5e announced!

[Jonathan Winters]

1- @Micheal T. & Alhoon.

Yep.
About PFRPG and 2E.
I am coming at this in a manner similar to Micheal's.
I was still playing 2E when 3E was started. After one of my friend insisted (a lot) I gave 3E a look. I didn't want to buy a new system, but I really liked some stuff (Spontaneous Casting / Healing!!!!).

I started integrating some of the ideas... Then my friend gave me his 3E books when 3.5 came out. And then I converted my game.

After a few years WotC decided to go ahead with 4E. I still had (have) tons of adventures to play. I still liked my 3E system. And then Paizo went ahead with their own game. Call it 3.75 if you want, some people do. All of this to say that if you want to play the game, around the table, you need a hard copy of the book. Not only that, but like Micheal said, with all the rules extensions, PF has become more or less its own system.

And Paizo is, IMHO, a company that I want to encourage as much as I can. Their proximity to fans, approach to customer service, general quality of their products, all make me want to support them.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Personally, I only have 3 PF books in paper format (the core rulebook, APG, and Classic Horrors Revisted (which isn't in the PRD at all, as far as I know.)) but if not for budgetary concerns, I'd buy a bunch more. Partially because I like supporting Paizo for the gutsy move of continuing an old system that WotC thought was "done," and I like the way they've done it. Partially because, while I do play with a computer handy, and use the PRD extensively to look stuff up quickly, I still prefer "real" books for initial reading, and for the feeling of owning something (in case the internet ever disintegrates, you know? )

[Jonathan Winters]

Part 2 (had some problems posting - sorry)

2- About 5E... Again, when 4E was announced and we got wind of the marketing strategy... What I said was: I am almost 40 and too old to learn a new system.
And then I added: If they could build this ''on top'' of 3E/3.5, like a modular (probably not the word I used) system that means I can still use my 3E stuff. If it's made like an add-on (my exact word) then I can get behind this. But what they did was something completely different! Some people loved it, some people well...

All of this to say that, fast-forward a few months later, Paizo is doing exactly what I said (yes, I know I'm a genius!).
So it was very easy to ''buy into'' PF. Heck, I wanted to buy into. All my adventures and stuff, I CAN STILL USE! The PCs get all these cool abilities to choose from and I simply adjust slightly my NPCs against them. Add a few HP here, a +1 to BAB there and no conversion needed. (YMMV with this as a DM.)

And that's not even getting into all the 3RD party publishers who Paizo totally encourages.

So just my two cents. Hope my ramblings made sense!
Patrick

[alhoon]

Jonathan, thanks for your answer.
So both you and Gonzoron buy into PF because you want to support the system and because 3E books are out of circulation, right?

[MichaelTumey]

Also I should mention, I don't play 3x anymore, only Pathfinder. I did allow use of 3x material the first year I played PF, but now only PF is used in our games. So there has never been a need to look back at 3x, at least for my gaming group.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Jonathan, thanks for your answer.
So both you and Gonzoron buy into PF because you want to support the system and because 3E books are out of circulation, right?

Nothing to do with the 3e books being out of circulation. I still have them, and I can get whatever ones I don't have off ebay, if I want them. More that I like the PF stuff, and the prd is a useful resource, but not as good as a book, for me. I bought the 3e books even though there was an SRD too. I'm sure people use the SRD and PRD for stuff from books they don't have (I do, actually, come to think of it. I never got around to buying Unearthed Arcana, but I use a lot of the classes from there.) But a lot of people use the SRD and PRD and still buy the books. If that wasn't the case, WotC would have sold 0 3e books and Paizo would have sold 0 PF books.

Back on the topic at hand, I'm glad to see that people from WotC have been talking about how 4e's total lockdown of the OGL was detrimental. (Bruce Cordell mentioned it, I think.) Hopefully 5e (are they really calling it D&D Next? or is that a codename?) will swing back toward being more open in that regard.

[Zilfer]

Yeah, i don't think i'll ever get over the feeling of a good old fashion book in my hand. I've thought about an Ebook for example but i don't think it'd be the same to me.

I've bought books I can read offline just to have it in front of me, and flipping through it with my hands. I find that much more appealing, like Gonz said.

[Jester of the FoS]

Personally, I only have 3 PF books in paper format (the core rulebook, APG, and Classic Horrors Revisted (which isn't in the PRD at all, as far as I know.)) b[

Classic Horrors Revisited isn't in the PRD but the content is still free to be used by the community if wanted.
You can see bits of it here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monste ... es/vampire
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monste ... dead/mummy

[alhoon]

I think what WotC suffered from pathfinder is the reason we will never, ever get an OGL like WotC made for 3.5 edition by any gaming company.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, Pathfinder became a problem well after the GSL.
I don't think they'll go as far as the OGL but it should be more lenient than the GSL. Something in the middle would be nice.

So far I'm optimistic. The concepts sound good, I dig the design goals. But, then again, I was all in for 4e until it came out.

[ewancummins]

Pathfinder is basically 3.5 with power creep, and some other rules changes (skills simplified, grappling and some other aspects of combat streamlined). That seems to be just what a whole lot of people wanted, and so PF got off to a strong start.

I think the best thing for Hasbro to do is make a new edition based on 4E. That would help them retain a lot of customers who like the changes made in 4E, or who started the hobby with it. At the same time, the designers should look back at popular features of previous editions (all the way back to 1974) and selectively incorporate such things in order to broaden the appeal of 5E.

One complaint I have often heard about 4E is that combat is slow and can grind to a halt because of complex or unclear rules. That's not good. The designers need to address this concern.

[Bluebomber4evr]

I think the best thing for Hasbro to do is make a new edition based on 4E. That would help them retain a lot of customers who like the changes made in 4E, or who started the hobby with it.

Sorry, but I think basing it off of 4th edition is the worst thing they could do. It's pretty evident it was a colossal failure, since they've announced a new edition less than three years after 4th ed. was released, they've fired the entire 4th ed. design team, and Pathfinder is consistently outselling 4th edition. "More of the same" is not going to fix this problem.

They could maybe have a 4th edition-based "basic" game, and then have an "advanced" game that works like 3.X (I think I said this either earlier in this thread or another one, not sure). It worked well enough in the 80s. But basing it purely or even mostly on 4th edition would be foolhardy.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Pathfinder is basically 3.5 with power creep

That's debatable. There is power creep in the base classes for sure, but the goal behind that is to make the base classes compare favorably with the power creeped Prestige Classes from the middle and end of the 3.5 line. By the end of 3.5 there was very little incentive to stay in a base class any longer than it took to qualify for your "perfect" PrC. PF tried to fix that by making it a real decision of whether to stay in a base class or swith to a PrC. There's definitely a lot of power nerfing in other aspects, mainly broken spells like polymorph, and the like, and broken feats like Power Attack, etc. And PrC's themselves (they don't get +2 in their good saves at 1st level for one thing.)

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I think the best thing for Hasbro to do is make a new edition based on 4E. That would help them retain a lot of customers who like the changes made in 4E, or who started the hobby with it.

Sorry, but I think basing it off of 4th edition is the worst thing they could do. It's pretty evident it was a colossal failure,

Careful... "colossal failure" is getting a bit close to 4e bashing for my taste, and a bit of an exaggeration, IMHO. While the numbers I've seen do show PF outselling 4e, 4e is a close 2nd, so it's doing well. Just not as well as they'd like, obviously. So I do agree with this:

"More of the same" is not going to fix this problem.

If they stick too close to 4e, then what's the point of a new edition? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The question is how to do that without alienating the many fans of 4e.

They could maybe have a 4th edition-based "basic" game, and then have an "advanced" game that works like 3.X (I think I said this either earlier in this thread or another one, not sure). It worked well enough in the 80s.

As I think has been touched on in this thread, that didn't work well in the 80's. There's a reason TSR went bankrupt and got bought by WotC, and most people blame fragmenting the player base with different ruleset, and different settings. Putting out too many books that sold small numbers, rather than a few that sold big number. I agree that this might be a good thing for the players, but it will be bad business in the long run, I think.

[Jonathan Winters]

I have to agree with Gonzoron on a lot of stuff here.

(Please bear in mind I have no insider knowledge.)

4E doesn't seem like a failure, but it also does not seem a huge success (like 3E was). Keep in mind there was something of a ''perfect storm'' to both 3E and PF, IMHO.

People weren't playing 2E that much, from the way pros were talking about it was almost moribund. BOOM. Here came 3E which revitalized the RPG industry. And the OGL licensed helped (mind you we had a lot of bad products in there too from 3rd party publishers for a little while - and then capital darwinism took effect on most of them).

Then WoC announced 4E. BOOM. They split the ''vote'', some gamers were angry, some happy, etc. The GSL had a LOT of people worried (FoS folks correct me if I'm wrong, but I think even fan-sites were worried about an across the board shutting down from Wizards at first?).

Then Paizo managed the (almost) impossible (or is that the unthinkable?) with PF.

So we are again at crossroads. With another iteration / edition (what are we calling it officially?) that no one asked for per se.

Not saying it's going to be bad or good. It might be a great game. No idea. But how will Wizards regain its PF refugees? And let's not forget a lot of people felt ''burned'' by Wizards.

Personally speaking, Dang I love my PF. So I will be a hard sale.

Is Wizards willing to ''lose face'' and join some kind of PF hybrid / compromise bandwagon?

Interesting times all around... Somehow, as I am writing this, I get the creeping feeling that the ultimate winners may end being... us players(!).

Patrick