Abomination Vaults moves from Pathfinder 2E to D&D 5E

 Paizo is releasing their three part Pathfinder 2E adventure Abomination Vaults this September, in a hard cover compilation statted for 5th edition D&D. Interesting questions are raised....such as:

1. Is this purely an experiment to see how the interest in their adventure paths fares when presented to the much broader audience of D&D 5th edition?

2. Or, is this at least partially motivated by slower Pathfinder 2E sales, and a need to broaden the market in which Paizo publishes? 

I'm inclined to think #2. Pathfinder 2E still seems to have a narrower share of the market than Pathfinder 1E, going by VTT reports such as Orr Group provides on Roll20, and both editions of Pathfinder combined pale in comparison to the marketshare D&D currently owns.

Pathfinder 2E suffers from specific design issues, which (like D&D 4E also had problems with) are not so much flaws as they are limits of scope. I've gone over this problem in prior posts....with the caveat that I really enjoy playing the game....but PF2E was a tight and careful design for a specific type of player. D&D 4E suffered from the same limits (though some was likely a misguided push to market more saleable products like minis, cards, maps and such), but ultimately D&D 4E felt like it was designed for groups who exclusively used maps and minis and focused heavily on combat. Pathfinder 2E, similarly, has a deep focus on player limitations, extreme math balance, and a skill system hampered severely by a design philosophy which often consolidated and tightened skills that were useful for parsing out non-mechanical differentiators amongst characters rather than just balancing it all against a defined range. This has led to, among other things, the skill feats being a general nightmare for more casual groups who want a more flexible and open playstyle, and skills like Society becoming the dump skill for literally every action imaginable since so many otherwise unrelated skills were all dumped in to it. 

Ironically both 4E and PF2E also focused on making the DM's life easier and both did a good job on that. But...guess what....D&D 5E also made the DM's job easier, too, without hamstringing the players in the process. 

D&D 5E is like a theme park where you buy one ticket and can then go on any ride, in whatever order you want. Pathfinder 2E is like a theme park where you must get in line and follow the path. You are only allowed to deviate in certain ways, and if the ride senses you are having too much fun it stops. But it is easier to operate! 

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the 5E edition of Abomination Vaults sells. I suspect it will surprise Paizo, a lot, and we should expect more 5E adaptations next year as a result.

Pathfinder 2.0 Character Sheets Are In The Wild

The blog post about them at Paizo is here, and you can download the print-friendly version here. There is also a delightfully odd color version available which I think has a nice look to it but is too weirdly busy with the colors to be useful. No form-fillable edition (yet), I'm sure we'll see some soon enough.

One thing I like about these sheets right off the bat is that they are not that different from current Pathfinder 1.0, and it is clear that the majority of the obvious changes in terms of the information are organizational. This is a good sign as I see it....if this leads to a Pathfinder which looks and plays like the one we all enjoyed (assuming you are a Pathfinder 1.0 fan) then learning the new edition will mostly be a matter of adjusting to the cleaner structure of the math and progression, which I do see reflected on this sheet. Things I don't see on this sheet (thankfully) include weird new mechanics or extra layers of complication.

Now, it's still a very busy character sheet compared D&D 5E, so I think it's core fans are not necessarily going to be the "less is more" crowd....but we'll see! Either way I am really looking forward to the big reveal this week.

Return to the Crypt of the Everflame Pathfinder 2.0 Playtest Summary

Jason Bulhman, author of the very module playtested as well as lead Pathfinder designer provided an interesting blow-by-blow summary of a recent playtest he ran using an adapted version of the Crypt of the Everflame module (click here for the playtest report). That was one of the few published modules I ran for pathfinder 1.0 as well (it was the first in the line for the new PF system back then), and it's a halfway decent dungeon slog and introduction to classic Pathfinder. As such, this playtest report helps in framing some of the information revealed.

Interesting bits I noticed:

1. Perception is now treated as a proficiency/class/level thing that works like a skill but isn't.

2. Shield defense is a reaction and apparently fighters can go through a lot of shields using it.

3. Apparently somatic and verbal are discreet actions you must spend toward completing a spell?

4. flanking now grants flat-footedness which is also a -2 penalty to the enemy rather than a +2 bonus to the attacker. This one doesn't surprise me as it's consistent with the underlying redesign of many features in Starfinder, where the net effect is the same, but the wording/approach is essentially simplified or tightened up.

This summary was from a listen to the Glass Cannon Podcast which I concede I have not actually listened to because I don't have enough time or energy in my life to listen to podcasts, so I appreciate Jason's efforts to summarize this.

As these little bits and details roll along I concede, it sounds really interesting. I'd love it if the game managed to retain the "D&D feel" while also making combat more nuanced and lending weight to things the game has traditionally taken for granted (still thinking about what it means to spend an action on a verbal and somatic casting...)

Reviewing the 2017 Gaming Predictions

Back in December 29 of last year I made some gaming predictions/analysis about where things ought to go for 2017....so how did it stack up?

1. A Companion Book for Fantasy AGE

--NOPE!!!

As it turns out, Green Ronin got Blue Rose out this year, announced a Modern AGE (though that will probably not come out until sometime in 2018) and that was about it.

2. WotC Releases a Player's Tome for D&D 5E

--YEP!!!!

Sure enough, the did it: Xanathar's Tome is also for DMs, but contains plenty of new archetypes for players, new background details, and loads of little bits that D&D 5E needed. I wish they'd do this every year, but understand that the game's focus is on less splat...so maybe 2018 will give us a new monster book, instead.

3. Starfinder support for straight SF

--NOPE!!!!

Starfinder is fun, but it's pure fantasy space opera of the Nth order. I still contend it needed to be a broader toolkit, but for what it does set out to do, it does very well. So I suppose this is a wash. Given how saturated the market has become with SF game options, though, I would suggest that Starfinder probably is doing fine by distinguishing itself with its fantasy-based Pact Worlds universe and this was probably a smarter move on their part than directly competing with Star Wars, Star Trek, FrontierSpace, a re-release of Star Frontiers in POD, Traveller, Coriolis, and probably two dozen others I haven't mentioned, never mind all the generic systems with SF support. So yeah.

4. Swords & Wizardry goes mainstream

--NOPE!!!

The new edition came out but it doesn't appear to have changed S&W's saturation in the market. If anything the OSR seems to be dominated by the more innovative titles which are better described as "inspired by" as well as a slew of weird "we are going to repurpose the fuck out of B/X D&D" releases on rpgnow that are all over the place. So no mainstream OSR title.

5. GURPS Returns

--YEP!!!

Hell yeah it did. Dungeon Fantasy has re-energized GURPS, and then Steve Jackson Games got GURPS on to rpgnow which was a bold decision on their part, but brings it back in to the "view" of most gamers who don't frequent e23. They are looking to a future of new stand-alone, Kickstarter-funder releases similar to Dungeon Fantasy, and lastly Steve Jackson also regained control of his content for The Fantasy Trip, which was GURPS's predecessor, which based on his comments on the GURPS forums he plans to re-release as-is, meaning a very "lite" version of the system which inspired GURPS will be available again soon.

SJG could move too slowly on future plans, but for 2017 at least GURPS got some much needed love and attention.

6. Pathfinder 2.0 

--NOPE!!!

They could be quietly working on this, but they didn't announce it. There are lots of streamlined design decisions in Starfinder, but I feel many of those are designed to suit the space fantasy laser gun elements of the setting and may not be so ideal for straight fantasy gaming. There's a planned release schedule that suggests no 2.0 announcement for 2018, either....and judging from the diehard dislike of the Wilderness Adventures book's shifter class, the Pathfinder core will not be happy with anything that isn't fully public in playtest, so I suspect no 2.0 is in the works right now, or the foreseeable future.

So...2 out of 6! About par for the course with any good fortune teller, in other words....

Starfinder - Science Fantasy Madness!

Starfinder is an interesting new direction for the Pathfinder RPG.....it's essentially offering up a new genre of gaming which is both very old and somehow still unexploited, at least in the manner which Paizo is choosing to approach the subject. Yes, we've had lots of space fantasy before (Spelljammer, Star Wars, Space: 1889, Warhammer 40K) but prior to Starfinder I think the only really distinct mixture of hard fantasy and hard SF that was attempted was 3rd edition's Dragonstar, one of Fantasy Flight Games' early D20 series. It wasn't bad, I'll say that much.

Starfinder's unique not because it does anything particularly different....rather, it does some very formulaic content very efficiently, and attempts to wed the free-for-all elements of fantasy gaming in D&D/Pathfinder form to the SF environment. Other attempts to do this have had mixed success. The reason Starfinder feels distinct is because it is actually trying to capture what it's like to play Pathfinder --exactly as it feels, and with all that entails-- but with all the trappings of a science fiction campaign.

This is harder to do than it sounds, as anyone who has played or run their fair share of SF RPGs can attest.....the effort to run an SF game depends on a few key factors, which I consider as follows:

1. The Tech/Science Hurdle. You have to decide if your SF setting is going to be soft or hard on the science bits. This makes a huge difference in style and feel, and also how much technical information you need to consider in your scenarios. Starfinder removes this component....you can sliding scale the SF element all you want but it doesn't change the fact that this is a future universe with lots of magic. So Star Wars, essentially.

2. The Go Anywhere Hurdle. In most SF games you have to do one of the following: you prepare a careful set of scenarios and make sure the PCs don't deviate from the places you have worked out; or, you roll up a region with a minimum of detail and utilize the resources of the game to populate content on the fly. The former is the way most SF games tend to work, and the latter is how Traveller tends to do it. Both are solutions to the problem of a SF game requiring dozens or hundreds of worlds that you need to prep for or at least anticipate your players will visit. A third option is the "use an established setting" to keep prepared, such as Star Wars or Star Trek. Starfinder seems to be aiming for a middle ground here, with a defined area (Golarion Space In the Future) and it's emphasis on a magical future means you don't need to worry about too many technical details of each planet if you don't want to.

3. The Advancement Question. This may seem odd, but think about it....outside of Star Wars D20 editions, most SF games tend to aim for mechanics which de-emphasize character advancement as you see it in most D&D derived games. This is fine, as most SF gamers tend to want a bit more verisimilitude in their gaming and fans of Traveller are cool with the idea that advancement is something that happens slowly with effort rather than in bursts of adventure. But Pathfinder, D&D and their derivatives appeal to the gamers who happen to really enjoy spontaneous advancement through adventure, and Starfinder is squarely in the middle of this approach.

Anyway, I am continuing to read the massive Starfinder tome, and so far it's a fair mix of what I expected (Pathfinder in Spaaaaaaaaaaace) with some occasional surprises (occasional and unexpected rules changes/advancements that are both surprising and sometimes quite welcome).

I can't decide if I have the energy to run it yet. I like the relative simplicity of Traveller and Savage Worlds for my SF gaming, and despite the fact that I've never been a huge fan of hard fantasy/SF mixes I kind of like the aesthetic design that Starfinder is going for. It's evocative enough to get one thinking about how to make it work, and that's kind of really all this game needs to be successful: if people find their imaginations sparked, their interest piqued....then this is going to be a successful game.

I suspect....just an idea.....that the coolest part of Starfinder might be that it can allow a GM to conceive of the distant techno-fantasy future of his own campaign worlds. I once ran extensive Spelljammer campaigns which spun out of my Lingusia setting. Starfinder could also accommodate this, although unlike Spelljammer (which let you project your contemporary fantasy games in to wild space) Starfinder lets you imagine the fantasy world in the distant future. This is untrod turf in the world of fantasy gaming*....something one could do on an individual basis, but never something actually codified into a game before that I am aware of. I'm not even sure from my current reading point that Starfinder definitively addresses this, since it is primarily focused on selling their own future Golarion worlds setting....but it is most definitely an option, and something I'd like to see future GM resources explore.

*The end of the book has lots on this (including the classic races updated for Starfinder).

The Perils of Online Ordering: a bitch session

Source!

Warning: grumpy time ahead!

It was a weird holiday season for ordering online. I ordered a mess of books from Onebookshelf (rpgnow.com) and received them all with only a couple arriving after Xmas. Oddly, their publishing (Lighting Source) sent the books out to me as printed, so I received all five books in five different packages. Somehow this seems....inefficient, but hey, I got them in a pretty timely manner as POD goes.

Back in the beginning of November I placed an order for Chaosium, two of their newer fiction compilations (because Chaosium still hasn't gotten on the ebook bandwagon) and one physical print edition of BRP Mecha. Two weeks in and the order was still sitting at "in process." Tried emailing Aaron at Chaosium...his email bounced and their Mailer Daemon was explaining that he doesn't accept email anymore. Tried contacting literally all other available emails on their site and no one responded to me. Put a Paypal dispute in before a month was up (Paypal's witching hour for refunds), and the order magically went from "pending" to "complete." The package showed up the day after I escalated to a claim. Is Chaosium having some staffing issues? Poor online communication is a bad idea, especially during the holidays, and during their sale events (they had one three weeks after I placed my order, which was still absent, so that was just a smattering of bitterness on top of the rest, waiting so long for an order that I literally had it rubbed in my face that I had paid full price for stuff I could have gotten for cheaper in the interim. Sigh)

Then there is Paizo. First they have big sales and get overwhelmed with the response. On the plus side Paizo's customer service is excellent and quick to respond to queries. On the other hand, I put an order in on December 12th and it's nowhere near being completed as of today. Especially awkward because they don't charge you until it ships, which is both a pro (if you're a good book keeper) or a con (if you aren't and then forget they haven't charged you yet). I'm a reasonably good book keeper, but a floaty pending payment for over a month is more than my good accounting sense can take, so this makes two orders in a row from them I've requested a cancellation on because I can't figure out why you can go almost a month with no update on the order. In the world ruled by Amazon, this is just bizarre. Yeah...Amazon does have issues at times, but 95% of my ordering from them has been spot on and quick. UPDATE: Just as I sent them an email to cancel I finally got an email saying the order was shipping. Go figure! So maybe I'll get my Shackled City and Art of Dragon books after all...

One shining light in all this: Lulu, which took three days to print six books including a 448 page monstrosity from Mutant Epoch's latest module, and which sent them cheapo-rate and arriving another five days later. Yay for lulu.

Whew, got all that off my chest!

Golem Sale at Paizo

Lot of stuff on sale through December 1st now at Paizo right here. Debating whether I should fill out my Pathfinder collection this way...hmmm....there's a lot of older stuff too worth checking out at the Paizo site, and some of it is on sale as well. A couple years back they acquired all the product from American Eagle games and hobby store...which was, when I was in Seattle, the de facto game store for old and out of print material in new condition thanks to the fact that the founding owner had a penchant for massively over-ordering product.

Pathfinder MMO

The story announcement is here, and some company called Goblinworks is the licensee. Don't get too excited yet, though! Goblinworks appears by their new website to be founded by the Paizo gang. That's okay in and of itself, if they are able to properly wrangle together the sort of manpower necessary to make a full fledged MMO (just watch the credits roll on any typical computer game to get the gist of just how munumental such a project is), but time will tell. 

Shocked, We Iz!!!!

Wizards of the Coast Product Updates through April

WotC has put up their release schedule through April 2012. Looks like Heroes of the Elemental Chaos is the only actual book being released in that period for 4E. Hmmmmm. I'm sure the two tile sets and the boardgame that they are releasing make the product schedule look full from WotC's side of things...but....sigh.

This is why I like Paizo. Those guys know how to crank out books, and it seems to me that they know that not all gamers will buy all books, but variety is the spice of life, and inevitably Paizo will release a Pathfinder sourcebook or module that will snag someone's money, somewhere. I really have no idea if this is how it's actually done, but it seems to me that releasing 5 products with, say, a 20,000 print run and the expectation that each product will appeal to a different gamer (and a few collecting all of it) is a better approach than putting all the money behind one product with 100,000 copies, and hoping that all gamers everywhere will buy it simply because they are starved for content.*



*On the plus side, if someone were trying to find a game line that was less expensive, WotC's got that part covered. With their rate of releases these days I'm looking at only three book purchases for 4E over the course of the next 7 months; I'll probably buy at least 1-3 Pathfinder books every month in that same time period!