New and Revised Licenses

Mark Moreland wrote:

Jared Thaler - Personal Opinion wrote:

So. As far as I am reading this, a third party character sheet could not use the Pathfinder logo, the class icons, or possibly even the action symbols without a separately negotiated license?

A custom character sheet layout falls under the "some exceptions" in the Fan Content Policy. Since it's primarily art (the custom layout), it's not an RPG product in the sense that it'd need to reference the OGL or ORC. If it's an automated character sheet that's actively crunching numbers and referencing rules, then that would need to be released under the OGL/ORC and Compatibility License.

By that description, I'm certain that my character sheets, and many other tools like them, require ORC/OGL + Compatibility License. Only the most basic of tools would have no rules reference in them at all. Something as simple as "Select your ancestry from this list" would be enough to cross that very low threshold.

The gap between the old CUP and the new Compatibility License is what's jarring here.

The FCP doesn't apply to any character sheet, builder, tool, wiki or app that uses game rules, even if they're non-commercial. That means all the logos, artwork etc that used to be granted that way

I do not pretend to fully understand all the changes here, but my group exclusively uses pathbuilder for multiple reasons. Seeing that builders may no longer be covered and demiplane being the only official thing that I can think of that comes even close worries me, it is much too similar to dnd beyond and my group avoided it due to needing to buy packs or classes to be able to build a character.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak to the legal perspective, but until basically all of the OGL content for PF2e is remastered, it doesn't even seem tenable from a game perspective to have a third-party PF2e-related tool. Of which there are many, and they are popular and presumably help Paizo sell more product.

Seems, to me, to be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The OGL/ORC mixing is a tricky thing but ultimately something the end-user can just do privately while leaving the developer only having to make it clearly separate products. Though, of course, it would have been nice to allow mixing the two without the legal headache and thus dissuading everyone involved from making such tools.

I do not pretend to fully understand all the changes here, but my group exclusively uses pathbuilder for multiple reasons. Seeing that builders may no longer be covered and demiplane being the only official thing that I can think of that comes even close worries me, it is much too similar to dnd beyond and my group avoided it due to needing to buy packs or classes to be able to build a character.

Thankfully Pathbuilder is not affected given it has already had to abide by being purely ORC-based and not using Golarion content. That's why it just has "Faction prerequisites" and such, as opposed to saying for ex. "Firebrand member."

Thankfully Pathbuilder is not affected given it has already had to abide by being purely ORC-based and not using Golarion content. That's why it just has "Faction prerequisites" and such, as opposed to saying for ex. "Firebrand member."

...Is this true, though? Because it definitely uses "game rules" like classes and feats and leveling structure and such. The verbiage has all been sanitized but the underlying structure still relies on game rules that are a mixture of OGL and ORC content (at least for a complete product, as Jared noted above).

It's an example of an extraordinarily popular tool that I could easily see just...No longer existing after the licensing change.

I do want to be super clear (since I wasn't earlier) that I am massively in favor of the shift to being more open to fan made art and letting fan artists sell their work!

I am just also worried that this seems like it will break some some of the existing tools I know and love.

MrVauxs wrote:

Thankfully Pathbuilder is not affected given it has already had to abide by being purely ORC-based and not using Golarion content. That's why it just has "Faction prerequisites" and such, as opposed to saying for ex. "Firebrand member."

...Is this true, though? Because it definitely uses "game rules" like classes and feats and leveling structure and such. The verbiage has all been sanitized but the underlying structure still relies on game rules that are a mixture of OGL and ORC content (at least for a complete product, as Jared noted above).

It's an example of an extraordinarily popular tool that I could easily see just...No longer existing after the licensing change.

So a tool like Pathbuilder or Dyslexic Character Sheets uses more than one license at once. We use the OGL / ORC for rules, the CUP for logos and stuff, and various other licenses for software, fonts, and everything else.

With this change, we'll still have access to the rules part with ORC, but everything else is gone. No logos, no iconic artwork, no class symbols, no Golarion setting IP, etc.

This becomes a problem when the boundary between rules and setting IP gets blurry. For example, the Red Mantis Assassin archetype clearly references the organisation from Golarion, right alongside the mechanical rules that the ORC grants.

This is where I'm most unclear. Do I need to throw out every Lost Omens sourcebook from my product, because every background and ancestry in them is potentially tainted by setting IP?

MrVauxs wrote:

Thankfully Pathbuilder is not affected given it has already had to abide by being purely ORC-based and not using Golarion content. That's why it just has "Faction prerequisites" and such, as opposed to saying for ex. "Firebrand member."

...Is this true, though? Because it definitely uses "game rules" like classes and feats and leveling structure and such. The verbiage has all been sanitized but the underlying structure still relies on game rules that are a mixture of OGL and ORC content (at least for a complete product, as Jared noted above).

It's an example of an extraordinarily popular tool that I could easily see just...No longer existing after the licensing change.

It never depended on those licenses or policies to begin with. The change thus does not affect it. Its purely based on its interpretation of OGL/ORC and how to mix the two (re: the prompt asking the user whether they want to mix on their own accord).

Pathbuilder is the only example so far of a tool continuing to work after this change that does not have unique licensing with Paizo (like AoN), as they always avoided using Paizo IP on accord of being a paid service and thus incompatible with CUP.

The main problem for Dyslexic Character Sheets, pf2easy, pf2etools, etc. is the deprecation of Community Use Policy in favor of a) a fan policy for merch or b) going to Pathfinder Infinite... and no other options.

Jared Thaler - Personal Opinion wrote:

So. As far as I am reading this, a third party character sheet could not use the Pathfinder logo, the class icons, or possibly even the action symbols without a separately negotiated license?

A custom character sheet layout falls under the "some exceptions" in the Fan Content Policy. Since it's primarily art (the custom layout), it's not an RPG product in the sense that it'd need to reference the OGL or ORC. If it's an automated character sheet that's actively crunching numbers and referencing rules, then that would need to be released under the OGL/ORC and Compatibility License.

It's not the 1970s any more. A character sheet isn't just some boxes on a piece of paper. People use a whole variety of tools and apps at their game table. Even those made primarily for print, like mine, have a strong digital component and plenty of specific rules references.

Where does this leave accessibility tools? I have a nearly-blind player at my table, who's constantly looking for audio-based tools to help. Do these license changes make that less likely?

This becomes a problem when the boundary between rules and setting IP gets blurry. For example, the Red Mantis Assassin archetype clearly references the organisation from Golarion, right alongside the mechanical rules that the ORC grants.

This is where I'm most unclear. Do I need to throw out every Lost Omens sourcebook from my product, because every background and ancestry in them is potentially tainted by setting IP?

It seems a bit difficult to have a functional thing, from a game perspective, if every background, ancestry, archetype, etc that was printed under OGL but hasn't been reprinted under ORC becomes off-limits.

...I'm not a lawyer but I feel your pain.

This is pretty confusing
While I applaud the changes for fan merch, it sounds like there really ought to be a carve-out for using both rule and lore names/descriptions for things like character sheet tools and such. I don't know if thats even possible for content published under OGL while still disentangling from OGL, but at least for content published under ORC as its a safe license it should be possible?

Also I presume that the pf2e foundry extension is not impacted though, since as I understand it they already has a specific licensing agreement worked out via the foundry partnership?

So, to confirm, where would I be able to release a rules-agnostic "Inevitables of Golarion" book under that title as of September 2nd? Could I charge for it on PF Infinite?

Inevitables are owned by Wizards of the Coast. You need to ask them if you can refer to them in a non-OGL product. But as long as you're releasing something that is lore and no game rules, you can do so and use Paizo's IP via the Fan Content Policy.

You can't refer to "inevitables" in the context of being a race of sort-of-mechanical extraplanar outsiders who maintain order and include subvariants like the kolyarut and marut and the like without the OGL. So you can't publish that on Infinite after August 31. If you strip out all the OGL-derived content, then it'd be fine, but inevitables as a thing are inherently OGL, so I don't know how you'd do that.

I do not pretend to fully understand all the changes here, but my group exclusively uses pathbuilder for multiple reasons. Seeing that builders may no longer be covered and demiplane being the only official thing that I can think of that comes even close worries me, it is much too similar to dnd beyond and my group avoided it due to needing to buy packs or classes to be able to build a character.

Pathbuilder should be unaffected by these changes. That site and app do not use the Community Use Policy nor the Pathfinder Compatibility License. They just use the OGL and ORC. Nothing Paizo does or could do can alter their ability to use that content, nor would we want to.

So what does this mean for things like Pathbuilder2e? I am not very smart with legal terms and whatnot, is Pathbuilder2e safe?
Edit: Whoops lmao there is a response like one message above me that answers this! Im both daft and blind!

Where does this leave accessibility tools? I have a nearly-blind player at my table, who's constantly looking for audio-based tools to help. Do these license changes make that less likely?

We will be addressing this in the FAQ as quickly as we can. The intent was never to prevent accessibility tools or other game aids, we simply did not account for the wide variety of them when we made the inexaustive list of examples.

Where does this leave Hephaistos? I use the heck out of that site for Starfinder sheets and starship builds.

Thanks for responding to questions. Wondering about how this impacts (totally free, labor of love) conversions of PF1 modules and APs to remastered PF2. These projects keep people buying and engaging with legacy material all over again.

Can you please lay out how to pursue that in the new licensing regime?

It basically sounds like SF1e is dead for Starfinder Infinite. Once SF2e is out, will there be any use for SF1e setting lore? Will it be possible to use SF1e setting lore with SF2e rules in Starfinder Infinite once SF2e is out? Or do we just need to forget the past and move on to SF2e only?

How does this affect map remakes of adventures and adventure paths? The FCP states "You may not use artwork, including maps, that have not been published in the blog, although you may create your own interpretations of material presented in our artwork and maps, provided that your interpretations don't look substantially similar to our materials."

What counts as substantially similar? Is a near 1:1 remake of a map with different assets and higher pixels per square such that it works better in VTTs allowed? What about making a compilation of those into a module so that others don't need to manually set up every map it just has all of them ready for them (barring things like monsters and treasure since that would be getting into rules stuff).

EDIT: Mark confirmed on Reddit that this exact thing is fair game.

I also would like to know where this leaves VTTs such as foundry and Fantasy Grounds?

This change definitely leaves more questions than answers, and I'm not sure I fully understand what tools may need to change and what might not. I'm even sitting here trying to figure out how I would publish my custom setting I'm working on (was going to use ORC licensing and current remaster rules terms that might be considered outside the bounds under this policy), and... I'm honestly just not sure how it would be licensed effectively, especially if I ever wanted to publish it outside of a pdf on Infinite... if I would even be allowed to under this policy.

Finally got around to reading the license:

But those Pathfinder Society faction dice bags you have been making because you love them? You can totally start selling those now instead of just giving them away for free.

While digital items may reuse official Paizo art or logos, merch should not. Do not use the “Paizo,” "Pathfinder," or "Starfinder," trademarks and logos on your physical merch or in marketing materials when selling it. Do not use official art or assets from our games in merch.

So faction dice bags (faction name and color scheme maybe?) would be fine, but faction dicebags with a faction symbol copied from the blog would not, is that correct?

(It might be a good idea to make that more clear)

Found a punctuation error in Fan license.

I'll take that as a sign this is a work in progress. Please leverage the CUP registrations to notify users when you have this all sorted out rather than rely on blog posts.

Also, as someone who released many CUP projects, it was a great license and it was fairly simple. I definitely have a lot of questions reading through all this. My gut reaction is that this will make me think twice before starting anything new, or updating any of my current projects

Apologies if this has already been answered, but what does this mean for Pathfinder Second Edition content that was released before the Remaster? If I wanted to make a collection of feats or subclasses for Gunslingers, Summoners, or Thaumaturges, would I be out of luck? Are there plans to re-release the six still-OGL classes in Second Edition under the ORC in some future Player Core 3-esque product, or will we have to keep publishing them under OGL and not on Infinite for the foreseeable future?

Apologies if this has already been answered, but what does this mean for Pathfinder Second Edition content that was released before the Remaster? If I wanted to make a collection of feats or subclasses for Gunslingers, Summoners, or Thaumaturges, would I be out of luck? Are there plans to re-release the six still-OGL classes in Second Edition under the ORC in some future Player Core 3-esque product, or will we have to keep publishing them under OGL and not on Infinite for the foreseeable future?

Those classes are owned by Paizo, not WotC, and so don't require you to cite the OGL in order to use them on Infinite. For the official Mark answer: Here seems to be answering a similar enough question to yours. The idea I get is that they were published under the OGL, but Infinite says "okay" to any Paizo original creations regardless which licence they're under.

Now I'm no lawyer (in fact I'm very curious what Ronald will have to say about this, if anything) nor 3rd party publisher (yet) but, candidly, most of this seems like a pretty massive misstep, especially the restriction of OGL content from Pathfinder/Starfinder Infinite. As a 2e player this won't affect me that much, but I very much sympathize with the 1e players who still prefer and play their system, and like to publish content for it to keep it alive. I don't see any reason to effectively cut them out of using these official channels to do that. "It's more convenient for Paizo" is not a valid reason to do that. If there is one, which I'm not ruling out given the obtuse nature of law, it hasn't been provided to the community in a clearly digestible or even complex and confusing manner. Please reconsider these changes.

As far As I understand, we can still use previously allowed PCUP art for fan-based forums, youtube presentation, etc , as long as we don't monetize this at all ?
Right ?

@Dmurnett: I feel like Paizo has more than earned the benefit of the doubt at this point that they put more thought into this than "it's inconvenient for us". Let's see how the FAQ and whatnot continue to evolve over the coming days and let other people with more direct stakes ask their questions.

I'm no lawyer, but from Paizo's last communication re: licenses in November, I felt the impression was clear that the OGL and Infinite licenses could not and would not co-exist for long. At that time it was only prohibiting Infinite material being published under the OGL, not OGL content being used on Infinite "because we still have classes and monsters and other game and setting elements that creators will need access to [via OGL] in order to make content for Pathfinder."

I know this may be a lot of people's first exposure to this news re: licenses, but it feels like this was always the logical conclusion for Infinite, being as it was always intended as a "walled garden" (if I remember the phrase right) from which WotC had necessitated the exclusion of the OGL by virtue of their stunt last year, making it no longer safe for Paizo to include new content they don't own in said garden.

I don't want to pretend any of this is necessarily intuitive or obvious (nor that I necessarily understand all of the implications--I'm not invested in them, so I haven't dug into the details!) but it doesn't seem strange at all to me given it lies directly in line with the trajectory re: preventing another OGL debacle from threatening Paizo's workings and the stated design intentions of Pathfinder Infinite itself.

@Dmurnett: I feel like Paizo has more than earned the benefit of the doubt at this point that they put more thought into this than "it's inconvenient for us". Let's see how the FAQ and whatnot continue to evolve over the coming days and let other people with more direct stakes ask their questions.

I suppose that's fair, I was maybe a bit harsh. Paizo is a company that has a lot of goodwill behind it, and for good reason. Still, it's important that we hold them accountable if they slip up. A company, no matter how historically kind, is not your friend. I care a lot that 1e players (and pre-remaster 2e players I suppose) have the option of properly communally maintaining their game now that Paizo understandably doesn't. I find it understandable that if allowing it on infinite poses a threat to Paizo or is otherwise unsolvably complicated then it's a necessary sacrifice, but if such is the case they haven't been up-front about it. Having only Mark's earlier posts in this thread to go by (most notably the one about how Infinite didn't have that much 1e output anyways), the only conclusion I can come to is that Paizo doesn't care about this, unless they address it in more detail. While I'm very certain that they will, I don't live in the future where they already have, I live in the now where they haven't yet, and (un)fortunately I'm no witchwarper so I'm forced to act in accordance with my current reality.

For the French-speaking community, these major changes mean a permanent loss. We don't have all the tools provided by the much larger English-speaking community.

The French publisher cannot allocate resources to set up and maintain a wiki for PF2 & SF 2. Not even a VTT or premium modules.

There is no alternative solution for us. No nexus, no infinite, nothing without what we do is allowed any more even though it allowed Pathfinder to emerge and have a community among French speakers.

There are three of us fans who translate and maintain the PF2 system for the foundry VTT platform. We use it to have the only existing wiki in French for PF2.

A team for SF2 was getting ready to use what we're doing to promote SF2 products and we're working with them to prepare the release of the Field Test.

Without our project, there are no resources to play with, excluding two-thirds of the French-speaking community (nearly 400 groups).

We have no choice but to put an end to our initiative. I'm angry because I spent nearly 15 years helping to develop Pathfinder on PF1 and then PF2.

Hi, creator of Hephaistos here. Hephaistos is a fan-made website for Starfinder 1E where you can make and manage Characters, Starships, Mechs, NPCs and more for free, and so far it has relied upon the Community Use Policy. I want to double-check that I'm understanding the new licensing correctly:

The CUP doesn't exist anymore, and Hephaistos is an RPG product as defined by the Fan Content Policy so that doesn't apply either. This means that Hephaistos must now rely upon the OGL for Starfinder 1E content, and so existing content on the website must be sanitized to remove any Product Identity (as defined by the OGL). Is that correct? If so, is there a "grace period" for these changes to be made?

Really keen to see some clarity and direct attention to the digital tool space. I love to buy your books, I very rarely open them. I play physically at a real table rolling real dice, but we look up all those rules digitally. Every statblock has linked spells and rules and it's amazing.

Those tools are almost exclusively made by the community. Supported by the community. Passionately and with love to ensure we can all play PF2e easily.

Can we get a digital tool faq to clearly layout what can be used. Can the tools include copies of the spells, monster statblocks? Can only the monsters from the rule books be included? Or can statblocks from the adventures be included but the named npc statblocks cant be used?

It's really confusing since most people use AoN as a reference, but lots of people don't understand that they have a special license agreement in place.

Burt from PFOA told me that I need to ask if reworded version of rules are also allowed.

Link to PFOA.

Hi, creator of Hephaistos here. Hephaistos is a fan-made website for Starfinder 1E where you can make and manage Characters, Starships, Mechs, NPCs and more for free, and so far it has relied upon the Community Use Policy. I want to double-check that I'm understanding the new licensing correctly:

The CUP doesn't exist anymore, and Hephaistos is an RPG product as defined by the Fan Content Policy so that doesn't apply either. This means that Hephaistos must now rely upon the OGL for Starfinder 1E content, and so existing content on the website must be sanitized to remove any Product Identity (as defined by the OGL). Is that correct? If so, is there a "grace period" for these changes to be made?

See the following

The Community Use Policy has been replaced by the Fan Content Policy. New or ongoing projects will need to comply with the FCP instead of the CUP, but an existing CUP project does not need to shut down or cease operation so long as they aren't adding new content to it.

A web-based database may still use the game rules released via the OGL and/or ORC but can not use any additional trademarks or copyrights of Paizo's such as logos, artwork, proper nouns, etc. that might have been previously allowed via the CUP. They can get access to limited trademarks via the Compatibility License, but that's really just the logo(s) and Pathfinder-icons font.

I will simply add that one thing about this whole debacle makes it clear that Paizo's own former permissiveness was never a matter of OGL vs ORC, but the Community Use Policy. And so with its removal, the death of that permissiveness.

Even with ORC allowing us to copy the rules, CUP allowed us to be *accurate* in our depiction of the rules. Now the entire Lost Omens lineup has to be edited or removed, and that's the beginning of things if an appropriate replacement is not provided.

@Mark Moreland: Will third party publishers still be able to publish PF1 and SF1 OGL conversant content outside of Pathfinder Infinite/Starfinder Infinite? I mean, Paizo is still currently a storefront for digital third-party PDFs - so a publisher could still, after August, publish PF1 OGL content and sell them here, or elsewhere, anywhere but Infinite?

I'm no lawyer, but from Paizo's last communication re: licenses in November, I felt the impression was clear that the OGL and Infinite licenses could not and would not co-exist for long. At that time it was only prohibiting Infinite material being published under the OGL, not OGL content being used on Infinite "because we still have classes and monsters and other game and setting elements that creators will need access to [via OGL] in order to make content for Pathfinder."

I know this may be a lot of people's first exposure to this news re: licenses, but it feels like this was always the logical conclusion for Infinite, being as it was always intended as a "walled garden" (if I remember the phrase right) from which WotC had necessitated the exclusion of the OGL by virtue of their stunt last year, making it no longer safe for Paizo to include new content they don't own in said garden.

I don't want to pretend any of this is necessarily intuitive or obvious (nor that I necessarily understand all of the implications--I'm not invested in them, so I haven't dug into the details!) but it doesn't seem strange at all to me given it lies directly in line with the trajectory re: preventing another OGL debacle from threatening Paizo's workings and the stated design intentions of Pathfinder Infinite itself.

Yep, this is all pretty much an extension of what was already happening. I vaguely remember during those discussions some mentions and calls for a flow chart or two to help publishers and creators navigate what they could and couldn’t do depending on what their product/content/creation is. I really think a visual flow chart representation would help clear up a lot of confusion. And stop the prevalence of posts beginning “I am not a lawyer…”. Because very few of us are, and there are a lot of really creative AND passionate people who love this community and the inspiration it brings forth, and the last thing they need is some ham-fisted legalese that completely harshes their flumph. Or whatever the ORC version of a flumph is.

Are Paizo-IP video games allowed on Infinite, provided that the uploaded product does not include prohibited file types?

I really fee that the line between “factory farmed flumphs” and “backyard hand reared hand sewn flumphs” is going to be incredibly hard, nay pointless to provide overwatch for. How will Paizo tell if you totally *didn’t* get your supply of bespoke charming hand drawn-style pocket pet created at one of those print-on-demand shopfronts instead of painstakingly belovedly hand-drawing your pocketpets and sending them out one by one with personalised packaging and heartfelt messages.

It seems completely naive to think people won’t try to game the incredibly loose junction of “fan” “bespoke” “passionate” “creative” and “mass production”.

I also wonder if a lot of this could be avoided if the Pathfinder/Starfinder rules were *not* setting specific. Were the rulesets scrubbed of Golarion or the Pact Worlds etc, could this not all be much much simpler?

Previously, I commissioned a PF1 adventure set in Golarion which I gave to some people essentially distributing it under the CUP.

Am I understanding correctly that I now couldn’t do that? If I got a module written for me and wanted to give it away, I’d have to not use a license and take the risk?

Hi! I’m part of the same group as rectulo_Fr who posted above, and we have been working to promote and share our passion for Pathfinder and all Paizo products, and to create a community for the French-speaking players for more than 15 years now.

This includes sharing news, translating articles, creating and sharing game aids, homebrews, adventures, AP add-ons and other products made by the community under the PCUP. Most of those things are no longer possible under the new policy, which is a really harsh blow both in concrete/practical ways and to the morale of all the fans.

And not everything can simply be ported to Infinite, either because it is not intended for an international audience (e.g., for products not written in English) or for mass publication (e.g., “I made a short adventure, but I do not feel confident enough to share it on such a large platform.”), or because fans simply might not desire to go through the hassle of such a formal system just to share a short creation of theirs. All in all, this will unfortunately lead to the loss of potential content, with people simply choosing not to bother sharing their creations since there is no legal, simple and efficient way to do it anymore.

So, naturally, anger and frustration ensue… but the main feeling many of us get from all this is one of deep disappointment (and, from the various discussions I have read here and there, it is shared by many other content-producing fans who helped bring up the community).

It is hard not to draw parallels with what happened when WotC suddenly decided to change their OGL, even though I see 2 main differences:

(1) While it could be contested whether WotC had the right to change the policy, the (abrupt) removal of the PCUP is entirely in the purview of Paizo, so it’s entirely in your hands whether or not this unfortunate change stands.

(2) While the changes WotC tried to enact mostly targeted people who made money from the licence, the change in policy here affects fans who share their creations for free, fans who are motivated only by passion for the game and not by financial gains (which might actually make the blow even harsher).

It’s difficult not to feel some sort of “breach of confidence” in front of such a deep change in policy, when the fans who supported the game and helped it grow for so many years are suddenly told they are not allowed to do so anymore.

I have been a fan of Paizo for more than 15 years (heck, I started by translating the alpha version of Pathfinder 1 and promoting the very first AP back in 2008, mainly to let the French-speaking community know that very solid alternatives to D&D4 existed). And my passion for the game was and is based on the high quality of the adventures/world and the system… but also (and maybe mostly) on the ethic decisions and behaviour displayed by Paizo in how they treat their community and fans. That might be why I feel so affected by this change, which sadly seems inspired by disrespect and disregard for the work of the fans – something that I would not expect at all from Paizo.

I still cling to the hope that this might be a mistake or an error in judgement and that Paizo (as they have done before) can identify the problem and maybe revise the change in policy concerning free fan-made game products that helped grow the game.

I also wonder if a lot of this could be avoided if the Pathfinder/Starfinder rules were *not* setting specific. Were the rulesets scrubbed of Golarion or the Pact Worlds etc, could this not all be much much simpler?

That therein is why the rules for the system are so good. They feel like part of the setting, and make it feel well done.

But Paizo doesn't want people to enjoy that anymore, apparently. Only if you're a licensed partner, a 2e creator, or a commercial fan product designer do you matter to them anymore.

No longer are community tools and homebrewers something they desire to exist.

After years of openness, I'm willing to grant Paizo the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is a careless mistake, not deliberate malice (a level of trust I no longer extend to some other beach-based companies).

But mistake or not, the effect of these changes on third party creators is really bad, and needs to be fixed. If it's not fixed, creators will think twice about working with Paizo properties in the future, and the players will suffer.

Your website header still points to Community -> Community Use page which was last updated Sept 01, 2023. If you are revoking it or no longer allowing new content under the CUP then I, an unpaid consumer, shouldn't have to tell you that this page needs to be updated at a minimum. This is also the page that resolves from the paizo.com/communityuse link on every CUP project.

Separately, the new Fan Content license claims it does two things the CUP did not:

- You can make and sell merchandise based on Paizo’s IP in limited circumstances,
- Distribute free content on a larger scale.

This statement makes you think its just adding onto CUP. However, this is misleading, because there are other things you could do under CUP that you now cannot.

Instead of having a simple license for content I was going to make free, I now need to parse through Cans and Cannots for the type of content I am making available. For example, An adventure I previously wanted to release under CUP is no longer possible, and I am instead forced to use the Infinite license. I previously did not want to leverage the Infinite license due to the added complexity for a project I wasn't going to charge for anyway. At this point in time, I'd rather bin the whole adventure, or rip out anything that would require me to use either license. Mind you, this is something I had already commissioned art for so I was already operating at a loss. And to give no warning of the sunset of CUP? Thanks, I guess.

I'm sure these licenses will be great for people who want to engage with them and profit off of them. But what about people like me who have spent the better part of the past decade releasing CUP projects for free? There's too much added complexity, too many questions, undefined terms in licenses, and too much risk for me to want to engage with the new Licenses.

Burt from PFOA told me that I need to ask if reworded version of rules are also allowed.

Link to PFOA.

Asking in thread.

Yeah not a fan of this. Just because Pathfinder 1e ans Starfinder communities are smaller than Pathfinder 2e, it seems callous to prevent them from engaging with Infinite entirely.
Even just removing OGL content from the options available to PF2e creators is a huge loss. I was hoping to see some interesting stuff playing with alignment and/or OGL extraplanar creatures and War of Immortals, but now that's impossible.

Even just removing OGL content from the options available to PF2e creators is a huge loss.

I remembered PFOA included undead character under undead PC rule, which is in BotD.

This is a gutting decision for this 1e grognard.

Please consider that the current amount of PF1 content on (not-so-)Infinite(-anymore) may be limited simply by the current vast *supply* of content, that is quickly being exhausted. It might be 5 years since the last 1e AP, but I haven't finished my backlog yet, much as some folks who've been playing PFS1e only since it's end haven't finished the 11 years of that.

Disappointing.