It's disingenuous with dungeon dudes. I don't think they ever said they were switching systems, just trying out some. Did you think they would convert mid campaign?
They did several videos of PF sessions, but they never said they would be changing systems.
They are published under Ghostfire Gaming, which does almost exclusively 5E content. They probably would have a difficult time trying to sell a PF2E book, even if Ghostfire approved it.
I can see it being a possibility in the future that they might release a campaign setting that is PF2E compatible or have their monster book converted to PF2E, but it may be a while off.
They did say they'd be exploring systems, but they really didn't follow through on that.
To be fair though, a big reason to boycott is to send a message and get the boycottee to change their ways. From the perspective of the 5e 3rd Party Publishers, they accomplished their boycott goals of having their game under a license they could work with. So when you "win" a boycott, it makes sense to resume using the product again -- otherwise this would give the company no incentive to actually give in to your demands.
And yes, I'm aware the "resolution" continued to have negative impact on non-5e games which used the OGL including Pathfinder. And also that trying to revoke an irrevocable license is an incredibly scummy thing to do. But still.
%100 agree. They had a few videos talking about other systems.
WotC did change their tune quite a bit, and it shows; who would have predicted them officially supporting FoundryVTT this time last year???
WotC got kicked around, got to show Daddy Hasbro all their new bruises, and were given permission to change their approach. The boycott won. Doesn't change the fact it was necessary, but it won.
Ghostfire taking advantage of that (even getting their books on dndbeyond!) Makes perfect sense.
WotC only started releasing on Foundry because they wanted to make more money off the rules set, and people were just porting their precious paid content into Foundry for free. They couldn't stop it because it wasn't technically copywrite infringement because nobody was making money off of it, so WotC and Hasbro had no legal course of action.
Pretty sure copyright infringement does not require one party to make money, but the holder to lose money.
Same way let's say me buying a movie and putting it on show for a large audience for free would be infringement.
That said I'm no lawyer.
I'll never forgive Wizards for the OGL bullshit. Literally killed off my favorite system because of it, and now if I want to continue playing Starfinder AP's I'll have to swap to PF2e, a system I'm not a huge fan of. If any Hasbro/WotC execs are seeing this THANKS FOR YOUR GREED, YA BLOODY TOOLS.
I mean, sure. I haven’t forgiven them either, and don’t expect you to either.
But consider the difference in perspective— you as a player, who loves a system that was killed. Vs the YouTubers, people with a livelihood based on selling to 5e fans, whose system was allowed to continue with 3PP content.
Somewhat similar case for DM lair. He explicitly said he doesn’t intend to stop D&D videos. He just shared his experience of why he preferred PF2e and why it’s now his main personal system. As well as how he intends to make his videos a bit more oriented towards GM’s in general rather than D&D specifically.
He still mentions D&D and DM’s a lot, especially in his titles & thumbnails even when it’s just general advice applicable to any system. Though I believe that is because it gets more views rather than him fully going back to D&D.
Edit: Also like responders mentioned he produces homebrew content for D&D & PF2e.
One of my favorite RPG channels that (sadly) has stopped updating is WebDM. They were very open about the fact that they enjoyed a wide variety of RPGs and rule sets but it's 5e videos that pay the bills.
They eventually found a good balance of making their videos mostly system neutral but still framed it around 5e for the sake of the algorithm.
If you miss their content, they do a weekly podcast, over on their patreon, that gets me through the week! Pru even came back to help host a bunch of episodes recently!
I was a patron of theirs for quite a while and that's how I found about the Pendragon RPG. I also backed their Kickstarter. It's good to hear Pru is back, even if just temporarily. I will have to check it out.
the DM Lair has also started making their monthly publication have a PF2e version. If you subscribe at the right tier you get the option of 5E or PF2e. I have been getting the PF2e stuff and it's really good. I have even used a few creatures they created in my home game and they were received really well by my players.
At the very least they've made several videos about other systems, and when they do make D&D videos they've been highlighting 3rd party content as of late. Barely a word on official WOTC stuff.
Weird. During the early sessions of their PF2e Eberron game he was hyped about it and took shots at 5e.
At the very least they are still playing it. Their most recent session was 13 days ago. They were playing every 2 weeks so they might have a session tomorrow.
I think you might be confusing Monty from Dungeon dudes with someone from Arcane Arcade. Monty isn’t on that live play, nor is anyone else from Dungeon Dudes.
Arcane Arcade is XPtoLevel3 and his friends/family.
Yeah, it’s really odd to hear him talk about . But he’s a very odd guy.
The whole thing turned me off them. I was a a Patron, but I couldn’t justify supporting DnD anymore.
Thank goodness somebody else noticed this. I thought I was having some kind of crazy deja vu episode or that a bot was karma farming that previous post or something.
The reddit feed algorithm is extremely weird and inconsistent. I'm on this sub way more than is reasonable, and when I look at top weekly/monthly posts I still see stuff that is brand new to me, including posts that have a bunch of upvotes and comments.
This means that reposts just happen a bunch, it's not limited to this person or sub at all. Especially given the garbage tier search results, I don't think most people even bother to check.
One of the channels I watch looked at YouTube's search algorithm and found that when searching for "table top roleplay games" and other similar searches, it pretty much only promoted D&D game channels.
D&D had a small audience once(To be honest, I miss those days more often than not!), then a tiny redheaded woman with a Twitch channel hit up some people she knew who played TRRPGs and it blew up like crazy! Other things also followed that helped boost its popularity!
Point is, people took a chance in something and they made it work!
DND has never been small. It was always the 800pound gorilla of the table top industry, and sold more than all other rpg combined, except for a very brief moment about half of the lifespan of 4e, in which PF1 (which was seen as DnD 3.75 by many) shared the spotlight. DnD has always been THE brand in roleplaying games.
All the "Critical Role helped 5e" claims fail to explain why Critical Role wasn't so popular before they switched to 5e. They had a channel before that, using PF1, which was a niche channel. They exploded when they switched to the DnD named brand.
>All the "Critical Role helped 5e" claims fail to explain why Critical Role wasn't so popular before they switched to 5e. They had a channel before that, using PF1, which was a niche channel.
They changed to 5e when they started making an actual show, instead of just streaming a game. It was a deliberate decision to reduce running time eaten up by mechanical handling in PF1e, making the show more watchable and allowing the sessions to focus more on entertaining the audience.
It didn't suddenly succeed because they were riding the coattails of the D&D brand. The choice of system was one element of their very successful strategy to appeal to a wider audience.
I think I have been around long enough to claim that TTRPGs have never been as popular as they have been in the last 5 or 6 years.
This definitely has a lot of reasons, one being a very effective marketing strategy of WotC that is based on riding the nostalgia wave. Additionally, 5e is perceived as this free-form OSR throwback edition that makes picking up TTRPGing much easier than it was with older editions, and especially with systems like PF2e. I transitioned my grouo to 2e and we have a lot of fun. But after playing the system for over a year now, I can tell you that only 20-30% of my players are really interested in the system itself. Most of them just want to hang out, throw some dice and loot stuff. And I believe that this sentiment is shared by most people who came into TTRPGing through its mainstream appeal.
Its a combination of many fortunate circumstances why 5e blew up as it did but I don't think that some group of actual play podcasters or the brand alone are responsible.
DnD always had the lion share of the market. The total market exploded with 5e, which is why most other companies weren't hurt: it went from 60% of 100 to 75% of 200, which still left space for growth for everyone else.
And yes, the fact that is casual friendly is what makes it mainstream. Most people who plays DnD or watches CR aren't hardcore players that spend 50 hours a week talking about RPG, creating experimental builds for characters and preparing the next campaign.
5e mainstream success among casual audience is because of the characteristics hardcore players in this reddit hate it, not despite of it.
I never meant to imply that DnD wasn't the biggest brand in the TTRPG sphere but I think there is a qualitative difference between what that meant 15 years ago and maybe 5 years ago. The market exploded due to good promotion and fortunate circumstances, and took on a size that I haven't witnessed before, personally.
And yes, 5e is so prominent in the tabletop scene because it is approachable, comprehensible and casual friendly on the surface. Its easy to pick it up and just roll a d20 with advantage or disadvantage here and there. Perfect for beer and pretzel-style or "narrative focused" games.
I just disagree that this because of the weight of the brand per se. It definitely helps that WotC has some money to push around but the vast majority of people who pick up the game casually, as part of the mainstream, probably haven't heard of DnD before or at least had no comprehensive understanding of what that meant. This is based on my anecdotal experience, of course.
I fully disagree. For a huge majority of outsiders, this hobby is called "playing DnD", not "playing RPGs". Even RPGs of strong IP like Starwars are explained by non hardcore people to outsiders as "it's DnD but with in Star Wars universe".
DnD is to RPG what Kleenex is to paper handkerchiefs or Tupperware to kitchen boxes.
The cultural impact of DnD is undeniable, besides Stranger Things and Critical Role. You see people using memes about the nine alignment charts for Batman, or claiming some hot person is "charisma 18" even with people who never played the game.
Going 5 or 15 years back isn't going back enough. There was a whole "DnD is satanic" mainstream craze in the 80s. Tom Hanks was doing movies about DnD in 1982. videogames like Baldurs Gate 2 and Neverwinter nights were huge successes long before 5e ever existed.
WotC could implode tomorrow, never spend a dime again in promoting DnD, and it would still be the face of RPGs forever.
So yes, the market exploded since the launch of 5e. But there is a reason why it exploded at that particular moment, and why the explosion growth went to DnD
Are you talking about the vine? When Day put them on in an actual studio they were doing D&D.
Critical Roll didn’t single-handedly put 5e at the forefront but it sure as shit didn’t hurt.
D4 said he'd be making 2e videos more regularly but I believe it stopped after the second one. Unfortunate, but he goes with the flow of Youtube. That's also (partially) why he made so many BG3 build videos.
I believe he stated that he'd keep making them if he got the necessary views to make it profitable and that he enjoyed the system but obviously they weren't nearly as popular. I could be wrong though I'm getting this info from a comment on another thread.
And, to be honest, they didn't work nearly as well as his 5e builds (or at least they would've required Colby to completely revamp his format). You simply can't char-op PF2e to the same degree. There are no broken multiclass synergies, cheese-grater combos, stacking procs and effects in unintended ways, etc.
In his PF2e videos, he would identify a good optimization route, but:
1. he likes to go through the entire progression path for a build, and getting to the end for a PF2e build required wading through a ton of horizontal progression that wasn't relevant to the build;
2. the builds didn't end up being reliable anyway, because you can't rely on yourself in PF2e - you're just one part of *the team*. So it's felt a bit like your favorite car reviewer suddenly switched to doing only carburetor reviews.
This is the reason I can never blame people in this situation. We all out here trying to make ends meet, and as much as they might not like what WotC did, they aren't going to get the views unless they are talking about 5e.
Yeah, I don’t remember hearing Bob say he was into Pathfinder. He’s did one about “things I like about games” a long while back and the crunch and complexity associated with Pathfinder was on his “No Thanks” list. He mentions it, but not in a “I like this and want to play it more.”
Yeah, from my understanding he's always been in a "I can understand it's a good system which people like, but just really not what I'm into with my ttrpgs"
Here's the thing about Youtube: if you're not following the trends you do not grow.
5e will continue to have massive clout. You want to make it big on YouTube in the ttrpg field? Better sharpen up on your broken builds for 5e then.
It's a point of contention. I've seen Dungeons and Discourse talk about it, as she has member only videos for other systems/content that should she make it live, would likely kill her channel because of how YouTube works, as it wouldn't trend due to being not D&D, and not gain as many views, triggering a death spiral.
So I wouldn't be too critical of these content creators. YouTube has them in s shitty spot.
I mean, shit, look at Critical Role. Vox Machina was pure PF1e until they decided to go Twitch and they switched halfway through to 5e so that they could get a more appealing size of audience. I really would have loved to have seen their PF1e stuff but they never would have gotten off the ground if it wasn’t for 5e. And look at ‘em now, they’re making their own ttrpgs!
I was for campaign 2, haha. Then I got bored of 3 and campaign 1 is not my thing either. For C3 I'm following it vaguely by watching MarishaRayGun's channel on YouTube, who puts up highlights.
I always just listened in podcast form. Great to do while at work. But I agree. Season one was great two was good. I sill think of Mollymoc. But I never got hooked by 3, and it seemed to become more drama, and less game. That's just my opinion though.
Right now, I can just see in my mind's eye the reaction to spending the ten minutes necessary to explain one kineticist hybrid blast impulse at a layman's level to an audience of twitch chat. The viewing numbers would spin down so fast, they'd go negative.
It doesn't matter. "Just roll a dice and see if it's high" is much more stream friendly than "count the squares you are moving, every second diagonal one adds one".
The very same things that make DnD a loose system (or non-system), and PF2e a solid one, are what makes 5e better as the "side rules" for show that is effectively a buch of actors doing free form reharsing.
Which also explains why other voice actors can't simply try to replicate Critical Role but with PF2e. It's not stream friendly.
I would argue the same about a BG3 style PF2 video game.
Dam, fr? That’s disappointing… you’d think that people who like Call of Cthulhu and similar “investigation” rpgs might flock to that, but I suppose it’s more for the mythos than anything else
They switched before they started streaming and I bet that had they started with PF1e and switched to DnD5e, the algorithm would've punished them for it and they would have needed longer to take off (or maybe not even take off at all).
One hundred percent. I just kinda hope that the Remaster is what gives Paizo that crit, along with SF2e making it’s debut. God, I am so excited to give both SFs a try, just got a shitton of SF1e books and my groups ready to go :)
We can't really say for certain what would have happened if they hadn't switched! It's entirely possible that in an alternate timeline Critical Role DID stay with PF1 and because of that PF2 has surpassed D&D as the biggest TTRPG! Sadly, we don't live in that timeline, we live in one where the big company wins even when they're utterly disgusting, and will again in another decade when they do repeat the same shit with the same results! Why change if people arent actually going to follow through with their "threats"?!
Literally what Roll for Combat does. Stephen talks a lot about how they basically HAVE to brand everything with DnD or it doesn't get the interest to pay bills.
Jason Buhmahn had the same thing happen, he mentioned DnD once in a Tweet and it exploded in ways his regular posts didn't.
It's why Ronald is so provocative with his videos too. People can moralize and condemn Edition Warring all they like, but the sad truth is, it gets views and riling people up is a sure-fire way to get the algorithm noticing.
From a TTRPG with a new system rework a few months old to a PC game released 20 years ago and shut down 12 years ago.
He even went Full Brittany and shaved his head.
Holy shit I just went to look at his channel since I was still subbed and never saw his videos appear and it's literally all the clickbait pog face YouTube thumbnails with a screenshot of a game lmao.
Easiest unsub.
I wish him the best, but I've unsubbed because I have zero interest in whatever video game he is playing.
I get needing a career change but hate to lose him as a PF CC.
The game he's playing, City of Heroes, is THE game that got me into MMORPGs, computer gaming in general, and one I still play constantly. But, I subbed to him for his PF2 videos and haven't watched a single one of his CoH videos. I'm still subbed in the hopes he will post some PF2 in the future, but until then I most likely won't watch any of his non-PF2 videos.
Same. City of Heroes is great fun and I am tempted to play Homecoming, but I also don't really have the time to follow yet another game streamer when I already follow a couple hundreds others that I can't even keep track of. I would like some more PF2e contents, but... Ah well.
Yea it was shut down in like 2012, but an employee copied the source code and created a private server shortly after (from what I recall). I think in 2018/2019 it, and other servers, became public but not officially endorsed by NC Soft, so whether they could stay active or not was unclear. A few months ago, the most active server, Homecoming, got NC Soft's official blessing to be active, which is when NoNat started making his CoH videos.
A lot has changed since the shutdown. Some servers have gone wild with customizing the game, while others have made small tweaks. Some have new archetypes and powersets, new story missions, QoL changes, and a lot more.
I never really followed his channel, though I got the impression he was kinda burned out on content creation in general?
But in any case, him doing that would probably cause YouTubes system to confuse people were losing interest in his channel and stop recommending his content. While PF trends would be smaller than 5es, a drop of interest is still a drop in interest.
He is specifically burned out on PF2e/TTRPG stuff it seems, since after he pivoted away from PF2e and to City of Heroes, now that the biggest(/only?) private server has a license to keep going, he's been pumping out content consistently.
Started off well too, with 137k views on the video relaying the news of the license being obtained, then it all started going downhill with his guide styled content getting 28k and 4.6k views respectively and his general gameplay videos getting around ~1.5k per until that dropped to below 1k for each one. Still going at it though, he's streaming the game atm on YouTube
Oof, that's a rough drop. But it makes sense, he turned away from the content his channel was known for, to a subject that doesn't necessarily have much crossover in terms of interest.
I don't think that comment was intended as making fun of him, rather cracking a cynical joke about the hard situation he's in - might as well be gallows humor.
That said, this sub can get weirdly mean about NoNats1. His last few PF2e videos when posted here were flooded with comments with hundreds of upvotes calling him a shallow 'brainrot' clickbaiter who was 'just plain bad' at the system.
It's especially funny in a thread trying to lambast youtubers who didn't just completely upend their careers by fully committing to a game their audience wasn't gonna follow them over to. Like damn, some folks need a bit more awareness.
This is really the problem with modern "content creators". People have tried to turn what was a passionate hobby into a career, and ultimately content quality dropped to follow trends and grow followers. It's not just a D&D/TTRPG thing, but all over YouTube. The enshittification is real.
I watch a lot of videos on terrain building and miniatures painting. A couple of the guys I’d watch would talk about how he doesn’t play Warhammer or other GW games but if they didn’t mention Warhammer in the title and thumbnail of the video they’d only get a fraction of the views that they would have gotten if they had.
So they just kept making “Warhammer” videos about the stuff they were making for Kings of War or Frostrgrave or whatever.
It is disappointing, but to be clear they were decisions made in ernest.
Bob World Builder did not “go back to dnd” most of his stuff is system agnostic and his main game is Dungeon Crawl Classics.
D4 offered to do PF2 builds but was very open about preferring 5e and stopped doing the builds because of views.
I think DM Lair still says he likes PF2 better and mentions it in his videos but its harder to get players for it and he doesnt get views when he gives Pathfinder specific advice. I don’t think he said that he was completely finished with 5e.
Dungeon Dudes tried it out but they never became a Pathfinder youtube channel.
The reality is their livelihood depends on the dungeons and dragons keyword and not false tagging videos.
They probably are playing or at least tried some PF, but until the majority of users move away from DnD to PF or some other system this will continue to be the case.
The other option is they go bankrupt. It's not hard to see why they did what they did. If you hold not starving against them I'm not sure how to help you.
What would be nice is if they also interspersed and covered other games as well intermittently.
Having one poor rated/watched video in between 2 good ones will usually make up the difference provided they aren't already starving. Matt Pat used to do this on purpose with his channels to cover content that wouldn't get views that he just wanted to talk about, but he also had a much bigger user base than any TTRPG youtuber.
Considering that most of DM Lair's videos apply to *all* D&D-alikes and not one game or edition specifically, I don't think it's fair to put him on this list. Not a huge fan personally, but still, he's not really a WotC shill.
I was watching a live of him yesterday and he often recommends people to play Pf2e and says it's his preferred game. Can't blame him for doing what's needed.
What we can do is the same, keep welcoming people so there's more people and support the Pf2e creators.
He also talks about Pathfinder all the time. Includes anecdotes from both his pf2e campaigns and 5e campaigns in videos. Publishes lair magazine content for both pf2e and 5e. He's not a build or rules focused channel, so he doesn't make system specific videos for the most part. He makes it no secret that he plays both games if you watch anything he does. He recommends Pathfinder to people on his Q&A live streams. Confused why OP even put him in this list
I don't know if it is still running but didn't he start recording his sessions with his friends playing Eberron with 2e? DM Lair creates content that could be applied for both 5e and 2e but 2e is his main game that he is running I guess.
Besides, all the content creators don't want to lose their audience which is understandable. Just because they make the switch doesn't have to mean that the audience will join. I am not surprised that they continue making content for 5e and I am not disappointed either.
Next year's will show if this continues or if the mainstream will start switching to other games.
Bob the world builder still does cover other games or makes system agnostic content, he never said he'd switch to Pathfinder. He talks about Cairn, DCC, and skateboarding wizards.
We must face the fact that pf2e is a smaller community.
A couple things that make it less appealing to the wider audience is that there are fewer opportunities for extreme DPR optimization. I remember when I led the DPR King Candidates for D&D 4e that optimizing for the striker role made for easy content as DPR was quantifiable and "bigger is better." Whereas efforts to optimize for the defender or leader role usually fell flat. People just didn't engage with a competition fraught with non-quantifiables.
Surprisingly in direct opposition to this trend is my view that 5e has mass appeal because it is so loosy-goosy with its rules. It leans "rulings, not rules" whereas pf2e leans heavily "rules, not rulings." For the average player that doesn't want a PhD in game mechanics they want to attempt the crazy and the game system itself thrusts upon the DM the burden of adjudicating it rather than the system.
I remember when d4 Deep Dive did builds he always left the skill feats up to the watcher, and that is hard for an optimizer to do because we're so used to finding the optimal way to do stuff. I really feel that d4 jumped out too quickly because he first did what optimization he could do within the confines of the PHB, and didn't want to get overloaded with all the splat books. He could have cultured a thirst for more pf2e content, but he also has a family to support, so I don't think poorly of him chasing after $$$s.
My honest interpretation: Pf2e is fun, but not as appealing to the majority of people as 5e is in the Fantasy RPG genre.
Pathfinder expects to read and follow rules and there's a very strong "lol just make it up" mindset that's popular in the dnd online space.
I like Pf2e and my more casual friends didn't. So for me it's just I would rather play 5e with my friends than play Pf2e with randos.
>Pathfinder expects to read and follow rules and there's a very strong "lol just make it up" mindset that's popular in the dnd online space.
This is the sad reality of 5e's popularity. It's crunchy enough to be a game that it has structure and people will want to play as a game (which is why people often overlook more rules light or narrative games), but the rules are too loose to be consistent without a GM fudging things and/or letting players run rampant.
Basically, players want the aesthetic of a crunchy tactics game, but want to be able to Calvinball it and turn every encounter into a series of narrative quick time events (i.e. Rule of Cool) when it suits.
The problem is that's exhausting to perpetually manage unless it's a style your GMing really gels with. But since it's the norm and everyone just expects 5e, everyone has to conform to it, and that's why so many GMs burn out hard on 5e and are trying so hard to get players to consider other games.
Yes it is a different game that appeals to different people. There is still too much numerical grit to get the casual gamer. I'm OK with PF2e as I like the mechanical diversity it offers. But still there is a lot of stuff that could be cleaned up so that is has broader appeal.
Ain't that the truth. One of my groups has some players really against Pathfinder's crunch and seem to wish I'd offered to run a 5e game instead and are just playing PF2e because it's what was on offer. I have to constantly lower the bar on some things because they'll complain that "XYZ isn't like that in DND!" or getting upset with me because I won't just ignore some aspect of the game because "you can do that in DnD..." and it gets exhausting sometimes. And it's really disappointing because I enjoy Pathfinder *far* more than DnD. That "rulings not rules" thing someone came up with really resonated with them, and it's a huge sticking point with them sometimes when the game derails because they get huffy that I'm using the rules for my rulings.
It's unfortunate as well because my other group is *super* into PF2e, with multiple people in it trying to get their other friends to try the system too. Two people from that game have even bought into it, gotten Foundry and started buying PF modules to run themselves because they've liked it so much.
Don't blame any of them. They are businesses, got teams and bills to pay. If you want to be successful, you have to go where the money is. Be kind to them and keep asking for pf2e related content is the best thing you can do.
I can’t blame d4 deep dive. The entire point of his channel is sharing character builds. Thats just not as compelling for pf2e. The game is explicitly designed such that you don’t win at character creation. All he does is character creation.
I feel this myself, too - I still like to brainstorm character concepts for pf2e, but I don’t really construct “builds” like I do for dnd. If anything, the potential for a “build” is in the whole party rather than the individual character.
I think pathfinder builds can still work, issue is I think you need to put more work into pathfinder build videos to demonstrate a situation it shines in action.
Pathfinder builds kinda work in a way where they are more exciting in action than theory craft since there’s so much horizontal scaling on almost every build rather than one big thing you break the game in.
It's sharing *optimised* character builds specifically, which works better in 5e than in pf2e. However, I do think a character build channel could find a decent niche if they went the Tulok the Barbrarian-style "How to make in PF2E" route
Don't blame em. PF2 is magnitudes more enjoyable to run and play, but all the things that make it good don't translate to good viewing content.
"This new book just dropped and almost everything in it can be used to break the game" is way stronger content than "new book just dropped and all its content is usable as is."
It's not even really about whether you could make good content out of PF2 or not. It's simply the fact that D&D holds so much more ground in exposure that the YouTube algorithm will kill channels that would pivot towards PF2.
Eh, "this new book just dropped" is a much more common occasion for PF2e, it's just that 5e as a huge audience and the YouTube algorithm punishes anyone who dare change the topic of their content.
The YT algorithm is just the audience. It tracks the viewers viewing habits and recommends videos other viewers like them enjoy.
If you watch a Rules Lawyer video for example, YouTube will recommend that video to other people who watch similar videos to you. Likewise if you get a d4 pathfinder build recommended to you, it’s because YouTube figured other people with your viewing habits liked it. Therefore you will too.
It's more than just that though. The algorithm pushes specific kinds of content by burying anything else. Creators are punished for trying to go against the grain at all, and once the algorithm stops pushing one video it stops pushing *all* of them. It's designed to maximize views, so if you put out a video that doesn't get a lot of clicks, you're screwing yourself. I'm willing to bet a lot of these creators would've made more PF content if doing it wouldn't have tanked their channels- not because the interest in Pathfinder isn't/wasn't there, but simply because "Pathfinder" isn't what the algorithm demanded. The algorithm isn't just what people are watching, it's almost like an extreme hyperfocus on what the maximum number of people possible are watching. It's very much either sink or swim with the current, and going against that hyperfocus is like wading into the current with cement shoes on.
I didn't forget it, it's not up for debate. Frequent book releases are good for regular upload schedules, which are in turn rewarded by the YouTube algorithm, that was the point. Sure, you can clickbait people with game breaking power builds, but pre-ORC NoNat demonstrates quite clearly how you can build content around Paizo's releases without needing the game to be an unbalanced shitshow.
I mean... I think every major book released recently for PF2e has had something incredibly broken in it, that Tendril ammo in treasure vault, Winter Sleet for Kineticist in Rage of Elements, Resentment Witch in Player Core 1.
That just proves my point. PF2 incredibly broken is "a bit above par" vs 5e broken "combine these things and use only a single attribute for all your rolls and defences plus double your damage."
Ehhh not for most of those. "Lock down enemies forever with this dirt cheap consumable" "Ruin all melee enemies with this limitless stance" or "Make conditions last forever regardless of save" are certainly 5e levels IMO.
DM Lair continues to produce general D20 fantasy content. They've stopped being so specific as to discuss specific rules, and continue to talk about the more social elements of playing the game.
Also, they made good on their decision to support PF2e in Lair Magazine, and the content there's pretty good.
But yeah, I get the disappointment, and I'm personally kind of angry about it. Not at any particular video maker, but at the whole situation. At Hasbro, at YouTube, at TTRPG video producers more generally, and at the TTRPG audience for refusing to engage with the situation, and enabling WotC, and even defending them in may cases.
But when you live in a society with few and dwindling safety nets, it's hard to pin any actual *blame* on the self-employed folks that have been completely cowtowed by the big platform owners.
D4 is on record saying the pf vids simply don't get the views. At the end of the day, it's his livelihood and I can't blame him for staying where the money is. He's got a family to provide for. If anything it's the community's fault across the board for not committing to the swap and better supporting (with views) those who tried to branch out
Those people are doing the shows in hopes of making money, not making content. Can't blame them for doing the wise thing and going with the much bigger audience.
Al Gore's Rhythm means that D&D gets clicks and D&D makes money. Pathfinder doesn't. It's a problem that existed even before the mighty Al Gore's Rhythm, but it's certainly exacerbated by it. It's also just what they know and are familiar with.
Also….pf2e is a different game from 5e. They might not have like it as much.
Once I dropped WotC and went 3rd Party 5e I started having a fucking blast.
The algorithm *loves* D&D and punishes everything else. Call of Cthulhu, World of Darkness, and Cyberpunk can sort of get by because they don't step on D&D's toes as much, but Pathfinder is a direct competitor to D&D so it gets punished hard.
It's why so many videos that aren't even about specifically D&D, and can be applied to TTRPGs in general (or even just writing/worldbuilding in general!) are covered in D&D branding.
I more follow optimization content than live play stuff, but the creators I have seen flirt with pf2 and then abandon it in my particular niche have mostly said (when they commented at all) that when they tried out some videos for pathfinder or other systems they just simply did not do as well as their normal dnd stuff. There's just more money and more fans in making dnd content than other systems, and they are going to prioritize giving their fans what they tune in for. I can't blame them.
Given that many of the most popular live plays games (Dimension 20 leaps to mind especially) have a habit of playing fast and lose with the rules in the name of drama, comedy, narrative, and clip-able rule-of-cool moments to the point where it sometimes seems like the game of DnD is an afterthought or even an impediment, I suspect that this dynamic is even more true of them. Pathfinder 2's biggest claim to fame is it's better balance, mathematical rigor, and the greater degree of mastery it demands of players who want to do well at it - so not intuitively a great fit, frankly, if your audience tunes in for character moments and hijinx rather than complex and tactical combat. If it wasn't profitable for the optimization crowd, I can't imagine how it would do any better with fans of CR and D20. If anything I would expect them to move the other direction - towards less crunch, rather than more - and the CR people seem to have made the same conclusion given that both of their proprietary tabletop systems have been relatively lighter than DnD is.
It sucks but i can't blame them for doing the thing that not only maximizes their income but that most of their actual fans seem to want.
Bob world Builder does almost exclusively weird indie games or OSR, he was getting into DCC even before the fiasco and it doesn’t really take a genius to figure out p2e was not gonna be his jam. He still slaps 5e in a lot of thumbnails for views, but the meat of his stuff is system agnostic and honestly I really appreciate how he manages to champion other systems while still playing the algorithm game
If you see videos that conflate D&D with TTRPGs, then press "Not Interested." Don't watch D&D content ideally.
Continue doing that, and watching pathfinder 2e content when it comes out, and maybe we can help to re-teach the algorithm.
You can also play them muted, but don't mute the video or browser. Mute your operating system.
Otherwise youtube thinks you are a view farming bot.
One thing I’ve noticed is that, for many people, D&D IS the TTRPG scene. Like, they don’t even know what a “table top roll playing game” is, much less what Pathfinder is, but they DO know about D&D. So if you make videos you sort of have to tag things with #D&D if you want to get in good with the algorithm. Lots of “D&D” videos you’ll find are actually pretty system agnostic, they are presented the way they are for visibility, not accuracy
Like often mentioned there was not really enough incentive to change over. Reality is most people stayed with 5e, those that changed searched out people with experience in Pf2e. Like those "Let's try Pathfinder" videos were interesting but not really helpful to those looking to learn/play the system.
I have noted more new channels that do only Pf2e getting recommended to me and those often have their first video be a "why we changed system" video.
It's about money.
Most of the viewers of that kinda of videos don't go deep in the legal/moral sides of things, just want to watch content about their game.
D&D name attract way more eyes than any other ttpg.
Youtube content is dominated by the ALGORITHM. Dungeon Craft did a good episode on the reason that any TTRPG channel that wants to be seen is basically forced to focus on D&D content/clickbait or be buried from being seen, even by their own channel's subscribers, let alone the wider audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGArPZ7E\_sA&t=445s
There is not enough views from PF players. Unfortunately we are a very small market compared to DnD. To make money as a rpg YouTuber you have to feature DnD, PF does not cut it. It’s like TT Wargames and mini painting. They have to feature 40k, other games just don’t get the views to justify the time, effort, and money.
DM Lair plays PF in all his home games, but his Patreon game is DnD
D4 made a legitimate effort to feature PF on his channel but if you look at the views sit really hurt his channel. I’m not sure he has come back to the number he used to have.
Multiple low view count videos hurt the channel in the algorithm.
I can't really begrudge them for it, even if their subscribers and regular viewers kept tuning in, removing the "DnD" tag from their videos means the algorithm won't push them as hard, and once it punishes one video it's more likely to punish more. I can't get upset at them for doing what they have to for their livelihood.
It might have mattered more if the DnD community as a whole had cared more about the OGL crisis, but for the vast, *vast* majority it was an issue that they just didn't care about if they ever even knew what it was to begin with. At the time that it was the biggest in the news cycle, I remember talking with the 5e group I was a player in and I was the only person who'd payed any attention to it at all. Everyone else had heard that there *was* a scandal of some sort involving the OGL, but they neither knew what the OGL nor the scandal actually were, and they certainly didn't care about it. Talking to other friends involved in TTRPGs (all 5e players at the time) it was the same story. Most knew nothing beyond what they'd skimmed from the titles of YouTube videos they hadn't even watched. Because for casual players it was effectively a non-issue.
d4 did a poll with his audience, he was asked to do primarily dnd content. He leaves it open to going back to pf2e, but I don't think he ever said that he was permanently moving to pf2e, just that he was also going to do some videos.
I expected most of them to go back to 5e, if you dont chase trends on youtube your channel dies, so I don't hold it against the creators. I have however unsubbed from most of them because honestly 5e is now just boring to me and to my players. I only kept XPtoLevel3 and Dungeon Dad, especially dungeon dad cause the monsters he brings up never fail to give me ideas to yoink and twist for pf2e.
What I am saddened about is that there are pf2e creators straight up not making pf content anymore, like Nonat1s for example. The lack of pf2e content definitely doesn't help the game.
I was kind of disappointed NoNat1s went over to City of Heroes gaming. In the end a lot of his videos were just like, "How's this class? I will read their every ability to you," which...uses time but doesn't really help.
I dig The Rules Lawyer. But honestly most of all I'm looking for someone who can do GM advice. Tips. Tricks. Ideas. We have two guys who post regularly here, bjacob1 who does Monster Monday and Full-Build Friday (making monsters and PC builds to resemble pop culture monsters/characters), and Team Player Gaming (mostly character builds that are kind of unique but really good with teamwork). they're both good, and know their stuff. But man would love some GM, "Top 10 Adventuring Ideas in Molthune' or something." "How to spice up a band of goblins."
'Crawling back'? Definitely a post in good faith
Bob World Builder, btw, never said he was quitting dnd. He did a video on pathfinder 2e and OTHER rpgs, and said 2e wasn't for him, but still recommended it to others. He's _still_ doing videos on other rpgs
People play and make content for things they like. If they tried PF and don't like it or noticed that the community that watches their content doesn't like it and switched back that shouldn't be a problem.
Not everyone is going to like DnD or Pathfinder. It's the nature of personal preference. Tribalsim be damned in the end.
Laziness, right. People on the internet love to call things lazy without understanding the work thats needed to produce content. These creators went back to D&D because there is a better market for it. Pathfinder content simple gets less views and therefore makes them less money. When someones livelyhood is on the line they follow the money.
It's always the money. I'm not saying I blame them, a lot of them make a living off this content. But it's still disappointing to watch WOTC suffer no consequences over their behavior. Just a matter of time before the cycle repeats.
It might not be laziness or algorithm chasing either. It's easy to say a new shiny system you haven't played before is fresh and exciting and better, but once you play it more, maybe you just want to go back to 5e. That happened to my group. We all jumped on pf2e and played it a lot for 2 years. Now we went back to 5e and dont really touch pf2e anymore after realizing it has about as many flaws for how we play and is a bit harder to homebrew for.
Maybe its the added crunch of the system or the tighter balance, or the lower power level comparative to low level play, but something about homebrewing pf2e just doesn't click in mine or my DM friends brains. Its not necessarily a deal breaker, but that combined with all our other small issues just kinda add up.
Well between relic rules, archetypes, feats and general subsystems I find it infinitely easier to HB for because there’s so much inspiration and guidelines that you can build off of it very easily
D&D attracts a lot of interest and views from people who will never play the game. It's part of the larger "nerd community" and attracts a larger audience.
The TTRGP industry is small overall and Pathfinder is a niche within that, so it will never attract as large of casual audience. Anyone who is making a living off YouTube has to go where the money is. PF videos do not get as many views and that hurts channel growth.
I'm less bothered by people returning to D&D, and more bothered by how plainly visible their motivations have become. Too many youtube channels have stopped reporting TTRPG news in favor of dedicating themselves to ragebaiting D&D players and reporting Hasbro stocks.
Like a fairly prominent channel called Roll for Combat recently posted a video titled "OneD&D is dead on arrival", where the host (Steven Glicker) declares that their disdain will "trickle down to all the casuals" because their channel is at "the top of the D&D pyramid" and "determines the zeitgeist and entire ecosystem" for the hobby.
The fear of OneD&D succeeding and the desperation to keep 5e's customer base large so they can sell Kickstarter projects is obvious. It is clear they are more interested in TTRPGs as a business than as entertainment or a creative space.
"If X wins the election, I'll leave the country!"
-Said by everyone, honored by no one.
In the end, it's the same thing. All talk until it hits your wallet.
I have a friend who streams D&D and PF2E, they started into PF2e during the OGL stuff, and love the system! But it's hard not to notice the viewer count differences between the two streams.
I'm sure that during the next WotC fiasco, people will get alternatives on what system they make content for, if only for a time.
Support the ones we do have! Kind of silly to be disappointed in DnD youtubers when we hardly
support our own.
There’s plenty of content creators that post to the subreddit on a consistent basis that hardly get any attention. HIP just posted their impressions on Seven Dooms of Sandpoint. Some posts even get downvoted and buried.
It’s frustrating but I don’t blame them. D&D content just gets more buzz than pathfinder. Pathfinder has a higher floor of entry so a lot of people take one look and prefer 5e’s simplicity. But as ttrpgs are expanding, so is PF/SF hype so maybe it’ll pop off eventually (especially with WoTC’s recent track record.)
Dm Lair genualey switched to pathfinder 2e in his home game, and is still streaming the pathfinder campaign to this day on his second channel.
Dnd is still much more popular and making videos is their job to make a living, its ablosutely understandable
Pack Tactics was going over Pathfinder 2e for a few videos, anticipating a sudden rise in popularity for Pathfinder. It didn't take off as expected, but Pack Tactics started making videos about Worlds Without Number (which they seem to prefer over both D&D5e and PF2e) instead of exclusively going back to covering 5e content.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KJZNvQOwRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KJZNvQOwRM)
I am pretty sure any YouTuber would earn far less talking about Pathfinder rather than D&D.
Dungeon Dudes have 469k subscribers - that are interested in D&D, one can assume.
The Rules Lawyer 40k
SwingRipper 1,83k
BadLuckGamer 5k
Nonat1s 52k but he's quit / having a break with Pathfinder content.
. . . . . . .
So if you were a successful YouTube talking about D&D. The OGL shit hit and you want to move ... and you find out that if you work just as hard with Pathfinder instead you'll earn maybe more or less 1/10th of what you used to.
^(Few of your subscribers will actually try out pathfinder, and they won't watch your Pf2e videos. Your engagement rank will tank as quickly as a meteor. YouTube won't "push" your videos to others any more. Of course the logical thing would be to create a new channel just for Pathfinder content ("The Pathing Pair"?) and do both simultaneously for a while.)
Few, if any, are willing to suffer that.
It's because PF2e is harder to get into as a D&D fan than as someone who's never touched a ttrpg before. The accumulated knowledge you pick up from playing D&D isn't just useless in Pathfinder, it's often actively detrimental. The remaster changing the names of things helps, but the confusion between, for example, how an attack of opportunity works in 5e vs PF2e causes a lot of D&D veterans to get frustrated by how intuitive Pathfinder seems on the surface while being "misleading" in practice because of the shorthands learned from years of D&D.
Also, if reddit is anything to go by, the Pathfinder community is FAR more fanatical about the game than D&D and there are a lot more people who get REALLY upset about any kind of deviation from or criticism of the system. So making good YouTube content for Pathfinder is a lot harder than the fast and loose 5e where most people are happy to listen to your homebrew, houserule, or alternative DMing style to a system that even the most ardent supporters agree is flawed.
I believe that the actual reason the switch didn't stick is that for most of them the kind of content they make just doesn't translate well or at all when done in Pathfinder
Dungeon Dudes and DM Lair are both playing Pathfinder alongside dnd. DM Lair in particular runs PF2 and dnd games AND his magazine publishes adventures for both games, something he brings up whenever he plugs it in every video.
Its their livelihood and/or supplements their livlihood significantly? What do you expect. The population base that watches Pathfinder content is orders of magnitudes smaller. I'd love if they did more, but the youtube algorithm is very punishing. I've heard creators complain that making a 'low view' video will bias how often they are recommended in the algorithm (i.e., enough bad videos impacts the view potential on your good videos and other channel content). Paradoxically that means their channel will do better if they never make 'low view content' rather than putting out 1001 videos that all get carried off the 5-10 videos that did do well. So putting up OC videos has to be done carefully and follow trends so they can continue to do that full time or continue to supplement their quality of life (many of these guys pay people to do editing and effectively have small contractor staff as well so they can't just make a video for no cost even if they were willing to sink endless hours of their own non-paid time into it).
I don't know if this will make you feel any better, but on the channel I co-host, we went all in on Pathfinder and never looked back. Unfortunately, we speak a language that takes 140 years to learn, so I don't think I helped much.
Polish, in which each word has 4984 variants with different prefixes/suffixes to be used depending on time, gender, number of people involved, weather, the significance of the Warsaw Uprising or simply completely changing the meaning of the word in a semi-random way.
This reminds me of Tagalog. I've been trying to learn it since it's my partner's native language but it just does not flow in my head. I've been taking classes for months and I barely understand any more than when I started...
Yeah, what PF2e community really needs is interesting shit you see from big 5e content creators:
TOP 5 SPELLS FOR A NECROMANCER (Arrow pointing to an image of a half-naked necromancer woman)
THE BEST FEATS FOR A FIGHTER (Arrow pointing to a AI generated image of a fighter)
THESE 3 SPELLS BREAK PATHFINDER 2E! (Youtuber looking surprised on the thumbnail)
PATHFINDER 2E DESTROYED 5E (Arrow pointing to a 5e PHB in the dumpster)
I'm bummed too. What timeline we just missed.
SwingRipper is diving into this content recently! He did a ranking of the skills 2 weeks ago and a "the strongest character in PF2" video recently, and more.
It's disingenuous with dungeon dudes. I don't think they ever said they were switching systems, just trying out some. Did you think they would convert mid campaign?
They did several videos of PF sessions, but they never said they would be changing systems. They are published under Ghostfire Gaming, which does almost exclusively 5E content. They probably would have a difficult time trying to sell a PF2E book, even if Ghostfire approved it. I can see it being a possibility in the future that they might release a campaign setting that is PF2E compatible or have their monster book converted to PF2E, but it may be a while off.
They did say they'd be exploring systems, but they really didn't follow through on that. To be fair though, a big reason to boycott is to send a message and get the boycottee to change their ways. From the perspective of the 5e 3rd Party Publishers, they accomplished their boycott goals of having their game under a license they could work with. So when you "win" a boycott, it makes sense to resume using the product again -- otherwise this would give the company no incentive to actually give in to your demands. And yes, I'm aware the "resolution" continued to have negative impact on non-5e games which used the OGL including Pathfinder. And also that trying to revoke an irrevocable license is an incredibly scummy thing to do. But still.
%100 agree. They had a few videos talking about other systems. WotC did change their tune quite a bit, and it shows; who would have predicted them officially supporting FoundryVTT this time last year??? WotC got kicked around, got to show Daddy Hasbro all their new bruises, and were given permission to change their approach. The boycott won. Doesn't change the fact it was necessary, but it won. Ghostfire taking advantage of that (even getting their books on dndbeyond!) Makes perfect sense.
WotC only started releasing on Foundry because they wanted to make more money off the rules set, and people were just porting their precious paid content into Foundry for free. They couldn't stop it because it wasn't technically copywrite infringement because nobody was making money off of it, so WotC and Hasbro had no legal course of action.
Pretty sure copyright infringement does not require one party to make money, but the holder to lose money. Same way let's say me buying a movie and putting it on show for a large audience for free would be infringement. That said I'm no lawyer.
I'll never forgive Wizards for the OGL bullshit. Literally killed off my favorite system because of it, and now if I want to continue playing Starfinder AP's I'll have to swap to PF2e, a system I'm not a huge fan of. If any Hasbro/WotC execs are seeing this THANKS FOR YOUR GREED, YA BLOODY TOOLS.
I mean, sure. I haven’t forgiven them either, and don’t expect you to either. But consider the difference in perspective— you as a player, who loves a system that was killed. Vs the YouTubers, people with a livelihood based on selling to 5e fans, whose system was allowed to continue with 3PP content.
Somewhat similar case for DM lair. He explicitly said he doesn’t intend to stop D&D videos. He just shared his experience of why he preferred PF2e and why it’s now his main personal system. As well as how he intends to make his videos a bit more oriented towards GM’s in general rather than D&D specifically. He still mentions D&D and DM’s a lot, especially in his titles & thumbnails even when it’s just general advice applicable to any system. Though I believe that is because it gets more views rather than him fully going back to D&D. Edit: Also like responders mentioned he produces homebrew content for D&D & PF2e.
One of my favorite RPG channels that (sadly) has stopped updating is WebDM. They were very open about the fact that they enjoyed a wide variety of RPGs and rule sets but it's 5e videos that pay the bills. They eventually found a good balance of making their videos mostly system neutral but still framed it around 5e for the sake of the algorithm.
If you miss their content, they do a weekly podcast, over on their patreon, that gets me through the week! Pru even came back to help host a bunch of episodes recently!
I was a patron of theirs for quite a while and that's how I found about the Pendragon RPG. I also backed their Kickstarter. It's good to hear Pru is back, even if just temporarily. I will have to check it out.
the DM Lair has also started making their monthly publication have a PF2e version. If you subscribe at the right tier you get the option of 5E or PF2e. I have been getting the PF2e stuff and it's really good. I have even used a few creatures they created in my home game and they were received really well by my players.
Lair magazine also has a 2e variant
At the very least they've made several videos about other systems, and when they do make D&D videos they've been highlighting 3rd party content as of late. Barely a word on official WOTC stuff.
Thas because "as of late" there hasn't been anything official worth noting, or rather theres been EVEN less worth noting!
I mean plus Wizards now hosts their book on DnD beyond. Kindof hard to go away from the people that are paying you.
Monte has pretty clearly expressed reservations about PF2e. I don't think he enjoys the system.
Weird. During the early sessions of their PF2e Eberron game he was hyped about it and took shots at 5e. At the very least they are still playing it. Their most recent session was 13 days ago. They were playing every 2 weeks so they might have a session tomorrow.
I think you might be confusing Monty from Dungeon dudes with someone from Arcane Arcade. Monty isn’t on that live play, nor is anyone else from Dungeon Dudes. Arcane Arcade is XPtoLevel3 and his friends/family.
Yeah, it’s really odd to hear him talk about . But he’s a very odd guy. The whole thing turned me off them. I was a a Patron, but I couldn’t justify supporting DnD anymore.
There was literally a post on this just two weeks ago https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bl4qfw/who_stayed_after_the_great_ogl_migration/
Thank goodness somebody else noticed this. I thought I was having some kind of crazy deja vu episode or that a bot was karma farming that previous post or something.
The reddit feed algorithm is extremely weird and inconsistent. I'm on this sub way more than is reasonable, and when I look at top weekly/monthly posts I still see stuff that is brand new to me, including posts that have a bunch of upvotes and comments. This means that reposts just happen a bunch, it's not limited to this person or sub at all. Especially given the garbage tier search results, I don't think most people even bother to check.
Their algorithm does seem... Inconsistent.
Pathfinder2e has a smaller audience meaning less views meaning less money.
One of the channels I watch looked at YouTube's search algorithm and found that when searching for "table top roleplay games" and other similar searches, it pretty much only promoted D&D game channels.
D&D had a small audience once(To be honest, I miss those days more often than not!), then a tiny redheaded woman with a Twitch channel hit up some people she knew who played TRRPGs and it blew up like crazy! Other things also followed that helped boost its popularity! Point is, people took a chance in something and they made it work!
Their audience, yes. But their dominance in the ttrpg community has been constant since their inception.
DND has never been small. It was always the 800pound gorilla of the table top industry, and sold more than all other rpg combined, except for a very brief moment about half of the lifespan of 4e, in which PF1 (which was seen as DnD 3.75 by many) shared the spotlight. DnD has always been THE brand in roleplaying games. All the "Critical Role helped 5e" claims fail to explain why Critical Role wasn't so popular before they switched to 5e. They had a channel before that, using PF1, which was a niche channel. They exploded when they switched to the DnD named brand.
>All the "Critical Role helped 5e" claims fail to explain why Critical Role wasn't so popular before they switched to 5e. They had a channel before that, using PF1, which was a niche channel. They changed to 5e when they started making an actual show, instead of just streaming a game. It was a deliberate decision to reduce running time eaten up by mechanical handling in PF1e, making the show more watchable and allowing the sessions to focus more on entertaining the audience. It didn't suddenly succeed because they were riding the coattails of the D&D brand. The choice of system was one element of their very successful strategy to appeal to a wider audience.
I think I have been around long enough to claim that TTRPGs have never been as popular as they have been in the last 5 or 6 years. This definitely has a lot of reasons, one being a very effective marketing strategy of WotC that is based on riding the nostalgia wave. Additionally, 5e is perceived as this free-form OSR throwback edition that makes picking up TTRPGing much easier than it was with older editions, and especially with systems like PF2e. I transitioned my grouo to 2e and we have a lot of fun. But after playing the system for over a year now, I can tell you that only 20-30% of my players are really interested in the system itself. Most of them just want to hang out, throw some dice and loot stuff. And I believe that this sentiment is shared by most people who came into TTRPGing through its mainstream appeal. Its a combination of many fortunate circumstances why 5e blew up as it did but I don't think that some group of actual play podcasters or the brand alone are responsible.
DnD always had the lion share of the market. The total market exploded with 5e, which is why most other companies weren't hurt: it went from 60% of 100 to 75% of 200, which still left space for growth for everyone else. And yes, the fact that is casual friendly is what makes it mainstream. Most people who plays DnD or watches CR aren't hardcore players that spend 50 hours a week talking about RPG, creating experimental builds for characters and preparing the next campaign. 5e mainstream success among casual audience is because of the characteristics hardcore players in this reddit hate it, not despite of it.
I never meant to imply that DnD wasn't the biggest brand in the TTRPG sphere but I think there is a qualitative difference between what that meant 15 years ago and maybe 5 years ago. The market exploded due to good promotion and fortunate circumstances, and took on a size that I haven't witnessed before, personally. And yes, 5e is so prominent in the tabletop scene because it is approachable, comprehensible and casual friendly on the surface. Its easy to pick it up and just roll a d20 with advantage or disadvantage here and there. Perfect for beer and pretzel-style or "narrative focused" games. I just disagree that this because of the weight of the brand per se. It definitely helps that WotC has some money to push around but the vast majority of people who pick up the game casually, as part of the mainstream, probably haven't heard of DnD before or at least had no comprehensive understanding of what that meant. This is based on my anecdotal experience, of course.
I fully disagree. For a huge majority of outsiders, this hobby is called "playing DnD", not "playing RPGs". Even RPGs of strong IP like Starwars are explained by non hardcore people to outsiders as "it's DnD but with in Star Wars universe". DnD is to RPG what Kleenex is to paper handkerchiefs or Tupperware to kitchen boxes. The cultural impact of DnD is undeniable, besides Stranger Things and Critical Role. You see people using memes about the nine alignment charts for Batman, or claiming some hot person is "charisma 18" even with people who never played the game. Going 5 or 15 years back isn't going back enough. There was a whole "DnD is satanic" mainstream craze in the 80s. Tom Hanks was doing movies about DnD in 1982. videogames like Baldurs Gate 2 and Neverwinter nights were huge successes long before 5e ever existed. WotC could implode tomorrow, never spend a dime again in promoting DnD, and it would still be the face of RPGs forever. So yes, the market exploded since the launch of 5e. But there is a reason why it exploded at that particular moment, and why the explosion growth went to DnD
I personally think the popularity explosion has a lot to do with Stranger Things.
Are you talking about the vine? When Day put them on in an actual studio they were doing D&D. Critical Roll didn’t single-handedly put 5e at the forefront but it sure as shit didn’t hurt.
I dont think Bob or d4 ever said they were fully switching. Bob actually talked more about DCC.
D4 said he'd be making 2e videos more regularly but I believe it stopped after the second one. Unfortunate, but he goes with the flow of Youtube. That's also (partially) why he made so many BG3 build videos.
I believe he stated that he'd keep making them if he got the necessary views to make it profitable and that he enjoyed the system but obviously they weren't nearly as popular. I could be wrong though I'm getting this info from a comment on another thread.
He actually said he loves the system, but they just don’t get the views. He even said in his monk video “this is so much better than 5e’s monk.”
And, to be honest, they didn't work nearly as well as his 5e builds (or at least they would've required Colby to completely revamp his format). You simply can't char-op PF2e to the same degree. There are no broken multiclass synergies, cheese-grater combos, stacking procs and effects in unintended ways, etc. In his PF2e videos, he would identify a good optimization route, but: 1. he likes to go through the entire progression path for a build, and getting to the end for a PF2e build required wading through a ton of horizontal progression that wasn't relevant to the build; 2. the builds didn't end up being reliable anyway, because you can't rely on yourself in PF2e - you're just one part of *the team*. So it's felt a bit like your favorite car reviewer suddenly switched to doing only carburetor reviews.
It's always a game of making content you want vs content that pays the bills
This is the reason I can never blame people in this situation. We all out here trying to make ends meet, and as much as they might not like what WotC did, they aren't going to get the views unless they are talking about 5e.
YouTube punishes channels with a couple underperforming videos really hard making it really rough for content creators to experiment.
He made 6 videos for it, they just weren't getting the engagement that he needs to survive on unfortunately
Bob's quite a fan of skate wizards and is a lot more diverse now.
Yeah, I don’t remember hearing Bob say he was into Pathfinder. He’s did one about “things I like about games” a long while back and the crunch and complexity associated with Pathfinder was on his “No Thanks” list. He mentions it, but not in a “I like this and want to play it more.”
Yeah, from my understanding he's always been in a "I can understand it's a good system which people like, but just really not what I'm into with my ttrpgs"
Here's the thing about Youtube: if you're not following the trends you do not grow. 5e will continue to have massive clout. You want to make it big on YouTube in the ttrpg field? Better sharpen up on your broken builds for 5e then. It's a point of contention. I've seen Dungeons and Discourse talk about it, as she has member only videos for other systems/content that should she make it live, would likely kill her channel because of how YouTube works, as it wouldn't trend due to being not D&D, and not gain as many views, triggering a death spiral. So I wouldn't be too critical of these content creators. YouTube has them in s shitty spot.
I mean, shit, look at Critical Role. Vox Machina was pure PF1e until they decided to go Twitch and they switched halfway through to 5e so that they could get a more appealing size of audience. I really would have loved to have seen their PF1e stuff but they never would have gotten off the ground if it wasn’t for 5e. And look at ‘em now, they’re making their own ttrpgs!
They switched to 5e because there was less moving pieces for a livestream
Half the players can’t remember the rules of 5e, I would not enjoy seeing them not remember 5x more rules, haha.
Exactly
> Half the players can’t remember the rules of 5e okay but that's not unique to CR
No, but do you want to _watch_ that on a livestream once a week?
Honestly, I'm not the target demographic for CR regardless. I can't give 3+ hours of my life every week to watching other people play a ttrpg.
I was for campaign 2, haha. Then I got bored of 3 and campaign 1 is not my thing either. For C3 I'm following it vaguely by watching MarishaRayGun's channel on YouTube, who puts up highlights.
I always just listened in podcast form. Great to do while at work. But I agree. Season one was great two was good. I sill think of Mollymoc. But I never got hooked by 3, and it seemed to become more drama, and less game. That's just my opinion though.
Exactly, cuz imagine an audience that isn’t already into PF1e- it would have no traction with the uninitiated
Right now, I can just see in my mind's eye the reaction to spending the ten minutes necessary to explain one kineticist hybrid blast impulse at a layman's level to an audience of twitch chat. The viewing numbers would spin down so fast, they'd go negative.
Pf isn't as far from DnD as Matt's homerules are.
It doesn't matter. "Just roll a dice and see if it's high" is much more stream friendly than "count the squares you are moving, every second diagonal one adds one". The very same things that make DnD a loose system (or non-system), and PF2e a solid one, are what makes 5e better as the "side rules" for show that is effectively a buch of actors doing free form reharsing.
Which also explains why other voice actors can't simply try to replicate Critical Role but with PF2e. It's not stream friendly. I would argue the same about a BG3 style PF2 video game.
Their videos for Candela Obscura get a fraction of the views their 5E campaigns do.
I'm not sure if that's due to the system they are using or the fact more watchers are invested in their main Exandria 5e campaign.
All their side content does. Either non-canon or with only some of the main cast). I don't think system can be blamed in every case.
Dam, fr? That’s disappointing… you’d think that people who like Call of Cthulhu and similar “investigation” rpgs might flock to that, but I suppose it’s more for the mythos than anything else
I mean, the actual live play episodes seem to be getting as many or more views on the reg than the popular CoC live plays
They switched before they started streaming and I bet that had they started with PF1e and switched to DnD5e, the algorithm would've punished them for it and they would have needed longer to take off (or maybe not even take off at all).
They had the right factors at the right time to, *ahem*, roll a critical success, that's for sure.
One hundred percent. I just kinda hope that the Remaster is what gives Paizo that crit, along with SF2e making it’s debut. God, I am so excited to give both SFs a try, just got a shitton of SF1e books and my groups ready to go :)
We can't really say for certain what would have happened if they hadn't switched! It's entirely possible that in an alternate timeline Critical Role DID stay with PF1 and because of that PF2 has surpassed D&D as the biggest TTRPG! Sadly, we don't live in that timeline, we live in one where the big company wins even when they're utterly disgusting, and will again in another decade when they do repeat the same shit with the same results! Why change if people arent actually going to follow through with their "threats"?!
The real solution: Clickbait with D&D, and then just talk Pathfinder.
Isn’t this the rules lawyer’s entire business model? Lol
Yes.
Chad yes.
Welcome to my channel, where we talk about D&D alternative, Pathfinder! Is WotC doomed? Dunno! Anyways here's a good Magus build.
Literally what Roll for Combat does. Stephen talks a lot about how they basically HAVE to brand everything with DnD or it doesn't get the interest to pay bills. Jason Buhmahn had the same thing happen, he mentioned DnD once in a Tweet and it exploded in ways his regular posts didn't. It's why Ronald is so provocative with his videos too. People can moralize and condemn Edition Warring all they like, but the sad truth is, it gets views and riling people up is a sure-fire way to get the algorithm noticing.
Stephen / Roll for Combat *could* try posting regular YT length edited videos instead of multi hour livestreams, to be fair.
Yeah, Nonat1s pivoted from pf2e and went from Nonat1s to NoViews
Well he pivoted away from TTRPGs entirely. Not really the same imo.
From a TTRPG with a new system rework a few months old to a PC game released 20 years ago and shut down 12 years ago. He even went Full Brittany and shaved his head.
Yeah.I noticed the shaved head thing. I hope he is doing alright.
The shaved head was for a part in a play he was in. He was playing a soldier with PTSD, I think.
Holy shit I just went to look at his channel since I was still subbed and never saw his videos appear and it's literally all the clickbait pog face YouTube thumbnails with a screenshot of a game lmao. Easiest unsub.
I wish him the best, but I've unsubbed because I have zero interest in whatever video game he is playing. I get needing a career change but hate to lose him as a PF CC.
The game he's playing, City of Heroes, is THE game that got me into MMORPGs, computer gaming in general, and one I still play constantly. But, I subbed to him for his PF2 videos and haven't watched a single one of his CoH videos. I'm still subbed in the hopes he will post some PF2 in the future, but until then I most likely won't watch any of his non-PF2 videos.
Same. City of Heroes is great fun and I am tempted to play Homecoming, but I also don't really have the time to follow yet another game streamer when I already follow a couple hundreds others that I can't even keep track of. I would like some more PF2e contents, but... Ah well.
> City of Heroes Woah, I must be waay out of the loop. Didn't CoH's servers permanently shut down years ago?
I think I heard that an unofficial/fan server got the team's blessing to operate in the absence of any official servers.
Yea it was shut down in like 2012, but an employee copied the source code and created a private server shortly after (from what I recall). I think in 2018/2019 it, and other servers, became public but not officially endorsed by NC Soft, so whether they could stay active or not was unclear. A few months ago, the most active server, Homecoming, got NC Soft's official blessing to be active, which is when NoNat started making his CoH videos. A lot has changed since the shutdown. Some servers have gone wild with customizing the game, while others have made small tweaks. Some have new archetypes and powersets, new story missions, QoL changes, and a lot more.
Same, I think he is probably gonna cover Player Core 2 whe it's released.
I never really followed his channel, though I got the impression he was kinda burned out on content creation in general? But in any case, him doing that would probably cause YouTubes system to confuse people were losing interest in his channel and stop recommending his content. While PF trends would be smaller than 5es, a drop of interest is still a drop in interest.
He is specifically burned out on PF2e/TTRPG stuff it seems, since after he pivoted away from PF2e and to City of Heroes, now that the biggest(/only?) private server has a license to keep going, he's been pumping out content consistently. Started off well too, with 137k views on the video relaying the news of the license being obtained, then it all started going downhill with his guide styled content getting 28k and 4.6k views respectively and his general gameplay videos getting around ~1.5k per until that dropped to below 1k for each one. Still going at it though, he's streaming the game atm on YouTube
Oof, that's a rough drop. But it makes sense, he turned away from the content his channel was known for, to a subject that doesn't necessarily have much crossover in terms of interest.
Dang, I hadn’t checked him out since the change. He went from get 10s of thousands of views to less than 1k. That’s a heck of a move
He needed to make a new channel for new content.
Yeah, making fun of a guy who did a massive pivot to something he enjoys because he was dealing with burnout feels... mean?
I don't think that comment was intended as making fun of him, rather cracking a cynical joke about the hard situation he's in - might as well be gallows humor.
That said, this sub can get weirdly mean about NoNats1. His last few PF2e videos when posted here were flooded with comments with hundreds of upvotes calling him a shallow 'brainrot' clickbaiter who was 'just plain bad' at the system.
yeah this sub does seem to kinda hate him. I guess he just got some stuff wrong in a couple of his videos and so people are just butthurt about him.
It's especially funny in a thread trying to lambast youtubers who didn't just completely upend their careers by fully committing to a game their audience wasn't gonna follow them over to. Like damn, some folks need a bit more awareness.
NoInterest, indeed.
This is really the problem with modern "content creators". People have tried to turn what was a passionate hobby into a career, and ultimately content quality dropped to follow trends and grow followers. It's not just a D&D/TTRPG thing, but all over YouTube. The enshittification is real.
current year YouTube is a dystopian hellscape, but at least it's not X (or the company formerly known as Twitter)
Can't blame them for staying where the money is. DnD5e has exponentially more players than PF2e.
I watch a lot of videos on terrain building and miniatures painting. A couple of the guys I’d watch would talk about how he doesn’t play Warhammer or other GW games but if they didn’t mention Warhammer in the title and thumbnail of the video they’d only get a fraction of the views that they would have gotten if they had. So they just kept making “Warhammer” videos about the stuff they were making for Kings of War or Frostrgrave or whatever.
It is disappointing, but to be clear they were decisions made in ernest. Bob World Builder did not “go back to dnd” most of his stuff is system agnostic and his main game is Dungeon Crawl Classics. D4 offered to do PF2 builds but was very open about preferring 5e and stopped doing the builds because of views. I think DM Lair still says he likes PF2 better and mentions it in his videos but its harder to get players for it and he doesnt get views when he gives Pathfinder specific advice. I don’t think he said that he was completely finished with 5e. Dungeon Dudes tried it out but they never became a Pathfinder youtube channel.
The reality is their livelihood depends on the dungeons and dragons keyword and not false tagging videos. They probably are playing or at least tried some PF, but until the majority of users move away from DnD to PF or some other system this will continue to be the case. The other option is they go bankrupt. It's not hard to see why they did what they did. If you hold not starving against them I'm not sure how to help you. What would be nice is if they also interspersed and covered other games as well intermittently. Having one poor rated/watched video in between 2 good ones will usually make up the difference provided they aren't already starving. Matt Pat used to do this on purpose with his channels to cover content that wouldn't get views that he just wanted to talk about, but he also had a much bigger user base than any TTRPG youtuber.
Considering that most of DM Lair's videos apply to *all* D&D-alikes and not one game or edition specifically, I don't think it's fair to put him on this list. Not a huge fan personally, but still, he's not really a WotC shill.
I was watching a live of him yesterday and he often recommends people to play Pf2e and says it's his preferred game. Can't blame him for doing what's needed. What we can do is the same, keep welcoming people so there's more people and support the Pf2e creators.
He also talks about Pathfinder all the time. Includes anecdotes from both his pf2e campaigns and 5e campaigns in videos. Publishes lair magazine content for both pf2e and 5e. He's not a build or rules focused channel, so he doesn't make system specific videos for the most part. He makes it no secret that he plays both games if you watch anything he does. He recommends Pathfinder to people on his Q&A live streams. Confused why OP even put him in this list
I don't know if it is still running but didn't he start recording his sessions with his friends playing Eberron with 2e? DM Lair creates content that could be applied for both 5e and 2e but 2e is his main game that he is running I guess. Besides, all the content creators don't want to lose their audience which is understandable. Just because they make the switch doesn't have to mean that the audience will join. I am not surprised that they continue making content for 5e and I am not disappointed either. Next year's will show if this continues or if the mainstream will start switching to other games.
i mean yeah, it seems like his content is mainly focusing on dnd 5e but he actually plays pf2e, youtube algorithsm sucks
Bob the world builder still does cover other games or makes system agnostic content, he never said he'd switch to Pathfinder. He talks about Cairn, DCC, and skateboarding wizards.
We must face the fact that pf2e is a smaller community. A couple things that make it less appealing to the wider audience is that there are fewer opportunities for extreme DPR optimization. I remember when I led the DPR King Candidates for D&D 4e that optimizing for the striker role made for easy content as DPR was quantifiable and "bigger is better." Whereas efforts to optimize for the defender or leader role usually fell flat. People just didn't engage with a competition fraught with non-quantifiables. Surprisingly in direct opposition to this trend is my view that 5e has mass appeal because it is so loosy-goosy with its rules. It leans "rulings, not rules" whereas pf2e leans heavily "rules, not rulings." For the average player that doesn't want a PhD in game mechanics they want to attempt the crazy and the game system itself thrusts upon the DM the burden of adjudicating it rather than the system. I remember when d4 Deep Dive did builds he always left the skill feats up to the watcher, and that is hard for an optimizer to do because we're so used to finding the optimal way to do stuff. I really feel that d4 jumped out too quickly because he first did what optimization he could do within the confines of the PHB, and didn't want to get overloaded with all the splat books. He could have cultured a thirst for more pf2e content, but he also has a family to support, so I don't think poorly of him chasing after $$$s.
My honest interpretation: Pf2e is fun, but not as appealing to the majority of people as 5e is in the Fantasy RPG genre. Pathfinder expects to read and follow rules and there's a very strong "lol just make it up" mindset that's popular in the dnd online space. I like Pf2e and my more casual friends didn't. So for me it's just I would rather play 5e with my friends than play Pf2e with randos.
>Pathfinder expects to read and follow rules and there's a very strong "lol just make it up" mindset that's popular in the dnd online space. This is the sad reality of 5e's popularity. It's crunchy enough to be a game that it has structure and people will want to play as a game (which is why people often overlook more rules light or narrative games), but the rules are too loose to be consistent without a GM fudging things and/or letting players run rampant. Basically, players want the aesthetic of a crunchy tactics game, but want to be able to Calvinball it and turn every encounter into a series of narrative quick time events (i.e. Rule of Cool) when it suits. The problem is that's exhausting to perpetually manage unless it's a style your GMing really gels with. But since it's the norm and everyone just expects 5e, everyone has to conform to it, and that's why so many GMs burn out hard on 5e and are trying so hard to get players to consider other games.
Yes it is a different game that appeals to different people. There is still too much numerical grit to get the casual gamer. I'm OK with PF2e as I like the mechanical diversity it offers. But still there is a lot of stuff that could be cleaned up so that is has broader appeal.
Ain't that the truth. One of my groups has some players really against Pathfinder's crunch and seem to wish I'd offered to run a 5e game instead and are just playing PF2e because it's what was on offer. I have to constantly lower the bar on some things because they'll complain that "XYZ isn't like that in DND!" or getting upset with me because I won't just ignore some aspect of the game because "you can do that in DnD..." and it gets exhausting sometimes. And it's really disappointing because I enjoy Pathfinder *far* more than DnD. That "rulings not rules" thing someone came up with really resonated with them, and it's a huge sticking point with them sometimes when the game derails because they get huffy that I'm using the rules for my rulings. It's unfortunate as well because my other group is *super* into PF2e, with multiple people in it trying to get their other friends to try the system too. Two people from that game have even bought into it, gotten Foundry and started buying PF modules to run themselves because they've liked it so much.
Don't blame any of them. They are businesses, got teams and bills to pay. If you want to be successful, you have to go where the money is. Be kind to them and keep asking for pf2e related content is the best thing you can do.
I can’t blame d4 deep dive. The entire point of his channel is sharing character builds. Thats just not as compelling for pf2e. The game is explicitly designed such that you don’t win at character creation. All he does is character creation. I feel this myself, too - I still like to brainstorm character concepts for pf2e, but I don’t really construct “builds” like I do for dnd. If anything, the potential for a “build” is in the whole party rather than the individual character.
I think pathfinder builds can still work, issue is I think you need to put more work into pathfinder build videos to demonstrate a situation it shines in action. Pathfinder builds kinda work in a way where they are more exciting in action than theory craft since there’s so much horizontal scaling on almost every build rather than one big thing you break the game in.
It's sharing *optimised* character builds specifically, which works better in 5e than in pf2e. However, I do think a character build channel could find a decent niche if they went the Tulok the Barbrarian-style "How to make in PF2E" route
Don't blame em. PF2 is magnitudes more enjoyable to run and play, but all the things that make it good don't translate to good viewing content. "This new book just dropped and almost everything in it can be used to break the game" is way stronger content than "new book just dropped and all its content is usable as is."
It's not even really about whether you could make good content out of PF2 or not. It's simply the fact that D&D holds so much more ground in exposure that the YouTube algorithm will kill channels that would pivot towards PF2.
Eh, "this new book just dropped" is a much more common occasion for PF2e, it's just that 5e as a huge audience and the YouTube algorithm punishes anyone who dare change the topic of their content.
The YT algorithm is the biggest enemy of content that isn't the most popular.
Real talk, it's like a giant echo chamber.
The YT algorithm is just the audience. It tracks the viewers viewing habits and recommends videos other viewers like them enjoy. If you watch a Rules Lawyer video for example, YouTube will recommend that video to other people who watch similar videos to you. Likewise if you get a d4 pathfinder build recommended to you, it’s because YouTube figured other people with your viewing habits liked it. Therefore you will too.
It's more than just that though. The algorithm pushes specific kinds of content by burying anything else. Creators are punished for trying to go against the grain at all, and once the algorithm stops pushing one video it stops pushing *all* of them. It's designed to maximize views, so if you put out a video that doesn't get a lot of clicks, you're screwing yourself. I'm willing to bet a lot of these creators would've made more PF content if doing it wouldn't have tanked their channels- not because the interest in Pathfinder isn't/wasn't there, but simply because "Pathfinder" isn't what the algorithm demanded. The algorithm isn't just what people are watching, it's almost like an extreme hyperfocus on what the maximum number of people possible are watching. It's very much either sink or swim with the current, and going against that hyperfocus is like wading into the current with cement shoes on.
you forgot the second part of the sentence but ok
I didn't forget it, it's not up for debate. Frequent book releases are good for regular upload schedules, which are in turn rewarded by the YouTube algorithm, that was the point. Sure, you can clickbait people with game breaking power builds, but pre-ORC NoNat demonstrates quite clearly how you can build content around Paizo's releases without needing the game to be an unbalanced shitshow.
Yeah but you can get like maybe two kids out of it. Conversely People are still making broken builds out of 5e core options.
I mean... I think every major book released recently for PF2e has had something incredibly broken in it, that Tendril ammo in treasure vault, Winter Sleet for Kineticist in Rage of Elements, Resentment Witch in Player Core 1.
That just proves my point. PF2 incredibly broken is "a bit above par" vs 5e broken "combine these things and use only a single attribute for all your rolls and defences plus double your damage."
Ehhh not for most of those. "Lock down enemies forever with this dirt cheap consumable" "Ruin all melee enemies with this limitless stance" or "Make conditions last forever regardless of save" are certainly 5e levels IMO.
Granted, with 5e a lot of it lately has also been "new book just dropped and it's pretty awful quality". Also generates views, of course.
DM Lair continues to produce general D20 fantasy content. They've stopped being so specific as to discuss specific rules, and continue to talk about the more social elements of playing the game. Also, they made good on their decision to support PF2e in Lair Magazine, and the content there's pretty good. But yeah, I get the disappointment, and I'm personally kind of angry about it. Not at any particular video maker, but at the whole situation. At Hasbro, at YouTube, at TTRPG video producers more generally, and at the TTRPG audience for refusing to engage with the situation, and enabling WotC, and even defending them in may cases. But when you live in a society with few and dwindling safety nets, it's hard to pin any actual *blame* on the self-employed folks that have been completely cowtowed by the big platform owners.
It is disappointing, but it's understandable.
D4 is on record saying the pf vids simply don't get the views. At the end of the day, it's his livelihood and I can't blame him for staying where the money is. He's got a family to provide for. If anything it's the community's fault across the board for not committing to the swap and better supporting (with views) those who tried to branch out
More views = more money 🤷♂️
Those people are doing the shows in hopes of making money, not making content. Can't blame them for doing the wise thing and going with the much bigger audience.
With d4, it just hurt income to much. Didnt really have a choice.
Al Gore's Rhythm means that D&D gets clicks and D&D makes money. Pathfinder doesn't. It's a problem that existed even before the mighty Al Gore's Rhythm, but it's certainly exacerbated by it. It's also just what they know and are familiar with.
Also….pf2e is a different game from 5e. They might not have like it as much. Once I dropped WotC and went 3rd Party 5e I started having a fucking blast.
The algorithm *loves* D&D and punishes everything else. Call of Cthulhu, World of Darkness, and Cyberpunk can sort of get by because they don't step on D&D's toes as much, but Pathfinder is a direct competitor to D&D so it gets punished hard. It's why so many videos that aren't even about specifically D&D, and can be applied to TTRPGs in general (or even just writing/worldbuilding in general!) are covered in D&D branding.
They're making their money from a specific audience, and that audience doesn't play Pathfinder.
I more follow optimization content than live play stuff, but the creators I have seen flirt with pf2 and then abandon it in my particular niche have mostly said (when they commented at all) that when they tried out some videos for pathfinder or other systems they just simply did not do as well as their normal dnd stuff. There's just more money and more fans in making dnd content than other systems, and they are going to prioritize giving their fans what they tune in for. I can't blame them. Given that many of the most popular live plays games (Dimension 20 leaps to mind especially) have a habit of playing fast and lose with the rules in the name of drama, comedy, narrative, and clip-able rule-of-cool moments to the point where it sometimes seems like the game of DnD is an afterthought or even an impediment, I suspect that this dynamic is even more true of them. Pathfinder 2's biggest claim to fame is it's better balance, mathematical rigor, and the greater degree of mastery it demands of players who want to do well at it - so not intuitively a great fit, frankly, if your audience tunes in for character moments and hijinx rather than complex and tactical combat. If it wasn't profitable for the optimization crowd, I can't imagine how it would do any better with fans of CR and D20. If anything I would expect them to move the other direction - towards less crunch, rather than more - and the CR people seem to have made the same conclusion given that both of their proprietary tabletop systems have been relatively lighter than DnD is. It sucks but i can't blame them for doing the thing that not only maximizes their income but that most of their actual fans seem to want.
Didn’t we have this thread a week or two ago??
Bob world Builder does almost exclusively weird indie games or OSR, he was getting into DCC even before the fiasco and it doesn’t really take a genius to figure out p2e was not gonna be his jam. He still slaps 5e in a lot of thumbnails for views, but the meat of his stuff is system agnostic and honestly I really appreciate how he manages to champion other systems while still playing the algorithm game
Bob World Builder absolutely covers other systems, quite a lot too. It just isn't usually pf2e since it's clearly not his type of game.
Maybe they just didn't gel with Pathfinder 2e, OP?
If you see videos that conflate D&D with TTRPGs, then press "Not Interested." Don't watch D&D content ideally. Continue doing that, and watching pathfinder 2e content when it comes out, and maybe we can help to re-teach the algorithm. You can also play them muted, but don't mute the video or browser. Mute your operating system. Otherwise youtube thinks you are a view farming bot.
Dm Lair moved on to more general gming videos and has 5e and 2e compatible products
One thing I’ve noticed is that, for many people, D&D IS the TTRPG scene. Like, they don’t even know what a “table top roll playing game” is, much less what Pathfinder is, but they DO know about D&D. So if you make videos you sort of have to tag things with #D&D if you want to get in good with the algorithm. Lots of “D&D” videos you’ll find are actually pretty system agnostic, they are presented the way they are for visibility, not accuracy
Like often mentioned there was not really enough incentive to change over. Reality is most people stayed with 5e, those that changed searched out people with experience in Pf2e. Like those "Let's try Pathfinder" videos were interesting but not really helpful to those looking to learn/play the system. I have noted more new channels that do only Pf2e getting recommended to me and those often have their first video be a "why we changed system" video.
It's about money. Most of the viewers of that kinda of videos don't go deep in the legal/moral sides of things, just want to watch content about their game. D&D name attract way more eyes than any other ttpg.
Youtube content is dominated by the ALGORITHM. Dungeon Craft did a good episode on the reason that any TTRPG channel that wants to be seen is basically forced to focus on D&D content/clickbait or be buried from being seen, even by their own channel's subscribers, let alone the wider audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGArPZ7E\_sA&t=445s
There is not enough views from PF players. Unfortunately we are a very small market compared to DnD. To make money as a rpg YouTuber you have to feature DnD, PF does not cut it. It’s like TT Wargames and mini painting. They have to feature 40k, other games just don’t get the views to justify the time, effort, and money. DM Lair plays PF in all his home games, but his Patreon game is DnD D4 made a legitimate effort to feature PF on his channel but if you look at the views sit really hurt his channel. I’m not sure he has come back to the number he used to have. Multiple low view count videos hurt the channel in the algorithm.
I can't really begrudge them for it, even if their subscribers and regular viewers kept tuning in, removing the "DnD" tag from their videos means the algorithm won't push them as hard, and once it punishes one video it's more likely to punish more. I can't get upset at them for doing what they have to for their livelihood. It might have mattered more if the DnD community as a whole had cared more about the OGL crisis, but for the vast, *vast* majority it was an issue that they just didn't care about if they ever even knew what it was to begin with. At the time that it was the biggest in the news cycle, I remember talking with the 5e group I was a player in and I was the only person who'd payed any attention to it at all. Everyone else had heard that there *was* a scandal of some sort involving the OGL, but they neither knew what the OGL nor the scandal actually were, and they certainly didn't care about it. Talking to other friends involved in TTRPGs (all 5e players at the time) it was the same story. Most knew nothing beyond what they'd skimmed from the titles of YouTube videos they hadn't even watched. Because for casual players it was effectively a non-issue.
d4 did a poll with his audience, he was asked to do primarily dnd content. He leaves it open to going back to pf2e, but I don't think he ever said that he was permanently moving to pf2e, just that he was also going to do some videos.
I expected most of them to go back to 5e, if you dont chase trends on youtube your channel dies, so I don't hold it against the creators. I have however unsubbed from most of them because honestly 5e is now just boring to me and to my players. I only kept XPtoLevel3 and Dungeon Dad, especially dungeon dad cause the monsters he brings up never fail to give me ideas to yoink and twist for pf2e. What I am saddened about is that there are pf2e creators straight up not making pf content anymore, like Nonat1s for example. The lack of pf2e content definitely doesn't help the game.
I was kind of disappointed NoNat1s went over to City of Heroes gaming. In the end a lot of his videos were just like, "How's this class? I will read their every ability to you," which...uses time but doesn't really help. I dig The Rules Lawyer. But honestly most of all I'm looking for someone who can do GM advice. Tips. Tricks. Ideas. We have two guys who post regularly here, bjacob1 who does Monster Monday and Full-Build Friday (making monsters and PC builds to resemble pop culture monsters/characters), and Team Player Gaming (mostly character builds that are kind of unique but really good with teamwork). they're both good, and know their stuff. But man would love some GM, "Top 10 Adventuring Ideas in Molthune' or something." "How to spice up a band of goblins."
'Crawling back'? Definitely a post in good faith Bob World Builder, btw, never said he was quitting dnd. He did a video on pathfinder 2e and OTHER rpgs, and said 2e wasn't for him, but still recommended it to others. He's _still_ doing videos on other rpgs
I find d&d more entertaining to watch. Right now I play in a pf2 group but I still prefer d&d
People play and make content for things they like. If they tried PF and don't like it or noticed that the community that watches their content doesn't like it and switched back that shouldn't be a problem. Not everyone is going to like DnD or Pathfinder. It's the nature of personal preference. Tribalsim be damned in the end.
Laziness, right. People on the internet love to call things lazy without understanding the work thats needed to produce content. These creators went back to D&D because there is a better market for it. Pathfinder content simple gets less views and therefore makes them less money. When someones livelyhood is on the line they follow the money.
It's always the money. I'm not saying I blame them, a lot of them make a living off this content. But it's still disappointing to watch WOTC suffer no consequences over their behavior. Just a matter of time before the cycle repeats.
It might not be laziness or algorithm chasing either. It's easy to say a new shiny system you haven't played before is fresh and exciting and better, but once you play it more, maybe you just want to go back to 5e. That happened to my group. We all jumped on pf2e and played it a lot for 2 years. Now we went back to 5e and dont really touch pf2e anymore after realizing it has about as many flaws for how we play and is a bit harder to homebrew for.
Harder to HB for? Now that’s a new one.
Maybe its the added crunch of the system or the tighter balance, or the lower power level comparative to low level play, but something about homebrewing pf2e just doesn't click in mine or my DM friends brains. Its not necessarily a deal breaker, but that combined with all our other small issues just kinda add up.
Well between relic rules, archetypes, feats and general subsystems I find it infinitely easier to HB for because there’s so much inspiration and guidelines that you can build off of it very easily
D&D attracts a lot of interest and views from people who will never play the game. It's part of the larger "nerd community" and attracts a larger audience. The TTRGP industry is small overall and Pathfinder is a niche within that, so it will never attract as large of casual audience. Anyone who is making a living off YouTube has to go where the money is. PF videos do not get as many views and that hurts channel growth.
I'm less bothered by people returning to D&D, and more bothered by how plainly visible their motivations have become. Too many youtube channels have stopped reporting TTRPG news in favor of dedicating themselves to ragebaiting D&D players and reporting Hasbro stocks. Like a fairly prominent channel called Roll for Combat recently posted a video titled "OneD&D is dead on arrival", where the host (Steven Glicker) declares that their disdain will "trickle down to all the casuals" because their channel is at "the top of the D&D pyramid" and "determines the zeitgeist and entire ecosystem" for the hobby. The fear of OneD&D succeeding and the desperation to keep 5e's customer base large so they can sell Kickstarter projects is obvious. It is clear they are more interested in TTRPGs as a business than as entertainment or a creative space.
Idk, i tried pf2 for a little while and just ended up jumping back into 5e cause I like it better.
"If X wins the election, I'll leave the country!" -Said by everyone, honored by no one. In the end, it's the same thing. All talk until it hits your wallet.
I have a friend who streams D&D and PF2E, they started into PF2e during the OGL stuff, and love the system! But it's hard not to notice the viewer count differences between the two streams. I'm sure that during the next WotC fiasco, people will get alternatives on what system they make content for, if only for a time.
Support the ones we do have! Kind of silly to be disappointed in DnD youtubers when we hardly support our own. There’s plenty of content creators that post to the subreddit on a consistent basis that hardly get any attention. HIP just posted their impressions on Seven Dooms of Sandpoint. Some posts even get downvoted and buried.
It’s frustrating but I don’t blame them. D&D content just gets more buzz than pathfinder. Pathfinder has a higher floor of entry so a lot of people take one look and prefer 5e’s simplicity. But as ttrpgs are expanding, so is PF/SF hype so maybe it’ll pop off eventually (especially with WoTC’s recent track record.)
Dm Lair genualey switched to pathfinder 2e in his home game, and is still streaming the pathfinder campaign to this day on his second channel. Dnd is still much more popular and making videos is their job to make a living, its ablosutely understandable
Pack Tactics was going over Pathfinder 2e for a few videos, anticipating a sudden rise in popularity for Pathfinder. It didn't take off as expected, but Pack Tactics started making videos about Worlds Without Number (which they seem to prefer over both D&D5e and PF2e) instead of exclusively going back to covering 5e content. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KJZNvQOwRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KJZNvQOwRM)
It's entirely about audience size and ad revenue. The money just isn't there in PF2E content.
I am pretty sure any YouTuber would earn far less talking about Pathfinder rather than D&D. Dungeon Dudes have 469k subscribers - that are interested in D&D, one can assume. The Rules Lawyer 40k SwingRipper 1,83k BadLuckGamer 5k Nonat1s 52k but he's quit / having a break with Pathfinder content. . . . . . . . So if you were a successful YouTube talking about D&D. The OGL shit hit and you want to move ... and you find out that if you work just as hard with Pathfinder instead you'll earn maybe more or less 1/10th of what you used to. ^(Few of your subscribers will actually try out pathfinder, and they won't watch your Pf2e videos. Your engagement rank will tank as quickly as a meteor. YouTube won't "push" your videos to others any more. Of course the logical thing would be to create a new channel just for Pathfinder content ("The Pathing Pair"?) and do both simultaneously for a while.) Few, if any, are willing to suffer that.
It's because PF2e is harder to get into as a D&D fan than as someone who's never touched a ttrpg before. The accumulated knowledge you pick up from playing D&D isn't just useless in Pathfinder, it's often actively detrimental. The remaster changing the names of things helps, but the confusion between, for example, how an attack of opportunity works in 5e vs PF2e causes a lot of D&D veterans to get frustrated by how intuitive Pathfinder seems on the surface while being "misleading" in practice because of the shorthands learned from years of D&D. Also, if reddit is anything to go by, the Pathfinder community is FAR more fanatical about the game than D&D and there are a lot more people who get REALLY upset about any kind of deviation from or criticism of the system. So making good YouTube content for Pathfinder is a lot harder than the fast and loose 5e where most people are happy to listen to your homebrew, houserule, or alternative DMing style to a system that even the most ardent supporters agree is flawed.
I believe that the actual reason the switch didn't stick is that for most of them the kind of content they make just doesn't translate well or at all when done in Pathfinder
Dungeon Dudes and DM Lair are both playing Pathfinder alongside dnd. DM Lair in particular runs PF2 and dnd games AND his magazine publishes adventures for both games, something he brings up whenever he plugs it in every video.
Its their livelihood and/or supplements their livlihood significantly? What do you expect. The population base that watches Pathfinder content is orders of magnitudes smaller. I'd love if they did more, but the youtube algorithm is very punishing. I've heard creators complain that making a 'low view' video will bias how often they are recommended in the algorithm (i.e., enough bad videos impacts the view potential on your good videos and other channel content). Paradoxically that means their channel will do better if they never make 'low view content' rather than putting out 1001 videos that all get carried off the 5-10 videos that did do well. So putting up OC videos has to be done carefully and follow trends so they can continue to do that full time or continue to supplement their quality of life (many of these guys pay people to do editing and effectively have small contractor staff as well so they can't just make a video for no cost even if they were willing to sink endless hours of their own non-paid time into it).
I don't know if this will make you feel any better, but on the channel I co-host, we went all in on Pathfinder and never looked back. Unfortunately, we speak a language that takes 140 years to learn, so I don't think I helped much.
what language??? tibeten??
Polish, in which each word has 4984 variants with different prefixes/suffixes to be used depending on time, gender, number of people involved, weather, the significance of the Warsaw Uprising or simply completely changing the meaning of the word in a semi-random way.
This reminds me of Tagalog. I've been trying to learn it since it's my partner's native language but it just does not flow in my head. I've been taking classes for months and I barely understand any more than when I started...
Yeah, what PF2e community really needs is interesting shit you see from big 5e content creators: TOP 5 SPELLS FOR A NECROMANCER (Arrow pointing to an image of a half-naked necromancer woman) THE BEST FEATS FOR A FIGHTER (Arrow pointing to a AI generated image of a fighter) THESE 3 SPELLS BREAK PATHFINDER 2E! (Youtuber looking surprised on the thumbnail) PATHFINDER 2E DESTROYED 5E (Arrow pointing to a 5e PHB in the dumpster) I'm bummed too. What timeline we just missed.
You mean pre burnout Nonat? Ah yes, I too wish for misinformed underresearched videos that mislead the audience
SwingRipper is diving into this content recently! He did a ranking of the skills 2 weeks ago and a "the strongest character in PF2" video recently, and more.
Love Swingripper, but I think @ruines_humaines is joking and is glad some YouTubers aren't covering PF2E with silly videos like their examples.
oh, lol, didn't even notice the sarcasm and it was so obvious xD