jreyst's page

Dude... take a break lol

I'm so tired of downloads from Paizo not working. I have to click the download link like 500 times to get it to finally work. So far I've been trying for three days to download AA4 unsuccessfully in both Chrome and Edge, and the few times something DID download it was a 0 byte file.

and for downloads you have to click the download link 9 million times before it works

Most of the people involved (administers, voters, judges, etc.) come from Enworld and that board heavily favors WotC and indie games.

That has been my impression as well.

Yes, all digital downloads are listed in the customers logged in account page and are able to be redownloaded infinite times. Any questions just email help@opengamingstore.com (I John Reyst get and respond to those emails).

Or set a cookie when the browser loads the errata page with a datetime. The next time the browser loads the page the server checks the datetime on the cookie to see if the datetime is older than the last page edit/update and then use javascript to change the font to red for changed/new content?

No, you just have to declare what is and is not open content. Nothing in the OGL says that ANY of it HAS to be open content, though anything already declared open content can not be made closed by a later product. So therefore, anything that was previously open content in sources referenced in this book remain open content but new rules in this book are 100% closed content ("Product Identity").

A warning though, the entire book is a graphic, meaning that the text is not selectable or searchable and it is declared 100% Product Identity.

If you're releasing products whether for free or not on a commercial marketplace then my guess would be that you'd be considered a publisher. However, that's clearly up to Paizo.

I think you are thinking of the blood disease porphiria (sp?)

Porphyra is one of the early derivations of the word purple.

It's also a coldwater seaweed that grows in cold, shallow seawater. :D

@JGray: The maths hurts's my headz (lol)

I'm with Jeremy above in that I almost never watch podcasts/videos or listen to audio disbursements of info. I second the request for a transcript.

Why does this case come with so many unwritten exceptions?

Because it's Pathfinder/3.x derivative/a descendant of 40+ years of rules which in some cases were never re-written critically when passing from generation to generation.

I'm with Philip in that unless Wizards somehow creates a customer service relationship somehow remotely on par with what Paizo has created, while I may play 5e, I will in no way promote it or encourage others to do so. For me, the product called Paizo customer relationships more than makes up for any shortcomings in the Pathfinder product.

Ok, it looks like you meant "arcane HEALER" not "arcane DUELIST"

Adding now...

It's a trap! ;)

Looks like someone might have forgotten to pay the hosting bill lol

Host does not have to, but often does, have snacks and beverages on hand. Everyone else brings whatever they want and its generally viewed that anything anyone brings, unless its a single-serving item (one candy bar or one jerky stick etc.) is community access. We've all got decent jobs and decent income and are close personal friends so there's not really ever an issue.

So, anyone wanting a PDF of the rules, go ahead and leave your email addy here, and I'll do a mass mailing sometime next weekend, given the opportunity.

Ooh pick me pick me!

jreyst@gmail.com!

Note: The usual disclaimer, ie I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice and this is likely not exhaustive. This is just something quick I wanted to post.

If you release a product which claims to be adhering to the Open Game License you must:

1. Declare any Product Identity
The usual course of action is that proper names/nouns (such as made-up NPC or place or spell names) are designated as Product Identity. However, you are not required to do so. You might designate EVERYTHING in your product as Product Identity MINUS anything already designated Open Game Content elsewhere, OR, you might say that everything is designated Open Game Content, proper nouns and all. You are not required to do so (designate everything as product identity) however, merely that you indicate what is, and is not, Open Game Content vs. Product Identity and you must do so clearly.

2. Declare any Open Game Content
If you include content that has already been declared OGC elsewhere then it remains so. You can not make something that was Open Game Content no longer OGC. NOTE! It is not required that you indicate ANY Open Game Content. The only requirement is that you clearly state what IS and IS NOT Open Game Content. You are NOT required to designate your new content Open Game Content. However, not releasing ANY NEW content as OGC is often viewed as ungrateful to the Open Gaming community and philosophy and is generally "bad form."

3. Include a complete copy of the OGL
This must include all product names and Section 15 entries from all products you reference in your product. At the very least it should include the WoTC System Reference Document and most likely the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. If you use mechanics which depend on something first appearing in some other product you must include that product and all of the items IT references in ITS Section 15, in your Section 15 (see below.)

3.a. Within your OGL, in Section 15, usually as the last entry, you must include the name by which others must reference your product in their Section 15 if they reference your Open Game Content.

Now, in response to your specific questions, in a case of 10 town shops, yes, the usual course of action would be to designate all mechanical aspects (the actual "builds" of the NPCs and such) as Open Game Content but leave their names, the names of their businesses, and any other made-up words, as Product Identity. However, as indicated above, you are not required to make their names Product Identity, just that that is the usual course most publishers take. However, that does make it harder for other publishers to reference your NPCs in their products (but you may want that to be the case anyway so...)

It is also important to remember that actual "rules" can not be copyrighted, that is, that if you create a blacksmith named Wilbur Sparkbeard, and then go on to describe his entire family and family history, his shop, and such, and also provide Pathfinder statistics for him, EVEN WITHOUT INDICATING the statistics are Open Game Content, someone else could copy and paste every mechanical aspect of that NPC, change the name, and use it as-is in their product.

Of course now someone will come along and poke a bunch of holes in the statements above but as stated, I'm not a lawyer, only relating my current understanding of the matter.

Open Gaming Monthly would also certainly love to add you to its roster as either a contributor (awesome-est) or as the subject of the Interview column for issue #3 (still awesome.)

We've already got someone lined up for issue #2 or else I'd invite you for that one :D

WOOT!

Agreed with "it seems to fail/not have any effect" and then leave the exact reasons somewhat vague for the player to try to guess.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more GR stuff as well but it just seems odd to try to milk this cow again...

I'm kind of in the same position as a few others... there's already PF Freeport stuff available and.. this may come across poorly but... GR has released 1 PF product in 3 years. I'd personally rather spend money on products from companies that more fully are vested in PF, like Frog God Games.

No offense to GR since I'm actually a big fan of Mutants & Masterminds, but hey if you want in on the PF fun I think ya kinda oughta be a little more involved in it. Not fire and forget one product and wait for checks to arrive.

Gah. That sure sounds bad but its honestly how I feel about it.

Ok, maybe not everyone but you DID say:

I would say better then 50% of the complaints are from the users basically throwing their books around and cracking the binding and then complaining because their book fell apart. I am going to go out on a limb and say the same thing here.

So... maybe not everyone but "better than 50% of the complaints" are from people who basically beat their books all to hell is what I took that to mean.

@Deanoth: My CRB has seen maybe one game session since I bought it. It's otherwise sat unopened on my shelf except for the few times I flipped through it now and then in the "library." In general, without ever having been opened, or having been kept in an airtight bag with a backer board as I used to store my comics, I highly doubt you could take better care of a book. That still doesn't change the fact that if I hold the book by the binding, opening facing downwards, that the binding shimmies and shakes and makes a snapping/popping/cracking sound. I assure you my book has not been treated poorly.

Now, am I stating that this is an epidemic affecting every book ever printed? Absolutely not. Am I saying that I *know* there is something wrong with how its made? Nope. I don't know enough about bookbinding to be able to say. I'm only reporting my personal observations. I'm also quite certain that if I took this book to every game session and convention I've been to since I bought it I'd be on my 2nd or 3rd copy by now.

But please don't come in here and tell everyone who reports their book is falling apart that its impossible, or that they must have really mistreated their books. You have no idea how they've treated the book.

@Deanoth: It could also be that they're not terribly well made. Note I stress could. I'm not stating that as a fact, I'm stating it as a possibility.

Unless you're stating that is truly impossible, which I doubt.

+1/Like on Perram's comment. I'd love to see "Pathfinder Revised" broken into two books, and including a bit more drastic mechanic updates, such as changes for Stealth etc.

My 1st Edition DMG and PHB are rock solid to this day. They were stuffed into backpacks, duffel bags, in trunks of cars under mounds of other books, used daily for years, have been written and colored in, and to this day the bindings are rock solid. I had several copies of the 1st Edition Unearthed Arcana fall apart on me and I've heard the same from many others. While I do not profess to know a damned thing about the book binding process or how those books differ, there is a clear difference. My PF CRB sees virtually no use and the cover and binding is loose and snaps/crackles/pops on opening. Maybe I'm alone, maybe not. Just because very few people are complaining does not mean there is NOT a common issue.

It could be any of...

a) very few people care
b) very few people care enough to post about it
c) very few people (in the big picture) frequent the boards
d) perhaps its truly affecting very few people as well

I suspect its affecting many more than are talking about it, for a combination of reasons a-c.

Edit Added in the "NOT" in the final sentence. Seems I was typing faster than I was thinking. A common problem for me it seems..

Yeah I just called her trying to figure out how that story got conveyed to her.. did her friend say it happened to HER (in which case she's directly lying), or a friend of HERS (in which case her friend's friend could have made it up and there was no lying on my wifes immediate friend.) It still wasn't completely clear to me.

Sorry, forget I ever mentioned it. I'm gonna beat my wife (kidding) when I get home because I never fall for that kind of stuff but since it was coming from her... I just by default didn't suspect it. That'll learn me.

Ok, umm yeah that's odd. Seriously, my wife just called me and told me that exact story. Now I have to find out more about her work friend to find out how that info got to her. Because yeah, that's practically verbatim what she told me lol

At this point in time that is all the information I have. My wife called me while she was driving home. I'll have to search the local news to see if there was anything reported about it.. I have to think that would be some paper-selling headlines...

I swear to Zeus, Odin, or whomever else is a high muckety-muck, this really happened, today. My wife works with someone who has an adult son with Down's Syndrome (or that's what she just told me on the phone.) Her son stays home by himself during the day while she (my wifes friend) is at work. He understands that he is only to call her if it is an emergency. Today he called her in a panic. She got out of him that he captured a leprechaun. She explained to him that he knows that leprechauns do not actually exist. He very adamantly insisted he has one captured. She went home at lunch time to calm him down. When she got home she heard a pounding coming from a bedroom closet and her son forcefully holding the door closed. She immediately rushed to open the door, and out springs a ... little person or dwarf, or whatever is the politically correct term. He was obviously in quite a state of distress. She learned that he is a Jehova's Witness and had just been making the rounds... Needless to say he was none-to-pleased at his predicament. I kid you not, that JUST happened this morning in the Detroit Michigan suburbs. I couldn't have made up a funnier story. Ok, carry on.

Yeah this was asked a few years ago with the same answer, and I approached Lisa at last years Gencon with the same question and got the same response. I would have used that if it were available but instead had to use the RPGNow affiliate program since it was the only option. Well, more accurately, that's for non-Paizo products (i.e. 3pp books.) If you want a cut of Paizo books the only way I've seen to do that is to refer clicks to Amazon.

OK you're right, not worth the risk

Yeah take it from me... don't risk it. You don't want to be wrong.

Thanks Dale :D

Gah. Unless Paizo changed their policy recently every book they've ever released has had the same OGL policy: All mechanics are Open Game Content, all fluff (proper nouns/names etc.) are not. The question here is the classic one of "What if the name of the item is a proper noun/name/made-up word?" By normal assumptions it is Product Identity and therefore NOT OPEN GAME CONTENT, however, by appearing in the NAME area of the item, my understanding is that the word then becomes Open Game Content BUT ONLY WHEN USED IN THAT SAME LOCATION, i.e. referring to the name of the <thing> For example, if something was called "The Mask of Alakabooboo" and Alakabooboo was a known NPC in the world of Golarion, and therefore Product Identity owned by Paizo, then the word "Alakabooboo" can be used to refer to that item, but you can't then go on using that name to reference the NPC or his family or other such unrelated matters.

I could be mistaken but I doubt it.

The mechanics are *almost certainly* Open Game Content, unless Paizo changed their policy uniquely for just that one book (unlikely.)

I think that a complete standalone game system would need further definition. As the OGL and PCL stands right now there is nothing restricting you from reprinting everything that is declared Open Game Content.

Fair enough :D

My response was not designed to answer the logic of doing so, merely to respond in the affirmative, that yes, you are allowed to do so if you wish to (and assuming you follow the other restrictions of the OGL etc.)

But a key point I believe is that yes, you can completely reprint the classes verbatim, assuming there is no product identity contained within the class details.

The skeleton and zombie entries say the following under attacks:

"A skeleton/zombie retains all the natural weapons, manufactured weapon attacks, and weapon proficiencies of the base creature."

It also says the following under feats:

"A skeleton/zombie loses all feats possessed by the base creature."

Two questions:
1. Does "base creature" refer to the creature type (e.g., humanoid) or the creature itself (e.g., hill giant)? A basic humanoid is not proficient with greatclubs but a hill giant is because hill giants have the greatclub martial weapon proficiency feat.

2. If "base creature" in this example means hill giant and not humanoid, would a skeleton or zombie hill giant retain its proficiency with greatclubs? Which takes precedence--the undead retaining its old weapon proficiency or its loss of all feats, including weapon proficiency feats?

Thoughts?

Or at least read what you post before hitting submit? lol

Random request: Can we stop saying "DMPC" ?

Saying "Dungeon Master Player Character" makes no sense to me.. lol

Just kidding.. kind of.

Personally I always find the "If you don't like it fix it" argument silly. When I buy a car if the windshield is cracked or the taillight wiggles I have every right to take it back and expect it fixed, or at the very least assume that buyers will note the obvious flaws and then make sure the maker addresses those in their next model year, or not buy them. In RPGs since everyone is a mechanic the makers can sell you a product with literally missing or broken pieces and everyone just says "quit your whining, what do you expect perfection?" lol No, I just expect that if I pay money for something I shouldn't have to fix it as soon as I drive it off the lot, or duct tape corrective text all over my dash. Sorry, just my opinion.

I saw that game for sale at U-Con in Michigan last month. I almost bought it just for the joke of it lol

My group has a Google Spreadsheet with rows for each PC and major monster/enemy. It includes major PC info like Perception modifiers, saving throws, active spell effects etc. It is shared between the GM and players and each player is responsible for ensuring that his currently active effects are listed. The spreadsheet automatically rolls init each round (yes, we do every round since we like it that way) and the sheet re-sorts the rows based on Init order. Things flow fast and not entirely predictable.

The problem is that those spells need to explicitly say they can be cast while flat-footed otherwise they can't, even if the casting time is 1 immediate action.