It is time to forgive WOTC and get back onboard.
- Thread starter ECMO3
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ValamirCleaver
Jäger aus Kurpfalz
... because Magic: The Gathering was eating almost all of their marketshare in the mid to late '90s...
darjr
I crit!
Only partly. TSR had major issues well before Magic. Magic was just another heavy blow, and one if the few not self inflicted.
I submit that we do not know what the internal discussion is like at this point. Maybe the upcoming interviews might give us some idea, but maybe not.
Even if they told us, a load of us would not believe what they said, possibly even if future business decisions indicated that they'd changed.
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Parmandur
Book-Friend
That was a misquote in the early leaks of the language in the morality clause section. They were not saying theybexpected pushback on the new license, but on instances of enforcing the morality clause.
Nope, again that matches my corporate experience and study of humanity in general.
It's not a "tactic," just pointing out how it is entirely reasonable to move on when a corporation has done truly horrendous things as a consumer.
I mean, they unionized, which is nice. Some of the people who did monstrous things are still in charge, soooo feels kinda the same to me. Which isn't to say don't buy from Paizp, quite the opposite! If theybpit out a product you like, buying it is not formal cooperation in anything good or bad that anyone at Paizo does.
No forgiveness needed: spend your fun time money as you will (the idea of being "on board" with a corporatuon is silly, contra thenOP), and spelling is mere convention.
darjr
I crit!
All I can go in is what they do in public. They’ve said nothing about their future plans about open gaming and nothing about any internal changes.
BlackSeed_Vash
Explorer
Before all this went down, my group decided to play a "short" campaign using Star Wars RPG for a change of pace. We do plan on going back to D&D 5E afterwards, but we decide to only run older edition campaigns, 3rd party content, and/or homebrew.
It was actually the same board that put the 5.1 SRD into CC.
Yes they did, they released 5.1 into CC and they said OGL 1.0a will never be revoked (although to be fair they said that in the past too).
As a point of fact WOTC has not [yet] broken any promises on open gaming and they have been making promises about open gaming for some 20 years now.
Also I do think I need to point out that WOTC has put out far more open game content than any other RPG creator. For all the warranted goodwill generated by Kobold Press and Paizo, less of their actual IP generated by their creators has been released under OGL 1.0a.
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Scribe
Legend
Yes, you can cherry pick the last of the 3 items. And?
Imaro
Legend
But it was WotC owned by Hasbro that did all 3... thus it was the same corporation. You choosing to be overly pedantic and/or move goalposts doesn't change that what I claimed was true.
Scribe
Legend
If you think the leadership changing doesnt change a corporation, you clearly have never worked for a corporation.
TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
They never had the intention to do so. They did so after threatening a whole ecosystem and hobby leading into tens of thousands of people yelling at them. If people hadn't yelled, things would be very different.
The leadership of twenty years is not the leadership of now. Same branding, different company.
They may not have broken any promises (not that they didn't attempt to) but they did break the trust the brand had built with many people over the years.
Anyway, saying they didn't break their promise as an argument is very weird to me. Here's a bad analogy to illustrate how I see it: "They held a gun at my head and were about to shoot, but something stopped them and they didn't. So we're good, they didn't kill anyone."
Far more content? How do you measure it? In books? Pathfinder 2E has released more books in four years then 5E did in almost a decade. Paizo's entire rules are available for free online, and we're not even talking about Starfinder and Pathfinder 1E.
And if you were referring to what others have put out through the license for WOTC, then I really don't see how it's a positive; it reflects even worse on them. You'd be right in that no other RPG had more open game content made by others through a permissive license; and this is an important catalyst in 5E's success over some of the other RPGs and publishers that you're naming. It's been embraced and celebrated. And then they turned around and tried to destroy everything that brought them to where they had never been before. It's an even sadder story.
You realize that's pretty normal, right? After flubbing it that badly, sensible people take a step back and breathe, and think.
If we are going to assume something (there is no need to, but if we do it anyway) why not assume that the plans are undecided, rather than the plans are unchanged?
Cap'n Kobold
Hero
It was an ecosystem largely built on their land that they had opened up to the public themselves. - They weren't expecting people to build large commercial properties competing with them on their own land when they did so.
When they tried to reel back in some of the rights to their land, they obviously weren't expecting quite an upsurge in people asserting their squatters rights and giving them bad enough press that they would lose money if they were to reassert their rights to their land.
Releasing under OGL 1.0a is not the same as giving access for free as I understand it. WotC released their content under 1.0a which allows people to not only access it, but also use WotC's content in product that they are making money from themselves. Arguably it is 1.0a that is what allows Paizo to make money from selling their products based on D&D.
However Paizo have not released as much content under 1.0a, which means that other companies can't make money from content Paizo produced in the same way that Paizo is making money from WotC content.
TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
And WotC profited from that ecosystem at least as much as the ecosystem did their product. It's mutualism.
Sorry but no. They did not try to reel back some of their rights, the draft that was leaked had some absolutely outrageous clauses by almost any measure. I mentioned it in another thread - but I would have understood them asking for a cut of profits for products built on their framework. I would not have agreed with it, but I would have understood. But the amount they asked was outrageous, the clauses concerning the copyrights of content built on the OGL was outrageous, them asking you to waive rights like a jury was outrageous, the clauses about allowing them to jump in any lawsuits over third party creators was outrageous.
WotC releases their content under 1.0a, which following the SRD allows you to redistribute a small amount of their content and to make content yourself which reference some key components and concepts from the game. Paizo allows every rule, player option, feats of every single book they have released available online. The parts they don't allow are lore and arts if I recall.
Admittedly, these two things are different. But Pathfinder 2E also used the OGL and they also have a much bigger SRD. Having their content available for free is only the cherry on top.
If there's one thing that came out of this whole OGL debacle, it is that this is arguable and nobody knows. It probably did at some point, but we don't know if it still does. WotC did not pull the trigger, it did not lead to lawsuits and so we have no idea. My absolutely unprofessional reading of the situation is that twenty years later, no Paizo does not need the OGL to make Pathfinder. We'll actually see that happen soon with new printings omitting it if I recall.
What? Every single Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder books, which are much more numerous than 5E books, are under the OGL. And as mentioned, both SRDs are waaaay more permissive than 5E's.
darjr
I crit!
Undecided is unchanged.
But sure let’s see. Note I did mention the impending YouTube interviews already.
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mamba
Hero
this is the most charitable (to WotC) reading possible, let’s fix your analogy a bit, so it better reflects reality…
It was an ecosystem built on land who’s owner is unclear. WotC arrived there first, but it was by no means their land, arguably a little of it is, but much is not. As others arrived, WotC had the idea that instead of everyone competing with each other and arguing over who owned which part and whether the concept of land ownership even existed, they should instead all work together and benefit together from this land.
So they invited others onto the land because they realized that the improvements everyone would make would benefit all of them. They signed a contract with everyone, telling them that they could live there happily indefinitely and they all would prosper.
Then, many years later, when the initial vision has been achieved and the land had become valuable beyond their wildest dreams, WotC got greedy. They realized that they got richer than the others and thought that they could break their contract and claim all the land as theirs, and that them being so much richer meant the others would just have to accept it as they were too weak to fight back.
But WotC had not counted on the others having friends that would come to their aid and that together they could stand up to WotC and make them adhere to that contract they all had agreed to so long ago.
After a lot of huffing and puffing, WotC saw the value of their shared land drop and feared for the success of their big new projects, so they reneged and did not break the contract after all.
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