| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Purchasing modules for APs on Foundry should not be the most expensive purchasing options. Pathfinder Adventure Path #182: Graveclaw is currently $36 to get the foundry version, $8 more expensive than the print edition, $7 more expensive than Fantasy Grounds and $11 more expensive than the pricing for Outlaws of Alkenstar. If this is the pricing we can expect for Foundry going forward I don't know that I can continue to do business with this company.
Some things that might fix this issue: removing the requirement to purchase the PDF. Considering that the module on foundry comes with everything you need to run it, the PDF purchase is completely superfluous. Alternatively increasing the discount for purchasing the PDF and foundry code together so that it is at least not more expensive than any of the other purchasing options.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
While I am also unhappy with the pricing there is more to the comparison than you would think at first glance.
- Foundry maps are all remade in much higher quality for vtt use including tiles and layers set above tokens
- Audio is made/compiled for the adventures
- Unique macros are made for the adventues
- Unique journal art and layout is designed for the adventures
- The core material for foundry is not monetized and as such cannot be used to offset costs
- Paizo subcontracts the adventure work, people have to be willing to do said work and take the above into consideration
So while it is more expensive than fantasygrounds and the pdf, I can understand why. Personally I have more of an issue that Abomination Vaults offered not a cent of discount to people who owned each of the three adventure books (nor made an errata document), something that is going to repeat with the upcoming Ruby Phoenix AP sadly.
But yes, the price of the foundry APs has stopped me from purchasing any more physical APs and the issue with Abomination Vaults and Ruby Phoenix release means I will simply never purchase another AP (in pdf or foundry form) until I am going to run it (when previously I was buying all physical, all pdf and all foundry).
Again though, the foundry modules are above and beyond what the competition offers and have a lot of bespoke elements created for them.
If you wish to save some money demiplane might be a good route, being a digital product it is easy to either use in place of the journal or copy into the journal (especially with v10 page handling).
It gives you images and while you would have to do all the maps up yourself between quick search/insert and monks wall enhancements it is quite easy (even easier if you use simple fog instead of worrying about dynamic lighting, but monks wall enhancements make doing walls yourself pretty easy).
In the near future we will also have bestiary 1-3 tokens as a pack we can purchase (with blank templates for custom tokens) so couple that with grabbing nexus images for npcs not covered by bestiary 1-3 and it would be minimal work and notably cheaper across a whole AP
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
While I am also unhappy with the pricing there is more to the comparison than you would think at first glance, etc.
If you wish to save some money demiplane might be a good route, (etc)...
Your suggestions for alternative ways of doing things are good, but not really the point here. I'm not looking for alternatives, I'm looking for a better price point. I understand what goes into the pricing of these modules. They need to figure out how monetize These AP's for themselves and their subcontractor in a way that doesnt feel like I'm getting ripped off.
I cant even begin to imagine how freaking expensive Kingmaker is going to be. Considering that Blood Lords for Foundry is around 20% more expensive than the Print version, the Roll20 version or the Fantasy Grounds version, if the the print version of Kingmaker is $100 and Kingmaker has the same basic mark up as Blood Lords we're looking at, what, $120?
Paizo needs to get it's foundry pricing figured out or support the PDF importer so we can just go back to purchasing PDF's then importing them. The current foundry pricing model doesnt feel good.
| 18 people marked this as a favorite. |
It seems natural it would be the most expensive form of buying the AP as you get the most extra stuff with it. The reason the PDF costs money is not because of the PDF itself but because you are paying for the adventure. The reason you have to buy the PDF is because you have to pay Paizo for developing the AP.
The foundry module is according to those that develop it, 16 USD worth of work and if you don't want it you could always just buy the PDF and do it yourself.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of work goes into making these modules completely separate from the adventures themselves. The people doing that should be properly compensated for their work. If that puts them outside your price point, that is unfortunate but better than stiffing the people doing the labor.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of work goes into making these modules completely separate from the adventures themselves. The people doing that should be properly compensated for their work. If that puts them outside your price point, that is unfortunate but better than stiffing the people doing the labor.
In fairness to the OP, it sounds like he would be willing to pay the price point for the module itself (or maybe even with more of a markup). It's that you have to buy the module and the PDF together that makes the price point so high.
I personally like the products and the bundle a lot, but I can see why its a pain point too.
A lot of work goes into making these modules completely separate from the adventures themselves. The people doing that should be properly compensated for their work. If that puts them outside your price point, that is unfortunate but better than stiffing the people doing the labor.In fairness to the OP, it sounds like he would be willing to pay the price point for the module itself (or maybe even with more of a markup). It's that you have to buy the module and the PDF together that makes the price point so high.
That would result in stiffing Paizo for their share of the work, though, wouldn't it?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Fantasy grounds discounts the price of the PDF if you already own it - which is pretty nice honestly.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The current model does make subscriptions more attractive considering you get the PDF for free and that discounts the Foundry module as well. I would assume this is intentional with their business model.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of work goes into making these modules completely separate from the adventures themselves. The people doing that should be properly compensated for their work. If that puts them outside your price point, that is unfortunate but better than stiffing the people doing the labor.In fairness to the OP, it sounds like he would be willing to pay the price point for the module itself (or maybe even with more of a markup). It's that you have to buy the module and the PDF together that makes the price point so high.
I personally like the products and the bundle a lot, but I can see why its a pain point too.
But the PDF is just a vessel for buying the adventure, they aren't charging you a bunch of extra because it is in a PDF but because that is what the adventure costs. Moving the adventure into the module doesn't mean you can skip paying for the adventure.
With how annoying it is to pay marked-up prices for the APs to use in Foundry, I have to look at that as a much better method than what D&D One is doing with their business model. Pathfinder 2e is a superior product and Paizo and better company. For that and what they offer for free, I would much rather pay a higher licensing fee than be micro-transactioned to death.
The amount of work that would go into making just one of these books. Adding LoS, lighting, encounters, monsters, sound effects. It boggles the mind. I'd pay basically whatever they ask, because I don't want to do it!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of work goes into making these modules completely separate from the adventures themselves. The people doing that should be properly compensated for their work. If that puts them outside your price point, that is unfortunate but better than stiffing the people doing the labor.In fairness to the OP, it sounds like he would be willing to pay the price point for the module itself (or maybe even with more of a markup). It's that you have to buy the module and the PDF together that makes the price point so high.
I personally like the products and the bundle a lot, but I can see why its a pain point too.
Well I am waiting to see how it all works out before I buy. Yes I do want to have a go at the Kingmaker AP on Foundry VTT. But it will depend on the details. Paying for things twice is right up there with micro-transactions as a psychological problem for me. Clean simple pricing is important.
I'll be doing lots of customization generally as it is that sort of campaign it is. So just the PDF maybe where I end up.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
But the PDF is just a vessel for buying the adventure, they aren't charging you a bunch of extra because it is in a PDF but because that is what the adventure costs. Moving the adventure into the module doesn't mean you can skip paying for the adventure.
That would result in stiffing Paizo for their share of the work, though, wouldn't it?
I don't really know about Paizo's bottom line. None of us are really in a position to comment on what makes sense for them business wise.
All I know is that per Paizo's own comments, the bundle is priced at the value they set at a base price for the module ($16) plus the cost of the PDF. And that for certain users (like the OP), the bundle makes the price painful for them and they'd much rather have an option to buy the module on its own (even with a 30-60% markup, just as an example, not sure what numbers the OP would want, but it's something I've seen in other places).
If on the other hand, this really is the price Paizo needs to sell them at, imo calling it a 'bundle' is the problem, because it creates that impression among some end users that they're being saddled with the cost for something they aren't interested in: instead of paying 35 dollars for a fairly priced product, they're being upcharged ~119% for a PDF they don't want or need.
A module + free PDF, with a discount for people who've already purchased the game before would at the very least convey intent and look better, imo. Phrasing is really important for marketing and mandatory bundling often appears to be malicious (although I'm definitely not accusing Paizo of anything malicious here).
Ultimately I don't think it's a bad thing for people like the OP to be expressing their concern, even if it's not ultimately feasible for Paizo to do what they're asking for. I'm fine paying the price for foundry modules because I really love the quality of them (and I can just skip out on buying the PDFs or physical books like I might otherwise do), but not everyone has as much financial stability as myself and some others do and, to be fair, two-hundred plus dollars for an AP is a lot.
As someone who is running Curse of the Crimson Throne on Foundry and is having to do all the work myself, I would happily pay those prices to just be able to run it. Think about how many man hours of work it saves you.
It would be awesome if the price were lower, but that 36 bucks saves a TON of work.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
To clarify, as others have said, I just want the module. I'm happy to see a mark up on it so Paizo gets their piece. I don't want the bundle because I'll have no use for the PDF's. I'll only be running the module in Foundry and I'm happy to access the content via the journal entries there.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
To clarify, as others have said, I just want the module. I'm happy to see a mark up on it so Paizo gets their piece. I don't want the bundle because I'll have no use for the PDF's. I'll only be running the module in Foundry and I'm happy to access the content via the journal entries there.
I think basically everyone gets that, but are trying to explain the reason why it is the way it is.
You're saying "I just want the car, not the sheet-metal and plastic and rubber and wires."
Paizo pays human beings to invent, write, test, edit, draw, and map an adventure.
Additional human beings are paid to translate that content into VTT.
The cost to make it possible for you to play the adventure in a VTT environment is the wages of both sets of human beings... put together.
As Tumorseal has mentioned, the work being done to make VTT-usable game content is non-trivial. It's really, really labour-intensive even when you're just doing mechanical translation without creating anything new yourself.
Further, none of this is huge volume. It's not like there are tens of thousands of people buying the VTT adventures to drive the profit-per-hour-spent up. Imagine it takes 100 hours to convert an adventure and you sell 100 copies. You're making $1/hour.
My point is that nobody - nobody - is getting rich making this stuff. That should be the indicator that the pricing isn't out of line, even if it's more than you want to pay or can justify paying. Things cost what they cost.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
While I am also unhappy with the pricing there is more to the comparison than you would think at first glance.
- Foundry maps are all remade in much higher quality for vtt use including tiles and layers set above tokens
- Audio is made/compiled for the adventures
- Unique macros are made for the adventues
- Unique journal art and layout is designed for the adventures
- The core material for foundry is not monetized and as such cannot be used to offset costs
- Paizo subcontracts the adventure work, people have to be willing to do said work and take the above into consideration
So while it is more expensive than fantasygrounds and the pdf, I can understand why. Personally I have more of an issue that Abomination Vaults offered not a cent of discount to people who owned each of the three adventure books (nor made an errata document), something that is going to repeat with the upcoming Ruby Phoenix AP sadly.
But yes, the price of the foundry APs has stopped me from purchasing any more physical APs and the issue with Abomination Vaults and Ruby Phoenix release means I will simply never purchase another AP (in pdf or foundry form) until I am going to run it (when previously I was buying all physical, all pdf and all foundry).
Again though, the foundry modules are above and beyond what the competition offers and have a lot of bespoke elements created for them.
As someone who has only used the free PDF importer up to this point, I'm curious how this improves the experience in practice. Having to constantly fiddle with music seems distracting, for example, and I'm not sure how layers or unique macros improve things either.
It seems the PDF importer is no longer maintained after Frozen Flame 1.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
It seems the PDF importer is no longer maintained after Frozen Flame 1.
And to head off any potential rage...
My understanding is that the individual who was maintaining the importer had planned to stop even earlier due to the sheer amount of effort it took as a volunteer. They had continued longer until Paizo could get their modules rolling.
I imagine that if someone new wanted to start maintaining a similar project, that'd be fine.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It seems the PDF importer is no longer maintained after Frozen Flame 1.
I realize that, but I'm still curious how the paid version enhances the experience. At the rate I play through APs it will be a while before I need to purchase another, but I'm curious how my experience would be improved if I did.
Or, if a specific example helps, I'm playing with the free version of Abomination Vaults. I'm curious what I'd get if I paid to upgrade to the premium collected edition.
It seems the PDF importer is no longer maintained after Frozen Flame 1.I realize that, but I'm still curious how the paid version enhances the experience. At the rate I play through APs it will be a while before I need to purchase another, but I'm curious how my experience would be improved if I did.
Or, if a specific example helps, I'm playing with the free version of Abomination Vaults. I'm curious what I'd get if I paid to upgrade to the premium collected edition.
I'm speaking primarily about the Fantasy Grounds packages(used for books 3-6 of AoA and books 1-5 of EC) here not the Foundry ones, but I assume it will be similar. I have bought the Outlaws of Alkenstar Foundry one, but haven't looked too deep at it yet. I will buy the Kingmaker one when its out and am running it starting next week off my own built world until next year/whenever the Kingmaker Foundry package is out. I am using the free pdf2foundry version of book 6 of Extinction Curse.
It depends a lot on the AP and the GM. I don't care for a lot of the bells/whistles -- I don't use music, etc. AV is a small number of maps relatively speaking for an AP. So importing all the main floors/town + the 1-2 extra areas wouldn't be too painful and the type of thing a Foundry GM probably wouldn't mind doing themselves. I've been running Extinction Curse (books 1-4 on FGC, book 5 on FGU, book 6 on Foundry) and that's an AP that has many more maps, and sometimes a large degree of unspecified/unprovided maps for smaller encounters. It would be very easy to miss that you need a random map for an encounter when scanning/prepping, I've definitely got some peace of mind from knowing someone else has already dealt with that.
For creatures, it depends how much automation you want for unique/custom abilities that are added in the AP. Since the Foundry team gets creatures added pretty quickly, to the core/shared offerings you can get most/all of the benefit without buying the premium package. But this was a bigger selling point for me in FGU/C. Yes they had a useful text parser that could cut and paste a stat block, and handle most things, but any really custom thing would need to be hand coded, or manually dealt with.
Having all the artwork loaded for creatures/handouts is always nice.
I am very, very curious as to how a premium module would handle some of the more intricate custom rule sets (circus elements for EC, Hexploration/kingdom building for Kingmaker, maybe companion influence stuff as well). To me that's probably the biggest thing -- if they've done a good job with journal handouts for teaching subsystems, alternate "maps"/"character sheets" that work for tracking state across sessions for these important/large scale concepts.
To me, I'd buy the premium ones for an AP like AV because for me, the money->time savings calculation, makes sense. But that's always a personal balance point. I'd buy the premium thing for a 'complicated" AP both because the money->time savings argument AND because either it solves the big problem of handling special stuff, or at worst, saves me enough time dealing with the easy stuff to invest more time in the hard stuff.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
You're getting $36 (Adventure + VTT Integration) + $0 (Free Bonus PDF).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
As someone who has been pouring an embarrassing amount of money into Fantasy Grounds, and also as someone who has had to develop a Fantasy Grounds module myself for an adventure by hand...
I have to agree with the people saying it's a good deal. It's a bit more expensive than going the Fantasy Grounds route, but my understanding is that FG has a much higher buy-in cost than Foundry.
Yeah, Foundry is 50 bucks up front and that's it, unless you pay for a server instead of setting up your own with port forwarding. (Port forwarding is a pain to do but you don't need to do again until you change homes or internet providers.)
I'm pretty sure fryguy was single-handedly responsible for it, and driving himself crazy maintaining it as the number of adventures grew, and gladly put it in maintenance mode the moment Paizo committed to professional Foundry modules for all future APs.
There are similar projects, also singularly maintained, for other official content. But I'd be shocked if anybody commits to continuing the AP importer or similar projects outside of map remakes.
Yes, and to be clear, I'm not demanding anyone do so. I'm not THAT entitled. I'm just a potential customer curious what the paid option does to go above and beyond what I'm used to. Even what I'm used to would probably be worth the cost, but the paid versions sound swankier.
As someone who has only used the free PDF importer up to this point, I'm curious how this improves the experience in practice. Having to constantly fiddle with music seems distracting, for example, and I'm not sure how layers or unique macros improve things either.
As someone who has run both the pdf2foundry and paid version of AV.
- better quality maps (not just in resolution), lighting and detail
- way better journal work and organisation, often with macros linked where you want them, inline images to share, reminders/references, inline ability checks and saves complete with traits written in.
- high resolution tokens and npc images
- sounds embedded on maps (rather than music, stuff like dripping water, humming of magical equipmemt and the like)
Overall it is a very polished experience, music is very easy to handle either by dumping it onto the hotbar, assigning it to scenes and or using a module like video game music to set generic ambience playlists for scenes, generic combat playlists and specific enemy playlists to actors.
Oh and I have also run it on Fantasygrounds. The foundry implementation is pretty darn comprehensive, may not be things you personally value. But it is certainly not overcharging for the work they have put in.
To clarify, as others have said, I just want the module. I'm happy to see a mark up on it so Paizo gets their piece. I don't want the bundle because I'll have no use for the PDF's. I'll only be running the module in Foundry and I'm happy to access the content via the journal entries there.
It would be the same price though? You can just choose not to download the pdf, but nearly everything that makes the pdf have a price is included in the foundry module.
I gotta say, having now sampled the Foundry Premium content... I agree it is an elevated experience that earns its price point. And it sounds like there's still a decent amount of free pdf converter support if you look for it.