Creciendo's page

Thank you for sharing your feedback and support to us and the Archives of Nethys team! We've worked with them to develop a plan that values the site as a resource, supports our community, and is sustainable for everyone going forward.

Read today's statement from both teams!

It is appreciated that you listened and found a way forward that is mutually beneficial. I was most worried about delays in AoN getting early access as that puts them in a crunch position to get updates in last second, and delays access to new rules, feats, classes, Etc which in Pathfinder Society makes it harder especially now that players can come in with a level 3, 5, and 7 character that we have to adjudicate as GMs. Minimizing delays and keeping the site up to date also just sells Piezo as committed to empowering their users.

I just bought 4 items I had in my cart. As I said before keep making it easy for me to give you my money, which I do because I both love your content and because I value fostering our community and feeding the kitty for more good products to come. On that last note consider having the marketing department see if they can they be doing more to advertise inside AoN. For example, links from AoN to purchase the books related to what we're seeing or to help announce sales or new things coming. If there is an affiliate cut or tracking ability to see purchases made through that channel they can be using things like that to advertise instead of links to the sign up for Final Fantasy (the most recent ad at the bottom of the AoN screen I saw). If I see a cool weapon when I filter and I find out I need to have treasure Vault or some other book to legally use it at a PFS table make it easy for me to give you my money.

Maya, thanks for what you've done to facilitate communication.

Anorak wrote:

Company Blog has been posted. It seems they were still in discussions (If Jim is being honest) when Nethys dropped that post.

The thing that stands out to me though is that, as some would say "the math ain't mathing".

Jim says

Jim Butler wrote:

Archives placed a legal notice explaining that they had a license to use artwork and other elements, but other sites routinely copied those assets and used them for themselves. That created additional work for our legal and licensing teams to draft DMCA and cease‑and‑desist notices.

This logic would also apply to Demiplane would it not? You can also go there to find publicly accessible art that can be downloaded and posted elsewhere. So, this change to AoN won't eliminate that work; anyone who was doing that using AoN will just switch to Demiplane or other sources and keep doing it. And before anyone says "well, Demiplane makes them more money to cover the cost", that doesn't matter because AoN was volunteer. Any costs to Paizo by AoN would be minimal and should be considered as highly cost-effective marketing and good press.

This justification just doesn't make sense unless they are also going to have Demiplane remove art, or make it pay to access only where you only see art for things you've purchased there. (which would be an even bigger mistake than this mind you.)

This whole AoN debacle, along with recent blunders and issues, have made me seriously question the competence of Paizo's management. At a time like this, when clearly, they need to be bringing in more revenue and increasing customer spending, they should be doing the exact opposite of this.

They should be expanding their relationship with AoN instead of reducing it. I found out today, through a random reddit post, that there was a sale going on for PDF adventures. Mind you, that poster only found out through Tumblr. TUMBLR?! Instead of reducing or ending the...

I agree, the cost for the lawyers is drastically lower than the cost of trying to replicate this tool, a tool I consider central to making it easy to run games in this system despite the depth and complexity of the rules. I also agree, if someone wants to copy art, they'll scrape Demiplane. I further agree, I never have seen Paizo taking advantage of free advertising space that most of us are accessing several times per session we play - high value targeted advertising to your dedicated customers.

Also it's bad form to try to defensively throw AoN under the bus by defensively blaming them for sharing an announcement when they seem to have been unsure where they stood and were in jeopardy of having to do a sudden last minute change that would have been a shock to the community that would probably blow back harder than this little dust storm is. It's like when an NFL owner blames a player for not negotiating fairly when they don't really have any power in this situation, it looks petty and disrespectful to unpaid volunteers who add immense value, and have gone above and beyond for you in handling issues like the remaster that threw us all in a tizzy as GMs and Players, especially in PFS where we have to abide the rules correctly. You should have handled those conversations directly and not in public. In my opinion of course. I raised in another post, even if not using it for ads, if you had given a chance for them to do a funding drive I would have chipped in money happily, just like I do for charities run by cons and by Foundery Pf2E developers to give back, especially knowing Paizo is struggling.

I guess I'm just disappointed. Paizo has built a reputation of proactively working with it's volunteer communities. I want to give you my money, make it easy to give you my money. This makes it harder to be excited to give you my money.

Yesterday, Archives of Nethys announced the end of our commercial licensing agreement. We have heard the outpouring of community feedback and want to reassure everyone that they will continue to operate under the Community Use Policy. More details in the blog.

Some will miss access to artwork. I'm more worried about loss of ability to search for names of things from my AP in AoN. Will I not be able to look up Ren Mei Li in my Season of Ghosts game? If I look her up will I not have stats? Will there be unique backgrounds or feats I can't find, such as those masked in Pathbuilder2e.com? Being able to search AoN is FAR superior to search through a PDF or flipping through the hardcover of a book to get to this information. It makes it HARDER to run your amazing Golarion-based content.

The other issue, is I think you sell short the free labor your getting. Having the ORC license is nice, but if I have an unorganized text base of the rules that is useless. The ability to go into AoN and filter for items or weapons by traits, so I can find an item to give my players or pick for my character is amazing. The fact that AoN tells me PFS acess rules makes playing within PFS so much easier. Moreover, when you remastered and everything was looking like it might be chaos in PFS, AoN made the transition smooth. Paizo can't afford to pay for the staff to build and maintain a tool like this, and without it running games would be much more painful. Even now with Foundry VTT up I still have AoN on hand and use it at least 3-4 times a session. When Hasbro's D&D got greedy and started stuffing things like that behind a paywall the community support tools like AoN & Pathbuilder2e.com are what made the game accessible to me. And when I found cool things, I wanted to use in PFS that I found trough those tools I went and bought the books, I've bought so many books from the cool things those tools showed me I now just buy everything new P2E that you releasee, including AP's and AP Foundry VTT's I may not be able to run just to keep feeding the kitty and have the options on hand. Moreover, as a GM running PFS games I dread a new book dropping like Impossible Magic and not having the updated rules at my fingertips for several weeks.

If dealing with Art is an issue, fine, I can live without the art. Though, the fact that the places I see it used most often are youtubers in our community who show it for a few seconds, create interest, and foster passion for Paizo makes me wonder the free advertising you're giving up. I buy the bestiary foundry tokens anyway. But the money you save ensuring no one can use a personal name of a character; is not worth the friction you create for GMs and players who already bought your APs and delays in getting rules out is just cutting of your nose to spite your face. I'm not delaying buying impossible magic because I can look up new Magus rules. If you had worked with AoN to do a donation drive like Wikipedia does every year I would have contributed knowing 100% went straight to Paizo who allowed this cool tool to help me. Quantize the money you needed for staff and put it like a PBS drive. Heck since you made PFS scenarios all repeatable after GenCon I went and bought a dozen PDFs of games I've never run from earlier season where I don't have Foundry VTT season passes just to throw more money at Paizo even though I probably won't get to run them until next year just because I know your tight. This kind of stuff kills goodwill. I'm not sure what a true answer would be, but it just feels like there were much better ways to handle this.

I am paying $6 for the Tom Cartos – Essenheim Manor and Ruins Module to Woodsedge Lodge. Why? Just to have a VTT ready space to have my players meet up in at the start of 7-10 Shattered Blades, and it's worth it to me since I'll go back and use it as an excuse to prep an run 3-18 that also starts in Woodsedge Lodge. And I might find some other place to use the assets.

It made me think, I would spend a LOT of money to get an official Paizo produced VTT module pack of battle maps of the lodges that appear in the Pathfinder Society. Just like I happily bought Bestiary Token art an NPC Token art modules. They would be also useful for personally run campaigns.

If anyone at Paizo takes can pass this idea on to the right decision makers, please do. I'd love to give my money to Paizo direct and your artists, or get you to commission someone awesome like Tom Cortos.

I've updated my Guide to include Shining Kingdom

Just a note of thanks for the work you put in to try to empower the PF2E player's understanding and enrich our experiences. As a gamer googling for resources it can be easy to take for granted the hours spent by creative folk like you expanding our resources. And the fact your cycling back years later to try to polish up when new options drop from Paizo is epic.

Stay awesome!

... heading more toward "ghost town" status than one whose fortunes are on the rise and has a lot of newcomers moving in.

Combing through the message boards as I'm having fun prepping for tonight's SoG game, and saw this epic 'dad joke'. You really know how to make a person smile!

p.s. I've been loving this AP. I decided to weave your ghost town narrative into an upcoming 'Granny' Hu interaction about why they need to shake off the Southbank's old traditional ways or Willowshore will have to be abandoned, what with with the shrinking population since the fall of the imperial Lung Wa order, and now so many people that were killed by monsters.

I love boardgames, and games with tile laying elements like Carcasonne & Azule. I saw it was to be demoed at PaizoCon, but can't make that one.

I've been liking all the content in PF2E that I've gotten, so I want to buy it, but can't justify $20+ shipping for a single game. Is there a way of getting some bundled shipping if I can add to a high enough order total like $100 or something? Or should I ask for a local gaming retailer near me to see if they can order it and mix it with their upcoming purchases if they can get a better deal?