Seems to mostly be core rulebooks and hardcovers, so the least necessary to own parts. I guess they're trying to pass the price increases onto the whales rather than their more irregular consumers then.

For sure. Or just chat with them outside of the session some time

Hmm, perhaps I could leave room for people to level up at the end of the session while I pull each of them aside to explain the items and that the curses will drive the plot

Yeah I mean, basically anything can work with the right campaign, players, characters, etc. But my opinion doesn't matter; your player's opinions are the ones that do.

I'll also add that the element of surprise is overrated. You think it will be cool when the player discovers this effect at a dramatic moment but it is far, FAR more likely that they never discover it at all. Or they only discover it after it's been frustratingly negating everything they've tried to do so far. Or that they discover the curse at an un-dramatic moment and make the rational decision to just never trigger it again. That's why I say it's much better to tell the players ahead of time and set the expectation that being cursed will be a major part of their story; then they can DECIDE to have their character "accidentally" trigger the curse at a dramatic moment or what have you. You won't have to tell the player "you're compelled to yell now" they'll automatically go "GOD I just feel like YELLING right now FOR SOME REASON!" and feel good about playing their character instead of feeling bad that you're taking over their character.

Good advice, tyvm.

All of these players are new to ttrpg in general. I wanted this to be more like a homebrew adventure path for them, since I created the characters that they could choose from. I wanted the curses to be ironic to the character. For example the Greater Charlatan Gloves are a huge boon to a low level rogue but the rogue will probably never know about the curses until the consequences of their actions become apparent, the Champion is the party tank and so gets a very powerful weapon but their weapon is unreliable and could kill enemies before they're given a chance to accept mercy which could be anathema in some situations, etc.

Any advice for this campaign goal?

With something more than an incidental curse, you really need player buy-in. I recommend meeting with each player, telling them you'd like to give them a cursed item that will be a major part of their character's arc throughout the story, and the broad strokes of what you have in mind for their particular curse. Then, be receptive to feedback on that. Good players will recognize that this is a roleplay opportunity for them and try to fit it into the arc they had in mind for their character, but they may want the details tweaked to fit their particular narrative goals...eg to make the curse an ironic reflection of their flaws or a nod to their backstory or whatever. I recommend you try to approach this premise with a collaborative mindset.

Yes each item is tailored to the respective PC. the Warhammer for the Grandeur Champion, the Charlatan Gloves for the Thief Rogue, the armor for the Healing Cleric, the buckler for the Rascal Swashbuckler, bow for the Precision Ranger, and wand for the Elemental Sorcerer. All of them have stories about what caused their curses, such as an inexperienced blacksmith trying to impress their mentor with the Warhammer, but pouring their self-doubt and fear of failure into the magical runes

The first one could deal enough damage that on a crit fall it could knock a PC into dying outright and potentially do massive damage. Might just want to make that really clear to the player.

Otherwise I'm not really a fan of cursed items and without knowing exactly the motivation id say they're ok as long as you're ok with the possibility that players might just largely ignore the items.

You say you're working on a campaign though, do you have players? If the intent is for these to become a PCs "signature" item then i would create the items specifically for each PC for best chance of them not just being ignored.

Oh, I love the burning and decayed versions. I wish I had them a year ago, when I had my party dealing with an exploding ship in dock.

I do hope someone updates the Iron Gods Adventure Path for the 2E rules at some point.

Glad to hear there is finally a StarFinder beginner box coming. The cross over sounds neat too.

My guess is paizo people know this but its outside pressure that lead to it. I think they know its a bad idea but it does save some expense. Seems to me they are trying hard to not take to much away from AoN.

...m... Yes, it's totally possible they have a consultant or something in their ear telling them not to "waste" time and money on a partner that has provided them no real (i.e. measured) value. I know some of my last employer's worst decisions cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars up front before they ever cost them good well and development time.

People do love paying large sums of money so they can have a scapegoat. "Accountability sink" is a phrase than entered my lexicon several months ago, coming from Dan Davie's The Unaccountability Machine, though the context I was introduced to it was why everyone with an MBA, or with a job title that starts with "Director" or ends with "Officer" seem to have lost their minds over plausible-but-wrong text generation. But it's all the same instinct: "Someone else told me to do it, so it's not my fault."

...i wouldn't be surprised if, after seeing both their inventory and the market value of their developed products drop close to zero, paizo panicked and brought in an 'expert' business consultant to help right the ship: and here we are, by-the-book reactions...

It looks to me like the general feeling online is that this is great. People are happy with it.

Personally, I feel differently. Had the initial action of Paizo been doing this, we'd have been outraged. It only appears good because Paizo first threatened to do so much worse. Imagine someone threatening to cut off your arm then changing their mind and saying "oh no, you can keep your arm, I'm just going to take a couple of fingers." And then you thank them for it!

This statement:

• Still removes the art from AoN
• Gives some vague promise about putting some of the art back in the community use policy "soon"
• Gives AoN early access to PDFs, but significantly less early than they used to get (presumably, Demiplane is still getting the much earlier time)—AoN seems to claim this will lead to "minimal delays", an implicit admission that supporting things on the date of release will no longer be possible
• Does not involve an apology or admission of culpability from Paizo

So sorry, but this fails to work for me.

That doesn't come across as apologia to me at all. It really all just echoes my own thoughts on the issue. Paizo is desperate, and they're trying desperately to do things to make money, without properly thinking through the consequences of it. And they're making irrational decisions on the basis of data that doesn't capture the complete picture.

Longer term, I honestly think they would benefit greatly from moving out of the US. The kind of fraudulent behaviour from Diamond and JP Morgan would be far less likely to fly in a court in a civilised country. They're already a company that treats their workers at a standard that is far greater than is normal in America, so it really wouldn't be that big a shift for them, in terms of culture, to move to Canada or Australia.

man I don't have time but really like this guy. will have to check out his perspective at some point.

I've only gotten about 20 minutes into the video, but I've already hit some things I think I can comment on.

Some of what I'm about to say may come across as apologetics for Paizo, and I want to be clear up front that that is not my intent. I firmly believe that Paizo has made a poor and short-sighted decision on this, and that they've shot themselves in the foot for absolutely no reason whatsoever. But I've also spent the last few years working for a company that's done many of the same sorts of things, and I think I understand what they're doing right now.

For context, I have spent the past decade working as a data scientist and data analyst in the video games industry. My last company was one of these low-profile tech companies that did huge business during lockdowns and instead of using their windfall to prepare for the post-lockdown world, management instead treated the pandemic as their Arab Spring moment (the Arab Spring being the biggest factor in Twitter becoming a household name, and in the evening news turning into little more than a Twitter recap show). The pandemic was not their Arab Spring, though, and they spent the entire five years I worked there chasing that high and fending off their investors as their numbers slipped into the red.

Paizo is not a digital games or services company. It would not surprise me to discover that their business intelligence person is also, like, their accountant or something. The only data they would have that is their own comes from their website traffic and website sales, and their PnL statements. Everything else is either filtered through third party partners, or is totally inaccessible to them. And businesses today live off of LARPing data-driven decision making.

So, what data are they likely to have?

They'd have their website traffic logs, but I actually doubt they track that too intensively. Maybe they're tracking which IPs are landing on their homepage, backlinks, and probably data about logins, but there's probably many analytics hooks until you get to the store.

In the store, I'd expect them to have hooks for viewing a product, adding a product to the cart, checking out, and sales completions.

They would get sales information from Role20 for their various stores, i.e. DriveThruRPG(/Pathfinder Infinite) and Demiplane. For first party titles, we should expect that to be, at the very least, aggregated per-title sales, while things might be more abstract for third party licensed sales.

Then, of course, there are the sales numbers from their distributors -- at least, the ones that are still distributing.

Archives of Nethys doesn't sell any Paizo products, so they're not getting sales figures from AoN. Importantly, though, AoN also doesn't have very many links back to the Paizo website or Paizo store.

If people are buying Paizo products thanks to their usage of the Archives of Nethys website, that fact is invisible to Paizo. Every AoN-triggered sale is actually going to look like they came from Google, and they will be indistinguishable from so-called "organic" sales. They get zero credit for their contribution.

Management, looking at their dashboards -- which, in all likelihood for a place like Paizo is an Excel spreadsheet -- will see that they're spending $X on CnDs, and receiving $Y from Roll20, but $0 from AoN.

For a company that is bleeding to death, this is an issue. They're not thinking about the actual reality of things, they're just looking at what their numbers say, and their numbers say $0 and a miniscule amount of web traffic credited to AoN. Meanwhile, they're spending Z > $0 on servicing AoN (even if Z is small), which starts to look like a rotten deal to someone who is watching their business crumble around them.

It's not real, but they have no numbers in front of them to challenge the idea that it is.

So, what do they do? They cut their lines, and cut their toes off in the process.

I've watched this happen over and over again in my professional life. Management approves something that is very obviously a good idea to anyone watching, management slashes the budget 4 weeks later, a half-baked and half-neutered version of the thing launches with zero fanfare and zero integration, and then it fails to generate revenue. All support for the feature is revoked, and six months later it's removed from the product after 10s of thousands of dollars (or more) have been sunk into it in the least effective way possible. All because they hyper-focused on costs and revenue, and refused to look at the big picture.

I've seen lots of people upset at Paizo for the decision, and I've seen lots of people talking about how the situation with Diamond has caused this, but I've seen very few who seem to be worried about the future of Paizo. But this is the kind of behaviour that management engages in when the ship is sinking. The Diamond lawsuit is going to drag on for much too long, and they are still bound by the exclusivity deal, which means they simply cannot sell their books in major retailers in the US.

But they've also done very little to pivot to new revenue streams. Their eggs are all in this hardcover book business, and they're currently limited in what they can do there. Their regular business model is largely denied to them right now, and they have no backup.

This is a big problem. And everyone is much too focused on the hypocrisy of the company right now, and not the reasons why they're suddenly acting like hypocrites.

Ronald provides a great overview of the whole situation, explaining both sides' views, and rebutting some of the less convincing claims for why Paizo's actions here are justified.

Yeah tbh I'm not sure why, but apparently they do indeed have to remove it.

ignoring the fact that those same images are also on Demiplane, who will continue hosting them after this

That was brought up on their Bluesky post.

As Paizo had to recently lay off multiple people, them cutting costs is logical. Maybe it is not the best way to go about it. When I closed my business I was not making the best decisions near the end. But I did what I thought was best at that time.

why pf1? that was based on the ogl no?

Zagorath Yeah, this is some incredibly poor PR, right down to the vague finger-pointing at the AoN folks for publishing the information. But it's also the kind of head-scratching, short-sighted decision people make when under a lot of pressure, so I understand why Paizo's doing this.

They're wrong, and they just burned a ton of good will for the sake of a few bucks in lawyers fees, but I get it. Actually actively defending the choice is a fun kind of bootlicking, though, and has my days of not taking the Pathfinder communities on those platforms seriously coming to a middle.

HubertManne It will be quite a bit more than that. AoN contains a fair bit of Golarion lore-related text that will need to be removed, and it's likely the pages that contain full chapters of the books will have to be pared down or reworded.

It will be work for the AoN team, and I'm sure they could use some additional volunteers to help out with the process.

They have to remove the art assets, remove all their PF1 content, and they will no longer get access to content ahead of time (which enables them to have it available on the site as of the day it officially releases).