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Forum ate my last post, so I'll try to retype it.
I'm an not a businessman or a lawyer, and I know that some on the boards are, so I'll ask them and the rest of the community for their thoughts on the matter.
I've seen the multitudes of companies look at the GSL and say "no," others that have said flatly that they are staying with 3.5, and Paizo has decided to step it up with a different but compatible edition. So, from I business standpoint, I wondered thus.
If there is a large group of people who are not going to 4th edition and 3.5 is still a very marketable system with tons of good first and third party products, why does Wizards not simply divide and conquer: offer products for both 3.5 and 4th or make the GSL a little less lenient to allow for a greater amount of business to be done?
Do you think that in the future, if business does not boom as Wizards hopes, then they will change the GSL to accommodate? Is it that Wizards is so subsumed by Hasbro (which some designers have said they are not) that they see only the numbers and none of the costomers? Or would it just be too much of a hassle to produce both 3.5 and 4th edition products?
My knowledge of these matters is lacking, so I turn to the Paizo community for answers.
If there is a large group of people who are not going to 4th edition and 3.5 is still a very marketable system with tons of good first and third party products, why does Wizards not simply divide and conquer: offer products for both 3.5 and 4th or make the GSL a little less lenient to allow for a greater amount of business to be done?
If the reason remains the same at corporate why 2nd edition products were no longer supported when 3e came out, then the reason is (just a guess) that corporate abhors in-house competition. New editions mean a complete divorce from earlier versions with perhaps only a forward-leaning conversion guide as a parting gift, oh yeah, and a module on how to blow up your world to "rationally" explain the reasons for the changes. You're on your own now, son.
Don't think of this as a bad thing. It's just the way it is.
Paizo has largely rejected doing both 3E and 4E work at the same time, and I believe WotC would as well, for many of the same reasons.
Besides, as others have said, self-competition is something WotC stridently avoids.
No, I don't think we'll see "official" support for 3E ever again.
Cheers! :)
I know Paizo isn't going full-bore on 4e by any means (an understatement) but I WOULD like to see Paizo produce some beautifully illustrated power cards for 4e like they have for Item Cards.
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Paizo has largely rejected doing both 3E and 4E work at the same time, and I believe WotC would as well, for many of the same reasons.
Paizo can't do both because the OGL and GSL are mutually exclusive. Wizards can do both because it doesn't need to sign either license.
That said, it doesn't make much business sense to support two editions simultaneously.
So Paizo can't even make cool Gamemastery Power Cards for 4e?
Creative Director
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We cannot. Also, I think the GSL itself specifically prohibits anyone but WotC from making power cards, since you can't reprint the text of the cards. The best someone could do under the GSL is print blank cards, and that's not a lot of use, really.
It's not something we'll be doing, in any event. But it's sort of a no-brainer product; I'm sure it'll be along SOMETIME soon.
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So Paizo can't even make cool Gamemastery Power Cards for 4e?
They can, unless Wizards doesn't want them to, since Wizards has the right to decide that they're in the same product line as . . . well, Gamemastery line would be the logical example, but Wizards is technically allowed to say anything regarding what constitutes a product line, so they could just as easily say that they're in the same line as anything OGL Paizo makes.
Unless James Jacobs Ninjas me and says that the GSL forbids power cards completely, but what are the odds of that happening?
EDIT: I totally predicted that. Definitely didn't edit in the mention of being ninjaed afterwards. Honest.
In case anyone missed it, WotC is doing power card sets themselves.
I expect they would be very upset about someone doing an identical product, even without GSL issues.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the cards going sold by class at $9.99 MSRP? At that price ($80 for the set)
Might as well black and white photo copy the relevant pages out of the PHB, apply highlighter as necessary, purchase and trim colored construction paper or card stock and "laminate" the cards using masking tape. That like $20 in copies, $10 in supplies and whatever a 1.5 hour personal labor charge comes out to.
Who's selling the cards? I haven't seen them. I don't mind paying, don't have free time to make my own and like well-produced stuff, that's why I'd go for pro-published cards if someone's making them. Where did you see sets for $9.99? Paizo, stock them if they exist!
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the cards going sold by class at $9.99 MSRP? At that price ($80 for the set)
Might as well black and white photo copy the relevant pages out of the PHB, apply highlighter as necessary, purchase and trim colored construction paper or card stock and "laminate" the cards using masking tape. That like $20 in copies, $10 in supplies and whatever a 1.5 hour personal labor charge comes out to.
Heh. I did not recommend them as priced to move, I was just noting that WotC is going to be selling them and would likely not welcome any licensee trying to make a similar product.
Who's selling the cards? I haven't seen them. I don't mind paying, don't have free time to make my own and like well-produced stuff, that's why I'd go for pro-published cards if someone's making them. Where did you see sets for $9.99? Paizo, stock them if they exist!
The first set is due in January of '09.
As for complaing about the price, how much do you really expect to get for $10? I mean, EVERY power a class has in the PHB amounts to around 80 cards. If production quality is about the same as a deck of Magic cards, I'd say that's as good as a deal as you can expect.
For someone with access to cheap cardstock (likely buying in bulk), a decent laser printer and the time/inclination to do this then it's certainly cheaper than doing it yourself. On the other hand, as an example, how many times do you see someone say they prefer published adventures because they don't have the time to do them themselves?Given the overheads taken when you factor in the distributors and retailer margins, this is a pretty reasonable price, WotC's definitely not gouging out a huge profit on each set of cards.
Very true. I do, in fact, print my own cards. It isn't super cheap though, and since you have to print 8 cards at a time (or else you're wasting a hell of a lot of card stock) I have to guess what powers I'll want MANY levels ahead of time.
Plus, while the cards I make look alright, my own printer sucks and I my cards are fairly basic in structure. Hopefully Wizards includes some art (I don't need Magic level art, but a bit would be nice).
Throw in some blanks as well and I think it's a good deal. I wouldn't buy the whole set, but I could see picking up one or two (or maybe pooling with my group to buy all of them as a communal property).
Cheers! :)
I'm doing the same, albeit printing them out for my players instead. There are already a great range of options for cards (though of course not all are great, personal tastes differ etc.)There'll be one interesting customer survey aspect of this. By this time next year Wizards will be able to roughly determine how many people (who bought the cards) are playing which class.
Obviously some might buy all the decks, but this is going to be one of the few ways they'll have to determine which classes are the most popular.
Albeit it's unlikely this info would ever be shared, but it would be interesting to see in 18 months or so which class was most popular.
Interesting thought. Hadn't considered that angle. If you were Wizards, would you take that info and pump out more content for the more popular classes? Or try to put out more for the less popular ones to boost them up?
Interesting thought. Hadn't considered that angle. If you were Wizards, would you take that info and pump out more content for the more popular classes? Or try to put out more for the less popular ones to boost them up?
I would release new classes that could easily replace the unpopoular ones, and then I would release support for all the popoular classes.
I hope that Paizo reconsiders at some point down the road on producing 4E material, hopefully with the same approach as Pathfinder. Since any business is around with the goal of making money it would seem to be beneficial that Paizo consider expanding their revenue stream to include 4E. Today they have limited themselves only to 3.5E and will potentially lose revenue from a group of folks that switched to 4E. Bringing that revenue back to the business at some point in the future would seem to make sense. I’ll leave the issues with the licenses to the lawyers.
Do you think that in the future, if business does not boom as Wizards hopes, then they will change the GSL to accommodate?
Simple answer/opinion: yes.
However, I don't think it'll happen. IMO the crucial piece of the 4e platform is the online subscriptions. Even if only a small percentage of the market subscribes, their profits are going to be huge (and far, far more than the print magazines offered).
And the GSL is, IMO, proof that they aren't seriously interested in the contributions of third-party publishers, even if a few sign on.
Might as well black and white photo copy the relevant pages out of the PHB, apply highlighter as necessary, purchase and trim colored construction paper or card stock and "laminate" the cards using masking tape. That like $20 in copies, $10 in supplies and whatever a 1.5 hour personal labor charge comes out to.
Laughs Actually, that is a brilliant idea!
Paizo, if you make BLANK cards with art on the backs with pictures of adventurers or fantasy tropes on them I will BUY THEM and fill in the power info myself. I might use them for other things too; cards are just cool.
Very true. I do, in fact, print my own cards. It isn't super cheap though, and since you have to print 8 cards at a time (or else you're wasting a hell of a lot of card stock) I have to guess what powers I'll want MANY levels ahead of time.
Have you ever considered printing your powers out on 3x5 index cards? You can buy hundreds of index cards on the cheap and print on them using most printers. One power per index card might eliminate part of your problem and while they're not as sturdy as cardstock, they hold up well enough.
I've been doing this myself for weeks and it has worked out wonderfully, my players love them.
Have you ever considered printing your powers out on 3x5 index cards? You can buy hundreds of index cards on the cheap and print on them using most printers. One power per index card might eliminate part of your problem and while they're not as sturdy as cardstock, they hold up well enough.
I've been doing this myself for weeks and it has worked out wonderfully, my players love them.
Yeah but printing them out on cardstock with some snazzy graphics makes them look so much more professional! :P
I might go the index card route, but honestly I find the layout I use for my current cards very intuitive, and (having recently written out all the powers my 3.5 Incarnate could use, and thus experiencing it first hand) my hands cramp up pretty bad if I write for any extended period of time, especially if I'm trying to write on the smallish size.
One of the other players in my 4E game managed to get white index cards with a colored band across the top and he matches the colored band to his powers frequency of use ... black bands are dailies, reds are encounters, greens at-wills. Pretty cool idea from him (my printed out cards also come color-coded, of course)
Cheers! :)