AoN and other languages.

[Rigmo]

Hello. This is my first forum post and will probably be my last, as I don't interact frequently in English TTRPG communities. I may or may not post more in this thread.

I'm Brazilian and I am someone who is economically fortunate, so I have spent my share on PF Remaster, officially translated by New Order. I have access to pretty much all non-AP, currently translated material pre-Remaster as well.

Anyways, for the Remastered version of the game, PC2 and the Bestiary are currently backers-only, and thus not widely distributed. Currently, in Brazil, you'd have to contend with much, much higher prices than what they will be a bit after full release.

This is not a problem by itself. Book publishing companies have their struggles, translations have their struggles, and not every language has the luck to receive this kind of attention. That's okay.

The problem comes when AoN stops being a reliable tool for new GMs in other countries.

Pathfinder 2e Remastered is currently being translated, AFAIK, in 4 languages total: German, Italian, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. By my limited research, those 4 languages are all behind in releases. Anyway, that happens and is natural. However, even while waiting for an upcoming official translation, people could still play the game! PC1, GM Core, and AoN are plenty enough for a Portuguese-speaking GM to begin a table, provided that they know English. They can search for a category of monsters, get a few, translate what's necessary during prep time, and begin playing, with an image to boot to help describe whatever the players might have to face. In fact, using Google Translate plus extensions on the respective page is not that bad of an idea.

However, as of the end of the AoN and Paizo partnership, those images will be removed.

Whatever reason one might bring to explain why that happened, one impact that I haven't seen being talked about involves these foreign players and GMs. Without Nethys to host these images, and without a proper official translation, they'll have to either wait or resort to buying PDFs from Paizo directly. And because the Paizo store only sells in dollars, this triggers foreign exchange fees, a higher government tax (IOF), and double currency conversion. This is at least the case for us Brazilians, but I'd imagine there must exist similar taxes in these other countries. And you'd kind of want to buy many PDFs at once when playing this game. Factoring in the exchange rate between the dollar and the real, the price can become ludicrous quickly for the less fortunate who would have been able to buy their products had there been official translations. Even then, translating a PDF is not as easy as translating a web page. The "just buy it" argument doesn't even work for many people. They can't even buy it. And if you do, it's not as good.

Now, am I asking that book publishers translate Paizo's stuff faster? No, that's ridiculous. But AoN was very useful for a GM that was waiting for these books to be translated. Instead, people might stick to other systems with full translation and a single ecosystem in the meantime, as a gigantic amount of monsters can't even be described properly without images. You can't even play the game in its current state; many monsters don't have descriptions of how they look like in their text. Demiplane in its current state is not the same thing, searching the wiki is not the same thing, and googling it? Good luck.

Without AoN, a new GM in these countries has no reason to buy the translated GM Core and PC1 at the moment. And considering their current struggles, Paizo needs money right now.

I don't think that either side is malicious. I will keep being a supporter and spending money where it is deserved. But the foreign market has to be considered in decisions such as these. I do not know the exact situations of the German, French, and Italian translations of the game, but New Order does an incredible job, though they themselves might not even sell their books well without AoN as a quick GM tool for the Brazilian userbase.

I don't really care who's to blame, exactly. I don't know what the exact solution is, as I'm not a businessman or someone who is in Paizo or AoN, if there can be a compromise or not. But I do think that this perspective of mine has value.

Regardless, none of these problems affect me. Like any other human, though, I need to consider those that are affected.

Much love to both sides and the community.

[willowtinytree]

Oi! Fellow Brazilian here, who also doesn't normally post in the forums (though a lot of my time playing Pathfinder is spent in the English facing part of the OPO region, so I can't say I don't interact).

I wholeheartedly agree with your descriptions of the difficulties of running Pathfinder around here (which is also true for any TTRPG besides maybe the big national ones and well established ones in the scene such as D&D and WoD). But I am not sure there is a solution to this problem?

It's true that GM Core and PC1 lose value without Monster Core and enemy statblocks, and that the system as a whole isn't as accessible for the Brazilian market as it could be. Be that as it may, this problem can only be solved by New Order finishing their fundraising-translation-publishing cycle or by the creation of a translated AoN-equivalent.

In the end, I'm not really sure the lack of images in AoN has that much of an impact in Paizo's bottom line with foreign consumers compared to the lack of actual affordable translated books in bookstore shelves. I do believe it makes a difference for the onboarding of new players, who might need a more immediately clear reference for what is being described, or who are exploring AoN for the first time and will find a less visually interesting site. I'm bummed by the way business was handled with a long-standing partner and the (previous) home of their official SRD. But, again, not sure that is the main issue Paizo faces in the international market.

[magnuskn]

Archive of Nethys is not shutting down. The current situation is that after their deal with Paizo expires, they can't use the artwork anymore and get the new released rules only on suscriber day (which still is weeks ahead of the general public). Paizo and AON are currently still in negotiations.

Just wanted to clarify this, because there still seems to be misinformation from around the internet on this issue.

Greetings to Brazil from someone who lived seven years in Paraguay!

[willowtinytree]

magnuskn wrote:

Archive of Nethys is not shutting down.

That's a good clarification! I've seen a lot of misinformed posts as well, so I agree it's important to make that clear.

Still, I think both posts were about the art being taken out of the site. The initial worry seems to be that losing certain images makes creatures harder to describe -- which is true, and a fair point -- even more so for GMs who need to do additional translation work.

My own point is that, in ten years in the local scene, I've met a lot of GMs and players that have shaky to nonexistent English, or who simply prefer to support local efforts. Their problem playing any system has never been the lack of official accessible art (as helpful as that is, and I wish Maya all the luck on the CUP art dump endeavors), but lack of proper localization and marketing.

Greetings from Brazil, Paraguay is beautiful!

[Rigmo]

willowtinytree wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Archive of Nethys is not shutting down.

Their problem playing any system has never been the lack of official accessible art (as helpful as that is, and I wish Maya all the luck on the CUP art dump endeavors), but lack of proper localization and marketing.

Eae!

I agree wholeheartedly that the lack of images on AoN is not as big of a problem as the lack of translations. This is true. But it (an AoN with images) is a useful tool for any interested GM while they wait for the books in Catarse to stop receiving funding. I myself would not consider GM'ing the game if I didn't know how Pathfinder's most exotic monsters looked like. I do, because I own the books. Perhaps other Brazilian GM's will be affected by this, however.

I don't know how big New Order is, but it does a wonderful job translating the game. Perhaps Paizo could provide greater operational and logistical support to assist New Order and other book publishers with their releases, but that isn't happening anytime soon, considering their current situation.

My point being that this change might impact the international market of the game.