Brian Lewis, original legal drafter of the OGL, speaks out

[Staffan]

I wonder how much of that immediate resurrection was due to the less-restrictive OGL, and the influence of third-party publishers?

Likely none, as 5e wasn't released under the OGL originally. That didn't happen until early 2016 (at the same time as the DM's Guild launched), so a little over a year after the initial release.

As I recall, they did speak about it before that, saying essentially that they were going to publish an SRD but needed some time to figure out exactly how much to open it up.

 

[Greg Benage]

Likely none, as 5e wasn't released under the OGL originally. That didn't happen until early 2016 (at the same time as the DM's Guild launched), so a little over a year after the initial release.

I mean, @RyanD makes an interesting argument that Pathfinder retained customers that otherwise would have been irrevocably (heh) lost during the 4e years, and that could then be reclaimed by Wizards when 5e was released.

 

[Nebulous]

If you could get Paizo and the other major 3pps to agree on a "mere fantasy" framework for a not-d&d srd, and a truly open game licence, that would be huge. It would help mitigate some of the loss of network effects from D&D being cut off.

Yeah, if Paizo and Kobold and another big one worked together, that would be amazing.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Yeah, if Paizo and Kobold and another big one worked together, that would be amazing.

…and EN World Publishing!

 

[bedir than]

Should've said "recently de-defunct," i guess.

unfunct?

 

[Branduil]

This is exactly what I wanted to see happen. We need a new OGL which fixes the flaws of the original, provides a safe harbor, and can't be revoked.

 

[Aldarc]

Even as a 4e player, I heard from others that Pathfinder made good adventures. 4e generally lacked enough high quality adventures.

It would have been easy for Pathfinder to publish some (or all) of its adventures for the 4e gaming engine, make a profit for Paizo, and making 4e more successful.

One of the big problems, IMHO, was that WotC didn't initially know how to design adventures for the styles of games that 4e was good at cultivating. It took awhile for WotC to find its footing with writing adventures for 4e, but a lot of the damage had been done. Ironically, I do think that the 4e design philosophy for adventures would have worked better with "prepare situations, not plots" as per the Alexandrian or OSR sentiments. However, the 2e-3e philosophy of "prepare plots" was still the prevailing Zeitgeist then, particularly with Paizo adventure paths, which carried over in PF1, 5e, and PF2. But those are just my meandering thoughts.

 

[ThorinTeague]

If they are involved they are probably waiting to announce after WotC does something official?

The industry does not seem to be waiting for wizards of the Coast to do something official, rightfully so. Like the guy said, the mere threat of revoking the old licenses is enough. Just look at all the major game companies that have announced drastic course changes in the past week.

 

[amethal]

The folks at Paizo hated 4E. That’s literally why they made Pathfinder.

I wasn't a fan of 4e (although I've come to appreciate it a bit more since those days) but even to me some of their early objections to 4e as a game system seemed to be based on misconceptions. (I don't blame them at all for not liking the GSL that came with it.)

"It won't allow us to tell the kind of stories we want to tell" (or something to that effect), and then the example given was that the BBEG in one of their adventure paths was a Bard, and 4th edition didn't have Bards.

You can nit-pick about that:

Spoiler: Nit-Pick

I don't think you needed any great powers of prediction to realise that Bards, Gnomes and everything else people wanted that wasn't in the first Player's Handbook was going to be in a subsequent splat book.

If the BBEG in your current adventure path is a Bard, then are your seriously going to need a Bard villain in your next one?

What's including a Bard got to do with "stories you can tell?"

but in actual fact the BBEG wasn't a "Bard" anyway. They had Bard levels, because that was the best fit for the sort of character they were aiming for, but lots of stuff that came with it (Bardic knowledge, mastery of numerous musical instruments, proficiency with rapiers etc.) was not actually appropriate, and some of the stuff they wanted to include Bards don't usually get. The BBEG would actually have been easier to do in 4e than in 3.5e, because you could just give them the combat powers you wanted them to have and call it a day.

4e also attracted some criticism for "out-of-combat" stuff being hand-waved, but Paizo's BBEG's regularly do things "off-camera" for which no game mechanics are given (or needed).

 

[Echohawk]

Heh. Just so everyone knows. That obscure word "potation", relates to "potion", and means "the act of drinking".

We've discussed this before, albeit two editions and a pandemic ago...