Greg Benage
Legend
I totally understood ORC as a rallying flag. I totally don't get how people are convinced that a nonexistent license, with undetermined content licensed under it, is the solution for "real open gaming."
I think it would be pretty great if publishers big and small tossed the bespoke licenses in the garbage and started releasing SRDs under the Creative Commons licenses. (And don't be stingy: Most of this IP would have infinitely more value in the commons than it does under private ownership.) That would be great for open gaming. As someone who published for ten years and released dozens of books under the OGL, the idea that, having identified all your open content, you somehow can't create a CC-licensed reference document for that content is...not persuasive.
In any case, even if the actual ORC license that eventually materializes is great, it's just a license. It's real value will be in the safe harbor it provides to use game systems with a robust network of players. I don't know exactly what Paizo needs to do to get enough of the "D&D" out of PF2 to create a safe harbor for themselves and for licensees (neither does Paizo), but I remain concerned that the safer the harbor, the less robust the network of players will be. I know many people are convinced that we've entered a new golden age of non-D&D gaming, but the last 40 years of experience have made me extremely skeptical on that point.
I think it would be pretty great if publishers big and small tossed the bespoke licenses in the garbage and started releasing SRDs under the Creative Commons licenses. (And don't be stingy: Most of this IP would have infinitely more value in the commons than it does under private ownership.) That would be great for open gaming. As someone who published for ten years and released dozens of books under the OGL, the idea that, having identified all your open content, you somehow can't create a CC-licensed reference document for that content is...not persuasive.
In any case, even if the actual ORC license that eventually materializes is great, it's just a license. It's real value will be in the safe harbor it provides to use game systems with a robust network of players. I don't know exactly what Paizo needs to do to get enough of the "D&D" out of PF2 to create a safe harbor for themselves and for licensees (neither does Paizo), but I remain concerned that the safer the harbor, the less robust the network of players will be. I know many people are convinced that we've entered a new golden age of non-D&D gaming, but the last 40 years of experience have made me extremely skeptical on that point.