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Heck, the old Rolemaster setting Shadow World was actually in a location in their Space Master system. Fun for everyone.

Oh good. Fast Forward Entertainment. They had some great ideas. They had a hardcover with a spiral bound book of mini-encounters but it was so terribly written. For example, there's an encounter with a barbarian whose hiding yet runs out to attack the party with something like a 3K gem in his left boot or something. Their Dungeon World series was also solid on idea but weak on execution.

In terms of DDI, several of my buddies have subscriptions. It just makes character creation so much easier. For me though, I went in for Dragon and Dungeon monthly. At $5 a month... well, even electronically, there is no value that can compare to it PDF wise.

And I'm not trying to be dismissive. My opinion is that people are giving weight to 3rd party that isn't there. There's a lot of talk. For example, we all love Necromancer games. The sales of their boxed sets were so small that they were essentially limited print items. That's not a healthy community. I could very easily be wrong but I remember in the early 80's when Palladium came out and people were like, "If TSR had made a spell system that worked, or had a combat system that worked or had these awesome weapon matrixes... ditto for Rolemaster and dozens of other games. Which is why I believe Pathfinder will do well, but it ain't never going to be D&D. It's going to be another fancy heartbreaker. Now I could be wrong (easily so) on three counts.

First, it could not be convertible or easily convertible for 3rd edition stuff. Bam, another branch in the tree. Despite Arcana Evolved being a solid game, it's PDF only now and it's not even really another branch as much as an offspring. Grim Tales and a few others fall here as well but I don't see them as the inheritors of D&D.

Second, it could not bring in any new players but just retain the people who like 3e. In this case, it could still be huge but even with the 'split', D&D has the D&D name brand.

Third, I'm completely wrong and it not only keeps all of the 3e people but brings in new 3e people as Pathfinder people. This could happen. There's a hell of a lot of talent over there and they were well known for their excellent work on Dungeon and Dragon. But for every month that 4e is out and has the D&D brand and the DDI is out, newer players will never know that. To them, Paizo is just some weird company coming out with some 3e rip off.