Working with WotC and Paizo


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Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

Kajehase wrote:
And the size of a telephone. Of course, telephones in those days could be pretty big compared to today's varieties...

size? Heck, my two year old Droid has more processing power and memory than my first PC!


When the first people landed on the moon this was accomplished by 80386 CPUs - I mean what more do you need?

Also:

Lisa Stevens wrote:

This thread has gotten WAY off topic with Magic: The Gathering expansion discussions and the inevitable 4e vs Pathfinder. Not to mention PF2 speculation. A long ways from the Working with WotC and Paizo original thread. So let's leave off these other discussions in this thread, and leave it to its original purpose. :)

Thanks!


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Lisa Stevens wrote:

This thread has gotten WAY off topic with Magic: The Gathering expansion discussions and the inevitable 4e vs Pathfinder. Not to mention PF2 speculation. A long ways from the Working with WotC and Paizo original thread. So let's leave off these other discussions in this thread, and leave it to its original purpose. :)

Thanks!

Wait, this isn't another FaWTL thread? ;)


MicMan wrote:
When the first people landed on the moon this was accomplished by 80386 CPUs - I mean what more do you need?

Off-topic:
This was accomplished without the help of x86 processors, which weren't released until about a decade later in the form of the 8086. The 80386 didn't come out until 1985.

I have no idea where 'striker' comes from. What I didn't like about 4e was not that it used these terms but that each class was 'locked' into one role. There were 8 classes, four roles, and zero leeway.

Scarab Sages

Tank, DPS, nuker, etc. all became popular when the MMO Everquest came out. I was part of the beta, and I can recall these terms being used back then, around 1999 iirc, long before WoW was a gleam in Blizzard's eye.


ciretose wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
Thanks. I actually did see those one google, but I figured those were so silly that nobody would actually try to use anything similar to that as a decoding system. I am guessing the screen told you what to line up in order to get each letter of the code.

And now I feel old.

Floppy disks used to be floppy, you know...

I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.

Scarab Sages

wraithstrike wrote:
ciretose wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
Thanks. I actually did see those one google, but I figured those were so silly that nobody would actually try to use anything similar to that as a decoding system. I am guessing the screen told you what to line up in order to get each letter of the code.

And now I feel old.

Floppy disks used to be floppy, you know...

I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.

Floppy Disks! Ha! We had a computer which used a tape player for information storage.


To get back on topic: I have gotten a personal email from Vic when I was thinking I had enough free time to publish pathfinder related material.
WoTC on the other hand felt content to ignore me on several issues.

I had to make a public mockery of them on their boards for them to answer some of the harder questions*. They had a habit of answering some very easy questions in the sage advice columns as opposed to the ones that were not so easy to answer. They told me "all I had to do was ask", so I responded I had been asking for months**, and they knew that certain questions were always causing issues. Of course they never responded.

I don't think Paizo would make us pay for a rules compendium either. :)

*I think these were categorized as the book of unanswered questions or something similar and constantly caused debates. The extra spell feat was an example of one of them.

**I had made the submitted my questions to be answered on their Sage section, emailed them about it, and asked on the boards.


Wicht wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
ciretose wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
Thanks. I actually did see those one google, but I figured those were so silly that nobody would actually try to use anything similar to that as a decoding system. I am guessing the screen told you what to line up in order to get each letter of the code.

And now I feel old.

Floppy disks used to be floppy, you know...

I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.
Floppy Disks! Ha! We had a computer which used a tape player for information storage.

Computer's I've actually programmed on...

TRASH-80
COCO 3
Timex Sinclair
Honeywell CP-6 Mainframe (with a 9 bit byte)

The Trash-80 and COCO 3 were the first genner's that didn't have storage. :) The Timex-Sinclair used cartridges like a game console for all it's applications, anything else you had to store externally on a tape deck (not a tape drive, an actual old fashioned tape deck, like your Duran Duran songs came on). That's the only way to save stuff off the Trash-80 and CoCo 3 as well. Programs saved as audio data. :)

EDIT : Oh, the CP-6 had a hard-drive that cost as much as a luxury car, and held a whole gig of data! It was the size of a washing machine. :) When it got full, anything not marked 'keep' got sent to a tape drive that held a whole 5 gigs of data. :)


Wicht wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
ciretose wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
Thanks. I actually did see those one google, but I figured those were so silly that nobody would actually try to use anything similar to that as a decoding system. I am guessing the screen told you what to line up in order to get each letter of the code.

And now I feel old.

Floppy disks used to be floppy, you know...

I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.
Floppy Disks! Ha! We had a computer which used a tape player for information storage.

Some gov't agencies were still using those, and we were taught how to use them in training as late as the mid 2000's. They might still be using them now. I never saw them on a personal PC though.


wraithstrike wrote:


Some gov't agencies were still using those, and we were taught how to use them in training as late as the mid 2000's. They might still be using them now. I never saw them on a personal PC though.

They started fading out until the late 90's. After that, it was 3.5" 'floppies'. I had 2 PCs with actual 5.25" floppy drives, one a Zenith and one an IBM.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

Tangentally on topic.

One 'perk' of Paizo over WotC is information storage. At least *now* the system is standardized, I think Sean was on the topic about how they had some magazines on 8.5" disks and didn't have readers when Dragon CD was made.

If, in 10 years, Paizo wants to put all the APs together on a DVD Rom (or whatever DVD Roms will be) then, they won't be looking for ancient readers :-)


Matthew Morris wrote:

Tangentally on topic.

One 'perk' of Paizo over WotC is information storage. At least *now* the system is standardized, I think Sean was on the topic about how they had some magazines on 8.5" disks and didn't have readers when Dragon CD was made.

If, in 10 years, Paizo wants to put all the APs together on a DVD Rom (or whatever DVD Roms will be) then, they won't be looking for ancient readers :-)

Here's a bigger difference. PAIZO gives you the PDF with the book if you subscribe. WoTC not only wouldn't, but they got to where they would not sell the PDF at all. I travel quite often for work, and I like having the PDFs so I can work on the game notes at hotels in the evenings.

I had players who bought the books, then downloaded copies of the PDFs off the internet from questionable sites, because they couldn't get them any other way.

What I really like is that the 3PPs follow the methods of the Primary. So, this means that 3PPs are more and more offering the PDF with the Book if you order it from them, or through Paizo/RPGNow. This is a huge benefit to me, and I like the fact that I'm not treated as a criminal (Oooh! You can't have a PDF you nasty pirate, you'll give copies to other people! - WoTC) but instead as a valuable customer.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

And because WoTC refuses to sell PDFs of their products, certain 4E items that are now out of print and out of stock in warehouses can't be purchased by anyone short of through used book sales or collector priced ebay sales, unless someone has illegally made a PDF from scans of their books (which I do not recommend).

In other words, not only are they treating you as if you have a criminal mind and will sell pirated PDFs they may in fact be contributing to an escalation of the illegal PDF trade rather than elimnating it.

Again, I do NOT recommend doing this. I don't do it myself, but then I haven't bothered to buy anything published by WoTC since 3.5 ended.


Dark Sasha wrote:

And because WoTC refuses to sell PDFs of their products, certain 4E items that are now out of print and out of stock in warehouses can't be purchased by anyone short of through used book sales or collector priced ebay sales, unless someone has illegally made a PDF from scans of their books (which I do not recommend).

In other words, not only are they treating you as if you have a criminal mind and will sell pirated PDFs they may in fact be contributing to an escalation of the illegal PDF trade rather than elimnating it.

Again, I do NOT recommend doing this. I don't do it myself, but then I haven't bothered to buy anything published by WoTC since 3.5 ended.

Sort of +1.

my one regret was not buying PDF versions of the 3.5 Core books and Shackled City HC.

Legendary Games, Necromancer Games

mdt wrote:


Computer's I've actually programmed on...

TRASH-80
COCO 3
Timex Sinclair
Honeywell CP-6 Mainframe (with a 9 bit byte)

I think I might have one that goes back further:

The Sol 20!

Yeah, I'm old.

Clark


Dabbler wrote:
I have no idea where 'striker' comes from. What I didn't like about 4e was not that it used these terms but that each class was 'locked' into one role. There were 8 classes, four roles, and zero leeway.

You really aren't though. Again, people who haven't played 4e, etc, etc.

Warlocks are a strong mix of striker and controller blended together. Fighters are capable of some amazing amounts of damage. Paladins have a good amount of "leader" to their abilities. Etc, etc. This isn't even going into hybrids or multiclassing!

The Exchange

MicMan wrote:

When the first people landed on the moon this was accomplished by 80386 CPUs - I mean what more do you need?

I know, threadjack, sorry. Couldn't let this one slide as you are out by over 20 years. See: Apollo Guidance Computer. i386 is 1990's tech for space, see Space Craft CPUs


MicMan wrote:

When the first people landed on the moon this was accomplished by 80386 CPUs - I mean what more do you need?

At least 4 processor cores - all hyperthreaded. A GPU (or more) to match. Lots of gigabytes of RAM. A few GB of VRAM. A sound card (or on-board solution) that supports 7.1 sound. Hard drives with storage space measuring in the TBs. More hard drives - external ones - with several more TB. An optical drive able to read - and write on - discs that store over two dozen GB each. Two (or maybe more) flatscreens, each bigger than the first TV I ever owned.

You know, the usual. :)

386s might be able to kick the Apollo 11's butt, but they can't hope to support 30+ fps in today's games in 1920x1200.

I have no intention of going to the moon until the Lunar Park opens (though I'd probably open my own Lunar Park. With blackjack! And hookers!), but I do want to play today's games on my computer. Or watch some HD videos. Or goof around in the internet. Or do some actual work. Usually several of these things at once.

So be happy with your 386. I'll go and look if you can't seduce the dragon lady after all. ;-P

Contributor

wraithstrike wrote:
I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.

I sold my Apple IIe back in the mid 90s, and now I'm hating that I did because I'm crazy nostalgic for Oregon Trail and a bunch of text-based adventure games from the 80s I played as a kid. I'll be splurging at some point on Ebay to snag a working vintage Apple IIe I think.


wraithstrike wrote:


I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk

I too. Thank the Void that they're no longer around. What a crappy medium.


Matthew Morris wrote:


If, in 10 years, Paizo wants to put all the APs together on a DVD Rom (or whatever DVD Roms will be) then, they won't be looking for ancient readers :-)

Maybe still the DVD ROM. Even though Blu-ray has been around for quite some time, The DVD doesn't seem to go anywhere, not even as the medium of choice for films.

For a lot of things, those 4 (or 9) GB are way more than adequate. Though it may be that in 10 years, the Blu-rays will be so cheap that you can afford to waste 24.5 instead of 4 GB storage when putting a couple hundred MB worth of stuff onto a disc.

Although I think that they might start putting games onto Blu-ray in the not-too-distant future, since games that won't fit onto one DVD9 are getting more commonplace. And apparently they're working at the next thing after Blu-ray with will be able to store TBs worth of data. And they even claim that they could hit the market in three years.


Clark Peterson wrote:
mdt wrote:


Computer's I've actually programmed on...

TRASH-80
COCO 3
Timex Sinclair
Honeywell CP-6 Mainframe (with a 9 bit byte)

I think I might have one that goes back further:

The Sol 20!

Yeah, I'm old.

Clark

That is one ugly machine.


Todd Stewart wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.
I sold my Apple IIe back in the mid 90s, and now I'm hating that I did because I'm crazy nostalgic for Oregon Trail and a bunch of text-based adventure games from the 80s I played as a kid. I'll be splurging at some point on Ebay to snag a working vintage Apple IIe I think.

What about this? (Link)


Todd Stewart wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.
I sold my Apple IIe back in the mid 90s, and now I'm hating that I did because I'm crazy nostalgic for Oregon Trail and a bunch of text-based adventure games from the 80s I played as a kid. I'll be splurging at some point on Ebay to snag a working vintage Apple IIe I think.

You can download Oregon Trail. The full version was about 20.00 dollars the last time I checked. As for the texted based games it might take some searching. That might save you the trouble of buying the computer.


KaeYoss wrote:
Todd Stewart wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk and Oregon Trail, but I never had a PC growing up. My parents could not afford one. I had my first one in 2002ish after I joined the military.
I sold my Apple IIe back in the mid 90s, and now I'm hating that I did because I'm crazy nostalgic for Oregon Trail and a bunch of text-based adventure games from the 80s I played as a kid. I'll be splurging at some point on Ebay to snag a working vintage Apple IIe I think.
What about this? (Link)

Thanks.


Java based online version


KaeYoss wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk
I too. Thank the Void that they're no longer around. What a crappy medium.

They are no longer around? Damn, I must be halucinating when I look to right and up and see old floppies on the shelf. Still, they won't be around quite soon when I am done dealing with and getting rid of old trinkets and trash.

Wait, aren't we a bit off-topic? Wasn't that discussion about paizo? Nah, I must have been mistaken... Returning to old computers... Anyone want to buy C-64 or Atari 130 XE?


Drejk wrote:
KaeYoss wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk
I too. Thank the Void that they're no longer around. What a crappy medium.

They are no longer around? Damn, I must be halucinating when I look to right and up and see old floppies on the shelf. Still, they won't be around quite soon when I am done dealing with and getting rid of old trinkets and trash.

Wait, aren't we a bit off-topic? Wasn't that discussion about paizo? Nah, I must have been mistaken... Returning to old computers... Anyone want to buy C-64 or Atari 130 XE?

I think I still have my old broken Commodore-64 somewhere.


Drejk wrote:
KaeYoss wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk
I too. Thank the Void that they're no longer around. What a crappy medium.

They are no longer around? Damn, I must be halucinating when I look to right and up and see old floppies on the shelf. Still, they won't be around quite soon when I am done dealing with and getting rid of old trinkets and trash.

Wait, aren't we a bit off-topic? Wasn't that discussion about paizo? Nah, I must have been mistaken... Returning to old computers... Anyone want to buy C-64 or Atari 130 XE?

We're nine pages in, if we're still in sight of the topic we're lucky ;p

Dark Archive

unless its a topic about Paizo and WotC, so back to the topic! i'd like to hear what others working in Paizo think of 3PP, we have James' responce we whant others!

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Sunderstone wrote:
my one regret was not buying PDF versions of the 3.5 Core books and Shackled City HC.

The Shacked City hardcover was never sold in PDF form, though you can still purchase PDFs of the original Dungeon issues here.

Jon Brazer Enterprises

ulgulanoth wrote:
unless its a topic about Paizo and WotC, so back to the topic! i'd like to hear what others working in Paizo think of 3PP, we have James' responce we whant others!

Before moving ahead with the Book of the River Nations series, I sent Paizo an early version of the project, asking if they had any problem with it. I mentioned that if they wanted anything changed, i'd change it. I also stated that if they did not want me to move forward with it, i wouldn't do it.

A few days later i got an email back saying that Paizo had no problem with what i was doing. The people at Paizo really are awesome.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Sunderstone wrote:
my one regret was not buying PDF versions of the 3.5 Core books and Shackled City HC.
The Shacked City hardcover was never sold in PDF form, though you can still purchase PDFs of the original Dungeon issues here.

Thanks, I didnt know that. I figured I missed the boat.

In any case, that's 1/4 less regret. :) I wanted a PDF of the updated HC version of the AP. I still have the original magazines.

Dark Archive

Can someone share some insight as to the differences in trying to do freelance work for WotC and Paizo? Submission guidlines, advice from staff, willingness to view, or comment on, a submission, etc? Especially concerning those that are new, not well established yet, or trying to get into the business?


Dale McCoy Jr wrote:
ulgulanoth wrote:
unless its a topic about Paizo and WotC, so back to the topic! i'd like to hear what others working in Paizo think of 3PP, we have James' responce we whant others!

Before moving ahead with the Book of the River Nations series, I sent Paizo an early version of the project, asking if they had any problem with it. I mentioned that if they wanted anything changed, i'd change it. I also stated that if they did not want me to move forward with it, i wouldn't do it.

A few days later i got an email back saying that Paizo had no problem with what i was doing. The people at Paizo really are awesome.

Man, you're staying on the op's topic!! That is so.... odd.

No, seriously, they seem like a cool bunch - and it doesn't hurt that Paizo's business strategy goes so well with being just that - cool.

I'll check out your River Nations series,

GRU


brock wrote:
MicMan wrote:

When the first people landed on the moon this was accomplished by 80386 CPUs - I mean what more do you need?

I know, threadjack, sorry. Couldn't let this one slide as you are out by over 20 years. See: Apollo Guidance Computer. i386 is 1990's tech for space, see Space Craft CPUs

Yeah, my fault, I should have been more concise:

The Apollo Guidance Computer had about the same calculatory power as the first home PCs with an 80386 processor had.


Since Lisa and Co are obviously monitoring this thread...

There appears to be something wrong with the forums. I see 50 or 60 threads with 0 posts, it appears you can add to an existing thread, but not create new ones. Not sure if anyone noticed or not.


Todd Stewart wrote:
I sold my Apple IIe back in the mid 90s, and now I'm hating that I did because I'm crazy nostalgic for Oregon Trail and a bunch of text-based adventure games from the 80s I played as a kid. I'll be splurging at some point on Ebay to snag a working vintage Apple IIe I think.

If you like text adventures, it might interest you to know that there is a very active community of authors creating new text adventures all the time. The correct term for these games is now "interactive fiction"; this site is a good place to start if you're interested in getting back into playing them.


Drejk wrote:
KaeYoss wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


I do remember the "floppy" floppy disk
I too. Thank the Void that they're no longer around. What a crappy medium.
They are no longer around?

They're antiquaries nowadays. Some still exist, and they even still sell them, but that's mostly legacy stuff. It's been years since they enabled computers to boot with media other than HDs and floppies, and with the USB port being standard now, too, all the reasons for having floppy drives (common interface with other computers and bootable medium) are gone.

I think my current computer is the second or third one that didn't have a floppy drive any more(not counting the laptops).


MicMan wrote:

Yeah, my fault, I should have been more concise:

The Apollo Guidance Computer had about the same calculatory power as the first home PCs with an 80386 processor had.

(Continuing the threadjack.)

Not even close.

The 8086, released a decade after the AGC, and a decade BEFORE the 80386 was far more powerful than the AGC.

AGC: 2k RAM
Early 8086: 16k RAM

AGC: 32k ROM storage
Early 8086: Floppy access at 160K at the very bottom end.

AGC: 1.024MHZ
Early 8086: 4.077MHz

AGC: 4 16-bit registers
Early 8086: 8 16-bit registers

At best, the thing was half as powerful as an 8086.

When it was built, it was pretty darned awesome for what it was, but it doesn't hold a candle to the 8086, let alone anything else released after that, including the 80386.

That said, it could do some multitasking, which was pretty impressive for something that old, but that's more a function of software than hardware.


Way off topic - Maybe we should start an ancient computer thread.

The first home computer I ever used Microbee 16 .

Original MicroBees ran at a clock speed of 2 MHz, with a video dot clock of 12 MHz, which was sufficient to display 64 × 16 characters (512 × 256 pixels) on a modified television or composite monitor. The original machines were supplied with 16 or 32 kB of static RAM, and stored programs on cassette, using Kansas City standard and 1200 Baud encoding.

Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Jason Beardsley wrote:
Can someone share some insight as to the differences in trying to do freelance work for WotC and Paizo? Submission guidlines, advice from staff, willingness to view, or comment on, a submission, etc? Especially concerning those that are new, not well established yet, or trying to get into the business?

I've done freelance for both, but nothing for WotC since 2007. I never had a problem with them, my editors were all cool and helpful and offered advice and direction when needed and let me do my thing otherwise. Pay was regular and timely, sometimes even BEFORE product was turned over, depending on what the budget money looked like for that line item.

That said, everyone I worked with at WotC is long gone, and they also non-renewed my contract for my webcolumn with a rather vague "Your hit count and ratings are still good, but we can't renew you and can't actually tell you why, but we're bringing things in house right now." Which, of course, turned out to be the run-up to 4th Edition. Amusingly, Stephen Radney-McFarland, now of Paizo, was the one who replaced me on the "Behind the Screen" webcolumn... :)

Paizo staffers are very forthcoming with advice to gamers, including prospective submitters. That said, it's a relatively small company, and if you are someone they don't know sending something in cold, it's going to be a hard sell to get them to spend time reviewing and commenting on something you send in, especially if they are slammed with a deadline (which is most of the time).

If you are interested in writing for Paizo, my suggestion would be to go back and review now four years of RPG Superstar threads. On it, you will find an insane wealth of advice and analysis by staffers, professional freelancers, and peers out there. You can see the kinds of ideas people have brought forth and the way they have framed them or presented them, and get all kinds of data on both the content and the presentation. This is a resource. Use it. The ideas people submit aren't going to exactly mirror your ideas, but approach reading it from a perspective of "what could I possibly learn from this" rather than "here is why this wouldn't apply to me."

Do the same with published modules, or rulebooks, or whatever flavors of RPG writing appeal to you. Focus on Paizo's own material, but look at others as well. See how established professionals approach the task of writing.

Meanwhile: Write. Design. Think about what you might create. Share your creations with others. Learn to accept criticism, and learn how to defend your design decisions *AND* how to revise your design decisions. Find people with whom you can share creative ideas and professional presentation. Becoming a patron in Open Design could be an opportunity, as could submitting things to open calls in various PF-friendly 3PP publications.

There are many ways to become a pro, but hoping a chronically busy Paizo staffer is going to read and champion your unsolicited manuscript may not be your most productive avenue. That's my thought, although you'll note I am in no way an official spokesman for Paizo or WotC.

Just tryin to help anotha Jason out! :)

Dark Archive

Thanks Jason! =)

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