I don’t play it, but I’ve heard of it – courtesy of my local gaming store and my local ChattyDM – though I haven’t been near Paizo for more than a year. (time)

I actually find the concept of ‘support’ for a gaming system somewhat bewildering – I keep picturing people phoning a helpline because they can’t get the book to install

How many D&D players never looked at gaming forums or won’t even touch positively reviewed 3rd party products.

Good point, but counterpoint.

How many people who don’t actively follow the business of Paizo (likely on the internet) will have even heard of the new Pathfinder RPG, let alone play it?

Most companies try to build a community around a product. Paizo is building a product on a community that is already strong. Paizo is in a unique position, such that they’re able to come at it from the opposite direction.

This will be interesting to watch, even if the product isn’t for me.

The internet truly is an astounding ressource… however, it is largely ignored by a significant portion of a game’s clients…

How many D&D players never looked at gaming forums or won’t even touch positively reviewed 3rd party products.

The combination of prep-heavy game and busy life are the relevant combination here, I think.

Personally, I care more about a living (fan) community on the internet; that way, I can get responses to any questions and see what problems others have and so forth.

The top commercially successful RPGs are, in my mind, D&D, World of Darkness (all game lines combined) and Gurps. Rifts also comes to mind.

All these games have in common the continued publishing of new material. While one does not have to buy any of them to enjoy the game, the plethora of available material (by the parent company, or licensed 3rd parties) have made the game sustainable and occupy a constant presence on the shelves.

A lot of the games I played were like that: Paranoia, BESM and the aforementioned ones.

By creating new material, they created continued interest for those games. At least it did for me

Now the PDF market allows to create and produce material with very limited production costs (i.e. printing, shipping and inventory management) so the process becomes easier for smaller companies.

I have very limited time to prepare role playing games now… and I do have the discretionary expense money to buy supplements… the presence of support material makes me a happy customer and a happier GM.

For example, my friend Franky’s McWod game is suffering precisely because there isn’t a lot of support material to help him build a game on the limited time ressources he can pour in the game.

What I was driving at is that I’m convinced in my guts that a lot of the people who went ‘Huzzah!’ when Paizo announced that bold move will abandon them when 4e gets out…

What I believe we all agree on is that a sizable portion (hopefully a profitable one) of the market will remain with Paizo… and it should… Paizo is a 1st tier supplier of RPG products, they’ve got great people working there and they plan to do what’s the most important thing in out hobby: PROVIDE SUPPORT WITH NEW PRODUCTS!!!!

I just hope the customer remain loyal in the onslaught of products and coolness that WotC promises… (and I remain doubtful of the Digital initiative… as I’m a long time customer of WotC digital products and I have yet to be impressed…. but that’s for a later post).

Oh and thanks for the nice feedback man! Much appreciated! Heck you live in Montreal, I could probably lend the DMG II book to you… I’m not worried about getting back.. I have a few minions in that city too

Graham is raising interesting points. This is indeed the first time we see such a thing happen. We have few reference points because of the impact the internet boom and the OGL have had. Those two issues alone change the landscape radically.

Something to keep in mind: 3.5′s strongest ally, the d20/OGL license, is also its worse enemy. Because everyone has a right to modify the system, once there is no “company line” to follow (in effect, once WotC drops out of the picture) everyone is free to go in different directions. This makes it difficult for everyone to be on the same page.

Want an example? Paizo says they want to continue to support 3.5 but look at Pathfinder: The Alpha release is *not* directly compatible with 3.5. Characters are much stronger, making it difficult to “plug and play” Paizo stuff into your good old 3rd edition collection without conversions.

Essentially, despite claims to the contrary, Paizo’s Pathfinder *is* their own take on 4th edition. And unless they can garner support from other companies, each major player is going to go in a different direction. Making it unlikely that 3.5 will remain a unified big player in the RPG world once 4th edition is upon us.

Still, that will not prevent anyone from playing it from the comfort of their homes. That’s the thing I love about roleplaying products. One of the best bang for the buck I can imagine! Countless of us gamers are still using roleplaying products that are decades old and having fun. They can cease support of a game but nobody will knock at my door and take my Basic Red Box from me.

Every product is a gift we can use forever. And the OGL is nice in that it allows us to keep on sharing between us more material forever. I think beyond the business use of the OGL, that’s where its value really is. In sharing.

Totally glad to be here, BTW. Your blog kicks butt and I can’t wait to read your take on Robin Laws of gamemastering. It’s an amazing book. I’ve considered the DMG II for a while but still haven’t bought it. You’re tempting me

Hell, TSR even went after fansites.

As for whether thay can profit doing so, I think they can. They don’t need a huge audience, as they’ll have lower production costs.

It wasn’t possible before now, though. Besides the lack of legal right to do so, at the 1e/2e and 2e/3e switch the infrastructure just didn’t exist.

At 1e/2e there was little in the way of internet. Thus your audience was vastly diminished, and paperless publishing wasn’t really possible.

At 2e/3e, the internet was there of course, but paperless publishing wasn’t seen as a viable business model. In addition, the fan communities were (at most) in their infant stages, so the audience was still low.

Now, we have the legal right, the audience (and methods to increase said audience), and the viability of a paperless model established.

(Note, yes, that Paizo will be publishing actual books as well. Much of their profit will still come from pdfs, though. And without their net presence, community, and reputation they would be pretty much unable to do this as a paper business. The public playtesting, especially, is based solely on the viability of a paperless model.)

I actually think that Paizo and WotC’s business relation is actually very good… apart from the 4e licence being so late.

Regardless of what happens, I’m now very curious to see if 3.5 will get sufficient support from fans when 4e comes out to allow Paizo to support it… that would be a 1st in the history of RPGs.

While there are still players of older editions of D&D, I don’t think that anyone is actually making money supporting them…

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on that one…

Also, as much as people want to see Paizo and WotC as competitors, there’s more than that. There’s room for more than one roleplaying out there. We know that. In fact, there’s room for tons of fantasy RPGs despite the overlaps. D&D co-existed with Iron Heroes, Conan and many others. All this to say: I think people will be surprised that there is a fan base willing to buy both.

As for physical books vs. PDFs…? I have never bought a gaming PDF (or any PDF for that matter) and I don’t have any plans on doing so. I want my gaming books in my hand. I have picked up a couple of free (legal) PDFs online and I have had MAJOR hassles getting them printed and bound. Books don’t need power to be read and I can grab them and take them anywhere I wish. I don’t much like reading long passages on a computer screen.

1) Including something like that would estrange many customers and many third-party developers. Even if they had no intention of playing 3.X ever again, it is an example of an unreasonably strict rule, and evidence that even more strict rules may arise.

2) There is no way to enforce it. If a company signed the GSL which didn’t allow them to do 3.X, they can always just create a second company, as a subsidiary of the first, which does 3.X. Or vice versa, depending on wording. Both the company and the subsidiary have the same employees, adress, and bank account, but they are technically separate entities.

In any case, there is no good reason for them to do so.

(By the way, the speculation that the GSL and OGL won’t be compatible merely means that you may not be able to release a 4e product under the OGL, or a 3e product under the GSL, not that a company can only use one or the other. This does make sense.)

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/4thEdition/archives/4EOGLLeaks

Unfortunately I may prove correct. Why would WotC want competition at all? Much less from an obsolete version?

The main point, however, being that 4e doesn’t feel like an MMO or video game at all.

The teleport issue is a separate thing. It’s actually no different from what we have now, where characters can blink all over the place, not provoking AoOs.

That is just WRONG on so many levels….

Oh yeah – hey you kids get off my lawn!