Obsidian Entertainment - Pathfinder License

Turns out the news from yesterday was right as Obsidian Entertainment has acquired the right to make Pathfinder Games. Unfortunately the first game is a card game.

Obsidian to partner with Paizo Inc. to release electronic Pathfinder games

INDIANAPOLIS -- August 13, 2014 -- Obsidian Entertainment, the developer of Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: the Stick of Truth and the Kickstarter phenomenon Pillars of Eternity, announced that they have entered into a long-term licensing partnership with Paizo Inc. to produce electronic games based on its popular Pathfinder Roleplaying Game intellectual property

Obsidian's first licensed product will be a tablet game based on the highly successful Pathfinder Adventure Card game, a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players. Players each have a unique character composed of a deck of cards and a set of stats. Characters have classes such as fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric, as well as numbers that define attributes such as strength, wisdom and charisma etc. Players will be able to customize their deck to better suit each individual’s vision of their character.

"At Obsidian we have a long history of working with the greatest RPG franchises, and we're thrilled to get to play in the Pathfinder universe now," said CEO Feargus Urquhart. "We're huge fans and can't wait to bring what we do in the electronic gaming world to Pathfinder fans everywhere".

In the world of Pathfinder, players take on the role of brave adventurers fighting to survive in a world beset by magic and evil. The Pathfinder RPG is currently translated into multiple languages, with hundreds of thousands of players worldwide. The Pathfinder brand has also been licensed for comic book series, graphic novels, miniatures, plush toys, apparel, and is being developed into a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game.

"Obsidian is a video game developer at the top of its game", said Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens. "Being able to bring that type of experience and passion to Pathfinder can only mean great things, both for our loyal Pathfinder community and for all fans of great CRPG's.

Don't worry as a CRPG game will be annouced at a later date.

There will be a CRPG. Just no details to announce right now. Our deal with Obsidian is a long term partnership. I expect there will be many games over the coming years. The card game app was easier for them to get up running fast. There will even be a demo at our booth at GenCon. But there are other plans that will be revealed in time.

Super excited that this is finally public! Looking forward to working with Obsidian on a bunch of awesome Pathfinder games!

More information.

"Obsidian Entertainment has acquired the right to make Pathfinder Games."

Yes!

"Unfortunately the first game is a card game."

Nooooooo!

"Don't worry as a CRPG game will be announced at a later date."

Yessssssssssssss!

Well, hopefully this card game will generate a decent amount of funds for the CRPG. I mean, someone must buy this crap, or they wouldn't bother making it.

Unless this is also the next RPG they plan on taking to Kickstarter… I don't pay attention to tabletop stuff, but from reading the wikipedia page, Pathfinder is just basically a modified version of 3.5 D&D but not much lore attached to it other than some monster books.. so a Pathfinder RPG could in theory take place in pretty much any setting, right?

Originally Posted by daveyd
so a Pathfinder RPG could in theory take place in pretty much any setting, right?

Yup.

But I gues this is true for virtually any ruleset. (Divine and arcane magic might be a problem here and there though.)

They have a generic fantasy world, Golarion, that has several years (6-ish?) of books, modules and campaign setting material to draw a backstory from. Don't know how interesting that campaign setting is, but they do have it.

I'd love to see Obsidian do something amazing with Pathfinder. Then I'd love to see them do something incredible with The Dark Eye. So many companies have done bad things with TDE and - one could argue - made it less relevant (to North American audiences anyway) in the process.

But that's probably only a dream…

Pathfinder has the best monster concept art en masse, we could find. Very good weapons too. But a CRPG will be a ton of work.

Could someone more familiar briefly describe and summarise the key differences between the Pathfinder settings and the Forgotten Realms? I must admit that I haven't played PnP in some time (man, I even completely missed the release of 5th Ed…) and thus aren't really up to speed on the features of Pathfinder. Cheers.

Let's see…. South Park and now a card game based on Pathfinder?

Are they trying to prove they can come up with increasingly bad ideas and ways to waste their talent - because, if so, I'M CONVINCED - YOU WIN OBSIDIAN!



But all is forgiven if you man up and go finish that Aliens RPG!

IIRC Obsidian was in financial trouble few years back and they had to let people go right? (I remember reading post where their CEO posted they were burning 1 million a month or what not). It makes sense for a company to diversify and I think south park was a hit so it was good business decision.

So provided they keep on making CRPG then I will be happy.

Originally Posted by lostforever
IIRC Obsidian was in financial trouble few years back and they had to let people go right? (I remember reading post where their CEO posted they were burning 1 million a month or what not). It makes sense for a company to diversify and I think south park was a hit so it was good business decision.

So provided they keep on making CRPG then I will be happy.

They should do whatever makes them happy

But there was a time when I was interested in their work, and I'm all but through with that.

No big deal, though.

I play the (physical) card game with my wife regularly, and it's a nicely designed game. The way the cards represent the characters strengths and items is quite uncanny, and the game does give a sense of an RPG exploration/dungeon run in a nice <1hr package.

That said, I'd much rather play a proper crpg than a remake of something that already exists. I'm not sure the card game would be ideal for tablet play, as it is a co-op game which benefits from multiple players.

Of course, if they do a crpg, what's the betting it'll be Rise of the Runelords again? That's the story-basis for the card game, and one of their more famous campaigns, and an audio CD series, and (I think) books, and miniatures and…

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Could someone more familiar briefly describe and summarise the key differences between the Pathfinder and the Forgotten Realms universes? I must admit that I haven't played PnP in some time (man, I even completely missed the release of 5th Ed…) and thus aren't really up to speed on the features of Pathfinder. Cheers.

Pathfinder is not really a 'universe'. The question would be what are the key differences between D&D and Pathfinder (and then, more specifically, what version of D&D vs. Pathfinder). Pathfinder really was born, or got prominent when Wizards of the Coast decided to WoWize D&D. They said 'hey, World of Warcraft has a lot of gamers, let's turn D&D into WoW offline!". The result was (IMHO of course) a craptacular vomit-inducing prefer-root-canal-procedure-than-that experience called D&D 4th edition. Lots of D&D players hated it and Pathfinder was born as a 'what D&D 4 should have been' project, with rules similar and evolved from D&D 3.5.

What's Pathfinder?

Originally Posted by Gorath
What's Pathfinder?

It's a pen&paper ruleset.

Pathfinder = DND 3.75

Originally Posted by wolfing
Pathfinder is not really a 'universe'. The question would be what are the key differences between D&D and Pathfinder (and then, more specifically, what version of D&D vs. Pathfinder). Pathfinder really was born, or got prominent when Wizards of the Coast decided to WoWize D&D. They said 'hey, World of Warcraft has a lot of gamers, let's turn D&D into WoW offline!". The result was (IMHO of course) a craptacular vomit-inducing prefer-root-canal-procedure-than-that experience called D&D 4th edition. Lost of D&D players hated it and Pathfinder was born as a 'what D&D 4 should have been' project, with rules similar and evolved from D&D 3.5.

Wrong. They developed a universe, it's called Golarion. Basically it's a kitchen sink, ranging from typical fantasy, vikings to wild west and techno-alien stuff. It all depends on the region.

Originally Posted by Hamenaglar
Wrong. They developed a universe, it's called Golarion. Basically it's a kitchen sink, ranging from typical fantasy, vikings to wild west and techno-alien stuff. It all depends on the region.

I think most of us only know Pathfinder as the rule set. I have played for years and never really bothered to look into the Pathfinder universe. I have a campaign I play in Forgotten Realms using Pathfinder rules.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
They should do whatever makes them happy

But there was a time when I was interested in their work, and I'm all but through with that.

No big deal, though.

Wait, what!?!? Pillars of Eternity is going to be some amazing stuff!

Collectable card games have made gobs of money for WotC over the years. Not sure how much that market has dried up….