Adventure Card Game Format Licensing?

[Poog's Toad]

Hello - anyone aware of future products coming that will use the Adventure Card Game system outside of the Pathfinder theme/universe/setting? I see other (non-Paizo) products billing themselves as "Adventure Card Games" but with significant differences from the PACG mechanics - was wondering if those were licensed in some way?

[KingOfAnything]

I don't think 'Adventure Card Game' is protected any more than 'Roleplaying Game' is protected in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. And if it were, it would belong to Lone Shark Games, not Paizo.

[Hawkmoon269]

"Adventure Card Game" was intentionally not trademarked (Pathfinder Adventure Card Game was). Vic explains here that they felt Magic: The Gathering benefited from the existence of other "trading card games" and so they hoped that eventually there would be other companies making "Adventure Card Games" as well. It looks like that hope is coming to fruition.

[James McKendrew]

Lone Shark Games, the folks who develop the rules and such for Pathfinder ACG, do have a game that uses similar (but not identical) mechanics, called Apocrypha. It's huge amounts of fun!

[skizzerz]

The name Adventure Card Game name is not trademarked, so anyone else could make a game with similar mechanics and call it an ACG. Indeed, Vic states that is a desirable outcome, and I suspect Mike feels much the same way.

While someone else can’t duplicate PACG’s or Apocrypha’s mechanics directly (Lone Shark Games has a copyright on those mechanics; and Paizo obviously owns the PACG setting), there’s a lot of space in the area to do something similar and call it an ACG.

[Codcake]

This may be helpful

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249/mythbusting-game-design-and-copyrig ht-trademarks-a

[elcoderdude]

Codcake wrote:

This may be helpful

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249/mythbusting-game-design-and-copyrig ht-trademarks-a

That is interesting.

Codcake's link linkified