New and Revised Licenses

TheCowardlyLion wrote:

Got any sources for the claim that Paizo/Starfinder is stealing art?

Look through the starships in SOM: many of them are bad Photoshops of stuff taken from other properties.

Prime example #1: the Redshift Revolution, SOM p85 is a bad photoshop of Star Citizen's RSI Apollo medical ship; they didn't even change the ship's colour.

Had to borrow/bug a friend to see the ships in question since i don’t own the book and your “prime example”… looks nothing alike, the only thing they DO have in common is the color.

Edit: also compared your Justicar and Serenity, they have absolutely nothing in common, at all.

I’m not gonna go through the entire list (if someone else wants to feel free), but two prominent “examples”… aren’t.

You made very serious accusations and have just your fumes to back them up, not a good look.

TheCowardlyLion wrote:

Got any sources for the claim that Paizo/Starfinder is stealing art?

Look through the starships in SOM: many of them are bad Photoshops of stuff taken from other properties.

Prime example #1: the Redshift Revolution, SOM p85 is a bad photoshop of Star Citizen's RSI Apollo medical ship; they didn't even change the ship's colour.
The Ringworks Wanderer is a Photoshop mashup of a reversed Jedi Starfighter and Robotech Valkryie veritch's cockpit and nose.
The Idaran VoidRunner is a Photoshopped Naboo Starfighter.
The Infernex Unshakeable is a Photoshop of Farscape's Peacekeeper Prowler.
The UC Librama is a Photoshopped Zentraedi Flagship.
I've seen Photoshopped Star Trek ships (Norikama Valkyrie - they seem to like Maquis and Cardassian ships).
The Driftmaven station is a photoshopped engagement ring (and some pretty low-effort Photoshop at that).
The Infernex Justicar is a Photoshopped Serenity from Firefly.
I'm certain the Idaran Saga is taken from another IP, I just don't know which one.
The Sov-El Korinath is also from another IP.

Paizo mined just about every scifi IP in existence for not just inspiration, but material to alter.

If Paizo is going to start punishing the community for creating tools Paizo can't profit from, maybe these IPs should be made aware of Paizo's own copyright violations in turn.

good to know vague similarities are the threshold for accusing something of being stolen art

Well, you'd be the first person who's said that to me. Literally every single time I've presented the two side-by-side the person I'm showing immediately recognized they are very much the same ship. The Revolution just has the side pods cut off, the front cockpit glass colored to grey, and greebling added. They are the same ship.

Well, you'd be the first person who's said that to me. Literally every single time I've presented the two side-by-side the person I'm showing immediately recognized they are very much the same ship. The Revolution just has the side pods cut off, the front cockpit glass colored to grey, and greebling added. They are the same ship.

…

They are not.

You are being awfully carefree throwing out these accusations baselessly.

good to know vague similarities are the threshold for accusing something of being stolen art

For sue-happy corporations like Disney and Paramount, "vague similarities" is more than enough to issue a cease & desist letter at the very least.

You may not be able to see it, but many others do. With a trained eye it's not hard.

Well, you'd be the first person who's said that to me. Literally every single time I've presented the two side-by-side the person I'm showing immediately recognized they are very much the same ship. The Revolution just has the side pods cut off, the front cockpit glass colored to grey, and greebling added. They are the same ship.

the revolution is significantly less chunky and blocky, and the side engines are in no way similar

TheCowardlyLion wrote:

Got any sources for the claim that Paizo/Starfinder is stealing art?

Look through the starships in SOM: many of them are bad Photoshops of stuff taken from other properties.

Prime example #1: the Redshift Revolution, SOM p85 is a bad photoshop of Star Citizen's RSI Apollo medical ship; they didn't even change the ship's colour.
The Ringworks Wanderer is a Photoshop mashup of a reversed Jedi Starfighter and Robotech Valkryie veritch's cockpit and nose.
The Idaran VoidRunner is a Photoshopped Naboo Starfighter.
The Infernex Unshakeable is a Photoshop of Farscape's Peacekeeper Prowler.
The UC Librama is a Photoshopped Zentraedi Flagship.
I've seen Photoshopped Star Trek ships (Norikama Valkyrie - they seem to like Maquis and Cardassian ships).
The Driftmaven station is a photoshopped engagement ring (and some pretty low-effort Photoshop at that).
The Infernex Justicar is a Photoshopped Serenity from Firefly.
I'm certain the Idaran Saga is taken from another IP, I just don't know which one.
The Sov-El Korinath is also from another IP.

Paizo mined just about every scifi IP in existence for not just inspiration, but material to alter.

If Paizo is going to start punishing the community for creating tools Paizo can't profit from, maybe these IPs should be made aware of Paizo's own copyright violations in turn.

I'm sorry, but that's just not how IP law (or anything) works. It's also distracting from the point of the conversation. Let's also keep commentary on the quality of Paizo's artwork out the discussion, everyone is welcome to their own opinions but it has zero relevance to the conversation.

Also, equating similarities between pieces of art and the fate of 3rd party tools, publishers, accessibility and translation projects is just not really an accurate comparison.

I will continue to push back on the idea that the primary driver of this is greed. If maximizing profit was the goal, potentially alienating large parts of the community and consumer base is not a rational strategy.

A lot of us are worried about this. A lot of us a disappointed.

Let's not lose focus here.

Quote:

good to know vague similarities are the threshold for accusing something of being stolen art

For sue-0happy corporations like Disney and Paramount, "vague similarities" is more than enough to issue a cease & desist letter.

You may not be able to see it, but many others do. With a trained eye it's not hard.

your "trained eye" was trained wrong!

I'm not commenting about the quailty of the artwork, which is arguably pretty bad.

I brought it up because of the hypocrisy of Paizo protecting their IP against the community when they themselves have mined the collective for material.

That's the point, not their bad artwork.

And for Disney, "vaguely resembles" is enough for them to issue C&D warnings.

the claim that it's photoshopped artwork is objectively wrong both at a glance and when subject to analysis, and detracts from your argument to the point that it is, effectively, a non-argument

Quote:

good to know vague similarities are the threshold for accusing something of being stolen art

For sue-happy corporations like Disney and Paramount, "vague similarities" is more than enough to issue a cease & desist letter at the very least.

You may not be able to see it, but many others do. With a trained eye it's not hard.

This conversation needs to either end or move somewhere else. It's not helpful or productive, and it really isn't even about the actual issue at hand.

You're also using up oxygen from the very people who need to be heard the most, those whose projects and businesses are threatened.

Please move on.

The Ringworks Wanderer is a Photoshop mashup of a reversed Jedi Starfighter and Robotech Valkryie veritch's cockpit and nose.
The Idaran VoidRunner is a Photoshopped Naboo Starfighter.

You must be a lot better at Photoshop than I am, how in the dark side of Eox do you turn a Naboo Starfighter into an Idaran VoidRunner using Photoshop?

The Robotech Valkryie veritch's cockpit and nose are found on almost every modern fighter jet.

I feel you are connecting dots that are not there.

TomatoFettuccini wrote:

The Ringworks Wanderer is a Photoshop mashup of a reversed Jedi Starfighter and Robotech Valkryie veritch's cockpit and nose.
The Idaran VoidRunner is a Photoshopped Naboo Starfighter.

You must be a lot better at Photoshop than I am, how in the dark side of Eox do you turn a Naboo Starfighter into an Idaran VoidRunner using Photoshop?

The Robotech Valkryie veritch's cockpit and nose are found on almost every modern fighter jet.

I feel you are connecting dots that are not there.

Please stop encouraging this conversation to continue here.

If you're really that invested, create a thread of the Starfinder section of the forums. Or, better yet, don't.

back to the subject at hand, as someone who enjoys both editions of Pathfinder and Starfinder, and the settings of both games, I'm hoping some exception will be created for 1e material with those settings to be able to exist, though I understand if it isn't possible

With this change Paizo has effectively killed Hephaistos (https://hephaistos.azurewebsites.net/), which my group has happily used for years. The patreon is holding a vote on if the devs should shutter the project entirely or just to use OGL rules.

I mean this with all the venom it implies: what a horribly WotC-esque change, Paizo.

Yeah, this is pretty much where I am at right now.

I'm not sure if Paizo realized it or not (since SF has always been the red-headed stepchild of Paizo RPG stuff), but Hephaistos was a tremendous boost for SF1. It is simply the best online character generation tool I have ever seen.

Not only that, but it made it trivially easy for me to scale creatures to my party either by design or on the fly, or make variants easily, or convert a D&D3E/PF1 creature in SF1, or just create a new creature in minutes, saving me probably dozens of hours of GM work over the years.

I wouldn't say that I won't play SF2 without Hephaistos, but I strongly suspect my GM time and interest will be increasingly devoted to other companies' products if that happens. It's going to be hard enough to get my local Society group into SF2 as it is because they aren't fans of PF2.

I'm just one guy. Take it for what it's worth. But I suspect I'm far from the only person who feels this way.

I’m still curious how illustrations are being accused of being “photoshopped”.

(1) I see that the revised license no longer carries an Exhibit B (specific Paizo products publishers can reference by name). Is a revised Exhibit B forthcoming or are publishers now allowed to reference any Paizo product's name in the book text?

We were never good at keeping Exhibit B up to date, and in the end, it didn't really serve the needs of the brand(s) to limit which of our books someone could reference. If you are directing people to one of our books in your OGL/ORC product, that's a win for us. The removal of Exhibit B was intentional, and does, in fact, mean that you can now reference any Paizo publication by name in your products.

((2) The Paizo Compatibility License specifically requires reference to Pathfinder First Edition as “Pathfinder First Edition,” and seperately requires publishers to accurately reference Paizo product titles. How do we do this for First Edition products. E.g., to reference the ACG, is it "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Class Guide" (as it is known on the product page), "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game First Edition: Advanced Class Guide," or something else?

In this case, the requirement to refer to the edition as "Pathfinder First Edition" is in any statements you're making about the game edition. Book titles should still be referred to by their actual titles. This is to ensure that people aren't substituting inconsistent shorthand like P1, PF1, P1e, etc. into their Compatible products in place of the trademarked names we want them to be using in exchange for the right to use the logos in the first place.

Hi if I want to start a website were people can share homebrew AP and onshots they have written with a possibility of selling them as long as the material is within the regulations with the licenses is that okay?

Arcanists-of-Albany wrote:

(1) I see that the revised license no longer carries an Exhibit B (specific Paizo products publishers can reference by name). Is a revised Exhibit B forthcoming or are publishers now allowed to reference any Paizo product's name in the book text?

We were never good at keeping Exhibit B up to date, and in the end, it didn't really serve the needs of the brand(s) to limit which of our books someone could reference. If you are directing people to one of our books in your OGL/ORC product, that's a win for us. The removal of Exhibit B was intentional, and does, in fact, mean that you can now reference any Paizo publication by name in your products.

Arcanists-of-Albany wrote:

((2) The Paizo Compatibility License specifically requires reference to Pathfinder First Edition as “Pathfinder First Edition,” and seperately requires publishers to accurately reference Paizo product titles. How do we do this for First Edition products. E.g., to reference the ACG, is it "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Class Guide" (as it is known on the product page), "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game First Edition: Advanced Class Guide," or something else?

In this case, the requirement to refer to the edition as "Pathfinder First Edition" is in any statements you're making about the game edition. Book titles should still be referred to by their actual titles. This is to ensure that people aren't substituting inconsistent shorthand like P1, PF1, P1e, etc. into their Compatible products in place of the trademarked names we want them to be using in exchange for the right to use the logos in the first place.

seen how you are going for the last post i put out my 2 question for the third time and i will keep it short.

I’m still curious how illustrations are being accused of being “photoshopped”.

It's a way of discrediting the artists (and by implication, the company that commissioned them) by accusing them of plagiarism. It's also trivially easy to prove wrong, as many if not most of the comparisons he made are between images that share little more than a slight cosmetic resemblance (he moved off of the claim of "photoshopping" when challenged, revising it to a claim that Lucasfilm or Paramount might sue over a "vague resemblance" when the legal standard for copyright violation is "striking similarity," i.e. the presence of features whose ONLY explanation is direct copying of copyrighted material).

It's also a way to derail the conversation by moving the topic onto something unrelated but at least mildly spicy.

Two questions from a PF1/SF1 grognard:

First, I have some organized play references I've made for Pathfinder 1e that exist on a website that may or may not be changing form. The website's made use of the CUP so far in a way that means I don't ever have to worry about what I'm doing so long as I'm not charging for it.

Since the site may be changing form significantly or migrating some of those references to another site for long-term archival storage, what happens? Do I have to all of a sudden spend hours and hours digging through, say, a list of languages on Golarion to figure out what the heck is OGL and what's not? Even if I do (and I don't have the time to do that, I'm pretty sure), a simple list of PFS-legal languages is going to be significantly less useful if I can't simply write out the languages in question. Is that really what's intended here?

Second, as I'm such a grognard, I'm splitting off a local group to run PFS1e adventures using mostly PFS1e rules (sans reporting, don't worry VOs!)--but we have to make some changes to enable sustained play. If I put those up on a website for everyone in my little home group to read, am I running afoul of the updated rules?

Second, as I'm such a grognard, I'm splitting off a local group to run PFS1e adventures using mostly PFS1e rules (sans reporting, don't worry VOs!)--but we have to make some changes to enable sustained play. If I put those up on a website for everyone in my little home group to read, am I running afoul of the updated rules?

What you and your own group do for your own games in your own little circle is never, and never has been, of any concern of anyone or any company. (And don't ever let anyone try to convince you otherwise.)

Terminalmancer wrote:

Second, as I'm such a grognard, I'm splitting off a local group to run PFS1e adventures using mostly PFS1e rules (sans reporting, don't worry VOs!)--but we have to make some changes to enable sustained play. If I put those up on a website for everyone in my little home group to read, am I running afoul of the updated rules?

What you and your own group do for your own games in your own little circle is never, and never has been, of any concern of anyone or any company. (And don't ever let anyone try to convince you otherwise.)

I don't think that's the question though. I think the question is about putting the organized play rules (PFS1e) up on a publicly available website. Even if their group is the intended audience.

emky wrote:

Terminalmancer wrote:

Second, as I'm such a grognard, I'm splitting off a local group to run PFS1e adventures using mostly PFS1e rules (sans reporting, don't worry VOs!)--but we have to make some changes to enable sustained play. If I put those up on a website for everyone in my little home group to read, am I running afoul of the updated rules?

What you and your own group do for your own games in your own little circle is never, and never has been, of any concern of anyone or any company. (And don't ever let anyone try to convince you otherwise.)

I don't think that's the question though. I think the question is about putting the organized play rules (PFS1e) up on a publicly available website. Even if their group is the intended audience.

Yes, exactly - that's a nicely concise wording of the bigger-picture question. "Where does this leave Organized Play aids from the OGL times?"

I'm no longer a VO so this kinda has to be my venue for asking.

Everything we've done for org play (and I don't just mean for myself) has typically relied on the CUP.

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.

What is the logic in this? Paizo now seems to be significantly limiting utilities that make it easier to play Paizo games (automated character sheets, character building software, etc). Haphaestos (sp?) is considering "abandoning" the character builder (leaving it up but making no more updates so it is grandfathered in). If Pathbuilder weren't already OGL, I would expect them to consider the same thing. These two utilities have greatly eased playing Paizo games (and probably expanded the playerbase) so why limit similar sites?

I just found out about the change because of the concern conveyed from a creator whose tools I use to play PF2.

I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been already stated except I could’ve gone another decade without hearing anymore licensing drama.

I’m saddened that this time it’s potentially connected to my fav rpg company. I’m reading through trying to understand the changes but….i don’t know just having another potentially limiting licensing headache/discussion is exhausting and I really wish it wasn’t connect to PF/Paizo. Gonna wait on sidelines and observe and see.

Hope what’s best for the community works out.

I'm definitely disappointed at the lack of awareness of the Paizo team to what players want. While plushies and dice bags are nice, the online tools are actually critical to players and GMs, directly supporting play, not just a sideline. The community created tools stand head and shoulders above any of the "officially licensed" tools. One made promises it never kept and couldn't even keep up with content updates over multiple years. It wasn't expensive, but certainly didn't provide the breadth of usability that Hephaistos does. The other, while newer, doesn't even support offline play (PDF export/download of character sheet). Despite the ivory tower concept of universal internet, it just doesn't exist and sometimes going paper and pencil is the only way to play. That just means I have to spend more non-playing time ensuring I have copied everything correctly rather than playing. So, less playing which ultimately means less revenue for Paizo. Online play and character building is here to stay, I'd suggest that Paizo find a way to embrace rather than disengage those that produce them (and sorry, the licensed tools don't hold a candle to Hephaistos and Pathbuilder).

https://www.reddit.com/r/starfinder_rpg/comments/1ekmi6n/no_hephaistos_upda te_today/

No Hephaistos Update Today

Linkified! :3

As someone who only really cared for SF1e, I was happy with the knowledge that I could keep enjoying SF1e like people had PF1e for so long, with a steady stream of new, user-made content if people wanted to use it.

Since that's not the case, I guess I'm not really a Paizo customer anymore, as I don't like PF2e, and positively hate the direction SF2e has gone. That's a big shame, and it hurts to feel this way.

It was bad enough that SF1e was abandoned so quickly (I get it, the OGL nonsense) but everything else, combined with this news, is just too much; this is positively awful.

Again, folk *can* still make Starfinder 1E products, just not with Paizo proper names.

Again, folk *can* still make Starfinder 1E products, just not with Paizo proper names.

Sincerely: What the hell does that even mean? It's hard to appreciate how much of Starfinder is Paizo-owned proper nouns. I myself didn't get the full picture until I started reading the 2e playtest document. Can you still call the core race of warlike lizard aliens Vesks? Can you refer to a Solarian? What about other crucial game mechanics like Drift Engines?

With PF2e especially most rules options are generic enough medieval, high fantasy, or RPG concepts, but in sci-fi there's truly very little setting-divorced concepts to refer to. And so Starfinder bakes a ton of it into its own setting. Universal Basic Polymers, the Drift as a form of FTL, and especially the countless alien races. Is all of that now going to need to be replaced with new, unstandardized, obfuscated names?

Seriously, if you want to make a Precog supplement you are potentially expected to call the class you are making rules for something else throughout the entire book. Maybe you aren't, but Paizo isn't telling you that. Which is understandable, but that's why it's good to a) make an exception for free supplements like the CUP more or less used to so hobbyist game designers don't have to be afraid to post something cool they came up with and b) have an official channel to entirely bypass this mess, like, say, Starfinder Infinite, where you can use and monetize Paizo IP and rules more or less freely... Unless it's 1e because that's OGL and that's banned now. Well, starting in September it will be, which is far too soon.

It's not impossible to make 1e content, not even 1e Starfinder content, but the hoops you have to jump through to protect yourself when doing it is undeniably a form of red tape, intentional or not. Making it prohibitively complicated to support a system is the same as banning the support of a system, just with added plausible deniability.

Again, folk *can* still make Starfinder 1E products, just not with Paizo proper names.

Sorry, no, DMurnett is absolutely right here. The fact that they hypothetically can make SF1e content is not a helpful statement when you realize how difficult actually doing that may be.

While there's a decent amount of Paizo IP baked into PF1e, it's generic enough (it was based on D&D3.5e after all) that you can cut out the Paizo content without too much issue.

But Starfinder is pretty much entrenched in layers of Paizo content. If you cut that away, you're gutting the system itself.

And we're not just talking about making content. There's also the robust community of character builders, sheets, accessibility tools, and translations that are also under fire.

The Paizo IP free SRD can be found on John's Starjammer SRD site I believe.

The Paizo IP free SRD can be found on John's Starjammer SRD site I believe.

From a quick skim (which I admit isn't as thorough as it ideally should be but I'm not a 1e expert anyways) this is still littered with things that may or may not be Paizo IP. Races and their languages seem entirely unchagned, for one, and from a quick word search a capital d Drift shows up a couple separate times in starships.

It's also not nearly as complete as Archives of Nethys (I don't see any mention of the Precog for example), unless third-party ventures are only allowed to build on an extremely restrictive set of rules sources to begin with, in which case I doubly advise Paizo not to lock 1e players out of using Infinite where they very much could use anything.

This is very bad. It leaves many products that I use regularly in limbo and makes the game much more difficult to play/use/enjoy.

Nobody seems to really know what words are allowed and what aren't. The ORC license itself doesn't answer that question.

The various examples of projects that have gone down the renaming route - the SRD listed above, Pathbuilder - just serve to show how treacherous this path is, given that they have obvious errors.

So unless you're willing to simply trust that Paizo don't care, it's not an option; and I'm afraid my reserves of blind trust are a lot lower since the OGL crisis.

Just another reason I loathe that the setting and ruleset are so tightly intertwined. I don’t like Golarion, I don’t like the Gap, the Drift is entirely derivative and yet Named.

I want to play in worlds with the ruleset, I don’t need to be corralled into a World/s with a Ruleset. It also feels somewhat of a reach to drive or direct people to play in an established campaign setting rather than allow them to play in it organically. I fully understand “from a business point of view” but where business drives creativity the inspiration suffers.

Just another reason I loathe that the setting and ruleset are so tightly intertwined. I don’t like Golarion, I don’t like the Gap, the Drift is entirely derivative and yet Named.

I want to play in worlds with the ruleset, I don’t need to be corralled into a World/s with a Ruleset. It also feels somewhat of a reach to drive or direct people to play in an established campaign setting rather than allow them to play in it organically. I fully understand “from a business point of view” but where business drives creativity the inspiration suffers.

Not just a business point of view. Its also generally considered good game design to express with the rules what setting you have. Not that everybody loves this, obviously, but it's not inherently a business decision--its also a good way to evoke setting and inspire creativity... at least for those who don't actively dislike the setting.

Nobody seems to really know what words are allowed and what aren't. The ORC license itself doesn't answer that question.

The various examples of projects that have gone down the renaming route - the SRD listed above, Pathbuilder - just serve to show how treacherous this path is, given that they have obvious errors.

So unless you're willing to simply trust that Paizo don't care, it's not an option; and I'm afraid my reserves of blind trust are a lot lower since the OGL crisis.

Your Patreon post made me aware of this and I find the idea that I might not get Starfinder 2.0 Dyslexic Sheets absolutely frustrating.

I want to bolster what DMurnett has said above.

For better or for worse, Starfinder's rules are much more tightly coupled with its setting than Pathfinder. The SF2e playtest demonstrates this perfectly. For example, the names of 11 of the 48 heritages across all ancestries in the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook contain Reserved Material (as defined by the ORC); for comparison, none of the ancestral heritages in the Pathfinder Player Core are named after Reserved Material. As another example, the names and descriptions of 7 of the 21 armor models in the SF Playtest contain Reserved Material, compared with 0 of the 12 armor in PF Player Core (excluding "No Armor" in both cases).

Kasatha, one of the core species, are named after their home planet Kasath. Kasath, being a location name, is Reserved Material under the ORC, and so Kasatha is a derived noun and hence also comes under Reserved Material. Sure, Paizo's own usage of the word starts with a lowercase "k" (i.e. kasatha), and I'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion that is a logical argument that the usage of "kasatha" is not covered by the ORC.

I was originally confident that paizo would be able to handle this and do right by the community but after so many voices from the creators who are affected by this decision and how bad the OGL disaster was I don't have that faith anymore.

The Dyslexic Character Sheet patreon blog a product that I have used longer than I can remember a product that is now currently dead in the water with no word from Paizo is definitely a straw approaching the breaking of the camels back for me as far as the future of Pathfinder and Paizo's products are concerned.

I know the team is spent from GEN Con but this is something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later imo.

I want to give Paizo the benefit of the doubt but over the past few years every company that I thought was good and beyond reproach has let me down so that faith to give that benefit is running increasingly short.

Just be patient, deadline isn't up yet. They'll have a proper statement before then. If they don't, you can get upset. If they do and they don't properly address it, you can also get upset. But until then, you're better off just waiting rather than spending your energy being angry. This forum has almost 400 messages, I think they understand the general opinion. I mean, obviously I'm not your parent, do whatever you want, but at this point it's just going in circles in an unhealthy manner IMO and it's best to wait

Just be patient, deadline isn't up yet. They'll have a proper statement before then. If they don't, you can get upset. If they do and they don't properly address it, you can also get upset. But until then, you're better off just waiting rather than spending your energy being angry. This forum has almost 400 messages, I think they understand the general opinion. I mean, obviously I'm not your parent, do whatever you want, but at this point it's just going in circles in an unhealthy manner IMO and it's best to wait

Well to be clear, the deadline for OGL products being published on Infinite hasn't passed yet, however, the changes to the CUP and rest of licenses were effective immediately. Paizo has said they are "working on a solution that is both sustainable for Paizo and supports the community [they] love", but until that statement we're in limbo.

Arita wrote:

Just be patient, deadline isn't up yet. They'll have a proper statement before then. If they don't, you can get upset. If they do and they don't properly address it, you can also get upset. But until then, you're better off just waiting rather than spending your energy being angry. This forum has almost 400 messages, I think they understand the general opinion. I mean, obviously I'm not your parent, do whatever you want, but at this point it's just going in circles in an unhealthy manner IMO and it's best to wait

Well to be clear, the deadline for OGL products being published on Infinite hasn't passed yet, however, the changes to the CUP and rest of licenses were effective immediately. Paizo has said they are "working on a solution that is both sustainable for Paizo and supports the community [they] love", but until that statement we're in limbo.

Fair! That’s my bad for misunderstanding their statement! Still, the spirit remains that all you can do at this point is wait. I sincerely don’t think they’re going to make you guys wait longer than they ABSOLUTELY have to, but besides gencon, obviously you got stuff like lawyers to consult with first on what’s feasible, so it’s not going to be an immediate thing. Best case scenario, I imagine they’ll rescind this post and announce their goals more transparently but for an indeterminate future as they figure things out themselves

I just don’t think the endless cycle of negativity is helping anyone when right now waiting is all you can do, but again, you do you, I’m just a stranger

They need to discuss with their lawyer too, it takes time.
Contact lawyer with questions raised by community, lawyer say "we'll think about it / look it up and come back with an answer", [random amount of time counted in "business days"], finally get back, sometimes asking clarification, missing information, or raising more questions, thus needing a new loop from step one.
AND there was GenCon in the middle of it, adding more delays.

Fair! That’s my bad for misunderstanding their statement! Still, the spirit remains that all you can do at this point is wait. I sincerely don’t think they’re going to make you guys wait longer than they ABSOLUTELY have to, but besides gencon, obviously you got stuff like lawyers to consult with first on what’s feasible, so it’s not going to be an immediate thing. Best case scenario, I imagine they’ll rescind this post and announce their goals more transparently but for an indeterminate future as they figure things out themselves

I just don’t think the endless cycle of negativity is helping anyone when right now waiting is all you can do, but again, you do you, I’m just a stranger

That's the thing - this is something that demands action from those of us with content that will be impacted by the deadline, not zen, and every day spent waiting is a day wasted. I don't know the process of getting something into Infinite but I suspect it's not nothing.

The frustration isn't an especially useful reaction, no, but it's not unwarranted or unearned.

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Just another reason I loathe that the setting and ruleset are so tightly intertwined. I don’t like Golarion, I don’t like the Gap, the Drift is entirely derivative and yet Named.

I want to play in worlds with the ruleset, I don’t need to be corralled into a World/s with a Ruleset. It also feels somewhat of a reach to drive or direct people to play in an established campaign setting rather than allow them to play in it organically. I fully understand “from a business point of view” but where business drives creativity the inspiration suffers.

Not just a business point of view. Its also generally considered good game design to express with the rules what setting you have. Not that everybody loves this, obviously, but it's not inherently a business decision--its also a good way to evoke setting and inspire creativity... at least for those who don't actively dislike the setting.

Perhaps it is “generally considered good game design”, but I’ll have to take that with especially large helpings of grains of salt given the “good game design” is then peppered across a raft of Lost Omens releases rather than being in the Core rules. It absolutely is a business decision to parcel out character options into different, individual releases. And given the arguments for “rules given away for free via online sources” is made problematic by the “good game design” I’m not sure how good “good” is.

And yes, for other games that might be a good design option, but for any RPG that isn’t intended only to be played via an official setting, it really, really isn’t. It’s scads of text that is at best extraneous and at worst actively locks options behind “flavor” that isn’t warranted.

Personally where you see “evokes setting” and “inspires creativity” I see “needless” and “hand-holding”. But I get it, we each come to RPGs looking for and requiring different things. I want a ruleset that is rigorous and allows me to express my creativity without strictures. Other folx are looking for narratively and creatively satisfying worlds in which to explore with a great ruleset.

So what's this about no longer publishing 1E content on Pathfinder Infinite?! Is that true?

Jeez. This is why I have come to HATE big TTRPG companies over the many many years.

First things were great with D&D until WotC axed 3rd Edition for that 4E garbage. They turn things around for 5E but not for the sake of the game, only for the sake of profit. The game itself has suffered immensely under its "For-Uber-Proft" model.

A ton of us voted with our money on Pathfinder because of ONE MAIN THING

IT WAS 3.5E COMPATIBLE!

We built you, Paizo, from the ground up to where you're at today. And many of us were hoping you wouldn't pull a "WotC 4E" on us at all.

BUT THEN YOU DID! With PF2e. Which, especially with Remaster, is absolutely light years away from what it originally was. From what we originally invested in. It's an entirely new game, system, lore, the whole thing.

It was depressing but us PF1e fans kept going. We looked towards 3rd parties since you wrongly chose not to continue to support Pathfinder 1e anymore, not even an annual "1st Edition Compendium" where you sell us a PDF with a ton of PF2e's content converted for us! (Sure would be F-ing cool to play an Inventor or a Wood Kineticist in PF1E!!!) You even had the audacity to write the entire Abomination Vaults AP for your RIVALS! For 5E?! That could've been converted to PF1E instead!

And now there's this new on no longer keeping PF1e content on Pathfinder Infinite?

I'm done investing in TTRPGs, hoping they keep the game the same and continue to support and enhance and adjust for decades to come, but instead they cash grab and create new edition after new edition after new edition.

Ton of PF2E monsters I can't use in my PF1e games that I sure wish was converted. Quite a number of spells, feats and classes we can't use. Definitely sucks we can't use a single AP for a PF1e game after Tyrant's Grasp.

Wish I was Elon-Rich so I could buy WotC and Paizo and fixed everything they ever messed up on and bring back what was great about those games again with forever new content.