Zub said:
CMP has announced deals with two companies recently which allow them to distribute the data sets for certain properties. Previously, those companies had allowed PCGen to distribute those properties freely. Is it CMP's strategy to pursue deals with d20 publishers so that those publishers will no longer allow their material to be distributed freely, but only through purchase from CMP?
PCGen has stated that they will not distribute material without the publisher's consent, whether it is OGC or not. Seems interesting now, that could work out to CMP's advantage.
Zub
Zub,
There is a difference between the data sets that PCGen uses now and the ones CMP will be releasing.
The PCGen sets used now are all OGC (or little IP/PI used with special permission - i.e. names of things)... that won't change one bit, those sets, and more, will always be free and only be in by publisher permission/consent.
The CMP PCgen sets - we are _licensing_ the rights to produce them, so that allows us to do more than just the OGC data, it allows us to do everything in a given product.
So what's that mean overall? Good things all the way around - one thing that most people seem to think is that PCGen is now 'dead' because of CMP. Nothing could be farther from the truth, it's a synergy here - the better PCGen does, the better CMP does and vice versa...
Yea, you can buy CMP's set to use in PCGen, or you can continue to use the OGC free sets that come with PCGen, the choice is yours.
One advantage that people haven't seemed to think about.... publishers that CMP makes agreements with... since we're doing the full product, it makes it easier to pull out just the OGC sets to have released in PCGen... It means getting more (OGC) product in PCGen faster...
Does that mean that PCGen doesn't need data monkeys anymore? Nope, it just means that anything the volunteers churn out CMP won't have to, and anything we churn out, they won't have to... Which raises the need and desire for more good volunteer data monkey since we'll be working pretty close on things.
PCGen is NOT CMP and CMP does not OWN PCGen... Bryan McRoberts, who created PCGen is a CMP owner, Jason Buchanan spent years working on PCGen, as did I... We created CMP to produce d20 product and with the e-Tools deal, this seemed like a logical extension of what we do...
So I hope that clears things up a bit for you and others wondering the same thing Zub... IF not, feel free to ask questions and I, Bryan, or Jason will respond.
