James Todd's page

Without inappropriately giving out too much info on my personal/work life, I must say I'm a little confused when people suggest Paizo's hands are tied because ND licensed the brand.

If Paizo is truly hamstrung by this, they need better lawyers. Ninja Division's actions, lack of action, and clear damage inflicted on the brand should basically torpedo any rights they have under the license. This should be the easiest agreement in the world to exit..if the right language was included on the front end.

If the agreement has language prohibiting Paizo from apologizing, they definitely need new lawyers.

Someone at Paizo should look up how J&J handled the Tylenol scare in the 80s and the revelation that using baby oil for tanning was hazardous. In both cases they took actions detrimental to the SHORT term success of their business, but in so doing reinforced faith in their brands which long-term benefited them.

The longer the leaders of THIS brand remain silent, the more time they spend crafting a safe message with the proper legalese, the less impact that statement will have.

At this point I'm sure for a few it's already too late, but at a certain point (perhaps already?) it will have no meaning for anyone because it will have become clear that what Paizo cared about was covering their legal bases... and not truly doing what's right for the customer.

To clarify one bit. I did not back the SF KS, but I backed ND work in the past.

When Paizo actually tried to reassure people about ND, some people reacted by trusting ND due to Paizo's endorsement. I went the other way, and stopped trusting Paizo (or at least their judgement) I haven't bought Paizo stuff since, and that is why I'm watching this - their reaction will have a lot of impact on whether or not I return to being a loyal Paizo customer.

I'm trying to recall the timeline, but as far as I can tell Paizo would have to be negligent or willfully blind to have done this.

SDE:L was...a year? ...late when they started this. Simple vetting of this partner would have shown issues in pretty much ALL recent KS projects from ND, and in fact in SDE you can see clear misstatements/lies about the state of the project.

Joining late, but here's my 3 electrum:

I buy RPG products to deal with a specific need - I don't have time to write my own adventures/encounters. When I was in my teens and twenties, I did...now I don't. The number of fantasy/science fiction books and anthologies that are written every year is vast, and the number of really good books written is much smaller, but still large. The fiction you're including is not bad, also not consistently fantastic - why not let us pick up our fiction at the library (whether real or "E")?

I don't need my auto mechanic to share his latest sonnet with me, and I don't need my landlord to show me his newest dance cycle. While the fiction is clearly more tied to the adventures, when I want fiction I'll buy some. I want to pay Paizo for high quality RPG stuff.

I've mentioned this in another thread, but here goes - to me all the 'embroidery' that isn't core RPG stuff just continues to make me worry that Paizo is so busy 'growing the brand' that they're losing sight of the needs of actual DMs and players. But this may be 95% based in my current aggravation about map issues.

Can someone tell me if Paizo might be deliberately making their maps wonky to keep people from using established VTTs until they get their own VTT product out? I hate to assume evil intent when simple negligence is as likely, but these maps are ridiculous in terms of conversion to VTTs.

If you create a map for a group of users who are more and more using VTTs, would it not be really cool if the grid you supply on your maps is actually SQUARE, and CONSISTENTLY SQUARE across the entire map? I'm not even asking for a standard grid size (50x50 or similar) - just a consistent grid.

This is a nightmare....most modules I buy move right into D20Pro or Klooge and a very close grid can be fit quickly. When I run into maps that aren't square (gridlines slightly taller/wider than wide/tall), it's normally at least consistent and I can do an unconstrained rescale...this doesn't seem to work with Paizo maps. They seem to vary across the map in terms of distortion.

Am I just doing something wrong - if so, it's the same something that has worked well for every other map in a module I've purchased?

Related, there used to be an Excel/OpenOFfice Calc worksheet that would automate the unconstrained rescale, and I've lost it, so now I am doing it by hand. If someone has a link to that I'd appreciate it.