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<blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 7651108" data-attributes="member: 150">Well, now, the two primary operating TRPG subscription models shouldn't offend you, if I understand your position correctly. Paizo's model is a subscription to a product line -- but once you have the product, it's yours, you don't lose it when you cancel your subscription. WOTC's model provides online tools as a web service -- Character builder, Monster Builder, Reference database, and access to PDFs of content (pdfs which will still be yours, if you've downloaded them -- what you lose when you cancel your subscription is access to the archives, not access to the copies you've already downloaded). Parts of this are a web service -- not quite software as service, but close enough, I'm sure, to draw your scorn. But I think you're missing a lot of the work and value that they include -- or at least, that they did include when 4e was in it's prime.&nbsp; At it's best, they were releasing content updated that added content from newly published sourcebooks into the database each month -- from the books and dungeon and dragon articles both.&nbsp; New character options, monsters, magic items, rules -- all added to the compendium and released right about when the book hits the shelves. That takes a lot of not-trivial work, and at least for me it's worth paying for that service. And by delivering it as a web service, they make it available to subscribers in a far more effective way than they did before with the downloadable tools.In the future, I don't think there would be a viable program that wasn't offering either one or the other -- although a free-to-play/microtransaction version might be interesting, it's not clear to me how that one might work.-rg</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Radiating Gnome, post: 7651108, member: 150"] Well, now, the two primary operating TRPG subscription models shouldn't offend you, if I understand your position correctly. Paizo's model is a subscription to a product line -- but once you have the product, it's yours, you don't lose it when you cancel your subscription. WOTC's model provides online tools as a web service -- Character builder, Monster Builder, Reference database, and access to PDFs of content (pdfs which will still be yours, if you've downloaded them -- what you lose when you cancel your subscription is access to the archives, not access to the copies you've already downloaded). Parts of this are a web service -- not quite software as service, but close enough, I'm sure, to draw your scorn. But I think you're missing a lot of the work and value that they include -- or at least, that they did include when 4e was in it's prime. At it's best, they were releasing content updated that added content from newly published sourcebooks into the database each month -- from the books and dungeon and dragon articles both. New character options, monsters, magic items, rules -- all added to the compendium and released right about when the book hits the shelves. That takes a lot of not-trivial work, and at least for me it's worth paying for that service. And by delivering it as a web service, they make it available to subscribers in a far more effective way than they did before with the downloadable tools. In the future, I don't think there would be a viable program that wasn't offering either one or the other -- although a free-to-play/microtransaction version might be interesting, it's not clear to me how that one might work. -rg [/QUOTE]

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