Pre-Order Rise of the Runelords for Hero Lab

[Silveras]

Originally Posted by ValaraukarU

Note that Paizo was specifically contacted before portfolios with their AP encounters were publicly shared. I personally contacted them for CotCT about the names and the images and was denied permission on the images but the rest was allowed.

Splendid.. that takes care of that concern, then.

[Villadelfia]

Originally Posted by liz

Extensive user feedback was the main reason we included official Adventure Path support as an option on our recent survey. The survey respondents overwhelmingly confirmed that users were looking for a package like this and that the $24.99 price point was appropriate. Since users will not be required to own the supplemental packages, the official Adventure Path package will greatly simplify running adventure paths for many users. As with almost every situation, though, there's no simple solution here that will please everyone. When that occurs, our focus becomes the majority of users.

As you might have gathered, the sticking point for me is not so much the price (go ahead, check my license in your system, I own everything first-party that you offer for pathfinder, and that was all bought before you introduced the discounted companion packs) as it is long-time customers not getting any discount for owning all the pre-requisites. I would like a price like $9.99 for those who already own the supplemental packages required, but really any discount at all would be a sign of good-will.

I know you have the ability to require the purchase of a pack before you can buy another pack, so I know you have the ability to add a pack with "(Requires Pathfinder Core, Requires Advanced Player Guide, Requires Bestiary 1, 2, 3,...)" at a discounted price.

It also bothers me that I haven't gotten an answer to my question if you are planning to offer a discount, not a yes, not a no, not even a maybe. So I will pose it as a direct question this time:

Will you, or will you not, offer a discount for owners of the needed supplemental packages?

[Colen]

Our sales system actually doesn't have the capability to do multiple pre-requisites like that. Currently we can specify a single thing that's required before you purchase a package (to stop people from buying the APG before they have access to Pathfinder, for example), but that's all we can do.

The other issue here is that a lot of adventure paths simply use a heck of a lot of sourcebooks. For example, here are the books I saw being used as references when I looked through issue 6 of Iron Gods (which seemed pretty representiative after I looked at a couple of other adventure paths):

1. Bestiary
2. Advanced Class Guide
3. Advanced Player's Guide
4. Inner Sea Bestiary
5. Ultimate Combat
6. Bestiary 3
7. Technology Guide
8. Bestiary 4
9. Bestiary 2
10. Numeria, People of the Stars
11. Monster Codex
12. Mythic Adventures

Now, that's just one issue of the adventure path, and it references material from 12 other books, which are contained in 11 different packages (as Numeria and Tech Guide are in the same package). I assume the rest of the Iron Gods AP references additional books on top of that.

That means for Iron Gods, the only people who'd be eligible for a discount like you propose would be people with those 15+ specific packages, which (unfortunately) is not a lot of people. So to implement this, we'd need to spend a bunch of time working on adding capabilities to our sales server, which only the small number of people with those 15+ packages would be able to take advantage of.

I'm not opposed to your idea of a discount for people who have everything, it's just not something we're capable of handling right now, and making it happen would compete with the task of working on improvements to Hero Lab that will benefit all our users.

[Villadelfia]

Originally Posted by Colen

Our sales system actually doesn't have the capability to do multiple pre-requisites like that. Currently we can specify a single thing that's required before you purchase a package (to stop people from buying the APG before they have access to Pathfinder, for example), but that's all we can do.

The other issue here is that a lot of adventure paths simply use a heck of a lot of sourcebooks. For example, here are the books I saw being used as references when I looked through issue 6 of Iron Gods (which seemed pretty representiative after I looked at a couple of other adventure paths):

1. Bestiary
2. Advanced Class Guide
3. Advanced Player's Guide
4. Inner Sea Bestiary
5. Ultimate Combat
6. Bestiary 3
7. Technology Guide
8. Bestiary 4
9. Bestiary 2
10. Numeria, People of the Stars
11. Monster Codex
12. Mythic Adventures

Now, that's just one issue of the adventure path, and it references material from 12 other books, which are contained in 11 different packages (as Numeria and Tech Guide are in the same package). I assume the rest of the Iron Gods AP references additional books on top of that.

That means for Iron Gods, the only people who'd be eligible for a discount like you propose would be people with those 15+ specific packages, which (unfortunately) is not a lot of people. So to implement this, we'd need to spend a bunch of time working on adding capabilities to our sales server, which only the small number of people with those 15+ packages would be able to take advantage of.

I'm not opposed to your idea of a discount for people who have everything, it's just not something we're capable of handling right now, and making it happen would compete with the task of working on improvements to Hero Lab that will benefit all our users.

My mistake, I thought there was something like that because I thought you can't buy the bestiary 2 without having b1 and core.

How about this: Since it's such a small amount of people that qualify, can't you just send them a special offer via mail and have them buy it the direct route? I mean, I don't know how many "very few" is, but you make it sound like less than a hundred, so while not ideal that should be doable even IF we all respond immediately to the offer.

Btw, you've made me curious now, at which percentile is my license in number of pathfinder packages owned?

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Colen

The other issue here is that a lot of adventure paths simply use a heck of a lot of sourcebooks. For example, here are the books I saw being used as references when I looked through issue 6 of Iron Gods (which seemed pretty representiative after I looked at a couple of other adventure paths):

1. Bestiary
2. Advanced Class Guide
3. Advanced Player's Guide
4. Inner Sea Bestiary
5. Ultimate Combat
6. Bestiary 3
7. Technology Guide
8. Bestiary 4
9. Bestiary 2
10. Numeria, People of the Stars
11. Monster Codex
12. Mythic Adventures

Just to say this is very common I have found for the APs actually and the major issue with the community stuff. As we didn't "duplicate" a monster that was already in a one-off book like Tech Guide or Paths of Presitage I have gotten lots of emails over time about files that don't open. It was not an error in the community stuff as much as the person simply didn't have all the required licenses.

The fact that LW will be including all these "one-off" Things from all these books is a awesome feature. It will make using the official encounter files much nicer compared to the community versions.

[ruhar]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

The fact that LW will be including all these "one-off" Things from all these books is a awesome feature. It will make using the official encounter files much nicer compared to the community versions.

Ok, MAYBE it is worth $25. I just wish I had more gold pieces than what my stingy job pays me so I can fully enjoy my fun.

To the GMs out there who have players who contribute monetarily, enjoy because I really believe you are a minority.

[Colen]

Originally Posted by Villadelfia

My mistake, I thought there was something like that because I thought you can't buy the bestiary 2 without having b1 and core.

Everything we've done so far just depends on core - there hasn't been anything with a strong enough dependency on another book for us to require anything else yet. (I actually considered making the Monster Codex dependent on Bestiary 1 last year, but it turned out that we included enough of the base monster races in our free content to not need that.)

Originally Posted by Villadelfia

How about this: Since it's such a small amount of people that qualify, can't you just send them a special offer via mail and have them buy it the direct route? I mean, I don't know how many "very few" is, but you make it sound like less than a hundred, so while not ideal that should be doable even IF we all respond immediately to the offer.

Btw, you've made me curious now, at which percentile is my license in number of pathfinder packages owned?

Your license is definitely at the top end of the scale in terms of packages owned - most people don't have nearly as many. We almost didn't go forward with this project because of this problem - it wouldn't be very helpful for us to sell an AP if the majority of users wouldn't be able to use the encounters, particularly if it's just something they would discover at the game table.

If we did do a special offer like this, some of additional questions rear their ugly heads: Is this a one-time thing, or if someone purchases the required packages 6 months from now, do they get to take advantage of it as well? If someone purchased the full price version, then over the next year happened to buy all the packages that it uses, do they get a discount? If someone who qualifies now doesn't want to purchase the package, but then in 2 months time their group suddenly decides to play rise of the runelords, do we let them buy then?

If we started going down this road, no matter what we choose, we're still going to make someone unhappy, and that's even after we've done a lot of extra work to make it happen.

[AndrewD2]

Here's a question: Is this package included in the aforementioned $65 bundle for the year of Hero Lab stuff that was going to be coming this or next month?

[Colen]

It is not - as specified in the news post, the 2015 bundle includes:

* All hardcover core rulebooks – for example, Pathfinder Unchained and Occult Adventures.
* All Player Companion and Campaign Setting rulebooks – for example, Heroes of the Wild and Andoran, Birthplace of Freedom.

It doesn't cover adventure paths. We're not sure how many adventure paths we're going to release this year, so it didn't make sense to include them in the bundle.

[AndrewD2]

Yeah I realized that after I asked. Thanks though!