12Seal's page

Hmmm. Time to bone up on that one again, then. Tfw relying on WotC.

Umu. The problem I have is the uncertainty. It is just game mechanics, not proper names, at least, so there's that.

That's promising.

I've been working on a setting for a few years now that I use in writing and games with friends and that I intend to make available for public use for free. It is not directly connected to Golarion, uses none of its lore or settings, its ethnicities, its deities, or the like, and is more heavily inspired by JRPGs, Anime, Manga, Light Novels, Web Novels, and the like, as well as more traditional fantasy novels and sources. However, it was built with the assumption that it runs on 1st Edition Pathfinder, uses the Classes, Spells, rules, mechanics (including many variant and supplemental rules), and a fair amount of 3PP and Homebrew content besides.

It is also not compliant with the Paizo's current standards, and not only because I'm an amateur hack working entirely on his own. The setting absolutely contains erotic (and LGBTQ+ friendly) content, slavery, and other subjects common in the inspirational material, some of which would need trigger warnings. It's a smutty, violent, somewhat dark world aimed at a more mature audience than Paizo's current fare and would probably be looking at an R to X movie rating rather than the preferred PG-13 and lower.

That this was a hang-up for Paizo's use policies on unofficial content was not something I'd realized when I first started work on the eventual public version. Among other things, slavery hadn't been booted from Golarion at the time. It probably didn't help that I'd assumed the slightly naughty content of the early Pathfinder setting was tacit approval of similar and more, but that's on me.

That said, one of the reasons why I considered making this setting publicly available was to promote continued 3rd Party support for the first edition of the game; it seems clear to me that there are still fans of it out there and that having a shared setting with relatively few restrictions (and the audience it brings) available to them to create in might encourage people to continue or pick back up their support of the edition.

However, this aspect of the work is meaningless if it runs afoul of Paizo's own permissions. I'd be better served simply creating my own system, which is an extra layer of complexity, difficulty, and time consumption I'd prefer to avoid on top of negating any possible encouragement towards would-be 1e creators. As such, I'm looking for an official response on the subject of whether or not I am allowed to actually do this or whether I should Cease & Desist, so to speak, and start revising terminology and building a new system for it or just cancel the public aspect of the work entirely and stick to personal use. What are the permissions for this sort of thing, if any, and the restrictions?

Below are 50+ pages of warlock-y goodness!

The warlock base class remains very similar to the 3.5 version. There are now, however, 10 different pacts to choose from each with unique flavor and properties (and perhaps more to come). Next is the invocations page, some are new, some are removed and many are changed. Last is the feats page, adding new feats, listing possibly useful feats and consolidating others.

While this is not a WIP, I am very eager to hear feedback, especially when it comes to adding more content or balance issues.

Please enjoy!

Warlock base class

Warlock pacts

Warlock invocations

Warlock feats

Yes, it's an ancient necro, but I very much like this. Was basically what I was looking for in a PF1 Warlock. Great work and thanks for sharing!

I've been writing a protagonist of late that’s a multiclass Magus-Savant, and I've been finding the Savant abilities underwhelming, even as a Jack-of-All-Trades type.

I was wondering what other people who've used the Class think of it, if it’s just me who's unimpressed with its performance, and what others might suggest to improve it. I have some ideas of my own (mostly cribbing from the Investigator and 3.5's Factotum of Anachronistic Adventures' Cogitator), but I'd like second opinions and thoughts on it. I get that it's inherently going to underperform compared to specialists, but it feels weak even then. Flavorful (which is why I went with it), but weak.

K, so how much XP did we get for this win?

An IP and copyright lawyer's take on OGL 1.2

And my attempt to link it failed. Wrong code, :P

Hasbro's not selling D&D. They'll mothball it for a few years in the worst case.

And that's only if the movie completely flops. To them, it's an IP more than it's a game.

Well, I mean the modern trend seems to be taking legacy IPs and the utterly destroying them for short-sighted cash grabs and poorly-conceived political and activist agendas that might have been decent if people cared about the product and audience as much as they did their bottom lines and big ideas.

Hatewatching shouldn't be a thing, but it is, and I weep inside for it.

As nobody else has posted it yet, allow me: D&D Short's video on what he has been told by the WotC staff he was in contact with.

Of particular note is this (corroborated) statement (time linked) about the head of D&D's digital stuff, Chris Cao: "he doesn't play D&D, because according to him, he doesn't need to play it to understand what the community wants - he believe his experiences in MMO video games and mobile games is enough and it's all the same anyway."

There we have it, ladies and/or/through gentleman. The TSR-level of contempt for the customer.

Pretty much exactly what I expected (and said as much). Assumption of all markets as the same and therefore what works at one place works identically in the other and thus he can force the market to be what he thinks it should be.

I am not remotely surprised, since this whole thing smacked exactly of that kind of management, sorry, MIS management.

If Hasbro is really expecting to increase D&D's revenue six-fold in the next four years, I can only foresee D&D being sold off when it inevitably fails to reach that mark, EVEN if this debarcle doesn't sink it faster.

(Here's a charming little thought to imagine for a moment of levity in this insantiy - imagine what would happen if it came to that and Paizo (et al) were to sidle up and say "well, tell yer what, we'll that that off yer hands on the cheap, mate...!")

Paizo and the other ORC signatories pooling resources to buy D&D would be beautiful. However, the best result from that, imo, would be to then consign everything under the label to the Public Domain. This would allow anyone to make anything from it, whenever they wanted. Obviously, Ed Greenwood would still own the Forgotten Realms. Keith Baker would likely keep Eberron. Dragonlance and Ravenloft to Hickmann and Weis. The individual settings would likely remain theirs, but all of the names and everything else would be open permanently.

Mhmm. Those are the folks that likely didn't care much in the first place but spoke up because everyone else seemed to be upset.

12Seal wrote:

I mean, yes, but that's honestly just business. For all that diehard free market proponents love to talk about the merits of competition, the reality is that competitions always have winners. Everyone works towards that monopoly in whatever way they can because it's the most efficient way to make money, and therefore the ultimate goal of any serious competitor. That's miserable for everyone else, ofc, hence anti-trust laws, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still the goal.

Especially for a publicly traded company that's beholden to shareholders who are themselves usually more interested in getting fat returns on their investments than on what the company stands for or its consumers. That's how we end up with the adversarial relationship between the management of Hasbro/WotC and the audience; the shareholders, and by extension upper management, want to separate the audience from as much money as they possibly can, whether the audience wants to part with it or not, in order to boost profit margins. That means killing competition, changing the business model from "ownership" to "rent-seeking," and forcing brand loyalty going forward by quashing 3pp and taking the majority of income on 3pp products by virtue of its licensing rules and larger economic scale.

It's actually a sensible move through that lens. However, to everyone but the corpo suits, it's utterly vile.

They aren’t trying to win by competing but by outlawing their competitors.

This is also a form of competition, just not one that should be allowed. "I can't win the race? Guess I'll need to get everyone ahead of me disqualified." It’s a dirty tactic, but so long as it's not clearly illegal, it's going to sit just fine. It's not like this is actually a monopoly, precisely because there are other systems and games that make use of no SRD content in the space, like Shadowrun, GURPs, WoD, Warhammer, etc...

I don’t know how many times over the years I've heard people say "How about playing something other than D&D." They’re still saying it, with exactly the same intent.

They were a pair of official D&D magazines--basically how Paizo cut its teeth on game design back in the beginning.

Good times, those. Also, thanks for that link. Me forget.

You aren't wrong. "Just business" is my way of complaining about the nature of a culture (that is to say, corporate and stonk culture) that prioritizes money over people, the planet, and even their own products. "Just business" is itself vile in my book; it's the supplantation of morality and ethics in favor of a Blue-and-Orange philosophy. Instead of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos, it's alignment compass is Profit, Loss, Supply, Demand, respectively.

Any system like that will inevitably crush everything for the sake of the Dollar Almighty.

Aaaaand the rabbit hole is deeper:

https://youtu.be/_dRhy8XdjC4

I mean, yes, but that's honestly just business. For all that diehard free market proponents love to talk about the merits of competition, the reality is that competitions always have winners. Everyone works towards that monopoly in whatever way they can because it's the most efficient way to make money, and therefore the ultimate goal of any serious competitor. That's miserable for everyone else, ofc, hence anti-trust laws, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still the goal.

Especially for a publicly traded company that's beholden to shareholders who are themselves usually more interested in getting fat returns on their investments than on what the company stands for or its consumers. That's how we end up with the adversarial relationship between the management of Hasbro/WotC and the audience; the shareholders, and by extension upper management, want to separate the audience from as much money as they possibly can, whether the audience wants to part with it or not, in order to boost profit margins. That means killing competition, changing the business model from "ownership" to "rent-seeking," and forcing brand loyalty going forward by quashing 3pp and taking the majority of income on 3pp products by virtue of its licensing rules and larger economic scale.

It's actually a sensible move through that lens. However, to everyone but the corpo suits, it's utterly vile.

The grognards awaken! The end is nigh!

As has been pointed out by others, WotC can’t unring this bell. Why would anyone trust them at this point?

Ignorance. I've had to explain this s*&@show to people irl twice. Folks who were interested in D&D and didn't know much of anything about the market, just that D&D was a thing and they were interested in trying to play.

Lol, not really on topic, so spoilered:

Probably should avoid further discussion of that here, lol. Especially while I'm at work =3

As a sidenote, I do cautiously hope that the ORC adopts language similar to the new OGL's about prohibiting blatantly abusive content. We don't need "Myfarog, ORC edition".

At the same time, I (perhaps vainly) hope the ORC avoids being overly restrictive around "messy" content, like BoEF-style Mature Audiences Only publications, publications that explore potentially traumatic subjects, and content that digs into "problematic" tropes to try to unpack their deeper meaning. I think a lot about how marginalized writers like Isabel Fall have been treated when trying to write about some edgy topics, and it's left me sort of more on the side of taking a light touch to this sort of thing. There's a difference between tackling a messy subject in good faith and writing actual Nazi propaganda, and I hope we can tell the difference.

As one example, I'm working on an ancestry right now that is closely linked to severe trauma as a key motif of its, well, existence. It's not the sort of thing everyone would be comfortable with, and parts of it might not be super kid-friendly, but that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to exist provided it's correctly labeled.

I may be paranoid, but I guess I worry about new licenses ultimately emphasizing a squeaky-clean Disneyfied feel for new releases--less out of social conservativism so much as simple play-it-safe corporate caution. I've seen that trend in other industries, and I'm not a huge fan.

Oops, my sidenote went longer than my actual note. [EDIT: and I think I changed my mind halfway through and decided, actually, they shouldn't do the restrictions at all, it's not a good idea.]

This kind of thing, tbh. Most of my Pathfinder energy of late has been devoted to working on Mature-themed setting heavily inspired by the Monstergirl/boy trope and a number of works in the genre for PF1. I might eventually publish it, but it rather obviously contains a range of themes that would run afoul of a Disneyfied vision of Fantasy.

But do they (WotC) deserve him?

No. They deserve nothing right now but black flag and jovial Roger.

stream was cancelled

Lmao.

Also, another take:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/12/beg-forgiveness-ask-permission/#whats-a- copyright-exception

12Seal wrote:

My guess is yeah. Not just them, tho. This is likely an attempt to cripple the competition with the ultimate goal being consolidation into their own VTT and a tiered subscription model. 1.1 as-is likely isn't the end of this, just tge opening play.

It seems in reframing the new OGL as having more power over all multimedia universes (I saw mention of NFTs for chrissakes) this is really the play. A new edition. New media control -DnD Beyond, the Paramount plus TV show, the hugely popular VTTs out there, all of it is to be brought under One DnD. It is a grab to control and cash in on so many other people’s work, ideas, passion, amd to put it under capitalist control of people who love nothing. Because only that kind of person would conceive of this, let alone enact it.

They love money. Short term gains and monopolization to keep them going. The shareholder meeting that triggered this crapshoot specifically questioned why they were selling a single book (to the DM) and having a half-dozen other people (the players) not buy it. "Why isn't there a subscription model in place? Why no microtransactions?"

This is the big money that invests in D&D demanding more of a return on that investment. They want results. More results.

I've used Roll20, but it isn't always convenient for scheduling. I've taken to forum and Discord lately.

Kobold Press has been and always will be committed to open gaming and the tabletop community. Our goal is to continue creating the best materials for players and game masters alike.

This means Kobold Press will release its current Kickstarter projects as planned, including Campaign Builder: Cities & Towns (already printed and on its way to backers this winter).

Read the full statement here:
Raising Our Flag - Kobold Press

Nice!

Can't help worrying that Golarion and the Pact Worlds may end up as Hasbro IPs, since it started as a D$D setting and has been OGL for so long.

How will this effect Youtube channels and podcasts that play 5e? I listen to Oxventure, Dragon Friends, Adventure Zone, Dungeon Dudes (among others), will they be able to continue producing new episodes after 13/01/2022 if they make money via adverts, merchandise or live shows?

Their revenue will be subject to the royalties demands as well, I'm sure. Can't imagine Jules is pleased.

KS was meant for small scale.

Please dont boycott as that will really hammer small press.

Yeah, ngl, I'd boycott OGL content on Kickstarter. They say they tried to negotiate a better arrangement for their users, but really... it's going to be new OGL content. That's going to be stuff that feeds this beast. No sense in offering up more IP sacrifices to Rovagug, it will only grow stronger for it and then seek to destroy everything but itself. This is Hasbro showing it can't be trusted. It's telling us what it wants and that it will try again even should it fail.

It's time to leave D$D and its OGL.

Ick, so "we get your stuff" is in full effect as of the 13th.

This s!#& is like watching the guy who's been helping you out turn into a Werewolf... and you're a Level 1 Commoner.

Any discussion of "oh we can to rewrite it" doesn't take into account that this "OGL 1.1" is claiming to essentially "morph" all previously OGL 1.0a released content. Everything that has already been released as OGL 1.0a supposedly now follows the terms of OGL 1.1, meaning WotC has a royalty free license for it and etc.

And that is to say that the situation is so heinous that there's really no recovery. Just note - this is statement "you released your stuff on a license that we get to rewrite any way we want".

If this goes thought, WotC will essentially own anything ever released on OGL 1,0a and even things "like" these because of it's ability to now release "OGL 1.2" and so-forth.

And the legal theories being used are completely dubious but the most outrageous legal theories will stand if everyone accepts them. So rewriting would not help even slightly imo and I believe in Stephan Glicker's opinion.

There is no alternative to fighting, none.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ6iTzeiNY8

This is honestly disgusting.

12Seal wrote:

Heard a rumor claiming 1.1 is already live. Can anyone confirm whether they rammed it through?

Would make sense if they're trying to harvest IPs.

It's not released publicly yet that I know of, but it's likely to have been given out privately. We know Kickstarter has cut a deal with it already. Everyone else is silent, suggesting a legal action, battle, or advice is keeping others silent which is why we likely haven't heard from Paizo yet on this.

Sounds reasonable.

My guess is yeah. Not just them, tho. This is likely an attempt to cripple the competition with the ultimate goal being consolidation into their own VTT and a tiered subscription model. 1.1 as-is likely isn't the end of this, just tge opening play.

Heard a rumor claiming 1.1 is already live. Can anyone confirm whether they rammed it through?

Would make sense if they're trying to harvest IPs.

magnuskn wrote:

Zaister wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

It's not that I ever went away, I'm just quietly GM'ing three campaigns in 1E. Not much new to talk about there. ^^

Just you wait until the Wizard Lawyers come knocking at your door to take away your unauthorized 1E OGL 1.0a books!

<brandishes 1E Core Rule Book> I'll give you my books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands! :p

LOL, Really. Come take away my 1st ed books and stop me from running my game in MY world that s 100% mine

They won't have to once you run the game online. Then they have every right to reprint your setting and adventure as their own... according to them.

Man it's warm in here. Feeling Fahrenheit 451.

^Good idea -- I wish they would cover it. Granted, they have big things on their radar, but that doesn't stop them from covering a lot of stuff less important than this. Not to say this is unimportant -- some people pointed out (I think earlier in this thread) that this is also a threat to open source software, which plays a role in quite a big part of the economy.

Indeed. I suspect the more people who bomb them with this as a story lead, the more likely they are to cover it. Feel free to follow suit and mention the Open Source Software angle, as I didn't.

Sent a message about this as a possible story to a news organization (NPR). Perhaps someone will cover it and get the word out if we pester enough folks.

There's also a Change.org petition taking off with about 4x as many signees as opendnd's petition right now – you can find that here.

Wish there was a way the two could link to each other.

Signed, donated, and spread.

Here's a working link to OpenDND

OpenDND.

Signed and spread.

I imagine there's a good chance everyone using 1.0a may have to put their production and publication on hold as of January 13th, if just to see what Hasbruh will actually do with this. Them sitting on it and doing nothing will itself have a devastating effect, since they could argue they own everything OGL released after the 13th and subsequently pad their catalog and access otherwise unavailable IPs in the future. Even reprints are suspect of this.

Until someone bites, or cooks up an alternative to the OGL that everyone gets on board with, the effects of 1.1 will be chilling on the market. Expect old things to become unavailable, and new things to be delayed indefinitely.

Unfortunately. 5e is running on momentum; few want to play anything else due to its simplicity and versatility, unless they were already exposed to other systems. No one wants to fork over the cash for new books, learn a new system, and then find out nobody else in their group wants to play.

If I were being realistic about this rather than hopeful, I'd say that WotC will largely go uncontested. They don't have the ground to stand on, but they do have a pile of money. They'll likely force their 3pp competitors and contributors to jump ship from D&D compatibility.

We may see new systems spring up, or Paizo going saint-mode and creating their own 2e OGL in order to lure in those creators, but this move will probably work well for WotC and may sink a bunch of 3rd party publishers.

What truly amazes me is that this is round 3 of this crap. First was TSR, whose draconian 3pp policies led to the nickname "They Sue Regularly" and the eventual creation of the OGL in the first place under WotC. 3x exploded under that.

They then tried to kill the OGL for 4e with the GSL, and instead the lack of 3pp attention hindered 4e's prospects and boosted Paizo and Pathfinder to outperform them.

They bring it back for 5 and what happens? 5e does gangbusters.

Now here's round three of this mess, and just like with the TSR grognard gripes and 4e's naysayers, the exact same thing is happening. How the hell have they not learned this lesson?

I mean, technically, they're asserting the rights to make RPGs of any IP that's ever been made compatible with D&D, or will be, post OGL. Previously printed content is supposed to be protected, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's otherwise so long as it gets another printing or release.

I should hope so. I still use PF1 for my own projects. Doesn't take much to convert older stuff, even if conversion is required.

I'd honestly love seeing PF1 revisited and continued, but dreams and reality aren't the same, lol.

Ahhhh, 1e. Tho that still leaves us with the same situation if 1.0a is revoked, functionally or legally.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Vardoc Bloodstone wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Also, Vardoc, we've linked two accounts now from lawyers who seem extremely concerned. They're a good read, and an informative watch.

Look, I’m not saying don’t have an interest, or don’t follow the story. But frankly, most these folks don’t know what they are talking about. I love Ron as a content creator and member of our community, but he is not an expert in these fields.

So my message is to ease the panic, but if that doesn’t sit well with you then by all means, you do you.

And for what it is worth, I am fairly confident that none of these fears will come to pass and that Paizo can continue to Paizo. Like 80-90% certain.

Edit: typo.

I certainly hope you're right.

Paizo will be fine regardless. They have multiple options here.

It's the rest of the community who loses if this fight is sidestepped rather than won.

Obviously it would be better if the victory could come in the form of the court of opinions where WotC realizes that trying this would ruin their public image and damage D&D's revenue.

But most likely they're going to go full corporate on this and demand submission or an actual legal battle.

Not saying Paizo has an obligation to participate, they don't. There are absolutely reasons they would probably be better off avoiding that battle.

But it would sure be nice if they did.

The best way to accomplish that would be to get big influencers with more mainstream appeal or business clout collectively on board and hammering home how bad this is to the 5e fans. Mercer comes to mind.

Coridan wrote:

Most likely it's whoever in charge of WotC wanting to impress their bosses in Hasbro. This happens a lot in game studios where a studio head will be in a meeting with the big boss (like EA) and the big boss starts singing the praises of one branch who brought in x money with microtransactions and live services, them goes to the other studio head "so what have you guys got coming up" and the guy who heads a studio known for epic single player RPGs then comes up with Anthem on the spot

This sounds exactly what happened when corporate busy bodies who know nothing of the industry decide they want to increase profits.

I hope this fails.

That 1980s cartoon had way more DND feels than this generic movie. They should bring back it.

Or Record of the Locosss which was a DND campaign.

Minor thing, but Record of Lodoss War started as D&D replays, but has since had its own 2d6-based system churned out. It's called Sword World, is on its 2.5 edition last I'd heard, and has never been translated into English. It's basically Japan exclusive.

D&D isn't getting Ryo Mizuno's stuff back anytime soon. This thing is a good decade+ older than the OGL, so WotC can just cry about it. No Record of Lodoss Wars, no Legend of Crystania, no Rune Soldier Louie, or anything else in that setting for them.

What an absolutely disgusting mess this is. I sincerely hope Paizo and the like have what it takes to win a legal fight over keeping 1.0a in effect.

And that WotC chokes on the ashes of 1.1 as it burns and all the decent 3rd party creators jump ship.

Dare I say it's nightmare fuel?

Maybe. It depends on how overpowering I want the creature to be. Though in this case I was just using it as an example, there are a number of high-level Monsters that are still expected to be around the same CR despite the change in form and size. There's a number of traits this would end up impacting (like space/reach and carrying capacity), sure, but their Special Qualities and defenses outside of HP and AC probably aren't going to be affected much.

Some Monsters within the inspiring setting were able to revert to their original state temporarily, as well, but not all could, which is another factor in me looking at different conversion methods; not all Monsterfolk have the same traits, so all suggestions are welcomed. The Tarrasque specifically would probably be a Masque of Form'd creature.