Paizo Announces New Irrevocable Open RPG License To Replace the OGL

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Paizo, the maker of Pathfinder, has just announced a new open license for use with RPGs. The license will not be owned by Paizo - or by any TTRPG company, and will be stewarded by Azora Law, a company which represents several tabletop gaming companies, until it finds its home with an independent non-profit. This new license is designed to be irrevocable.

We believe, as we always have, that open gaming makes games better, improves profitability for all involved, and enriches the community of gamers who participate in this amazing hobby. And so we invite gamers from around the world to join us as we begin the next great chapter of open gaming with the release of a new open, perpetual, and irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC).

The new Open RPG Creative License will be built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers. Paizo will pay for this legal work. We invite game publishers worldwide to join us in support of this system-agnostic license that allows all games to provide their own unique open rules reference documents that open up their individual game systems to the world. To join the effort and provide feedback on the drafts of this license, please sign up by using this form.

In addition to Paizo, Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and a growing list of publishers have already agreed to participate in the Open RPG Creative License, and in the coming days we hope and expect to add substantially to this group.

The ORC will not be owned by Paizo, nor will it be owned by any company who makes money publishing RPGs. Azora Law’s ownership of the process and stewardship should provide a safe harbor against any company being bought, sold, or changing management in the future and attempting to rescind rights or nullify sections of the license. Ultimately, we plan to find a nonprofit with a history of open source values to own this license (such as the Linux Foundation).

Read more on Paizo's blog.

 

[Parmandur]

I would bet on Castles & Crusades and Dungeon Crawl Classics as well.

Goodman feels like they are signaling that they have a more...mutual understanding with WotC, based on their statement today?

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I think it means we'll have several system reference documents to choose from.

I think that's the biggest potential risk now, a dozen fantasy heartbreakers, with no network externality effects.

 

[kenada]

Years later Paizo is bought by Amazon who immediately revokes it.

The license is being held by the law firm drafting it until it can be transferred to a neutral entity.

 

[Scribe]

Respectfully, there is no reason -- indeed, LESS THAN ZERO reasons with this announcement -- to think that this first point is true. Paizo has said, quite clearly, that the OGL 1.0a is not revocable and it will go to court if necessary to fight for that result. Unlike a myriad of small publishers in this field, it has the resources to do this and it has just declared that it will, if necessary, do so.

The first point isnt true, because Wizards never lost their IP. One cannot 'get back' what one never lost in the first place.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Per the announcement, Paizo is not going to control the license.

I forgot the winky face

 

[Parmandur]

I think that's the biggest potential risk now, a dozen fantasy heartbreakers, with no network externality effects.

Yeah, even a common license cannot provide that. This network externality effect will likely remain in D&D'Souza favor in the future after the dust settles.

 

[Composer99]

I used to work for a roof consulting firm, and let me tell you, when you've enough snow and ice on your big box retail store roof that its structural integrity is in question, you don't dilly dally on responding. (I mean, people have, but that ends in disaster.)

This isn't as bad for Hasbro as a roof collapse would be for a retailer (since injuries and deaths are, I hope, off the table), but it feels like it's not far off in terms of lost money and prestige.

 

[Bolares]

Years later Paizo is bought by Amazon who immediately revokes it.

Tell me you didn’t read the blog post without telling me you didn’t read it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So this seems to solve some problems but leaves a lot up in the air. Everything made under the 1.0 OGL is still under the cloud of the deauthorization as to whether there are rights to use it under the new license.

The new ORC license will make things under the new license a safe harbor, but only if people have the rights to the things they want to put under ORC.

So for Pathfinder which uses the SRD under the 1.0 OGL, and all the 3e, 5e, and OSR OGL stuff it is still undetermined whether they can be used at all to put under the new license. Most everything hinges still on the actual effect of deauthorization.

It is good to hear their declaration on deauthorization though.

I suspect that there will be a number of people who use the ORC license to creep closer to 5E D&D in the implementation of games licensed via ORC.

It's possible that WotC will sue all of them, but unless someone outright clones 5E -- which I don't think will happen, as the temptation to tinker with things will end up creating something at least a little different -- but unless they're Paizo-sized, I bet that will be too much trouble for WotC to bother with, especially as I imagine there's going about be some drama at the C-suite level as the board and activist investors start unpacking how this has all gone down. (We should count on this hitting the Wall Street Journal any day now, and then the feces is really going to hit the fan internally.)

By the time things calm down at WotC, I suspect we may have a ruling on OGL 1, which will likely pull some or all of WotC's teeth.

 

[Greg Benage]

Tell me you didn’t read the blog post without telling me you didn’t read it.

Dang, tough crowd. He included the winky emoji and everything.