Another one bites the dust

[redzimmer]

It is a sad day in 3.5 Land, as WOTC have asked pathguy.com to remove his D&D character generators. With this and the recent loss of dndtools.eu, it certain will take a lot more brickwork to make s character.

:smallsadface:

[YossarianLives]

Damn! I loved the character generator. I used it to make all of my characters.:smallfrown:

[Cathwar]

I could fully understand why WoTC would do this IF they had comparable tools they were offering for sale. But D&D has not had a decent "official" generator since....forever. Pathguy provided a great, easy to use character generator for new players of 5th edition...one would think WoTC would want to make it easier for people to start 5th edition, rather than harder.

The argument that they are just protecting their IP doesn't hold much water, since they have left these sites alone for decades.

They certainly have the RIGHT to do this, but the timing (new edition, trying to attract new players or get them back from Pathfinder, no similar commercial product) strikes me as odd.

Sigh.

[Cruiser1]

Damn! I loved the character generator. I used it to make all of my characters.:smallfrown:
Indeed, the 3.5 character generator (http://www.pathguy.com/cg35.htm) and related ones on the site were nice because they were done entirely in Javascript within a single HTML page, so everything was client-side with no server operations. However, they did reference feats and such outside the SRD. There are other quality character generators out there, such as PCGen (http://pcgen.org/) which allows 3.5 and Pathfinder character generation, however they only include SRD material so they'll never be shut down. :smalltongue:

[Ksheep]

It's a real shame that this was taken down. That said, it appears that the Internet Archive does have working archives of most of the generators. We just won't be seeing anything else added to them as time goes on. Not really an issue for 3.5, but it might be an issue for the D&D Next and Pathfinder generators.

[Divayth Fyr]

I can see why they wanted to deal with D&D generators, but why Pathfinder ones as well? :smallconfused:

[Ksheep]

I can see why they wanted to deal with D&D generators, but why Pathfinder ones as well? :smallconfused:

Probably just some lawyer at Hasbro HQ getting a bit trigger happy. They've been doing a lot of this sort of stuff with other properties as of late, even going as far as targeting reviewers and fan-artists of some of their shows with DMCA takedowns. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever did this isn't aware that Pathfinder isn't the same as D&D, likely just thinking that all PnP RPGs fall under their rule.

[Cruiser1]

I can see why they wanted to deal with D&D generators, but why Pathfinder ones as well? :smallconfused:
The SRD only contains certain things, not everything needed to build a character. For example, the SRD doesn't contain stat rolling techniques, which levels you get to raise a stat or gain feats, XP thresholds and when/how to level up, etc. Those details are only in the PHB or DMG. Pathfinder adopted most of those things from D&D 3.5, which means a Pathfinder character generator requires things beyond the 3.5 SRD. Therefore WotC lawyers can make a good case to take down a Pathfinder character generator.

[Melcar]

Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro are utter F-words.

Sorry but they are... They insist on making it more difficult to play older versions while thinking that shotting down archives or web-pages that helps players, play the game, incourages people to buy a new edition? Especially after seeing what GREAT work they did with 4th.

[Divayth Fyr]

It seems Pathfinder generators are back online.

[Sam K]

Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro are utter F-words.

Sorry but they are... They insist on making it more difficult to play older versions while thinking that shotting down archives or web-pages that helps players, play the game, incourages people to buy a new edition? Especially after seeing what GREAT work they did with 4th.

Hasbros (and/or WotCs) legal department is likely ran with different objectives than the division that actually makes and promotes games. Standard procedure in major corporations - someone freaks out over "People putting our thingamjigs on the internets", a director of legal affairs get a bonus for "Protecting our intellectual property from being exploited online", and suddenly the beancounters are sending out cease and desist letters to everyone.

"Alignment to corporate strategy" is a bigger joke than "alignment in D&D" - quite a few people will screw over the company long term success for a +10 000 profane bonus to their anual income stat.

[Lightlawbliss]

Knowing what happened with dndtools threads, this conversation should probably stop (even if I personally wish it would continue with much hateful language to wizards for their choices).

[Haruki-kun]

The Winged Mod: Everyone, please remember that we have rules on this site about discussing politics, legal issues, and sharing copyright infringement.

If anyone here wants to, you can feel free to start a thread to discuss and share legal resources and tools you can use for gaming, but please do not start threads to discuss when a resource or tool gets taken down due to copyright infringement issues or legal action from the copyright holder.

Thank you for understanding. I will be closing this thread now.