An Open Appreciation for Paizo

I am impressed on how PAIZO treats the 3rd Party Community for the OGL. Since I read the open letter about how 3rd Party Publishers enjoy the service they get from the company -- like being used as a sales point.

I write third party products, and I am very impressed. As a libertarian, it has become increasingly important to me to look at the issues on Personal Property Rights and how the Free Market operates. In this appreciation, I'd like to focus on Free Market Enterprise. The D&D Market is incredibly small compared to say: several Sports. This niche caters to the most creative of people (who are also very intelligent, I may add). Eventually, they create their own works -- campaign setting, house rules, what have you.

The OGL and GSL allows them to create their own work and to publish them for others to use. While the 3rd Party Publishers of 4th Edition materials are left in the lurch, PAIZO has realized that competition is healthy for the hobby as a whole when there is some level of cooperation. By all appearances the level of cooperation is very high. PAIZO uses 3rd Party OGL material in their products as well as do some low level advertising for these companies. It makes me smile. Back in the day, Wizards used very little if no OGL content (there was one or two exceptions -- the Razor Boar and the Scorpion Folk in the MM2). I don't know what has gotten ahold of Wizards' thinking; but people who bought the products felt that Wizards' material is absolutely the best and they buy nothing but wizards' products in later years.

Why that happened, I have a theory. But I do believe that the Free Market was in action! Now that things have sorted themselves out, the OGL community can continue forward with support from PAIZO itself. This will help a lot of people down the road. Not only we writers have reviewers, but we also have the people working at PAIZO, and that's a good thing. This actually helps everyone involved in knowing what might be gems, and what might be dross. It also helps us writers to actually write well and better additions to Pathfinder.

So this is a good thumbs up!

Elton Robb
♡2011 Copying Art is an act of love. Please copy and share.

If 4e was released with a Creative Commons License

Interesting question.

One thing for sure, if it was released with a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license, I'd be tearing into it and throwing out all the stupid miniature rules (DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!)  I'd create some modules around the Yaun-ti, since they are the most interesting monsters in D&D that WotC claims that it has copyright over (the second being Mind Flayers, which are based on HP Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu mythos).  I'd also be addressing a few rules that I've seen of late.

Take Sampson of the Bible.  Sampson was a judge of Israel who also happened to be Dan's local hero.  He was strong enough to kill a lion, to carry away city gates, and to cause the Temple of Dagon to fall and destroy the entire Philistine Aristocracy.  I'd say he had a STR of 30 (of course he sinned and had his hair cut off, so he lost his strength "it went back down to a measly 9.")  For some dumb reason, the ability scores are linked to one's level.

Actually, one of my 4e players made an issue of it when I didn't think there was one.  He thought I was insane.  Actually I was so incredibly tired I didn't want to discuss the issue.  I wanted to show he had super strength (in RM, Sampson would have a bonus to his strength not a modification to his strength score.  The "supernatural" bonus would be about +10 or +15 for RMFRP).

Secondly, I'd do something about the pidgeon-holing.  I just don't know where to begin.  I'd probably throw out the extended roles and try something different (I'm beginning to think that the pidgeon-holing is a core aspect of the system, but if we just got rid of that).

So, what would you do if WotC released 4e with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license?