Incidentally, you might also want to pick up something like the Abomination Vaults GM's Guide, as keeping megadungeons flowing is far from the easiest trick to manage, whatever edition you're playing.
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| I'd forgotten about this one, so I may try the original recipe. |
Some people have been loudly asking what I think is a very silly question. It boils down to, "Wait, isn't Paizo like the Sega to Wizards of The Coast's Super Nintendo? Why would they release content for the game that is their main competitor?" While I'm not the first person to answer this question, as someone who deals with this setup in a microcosm as a creator, I figured I'd add my voice to the growing stream.
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Why Is This Happening? Money, And Audience Share
I am not the oldest creator in the game, but even I've been around long enough to understand something very important when it comes to making RPGs as your job. First, there's a limited audience you're playing to. Even with the huge surges in interest the hobby has seen, RPGs are still a niche part of the publishing industry. This is why pay rates are so low, and why budgets tend toward the shoestring, and why risk is a word most folks in charge don't like to hear; long and short, even "successful" RPG companies don't have a lot of spare cash in their war chest if something tanks, unless they're part of a parent company that can bail them out when something goes poorly.
And let's not forget, we're talking about companies here. Players love these games. Designers love these games. Companies make decisions based on bottom line, risk, and return on investment. Given that viewpoint, I'm honestly surprised it took this long for Paizo to start porting their content to the 5E system to try to get a bigger piece of the pie.
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| Make no mistake, this is a very smart business move. |
As regular readers know, I've been releasing content for my own setting Sundara: Dawn of a New Age for a little over a year at time of writing. While I originally planned and designed this setting to run on the Pathfinder system, I was more or less required to port every release I had to Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition as well. Why? Because numbers that I've seen peg DND 5E as being something like 80% of the total RPG marketplace. That game system has the fastest growing fan base, the largest number of players, and it represents the biggest pool for designers to go fishing in. So while a lot of content for my setting is a bastard and a half to translate to 5E in any meaningful way (given that PF has a vastly more complex and robust rules system that my world design sort of revolves around), not doing it would make the project a non-starter for my publisher, who'd like to actually make money off the content I design.
Same deal for Paizo, but on a larger scale.
Because Paizo has spent more than a decade developing a complicated, interesting setting. There's a massive variety of classes and archetypes, dozens of fully-written campaigns, and a staggering number of smaller modules out there which all take place in Golarion. This is intellectual property that Paizo already owns, and which it is already selling. However, by translating this content to a 5E compatible version they're making all of this older work accessible to players who previously may never have had a reason to check it out for themselves, or who are leery of leaving the comfort zone of their preferred system, Paizo stands to snag a large group of players who never would have tried their products otherwise. While it could lead to players buying additional PF Classic or PF 2E books and content, that would be more of a fringe benefit. The primary purpose would be to re-use all the assets Paizo already paid for, but to sell them to a new audience, thus making a tidy profit with less initial investment.
Incidentally, before moving on here, you can find a full list of all the splat books I've been releasing listed in Speaking of Sundara (My Latest Video Series With Azukail Games), if you're interested in checking out what I've been putting together, whether you prefer PF or DND 5E at your table.
This Isn't an Either/Or Situation
A final thing I feel should be made clear here (and which most designers who do this for a living already understand) is that this isn't a one-or-the-other setup when we're talking about a company as big as Paizo. They have the ability to hire freelancers and recruit designers to keep several plates spinning at a time in order to tap multiple markets. So while they seem to be testing the waters with this release, it would be entirely possible for them to keep releasing new content for their existing players with one hand, while converting their older content to a different edition with the other.
However, if you're someone who's worried that Paizo is going to stop supporting your favored edition of the game, then make sure you're voting with your wallet, and doing what you can to big-up the signal to spread the word. Buy copies, leave reviews of what you get, start conversations, get people interested, and so on. When companies review the charts are the end of the day, they're looking at what products got a big response from the audience, and that's where more effort and energy is going to go.
Keep that in mind, because it's the voice of almighty dollar folks tend to listen to when making decisions about what they're going to produce next.
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