Q about Forgotten Realms for HL
 

I must apologize in advance, my forum searching abilities are sinking to all time low in competence as I have been unable to find an answer to this question. If its listed somewhere and any reader just wants to hyperlink the answer, I'd be grateful. In lieu of that, if someone cares to answer in conversation I'd be equally grateful. :o

I'm confused about the following situation. Pathfinder has a ton of data sets that one can buy from LW and I'm sure its a great source of income for them. I like the PF rule set much more than the AD&D 3.5 rule set, but I dislike PF's world. I greatly prefer the Forgotten Realms and upon rare occasion venture into Eberron.

I've seen that there is a community project that has the FR as well as other older world settings as data files, but I'm curious, why doesn't LW produce these data sets and sell them just like it does PF's native world?

FYI I think you posted this to the wrong forum as you asking about Pathfinder in the d20 forum. :(

But basically the answer is Copy Right. The Campaign Settings for FR and Eberron are not OGL and are copy righted by WotC. Honestly what the community is doing is illegal as we are re-printing copy righted material. The thing is the mechanics are not copy righted and we make no money on it. Plus as its in a different format you would really need the 'books' to make it useful.

So my take is that it's simply not in WotC time/money budget to go after us. Though from my understanding they could if they wanted too. Mostly likely it would be a request to take the stuff down. I hope. :) :D

So for LW to do this they would need to get an actual license from WotC. Before releasing Pathfinder stuff they got a license from Paizo. One of the reasons they can use the official Paizo/Pathfinder Logos.

@Shadowchemosh

I see, thanks for your informative reply to the matter and hopefully I didn't stir up a bee's nest in asking it. I figured it might be because of licensing but wasn't sure if it perhaps it had been someone at LW thinking it wasn't worth it.

FWIW, if LW ever did do a data set that was FR specific, I'd definitely slap the green on the counter for that. Virtually everyone I'm still in contact with that pursues the hobby reaches for HL first before doing anything with any game so I'd definitely love to see a FR data pack compatible with PF's rules.:)

@Seeker1728:

I can't remember if it's in the normal community update files or in RavenX's update files, but there already is Forgotten Realms data for the Pathfinder ruleset, and instead of buying it, you download it for free from your fellow Hero Lab users. Look in the Pathfinder forum for the "Community Data Sets" or something.

The most recent updates are in my repository for pathfinder. The FR data is updated by me a few times per year. Unfortunately the data is not backward compatible with 3.5's data set, the differences in systems are that big. I am currently preparing to add Dragonlance to the repository soon.

Lone Wolf doesn't provide the data because they do not have an official license from Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast to do it. Creating the data and selling it without a license would land them in legal hot waters. Pathfinder is officially licensed, which is why you get the books done by lone wolf with each new release.

I provide the data for many settings free of charge because I run the different settings using Pathfinders rules in place of 3.5, my players don't want me to run 3.5 anymore, they feel pathfinder fixed a lot of the problems in the game. The forgotten Realms project was a data conversion I started many years ago and has grown into what it is.

For the record, the d20 community set is starting to add some FR data as well. Not sure how much that helps in this case, but we're working on it.

@Everyone

Thanks for all the replies, it was greatly appreciated and I found the file that RavenX posted in the PF forums. I don't want to unduly keep this thread going since its basically in the wrong forum (I mistakenly thought there was no such thing in the PF forum, learn2read more in the future :o )

Having found that file and followed its instructions saved me a looming mountain of headache, my deepest of gratitude to everyone who contributes to that file and who gave me direction in this thread.

The d20 3.5 material is what it is. I've converted everything as I went along to fit Pathfinder. The differences between the two are significant enough that my files are not compatible with 3.5. Getting races of Faerûn done hasn't been an easy task, but it was worth it.