This was a problem with late 2e products as they assumed one had the P.O. books.

Quote from: Votan;681081But if a group likes including new options, the "catch-up" cost is daunting.

There are three reasons this is (or at least was) less of a problem for Paizo than for WotC:

(1) Paizo not only releases their material under the OGL, they also go out of their way to make that material easily accessible online. Your player wants to use a feat or class from the latest Paizo supplement, but you don't have the money to buy the book? Doesn't matter. The feat or class is trivially available online for free.

(2) For a long time, Paizo managed to maintain a minimal rules-based supplement approach. This remains true for the big hardback releases, but the monthly Player's Companion series seems to be prone to glut.

(3) Paizo doesn't necessarily need rule supplements to continue selling in order to remain profitable. The heart of their business model are the adventure modules and as long as that remains true if the rule supplement market ever reaches a point of glut they can simply phase those products out.

As noted, I think the monthly Player's Companion releases over the last year represent a significant shift in Paizo's historical business model.

I also haven't looked at the last couple adventure paths in detail. And if they are, in fact, relying more heavily on the splatbooks that also represents a shift in Paizo's historic model. (If all the content you need to play is still presented in the books themselves, however, I wouldn't necessarily view that with alarm.)

Either way, I still think seeing a new edition of Pathfinder earlier than 2016 is extremely unlikely (and that's assuming that D&D Next actually ships in 2014). If I was betting, though, I'd say that a new edition before 2020 is very likely, although that edition will be iterative rather than a reboot. (Unless D&D Next pulls off a miracle and somehow manages to completely disrupt the PF customer base.)

Quote from: mcbobbo;681072I think you find so many 3rd parties because you're not searching paizo.com.

Paizo actively supports 3rd party products and lists them on their site for sale.

Quote from: Libertad;681063Now that Pathfinder/Paizo is "3rd Edition lives again," I can't help but notice the same trend happening again.  Go onto Drive-Thru RPG and put Pathfinder into the 'rules system' search, and you'll find hordes of 3rd Party Publishers.  Need 101 female orc names?  How about a post-apocalyptic game with the Pathfinder rules set in the modern world with no magic?  Still not convinced, what about a slew of "adult" products which make the Book of Erotic Fantasy look highbrow and tasteful?

Game product makers are following the money, and that's not so much on Paizo.com. Are you finding Paizo downloadable products anywhere but on paizo.com?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;681125There are three reasons this is (or at least was) less of a problem for Paizo than for WotC:

(1) Paizo not only releases their material under the OGL, they also go out of their way to make that material easily accessible online. Your player wants to use a feat or class from the latest Paizo supplement, but you don't have the money to buy the book? Doesn't matter. The feat or class is trivially available online for free.

(2) For a long time, Paizo managed to maintain a minimal rules-based supplement approach. This remains true for the big hardback releases, but the monthly Player's Companion series seems to be prone to glut.

(3) Paizo doesn't necessarily need rule supplements to continue selling in order to remain profitable. The heart of their business model are the adventure modules and as long as that remains true if the rule supplement market ever reaches a point of glut they can simply phase those products out.

As noted, I think the monthly Player's Companion releases over the last year represent a significant shift in Paizo's historical business model.

I also haven't looked at the last couple adventure paths in detail. And if they are, in fact, relying more heavily on the splatbooks that also represents a shift in Paizo's historic model. (If all the content you need to play is still presented in the books themselves, however, I wouldn't necessarily view that with alarm.)

Either way, I still think seeing a new edition of Pathfinder earlier than 2016 is extremely unlikely (and that's assuming that D&D Next actually ships in 2014). If I was betting, though, I'd say that a new edition before 2020 is very likely, although that edition will be iterative rather than a reboot. (Unless D&D Next pulls off a miracle and somehow manages to completely disrupt the PF customer base.)
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I don't think we are in deep disagreement here.  

I actually only noticed the use of (non-referenced) classes, items, and feats in the last adventure path (where I started looking stuff up way too often) so it could well be a more recent shift.  I know for sure this was not true of either Rise of the Runelords or the Serpent's Skull, both of which I have successfully run using the core book.  I notice the next path (about the World wound) is built around Mythic adventures.  But this might be a feature of one or two paths.  

Another major advantage that Paizo has is that it has been really, really tight on the quality control for the hardback rulebooks.  I was deeply impressed by the NPC Codex, which was both inventive and supplemental in the best sense (you did not need it to run your game but you would be delighted to get it).  Some of the characters in the book are really smartly developed and showcase directions that PCs could also be developed.  This sort of approach really extends the lifecycle of the product line and so .  

But an incremental upgrade that tries to tighten up the rules on the basis of play experience might well be possible.

Given that Paizo was all about following the 3e mold, and as far as I can see did nothing to resolve the fundamental design flaws of that mold (I'm not talking about problems in RPG mechanics, i'm talking about things like the nature of 3e being about character-building, splatbooks with feats/prestige-classes/etc), it would seem an inevitable outcome that eventually, sooner or later, Pathfinder would run into the same Massive Bloat problem that 3e did.

Quote from: RPGPundit;681968Given that Paizo was all about following the 3e mold, and as far as I can see did nothing to resolve the fundamental design flaws of that mold (I'm not talking about problems in RPG mechanics, i'm talking about things like the nature of 3e being about character-building, splatbooks with feats/prestige-classes/etc), it would seem an inevitable outcome that eventually, sooner or later, Pathfinder would run into the same Massive Bloat problem that 3e did.

While this is true, the quality of the products and the innovation in content (NPC Codex, Ultimate Campaign, Beginner Box) will slow he rate at which the decay happens.  I do not think it was an accident that Paizo won so many Ennies today for both company and product.  

That being said, making the next adventure path all based around Mythic Adventures isn't a good sign.

Quote from: Teazia;681116This was a problem with late 2e products as they assumed one had the P.O. books.

Offhand the only PO-based adventure I can recall was Gates of Firestorm Peak (which used mostly Combat & Tactics). The three Player's Option books & the GM Option High Level Campaigns had references to each other to some extent, but not to the point where you had to catch them all to play.
If there are any others I want them

Quote from: Haffrung;681087The foundation of Paizo's business is the Adventure Paths, and they don't require any books besides the cores and the bestiaries.

Agreed, and they're good stuff.

Hell, I hate D&D.  I have for decades.  I've never played Pathfinder, and I never will.  But Pazio's setting material is well executed, and it doesn't take very much work to strip out the game mechanics and insert the system of your choice.

I see the 3.5 era of third party material with fond memories. I am thrilled to see folks doing the same for Pathfinder. Will it all be gems? Nope. But does it mean we will have some great or at least interesting things to play with? Yep. The more the merrier.

Quote from: Ravenswing;682234But Pazio's setting material is well executed, and it doesn't take very much work to strip out the game mechanics and insert the system of your choice.

And the there are those who lament that the newer paths are dependant on specific sourcebooks...

Sometimes I really wonder just when the DIY spirit was abandoned by the RPG community.
Or if there were certain games or products that served as the "wrong" role models, effectively "excorcising" the spirit of DIY from the hobby.

Similar to how 3e's CR, delve format, and builds, and 4e's "encounterd4tion" taught a whole generation of gamers a way to play which is very hard to unlearn. But then, every D&D had its zeitgeist-y "badwrongfun", from monty haul to railroads to level-appropriate encounters.

Sorry, I've been playing D&D. What exactly is a 'Paizo'??

It's only a problem if you buy the damn books. Don't like rules bloat? Don't by anything but the core rule books. Jesus. How hard is that to figure out?


 I have a friend who owns every 3.5 book out there (or at least all the WotC books) and as soon as you get away from the core books shit gets broken. It looks to me that all those books were for munchkins. Most of them are just terrible.

A few years back I bought PF core rules and ran it for about 18 months I guess.
I wasn't really a PF fan, but you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to find players for that compared to any other RPG.
 
For the first year I just used the Core rules and a couple of bestiaries.
I ran various linked adventures using it.

In the last 6 months I ran it I and a few other people who played in the campaign bought into the expansion books at the time.

Looking back I think I enjoyed running PF with just the core rules and a couple of bestiaries more than when we got the various splatbooks available at the time.

If I were to run PF again (which I doubt, as I run other RPGs now),  I would just stick with the core rules.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;682312Sometimes I really wonder just when the DIY spirit was abandoned by the RPG community.

It seems modern gamers have a different ideas of what, exactly, that DIY should be.

For my generation it was writing up adventures and tweaking the system. For a lot of today's gamers, the do-it-yourself part is taking a bunch of books home and building a powerful, unique character. From their point of view, we were dull, lazy players for spending only 5 minutes to make a generic Dwarf fighter.

But playstyles aside, as the hobby ages the hobbyists tend to have less time. If you're 42, with a serious career, a spouse who works, two kids, and some kind of social life outside of gaming, it's pretty hard to find the time to simply play once or twice a month, let alone create your own world setting and write up a level 1-20 campaign.

I have no problem with the idea of adventure paths. I just can't stand Paizo's cheesy pop-culture kitchen sink fantasy milieu, with its teen punks, Victorian asylums, top-hatted serial killers, kickass anime heroines, modern family melodrama, and comically anachronistic whitebread American shlock.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;682312And the there are those who lament that the newer paths are dependant on specific sourcebooks...

Sometimes I really wonder just when the DIY spirit was abandoned by the RPG community.
Or if there were certain games or products that served as the "wrong" role models, effectively "excorcising" the spirit of DIY from the hobby.

The DIY model is fine.  But if I am going to take that road, Pathfinder is not really the optimal choice.  The point of an adventure path is to take the scut work out of a lot of customized NPCs in the framework of a adaptable and interesting story.  The original versions worked well and the DIY was involved in adapting and enriching the story.  

True, I could just run critters out of the monster book.  Or develop them myself.  My issue was that the thing that these books added that was the most useful was a series of set piece encounters that can be deployed as part of ongoing campaign.  

If I have to do a bunch of research and downloading to figure out the encounters, it starts to look like about as much work to just develop my own material.  Which is fine, but then I start looking really hard at things like B/X D&D or Savage Worlds or (heavens above help me) 4E where the preparation is a lot less complicated.

If you like making Pathfinder NPCs then more power to you.  If you just take them out of the existing books and knit them into stories that is also cool.  I find Pathfinder on the complex side for my own tastes as a GM, and so the Paths that integrated with the core rules were appreciated.