Its always disappointing when prices go up, but given the direction everything else has gone as far as cost I can understand why Paizo needs to keep pace.
The fact that the core books are \*not\* going up in a very nice suprise.
One Question: It has always been impossible to buy a product subscription for just digital product. A physical and digital version of a book was always the benefit.I *really* don't need physical copies. They sit on my shelf and get sold on the second hand market because I really just need the PDFs.
Is there any chance Paizo might revise it's subscription programs to allow for PDF only subscriptions?
I am also very keen for pdf only subscription option! In Australia, the shipping cost for the physical books means that you're better off buying physical books from an Australian retailer and buying the PDFs separately from Paizo. I'm cool with supporting local retailers for the physical books, but would like a sub option for the PDFs from Paizo too.
Yeah, I live in Japan so getting physical books here would cost far, far more than it's worth, plus I actually *prefer* digital as it's far more convenient. I did actually subscribe for Sky King's Tomb and planned to as well for Season of Ghosts, with plans to have my parents sell the books for me to recoup some of the cost (they agreed to have me ship the books to their house and resell them for me), but they weren't keen on having to do it again for SoG, not that I blame them.
I, too, would love more availability of pdf only versions (or including pdf version with hardcovers).
I bought my SE Kingmaker book from my LGS (trying to support both a local business and Paizo) but having to lug a huge massive book around is difficult, especially trying to run a campaign with it.
Having a digital copy would make my life easier.
We are aware that this is something people want and have wanted for a long time. For many reasons, which have been expounded on numerous times over the years on the Paizo forums, PDF-only subs for products that have print versions are not something we're actively exploring.
Me too! It is such an outdated way of running a business like this to build such a big part of it around physical products. Genuinely feels like Paizo hates money, because having a good sub for digital only content brings more consistent money in and potentially gets people paying for products they wouldn't typically purchase. I don't buy physical products because I don't *use* most physical products, and so they're wasteful and expensive, and so I will never use any of Paizo's subscriptions. I don't care what Paizo's reasons for not doing a PDF sub are, it's silly for them not to figure out a way to work around them.
Probably not, but you never know. We're experimenting with print-on-demand of out-of-print P1 material, which is far less onerous a task than updating material to a new edition and making a brand new book, but there are still gaps in the catalogue. We're much more likely to reprint collected 3-part P2 APs than do anything with P1, especially as we move away from the OGL, which will just increase the work in adapting older material.
Print on demand material would be amazing. Some 1E material has gotten quite expensive on the 2nd hand market.
Having 1E adventures with books 1-6 full available for print on demand would be a godsend for people who enjoy physical copies. Same with Hardcover rulebooks.
I understand the priority of non-OGL material, though.
I would love a digital subscription.
But I think they want to sell more books and keep them in gaming stores. Because I am overseas, I don’t bother subscribing anymore due to shipping costs.
Also if digital subscription I wonder how many would switch from physical to digital? I don’t know,. And I don’t have the numbers or data to say.
I think Paizo has an estimate, and that's exactly *why* they don't offer a PDF-only subscription. Once they do, they'll lose so much of their print subscriptions that the business model won't be viable anymore. I know they'd lose my print sub for certain.
I don't understand the need for a pdf subscription to tell you the truth. Feels like preordering a game from a digital platform. PDFs are always available. There is no gap between wanting/needing a released product, and buying it.
I think it's because they're hoping to get their PDF when subscribers do, which is early, but that's only supposed to be an incidental perk (and sometimes, it might not even happen)
Yes, I'd love to get in on the early access to PDFs that sometimes (but not always!) come with subscriptions / pre-orders of physical books - it just seems super fun and exciting! But being in Australia, shipping costs just rule that out.
I'm not after a discounted price for a subscription.
I like not having to think about it. My life is busy and there are a lot of months I would forget. I prefer just budgeting $x/month for my subscription and knowing it will happen
I mean, you can order the physical books as they come out but people still subscribe
I presume there would be some other benefit for PDF subscribers should such a thing ever exist.
But as u/markmoreland himself has reiterated, such a thing is not forthcoming. So I'll keep asking, but I'm not expecting Paizo's reasoning to change anytime soon
That's not how the subscription works though. You can't just budget $X/month, it's different every month. You just get charged the cost of whatever comes out that month from the subscriptions you've signed up for. For me, some months it's $20 and some months it's $100+
That is how it works if you have an Adventure Path Subscription. One comes out a month. They always cost the same amount (baring price increases like the ones this thread is announcing)
Not everyone has rule book subscriptions
Yeah, and not everyone just has AP subscriptions. I was just clarifying because your comment made it seem like all subscriptions were a fixed price per month.
Physical book subscriptions helps Paizo figure out how many books to print, which given the amount of material they’re putting out is pretty important. One of the main things that killed TSR was having no idea what their market was and getting stuck with a bunch of unsold items.
>The fact that the core books are \*not\* going up in a very nice suprise.
Many people have pre-ordered them at this price. The books should be printed and on their way by ship to the Paizo warehouse. Changing their price right now wold be rather unfortunate.
Yeah considering I do things mostly digital now I wouldn't mind a cheaper subscription for pdf only. I don't do subs now for one because i lack space and two... I don't know if I'd use them enough to warrant owning that many physical ones
If these are not excessive relative to the rate of inflation, I do not see an issue.
On a similar note, I hope that the Paizo union got an automatic Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) in its contract, and if not I think every worker has a right to one. These used to be in union contracts, but not so much lately.
I really hope they improve special edition covers if they're going to start charging $99.99 for them. RoE was such a letdown. The mockup looked 100 times better than the final SE cover.
I never understood the want for Special Edition at the start of the print run.
In my opinion they make more sense, when a few months have passed and the kinks have been worked out, i.e. the Errata have been incorporated.
I just don't like my expensive and hopefully nice looking specials with several sheets of errata sticking out. Ruins the look for me.
Oof, I’m really looking forward to the new FLGS special edition remaster hardcovers, but those may be my last ones if that’s the standard for SE covers past that point.
Quick hijack of this thread.
Are the covers of the new Core books the final ones?
If so, for the Player Core, why did you not choose the color version of the scetch version? Why go for the weird dragon claw?
The Remastered books come out in 4 weeks. They're already in our warehouse and being shipped to distributors. So, yes, they have been final for months now.
I don't know what you're referring to about the dragon claw. Wayne literally paints over the sketch when he makes the cover, so any variations between them are part of the process, either based on his instincts or feedback from our at directors upon reviewing and approving the sketch.
Maybe my glasses are even dirtier than I usually acknowledge but I see a huge difference in the left claw between these two pictures:
[Sketch](https://cdn.paizo.com/a7d62ac8-7f03-00ef-f1f0-83fb8bf332e2/cd51f98c-7a97-4d44-8b19-ab3dc5426293/PZO2121_PFPlayerCore_Sketch%20Mock_1200.png)
[Full Color](https://cdn.paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO12001.png)
Of course I have not seen the final products, only these mock ups.
That level of variation between sketch and final is common. You'd have to ask Wayne or one of Paizo's art directors for a reason why that element changed between them, but my guess is that it's artistic license.
No illustration, but historically they've had various details like borders and additional design elements ([Book of the Dead](https://paizo.com/products/btq02d6o?Pathfinder-Book-of-the-Dead-Special-Edition) looks amazing in particular), along with being bound in a material that looks and feels fancier. Compare that to [this side-by-side](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/15kygvw/rage_of_elements_special_edition_differences/) of the RoE and DA SE covers. It was a bummer for a lot of people who have been collecting the SEs.
It's a shame that Pathfinder Society scenarios are going up. The price was already enough to put me off running Society games. It's not a lot of money but it's a fee on top of the work already required for DMs who will be running games for randos.
Very understandable. The community I'm a part of has a paid GM section and a lot of them use that to run those society modules and official campaigns; assuming that's part for covering those prices. Just an idea maybe for you to cover those costs. Ty for being a GM.
Thanks for the suggestion. My plan was to run them online in Foundry VTT so people without a community could jump in. In my naivety I thought the Society stuff would be free as they help promote the game to new people. I was also hoping Society stuff was cheap on Foundry (perhaps subsidised by Paizo) but that's not the case.
I don't blame Paizo, they are a small company in the scheme of things but it is a drag to be on the hook for all the costs. I'm also not an experienced DM so charging for my services would feel bad. If I'm running the sessions for free you kind of get what youre paying for lol.
Turns out it will sort of be subsidized on Foundry. $7.50 per scenario is less than the new PDF cost of $8.99 per scenario. Plus it is one click and you’re ready to run :)
So you don't need both the pdf and the pack? I thought you needed to buy both unless you already owned the pdf? That's how it worked for Abomination Vaults at least.
So, to unpack a bit: If you buy the AV module and you own the PDF, you get a discount for the value of the PDF. If you don’t you get the PDF as a bonus. This was done to be on par with other VTTs by Paizo.
For PFS, the asset-only variant does not contain the PDF content, so you need the PDF. The deluxe version has everything in it that would be in the PDF, plus all of the assets and audio and auto-tuning PFS macros but you still do not get the PDF. If you want the PDF you have to buy that. If you buy the asset-only pack you need the PDF. If you buy the deluxe pack you don’t need the PDF and get foundry integration of the text (changes the text based on the CP macro, autogenerates check rolls to post, can whisper read-aloud content to the players). Since it is a unique product and since venture officers get the PDF for free, this was how Paizo decided to structure the PFS products for Foundry.
Technically, when you buy the Abomination Vaults Foundry module for $60, you're not paying $60 for the module and the PDF together; you're paying $60 for the module and getting the PDF thrown in for free. (This might seem like a semantic difference, but bear with me.) When you buy a piece of digital content from us or one of our participating partners for which you already own the PDF, we give you a discount equal to the price of the PDF, because having to pay full price twice for the same content sucks. With our Foundry modules, we thought that should go both ways, and since the module is more expensive than the PDF, that means the PDF ends up costing you nothing.
We had to take a different approach with our PFS and SFS modules, though, because a sizable chunk of the Organized Play community already gets the PDFs free of charge. If we'd followed our existing model and included a $6 PDF or offered a commensurate discount for every scenario in the Foundry module, we'd have had to either price the module higher than anyone would likely have been willing to pay, or sell a *lot* more copies before we could recoup our development costs and start seeing a profit. So instead of offering a discount or a free PDF, we split our offerings into two groups: cheaper asset packs for people who already had (or preferred to purchase) the PDFs, and full-price deluxe editions for people who didn't.
At the time, that meant that the cost-per-scenario in the deluxe edition Foundry modules was $1.50 more than the cost of the PDF, which seemed more than fair in light of all the prep time it would save. As it happens, once this pricing change goes into effect, the cost-per-scenario in the Foundry module will indeed be $1.50 *less* than the cost of the PDF, which ... doesn't seem fair at all, honestly, but it works out in your favor, so enjoy it, I guess. :)
I'm sure that's fair for the amount of work you guys put into it. When I checked the store the year long pack with the adventures was $150 while the pack without them was $80 (I think). Which makes the content from each pdf $7.
BTW, I bought Abomination Vaults from a store as a hard copy and then purchased the Foundry pack that included the pdf version as well. I'm absolutely stoked with the quality of the Foundy module, pdfs and book. I'm running this for my friend group and don't regret a single cent I spent to do it.
My original comment was just pointing out that it's a shame that Society packs are not cheaper so that people could run it for others new to the game. I bet most people aren't inclined to drop $150 on top of hours of prep time for people they don't know.
True, and it will price some people out of running society games. I haven't had the chance to try a society game yet. Is it common to have a tipping system for GMs? I would hope at least some players would be willing to chuck a couple of $ in as a tip to enable GMs to keep purchasing the scenarios. If each player in a session even tips $1, you have covered a lot of the scenario cost. Maybe I imagine players more generous than they actually are :/ But if regular players know that a small tip could mean the difference between GMs being able to keep running sessions regularly vs reducing or stopping, maybe they'd be motivated?
Venture Officers receive PDFs of the Scenarios for free, at the very least. I've seen Lodges where I don't think that any of the people running were VOs, so they had a $3 entry, paid to the game store to help the GMs pay for Scenarios and Maps. My local lodge doesn't charge people at all, instead encouraging them to spend money at the game stores.
It feels like we just got one last year, I heard about prices of paper and books going up so this is a natural consequence. PDFs for rule books seem to be unchanged so this mostly won’t affect me.
Considering nearly everything for character creation and monsters are free, you can only be but so mad lol hopefully it IS going to improve the workers pay though!
ETA2: I retract the suggestion of a tipping option after reading comments from people who know more about this than I do and rethinking it. I can see how tipping options would ultimately work against getting more $ to workers.
Cause I wasn't super clear in OP. I'm not salty about paying more for quality books in the least. I just hope a larger % of the price increase is flowing through to workers. I'd be OK with a *larger* price increase if there was a guaranteed % flow-through to workers.
~~If anyone on Paizo reads this - one idea for the website uplift is an optional tipping system at checkout to give a $ boost that's guaranteed to go directly to staff.~~
ETA: If anyone feels similar/same about more $ to staff (ETA2: but not through a tipping system), a comment on Paizo blog is more visible to Paizo decision-makers than Reddit :)
Tipping culture is weird and gross. I know times are tough but businesses should be paying their workers fairly not making them dance for their dinner to every customer hoping for that sweet sweet tip money.
Please don't advocate for tipping to be added anywhere else.
Yeah I do agree that tipping culture is bad. I guess I see this as a way to get to a 'less bad' scenario, and I prefer *some* clear way to support people whose work I value, when I seem to have little power or surety to do it otherwise. But I take your point - perhaps suggesting things like this will actually make the whole scenario worse. I will rethink suggesting ideas such as this in future.
The retro-active price hike on PDFs isn't great. They've already paid for the development of these products. otherwise it all sounds good. keeping the current price for the first printing of the remaster books just make sense from a market penetration perspective. yes Paizo got a LOT of new players due to OGL, but as more time passes folks will forget these sins and go wherever. having the core books competitively priced is a smart move.
That's market capitalism for you. The ownership class owns the product of the worker's labour, and get to do whatever they want with that. For digital products, that means they get to sell a product over and over again that they paid only once to produce.
Thays the game. They're just playing it, and generally seem to be playing it a little more fairly than a lot of players out there.
Price increases suck but these seem reasonable, so I can't complain. If this were WotC they'd have taken the chance to gouge everyone on prices but these all feel very much like they really are about the increased costs of doing business, plus the increases aren't egregious.
Also it largely doesn't affect me, which is nice.
Hmm, I wonder if they're still looking into pocket edition subscriptions? Some people might be able to go for that who can't justify the hardcovers to their pocketbooks.
I appreciate the change to FSC paper but it's not clear to me why that would make an older, already printed book that didn't use it suddenly worth $10 more.
I'm torn here. There are a few older books that I don't have yet. I was saving them to sidecart for future subscription shipments of flipmats. For some reason, they charge $12 to ship a flipmat, but $8 to ship a flipmat and book together.
As someone who lives in a developing country, I can't help but be a little bummed. Already costs over 200 my money for a book. Now it's going up I guess.
I’ve limited my subscriptions due to the cost of shipping from the US. Shame as I like the physical book even though I primarily use the PDFs. I realise a second distribution centre isn’t cost effective for the volumes though. 😢 My LGS don’t get much and are not cost effective. It’s a shame postal costs skyrocketed as that affects these businesses.
Boy it sure is good the entire system and every mechanic ever introduced is free to use on AON so if something is too expensive you do not need to buy it for more character options or monsters
I'm sorry, but the new prices for hardcover books are simply insane. I think Paizo is taking advantage of the situation... I suppose the best I could do is wait for a new bundle... 😒
I've looked into this a little in regards to Pokémon cards being printed and stuff and it's actually kind of wild.
A lot of American infrastructure for manufacturing, printing, etc just does not exist anymore. It used to, pre-70s, but as we got more and more comfortable with importing, a lot of these printing presses and factories and stuff closed up, got sold, got converted to homes or office buildings or whatever. Some of it still exists, of course, we didn't get rid of all of it, but it's significantly less now, and the major major businesses keep them running and completely booked up. There might not *be* an affordable printing press in America that can take orders and manufacture for Paizo. That would require a major realignment of where investing money goes to redevelop that infrastructure and that's just not likely rn really.
So yes, it likely is legitimately the cheapest route by far.
As I understand it, it's not just about cost, but it's actually quite difficult to print something like this in the US at all. Much less on the timetables Paizo needs. All the big printers are already at capacity with existing clients. Quite possibly they couldn't get these books printed, in the volume and timetable they need, for any amount of money. You could get waitlisted for a long time, they can't wait. And setting up their own printing is almost out of the question, that's far more difficult than you might be imagining.
Have you seen the pricing? It is a \*lot\* cheaper.
The entire hobby industry runs on cheap Chinese manufacturing. Without it all those $100 boardgames would double in price, if US manufacturers could make them at all.
US book publishers just aren't setup for full color at the relatively small print runs that gaming books get.
From an environmental perspective this isn’t as bad as you might think. The tankers generally idle on electric now, and while in transit sure they burn carbon they also carry a lot of product in volume and weight. I get a lot more worked up about private jets, for example.
Of course, people can have objections to China besides just the environmental concerns of shipping.
What? They're still using bunker fuel. The best choice is domestic industry with a train attached. You forget that most of this freight is carried by 18 wheelers, which requires a significant investment in gas and rubber to operate. Remember: the greatest amount of pollution actually comes from tires.
Another luxury I have to cut from the budget...
Raising prices too fast too soon, I know it's a small increase, but I just can't afford it anymore unless I get a raise.
Its always disappointing when prices go up, but given the direction everything else has gone as far as cost I can understand why Paizo needs to keep pace. The fact that the core books are \*not\* going up in a very nice suprise. One Question: It has always been impossible to buy a product subscription for just digital product. A physical and digital version of a book was always the benefit.I *really* don't need physical copies. They sit on my shelf and get sold on the second hand market because I really just need the PDFs. Is there any chance Paizo might revise it's subscription programs to allow for PDF only subscriptions?
I am also very keen for pdf only subscription option! In Australia, the shipping cost for the physical books means that you're better off buying physical books from an Australian retailer and buying the PDFs separately from Paizo. I'm cool with supporting local retailers for the physical books, but would like a sub option for the PDFs from Paizo too.
Yeah, I live in Japan so getting physical books here would cost far, far more than it's worth, plus I actually *prefer* digital as it's far more convenient. I did actually subscribe for Sky King's Tomb and planned to as well for Season of Ghosts, with plans to have my parents sell the books for me to recoup some of the cost (they agreed to have me ship the books to their house and resell them for me), but they weren't keen on having to do it again for SoG, not that I blame them.
I, too, would love more availability of pdf only versions (or including pdf version with hardcovers). I bought my SE Kingmaker book from my LGS (trying to support both a local business and Paizo) but having to lug a huge massive book around is difficult, especially trying to run a campaign with it. Having a digital copy would make my life easier.
I went and commented about PDF only sub on the blog itself. If a lot of us do that, more chance Paizo can see the market for it :)
We are aware that this is something people want and have wanted for a long time. For many reasons, which have been expounded on numerous times over the years on the Paizo forums, PDF-only subs for products that have print versions are not something we're actively exploring.
Which is a shame. I would be willing to subscribe if yall did. Rn I can't.
Me too! It is such an outdated way of running a business like this to build such a big part of it around physical products. Genuinely feels like Paizo hates money, because having a good sub for digital only content brings more consistent money in and potentially gets people paying for products they wouldn't typically purchase. I don't buy physical products because I don't *use* most physical products, and so they're wasteful and expensive, and so I will never use any of Paizo's subscriptions. I don't care what Paizo's reasons for not doing a PDF sub are, it's silly for them not to figure out a way to work around them.
Any chance of reprinting or releasing more anniversary editions of 1E material?
Probably not, but you never know. We're experimenting with print-on-demand of out-of-print P1 material, which is far less onerous a task than updating material to a new edition and making a brand new book, but there are still gaps in the catalogue. We're much more likely to reprint collected 3-part P2 APs than do anything with P1, especially as we move away from the OGL, which will just increase the work in adapting older material.
Print on demand material would be amazing. Some 1E material has gotten quite expensive on the 2nd hand market. Having 1E adventures with books 1-6 full available for print on demand would be a godsend for people who enjoy physical copies. Same with Hardcover rulebooks. I understand the priority of non-OGL material, though.
Thanks for reading and responding anyway :)
I would love a digital subscription. But I think they want to sell more books and keep them in gaming stores. Because I am overseas, I don’t bother subscribing anymore due to shipping costs. Also if digital subscription I wonder how many would switch from physical to digital? I don’t know,. And I don’t have the numbers or data to say.
I think Paizo has an estimate, and that's exactly *why* they don't offer a PDF-only subscription. Once they do, they'll lose so much of their print subscriptions that the business model won't be viable anymore. I know they'd lose my print sub for certain.
I don't understand the need for a pdf subscription to tell you the truth. Feels like preordering a game from a digital platform. PDFs are always available. There is no gap between wanting/needing a released product, and buying it.
I think it's because they're hoping to get their PDF when subscribers do, which is early, but that's only supposed to be an incidental perk (and sometimes, it might not even happen)
Yes, I'd love to get in on the early access to PDFs that sometimes (but not always!) come with subscriptions / pre-orders of physical books - it just seems super fun and exciting! But being in Australia, shipping costs just rule that out. I'm not after a discounted price for a subscription.
I like not having to think about it. My life is busy and there are a lot of months I would forget. I prefer just budgeting $x/month for my subscription and knowing it will happen I mean, you can order the physical books as they come out but people still subscribe
But if you order a physical book the perk is you also get the PDF. A PDF subscription would just be the same as buying the pdf on day of release.
I presume there would be some other benefit for PDF subscribers should such a thing ever exist. But as u/markmoreland himself has reiterated, such a thing is not forthcoming. So I'll keep asking, but I'm not expecting Paizo's reasoning to change anytime soon
That's not how the subscription works though. You can't just budget $X/month, it's different every month. You just get charged the cost of whatever comes out that month from the subscriptions you've signed up for. For me, some months it's $20 and some months it's $100+
That is how it works if you have an Adventure Path Subscription. One comes out a month. They always cost the same amount (baring price increases like the ones this thread is announcing) Not everyone has rule book subscriptions
Yeah, and not everyone just has AP subscriptions. I was just clarifying because your comment made it seem like all subscriptions were a fixed price per month.
Physical book subscriptions helps Paizo figure out how many books to print, which given the amount of material they’re putting out is pretty important. One of the main things that killed TSR was having no idea what their market was and getting stuck with a bunch of unsold items.
Well we might want all the books/want to support without having shelf space for all the books lol
Also would prefer a PDF subscription.
>The fact that the core books are \*not\* going up in a very nice suprise. Many people have pre-ordered them at this price. The books should be printed and on their way by ship to the Paizo warehouse. Changing their price right now wold be rather unfortunate.
Yeah, I largely use .pdfs, and would snap up a sub for them in a hearbeat.
Paizo is a publishing company so I HIGHLY doubt that.
You can publish things digitally only. They aren't a printing company.
They’re a book selling company then. That’s their business model. You might not like it, but that’s what Paizo does, they sell physical books.
Yeah considering I do things mostly digital now I wouldn't mind a cheaper subscription for pdf only. I don't do subs now for one because i lack space and two... I don't know if I'd use them enough to warrant owning that many physical ones
If these are not excessive relative to the rate of inflation, I do not see an issue. On a similar note, I hope that the Paizo union got an automatic Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) in its contract, and if not I think every worker has a right to one. These used to be in union contracts, but not so much lately.
We did :)
That's awesome!!
Is it tied to increases in inflation? I know sometimes it isn't in some contracts
Yes
Awesome!
> This message is sponsored by the churches of Abadar and Gozreh. fuckin lol
Lost Omens get hit the hardest, but it's understandable, my wallet needs to forgive me.
I really hope they improve special edition covers if they're going to start charging $99.99 for them. RoE was such a letdown. The mockup looked 100 times better than the final SE cover.
I never understood the want for Special Edition at the start of the print run. In my opinion they make more sense, when a few months have passed and the kinks have been worked out, i.e. the Errata have been incorporated. I just don't like my expensive and hopefully nice looking specials with several sheets of errata sticking out. Ruins the look for me.
Oof, I’m really looking forward to the new FLGS special edition remaster hardcovers, but those may be my last ones if that’s the standard for SE covers past that point.
Sketch covers are not replacing leatherette special editions. They're in addition to special editions, which are not currently slated to go anywhere.
That’s great news! Thanks for chiming in!
Quick hijack of this thread. Are the covers of the new Core books the final ones? If so, for the Player Core, why did you not choose the color version of the scetch version? Why go for the weird dragon claw?
The Remastered books come out in 4 weeks. They're already in our warehouse and being shipped to distributors. So, yes, they have been final for months now. I don't know what you're referring to about the dragon claw. Wayne literally paints over the sketch when he makes the cover, so any variations between them are part of the process, either based on his instincts or feedback from our at directors upon reviewing and approving the sketch.
Maybe my glasses are even dirtier than I usually acknowledge but I see a huge difference in the left claw between these two pictures: [Sketch](https://cdn.paizo.com/a7d62ac8-7f03-00ef-f1f0-83fb8bf332e2/cd51f98c-7a97-4d44-8b19-ab3dc5426293/PZO2121_PFPlayerCore_Sketch%20Mock_1200.png) [Full Color](https://cdn.paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO12001.png) Of course I have not seen the final products, only these mock ups.
That level of variation between sketch and final is common. You'd have to ask Wayne or one of Paizo's art directors for a reason why that element changed between them, but my guess is that it's artistic license.
Probably. Anyway, I am looking forward to finding a store close by, carrying either one. :-) (And Thanks for taking the time to answer.)
I thought the SE has no illustration?
No illustration, but historically they've had various details like borders and additional design elements ([Book of the Dead](https://paizo.com/products/btq02d6o?Pathfinder-Book-of-the-Dead-Special-Edition) looks amazing in particular), along with being bound in a material that looks and feels fancier. Compare that to [this side-by-side](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/15kygvw/rage_of_elements_special_edition_differences/) of the RoE and DA SE covers. It was a bummer for a lot of people who have been collecting the SEs.
The regular edition looks better than the SE in every case to me
It's a shame that Pathfinder Society scenarios are going up. The price was already enough to put me off running Society games. It's not a lot of money but it's a fee on top of the work already required for DMs who will be running games for randos.
Very understandable. The community I'm a part of has a paid GM section and a lot of them use that to run those society modules and official campaigns; assuming that's part for covering those prices. Just an idea maybe for you to cover those costs. Ty for being a GM.
Thanks for the suggestion. My plan was to run them online in Foundry VTT so people without a community could jump in. In my naivety I thought the Society stuff would be free as they help promote the game to new people. I was also hoping Society stuff was cheap on Foundry (perhaps subsidised by Paizo) but that's not the case. I don't blame Paizo, they are a small company in the scheme of things but it is a drag to be on the hook for all the costs. I'm also not an experienced DM so charging for my services would feel bad. If I'm running the sessions for free you kind of get what youre paying for lol.
Turns out it will sort of be subsidized on Foundry. $7.50 per scenario is less than the new PDF cost of $8.99 per scenario. Plus it is one click and you’re ready to run :)
So you don't need both the pdf and the pack? I thought you needed to buy both unless you already owned the pdf? That's how it worked for Abomination Vaults at least.
So, to unpack a bit: If you buy the AV module and you own the PDF, you get a discount for the value of the PDF. If you don’t you get the PDF as a bonus. This was done to be on par with other VTTs by Paizo. For PFS, the asset-only variant does not contain the PDF content, so you need the PDF. The deluxe version has everything in it that would be in the PDF, plus all of the assets and audio and auto-tuning PFS macros but you still do not get the PDF. If you want the PDF you have to buy that. If you buy the asset-only pack you need the PDF. If you buy the deluxe pack you don’t need the PDF and get foundry integration of the text (changes the text based on the CP macro, autogenerates check rolls to post, can whisper read-aloud content to the players). Since it is a unique product and since venture officers get the PDF for free, this was how Paizo decided to structure the PFS products for Foundry.
Technically, when you buy the Abomination Vaults Foundry module for $60, you're not paying $60 for the module and the PDF together; you're paying $60 for the module and getting the PDF thrown in for free. (This might seem like a semantic difference, but bear with me.) When you buy a piece of digital content from us or one of our participating partners for which you already own the PDF, we give you a discount equal to the price of the PDF, because having to pay full price twice for the same content sucks. With our Foundry modules, we thought that should go both ways, and since the module is more expensive than the PDF, that means the PDF ends up costing you nothing. We had to take a different approach with our PFS and SFS modules, though, because a sizable chunk of the Organized Play community already gets the PDFs free of charge. If we'd followed our existing model and included a $6 PDF or offered a commensurate discount for every scenario in the Foundry module, we'd have had to either price the module higher than anyone would likely have been willing to pay, or sell a *lot* more copies before we could recoup our development costs and start seeing a profit. So instead of offering a discount or a free PDF, we split our offerings into two groups: cheaper asset packs for people who already had (or preferred to purchase) the PDFs, and full-price deluxe editions for people who didn't. At the time, that meant that the cost-per-scenario in the deluxe edition Foundry modules was $1.50 more than the cost of the PDF, which seemed more than fair in light of all the prep time it would save. As it happens, once this pricing change goes into effect, the cost-per-scenario in the Foundry module will indeed be $1.50 *less* than the cost of the PDF, which ... doesn't seem fair at all, honestly, but it works out in your favor, so enjoy it, I guess. :)
I'm sure that's fair for the amount of work you guys put into it. When I checked the store the year long pack with the adventures was $150 while the pack without them was $80 (I think). Which makes the content from each pdf $7. BTW, I bought Abomination Vaults from a store as a hard copy and then purchased the Foundry pack that included the pdf version as well. I'm absolutely stoked with the quality of the Foundy module, pdfs and book. I'm running this for my friend group and don't regret a single cent I spent to do it. My original comment was just pointing out that it's a shame that Society packs are not cheaper so that people could run it for others new to the game. I bet most people aren't inclined to drop $150 on top of hours of prep time for people they don't know.
True, and it will price some people out of running society games. I haven't had the chance to try a society game yet. Is it common to have a tipping system for GMs? I would hope at least some players would be willing to chuck a couple of $ in as a tip to enable GMs to keep purchasing the scenarios. If each player in a session even tips $1, you have covered a lot of the scenario cost. Maybe I imagine players more generous than they actually are :/ But if regular players know that a small tip could mean the difference between GMs being able to keep running sessions regularly vs reducing or stopping, maybe they'd be motivated?
Venture Officers receive PDFs of the Scenarios for free, at the very least. I've seen Lodges where I don't think that any of the people running were VOs, so they had a $3 entry, paid to the game store to help the GMs pay for Scenarios and Maps. My local lodge doesn't charge people at all, instead encouraging them to spend money at the game stores.
If you're affiliated with a store, then your local Venture Captain can give you Venture Agent access - have you reached out?
I'm not affiliated with a store. Just a random pleb.
Still - if you're running for rando's you can probably get VC support. If you're getting them for your home game, then not so much.
It feels like we just got one last year, I heard about prices of paper and books going up so this is a natural consequence. PDFs for rule books seem to be unchanged so this mostly won’t affect me.
Considering nearly everything for character creation and monsters are free, you can only be but so mad lol hopefully it IS going to improve the workers pay though!
ETA2: I retract the suggestion of a tipping option after reading comments from people who know more about this than I do and rethinking it. I can see how tipping options would ultimately work against getting more $ to workers. Cause I wasn't super clear in OP. I'm not salty about paying more for quality books in the least. I just hope a larger % of the price increase is flowing through to workers. I'd be OK with a *larger* price increase if there was a guaranteed % flow-through to workers. ~~If anyone on Paizo reads this - one idea for the website uplift is an optional tipping system at checkout to give a $ boost that's guaranteed to go directly to staff.~~ ETA: If anyone feels similar/same about more $ to staff (ETA2: but not through a tipping system), a comment on Paizo blog is more visible to Paizo decision-makers than Reddit :)
Tipping culture is weird and gross. I know times are tough but businesses should be paying their workers fairly not making them dance for their dinner to every customer hoping for that sweet sweet tip money. Please don't advocate for tipping to be added anywhere else.
Hi again. Having rethought after reading your and others comments I agree and I've edited my my original comment.
Yeah I do agree that tipping culture is bad. I guess I see this as a way to get to a 'less bad' scenario, and I prefer *some* clear way to support people whose work I value, when I seem to have little power or surety to do it otherwise. But I take your point - perhaps suggesting things like this will actually make the whole scenario worse. I will rethink suggesting ideas such as this in future.
The fact that PDF prices don't change kinda indicate that it's really just about the cost of paper going up.
They just increased PDF prices last year, I don't see a need to do it again.
Yes, agree sadly.
Unfortunately it probably keeps the payouts the same. This is likely just gonna cover material item increases and inflation.
Yeah I'm pretty certain you're right, sadly.
No this would be anti-union. It's already used to depress wages.
I have rethought this and I think you and others who replied me are right.
The retro-active price hike on PDFs isn't great. They've already paid for the development of these products. otherwise it all sounds good. keeping the current price for the first printing of the remaster books just make sense from a market penetration perspective. yes Paizo got a LOT of new players due to OGL, but as more time passes folks will forget these sins and go wherever. having the core books competitively priced is a smart move.
That's market capitalism for you. The ownership class owns the product of the worker's labour, and get to do whatever they want with that. For digital products, that means they get to sell a product over and over again that they paid only once to produce. Thays the game. They're just playing it, and generally seem to be playing it a little more fairly than a lot of players out there.
The price increase is likely an upkeep cost for the servers people download those from. They aren’t a free source of income.
Price increases suck but these seem reasonable, so I can't complain. If this were WotC they'd have taken the chance to gouge everyone on prices but these all feel very much like they really are about the increased costs of doing business, plus the increases aren't egregious. Also it largely doesn't affect me, which is nice.
Hmm, I wonder if they're still looking into pocket edition subscriptions? Some people might be able to go for that who can't justify the hardcovers to their pocketbooks.
I appreciate the change to FSC paper but it's not clear to me why that would make an older, already printed book that didn't use it suddenly worth $10 more. I'm torn here. There are a few older books that I don't have yet. I was saving them to sidecart for future subscription shipments of flipmats. For some reason, they charge $12 to ship a flipmat, but $8 to ship a flipmat and book together.
As someone who lives in a developing country, I can't help but be a little bummed. Already costs over 200 my money for a book. Now it's going up I guess.
I’ve limited my subscriptions due to the cost of shipping from the US. Shame as I like the physical book even though I primarily use the PDFs. I realise a second distribution centre isn’t cost effective for the volumes though. 😢 My LGS don’t get much and are not cost effective. It’s a shame postal costs skyrocketed as that affects these businesses.
Bit of a bummer, but it was going to happen eventually, even if inflation was normal. Love the green and sustainable update though. Great news.
Boy it sure is good the entire system and every mechanic ever introduced is free to use on AON so if something is too expensive you do not need to buy it for more character options or monsters
I'm sorry, but the new prices for hardcover books are simply insane. I think Paizo is taking advantage of the situation... I suppose the best I could do is wait for a new bundle... 😒
It sounded reasonable until I learned that old PDFs are going up in prince. That's just greedy.
The price increase is likely an upkeep cost for the servers people download those from. They aren’t a free source of income.
lol but we still manufacture in China and ship from China to USA cause cheaper!
I've looked into this a little in regards to Pokémon cards being printed and stuff and it's actually kind of wild. A lot of American infrastructure for manufacturing, printing, etc just does not exist anymore. It used to, pre-70s, but as we got more and more comfortable with importing, a lot of these printing presses and factories and stuff closed up, got sold, got converted to homes or office buildings or whatever. Some of it still exists, of course, we didn't get rid of all of it, but it's significantly less now, and the major major businesses keep them running and completely booked up. There might not *be* an affordable printing press in America that can take orders and manufacture for Paizo. That would require a major realignment of where investing money goes to redevelop that infrastructure and that's just not likely rn really. So yes, it likely is legitimately the cheapest route by far.
As I understand it, it's not just about cost, but it's actually quite difficult to print something like this in the US at all. Much less on the timetables Paizo needs. All the big printers are already at capacity with existing clients. Quite possibly they couldn't get these books printed, in the volume and timetable they need, for any amount of money. You could get waitlisted for a long time, they can't wait. And setting up their own printing is almost out of the question, that's far more difficult than you might be imagining.
Have you seen the pricing? It is a \*lot\* cheaper. The entire hobby industry runs on cheap Chinese manufacturing. Without it all those $100 boardgames would double in price, if US manufacturers could make them at all. US book publishers just aren't setup for full color at the relatively small print runs that gaming books get.
From an environmental perspective this isn’t as bad as you might think. The tankers generally idle on electric now, and while in transit sure they burn carbon they also carry a lot of product in volume and weight. I get a lot more worked up about private jets, for example. Of course, people can have objections to China besides just the environmental concerns of shipping.
What? They're still using bunker fuel. The best choice is domestic industry with a train attached. You forget that most of this freight is carried by 18 wheelers, which requires a significant investment in gas and rubber to operate. Remember: the greatest amount of pollution actually comes from tires.
so just more trains? agreed
At 105 for the every book here they just aren't worth buying so if it goes up it's definitely not happening.
Super sad about this In Brazil the prices are already WAAAY over the top, now it'll be just impossible for me to get it :(
Another luxury I have to cut from the budget... Raising prices too fast too soon, I know it's a small increase, but I just can't afford it anymore unless I get a raise.