Quote from: oggsmash;1097952I have a feeling the bean counters at Paizo have a good idea what to look for in the first 6 months, and it will tell them a whole lot.  As a man on the street, I dont know what to look for, but as a layman's guess I feel they will have a VERY good idea how they are doing by February.  That will have been through both the holiday season for retail and the after christmas gift money use for their materials.  They will know if they have a hit or if they have to course correct....fast.

I heard that early figures from Amazon put Pathfinder 2e sales at #2 in RPGs.

I also saw pictures of the Book Table at Gen Con so I would guess how quickly that sells through could be an indication (depending on their printing numbers of course)

Quote from: Shasarak;1097594So what signs are you looking for six months post launch to indicate a yeah or a nay?

Chatter online.

If it's a nay, it might look much like the 7th Sea 2e debacle. We saw this huge hype to the launch, and then POOF it was gone. A huge number of players got their books, and then only very few chattered about it, and then it was forgotten.

If it's a yeah, you will see heavy chatter about people starting PF2e campaigns, and rampant chargen build discussions.

Quote from: Shasarak;1097965I heard that early figures from Amazon put Pathfinder 2e sales at #2 in RPGs.

I also saw pictures of the Book Table at Gen Con so I would guess how quickly that sells through could be an indication (depending on their printing numbers of course)

I think they are number 1, however I think given what they put out to get the new edition done, they are not going to know how they fared till after the holiday season.  It was expected for them to be number 1 I should think.  But number 1 is a week to week thing, net returns is what is going to matter in a year.

If it's not #1, it's already a failure.  On launch, you'd expect that people who are eagerly awaiting it would pick it up.  If it can't beat an RPG that's been in production for years, that'd be a bad sign.  

Like, everyone that really wants to play 5th edition SHOULD have a book by now.  You either have newly introduced people or reluctant buyers who have finally agreed to migrate due to peer pressure or lack of better options.  PF#2 should have an army of early adopters if they want to succeed.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1098017Like, everyone that really wants to play 5th edition SHOULD have a book by now.  You either have newly introduced people or reluctant buyers who have finally agreed to migrate due to peer pressure or lack of better options.  PF#2 should have an army of early adopters if they want to succeed.

Spoken like the true captive buyer audience that WotC wants......

Quote from: jeff37923;1098038Spoken like the true captive buyer audience that WotC wants......

I don't really play 5th edition or Pathfinder.  I was pretty excited about Pathfinder and participated in the original Alpha and Beta playtests.  I don't think that they were actually interested in feedback, and I don't think that Pathfinder 'fixed' 3rd edition in any of the ways I had hoped.  

Most of my gaming is a homebrew system I developed with my friends.  It delivers a D&D experience in a much more enjoyable way than playing by someone else's rules.  I'm very lucky because such a collaborative process would not have been possible if my friends didn't bring additional strengths to our efforts.  

I'm certainly an interested bystander in the RPG community and I watch what developers are doing relatively closely.  But it's hard to consider myself a 'captive buyer'.

You design outside the D&D paradigm.

D&D is the gateway drug to REAL roleplaying.

GURPS and HERO get you to the REAL game.

But --- down what you want.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1098150GURPS and HERO get you to the REAL game.

Heh. Thus speaketh the crusty grognard. I'm with you - I have a shelf of Hero books, some GURPS, and don't really keep up with new games anymore. But let's face it, in 2019 these games have little mindshare and playtime outside the most obscure corners. Savage Worlds reinvented the universal system for the 21st C, and even that is old news now.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1095751I'll take the BRP system of Call of Cthulhu and old Swedish rpgs before D&D any day.

Same here, actually. Having started with Runequest-like systems, I never thought any product with D&D on it improved anything.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1098150GURPS and HERO get you to the REAL game.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1098193Thus speaketh the crusty grognard. I'm with you -

Hear, hear!

In support of Pundit's assertion:
https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/the-wfrp-manifesto-conclusions/

Quote from: Jaeger;1097547...When you really look at Dungeon world, and all the effort that went into creating the game, they could have turned out a well produced OSR game variant that did basically the exact same thing.

But I guess it is a way to play D&D, without having to actually say that you have played D&D.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1097624That's a reason for it too. Actually fucking playing D&D would be admitting defeat.

Quote from: cranebump;1097815Oh, bullshit. It's just another way to run a fantasy campaign. Read the introductory material. It's just another way to run a game. You have no grounds to make an honest appraisal of the system because you've never run it.? ...The DW designers DID consider D&D when they designed the game.

Well, I do happen to have grounds for an honest appraisal.

And I believe there is some truth to what is being said in bold above.

I've read the 'introductory material' and it is a perfect blurb for introducing someone to playing D&D.

DW is not just another way to run a fantasy campaign, unless the definition of 'Fantasy campaign' = 'Play D&D'.

DW has every D&D trope, from the 6 ability scores, races, classes, levels,  Hit Points, and Class abilities that they call "Starting Moves"...

Mechanically speaking there is nothing done in DW that could not be ported over to a traditional OSR/D&D d20 roll high DC check system.

Everything DW does could easily be taken and adapted into an OSR rules variant.

Instead the designers made a deliberate decision to make a very "D&D/OSR" game that uses a different die mechanic than D&D.

Which begs the question: Why go to all that trouble to avoid rolling a d20?

Quote from: JaegerWhich begs the question: Why go to all that trouble to avoid rolling a d20?

Because a d20 doesn't have narrative action, don't do fail forward, don't use playbooks, don't subscribe to "play to find what happens", etc, etc.

Dungeon World aims at emulating D&D themes, yes, but the way it approaches those themes is different enough to the original(s) to warrant it's existence IMO.

Quote from: Itachi;1098957Because a d20 doesn't have narrative action, don't do fail forward, don't use playbooks, don't subscribe to "play to find what happens", etc, etc.
.

The 2d6 die mechanic does nothing that you can't port over to a d20.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098966The 2d6 die mechanic does nothing that you can't port over to a d20.

Actually it does. 2d6 produces a pyramid distribution that makes average results more common ( = more 7-9, "success at a cost" rolls). Where d20 produces a flat line.