Traditionally, products are broken down as follows;
1st party; Anything created by the company for their game system.
3rd party: Anything published or otherwise created by a 3rd party.
and we can argue there is 2nd party, which is anything a DM creates for their own campaign.
But where would you place Dragon (and by extension Dungeon) Magazine in relation to Pathfinder?
Additionally, which issues of Dragon Magazine do you think are most worth investing in for use with Pathfinder content?
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2nd party, produced under a direct license from the 1st party.
2nd party, produced under a direct license from the 1st party.By that standard all of Pathfinder is 2nd party.
Also by that standard, all 3rd party content would have to be illegal (if it is not produced under license, it is an IP infringement, while if it is produced under license, then by your definition it is "2nd party.")
That's a rather odd definition, though, given that "content produced under license by a party separate from the IP owner and the customer" is usually what gets referred to as 3rd party.
I don't see how that follows. 3rd party publishers do not have the rights to use the Pathfinder name/marks (outside of the Pathfinder RPG Compatible logo), nor any of the Product Identity of Pathfinder. A 2nd party that holds a Pathfinder license does get to use those things (they get to set things in Golarion, their product gets a Pathfinder logo, etc.). A 1st party product is something that Paizo does entirely in-house, and all of their RPG lines fit this bill more-or-less. Yes, freelancers actually write the material for a lot of the lines, but those freelancers are contracted directly by Paizo and not some intermediary, and Paizo has their own in-house staff that further edits that content and puts together the final product.
I was wondering when someone was going to mention that.
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Clarification: traditionally, the first 2 parties in a business transaction are the buyer (you) and original product creator/publisher (Paizo, in the case of Pathfinder). (Note that we don't actually call either of these "first-party" or "second-party," though.) "Third-party" refers to ANYONE else.
Paizo started off as a third-party publisher for 3.5, but now that Pathfinder is its own thing, they're considered the primary publisher for that. Anyone that makes a Pathfinder-compatible product is "third-party."
Dragon was published by Paizo under a special arrangement with WotC, giving it the status of "officially licensed third-party material." It was blessed by WotC, but none of its content was considered cannon.
As for me, I still pull out my Dragon Compendium once in a while, and the occasional old issue, but I've left most 3.5 content behind. I have a lot of homebrew that has carried over from 3.5, some of which I stole from Dragon, but a lot of it has been updated since.
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I believe Dragon and Dungeon would die off at some point, because niche print magazines are an increasingly poor business.
Just out of curiosity, what (if anything) differentiates them from Paizo's APs and/or Player Companions in that regard? The latter products seem to be quite successful so far. ^_^
Legitimate question, not snark.
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I believe Dragon and Dungeon would die off at some point, because niche print magazines are an increasingly poor business.Just out of curiosity, what (if anything) differentiates them from Paizo's APs and/or Player Companions in that regard? The latter products seem to be quite successful so far. ^_^
Legitimate question, not snark.
Magazines are an arcane business. They are expected to be sold at price point well below the PF APs and Companions, so they require ads to be profitable. In the Youtube/Facebook/Twitch age, print ads are becoming increasingly irrelevant, doubly so among the hyper-tech geek target group.
Furthermore, magazines fall under several regulation and business practices such as the god-given right of a distributor to return the unsold magazines to you and get back part of the price.
On the top of that, there's the schedule that does not allow for any slips and delays. You can't just have a "no-magazine month".
And many other things which used to drive Lisa and Vic up the wall. I recall the collective sigh of relief when Paizo ended up no longer publishing a magazine. Periodical book series which Paizo does now, while quite similar on paper (HAHAHA! GOOD PUN, GORBACZ! UR SO SMRT!), are an entire different animal from business and legal point of view.
The sad story of Kobold Quarterly, which went belly up despite being an excellent publication and a rightful spiritual successor to Dungeon and Dragon, is a cautionary tale to anybody who thinks mags are a good business in this day and age.
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I see. Well thought-out; thank you! ^_^
If you are interested in some of the deatails, read the first few years of blog posts in Here
Chief Technical Officer
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Clarification: traditionally, the first 2 parties in a business transaction are the buyer (you) and original product creator/publisher (Paizo, in the case of Pathfinder). (Note that we don't actually call either of these "first-party" or "second-party," though.) "Third-party" refers to ANYONE else.
Paizo started off as a third-party publisher for 3.5, but now that Pathfinder is its own thing, they're considered the primary publisher for that. Anyone that makes a Pathfinder-compatible product is "third-party."
Your first paragraph is correct with respect to contract terminology. But when people talk about "third-party publishing" in gaming, they're applying terminology from video game development rather than contract law. Under this paradigm:
• First-party developers make the platform that the game is played on as well as the game, so Microsoft is the first party for XBOX, Sony is the first party for Playstation, and so on.
• Second-party developers are directly contracted by first parties to make games for them. The first party usually has significant control—sometimes total control—over the product. This category tends to be a bit fuzzily defined sometimes. (343 Industries develops Halo for Microsoft, but they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. Are they 1st-party or 2nd?)
• Third-party developers make games for platforms they don't own, and though they usually have some form of contract with the 1st party (at least, for consoles—not so much for PC), the 1st parties don't generally have control over their business decisions.
So applying this paradigm to the world of the Pathfinder RPG:
• Paizo is the first party, because we make the underlying system.
• We don't tend to do a lot of RPG content that could fall under the "second party" banner, though some things we authorized for Kobold Quarterly a while back might fit in that category. (You could certainly say that WizKids produces Pathfinder Battles minis as a second party... but most people would just call them a "licensee.")
• Anybody who uses our Pathfinder RPG Compatibility License would be a third-party publisher.
This is all different from contract law. Under the Pathfinder RPG Compatibility License, Paizo is a party to it (nominally the first party) and anyone using it is a party to it (nominally the second party); there is no third party to that particular contract, as it does not provide for assignees, delegates, or third-party beneficiaries. Similarly, with the OGL, Wizards of the Coast is a party to it (nominally the first party) and anyone using it (including Paizo) is a party to it (nominally the second party).
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4th party. Made for another system but convertable. See the entire conversions sub board. Mana potions from Diablo are 4th party. So are Trolls that reproduce by regeneration.
Not a feat for this section of the forums (or anywhere in the forums even, I am not sure), but now I want to see an effort made to convert every Paizo published Dragon Magazine's content to Pathfinder, including flavor where necessary. There is no far realm after all, but there is the Dark Tapestry and the outside.
Possibly also Dungeon magazine...
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Not a feat for this section of the forums (or anywhere in the forums even, I am not sure), but now I want to see an effort made to convert every Paizo published Dragon Magazine's content to Pathfinder, including flavor where necessary. There is no far realm after all, but there is the Dark Tapestry and the outside.
Possibly also Dungeon magazine...
Sadly, anything published in those magazines is Wizards IP, and is not part of the OGL.
Unless you're talking about fan conversions. In which case, most of it works fine as published. ^_^
While I am thinking of it, would full conversions of Dragon Magazine content be ok to post, or would one need to do something with the information to make it ok? I mean, it isn't selling the information, but it is in a sense giving away content one would require paying money otherwise to access.
For instance; I'd love to update (or see updated) the different paladin types (There were two articles that gave different paladins for every alignment), cerebrosis, the Aberration Paragon, the Tainted PrC, and the spell sovereign. For the paladin part, for example, would I be able to just post alternative classes for each?
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I believe Dragon and Dungeon would die off at some point, because niche print magazines are an increasingly poor business.Just out of curiosity, what (if anything) differentiates them from Paizo's APs and/or Player Companions in that regard? The latter products seem to be quite successful so far. ^_^
Legitimate question, not snark.
Magazines are an arcane business. They are expected to be sold at price point well below the PF APs and Companions, so they require ads to be profitable. In the Youtube/Facebook/Twitch age, print ads are becoming increasingly irrelevant, doubly so among the hyper-tech geek target group.
Furthermore, magazines fall under several regulation and business practices such as the god-given right of a distributor to return the unsold magazines to you and get back part of the price.
On the top of that, there's the schedule that does not allow for any slips and delays. You can't just have a "no-magazine month".
And many other things which used to drive Lisa and Vic up the wall. I recall the collective sigh of relief when Paizo ended up no longer publishing a magazine. Periodical book series which Paizo does now, while quite similar on paper (HAHAHA! GOOD PUN, GORBACZ! UR SO SMRT!), are an entire different animal from business and legal point of view.
The sad story of Kobold Quarterly, which went belly up despite being an excellent publication and a rightful spiritual successor to Dungeon and Dragon, is a cautionary tale to anybody who thinks mags are a good business in this day and age.
Point if clarification - Kobold Quarterly definiately did not go "belly up". The publisher made the decision to stop publication in order to focus on more profitable and less time / labor intensive product lines. The magazine didn't go belly up
When it comes to intellectual property and copyright laws, it is the distribution without permission that is illegal, not just sales. "Fair use" will pretty much cover home games (although, technically, any materials containing the IP/copyrighted information should be destroyed or returned to the original purchaser), but any wider dissemination ("without the express written consent" of WotC) is not covered by fair use. Fan conversions are usually a bit of a gray area, but may be considered violations if WotC objects to the quantity, scope, etc.
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If you go back to something previous to the copyright, you can use that. My Ooglers are not beholders. They are based on far earlier floating, alien, eyeballs. Basic concepts cannot be copyrighted.
For example, one module in the magazine was the Changemat. You could have humanoid spiders that kept similar large spiders as pets and worshipped demons with human sacrifices. You just cannot call them Changemats and must make up their stats fresh. You can make their behavior learned and thus open it up to PC spidroids.
Their are already topics where people are discussing the neutral, paladin like archetype. You do not have to reinvent the wheel to create a better car.