Pathfinder is an interesting child of the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying world. After Wizards of the Coast (who made a fortune in collectible card games) purchased the failing Dungeons & Dragons publishing company TSR, they launched a third edition of the venerable RPG and revitalized the tabletop RPG industry†. It meant business for many other publishers, too: an edition of the rules was released under an open-source license. The effort, championed by marketing man Ryan S. Dancey at Wizards, was a smart move. TSR killed itself as they saturated the market with too many product lines, a huge mess of different game worlds, adventures and campaign settings. The diversification would split their fan base and damage the company: surely, the public loved the variety, but individual product sales were poor. By focusing on a small set of core books and supplements, but opening the rule set for anybody, WotC would capitalize on their best assets while third parties would fill the market gaps and take the risks.

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Notas:

1. † 3rd edition was a huge hit: 300,000 player handbook books the first month alone. A huge success in the dead tree RPG industry, not so much compared to videogame revenue. [↩]

This is not only a welcome post, but a welcome back too, as I’ve been using this address on and off for a personal blog. It was more dead than alive, though, and only due to recent developments I’ve found time to launch it again. Expect to see here biased opinions, one-sided reviews and the occasional vile article or two.

I write on games and technology issues. I’m a game programmer by trade but a game player by choice and I’ve been playing games since the 80s, so you can expect the occasional old man rant or two. You’ve noticed I’m writing in English, a language which I seldom use in the real world. For my future grammars and spelling mistakes, I apologize in advance.