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The "cost" in "sunk cost" is not only, or even primarily, money. It's mostly time and effort. I've only met a single person who started with 5e and didn't want to switch to a different system, and his argument was specifically that he'd spent a lot of mental energy learning 5e and didn't want to "waste" that.

Don't debate people about Pathfider, just invite your friends to play because you like it and want to share with them. People kind of shut down when it's presented like a challenge.

The one point you brought up that I don't really mentioned elsewhere was that, for some people, D&D is just a casual hobby that they play _maybe_ 4 hour a week, at most. It took them how long to learn 5e? Are they really going to do that _again?_

For me, the OGL nonsense was the first D&D drama I actively engaged with. During it, the future of a game I enjoy was in a difficult and uncertain spot, so I bought 3rd party books, and I bought 3 new TTRPGs, Monster of the Week, Call of Cthulhu and Alice is Missing. The biggest factor that decided which ones to invest in wasn’t just price, it was interest. I was interested in trying other genres that D&D wasn’t a good fit for. And I talked with my group. I informed them that I wanted to start investing in other TTRPGs and sent them ideas for what would interest them. Now, on days when people are unavailable for our normal sessions, we use that time as a testing ground for other RPGs. Cthulhu was a huge hit with my players and now we are about to start our first campaign. It’s very likely that inbetween campaigns, we will try Monster of the Week and Pathfinder, or Numenera or any of the other myriad of PDF TTRPGs my group has picked up. We likely won’t drop D&D anytime soon, but we are playing it less and less often as time passes.

Part of my issue with people not trying new systems is due to the groups I grew up with. Everyone I used to play with (pre-5e) were just super interested in trying *any* new system. Didn't matter what it was or how complex it could be. I feel that *that* love for ttrpgs in general is gone. I haven't met a group that does that since those old groups, since 5e became *THE* game people play.

I found the one thing that worked the best for trying a new system, or campaign setting, with a pre-established group is basically going "Hey, there's something I wanna try, anyone wanna do a one-shot?" Ironically, it's how my group and I got into PF2e, though it helps that most of them were PF1e players before they got tired the power creep. The Power of the One-Shot adventure can be strong, because all you have to commit to is one session if you like it more than that you can keep going, if you disliked it, well you only committed to one session.

The reason I haven't bothered learning Pathfinder is that it doesn't seem to do anything for me. I've tried CoC and Edge of the Empire, because those games allowed me to play a game that is totally different to 5e. This is the advantage other TTRPG's that are focused outside of the fantastical setting have, D&D can't compete because it isn't a horror game or a sci-fi game. Trying to get my players who already struggle with the rules of 5e to learn a brand new system to go on the same types of adventures feels like a waste when we could aim for a totally different experience.

In general there's an actual play network I really like if you wanna showcase a bunch of different systems. It's called the Glass Cannon Network. Their flagship shows and podcasts are Pathfinder, both 1e and 2e, as well as a Starfinder campaign but they make content with a bunch ofbdifferent systems to showcase them for people, including a couple dnd 5e mini campaigns, Call of Cthulu, Delta Green, Blades in the Dark, and many more! If people are interested in a sampling of different systems I highly recommend them. They're also really funny and entertaining

My favorite part of this video is you saying that this was all about how we need to get off of Twitter. You are right and I am glad I understood the purpose from the get go😂

Here are some of the positives of TTRPG games I've played, starting with Pathfinder 2e and ending with 5e - As a GM, Pathfinder 2e is a breeze to prepare for. I get so much faction politics and RP planning done during prep because I'm not spending all that time tinkering with combat balance. For combat I just follow the encounter creation guidelines and it gives me more or less the experience I want. Also magic items, rewards, downtime ... everything just works. From the player perspective, someone else in the comments compared PF2e's heroes to Navy Seals (as opposed to superheroes) and that description is apt. The threat of death is present at all levels, but teamwork makes the dream work. On the other end of the spectrum, Freeform Universal is a fantastic rules-lite narrative engine. It's six degrees of success are so intuitive, I can (and have) built one-shots on the fly for it. Avatar Legends has more narrative guidelines and its balance mechanic is super faithful to the characters in the show. Dungeon World is the familiar fantasy lite. Outside of the core mechanics, it has great advice for the GM to keep narrative beats going. Shadowrun 5e - dice pools are fun. Also, it has probably my favourite lore. Wanderhome - diceless RPG about Studio Ghibli-esque travels. It's all about that semi-nostalgic wanderlust mood. I've also used its character-ties mechanics in session 0 for other games. Fate requires a high trust in your GM and players, so I wouldn't play it with strangers on the internet. But if you have that core group, it's mechanics can be versatile and fit into any genre of any game. Finally, DnD 5e, my first love. It is bonkers fun! A well built wizard can trivialize pretty much every fight. A well-built ranger/fighter can one-shot I think any monster in the OG Monster Manual. The divine soul sorcerer can pump out 300hp of healing on a single turn by level 13. While this can be (is) frustrating for the DM, as a player there are few highs as great as bending the game completely in your favour while being entirely within the ruleset. [Bonus shoutout to Fantasy Age for its stunt system. But since I haven't played or run it, it'd be disingenuous to include it here.]

The video specifically refers to PF2e, but this applies to PF1e as well, and a host of other games. There's this running question of "Why do people keep playing 5e homebrews instead of playing an actual game suited to what they want?" and the answer is that _those people like 5e._ My group is in the midst of pivoting from 5e to PF1e and I'll be honest, I feel like the only one who isn't vibing with it. I dropped out of one game and while I'm tentatively going to be in the next one, I really don't know if it'll stick there either. I'm in another PF game and I've lasted better there... but it's a total Monty Haul game and my character is one of the more "powerful but simple" classes, and we're all so hilariously OP that my frustrations with the system are easy to ignore. I walk up to the monsters, I click the row of macro buttons at the bottom of my Roll20 screen, and the monsters explode into a fountain of gore. There's also a particular upcoming plot beat that I want to see through, but when that's done, I dunno whether I will be too. But my character sheet is a giant Google Sheets document with multiple pages and a fuckton of encoded calculations that I don't understand, and I have to get someone else to help me with it whenever I level up. My numbers are bigger, but so are those of everything I fight, so it's a fairly lateral move. My choices with character building feel much more linear, like there's a "Right" way to build anything, and the other options are wrong. It's so much crunchier, and I never wanted or needed more crunch, so that's more of a detriment than anything else. And, on a purely selfish level, the things I play RPGs for, the heroic fantasy story and the fights, are the things D&D does well enough on its own. The things where it doesn't excel rarely come up as an issue for me, personally, outside of a general "I want the people who _do_ prefer those things to have fun too." But in a situation where I'm the one not enjoying things, my usual response is to just not continue that thing and leave everyone who does like it to continue without me. I'm not about to sit there and try to force them to play 5e. If they don't want to play that, and I don't want to play PF, then I'm the odd one out and the onus is on me to either suck it up or not be involved. I think you made a very good point about comparing the PF fandom's antics to proselytising, because proselytising doesn't actually work. Not at its stated goal, anyway. The success rate of God-fearing folk going out to spread the good news is extremely low. The conversations end up uncomfortable and awkward because humans don't like it when you try to impress your views on them unsolicited. But in the current context, proselytising was never _meant_ to succeed. It's not a recruitment tactic, it's a reinforcement tactic. The people who tell the faithful to go out and spread the word aren't stupid. They know that proselytisers aren't well-liked by the general public. People ignore them, react with hostility, slam doors in their faces, or even start fucking with them and making jokes about being Satanists. This is the point. Proselytisers are sent out with the purpose of getting rejected, belittled, mocked, and insulted, because it pushes them further into the in-group and helps convince them to stay. It reinforces the idea that the world really _is_ cruel and hostile to their faith. It's why the denominations that do it are the smaller, more cult-like ones. The big, mainstream Christian sects don't _need_ to send out Door to Door Jesus Salesmen, they're big enough and ingrained enough that they get plenty of people through the doors on a Sunday. With that in mind, adopting their tactics and expecting it to work on 5e players isn't exactly a winning strategy.

I DM pathfinder on a VTT but in person. I feel like a VTT would really help sell PF2e to a lot of people. VTTs do the math for you and remember conditions for you, so you dont have to do the number crunching that some people complain about.

I actually started with Pathfinder 1e and moved to 5e. You hit the nail on the head when you said that consideration of what someone is looking for is so important. I can say with confidence something that I'd like to encounter more to be sold on learning new systems (which I'm truly loathe to do) is having people have more focus in being enthusiastic over the characters and stories I want to tell over the mechanics of a system. I completely understand and want people to be excited over a system that they love-but I find it very hard for myself to enjoy getting into it when I'm bombarded by the crunch of a game. That's just not fun to me-especially since my character creation style veers towards focusing on flaws. When I'm helping friends build characters in 5e, I just like asking them character questions and we have so much more fun talking about that. Asking: "Do you think they're harder to hit or they do get hit but are harder to down? What fits from your backstory?" versus "This is what AC and HP are and how they work and what they do, which do you want more of?" I just find it more engaging.

Years ago, I wanted to start a Dragonlance campaign. Being a Pathfinder1e player, and appreciating all the good work (and distrusting WotC since D&D4e, and how they cancelled Margaret Weis' Dragonlance's license, I was deeply in favor of using Pathfinder2e... Until I realized that it still used vancian clerics and wizards, unlike D&D5e. This is why the Dragonlance campaign is using D&D5e, today. We will be moving to Pathfinder2e eventually (our first initiation game was last week, actually, and everyone was very happy with the results), but that's how vancian magic in a 21th century RPG was a showstopper.

I feel its a matter of comfort. I know someone who played 3rd and 5th edition and went straight back to 1st ed advanced dnd. He was too comfortable in that game to really give anything else a go.

I know we don't talk about sunk-cost fallacy, in this video, but because you still talk about it a bit: 2:00 They do. Why do you think bad gotcha games work? They try very hard to make the beginning as stimulating as possible and then keep people with the suck-cost fallacy. Not only in money, but also time and emotional investment. Finding something you like can be hard for some people, and "betraying" it in search for something better can be hard. I am so impressed at how empathetic you are to all sides. Giving your advice to better advertise other systems, without condemning people who try to get people to switch or the people who don't want to switch, is quite impressive

The Matt Colville example I think you misunderstood, in that video he's talking about a video Zee Bashew made where Zee talked about running a Blades in the Dark setting. A bit of a complex setup so totally understandable error, and the point's still there - Zee talks in his video about how Blades in the Dark has a ton of heavy setting stuff that is very tied in with the mechanics, making onboarding more difficult. Zee did clarify he really enjoyed Blades though. 😄

Pathfinder is a complex system with a lot of granularity and seems well balanced. That's a strength and a negative. The complexity is a barrier to me learning the system enough to play it or run it even if I think it looks great. DnD 5e was remarkably simple for me to pick up and run a game. If I didn't know a rule, it felt intuitive to come up with something and I was often right or close. Pathfinder has a lot of crunchy rules which has high value for folks but it's still a barrier. WOTC can bugger off as I can run what I like with the books I have already.

I think my friends took so long to try (just before the drama) because pathfinder 2 looks more filled with responsibility of the balance. Not just in the system, bur for players, including dm. It looked too... Precise to be comfortable. At least from the start

This topic is very reminiscent of the one MMO players also experienced in the last few years since the Blizzard drama helped sink World Of Warcraft's player base and allowed the next largest competitor (Final Fantasy XIV) to rise. It took one too many horrible things done by Blizzard to finally get people to branch out from the mainstream choice, but even then, they just flocked to the next biggest game with an extremely similar system, rather than the smaller games that stood more apart (Deja vu). I have personally not played Pathfinder 2e yet, but only because the people I have played Pathfinder with ran 1e exclusively. Pathfinder 2e is a game I definitely wouldn't mind playing in the future (if asked) cause I do like what Paizo has been doing as a company, but I doubt I would ever want to run it myself (just because I am not overly enamored with D20 systems in general). One D20 system is enough for me. The only reason I run D&D 5e is if I want to use an official D&D (IE Dragonlance or Ravenloft) or Magic The Gathering (IE Ravnica or Theros) setting. Otherwise, if I am looking to create a game around a custom setting or something from another media I usually prefer Savage Worlds or Green Ronin's AGE system. My favorite games tend to be the more story-focused, skill-based, dice pool systems instead of class-based systems with a more binary pass or fail system. Regardless, it is definitely an uphill battle to convince anyone to play a non-D&D system, so I empathize with this topic.

As someone who has been a fan of non-D&D systems since the 90s, I’ve come to understand a few things about getting people to try new systems: Much like how each class has a core fantasy, each game has a core fantasy. D&D is about epic fantasy monster fights. Vampire is about isolation and moral corruption. Star Wars is about epic space battles and fighting evil with plasma swords. And, just as not every class is going to appeal to every player, not every game is going to appeal to every player. (I *hate* Vampire, for example.) Second, if you want to get someone into a new game, get them excited about that core fantasy; if they aren’t already interested when you start explaining the rules, you’re going to lose them. Don’t get your squee for the game all over them, but show them *why* the core idea is cool. (This is why Twitter sucks; you can’t explain anything well with that kind of character limit.) Some of this is timing: right after the first Matrix movie was a great time to recruit people to Mage, because they had much thematic resonance with each other. Show them media that has the resonance and themes of the game you want to play. (They don’t even have to be the same genre; most vampire movies are terrible examples if you’re trying to get someone interested in Vampire: the Masquerade, for example.) Lastly, accept that “No.” is both a valid answer and a complete sentence. Trying to push someone into a new game doesn’t work long term; we’re here to have fun, and being pressured into something is never fun. That’s all I got. Enjoyed the video, and looking forward to the next one.

I think a big issue with switching to PF2 is that it's a hard sell, especially for people who started playing with 5e. There's a lot of stuff to keep in mind where 5e is super streamlined and easy to learn. I've tried to convice my group to try it and my players have experience with 3.5 and PF1 and they are still not interested because they just prefer the simplicity of 5e.

I'm the forever DM of my group and the most passionate for the hobby. The OGL drama did nothing for us since it really only affect 3rd party creators that sell content. Your last point hit right in the spot, I'm always looking and reading other systems, but my players never want to try any because they are already comfptable with 5e and they just say "We can do that on 5e". Even with rules light systems where I tell them that they only need to create a PC and I can handle the rest of the rules is just more reason to just stay with 5e for them.

Yet again, one of your core themes/mantras comes into play (no pun intended) here: communicate with your group. Asking if folks are open to trying new/different systems is an ideal way to start. During my time in the military (and while I had no real relationship responsibilities), we gamed almost every weekend. Sometimes it was DnD, other times it may have been Shadowrun, Battletech, Rifts, or a variety of other games. These were also great opportunities for others to run a game, which helped deal with DM/GM burnout. Also, not sure if intentional, but you telling people to get off of Twitter smells a bit of you saying someone's fun is wrong. Thanks, as always, for the insights and conversation.

As a 5e player, here's my take on Pathfinder (and other different systems). I don't enjoy DMing/GMing at all. If somebody in the group says, "Hey I was thinking about running Pathfinder, what do you think?" I'd be onboard and happy to try it. I've played dozens of different systems over the years. But if I suggest a new game, I'd feel obligated to be the one that has to learn it, teach it, and run the game. Plus I and the groups I'm in are enjoying 5e. And yes, I have seen plenty of Pathfinder players that instead of saying hey Pathfinder is great, they start by saying 5e sucks. Which is an immediate turnoff.

Pathfinder 2e is a bit more complicated as far as character builds go, though you get much more choice. For the 5e players that really don’t like the amount of rules as is, it won’t be for them. The way I got my table to try new systems is that about a year ago I said “I’m freaking done with 5e. I’m a hollow shell of a GM. I need to either try something new or step down.” So we’ve tried a few things including Pathfinder 2e and we’ve really enjoyed it!! I do generally have to do the learning and teaching, but that’s fine for me. The easiest way I have found is “let’s do a short adventure (one or two sessions” in this system. I’ll make some precons or here are the tools for you to make your own character.” Basically do as much of a low commitment easy entry point suggestion as possible.

I have some experience playing and attempting to GM Pathfinder 1e. While the systems are quite different, I feel like 2e suffers from the same issue I had with 1e. WAY too much for my ADHD brain to keep track of, and way too many numbers to crunch. I came here to have fun with a roleplaying game, not keep track of five +2 circumstance rolls that I WILL forget. Someone tried to sell 2e as a GM on me by saying there are several more Conditions to keep track of. I already have a hard enough time remebering which Conditions do what in 5e, I don't need more. It's not the fault of the game designers, it's just when it comes to what I enjoy in this type of game, more math is not one of them. That said, I've ultimately decided that if I do play Pathfinder 2e, it'll be as a player, and not a GM.

I really hope you enjoy your first session of pathfinder Mike, I found myself looking forward to sessions of a game after years of feeling a vague sense of fatigue whenever my groups next 5e session was approaching, sometimes I’d make excuses just to miss a session.

The main reason is people are so used to 5e. That any other rpg just seems like its pointless to learn. in my experience. When I wanted to run some cyberpunk and coc games I've had people want me to run it in 5e! Getting my group into 2e was even harder until I actually had to sit them all down and explain why I was so tired of playing 5e for nearly 6 years. So far were in a year of our longest campaign yet

Hey I'm a recent 5e player, and this video is exactly why I'm currently playing 5e over other options. I would absolutely be open to pathfinder or another interesting system some day once I've had my fun in 5e, but I just haven't stopped having fun with 5e yet. The stories it facilitates are still exciting to me and my first ever game I'm DMing is less than 1 year old. I hear people call 5e "rules light" and respond "thankfully" because I'm new and the "light rules" of 5e matches my capacity to run a table for the first time. Plus my friends play 5e and I mostly just want to play with my friends. Also, a really fun and entertaining actual play show will some day be the perfect way to get me into a new system, but I'm not bored of critical role and dimension 20 yet and actual play shows take up a crazy amount of time. Every episode of critical role is as long as a LotR movie and I have other hobbies too so I don't want another actual play show... yet. I did however stumble across a pretty cool pathfinder channel on youtube and am both interested in and intimidated by the much more in depth builds that pathfinder fosters. Pathfinder gang, just give me some time. I'll totally play with you some day.

For me, it's not the sunk cost, it's the up-front investment. Learning a new system is a huge time and resource commitment with no guarantee that it will pay off. The OGL fiasco was enough to make me take the risk, and I'm glad I did. I think 2e is a far superior system and I've been playing since AD&D

Most of the people who have tried to get me to try Pathfinder have said something along the line of, "It's like 5e, but with more rules and bigger numbers." and that just doesn't sound like fun to me.

I had to be convinced to learn 5e, since I've been playing Pathfinder 1e since the early 2010's. Figured out I liked Pathfinder more, and switched right back to it

Thank you for actually point this out. I had noticed this fustration of my own after I dealt with a channel (there were other issues with it that caused me to leave, but this contributed to part of the reasons) was that when people did try "new systems" they were just 5e clones more or less. So had me wondering why even complain about 5e when you're not willing to try something *actually* new. When I tried to create a group for DCC just so I could play games, I was hit with pushback. Not because I was insulting 5e (I actually wanted to use the DCC experience for me to play 5e in a better understanding of the system in both it's flaws and strengths. I only started to "insult" 5e because I was fustrated with all the pushback I was getting and it was in private now looking back on it. Because I wanted to bring back that Magic I had during the 5e Beta game I played in Pax East), but because I would get the push back of "Oh this is stupid" or something akin to it that they found issue with it without actually *trying* it. It wasn't until I actually got people who heard of DnD but never really *experienced* it having a postive reaction to my discription of DCC was where I saw the issue. Those other people were far too comfortable with what they had, and their complaints were honestly purely cosmetic in the long run where they could fix it by doing houserules. The average person actually were curious because it didn't sound exactly "rehashed" due to the popularity of 5e. You can take a lot of things from DCC and apply it to 5e if you wanted to change the cosmetics aspect of 5e. I have seen people literally take the magic system of DCC and applyed it instead to the magic users of 5e, making the consquences of magic a bit more dangerous than one would do with the Wild Magic system. both are valid but one has a different feel to the chaos magic can wreck havioc on. DCC is also a great teaching tool for DM/GM/ and Judges that you are allowed to give consiquences to your players' actions, or how you could handle Problematic players who are trying to ruin the experice of other players with their actions. After the postive response that I got when I was doing an art stream while I explained DCC has me excited and wanting to open up "Open Tables" for people can join in and try DCC without the worry of a long compaign as I would use Funnels mostly, with maybe one or two higher level games. But for the pure goal of showing people that you don't have to just learn 5th edition to have fun. (Honestly WotC really should consider doing Open tables to introduce people into table top hobby and swag for something akin to Goodman Games' Road Crew to encourage people and show it off more, but that's not going to happen.) I also want to eventually learn PF2e and Barbarians of Lamaria.

As far as the group I game with, their reason for not wanting to try Pathfinder 2 was their disappointment with the PF2 playtest. They can't see past the problems with the playtest, even though the official release of the game did a good job of fixing those problems.

Before watching the episode: my issue with DnD 5e is that the mechanics are so wonky, and the solution would be better mechanics, not just more mechanics. I've GMed a bunch of sessions of both PF2 and Starfinder, and found them lacking. They just retain too many of the core problems from DnD 3e. So while I've dropped the idea of ever running 5e again (which was easy for me since it was never my only system), I'm instead moving to other games that have rules built on a better core.

Holy cow, love the Man from UNCLE shoutout. That movie rules

I think 5e was pretty much accidentally made to resist the pressures of a simple PF2e sell. It's complex but the moving parts are simple and obvious that homebrewing and houseruling gives you obvious results. So a person can create or buy content to fix issues they have and get nearly exactly what they want.

all i can say is, i like a little from both and can go with either system...

Hi! I never comment on KZfaq, but I wanted to let you know that I've spedrun all of your videos and loved getting to know your insight. You've inspired me to create more characters and helped me come to terms that my PC dying wouldn't be the end of the world, just the beginning of a new adventure! Now I want to read all the class and subclass features under the sun, your enthusiasm for TTRPGs is infectious. Plus, you seem very genuinely nice and willing to help. Please keep doing what you do!

Pathfinder 2e needs a computer game. Right now lots of PC players know a lot about D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder first edition. So when given a choice between the first and second edition they will pick the system they know, which will be the first edition, even though 2e is more streamlined. Things will change, but that is a pretty big barrier to overcome as of now. People that already are familiar with table top role playing games are more easier to convince, they will appreciate what has been done with the second edition.

Honestly, Mike, if you're open to more diverse games, I can't recommend Exalted enough. The main line (3rd edition) is wild and creative, with one of the most diverse settings in fantasy, but we're right on the cusp of the general release of Exalted Essence, a streamlined alternate ruleset using the same setting/lore as Ex3 but fitting the broad scope of all the various character types into a single rulebook.

Our group had switched to PF2E from 5E as one of our members was vocal about it being better. It was alright, not bad, but it didn't set my world on fire. I felt it was more or less more of the same, but with a few differentiating things at the same time. I'm not one stick in the mud with different TTRPG's, ill try them all, but my true love will always be 3.5E D&D. The others are easier for new people to get into, but after you get into it, it left me wanting more. It watered down skills and other things for me. Does that make the game more tedious? Sure, and it has it's own issues as well. However, once you get the swing of it, it goes by fine. 3.5E is the one that started it all for me, and it's the one I will always want to go back to. Also, the small handful of times I have played 2E was great. I really want to play more of that as well. Different strokes for different folks and all that is the spice of life. Just don't hammer that yours is the best, and everyone else is wrong, because it may not be for everyone. That hampers more than helps the possibility for others to want to try it. Good video, something that I feel more people need to hear.

The Fast & Furious joke made me laugh loud. I'm so eager to play Pathfinder but at the moment I don't want to learn a new system as a DM. I'd like to some friends make a game and play it as a character.

Honestly the problem to me is that I just don't like Pathfinder. I don't like the fundamental design principle of super granular character building, fishing for small bonuses in character creation, tracking whether a creature is flat footed, taking huge penalties for attacking more than once... etc. No amount of proselytizing is going to convince me to 'switch'. I may play in a game if someone I know to be a good DM is running, but the game just fundamentally isn't my cup of tea. I'd much rather spread the word about systems that do things very differently than D&D than systems that do D&D, but more complicated.

The way we like to think about it is 'DnD is like a menu at a restaurant, Pathfinder is more of a well stocked kitchen' Pathfinder has way more options and more interesting things you can create but it's much more work to build, while DnD gives you an already complete experience but with less options

I played pathfinder 2e for 2 years and had the same problem two other players in my group had while the other players were fine. I found that choice in gameplay is very limited. Or more accurately, you feel punished for doing something you didn't take a feat for. Whereas 5e just doesn't feel that way. You might say that its not a punishment, but negative numbers just always seem to feel that way. The people liked it for that reason though. Everything mattered and your choice of build mattered. Two different playstyles. Some of us liked having more choices while playing the game, others liked having their build choices rewarded when playing the game. I stuck it out cause the people were great to play with but man I really grew to hate pathfinder 2e. A couple others from the group had the same response. Eventually fell apart due to some of us just not liking the style of pf2e.

Also a lot of us Pathfinder players still play PF1. So you have to specify Pathfinder 1st edition or Pathfinder 2nd edition, you can't just say 2nd edition, because even with context, that's D&D 2nd edition.

Me and a group have just started playing pf2e, alongside another running game of 5e. This happened because one of our friends started messing with some pf2e tools and books and really fell in love with the system and offered to DM a game. It wasn’t ever a commentary on 5e, offered as a replacement, or even associated with it at all. The things that brought me in were the helpful tools they found to help us learn a system that on the surface (character building at least) looked more complicated, and also see them light up with excitement about the prospect of the game.

I think that "You stick with it if you like it" is a very good angle for this. I am german and I kinda found a lot of german players to be more comfortable with trying out new systems. That's because most of us start off with DSA 4.1 and come to one conclusion: We like the world (mostly because we know it and it's nostalgic) but don't like the system that seems to be designed to say: Nah. You should not be having fun! If people actually like the system of DSA (which is fine) they do stick with it and don't branch out. Most people I play with have at least tried out Cthulhu, World of Darkness and probably one or two more narrative systems. Or something with a different flavor - Cyberpunk, Traveller, StarWars. Nowadays I mostly play 5e, but I would not be against playing something else. But I am also kinda used to getting into new systems and I know by now which ones I get into quite easily and which ones are complicated to me (even though they are easier than DnD on a surface level) and what kind of mechanics I just don't jam with (please burn all the strange picture dices from StarWars).

If I could add an English sporting analogy: The challenge appears like "Stop watching football, cricket / rugby is a better sport". I'm a huge cricket fan, which we play in summer, so some fans follow football and cricket. Both football and rugby are played in winter, and involve running around a muddy field with a ball. Around 2 million people attend football every week, around 20,000 attend rugby unless there's an international match. Rugby fans target the 2 million football fans "Come on over to our better sport". They could be targeting the 53 million who don't watch football - but they don't.

I've played several different systems. D&D is my favorite, although not the only one I love. One thing that really irritates me is people who love saying, "There are other RPGs besides D&D." As if the only reason people play D&D is because we're unwilling to try something new. It seems absolutely incomprehensible to these people that I've played lots of games and yet still enjoy D&D. And really, I'll play whatever the people I enjoy playing with are running. If my current DM wants to switch to Pathfinder, or something vastly different, I'm on board. But I do find Pathfinder people particularly irritating with the way they seem to only push the game they like by crapping all over other games I love. *Obviously the above is generalization, not at all applying to everyone.

Sunk cost fallacy isn't just financial, it's also emotional and temporal. The time and effort that they invested into 5e would feel wasted if they just switched systems. And these are most often new players they haven't gone through an edition change before, so the idea of shelving almost a decade worth of rules and experiences for a new (hopefully) improved set of books is pretty foreign to them. All that hesitation to reinvest their time and effort in a new thing falls under sunk cost fallacy.

Interesting topic. I'm not very far through the video yet but here's my own experience as someone who played a lot of D&D 5e and only recently tried pathfinder. First off, as with all non-D&D systems, it was harder to find a game in a language I speak. I did know a group playing pathfinder but I also knew I wouldn't mesh well with their style of play regardless of the game. The second barrier for me though was the bigger one: pathfinder just didn't seem to offer anything truly different. When I look back at the other game systems I tried out each of them was offering something outside of that (european) psuedo-medeval fantasy. City of Mist was a modern noir mystery. GURPs had a level of flexibility nothing else did which let me run game based on anime my players enjoyed. Vampire the Masquerade is horror, as are the Chronicles of Darkness systems (we play a mixed monster/splat group so we get a little of everything in that game). Traveller is an excellent sci fi system (I'm still struggling to figure out how to run the module but that's on me). A lot of the time the non-D&D games I've been drawn to and tried have been.... just really different to D&D on a mechanics and setting level. Pathfinder, weirdly, suffered from being too similar.

I have 2 reasons that I haven't tried pathfinder. 1. The genre. It's medevial fantasy just like dnd. I've tried multiple systems and games, but each one was a unique genre or setting from each other. 2. Number crunch. Not just 5e, the other systems that I really enjoy are looser, more story focused, so the heavy detail is a big barrier to entry

after trying pathfinder, it honestly felt like playing a 5e game that the DM homebrewed the shit out of. It never felt like a different game, just 5e but at some point you get a random rule incorrect.

I think a certain part of this all is that pf1/2e and 5e cater to different play styles. I play in two different groups. The 5e group is extremely RP and lore heavy. I think we've gone 5+ sessions without a combat encounter and our characters are largely built on backstory over mechanical abilites. The 5e system suits this group really well because it's lightweight, accounts well for play outside of combat and leaves room for situational interpretation by the GM and party. The other group is currently on pf2e, but has played pf1e, tried 5e, then switched back. Why? They preferred the more hardline framework of pathfinder, and tend to really enjoy focusing in on the mechanical part of building characters. Pathfinder is better for that, and the 2e action economy is genuinely phenomenal. But as pointed out elsewhere in the comments, it comes at the cost of being more intimidating to prospective new players who are used to 5e and the play style it encourages. Is either of my groups' fun wrong? No. They're just different games.

A realization I had about 5e vs Pf2e is that 5e is a system built mostly on vibes while Pf2e is mostly based on math. The reason 5e became so popular is that its a simple system to do what you want with. Pf2e you can do a lot of things but its harder to get into with how specific the rules are. You don't usually break 5e by ignoring certain rules. You can easily break pf2e if you ignore certain rules and mechanics though.

A lot of the problems on the Player side of the screen really come down to how gamist do you like your "D&D"... meanwhile tghe big reason I've never wanted to is that somehow Palladium, LotFP, heck even PF1e have homebrew setting support, both officially and from their communities, meanwhile EVERY SINGLE piece of advice from the PF2e side is either Play in Golarion (or Golarion with Rarity changes that don't actually matter in play) in the Video Game Plot (Adventure Paths), or just reskin anything from Golarion, because you can still tell that Paizo makes everything from the Adventure paths side of their business.

We have a saying in Germany that roughly translates to "What the farmer doesn't know he won't eat." I might add "never change a winning team". If a system works for you, if you enjoy something, why change it? People in general like stability. And the more they have invested in this stabiity the less likely they are to try out alternatives. Plus a look at PF2 character sheets evokes aexistential dread fromt he design point of view. I have looked at many alternatives that do not remind me of the color of what food we have eaten eventually turns into, but even black and white character shhets just feel so cluttered and, as pathetic as it might sound, make me feel uneasy. I have thought about an own character sheet that just sums up the final numbers without all the little tickboxes here and there and everywhere but I'm just not technically savvy enough to do that. And I really shy away from all these conditions and having to stack various group abilities to fight a monster. I like systems that allow for more individual actions in combat.

I'm glad to see the "You can play 5E without supporting WotC" stated. Because that's been my stance. I'd like to try some other rpgs, but honestly I like 5Es system just fine for most parts of play that I've dealt with

I picked up the book for Pathfinder 2e, and it definitely has a few things going for it, but it also has that dumb "+n*Lv" modifier on everything. I really liked that 5e did away with that and used bounded accuracy so that crowds of commoners are any kind of threat.

Why is it hard. One factor: Entry Cost - a massive rulebook, lots more to remember, and after all the extra work you're playing D&D with a few extra levers. I understand that some people really enjoy the extra content (complexity). For many of us, that is not-fun make-work.

OK now I've watched the whole thing- I think that if you approach people with the system first 9 times out of 10 that fails. It's better to find out what people like in a game and approach it like that. 'Do you guys wanna play a heist/murder mystery/horror/puzzle game?' 'Hey I figured out how to run FullMetal Alchemist in GURPs, anyone want in?' etc. But mostly I had more luck playing different systems by playing with a variety of people, having several regular and irregular groups, and not being wedded to any one system. I'd never have tried GURPs if the GM who ran my Vampire Masquerade game hadn't wanted to try it. You try more stuff when you're not wedded to one system and are open to shorter games as well as long term campaigns. It's fine to love a system. It's fine to prefer long campaigns. But I think you become a better player and GM by experimenting and trying more stuff. Not all groups are open to that. If you're willing to take the time (and willing to GM) you'll find people to try it with tho.

I stopped playing 5e years before the drama came around, and I never had any interest in Pathfinder, since it is not different enough fro D&D for my taste.The system I design is so far at the end of the spectrum to the narrative side that I am not even sure I can even still call it a game. And I am aware that what I am working on is very niche, thus I feel my target audience might end up be more people from fanfiction writing communities than from the TTRPG crowd.

I got the physical copy of PF2e back in 2019, as I really wanted to play it. It took until the Humble Bundle this year to finally accept my fate and offer to run it and hey look there is a Humble Bundle! I may never get to play it, and part of me thinks I'd have an easier time DMing 5e (it's issues from the DM side of things never really bothered me, who cares about CR anyway), but we'll see how things turn out, by the time I've finished running Abomination Vaults I may feel differently.

I just hate the math simulator that Pathfinder 2e is/becomes. It's no fun when it stops being simple math and now you're reaching 30s but thats just a normal hit, and if you wanted to crit the monster you have to hit a 40, which might be mathematically impossible for you to do at some points. I've also seen people fail at being able to homebrew anything monster wise in Pathfinder simply because of all of the working parts of the monster that can break the encounter. One of the few things I do like is that spells aren't just a make it or break it and have various degrees of working, where even on a success something still happens that's impactful. However, it's still a point where magic is underpowered to the point where it's just more efficient action wise to be a fighter and hit 3 times in a row.

I am the forever GM of my group, I told em hey guys I'm done running 5e. I am looking at playing a Star Wars campaign you guys want to play that? I've got the Saga Edition to play. And they went ok cause you're the GM, and you put together the game we will play the system you want to play as long as you give us the resources we need to figure out how to play the game. (It helps that I have many different game systems saved onto my computer to pull out.)

The feeling I always have as a GM is that 5e is simplified and streamlined to a point, where it actively hurts my time AND interest. I was already struggling to build challenging encounters in PF1e (so basically 3.5e) and hated it. So when I got into watching guides and tips on how to run 5e I was actively discouraged. It also doesn't help how 5e's community is so player-based and most media I've seen revolves around broken combos, unbalanced multiclassing, holding narrative above everything else or OCs. 5e GMing was about everything I disliked but worse than 3.5e. PF2e on the other hand fixed most of the issues I had with PF1e and seemingly 5e. I've never had as much fun GMing. So in the end I have the exact same feeling about people promoting 5e (direct or indirect) than 5e players have about people promoting PF2e. Much of what they want to sell me as positives are net-negatives for me. And when I try to follow discussions between 5e players on social media I sometimes get actually angry at their takes. So it feels to me like the PF2e community and 5e community are distinct for a reason. They seem to have severely differing opinions on what constitutes as a good TTRPG experience and it shows. Just try to compare the PF2e subreddit and the 5e subreddit.

Happy Almost Birthday, Mike!

The main reasons I don't want to try pathfinder, or any other ttrpg is because 1. I like 5e just fine, 2. I don't want to have to read through some huge book to work out if I want to play a game or not. TTRPG rulebooks are DRY. I'm not changing unless I have a really good reason and 3. I can homebrew whatever I want, it's not that hard once you're familiar with the way the rules trend.

Personally I'd love to try out new systems, but I feel a bit too overwhelmed with the amount I need to learn or what I imagine others want me to know on top of finding it hard to find a group of like-minded people that want to spend 4 hours a week with me to get through the campaign. Sadly enough it is not as cut and dry as not having enough people interested in a product, but sometimes the way to enter into the space is not as smooth as people like it to be, so they stick to what they are comfortable with. I hope to one day find a group that just wants to play Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu and other systems just as much as 5e just to so I can try out these things in as comfortable of a space as it can be, but we all know it can sometimes be a bit harder then we'd like with these steps in a gaming sphere of such magnitude as the TTRPG community as a whole!

Great video. When the OGL drama happened, I went to Reddit quickly and started reaching out to people who were coming from 5e wanting to jump ship but didn't know where to start. I taught a Pathfinder 2e 101 class over the course of those 3 weeks on Discord and converted about 15-20 people to start playing. I never once shat on 5e's system, but I asked leading questions what they wish was different in 5e. They were always the same responses, "It's a linear combat system, martials suck/caster rock, ambiguous rules, etc" IMO it's all about framing what works about 5e, but how it lacks some things and how Pathfinder does it slightly different.

For me, the approach I took with my group was focusing on the OGL situation, plus the idea that Paizo as a company is much more my bag than WotC. Sure, Paizo is a company, and is far from perfect, but as a whole, I felt much less comfortable supporting WotC than Paizo. There was also the fact that one of my players straight up wouldn’t have come back for my C2 if we stuck with 5E. It’s a good motivating factor. But then, when we did the switch, I won one of my players over by showing her character creation. As she was trying to find a way to transition her C2 character from 5E to 2E, she started seeing the options and got excited. That was the moment I knew this would work. (Also helps that one of my players is gonna run his own Pathfinder game with us at some point. XD)

Friend: "Look at this awesome Homebrew for DnD 5e! I wonder where these people get such briliant ideas to add homebrew into such an awesome RPG game." Me, after reading the Homebrew: "This is practically, word-for-word, the mechanics from Pathfinder 1e/2e."

I got 13th age, level up, open legend, Conan d20, Fallout, savage worlds, fate, world of darkness, and every edition of DND since the black box set... Now I gotta grab pathfinder. Edit: Happy Jacks rpg podcasts has a massive amount of actual play content with pile different game systems on display. They're great people and have a fantastic advice podcast as well!

Good analogy between the movie and TTRPG industries. I have been keeping quite with my group about fantasy AGE which I really want to play. They were not receptive to PFe2 when our DM brought it up. Some useful tips in your video about how to go about getting people to try.

My group switched to PF2 before the shit hit the fan on D&D, we found a DM that took us through the starter box. All 5 of us players had a great time, then we started playing an adventure and after 6 or 8 sessions later most of us decided it wasn't as fun. So we came back to D&D. It is always fun to try new games and it makes you discover new things, even if you don't stay with it maybe you can take something from that game and implement it into your other game. I know I kept having problems with the 3 action system, my brain wanted to keep not counting movement as one of those 3. Everyone just kept laughing about it and joking that I was trying to cheat :D , so it definitely takes some mental change when playing a new game, but its so worth it in the end to try new things :D

What made me interested in PF2 was Ronald the Rules Lawyer selling it to me as a GM.

I feel that some Pathfinder fans are in denial about the fact that Pathfinder is more complex. That does not make it better or worse than 5e but it does raise the bar of entry. It may also be too granular during actual play. This might be what Pathfinder fans really like and that is just great. But they should please stop claiming it is easier than 5e. It is not. Personally what have attracted me to Pathfinder has been the great adventures they made. Especially during those times where the WotC modules were a little lackluster.

As a player I really want to try Pathfinder, I've heard very good things about their action economy in combat and I have already played a bit with a couple character builders. Though to be honest the part that excites me the most is the fact that you keep upgrading your skills regularly, that has always been a pet peeve of mine with D&D 5e. As a DM, I unfortunately don't see much reason to change. I DM to tell stories and as far as the mechanics support that I'm fine with it. I like trying different systems to tell different stories, for example I'm just getting started with Star Wars FFG and next in line I have Forgotten Lands and L5R 2e, all of them incredibly different not only in mechanics but also in backstory and, even if you don't play in their official settings, in the types of stories they are aimed to tell. All that to say, I don't really see myself in Pathfinder telling a story that I couldn't tell in D&D, therefore I have no incentive to change. Pity, because as I said I'm interested in the mechanics and their settings sounds pretty cool even though I'm more of a homebrew-gal myself

So in dnd 5e you have to make only a few choices, your race, class and background, and then a few skills from a medium sized list. Some classes and races have a feat and a subclass but those are rare. In pathfinder you have to make these choices ancestry, ancestry feat, class, class feat, background, and subclass, along with skills from a much larger list. If someone wants to get into dnd you can give them a really simple class like barb, or fighter and give them a simple race like dwarf. That option for a simple race and class is not available for pathfinder 2e. In addition you also have more complex rules for ability scores. Pathfinder is a great system that is much more balanced and much more consumer friendly, but it is much les new user friendly, especially for people who are new to rpgs in general.

With my group at least, all you really have to do to get people to try new games is offer to run them! We've played a few systems over the years and I'm currently GMing PF2e and I think everybody's having fun. That being said I know that PF2e is a better system than 5e for me, in that it addresses the sort of things I have problems with in 5e (DEX being a god stat, the relative lack of character options, multiclassing and all the issues that comes with etc.), and it does the combat a bit neater in my opinion. If your issues with 5e are not similar to my issues PF2e is probably not the game for you, and that's OK, things like Dungeon World and the OSR exist (as does 5e...). No RPG is perfect, they just have flaws that you don't care about. No RPG appeals to everyone and if one did, it'd probably be super bland.

I think PF2 is cool, but it's a MUCH crunchier game than 5e at a time when most of the growth in the hobby has been theater kids focused on RP, rather than power gamers or wargamers.

As someone who has had 5e as my go-to system for many years, you hit a lot of the points on why people have NOT successfully converted me. Honestly, 5e, for a long time, has done everything I wanted it to. And every time I would mention wanting to add aspects of certain things into a game that aren't fighting dragons and delving dungeons, I'd get people jumping to tell me why I should actually be playing some other system instead. And 99.9% of the time, the systems suggested don't actually do what I want to do. Usually the whole system will be focused around the one thing, and I just wanted that thing to be one part of a larger fantasy adventure. In the case of Pathfinder, I have actually taken an interest in it recently, for the reasons you gave: Seeing other people having fun with it. But I didn't want to even look at it for so long because so many people were absolutely awful to me about why I should play it instead of 5e. At best they're annoying about it, at worst they start insulting me for liking a game they consider inferior. It could be the best system in the entire universe, but if my only experience with it is people beating me upside the head with it, I'm not gonna want anything to do with it.

I’m running my first game of Shadowdark next Saturday and one thing that excites me for it is that we will get through character creation in the first 15 minutes - ideal if you need to find time in schedules for the occasional game. I’m hoping it works out and can become my one shot system of choice.

Great video as always!

My brother's answer to the question was, "sounds interesting, but it's not D&D is it? It sounds like playing with MegaBloks instead of Lego"

I strongly believe, that one day... critical role, will release "Critical Roll" the Critical Role TPG system, based on 5e but massively improved, and it will turn D&D into a crater

Never seen someöne compare Dungeon Crawl Classics to Fast and the Furious before. Lmao

Careful with that interpretation of "sunk cost fallacy". It doesn't just refer to how much money you've put on it. The time invested is also a sunk cost, arguably a much higher one than the monetary cost of books and other materials, and brands often count on that for their share of fan loyalty.

i never felt like Pathfinder had it's own identity outside of "5e but it makes more sense!"

That was a pretty damn good pitch for a Pathfinder 2 stream...It took me a few seconds to realize that "Different Actual Play" was your version of "insert name here", and I was saddened at the realization. I mean, it could totally have a been a real thing, with a group trying to promote being different from the other actual play games out there, or for using a different system from the usual D&D, or even different as in they have a lot of different people in their diverse cast. DAP as the acronym, a fan could be referred to as a Dapper. It could work.

for me the reason i havent switched is purely systems based and you hit the nail right on the head with every "problem" 5e has can and probably already has a 3rd party patch. the only problem is the lack of options for players officially released by WotC. which again sees many 3rd party publishers put out the niche's that im looking for.

As a Mexican TTRPG player who is interested in playing Pathfinder 2E, one issue I have noticed for non-native English speakers is the lack of books and other materials in different languages. So far there is not a Pathfinder 2E product (or even a Paizo one) that is written in Latin American Spanish or in a Neutral Spanish (Non European Spanish). I know how to speak, write, and read English but I can not speak for many people that live in Latinamerica, much less other parts of the world. But I think it would be nice for accesibility reasons that the Pathfinder and Paizo corebooks could be available in different languages.

My first group that I played with wanted to play through Dragon of Icespire Peak using PF2 rules. And I took a good look at the rules and quite early decided that PF is not the system for me. I rather go for rules light than PF :P

For me the frustration of being a pathfinder player (or any other system for that matter) and the appeal of 5e is it's popularity. I've been playing 5e for years and only recently made the switch, but I had to leave my old group behind and join society play to find games in person (and resorting to online play, which isn't bad but isn't ideal either). I still have fun but there is definitely something lost when you are playing with different people week by week and there isn't time to build up friendships, as well as the constraints that society play imposes on the narrative. At this point, I'd be willing to try any system given a solid elevator pitch, but I'd want to know that I could find and join a table of people I'd enjoy playing with long term. And the only game that comes close to providing that in my current circumstances is 5e. This is why pathfinder players are so eager for people to switch, I'm envious of how much easier it is for 5e players to play, even with DM shortage.

5E is a very newcomer-friendly D20 system and the system for the largest brand in the TTRPG space. I come to TTRPGs from World of Darkness, and the many iterations of White Wolf (as it has been bought and sold over the years) and its attempts at recreating the ssytem also has its fans - and yet - they're the only place to go for that urban dark fantasy theme (they aren't, but they're the largest recognized). One issue with Pathfinder / Starfinder is that pretty much *all* of it is based on supplements or articles found in adventure paths - which are $20 a pop on PDF. - but the rules are free on Chronicles of Nethys (the Paizo SRD, much like WOTC offered free on DnD Beyond) - but it's difficult without the context that the books actually give you (lore, art, etc).

2:30 Holy crap! I'm honored. Thank you for having a great youtube channel and discord community.