Very Interesting

A number of people have pointed out to me that, according to this page, Paizo will be selling the PDF version of their upcoming Pathfinder Roleplaying Game for $9.95. Now, I'm not ever likely to be playing Pathfinder. From what I have seen -- I have read the Beta Playtest in its various iterations -- it's still too much like v.3.5 to hold any appeal for me, no matter how much I like the Paizonians.

That said, $9.95 is a remarkably ... reasonable price for a PDF, especially in an industry where far too many companies offer very little discount over the cost of buying a hardcopy. I can't help but applaud Paizo for doing this and I hope -- almost certainly in vain -- that we might see other companies follow their lead. In my experience, a low price on a PDF means that I'm much more likely to plunk down some money on a product whose merits I'm unsure about than if the PDF is a mere 10-20% cheaper than the print version. Likewise, if I like the PDF, odds are good I'll also buy the print version. If there were a PDF version of HackMaster Basic available at a reasonable discount, I'd probably buy a copy, because, despite my skepticism, I'm still intrigued by it. But, alas, no such thing exists and so Kenzer has lost not just one but possibly two sales from me (and the possibility that I'll drive some sales their way with a review of the thing).

At $9.95, though, I'll happily snag a copy of Pathfinder, even though I'm highly unlikely to play it or to buy any of its supplementary material. That's a small enough amount of money that, even if I find nothing of value in the PDF, I won't feel as if I'd been cheated and the odds of that's happening are pretty slim indeed.