You may have noticed that Paizo’s Pathfinder line went toe to toe with Wizards of the Coast in the ENnies. Paizo’s Bestiary 2 beat WotC’s Monster Vault in the Best Monster/Adversary group, Pathfinder: Inner Sea World Guide beat WotC’s Dark Sun Campaign Setting in Best Setting and in fan’s choice for best publisher; Paizo Publishing beat Wizards of the Coast.
But does any of this matter?
It might do. According to ICV2 Wizards of the Coast is no longer the best selling RPG. Pathfinder is. ICV2 are a specialist firm of consultants who track the comic book, anime, games and collectable markets. Their sales charts have some authority.
Are you a Paizo and Pathfinder fan? Why do you prefer them to Wizards of the Coast and their settings? Or are you still a D&D loyalist? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Do you have any thoughts on this article? Let us know in the comments below.
Paizo is printing the rule set that I prefer to play for high fantasy RPGs. I gave D&D 4e a shot when it first came out (an average of 6 hours a game every saturday for 6 months) and I just didn’t like the feel of the game. My first RPG was 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder is familiar without being stale.
I will also say that I didn’t like the “oh, you weren’t really having fun for 10 years and anyone who wanted to grapple was eating paint chips” videos that WotC was releasing near the beginning.
I asked someone if Paizo was the Apple of the RPG world and WotC the Microsoft. They thought that was about right.
I will concede that there is an amount of company loyalty/inertia in my decisions, but it doesn’t change the fact that I was perfectly fine with 3.5 and WotC created a radically different product that was about as compatible with my existing game library as it is with OD&D, then had the gull to tell me that I the rules set that I had no real trouble with sucked, THEN compared me (and people like me) to a troll when I (and people like me) brought up points like “skill challenges don’t work as written.”
Sadly, now you know how us old-schoolers felt when 3E changed everything. And 2E before that, though not as dramatically. Only we didn’t have an alternative like Pathfinder at the time.
I was VERY happy with the Unearthbed Arcana/ Greyhalk early Realms….
D&D 2nd edition. I just learned what THAC0 means this year.
There’s definitely some retro cred with the older editions that the later versions don’t have.
I hate both. They are WAY better fantasy games out there like Mongoose RuneQuest II and The One Ring by Sophisticated Games/Cubicle 7.
I prefer pathfinder by leaps and bounds over 4E. Pathfinder is more the way that dungeons and dragons was intended to be like. Although I wish Pathfinder was more simplified and like some of the earlier editions.
Pathfinder, due to OGL and organic evolution of story lines. The artificial architecture behind story lines dependent on game mechanics is becoming pathetic with WOTC.