The Paranoid's Guide: Brief Thoughts on the Recent Timeline of the OGL

[Steel_Wind]

It just seems like Paizo more accurately predicted the shitstorm that was going to come out of this and positioned themselves to take advantage of it.

Honestly? No, I don't think so.

The decision to proceed to litigation, if required, may have been discussed notionally before starting ~10 days ago when the Gizmodo story came out, but the ORC stuff was made up on-the-fly during the course of this week, largely as a result or Erik Mona seeing so much horror and dismay expressed by so many 3pp -- the vast majority of which could not afford legal counsel. He was the prime mover of that aspect of things, aimed at helping 3pp, especially smaller ones.

I do know there was a large staff meeting on Monday at Paizo, where Mona spoke and rallied the Paizo staff. They cheered him on -- but what they cheered him on about was not mentioned. Nevertheless, that there was some meeting -- and that they were cheering about it -- surfaced in vague references on FB on Monday the 9th. You have to put it together after the fact, but now? It fits.

ORC was cobbled together quickly, likely over the course of ~3 days, between Monday and Thursday when Paizo made its announcement on its blog/twitter/FB. I am not certain of this, but because of some public (and a few private) comments from Mona? Along that timeline, yes.

All of this stuff took place and came together very rapidly over that timeline. There wasn't all THAT much planning involved, not much time to do it. This was the result of reaction in the moment over that timeline, imo.

tl;dr: they were just doing the best they could in the circumstances, in the moment.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Whether or not Paizo had anything to do with the leak, they would certainly have been among the companies to have received the new OGL earliest, the ones being offered the sign early to be screwed slightly less than your competitors deal.

No. I do not believe Paizo was ever offered that deal. Paizo has hundreds and hundreds of products in its PF1/PF2 catalog. Only one of them -- out of all of those products, is a 5th edition book (the Kingmaker 5e Bestiary) . The idea that they would "certainly" be among those companies is wrong-headed.

Paizo aren't in the 5e products business; they would never agree to those terms - and there was no reason to expect they would. WotC would know that before it even asked (which is why they didn't). To the extent that WotC has a competitor? Paizo is it. WotC had NDAs signed so that Paizo would be one of those who didn't find out until it was a fait accompli.

 

[MarkB]

No. I do not believe Paizo was ever offered that deal. Paizo has hundreds and hundreds of products in its PF1/PF2 catalog. Only one of them -- out of all of those products, is a 5th edition book. The idea that they would "certainly" be among those companies is wrong-headed.

Paizo aren't in the 5e products business; they would never agree to those terms - and there was no reason to expect they would. WotC would know that before it even asked (which is why they didn't). To the extent that WotC has a competitor? Paizo is it. WotC had NDAs signed so that Paizo would be one of those who didn't find out until it was a fait accompli.

How many of their products are 5e compatible is irrelevant. De-authorising the existing versions of the OGL wouldn't only affect 5e products, it would affect all products published under those licenses, going right back to those based upon 3e. That includes most Pathfinder products. Under those circumstances they'd still need to sign up to the replacement OGL in order to keep those products on the shelves.

 

[Steel_Wind]

You make it sound like some kind of industrial espionage on Paizo's part. Based on the stories told by Lisa Stevens and Jason Bulmahn here, it's more like:

1. Wizards announces 4e.
2. Fall 2007: Freelance work for Jason Bulmahn dries up, leaving him time to work on a set of rules mods for 3.5e. Had history gone differently, this would probably have ended up being something similar to Trailblazer – an interesting curiosity but nothing that changed the industry.
3. Early 2008: Paizo start getting antsy because of the lack of info, and decide to do their fall 2008 AP for 3.5e. Jason brings his house rule document up, and gets told to start working on that full time as a backup plan.
4. Shortly thereafter, Paizo sends Jason to a convention where they are demoing 4e. He returns with his report on how it works, and the folks at Paizo decide that regardless of how the coming licensing regimen will work, they're not interested in doing that. The backup plan now becomes plan A.
5. Paizo announces the Pathfinder RPG in spring 2008 along with an alpha test. The beta test is released simultaneously with GenCon 2008, and eventually the "real" version comes out at GenCon 2009.

This misses out over what Paizo explained at the time. They came out with Pathfinder AP for 3.5 because they had not other choice; they needed a product line and Mona didn't want to fire anybody who worked for Paizo. During the course of that initial 9 months, they were asking WotC to provide the terms of its GSL. WotC said it was coming -- then delayed -- then delayed again.

The real problem by that time was that Paizo was releasing Pathfinder AP for 3.5 -- and 3.5 had gone out of print and new books were vanishing in the marketplace. WotC's delay in providing the GSL was what pushed Paizo's hand -- they came out with the PF1 beta at the next Gencon. PF1 CRB would take further time.

 

[Staffan]

This misses out over what Paizo explained at the time. They came out with Pathfinder AP for 3.5 because they had not other choice; they needed a product line and Mona didn't want to fire anybody who worked for Paizo. During the course of that initial 9 months, they were asking WotC to provide the terms of its GSL. WotC said it was coming -- then delayed -- then delayed again.

The real problem by that time was that Paizo was releasing Pathfinder AP for 3.5 -- and 3.5 had gone out of print and new books were vanishing in the marketplace. WotC's delay in providing the GSL was what pushed Paizo's hand -- they came out with the PF1 beta at the next Gencon. PF1 CRB would take further time.

That was prior to this. When Paizo lost the licenses to Dragon and Dungeon, they pivoted to making adventures and a campaign setting of their own, branded Pathfinder (to allude to their popular Adventure Paths from Dungeon magazine), and leveraged their unique position with a large mailing list of people who already were predisposed to like their stuff and to whom they owed money. But at that point, they were still expecting to make "off-brand D&D" stuff, whatever that happened to be.

At the start of 2008, they had to make the call that the fall 2008 AP (first part released at GenCon 2008) would still be for 3.5, because they still didn't have the 4e rules or any information about licensing. This was seemingly pretty scary to them, but necessary. But at this point they had not yet committed to anything else about the future, which is why they had Jason Bulmahn develop his house rules into something bigger. That's where we get to item 3 on the timeline.

 

[MockingBird]

Paizo pretty much came out of this looking like Robin Hood. If Paizo has savvy business people then they have been tracking this from the first kernel of a rumor ever dropped. It's a smart move and a play they have played before with great success.

 

[Steel_Wind]

How many of their products are 5e compatible is irrelevant. De-authorising the existing versions of the OGL wouldn't only affect 5e products, it would affect all products published under those licenses, going right back to those based upon 3e. That includes most Pathfinder products. Under those circumstances they'd still need to sign up to the replacement OGL in order to keep those products on the shelves.

What ARE you talking about? The point was simple: WotC is most unlikely to have presented a contract under NDA to Paizo. They had no need to - Paizo was not one of the 3pp making products for them (which is what the 1.1 OGL was about - in the sense of why one would ever sign it). Paizo was their main competitor they were trying to hide all of this from until it was a done deal (hence, the NDAs to others).

As far as de-authorizing the OGL 1.0a, Paizo was never going to agree to sign that, right? WotC knew that - we know that. You could wake most of us, dead drunk at 3:30 a.m. and most of us would get that one right.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If we're going to advance baseless conspiracy theories: No one's heard a thing from Mattel in all this.

Think about it, won't you?

Everyone's talking about the OGL, but not the Barbie for Preschoolers.

 

[MarkB]

What ARE you talking about? The point was simple: WotC is most unlikely to have presented a contract under NDA to Paizo. They had no need to - Paizo was not one of the 3pp making products for them (which is what the 1.1 OGL was about - in the sense of why one would ever sign it). Paizo was their main competitor they were trying to hide all of this from until it was a done deal (hence, the NDAs to others).

As far as de-authorizing the OGL 1.0a, Paizo was never going to agree to sign that, right? WotC knew that - we know that. You could wake most of us, dead drunk at 3:30 a.m. and most of us would get that one right.

WotC's ability to estimate what people would or would not be prepared to do seems to have been entirely absent in this debacle.

 

[wingsandsword]

Oh, I think that from Hasbro's side this has been developing for a while! If this hadn't been fully vetted and run through multiple decision-making processes (NOT TO MENTION MULTIPLE PASSES THROUGH LEGAL) I would consider that beyond imbecilic.

Also, interestingly. . .the Internet Archive entry for the OGL FAQ on the WotC site shows it was up until November 2021. The FAQ where they promised that if WotC ever released a new version of the OGL then people could always use older editions. Then. . .it was quietly taken down without any announcement.

This has been in the making for a while. I suspect that November 2021 was when they decided to find a way to claim they legally cancelled the OGL. Maybe someone hadn't invented this whole "de authorization" nonsense yet, because it certainly wasn't in the original intent or something that is normally done with copyleft licenses. . .until someone invented the idea. Once they had the idea, they just waited until closer until the release date for 6e to put it out, because they wanted to just drop it on everyone as a surprise.