Over 1,500 Publishers Support Paizo's Upcoming Open RPG Creator's License

Paizo has revealed some of the 1,500+ tabletop RPG publishers who have expressed an interest in their new Open RPG Creator's License (ORC), describing the group as the 'ORC Alliance'.

The license itself is still being worked on, so these 1,500 publishers have not actually seen it or signed anything. But they have indicated to Paizo that they support a new, truly open, irrevocable industry license.

Over the course of the last week, more than 1,500 tabletop RPG publishers, from household names going back to the dawn of the hobby to single proprietors just starting out with their first digital release, have joined together to pledge their support for the development of a universal system-neutral open license that provides a legal “safe harbor” for sharing rules mechanics and encourages innovation and collaboration in the tabletop gaming space.

The alliance is gathered. Work has begun.

It would take too long to list all the companies behind the ORC license effort, but we thought you might be interested to see a few of the organizations already pledged toward this common goal. We are honored to be allied with them, as well as with the equally important participating publishers too numerous to list here. Each is crucial to the effort’s success. The list below is but a representative sample of participating publishers from a huge variety of market segments with a huge variety of perspectives. But we all agree on one thing.

We are all in this together.

• Alchemy RPG
• Arcane Minis
• Atlas Games
• Autarch
• Azora Law
• Black Book Editions
• Bombshell Miniatures
• BRW Games
• Chaosium
• Cze & Peku
• Demiplane
• DMDave
• The DM Lair
• Elderbrain
• EN Publishing
• Epic Miniatures
• Evil Genius Games
• Expeditious Retreat Press
• Fantasy Grounds
• Fat Dragon Games
• Forgotten Adventures
• Foundry VTT
• Free RPG Day
• Frog God Games
• Gale Force 9
• Game On Tabletop
• Giochi Uniti
• Goodman Games
• Green Ronin
• The Griffon’s Saddlebag
• Iron GM Games
• Know Direction
• Kobold Press
• Lazy Wolf Studios
• Legendary Games
• Lone Wolf Development
• Loot Tavern
• Louis Porter Jr. Designs
• Mad Cartographer
• Minotaur Games
• Mongoose Publishing
• MonkeyDM
• Monte Cook Games
• MT Black
• Necromancer Games
• Nord Games
• Open Gaming, Inc.
• Paizo Inc.
• Paradigm Concepts
• Pelgrane Press
• Pinnacle Entertainment Group
• Raging Swan Press
• Rogue Games
• Rogue Genius Games
• Roll 20
• Roll for Combat
• Sly Flourish
• Tom Cartos
• Troll Lord Games
• Ulisses Spiele

You will be hearing a lot more from us in the days to come.

 

[Von Ether]

Well, which is it? It's not "fractured" if that "number is pretty much everyone". They're all standing united against WotC's overreach and for properly open gaming.

Pardon, I should have said that for a very traditionally fractured industry, that number is pretty much everyone on the same page for once.

Hence, the "Wow," part at the start of the sentence. Apologies if the post lacked context.

 

[overgeeked]

Pardon, I should have said that for a very traditionally fractured industry, that number is pretty much everyone on the same page for once.

Hence, the "Wow," part at the start of the sentence. Apologies if the post lacked context.

Sorry. Reading five things at once.

 

[ersatzphil]

Although, as I've said in the past, they've burned through all of the true TSR classics that aren't in Yawning Portal, Curse of Strahd or Ghosts of Saltmarsh, so I don't know how many more OAR installments we've got left. Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Dungeonland/The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror and the Slavers series seem like the only remaining obvious ones, as the Pharaoh series is after the era the company has traditionally cared about.

I would actually love to see an OAR version of N1.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I would actually love to see an OAR version of N1.

Against the Cult of the Reptile God is an all-timer, for sure. I think it'd likely be a very slim volume unless they broke their 1E/BX focus and added in the 4E/D&D Next Against the Cult of Chaos update. (Which would be fine by me, since I can't find a copy of that anywhere.)

 

[Greg K]

Hopefully, Ad Infinitum (Steve Kenson), Barrel Rider, Gallant Knight Games, Mage Hand Press, {OAP}, Kibbles Tasty, Sterling Vermin, Taron Pound, Tribality, Walrock Homebrew all join.

 

[ersatzphil]

Against the Cult of the Reptile God is an all-timer, for sure. I think it'd likely be a very slim volume unless they broke their 1E/BX focus and added in the 4E/D&D Next Against the Cult of Chaos update. (Which would be fine by me, since I can't find a copy of that anywhere.)

This is the first I've heard of it!

...this is what I get for taking a decade off from RPGs.

 

[Vayman]

And my axe!

 

[Jer]

Hopefully, Ad Infinitum (Steve Kenson), Barrel Rider, Gallant Knight Games, Mage Hand Press, {OAP}, Kibbles Tasty, Sterling Vermin, Taron Pound, Tribality, Walrock Homebrew all join.

I'm on the patreon and he did put out an announcement last week that he's pondering possibilities for Icons.

It should be easy enough to relicense the core game under a different license since it's actually mostly Fate derived not d20 and Fate has both an OGL and CC-BY license options. But the effect it has on downstream stuff from others who have published Icons stuff under the OGL license is probably going to be a headache for them all to have to deal with when Wizards "deauthorizes" the license, whatever that means.

 

[OB1]

More likely they're under an anti-disparagement clause, meaning they can't say anything negative about WotC. But that shouldn't prevent them from signing on to the ORC.

Not sure they will need to. In the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, they don't provide any of their content for use by others via an SRD and in fact explicitly state that none of their content can be used without their express written agreement. They only use the license for WotCs 5.1 SRD. So unless they decide to switch to a system under ORC, I don't know why they would use it.

 

[beta-ray]

It sounds interesting (I wouldn't think licensing things would ever be interesting), but I don't want to get too rah rah, until things are finalized. Hoping for something good to come of this.