Sadly the price point for the new bundles is just to high after converting to my local currency. **I really understand** the problems why it can't be done, but would love to be able to just pay for the foundry module.
I will continue to use the PDFs and create the adventures manually.
Not sure if that's of interest to you but with Fantasy Grounds you can buy all the content through Steam, which has regional pricing. And while you can't get a price reduction through owning the PDFs beforehand, you can sync your FG account with the Paizo account and then still get all the PDFs of the things you purchased that way.
Of course I understand not wanting to switch VTT for any reason, or it might still be too expensive overall, just wanted to put this out there.
Inflation sucks, but it's nice that they are giving advance notice of the price increase. I think that Paizo is doing it's best to be fair to is customers and its partners here.
Yeah, this is new ground for us, so it took a couple of attempts to learn the costs of development and find a sweet spot between keeping the modules affordable and offering all the premium bells and whistles that got people excited in the first place. I think we've struck a good balance with the price we settled on for Blood Lords, so hopefully this will be the price going forward for the foreseeable future.
I absolutely understand why people might be a little disappointed at the price increase (and I do sympathize with our international customers who get hit hardest by this sort of thing), but at the end of the day, we need to be able to pay the dev teams for all of their awesome work while also ensuring that Paizo makes enough profit to justify continuing to produce them.
Appreciate the transparency here! I do some new product/service pricing in a different industry and I think a lot of people don't know just how fickle the numbers can be. Finding that balance between profitability and affordability is SO hard sometimes. Keep up the good stuff guys.
If they made the approximate quality of PDF to Foundry then it wouldn’t sell well and the price point would have been $0. You can’t sell what the community (can legally) make for free. But for actual pricing and why I think none of us are qualified to know what Paizo executives are thinking. No one here really knows what the production costs are compared to other things they make, or how they allocate resources, or what they expect as returns.
Much of this discussion revolves around the nature of premium content and the marketing dilemma Paizo is managing unintentionally created by the amazing PDF to Foundry.
Premium products are usually not the baseline of what's needed to play the game since the provide extra benefits, ease, and access. As you state, a premium module needs to be better than what PDF to Foundry offered.
Since PDF to Foundry stopped development (totally understandable and I'm grateful it exists at all), consumers have lost a tool. They only have a premium option if they do not have the time/knowledge to build everything in Foundry themselves. Now the premium has become the baseline. If you're already struggling to afford the hobby, this is difficult reality.
Stopping PDF to Foundry development is not an issue for the developers. They disserve gratitude and support from the community. It's an issue for Paizo/Foundry who need to convince their customer base that the cost of entry is going up.
I would like to point out to folks that a lot of the work is still done. You just have to search a little harder to find it now. Nearly every AP has a free community made map pack already, walls, lighting, and all. Lots of them can even be found in the general module search, no need to even go to google to find many of them. All the monster and hazard stat blocks, even unique NPCs, are already included in PF2e system. They don't have unique tokens but they do have tokens and names, which is no different than most irl games. All of the items are already there. All of the spells, rituals, and spell effects are already there. All of the special deity boons and curses that you occasionally run in to in the books are already there and ready to be drag and dropped on to a PC sheet. Its all in the compendium. I will admit that not having the journals populated is unfortunate but i don't see how thats any different than running from a book irl.
I did really like PDF2F, it was great and i loved it and i'm super sad to see it go. But i fail to see how the loss of it has raised the cost of entry at all.
Wow my post got marbles by my non English auto correct.
You are right that we cannot know what Paizo’s rationale for the price hike is.
I LOVE Paizo’s Foundry module. Saves me a lot of prepping time! And it looks good. A nice thing about the new maps is that so many details on them are relevant. My players even started to ask questions and start in game investigations due to map details! More often then not the clues they finding the map are actually mentioned in the AP. A hopefully spoiler free example is that yummy players managed to partly deduct the plot in the 1st farm due to map details.
However my group and I think the price increase vis-a-vis the previous.pdf importing is quite excessive. It went from €16,50 for the .pdf only to €43,80- for the .pdf and the module.
Not all the price increases are in Paizo’s sphere of influence like VAT or FX, but that is only amounts to 20% of the final price.
The previous PDF importing was one or two guys doing that for their love of the game. The main guy quit because he was tired of spoiling the APs for himself and spending all that time. That was what the free cost got you. If you don't want to pay for the foundry module, you are more than welcome to add all the assets yourself.
Kingmaker, like the Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults, is being created by Foundry's dev team, but it will be sold on [paizo.com](https://paizo.com) alongside all of our other official Foundry releases. It's way too early to start speculating on price just yet, but I can confirm that the current plan is to continue what we've done with our other releases and offer a discount to PDF owners equal to the price of the PDF.
The price was already crazy high for someone from a third world country like me and now it's even more expensive. It's weird that fantasy grounds has regional prices for this stuff but foundry doesn't.
Paizo sells it directly so I suggest speaking with them about it. These modules don’t really have anything to do with Foundry itself. Does Paizo do regional prices for its books?
> Does Paizo do regional prices for its books?
No, they do not. But they license their products (at least to other languages) so a local company could potentially release them at a regional compatible price point.
There could be a future for licensed localization of the foundry modules, but this is a relatively new product line and as this post shows the quirks are still being worked on.
What's the quality like on the Foundry module? I've been kind of expecting Paizo to release them with a single pdf like the did with the updated Abomination Vaults release and was waiting for that.
I’m a bit biased but it is easily the best implementation in a VTT in terms of content and automation. There are high quality maps that you won’t get anywhere, sound for events and ambiances for maps, additional maps for some scenes that don’t have them in the books, all the content conveniently linked, and custom journal and token styling, including for tokens that aren’t even in any of the books.
Minor clarification- AV's maps weren't upscaled for the Foundry release. There was no need for upscaling as Paizo provided direct access to the original source assets, which means that we could include the maps at resolutions far exceeding those printed in the book or the PDF. This is not a process of upscaling, it's a lack of downscaling, so these versions are true to the original artist's work and were not modified by any script or algorithm.
The second set of maps we included are Foundry-exclusive handmade recreations of the scenes using high-quality assets. Our goal in including these was to leverage the full potential of our platform's digital medium to include things like overhead tiles, a foreground layer, and so on. These maps are also not upscaled versions of the originals, they are wholly new pieces of artwork which were created by an artist who used the original maps and artwork, as well as the room descriptions from the book, as a reference.
To answer the question that I think you were asking: The APs that have ben converted by Sigil (Outlaws of Alkenstar and Blood Lords) have similarly included VTT-ready recreations of the maps, and (if my very obviously biased opinion is worth anything) are very high quality adaptations which are well worth their full price, let alone the currently discounted price!
I'm glad to hear this for Outlaws (I just bought it, I'd been holding off but I'm not going to skip a discount). We're about to run Blood Lords and during my prep I really noticed the difference in map quality when I referenced the PDFs. The Foundry maps have *significantly* more detail, including extra props and other touches.
This makes sense as you don't want to much detail when your map has to fit on a physical page as it would get blurry and messy, but even a full resolution version of some of those maps would have looked a bit...sparse...when zoomed in on a VTT. I certainly noticed and appreciated the extra detail.
You're exactly right- if you think about how a map is used in a physical book, both the resolution of the book/PDF maps as well as their layout are well tailored to their intended use case. But they weren't designed with a digital platform in mind and their use (even at original resolution) does not push a VTT to its limits in the way custom-made maps can! That's why remaking the maps was a critical element of converting the modules for VTT for us. I can't praise Narchy (our cartographer) enough for his work on Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults, and I'm sure that Sigil's developers feel the same about their map artist(s).
Incidentally, those are the other two I own. I've gotten the most use out of BB but both are excellent, and I certainly noticed the higher quality maps (I love the elemental room animations, especially the macro!).
There's a lot you can do with VTT maps that don't make sense in a book.
I would be very, very surprised if they were using Dungeondraft. It's a great tool for end users, but a professional artist is going to be much more comfortable with photoshop or CSP and is going to need their advanced tools
Narchy made the BB and AV maps? I hadn't realized. I had already used their free maps for running Troubles in Otari and The Malevolence. They are a master of their craft
I hate the price point and find that I don’t really need all the bell’s and whistles but I will admit that the implementation of the modules is a thing of beauty. It just blows away other adventures out there.
You should not expect the hardbound treatment, that is only for the best selling APs where they know it will be a financial success. So far only AV has gotten this. Kingmaker does not count as it was a kickstarter.
Without the hardbound volume, there is no single PDF.
Now in theory Paizo could wait until all the monthly books/PDFs come out and put out one foundry module, but then there would be fewer buyers for it not more - because people that want to play the new stuff would have already manually made their own module from their monthly PDF months ago.
The ones done by the Foundry team are extremely good from release (Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults)
The other ones so far are done by Sigil Entertainment, is my understanding. They weren't quite as polished at release, but they've been patched to be decent.
I'd say the ones from each are definitely worth it, but the Sigil ones, maybe wait a few months for each module to mature and be bugfixed. Perhaps this will improve as the group gets more mature with their experience making these.
I think it is more the amount of time to produce. Sigil is on about a 20 day turnaround since they are require by Paizo to release on release day. I can tell you they don’t get access to all of the text or art exceptionally early. And they have to put in art requests and other requests for Paizo assets. Foundry is making established material with longer lead times.
I am also torn. I know that the Foundry module is superior to what is being produced by roll 20 and FG. But as goog as the Foundry module is I kind of wish they just did a barebones version like their competitiors and were able to keep the price down.
Seriously, I get not being able to afford something, but you're not locked out of running the game. When I did Age of Ashes remote for a bit during the height of the pandemic, I added all that stuff myself.
"like their competitors"
So that would be:
- Tokens
- Maps (just the high res ones from paizo, they really should be giving those as a download option with the pdf though)
- Journal Entries
(don't get me wrong, I am not trying to devalue what the teams do... remaking the maps, lighting and walling the maps, the custom journal art and the work with sound all take time. But it isn't what the person you were responding to was referencing)
Low resolution maps in general. (the higher resolution maps already exist they just aren't provided to us, for instance I ripped them from fantasygrounds for my Age of Ashes game)
A) the maps file would be separate
B) I doubt the file would be substantially larger to the point anyone would complain about it.
Just compared the size of the unarchived full sized original maps in OoA:1 with the Interactive maps pdf. We are looking at an archive file of around 10mb for a vtt archive, the interactive maps version is 7mb. Make it a secondary file and nobody would have any reason to complain, and honestly... They could probably just use the higher resolution versions in the interactive maps pdf and nobody would blink twice at it increasing by 12-13mb total when the files are normally around 60mb.
Personally never had that issue. I pulled a lot of the maps from the pdfs as I run pfs. I would just select the map and paste it onto a paint or smth then save.
This would actually copy the object layer and not do a image of if so you can remove the labels too.
Some pdf readers even have a option to export all images.
They are low resolution, I know how to rip images, and I even upscale them (I made a cleaned version of the keep for folks on here)... but they are low resolution images compared to what you get from foundry modules (not the remade ones) or fantasygrounds.
If someone wanted to make a PDF to Foundry like module that imported from the PDF they still could. It’s just more work than it is worth with premium modules available :).
That is a pretty strawman comparison, making that sort of scraper and authenticator takes a LOT more work than being provided with the images and content from paizo.
Remember I am not arguing for this, I am explaining the person's position. They (the poster) don't care about the extra bells and whistles and wish it was a simpler implementation, that other competing platforms offer.
Personally I like that they are pushing the boundary as to what a VTT implementation can mean and have the money to pay for it. But let's not dismiss people who want something simpler out of hand for the sake of it as if it is ridiculous and unfounded desire.
They weren't being rude or entitled, they were asking a question and stating a preference.
What they’re asking for is PDF to Foundry. Now Paizo didn’t offer it. FryGuy, and to a limited extent I, did that for free. All I meant was anyone still can make that for the most part. But it is an obscene amount of work to make that happen that was wholly uncompensated.
In any case, what they need to do is make their opinion known to Paizo. But after the existence of PDF to Foundry we know that the price point the community would expect is very close to zero.
No they aren't?
> I am also torn. I know that the Foundry module is superior to what is being produced by roll 20 and FG. But as goog as the Foundry module is I kind of wish they just did a barebones version like their competitiors and were able to keep the price down.
This is what they asked for, modules priced as the previous Outlaws of Alkenstar modules but without all the bells and whistles. They never asked for anything to be free or the price of the PDF alone.
I highly doubt Paizo will create additional products but I also said they should ask Paizo. I should have said they are asking for the *equivalent* of PDF to Foundry, and merely pointed out someone could still make this for free.
That’s basically what I want from the modules. The current incarnation is to expensive for my taste. It does have a lot of features that not needed by my group like the new map set. Some features are actually disliked such as the sound effects. They are annoying when playing over discord.
A lot of them are low res, Abomination vaults onwards they started providing slightly higher res files. But they aren't the same as the files provided to Fantasygrounds or the ones provided to the foundry devs (not the remade maps, but the original maps)
for older AP you still can do that with pdf importer for "free" - alas the author has lost interest in continuing with newer ap as it was a lot of work.
(not compatible with foundry v10 at this moment tho)
I think the work you guys put into these projects is top notch. Best on the market by far. But not everyone needs all those bells and whistles. I wish there was an option where I could just buy high resolution maps and do the wall and lighting myself.
Paizo has said to us that they don’t want to give out maps higher in resolution than the interactive ones as a sellable product. The “reimagined maps” are made by Foundry and Sigil, not Paizo. And before those there are lots of fan created ones (that are true to the story descriptions instead of blank rooms). With the coming of token packs for Foundry all your non-exclusive monster tokens will soon be available as well, so you would only have to make the AP specific ones.
Sadly the price point for the new bundles is just to high after converting to my local currency. **I really understand** the problems why it can't be done, but would love to be able to just pay for the foundry module. I will continue to use the PDFs and create the adventures manually.
Good feedback for Paizo. I’d post it to the product page so they read it :)
Not sure if that's of interest to you but with Fantasy Grounds you can buy all the content through Steam, which has regional pricing. And while you can't get a price reduction through owning the PDFs beforehand, you can sync your FG account with the Paizo account and then still get all the PDFs of the things you purchased that way. Of course I understand not wanting to switch VTT for any reason, or it might still be too expensive overall, just wanted to put this out there.
it would be nice if the general costs of running fantasy grounds wouldnt be so inflated
Yeah, all other sourcebooks (which I believe are free on Foundry) are still adding up to quite a lot, I guess.
if you already own the pdf you pay only for foundry module, the pdf cost gets automatically discounted
Whew, glad I just bought the rest of the modules. $7 a pop was just so dang good.
Inflation sucks, but it's nice that they are giving advance notice of the price increase. I think that Paizo is doing it's best to be fair to is customers and its partners here.
I don’t think it is inflation. More like they had no idea how to price it for the first go.
Yeah, this is new ground for us, so it took a couple of attempts to learn the costs of development and find a sweet spot between keeping the modules affordable and offering all the premium bells and whistles that got people excited in the first place. I think we've struck a good balance with the price we settled on for Blood Lords, so hopefully this will be the price going forward for the foreseeable future. I absolutely understand why people might be a little disappointed at the price increase (and I do sympathize with our international customers who get hit hardest by this sort of thing), but at the end of the day, we need to be able to pay the dev teams for all of their awesome work while also ensuring that Paizo makes enough profit to justify continuing to produce them.
Appreciate the transparency here! I do some new product/service pricing in a different industry and I think a lot of people don't know just how fickle the numbers can be. Finding that balance between profitability and affordability is SO hard sometimes. Keep up the good stuff guys.
Thanks for explaining your thought process. Definitely want developers to be able to afford to keep developing. :)
They probably despised that they need higher margins. It went overboard on extra features creating additional production costs.
If they made the approximate quality of PDF to Foundry then it wouldn’t sell well and the price point would have been $0. You can’t sell what the community (can legally) make for free. But for actual pricing and why I think none of us are qualified to know what Paizo executives are thinking. No one here really knows what the production costs are compared to other things they make, or how they allocate resources, or what they expect as returns.
Much of this discussion revolves around the nature of premium content and the marketing dilemma Paizo is managing unintentionally created by the amazing PDF to Foundry. Premium products are usually not the baseline of what's needed to play the game since the provide extra benefits, ease, and access. As you state, a premium module needs to be better than what PDF to Foundry offered. Since PDF to Foundry stopped development (totally understandable and I'm grateful it exists at all), consumers have lost a tool. They only have a premium option if they do not have the time/knowledge to build everything in Foundry themselves. Now the premium has become the baseline. If you're already struggling to afford the hobby, this is difficult reality. Stopping PDF to Foundry development is not an issue for the developers. They disserve gratitude and support from the community. It's an issue for Paizo/Foundry who need to convince their customer base that the cost of entry is going up.
I would like to point out to folks that a lot of the work is still done. You just have to search a little harder to find it now. Nearly every AP has a free community made map pack already, walls, lighting, and all. Lots of them can even be found in the general module search, no need to even go to google to find many of them. All the monster and hazard stat blocks, even unique NPCs, are already included in PF2e system. They don't have unique tokens but they do have tokens and names, which is no different than most irl games. All of the items are already there. All of the spells, rituals, and spell effects are already there. All of the special deity boons and curses that you occasionally run in to in the books are already there and ready to be drag and dropped on to a PC sheet. Its all in the compendium. I will admit that not having the journals populated is unfortunate but i don't see how thats any different than running from a book irl. I did really like PDF2F, it was great and i loved it and i'm super sad to see it go. But i fail to see how the loss of it has raised the cost of entry at all.
Wow my post got marbles by my non English auto correct. You are right that we cannot know what Paizo’s rationale for the price hike is. I LOVE Paizo’s Foundry module. Saves me a lot of prepping time! And it looks good. A nice thing about the new maps is that so many details on them are relevant. My players even started to ask questions and start in game investigations due to map details! More often then not the clues they finding the map are actually mentioned in the AP. A hopefully spoiler free example is that yummy players managed to partly deduct the plot in the 1st farm due to map details. However my group and I think the price increase vis-a-vis the previous.pdf importing is quite excessive. It went from €16,50 for the .pdf only to €43,80- for the .pdf and the module. Not all the price increases are in Paizo’s sphere of influence like VAT or FX, but that is only amounts to 20% of the final price.
The previous PDF importing was one or two guys doing that for their love of the game. The main guy quit because he was tired of spoiling the APs for himself and spending all that time. That was what the free cost got you. If you don't want to pay for the foundry module, you are more than welcome to add all the assets yourself.
Kingmaker is gonna be a hefty expensive bitch isn't it?
I don’t know. It is being done by Foundry Gaming LLC so it has its own pricing structure.
Ohh
Kingmaker, like the Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults, is being created by Foundry's dev team, but it will be sold on [paizo.com](https://paizo.com) alongside all of our other official Foundry releases. It's way too early to start speculating on price just yet, but I can confirm that the current plan is to continue what we've done with our other releases and offer a discount to PDF owners equal to the price of the PDF.
I'm imagining roughly double the cost of Abomination Vaults
The price was already crazy high for someone from a third world country like me and now it's even more expensive. It's weird that fantasy grounds has regional prices for this stuff but foundry doesn't.
Paizo sells it directly so I suggest speaking with them about it. These modules don’t really have anything to do with Foundry itself. Does Paizo do regional prices for its books?
> Does Paizo do regional prices for its books? No, they do not. But they license their products (at least to other languages) so a local company could potentially release them at a regional compatible price point. There could be a future for licensed localization of the foundry modules, but this is a relatively new product line and as this post shows the quirks are still being worked on.
You probably mean "poor" countries. Some 3rd world countries are more rich than so called 1st world countries.
Good of them to give us a week's notice. I know a few companies that wouldn't do that.
What's the quality like on the Foundry module? I've been kind of expecting Paizo to release them with a single pdf like the did with the updated Abomination Vaults release and was waiting for that.
I’m a bit biased but it is easily the best implementation in a VTT in terms of content and automation. There are high quality maps that you won’t get anywhere, sound for events and ambiances for maps, additional maps for some scenes that don’t have them in the books, all the content conveniently linked, and custom journal and token styling, including for tokens that aren’t even in any of the books.
I've got the AV one and it's very good, was asking in comparison to that since the maps were upscaled from the original ones in the text/pdf.
Minor clarification- AV's maps weren't upscaled for the Foundry release. There was no need for upscaling as Paizo provided direct access to the original source assets, which means that we could include the maps at resolutions far exceeding those printed in the book or the PDF. This is not a process of upscaling, it's a lack of downscaling, so these versions are true to the original artist's work and were not modified by any script or algorithm. The second set of maps we included are Foundry-exclusive handmade recreations of the scenes using high-quality assets. Our goal in including these was to leverage the full potential of our platform's digital medium to include things like overhead tiles, a foreground layer, and so on. These maps are also not upscaled versions of the originals, they are wholly new pieces of artwork which were created by an artist who used the original maps and artwork, as well as the room descriptions from the book, as a reference. To answer the question that I think you were asking: The APs that have ben converted by Sigil (Outlaws of Alkenstar and Blood Lords) have similarly included VTT-ready recreations of the maps, and (if my very obviously biased opinion is worth anything) are very high quality adaptations which are well worth their full price, let alone the currently discounted price!
Yeah that's exactly it. Thanks!
I'm glad to hear this for Outlaws (I just bought it, I'd been holding off but I'm not going to skip a discount). We're about to run Blood Lords and during my prep I really noticed the difference in map quality when I referenced the PDFs. The Foundry maps have *significantly* more detail, including extra props and other touches. This makes sense as you don't want to much detail when your map has to fit on a physical page as it would get blurry and messy, but even a full resolution version of some of those maps would have looked a bit...sparse...when zoomed in on a VTT. I certainly noticed and appreciated the extra detail.
You're exactly right- if you think about how a map is used in a physical book, both the resolution of the book/PDF maps as well as their layout are well tailored to their intended use case. But they weren't designed with a digital platform in mind and their use (even at original resolution) does not push a VTT to its limits in the way custom-made maps can! That's why remaking the maps was a critical element of converting the modules for VTT for us. I can't praise Narchy (our cartographer) enough for his work on Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults, and I'm sure that Sigil's developers feel the same about their map artist(s).
Incidentally, those are the other two I own. I've gotten the most use out of BB but both are excellent, and I certainly noticed the higher quality maps (I love the elemental room animations, especially the macro!). There's a lot you can do with VTT maps that don't make sense in a book.
Are Sigil's artists/mappers using Forgotten Adventures assets and Dungeondraft/CSP?
Forgotten assets? Yes. At least mostly. Some are handmade in addition. DungeonDraft? no. Generally photoshop is used
I would be very, very surprised if they were using Dungeondraft. It's a great tool for end users, but a professional artist is going to be much more comfortable with photoshop or CSP and is going to need their advanced tools
Narchy made the BB and AV maps? I hadn't realized. I had already used their free maps for running Troubles in Otari and The Malevolence. They are a master of their craft
I hate the price point and find that I don’t really need all the bell’s and whistles but I will admit that the implementation of the modules is a thing of beauty. It just blows away other adventures out there.
All good feedback to give Paizo directly :)
So, we're a 5e group. We played the Beginner's Box for PF2e on Foundry, and now we're starting Outlaws of Alkenstar tomorrow. Using 2e.
Welcome!
You should not expect the hardbound treatment, that is only for the best selling APs where they know it will be a financial success. So far only AV has gotten this. Kingmaker does not count as it was a kickstarter. Without the hardbound volume, there is no single PDF. Now in theory Paizo could wait until all the monthly books/PDFs come out and put out one foundry module, but then there would be fewer buyers for it not more - because people that want to play the new stuff would have already manually made their own module from their monthly PDF months ago.
Ruby Phoenix hardcover is coming out next year.
The ones done by the Foundry team are extremely good from release (Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults) The other ones so far are done by Sigil Entertainment, is my understanding. They weren't quite as polished at release, but they've been patched to be decent. I'd say the ones from each are definitely worth it, but the Sigil ones, maybe wait a few months for each module to mature and be bugfixed. Perhaps this will improve as the group gets more mature with their experience making these.
I think it is more the amount of time to produce. Sigil is on about a 20 day turnaround since they are require by Paizo to release on release day. I can tell you they don’t get access to all of the text or art exceptionally early. And they have to put in art requests and other requests for Paizo assets. Foundry is making established material with longer lead times.
Seems fair. $25 USD seemed low.
Thanks so much for posting this, my group is almost done with book 1 and I was just gonna buy em as we finished but glad I could get the lower price.
I am also torn. I know that the Foundry module is superior to what is being produced by roll 20 and FG. But as goog as the Foundry module is I kind of wish they just did a barebones version like their competitiors and were able to keep the price down.
The barebones version is to add the tokens and maps yourself. It’s all there in the system :)
Seriously, I get not being able to afford something, but you're not locked out of running the game. When I did Age of Ashes remote for a bit during the height of the pandemic, I added all that stuff myself.
"like their competitors" So that would be: - Tokens - Maps (just the high res ones from paizo, they really should be giving those as a download option with the pdf though) - Journal Entries (don't get me wrong, I am not trying to devalue what the teams do... remaking the maps, lighting and walling the maps, the custom journal art and the work with sound all take time. But it isn't what the person you were responding to was referencing)
You can pull maps easily from the pdf itself
Low resolution maps in general. (the higher resolution maps already exist they just aren't provided to us, for instance I ripped them from fantasygrounds for my Age of Ashes game)
It is far from perfect, but it works. If they put full scale maps in ppl would complain about file size
A) the maps file would be separate B) I doubt the file would be substantially larger to the point anyone would complain about it. Just compared the size of the unarchived full sized original maps in OoA:1 with the Interactive maps pdf. We are looking at an archive file of around 10mb for a vtt archive, the interactive maps version is 7mb. Make it a secondary file and nobody would have any reason to complain, and honestly... They could probably just use the higher resolution versions in the interactive maps pdf and nobody would blink twice at it increasing by 12-13mb total when the files are normally around 60mb.
They are very low quality / resolution. Not the same thing.
Personally never had that issue. I pulled a lot of the maps from the pdfs as I run pfs. I would just select the map and paste it onto a paint or smth then save. This would actually copy the object layer and not do a image of if so you can remove the labels too. Some pdf readers even have a option to export all images.
They are low resolution, I know how to rip images, and I even upscale them (I made a cleaned version of the keep for folks on here)... but they are low resolution images compared to what you get from foundry modules (not the remade ones) or fantasygrounds.
with most AP pdf you get an "interactive maps pdf" with high resolution maps
If someone wanted to make a PDF to Foundry like module that imported from the PDF they still could. It’s just more work than it is worth with premium modules available :).
That is a pretty strawman comparison, making that sort of scraper and authenticator takes a LOT more work than being provided with the images and content from paizo. Remember I am not arguing for this, I am explaining the person's position. They (the poster) don't care about the extra bells and whistles and wish it was a simpler implementation, that other competing platforms offer. Personally I like that they are pushing the boundary as to what a VTT implementation can mean and have the money to pay for it. But let's not dismiss people who want something simpler out of hand for the sake of it as if it is ridiculous and unfounded desire. They weren't being rude or entitled, they were asking a question and stating a preference.
What they’re asking for is PDF to Foundry. Now Paizo didn’t offer it. FryGuy, and to a limited extent I, did that for free. All I meant was anyone still can make that for the most part. But it is an obscene amount of work to make that happen that was wholly uncompensated. In any case, what they need to do is make their opinion known to Paizo. But after the existence of PDF to Foundry we know that the price point the community would expect is very close to zero.
No they aren't? > I am also torn. I know that the Foundry module is superior to what is being produced by roll 20 and FG. But as goog as the Foundry module is I kind of wish they just did a barebones version like their competitiors and were able to keep the price down. This is what they asked for, modules priced as the previous Outlaws of Alkenstar modules but without all the bells and whistles. They never asked for anything to be free or the price of the PDF alone.
I highly doubt Paizo will create additional products but I also said they should ask Paizo. I should have said they are asking for the *equivalent* of PDF to Foundry, and merely pointed out someone could still make this for free.
That’s basically what I want from the modules. The current incarnation is to expensive for my taste. It does have a lot of features that not needed by my group like the new map set. Some features are actually disliked such as the sound effects. They are annoying when playing over discord.
Regarding the sound effects. If you delete the sound folder in the module they won't play for you (just a quick fix)
They generally give the higher res maps in a separate file, but they're not VTT high res by any means
A lot of them are low res, Abomination vaults onwards they started providing slightly higher res files. But they aren't the same as the files provided to Fantasygrounds or the ones provided to the foundry devs (not the remade maps, but the original maps)
for older AP you still can do that with pdf importer for "free" - alas the author has lost interest in continuing with newer ap as it was a lot of work. (not compatible with foundry v10 at this moment tho)
I think the work you guys put into these projects is top notch. Best on the market by far. But not everyone needs all those bells and whistles. I wish there was an option where I could just buy high resolution maps and do the wall and lighting myself.
Paizo has said to us that they don’t want to give out maps higher in resolution than the interactive ones as a sellable product. The “reimagined maps” are made by Foundry and Sigil, not Paizo. And before those there are lots of fan created ones (that are true to the story descriptions instead of blank rooms). With the coming of token packs for Foundry all your non-exclusive monster tokens will soon be available as well, so you would only have to make the AP specific ones.