redeux's page

Will you be able to leave unverified reviews, for products not on your accounts purchase history, and where these unverified reviews do not leave any rewards?

This solves awkwardness around PFS scenarios not being owned when you reviewed the foundry modules. We've been told those PFS scenario reviews are important, so I would imagine it's best and easiest to gather those on a per-scenario basis rather than sorting through multiple product pages for them.

This also allows someone who bought a physical book in a store to leave a review, or maybe a player who sat at the beginning of an adventure wants to say 'Hey, this was kind of an awkward start having the town hall on fire, but the rest of the book was pretty fun'. That seems like it would be a valuable review too, even if from a player perspective?

Don't get me wrong, the rewards sounds great, but I think it's been hard enough to get people to review some products that putting additional barriers on that seems like a net-negative.

Will there be any Flip Tiles released again? It has been 3 years since last ones according to the Flip Tiles subcategory when sorted by newest first. I really value the Flip Tiles since they let me throw together my own custom maps in a matter of minutes. Much more flexible for impromptu scenes.

Thanks kindly

Looking forward to trying Starfinder and excited to hear your primary goals going into a new program!

Hellknights are overrated. I welcome this. Reading through the old vs proposed i can't think of any obvious issues/gaps.

thank you

Ron Lundeen is a former Paizo employee who wrote some ACG adventures years ago, but at some point pulled them from his website over concerns with updates made to the community use policy in ~2019. He wrote his concerns in his blog:
Paizo Updates the CUP
More CUP updates

With the release of Pathfinder Infinite the adventures can now be found here: Ron Lundeen's PF Infinite releases. You're specifically looking for Shield of Rannick, Bloodlust Corsairs, and God Callers of Sarkoris.

It doesn't look like the products are in the PbP online software atm but I'll ping the gurus so see if that's something we can do under the original product licensing

That's new to me. I always figured it was silently left out of the guide but not intentionally, and that we were still supposed to recognize former campaign leadership.

It doesn't quite make sense though, there isn't going to be an update to the guide to say "please run (monster name) with 72 hit points" or "(monster name) perception should be +8 instead of +18". And given Paizo's reluctance to send out PDF updates, I don't see that happening either.

This also means that when Alex is no longer Campaign leadership, the VTT errata forum is no longer authorized and any changes made under it for PFS stuff would need to be reverted.

Instead, I think it would be better for that combined clarification document that was being worked on to be combed through, include things that can be included in the guide, and then link the rest from the guide as authorized changes. And by that logic you also need to authorize the VTT forum from the guide instead of relying on a current campaign leadership member.

Or, back to my initial point, recognizing prior campaign leadership.

In the end, I think all of this really needs a careful look from the perspective of "How do GMs get and use information?" and "How can they reasonably be expected to keep up with any clarifications/changes (and any former clarifications no longer applying if thats a thing you decide still has merit)?"

I do still think it would be a good idea to link the forum from the guide, OR link a compiled list of clarifications sorted by campaign/scenario that then link to the appropriate place. I think it's a valid point that people won't necessarily know to check the Digital Product Forum. Or if they do know, it could still be made easier to find the relevant info based on what they're running.

Foundry and OP products part deux

Did someone say my name?

I just want to clear something up, quoting TMun from a discord sever:

[...]the volunteer developers who make the system for Foundry aren’t making these changes, nor is anyone from Foundry Gaming LLC. The product is made by Metamorphic under contract from Paizo and Andrew White is the point of contact between those two entities.

If we’re going to be pedantic that Paizo staff posting is a problem because it isn’t a specific member of Paizo staff, can we be equally clear what is meant by the “Foundry Team”. Because the last thing I want is complaints about the volunteers or issues on the system development board because everyone is upset at the wrong people. This literally has nothing to do with either PF2e on Foundry nor the Foundry software.

This is a Paizo first party product receiving errata from Paizo staff. That it happens to be usable on Foundry software shouldn’t matter as to the argument. This isn’t a VTT versus other VTT/PDF war issue and I don’t want it to turn into that. This is 100% a Paizo internal problem.

I'm not accusing anyone here, but I have seen a lot of mentions of "Foundry" and "Foundry Team" in various discussions and I think it's important for us to be clear about what is being discussed.

--------

I understand that people are upset that:
A. Andrew White isn't listed as campaign leadership. Given that just last week Shay mentioned working on the "Foundry/PDF" updates then I would hope that we can agree that this seems likely that whatever update to guide, or post from Campaign Leadership, that is needed will come to support Andrew.
While we're on this topic I would like to also mention that prior campaign leadership members aren't listed under campaign leadership. If we're being pedantic about who is and who isn't campaign leadership the Org Play guide should be updated to include that clarifications from prior campaign leadership are valid unless later removed from current campaign leadership. And I say this next part in jest but "Who is this Michael Sayre guy?". Obviously some of us know the answer to that, but no new GM reading the guide current date would know past campaign leadership members.

B. That the location of a VTT subforum isn't ideal. Paizo produces more than just PFS scenarios for FoundryVTT, and Metamorphic is raising issues with more than just PFS scenarios, thus this was put in a more generic location. If it makes sense to link it from the guide then that seems like a good idea.

Also, wasn't there a VO project of reading through the forums and collecting all campaign leadership clarifications and putting them in one easily accessible spot? You could even add that as a page to the guide, sorted by scenario, optionally state the clarification, and at least link the clarification link. Now everything is in one, nice, centralized location.

I'm not suggesting that none of this isn't a problem. I just think that feelings have been escalated in various areas/communities and this is being made a bigger deal than it needs to be. Honestly given post from earlier this month about clarifications... I think campaign leadership needs more praise when they work out solutions even if they are temporarily not to everyone's perfect expectations. Otherwise we're just going to get demoralized leadership who don't want to provide any clarifications and this hostility will continue which isn't healthy IMHO.

Thank you for hearing the voice of your community and recognizing all of the volunteer effort that has made Paizo and the community great.

That black background makes it really hard to see the pictures. I think something lighter is preferable. At least at the token selection stage.

The tokens are dynamic rings so you can use a different ring with a core setting, or using a module to add additional custom ones.

For the UI though I believe they are changing that to be a more parchment color based off screenshots I'm seeing for the 1.0.2 update that will be coming out. It's much easier to see details with that color.

I already left a review but in case people don't read those, I'll just say this module is fantastic. Perfect for when the party goes off the rails

Elfteiroh wrote:

Noven wrote:

I also just don't like that by funneling stuff into Pathfinder/Starfinder Infinite you won't be allowed to port the content to other VTTs, only to Roll20.

A lot of stuff sold on PFI is already available in FoundryVTT too. PFI doesn't lock you to Roll20.

Pretty sure that section 4 of this post suggests otherwise.

correct. It currently is not being enforced, but could be. The license is granted when you sell a new product on PFI and it explicitly lists what platforms you have the right to make them available on. Without the license explicitly mentioning FoundryVTT then all it would take is for Paizo/R20 to decide to pull all works that have Foundry content. Goes back to the trust thing.

redeux wrote:

Try finding it, and if you do find it, give it a read. Understanding the full implications of the Infinite license is crucial for any creator considering publishing under it. Your rights, your work's future, and your ability to manage your content are all tied up in these terms.

Wow you weren't kidding, that took some digging to be able to download and read. Having done so, perhaps not to the full depth necessary, I have to say that I too am a little disheartened.

Was this not exactly what we were rallying against when WOTC tried to revoke the OGL? Against a walled garden where in order to publish you needed to give up all rights to your IP in exchange for the privilege of publishing on DnDbeyond/Pathfinder Infinite.

I was really looking forward to writing some adventure sequels for my favorite system but, while I agree that their intent seems to be in the right place, there is a lot of room for abuse in the system.

I do hope that someone with better reading comprehension then me will may shed it all in a better light.

I'm glad at least someone tried and found the license. And I say that as a kuthite because it was harder than it should be.

I do think that this is a bit different than what WOTC did. As much as I don't like what Paizo has currently said about their licensing, it's not quite on the same level as the coastal wizards.

The coastal wizards wanted to revoke the OGL which would've prevented people from using any of the WOTC content unless they signed a new license that gave up a good % of money to WOTC.

Separately Paizo has revoked their CUP which, among other things, allowed free TTRPG content to use paizo IP. The reason why this isn't as bad as the OGL debacle is because Paizo still has content published under the OGL and going forward all their content is still being published under the ORC license. Meaning that regardless of what paizo does with their licensing here, as long as they continue to publish ORC content then anyone can continue to use their non-Paizo IP content for free or paid purposes, however they'd like.

The funneling into the walled garden currently only applies if you want that paizo IP. It is their brand and they can do that if they want, but revoking the CUP has been a huge slap in the face to the community that gave them so much love. The Fan Content Policy is generous to allow monetization of non-TTRPG products, but since it does not allow TTRPG products this means you no longer can make free TTRPG products with Paizo IP outside of Infinite.

While I mostly care about the the restoration of the CUP, or a revision of the Fan Content Policy to allow projects to continue to exist, I do think the Infinite license could use some work:
- It needs to specify what other platforms are acceptable so we don't have to trust.
- There needs to be clear expectations about under what conditions an account is suspended or work is pulled.
- The license needs to have Paizo/Roll20 forfeit their interests in your work and rights granted to them by you if they decide to suspend your account or pull your work.
- There should also be the option for creators to withdraw their work and revoke the rights granted to Paizo/roll20. The current license is written near exactly how a contractor agreement I have is written which spells out that the company I do contract work for has full unilateral control over what they do with work that they pay me for. This is acceptable under a paid arrangement. I find it less acceptable that content creators give irrevocable rights to Paizo/Roll20 to the same degree of contract work.
- Make the license text easier to find.
- And I'm sure I could find other things to list off, but in general I think it needs to become less one-sided since overall it is basically a "trust us" sort of thing. Currently you are giving a lot in exchange to use Paizo IP.

A fix has been implemented for the ones in the Monster Core pack, you can now click a setting in the core settings to fit the ring to the grid.

The Grid Fit mode is now the default setting in pf2e as of latest system release. So this shouldn't be an issue for any dynamic tokens unless you like the smaller rendered tokens and explicitly set the core option to "standard".

Started this a few weeks back and originally decided not to post it, but speaking of trust.... Let's talk about how previously acceptable avenues for publishing free adventures with paizo IP are now being pushed into Infinite. Before you could read the relatively simple CUP. Now you have to dig to find the Infinite License and when you find it, it is a fairly one-sided deal.

Some highlights of "trust":

5. Rights You Grant to Roll20 and The Publisher

(a) No Reversion. Due to our licensing arrangement with the Publisher and the collaborative nature of the Program, you are granting us broad licenses in your Work and your User Generated Content included in your Work, and the rights to your Work will not be reverted once it is published in the Program. You will have the ability through online tools at Roll20 websites to stop further public sale of your Work on Roll20 marketplaces (though customers who already purchased digital download copies will continue to have access to the purchased Work), but not to stop the sale or use of works of other authors in the Program, or to limit Publisher's rights in the Work, even when such works use your User Generated Content that you originally created in your Work and thereby became part of the Program IP for other authors to use

(b) License to your Work. Effective as of the date you setup your Work through the Program onRoll20's website, you grant Roll20 and the Publisher the irrevocable, royalty-free license throughout the world for the full term of copyright protection available (including renewals), to develop, license, reproduce, print, publish, distribute, translate, display, publicly perform and transmit your Work, in whole and in part, in each country in the world, in all languages and formats, and by all means now known or later developed, and the right to prepare derivative works of your Work (the "Publisher Derivatives"). Publisher shall own all right, title, and interest in and to the Publisher Derivatives.

(c) License to all User Generated Content in your Work. Effective as of the date we first make your Work available through the Program, you grant us the irrevocable license for the full term of copyright protection available (including renewals), to all User Generated Content included in your Work. You agree that the User Generated Content is available for unrestricted use by us without any additional compensation, notification, or attribution, including that we may allow other Program authors, The Publisher, and other third parties to use the User Generated Content.

You are granting rights to your work without reversion to Paizo/Roll20. This is irrevocable, royalty-free license to develop, license, reproduce, publish, distribute, translate, display, perform your work in any language, and any future means. They can also make derivative works under full copyright ownership of your works.

4. Rights Granted to You.

(a) Subject to your compliance with the terms of this Agreement, Roll20 grants you the limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, personal, worldwide, and revocable right to use and otherwise incorporate Publisher IP and Program IP into your Work(s) for distribution through the Program only.

(b) Except for short promotional excerpts used to promote your Work, you may not display, recreate, publish, distribute, or sell your Work (or derivatives thereof) outside of the Program administered on Roll20 websites or through other platforms or channels authorized or offered by the Publisher.

You may not publish, recreate, distribute, or sell your work on anywhere other than Infinite, Roll20, or other platforms offered by the Publisher.

So now we have established that you are locked into their platform, cannot sell it elsewhere. There's already some 'trust' issues in there. Like even if you are granted the ability to publish, sell, or distribute, your work on another site/VTT then that could always be taken away. It needs to be in the license text explicitly what sites are allowed.

But we're not done yet.

3. Account Information; Account Suspension.
[...]
(c) Account Suspension. We may suspend your account or your participation in the Program at any time. You acknowledge that if we do so, you may be prevented from accessing communications and content on the Roll20 websites. If we suspend your account, you must stop using your Roll20 account and you will not create any new accounts.

Self explanatory. And just in case you don't acknowledge that, here it is again

9. No Obligation to Make Available or Sell.

You acknowledge that we have no obligation to market, distribute, or offer for sale your Work, or to continuing marketing, distributing or selling your Work after we have started doing so. We may remove your Work from the Program and cease further exploitation at any time in our sole discretion without notice to you

Last sentence.

When you put all these things together, along with the other clauses of the agreement, you get a fairly one-sided deal in exchange for the use of Paizo IP. You are essentially trusting Paizo/Roll20 not to take down your work without cause. They could suspend your account and still continue selling your work, leaving you with no control over it. While they would have to pay you for any sales of your original work, they would not owe you anything for any royalty-free derivative works they create under the full copyright license you granted them.

While the CUP license had clauses that allowed Paizo to revoke your ability to use the policy, you weren't irrevocably granting rights to your work to Paizo. If they revoked your ability to use the CUP you could strip the Paizo IP from the work and republish on your own. But if the same thing happened on Infinite you are out of luck.

And there is no clear guidelines or reasons for why content might be removed or accounts might be suspended. Nor is there an opt-out or right to revoke the rights you've granted Paizo/Roll20.

This is why it is unacceptable to me to release my free adventure that I commissioned art for under the Infinite license. Notwithstanding that Infinite doesn't allow a foundry module, I would be in a very one-sided relationship. I'm better off not using Paizo IP at all. And maybe that is how they want things to be. As I've said before, it is their brand and IP. They can do with it what they want. But I don't have to like it.

Posts like this post right here could be something that could cause them to decide to pull any works on Infinite if I used it. Given that there was an incident in the past where a Paizo executive doxxed a forum user, it raises concerns about how much power Paizo could wield over content creators under this agreement. That's part of why I've been hesitant to add more critical posts in case they just want to ban me from the forums or my account altogether.

FWIW I have a much higher opinion of Paizo, and I don't think they would do these things, but they could. And I understand to a certain extent some of these clauses are necessary to operate a store that sells user submitted work. However, a more balanced license could have been employed, with less ambiuity and one-sidedness. The current text has an issue that this is a lot of trust placed into Paizo/Roll20 in exchange to use the Paizo IP. That's literally all you get under section 4 Rights Granted to You. They give you the right to use their IP but only within the platform. While I currently trust Paizo, who is to say I still will next year or 5 years from now. The current structure of the agreement creates potential for misuse. For example, they could maliciously take down all content of a certain type and then create royalty-free derivatives of that work.

The CUP was a simple policy that did not require a lawyer to understand its terms when I first started releasing projects under it years ago (~2016-2018?). I can't say the same for the Infinite Agreement. It would've turned me off from working on content, or I would have just read their FAQ and trusted them rather than reading the license, because they make it hard to find. I am curious how many people selling on the infinite platform have read and understood the Infinite license.

I personally wouldn't have an issue with Infinite's license as much if it wasn't for the Paizo IP TTRPG products being silo'ed into it. It's a walled garden. Once your work is on Infinite, you're stuck there. Forever. You lose all flexibility to use your own work elsewhere, even if they ban you without reason or if future changes to the agreement no longer align with your values. If they want paid products on there then that's fine. But free TTRPG products need the CUP brought back or a revised Fan Content Policy.

I appreciate Paizo being willing to listen to community feedback and work towards a solution that is feasible for both them and the community.

And for everyone else, I encourage you to read the Infinite license. I'm intentionally not linking it. Try finding it, and if you do find it, give it a read. Understanding the full implications of the Infinite license is crucial for any creator considering publishing under it. Your rights, your work's future, and your ability to manage your content are all tied up in these terms.

Disclaimer: As always, im not a lawyer and i'm not your lawyer. I have done my best to represent the license text factually correct, but if I made a mistake then I guess that just further proves my point that this is a license that requires a lawyer to understand

As far as "just get a special license" I think there are some issues with that. Ron Lundeen, former corporate attorney and then former paizo employee, once said this about a previous revision of the CUP:

Discourage Licensees. The former policy had a statement about how you might be able to get more rights if you become a Paizo licensee, with an email how to reach out to them. The new policy says, "We also offer commercial licenses, but generally only to established companies with good reputations and solid business plans." To me, this reads like Paizo had too many small-scale people reaching out to them for licenses, and they wanted to say, basically, "serious applicants only." That's understandable. But I worry about the chilling effect of this new statement, particularly for eager but novice entrants into this business (such as content creators from marginalized minorities); being outside the traditionally white-male-dominated power brokers in our hobby, they might be too easily dismissed as not having "good reputations."

So just getting some bespoke license isn't a great solution when Paizo in the past has actively discouraged getting such licenses unless you were an established company and had solid business plans.

Rons posts:
Paizo Updates the CUP
More CUP updates

A lot of paizo staff got sick with covid at Gen Con, but I'm sure all the venture officers are pushing for this to be updated ASAP

This is *very* exciting. One of the issues I've had with Foundry's browser picker is that searching is not always great. i've added tags in my 4k token filenames to help my searching but it is very cool being able to do actual tags with a datasheet. May make a fun project to make a script to convert my filename tags to a datasheet.

And all that aside, 1200 tokens?! This is fantastic.

Hi all,

Last week Foundry Staff said they marked this to discuss for V13. But it sounds like Foundry Staff will release a patch this week to implement a dynamic ring fit mode which will allow the rings to fit 100% to the grid space.

I am very excited about this change. Dynamic Rings are really neat once they are scaled to a user's liking. I'm glad Foundry not only heard the community but is implementing a fix so quickly.

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.

It is really unfortunate Foundry decided to go this route, I was very excited for this product (and future similar products), but it not going to be useful for me unless it is compatible with half a decade worth of tokens I have collected from other sources.

If you're referring to the scaling, the Token Ring Adjuster module (linked above, and searchable within foundry) is able to define scaling for dynamic rings. Once enabled you can go to the module settings and specify the token scale you want. Then when you drag new dynamic rings from the compendium they'll automatically be scaled to your liking. This is what I'm doing until/if Foundry allows the rings to be scaled natively.

looks like updated pdfs havent been posted yet, but giving my feedback before i forget
Here are some notes I took when doing the data entry for Foundry:

Quinn Lvl 5 - Dex and Con was increased, but the +1 was not added to Fort/Reflex/AC. These should be Fort+10, Reflex+11, AC 21.
Quinn Lvl 5 - Untrained Improvisation bonuses applied incorrectly to untrained skills

Sajan Lvl 5 - Fort should be +11 and Will +12

Yoon Lvl 3/5 - Voice of Elements gives Pyric, so there may be 1 unallocated language as a result though I don't think the rules directly support taking a new language like they do when you become trained in an already trained skill.
Yoon lvl 5 - intelligence increased resulting in an additional unallocated language.
Yoon lvl 5 - Lvl 5 skill boost unallocated. Intimidation was increased to expert at lvl 3 and Thievery was increased to expert by Skilled Heritage. Leaving the lvl 5 skill boost unallocated.

Seelah Lvl 3 - Missing skill boost (should be thievery or intimidiation based off of lvl 5 expert proficiencies)

Korakai Lvl 1/3/5 - penalty from chain shirt's Noisy trait not applied to stealth skill.
Korakai Lvl 3/5 - Class feats could be more clear by listing "Domain Acumen (Whispers of Weakness)"
Korakai Lvl 3 - Page 1 under 2nd rank spells it lists an extra spell. should not list resist energy (based off of page 4 listing)
Korakai Lvl 5 - Page 1 and page 5 both list an extra 3rd rank spell. Should only have 2 new spells added to spell list. Can still cast three 2nd rank spells per day.
Korakai Lvl 5 - Toughness hp not included in total hp.

Seoni Lvl 5 - HP should be 53. I think +2 from toughness wasn't added between lvl 3 and lvl 5 seoni sheets.
Seoni Lvl 5 - Diplomacy listed as trained +13 but should be trained+11
Seoni Lvl 5 - Might just be my unfamiliarity with remaster sorcerer but she may have been given some extra feats - Not sure where Tap Into Blood came from but it is listed under class features and I think its a class feat? and then there's seemingly 2 additional class feats selected for 4th level (Bespell Weapon and Counterspell). Might be worth checking on all of these.

Also in general several pregens had thieves tools/infiltrator tools but no additional lockpicks which are pretty cheap. I think most people usually buy a few replacement picks in case they critically fail and new players wouldn't know to do that with pregens

The following module (up)scales the token ring size automatically when you drag a token to the map. It also allows you to set the magnification sizes for each token size via configuration.

https://github.com/7H3LaughingMan/token-ring-adjuster

https://github.com/7H3LaughingMan/token-ring-adjuster/blob/main/module.json

PS: No idea how magnified tokens affect the "Wall height" module (as in looking for walls of certain height).

Thank you Weissrolf for linking that.

As it has been said, this is a design choice of FoundryVTT and will impact any module that utilizes dynamic tokens. There are some exciting things possible with dynamic rings such as being able to have all actors with the same ring even if the actors are from varying sources.

Foundry Staff have marked the dynamic ring size to discuss for V13. They are making no guarantees or promises about what may occur other than they will be discussing as a team. I think that is good news they are at least willing to listen to community feedback.

redeux wrote:

On the note of PDF importers for foundry or other future projects, my understanding is that these are nothing more than highly specialized PDF readers and as a result do not need to rely on licensing/agreements/policies. It would be very hard for Paizo to ever restrict the PDF importers without also restricting everyone's ability to read one of their PDFs for "normal" use. And they'd be fools to try it since the PDF importers are undoubtedly selling lots of PDFs.

This might be a conversation for another thread but my understanding was that they had a PDF reader component to find your watermark for verification, but they were very much a repository of data on the adventures that were locked beyond that watermark verification. That they either hold the data for all the journals and maps directly, or that they hold all the data that is able to scrape from all the information with particular parsing, which would need to include major RPG terms for recognition and digestion into NPC blocks and skill check automation and such.

With the fact that Dedril's adds in AI Art for the modules he imports, its very clear that it at least has programming that knows what actors are in which modules, which could constitute enough information to be acted against by paizo here. The lengthy delay in supporting new scenarios makes me believe its all manual journal creation unlocked by the PDF watermark read, though.

You're not wrong that it is a lot of manual work, but the modules themselves don't store any paizo IP or data that needs to be under a license/agreement/policy. the modules work by reading the PDF and then having been manually coded to know what to do with each piece of data. The importers are taught to take the map from page 2 and make it a scene, then take the block of text from the next page and format it as a journal. And so on. You mention actors, it could be possible to regex the text and know that a block of text announcing "Creatures" on page 5 will have the a creature with the a specific UUID which is linked instead of that text. This is then resolved as a dynamic link within foundry to render the paizo IP as licensed by the pf2e system. And when that actor is imported, the art can be matched with art from the PDF or the AI art the module includes, all without paizo IP stored in the module. Since they dont rely on the CUP or Fan Content Policy they could leverage OGL or ORC to include actor names in their regex lookups for anything that was covered by it, but you still could do this without a list of paizo IP by regex'ing patterns in the text other than the paizo IP. So there's nothing in the actual module data that needs to be Paizo IP. To prevent a pdf importer from operating then regular pdf readers wouldn't be able to read a PDF because they are both reading the PDF in their own way.

On the note of PDF importers for foundry or other future projects, my understanding is that these are nothing more than highly specialized PDF readers and as a result do not need to rely on licensing/agreements/policies. It would be very hard for Paizo to ever restrict the PDF importers without also restricting everyone's ability to read one of their PDFs for "normal" use. And they'd be fools to try it since the PDF importers are undoubtedly selling lots of PDFs.

Mark Moreland wrote:

As you mention, Archives of Nethys has a commercial license to operate and maintain a rules reference for the community, and part of this change is to ensure that that license (and those of other partners) actually means something, because someone else can't end-around that license by combining the OGL/ORC with the Community Use Policy and do the exact same thing.

I think this quote is the source of a lot of the problems. I've thought it was a bad thing each time Paizo announced a partnership, because it made this sort of nonsense seem much more likely. If the choice is between official partner tools and fan made tools, the fan made tools are what needs to survive, not the partner tools.

Paizo is probable within their legal rights to do this, but this is not the attitude of the Paizo I have known and loved for almost ten years now. Old Paizo realized that the fan made tools were what made them a success.

Agree. Part of my issue with all of this is that while Foundry is OK with their own partner license, the changes made to the licensing for everyone else prevents the next Foundry or similar tool. The PF2e/SF/PF1e systems on foundry are products of love from the community that were developed under the CUP and OGL/ORC. The pf2e system on foundry alone has probably over a million dollars of development time volunteered to it, and was all made possible because the community came together. Under the new licensing structure you aren't going to get a random group of people together and go for a commercial license to start the next Foundry or similar.

[...] because someone else can't end-around that license by combining the OGL/ORC with the Community Use Policy and do the exact same thing

Before you could combine the CUP and OGL/ORC and not profit from it. The value of a commercial license was commercialization. The changes have now made it so the value of a commercial license is the IP and broader commercial freedom than granted under the new, lesser licenses.

Years ago Paizo discontinued my favorite game, Pathfinder Adventure Card game which they published, and I've since watched license after license issued to new boardgames, cardgames, and companies. To me its clear Paizo has shifted a focus on more licensing so wanting to make those commercial licenses stronger makes sense, from a purely a business perspective, if you never step outside to interact with community made tools. Or forgetting how many of these commercial/special licenses started out as community made tools.

Separately, the other changes to funnel and silo everyone into the Infinite license Agreement makes sense from a business perspective. As i said before, its a great business idea. It's just not the Paizo I know. Some of these license changes are necessary to separate Paizo from the OGL, I get that. But to not recognize the kind of efforts the community have done and remove the avenue for projects like the next Foundry is a slap in the face.

I've got nothing but love for all of the individual employees at Paizo, and I hate being so critical, but it feels like the company has shifted its priorities away from the community that helped it grow. The passion and dedication of fans who created and maintained tools under the CUP were fundamental to Paizo's success. While these changes might be beneficial from a business standpoint, it feels like a betrayal to those who have invested so much time and effort into creating valuable, free resources for the community.

Also. We know that Foundry has a special license to host Pathfinder, but what about Foundry *modules* for Pathfinder, like those that help with gameplay automation and accessibility? Are any of those going to land in hot water just for making the game easier to run? Because these modules are a HUGE reason why people use PF2e on Foundry in the first place. If you restrict them, you are going to make a lot of people very upset.

Modules that are code-only, or only reference Paizo IP through dynamic links that resolve within Foundry, have no ties to any Paizo policy/agreement/License. Content modules are more gray area, and Foundry Staff has been working with Paizo to answer module/translator developer questions.

So just hang tight and don't panic on this particular point quite yet. I imagine at some point Paizo or Foundry will put together a FAQ to help module developers

Anguish wrote:

I remember a different company playing games with licenses not so long ago and being declared The Bad Guy.

You don't make more restrictions and get to be The Good Guy.

I think it i a bit "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation.

Doing nothing would meant that they still had entablements with the OGL and where still somewhat dependent on WotC goodwill. In the long term this would be a very bad descission as WotC (or better Hasbro) has shown that they don't really respect the customers.

Paizo has allways been more open with their licences and the fact that AoN exists - and as Mark has posted is in now way affected - shows that they continue that way.

Yes, it will be bumpy for a few month for sure, but this not so good decisssion seems to be better then the alternative.

The OGL vs ORC thing is just a convenient excuse. They are also gutting their Community Use Policy, and now Infinite products can't be released under OGL vs ORC. So they're funneling all their content into Infinite but want to say "mine mine mine".

As another poster mentioned there was no comment period, no advance notice. These changes were just dropped all of a sudden, through a blog. Paizo has had over a year to work on the ORC and they just now are communicating this? And to top it off, the licenses and FAQs are a complete mess. For instance, the current Infinite License Agreement text that is still available on their infinite platform and updated October 2023, still contains a clause that tells you to include the Open Game License if you are using content with OGL. But then the FAQ under the paizo.com/licenses page tells us that the Infinite License Agreement cannot be used with any other license other than the Infinite License Agreement meaning no OGL and no ORC.

So to go back to what I was saying -> Your CUP Projects that are RPG products can't be CUP projects anymore, and they don't qualify for Fan Content Policy -> You now must choose between Infinite or OGL or ORC, and gutting your content to match. And if you already have something on Infinite then if it has OGL or ORC content then you'll have to figure out what to do about that, but you'd be gutting it in some form or another.

So we can say that this is all just to protect them from the OGL and the evil wizards, but ask yourself why ORC can't be used with the Infinite platform? "mine mine mine". They have also taken the opportunity to funnel content into their Infinite License Agreement and disallowed the use of OGL and ORC licenses under that license Agreement. It's a great business idea.

But, lesson learned: CUP was a Policy, it was right there in the name. Same with Infinite Agreement. This just highlights the value of having an irrevocable license and avoiding policies/agreements that can be rugpulled.

I'm not a lawyer, i'm not your lawyer. Im an unpaid consumer going through the stages of grief.

Your website header still points to Community -> Community Use page which was last updated Sept 01, 2023. If you are revoking it or no longer allowing new content under the CUP then I, an unpaid consumer, shouldn't have to tell you that this page needs to be updated at a minimum. This is also the page that resolves from the paizo.com/communityuse link on every CUP project.

Separately, the new Fan Content license claims it does two things the CUP did not:

- You can make and sell merchandise based on Paizo’s IP in limited circumstances,
- Distribute free content on a larger scale.

This statement makes you think its just adding onto CUP. However, this is misleading, because there are other things you could do under CUP that you now cannot.

Instead of having a simple license for content I was going to make free, I now need to parse through Cans and Cannots for the type of content I am making available. For example, An adventure I previously wanted to release under CUP is no longer possible, and I am instead forced to use the Infinite license. I previously did not want to leverage the Infinite license due to the added complexity for a project I wasn't going to charge for anyway. At this point in time, I'd rather bin the whole adventure, or rip out anything that would require me to use either license. Mind you, this is something I had already commissioned art for so I was already operating at a loss. And to give no warning of the sunset of CUP? Thanks, I guess.

I'm sure these licenses will be great for people who want to engage with them and profit off of them. But what about people like me who have spent the better part of the past decade releasing CUP projects for free? There's too much added complexity, too many questions, undefined terms in licenses, and too much risk for me to want to engage with the new Licenses.

Found a punctuation error in Fan license.

I'll take that as a sign this is a work in progress. Please leverage the CUP registrations to notify users when you have this all sorted out rather than rely on blog posts.

Also, as someone who released many CUP projects, it was a great license and it was fairly simple. I definitely have a lot of questions reading through all this. My gut reaction is that this will make me think twice before starting anything new, or updating any of my current projects

It does seem to be opposite of how the imprisoned elemental lords were handled. as seen here and here, though perhaps how those events unfolded were known by staff and this is more definitive.

But nice to see free rebuilds for those impacted.

If my math is right we're at 20 challenge points with three level 1's. I think I will switch from my lvl 4 to bring us back down into low-tier. Likely will bring a lvl 2 champion or lvl 2 summoner which would put us at 17 challenge points.

But similarly looking forward to this!

#5-08 is a level 5-8 repeatable....someone had fun with that ;)

Alright so...another VTT? I just dont know why Paizo keeps casting this wide net for VTTs when they have one of the best, if not the best VTT integrations on the market with Foundry VTT. There are players I play with that generally HATE playing online, but are willing to because the foundry integration is as good as it is. So why isnt Paizo using it as a major marketing tour. Instead we get almost illegible posts like this about a product I am going to dismiss out of hand because I have something that does this already.

While I am certainly in Foundry's corner (community dev), mobile options lack official support and are not the greatest experience currently. Natural Pengu claims to be mobile friendly, which is neat....but I do certainly question the mobile accessibility of the VTT when Natural Pengu's blog is not mobile friendly. I am eager to see what they bring to the market, as competition is a good thing.

---------------

Entirely unrelated, while I am glad that questions are being answered in this blog, I do hope that the website will document all of this information more clearly and concisely. I looked at the website last night and was left thoroughly confused, and the sad reality is that these blogs often get lost in time so they shouldn't be the primary way to learn more about a product.

Thank you for everything you have done for our lodge Half the Sky! What a tremendous accomplishment, congratulations!

And congratulations to the campaign coin holders! Thank you for all that you have done for org play!

And thank you as well Linda! We have all benefited from your tremendous work! I wish you luck in your future adventures!

Yes, it is known and being looked into.

Yes, it is known and being looked into.

Yes, it is known and being looked into.

Hello,

During data entry for foundry I found the following which I believe to be mistakes,

• - Alystair Caskwater (1-2) has a weakness to good 5, but the other 3 variants have weakness to positive. This seems like they should all have weakness to positive.
• - Weak Shadow Draugr has the same stats as Shadow Draugr with the exception of the Void's Revenge DC. This seems like the Weak template was not actually applied to the monster.

Is there a chance we can get developer clarification so we don't have to run as written? Particularly the Weak Shadow Draugrs seem like that can be a problem if they're actually using normal stats. Thanks!

Will this come out on Foundry pre-built at the same time?

Yes, Sigil has been contracted for the conversion work and the plan is to release on street date.

What if this whole time the VC's were actually VA's? They only oversee one lodge...

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!

Hi all! Please remember to submit bug reports through the service portal linked on the landing journal entry or directly via this link: https://support.sigil-services.com/. That's the best place to make sure the developers see it. Thanks!