavily into digital releases. The future is digital, it's app-based, and it's having your character sheet on your phone or tablet. Companies that aren't already working on these products will have a hard time in the years to come and no amount of conservative grognards will change this.
The past is app-based actually. What you are describing is the present (and sliding into the past). Not the future.
When everybody jumps on the new trend, it is not innovation anymore and will not bring differenciation on the market.
Note also that a single company trying to do everything by itself rather than creating an ecosystem that helps it flourish is definitely a thing of the past.
I agree that Paizo does not seem to have a good digital instinct. But I believe the model you want to propose / impose is not the good one for them, no matter how fervently you attack people who disagree.
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And that's without getting into the failed comparison of LoL/WoW/FF14 putting out patches and hotfixes weekly and a tabletop game like Pathinfder doing something similar (yes, I'd love for them to put out more errata).
Without even going over the extra designer hours required, how would they get the quantifiable data to do so? MMOs can cause they have millions of players playing constantly for many hours and their immediate feedback and logging to the server, matches/scenarios/dungeons/whatever are also much shorter than tabletop sessions.
There is absolutely no way to get that quantity and quality for a tabletop game played in person or via PBP, the closest we have are the Playtests, and those runs for a month or two and take pretty much all of the Designers' focus and then some.
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You know, if there was an app that had a character builder and you could purchase the books with it, I'd pay for that in a heartbeat. More convenient errata would be the cherry on top but not that important.
That would be Pathfinder Nexus, a service Paizo announced a little while ago but hasn't released yet. Some of the people working on it are people who developed D&D Beyond.
Paizo isn't your friend, you should be holding their feet to the fire to make the best game possible and not accepting second-rate work because they're running on a tight budget and working within an outdated business model.
Paizo is a very small company whose workers are already very crunched. I hold no love for any company, but I'm capable of caring for the well being of people who aren't my friends. Especially when they're people who browse and post on these forums, interacting with the community.
And speaking as a League of Legends fan, I would absolutely take fewer balance patches if it meant the workers got treated better.
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The videogame industry is demonstrably exploitative at basically all levels and the proliferation of always-updating loops has only continued to drive that exploitation. Like others, I'd like more frequent and comprehensive errata, but I absolutely do not want the videogame industry model to become standard literally anywhere else. May it die in a fire.
As for the philosophical points about holding Paizo accountable: Maybe chill a bit. The stakes aren't that high.
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I doubt Paizo has any interest in this sort of thing.
They would need to dedicate resources to constantly updating and rewriting rules they've written instead of producing new products they get paid for.
There's very little benefit for Paizo.
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League of Legends got nearly 2 billion in revenue in 2020. Their balance patches are not their source of revenue; they are their customer retention. When you figure out how Paizo can get in on that sweet microtransaction money with multiple tens of millions of players... Yeah, then I'll expect a dedicated team just for regular updates to existing content.
Paizo does fix some stuff. But c'mon, their revenue across all lines is three orders of magnitude lower than LoL by itself.
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Paizo's entire business model is print subscriptions and they frequently speak about how essential brick-and-mortar stores are to how they stay afloat, but by all means, act smug about it for no reason.Then they need to rapidly change that model because it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain going forward. Even large companies dominating their fields are moving towards having a substantial digital footprint. Some examples are WotC investing heavily in MtG Arena and digital content for D&D, Games Workshop moving to frequent balance updates and Warhammer+, and even smaller companies like R Talsorian games investing heavily into digital releases. The future is digital, it's app-based, and it's having your character sheet on your phone or tablet. Companies that aren't already working on these products will have a hard time in the years to come and no amount of conservative grognards will change this.
While I think most of agree that the world is increasingly becoming more digital, and that Paizo will have to adapt to that, it means that pdfs are going to be the main method of transmitting game rules rather than printed copies....which really just means at some point Paizo is going to have to raise the price of their pdf copies. Currently pdfs are about 1/3 the price of the printed copy. Paizo costs will change as they're likely going to need to print less total copies, but the individual price per printed copy will need to go up. And for Paizo to maintain revenue for their non-printing related costs they'll likely need to raise pdf prices.
I think all of that is true as we move towards the future.
But none of that is related to having an endless cycle of updates. TTRPGs aren't computer games. You have a GM for a reason. Yes very obvious and blatant issues should be addressed with errata. But Paizo doesn't have the resources to constantly tweak the rulesets and reissue them, in either print or pdf. It's a task that generates no additional value for the company.
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Currently pdfs are about 1/3 the price of the printed copy. Paizo costs will change as they're likely going to need to print less total copies, but the individual price per printed copy will need to go up.
This is part of what I was referring to when I commented that their main product is their magazine, not their game rules. Because for their main product lines, this is just not true. Only the rulebooks are so heavily discounted; Lost Omens and Adventure Path PDFs are much closer to full price.
And this thread (especially certain comments) ignores the fact that Paizo has been trying digital initiatives for years, and have backed away because that is not what they’re good at. It seems the path they’re going for is partnership and licensing out their IP for other companies to make digital products with.
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I don't think that a divide is inevitable with more thorough errata through online means. I doubt changes would create a fissure big enough that the physical copies become fossils. As long as they don't completely disregard reprints, It should be fine.
You're wrong. It is utterly inevitable.
I actually played 4th edition D&D for awhile and that is exactly what happened. Players had a choice. Use their physical rulebooks with whatever they considered the most important errata added in or use the online subscription rules (I forget what it was called back then). Every group made its own decision and stuck to it. The vast majority, at least locally, went with the online rules and the books were essentially only useful as door stops.
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And that's without getting into the failed comparison of LoL/WoW/FF14 putting out patches and hotfixes weekly and a tabletop game like Pathinfder doing something similar (yes, I'd love for them to put out more errata).
Without even going over the extra designer hours required, how would they get the quantifiable data to do so? MMOs can cause they have millions of players playing constantly for many hours and their immediate feedback and logging to the server, matches/scenarios/dungeons/whatever are also much shorter than tabletop sessions.
There is absolutely no way to get that quantity and quality for a tabletop game played in person or via PBP, the closest we have are the Playtests, and those runs for a month or two and take pretty much all of the Designers' focus and then some.
I'm with you. TBH as much as I want more/faster errata having it be like video game patches would make me really unhappy. A player or GM shouldn't have to be checking for errata to a tabletop game weekly or even monthly. Maybe every 6 months similar to what GW is currently doing would work. I get the comparison to video games but until this game is fully handled in a virtual space it's just not the same thing.
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Paizo isn't your friend
Your are right and wrong. You can't be friends with an inanimate concept but there are people who are work at the company that I know. And to hear someone make inane demands of them is quite frankly appalling.
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League of Legends got nearly 2 billion in revenue in 2020. Their balance patches are not their source of revenue; they are their customer retention. When you figure out how Paizo can get in on that sweet microtransaction money with multiple tens of millions of players... Yeah, then I'll expect a dedicated team just for regular updates to existing content.
Paizo does fix some stuff. But c'mon, their revenue across all lines is three orders of magnitude lower than LoL by itself.
I can't wait until the Maid Cafe Skin for Valeros drops, that's going to be a sick season. The Lem taunt from the last season pass is pretty cool too, I'm really glad they made it a time-limited drop too, that way it feels special.
Currently pdfs are about 1/3 the price of the printed copy. Paizo costs will change as they're likely going to need to print less total copies, but the individual price per printed copy will need to go up.This is part of what I was referring to when I commented that their main product is their magazine, not their game rules. Because for their main product lines, this is just not true. Only the rulebooks are so heavily discounted; Lost Omens and Adventure Path PDFs are much closer to full price.
And this thread (especially certain comments) ignores the fact that Paizo has been trying digital initiatives for years, and have backed away because that is not what they’re good at. It seems the path they’re going for is partnership and licensing out their IP for other companies to make digital products with.
It's true that their Adventure Paths and "softback" works (when thinking of printed stuff) is still full price when it comes to digital, but my guess is that a critical portion of revenue comes from the main lines that are greatly discounted. Without the main line, the other products don't really exist (or else Paizo is back to writing for a system that isn't theirs, like back in the 3.5 days). But I think the future they're going to have to raise the price on the main line pdf products too. And of course there is also the issue that these are pdfs that have no digital encryption to prevent them from being shared (at this time). So it's almost a voluntary process to pay for them.
Paizo doesn't publish sales data, but I suspect that while the "softback" materials account for 60% or more of total revenue, that the major core rule books are individually bigger sellers than the other materials. Paizo treats the main line as a means to provide a basis to sell the other stuff. And that other stuff is typically where Paizo excels anyways.
And I don't mean to ignore Paizo's digital efforts, but as you've noted they've not been particularly successfully executing it themselves. And the digital products that have come to bear, like the CRPG by OwlCat end up being a distinctly different from the TTRPG. But this avenue could end up being one of the most profitable for Paizo, I think.
And I don't mean to ignore Paizo's digital efforts, but as you've noted they've not been particularly successfully executing it themselves. And the digital products that have come to bear, like the CRPG by OwlCat end up being a distinctly different from the TTRPG. But this avenue could end up being one of the most profitable for Paizo, I think.
To be clear, I didn’t mean you with that comment.
They have been, quite reasonably I feel, raising the prices in rulebook PDFs (along with everything else). But I think there will be diminishing returns there as long as AoN remains a thing.
Like you said, their real stuff depends on those rules being in as many hands as possible. I would add that they need those to be in as stable and static of a form as possible. So even they sell more rulebook units, that’s more “working as intended” than a happenstance, as long as their bread and butter is the magazine.
But I think there will be diminishing returns there as long as AoN remains a thing.
Yeah, it's a tough spot.
The company needs to make money.
The most widely used products are going to be the hardback main rules line, but the most profitable are going to be the other products. Because you don't find that on AoN. Or at least not the context. Sure the feat might be on there, but it doesn't explain how or why.
In the end it's really a complex problem.
If Paizo stopped the free access to AoN and instead charged....they'd potentially push away a significant portion of the player base. But it's possible those people aren't providing much revenue anyways. And the market can only tolerate producing so many APs and short adventures. If Paizo could crank out 10 times as many, there's no guarantee that they could all sell well enough that it'd be worth it.
It's simply a tough market to try to make the transition through, especially when you don't have the deep pockets of someone like WotC backing you up.
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Like AoN being free to use is a big reason why I keep buying the dead tree books from my FLGS, because you can't Control+F a physical book. So the books are things I pick up to read through (because that's a pleasant experience) but the website is a reference.
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The most widely used products are going to be the hardback main rules line, but the most profitable are going to be the other products. Because you don't find that on AoN. Or at least not the context. Sure the feat might be on there, but it doesn't explain how or why.
In the end it's really a complex problem.
With all due respect, I think you might have this backwards. The adventure line isn’t the most profitable because it’s not on AoN. I think it’s not on AoN because it’s the most profitable and they want to protect that.
With all due respect, I think you might have this backwards. The adventure line isn’t the most profitable because it’s not on AoN. I think it’s not on AoN because it’s the most profitable and they want to protect that.The most widely used products are going to be the hardback main rules line, but the most profitable are going to be the other products. Because you don't find that on AoN. Or at least not the context. Sure the feat might be on there, but it doesn't explain how or why.
In the end it's really a complex problem.
Eh, sorry I didn't try to make that specific point and it honestly doesn't matter (IMO) which way you look at it.
Adventure Paths (feats notwithstanding) aren't on AoN.
Adventure Paths (and similar items) are the profitable segment of Paizo's products, we presume.
Whether it's profitable because they don't put it out for free, or the don't put it AoN so they can get the profit is kind of an unimportant issue (IMO) once the dynamic is established. I think we can all agree that if Paizo started putting out all their Adventure Path (and similar) products on AoN for free it would be a bad financial decision and they would basically be reliant on donations to stay afloat (people choosing to pay even though they can get the product for free).
Anyways, I think they put the general rules on AoN for free because it gets people to engage with the system and helps support their profitable product line which are Adventure Paths, Adventures, Scenarios and Lost Omens products.
It wouldn't surprise me if the increasing amount of lore or even adventures in rulebooks is to get buyers something more than they would get just from looking at AoN. Just speculation, could definitely be wrong.
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We should also remember that PF2 operates under the Open Gaming License so someone was always going to create an open rules source. AoN gets to use proper names and what not through a special license from Paizo if I recall, but the rules were always going to be available until they decide to switch to a more restrictive SRD like WotC did with 5e.
True, but that was a choice Paizo made. They could have chosen not to do so. Although it would have ramifications for what they could use as a basis for the game and its rules.
Obviously someone made the decision that starting from scratch and not using OGL was going to be more costly than having the rules mechanics be freely reproduced.
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It wouldn't surprise me if the increasing amount of lore or even adventures in rulebooks is to get buyers something more than they would get just from looking at AoN. Just speculation, could definitely be wrong.
Pretty sure Paizo has said before that customers prefer the combo over each in isolation but there are so many things I've seen in different places I might be wrong.
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Like AoN being free to use is a big reason why I keep buying the dead tree books from my FLGS, because you can't Control+F a physical book. So the books are things I pick up to read through (because that's a pleasant experience) but the website is a reference.
I'll say that my personal experience is that AoN and the PFSRD were my points of entry. When I have conversations in which I can evangelize (sadly, not yet particularly successfully) they're things that i can point people to as well.
Part of this is game store economics. One of the things that you must have to be a thriving FLGS is a place where people can gather together to actually play games. They come, they play games, they hang out, they feel a sense of community, and they know that them handing money to the store in one way or another is a necessary part of keeping the whole ecology of it alive, so they buy things. The things they buy... may or may not have anything in particular to do with the games they are playing, but there's a direct causal link. AoN is basically out there being a bunch of empty tables in a room. People will come, and they will play, and the person at the desk in the front lets them, regardless of who it is, or how much they've spent... but they all know that money is the thing that keeps it all alive, so... sure. I mean, Book of the Dead sounds cool, right? I suppose I have enough money built up in my "personal obligation to Paizo" budget to buy Book of the Dead... and all of the chunks in there that aren't in AoN help me feel that I'm getting something real for my money that I can read and enjoy.
Make no mistake. Providing the core of the crunch of the game for free is a key part of the business model. They want as many people walking in that door as they can get.
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I'll say that my personal experience is that AoN and the PFSRD were my points of entry. When I have conversations in which I can evangelize (sadly, not yet particularly successfully) they're things that i can point people to as well.
Part of this is game store economics. One of the things that you must have to be a thriving FLGS is a place where people can gather together to actually play games. They come, they play games, they hang out, they feel a sense of community, and they know that them handing money to the store in one way or another is a necessary part of keeping the whole ecology of it alive, so they buy things. The things they buy... may or may not have anything in particular to do with the games they are playing, but there's a direct causal link. AoN is basically out there being a bunch of empty tables in a room. People will come, and they will play, and the person at the desk in the front lets them, regardless of who it is, or how much they've spent... but they all know that money is the thing that keeps it all alive, so... sure. I mean, Book of the Dead sounds cool, right? I suppose I have enough money built up in my "personal obligation to Paizo" budget to buy Book of the Dead... and all of the chunks in there that aren't in AoN help me feel that I'm getting something real for my money that I can read and enjoy.
Make no mistake. Providing the core of the crunch of the game for free is a key part of the business model. They want as many people walking in that door as they can get.
This is a big one for me as well. It is much easier to get your friends to play a TTRPG with you when you can easily point them at free resources that they can use to build a character and learn the rules.
I remember starting up my TTRPG experience having to pass around the one copy of the Core Rulebook that the GM happened to own at my FLGS. It makes everything a pain. Being able to easily hop onto AoN or just use Pathbuilder for that matter is WAY more convenient for getting new players into the hobby without hand holding them the entire time they want to read the rules.
And it makes using a VTT much easier for basically the same reasons, which is pretty important in todays world where game groups had to adapt to lockdown conditions. My group hasn't had a single full face to face session since the before times. Being able to drop AoN links into discord between sessions to talk about character builds and what have you is Real nice.