Well, I now have most of the core of Pathfinder sitting on my shelf: the Core Book, the first Bestiary (the second is ordered but not in stock at MilSims), the Games Mastery Guide, and the Advanced Player’s Guide. Next to that is 40 Adventure Path modules, and sitting on the floor wanting a place to stay is the Paizo Beginner’s Box.
What I’ll do with all of that is anyone’s guess. If my players suddenly become interested in playing Pathfinder, I’m ready for them. However, at present I think it’s going to serve more as reference material – mostly so I know what people are talking about when they talk Pathfinder.
I’ve started reviewing the current Adventure Path (Jade Regent) and it’s been an interesting experience. Popping in to research what other people think of the books on the Paizo boards have opened my eyes to a few flaws here and there – the most damning being the problems with the caravan rules. The adventures aren’t as interesting to read as I hoped (mainly because there’s only so many dungeons that I can take), but the good bits are very good. Alas, there are enough assumptions and plot points that I disagree with that if I ever ran the adventures, I’d have to gut a lot of them… especially the NPCs who accompany the PCs, who, four parts out of six in, haven’t yet shown themselves to be worth including.
Meanwhile, I’ve also been picking up the small selection of Paranoia 25th Anniversary products: the core rulebooks and the adventures. However, Mongoose are having some big QA issues on their major releases (the reprint “Redux” adventures), so I’m feeling rather let down by them.
This is another game that I don’t have time to run; unlike Call of Cthulhu, it’s a lot harder to run with fewer players (as an interim game). You really want 4-6 players all backstabbing each other… but I may get the opportunity next year.
Paranoia
I have the limited edition version of Troubleshooters and High Programmers. Like you, I’m slightly reluctant to spend much money on Mongoose over editing issues – in particular, I was very disappointed that my limited edition has several pages in which the “amusing quotes at the bottom of the page” have messed up and gone onto the wrong page. They do occasionally bring out much more lovingly crafted books – I really liked the latest Judge Dredd – but it seems inevitable that Mongoose books will have hilarious problems.
I definitely agree that you need a decent sized group for Paranoia – it’s probably one of the few games I can think of where 6 players makes it a quantifiably better experience than 4, since so much of the game is keyed to players reacting to each other.
George Q