Whither goest Pathfinder?
Aug. 18th, 2009 09:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viktor_haagAs a regular player of rolegames, my consistent problem over the last decade or so has been fitting the preparation time requirements into my life's schedule. As a result, my favourite games as a moderator over that time have pretty consistently been those that have provided easy access to high-quality materials that I can use for actual play: not additional rules or options, but adventures, campaigns, plots, scenarios, and so on. Unfortunately, the hobby in general seemed to be moving away from publishing that kind of material, and more towards a model where games were supported by rule expansion, and providing a constant stream of increased mechanical options for players and moderators. This made my involvement with any one game harder, not easier.
Recently, I've attached my time in the hobby pretty solidly to Paizo, and their Pathfinder series of products. What's interesting to me about Pathfinder is that its success (if it is indeed successful) seems apparently solidly based on a traditional hobby model: entrench a game's popularity and mindshare by providing a host of high-quality actual play materials (and by that, I mean adventures, campaigns, and practical campaign setting material, and not splat materials (by that, I mean products that focus on interminable variation of player character and rule-system expansion).
The Pathfinder engine seems centred on regular releases of "adventure path" periodicals: each issue (six to a volume) provides one-sixth of an adventure path style campaign, bundled with supplementary world background material. All the adventures (to date) are set in single a house setting (the world of Golarion).
These periodicals are supported by a series of "companion" type special issue material: deeper background on a variety of topics (nations, areas, cultures, aspects of culture), stand-alone "modules" that aren't part of a campaign, practical gaming artifacts (map packs, reference cards, miniatures, props).
And now a full-fledged game to represent the core game rules to slide underneath all these materials and replace the DnD3.5 set of rules now that they've been orphaned by Wizards Of The Coast.
The only other games I can really think of that have provided this breadth and depth of support in this model are Call of Cthulhu and old-style D&D itself (not AD&D 2nd edition nor D&D3e and 3.5) where the publishers of the game are also the main purveyors of play material, and there's much, much more actual play material being produced, in a coherent manner, than splat material.
Conceptually this model has several challenges:
• It's hard to ensure that quality continues to be high and steady because it's presumably hard to ensure that you can continue to pay a regular creative staff or solicit enough input from creative independent authors.
• To be profitable, it's almost certain that you have to produce material at a much faster rate than your customer base can practically consume it (Paizo has just released the rules, and already they have four full APath campaigns in place, and are embarking on a fifth: how much actual gaming time does that provide? Well, my group has been playing for over a year, and we've only gotten two-sixths of the way into the first campaign...), which presumably would mean that in order to be profitable, you have to have a customer base large enough that there's overlap, and your main-line products have to be attractive/useful enough that people will continue to purchase them well in advance of fully making use of them.
• AP materials depend heavily on synergistic context to be successful: that is, part 3 of a campaign depends heavily on all the other parts of the campaign selling, and being in print, and supplemental materials also; keeping things "in print" is a huge challenge, so keeping control of initial printing inventories, and re-running printings is logistically very challenging; luckily, PDF goes a long way to helping to ease this problem (if a customer gets stuck because they just can't find more than a few products in an AP campaign suite, they can fill out with PDF copies and the publisher will still be able to sell of the hardcopy inventory at a better rate than they otherwise might have with no e-books available: PDF keeps that "context" around longer).
Now, I'm not a business guy, and the folks at Paizo may be laughing now at my observations; it's just that this is how things seem to me from some thinking about their situation. Paizo seems ideally suited to what they're doing for several reasons -- for one thing, they have ancillary business behaviour to fully support what they're attempting to do creatively. Their past situation seems to have given them the contacts, resources, and business model that's rather perfectly suited to their current business and kudos to them for building up what seems to be a very solid business.
In short, Paizo seems rather like another Avalon Hill (who I understand survived as long as they did, with such good quality as they did, partly thanks to also being a printer/manufacturer themselves).
Paizo's challenge will be to maintain significant curve of profitable creative output around the whole Pathfinder line. I suspect that electronic media (i.e. PDF) will likely go a long way to solving the traditional over-inventory and back-stock problem that gradually wore down game publishers that used the "constant stream of AP material" model in the past, but still, they'll need to gather a huge fan-base to support the disconnect between the rate at which they're producing play material and the rate at which groups can effectively consume it. Luckily for them, Hasbro's business decisions have virtually handed them the opportunity to capture a huge customer base (all those folks who would prefer to play DnD3's more direct mechanical descendants than the direction that the 4e rules have gone; all those folks who they've captured with their high quality actual play material, who are inclined for various reasons to "keep it in one house" and be loyal to the brand).
I think the next five to ten years might look very interesting in our hobby: I would be not at all surprised to see Paizo to become an industry heavyweight in terms of sales and fanbase that has definite staying power. In fact, it's possible that Paizo might even outlast Wizards Of The Coast itself in the roleplaying hobby, should Hasbro decide that it's "roleplaying division" is not quite profitable enough.
I have no real idea what Pathfinder's sales are like. I seem to remember hearing comments from at least a few retailers that reported initial crazy enthusiasm followed by precipitous tail-off. This whole "periodicals approach" to the business pretty much requires a solid, steady subscriber base. To a certain extent, Paizo's business can be subsidized by their other activities, but without regular purchasers of their main-line "adventure path" periodical, I suspect their success will suffer greatly. Getting a core RPG "oar" into the water was probably a necessity, and may stabilize their offerings (and re-generate interest in it) -- certainly, from what I've understood of the size of their physical print-run for the core rules, they're betting rather heavily on its success. It'll be interesting to see over the coming years.
Recently, I've attached my time in the hobby pretty solidly to Paizo, and their Pathfinder series of products. What's interesting to me about Pathfinder is that its success (if it is indeed successful) seems apparently solidly based on a traditional hobby model: entrench a game's popularity and mindshare by providing a host of high-quality actual play materials (and by that, I mean adventures, campaigns, and practical campaign setting material, and not splat materials (by that, I mean products that focus on interminable variation of player character and rule-system expansion).
The Pathfinder engine seems centred on regular releases of "adventure path" periodicals: each issue (six to a volume) provides one-sixth of an adventure path style campaign, bundled with supplementary world background material. All the adventures (to date) are set in single a house setting (the world of Golarion).
These periodicals are supported by a series of "companion" type special issue material: deeper background on a variety of topics (nations, areas, cultures, aspects of culture), stand-alone "modules" that aren't part of a campaign, practical gaming artifacts (map packs, reference cards, miniatures, props).
And now a full-fledged game to represent the core game rules to slide underneath all these materials and replace the DnD3.5 set of rules now that they've been orphaned by Wizards Of The Coast.
The only other games I can really think of that have provided this breadth and depth of support in this model are Call of Cthulhu and old-style D&D itself (not AD&D 2nd edition nor D&D3e and 3.5) where the publishers of the game are also the main purveyors of play material, and there's much, much more actual play material being produced, in a coherent manner, than splat material.
Conceptually this model has several challenges:
• It's hard to ensure that quality continues to be high and steady because it's presumably hard to ensure that you can continue to pay a regular creative staff or solicit enough input from creative independent authors.
• To be profitable, it's almost certain that you have to produce material at a much faster rate than your customer base can practically consume it (Paizo has just released the rules, and already they have four full APath campaigns in place, and are embarking on a fifth: how much actual gaming time does that provide? Well, my group has been playing for over a year, and we've only gotten two-sixths of the way into the first campaign...), which presumably would mean that in order to be profitable, you have to have a customer base large enough that there's overlap, and your main-line products have to be attractive/useful enough that people will continue to purchase them well in advance of fully making use of them.
• AP materials depend heavily on synergistic context to be successful: that is, part 3 of a campaign depends heavily on all the other parts of the campaign selling, and being in print, and supplemental materials also; keeping things "in print" is a huge challenge, so keeping control of initial printing inventories, and re-running printings is logistically very challenging; luckily, PDF goes a long way to helping to ease this problem (if a customer gets stuck because they just can't find more than a few products in an AP campaign suite, they can fill out with PDF copies and the publisher will still be able to sell of the hardcopy inventory at a better rate than they otherwise might have with no e-books available: PDF keeps that "context" around longer).
Now, I'm not a business guy, and the folks at Paizo may be laughing now at my observations; it's just that this is how things seem to me from some thinking about their situation. Paizo seems ideally suited to what they're doing for several reasons -- for one thing, they have ancillary business behaviour to fully support what they're attempting to do creatively. Their past situation seems to have given them the contacts, resources, and business model that's rather perfectly suited to their current business and kudos to them for building up what seems to be a very solid business.
In short, Paizo seems rather like another Avalon Hill (who I understand survived as long as they did, with such good quality as they did, partly thanks to also being a printer/manufacturer themselves).
Paizo's challenge will be to maintain significant curve of profitable creative output around the whole Pathfinder line. I suspect that electronic media (i.e. PDF) will likely go a long way to solving the traditional over-inventory and back-stock problem that gradually wore down game publishers that used the "constant stream of AP material" model in the past, but still, they'll need to gather a huge fan-base to support the disconnect between the rate at which they're producing play material and the rate at which groups can effectively consume it. Luckily for them, Hasbro's business decisions have virtually handed them the opportunity to capture a huge customer base (all those folks who would prefer to play DnD3's more direct mechanical descendants than the direction that the 4e rules have gone; all those folks who they've captured with their high quality actual play material, who are inclined for various reasons to "keep it in one house" and be loyal to the brand).
I think the next five to ten years might look very interesting in our hobby: I would be not at all surprised to see Paizo to become an industry heavyweight in terms of sales and fanbase that has definite staying power. In fact, it's possible that Paizo might even outlast Wizards Of The Coast itself in the roleplaying hobby, should Hasbro decide that it's "roleplaying division" is not quite profitable enough.
I have no real idea what Pathfinder's sales are like. I seem to remember hearing comments from at least a few retailers that reported initial crazy enthusiasm followed by precipitous tail-off. This whole "periodicals approach" to the business pretty much requires a solid, steady subscriber base. To a certain extent, Paizo's business can be subsidized by their other activities, but without regular purchasers of their main-line "adventure path" periodical, I suspect their success will suffer greatly. Getting a core RPG "oar" into the water was probably a necessity, and may stabilize their offerings (and re-generate interest in it) -- certainly, from what I've understood of the size of their physical print-run for the core rules, they're betting rather heavily on its success. It'll be interesting to see over the coming years.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-18 14:25 (UTC)I didn't buy Pathfinder ... but I did buy a couple of their "Swords & Planet" books, and I've certainly bought their game aids in the past.
Doug.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-18 19:28 (UTC)And, their adventure path material I like a lot. The plotting is decent, the characters and foes are, for the most part, interesting, and so far they're producing a fair amount of fun in play. I like long-running campaigny type setups, and Paizo's stuff has the distinct advantage of giving me lots of good material to work with, so I don't have to fret too much about prep time or about dry spots from my own imagination about where things could go next.
My other group of folks is stuck into playing 4e fairly happily and I found that, there, I rather preferred to play rather than run (although, as a GM, I must say that 4e provides lots and lots of good support for making preparing for play easier). For me, 4e feels a lot like playing Champions but in a fantasy environment, and I suspect that this is one reason why our Wednesday night group (a bunch of veteran HEROites) gets along with the game as well as it does.