NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 721960" data-attributes="member: 6957">First off let me state that I have no problem with CMP charging a reasonable price for splatbooks and other IP. From what I have read they will continue to update this material, free, for a period of 1 year.By charging money they also attract companies that are currently unwilling to open their material for the OGL. SSS comes to mind. Considering that E-Tools was going for $40 (!) at our flgs I don't find spending around $25 for a program that WORKS that bad a deal. And, frankly, I don't think that I will need to purchase all that much material anyway, I don't use Forgotten Realms at all. The speculated Scarred Lands stuff on the other hand....I also believe that many companies, if not most, will view having their material available free to be a good incentive for folks to buy their commercial products. (I know that in my case the counterpoint was true, when the splatbooks were dropped from PCGen I dropped the splatbooks.)But looking at the issues:Do I believe that at the end of that year they will suddenly change all the files to not function with the older version of the program?No.Do I think that by subscription they mean that at the end of the year the program will cease to function? (Which I gather Microsoft tried. The folks at Corel thought that MS going to a subscription system was a great idea... For Corel.)No.Do I think that in the course of a year the Code Monkeys will iron out the inevetable bugs in the .lst files?Yes.This last means that the 'subscription' is most likely a moot point, at least for most groups.Further:From what I read they will be offering 'bundle deals' on lst files, for less than the sum of purchasing the files seperately.Telling websites not to carry files covered by IP is something that they HAVE to do in order to protect IP. Unprotected IP is lost.My only questions are what books fall where in the 1-5 dollar range listed. Though I suspect that the class books will be at the low end, generic books like Savage Species in the middle and Forgotten Realms at the high end. (No proof, just speculation.) And, when will the various material become available.I don't know how the Codemonkeys feel about a gaming group sharing a .lst file among themselves. My suspicion is that they will dislike it but not do anything about it - if they even hear about it.Going by what I've read on several forums I sometimes wonder if I was the only person to delete version 2.7x from my machine when they had issues with IP. But then I only use PCGen to store Player Characters and create NPCs. When the splatbooks were dropped from PCGen I just dropped them from my campaign as well. (The one thing I really miss is the die rolling that was removed from PCGen. On the other hand I use the points system for NPCs anyway, I find that it helps balance things.)All in all, I intend to shell out my moneys for the material, possibly waiting for bundles as they become available.My congradulations to CMP for completing what likely was a rather arduous round of negotiations.The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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