Well, I’m glad they finally got around to letting third party publishers know how they’re going to be able to stay in business. There’s a couple unfortunate things about this, however.
1. The $5000 fee. That’s a lot of money for a RPG publisher. This effectively prices out everyone except the very largest third party companies. I’m not sure why – I can see them wanting to keep it out of the hands of “dude in his garage” but that’s steep. And it’s only for a couple months of lead time, so the publishers would need to be making more than $5k profit on their 4e product(s) in that time to make it worthwhile.
2. The community standards. I worry about this one, especially with some of the frankly candyass things some of the Wizards have said lately, like leaving out half-orcs because of the “disturbing implications of their creation.” Where do they plan to draw the line? Just the Book of Erotic Fantasy (which did lose its d20 license)? How about the d20 version of Macho Women With Guns? Some of the recent Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path episodes have definitely been R rated.
Geek Related 