What brought you into Pathfinder?

[Alex Speidel]

Hey there, Pathfinders! At GalaxyCon Richmond later this month I'm going to be running a "Pathfinder & Starfinder 101" presentation and panel. I'm putting together a presentation now going over the basics of how to play and get started, and I want to make sure I use my limited time as effectively as possible.

I have a simple question for you all today: what drew you into Pathfinder? Was it the character creation and the chance to play a particular ancestry or class? Was it the 3-action economy or degrees of success? Something about our world that really spoke to you? Did you just want to harness the power of gay for yourself?

Thanks for your help! If you're in the Richmond area, I'd love to see you all at the show :)

[SuperBidi]

I was a Pathfinder 1 player. And I became one because friends started playing it. And these friends were playing D&D 3.0 before and were testing most of D&D knock offs...

So I'm not sure my answer is really helpful :)

[Aristophanes]

I was living in Northern NJ and playing in several D&D 3.5 games.
I moved to Baltimore Maryland in 2008 for work. I don't remember how I heard about it, but I got involved with PFS at a game store in Abingdon in late summer 2012. When the PF2E playtest started, I followed it in the forums intently. It quickly became my favorite version of D20. I've been playing it ever since!

[Conscious Meat]

The mechanics do strike me as pretty well-designed -- the three-action system with MAP, the modifier system, the feat system, et cetera. I also appreciate the amount of explicit rules support for a lot of possible actions, reducing the need to make judgment calls.

If I were to compare it with "the world's fantasy oldest roleplaying game", there's also clearly more attention played to balancing different player options and supporting a large variety of reasonably viable builds, which in turn makes it easier for a GM to be confident about encounter difficulty and to ensure that all the players have chances to shine.

[BigHatMarisa]

Accidentally caught wind of the PF2 playtest while I was fleshing out some details for OOC roleplay with my old PF1 characters.

Read it and was surprised with how different it was, and it just felt... right? Mostly right, anyways. Felt like a lot of the old philosophy of 3.5 and PF1 was being shaken off in favor of trying a lot of new things, which I appreciated from a mechanics perspective, while still keeping Golarion and its surrounding multiverse intact. PF1 would always be there if I ever wanted to pick it up again, after all.

I think an underappreciated system (mostly because it doesn't get a lot of signposting) that I came to love (after release anyways) is the magic item/attunement system. Having a limited amount of slots for attunement means that the choices you make for your tacky wizard outfits actually matters, and sometimes lower level magic items have unique effects you might wanna keep around, so making meaningful choices happens way more often, whereas in PF1 you basically wanted to just fill every slot you could.

[Dr. Frank Funkelstein]

I played (a bit of) PF1 after WotC tanked D&D4, after many years of 3.0/3.5 i was feeling quite at home.

After a lengthy pause (starting to work after uni etc), i was drawn back into roleplaying by the ease of access of D&D5 online, especially during the pandemic.

Over time, i became disillusioned with the direction d&d5 was taking and read about Pathfinder2e and its "balance first" approach. Having all the rules available online made the start easy.
I soon switched my own group from Shadowrun to PF2e as preparing and running sessions with Foundry was soooo much easier.

I like having clear rules about (most) things, the working level-based challenge system (as opposed to CR in 5e) and the myriad of combinations that classes and archetypes offer.

My main issue was finding groups to play with, despite having a much better localization in Germany than D&D5 it is rather niche, but after some time i got a nice pool together.
There is also PFS, which i recently started - sometimes good, sometimes too much roll-play for me, and still not a lot of games in european timezones.

[Bluemagetim]

It was kind of by chance.
I lent a friend all my DnD books, and another group of friends wanted to play DnD.
I didnt want to rebuy the books I own and saw the core rule book in a book store. Since I was GMing no one had a problem with using the Pathfinder rules instead.
I have to admit I had a lot of rules confusion at first just reading through that book and that was why I found my way to these forums in the first place. Lots of knowledgeable people here ready to share what they know.

[Castilliano]

In it from the beginning of 3.0 which brought me back to D&D, then 3.X to PF1 to PF2, appreciating the improvements along the way. Meanwhile 4.0 diverged too far, and 5.0 failed to rectify that. And WotC worlds & regurgitated plots pale in comparison to Golarion & its APs.

I've found Starfinder amusing as a palette cleanser, but kinda blah mechanically (and too wonky w/ spaceship battles & their meta-budget). If SF2 syncs with PF2 though, that'd be tremendous. Crossing fingers on how y'all update spaceship battles, kinda hard to make challenging with all the PCs in one ship/eggs in one basket, so little leeway for setback.

[keftiu]

I'd heard some buzz about the Iron Gods AP for PF1 and borrowed a friend's PDFs to see what was up with Other D&D that had aliens and androids in this one corner of it.

Been a fan of Golarion ever since.

[WatersLethe]

I came in through the D&D 3.5 -> D&D 4E -> Pathfinder 1E pipeline.

4th edition didn't have the spark it needed, and was generally quite boring for our groups (recent revisionist historians like to gloss over its many, many flaws). I thought it was going to be a more streamlined and approachable game for brand new players who I was introducing to TTRPGs, but they all bounced off of it hard and we realized choices weren't compelling, and we weren't able to tell the stories we wanted to tell. The system lacked due respect for the fantasy, pushing homogenized game design over all.

I still remember the look of utter boredom on my friend's face as she wordlessly tapped her Eldritch Blast power card for the umpteenth time in a fight. I thought "oh, maybe TTRPGs aren't for her" but then that same players' eyes sparkled when we started diving into PF1, with its wealth of meaningful choices, customization, and respect for our imaginations. The difference was night and day.

From there, we were all-aboard PF1, playing regularly and with a lot of good stories to tell. I would still be happily playing PF1 if PF2 never came about, and I was convinced a PF2 was not necessary.

After diving into the PF2 playtest, however, I came to realize how much extra work I had been doing as a GM over the years and how much easier things could be. PF2 retained all the charm and zest of PF1, paying respect to the history of the game and keeping all my favorite sacred cows, while modernizing the engine underneath. I no longer had to guide my players into making characters on the same optimization wavelength, and I could build encounters on the fly. My GMing workload dropped to a tenth or less, and the stories we played were just as fun as before. We've played even more frequently than ever previously!

So here I am, enjoying PF2, excited for SF2 to bring those stories onto the same, well-oiled engine.

[Karys]

I was dealing with a rough time in my life, so a friend suggested trying PF1 as a distraction of sorts. Hardly got to play but was enthralled by the books and world, Golarion is a crazy place and I couldn't say no to learning more.

Not long after that Starfinder and PF2e were happening, and kept me hooked ever since with the world updates and especially the three actions and feat systems of PF2e.

[Finoan]

I had played some D&D3.5 back in the day, but disliked D&D4. So I abandoned it, but didn't replace it with anything. I was in college at the time and didn't have much time to play anyway.

I learned about Pathfinder's existence from seeing the Pathfinder Action Card game of Skulls and Shackles in a FLGS. From there I found Pathfinder and Starfinder and the announcement of the Pathfinder2e playtest coming soon - all at the same time.

What makes me choose Pathfinder2e over other game systems that I have tried:

* The character building. Having the ability to build a character by choosing thematic components without worrying much over the power level or effectiveness of the resulting character. It lets me play the characters that I want to play.

* Character Skills and Victory Point skill challenges. Combat not being the mandatory and only focus of character power. Characters also have skills. And skill feats. And some of the party-wide challenges that the story presents to the characters use those instead of just using combat abilities.

[Perpdepog]

I entered into the Pathfinder ecosystem thanks to how accessible it was. To clarify, I mean this from a literal readability and availability standpoint, not the mechanics--PF1E is still one of the crunchier systems I've tried.

I got into TTRPGs through a friend running D&D 3.5. I liked it, but also couldn't really read the rules. I'm blind and use a screen reader, and 3.5's PDFs were often very difficult to read, sometimes impossible. Then I found PF1E which had all of its rules online, in easily searchable pages, that I could easily navigate with a screen reader, and that really pulled me in. I recall being confused about the rules, but thankfully my slight experience with 3.5 helped me get over that hump.

Same story for why I bounced off D&D 5E, too. I and my group were interested in trying it out, I think it was being released around the time I really got into Pathfinder, but WotC didn't release PDFs at all initially, A piracy curbing measure I believe, so I bounced right off.

If a company isn't going to make their materials accessible for me as a customer, then they clearly don't value me or people enough like me to deserve my business. Paizo's always been good about that, so I've happily gone from PF1E to PF2E, and I don't see that changing.

[Kelseus]

I was looking for a D&D 3.5 game to join. I messaged a person looking for players on a RPG group finder website (I don't remember the name). That group was playing Pathfinder 1. A couple of the players even had their P1 playtest books. I joined that group and I have been Pathfinder ever since.

[OrochiFuror]

Started with AD&D, played every edition since. Had no interest in Pathfinder since it was just more 3.5 and I was tired of that editions problems. 5e was bland and felt more like 1st or 2nd edition with barely anything going on.
I had a list of things I liked from 4e and things I would like in a system, heard about the PF2 play test after it ended and so looked into the rules and it had a lot of the things on my list in it. That and the modular design with lots of options interested me greatly.
Once I found Pathbuilder2e I was able to take part in PF2 even when not able to play the game or have a group.

[YuriP]

I'm Brazilian and I usually played D&D 3.5, TRPG, PF1 and 5e before when New Order publisher made a partnership with to take PF2e in portuguese to Brazil and when this happen it take my attention and I participated in the crowdfunding of the game.

The primary point to buy and play PF2e was the compromise of the publisher to give every content as possible to my language (I speak some english but this isn't the case of all my friends) because here we lack of serious publishers to keep the games updated.

But after I start to play I fall in love to all customization, balancing and GM support that the system provides. I also liked how interesting the Golarion setting is due its large and well constructed setting.

After this I start to participate in the PF2e community to take more and more info about the game and sometimes to give my impressions and opinions too and now I'm still here, commenting, posting and specially playing PF2e.

[Bluemagetim]

Bluemagetim wrote:

It was kind of by chance.

I lent a friend all my DnD books, and another group of friends wanted to play DnD.
I didnt want to rebuy the books I own and saw the core rule book in a book store. Since I was GMing no one had a problem with using the Pathfinder rules instead.
I have to admit I had a lot of rules confusion at first just reading through that book and that was why I found my way to these forums in the first place. Lots of knowledgeable people here ready to share what they know.

To make my answer more useful for your stated purpose.

There are some things I really liked when I started to read the rules and as the remaster material came out.

I immediately liked the 3 action economy of the game.

I was hesitant about how weak archtyping seemed, since your using a class feat to essentially reach back for lower level class abilities from other classes.

I loved the ability to customize a character in ways that DnD never allowed either narratively and or mechanically starting at character creation.

I see pathfinder as a game that allows players to make and develop a character all their own mechanically to match the sense of this narratively.

[Oznogon Games]

I hadn't played much D&D and grew up mostly on other TTRPGs (Shadowrun, Earthdawn, WEG Star Wars). When I wanted to get back into the hobby, D&D 3.5 was beyond overwhelming with no clear entry point, so I went to my FLGS for advice and got introduced to the 1E Beginner Box Bash. I liked the "buy this one box and everything you need to play is inside" model so much that I picked up both the Box and CRB.

While learning the rules but before I'd run a game, I found out about RPG Superstar and thought it'd be a fun way to learn the game. I ended up liking Pathfinder so much that I signed up for Pathfinder Society, and while I bounced completely off of it, I loved running the Beginner Box so much that I ended up running demos of it as a volunteer at the Pathfinder booth at PAX East. The year-round RPG Superstar community also helped me develop my understanding of the broader system.

Similar to Perpdepog, one of my regular players especially appreciated the accessibility of the rules. For comparison, I had to rewrite the 5E SRD PDF in plain text just so everyone at the table could try it for one session without having to sign up for a paid service.

I eventually got involved with layout and design at Wayfinder and contributing to PathfinderWiki, both Community Use Policy projects that turned Pathfinder from a game I played to a project I worked on, which in turn led to a fun side career as a freelancer.

So for me what really hooked me was:

- My FLGS, which championed it; without that I probably would've tried D&D again, gotten overwhelmed, and found a different hobby altogether

- The Beginner Box, which was way way way way easier to run and less daunting than the CRB or PFS for playing with friends who had no TTRPG experience

- The communities around the game, especially my FLGS and the RPG Superstar forums

- The relative accessibility of the rules, not only as freely available and searchable resources, but especially for being in assistive device-accessible formats

- The Community Use Policy and open license on the rules, which facilitated the projects like AoN and PFW that granted that easy access to rules and lore, and also allowed me to contribute to the setting, design with the rules, and share what I made with others, all without worrying about copyrights or trademarks or whatever

[Agonarchy]

Hard and simple: The OGL Fiasco

Complex: I was a D&D fan from the 90s, from 2E through 4E. I did not like 5E, so skipped it after I finished DMing my 4E campaign and stopped playing RPGs. With 5.5E, I let hope into my heart as I liked a few things they were saying, but the rules only got worse as things went. I picked up the Planescape set and, as an OG PS fan, was mortified. Then the OGL Fiasco, and I dropped WotC entirely and decided to check PF2E out, and I've been quite happy since.

[NorrKnekten]

Pathfinder 1 player here, Pathfinder had always been my preffered system due to character creation and choices.

However I had essentially stopped engaging in any roleplay due to attending university trying to get a masters degree.

Then I saw the early playtest books in the local games store and bought one right there.

[Mangaholic13]

Like many others, I'm the came here from PF1e after DnD 4th happened.

I got into DnD during 3.5 and, being new to edition-related things, basically flipped my lid when I learned 4e was coming out, feeling the admittedly toxic idea "All the 3.5 books I've bought are now worthless!!!".

Then I learned of Pathfinder and how it used 3.5's rules as a basis, and I got hooked.

Helped that the playgroup I joined was did not like dnd 5e either.

[Tarlane]

I'm from the olden days. We play a lot of different systems, but my group always leaned more towards D20 systems. So came from AD&D into 3.5, and started following Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

The group absolutely loved Shackled City and Age of Worms so when Paizo started to release Pathfinder adventures we merged over. Some of my players still are traumatized by Carnival of Horrors and Mamma Graul.

[Mathmuse]

WatersLethe wrote:

I came in through the D&D 3.5 -> D&D 4E -> Pathfinder 1E pipeline.

Same here, except that I started with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back in 1979, and my wife was the main instigator for Pathfinder. We had been playing D&D 4e at the Family Game Store in Savage, Maryland, when Stewart Sinex decided to hold a demonstration game of the new Pathfinder 1st Edition. I was busy, but my wife and one daughter tried it. They came back having purchased the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. Furthermore, our friend Ben had subscribed to Pathfinder magazine and he lent up the six issues with the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. This was the D&D 3.5 version of that adventure path, but my wife decided to run it under Pathfinder rules. She and I also played in other Pathfinder games at the Family Game Store.

A year later, in the middle of Hook Mountain Massacre, my wife had to quit GMing due to health problems. I chose to take over as GM rather than let the campaign die. I discovered that GMing is like a mathematical puzzle and I like mathematical puzzles. Besides, I liked running games for my wife. So I kept running Pathfinder games (and one Starfinder mini-campaign and one D&D 5e campaign). I stick with Paizo because I like their modules.

[Rhapsodic College Dropout]

Wayne Reynolds' art. I was reading a magazine in like November of 2009 and it had Christmas lists for all types of people, including fantasy-lovers, and the Pathfinder Core Rulebook was pictured. The action shot of Valeros fighting a red dragon really sucked me in.

I was a long time RPG player of video games, and had always wanted to try TTRPGs but they just weren't popular in my area growing up. But, it was 2009 and this new and "better" version of Dungeons & Dragons was coming out, so I decided to buy the book and try and find a group. Luckily, my World of Warcraft guild had just gotten tired of WoW so we decided to play Pathfinder online with a really basic VTT. I loved it, and started advertising to run PFS games locally in person. One thing led to another, and Pathfinder has been a part of my life, one way or another, for the past 15 years.

[Deriven Firelion]

My hatred of 4E and WotC's refusal to accept they had a bad game that they were trying to tell us was a great game. It created an incredibly toxic community for D&D where the people who liked 4E D&D would call the people that hated 4E grognards and dismiss our opinions. The 4E game designers were literally telling us all we were just wrong to dislike 4E and that we would have to just accept it.

Then somehow Paizo got control of the 3E game and fashioned PF1 based on the 3E ruleset. I liked 3E after playing it for years. Paizo seemed to have a somewhat fresh take on it and a great adventure system, so I hopped over and brought my whole group as I am the main DM for my group.

Now that I've been playing PF, I've stuck with it. Paizo seems to actually listen to their customers unlike WotC. They engage in game design that takes into account customer concerns.

They all are gamers or most of them. And whoever does adventure design does some great story elements in the AP. I like the literary influences that inspire Paizo adventure creation as well.

[Kelseus]

Kelseus wrote:

I was looking for a D&D 3.5 game to join. I messaged a person looking for players on a RPG group finder website (I don't remember the name). That group was playing Pathfinder 1. A couple of the players even had their P1 playtest books. I joined that group and I have been Pathfinder ever since.

To follow up on this, I had never heard of Pathfinder before this group. The guy I was messaging with said they played it so I googled Pathfinder ahead of my first session.

[NoxiousMiasma]

Got started with 1e because I got invited to a game. Enjoyed the table but not so much the system (sorry, I just cannot stand the 3.5-descended action system). Got invited by another friend to join in on the 2e playtest, had a great time, and then didn't think about the system again for like 2 years. Eventually acquired the core books for 2e in a bundle, and am now running my own campaign, and playing in another.

[BotBrain]

An alchemist class that isn't entirely RNG based.

No really, that's the catalyst.

[Mangaholic13]

BotBrain wrote:

An alchemist class that isn't entirely RNG based.

No really, that's the catalyst.

Ah, another less than satisfied user of the DnD Alchemist.

[Ravingdork]

For me it was the Pathfinder 1e Playtest. Got hooked hard through the DD3e, DD3.5e, DD4E, P1e, P2e pipeline. 2e improved upon it in every meaningful way, which is a big part of what keeps me around.

[Kavlor]

In reality it's quite simple. Pathfinder Kingmaker CRPG and Golarion lore.

[Errenor]

Basically that it's a very good game. I found and read CRB before I could/would play it with someone and thought that is really fixes all the things I dislike in dnd5 rules. I even thought the rules were perfect at that time. dnd5 campaign/games ended and I didn't want to start new ones. Then there was a disastrous campaign in Witcher (Talsorian's) and I thought I don't want to play any TTRPGs at all. Then at last I tried PF2 and it was a relief: actually good rules and anventures. Well, and the company I guess.
Now I don't think the rules are perfect, but I manage :) And it doesn't make the game worse.

[HolyFlamingo!]

The Black Lives Matter humble bundle in 2020. I'd dabbled a little before that--bought the PF1 beginner box to play with friends around 2014-ish, but didn't quite click with it--but something about 2e made sense to me. Stayed because the game did everything D&D did, but better, ESPECIALLY monster design! PF2 creatures are just so much more interesting from a tactical standpoint, and the encounter balancing tools actually work!

[Squark]

Another OGL scandal refugee here. But I think what made me stay was the realization that PF2 respects my time and intelligence as a GM. I have mechanics for most obvious things players might do, the system actually follows the math it sets out (I was flabbergasted when I realized that WotC doesn't follow the math laid out for creating monsters in the DMG even in the monster manual) so I can reliably balance encounters, I have a much bigger toolkit for improvising if I need to (as opposed to just advantage/disadvantage), and monsters are just far more fun to run in this game.

[Zoken44]

I got into it searching around in boredom back just before the APG came out. I saw the customization and options and freedom, and yeah, there's a lot more rules, but that's because there's a lot more viable choices and options.

[arcady]

When D&D 4E was announced and we saw that it wasn't D&D anymore but a wholly new tRPG that just had D&D slapped on the front cover.

It was a great game. I still think it's a better tRPG than any edition of D&D. But it was just named wrong so there was brand confusion and folks started looking for the exits.

Bunch of folk from Dungeon Magazine decided to reprint the D&D 3.5 rules. At this point in time I'd already first moved on to Mutants and Masterminds and then mostly left the hobby because MMOs were picking up and there were way too many racists in the D&D scene back in those days.

But I grabbed the playtest of the new D&D 3.75 - named Pathfinder, and sat on it. Bought books as I saw them over the years and sat on them.

In the middle of Covid lockdown I was musing around on Amazon and it popped up 'Mwangi Expanse' as a recommendation so I looked it over. All sorts of glowing reviews and comments about it being a well done 'fantasy Africa' treatment.

Not that I believed that. I'd been in this hobby since 1980 and I'd never once seen a non-Eurocentric sourcebook that wasn't full of "problems". Even half the Eurocentric ones were bad stereotypes. I'd already been playing almost 20 years of WoW and rolling my eyes at the ethnic stereotype used for Dwarves - which is notably some mix between Scottish and Irish.

So I sat on that recommendation for a few months and keep looking back at it, and reading detailed reviews.

Finally on a whim I bought it, fully expecting the worst. Tarzan and Lora Croft meets 'Maguma the porter', voodoo, and all that usual nonsense.

Ok... it does have a gorilla king. So it didn't get off scott free. And they did still have some legacy stuff from the PF1E days. Vidrian may be there but that the place had been colonized before hand never should have been in this history. Something that that later repeats in Tian Xia.

At this point in their mutual histories it is more likely Goka or some other power in Tian Xia would colonize the heck out of Cheliax.

BUT... They clearly worked hard to 'write forward' and fix PF1E stuff without 'wiping the slate' with a 'DC Comics' style reboot.

I have mixed feeling on that.

However that they did such a good job of 'writing forward' and making a great sourcebook that explored the people of that area got me interested.

Not just in Pathfinder, but in the hobby as well.

Clearly something had changed for this to happen, and maybe the racism had died down or been pushed back some. So I decided to give things a try.

There's a very nasty rpghorrorstory of mine on reddit and I didn't want that kind of experience again so I was very hesitant. And that rpghorrorstory is only a fraction of things as it only dealt with my attempts at playing a female character, and didn't cover what happened anytime my characters had a 'bit of shade' to their tone or groups found out I did.

Took almost another year to finally get to finding a group to join just a month or so before the OGL scandal hit.

And yeah. The hobby's changed.

You folks that are here after the 5E / Critical Role / Stranger Things era have no idea what it used to be like.

There are still some oddballs. They get thrown at me in my YouTube recommendations all the time. But they get lectured now, rather than being the ones dictating to everyone like it used to be.

And Pathfinder 2E?

It seems to be in the lead on this in the right ways. D&D 2024 is also going forward - but I have some issues there as I'm mixed-race and that can be discussed ELSEWHERE.

But Pathfinder 2E keeps giving me hope.

And it turned out to be a good game system too. Not just good lore.

Though it seems to be based on some mix between old d20 and that game WotC called 4E that, as I said, I feel was a great game with the wrong name.

So... The lore and ability to do a wide array of cultures well is what got me to 2E. In a roundabout way.

[Mathmuse]

arcady wrote:

In the middle of Covid lockdown I was musing around on Amazon and it popped up 'Mwangi Expanse' as a recommendation so I looked it over. All sorts of glowing reviews and comments about it being a well done 'fantasy Africa' treatment.

Not that I believed that. I'd been in this hobby since 1980 and I'd never once seen a non-Eurocentric sourcebook that wasn't full of "problems". Even half the Eurocentric ones were bad stereotypes. I'd already been playing almost 20 years of WoW and rolling my eyes at the ethnic stereotype used for Dwarves - which is notably some mix between Scottish and Irish.

So I sat on that recommendation for a few months and keep looking back at it, and reading detailed reviews.

Finally on a whim I bought it, fully expecting the worst. Tarzan and Lora Croft meets 'Maguma the porter', voodoo, and all that usual nonsense.

Paizo modules used to be like that. I am running the Strength of Thousands adventure path, which came out in 2021 one month after the release of Lost Omens: The Mwangi Expanse and has the same inspiration. In May 2024 to create a class field trip I purchased an old module GameMastery Module W2: River into Darkness, published in 2008. River into Darkness is written from the colonist point of view and appears strongly inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I amused myself with recounting the events of River into Darkness and their aftermath from the native point of view: River into Darkness Revisited.

Currently, I am adapting the module,
Pathfinder Society Scenario #7–24: Dead Man's Debt, published in 2016, for another class field trip. The attitude had shifted. This time the adventurers are working with the native Ekujae elves. The module is more fair to the natives but not fully to the degree of Lost Omens: The Mwangi Expanse. It refers to the Ekujae as jungle elves who live in treehouses and are very untrusting of outsiders, even outsiders whom they invited to defeat the re-emergence of a demon. But it does spend a page talking about the daily lives of these elves for players who want to learn about them.

Like many RPG writers, Paizo started by adapting old myths, legends, and literature to create adventures. But they learned how to better please the players by being fair to the people in their stories and removing the prejudices in the original source material. As I said above, I like their modules.

[The Raven Black]

I went the 3.0, 3.5 then PF1 road too. Because my forever GM just could not stand DnD4.

I found these boards and have been posting here ever since.

I liked how PF2 was much simpler to remember and use than PF1 while still being able to tell the same stories.

And that I could still minmax PCs but without the fear that I would be too far above other PCs, nor that real minmaxers would be too far above mine.

TBT I was and still am amazed at how robust the maths behind PF2 are. It helped create a game with an incredible amount of diversity in builds while keeping everything on the same power range.

And it is so easy to use and adapt as a GM too : monster building rules, encounters budget, rarity ...

[Riddlyn]

I've played ttrpg's since the late '90's. I was finally looking to get back into the hobby and I saw Pathfinder groups on roll20 so I ended up finding Archives of Nethys. I read the PF 1 Magus and finally found a class I was super eager to play. I never got a chance to really play PF1 but 2e was out so I read and decided I was going to try it. About a year after I started playing the Magus came out and I haven't really had an interest in another system since.

[QuidEst]

I read the 3.5 rules online for fun, eventually finding my way over to the Giant in the Playground forums back in 2011 through the Order of the Stick webcomic. After a year or so, I picked up Pathfinder for the freely accessible rules. The first thing I made was a conversion of one of my Neopets characters as an Alchemist for a Carrion Crown game.

The thing that drew me in was being able to represent my character- finding clever ways to give them mechanics that suited the idea.

[Maya Coleman]

I have always been interested in TTRPGs and found most of the TTRPGs I've played by backing indie developers on Kickstarter, but my friend invited me to a Pathfinder Society game a few years ago, and I said yes simply because it looked interesting! I'm easily bought by friendship and Alchemy in general. ^_^

[moosher12]

My ex brought me into it initially. Though it was a bad experience. No one bothered to teach me how to actually play, but expected I know. Stuff like BAB never being mentioned. One player screaming at me because I did not have an action immediately lined up when my turn came around, and a partner unwilling to jump to my defense, despite it being my first time playing Pathfinder 1E. It was an overall hostile and unfriendly group, and I likely never would have played Pathfinder again because of them without the following intercession.

My current partner though, (friend at the time) started bringing it up back in 2017 or 2018 and worked very hard to convince me to give it a second chance and worked to ease me into it. Ended up giving it a second try then, I eventually got more into it, and the two of us were playing around with one-on-one games to get to know the system, and then the next thing I knew I become confident enough to be a proper GM to a whole group. Stuck it this time and now I'm musing the lofty goal of entering the industry, as I ended up writing a lot.

But that was the answer to the title. As for the OP itself: Initially, we stuck to Pathfinder 1E until about... 2022 I believe. One of the people in a D&D game I was playing in wanted to check out PF2E. I'd heard bad things about it at the time. So I was skeptical, but I wanted an out from Rise of the Runelords, as high level play was starting to grow difficult to manage. I offered we try the Beginner Box, a quick test to see whether I'd like it, let alone the players. As a GM, PF2E was relatively intuitive. And I grew to adore running it (I still doctor it from time to time. And my 200 and counting page home rule document shows there's stuff I wanted to fix). But still, it's a great system. I like the class flexibility, I like the action economy. I like that it gives room to grow, but not so much room that my players feel like they are never in danger. I'm currently running Kingmaker, and after Kingmaker, I want to try my hand at porting Rise of the Runelords to 2E for my table (I know someone else is also doing it, but I wanna try my own hand at it).

[Driftbourne]

I had played D&D 1st through 3.5 and other TTRPGs for about 30 years with the same group of friends but had moved to a new state, and not played for a while. I had heard of PF1e but had never played. A friend got me into Magic the Gathering, and once I realized what a money pit that was I started to look to get back into TTRPGs. I figured WOTC had enough of my money so when I saw the PF2e core rule book in a bookstore I grabbed it, not even realizing that it had just been released.

If I had to point to one thing that caught my eye the first time looking at the PF2e Core Rule book at the store it was playable goblins!

I had never interacted with D&D or other gaming communities on the internet, so finding the Paizo website and forums was a big surprise, after feeling drained by WotC finding all the free RPG day adventures had me hooked. Around the same time, there was a PF1e lore humble bundle, so suddenly I had more content than 30 years of playing D&D Not only did PF2e look great Paizo was a company I could respect. Then I discovered Starfinder.

After 90% of my D&D games being homebrew, something that stood out is Paizo's setting and adventures are so good I have yet to get back to homebrewing.

I didn't know anyone else who played PF2e or SF. Someone on the forums found that out and invited me to SFS play-by-post. At that time I had not even considered trying organized play or play-by-post, now it's my preferred way to play. I did later find some in-person PF2e organized play which I also enjoyed, while the group lasted.

It's nice to find a great game, made by someone you can respect, with a great community.

[WWHsmackdown]

I have friend groups that dabbled in a smattering of ttrpgs: zweihander, morkborg, star wars, & shadow of the demon lord, but starfinder and DnD 5e were the only two games I played with any real frequency. When the pf2e dropped I opened it up to peruse in my local nerd shop and saw that rangers and monks were interesting and fun, not shortchanged and suboptimal. I dropped 5e and started GMing for pf2e, being a PC whenever I get the chance. My fixation made me sideline starfinder, but sf2e having the engine I love is gonna get me back into GMing scifi

[dpb123]

While I played 1e, 3.5, Dnd 4e and 5e, as well as other TTRPGs like Shadowrun, Mutants & Masterminds, I very much like 2e's 3-action economy. But what made me choose to seek out 2e games over 5e games was character creation/advancement and real choices that allowed me to bring to life a variety of character concepts. 5e and their paucity of choices - especially wrt to skills - was utterly stifling and all my characters started to feel the same mechanically. With that said, advantage/disadvantage is a rather elegant game element.

[Jerdane]

For me, it is the storytelling in the Adventure Paths. My local chain bookstore had the first three books of Jade Regent AP, so I read bits of them and got enthusiastic at playing in those worlds. Took a while to actually join a group, though, and even after all this time I've only ever managed to play two APs (Age of Worms and Age of Ashes, weirdly enough). My other games have had the GM running a sandbox in their own world, which is less to my taste as I prefer scripted plots with foreshadowing, fancy set pieces, custom maps, and such.

[rainzax]

Came in through the pipeline.

But what keeps me coming back is that 2nd edition fixed most of the major problems of the 1st edition (especially the emphasis on giving GMs lots of tools), the community around the game including Society, how the Business side actually incorporates feedback of the player base in multiple meaningful ways, and the Golarion setting itself.

It’s a quadruple threat!

=)

[magnuskn]

Well, I assume you are talking about "what brought you into Pathfinder 2E". But to recap shortly what brought me to Pathfinder in the first place:

I was a happy D&D 3.5E player, with the Forgotten Realms as my favorite setting, when the developers at Wizards of the Coast decided to radically change their game system with the 4E edition and blow the Forgotten Realms up, i.e. kill off a lot of fan-favorite characters, advance the timeline a lot, change the setting drastically for the worse.

And luckily the people at Paizo were ready with their new edition and their great setting, Golarion. I've been here ever since.

Now, as for what got me into 2E:

I was one of the people who resisted going from 1E to 2E for a long time. The system was radically different, the setting was left intact though. I'd been playing quite a lot of 1E since 2019, when 2E was released. But in that time my players and I discovered even more synergies between feats and other aspects of 1E, making player characters even more overpowered at high levels. Which, after GM'ing high-level games for more than two decades, was finally enough to make me look elsewhere, because it really is demoralizing that upping the AC of the BBEG by 10, upping saves by 10 and giving him well over 1000 HP still results in him getting obliterated in 1 1/2 rounds by the ping-pong teamwork feat Outflank and two-weapon fighting characters with kukris.

In any case, about that time Rage of Elements released and I got my first look at the new Kineticist, a class I was naturally drawn to as a big fan of The Legend of Korra and Avatar the First Airbender. And that class was so elegantly built and is, by my reckoning, the best build class I've ever seen in a game, that it convinced me to give the game a try. So, I got some books, started playing in Pathfinder Society and convinced enough of my friends to try out the system that we are running an Abomination Vaults group on every second Sunday (tomorrow is the next session, they are at and on level three) and we'll change to 2E after the current GM finishes with Strange Aeon in the Tuesday group as well. Sadly we got a player in our two Friday bi-weekly groups who is adamantly against the system, so there we'll have to see where we go in a few years, when our current AP's end.

[The Weave05]

My group and I started with 3.0 and through 3.5 and left D&D when 4e was announced, feeling it was a departure from what style of game we wanted. We jumped ship to PF1 and loved it, but our interests waned over the years. In particular, being a "forever GM" was causing me some burn out, and none of the other players could consistently take up that mantle.

We dabbled in 5e and had fun, but coming from the crunch of 3.0 and PF, we missed the level of customization and choices you made as you leveled. The other important factor that I don't see thrown out too often is 5e was really hard to GM for (at least, I think so). The CR system did little to help with balance, and on more than one occasion encounters I thought would be really challenging were cake walks and encounters I expected them to breeze through were nearly TPKs. When PF2 came out, we started a small homebrew one-shot and figured it would be all that came of the edition, as our lives were all moving in different directions.

Flash forward to today, and we're all playing online almost weekly, in our second 1-20 campaign I've run in PF2 (currently level 13). Honestly, while it was clear we liked the system, I think the big factor for me was how easy it was to GM for (comparatively). The math just works - I can anticipate the challenge of an encounter and I can also pretty quickly improvise difficulties now that I am familiar with the math. Also, unexpectedly, though we were moving apart (I had moved across the country), the pandemic sort of fast-tracked our online transition and made us all very familiar with things like Roll20 and Foundry. Looking back, I am shocked we've held together this long with how close my group was to fracturing, but I really think PF2 is to thank for that.

[Rory Collins]

I am going to be in Richmond that Saturday to see Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham...I live in Hampton.

What got me into Pathfinder was the whole OGL fiasco. I have been playing tabletop RPGs since 1981. I started with the enemy and played a bunch of different rpgs (Paranoia, Talislanta, etc.) throughout the years and every iteration of that other RPG. The first time I heard about Paizo was when I got a subscription to Dragon and Dungeon magazines. I had gotten those magazines for years prior and when they were being published by their parent company. Still I never really paid attention to who Paizo was.

Eventually at some of the book stores and comic stores I started seeing some Pathfinder stuff but really never had any interest in it until that massive miscalculation on that other company's part. After that I picked up all the PF2E stuff I could and some of the Pathfinder 1 stuff for various locations. So far, I have enjoyed PF2E. There are some things I don't like (very very crunchy where some of the feats seem to cover things you should be able to do with a skill normally, some rules being a little obscure for new people coming in, etc.), but the practices of the company for their people (ie. inclusiveness and the blogs about the people that made their products) and the world they have built are what make it worthwhile. Also, even on these forums, representatives of the company get involved with the community. That doesn't happen anywhere else.