Paizo's Partnership with Archives of Nethys ends on July 24

[Gisher]

Here's the statement from AoN.

[TheWorstFighter]

As disappointing a decision as it is confusing.

[n00bxqb]

I'm very disappointed in this news and hope Paizo reconsiders their partnership with Archives of Nethys. They've been a tremendous resource for players and GMs alike and it's one of the key selling features of Paizo's TTRPGs.

[DaneilSan]

Terribly disappointed. A wonderful resource for the community. I wouldn’t have gotten half the people into Pathfinder without it.

[JiCi]

Well, as long as they don't shut down, we're good...

[BookBird]

Tremendously baffling. I can't imagine there's much profit to be made in this. Things must be really dire behind the scenes if this is where they're at, and even in this case I doubt it's worth it.

[worldhopper]

This is baffling and incredibly disappointing. I get that Paizo's struggling hard after the Diamond disaster, but this feels like complete nonsense logic. I'm sure some MBA figured this is a good idea, going "well, if the players have access to the rules for free on AoN, they won't buy the books," but we have years of proof that's not true. It's the same kind of thinking that led to WotC trying to kill the OGL, and, well... we saw how that went.

The Archives of Nethys has been a huge boon for getting people into the game and making it accessible to everyone. It makes me want to buy more books, not fewer. All this decision will do is render a major community resource less useful and raise the barrier for new players to get involved. Please, please reconsider.

[AsheIsAmazing]

Really disappointed to hear this.

[moosher12]

This is really disappointing, please grant it back. AoN was such a beautiful service that helped me bring people into the community. And without it, it never could have happened. And frankly, because of Paizo's need to apply errata to books, Archives of Nethys is not just important, but almost mandatory. As playing the game through books only makes players and GMs have to deal with Paizo's various unupdated, and sometimes even broken content. Even when you own the books and the PDFs, AoN is still a valuable resource for managing the game as a whole.

[Conscious Meat]

Likewise, not a fan of this decision. They'll still be able to host rules text, at least, but this seems... unfortunate.

[IanJames]

There ought to be a way forward in any case, this seems like a mutual loss and a step backward.

[Jeff Wilder]

Depending on a few things, this could end my group's experimental adoption of PF2E. We've been buying nearly everything, but being able to look at the *Archives of Nethys* at the table has been incredibly important to us. If that ends, I don't see how we continue the change.

[Ravingdork]

Also started a thread here.

[Gorgo Primus]

I think revoking the special Paizo Publishing License with AoN is a selfish shortsighted move that’s openly hostile to their own fan and customer base. AON having access to all the rules, with proper official terminology, names, and images is a huge part of what makes 2E so accessible and is a major selling point. It’s also the premier tool used to look up rules while running games online, rather than fumbling through all the physical books on my shelf.

I can’t think of a single reason to do this that isn’t some misguided and mistaken belief that AoN somehow costs them sales (it does the opposite).

[Elfteiroh]

Gorgo Primus wrote:

I think revoking the special Paizo Publishing License with AoN is a selfish shortsighted move that’s openly hostile to their own fan and customer base. AON having access to all the rules, with proper official terminology, names, and images is a huge part of what makes 2E so accessible and is a major selling point. It’s also the premier tool used to look up rules while running games online, rather than fumbling through all the physical books on my shelf.

I can’t think of a single reason to do this that isn’t some misguided and mistaken belief that AoN somehow costs them sales (it does the opposite).

TBF, the official terminology and names are not going away. The CUP still let them use the proper names and mention the deities and stuff. It's really just the pictures and early access to the books that's going away.

[Dunwright]

I'm curious here- does anybody know how early AoN had actually been receiving these new books to target updates for street release date? That is to say, how much will this actually delay updates compared to the way they've been doing things? Will they come a few weeks after street date? A few months? Paizo doesn't pay AoN and is encouraging them to still keep the site running and updating in accordance with their Community Use Policy, so I can only conclude that somebody at Paizo has calculated that the amount of money they lose from people just going to AoN for their rules in whatever timespan will be created by these delays is significant enough that it was offsetting the money they gain from AoN bringing players into the game and needed to be corrected. Presumably the idea is that if AoN takes weeks or months to update after a new release then a significant number of people exist who really want the new rules *immediately* and have the money to buy new releases immediately but don't otherwise care enough to actually buy them if they're available on AoN will be compelled to buy these books in that timeframe because they just won't be able to wait for AoN to update. How many such customers actually exist, I wonder? Paizo probably has better data on this than any of us can speculate but it feels like it must be a small niche to me. Maybe my intuition here is wrong though.

[moosher12]

Remember everyone to send emails where you can. Also Gen Con is around the corner, and anyone visiting Gen Con can talk to Paizo representatives directly.

[TheFinish]

I will echo my tremendous disappointment in this decision. I cannot fathom what Paizo gains from this that offsets the tremendous amount of goodwill they're likely to lose from this course of action.

[ornathopter]

I'm very disappointed by this news. AON is, without exaggeration, what makes Pathfinder playable for me. Being able to easily find all the rogue feats, or all the water spells, or all the types of shields, in an easy intuitive way - all that is incredibly helpful and there's no replacement for it. Without that, if I had to flip between 5 books to put a character together or to try and figure out where exactly the feat I sort-of remembered was from - that would be exhausting. There's already a long list of TTRPGs with interesting concepts and rules that I can't really get my friend group into because they have 10 source books and no AON-equivalent.

And I'm glad that the rules are still up, but the art is a loss in itself. I suppose some of them will still be up on the pathfinder wiki, but still.

[Twiggies]

Just 10 minutes before I saw this announcement, I had just gone onto aonprd to share the Athamaru page with a friend to show them how cute the art of these fish people are, and how cool it is of Paizo to have a deal with this super awesome community built website which makes looking for things super easy for getting into the game, as a way to convince them to try playing it. And then... LOL.

This one is wild to me too:
"We have been hosting the original Paizo PRD up until now, under legacy.aonprd.com. With the partnership dissolving, we will be taking this site down."

Losing old pages is always immensely sad, even if most of it is on the modern aonprd.

Sincerely hope they rethink this.

[Perpdepog]

Elfteiroh wrote:

Gorgo Primus wrote:

I think revoking the special Paizo Publishing License with AoN is a selfish shortsighted move that’s openly hostile to their own fan and customer base. AON having access to all the rules, with proper official terminology, names, and images is a huge part of what makes 2E so accessible and is a major selling point. It’s also the premier tool used to look up rules while running games online, rather than fumbling through all the physical books on my shelf.

I can’t think of a single reason to do this that isn’t some misguided and mistaken belief that AoN somehow costs them sales (it does the opposite).

TBF, the official terminology and names are not going away. The CUP still let them use the proper names and mention the deities and stuff. It's really just the pictures and early access to the books that's going away.

Which I think is important to keep in mind, especially if folks are going to talk with Paizo staff or send emails to the company. AoN isn't being shut down, they're just not being fed into the loop or being allowed to use the art. Or host the PRD site, though I'm not sure who still uses that site over AoN itself.

All that being said ... I'm also saddened and disappointed by this decision. Paizo's relationship with third-party entities like Archives of Nethys is one of the things I've always liked about the company. Business is gonna business, but the fact Paizo put its rules up online, for free, and in formats that are easy to read is what got me into the game, and the fact that Paizo seemed to allow such sites with their blessing is one of the reasons I've stayed. Extending partnerships to folks like AoN also helps promote a culture of accessibility that is head-and-shoulders more open than other games I know and like.

[Perpdepog]

Dunwright wrote:

I'm curious here- does anybody know how early AoN had actually been receiving these new books to target updates for street release date? That is to say, how much will this actually delay updates compared to the way they've been doing things? Will they come a few weeks after street date? A few months? Paizo doesn't pay AoN and is encouraging them to still keep the site running and updating in accordance with their Community Use Policy, so I can only conclude that somebody at Paizo has calculated that the amount of money they lose from people just going to AoN for their rules in whatever timespan will be created by these delays is significant enough that it was offsetting the money they gain from AoN bringing players into the game and needed to be corrected. Presumably the idea is that if AoN takes weeks or months to update after a new release then a significant number of people exist who really want the new rules *immediately* and have the money to buy new releases immediately but don't otherwise care enough to actually buy them if they're available on AoN will be compelled to buy these books in that timeframe because they just won't be able to wait for AoN to update. How many such customers actually exist, I wonder? Paizo probably has better data on this than any of us can speculate but it feels like it must be a small niche to me. Maybe my intuition here is wrong though.

I'm not sure either. The answer there is fairly easy though; just request--I doubt they'd even need to make it any sort of order--that AoN delay new releases for a few weeks after street date. Provide some buffer time for folks to get the books and read the lore. The actual mechanics are available on Pathbuilder and Nexus anyway.

[BotBrain]

This is legitimately terrible behaviour on Paizo's end. One of the biggest draws to this system is the fact there is a comprehensive and free website right there that you can just show people. Pictures of ancestries bring them to life, glimmers of setting lore get people invested and inspire people. If you take this away, people will bounce off a system, especially one like pathfinder that people are convinced is inaccessible and overly complex.

This is the kind of decision that makes me strongly consider ceasing to purchase Paizo products. I chose this company because it didn't behave like WOTC trying to put everything behind paywalls and throw their weight around.

If this is some desperation move spurred on by the diamond bankruptcy, I sympathise, but this is the kind of behaviour that will cost far more than whatever money will be raised by people buying books to see some art and setting lore.

[Crouza]

Imagine looking at your situation post the diamond fiasco and in the midst of tariffs and global trade shocks and going "Yes, now is the time to take the metaphorical shotgun and blow my own foot off." By pissing off their community out of nowhere and with seemingly no other justification than "I was bored tee hee".

[BotBrain]

Also right before your major book for the year? I was excited for impossible magic but I'm not buying anything until there's a satisfying resolution to the situation.

[TangledLion]

So I shared my thoughts in discussion of the PF2e Foundry discord server but I'm sharing here since I'm aware Paizo pays attention to forum buzz and I'm sure customer service is already swamped enough without me sharing my thoughts there. (Seriously give those folks a hero point).

I said on the discord wrote:

Yeah like, I think I kinda understand if this was driven by not receiving any[/enough] royalties(we don't know for certain if this is the reason) but like it still feels like a short sighted decision imo. I've spent a [...]ton of money directly on Paizo.com for finder [stuff]. More than I really should have probably. And literally none of that would have happened if it wasn't for AoN having access to all the rules for free and having that cool resource be officially endorsed by Paizo is one of the things that made me a fan. I feel that even if there's a month the archives don't send revenue to Paizo they STILL provide value to them and the partnership was a cool way to show they supported the project. Glad it isn't going away but I very much liked that they were being allowed to use more and more art even if in low resolution it just made it feel all that more legit.

I would encourage Paizo to reconsider this decision. I do recognize AoN isn't going away, just losing some perks, but I still feel like they bring a good deal of value to the Pathfinder and Starfinder communities bringing in new people to become fans of this world so carefully crafted by the teams at Paizo. And when those people become fans, they're more likely to make purchases here on Paizo.com because they see bits and pieces of the lore of Golarion in things like Deity blocks, monster descriptions, and bits of lore in various scattered feats and items from APs. And so they buy the books to try and get more of the picture of that amazing lore.

There's even been times I was on the fence about a new release, and I go on Nethys and browse the newly added books and see something that catches my imagination and I want to know more so I pick the book up right away. On someone like myself that's better marketing(hate to use such a callous term but I think it applies) than any advertisment can do on its own. And in the case of those occasions, their ability to get the new info up promptly was a big part of how I got interested in a book I may not have been interested in otherwise.

tl;DR I'm not mad but slightly disappointed by this decision and would urge a reconsideration and reflection on all the value AoN provides as a Paizo partner as a whole.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

So, a little update from where I've been. Pathfinder RPG Discord is in a bit of a shitstorm, what with there being people who aren't reading and others being jerks about it. Not to mention there was a bluesky post in response to the email campaign that's been overwhelming the one person taking care of that.

So this has become the best place to protest now. I do agree that Paizo needs to reconsider this, even if this is pretty minor by itself. But if this is a sign of things getting worse. And that notion is causing people to really overreact. Even still, AoN is a cornerstone of this community, especially in a world where people aren't paid enough to buy things for fun, and where people's ability to get together socially with others outside of online spaces is dwindling. There is no given reason for why this decision was made, and people like me need to know if Paizo is still on our side on things.

Paizo has done better when other corporations have chosen to fall behind. AoN is part of why we have banded together around PF2e since the OGL fiasco back in 2023 with DnD5e. That game hasn't improved much since, and other options aren't on the same level of fame. So please, make a good statement soon and reconsider this decision. Thank you.

[BotBrain]

I'm still going actually. I'm going to log off for my own sake and to avoid cluttering the forum but I am genuinely upset at this. Some of that is my own fault for over-investing in pathfinder as a concept instead of treating it as a Thing I Like but this is truly baffling and upsetting.

Before I go I'll remind everyone not to take it out on customer service reps, and to be polite yet firm in your criticism.

[CthosEris]

This is so disappointing. One of the main things I tell friends to get them interested in 2e is that the rules are all free on AoN. I hope Paizo reverses this decision!

[Dunwright]

Perpdepog wrote:

Dunwright wrote:

I'm curious here- does anybody know how early AoN had actually been receiving these new books to target updates for street release date? That is to say, how much will this actually delay updates compared to the way they've been doing things? Will they come a few weeks after street date? A few months? Paizo doesn't pay AoN and is encouraging them to still keep the site running and updating in accordance with their Community Use Policy, so I can only conclude that somebody at Paizo has calculated that the amount of money they lose from people just going to AoN for their rules in whatever timespan will be created by these delays is significant enough that it was offsetting the money they gain from AoN bringing players into the game and needed to be corrected. Presumably the idea is that if AoN takes weeks or months to update after a new release then a significant number of people exist who really want the new rules *immediately* and have the money to buy new releases immediately but don't otherwise care enough to actually buy them if they're available on AoN will be compelled to buy these books in that timeframe because they just won't be able to wait for AoN to update. How many such customers actually exist, I wonder? Paizo probably has better data on this than any of us can speculate but it feels like it must be a small niche to me. Maybe my intuition here is wrong though.

I'm not sure either. The answer there is fairly easy though; just request--I doubt they'd even need to make it any sort of order--that AoN delay new releases for a few weeks after street date. Provide some buffer time for folks to get the books and read the lore. The actual mechanics are available on Pathbuilder and Nexus anyway.

I can't help but wonder if this was some sort of mangled decision-by-committee brought about by Paizo's recent struggles. Like some executive who's been trying to stem the bleeding since the Diamond fiasco and the layoffs floated the idea of shutting down free rules resources to force free-loaders to buy books, and somebody else argued back that this would be a bad idea for a number of reasons, and back and forth until you end up with this weird decision that doesn't seem to accomplish anything meaningful but annoys a lot of people and was pushed through because somebody has to be seen to be doing something about the decline. Maybe that's way more speculation than is warranted here, but to me it bodes poorly for Paizo a business.

[Deriven Firelion]

We have been lucky Paizo has been giving so much away for free all these years. I wouldn't be surprise if in the current economic environment with the K-shaped economy and AI making it easier to make adventures that they are taking some revenue hits.

I know my buddies when they DM use AI services like Chat GPT and Gemini to make adventures including monsters, maps, NPCs, descriptions for encounters, and the like.

They don't need things to be overly precise for gaming. The AI has become so good it can kick out maps, design monsters, and build an entire adventure with some prompts.

I bet it's searching the web and drawing all the info from sites like Archives of Nethys and the like. Now Paizo after dealing with Wizards of the Coast's legal issues with intellectual property is getting to deal with the reality that AI is going to eat into their adventure profits.

Their model seemed built on the idea of giving the base rules of the game away, then making money selling adventures. Now people can use AI to quickly produce encounters and adventures with quickly designed creatures, maps, narratives, traps, and the like because the AI searched all their rules off the web and used them to build adventure materials within minutes.

The AI world is going to hit Paizo and other companies producing similar content like an streaming hit movies and music. They need to move to defend their market and may have to figure out how to prevent AI from using all their online content to eat into their adventure line profits.

I still prefer a well designed Paizo module. But if my buddies are only using AI now for adventure design, they can't be alone in that regard.

[Axolotl]

I’m very much not a tech guy, but couldn’t you put a CAPTCHA on AoN to prevent it from being scraped for AI content? It’s probably more complicated than that.

Anyhow, joining the chorus to say that this is a very disappointing decision by Paizo. Paizo should have at least gotten ahead of this with an announcement of their own PRD or SRD. Leaving everyone in the dust with no explanation, and having to hear about this through Archives of Nethys, is simply unprofessional.

[Tridus]

I understand that things are tough, but this is a mistake. AoN is one of the best pieces of advertising Paizo has. The fact that someone can just go look up an ancestry/class/rule and find it, with art? That's a huge selling feature of the system for new folks.

It's not a money maker in terms of royalties, but the goodwill and fan marketing it produces are worth a fortune.

I've got a whole shelf of PF2 books that is groaning under its own weight and I still use AoN every game night. It's that valuable. Along with Pathbuilder (and probably Foundry, though I suspect Foundry modules do pay royalties) it's one of the cornerstones of making Pathfinder accessible and easy to play.

Someone is going after the wrong target, here. If there is a fear about AoN causing reduced book sales, I'm sure something could be worked out so content is delayed a bit.

But taking down something like the Shoony ancestry art? Let's be real: no one is buying Extinction Curse book 3 just for ancestry art. But I can send someone to that page, they see that, and ideas just spring up in their head. I've literally seen it happen at my table.

I really, really urge Paizo to rethink this. AoN are your fans and supporters. Find a way to make it work.

[ornathopter]

It would be very weird if this was because of people using AI to plagiarize adventures, because AON doesn't have full adventure text, or maps, or narrative. It has the monsters, it has items and archetypes, but you can't run an adventure path for free off of what's on Archives of Nethys. So punishing them for some people deciding to let hallucination-bot come up with a dungeon for them would be like punishing a library with a cookbook section because people keep going to McDonalds for lunch instead of buying your cookbooks to make food at home.

[Highwind Raptor]

Like many, I'm disappointed in this decision. AON is a huge reason I was able to get my current group into the hobby. Without direct word from Paizo, this move seems hard to justify.

[WWHsmackdown]

I really like this game, I hope Paizo can stay solvent over the Diamond theft. I'll keep buy rulebooks and adventures; hopefully that's enough

[moosher12]

ornathopter wrote:

It would be very weird if this was because of people using AI to plagiarize adventures, because AON doesn't have full adventure text, or maps, or narrative. It has the monsters, it has items and archetypes, but you can't run an adventure path for free off of what's on Archives of Nethys. So punishing them for some people deciding to let hallucination-bot come up with a dungeon for them would be like punishing a library with a cookbook section because people keep going to McDonalds for lunch instead of buying your cookbooks to make food at home.

Agreed, AI does not make sense in this case. Because all AI can really do is build encounters the same way any 3rd party could, but there isn't any Paizo adventures to borrow from, unless they are being fed the PDFs directly, which is a problem completely unrelated to AoN. Alike, if it is building statblocks from AoN, you don't need AoN to do that. You can just feed it the PDFs.

[Tridus]

Axolotl wrote:

I’m very much not a tech guy, but couldn’t you put a CAPTCHA on AoN to prevent it from being scraped for AI content? It’s probably more complicated than that.

Anyhow, joining the chorus to say that this is a very disappointing decision by Paizo. Paizo should have at least gotten ahead of this with an announcement of their own PRD or SRD. Leaving everyone in the dust with no explanation, and having to hear about this through Archives of Nethys, is simply unprofessional.

Cloudflare has some AI blocking services, but blocking it in a way that determined scrapers can't get through while also making it easy to use for humans is an extremely difficult challenge on a technical level. And with the community use licence, that content is out there anyway (that's how Pathbuilder users it).

The thing is that I just finished GMing a game tonight. I hit AoN literally ten times during the game looking up things like items, retraining rules, etc. I have a shelf full of books, but for looking up a rule or item during a game AoN is massively faster and more convenient. It's a huge win for PF2 in terms of ease of game mastering that we have this.

If this is really about AI, then it's very shortsighted because it won't really stop AI from ingesting material (especially since the actual rules and such will still be on AoN, just slower).

[Gisher]

I've been contemplating this decision, and the only possible reason for it that I can come up with is that someone else promised they will provide Paizo with more revenue than AoN if they are given the Paizo imprimatur.

With Paizo's current financial troubles, an offer like that would be pretty much impossible to turn down.

I'm glad that, at least for now, AoN will still legally be able to post the newer written content, but I'm worried that Paizo might eventually take the WotC approach of rescinding that license in order to drive traffic to whoever becomes the official online reference.

[Deriven Firelion]

ornathopter wrote:

It would be very weird if this was because of people using AI to plagiarize adventures, because AON doesn't have full adventure text, or maps, or narrative. It has the monsters, it has items and archetypes, but you can't run an adventure path for free off of what's on Archives of Nethys. So punishing them for some people deciding to let hallucination-bot come up with a dungeon for them would be like punishing a library with a cookbook section because people keep going to McDonalds for lunch instead of buying your cookbooks to make food at home.

AI is not plagiarzing adventures. It's plagiarizing base rules content to make adventures.

You can type in something like "Make an orc enemy for CR 7 that uses a great axe using PF2 rules." It will generate you an orc enemy with full PF2 rules using AI.

You can do the same for traps. You can do the same for narratives. You can do the same for maps.

I usually use modules. My buddies were using this AI stuff. I asked them how they were generating creatures that I couldn't find on Archives or from other sources. They said they just typed in "Use PF2 to make x creature." The AI did it. It might mess up a rule or two, but if you type in the CR, it will take the PF2 rules and generate an appropriate CR creature.

The AI was even making completely new abilities. Just making stuff up for monsters. I was wondering "Where did you that weird ability no other creature has?" My buddy tells me the AI just made it up. Gave it a DC and made up some monster ability.

They told me they sat there writing prompts to make maps, write up a narrative, and generate monsters.

My other buddy that has a Gemini account makes up images for the monsters, NPCs, and uses AI to generate video roleplaying for his characters to give them a voice and personality.

I feel like Paizo needs to get ahead or at least keep with the AI game. It's providing tools to players they better learn to integrate or it's going to hammer them.

Paizo has to beat the AI content the users can produce by maybe having their own artists start integrating AI into their modules and games. Maybe they can start including AI videos with PDF downloads for NPCs and such. Make their stuff better than the stuff users can make.

AI has really change the adventure making work. My buddies are going to town with it. I'm cheap though. I don't want to spend money on an AI account to make videos and such. It is pretty cool when your DM is sending you videos of the NPCs and monsters in the game moving and talking.

[Twiggies]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

[snip it's because of AI]

Guessing it's because of AI making adventures doesn't make sense, because the main contents of the site, the text, which the AI would scrape for regurgitating and guessing text for stats, is still going to stay up (except for legacy.aonprd, RIP), new updates will just be slower and removing the images is mainly going to impact real humans being able to attract other real new humans folk in.

[Deriven Firelion]

moosher12 wrote:

ornathopter wrote:

It would be very weird if this was because of people using AI to plagiarize adventures, because AON doesn't have full adventure text, or maps, or narrative. It has the monsters, it has items and archetypes, but you can't run an adventure path for free off of what's on Archives of Nethys. So punishing them for some people deciding to let hallucination-bot come up with a dungeon for them would be like punishing a library with a cookbook section because people keep going to McDonalds for lunch instead of buying your cookbooks to make food at home.

Agreed, AI does not make sense in this case. Because all AI can really do is build encounters the same way any 3rd party could, but there isn't any Paizo adventures to borrow from, unless they are being fed the PDFs directly, which is a problem completely unrelated to AoN. Alike, if it is building statblocks from AoN, you don't need AoN to do that. You can just feed it the PDFs.

It builds them in minutes for free. This is going to hurt 3rd party adventure designers too.

[moosher12]

Plagiarizing base rules content to make adventures doesn't sound like a problem, because that's the point of licensing in the first place, to grant the rights to use base rules content to anyone else using the license. A human 3rd party can already do that all they want. If anything, all it does is force the user of the AI to use the ORC license from a legal point of view, as it needs to act like a 3rd party, and inject any of its innovations back into the licensescape to legally be allowed to participate.

If it's taking the content without ORC, the company can be sued. And if it's taking the company within ORC, the license is doing as its designed to do, and it in return grants Paizo access to its mechanical content.

Granted, it's not to say it's not a problem for 3rd party adventure writers. But that doesn't specifically sound like a Paizo problem. Unhealthy for the community, yes, but not a Paizo problem.

[Deriven Firelion]

Twiggies wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

[snip it's because of AI]

Guessing it's because of AI making adventures doesn't make sense, because the main contents of the site, the text, which the AI would scrape for regurgitating and guessing text for stats, is still going to stay up (except for legacy.aonprd, RIP), new updates will just be slower and removing the images is mainly going to impact real humans being able to attract other real new humans folk in.

The AI alone is likely but one of a many reasons slamming Paizo.

All these factors keeping adding up. Paizo may need to rethink it's money-making methodology in the wake of all these changes.

Paizo has a hard ban on anything AI produced on the forums. Yet outside these forums people are using AI to do a lot of stuff with their rules. They cannot be happy about that.

[Parry]

Chasing imaginary money by burning community goodwill is certainly a choice. My cynical self imagined that this was the plan when Demiplane launched. I am sure there are projections on loss due to AI and such, but the most obvious reason for this decision is to slowly throttle free options until many players, especially those less comfortable with non streamlined access to materials, feel forced into the paid model. I know it is just a normal business strategy, but it feels deeply scummy.

I sent in my more detailed thoughts on the issue, but as I mentioned in my email I am a customer from Singapore with multiple books subscriptions. I pay a criminal amount in shipping to support Paizo. The apologists on the subreddit and other places are right, Paizo is a business and decisions that effect it are determined by financial gains. There is no reason for me to spend my money with companies that I fundamentally disagree with, and when possible, I don't. This is not a threat or an ultimatum but an explanation: I will be cancelling my subscriptions and other purchases (like VTT products, which I bought even when I wasn't GMing) because it doesn't make financial or ethical sense for me to support a company who is making decisions that I fundamentally disagree with. (I am so disappointed I ended multiple sentences with prepositions).

[Deriven Firelion]

moosher12 wrote:

Plagiarizing base rules content to make adventures doesn't sound like a problem, because that's the point of licensing in the first place, to grant the rights to use base rules content to anyone else using the license. A human 3rd party can already do that all they want. If anything, all it does is force the AI to use the ORC license from a legal point of view, as it needs to act like a 3rd party, and inject any of its innovations back into the licensescape to legally be allowed to participate.

If it's taking the content without ORC, the company can be sued. And if it's taking the company within ORC, the license is doing as its designed to do, and it in return grants Paizo access to its content.

Granted, it's not to say it's not a problem for 3rd party adventure writers. But this isn't a Paizo problem.

Who is going to buy adventures if you can generate them at home including full maps, pictures of monsters, and AI video within minutes?

It's not just the rules. It's also the maps. It's also image. It's story text.

If you sit down with an AI, you can generate everything yourself within minutes that used to take months or weeks of planning, design, coordination, up front costs, and planning a how many copies print for a run.

Now some DM sitting at home goes, "Draw me an orc chieftain with a cool axe that leads the Deadskull tribe."

"Make a video of the the chieftain shouting 'I will kill you all'"

Draw a map of the orc chieftains throne room and a little orc outpost dungeon.

The orc is in there because he's leading his tribe to conquer the local village Wildwind. Write me a narrative for that. Toss in some NPCs appropriate to a fantasy village.

Minutes later you have this whole encounter with pics, maps, videos, and narrative.

Anyone can do this at home using an AI search engine. You don't think the Paizo people are looking at this going, "This is not good, not good at all."

They pay money for monster art, maps, covers to modules, and have adventure and rule designers at Paizo who spend their work hours writing all this stuff up.

This has got to be hitting Paizo. It cannot be occurring at just my gaming table.

My group is even old people. We're not even young. I can't even imagine how much the young people would rather use AI than buy a module. AI is something they are growing up with. If old men like us can use it well, the young'uns have to really be using it like champions.

[moosher12]

For one, people with taste. People with no taste will always settle for slop. There is a reason I used AoN PF1E over d20PFSRD. Because even though d20PFSRD runs better, having the better context of AoN PF1E was simply more fulfilling. There is a reason people buy Lost Omens books despite them being relatively unimportant. Because I know full well, many players, who don't touch Golarion Lore. They run off and make their own worlds. I know others who AI Generate a big breasted waifu to be their character. I also know players who, despite all of these resources, buy physical books, and use Hero Forge, often with a subscription, to handcraft their own characters, who commission actual artists to make their character, not just once, but multiple times. There will always be people who will settle for slop, and there will always be people who will buy the genuine.

Plus, if I was a player, and if AI was such a big deal. I'd ask one thing. Why even have a GM? A GM who relies too much on generating slop will soon make his players realize he's replaceable, and he'll either be converted to a player, or he'll be left behind as the players start just going to an AI GM instead. In the end, all they're doing is furthering their own obsolescence instead of making themselves more valuable. Meanwhile, I put in a lot of personal work crafting and personalizing my adventures, and you know what, a lot of my players want ME, specifically. While a GM with no taste catering to players with no taste will suffer their tasteless players replacing him with something simpler.

[Crouza]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

Plagiarizing base rules content to make adventures doesn't sound like a problem, because that's the point of licensing in the first place, to grant the rights to use base rules content to anyone else using the license. A human 3rd party can already do that all they want. If anything, all it does is force the AI to use the ORC license from a legal point of view, as it needs to act like a 3rd party, and inject any of its innovations back into the licensescape to legally be allowed to participate.

If it's taking the content without ORC, the company can be sued. And if it's taking the company within ORC, the license is doing as its designed to do, and it in return grants Paizo access to its content.

Granted, it's not to say it's not a problem for 3rd party adventure writers. But this isn't a Paizo problem.

Who is going to buy adventures if you can generate them at home including full maps, pictures of monsters, and AI video within minutes?

It's not just the rules. It's also the maps. It's also image. It's story text.

If you sit down with an AI, you can generate everything yourself within minutes that used to take months or weeks of planning, design, coordination, up front costs, and planning a how many copies print for a run.

Now some DM sitting at home goes, "Draw me an orc chieftain with a cool axe that leads the Deadskull tribe."

"Make a video of the the chieftain shouting 'I will kill you all'"

Draw a map of the orc chieftains throne room and a little orc outpost dungeon.

The orc is in there because he's leading his tribe to conquer the local village Wildwind. Write me a narrative for that. Toss in some NPCs appropriate to a fantasy village.

Minutes later you have this whole encounter with pics, maps, videos, and narrative.

Anyone can do this at home using an AI search engine. You don't think the Paizo people are looking at this going, "This is not good, not good at all."

They pay money for monster art, maps, covers to modules, and have...

I very much doubt the person who would AI generate a campaign would want to even bother with Pathfinder in the first place. They're way more likely to go after a ruleset that's already wishy washy and full of questionable content, IE dnd 5e.

[ornathopter]

It's always been possible to draw your own maps and come up with your own creatures and stories. It doesn't make any difference to Paizo whether or not someone does that with their own imagination or if they get hallucination-and-plagiarism bot to alternately hallucinate and plagiarize some stuff they'll have to edit anyways to fix things like 'the rules don't work that way' and 'this map has a bunch of doors to nowhere and the hallways make no sense.' 'Speed' doesn't matter because the time taken is going to be at the pace of the actual human players.

Also these suggestions for how Paizo should use AI are pure nonsense. They have artists who like making art; they do not need AI to regurgitate what they have already drawn. And "AI videos with PDF downloads for NPCs" is just word salad.

[Twiggies]

What does this AI slop stuff even have to do with the very specific change from their partnership down to CUP license. How exactly does this benefit or un-benefit people that don't like thinking, creating or supporting creative endeavours lol. Seems kinda derail-y.