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.

 

[mamba]

Trying to get a general handle here... what, in terms of free to use gaming material, does ORC offer?

too early to tell, we do not have the license yet, let alone any material under it

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I actually don't think they have much to worry about. I suspect a large amount of their audience are the people who are CR fans who play D&D... not the D&D/OGL diehards who also watch CR. So there's a good chance that a lot of their audience have no idea about this OGL thing, because none of them care about any products outside of CR and D&D and the show.

That's the thing that I suspect is going to shock a lot of the people here on the boards when all is said and done-- I just don't think most of the general D&D audience knows about or cares about all of this. After all... a large number of 3rd Party D&D material is made, sold, and bought through DMs Guild and NOT the OGL... so if the Guild is still up and running, many players will not see their purchasing habits change nor will a lot of designers. They'll still create D&D product for DMs Guild, and folks will buy it through DMs Guild.

So what will happen is that by the spring the OGL 1.2 will be released, most current OGL designers will move away from it and begin supporting other games instead of D&D (and hope against hope those games have or find enough of an audience to keep their sales going), and the D&D wing of the RPG community will continue on as though nothing happened.

And at that point down the line we'll see just how strong the "Never playing D&D so long as WotC owns it!" contingent's resolve actual is.

I get where this comes from, but I think the fact that 1500+ publishers are looking at the ORC, and that wotc keeps backing down and changing their tactics, tells us IMO that enough to the community is angry that it very much is not just enworlders and OGL diehards.

And as a longtime critter…yeah it’s gonna get toxic. 100% guarantee.

It already is on twitter, and has been since CR didn’t like abandon and repudiate D&D and wotc the second the first OGL 1.1 leak dropped.

 

[Cergorach]

but I think the fact that 1500+ publishers are looking at the ORC

How many of those 1500+ 'publishers' are 'relevant'? Of the sixty that actually were listed, there are already some truly tiny 'publishers' in there. Look at Minotaur Games a tiny operation, even on DTRPG they only have 24 products, some of which are even bundles of the other ~20 products... Everyone that ever used or intents to use the OGL is being drafted as a 'publisher'... Sure there are a couple of big names on there, but there's a reason why they didn't publish the complete list and even with the list they published they a scraping the barrel... 1500+ publishers just sounds like a lot and some kind of big force to be afraid of...

The idea of the ORC alliance is great, but do realize that it's only a few high level publishers standing at the front, with the rest of the mass being level-0 NPCs... ;-)

And to date we've only heard of the intention, no license has been published and no SRDs have been published under it. It's all a LOT of hope and promise, I really hope it works out, but I'll wait before I glorify it as the next best thing since sliced bread.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How many of those 1500+ 'publishers' are 'relevant'?

The question is irrelevant. You brought up DMsGuild publications. Almost none of those publishers are "relevant" in any broad sense, and if 1500+ publishers are stating their intention to use the ORC license, most DMsGuild publishers that people are supposedly getting most of their 3pp from...are probably in that 1500+ (and growing).

Of the sixty that actually were listed, there are already some truly tiny 'publishers' in there. Look at Minotaur Games a tiny operation, even on DTRPG they only have 24 products, some of which are even bundles of the other ~20 products... Everyone that ever used or intents to use the OGL is being drafted as a 'publisher'... Sure there are a couple of big names on there, but there's a reason why they didn't publish the complete list and even with the list they published they a scraping the barrel... 1500+ publishers just sounds like a lot and some kind of big force to be afraid of...

The idea of the ORC alliance is great, but do realize that it's only a few high level publishers standing at the front, with the rest of the mass being level-0 NPCs... ;-)

You've moved the goalpost into an adjacent lot.

Either the DMsGuild is where players get most of their 3pp, or small DMsGuild publishers don't matter and won't impact how the community at large interacts with dnd. You can't have both.

And to date we've only heard of the intention, no license has been published and no SRDs have been published under it. It's all a LOT of hope and promise, I really hope it works out, but I'll wait before I glorify it as the next best thing since sliced bread.

Complete red herring.

Not only have I never glorified any license in any context at any time on these boards, much less this one in this conversation, but your pessimism about it and the fact it hasn't been fully drafted and released yet, are all completely tangential to the point of contention.

 

[Aspirinsmurf]

The DMs Guild and the OGL are completely unrelated things. I don’t even think they will let people publish anything under the OGL there.

https://support.dmsguild.com/hc/en-us/articles/217520927-Ownership-and-License-OGL-Questions

 

[Morrus]

Look at Minotaur Games a tiny operation, even on DTRPG they only have 24 products, some of which are even bundles of the other ~20 products...

Well that's Pathfinder creator and Paizo lead designer Jason Bulmahn, isn't it? I'd argue that he's 'relevant'.

 

[JEB]

Critical Role did release a bunch of content as OGC in their 2017 Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting from Green Ronin.

Don't see any OGC declaration in my copy, which by default means none of their additions are OGC. Unless I missed it somewhere?

 

[Rabulias]

Don't see any OGC declaration in my copy, which by default means none of their additions are OGC. Unless I missed it somewhere?

Check the tail end of the OGL on p.143:

Open Content: Rules and game mechanics (but not Product Identity) on pages 26, 45, 55, 59, 65, 93, and Chapters 3 and 4 are Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Game License version 1.0a Section 1(d). No portion of this work other than the material designated as Open Game Content may be reproduced in any form without written permission.

 

[JEB]

Check the tail end of the OGL on p.143:

That's not present in my print copy (second printing):

View attachment 20230121_234030.jpg

Was that only in the first printing? Or changed in a later printing?

 

[Psikosis]

Onward to what's next!