Pathfinder Vs 4.0 D&D
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG/general/monteCookJoinsThePathfinderRPGTeam
So for those of you not keeping up with the latest gaming buzz. Dungeons & Dragons is coming out with a 4th edition. The source material they have released suggests that this 4.0 will be radically different from previous Dungeons & Dragons games including systems designed similar to an MMORPG with better balancing factors, a fully described setting with racial backgrounds, and no Open Gaming Licenses.
The OGL, if you are unfamiliar with that, was the brain child of several people to create a system which allows anyone to publish source material for Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 and 3.5. So independent companies, as long as they followed the rules stated in the OGL, could publish adventures and rule changes for D&D. This led to a lot of crap flooding the market. It also led to a few gems as well.
I can't verify that Pathfinder is a gem, but its popularity certainly seems to suggest that the books that Paizo publishing has put out are not your average OGL trash. This is because Paizo publishing is actually producing its own core rule set called Pathfinder, which, incidentally, is more or less 3.5.5 D&D. So your wondering why Paizo might want to go up against the megacorp known as Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro by producing its own book that is a near copy of D&D 3.5? Well it comes down to two or three things.
1) Wizards of the Coast announced that independent companies may only produce source material for 4.0 D&D if they stop producing material for 3.5 and 3.0 completely. More specifically they are not allowed to produce material under the OGL, which 4.0 will not have. Since Paizo publishing's entire line is 3.5 related products for the most part, this would kill their business while they made a transition.
2) Not all gamers are happy with what they have been hearing about 4.0. It actually sounds like considerably more grumbling than when 3.5 came out. Although I don't remember the grumblings between 2.0 and 3.0 but I still know that there are people today who are playing 2.0 D&D, although no new books have been published for awhile. The re-release of D&D 1.0 under the name Hackmaster has been rather popular as well. Combined with the fact that Paizo wants to keep its books selling, it makes sense for Paizo to release a full set of rules for its other books, even if those rules are, for the most part, 3.5
3) And honestly, if your going to re-print the D&D manual because all the source material is going to dry up, why not make some improvements on it? Change and ingenuity are the spice of RPGs. But a good source grounding is needed, hence why Paizo has picked up Monte Cook, one of the disenfranchised writers of D&D 3.0 that WotC dropped like a ton of bricks before writing 3.5. I've seen some of Monte Cook's exclusive books for D&D as well as his own gaming system and I was sadly unimpressed but as long as he is working on a team as a consultant, I'd say this is good news for Pathfinder.
So. In the coming months it will be D&D 4.0 vs Pathfinder. Will it be all out war or just a unsettling truce?
So for those of you not keeping up with the latest gaming buzz. Dungeons & Dragons is coming out with a 4th edition. The source material they have released suggests that this 4.0 will be radically different from previous Dungeons & Dragons games including systems designed similar to an MMORPG with better balancing factors, a fully described setting with racial backgrounds, and no Open Gaming Licenses.
The OGL, if you are unfamiliar with that, was the brain child of several people to create a system which allows anyone to publish source material for Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 and 3.5. So independent companies, as long as they followed the rules stated in the OGL, could publish adventures and rule changes for D&D. This led to a lot of crap flooding the market. It also led to a few gems as well.
I can't verify that Pathfinder is a gem, but its popularity certainly seems to suggest that the books that Paizo publishing has put out are not your average OGL trash. This is because Paizo publishing is actually producing its own core rule set called Pathfinder, which, incidentally, is more or less 3.5.5 D&D. So your wondering why Paizo might want to go up against the megacorp known as Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro by producing its own book that is a near copy of D&D 3.5? Well it comes down to two or three things.
1) Wizards of the Coast announced that independent companies may only produce source material for 4.0 D&D if they stop producing material for 3.5 and 3.0 completely. More specifically they are not allowed to produce material under the OGL, which 4.0 will not have. Since Paizo publishing's entire line is 3.5 related products for the most part, this would kill their business while they made a transition.
2) Not all gamers are happy with what they have been hearing about 4.0. It actually sounds like considerably more grumbling than when 3.5 came out. Although I don't remember the grumblings between 2.0 and 3.0 but I still know that there are people today who are playing 2.0 D&D, although no new books have been published for awhile. The re-release of D&D 1.0 under the name Hackmaster has been rather popular as well. Combined with the fact that Paizo wants to keep its books selling, it makes sense for Paizo to release a full set of rules for its other books, even if those rules are, for the most part, 3.5
3) And honestly, if your going to re-print the D&D manual because all the source material is going to dry up, why not make some improvements on it? Change and ingenuity are the spice of RPGs. But a good source grounding is needed, hence why Paizo has picked up Monte Cook, one of the disenfranchised writers of D&D 3.0 that WotC dropped like a ton of bricks before writing 3.5. I've seen some of Monte Cook's exclusive books for D&D as well as his own gaming system and I was sadly unimpressed but as long as he is working on a team as a consultant, I'd say this is good news for Pathfinder.
So. In the coming months it will be D&D 4.0 vs Pathfinder. Will it be all out war or just a unsettling truce?