| borringman |
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Let's bear in mind that OGLv1.0a wasn't a paradigm shift of copyright law. In hindsight, the only thing it offered was certainty that WotC wasn't going to be "They Sue Regularly" all over again. Mind you, that was a HUGE benefit; legal costs can be significant for an indie publisher. Just saying the benefit was economic, not legal.
I don't know what ORC plans to do but OGLv1.1 was legally untenable. You can demand royalties for 3rd party content and revoke a license for code of conduct violations all you want, but mechanics are not protected by copyright so these power grabs were always a huge bluff by WotC. Beyond protecting their trademarks (which WotC never opened up in the first place) they have no real power over others' original works, no matter how derivative. I can demand everyone here pay me and conform to my personal code of ethics, but I have no legal power to enforce it until my plans to take over the world are completed.
That in mind, IANAL but my best understanding is ORC can't contain a morality clause that would function as desired. Hypothetically ORC could boot someone from the Alliance, and setting aside the uncomfortable questions of whose job is it to be World TTRPG Police and how to prevent abuse of such power, that may be the thing to do just on principle. But any effect beyond good feels would be a formality because the exiled can still publish anyway ("compatible with Pathfinder" etc.). In practice you can't sue someone just for being objectionable; the legal means here would be something like defamation, which is a tough road if the dispute boils down to Content Creator A is offended by Content Creator B. At most ORC could serve as a quality standard like JIS but is that really part of the plan?
IMO, ORC doesn't NEED to be the be-all, end-all runbook of game publishing anyway. The morality angle originated from the odious OGLv1.1, and personally I suspect it was put in there as a PR smokescreen for the awful stuff. In practice, all it'd do is EXCLUDE bigoted content from WotC's royalty scheme via revocation whereas the publication itself can't be stopped. As envisioned, the woke folks are still stuck paying 25%. FWIW, there are other ways of dealing with TTRPG pariahs without throwing a legal document at them; just ask Wizards of the Coast how their month is going.