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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

Signing on in the sense of openly supporting the creation of the license. Not the release of their IP under it.

They play mostly straight D&D in Matt’s homebrew world, I don’t see an issue with them keeping their stuff PI instead of OGC.

And when they publish their own RPG (which seems inevitable), I’m hoping they do so under the ORC.

 

[EthanSental]

That’s a lot of people but my negative Nancy feel on this is….whatever Paizo and group creates, the number of backers players are exponentially smaller than D&D 5e so the million dollar kickstarters for small publishers are not as likely as we’ve seen with 5e kickstarters in the last 3 or so years. Again, the player base isn’t big enough to keep this many publishers solvent, for a smaller game reach.

Some will go down swinging the David vs Goliath sling cause of WOTC or whatever they are thinking but those 1500 need to be realistic in their expectations.

 

[Solauren]

They lost the initiative.

Wizards just knee capped the orc with a Creative Commons cantrip.

Like anyone will trust Wizards ever again. Hell, what they've released can still be used to shut down anyone that see as a competitor. If it had been used under the d20 system, they could have used it to shut down Pathfinder when it interfered with 4E.

 

[OB1]

Signing on in the sense of openly supporting the creation of the license. Not the release of their IP under it.

They play mostly straight D&D in Matt’s homebrew world, I don’t see an issue with them keeping their stuff PI instead of OGC.

And when they publish their own RPG (which seems inevitable), I’m hoping they do so under the ORC.

But if they aren't interested in the opening parts of their game for others to use, why would they publish under ORC? They used OGL to gain access to WotC's SRD, not to add to the creative commons of the OGL. Given the strength of their brand, likely a wise business decision. If they did decide to allow content to be created for their RPG, I would bet it would be under a license more similar to the current 1.2 doc, that allows 3PPs to create for their system, but not lead to competitors to their brand.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Wizards just knee capped the orc with a Creative Commons cantrip.

I think they are doing them a favor by releasing all of the basics right

 

[Scribe]

I think they are doing them a favor by releasing all of the basics right

The basics already available, perpetually?

 

[Morrus]

I think they are doing them a favor by releasing all of the basics right

No, they are reducing the amount of open content tenfold. They're not doing anybody a favour. Yesterday the whole SRD was open gaming content. Today a tenth of it is.

 

[Konrad13]

Me and my core gaming group will be chatting over the coming weeks on making our own system to play games with and we fully intend on forming a company and publishing under the ORC.

 

[jerryrice4949]

The big question now is whether the non-D&D RPG market can grow and expand alongside the number of companies that will be wading into that pool for the first time as they transition away from making D&D supplements or D&D-adjacent games?

We know a large number of companies have been able to survive off the D&D design grid... the question is whether the rest will be able to keep themselves afloat alongside them now as well?

I

The big question now is whether the non-D&D RPG market can grow and expand alongside the number of companies that will be wading into that pool for the first time as they transition away from making D&D supplements or D&D-adjacent games?

We know a large number of companies have been able to survive off the D&D design grid... the question is whether the rest will be able to keep themselves afloat alongside them now as well?

Yeah a few will probably do very well. Some may go the OGL 1.2 route and benefit from the creator badge especially if the movie does well and OneD&D is popular. But for a lot of small publishers I expect a death spiral. Many of us have gotten used to beautiful books lavish-fully illustrated with full color. If the split means fewer more fragmented backers than the quality will likely decrease causing fewer people to be interested etc.

 

[BlueFin]

(I was thinking about this - it really is the case that for me at least the Wizards purchase of D&D was a bit of a reset in my attitude towards D&D and TSR. I'd fallen off the D&D train in the 90s in large part because TSR was just a terrible company online and I didn't want to support them. I came back to D&D with Wizards in large part because they said all the right things and did all the right things to indicate that they weren't going to be TSR and they understood how bad that was. 20+ years later and Hasbro is right back where TSR was with me, destroying all of that goodwill in one fell swoop.)

Totally agree with this. It's essentially the reason I won't be spending another penny on D&D until wotc no longer owns it. (That is, it won't be enough for me for hasbro to sell off wotc)

"Don't bite the hand that feeds you" - the problem is that wotc thinks they're the ones feeding us, forgetting, as many have pointed out, we have almost 50 years of published material to use for our games and don't actually need to spend another cent in order to have amazing games for the rest of our lives.

And... "Don't poo where you eat", only wotc have gone much further, poisoning the well and the land all around, only to find themselves on an island in the middle of the land of ORC!! Hurrah!!