Paizo Announces New Irrevocable Open RPG License To Replace the OGL

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Paizo, the maker of Pathfinder, has just announced a new open license for use with RPGs. The license will not be owned by Paizo - or by any TTRPG company, and will be stewarded by Azora Law, a company which represents several tabletop gaming companies, until it finds its home with an independent non-profit. This new license is designed to be irrevocable.

We believe, as we always have, that open gaming makes games better, improves profitability for all involved, and enriches the community of gamers who participate in this amazing hobby. And so we invite gamers from around the world to join us as we begin the next great chapter of open gaming with the release of a new open, perpetual, and irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC).

The new Open RPG Creative License will be built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers. Paizo will pay for this legal work. We invite game publishers worldwide to join us in support of this system-agnostic license that allows all games to provide their own unique open rules reference documents that open up their individual game systems to the world. To join the effort and provide feedback on the drafts of this license, please sign up by using this form.

In addition to Paizo, Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and a growing list of publishers have already agreed to participate in the Open RPG Creative License, and in the coming days we hope and expect to add substantially to this group.

The ORC will not be owned by Paizo, nor will it be owned by any company who makes money publishing RPGs. Azora Law’s ownership of the process and stewardship should provide a safe harbor against any company being bought, sold, or changing management in the future and attempting to rescind rights or nullify sections of the license. Ultimately, we plan to find a nonprofit with a history of open source values to own this license (such as the Linux Foundation).

Read more on Paizo's blog.

 

[Reynard]

Maybe, but WotC spent $146,000,000.00 for DDB (the sheer size of that cheque for a RPG web-portal is something that we have become WAY too blasé about) to not carry out that plan.

Perhaps the rational fall-back plan is to say: "we'll just rely on the strength of our product, and not the exclusivity of our VTT being the only place to play to make our Billions."

And if their DDB VTT is all that and a bag of chips? They should be able to do it. If they had just done that, it could have worked. It would not have been a Hail-Mary, not really.

Problem: But now they have this stink surrounding their new game and self-inflicted trust issues. And the moment they take 5e off of the market, the ORC version of same will be there, enticing people with the same wine in a shiny bottle -- with tons of ORC 3pp licensees supporting it.

A rational long-term business owner might accept half a pie here. But short-term professional management, gambling with other people's money and using other people's assets trying to strike it rich to earn World of Warcraft money -- and secure life-altering short-term bonuses, might be tempted to convince themselves that they can roll the dice, fish for a crit, and still pull it off.

Madness.

If only something like this had happened before, they might have been able to anticipate it. If only.

What does the VTT have to do with making major changes to 5E?

 

[Steampunkette]

Is this a fair take?

"Wording explanations and descriptions* just right is a lot of work. One aspect of copyright is that it covers the non-trivial wording of things, so something that makes you not need to make your own wording from scratch is a huge benefit."

* Say of spells or monster ecology or magic items or of how the combat mechanics work.

Yes, that is a fair take.

I understand and agree with the legal reasoning here. But that doesn't matter if Hasbro decides they don't have to and don't want to tolerate it. If they decide to take your non-5e SRD based Level Up and initiate lawfare to chill the market they absolutely can.

You can certainly make that argument in court and probably have a good chance of winning 4 years and 2 million dollars down the road.

If you use ORC and make a substantively similar game to Hasbro's mechanically it doesn't protect you from the above and is always going to be a Sword of Damocles hanging above your head.

Which is why working with Paizo and other companies that are also on the chopping block with the ORC would be important.

It's basically going to become a Union situation, with any attempt at litigation running into Class Action Lawsuits spearheaded by Paizo and Azora because they've already thrown down the gauntlet. In their press release they stated that they're willing and able to go to court if they need to, but don't -want- to and know that other publishers can't.

Because any case of the OGL 1.0a that goes well for WotC and bad for, say, EN Publishing, creates a legal precedent that will go bad for Paizo if WotC then takes them to court afterward.

 

[Alzrius]

The OpenD6 games aren't derived from the WOTC System Reference Document

I didn't say they were. I said that the OpenD6 SRD was put out by a company that's since shut its doors, which means that there's no one to reissue it under Paizo's ORC License, so the only way it could be used in conjunction with that license (barring some sort of dual-licensed OGL & ORC product; I have no idea if that's feasible or not) is for some sort of blanket grandfathering of OGL Open Game Content into the ORC License.

 

[rcade]

I understand and agree with the legal reasoning here. But that doesn't matter if Hasbro decides they don't have to and don't want to tolerate it. If they decide to take your non-5e SRD based Level Up and initiate lawfare to chill the market they absolutely can.

Hasbro could win long, expensive court fights, but it would be taking a huge negative publicity hit throughout that process and the RPG publisher being sued would be supported by a lot of gamers. The case would make the mainstream media and casual gamers would learn of the alternative to D&D.

To me, that doesn't sound like a winning move for Hasbro.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If I was a 3pp the smart move would have been to wait and see and be sensible.

Is that sensible or smart? You haven't explained how.

WotC are burning bridges, and frankly every major 3PP knows considerably more about the situation than you do (or I do, to be clear).

If WotC decide to go with some kind of lock-in, poison-pill, or even general deauthorization approach to the now OGL 2.0 (1.1 is dead, apparently), the 3PPs are proven correct and it's probably too dangerous and expensive to work with WotC. If WotC doesn't do that, the 3PPs still have the choice to publish under either licence.

What this looks like is very much an attempted "I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further!", only Han Solo saunters in and offers a different deal. Sure, Darth Vader can then go "Whoa, whoa, let's all caaaaalm down! How about this deal?" and improve their offer, but given he just tried to muscle you into totally a terrible deal, why on earth (or Alderaan) would you trust him?

That was my main concern; you get 5-6 publishers putting out 5-6 different fantasy games, there's no way the public can keep up. In an ideal world they could co-create a core game and all SHARE supplementing it, but I don't know if such a thing is even possible. It would be unprecedented.

Let a hundred flowers blossom.

Sure some of those games will fall by the wayside, but whatever is left is much more likely to be an attractive and well-designed game than anything hammered together by a committee of different publishers trying to design a game that's an "average" of what they all want, or god bloody help us a "universal system" (kill me now).

 

[FoolishFrost]

So, that doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions and negotiate an alternative - if you have the leverage to do that. The proposed contract is a starting point.

Now if you don’t have any leverage then make a decision, sign or not.

What I’m seeing on these boards is lots of claims that 3pp have all the leverage that they are in the position of strength. So why isn’t it be used to secure alternatives… ether because it isn’t as strong as people think it is or they aren’t willing to negotiate.

Because, simply put, the frog does not want to let the scorpion ride on it's back again.

Listen, a willingness to negotiate is great. On the other hand, the other side has to do so in good faith. I have had dozens of utterly silly contracts tossed at me by people who used boilerplates or didn't understand what the contract said. I advise them, to amend, why, and what's wrong with them. They either change them, or not.

But Wizards is not some noob who just grabbed a contract of the net. They created this thing, agreed to it, and released it for signature. This contract is not a thing to negotiate from, it was an extinction level event that Wizards HAD to know was going to crush companies. It's designed to crush them. It's bad faith.

So no. Negotiation is really not an option. No contract that sounds like "Gimmie 25% and let me punch you in the face any time I like!" is a starting point.

 

[Steampunkette]

"Meet me in the middle." says the Unjust Man.

You take a step forward. He takes a step back.

"Meet me in the middle." says the Unjust Man.

 

[Greg Benage]

Problem: But now they have this stink surrounding their new game and self-inflicted trust issues. And the moment they take 5e off of the market, the ORC version of same will be there, enticing people with the same wine in a shiny bottle -- with tons of ORC 3pp licensees supporting it.

I don't think there will be an "ORC version of 5e." No one knows exactly how much "D&D" a publisher needs to strip out of 5e to be reasonably safe from copyright infringement lawfare, but it seems likely that any publisher with a large enough stake to be a significant competitor to Wizards will want to strip out a lot of "D&D" from whatever they publish.

The fundamental dilemma is this:

• The more D&D-like your game is, the more likely Hasbro comes after you and the stronger their case
• The less D&D-like your game is, the less likely it is to compete for D&D customers

I don't think this is a trivial problem. D&D customers (okay, me) complain when the designers make spiritual weapon a concentration spell. The move from "race" to "species" sparks mass discontent. That is, this is even an issue for the OneD&D designers, and OneD&D is really very much like 5e!

There seems to be this perception that it's trivial to just "change some wording" and you'll have a D&D clone safe from copyright infringement claims that a large segment of the market will nevertheless recognize and accept as a D&D clone, and...I just think that's way off the mark.

 

[FoolishFrost]

"Meet me in the middle." says the Unjust Man.

You take a step forward. He takes a step back.

"Meet me in the middle." says the Unjust Man.

You take a step forward with a smile. He takes a step back off the cliff.
"I don't think we can meet in the middle anymore." you say.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think there will be an "ORC version of 5e." No one knows exactly how much "D&D" a publisher needs to strip out of 5e to be reasonably safe from copyright infringement lawfare, but it seems likely that any publisher with a large enough stake to be a significant competitor to Wizards will want to strip out a lot of "D&D" from whatever they publish.

The fundamental dilemma is this:

• The more D&D-like your game is, the more likely Hasbro comes after you and the stronger their case
• The less D&D-like your game is, the less likely it is to compete for D&D customers

I don't think this is a trivial problem. D&D customers (okay, me) complain when the designers make spiritual weapon a concentration spell. The move from "race" to "species" sparks mass discontent. That is, this is even an issue for the OneD&D designers, and OneD&D is really very much like 5e!

There seems to be this perception that it's trivial to just "change some wording" and you'll have a D&D clone safe from copyright infringement claims that a large segment of the market will nevertheless recognize and accept as a D&D clone, and...I just think that's way off the mark.

Right. There are any number of existing games that could fill the void if all people wanted was a fantasy RPG that isn't too terribly complicated. But people don't want that. They want 5E.