Paizo Inc. Community Use Policy
Applicable to Non-Commercial Activity
Last Updated Friday, September 01, 2023
The Paizo community is an intelligent, creative, dedicated, and enthusiastic group of people, and we (Paizo) appreciate and value your contributions. This Community Use Policy is designed to encourage you to spread your enthusiasm and creativity while respecting ownership of our copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual properties. It applies to Twitch and YouTube videos, adventures, websites, podcasts, software, and other extensions of Paizo products.
This policy authorizes certain non-commercial use of the Paizo-related material specifically identified in the Permissions section of this policy ("Paizo Material"). For information on commercial licenses, see below.
Why Have a Community Use Policy? While copyright and trademark laws protect Paizo, they also prevent you from using our intellectual properties. That means that you are generally prohibited from using any of our logos, images, or other trademarks or copyrighted content without our consent. This policy grants you the consent to use some of our intellectual property under certain circumstances.
Requirements
- Your project must be free. You’re free to use Paizo Intellectual Property (our IP) in your Community Use project provided that your project is accessible by everyone for free.
- Free doesn’t just mean free from payment, it also means free from hassle. You can’t require survey completions, gate access behind downloads of unrelated products, require opting in to email lists (unless the entirety of your project is only available in email form), or other unnecessary annoyances as a requirement to access your project. You can’t lock your content behind a paywall of any sort.
- You are allowed to accept donations on platforms like Patreon and to generate advertising revenue via YouTube, Twitch, and web ads.
- You are allowed to have paid sponsorship of your content as long as that sponsor is clearly identified to your audience.
- Your project must be unofficial. This means that you can’t say or imply that Paizo recognizes, endorses, or sponsors your project in any way. You must reproduce Paizo's copyright and trademark notices from all Paizo Materials that you use in your project.
- Your project must follow the rules of all other IP owners whose content is used in your project. You agree to obtain permission to use any third party’s intellectual property in your project as well. If we find out that you’re using someone else’s IP in your project without their permission, we may deny the use of our IP and require you to take down and/or stop distributing your project. Other people’s IPs are valuable, too, and you need permission to use them just like you need permission to use ours.
- Don’t do anything that might hurt or damage Paizo. You agree to use your best efforts to preserve the high standard of our intellectual property. You agree to not use this permission for material that the general public would classify as "adult content," offensive, or inappropriate for minors, and you agree that such use would irreparably harm Paizo. You agree to not use Paizo's trade dress—that is, you may not make your material look like ours. You agree that such use would irreparably harm Paizo.
- Obey the law. The requirements of this policy are not a replacement for the laws of the land in your country, they are in addition to those laws.
- Non-Commercial Use: If you make any commercial use of Paizo Material beyond what is explicitly allowed by this policy, your rights will be automatically terminated, and any permission granted by this Policy will be immediately revoked. If Paizo believes that you are in the publishing business, you are considered to be a commercial user, and you are not granted any right to use any Paizo Material under this Policy. For commercial use, please apply for the Pathfinder Compatibility License and/or the Starfinder Compatibility License.
Usage Requirements
To use Paizo Material under this Policy you must include the following notice in a legible/accessible form in each project, product, or on each website that uses any Paizo Material:
"[This website, product name, Twitch show title, etc.] uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., used under Paizo's Community Use Policy (paizo.com/communityuse). We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. [This website, product name, Twitch show title, etc.] is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, visit paizo.com.
If the Paizo Material you're using clearly credits its authors or artists, you must reproduce that credit. You agree to create an account on paizo.com and add an entry describing your material on our Community Use Registry at paizo.com/community/communityuse/registry, with links where appropriate. You agree to endeavor to keep this information up-to-date.
Permissions
As long as you comply with all of the above usage requirements, we hereby grant you the following permissions:
- You may use the contents of the Community Use Package as well as the cover images on Paizo products on the Community Use Approved Products List below.
- You may not alter the color, typography, design, or proportions of the logos or icons found on those materials, or otherwise modify them.
- Product covers may not be cropped, color adjusted, edited, distorted, or modified.
- Should an item be removed from the Community Use Package, you don't need to remove it from existing projects, but you may not use it in future projects.
- You may use product descriptions (as they appear on the back of each product or in the product listings on paizo.com) of all of the products on our Community Use Approved Product List below.
- You may use any of the text or artwork published in the Paizo Blog or Web Fiction, with the following exceptions:.
- You may not use excerpts of Planet Stories publications, Pathfinder Comics, and any logos and icons that aren't also in the Community Use Package.
- You may not use any photographs published in the blog (because those rights are usually not ours to offer).
- 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.
- You may use artwork and maps from Paizo products listed in Section 1 of our Community Use Approved Product List on Twitch, YouTube, and similar platforms during performances and live streams of adventures, scenarios, and Adventure Paths.
- You may descriptively reference trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, artifacts, places, etc.), locations, dialogs, plots, storylines, language, and incidents from products listed in Section 1 of our Community Use Approved Product List below.
- You are granted permission to print assets for personal use.
We reserve the right to deny the use of our IP at any time for any reason or for no reason. This includes, for example, if we think our IP is being used inappropriately (determined at our sole discretion). If we deny you the right to use our IP, you must immediately stop distributing any part of your project that uses or might use our IP.
You agree to indemnify Paizo against any kind of legal claim or dispute brought against us that is related to your project or your use of our IP. If we get sued or caught up in a legal dispute because of your project or for any other reason related to how you used our IP, you must pay our legal fees and costs related to that lawsuit or dispute, including our attorney’s fees and any settlement or judgement amount that we’re required to pay.
The permissions granted under this Policy are personal to you and may not be assigned or transferred without our consent. We reserve the right to amend, modify or terminate this Policy at any time.
What commercial licenses are available?
This policy only allows for non-commercial use. If you wish to charge for access to your project, you may be able to use either the Pathfinder Compatibility License or the Starfinder Compatibility License. These licenses do not grant permission to use Paizo’s IP outside of compatibility logos, which more clearly showcase your content as being Pathfinder- and Starfinder-compatible.
We also offer commercial licenses, but generally only to established companies with good reputations and solid business plans. If you are interested in securing a commercial license, please contact us at licensing@paizo.com.