Pathfinder 1E Is Pathfinder Sustainable in the Long-Term?

[JoeGKushner]

Funny story.

Pathfinder was on Amazon about three weeks ago. We entered all of the relevant info into Diamond's (our book distributor) database, and Amazon sucked it out and magically put it online months before the relevant catalog even went to press.

Obviously, we freaked and had them remove the pages. If you search hard enough, you can find the old sites on google caches. We asked them to remove the pages and put them back up after the announcement. It's apparently taken them a few days to do so, but the pages will be up very soon.

In fact, they're up already, they're just hidden.

The GameMastery Modules are all on Amazon, and we solicited them at the same time.

--Erik

Are the card decks and map GM products going to be at Amazon.com as well?

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Also, even if Pathfinder doesn't have the same subscription numbers as as Dungeon and Dragon did, that doesn't mean it's not a success.

I realise that. However I still wonder if there will be enough people willing to subscribe to it to make it viable financially for Paizo to produce.

Right now my gaming group collectively encompasses 1x Dungeon subscription and 2x, mabye 3x Dragon subscriptions.

I can pretty much guarantee that will change to 1x Pathfinder subscription for our regular DM.

Does that mean Pathfinder is a failure becuase it's only generating 1/4 the subscriptions that Dungeon and Dragon did?

Hardly. That one Pathfinder subscription brings about as much money as our entire gaming groups collective subscriptions to Dungeon and Dragon did in the first place.

That is a point. However it also points out how expensive Pathfinder will be compared to Dungeon and Dragon magazine subscriptions.

And if I had to guess, I'd guess that dollar-for-dollar Paizo will see a higher profit margin from Pathfinder than from Dungeon and Dragon.

You are probably right on this. Paizo also no longer have to pay a licencing fee to WotC for the 2 magazines. Is this, combined with the increased profit margin for Pathfinder enough for it to be sustainable though? We will see I guess.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I'm probably a bit of an odditiy - I was more of a Dragon reader, Dungeon never appealed to me much, as I create my own adventures. I'm afraid that, judging from what we know at the moment, Pathfinder won't offer me much

However, I DO wish Paizo well, and hope that Pathfinder is a blazing success....

I'm sure there are plenty of Dragon only readers that won't find much appeal in Pathfinder as, from what we have seen so far, it seems to be targetted more at Dungeon readers than Dragon readers. Hopefully the loss of these subscribers doesn't hit Paizo badly enough to make Pathfinder unviable.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Quartz]

However, if you aren't a subscriber you can buy PDF's of each issue for $13.99.

I expect to take this route.

 

[Graf]

I think Olaf's done a brilliant job laying out why Pathfinder is likely to face an uphill battle as a periodical.

I don't think Mona and co. are dumb. They're not thinking that Pathfinder is going to be a replacement for the APs (or at least that's just a happy coincidence) they're aiming for a fatter target. Scroll down to the bottom for what I think they're actually shooting at.