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Author Topic: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?  (Read 1034 times)

Ruprecht

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Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« on: November 18, 2022, 10:31:11 PM »
Anyone know of any games based on the Pathfinder SRD? They let everything out there for free and yet I've never heard of a game based on any of the Pathfinder stuff. Not that I'd want anything based on Pathfinder but I am curious. It's like Darwins dead-end on the open gaming license front. It was huge for awhile, but then when folks started making their own everyone went in a different direction.
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Jaeger

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Re: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2022, 05:48:26 PM »
Anyone know of any games based on the Pathfinder SRD? They let everything out there for free and yet I've never heard of a game based on any of the Pathfinder stuff. Not that I'd want anything based on Pathfinder but I am curious. It's like Darwins dead-end on the open gaming license front. It was huge for awhile, but then when folks started making their own everyone went in a different direction.

Assuming you mean PF2...

PF2 's ecosystem does not lend itself well to making PF2 "alternatives" the way the 5e OGL does.

Firstly, because PF2's main marketing point is as an alternative to 5e. So not much call for an alternative to the alternative...

Secondly, PF2's game system has very tight leveling math. The entire gameplay experience is designed around encounters within a 1-2 level band of the PC's current level. Deviate from that and you instantly go to a total cakewalk or TPK.

Naturally, this does not lend itself well to system hacking, because you must account for the tight system math not to break stuff.

Not that PF2 doesn't have some decent ideas in it. But by the nature of its tight system design one is more likely to port those ideas into another OGL/D&D system than doing anything the other way around.
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Jam The MF

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Re: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2022, 06:13:19 PM »
I'd guess that he was referring to the PF 1st Edition SRD, which is an outgrowth of D&D 3.5 Edition.
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Jaeger

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Re: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2022, 07:25:51 PM »
I'd guess that he was referring to the PF 1st Edition SRD, which is an outgrowth of D&D 3.5 Edition.

In which case people already have the 3.5 OGL.

PF1 was just not that big a shift from it.
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Ruprecht

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Re: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2022, 10:16:28 PM »
In which case people already have the 3.5 OGL.

PF1 was just not that big a shift from it.
I was talking about PF1. Certainly there are extra classes, spells, and creatures that differ from 3.5. Maybe I just haven't seen it but I haven't seen any PF1 content in OSR products.  They put everything out there for free and nobody seems to want it which is both sad and hysterical.
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Jam The MF

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Re: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2022, 12:39:14 AM »
In which case people already have the 3.5 OGL.

PF1 was just not that big a shift from it.
I was talking about PF1. Certainly there are extra classes, spells, and creatures that differ from 3.5. Maybe I just haven't seen it but I haven't seen any PF1 content in OSR products.  They put everything out there for free and nobody seems to want it which is both sad and hysterical.

Pathfinder is a huge resource for ideas.  There are people who would discount Pathfinder, saying that it's just a representation of D&D 3.5 Edition.  But Pathfinder added a lot of new content, and a reworking / adjustment of previous content.  For instance; the original Advanced Player's Guide for PF 1st Edition, was well received and highly praised.
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S'mon

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Re: Any Games use the Pathfinder SRD?
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2022, 02:30:33 AM »
I was talking about PF1. Certainly there are extra classes, spells, and creatures that differ from 3.5. Maybe I just haven't seen it but I haven't seen any PF1 content in OSR products.  They put everything out there for free and nobody seems to want it which is both sad and hysterical.

There is a ton of 5e open content that no one reuses, either. Eg Kobold Press put all their monsters out as open content - https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature

A friend of mine writes professionally for 5e 3PPs, a lot of million dollar kickstarters, she's doing half the writing (she's a fairly successful Young Adult and children's author). She had no idea she could use all this stuff under the OGL rather than make up her own monsters & do her own stats every time. A lot of people think of the OGL as just letting them use the SRD.