I think Creative Commons is absolutely rad. I mean, let's be real here: RPG books can get expensive, [i]fast[/i]. Your average core rulebook can set you back anywhere from $30 to $60+ dollars (looking at you, [i]Numenera[/i]) for a physical copy, and while PDFs are often (but not always!) cheaper, passing around a PDF at the gaming table isn't always feasible if you don't own a tablet or something. The point is, the initial investment on a new tabletop game is about the same as the price for a new video game, and these days it's hard to justify spending that kind of money for something you might read/play once and then lose interest in. Demo rules and quickstart releases are nice (akin to vidya game demos, I suppose), but sometimes it's hard to tell if a whole book will be worth actual money from just a snippet of the rules, y'know? Confession time: I regularly pirate RPG books (thanks 4chan!). I do this for the exact reasons I outlined above, and if I can't find a copy of a game I'm looking at to pirate, well then ... I'm probably going to skip out on said game. That said, if something turns out to be awesome I snap up a real-money version ASAP because I want to support the people that make it, because I want them to keep making awesome stuff. Naturally, CC makes that system work even better, since the PDFs are readily obtainable instead of me having to comb the 'net for pirate copies. I've bought both PDF and hard copies of every EP release so far (and some more than once, I think), and even bought the USB drive with all the PDF releases at GenCon '13 despite owning all the PDFs already. And I totally backed the Kickstarter for Transhuman too, because hey, EP is rad yo. Plus I got that sweet picture of Lilith in the book which makes me giddy whenever I look at it. :D I'm glad to see that other companies are starting (however slowly) to follow suit with CC or pay-what-you-want models. It makes it a lot easier to examine what games I want to invest money in (which considering my upcoming unemployment is important now more than ever!).

Smokeskin wrote:

I think I'm going to pirate their next book maybe (ideally I'd pay half). I mostly read my books on my iPad 3, and Transhuman loads the pages SOOOO SLOOOOOW that I can hardly bother to look anything up in it. I think that could have been tested better and released in a lighter version for iOS devices, so not a full price product imo.

If you downloaded Transhuman the instant it came out, log back onto DriveThru and download it again. Shortly after release I tweaked the file to be more friendly; it loads plenty fast on my iPad 2.

Oh, good. I've been having similar problems with the pdf when I run sessions on my laptop (poor thing is running Chrome, Google Hangouts, a second screen for the Hangouts, Foxit Reader, Skype, and various other programs). Thanks!

... in PDF format and quite a few in print. I think I mentioned this on Rob's blog but being able to see the books before I made the purchase sealed the deal for me. I'm not starving, but $30 for a book is still something I have to budget for. I love that I can grab the PDFs for free (legally! No piracy involved!) and pick up the hardcovers as I find room in the budget. As Lilith said, it's absolutely rad. As an aside I've been trying to get some folks at work to play EP with me, but I can't seem to convince them downloading the PDFs is encouraged by Posthuman. I've explained what the creative commons is but they can't quite wrap their minds around the idea they're not pirating by grabbing the PDFs. Their loss, but still...

AdamJury wrote:

By the way, I see people have, essentially, "Creative Commons Guilt" on a semi-regular basis, so I want to re-iterate: we choose to license our stuff under that license, and we _want_ you to have access to the game, even if you can't afford to buy it.

I wanted to say that this was the thing that first brought your game to my attention, and you guys deserve a world of kudos for your approach to this often touchy subject. I have recommended your game to friends on several occasions and am happy to buy your products whenever I'm able. Good will and faith beget good will and faith; and those are things a company needs to sow in its foundations ... especially in this day and age.

I've wondered for a while now, if the form of Eclipse Phase's CC has hindered its spread into other media. You see I really love the EP setting, and would like to read EP novels and feel that that its when you die you get resurrected from your last back-up makes it a natural for video game adaption. This has caused me to wonder if there aren't novelist or video game makers who would be willing to pay to use the IP if by doing so they could profit off of their own creation. Maybe my concern is baseless. Maybe there are no would be EP novelist or video game developers out there, or maybe Eclipse Phase's CC does have a way for them to profit off of EP related work. If someone here has a greater understanding of the CC, or a more inside view of what EP related spin-off projects have been brought Posthuman's way, I would appreciate the insight.

I wish I had enough experience and skill to craft a good-looking, amazing video game from scratch. I'd love to put out a video game for free that doesn't [i]look like[/i] it was made with no budget, to keep an EP game in the spirit of the "pay anything" across all media formats.

Ranxerox wrote:

I guess that is my question, can they enter into an industry standard license or are they bound to stick to the CC? You would think that the CC would not prevent them from entering into other legal arrangements, but I hate to assume.

We own Eclipse Phase; 100% of it. We can do whatever we want with it. That includes extended a licensing to anyone else that doesn't require them to use CC and extending a licensing to anyone else that does require them to use CC. We could stop publishing new books under a CC license tomorrow if we wanted to (which we wouldn't do, and we can't rescind the CC on previous books, of course.) In the end, we still have full control over Eclipse Phase. Now, this does mean that when dealing with a potential license, there's often a bit of education that has to go on, because other companies don't necessarily understand the ramifications of the CC license. And I'm sure in some cases companies have looked at EP and gone "Nope, don't want to license something that's also CCed." -- whether those reasons are valid or not, well, that's not really relevant. The bottom line with big media deals is, in the end, the biggest company wants the most control. In the case of movies and video games, those companies want all sorts of auxiliary rights: toys, novels, posters, bumper stickers, etc. etc. etc. All of that requires careful negotiation, because we don't want to sign a contract that locks us out of our own business model. ;-) We aren't exactly pounding the pavement looking for media deals, but we have some experience with negotiating them, we keep our eyes and ears open, and we'd love to do some amazing things in other medias.

Ranxerox wrote:

I have been wondering about this for a while and really appreciate your clearing that up for me.

You're welcome, always happy to clear the air about technical/legal things. :)

The creative commons licensing for Eclipse Phase has made me have massive, massive respect for Posthuman Studios as a whole. It's one thing to say something; it's another thing entirely to put your money where you mouth is. It also leads to amusing conversations; People have made comments about how well Eclipse Phase has done compared to, say, CthulluTech, and wonder how the hell that happened with EP is being given away for free.

AdamJury wrote:

Yeah, note that Wildfire is now using a CC license for their new game, The Void!

There's a bit of irony in play as far as that goes (in my eyes, at least), but honestly I prefer to see them going in that direction instead of continuing to put those (quite frankly) insulting "If You Downloaded This Book..." sidebars like in the Ctech books. I'll forgo any further commentary regarding Ctech itself for the sake of politeness. That said, I'm glad to see CC catching on like that. Cosmic Patrol is another recent release that is also CC (from Catalyst, no less) that I really enjoyed and went on to purchase. :)

[url=http://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU]This[/url] comes to mind when you say that, Adam. :)

I work in a library where part of my job is to deliver a hour and a half long roleplay session per week. Currently doing Glory campaign. Creative commons lets me hand the books to some of the players who are unable to/unlikely to have the finances to buy it. Oldest player is 18 and can do it, but my youngest player is 10 (Before anyone comments: Her reading habits include titles such as 'Berzerk', and her mother is a massive manga fan and knows everything her daughter reads. If her parents are fine with those reading habits, EP is tame by comparison.) Thinking of donating one of the copies of the core book I got in the Transhuman kickstarter to the library. Got 4 copies but the people I bought them for couldn't wait or lost interest. Either way, it makes my job easier.

sysop wrote:

@Lask - There is something epic about a library supporting local gaming as strongly as this. :) You rock, and whoever OK'd the program for gaming also rocks - please tell them so for me. :)

Seconded. ^_^

As I said in the Den thread, I started RPing at 9 with a group of kids aged 9-13, in Palladium Books' Rifts campaign setting. I had a friend in middle school/high school whose dad introduced him to role playing with the original D&D box set when he was 5 as a way to do some imaginative play together. Not the [i]original[/i] original with the "hobbits" and "ents" of Tolkien estate lawsuit fame, but the collector's edition of the original (which was probably at least the third or fourth printing by that point, post-white box) that came out around the same time as the first D&D Basic Set (which his dad [b]also had[/b] and [b]also[/b] played with him). I was lucky to grow up around and connect with a lot of intensely imaginative and genius people, and I blame the early adoption of pen and paper RPGs for that with a lot of 'em. Start 'em young!

FATE is also under CC ( http://www.faterpg.com/ ) So for the younger ones I would recommend checking that out. :)