Do's and Don't's of 3rd Party Pathfinder Supplements?


Advice and Rules Questions


I've been seriously considering writing a pathfinder supplement based on a setting I've been working on - adding some races, some magic items, some monsters and a town, maybe a short adventure too - but I don't want to get deep into writing the supplement before I know the rules of making a Pathfinder Supplement.

Am I allowed to reference Pathfinder and it's setting specifically? or is it like D&D, where you can only mention it as "the worlds most popular RPG system" and other vague references?

Does anyone know if there's just a convenient list I could reference? or perhaps a Paizo representative that could walk me through it?

Thanks!

Community Manager

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Oh dear. This is a question with a complicated set of answers. Fortunately, I can help out, but the thing you need to remember is that the Pathfinder Compatibility License is a legal document. If you do not understand it, or the Open Gaming License, you really really should consult a lawyer.
I did put together an unofficial guide to the Pathfinder Compatibility License that does explain some of what's going on.

Now, the first thing you need to decide: Are you doing this for personal enjoyment, and not for profit? If so, look at the Community Use Policy. The Community Use Policy allows you to reference our intellectual property and product identity (our setting and many many many other things).

If you're looking to publish and distribute your supplement, then you would be considered a third-party publisher. (And the thing you need to ask yourself there is: do I want to write, or do I want to deal with the *business* of being a publisher and everything that entails? If the former, seek a partnership with a preexisting publisher who can handle all the day-to-day stuff of publishing).

Agreeing to the Pathfinder Compatibility License requires you to fully understand what you're agreeing to, and being liable for your mistakes. I suggest you read the Compatibility License and the Open Gaming License thoroughly before proceeding any further.

Either way, I look forward to hearing more from you. :)

Silver Crusade Contributor

I saw a thread around here somewhere, but I'm having trouble finding it. :/

You can mention Pathfinder, the system (I believe). You cannot mention anything about the world/setting. No references to Golarion, or Pharasma, or Varisians, or anything like that.

For an example, there are two third-party reference sites. Archives of Nethys is not-for-profit, while d20pfsrd has a store and some other things.

As a result, the trait Varisian Wanderer looks like this on d20pfsrd.

Does this makes sense? It's not everything, I know...

Silver Crusade Contributor

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Aaand... literally ninjaed. ^_^

Silver Crusade Contributor

Liz Courts wrote:

Oh dear. This is a question with a complicated set of answers. Fortunately, I can help out, but the thing you need to remember is that the Pathfinder Compatibility License is a legal document. If you do not understand it, or the Open Gaming License, you really really should consult a lawyer.

I did put together an unofficial guide to the Pathfinder Compatibility License that does explain some of what's going on.

Now, the first thing you need to decide: Are you doing this for personal enjoyment, and not for profit? If so, look at the Community Use Policy. The Community Use Policy allows you to reference our intellectual property and product identity (our setting and many many many other things).

If you're looking to publish and distribute your supplement, then you would be considered a third-party publisher. (And the thing you need to ask yourself there is: do I want to write, or do I want to deal with the *business* of being a publisher and everything that entails? If the former, seek a partnership with a preexisting publisher who can handle all the day-to-day stuff of publishing).

Agreeing to the Pathfinder Compatibility License requires you to fully understand what you're agreeing to, and being liable for your mistakes. I suggest you read the Compatibility License and the Open Gaming License thoroughly before proceeding any further.

Either way, I look forward to hearing more from you. :)

Also, thank you for this. I've been looking into this sort of thing on-and-off as well.


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Also, if you do want to become a publisher, talk to a lawyer. Then do it again. Then do it a few more times.


Liz Courts wrote:

Oh dear. This is a question with a complicated set of answers. Fortunately, I can help out, but the thing you need to remember is that the Pathfinder Compatibility License is a legal document. If you do not understand it, or the Open Gaming License, you really really should consult a lawyer.

I did put together an unofficial guide to the Pathfinder Compatibility License that does explain some of what's going on.

Now, the first thing you need to decide: Are you doing this for personal enjoyment, and not for profit? If so, look at the Community Use Policy. The Community Use Policy allows you to reference our intellectual property and product identity (our setting and many many many other things).

If you're looking to publish and distribute your supplement, then you would be considered a third-party publisher. (And the thing you need to ask yourself there is: do I want to write, or do I want to deal with the *business* of being a publisher and everything that entails? If the former, seek a partnership with a preexisting publisher who can handle all the day-to-day stuff of publishing).

Agreeing to the Pathfinder Compatibility License requires you to fully understand what you're agreeing to, and being liable for your mistakes. I suggest you read the Compatibility License and the Open Gaming License thoroughly before proceeding any further.

Either way, I look forward to hearing more from you. :)

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

I'd certainly like to publish and distribute it for profit, but primarily I want to raise awareness for my development company, and one of my settings.

Here's a link to our site, if you're curious: http://demonskunk-studios.squarespace.com/

I'll have to make some time to read through the Compatibility License, I'm pretty well familiar with the OGL already (Wayfarer is likely going to be published under the OGL once I get back to working on that), but in the meantime are there any glaring things that you could tell me about it (the Compatability License), maybe some frequent mistakes, or anything of that nature?


Im actually glad someone asked this. I had similar questions, and had no idea where to even begin. So thanks for breaking the ice on this one, and thanks to those that responded!


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The main thing about being a publisher is that, first of all, you kind of need to be the sort of person who will do it no matter what anyone else says.

Do's:

My suggestion is to put some stuff out under the Community Use policy, and see if you get a positive response. Once you've got your toes wet, apply to any open calls you see, and get used to dealing with the drafting and editing process. By then, you should have a pretty good idea where your strengths and interests lie.

Don't:

Don't assume that because you are full of brilliant ideas, you should be a publisher. Some people are just happier working as freelancers, or just doing stuff on their own time.


As a purchaser of a decent number of 3pp items I can suggest something. Be aware of what else is out there. nearly every 3pp publisher seems to see only Paizo and what they create. Massive tunnel vision.

If someone is going to purchase your product they are likely going going to purchase someone elses. So it is appreciated by me, the customer, if it takes into possible account the othermore popular items out there.

Liberty's Edge

RJGrady wrote:
Don't assume ... you should be a publisher. Some people are just happier working as freelancers

Absolutely!

I am a very happy (and very busy) freelance writer, graphic artist/designer and illustrator but I don't think I would ever want to be a publisher (even if I felt I had every it takes to BE a publisher!)


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Craig Bonham 141 wrote:

As a purchaser of a decent number of 3pp items I can suggest something. Be aware of what else is out there. nearly every 3pp publisher seems to see only Paizo and what they create. Massive tunnel vision.

If someone is going to purchase your product they are likely going going to purchase someone elses. So it is appreciated by me, the customer, if it takes into possible account the othermore popular items out there.

My friend, we could dedicate an entire team to doing nothing but observe other publishers and we would still miss stuff. We cannot presume that any other 3pp material will be in play; we can only certify our own, and Paizo's. Sometimes cooperative efforts happen, which create a more close relationship and ability to balance, but they don't happen often enough to be meaningful. If we tried to observe each other and balance up/down to each other's work nothing would ever get written.


For what it's worth though PoK... the company you're involved with is one of the very few besides Paizo that is seriously worth keeping an eye on, IMO.


Craig Bonham 141 wrote:

As a purchaser of a decent number of 3pp items I can suggest something. Be aware of what else is out there. nearly every 3pp publisher seems to see only Paizo and what they create. Massive tunnel vision.

If someone is going to purchase your product they are likely going going to purchase someone elses. So it is appreciated by me, the customer, if it takes into possible account the othermore popular items out there.

On the flip side, don't assume your audience knows (or likes) every Paizo product out there. I recall reading a Legendary Games product by Mark Seifter, which made a reference to a 'cards' mechanic without explaining what it was or how it worked. I'll admit, I'm not as attentive to Paizo products as many of the forums. I think I gave the ISWG a fair shot, hated it, and hence lost interest in all Golorion products (meaning a vast majority of Paizo products). But I still thought it was a big assumption on Mark's part that I would know what 'cards' were.

(They turned out to be from Pathfinder Player Companion: The Harrow Handbook, which I had not heard of before then).

Prince of Knives wrote:


My friend, we could dedicate an entire team to doing nothing but observe other publishers and we would still miss stuff. We cannot presume that any other 3pp material will be in play; we can only certify our own, and Paizo's. Sometimes cooperative efforts happen, which create a more close relationship and ability to balance, but they don't happen often enough to be meaningful. If we tried to observe each other and balance up/down to each other's work nothing would ever get written.

While I agree that you can't keep track of everything, I can say that when you do end up using other companies' work, I thoroughly enjoy it. I really liked the way the Mythic Heroes' Handbook wove together Legendary, DSP, Kobold Press, and RGG content, in spite of the fact that I wasn't familiar with any of the RGG classes previously.

I also really enjoyed Rite Publishing's 101 Renegade Class Feats The Secrets of Renegade Archetypes, and its sequel (TSoRA II).

Also, I'm really hoping the CURRENTLY LIVE In the Company of Dragons kickstarter by Rite Publishing will reach its second stretch goal: a collaboration with DSP, and the publisher hinted that the third stretch goal will involve Legendary Games.
(Because I had to work that in somehow:D)

I understand that it is necessarily a rare occurrence, though. I suspect that if you regularly assumed use of other game companies' supplements, you'd get situations similar to the one I described in the first half of this post much more frequently.

One thing I think works as a nice compromise is that you write while keeping in mind that the GM is likely to combine it with other supplements with which you are not familiar. While it is very likely that any customers you get will also be buying other non-Paizo PF supplements, you won't know which ones. If you leave your work sufficiently flexible so that it can be used alongside your customer's favorite other supplements, whatever they may be, then it is more likely to be used by more groups. Unfortunately, that is often easier said than done!


Prince of Knives wrote:

My friend, we could dedicate an entire team to doing nothing but observe other publishers and we would still miss stuff. We cannot presume that any other 3pp material will be in play; we can only certify our own, and Paizo's. Sometimes cooperative efforts happen, which create a more close relationship and ability to balance, but they don't happen often enough to be meaningful. If we tried to observe each other and balance up/down to each other's work nothing would ever get written.

Which is why I suggested acknowledging some of the more popular rather than all. And I am sorry but I don't really buy that argument. I am just one person and I know enogh of the 3pp stuff to know about lots of new domains that would be nice to see in Divine Channeler or Godling for example. And I am just a player/GM.


An issue I see with crossing over 3rd-Party content, is that in many cases people might use one publishers content, but not have access to or allow the other. Without that access, the crossover content from the book that you otherwise completely allow wouldn't be able to be used.

For example, if there was an ethermagic archetype in a path of war book, that text would be non-functioning for my group since we don't have any interjection books.


And what a great way to encorage the entire concept of 3pp by introducing gfolks to things they might not know about.

Shadow Lodge

Craig Bonham 141 wrote:
Prince of Knives wrote:

My friend, we could dedicate an entire team to doing nothing but observe other publishers and we would still miss stuff. We cannot presume that any other 3pp material will be in play; we can only certify our own, and Paizo's. Sometimes cooperative efforts happen, which create a more close relationship and ability to balance, but they don't happen often enough to be meaningful. If we tried to observe each other and balance up/down to each other's work nothing would ever get written.

Which is why I suggested acknowledging some of the more popular rather than all. And I am sorry but I don't really buy that argument. I am just one person and I know enogh of the 3pp stuff to know about lots of new domains that would be nice to see in Divine Channeler or Godling for example. And I am just a player/GM.

It's always good for a publisher's work to stand on it's own, and not rely on you to buy other works from another publisher to be fully useable.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I don't think most people realize how much 3pp stuff is out there. Even if I just bought the stuff that was vaguely interesting to me, I would be making multiple purchases most weeks. Just keeping track of what Paizo and other 3pp is doing with regard to firearms has proved challenging.

Building off existing products is extremely cool, but I try to avoid relying on more than a handful of products for any release, and I frequently reprint snippets of material I consider necessary.


Kthulhu wrote:


It's always good for a publisher's work to stand on it's own, and not rely on you to buy other works from another publisher to be fully useable.

Yes, but by it's very nature 3pp Pathfinder work doesn't stand on its own. It relies on everything that Paizo has done with Pathfinder.

And, for example, with Divine Channeler, if they were to do an expansion of the initial work where they covered all the base domains offered in the Core Rulebook and added the various other domains that have been presented in other works, perhaps even in their own works, then it's simply adding to the utility of the product.


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Craig Bonham 141 wrote:


Yes, but by it's very nature 3pp Pathfinder work doesn't stand on its own. It relies on everything that Paizo has done with Pathfinder.

And, for example, with Divine Channeler, if they were to do an expansion of the initial work where they covered all the base domains offered in the Core Rulebook and added the various other domains that have been presented in other works, perhaps even in their own works, then it's simply adding to the utility of the product.

Except its spending valuable page-count on something that requires people buying a product that isn't even from the same 3rd party publisher, so it's a risk to attempt that utility since only a portion of purchasers will ever use that section.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Craig Bonham 141 wrote:


And, for example, with Divine Channeler, if they were to do an expansion of the initial work where they covered all the base domains offered in the Core Rulebook and added the various other domains that have been presented in other works, perhaps even in their own works, then it's simply adding to the utility of the product.

The publishers of new domains could, of course, publish the relevant information for the Divine Channeler.

DO: Be ambitious. Considering linking together a lot of published material. Build on the work of others.

DON'T: Feel like you have to be intimately familiar with everything out there. Break your back trying to include absolutely everything in everything.


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Craig Bonham 141 wrote:


Yes, but by it's very nature 3pp Pathfinder work doesn't stand on its own. It relies on everything that Paizo has done with Pathfinder.

Actually the only thing a 3pp relies on is the OGL.

You can literally chuck out about 90 to 99% of the material open for reprint created by Paizo.

Some publishers do. Some do not. Some, like Dreamscarred press, go earlier than that and convert up. The only real assumption most can and should make is that you at least have the core book.


Well at least for Kaidan products - much of it was written towards the start (the first 2 years of Pathfinder), so at the time we weren't accidentally creating content that another publisher might have doing, because no one else was doing Asian flavored stuff then. Consider that I was working on ideas for a samurai class, before Ultimate Combat, but then Ultimate Combat was released before we released ours - so I converted that to archetypes instead of its own class. We released our first short AP of 3 modules, 2 years before Jade Regent was released.

The only cross-over by another publisher into what we already created occurred with a title, not content. We released Way of the Samurai (PFRPG), at least a year before Legendary Games released a supplement with the same name "Way of the Samurai". Though the content of those two supplements are completely different. We had already created at the time, Way of the Yakuza - which was a class/faction supplement for Asian crime guilds, so Way of the Samurai was essentially the same thing for a different class/faction. We plan to eventually do a Way of the Shinobi for ninja factions and Way of the Spirit (or something like that) for clerics, oracles and inquisitors.

Now many publishers are creating Asian stuff, but Rite Publishing, Kaidan and Jade Oath (another Rite Publishing Asian setting for China) was doing it first out of all the 3PP publishers, and often ahead of Paizo itself.

It was my experience developing Kaidan that got me both the contributing author gig with Jade Regent and the commission to create the City of Kasai map for The Empty Throne module.

Its possible another publisher may have duplicated content we already created (though I don't think so) because we were first at it.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

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The base OGL specifically prohibits referring to another company's trademarks. This was intended to enable licensing agreements hinging on the use of trademarks - such as the d20 logo and the Pathfinder-Compatible logo. But I can see how it might complicate one third party expanding upon another's material.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Craig Bonham 141 wrote:
Prince of Knives wrote:

My friend, we could dedicate an entire team to doing nothing but observe other publishers and we would still miss stuff. We cannot presume that any other 3pp material will be in play; we can only certify our own, and Paizo's. Sometimes cooperative efforts happen, which create a more close relationship and ability to balance, but they don't happen often enough to be meaningful. If we tried to observe each other and balance up/down to each other's work nothing would ever get written.

Which is why I suggested acknowledging some of the more popular rather than all. And I am sorry but I don't really buy that argument. I am just one person and I know enogh of the 3pp stuff to know about lots of new domains that would be nice to see in Divine Channeler or Godling for example. And I am just a player/GM.

Interestingly, players and GMs are actually probably much more likely to be familiar with everything that's out there than 3pp designers. Designers have to balance, refine, edit and develop their work, and try to keep abreast of recent FAQs and how they impact the game. Generally, they're doing all this while also holding down a separate day job and a family (third party publishing doesn't pay terribly well, doubly so if you're just a freelance writer).

A really prolific 3pp like one of the ones I write for, Dreamscarred Press, is putting out multiple releases a month, and each individual designer is trying to keep up with those releases as well as that other really prolific company, Paizo. And as they get a grasp on what Paizo and their own company are doing, they're also already working on the next thing they'll be putting out (or often next several things). I could tell you more about Dreamscarred's next 6 months worth of releases than I can about Paizo's current player companion, let alone what Little Red Goblin, Alluria, Kyoudai, Geek Industrial Complex, John Brazer, Louis Porter Jr., ICOSA, Silver Games, Super Genius Games, Rogue Genius Games, Amora Games, Northwinter Press, Rite, Drop Dead Studios, Radiance House, etc. are up to. I actually run an event where I showcase materials from 1-3 different third party publishers every week, and I still only have the vaguest idea about the sum of what's out there.

You also just don't want to step on people's toes. It's a tight-knit community, and generally cooperation is much more beneficial than competition. Publishers will often reach out when they want to play in each other's back yards, but if they can't synchronize their schedules or put aside the time to work together, it's pretty bad form to just run with another guy's stuff. You also have to make sure that what you're wanting to borrow is really covered by the OGL (not everything actually is) and sifting through the legaleze there is generally going to take longer than anyone has time for, especially when there's so much new, unique, and unclaimed material they can be working on.

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