Pathfinder 2e: Not For Everyone?

Over on Reddit the other day, u/MeanMeanFun asked the PF2 subreddit what they can do about a player at their table who isn’t as engaged with the game as the rest of the players. This player is newer to the game than the rest of the table, but has been playing for a year now and still struggles to remember things like what all of their items do, and isn’t engaging in optimal tactical play.

Some form of this discussion comes up somewhat frequently, and the responses people get are often jarring to me. Consider these replies:

If they cannot grasp the basics after 12+ months it is possible that pf2e isn’t their game.

Some people’s brains aren’t wired for this game. At this point I think you have to come to terms with the fact that they’re not gonna get any better, and then start thinking and discussing with your other players how to go forward.

There’s almost a kind of literacy that ttrpgs require in general and PF demands a lot of in particular. Even if someone is really committed to memorizing stuff, there’s a bringing-it-all-togetherness that’s a unique skill that’s still required to actually apply that knowledge.

All of which is to say that it’s possible this isn’t really their fault while this game still not really being for them. If someone just doesn’t get basketball and is constantly double dribbling, carrying, making fouls, and shooting in the wrong basket despite a lot of practice, they’re probably not going to be very welcome in the local pickup game, even if they practice a lot and try really hard.

Responses like this are common on any post where someone is either struggling to internalize all of the rules of the game, or doesn’t want to engaged deeply and directly with the game’s engine. There’s a chauvinism on display here which often goes unacknowledged and unchallenged, and not only is it deeply unhelpful to people who are specifically looking for help, but it also creates a sense that the game itself, and the community that surrounds it, is actually openly hostile to them and their play.

And my experience with the largest online spaces focused on the game is that they are hostile to players who aren’t looking to engage with the game in a narrow range of ways. There is constant background chatter around what “the game expects” or “the game demands”, and that chatter ultimately always paints a picture of a very rigid game with a very narrow focus on tactical combat with a narrow range of parameters.

Meanwhile, the game includes rules that supports almost everything under the sun, including a significant list of feats, spells, and other player options that people regularly complain are too niche to even look at, many of which are explicitly focused on exploration, survival, or social engagement – you know, all of the things you’d want to include in your game if you were trying to release a general purpose fantasy roleplaying game.

So, it all raises the question: Just who is this game actually for?

While there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among the game’s audience – or, at least the part of it that is active on Reddit and the Paizo forums – about who Pathfinder 2e is for, there does seem to be relatively strong agreement about who it is not for: Everyone.

And I’m not really sure I get it.

I mean, ok, sure, nothing is truly for everybody all of the time. Even water isn’t going to do much for someone who’s not thirsty. PF2’s not going to be a great fit if you’re looking for early 20th century psychological horror, say, or if you’re in the mood to play a cozy game about contemporary hobby farming. But the line is not “this game isn’t necessarily the best fit for the type of thing the player wants to do right now”, it’s “this game isn’t for them”. And I know someone’s going to tell me I’m reading too much into that wording, but I don’t believe that I am.

I think there’s a vocal group of people who like very particular things that PF2 enables, and who simultaneously do not care about other things that PF2 also enables, and who want to totally discount the latter while enshrining the former as the default – if not only – legitimate way to play the game.

And that’s unfortunate, because Pathfinder 2e is an incredibly flexible and robust fantasy RPG with so many bits and pieces that you can lean into or remove as your table sees fit. Is it a one pager? No, of course not – there are a lot of rules to skim over and decide what you like and want to keep, and what you maybe can trim away – but you can pare it down very far and have something that supports your play (just look at Pathwarden, and its genre-neutral follow-up Warden, both of which are based off of the PF2 engine). Or consider Hellfinder, another pared down ‘hack’ of PF2 focused on modern horror, developed by Jason Bulmahn, lead designer of both Pathfinder 1e and 2e.

The game is designed to be modular. It can be extended or stripped down almost as much as you want. This was the designers intent for the system.

And I say with much confidence, the game feels really good played loosely. It’s a great engine for wacky nonsense, and light play. It’s great for a roleplay focused table, just as it is for a hardcore tactical combat focused group. It supports fiction-foreward play so much better than it’s given credit for.

A response to the original post by u/SleepylaReef really hit something home for me. I don’t know that it’s fair to the OP, but it definitely holds a bit of a mirror up to this toxic vein:

Lots of players never learn the game, period. So you decide if this person is a friend you like to spend time with and you accept their foillibles, or if they’re just tools you use to game with and you kick them out for not being good enough for you.

For some people, the others sitting around the table are just tools to enable their own particular type of fun. For some people, there being others in the player pool who aren’t good tools for them is a waste of their time. This has become abundantly clear over time.

https://wanderingadventure.party/post/180