Tuesdays & Tasks: Faradian of Questhaven
Illustration by Arthur Wang
This article coverts a monster that appears in Race for the Crystal Fold to our Questhaven setting for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
Where have you been hiding this artist? In color, too!
I posted a comment on that page asking about the OGC status of that creature but you can feel free to respond here or there :)
The artist (Arthur Wang), is working on Race for the Crystal Fold (Arcana Evolved)a patronage project which allows me to afford color artwork.
The OGL declaration for this creature is in the Race for the Crystal Fold product (you want it you got to buy that) as this is considered a promotional preview :)
So I can only know if the creature is open or not after I buy the product?
If someone wants to take the content we create (and pay for, the author, editor, artist, layout, proofreader, etc...) the least that publisher (even if its free web content your still publishing it) can do is buy said product.
Now if you want to post the OGC portion of this and link to the product where it is for sale, (as say the Grand OGL Wiki does, shoot me an email, it can be found on the contact us section of our site), then I am happy to provide it for free, because that is advertising.
Can't argue with that.
Apparently you have not used or seen our site. We already do that (link to the real product and encourage purchasing) for Kobold Quarterly and every other product we post on d20pfsrd.com.
I get an impression you are not terribly friendly to entities such as the site I maintain though. Yes, we take open content from publishers and accumulate it in one location (edit: pretty much exactly the same as GrandOGLWiki, except we also tie the content into the PRD rules). In addition, we link the content into the copy of the PRD rules we maintain in order to make that content more useful to users of the site. In general, we favor content already formatted for the Pathfinder rules, but we do not limit ourselves to just Pathfinder content. Our goal is to post anything that is released as open content and link it into the rules. If you would rather your content not be included in our site all you have to do is tell me it is not open content.
All I wanted to know in this specific case is:
Is the article you linked to OGC or not? If you are saying the only way someone will know if it is open or not is by purchasing the product then I can't use your content. We're not about to go about purchasing a product just to find out the content is not open. That would be pretty silly and a waste of our time.
So with that said, unless I hear otherwise, we'll assume all content on your site is not open content and we will not repost it or link to it.
I am passigly familiar with the d20pfsrd.com, you have even talked to me in the past about the site and asked for my recomendations which I gave. I did not immediately tie your avatar name to said site, you handle is not like say Mark Gedak's whose handle is "GrandOGLwiki" you did not state that here, I found out afterwards.
I get an impression you are not terribly friendly to entities such as the site I maintain though.
I have created content for the Grand OGL WIKI, given them exclusive previews, provided special discounts on our products, and written a forward for the DM Sketchpad.
I am currently doing the layout and providing the art for free for Diamondthrone.com's compilation product.
Portions of our articles are OGC, portions of it are not, I offered to provide that information along with the section 15 for free and all I asked for was a private email.
I consider it a friendly policy that only asks for a small courtesy.
We're not about to go about purchasing a product just to find out the content is not open. That would be pretty silly and a waste of our time.
Yet, this is exactly what the Grand OGL Wiki does, they become a customer first (Mark owns a copy of every product posted on his site), then he sends a private email to said company requesting permission he doesn't need, and often requests clarification about what is OGC and what is not.
Also please remember that I am attempting to promote a patronage project for Arcana Evolved a system that is no longer in print, I make no money off that project, I do it because I love it, and because no there publisher out there is producing product for it.
I was not trying to be a jerk and if I offended you in anyway I apologize.
Steve,
I'd like to chime in that I'd love to see Arthur's works on future Questhaven releases. I can only imagine his concept of the Ironborn.
Urizen
The only way that could happen would be if we get to do a Patronage project. As one of the ways I keep the costs down is to to comission 5-10 pieces at a time.
Wait! What? no complaint that its only a head and shoulders shot?
hehehe
Steve
Bastage!
:P
Acutally, not this time. The fact that it was full color and not so minimalist or conceptualized if that means anything. I realize though that you're already setting an aesthetic standard for your QH line so I imagine you would like to remain consistent.
But if you're going to do a QH campaign setting patronage, I'd like to see what he can do.
But you'll have to get in line now that Owen dropped some news today on the upcoming PF Modern patronage model. I suspect you'll be throwing dollars that way too. But never fear, you're second on my list. I'd like to see QH take a corner / page out of the Iron Kingdoms market since that's now OOP and will likely not gain future support.
I am passigly familiar with the d20pfsrd.com, you have even talked to me in the past about the site and asked for my recomendations which I gave. I did not immediately tie your avatar name to said site, you handle is not like say Mark Gedak's whose handle is "GrandOGLwiki" you did not state that here, I found out afterwards.
Ok, sorry about that. I guess I could create an alias on here named "d20pfsrd.com" lol. I never thought of that.
I get an impression you are not terribly friendly to entities such as the site I maintain though.I have created content for the Grand OGL WIKI, given them exclusive previews, provided special discounts on our products, and written a forward for the DM Sketchpad.
I am currently doing the layout and providing the art for free for Diamondthrone.com's compilation product.
Portions of our articles are OGC, portions of it are not, I offered to provide that information along with the section 15 for free and all I asked for was a private email.
I consider it a friendly policy that only asks for a small courtesy.
Clearly I was mistaken then. I just seemed to detect some level of animosity. Obviously emotions are often mistaken on internet posts etc so I can only say "my bad" sorry about that.
We're not about to go about purchasing a product just to find out the content is not open. That would be pretty silly and a waste of our time.Yet, this is exactly what the Grand OGL Wiki does, they become a customer first (Mark owns a copy of every product posted on his site), then he sends a private email to said company requesting permission he doesn't need, and often requests clarification about what is OGC and what is not.
Well I certainly applaud Mark then. I, however, do not intend to purchase product without any knowledge beforehand if any of the content inside is open or not. With products like Kobold Quarterly and the various open design projects, I *know* there will be several items of open content contained within the products. I happily subscribe to Kobold Quarterly for that specific reason.
Now, when it comes to sending private emails to companies asking permission to reuse/repost their content, I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that if something is posted online, and is indicated as OGC, then by its nature you do not have to ask permission to reuse/repost said content. That would sort of defeat the purpose of the entire OGL I would think. I suppose if someone doesn't want their content to be open.. they shouldn't release it as OGC. Does that mean I think people should rip and reuse content wantonly without respect to the original creators? No, which is why I have agreed with Jason not to repost any Paizo content until it has been available at least two weeks on Paizo's servers, and why I have agreed with Wolfgang not to repost content from the KQ website for the same amount of time. I've further agreed not to repost content from the KQ magazines until the source material is at least two issues old. None of those agreements are required by the OGL, they're just done out of respect to the content creators and not wanting to harm their sales etc.
I think this all sort of stems from a recent issue I had on the site, specifically dealing with Kobold Quarterly content they post on the KQ website. I had been reposting/reusing their content on d20pfsrd.com for some time, spending a great deal of time reformatting and linking the content into the rules on the site. Later I discovered that I had inadvertently posted something that wasn't open content. Even though all parties involved knew very well about the content, and even spoke glowingly and approvingly about it, I ended up having to remove the content because it was not open. The author himself didn't even know it wasn't open content. With that event I decided I needed to be more resolute with adherence to the OGL and as such I didn't want to post *ANYTHING* that wasn't compliant with OGL, which is why I took down all content from the site that was copied from the KQ website. There is no way of determining the OGC status of the vast majority of their web content, even though I believe an indicator is required by the terms of the OGL. This is now being addressed, and I believe an OGC statement will likely be included in future articles, but as a result of all that chaos I got very frustrated. It seems very many people like to post d20 type content on their sites and blogs, content that clearly uses the OGL, but then neglect to indicate the OGC status of the content they post.
I don't care if the content is open or closed, just include one sentence saying, "This article is open content per the OGL" or whatever you like to say so that people know at a glance if content is open or not.
That's a lot of wind explaining what was ultimately my mistake so sorry if I rambled.
Also please remember that I am attempting to promote a patronage project for Arcana Evolved a system that is no longer in print, I make no money off that project, I do it because I love it, and because no there publisher out there is producing product for it.
I was not trying to be a jerk and if I offended you in anyway I apologize.
No offense taken (nor intended). I want to have a great relationship with the actual content creators that are creating such great stuff for so many peoples games. We (the 100+ collaborators on d20pfsrd.com) want to help promote sales of peoples content which is why we go out of our way to maintain spreadsheets of links to product purchase pages and detailed source lists. There's at least 3-4 people who do only that, building these tables and linking to purchase pages. We want to work with publishers, not against them. I have to admit that this is my first project of this scale and I clearly need to improve my personal relationship skills lol It seems like lately I'm in a lot of conflicts and I don't mean to be. I'm just trying to find the ideal process for making everyone happy. So far it has eluded me.
With that said, I apologize again if I misinterpreted your response as well as apologize if I came across as aggressive or rude.
Now, when it comes to sending private emails to companies asking permission to reuse/repost their content, I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that if something is posted online, and is indicated as OGC, then by its nature you do not have to ask permission to reuse/repost said content. That would sort of defeat the purpose of the entire OGL I would think.
Nope its not required at all its a courtesy. One I extend even in our proffesional work. For example I sent malhavoc press a copy of Ironborn of Questhaven, Green Ronin a copy of Wyrd of Questhaven, and Owen K. C. Stephens posted a great bit about the book.