of Dice and Dragons

This is no small announcement in my book, in a break from Wizards the folks at Paizo have decided to publish their own RPG based on the 3.5 OGL and SRD - Pathfinder RPG.

I caught this “little” piece of news first on Critical Hits and then saw it again on Trollsmyth so I figured I had better take a look.

After reading through the press release, CEO, Publisher and Lead Designer’s comments I’ve decided to at least take a look at the alpha product (I’ll post again after getting a chance to read through the 65 pages). There are a couple of key points here that cause me to want to look at it - first is of course, the leverage of all that 3.5 material I have sitting on shelves and hard disk. By making the system compatible with that set of rules there won’t be a need to sink tons of money into a new version which of course will make my wallet (and wife) happier.

The other item that I was pleased to see is that fact that Paizo has decided to have OPEN playtesting. This is absolutely huge in my opinion - gamers will have a chance to test out not only the alpha product but also the beta, due in August (which will also be available as a free download) and give feedback through an online forum community.

Only time will tell if this was a good move or not for Paizo, but I for one am glad to see that there’s a major player out there interested in giving us gamers more choices in the market place.

May your dice roll well.