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

[Steel_Wind]

Paizo releases very little content for 5e (there's the stuff for Kingmaker and I think that's it?) and if I had to guess who the "large corporations" WOTC is angry at are, I'd guess Paizo tops the list. So I'm not at all sure that they had the kind of privileged access to info that this thread is suggesting, except insofar as they may have been told about it by other industry players.

To the extent that WotC has competition, Paizo is certainly the largest. To be sure, Paizo has played a more effective role as a competitor in the marketplace in the past than they are right now. Still, Paizo isn't giving up.

Abomination Vaults for 5e, as well, would be the next most important product from Paizo. It's coming out this June, 2023.

The Kingmaker 5e version was authorized long ago and caught up in development hell during covid. AV is much more recent. In both cases (and especially with AV), what Paizo is doing is trying to get the best of its products into the hands of a great many entirely NEW players and DMs of 5e who are unfamiliar with Paizo products. And to do so with a relatively inexpensive one volume hardcover (which is what AV promises to be)

Most users of ENWorld are well aware of Paizo (though I do think many 5e fans here think they know more about PF2 and its products than they actually do).

Still, ENWorld grognards are NOT the main target market here. New 5e players brought in by Critical Role and MCDM, et al would be far more likely to be the target market for these marketing efforts.

You can say what you want about 5e vs PF1 or PF2 rule systems. But the one thing which WotC copied from Paizo (and not as well, imo, other than reducing the overall length) is Paizo's approach to Adventures.

Adventures are in Paizo's wheelhouse. Pathfinder Adventuire Path is their flagship product line - always has been. They do them better than anybody else, including WotC, imo. Paizo's production values are very high and there are a lot of new players who entered the hobby to play 5e who likely don't know that.

Paizo thinks (translation: Erik Mona thinks) that if they can get their best adventures into the hands of new players (Abomination Vaults Vol 1 would definitely fulfill that plan), then Paizo might get some new permanent business out of it - and maybe entice customers away from 5e to PF2.

If not, they create brand awareness and increase their good will --- and sell some books, the artwork for which is already a sunk cost. Win-Win.

To be clear, I think Abomination Vaults, Vol 1, is one of the best adventure products of the past 20 years. It's an excellent adventure written by James Jacobs, who is a master of his craft. (Sadly, Vol 2 isn't up to the same standard, imo). I express no opinion on Vol 3 by Stephen Radney-McFarland as I have not run it yet nor read it with the granular level of detail required for a truly in depth assessment.

Vol 1 though? :Chef's kiss!: You should get it for just that first part of the adventure. It's GREAT.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I highly suspect that Paizo knew the OGL 1.1 was coming and what were seeing now is all the stuff they had prepared for that. Dont see why they would bother leaking it though. The backlash (from the public and 3pp) was gonna be terrible whether it was leaked or announced.
To my mind the most likely scenario is Paizo just had to speed up plans they've had in motion for a while.

There are a lot of ex-WotC people at Paizo (at all levels, literally from the top down) -- and now a lot of ex-Paizo people at WotC, too. These staffers have worked together, and many of them are friends outside of work, Some don't see each other outside of GenCon or other industry cons, once a year. Some see each other on the weekends in each other's home campaigns. A few remain room-mates.

All of that, plus how connected these business people are with one another in a very small hobby would lead me to conclude that Paizo certainly heard about 1.1 from 3pp who had been contacted, even if they may not have seen documents until Roll for Combat and Gizmodo did.

No, I do not believe Paizo "leaked it".

Yes, you can tell from my comments that I am suspicious AF of the practical efficacy of NDAs, especially in a business as small and downright gossipy as this one is.

 

[Malmuria]

For the same reasons Ryan Dancey and Brian Lewis didn't use a CCL for the OGL to begin with -- there's a lot of Creative Commons Licenses, and some are more restrictive while others are more open. Using any of the alphabet soup licenses comes with the risk of misinterpretation (innocent or otherwise) that the license used is the least restrictive one. Couple this with the fact that CC Licenses aren't good for separating parts of work to protect as IP while allowing other parts of the work to be used as open content. There's a lot less give in a CC license if you're trying to use it with a valuable trademark.

 

[The Stray]

Nothing about that tweet invalidates the thought processes that went in to the ORC and the OGL instead of using a CCL, since I'm not the one you need to convince of this. I'm going by what Ryan Dancey himself has said about why his team elected not to use a CCL. Take it up with him.

 

[Staffan]

Now, I'm not saying anyone was plotting here. Heck, everyone can (and should) make rational business decisions. But I have written that history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. When Hasbro moved to 4e, Paizo made the decision to release Pathfinder, and IIRC they sent people to playtest 4e and evaluate it even while they advancing their own game system. Which was a rational corporate decision for them.

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.

For the same reasons Ryan Dancey and Brian Lewis didn't use a CCL for the OGL to begin with -- there's a lot of Creative Commons Licenses, and some are more restrictive while others are more open. Using any of the alphabet soup licenses comes with the risk of misinterpretation (innocent or otherwise) that the license used is the least restrictive one. Couple this with the fact that CC Licenses aren't good for separating parts of work to protect as IP while allowing other parts of the work to be used as open content. There's a lot less give in a CC license if you're trying to use it with a valuable trademark.

I think the main reason Ryan and Brian didn't use Creative Commons was that they didn't have a time machine. The OGL was released in 2000, and the first Creative Commons licenses were released in 2002.

The information I can find on Creative Commons' site is also not very helpful about whether CC-BY-SA (the one closest to the OGL) can be used on partial works (in order to have the same differentiation the OGL does between OGC and PI), and if so how that works for downstream licensees.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You make it sound like some kind of industrial espionage on Paizo's part.

We can discuss the timeline (I talked about in the other thread), but the basic point, which you don't disagree with, is that Paizo was already developing their own internal game system while they were play testing 4e.

Whether they want to say that the play testing gave them confidence to fully go ahead with their own system, made them comfortable "going with plan B," or allowed them to see what the competitor would be releasing and understand that they'd be better off with their own project ... there's a number of ways to put it! Right?

None of that is industrial espionage (which is a term you are using)- it's rational self interest. AFAIK, they weren't under any contractual agreement not to release a competing game system.

To the bigger point- the competitive actions we ascribe to corporations, good, bad, in-between, are often the product of our biases. Heck- I was just looking at the responses to the Critical Role announcement, which was the biggest zero of an announcement possible, and was amusingly unsurprised to see CR fans tie themselves into knots reading it as some sort of clever attack, or come up with fictional accounts of what's really happening "behind the scenes."

 

[Malmuria]

I don't think there's any legal or practical reason for a ttrpg company to use ORC vs creative commons. In fact, if I were publishing something I'd feel a lot more confident long term using creative commons, since I don't know what this supposedly neutral non profit setup with ORC is going to look like. The idea that CC licenses are too numerous or confusing doesn't really hold up (plenty of games use CC just fine), nor does the oft-cited idea that you can't section off IP under creative commons (which is what the previously quoted tweet dispenses with).

The main thing OGL gave people was a sense of being part of the d20 ecosystem. There's a similar "branding" effect going on with ORC. Ultimately it probably won't be harmful, but it's also not necessary.

 

[Greg Benage]

The main thing OGL gave people was a sense of being part of the d20 ecosystem. There's a similar "branding" effect going on with ORC. Ultimately it probably won't be harmful, but it's also not necessary.

Only try to see the truth: There is no ORC. Like, it doesn't exist yet. Right now, it's a rallying flag, which probably serves a good purpose. Before it was #OpenDnD but this has big publishers behind it. It's fine.

 

[Orius]

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.

 

[MarkB]

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. So they'd know well in advance that their industry was about to implode, and that they'd need to move fast to put a new system in place that cut WotC out of the equation.

Organising ORC was a smart response whether or not it let them look like the cavalry riding to the rescue of the industry. They needed it for themselves, being able to offer it to others in exchange for getting good publicity out of WotC's bad publicity was just gravy.