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Lately, I've been noticing a lot of errors/issues in some of the more recent books/remasters and it's gotten to the point where I now feel compelled to say something.
I'm used to the typical Paizo problems. My groups been playing pf1e and pf2e for a long time. We've experienced just about everything, from caravan combat to circus performances. I'm used to poorly designed campaign mechanics and unbalanced encounters, but this last campaign we just went through had errors that went beyond just bad game design.
We just finished Triumph of the Tusk and the second book was a nightmare. Littered with inconsistencies, mixing up characters, conflicting information, typos... Which A) made it a pain to GM and B) raised concerns about the direction Paizo is going. What made me even more upset is that when I looked into these errors with that particular book, someone had already highlighted every single major discrepancy in the book, months prior, with no reply or acknowledgement from the staff. It wasn't fixed by the time I played through it, and something tells me it still isn't fixed.
These errors in the Triumph of the Tusk and the errors present in Treasure Vault remastered, are concerning. It gives the impression that the company is rushing releases and not allowing time for proper editing and playtesting.
I love Pathfinder. I've loved Pathfinder for the last decade. I will continue to love Pathfinder, but Pazio needs to get its act together.
I implore Paizo to do a better job at editing and playtesting with their future releases. I look forward to the next string of pathfinder products and hope that the deficiencies plaguing Pathfinder 2e are soon a thing of the past.
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Looks like issues keep popping up. I guess there is a spectrum from “acceptable errors for the industry” to “hmm…maybe there IS a problem with the release schedule”.
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The following is to offer some perspective and perhaps a few takeaways for both fans and for Paizo, if any of the following is useful:
I freelanced with Paizo 2015-2020 as an editor. I don't know what's changed in the last few years, but I do know there was some staff turnover. So, for example, I'm not sure who to reach out to anymore if I wanted to seek freelance work again, or if their recruiting process has changed. I say this because the lack of transparency of how to seek independent contracts with Paizo may affect how many people they are able to hire. On the other hand, they may not be transparent about it because they don't want a ton of unqualified people bothering them with unsolicited hiring inquiries, which can easily happen in this sort of industry.
I can say that at the time I worked for them, I generally got decent notice and reasonable deadlines for the work I was hired to do. At the same time, I couldn't always take every contract because of the volume of content (the requests weren't unreasonable, just didn't fit with my own work schedule at the time). I didn't get the feeling the production schedule was unreasonable, but I was pretty far removed from the day to day production.
One potential "issue" is lot of time, books were split between multiple editors so different sections could be edited simultaneously. This saves time on the production schedule, but it puts a lot on the lead in-house editor(s) to QA check the work of all the freelancers, which may vary widely in quality. For example, in addition to differing proofreading skills, different editors may provide different levels of feedback. I'm the kind of pain in the ass editor who will point out logic errors and also suggest things like "if I were GMing this, I'd want X information, which you are not providing." I occasionally pointed out if some language used might offend some readers (which, I should note, they always responded to and changed, and it was usually an issue not well known or subject to interpretation). Other editors may strictly proofread or just focus on correct formatting and statblock structure. This can lead to one section of a book having a different degree of attention paid to it than another.
There's probably some additional challenges with new editions, errata, and remasterings. Game editing is challenging, because in addition to general proofreading, in house style, sustaining author voice, and ensuring consistency and coherence, you also have to pay attention to the rules of the game, very stringent statblock formatting, and gameplay coherence. In other words, you have to possess system mastery in addition to skill as an editor (which is a much harder job than one might think; yes I'm biased on that statement but I stand by it). With newer systems and revisions coming out (and I fully admit I've not been paying attention to the latest projects because my ancient gaming groups have stuck to PF1e), folks may just possess less system mastery than previously because stuff is newer.
I should note, my primary area of editing expertise is editing peer review medical and public health research. This means reading text with complex vocabulary I am not a subject matter expert on, making sure articles meet stringent requirements for research papers, and assessing and anticipating how a peer reviewer might respond to text. It requires a lot of expertise and practice. I find game editing more challenging in many ways than medical peer review editing. In some ways, it is actually more technical, and there are more facets of the text to pay attention to at once.
Key takeaway from this:
If system mastery is causing issues (and that is purely speculation on my part), perhaps Paizo might invest some time into training editors on some system mastery basics to be sure people are assessing the things they need to assess consistently.
And, here's a problem I don't think Paizo can fix very easily: why am I a health research editor and not a game editor? Even though I think health research editing is easier, relatively speaking, than game editing? Because the former pays way better. (Well, until grants and contracts to fund research all "disappeared" recently.) Paizo is a small company and its resources to pay editors and QA/QI personnel is only so much. And this is true for nearly any game company except maybe WOTC (and I'm not sure how much Hasbro values editorial staff). This simply it is what it is. Publishing is expensive. RPGs, while more popular than ever, are still relatively speaking a niche industry. The money for staffing is limited.
We (the U.S. and world overall) are in increasingly difficult times economically, so more editors may be seeking higher paying jobs elsewhere, even if they enjoy game editing (and to be clear, I had an absolute blast working on the projects I did here). This is entirely speculative, but the pool of available editors for this kind of work may be smaller than it used to be. You need to find folks who are willing to do the work more or less as a labor of love, because doing it for a living is not a realistic option for many.
I'm sad to hear a lot of errors have shown up late and that sucks. Everyone I ever worked with was proud of their work and intent on making it the best it could possibly be. I know if I'd worked on a product and heard of such problems, I'd be both mortified and frustrated, because I know I probably did fix a lot of other issues no one will have ever known about. If there are issues with production scheduling and hiring, I hope Paizo can address them as soon as possible.
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I am hoping Paizo gets back to playtesting some of their AP's before the street date,. Not all but some so things can be caught much quicker, as AP's usually don't have errata, just Devs (hopefully) posting in the AP's specific forum.
Its a lot to ask (but we have 3 parters now not 6), but we all know by now reading an Adventure compared to playing it is quite different where problems stick out way more. Maybe a dedicated small team to do so.
Probably won't happen but one can dream!!
Tom
PS, I am hoping to GM Tusk as one of my groups are following the Gods war arc, but I might have to switch to another AP sadly.
Creative Director
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First off, thank you SO MUCH for the adventure feedback. Even late, feedback is great—it's really difficult getting actual customer feedback on adventures compared to player-facing rules content. That said... here's some behind the scenes reality talk in the spoiler:
Again, the whole point of the developer pass, where someone on the Pathfinder narrative team takes the author's work (be it freelanced or written by a different employee) is to seek out and solve as many of the issues and problems that a playtest might trigger, which includes incorporating any notes the author provides as part of the process. We have NEVER had a "playtest the entire adventure on company time using company employees" step in any of the adventures we've published, all the way back to the start of Pazio before I worked here and before Pathfinder was even a thing. The only exceptions I can think of is the Beginner Box products, which were put through a very rigorous playtesting procedure for the entire product, and for edition changeovers like we did with Doomsday Dawn and some of the 2nd Edition starfinder adventures, but my experience working on Doomsday Dawn was that it was like 95% feedback on the rules and the player-facing options (as you would expect and want from a playtest of new rules) and 5%, if that, narrative/adventure feedback.
We do pay attention to feedback from folks about issues with adventures though! Especially when it's posted respectfully, and/or on the paizo forums, or vairous discords, or reddit, or in person at conventions, or via reviews... anywhere we can get feedback, great! Folks aren't as eager to give lots of adventure feedback as they are player-facing feedback though, so... yeah, it can be difficult to get feedback on adventures. And when we do, it's often so late after the product is out that the earliest we can institute that feedback is often for adventures that release years after the one being discussed. For example, Triumph of the Tusk came out last year, but we're currently in the process of finishing up development for adventures coming out next year—so that's about a 2 year gap.
It's not a perfect system, but it DOES work. I mean... if it didn't, we would have stopped publishing adventures years ago, but we haven't—we've been continuously publishing adventures every month for the company's entire lifetime of over 2 decades. Even through some pretty overwhelming extenuating circumstances that make sticking to a schedule a challenge (aka edition changes, OGL scandals, pandemics, and more).
Again, in closing, thank you for the feedback! Please continue giving us adventure feedback—the sooner and closer to the adventure's publication, the better!
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Thanks for the detailed reply James, I knew I could count on ya!! :)
I usually run the latest AP's, but with all the new things going on in our Golarian world its been a bit of a challenge honestly.
And me trying to do then in the timeline compared to when they come out, oh boy....
But thats also part of the GM's fun to to tinker and such, or at least to me.
Really excited out the Mythic AP's and hoping it got some extra care (passes) so there are the least possible problems it could possibly have.
Your 2nd shot at Mythic so I would assume so. :)
I know I need to get off my butt and start doing reviews, as some seem to be a bit underserved, or the person writing them had way different expectations and we need more and different takes on specific AP's.
Sad that the AP forums get way less traction, views and posts as reddit and discord kinda took over compared to past years when those forums were THEE place to pick up tips, work arounds maps and pretty much anything under the sun!! Man those were the days!!
Looking forward to what comes next from Team Paizo in the future and still nice to know you all can reach out and post some thoughtfull response posts.
Tom