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 spotThis 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.
Not to be That Guy, but have you watched the old TV show recently? It was incredibly episodic, played incredibly loose with the source material, and has not aged well.
If anything, the new movie looks exactly like the old TV show.
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As far as boycotting goes, I've been boycotting WotC since 4th edition Forgotten Realms came out. So I guess welcome to my world!
Bring your own cookies.
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As far as boycotting goes, I've been boycotting WotC since 4th edition Forgotten Realms came out. So I guess welcome to my world!
Bring your own cookies.
I went back to WotC for 5th edition. Stupid me, once the One D&D garbage started to come out, (now referred to as D&Done by me), came back to give Pathfinder 2E a look. Stupid me. Will have to buy up what I want quick it seems.
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I hope this very quickly goes vary badly for Hasbro/Wizards. And that we all get to read headlines that say something along the lines of -
"Hasbro roles a natural One D&D and critically fumbles"
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I hope this very quickly goes vary badly for Hasbro/Wizards. And that we all get to read headlines that say something along the lines of -
"Hasbro roles a natural One D&D and critically fumbles"
I think they underestimate the fan base, especially where the loyalties really lie. Do you really think their legal team anticipates the possibility of a multi-million dollar crowdsourced legal fund to fight them on this? The people involved in sales definitely know that Kickstarters resulted in millions being raised. Critical Role raised over $11 million for a cartoon series. Certainly the legal funding can be crowdsourced if WotC/Hasbro is hell bent on lawfare and the base is very large.
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(now referred to as D&Done by me)
Yeah, that's pretty clever. Hope it catches on. :D
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I think they underestimate the fan base, especially where the loyalties really lie.
I'm not so sure. Folk posting on this forum were already skewed against WotC, as evidenced in the 'Do you also play D&D?' thread, where everyone shat on 5e.
Most people who started roleplaying since 5e hit its stride, and who - in all likelihood - play nothing but D&D5e, won't care one whit what happens to Paizo or other smaller 3P creators.
I doubt the majority of those players are even aware of what is happening right now with the OGL.
As someone on the EN World forums said, WotC will get maybe a month of moaning online, then it'll be back to business as usual.
Obviously that doesn't account for any other predatory practices that are still in the pipeline for 2023 and beyond.
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I saw an interesting post from Michael Sayre about PF2 and the OGL (it was made 9 months ago so not a comment on the leak).
That's less true than you think. D&D already keeps their most defensible IP to themselves and every word of PF2 was written from scratch. Many of the concepts (fighter, wizard, cleric, spell levels, feats, chromatic dragons, etc.) aren't legally distinct or defensible except under very specific trade dress protections that Paizo's work is all or mostly distinct from anyways, and game mechanics aren't generally copyrightable even if PF2's weren't all written from the ground up. Most of the monsters that touch WotC's trade dress protections (i.e. real-world monsters modified heavily enough to have a distinct WotC version that's legally protectable) have already been reworked or were just always presented as legally distinct versions that don't require the OGL, and things like Paizo's goblins have always been legally distinct for trade dress law and protected for many years despite being released as part of a system using the OGL.
Considerations like keeping the game approachable for 3pp publishers, the legal costs of establishing a separate Paizo-specific license, concerns about freelancers not paying attention to key differences between Paizo and WotC IP, etc., all played a bigger role in PF2's continued use of the OGL than any need to keep the system under it. Not using the OGL was a serious consideration for PF2 but it would have significantly increased the costs related to releasing the new edition and meant that freelancer turnovers would have required an extra layer of scrutiny to make sure people weren't (unintentionally or otherwise) slipping their favorite D&Disms into Pathfinder products. It would have also meant all the 3pps needed to relearn a new license and produce their content under different licenses depending on the edition they were producing for, a level of complication deemed prohibitive to the health of the game.
It's possible and even likely that the next edition doesn't use the OGL at all but instead uses its own license specific to Paizo and the Pathfinder/Starfinder brands. It's just important to the company that they be approachable to a wide audience of consumers and 3pps; this time around the best way to do that was to continue operating under the same OGL as the first edition of the game.
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Having watched various videos, read various articles and the discussion on here, I gives creedance to the fact that this smells of a monopolisation attempt. I do not need to remind you that governments don't like monopolies, see the Activision-Blizzards purchase by Microsoft being opposed by the UK government. Now I know that it truely is just a money grab by Hasbro/WotC but still it seems both shodily put together and with a large degree of praying noone prods too deep. But they forget alot of people who play RPG's are geeks and/or nerds, some of which are now adults with Law Degrees. This going to be a s#&& show for both Hasbro and WotC since it shows contempt for what came before and the fans and it shows a great deal of ignorance.
But hey only time can tell, but thats my 2pence worth.
EtG
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I think in general the main barrier between us and getting standard 5e players to care is mainly about just making sure they know. Our communities don't always communicate with each other a lot, but nobody I've spoken to, Paizonian or D&D enthusiast, likes what WotC is doing one bit.
I'd honestly be surprised if Paizo can wrangle a deal better than Kickstarter's 20%. I don't think that's low enough for Paizo to stay running, so I doubt they're planning to cut a deal. We'll see, though!
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I certainly hope paizo is playing a long strategy. I would enjoy if starfinder 2e would be a OGL free game. This is likely to be just the beginning of the legal wrangling that will come out of Hasbro.
Paizo will likely want to keep some kind of OGL system, if only because they work so well with 3rd-party publishers and they need some kind of OGL to publish PF/SF-related works. Even if they move away from the WOTC OGL, they'll still want to have some kind of system in place to coordinate such works.
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Been waaaaayyy away from gaming for a bit, but have kept an "ear to the ground," per se, and this bit from The Man is crap. Team Paizo all the way, baby.
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My non-lawyer opinion on the matter:
Worst case expectations - things that were originally published under OGL 1.0 (Like the D&D 3.5 player's handbook) are still bound by OGL 1.0 even after OGL 1.1 supersedes and unauthorizes it. 3rd party products published against those OGL 1.0 products are already published and are also still governed under OGL 1.0 - meaning that WOTC can't demand royalties for those already published works.
But after OGL 1.1 unauthorizes OGL 1.0 nothing new can be created under OGL 1.0. Anything new that is created must be published under OGL 1.1 even if it is only referencing OGL 1.0 content.
So the Pathfinder CRB itself would still be fine. Building new content for Pathfinder 1 would have to be published under OGL 1.1.
Pathfinder 2 CRB would probably be re-released with the OGL content and the OGL 1.0 license removed. Paizo would almost certainly publish it with their own license - probably a 3rd party compatible or 'open' license.
So all this is going to do for Paizo itself is to drive 3rd party content creators to the PF2 platform. WOTC is going to find itself lacking 3rd party creators though.
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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 spotThis 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.
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For WOTC D&D isn't even their biggest money maker. It's Magic the gathering. Anyone that's played MTG can tell you WOTC only cares about sucking $ out of customers' pockets. 30th Anniversary Edition contains four booster packs with random content for $ 999.00, And the cards are not even legal for sanctioned gameplay. That's not a 30th-year celebration for the fan base. It's WOTC celebrating 30 years of greed.
If Paizo cuts a deal with WOTC, it just helps WOTC force others onto OGL 1.1. The only 2 ways I see out of this are to beat WOTC in court or make your games free of OGL content. I'd love to see where D&D would be without 3rd party content. D&D 5e doesn't need an update. WOTC needs OneD&D to force the new OGL 1.1 on everyone.
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So this may be a hot take - but I think we should all chill and hold off on the torches and pitchforks.
Contracts, intellectual property, and licensing law is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of doom-and-gloom articles and posts out there, but most of them are from folks who have no idea what they are talking about. The best one I saw was with an actual lawyer on Roll For Combat, and even he had a lot of qualifiers to his thoughts. He did seem to believe that this isn’t the end-of-the-world.
So I totally get the concern over our favorite hobby. But I’d wait until something official comes out (not a leak), and/or when Paizo comes out with something official.
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So this may be a hot take - but I think we should all chill and hold off on the torches and pitchforks.
Contracts, intellectual property, and licensing law is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of doom-and-gloom articles and posts out there, but most of them are from folks who have no idea what they are talking about. The best one I saw was with an actual lawyer on Roll For Combat, and even he had a lot of qualifiers to his thoughts. He did seem to believe that this isn’t the end-of-the-world.
So I totally get the concern over our favorite hobby. But I’d wait until something official comes out (not a leak), and/or when Paizo comes out with something official.
Taking action after a fire has started is the least effective time to take action to keep your house from burning down.
There will never be a better time than now for more and more people to voice their anger over this - yesterday would have been better, but tommorow is definitely worse.
If enough people get mad about this that it makes Hasbro blink and not move forward, that is absolutely the best result.
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So this may be a hot take - but I think we should all chill and hold off on the torches and pitchforks.
Contracts, intellectual property, and licensing law is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of doom-and-gloom articles and posts out there, but most of them are from folks who have no idea what they are talking about. The best one I saw was with an actual lawyer on Roll For Combat, and even he had a lot of qualifiers to his thoughts. He did seem to believe that this isn’t the end-of-the-world.
So I totally get the concern over our favorite hobby. But I’d wait until something official comes out (not a leak), and/or when Paizo comes out with something official.
It may be too late once something official comes out. already downloaded the DriveThruRPG app and downloaded everything, placing it on a local backup and into a cloud storage space I have. Working on getting all of my stuff from Paizo downloaded and saved in both spaces as well. I ahve a lot more there and no app to do it nice and clean.
I'm also looking at purchasing anything I want under OGL 1.0a as soon as possible because once OGL 1.1 goes live, it may no longer be available.
I've mirrored the Archives of Nethys site as well. Made sure I got copies of as many different SRDs as possible, too.
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So this may be a hot take - but I think we should all chill and hold off on the torches and pitchforks.
Contracts, intellectual property, and licensing law is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of doom-and-gloom articles and posts out there, but most of them are from folks who have no idea what they are talking about. The best one I saw was with an actual lawyer on Roll For Combat, and even he had a lot of qualifiers to his thoughts. He did seem to believe that this isn’t the end-of-the-world.
So I totally get the concern over our favorite hobby. But I’d wait until something official comes out (not a leak), and/or when Paizo comes out with something official.
Taking action after a fire has started is the least effective time to take action to keep your house from burning down.
There will never be a better time than now for more and more people to voice their anger over this - yesterday would have been better, but tommorow is definitely worse.
If enough people get mad about this that it makes Hasbro blink and not move forward, that is absolutely the best result.
Even if WotC isn't touching the OGL, and all the leaks are somehow wrong, it's never a bad thing to keep them afraid to touch it in the future. I say, keep the torches and pitchforks coming.
Also, Vardoc, we've linked two accounts now from lawyers who seem extremely concerned. They're a good read, and an informative watch.
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Even if WotC isn't touching the OGL, and all the leaks are somehow wrong, it's never a bad thing to keep them afraid to touch it in the future. I say, keep the torches and pitchforks coming.
And also, abandon the OGL in favor of an actual open content license that doesn't have this type of loophole in it in the first place.
Re-releasing the PF2 CRB without it wouldn't be a bad plan.
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Even if WotC isn't touching the OGL, and all the leaks are somehow wrong, it's never a bad thing to keep them afraid to touch it in the future. I say, keep the torches and pitchforks coming.And also, abandon the OGL in favor of an actual open content license that doesn't have this type of loophole in it in the first place.
Re-releasing the PF2 CRB without it wouldn't be a bad plan.
There is no real loophole.
Some corporate schmuck just noticed that modern licenses use "Irrevocable" where licenses of the time said "perpetual" and fired up the machine.
WotC's odds of winning this in court are less than 20% from everything I've been reading. All the precedence is stacked against them.
But Hasbro has many times more money to throw at the case than all of the combined third party producers could come up with together and could bankrupt them all long before a judgement is ever achieved should they decide to go the Lawfare route unless others join in to help fund such a lawsuit.
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Best case scenario: Paizo et al band together and go after Hasbro for punitive damages.
Hasbro appear to be using their comparative size and deep pockets to threaten the multitude of small companies in the market into accepting poorer terms than those already agreed. There should be severe consequences if those threats are not entirely above board.
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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.
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I know there's this idea that big companies can throw lots of money and win a case, and in certain situations that's true, but this isn't really one of those situations.
They don't throw money at a case to win the case. They throw money at a case to drive their opponent into bankruptcy before the case can even get close to a decision being made. This could definitely be one of those situations if WotC/Hasbro has decided to declare Lawfare to get all aspects of the D&D IP back.
I think they underestimate the fan base, especially where the loyalties really lie.I'm not so sure. Folk posting on this forum were already skewed against WotC, as evidenced in the 'Do you also play D&D?' thread, where everyone shat on 5e.
Most people who started roleplaying since 5e hit its stride, and who - in all likelihood - play nothing but D&D5e, won't care one whit what happens to Paizo or other smaller 3P creators.
I doubt the majority of those players are even aware of what is happening right now with the OGL.
As someone on the EN World forums said, WotC will get maybe a month of moaning online, then it'll be back to business as usual.
Obviously that doesn't account for any other predatory practices that are still in the pipeline for 2023 and beyond.
The Youtube Content Community is making sure they all know what it is and the gravity of it.
This thing is blowing up on Youtube
This is true, I've already seen a few videos pop up about it in my feed and I don't even watch RPG content on YouTube at all.
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.
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I certainly hope you're right.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.
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.
But Hasbro has many times more money to throw at the case than all of the combined third party producers could come up with together and could bankrupt them all long before a judgement is ever achieved should they decide to go the Lawfare route unless others join in to help fund such a lawsuit.
Given that Disney and Microsoft would both also be affected by a complete shut down of OGL, money to fight an injunction might not be an issue.
Whether either company cares enough to fight the full battle, I couldn’t guess. But telling WotC to take a long walk off a short pier if they want Disney to stop selling KotoR (ancient as it is now), that seems likely.
Edit: actually, I suppose Disney would have incentive to sue Hasbro into tiny tiny pieces regardless of the actual issue at hand, so who knows.
But Hasbro has many times more money to throw at the case than all of the combined third party producers could come up with together and could bankrupt them all long before a judgement is ever achieved should they decide to go the Lawfare route unless others join in to help fund such a lawsuit.Given that Disney and Microsoft would both also be affected by a complete shut down of OGL, money to fight an injunction might not be an issue.
Whether either company cares enough to fight the full battle, I couldn’t guess. But telling WotC to take a long walk off a short pier if they want Disney to stop selling KotoR (ancient as it is now), that seems likely.
The best outcome if they do release OGL1.1 that says OGL1.0a is no longer authorized would be an immediate C&D from the Disney legal department. I think that would shut this $%@# down right away! Disney has the single best IP litigation team in the industry.
How is Disney using the OGL?
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But Hasbro has many times more money to throw at the case than all of the combined third party producers could come up with together and could bankrupt them all long before a judgement is ever achieved should they decide to go the Lawfare route unless others join in to help fund such a lawsuit.Given that Disney and Microsoft would both also be affected by a complete shut down of OGL, money to fight an injunction might not be an issue.
Whether either company cares enough to fight the full battle, I couldn’t guess. But telling WotC to take a long walk off a short pier if they want Disney to stop selling KotoR (ancient as it is now), that seems likely.
Edit: actually, I suppose Disney would have incentive to sue Hasbro into tiny tiny pieces regardless of the actual issue at hand, so who knows.
AFAIK regardless if WotC manages to revoke the OGL1.0, everything already made under the OGL1.0 license is safe but you can't use it for future products.
How is Disney using the OGL?
Knights of the Old Republic uses d20 modern.
And yeah, I don’t expect miracles from that quarter, but the threat that Disney’s legal team might be having a slow week and decide to litigate Hasbro (one of their toy competitors) into insolvency might keep the most egregious actions Hasbro could take off the table, like trying to forbid sale of anything using OGL.
I’d rather that crap not be tried in the first place, even over “tried but did not succeed in court.”
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AFAIK regardless if WotC manages to revoke the OGL1.0, everything already made under the OGL1.0 license is safe but you can't use it for future products.
But Hasbro has many times more money to throw at the case than all of the combined third party producers could come up with together and could bankrupt them all long before a judgement is ever achieved should they decide to go the Lawfare route unless others join in to help fund such a lawsuit.Given that Disney and Microsoft would both also be affected by a complete shut down of OGL, money to fight an injunction might not be an issue.
Whether either company cares enough to fight the full battle, I couldn’t guess. But telling WotC to take a long walk off a short pier if they want Disney to stop selling KotoR (ancient as it is now), that seems likely.
Edit: actually, I suppose Disney would have incentive to sue Hasbro into tiny tiny pieces regardless of the actual issue at hand, so who knows.
The issue is in how they seem to be revoking it. From what I have seen they do not use the term "revoked" The term is "unauthorized" As such it is no longer a valid license for anything under section 9 of the OGL and thus can only be compliant under OGL 1.1. It's a bully move to be sure and likely would not hold up is a court of law if that is, in fact, what they are doing. As many have said, WotC/Hasbro has the funds to BURY any opponent in pre-trial motions after a painstakingly long and expensive discovery process at such a high cost that any opponent going down the litigation road would be bankrupted long before a single argument as to facts is heard in a court. It's not that WotC/Hasbro would believe they have a legal leg to stand on, it's that they believe they can insure it never makes it before a court to be heard.
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actually, I suppose Disney would have incentive to sue Hasbro into tiny tiny pieces regardless of the actual issue at hand, so who knows.At which point Hasbro say to Disney "here's a royalty free licence for you to keep selling your stuff",
Don't expect the Mouse to do anything for the benefit of anybody elsewhich Disney accept while Hasbro go after everybody else.
At which point Disney could say "nah" and begin a lawsuit that ends in one of their competitors bankrupt.
I'm not expecting Disney to do anything for anyone else's benefit. I'm saying they have a compelling interest in their own right to employ the same tactic that lots of people are saying Hasbro could do to 3pp.
Ahhhh, 1e. Tho that still leaves us with the same situation if 1.0a is revoked, functionally or legally.
I went back to WotC for 5th edition. Stupid me, once the One D&D garbage started to come out, (now referred to as D&Done by me), came back to give Pathfinder 2E a look. Stupid me. Will have to buy up what I want quick it seems.As far as boycotting goes, I've been boycotting WotC since 4th edition Forgotten Realms came out. So I guess welcome to my world!
Bring your own cookies.
Sounds hauntingly familiar - we were getting bored of the 5E due to lack of depth, glacial release of anaemic content and horrible GM toolkit years before... but it was the reprint of "same mechanics but even more dumbed down" and expectation that people will buy it all again that really turned us off.
As to the future... it really depends on how far WotC/Hasbro wants to push this, and given that a lot of the people making the decisions don't appear to actually understand what D&D is or why it is presently popular, I struggle to be optimistic.
If they go the less-horrible-PR route of insisting that OGL 1.0a cannot be used for 6th Edition (or whatever they want to call it), then the fact that it almost identical to 5th Edition still puts anyone trying to work on 5E material under 1.0a at risk. It'll still hurt the industry as it will push third parties away from the D&D brand - including those they outsource to to write their adventures - and a lot of people have products too far in production to back out before 1.1 kicks in.
If they go the nuclear option of trying to revoke the OGL 1.0a, there's going to be a legal battle, as it basically nukes every product derived from 3.5 onwards, including Pathfinder 2 - the OGL 1.0a is just inside the cover for a reason. From what I can glean from a few hours of reading/watching lawyers debate it, there's a case either way and the result is basically going to be a drawn out and expensive legal suit, whose legal outcome is up in the air, and quashes the industry while it is in progress.
Either way, it stinks for WotC/Hasbro PR even more than their antics around 4th Edition, but apparently that lesson has been forgotten. And which sucks as the people actually making the game seem to genuinely love the hobby.