Community Use Policy

[Steve Geddes]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, please move it to wherever it should go if not here..

I had a query regarding what constitutes "commercial use":

Is it ok for me to pay professionals to produce artwork, do layout, etcetera for inclusion of in something produced under the community use policy provided I was providing it totally free of charge (and had ownership of the rights to all that artwork and so forth)?

I wondered whether doing so would result in triggering the "If Paizo believes that you are in the publishing business..." clause.

Further details:

Spoiler:

I have a half-baked beginner box adventure which references some of the places near and around Sandpoint. I am toying with the idea of getting it illustrated, cartographied and laid out* before posting it somewhere-or-other - likely on a website which would also be designed by a professional.

It seems to fit within the intent of the license, but I can equally see it as something of a slippery slope (for example: if I decided to then pay some freelance author to actually write the adventure for me and then started posting those for public consumption) which seemed problematic.

*

Spoiler:

Presumably the use of the terms "cartographied" and "laid out" should make it clear that I am not, in fact, in the publishing business.

[Vic Wertz]

Steve,

You can spend all you like, so long as you're not generating income from publishing.

(And while we'd probably say "mapped," "laid out" is indeed the proper term.)

[Steve Geddes]

Beginner's luck. (although I can't believe the word "mapped" didn't think to appear in my head...)

Thanks, Vic. I appreciate the clarification. Now it's a question of which will win out, apathy or inspiration.