Big Pathfinder/Starfinder Reference Document News!

Congrats Blake and the rest of your team!! Excellent news!!

I wonder what this means for the phone apps that have copied the PRD. I love AON, but sometimes you just want to be able to look up something quickly offline.

I've honestly never used AoN, though I have been aware of it for some time, but I have no feelings about this.

That being said, I do have one major reaction. I LOVE that Paizo is more than willing to work with members of the community and bring them into the "official" fold. It's amazing to see that they care as much about the fans as we do about them and are willing to reward hard work with praise and inclusion instead of with C&D and DMCA notices.

I love you all. Thanks for keeping the "open" in OGL

ALso, selfishly this gives me hope of getting one of my adventure paths to get an "official" publication

Nice!

Question for the Paizo People — is Blake still going to be allowed to host Paizo content that isn't part of the Core Rulebook line, or does he have to take all of that down now?

For example, the Archives of Nethys currently host a lot of rules content from Player Companions and Campaign Setting Guides, stuff that the Pathfinder RD traditionally didn't include. (Exception: Technology Guide) Is that going to change?

Yay! Now they just need that nice wiki-style crosslinking between articles.

Congratulations Blake.

Congrats. I've been a huge fan of Archives of Nethys for my freelance work, so it's well-deserved.

And I think the search function's been pretty much fine from what I can tell over the last couple years.

My one request -- I wouldn't mind some *less* in-depth levels. For example, I wouldn't mind the old PRD's style of all the weapons in one list (so if I don't know off the top of my head if a weapon is simple/martial/exotic, I can just do a search on one page for the weapon and then see what category it is).

Nice!

Question for the Paizo People — is Blake still going to be allowed to host Paizo content that isn't part of the Core Rulebook line, or does he have to take all of that down now?

For example, the Archives of Nethys currently host a lot of rules content from Player Companions and Campaign Setting Guides, stuff that the Pathfinder RD traditionally didn't include. (Exception: Technology Guide) Is that going to change?

Yikes! What a horrible thought. Removing the Player Companion info would ruin the function Nethys has served.

What. The. Actual. Butt.

Do you want people to play 5e?
'cuz this is how you get people to play 5e!

For YEARS now I've had a single rule in my game:
If it's on the PRD it's legal.
If it's in the SRD it's not legal unless it's in the PRD.
Send me a link to the PRD rules for whatever you want to do and I'll allow it.

We all used the same site.
We all saw the same rules.
We all could send these links to one another and know instantly it was official.

Now all that's gone.

Thanks Paizo.
Been fun playing with you.

See you in 5e.

This is quite possibly the most colossal overreaction I've seen this week.

AoN is now official. That's what has changed. Nothing else. You still use the same site, see the same rules, and can send a link and know it's official. It even lists each book source so you know which book it came from.

It actually has more coverage than the PRD book wise, so I'm really not understanding what in the world you are talking about.

Yikes! What a horrible thought. Removing the Player Companion info would ruin the function Nethys has served.

I hope not, since then we'd still have to visit multiple sites. d20pfsrd has a lot of the player companion stuff on it.

Nothing was mentioned about removing anything, so I'm hopeful that isn't the case. It's hard to understate how much value sites like AoN add for players when you need to look up what something does. A quick search beats trying to figure out what book it's in any day of the week, especially with the sheer quantity of content PF has.

It looks to me like Paizo recognizes that and wants to encourage it rather than stymie it.

It actually has more coverage than the PRD book wise, so I'm really not understanding what in the world you are talking about.

The PRD was a much more manageable listing of rules, only the hardcover releases generally made it in. That was a useful distinction for him, and now that it is gone, he has lost functionality.

Nice!

Question for the Paizo People — is Blake still going to be allowed to host Paizo content that isn't part of the Core Rulebook line, or does he have to take all of that down now?

For example, the Archives of Nethys currently host a lot of rules content from Player Companions and Campaign Setting Guides, stuff that the Pathfinder RD traditionally didn't include. (Exception: Technology Guide) Is that going to change?

Golarion IP will still very much be a part. The post touches on this a little, but I can confirm for certain that part of the site will not be changing. :)

"As an official licensed partner, the Archives of Nethys includes setting-specific rules content as well as Open Game Content, so you'll be able to find the Golarion- and Pact Worlds–specific rules you're looking for quickly and easily."

Will there be the ability to sort spell lists by source? I just had my Ranger hit 4th level and was going to use the old PRD for his spell list. I wanted only the spells from the CRB. I don't have space to write down the hundred or so spells from AoN on his profile. Had to buy the CRB PDF for my immediate needs. Thank you in advance for your answer.

I am glad to hear AoN is the official PRD for 3 reasons.

1. PFS-legality is noted.
2. Not being Paizo means they won't have the issues if Paizo's website goes down.
3. They have lots more stuff, including Ultimate Intrigue.

Tridus wrote:

It actually has more coverage than the PRD book wise, so I'm really not understanding what in the world you are talking about.

The PRD was a much more manageable listing of rules, only the hardcover releases generally made it in. That was a useful distinction for him, and now that it is gone, he has lost functionality.

Exactly. Thank you.

For example:

I have a new player.
They want to buy a weapon.
They can use simple weapons.

The new site lists all simple weapons on one page.

I look and see something on there called a "stingchuck".
I have no idea what this is, having never heard of it before.

I open the listing for it and it's "A stingchuck is a foul bag made of a humanoid’s head with the brain removed and the skull heavily scored so that it bursts open when thrown."

What the butt?

Ahh... it's an item from "Adventurer's Armory", not one of the basic books.

Now I can no longer tell my player "Any weapon on this list from this page is available" because they'll be buying a freakin' human head to throw at people IN A HUMAN TOWN!

I don't want this item in my shops!
I don't want my players having this!

And I can not simply and easily send them a link to SIMPLE WEAPONS that does NOT include this item.

Do you really not see the problem here?

Phnord_Prephect, this is a brand new partnership and as Chris mentioned in her blog, allows the content to be updated in a more timely fashion. This means the concept of a PRD stays relevant to everyone who relies on it and isn't waiting months for updates to content.

I'm sure that over time there will be adjustments and changes to improve functionality. Let's keep feedback or requests for changes polite and free of aggressive language.

Congrats Blake!

This is the best reason for me to have to update all the links in the book I'm currently writing!

Congratulations! Always great to see Paizo collaborating with such a valuable community member.

Annoyed by this. My group doesn't use Player Companion or Campaign Setting content and prefers the PRD formatting and layout to the AoN one so my group is basically just screwed.

The closest equivalent is the Sources section of AoN, but that is horribly formatted, has no rules text, no tables, is insanely slow, and requires you to already know what your looking for to begin with unless you want to go into every single entry if you want to just read through the archetypes for certain classes things book by book.

AoN doesn't fit the purposes for my me or my players ever used the PRD so I guess we'll just have to go back to using the pdfs of books as "reference documents".

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Tridus wrote:

It actually has more coverage than the PRD book wise, so I'm really not understanding what in the world you are talking about.

The PRD was a much more manageable listing of rules, only the hardcover releases generally made it in. That was a useful distinction for him, and now that it is gone, he has lost functionality.

Exactly. Thank you.

For example:

I have a new player.
They want to buy a weapon.
They can use simple weapons.

The new site lists all simple weapons on one page.

I look and see something on there called a "stingchuck".
I have no idea what this is, having never heard of it before.

I open the listing for it and it's "A stingchuck is a foul bag made of a humanoid’s head with the brain removed and the skull heavily scored so that it bursts open when thrown."

What the butt?

Ahh... it's an item from "Adventurer's Armory", not one of the basic books.

Now I can no longer tell my player "Any weapon on this list from this page is available" because they'll be buying a freakin' human head to throw at people IN A HUMAN TOWN!

I don't want this item in my shops!
I don't want my players having this!

And I can not simply and easily send them a link to SIMPLE WEAPONS that does NOT include this item.

Do you really not see the problem here?

I don’t use resources like this, but can you not filter AoN by book titles? If so a “filter by core rulebook” option would be useful I think. (Is that difficult, Blake?)

Also, I wasn’t entirely clear on the blog - is the PRD being merged with AoN? Or will it be standalone and sitting alongside the current, broader database?

Also, I wasn’t entirely clear on the blog - is the PRD being merged with AoN? Or will it be standalone and sitting alongside the current, broader database?

The PRD is down entirely. AoN is effectively the PRD now. Trying to go to the PRD redirects you there.

For example:

I have a new player.
They want to buy a weapon.
They can use simple weapons.

The new site lists all simple weapons on one page.

I look and see something on there called a "stingchuck".
I have no idea what this is, having never heard of it before.

I open the listing for it and it's "A stingchuck is a foul bag made of a humanoid’s head with the brain removed and the skull heavily scored so that it bursts open when thrown."

What the butt?

Ahh... it's an item from "Adventurer's Armory", not one of the basic books.

Now I can no longer tell my player "Any weapon on this list from this page is available" because they'll be buying a freakin' human head to throw at people IN A HUMAN TOWN!

I don't want this item in my shops!
I don't want my players having this!

And I can not simply and easily send them a link to SIMPLE WEAPONS that does NOT include this item.

Do you really not see the problem here?

If the main value for you in the PRD is that it had a ton of released stuff missing, then yes, I can see how that would be a problem.

That's the exact reason why I never used the PRD and relied on AoN and d20pfsrd instead, though.

Given that a given entry lists where it's from if you click on it, you could just tell your player to only use things from the hardcovers and they can figure it out pretty quickly by looking at the things that interest them.

Let's keep feedback or requests for changes polite and free of aggressive language.

I politely request Paizo make the pre-existing PRD available to the public, in its entirety, in its pre-existing format, in perpetuity, even if it is never updated again.

I don't care who hosts it.
I don't care what the URL is.
I don't care if the landing page is a giant disclaimer stating aonprd.com is now the authoritative source for PFRPG rules and a big half-grinning half-snarling face of Nethys with big bright hyperlink to aonprd.com.

Heck, I don't care if it's a chibi anime Nethys head as an animated GIF with embedded 8-bit MIDI sound jingle that I have no way of turning off. Just give me back what I had yesterday.

Simply auto-redirecting http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ to aonprd.com was a slap in the face. You did not add anything to the gaming community; you took something away.

Congrats. I've been a huge fan of Archives of Nethys for my freelance work, so it's well-deserved.

And I think the search function's been pretty much fine from what I can tell over the last couple years.

My one request -- I wouldn't mind some *less* in-depth levels. For example, I wouldn't mind the old PRD's style of all the weapons in one list (so if I don't know off the top of my head if a weapon is simple/martial/exotic, I can just do a search on one page for the weapon and then see what category it is).

I've actually been thinking about this for a while. Having an "All" version and one still split by Proficiency.

For all who have suggestions on how to improve the site / give back functionality now lacking with the old PRD removal, please hit up the feedback emails (feedback@aonprd.com and feedback@aonsrd.com) - we have a lot in the works right now and I hope to address the most common concerns in the coming months.

I'm glad the PRD is getting some love, although I'm not familiar with AoN myself. Will there be a presence in the forums here for reporting issues?

Jacob W. Michaels wrote:

Congrats. I've been a huge fan of Archives of Nethys for my freelance work, so it's well-deserved.

And I think the search function's been pretty much fine from what I can tell over the last couple years.

My one request -- I wouldn't mind some *less* in-depth levels. For example, I wouldn't mind the old PRD's style of all the weapons in one list (so if I don't know off the top of my head if a weapon is simple/martial/exotic, I can just do a search on one page for the weapon and then see what category it is).

I've actually been thinking about this for a while. Having an "All" version and one still split by Proficiency.

This would be a good thing.

For all who have suggestions on how to improve the site / give back functionality now lacking with the old PRD removal, please hit up the feedback emails (feedback@aonprd.com and feedback@aonsrd.com) - we have a lot in the works right now and I hope to address the most common concerns in the coming months.

I hope you will continue to read this thread, and respond to requests here as well.

My PbP rules are CRB & APG only. So if someone does a source on CRB, all they get is a list of "topics", no detail, mostly not split up (aka simple/martial/exotic weapons). Same for APG. I would like to see this split up with "basic" information on each item.

Also, source on CRB, Class Rogue. This lists Favored Class Options that are not part of the CRB. This becomes confusing, as well as not correct. Ultimate Wilderness, among others, is not in the CRB.

While I think that some of the complaints are being presented in an aggressive manner, underneath the snark I believe that they have valid concerns.

I hope that you can address some of these in the coming months.

-- david

AoN, and Blake, are brilliant. I'm glad they'll get more Paizo support to do what they do.

I will also join the wagon of folks who say this was done poorly. AoN does NOT have everything the PRD had - particularly with regards to the rules section. And all that is gone now. Likewise all my characters have spell lists which link to the PRD. That is all gone now and I'll have to go through AoN and relink everything. This last is a minor thing perhaps, but time consuming.

Paizo has pulled the plug on something that, admittedly worked poorly at times, and was woefully out of date, but functional for all that.

Paizo, for the last months, all you've done is make it increasingly harder to play games.

I hope that trend changes, because your repeated technological failures are really pissing people off - and they are leaving. This is just another failure, but at least there's a strong community presence (AoN) to take up the slack.

Thank you Blake! Time to send you some more money for your now even more invaluable resource. Long live the Archives!

I sometimes use AoN for some information but I did like some aspects of the old PRD. For instance, the whole spell list for sorcerer/wizards (like the core rulebook does). I liked seeing all the spells categorized by level and then by school. In the default of AoN, it just seems to be one gigantic list by level. The utility of seeing what is what by school as well seems to have disappeared. Will this feature be added (or is it there in some other fashion, by selecting toggles and such)?

Existing links aren't properly redirecting. Will this be resolved?

I've updated the posts in this thread from "Karui Kage" to a new "Archives of Nethys" alias.

Love AoN! Congrats pn the partnership!

What. The. Actual. Butt.

Do you want people to play 5e?
'cuz this is how you get people to play 5e!

For YEARS now I've had a single rule in my game:
If it's on the PRD it's legal.
If it's in the SRD it's not legal unless it's in the PRD.
Send me a link to the PRD rules for whatever you want to do and I'll allow it.

We all used the same site.
We all saw the same rules.
We all could send these links to one another and know instantly it was official.

Now all that's gone.

Thanks Paizo.
Been fun playing with you.

See you in 5e.

You are covered.

AoN is officially official.

Oh this is a great move! I already use AoN a ton, and it's good to see it get the official nod.

Will AoN be getting the GM's resources and rules too?

EDIT: Whoa, they're already there!

As a user of AoN for years, I am happy that this was announced! Congratulations!

While I think congratulations are in order, Archives of Nethys is an excellent site, it lacks the clarity and ease of use of the original PRD.

Listing the rulebooks in order to get at the information I needed easily, or could help direct my players to was massively useful. It also was a limited subset of the overall rules. (Hardcovers and Technology Guide only). That was very, very useful as a GM, especially when guiding newer players through character creation and leveling.

While I like Archives of Nethys for deep-dive character building, the Paizo PRD was my bread-and-butter site for rules look-ups and for GM preparation. To lose its simplicity of use and design with no warning and no clear indication if we'll see any similar functionality under a completely separate party isn't the best move.

I don't want to take anything away from Karui Kage because he does great work, maintaining a fantastic database.

But I used the PRD, Archives of Nethys and d20pfsrd.com for different and complementary purposes.

Congratulations to Blake on this well-deserved selection.

Things I love about Archives of Nethys...

• It has OGL content up to date
• It has a Starfinder SRD
• No ads
• You can reverse the text/background colours
• It has available content from Players' Guides and Campaign setting material
• The Item generator tool (generates encounter and settlement treasures)

Things I'd like to see improved eventually...

• Available filtering of source material
• Option to organize by book rather than subject.

Still, people should know that this is awesome news.

I have enjoyed the Archives of Nethys site for years and I'm glad to see it get this attention.

Even still, I don't know if there were other reasons for this immediate change, I will say that this fast of a change over feels unusual and somewhat disruptive.

As an example, for a few magic items my groups had found I opted to post a link to the PRD to the full text of those items and spells. Both of those aren't working now, and I would have been surprised if they were supported. I don't mind if they stopped working a week or even days after I posted them, but when I was linking them, my thought process wasn't "what if that page on the PRD is taken down tomorrow?"

Again, I do think this change is for the best. I do think that the PRD is better served with this change. I just felt a little blindsided by the sudden change.

Edit: And of course, congratulations to Blake.

Tay-Dor wrote:

Boo....This blows (at least for the moment).

I was in the middle of using the PRD and WHAM...redirected to AON and the site grinds to a halt.

I preferred the organization of the PRD. Hopefully AON sees fit to put in Product references for those of us who want to limit things to certain books.

AoN has the source for things on every page, there is also a 'Source' option in the left hand menu that you can click on and select a specific source to see everything from it... it's actually miles ahead of anywhere else in that regard.

It isn't about 'being ahead,' a change in how information is organized can be a significant headache for users.

Hey Blake,

Good luck buddy! I see the switch from freelance to sponsored is already making you popular to yet at! Beautiful world isn't it!

You deserve the job dude, seriously. Just remember to take the "feedback" in stride and use it to make the AoN even better despite the aggression.

Congrats Blake :)

Totally deserve it ^_^

This is legit amazing. I love AoN and I am stoked to see them become an official partner :D

Congrats Blake - I agree that this is well deserved.
I hope you can incorporate the search filter feedback to match the functionality of the PRD.
Not wanting to take the shine off Blake's moment, I do have some feedback for Paizo.

Paizo - I can understand why you are making this change, but the handling of this change has been very unfortunate. With the recent Paizo site access issues and the transition to AON without notice, I find this a poor example of best practice.
This sort of data migration should have provided notice, a period of parallel access and then transition to AON only once the major issues of the users were resolved.
None of this has been done, which is why you're getting some "narky" comments. Whether Paizo agrees with the comments or not is irrelevant. Your customers are not happy and you should listen.

It's not too late to fix it...

Where are all the psionics rules from the pfsrd? Please leave the old site up, at least long enough for me to download copies if they are being dropped from the game...

And aonprd.com is down....

Service Unavailable

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

Mimo Tomblebur wrote:

Yikes! What a horrible thought. Removing the Player Companion info would ruin the function Nethys has served.

I hope not, since then we'd still have to visit multiple sites. d20pfsrd has a lot of the player companion stuff on it.

Nothing was mentioned about removing anything, so I'm hopeful that isn't the case. It's hard to understate how much value sites like AoN add for players when you need to look up what something does. A quick search beats trying to figure out what book it's in any day of the week, especially with the sheer quantity of content PF has.

It looks to me like Paizo recognizes that and wants to encourage it rather than stymie it.

It's probably the people that never spent a penny on Paizo products that are whining the loudest too, heh.

No, that's not true cigarret, and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't smear legitimate complaints with your 'whining' claim. I, at least, have purchased every source book for every character ability, DM run, etc. I do/use. I suspect many folks around here do (though certainly not all I agree).

However, Paizo's SRD and the Archives of Nethys are not identical. There are many legitimate reasons why the loss of Paizo's SRD is significant to many of us. Will AoN close the gap over the next weeks and months? I have every faith in Blake and his team. However, pulling the plug on Paizo's SRD in this way is poor form in my opinion - and others on this site and others I've communicated with agree.

Please don't assume and snark, it adds nothing to the conversation and only inflames emotions.

Papa-DRB - the site seems mostly stable to me (maybe a touch slower), and considering the extra load they must be experiencing I'm happy. I did get that error once, but I refreshed and it cleared. Over time, I suspect they'll add resources and it'll stay up and zippy.

Where are all the psionics rules from the pfsrd? Please leave the old site up, at least long enough for me to download copies if they are being dropped from the game...

d20pfsrd.com is still up and is not at all involved in this deal.

And aonprd.com is down....

Service Unavailable

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

It seems to be back up now.

Just curious Blake, but does that mean stuff like Horror Adventures and Planar adventures will be in there too soon? Cause I'd love to see some of that go live soon.