10 ms·

Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

220 points by gavanwilhite 4y ago

gavanwilhite 4y ago
Some great news comes out of the WotC OGL controversy, with Paizo announcing a new open license and taking a strong legal stand against WotC. They will be looking towards groups like the Linux Foundation to own the license once developed. (Site has been overwhelmed with traffic, thus archive.org)
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Lots of other RPG publishers are joining in too so the license is definitely finding broad acceptance in the community. Curious to see WotC's next move.
- labster 4y ago
  WotC’s next move should be to go the way of TSR and the dodo. In a way, I always knew this was coming. When lots of the people behind 3e left, I assumed that the OGL wouldn’t last forever, once there was enough money on the table. It took a decade longer than I thought, and I wasn’t expecting them to revoke the previous license, but instead remove the OGL from new versions. Either way, rent seekers gotta rent seek.
  - ninth_ant 4y ago
    > and I wasn’t expecting them to revoke the previous license, but instead remove the OGL from new versions Well, to be fair they did do exactly that with D&D 4e and the GSL. Which bombed spectacularly, as their audience continued to play 3.5 and Pathfinder which continued to use the OGL. This is actually WotC learning from their mistakes. If they launched 5.5e with a regressive and user-hostile licence, people would just ignore it and splinter the community and hurt the new edition. Instead — the way wotc is attempting here — they blow up the old editions entirely and shut down all their competition in one legal maneuver. Existing customers have little recourse, they still enjoy ttrpg with their friends and d&d has significant brand strength as well as being the only company left publishing. Nerds will whine but the company now is now well-positioned to be the sole competitor in the increasingly profitable digital future. They don’t have to spent 10 figures on the next dndbeyond, they can just sue them. They don’t have to built a better vtt than foundry, they just shut down foundry and theirs is better by default — tada! They may have underestimated how loudly nerds like me are whining, and voting with our wallets. And perhaps also o overestimating how successful their legal shenanigans would be — I’m not a lawyer but so much I’ve read from legal analysis suggests wotc is in a dubious position and unlikely to succeed here.
    - labster 4y ago
      I don’t think you understand the hobby at all. Every game master, without exception, is a content creator. Most of them want to try new systems just to see what they are like. If they decide to go to other systems, that’s it for D&D. They can make all of the movies and books they want, but that won’t make people DM it. It doesn’t matter if they succeed in court or not. People will stop writing right now (and write for other systems), because who knows if the rug will get pulled under them in the future. Six months from now, maybe they decide the new license is that they get 100% of your revenue — we know they untrustworthy businessmen already. Hasbro pulling an Elon is not them “learning from their mistakes”, it’s just another offense.
      - mcv 4y ago
        It's definitely going to hurt D&D, and I can totally see D&D getting overtaken by other RPGs. But D&D is much more than just a game; it's a brand and cultural icon on par with Star Wars. Hasbro still has the name. They can merchandise the hell out of it. The game will exist, and even if much fewer people will play it, the rich history of D&D will still be attached to it. > Hasbro pulling an Elon is not them “learning from their mistakes”, it’s just another offense. They think they're learning, but they're learning the wrong lesson. What they don't seem to realise is that the editions that used the OGL, are their most successful editions. And 4e that didn't, wasn't. Ryan Dancey (one of the creators of the OGL and VP at WotC at the time) even suggested that Paizo's Pathfinder system may have contributed to the success of D&D 5, because all the players who were disappointed with 4 could keep playing a game very close to D&D, and when D&D 5 came along, many of them switched back to D&D. Without Pathfinder, they might have strayed further and not have come back. Hasbro sees Pathfinder as the enemy, but it's not. You can be big together, and the OGL did make the RPG industry much bigger than it was before. I hope Paizo's new license will do the same.
      - theshrike79 4y ago
        Way too many Americans claim to play D&D, but in fact it's so far homebrewed it's a Theseus's Ship. But D&D is synonymous for table-top roleplaying to Americans, that's what they have to do. Even the super famous podcasts where professional actors play "D&D" are barely using the official rules, they're more for flavour than actual mechanics. I'm secretly hoping that this will actually push American players and GMs to consider other, better fitting, options for their games. If you want to play a sci-fi romp, maybe don't try to shoehorn it to D&D. Same with detective stories in a steampunk world.
Pet_Ant 4y ago
I’d like to hear from Monte Cook Games or White White as well.
- Daegalus 4y ago
  monte cook will probably stick to their CSOL. but they are looking to update the language to make it say irrevocable possibly and they are taking their paid fantasy setting book for Cypher and merging it into the SRD, effectively making 90% open and free
- Macha 4y ago
  Is White White meant to be White Wolf? They're basically defunct after the nazi scandal after Paradox bought them, Paradox licensed out their material for a few years and now has a new in-house team for World of Darkness.
  - Pet_Ant 4y ago
    Interesting, didn't know about that. > In November 2018, as a result of backlash generated by material pertaining to "murder of gay Chechens" published in a Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition source book as well as the inclusion of optional neo-Nazi aesthetic in the Brujah vampire clan,[7] it was announced that White Wolf would no longer function as an entity separate from its parent company, and would cease developing and publishing products internally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wolf_Publishing#Purchase_by_Paradox_Interactive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wolf_Publishing#Purchase...
dang 4y ago
It's fine to include archive links in the thread, for example if a server is overwhelmed, but please post the original source as the top URL. "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We've changed the URL from https://web.archive.org/web/20230112230330/https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v https://web.archive.org/web/20230112230330/https://paizo.com... now.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Thread merge request with the older but less popular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591
- somenameforme 4y ago
  You might want to bump this to the top as the site's been hugged and is 503ing.
- gavanwilhite 4y ago
  Will keep in mind going forward. Thanks for the kind way you point out rules!
- WithinReason 4y ago
  The original is down now and archive still lives.
ryukafalz 4y ago
This is exactly the sort of thing I hoped to see from Paizo once news of WotC's new license leaked. Good to see it! Really curious to see if the new license will be closer at all to something like Creative Commons or FOSS software licenses than the OGL was, or if it'll stay relatively close. My suspicion is Paizo will still want to keep control over their story/setting/etc so it'll likely lean towards the OGL in that way.
- mcv 4y ago
  The new license will probably be very similar to the OGL, except in being more explicit about its irrevocability, and not controlled by a single entity; once its written, Paizo will have no more control over this license than any other publisher. But other than that, the content will be very similar. An open gaming license like this will always have to account for protected property rights. People will want to make Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter games. That requires a clear separation between the shared mechanics and the protected property, and they have to be able to be published in a text where they are deeply integrated with each other.
Daegalus 4y ago
https://archive.md/leaSw https://archive.md/leaSw
nnadams 4y ago
> Ultimately, we plan to find a nonprofit with a history of open source values to own this license (such as the Linux Foundation). I'm not sure if the Linux Foundation is just a relevant example here or an actual contender to be the steward. I kind of hope it's the latter. TTRPG rules are close enough to code right? Structured instructions executed by humans with some flavor text at least.
- BerislavLopac 4y ago
  Not really. That more applies to board-game rules; TTRPG systems are more like guidelines for GMs and players. But regardless of that, open source licences have nothing to do with what the code is doing; they are about using certain specific code in other products. Code is not copyrightable, so you can take some closed-source code and replicate its functionality in a different way - using different language idioms, or a completely different language - completely legally.
  - kaoD 4y ago
    Code is copyrightable, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design It might not be patentable, except it is under some jurisdictions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
    - BerislavLopac 4y ago
      You're right, I meant to write that the code behaviour is not copyrightable.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  I dont think it really matters if it close to code or not, The Linux Foundation ceased being about Linux a long time ago. They really should just rename it to "The Foundation Foundation"
wexomania 4y ago
I would also love to see cc / open source scenarios and stories, perhaps a bit like how scp functions?
Macha 4y ago
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591
BerislavLopac 4y ago
While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open and by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...
- coremoff 4y ago
  compounded by, in D&D's case, the fact that most of their core material uses completely generic terms; fighter, cleric, strength, wisdom. Excepting a few, most of their monsters are generic fantasy monsters too or random combinations of "let's stick this head on this body". The stuff that is copyrightable they do a terrible job at monetizing (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberon, various planes, higher powers, etc.)
  - thatguy0900 4y ago
    Funnily enough, a lot of iconic dnd monsters like rust monster and owlbear was Gary gygax buying bags of random plastic toys and giving them statblocks. So they were themselves just statblocks for others copyrighted works.
- Sakos 4y ago
  Even if this is the case, I don't think there are any companies in the space with deep enough pockets to go up against WotC and challenge it. Just the fear of legal reprisal is a huge problem and has a significant chilling effect that can't be ignored. A new license is absolutely necessary in the context of the modern court system.
- mcv 4y ago
  Even if you're certain you'd win a lawsuit, you'd still have to be able to afford that lawsuit. As we saw in the Google vs Amazon case of the Java API, such lawsuits can be long and complex, and most RPG publishers are tiny. WotC is probably bigger than the entire rest of the industry put together. Even if technically game mechanics are fair use, where exactly to draw that line has never been tested in court, and in the past, well before the OGL, RPG developers publishing something that was intended to be compatible with someone else's game, have been sued over that. Including WotC itself in their early days. So just that already gave WotC an incentive to want a more open license. And in the late 1990s, before they released the OGL, the RPG industry was shrinking, with each company on its own island, and no exchange of material between different systems. WotC reasoned that the value of an RPG comes primarily from how easy it is to find players to play the game with, and if all RPGs are built on the same core mechanics, they have a common player base and players can much more easily pick up a new game. That's why they created the OGL: to connect all the islands, create a common player base for everybody, make all RPGs more valuable as a result, and thereby make the entire industry bigger. A bigger pie, of which WotC got the biggest piece. On top of that, they hoped that third party contributions would also improve D&D itself. Inspired by ESR's the Cathedral and the Bazaar. But the real thing that convinced other publishers to contribute to this common OGL system, much more than any of the legalities, is the trust that WotC built. The OGL was a solemn promise that they would never sue anyone who stuck to the rules in the OGL. Instead of the vague complexities and grey areas of copyright law, there were now clear lines drawn about what you could and couldn't do. And that is what convinced other RPG publishers to go along with this. To trust WotC. And everybody benefited from it. And now WotC destroyed that trust, and may never be able to repair that. Paizo is trying to rebuild a new similar agreement and the accompanying trust from the ruins of WotC's sudden idiocy. WotC seems to be seeing the RPG industry as a zero-sum game, where any money made by someone else, is money not made by them. That's not how it works. WotC benefited enormously from the OGL. The biggest editions of D&D are those that used the OGL (3.x and 5), whereas 4 was significantly less popular, and at some point even outsold by Paizo's Pathfinder. RPGs have always been a community effort. 20 years ago, WotC understood that. Modern Hasbro leadership only thinks in terms of products and consumers, and that attitude is going to hurt D&D.
stoobs 4y ago
Paizo's website has been hugged to death, so it's fair to say they're getting a lot of attention...
- lcrz 4y ago
  To be fair, their site is notoriously unstable and will break if fans look at it wrong.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sswezey 4y ago
Nice that the acronym for the Open RPG Creative License is also ORC.
bhickey 4y ago
It's unclear to me why CC-BY isn't sufficient for SRD material. I'm glad that Paizo is throwing off the yoke of Hasbro altogether, but I don't have a good understanding for what a new license will do that CC doesn't.
- awithrow 4y ago
  My guess is they want to keep the overall structure of the OGL while tearing out the parts that can make the license change at the whims of WotC. The ability to carve out portions of a product as trademark/non-reproducible while releasing he rest isn't something covered by creative commons. Without it I'd imagine many publishers would try to hack together similar language and you'd end up with a proliferation of different new licenses.
- bovermyer 4y ago
  This discussion is also happening in publisher circles. I think the argument is that the ORC (Paizo's proposed license) will differentiate between reserved IP and open content. I'm not certain, though. Source: I own a tabletop RPG publisher.
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    Then remove IP you want to protect from the CC BY-licensed SRD, publish the books under normal copyright terms, and add the rules content to the SRD? I still don't understand the value of the OGL spelling out reserved IP. That's already protected if the only open-licensed part is the rules text, which (not a lawyer) happens with a CC BY SRD and any other copyright license on the derived works. Wizards leaving reserved IP in their official SRD was a bug, not a feature. Back when Paizo still self-hosted Pathfinder 1E's SRD, they solicited pointers to and removed protected terms that they accidentally left in it so it'd be more ergonomic for publishers.
- Jack_Hacker 4y ago
  IANAL, but my understanding is that WotC is getting ready to revoke the old OGL on the basis that "perpetual" doesn't mean "irrevocable," and the main impetus for a new license is explicitly closing that loophole. The perpetual/irrevocable thing seems absurd to me as an outsider, but this article makes me worry that a court could disagree: https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-former-vice-president-ogl-comments-cant-revoke/ https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-f... >According to several lawyers who have weighed in on the situation, if a document does not specifically say it is “irrevocable,” it can be revoked. While the old OGL uses the term “perpetual,” it does not use the word “irrevocable” in writing, and Dancey’s use of the word in interviews and emails may not be sufficient for the courts.
danaris 4y ago
Good on Paizo for this. It's been heartening to see them turn themselves around in recent months, as they got rid of some toxic management and unionized their workers, as well as putting out one of the better crunch-heavy TTRPGs in recent times (Pathfinder 2nd Edition). This move will likely cement them for some time to come as the major tabletop gaming company that actually cares about their customers. From where I sit, the only better outcome we could see from this OGL debacle is if some coalition of TTRPG designers could get together and come up with a fully open TTRPG in the same basic mold as D&D and Pathfinder.
Glyptodon 4y ago
I wonder if WoTC's mishandled this so badly that they get a shareholder class action or some other form of shareholder unrest.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
Pathfinder is an even bigger, overly complex bloat than D&D. I don't get it why people don't make their own systems. It's not rocket science...
- buggy6257 4y ago
  Would you mind linking to the RPG systems you've written lately? I would love to play some new ones with friends from someone who knows what they're doing.
  - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
    Maybe you will... all I'm saying everyone is nuthugging these old, dinosaur like systems. Time to move on.
6451937099 4y ago
[dead]

220 points by gavanwilhite 4y ago

Some great news comes out of the WotC OGL controversy, with Paizo announcing a new open license and taking a strong legal stand against WotC. They will be looking towards groups like the Linux Foundation to own the license once developed. (Site has been overwhelmed with traffic, thus archive.org)

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

Lots of other RPG publishers are joining in too so the license is definitely finding broad acceptance in the community. Curious to see WotC's next move.

labster 4y ago
WotC’s next move should be to go the way of TSR and the dodo. In a way, I always knew this was coming. When lots of the people behind 3e left, I assumed that the OGL wouldn’t last forever, once there was enough money on the table. It took a decade longer than I thought, and I wasn’t expecting them to revoke the previous license, but instead remove the OGL from new versions. Either way, rent seekers gotta rent seek.
- ninth_ant 4y ago
  > and I wasn’t expecting them to revoke the previous license, but instead remove the OGL from new versions Well, to be fair they did do exactly that with D&D 4e and the GSL. Which bombed spectacularly, as their audience continued to play 3.5 and Pathfinder which continued to use the OGL. This is actually WotC learning from their mistakes. If they launched 5.5e with a regressive and user-hostile licence, people would just ignore it and splinter the community and hurt the new edition. Instead — the way wotc is attempting here — they blow up the old editions entirely and shut down all their competition in one legal maneuver. Existing customers have little recourse, they still enjoy ttrpg with their friends and d&d has significant brand strength as well as being the only company left publishing. Nerds will whine but the company now is now well-positioned to be the sole competitor in the increasingly profitable digital future. They don’t have to spent 10 figures on the next dndbeyond, they can just sue them. They don’t have to built a better vtt than foundry, they just shut down foundry and theirs is better by default — tada! They may have underestimated how loudly nerds like me are whining, and voting with our wallets. And perhaps also o overestimating how successful their legal shenanigans would be — I’m not a lawyer but so much I’ve read from legal analysis suggests wotc is in a dubious position and unlikely to succeed here.
  - labster 4y ago
    I don’t think you understand the hobby at all. Every game master, without exception, is a content creator. Most of them want to try new systems just to see what they are like. If they decide to go to other systems, that’s it for D&D. They can make all of the movies and books they want, but that won’t make people DM it. It doesn’t matter if they succeed in court or not. People will stop writing right now (and write for other systems), because who knows if the rug will get pulled under them in the future. Six months from now, maybe they decide the new license is that they get 100% of your revenue — we know they untrustworthy businessmen already. Hasbro pulling an Elon is not them “learning from their mistakes”, it’s just another offense.
    - mcv 4y ago
      It's definitely going to hurt D&D, and I can totally see D&D getting overtaken by other RPGs. But D&D is much more than just a game; it's a brand and cultural icon on par with Star Wars. Hasbro still has the name. They can merchandise the hell out of it. The game will exist, and even if much fewer people will play it, the rich history of D&D will still be attached to it. > Hasbro pulling an Elon is not them “learning from their mistakes”, it’s just another offense. They think they're learning, but they're learning the wrong lesson. What they don't seem to realise is that the editions that used the OGL, are their most successful editions. And 4e that didn't, wasn't. Ryan Dancey (one of the creators of the OGL and VP at WotC at the time) even suggested that Paizo's Pathfinder system may have contributed to the success of D&D 5, because all the players who were disappointed with 4 could keep playing a game very close to D&D, and when D&D 5 came along, many of them switched back to D&D. Without Pathfinder, they might have strayed further and not have come back. Hasbro sees Pathfinder as the enemy, but it's not. You can be big together, and the OGL did make the RPG industry much bigger than it was before. I hope Paizo's new license will do the same.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      Way too many Americans claim to play D&D, but in fact it's so far homebrewed it's a Theseus's Ship. But D&D is synonymous for table-top roleplaying to Americans, that's what they have to do. Even the super famous podcasts where professional actors play "D&D" are barely using the official rules, they're more for flavour than actual mechanics. I'm secretly hoping that this will actually push American players and GMs to consider other, better fitting, options for their games. If you want to play a sci-fi romp, maybe don't try to shoehorn it to D&D. Same with detective stories in a steampunk world.

Pet_Ant 4y ago

I’d like to hear from Monte Cook Games or White White as well.

Daegalus 4y ago
monte cook will probably stick to their CSOL. but they are looking to update the language to make it say irrevocable possibly and they are taking their paid fantasy setting book for Cypher and merging it into the SRD, effectively making 90% open and free
Macha 4y ago
Is White White meant to be White Wolf? They're basically defunct after the nazi scandal after Paradox bought them, Paradox licensed out their material for a few years and now has a new in-house team for World of Darkness.
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  Interesting, didn't know about that. > In November 2018, as a result of backlash generated by material pertaining to "murder of gay Chechens" published in a Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition source book as well as the inclusion of optional neo-Nazi aesthetic in the Brujah vampire clan,[7] it was announced that White Wolf would no longer function as an entity separate from its parent company, and would cease developing and publishing products internally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wolf_Publishing#Purchase_by_Paradox_Interactive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wolf_Publishing#Purchase...

dang 4y ago

It's fine to include archive links in the thread, for example if a server is overwhelmed, but please post the original source as the top URL. "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We've changed the URL from https://web.archive.org/web/20230112230330/https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v https://web.archive.org/web/20230112230330/https://paizo.com... now.

Semaphor 4y ago
Thread merge request with the older but less popular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591
somenameforme 4y ago
You might want to bump this to the top as the site's been hugged and is 503ing.
gavanwilhite 4y ago
Will keep in mind going forward. Thanks for the kind way you point out rules!
WithinReason 4y ago
The original is down now and archive still lives.

ryukafalz 4y ago

This is exactly the sort of thing I hoped to see from Paizo once news of WotC's new license leaked. Good to see it! Really curious to see if the new license will be closer at all to something like Creative Commons or FOSS software licenses than the OGL was, or if it'll stay relatively close. My suspicion is Paizo will still want to keep control over their story/setting/etc so it'll likely lean towards the OGL in that way.

mcv 4y ago
The new license will probably be very similar to the OGL, except in being more explicit about its irrevocability, and not controlled by a single entity; once its written, Paizo will have no more control over this license than any other publisher. But other than that, the content will be very similar. An open gaming license like this will always have to account for protected property rights. People will want to make Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter games. That requires a clear separation between the shared mechanics and the protected property, and they have to be able to be published in a text where they are deeply integrated with each other.

Daegalus 4y ago

https://archive.md/leaSw https://archive.md/leaSw

nnadams 4y ago

> Ultimately, we plan to find a nonprofit with a history of open source values to own this license (such as the Linux Foundation). I'm not sure if the Linux Foundation is just a relevant example here or an actual contender to be the steward. I kind of hope it's the latter. TTRPG rules are close enough to code right? Structured instructions executed by humans with some flavor text at least.

BerislavLopac 4y ago
Not really. That more applies to board-game rules; TTRPG systems are more like guidelines for GMs and players. But regardless of that, open source licences have nothing to do with what the code is doing; they are about using certain specific code in other products. Code is not copyrightable, so you can take some closed-source code and replicate its functionality in a different way - using different language idioms, or a completely different language - completely legally.
- kaoD 4y ago
  Code is copyrightable, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design It might not be patentable, except it is under some jurisdictions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
  - BerislavLopac 4y ago
    You're right, I meant to write that the code behaviour is not copyrightable.
phpisthebest 4y ago
I dont think it really matters if it close to code or not, The Linux Foundation ceased being about Linux a long time ago. They really should just rename it to "The Foundation Foundation"

wexomania 4y ago

I would also love to see cc / open source scenarios and stories, perhaps a bit like how scp functions?

Macha 4y ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361591

BerislavLopac 4y ago

While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open and by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...

coremoff 4y ago
compounded by, in D&D's case, the fact that most of their core material uses completely generic terms; fighter, cleric, strength, wisdom. Excepting a few, most of their monsters are generic fantasy monsters too or random combinations of "let's stick this head on this body". The stuff that is copyrightable they do a terrible job at monetizing (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberon, various planes, higher powers, etc.)
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  Funnily enough, a lot of iconic dnd monsters like rust monster and owlbear was Gary gygax buying bags of random plastic toys and giving them statblocks. So they were themselves just statblocks for others copyrighted works.
Sakos 4y ago
Even if this is the case, I don't think there are any companies in the space with deep enough pockets to go up against WotC and challenge it. Just the fear of legal reprisal is a huge problem and has a significant chilling effect that can't be ignored. A new license is absolutely necessary in the context of the modern court system.
mcv 4y ago
Even if you're certain you'd win a lawsuit, you'd still have to be able to afford that lawsuit. As we saw in the Google vs Amazon case of the Java API, such lawsuits can be long and complex, and most RPG publishers are tiny. WotC is probably bigger than the entire rest of the industry put together. Even if technically game mechanics are fair use, where exactly to draw that line has never been tested in court, and in the past, well before the OGL, RPG developers publishing something that was intended to be compatible with someone else's game, have been sued over that. Including WotC itself in their early days. So just that already gave WotC an incentive to want a more open license. And in the late 1990s, before they released the OGL, the RPG industry was shrinking, with each company on its own island, and no exchange of material between different systems. WotC reasoned that the value of an RPG comes primarily from how easy it is to find players to play the game with, and if all RPGs are built on the same core mechanics, they have a common player base and players can much more easily pick up a new game. That's why they created the OGL: to connect all the islands, create a common player base for everybody, make all RPGs more valuable as a result, and thereby make the entire industry bigger. A bigger pie, of which WotC got the biggest piece. On top of that, they hoped that third party contributions would also improve D&D itself. Inspired by ESR's the Cathedral and the Bazaar. But the real thing that convinced other publishers to contribute to this common OGL system, much more than any of the legalities, is the trust that WotC built. The OGL was a solemn promise that they would never sue anyone who stuck to the rules in the OGL. Instead of the vague complexities and grey areas of copyright law, there were now clear lines drawn about what you could and couldn't do. And that is what convinced other RPG publishers to go along with this. To trust WotC. And everybody benefited from it. And now WotC destroyed that trust, and may never be able to repair that. Paizo is trying to rebuild a new similar agreement and the accompanying trust from the ruins of WotC's sudden idiocy. WotC seems to be seeing the RPG industry as a zero-sum game, where any money made by someone else, is money not made by them. That's not how it works. WotC benefited enormously from the OGL. The biggest editions of D&D are those that used the OGL (3.x and 5), whereas 4 was significantly less popular, and at some point even outsold by Paizo's Pathfinder. RPGs have always been a community effort. 20 years ago, WotC understood that. Modern Hasbro leadership only thinks in terms of products and consumers, and that attitude is going to hurt D&D.

stoobs 4y ago

Paizo's website has been hugged to death, so it's fair to say they're getting a lot of attention...

lcrz 4y ago
To be fair, their site is notoriously unstable and will break if fans look at it wrong.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sswezey 4y ago

Nice that the acronym for the Open RPG Creative License is also ORC.

bhickey 4y ago

It's unclear to me why CC-BY isn't sufficient for SRD material. I'm glad that Paizo is throwing off the yoke of Hasbro altogether, but I don't have a good understanding for what a new license will do that CC doesn't.

awithrow 4y ago
My guess is they want to keep the overall structure of the OGL while tearing out the parts that can make the license change at the whims of WotC. The ability to carve out portions of a product as trademark/non-reproducible while releasing he rest isn't something covered by creative commons. Without it I'd imagine many publishers would try to hack together similar language and you'd end up with a proliferation of different new licenses.
bovermyer 4y ago
This discussion is also happening in publisher circles. I think the argument is that the ORC (Paizo's proposed license) will differentiate between reserved IP and open content. I'm not certain, though. Source: I own a tabletop RPG publisher.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Then remove IP you want to protect from the CC BY-licensed SRD, publish the books under normal copyright terms, and add the rules content to the SRD? I still don't understand the value of the OGL spelling out reserved IP. That's already protected if the only open-licensed part is the rules text, which (not a lawyer) happens with a CC BY SRD and any other copyright license on the derived works. Wizards leaving reserved IP in their official SRD was a bug, not a feature. Back when Paizo still self-hosted Pathfinder 1E's SRD, they solicited pointers to and removed protected terms that they accidentally left in it so it'd be more ergonomic for publishers.
Jack_Hacker 4y ago
IANAL, but my understanding is that WotC is getting ready to revoke the old OGL on the basis that "perpetual" doesn't mean "irrevocable," and the main impetus for a new license is explicitly closing that loophole. The perpetual/irrevocable thing seems absurd to me as an outsider, but this article makes me worry that a court could disagree: https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-former-vice-president-ogl-comments-cant-revoke/ https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-f... >According to several lawyers who have weighed in on the situation, if a document does not specifically say it is “irrevocable,” it can be revoked. While the old OGL uses the term “perpetual,” it does not use the word “irrevocable” in writing, and Dancey’s use of the word in interviews and emails may not be sufficient for the courts.

danaris 4y ago

Good on Paizo for this. It's been heartening to see them turn themselves around in recent months, as they got rid of some toxic management and unionized their workers, as well as putting out one of the better crunch-heavy TTRPGs in recent times (Pathfinder 2nd Edition). This move will likely cement them for some time to come as the major tabletop gaming company that actually cares about their customers. From where I sit, the only better outcome we could see from this OGL debacle is if some coalition of TTRPG designers could get together and come up with a fully open TTRPG in the same basic mold as D&D and Pathfinder.

Glyptodon 4y ago

I wonder if WoTC's mishandled this so badly that they get a shareholder class action or some other form of shareholder unrest.

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

Pathfinder is an even bigger, overly complex bloat than D&D. I don't get it why people don't make their own systems. It's not rocket science...

buggy6257 4y ago
Would you mind linking to the RPG systems you've written lately? I would love to play some new ones with friends from someone who knows what they're doing.
- lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  Maybe you will... all I'm saying everyone is nuthugging these old, dinosaur like systems. Time to move on.

6451937099 4y ago

[dead]