Paizo (publishers of Pathfinder) react to rumors of Wizards of the Coast moving from the existing Open Game License to a new, predatory license and attempting to somehow retroactively revoke the old license: https://paizo.com/community/blog
The punchline: Paizo previously used the OGL to release their original content because it was there; now they feel it is no longer trustworthy so they're making their own license.
The name: The Open RPG Creative License (ORC).
If you haven't been following this: Around 2000 D&D 3e was released using OGL 1.0a, which Wizards created. After 23 years gobs of commercial work has been released depending on this license. About a week ago Wizards started privately sending creators a "OGL 1.1" with alarming terms. Originally it had a go-live date of *TODAY*. The new license immediately leaked, and there was uproar.
Today Wizards announced a livestream to discuss the controversy. Then cancelled it.
https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-announcement-wizards-of-the-coast-1849981365
Follow-up: So one week after canceling the launch of "OGL 1.1" aka "OGL 2.0", Wizards has launched "OGL 1.2". They brag they've addressed community concerns in various ways, but I don't think they have. For example they brag the new license contains the word "irrevocable" (although they define it to mean something special in the document so maybe it's still revocable). But the outrage was that Hasbro was trying to revoke the *old* OGL, 1.0a. And they're still doing that:
https://www.polygon.com/23562874/dnd-dungeons-dragons-ogl-1-2-release-download-feedback-survey
A new draft of the Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License (OGL) places the core rules of the seminal tabletop RPG in the Creative Commons. “We’re giving the core D&D mechanics to the community,” said the executive producer. Feedback is due by Feb. 3.
So this extensively sourced video takes the otherwise inexplicable decisions by Wizards around the OGL and renders it all depressingly explicable: None of this ever had anything to do with 3rd party publishers. The OGL is a bullet aimed directly at "Virtual Tabletop" (OpenRPG, Roll20 etc) so Hasbro can monopolize that market with an Unreal "app" that gives Hasbro an eternal revenue stream charging you microtransactions for animations on every new spell you want to learn.
The vision of the future sketched here, the one Hasbro is currently risking destroying D&D forever to create, is really deeply depressing. Instead of having fun painting little models and maps, or God forbid *imagining*, you just pay $3.99 over and over forever. Some leaks float the idea of eliminating the DM role entirely (an "AI" does that).
Interposing technology where it's not really needed because technology can be monetized (taxed) in a way imagination can't.
mcc
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven
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