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  1. #1

    FG Legacy support for 3.5E/Pathfinder in the years to come?

    I realize there are people who are going to either start laughing their butts off at me or make snarky comments after reading this and I will do my best to take it in good stride :P .. having said that...

    I am slowly... ever so slowly ... piecing together a campaign with my own home brewed adventures/modules.. I'm doing it in my spare time when I'm not doing the dad thing ;) and it's progressing at a very slow pace (I'm very , very demanding of myself as far as the role playing element ... fully fleshed out NPC's with their own backstories and pictures to give the players more "oomph" as far as people to interact with .... writing up as much "flavor text" as possible to describe as many possible player reactions I can think of that I can just drop into an FG game session to speed things along instead of typing it up on the spot ,though of course I will resort to typing stuff up on the spot if I have to --- I know I know the players will surprise me with something I didn't anticipate , but after decades of RPG'ing I'd like to think I can make an educated guess as to which way they'll jump at least some of the time ;) ... looking up good combat maps to use....writing stats for the NPC's - that last part takes FOREVER I tell you ! ) ... given my campaign takes PC's from level one up through level eighteen or nineteen I don't expect it be done for, bare minimum, three or four years.

    (and yep I know I know , people are going to tell me " Don't do that, players may have no interest in what you're writing up and want to go off in an entirely different direction"... I've built up a "crew" of gamers over my years of FG'ing who more or less like the same things I do far as really getting into the RP aspect and if I tell them " Look, sorry for the limited railroading but the campaign was designed around the concept that the kingdom of Cygnar gives you a mission to go save the innocents and your PC's choose to go on the mission", I know they'll go along with it as opposed to saying " Screw Cygnar we're going to go work for the other guys!" ... long as I make the missions interesting and fun enough which I have every intention of doing ;) ... also I'll do my best not to fall into the classic " there's only ONE way to solve this mission and that's it" trap too, will try to brainstorm different possible player approaches to solving the problem in question.. and of course try to write my adventures up in enough detail to be prepared to do "spur of the moment" stuff when the players inevitably do something I hadn't anticipated ;) :P .. but anyways...)....

    I've been encouraged to see I'm not the only one on here who loves D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder :) .. D&D 4th edition and 5th edition gets praise as being streamlined and moving gameplay along faster and I can see how that would appeal to a lot of people.. but I'm a big fan of 3.5E due to the sheer level of customization you can put into it far as NPC and PC character design (which is the trade off far as the rules admittedly being much more complex than 4th or 5th edition , which I realize can bog game play down at times when you're running 3.5E)... that and I'd really rather not make a 180 degree turn and start re-writing all my NPC's in 5th edition format now that I've started writing them with 3.5 stats :P .. that and the older IK books inherently support D&D 3.5E which gives me a big advantage too.

    So I guess this is a question aimed more at the FG developers.. right now I know when you purchase an FG full license, according to the store link it includes rulesets for "D&D 3.5E, D&D 4E, D&D 5E and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game"

    In the years to come .. say four or five years from now (hopefully there will still be an audience for D&D 3.5/pathfinder by then ! :P ) ... do you think FG will continue to have built in support for D&D 3.5? It would suck if years later I finally get my campaign up and running only to discover that FG is no longer supporting D&D 3.5 :( .. I know I know, D&D 3rd edition rules were introduced in 2003 and still have a fan base here on FG over 12 years later (especially thanks to Pathfinder and the whole open game license thing) ... still, just wondering what the FG developers take is on this...

  2. #2
    Although I can't speak for them directly, I think I know Moon, Doug and Zeus well enough to say that I can't envision 3.5E/PF NOT being supported for a long, long while.

    The other thing that gives me hope is that you can still find 2E and ever 1E Rulesets around - OK, they may not be 100% up-to-date because they're Community Dev work, but still...

    So, with these two things in mind I can't see it being much of an issue, personally.

    And if the worst comes to the worst you can always move over to my Übergame Ruleset (when I get it done ) - its very, very close to 3.5E and the conversion will be a snap.

    And I wouldn't worry about what people think/say - its a legitimate concern (and/or similar concerns) that has been voiced by others, so you're not alone

    Just my $0.02 worth

    Cheers
    Last edited by dulux-oz; July 4th, 2015 at 04:46.
    Dulux-Oz

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  3. #3
    ddavison's Avatar
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    I've consulted my crystal 8 ball of seeing and the result came back, "most assuredly so".

    All kidding aside, overall popularity tends to focus us a bit more on one thing over another but it doesn't mean we plan to abandon our older stuff either. If you look at the least popular systems today (at least as they relate to FG), they are Iron Heroes, Arcana Evolved, BRP and Mutants & Masterminds. Those systems might have a few wrinkles and warts in their implementation within FG and not have the latest bells and whistles but they are still working for the most part. D20 Modern was in that state until recently and was revamped thanks to a new community dev. Call of Cthulhu, C&C , Savage Worlds and RMC all got recently updated but were starting to show some age for a while. I think that 3.5E and Pathfinder are still fairly popular today, so I doubt you'd have much to worry about.

  4. #4

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    I just can't imagine 3.5 / pathfinder not being in FG. First of all, it started that open gaming licence and secondly the rulesets can't be copyrighted. The mechanics I mean. So why would they subtract from their product instead of adding to it. I wouldn't worry one bit.

    I commend you for the work you put in to entertain your friends. And having friends to play with and understand and likes your style of telling stories is very important. There are two main reasons why I don't run online games with "strangers" on FG. I have a way of doing things, and seeing how others play rpgs, I don't think I could run campaigns like that - and since I suffer from a paincondition that makes my availability highly chaotic, regular gaming is not an option.

    Personally I too have a "narrow" story in which my players get to do their stuff. But I've abandoned the "there is only one solution" way of doing things, since I personally think it retracts from the importance of the characters. What I do, personally, is to insert what I call "breakpoints" in my storytelling. At these breakpoints I present a clear choice to my players. Lets say: do they kill a guy or spare him? Do they go left or right. That sort of thing. But what is important is that the choices the players are meaningful and have a real impact upon their experience.

    After nearly 24 years of gaming, I've come to the conclusion that players want to immerse themselves in good stories. Interesting worlds. And, if you give them a chance to have a say in the story, they will love it even more.

    Anyways... those are just my rambling musings. I would just carry on and keep doing what you're doing. And if your players are entertained, you're doing it right.

    Game on!


    Vires Animi

  5. #5
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    5e is the number one RPG game being played on all platforms right now.
    Pathfinder is still #2 and 3.5e is either 3rd or 4th.
    I think ddavison's crystal ball is telling the truth.

  6. #6
    You don't have anything to worry about, also look at PCGen for your npc's.

  7. #7
    Thanks guys ! And I feel like I should give you all an especially big thank you for taking the time to post replies this close to or on July 4th I thought I'd be the only one here on the forums today ! :P This is definitely some hard core dedication to the hobby of RPG'ing we all love so much :) ...

    Thanks for the kind words as well from you all :) ... viresanimi you pretty much read my mind ;) ... I'm going to do my best to make them "sympathetic bad guys"... sure they're doing evil things but because of ("insert tragic background here") that's revealed to the players as flashbacks (have kind of a strange concept going where I'll try to make the RPG seem like a TV show with "camera changes" to things the players see even if their PC's don't, just like a TV show .. we'll see if the players take to it or not once I explain my reasoning behind it ;) but anyways ...) ... and yep will definitely have alternate scenarios planned out ... do they try to befriend and/or reform the bad guy? Then " X " happens... do they say " Nope, sorry dude what you did was unforgivable you're going down " then " Y " happens ... and of course the inevitable " Z " scenario where some PC's are sympathetic to the bad guy and others flat out try to kill him or her :P (in which case insert init rolls here to see if a PC manages to kill off the bad guy before another PC can stop first PC ) ... followed by in-forum discussions to make DARN sure the players are okay in real life with any PC on PC conflict that results (I plan on laying out some ground rules too first , please don't try to kill your fellow PC's, even "just one hit point of lethal damage" still probably won't be appreciated by your fellow players et cetera.. if the players I have in mind are available when I finally have this thing up and running shouldn't be an issue anyways ;) ) ..

    And Nylanfs that is one awesome program thanks so much for the link ! :) If my google-fu is correct you helped design it? That's some really outstanding work in my humble opinion ! :) This will help a lot ! :)

    This is very reassuring (far as the likelihood 3rd edition will be around for some time to come ) thanks everyone ! :)

  8. #8
    Oh dear god no, I just handle the PR and occasional data work for a book here or there for it.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Nylanfs View Post
    Oh dear god no, I just handle the PR and occasional data work for a book here or there for it.
    Spoken like a true Marketing/PR Guy - go on, get your hands dirty in some coding! You know you want too!
    Dulux-Oz

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