They’re still going through with it and maintaining that they have the right to change the terms whenever they feel like. As expected they’re rolling back one or two things (which they can undo whenever they want) and acting like people won. Fuck WotC.
oh yeah ill definitely trust a corporation that tried to rent seek an entire industry, sure
pathfinder is an objectively superior system and I made this account to talk about it, actually. otherwise I don’t really post at all. play pathfinder and support their union
Pathfinder relied on OGL, I’m not sure what Paizo is planning in reaction to this.
So apparently all the stuff that the OGL “allows” is actually stuff Hasbro can’t copyright, like the game rules. Paizo already pretty much moved past all that stuff, too. So there isn’t really much if anything that Hasbro owns that they’re actually using.
Apparently the OGL was kind of a scam to trick 3rd party companies to agree to rules that were more restrictive than fair use. Since D&D is built on so many commons things like mythology, religion, or just books that Hasbro doesn’t own, there’s only a limited amount of D&D stuff that Hasbro has any claim too.
So Hasbro’s ability to stop anyone from making D&D supplements is actually really limited. As long as they don’t use any copyrighted language 3rd party companies can make whatever they want.
Honestly kinda funny when you realize the OGL was made to have DnD as the main deliveyr point (since you used their system and core rulebooks) and then could bolt supplements on to it. Another case of capitalists brutally butchering their golden goose and then getting confused when there’s no more golden eggs.
Paizo is writing their own OGL with a bunch of other small publishers, while also saying they’ll take WotC to court if they try to ‘rugpull’ OGL1.0a.
And to be fair, Pathfinder 2e doesn’t use OGL for much, at this point its mostly just a few names and concepts; they’ve said they decided to publish 2e on OGL mostly for convenience’s sake, so they didn’t have to have a lawyer look over everything written to make sure it didn’t ‘steal’ stuff.
Paizo’s Pathfinder card game isn’t OGL, and as a result has stuff like “Arcane Barrage” instead of “Magic Missile”.
Paizo have released the ORC license in response and have made it clear they intend to go to court if the original OGL license is deauthorised.
“Our plan was always to solicit the input of our community before any update to the OGL; the drafts you’ve seen were attempting to do just that.” Just straight up lying, how could this be true when we only knew about the new ogl due to leaks
a couple of the leaked contracts were sent to creators with the intent of being signed as an actual contract, so how could they have ever been “just drafts”
First, we wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products.
I love the fact that they keep frontloading this, as if a single person criticizing the new OGL was saying “what if I want to make a racist D&D book?”
edit: anyway, the damage is frankly already done, no matter what Hasbro tries to claw back. Their biggest competitor is releasing a new license, which will be held by a neutral organization, which is going to be superior to what the OGL was already, much less the gimped version that WOTC intends to release next.
The real question is whether this saga will actually create a change in the market. I’m a bit cynical to the idea that everyone will suddenly switch to Pathfinder instead of D&D 6 - right now Pathfinder is only about 1/10th the size of D&D, and every other TTRPG barely shows up as a blip compared to those two, and I just don’t see the kind of seismic shift happening that would need to happen to break that status quo. Everyone publishing TTRPG materials will need to publish D&D materials in order to make money, which should force the OGL 1.1 to have a big install base even if it’s a reluctant one.
Everyone publishing TTRPG materials will need to publish D&D materials in order to make money
you mean just 3rd party supplements?
Right yeah. Though I think it would be really funny if we saw the major 3rd party publishers do two things:
- Publish supplements for 🅱️ungeons & 🅱️ragons, which is legally distinct from that other game
- Publish supplements simultaneously for multiple systems, esp. if you’re primarily selling PDFs there’s no reason why you could have alternate versions with different game mechanics
Pathfinder will get a bit of growth but it’s not positioned to be the lifeboat it was with 4E. Pathfinder 2E is a very different system with different design principles and you can’t convert characters from D&D like they could last time. The good news is that being its own thing will give it a much stronger position in the ensuing legal battles, but the drawback is that it’ll be harder to get people to switch.
If there’s going to be a system that emerges as a clear lifeboat, it’s probably one of the ones being developed in response to this happening.
silver lining:
hopefully this pushes people to play things other than 5e
Even if WotC some how regains every last bit of good will it lost this has still been a massive win for the ttrpg community and especially VTTs. D&D has lost its momentum, players are looking at other games, creators no longer feel safe creating d&d specific assets. Watching all the people on patrion switch from 5e to Pathfinder or system agnostic is beautiful and can never be undone.
Paizo was already officially supporting foundry and yesterday gave away so many starter packs their site crashed. D&D has lost the VTT war.
Pandemic ruined my attempt to get into D&D, but even as an outsider I’m loving watching them crash and burn.
and yesterday gave away so many starter packs their site crashed
This?
Explore the world now with a free PDF copy of the Lost Omens World Guide . Simply add the PDF to your cart and use discount code OPENGAMING at checkout.
yeah, I thought they gave away some other stuff too, but by the time I was paying attention to their give aways everything was lagging and crashing so I’m not 100% sure. Also if you play their system on foundry you get all of their iconics premade plus all the rule books are all there free, but that’s always been that way.
