The Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting is a v.3.5 d20 SRD-based OGL-licensed work compatible with D&D™ 3.5e and other 3.5e-compatible OGL content, released by Paizo Publishing in August 2008.
The above sentence is far more interesting than it probably looks.
To understand why, the first thing you'd probably need to know is that the core rulebooks for D&D 4th edition were released in June 2008, with nearly a year-long buildup and hype beforehand. Plenty of time to learn a new ruleset and convert to it, if one were so inclined.
The second thing is that, while it is legally impossible for WotC to actually revoke the wide-open rights to make 3.5e-compatible books — the 3.5 SRD's both gratis and libre forever — they wrote their 4e license to contain a poison pill clause whereby publishers were not allowed to publish both 4e and 3.xe material, as well as several other clauses granting them the ability to pull the rug out from publishers at any time.
(The poison-pill clause has recently been removed, but too little, too late: and the other relevant clauses are almost all untouched. Paizo has confirmed that they have no intent to publish for 4e within the foreseeable future, and for all the same reasons they gave a year ago.)
So, after a great deal of hubbub and fuss, 4e went along its merry way without much of 3.5e's trailing flotilla of third-party publishers — some changing course, some still following, and a few just going under. And it's not like the d20 3.5 rules have expired; they're still as usable as they have been for the past several years, and Paizo's even publishing a sort of v3.75 update to sand off a few of the remaining rough edges.
Well. We'll see where it goes, won't we?
Monday, March 16, 2009
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