Suffering and success.
Hasbro being the worst, yet again
BG3’s only sin is having to be tied to the worst owner in tabletop gaming. Thank god Larian is independent.
Larian pls make a new series based on the Pathfinder ruleset. I think the success of BG3 has helped the mainstream to get used to DnD ruleset. Although Pathfinder is more complex, I think they have the chops to make it more accessible to the masses.
I thought the whole idea of Pathfinder was to simplify D&D. It’s more complex?
Pathfinder was to get around WotC dropping D&D 3.5. Paizo was started by veteran D&D writers to sell adventures, which they still do as adventure paths, not a system. When WotC updated to 4e, meaning no more print books that Paizo could reference, Pathfinder was a way to print new 3.5e PHBs and Monster Manuals.
Paizo didn’t initially change much. There were a few balance tweaks. The books were definitely better laid out than 3.5. The players did the math on things like combat maneuvers in advance. In practice the game played pretty much the same, my groups jumped over seamlessly.
Having run and played both, I do think Pathfinder 2e is counterintuitively simpler in play than 5e D&D. 5e plays fluidly almost immediately, move and act. PF2e is pretty demanding for the first hour or three, the three action economy and Conditions ™ are an armful initially, and many players need to unlearn some D&D habits. Once a player has below average system mastery PF2e is as fluid as 5e. Beyond that PF2e shines. The rules scale better to complex scenarios, giving players more clear options of how they could act and giving the GM a better framework to figure out exactly what someone needs to roll. I also think it’s easier for players to go from average to good system mastery in Pathfinder.
For new players in session 1 D&D is simpler, in session 5 Pathfinder pulls even or maybe ahead, and in session 50 Pathfinder still sort of works where D&D falls apart.
PF2e character customization, though, is much more complicated, which some people like and others do not.
Eh, yes and no.
Pathfinder 1e was pretty much just straight-up continuing D&D 3.5e, but with some tweaks. Pathfinder 2e overhauled a lot of stuff, often simplifying things, but still pretty complex.
Compared to D&D 5e, Pathfinder has more rules, but those rules often make things easier, or (IMO) get you more return for the effort. So, for example: The feat list is bigger and more complicated, but in practice, it means you only need to look at a handful of them when you level up, which is easier (and the rules give you guidelines for swapping things out if you don’t like them). The monk has more decisions to make with stances and attack types, but that’s… kind of what you want with a monk to make combat interesting. There are rules for boats, and holy shit how does 5e not have rules for boats.
The last example might sound silly, but it’s part of what convinced me to switch. It’s an annoying omission in and of itself, but also speaks to a broader pattern of 5e just not supporting Dungeon Masters, letting them fix the either broken or incomplete rules, or else take the blame for them. Pathfinder actually supports
DungeonGame Masters, as though their time, effort, and fun were just as valuable as anyone else’s. /rantPathfinder 2e is what I’d play if I wanted something like 5e, but runs differently. If I wanted something similar, I’d pick something else, but that’s a longer, even more off topic discussion to go into unprompted. :P
That sounds cool. My only exposure to Pathfinder was the Pathfinder: Kingmaker game, which felt a lot like the predecessor to Baldur’s Gate 3. I haven’t played it on Table Top. I’d definitely try it if someone had the books though. I already have a lot of D&D books, which makes it my go-to game.
They just launched some new Pathfinder books that are effectively pathfinder 2.x, with a lot of small (and some larger) tweaks, but technically the previous 2e books are still able to be used interchangeably.
To that end, there’s a Humble Bundle going on where you can pick up a TON of that legacy 2e content in official PDF form, so if you’re interested you should check it out! I believe most tiers include the Beginner Box, which has an intro adventure for new players and includes some sort of single player content that would give you a glimpse into how the game runs :)
Yeah, it’s definitely in the same wheelhouse as modern D&D, so if you like that general experience but want to try something new, it’s worth checking out. It’s my pick when I want high adventure, superheroic fantasy, with engaging set piece encounters, which is the vibe both games are going for.
@machinaeZERO@lemm.ee is also right on the money. There’s going to be a revision coming up, but the old stuff is still compatible and in Humble Bundle right now. (Pathfinder does that periodically, and they’re pretty sweet deals!) One more thing is that all the rules are free, legitimately. There’s a wiki called The Archives of Nethys, which has ALL the rules content from ALL the books. Paizo allows it, and explicitly gave the site the green light to do that. The books are still nice to have, and you still need them if you want adventures or lore, but you never have to buy a book just to get some rules in it, like a class or feat or whatever.
Yes it is. Pathfinder made for builders who want to create a character with hundreds of options to choose from. It is rule heavy in the tradition of dnd 3rd edition. Pathfinder 2e is much more refined, but I doubt they went away from this philosophy. It’s still very rule heavy.
I was impressed by how good Larian made BG3 in spite of using tabletop mechanics, but the Divinity games still had much better game play. I hope they start a new IP and add more of the roleplay options that made BG3 great, but with their own mechanics (hopefully without a charisma stat)
I hated the magical + physical armor parts in the D:OS mechanic. I think using a DnD ruleset instead of their own helps BG3 mainstream success. This is anecdotal evidence but I have a friend that is unable to play D:OS2 but loves BG3 very much.
I can understand why people familiar with DnD mechanics and setting would find it easier to get into BG3, but they’re certainly not easier to learn. You have 4 separate tabs of actions, loaded with different icons (half of which you probably won’t use). I’ve played 5e for years and even I found it pretty cumbersome, especially when 90% of the time your best option is just to press attack. Now that I say it though, maybe that’s why it’s easier. Divinity’s armour made sure you engaged with a variety of different classes and abilities whereas you can go through BG3 just whacking everything on the head and ignoring all your abilities. I’m glad they reached so many people with BG3 but I hope they go back to great tactical combat in the future
This would be my absolute dream. I loved BG3 but the weakest part of me was being based on D&D 5e. PF2 is just a better system in pretty much every way imo.
If they could make a PF2 CRPG, that would be incredible.
Isn’t there kingmaker and path of righteous alr?
I played em both and even did a secret ending run. Love both but it’s based on PF1e and it’s still built with RTWP by default. I love the various origin characters that Larian made for BG3 and D:OS2 that made your party members feel like real characters that have their own motivations unlike other RPGs that have your companion to be more like henchmen.
Personally I would love if they made something based on FATE. I would have absolutely no clue how to do it in a CRPG, but I love the system for actual pen&paper.
I don’t really think it is possible. FATE rules do not contain a game in a traditional sense and the game itself is created during play via Aspects. A computer game that attempts to do FATE right would just end up with a FUDGE adaptation. Maybe when the LLMs are much better…
Just play Wrath of the righteous.
Any chance you might be able to give some highlights of what you consider significant differences between 5e and PF1/2 (your choice)? My only experience is 5e tabletop and BG3.
PF2 quick highlights:
Action economy. You get three actions and can spend them however you want. Attack three times? Sure! (Note: there’s a -5 penalty for the second attack and a -10 penalty for the third attack on the same turn (note: some feats can mitigate this eg. one that drops them to -3 and -6 respectively)). Move three times? Yeah! Move attack move? Attack move attack? Cast a spell (typically consumes two actions) and then attack? Sweet. Got a feature on your spell where you can funnel more actions into it for a bigger effect? Very cool.
Degrees of Success: Roll more than ten below the DC? Oof, that’s not just a miss, that’s a miss where you also fall on your ass. Ten or more over? That’s a critical! You get sweet (and clearly defined) bonus effects. Roll a natural 20 or 1? That bumps you up or down a success tier instead of being an automatic failure or success. You might just be turning a critical miss into a regular miss on a 20 (given extreme DCs) or even a regular miss into a hail mary shot, like Bard hitting that gap between Smaug’s scales.
Counteract as a broad mechanic: Counterspell is now just one implementation of a greater and robust counter mechanic, wherein you make a bid and possibly get a better result. The counterspell example is that you can counter a spell of up to three spell slot levels higher than the one you spent just by rolling high (see degrees of success above). This is also how you disarm traps and dispel auras.
Counterspell itself gets way more granular. It is very different depending on which class you’re pulling it from, which means it feels way more satisfying, not having been smashed into a one-size-fits-all shape. You can build it up with feats, playing with the resource economy and requirements. My personal favorite is a feat which allows you (GM’s discretion) to counter spells with thematically relevant spells, like fizzling a fireball with create water. It’s intricate, it’s interesting, you get way more control over your kit, and you get to feel really cool when you do cool stuff. Which applies to the system on the whole.I really appreciate that, it does sound like a lot of fun!
Footnote: stuff’s complicated but in a good way
There are consistent rules that are written out pretty verbosely. This can be scary at first but also ‘generally’ prevents a lot of table discussion. There are tons of characters choice and it is pretty hard to make a low power/high power character; also encounter/monster building rules actually work. Price of this is that there are a lot of options that were balanced out of their fun. Thankfully they have been getting better at this.
Personally I think 5e sits at a weird point. There are games like PF2, 13th Age, etc. that deliver better gaming frameworks with depth and there are better ‘simple’ games like WWN and numerous retroclones that provide the bare minimum and empower GM to improvise. Where as 5e has had an approach more like the former to the rules interpretation and character complexity, with tons of unofficial official rules clarifications and specific character, while having the actual rules written out more like the latter group providing very little guidance to how to use them. It awes with fun abilities yet provides little on how they interact. It is not a bad game if the GM knows what they want out of it, but most games I have been in was a disparate mix of ‘things others do’. A lot of the blame lies with the DMG.
PF2e is a lot more approachable than 1e. It’s a lot harder to truly botch a character in 2e, while preserving variety of options. The 3 action system is also much more intuitive than action types.
They have Divinity already, why go looking for other IPs?
Forgotten realms is basically the IP for standard fantasy. This is an enormous strength for an IP. Divinity doesn’t have this strength, it doesn’t speak naturally to everyone like this.
Frankly I was really excited for the Divinity project they dropped for BG3, precisely because I like the “high middle age/early modern” feel of, eg. Pillars of Eternity that FR kinda lacks.
I’ve been browsing older Forgotten Realms sourcebooks and the love that the authors put into those is amazing. It hurts to see D&D and the worlds I grew up loving destroyed by a soulless entity that cares only about profit.
Hasbro continuing to make shit decisions on behalf of WotC, the only sector of the company keeping it afloat.
You see, if they fire everyone from the division, it’ll make even more profit. ez
Ah, the Jack Welch method.
(Seriously, fuck that guy. He was a pioneer among bloodsucking CEOS, and part of it was mass layoffs to boost short-term profits.)
Honest question: what’s bad about firing the “bad performers”?
If they wanted to fire the “bad performers” then they’d be firing the CEOs and higher ranked people, not those actually making the products work.
Nothing, if that’s genuinely what you’re doing.
But it’s dangerous to incentivize it, because you get short-term gains by firing anyone, whether or not it’s the right long-term call.
It’s also just difficult to identify bad performers. Fundamental attribution error is a bitch. And because we’re really bad at seeing the entire system surrounding someone’s productivity, we tend to blame operator error only to find that the next operator we hire has the exact same problem.
Exactly. It’s just goosing the numbers. The company made this much in profit, and the cost-cutting from firing people will save money immediately, so it looks great… on paper… for a little while. It doesn’t matter if the company is gutted, because the CEO and most of the investors will dip before things get too bad, and go onto the next thing. The employees will suffer and the customers will be upset, but CEOs don’t answer to them, they answer to shareholders, and shareholders just want the line to go up this quarter.
There’s no one there left to defend the IP, so they can do evil things. I’m guessing it’s as intended.
I think Barbie would like a word
That’s Mattel.
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Barbie is Mattel, not Hasbro.
Fuck I mixed up my board game doll companies lol
laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner
Yeah because that’s what we want of the ones in charge of publishing, administering and providing support for some of the most played games in the world now and historically: leanness! The fewer people to take care of important things, the better! 🤦
I know that he’s talking to investors rather than players, but come on! Also, there’s nothing “modern” about stupidly trying to increase profits via mass layoffs without expecting blowback and for quality to suffer. That’s some 1700s bullshit right there.
Also, when your company is ailing (read: Not making more profit than last year, no matter what ocean of money your managers are swimming in), fire the good parts. That’ll fix it!
Imagine if we quit our jobs if we didn’t get an annual raise. Maybe we could afford housing.
I’ve survived layoffs at companies where we were told that following the cuts, we were going to get leaner and more agile and more efficient.
I’m sure you’ll be just shocked to learn that what actually happened is I ended up doing twice as much work to pick up the laid off people’s slack, and at the end of the year got a smaller bonus than the previous year, along with a raise that didn’t cover inflation. Overall company profits, of course, hit a record high.
The same Hasbro that tried to make a land grab for all D&D derivative content by changing their Open Game License to grant them irrevocable, perpetual rights to it. This is not a nice company as they demonstrate time and again.
So maybe it’s time the RPG community stopped thinking Hasbro are ever going to change, mourn for what D&D has become, but move onto something else.
The OGL License happened after Larian teamed up with Hasbro to make Baldur’s Gate 3. Thankfully Larian is still independent so it can continue on to make better RPGs without Hasbro.
Thankfully Larian is still independent
Was getting worried there and about to Google more on the subject. Happy to hear that.
Shout-out to Pathfinder, paizo, and their new license!
This is mostly a USA problem. :) There are so many great pnp systems out there. But there will be a learning curve.
What? We don’t have a plethora of other games here in the US? I’ll have to remind the owners of all those shops that those hundreds of other games they’re selling currently only exist outside of the US. How embarrassing for us…
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And if one aren’t in the mood to learn something completely new, theres always Pathfinder.
Yeah Pathfinder 2e is good. It’s more crunchy than 5e, but that also means there are rules for most situations that come up. I like the 3 action system, much better than the old, “main action, swift action, move action, move- equivalent action” thing the old version had going on.
I have a group of friends, half in same town as me, half on the other side of the country, that get together once a week ion discord and play dnd via a self hosted foundry virtual tabletop docker. We used to play 5e but we decided to try out pathfinder 2e to see if we liked it and we haven’t gone back, pathfinder is fantastic. The flexibility with the actions makes it feel like you always get a chance to do something and you aren’t just wasting your turn when you are getting into position or whatever. Feels close enough to 5e that most of your intuition will be pretty close, just use a different website to look shit up. Highly recommend pathfinder!
For the likely large overlap this audience might have with dnd, it didn’t make 100mil a year so it gets to eat shit. It doesn’t help that the video game license isn’t counted in that total. Other Hasbro brands do make 100mil a year.
I thought magic was one. It is surprising to see layoffs there.
Anyway, of course a corporation does evil shit. The only moral is the line going up.
MtG made over a billion dollars. From what I can see WotC, products/services/licenses, make up over 3 billion of Hasbro’s 5.something billion revenue.
Yeah, card crack is real. They’ve been whaling and getting kids into gambling since the 90s. Don’t know why lay offs there. Line go up just a little more probably.
It’s not that. It’s that the fewer people they have to pay the more money they get to keep. It’s incredibly short sighted and self destructive. But they don’t care at this point.
That or they’re planning to lean on generative ai to produce content
IIRC they contract and credit the artists. I don’t think theyveven use any in-house srtists.
They’ve been caring less about artists and the community in recent years.
At cons, they used to pay for artists hotels and give them free booths to set up, now artists get nothing and have to pay something like $750 for a booth.
I think that’s more about WotC giving up on cons and tourneys than giving up on artists. If they’re having events at all, they’re not putting as much money into them as they used to.
And the generative card properties?
You mean using AI to design the card’s mechanics? I’d like to think we are still a ways away from that, specially since they’d have to train their on model that adjusts not only for the text generated but what the actual card would do in a game. they could use it for french vanilla cards I suppose, but it’s not like those take a human that long to make anyway.
1100 layoffs and they don’t use in house artists? I find that hard to believe but you might be right.
Yeah, my partner really likes the art but we’re both aware that MtG was just the real world precursor to the current micro-transaction culture.
MTG used to have 2 or 3 releases a year. Enough to keep things fresh, but not an instance amount.
When I was working in a Game Store in the Early 2020’s, there as more than one release a week, and a major release about once a month. They set the milking machine to maximum.
Guess Larian just got a load of designers and writers. Such a shame as 5th ed was a real highlight, but now a lot of people seem to be heading back to pathfinder like the 4th ed days. Luckily, the Divinity universe can stand on its own and there’s a wealth of other tabletop rulesets waiting for their amazing adaptions
I don’t think it’s too controversial to suggest that 5e mechanics are not the strength of BG3. It would be arguably praised more if it kept the world design of BG3 and replaced the combat to have the spell scope of DO2 with the basic actions of 5e (aka shove, which arguably BG3 tweaked anyway to make it fun in combat)
I’ll miss the design approach of the game but BG3 was just a big advertisement to how good a D:OS3 will be
Revisiting DOS2 after playing BG3, the game feels like Splatoon: Painted surfaces everywhere, all the time.
I’m quite partial to FreeDOS myself.
I agree. DOS2 was, mechanically, a superior game. Porting 5e into videogame format isn’t as clean.
I made the change almost a year ago now after all the OGL nonsense they tried to pull and I honestly believe Pathfinder is a much more fun game. My entire table enjoys it more than 5e and they are a real variety of different player types.
I’ve almost bought DIvinity Original Sin a couple of times, is it any good?
I prefer D:OS 1s story and played-through world to D:OS 2’s, but D:OS 2 has a lot more polish. Both are excellent games and worth your time.
Dos2 is really really good, if you like Larian games
I like Larian games they finish… Looking at your Tyranny!
It’s slow like a TTRPG. If you liked Baldur’s Gate then you will like Divinity.
If one is too slow for you then you won’t like the other.
I personally can’t stand either but I’m not a TTRPG fan.
I have a hankering to go back to it regularly and I’m playing on the Switch so it is less smooth, but yes I am a forever fan of Larian Studioes after experiencing just a tithe of DOS:2. Hard to explain why it is so good, but the mechanics are creative, fun, and challenging. The story is epic and actually epic in scope and the characters are all so fleshed out and the voice acting is professionally done and immaculate. It is very open ended and very long but very very good.
I’m so ready to get the kind of polish and mastery that BG3 has applied to a new game in the Divinity universe. I haven’t finished DOS3, not by a Longshot and don’t have time to play it, but it blew me away and I think about playing it again often. I will one day. It is daunting when you haven’t played a game like that in a while, to continue on. Especially on the harder difficulties lol RIP. Larian is the GOAT game studio up there with From Software and the Zelda team imo.
This just reads to me that Divinity Original Sin 3 is on the far horizon. YES
But no Larian studios Neverwinter 3??? 😢
Somebody needs to make a company shit list so I can avoid them. I got EA, Hasbro, Nestle so far.
spoiler alert though, it’s literally everybody. because everyone else is doing it, it’s not possible to survive as a business in a competitive space without doing, for lack of a better word, the devil’s work. It will take a major social disruption to change this, but it won’t happen in an organized fashion because we as a species are pathetic. The disruption will be the end of the world - North America cracking down the middle due to all the fracking, the Greenland glacier sliding into the ocean all at a go, something like that. FAFO endgame shit, due any minute now anyway.
Okay while I agree it’s everyone.
It is absolutely possible for a single corporation to not be the shittiest possible person in existence. They just can’t be public.
The stock market is the worst thing to ever happen to this country.
The stock market is the worst thing to ever happen to this world. FTFY
One solution is to support government regulation of these industries. Deregulation is the cause of much of this crap.
Well, if you deregulate patents and copyright (that is, abolish them, with only trademark laws remaining), then I’d expect only positive results.
Honestly its kind of extremely crumby that hasbro owns the wizards
The DnD games from the 90s on steam went up in price because of the success of BG3 they are now on sale forbtheir old price lol
Oof, glad I got all the Infinity Engine games in a Humble Bundle before BG3 released
Good luck avoiding most of them. They own everything.
Nestle doesn’t just make Chocolate…
Create a github repo, put eveey company in the readme
Good idea. I may get on it if there isn’t one already
Not that I know of. Just thought of if because I have seen similar uses before. GitHub has GitHub pages, if you want to create a website.
Samsung, Ubisoft, Epic, Chiquita, Dole, Apple, …
Pretty much any big corp is gonna be really shitty…
Almost as if capitalism would mean “profits over humanity”. I am shocked.
As am I! Just completely shocked!! And OUTRAGED!! /s
All of them.
“I felt your breath upon my neck; investors’ wants as cold as death.”
I can only ask how much cocaine remained on the table when they finally decided to do this. Not much, I’d wager.
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Haven’t played BG3 but wtf sense does it make to layoff these team(s)?
Plenty of people paid for the game and enjoyed it and it won GOTY.
You misunderstand. Larian is the company that made the BG3 video game, and they haven’t laid people off.
However it’s a licensed game. Baldur’s Gate and D&D are IPs that are owned by a company called Wizards of Coast. And Wizards is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is forcing layoffs at Wizards, specifically on the D&D team because it doesn’t print money as efficiently as say, Magic the Gathering does.
The people at Wizards, i.e the people who actually make D&D are no doubt passionate wonderful people. But Hasbro (and probably some of the Wizards management) are awful corporate parasites determined to suck every last penny from their properties.
They don’t give a shit how loved a product is, if it’s not making $100M per year then it’s basically worthless to them and they won’t fund it. So layoffs happen.
They laid off a lot of the MtG team as well.
Those AI mtg generators probably got admin too rabid at the thought of not paying employees…
then it’s basically worthless to them
Cool. Make it independent again.
No-o-o, because then it may make money for others, think about all the lost profits. Better shut them completely /s
This is sadly a much more likely scenario
That’s two separate products and companies you’re thinking about…
CEO is aptly named, at least.
I kept trying to figure out the joke about the name Swen Vincke and was failing. Cocks. It was right there in front of me everyone. It was Cocks.
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, for those of us who can’t help but read comments before reading articles
stop whoring yourselves to these evil fuckups
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They are owned by Hasbro? Why?
TSR, which was the company that originally made D&D got bought by Wizards of the Coast, which made Magic the Gathering. Then Wizards got bought by Hasbro.
Every product you love has been acquired by a large company that got bought by a larger company and then turned to shit. Until the government stops blocking mergers and acquisitions, this trend will continue.
starts*, but yeah
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why Do pEoPlEs LiVeLihOoDs mAtTeR if my GaEm WoRkS
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shut the fuck up already
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