OGL 1.2 survey is now live

[Gammadoodler]

But my point was, the unhappy people are a small, tiny minority and if many can't be appeased WotC will just shrug and barely notice the imperceptible drop in their income.
Compared to the fans they lose during 3.5e or 4e this is nothing.

It does depend somewhat on the network effect of the role the now unhappy population plays in the ecosystem and how replaceable the now unhappy people are in that role.

It's like if you piss off all the car salesmen in the industry. Yes, car salesmen make up a small portion of the car car-driving population, but they are the ones who help get other people behind the wheel(super simplified analogy).

 

[Scribe]

Compared to the fans they lose during 3.5e or 4e this is nothing.

They are not even at the stage of losing the 5e to 1D&D fans. That comes later.

 

[FormerLurker]

If you wanted to quickly establish lines of communication with as many aggrieved parties as possible, how would you do it?

There's lots of different ways. Yes, they could use the list of people who signed up for ORC to assemble plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit. But just because someone signed up for one doesn't mean they signed up for the other.

Paizo could have just written their own license on their own and released it for their own products.

They are. That's literally what ORC is.

Of course, it's good PR for them to do it like this too. I just don't think that it was the only motivation. In fact, they've already stated that they will defend OGL 1.0(a) in court if it comes to it.
From their press release: "While we are prepared to argue that point in a court of law if need be, we don’t want to have to do that, and we know that many of our fellow publishers are not in a position to do so."

Keyword of "if it comes to it" being "if."
With the leaked draft they needed to fight. As it cut off their profits. But now? It doesn't affect them. Even if they won the lawsuit, they couldn't really claim damages since they're clearly benefiting from the PR. It'd be a very expensive case that just cost them money with little to no net gain.

 

[FormerLurker]

I don't think that "drop your unethical and questionably-legal push to revoke/de-authorize the OGL v1.0a" can reasonably be equated to "blood."

But so many people here won't even accept that anymore or a reversion to how things were two months ago.
They don't just need to preserve the 1.0a OGL but provide reparations of some kind. The poster I was responded wanted nothing less than multiple firings of key executives.

 

[Xyxox]

Um.... no. 1,500 publishers agreed to consider publishing under Paizo's license when it's released. Not all are consulting lawyers.

Maybe.
But Paizo isn't going to sue just to get brownie points with gamers. They were likely willing if the 1.0a was revoked and they couldn't keep selling content under it. If they can keep selling their old content and back catalogue and have 6-12 months to re-release their core rules and new books under the OGL 1.2 or ORC then they'll do that instead of suing.

They've sweetened the deal repeatedly. They made the base rules Creative Commons. They removed the royalties clause and declaring income and virtually every other aspect of the proposed license.
There's nothing that would appease some people short of blood.

But my point was, the unhappy people are a small, tiny minority and if many can't be appeased WotC will just shrug and barely notice the imperceptible drop in their income.
Compared to the fans they lose during 3.5e or 4e this is nothing.

They released it under the Creative Commons because they know that is the worst possible license for TTRPGs. The mess that will create combined with acceptance that OGL 1.0a is dead when it doesn't have to be guarantees most of the competition will be ruined for a decade.

 

[Alzrius]

But so many people here won't even accept that anymore or a reversion to how things were two months ago.
They don't just need to preserve the 1.0a OGL but provide reparations of some kind. The poster I was responded wanted nothing less than multiple firings of key executives.

Let's leave aside for a moment that causing so much anxiety among the tabletop RPG community, to say nothing of disruptions to other publishers, seems like the sort of thing which would understandably cause some upset, particularly when it's viewed as having been avoidable, entirely unjustified, and completely unethical.

I suspect that the vast majority of people would be satisfied with WotC backing off and affirming that the OGL v1.0a cannot be revoked/de-authorized (and, perhaps, taking action to prove that, such as by releasing an OGL v1.0b with language that effect).

 

[FormerLurker]

They released it under the Creative Commons because they know that is the worst possible license for TTRPGs. The mess that will create combined with acceptance that OGL 1.0a is dead when it doesn't have to be guarantees most of the competition will be ruined for a decade.

What clause in the new license will guarantee competition will be ruined?

 

[Scribe]

I suspect that the vast majority of people would be satisfied with WotC backing off and affirming that the OGL v1.0a cannot be revoked/de-authorized (and, perhaps, taking action to prove that, such as by releasing an OGL v1.0b with language that effect).

This is frankly the only acceptable course of action they have.

 

[mamba]

But so many people here won't even accept that anymore

I very much doubt this, I think everyone would be happy if we were back to 1.0a

 

[mamba]

They released it under the Creative Commons because they know that is the worst possible license for TTRPGs.

given that there is no OGL 1.0a to release it under and 1.2 is pointless too, which other license should they have used? Also, where do you see the problem?