Pre-Order Rise of the Runelords for Hero Lab

[Villadelfia]

I have to admit that I'm not clear on how far "you don't need the packages" goes. I get that you don't need any extra packages to run the encounters in the AP, but what about things like the items that the PCs will gain as loot? What about things like setting-specific Traits for the PCs, or unusual creatures introduced for familiars or animal companions or mounts?

Aren't AP items and campaign traits already in hero lab as part of the core package?

EDIT: Yeah, just double-checked, they're already in hero lab under adventure paths as part of the core package. And they can't just remove them as that feature is publicly advertised on the web page: Feats, items, prestige classes and other player content from the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, and similar content from all the old OGL adventure paths.

 

[charlieluce]

Ah, right. Yeah, I wouldn't expect that to change.

 

[Colen]

Yes, player content for adventure paths will still be included for everyone, just like it is now.

 

[Silveras]

I'll just point out a couple of things.

I have been concerned for a while that the Community Portfolios are on the grey-area edge of legal action. The OGL does not include specific creature names, place names, and plot elements... which are part and parcel of the portfolios in some cases. That means that the portfolios are re-publishing Paizo's intellectual property without written permission. There may be some argument that it falls under the Paizo's Community Use Policy, and I don't pretend to be a lawyer to say whether it does or it doesn't.

However, the existence of an "official" package means it is part of a licensing deal with Paizo. For the Community to continue to publicly distribute a free alternative challenges that Intellectual Property much more directly, and probably no longer falls under any valid Community Use Policy protection (if it ever did anyway).

So, the existence of a publicly hosted competitor to the officially licensed is most likely a target that would force Paizo and/or LoneWolf to litigate... because some of the applicable laws amount to "if you don't take action, you lose your right to the property".

So, I see removing the Community Packs as being a protective thing for the Community.

 

[Villadelfia]

I'll just point out a couple of things.

I have been concerned for a while that the Community Portfolios are on the grey-area edge of legal action. The OGL does not include specific creature names, place names, and plot elements... which are part and parcel of the portfolios in some cases. That means that the portfolios are re-publishing Paizo's intellectual property without written permission. There may be some argument that it falls under the Paizo's Community Use Policy, and I don't pretend to be a lawyer to say whether it does or it doesn't.

However, the existence of an "official" package means it is part of a licensing deal with Paizo. For the Community to continue to publicly distribute a free alternative challenges that Intellectual Property much more directly, and probably no longer falls under any valid Community Use Policy protection (if it ever did anyway).

So, the existence of a publicly hosted competitor to the officially licensed is most likely a target that would force Paizo and/or LoneWolf to litigate... because some of the applicable laws amount to "if you don't take action, you lose your right to the property".

So, I see removing the Community Packs as being a protective thing for the Community.

So we just need to rename the files from "A2 - Bleak Grove.por" to "A2.por" and rename monsters like "Karzoug" to "Human Transmuter Wizard 20". That can be done, in fact, I will volunteer my time to do it if asked.

This is the same reason some feats are not on d20pfsrd under their actual name.

EDIT:

I have looked up the Community Use Policy, it specifically states: You may descriptively reference trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, artifacts, places, etc.), locations and characters from products listed in Section 1 of our Community Use Approved Product List at paizo.com/communityuse/products, provided it is clear that these are our marks.

All APs are listed in that list. So as long as that page lists the requisite copyright notice we're allowed to keep it up.

 

[AndrewD2]

The only real question on that is that its stored on d20pfsrd which can no longer use the community use policy anymore. Would its situation extend to the files stored on the site?

 

[Villadelfia]

Wasn't that only on pages where they are advertising for their own competing products?

If not, we can rehost them.

EDIT: Or move them over to the d20pfsrd sister site pathfindercommunity which is allowed to use the community use policy.

 

[ValaraukarU]

I'll just point out a couple of things.

I have been concerned for a while that the Community Portfolios are on the grey-area edge of legal action. The OGL does not include specific creature names, place names, and plot elements... which are part and parcel of the portfolios in some cases. That means that the portfolios are re-publishing Paizo's intellectual property without written permission. There may be some argument that it falls under the Paizo's Community Use Policy, and I don't pretend to be a lawyer to say whether it does or it doesn't.

Note that Paizo was specifically contacted before portfolios with their AP encounters were publicly shared. I personally contacted them for CotCT about the names and the images and was denied permission on the images but the rest was allowed.

 

[liz]

Hey everyone, my brain was fried last night, so I didn’t have a chance to put my thoughts into coherent words until now. To quell any misconceptions or rumors, here’s Lone Wolf’s stance on community versions of Rise of the Runelords and any future Adventure Path packages we release:

The community support for our products has been great. We're incredibly thankful for the many users that have put together the data packages in the past and continue to do so today. (Seriously, you all are awesome.)

Over the past few years, we've received a lot of feedback from users, frustrated that they need to purchase all of the independent sources just to run the community Adventure Path packages. In an ideal world, we would have been able to support all of the Adventure Paths from the beginning and this would be a moot point. However, we lacked both the technical capabilities within the product and the bandwidth as a staff until recently, so we had to wait.

Extensive user feedback was the main reason we included official Adventure Path support as an option on our recent survey. The survey respondents overwhelmingly confirmed that users were looking for a package like this and that the $24.99 price point was appropriate. Since users will not be required to own the supplemental packages, the official Adventure Path package will greatly simplify running adventure paths for many users. As with almost every situation, though, there's no simple solution here that will please everyone. When that occurs, our focus becomes the majority of users.

In keeping with our goal of simplifying things for users, we want to limit the user confusion that would arise from seeing two different options when users come to our official Lone Wolf community forums. As evidenced with the community packs, there's already a degree of confusion for many users, and that’s with only a single set of options available. This situation is much better than in the past, in large part because we've worked closely with ShadowChemosh to better support his amazing efforts and route users to his packages as directly as we can. However, it remains a recurring problem.

This confusion is unfortunate, but it’s for unofficial content, so users understand for the most part. However, once we begin selling Rise of the Runelords and future Adventure Paths, users will be relying upon us to avoid unnecessary confusion. That means providing a single source for the AP content. As can be seen from numerous user comments on this subject, the majority of users view this as a good thing.

If members of the community want to privately PM users with links to the files because someone asks about them, or post a link on other forums, go right ahead. We just want to avoid prominently confusing users on our official Lone Wolf venues.

I hope this clarifies things. If you have specific questions, feel free to PM me directly.

 

[liz]

Regarding the Community Use Policy: As @ValaraukarU mentions, Paizo has apparently been okay with files on d20pfsrd.com in the past. While we're not the official source on anything regarding this, nothing that we're doing here changes anything regarding the Community Use Policy and d20pfsrd.com.

 

[Silveras]

Note that Paizo was specifically contacted before portfolios with their AP encounters were publicly shared. I personally contacted them for CotCT about the names and the images and was denied permission on the images but the rest was allowed.

Splendid.. that takes care of that concern, then.

 

[Villadelfia]

Extensive user feedback was the main reason we included official Adventure Path support as an option on our recent survey. The survey respondents overwhelmingly confirmed that users were looking for a package like this and that the $24.99 price point was appropriate. Since users will not be required to own the supplemental packages, the official Adventure Path package will greatly simplify running adventure paths for many users. As with almost every situation, though, there's no simple solution here that will please everyone. When that occurs, our focus becomes the majority of users.

As you might have gathered, the sticking point for me is not so much the price (go ahead, check my license in your system, I own everything first-party that you offer for pathfinder, and that was all bought before you introduced the discounted companion packs) as it is long-time customers not getting any discount for owning all the pre-requisites. I would like a price like $9.99 for those who already own the supplemental packages required, but really any discount at all would be a sign of good-will.

I know you have the ability to require the purchase of a pack before you can buy another pack, so I know you have the ability to add a pack with "(Requires Pathfinder Core, Requires Advanced Player Guide, Requires Bestiary 1, 2, 3,...)" at a discounted price.

It also bothers me that I haven't gotten an answer to my question if you are planning to offer a discount, not a yes, not a no, not even a maybe. So I will pose it as a direct question this time:

Will you, or will you not, offer a discount for owners of the needed supplemental packages?

 

[Colen]

Our sales system actually doesn't have the capability to do multiple pre-requisites like that. Currently we can specify a single thing that's required before you purchase a package (to stop people from buying the APG before they have access to Pathfinder, for example), but that's all we can do.

The other issue here is that a lot of adventure paths simply use a heck of a lot of sourcebooks. For example, here are the books I saw being used as references when I looked through issue 6 of Iron Gods (which seemed pretty representiative after I looked at a couple of other adventure paths):

1. Bestiary
2. Advanced Class Guide
3. Advanced Player's Guide
4. Inner Sea Bestiary
5. Ultimate Combat
6. Bestiary 3
7. Technology Guide
8. Bestiary 4
9. Bestiary 2
10. Numeria, People of the Stars
11. Monster Codex
12. Mythic Adventures

Now, that's just one issue of the adventure path, and it references material from 12 other books, which are contained in 11 different packages (as Numeria and Tech Guide are in the same package). I assume the rest of the Iron Gods AP references additional books on top of that.

That means for Iron Gods, the only people who'd be eligible for a discount like you propose would be people with those 15+ specific packages, which (unfortunately) is not a lot of people. So to implement this, we'd need to spend a bunch of time working on adding capabilities to our sales server, which only the small number of people with those 15+ packages would be able to take advantage of.

I'm not opposed to your idea of a discount for people who have everything, it's just not something we're capable of handling right now, and making it happen would compete with the task of working on improvements to Hero Lab that will benefit all our users.

 

[Villadelfia]

Our sales system actually doesn't have the capability to do multiple pre-requisites like that. Currently we can specify a single thing that's required before you purchase a package (to stop people from buying the APG before they have access to Pathfinder, for example), but that's all we can do.

The other issue here is that a lot of adventure paths simply use a heck of a lot of sourcebooks. For example, here are the books I saw being used as references when I looked through issue 6 of Iron Gods (which seemed pretty representiative after I looked at a couple of other adventure paths):

1. Bestiary
2. Advanced Class Guide
3. Advanced Player's Guide
4. Inner Sea Bestiary
5. Ultimate Combat
6. Bestiary 3
7. Technology Guide
8. Bestiary 4
9. Bestiary 2
10. Numeria, People of the Stars
11. Monster Codex
12. Mythic Adventures

Now, that's just one issue of the adventure path, and it references material from 12 other books, which are contained in 11 different packages (as Numeria and Tech Guide are in the same package). I assume the rest of the Iron Gods AP references additional books on top of that.

That means for Iron Gods, the only people who'd be eligible for a discount like you propose would be people with those 15+ specific packages, which (unfortunately) is not a lot of people. So to implement this, we'd need to spend a bunch of time working on adding capabilities to our sales server, which only the small number of people with those 15+ packages would be able to take advantage of.

I'm not opposed to your idea of a discount for people who have everything, it's just not something we're capable of handling right now, and making it happen would compete with the task of working on improvements to Hero Lab that will benefit all our users.

My mistake, I thought there was something like that because I thought you can't buy the bestiary 2 without having b1 and core.

How about this: Since it's such a small amount of people that qualify, can't you just send them a special offer via mail and have them buy it the direct route? I mean, I don't know how many "very few" is, but you make it sound like less than a hundred, so while not ideal that should be doable even IF we all respond immediately to the offer.

Btw, you've made me curious now, at which percentile is my license in number of pathfinder packages owned?

 

[ShadowChemosh]

The other issue here is that a lot of adventure paths simply use a heck of a lot of sourcebooks. For example, here are the books I saw being used as references when I looked through issue 6 of Iron Gods (which seemed pretty representiative after I looked at a couple of other adventure paths):

1. Bestiary
2. Advanced Class Guide
3. Advanced Player's Guide
4. Inner Sea Bestiary
5. Ultimate Combat
6. Bestiary 3
7. Technology Guide
8. Bestiary 4
9. Bestiary 2
10. Numeria, People of the Stars
11. Monster Codex
12. Mythic Adventures

Just to say this is very common I have found for the APs actually and the major issue with the community stuff. As we didn't "duplicate" a monster that was already in a one-off book like Tech Guide or Paths of Presitage I have gotten lots of emails over time about files that don't open. It was not an error in the community stuff as much as the person simply didn't have all the required licenses.

The fact that LW will be including all these "one-off" Things from all these books is a awesome feature. It will make using the official encounter files much nicer compared to the community versions.

 

[ruhar]

The fact that LW will be including all these "one-off" Things from all these books is a awesome feature. It will make using the official encounter files much nicer compared to the community versions.

Ok, MAYBE it is worth $25. I just wish I had more gold pieces than what my stingy job pays me so I can fully enjoy my fun.

To the GMs out there who have players who contribute monetarily, enjoy because I really believe you are a minority.

 

[Colen]

My mistake, I thought there was something like that because I thought you can't buy the bestiary 2 without having b1 and core.

Everything we've done so far just depends on core - there hasn't been anything with a strong enough dependency on another book for us to require anything else yet. (I actually considered making the Monster Codex dependent on Bestiary 1 last year, but it turned out that we included enough of the base monster races in our free content to not need that.)

How about this: Since it's such a small amount of people that qualify, can't you just send them a special offer via mail and have them buy it the direct route? I mean, I don't know how many "very few" is, but you make it sound like less than a hundred, so while not ideal that should be doable even IF we all respond immediately to the offer.

Btw, you've made me curious now, at which percentile is my license in number of pathfinder packages owned?

Your license is definitely at the top end of the scale in terms of packages owned - most people don't have nearly as many. We almost didn't go forward with this project because of this problem - it wouldn't be very helpful for us to sell an AP if the majority of users wouldn't be able to use the encounters, particularly if it's just something they would discover at the game table.

If we did do a special offer like this, some of additional questions rear their ugly heads: Is this a one-time thing, or if someone purchases the required packages 6 months from now, do they get to take advantage of it as well? If someone purchased the full price version, then over the next year happened to buy all the packages that it uses, do they get a discount? If someone who qualifies now doesn't want to purchase the package, but then in 2 months time their group suddenly decides to play rise of the runelords, do we let them buy then?

If we started going down this road, no matter what we choose, we're still going to make someone unhappy, and that's even after we've done a lot of extra work to make it happen.

 

[AndrewD2]

Here's a question: Is this package included in the aforementioned $65 bundle for the year of Hero Lab stuff that was going to be coming this or next month?

 

[Colen]

It is not - as specified in the news post, the 2015 bundle includes:

* All hardcover core rulebooks – for example, Pathfinder Unchained and Occult Adventures.
* All Player Companion and Campaign Setting rulebooks – for example, Heroes of the Wild and Andoran, Birthplace of Freedom.

It doesn't cover adventure paths. We're not sure how many adventure paths we're going to release this year, so it didn't make sense to include them in the bundle.

 

[AndrewD2]

Yeah I realized that after I asked. Thanks though!