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.

 

[Charlaquin]

To add to this for PF2e:
You only ever take one circumstance bonus and penalty at most, so it’s like 2-1= +1. Same goes for status modifiers. The most complex math would be something like shooting a bow in heavy wind from 5 range increments away, frightened 2, and heroism on you. (-8, +2, +1, -2). That would be super rare. If the player was shooting from that far away consistently, I’d expect them to take care of their range increment modifiers and just give me the number so we can add the final +1.

I’ve never had it so bad that it slowed down play anymore than when I ran 5e and we discussed whether someone had advantage or disadvantage due to circumstances.

No doubt it’s an improvement from the bad old days of 3e and PF1, and for me it’s not an unreasonable amount of math. Unfortunately for most of the people I regularly play with, it’s still too much.

 

[Reynard]

We've gone through this whole week, with all the threads and all the analysis, and people STILL don't know the difference between an OGL and SRD and OGC.

I can't even...

 

[Matt Thomason]

if it had any in the first place then I am not sure how it can be dual licensed under ORC. Is only your contribution dual-licensed ?

You would have to ensure that either all existing open game content you are using is also dual-licensed, or that you have been very, very careful and are not using any existing open game content in your work.

I can't imagine many practical examples, but I think one would be if Paizo release a PF2(.5?) SRD under ORC, and you create a spell that can be used both in that and in the OGL 1.0-licensed PF2 SRD and does not include Paizo material that only exists in one and not the other.

 

[AlwaysMerlin]

uh...that'd be an attack roll of 26, and would have to be against an AC of 16 (after penalties) for it to crit. typo?

Haha. Maybe I should go back to 5E. Math too hard

 

[humble minion]

I think you under-estimate the financial resources of Paizo owner, Lisa Stevens by quite a bit. She was the 2nd largest shareholder in WotC when Hasbro bought it. She and Adkinson each got a veritable dump truck o cash from Hasbro, back-in-the-day. In the meanwhile, Paizo's been profitable.

The costs of a court case are not going to bankrupt Paizo. And in the meanwhile, they continue to do business -- and WotC continues to piss into the wind without a legal remedy.

tl;dr: Nope. It's not that easy

Well, it's all kind of speculation, but the resources of Lisa Stevens and the resources of Paizo are not the same thing. Paizo has big revenue but big expenses too. Back when there was controversy about Agents of Edgewatch during the protests etc about policing in the USA, Paizo said that they'd ideally prefer to pull the whole thing, but that they were already committed, and pulling out of a scheduled AP just before publication would have had a big enough impact on cash flow to push the company out of viability. So it's not like they're sitting on a secret gold mine over there or anything. No business of Paizo's scale has a few spare million just floating around in case a lawsuit comes along.

 

[Parmandur]

I think you under-estimate the financial resources of Paizo owner, Lisa Stevens by quite a bit. She was the 2nd largest shareholder in WotC when Hasbro bought it. She and Adkinson each got a veritable dump truck o cash from Hasbro, back-in-the-day. In the meanwhile, Paizo's been profitable.

The costs of a court case are not going to bankrupt Paizo. And in the meanwhile, they continue to do business -- and WotC continues to piss into the wind without a legal remedy.

tl;dr: Nope. It's not that easy

The same goes the other direction: fraught times.

 

[Abstruse]

An Ars Magica license would be amazing.

I want to make clear that John's been talking a lot about the OGL on both Twitter and Mastodon all week, specifically going into the history of the license, the reasons for its creation, and refuting several claims made by non-RPG folks writing on the topic for mainstream outlets. The Ars Magica getting an open license bit was from...yesterday? Tuesday? Time is fuzzy right now. So it's just a possibility thrown out in a sea of other thoughts and speculation and potential plans he's made. The only system he's stated for sure he'd consider releasing under ORC (depending on the final state of the license of course) is the WaRP System.

 

[masdog]

I mean that you don't give up ownership when you release something under the OGL. The 5E and 3E SRDs remain property of Wizards of the Coast. They have merely offered a license to use that property under specific conditions. Nobody but Wizards can put it under the ORC.

Similarly, the Pathfinder SRD is property of Paizo... except the bits that were taken from the 3E SRD.

Open game content is not public domain.

Ok. That might have been what you meant, but your original post made it sound like WotC owned the copyright on anything released under the OGL…

 

[Yaarel]

if it had any in the first place then I am not sure how it can be dual licensed under ORC. Is only your contribution dual-licensed ?

Many people have used the OGL 1.0a and voluntarily contributed to its Open Gaming Content.

The SRDs from Hasbro-WotC were likewise contributions to this Open Gaming Content.

If your product uses any of this Open Gaming Content, including any SRD from Hasbro-WotC, the permission to do so comes from the OGL 1.0a license.

If the OGL 1.0a were to vanish, all the permissions to use any of this Open Gaming Content would likewise vanish.

Note, your product might also contribute some to the collective Open Gaming Content, giving other gamers permission to use the parts that you say they can. Your own permission that you give also depends on the OGL 1.0a − and that would vanish too. They would be unable to legally use your content (even if you wouldnt go after them).



When the ORC gets up an running: you can use this license to contribute to the Open Content of this license, giving permission to others to use your designated Open Content. Likewise, if the ORC starts accumulating much good Open Content from many other contributers, you yourself can use that Open Content for your products.



If you are using both licenses − ORC and OGL 1.0a − you are borrowing from two separate pools of Open Content. Likewise, you are giving permission by two different ways for others to use any of your content that you contribute.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I want to make clear that John's been talking a lot about the OGL on both Twitter and Mastodon all week, specifically going into the history of the license, the reasons for its creation, and refuting several claims made by non-RPG folks writing on the topic for mainstream outlets. The Ars Magica getting an open license bit was from...yesterday? Tuesday? Time is fuzzy right now. So it's just a possibility thrown out in a sea of other thoughts and speculation and potential plans he's made. The only system he's stated for sure he'd consider releasing under ORC (depending on the final state of the license of course) is the WaRP System.

Yeah, it's been a hell of a week.

Still, it doesn't stop me from fantasizing of playing a game that runs like D&D with a magic system like Ars.