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
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