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I imagine Paizo are already doing something similar, albeit on a much grander scale.probably.
would be a shame to lose PF1, but if they don't want to fight that battle that's their call to make. The time and cost would be staggering.
The nine hells with that. Been working on perfecting 3.x stuff for years. Not going to give that up because some Hasbro/WOTC suit gets goldeneye.
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My interpretation was that the OGL is now a ticking bomb. Maybe it goes off on the 13th of Jan, as indicated in the leaked documents, maybe it gets delayed to some undetermined point in the future, but sooner or later it is going to explode. If nothing else, this is a wake-up call that Hasbro is out to get you, and severing yourself from the OGL is both urgent and necessary.
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My interpretation was that the OGL is now a ticking bomb. Maybe it goes off on the 13th of Jan, as indicated in the leaked documents, maybe it gets delayed to some undetermined point in the future, but sooner or later it is going to explode. If nothing else, this is a wake-up call that Hasbro is out to get you, and severing yourself from the OGL is both urgent and necessary.
Oh, definitely. They've essentially torched any trust or goodwill with most 3rd party developers essentially overnight, as well as the security and confidence of the industry.
Gasoline, match and maybe a little bit of extra fuel just to be sure.
Walking it back at this point may prevent the whole DnD brand from being tainted in the minds of a significant portion of the RPG community for years to come, but it seems to me like their professional relationships are going to be unsalvageable for the foreseeable future.
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Actually, you know what this reminds me of...
Several years ago, Oracle corporation bought the copyright to the open source software product MySQL. The problem with that, of course, is that Oracle also owns and markets probably the biggest proprietary database competitor of MySQL.
So of course, since the at-the-time version of MySQL was open source, the community copied the existing code and created a new clone of the project called MariaDB.
Now, we will never know whether Oracle intended to shut down or close the license on MySQL - nothing of the sort was ever announced or actually happened. MySQL is still a viable open source choice for database software. In fact, Oracle has improved the code - and especially its install defaults - quite a bit over the years that it has been in control of it.
But MariaDB is now the default database install for a lot of Linux distributions.
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would be a shame to lose PF1, but if they don't want to fight that battle that's their call to make
Let's start with a disclaimer: I don't endorse piracy. Good books should be rewarded with buying them.
But in such a scenario Paizo could find unusual allies among pirates. While illegal copies are currently undesired, they would become a boon once the books are no longer allowed to be sold legally. They still have the chance to spark interest in buying legal books (such as PF2), and they would undermine Hasbro's lawful evil policy. All Paizo would have to do is to stop fighting piracy of PF1 books, once the scenario becomes reality.
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I've heard a lot of contradictory things over the past week on how this will affect Paizo, Pathfinder, and Starfinder, but one common thing I see is the possibility of Paizo making its own OGL, with that being a pricey endeavor to undertake. I don't work at Paizo and none of the people who I've talked to about this work at Paizo, so obviously take this with the smallest grain of salt, but if they do decide to try and create their own OGL I'm curious what we, as fans of their product and wanting to help them succeed, can do to help. Would buying more of their product help? Or would there be somewhere to donate? Both? I'm not rich, but I'd still want to help in any way I could.
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My interpretation was that the OGL is now a ticking bomb. Maybe it goes off on the 13th of Jan, as indicated in the leaked documents, maybe it gets delayed to some undetermined point in the future, but sooner or later it is going to explode. If nothing else, this is a wake-up call that Hasbro is out to get you, and severing yourself from the OGL is both urgent and necessary.Oh, definitely. They've essentially torched any trust or goodwill with most 3rd party developers essentially overnight, as well as the security and confidence of the industry.
Gasoline, match and maybe a little bit of extra fuel just to be sure.
Walking it back at this point may prevent the whole DnD brand from being tainted in the minds of a significant portion of the RPG community for years to come, but it seems to me like their professional relationships are going to be unsalvageable for the foreseeable future.
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WOTC has exposed itself as the evil boss monster to a group of creative people who spend all their free time dreaming up ways to defeat evil boss monsters and have the patients to spend months or not years slowly leveling up to take on the challenge. Today we may be armed with pitchforks and tomorrow with swords. This is the start of a 12-part AP.
"What do you do?"
So there much of a chance Paizo has to halt publication for a while after 1.1 drops? Consensus I'm getting seems to be Hasbro probably doesn't have the legal authority to revoke 1.0, but that might not stop them from trying to bury rivals underneath legal expenses long before a ruling can put that in ink.
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I downloaded all my PDFs from Paizo and have them safely stored on physical media.
I'm debating getting the official PDFs of things I normally access on Archives of Nethys [Dark Archive, etc.] - but that would get really pricey over the course of just a few days. (I wouldn't mind if I had a couple months to spread out the purchases.)
I used HTTrack to mirror Archives of Nethys locally.
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.
Do HTTrack hyperlinks point out to the original pages or to the internal pages within the mirror?I used HTTrack to mirror Archives of Nethys locally.I downloaded all my PDFs from Paizo and have them safely stored on physical media.
I'm debating getting the official PDFs of things I normally access on Archives of Nethys [Dark Archive, etc.] - but that would get really pricey over the course of just a few days. (I wouldn't mind if I had a couple months to spread out the purchases.)
The internal pages within the mirror unless they point to a different domain and I used a choice that questions what to do with those links so I could download in such a way as to get complete SRDs for Pathfinder 1E, Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder. I then told it not t mirror other external links.
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This is relevant. Roll For Combat is hosting questions at 4:00 EST today. Bottom line is that fears of OGL 1.1 are probably overblown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ6iTzeiNY8
Edit: time error
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WOTC has exposed itself as the evil boss monster to a group of creative people who spend all their free time dreaming up ways to defeat evil boss monsters and have the patients to spend months or not years slowly leveling up to take on the challenge. Today we may be armed with pitchforks and tomorrow with swords. This is the start of a 12-part AP.
"What do you do?"
Get into the torch selling business. Can't do pitchforks without torches can we?
Sounds like a ******* TPK.
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From RollForCombat's video: there is now a site taking signatures against this. opendnd.games I would definitely add your name to this. If there's enough backlash, hopefully this can be changed before this gets into a big legal battle.
Also, if this is still going in March, I suggest that we all avoid the D&D movie. At least don't see it opening week. This will hit WotC/Hasbro harder than anything else.
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From RollForCombat's video: there is now a site taking signatures against this. opendnd.games I would definitely add your name to this. If there's enough backlash, hopefully this can be changed before this gets into a big legal battle.
Spreading that around like peanut butter on bread.
From RollForCombat's video: there is now a site taking signatures against this. opendnd.gamesLink doesn't work. And I can't find the site via a Google or Bing search.
If you click the link, it'll add an extra start on it that tries to link it to Paizo for some reason (likely a quirk of the forums). Highlight it, copy, then paste. If the URL changes at all, remove anything that isn't exactly as the link that is posted here. Had the same thing happen.
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This is relevant. Roll For Combat is hosting questions at 4:00 EST today. Bottom line is that fears of OGL 1.1 are probably overblown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ6iTzeiNY8
Edit: time error
That's opposite the impression I got from Stephen's commentary. He seems genuinely concerned Wizards is going to attempt to use 1.1 to put competition out of business through bully tactics and injunctions halting publications of OGL 1.0 compliant material. In consideration of Stephen's experience with the industry and insider knowledge (some of which he seems unable to share), this seems very much a crossroads moment for ttrpg culture. Hope not, but looks like this is actually going down.
Either way, definitely the time to band together and rally around the OGL.
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Here's a working link to OpenDND
Signed and spread.
To be fair, the video wasn’t out yet when I shared the link.
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This was just posted by a person named Noah Adams, "a licensed attorney with a focus on business, and intellectual property issues in the tabletop and digital gaming industries" on medium.com.
Let’s Take A Minute To Talk About D&D’s Open Gaming License (OGL).
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Signed
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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.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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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.
There's an active discord channel that lists both.
https://discord.gg/ktnnKXfF
Hopefully the link is allowed.
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So I found am article from the American Bar Association about the current OGL issue.
A few high lights (copy pasted from the link)
To discuss copyright in board games, we must look back to an 1879 Supreme Court case ironically having nothing at all to do with games. In Baker v. Selden,4 the plaintiff had developed a new method of bookkeeping and published a book containing an introduction, an explanation of the method, and some examples that consisted mostly of blank bookkeeping forms. His book met with little success, but when another publisher began successfully selling a book containing very similar forms, his widow filed a copyright infringement suit. The Supreme Court held that although the book was subject to copyright, the bookkeeping method itself was not a suitable subject of copyright, and because the forms were merely implements for performing the method, they were not copyrightable subject matter. Justice Joseph Bradley wrote, “[W]hilst no one has a right to print or publish his book, or any material part thereof, as a book intended to convey instruction in the art, any person may practice and use the art itself which he has described and illustrated therein. . . . The copyright of a book on book-keeping cannot secure the exclusive right to make, sell, and use account-books prepared upon the plan set forth in such book.”5
HOWEVER
Board games occupy a somewhat eccentric niche in intellectual property law, often not fully protectable by copyright, trademark, or patent, and thus susceptible to knock-offs and alternate themes. A would-be board game designer should understand which kinds of IP protection apply to which aspects or components of the game, and take appropriate steps to protect them accordingly: registering the copyright in the rules and other copyrightable components; ensuring that all agreements with contributors (such as artists) assign all rights to the game developer; exploring the possibility of patent protection for truly novel game mechanics; and making sure that any license or distribution agreements clearly delineate the IP rights of each party.
My thoughts
On one hand, it IS ESTABLISHED that you can not copyright methods. You can't copyright instructions on how to do things any more than you can copyright the concept of rolling a dice and adding numbers.
HOWEVER, Pathfinder and DnD are both a LOT more complicated than that, which is where the gray area comes into play. The intellectual line between DnD and Pathfinder is pretty clear, especially between 1e and 3.5.
Is Pathfinder completely screwed? I don't think so. But I do expect that they will have to make some changes, if for no other reasons than doing so will be easier than trying to fight with lawyer.
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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.
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It wouldn't be a D&D edition change without a bunch of unnecessary OGL drama.
-Skeld
Except for all the D&D edition changes before the OGL
This was just posted by a person named Noah Adams, "a licensed attorney with a focus on business, and intellectual property issues in the tabletop and digital gaming industries" on medium.com.
Let’s Take A Minute To Talk About D&D’s Open Gaming License (OGL).
This guy is not only an IP lawyer, he also specializes in tabletop gaming.
His conclusion is pretty stark.
The key point is that OGL 1.0a never says that it is irrevokeable. Therefor, Hasbro can revoke it at any time.
There are cascading effects, which are as dire as you might expect: once revoked, no one can produce or SELL anything based on that license.
So everything in the warehouse, and everything paid for but not yet delivered is illegal to sell. Eating those inventory costs will be deadly.
And, in the future, no one can produce any materials that use the 1.1 license without giving Hasbro an unlimited, royalty-free license to do whatever they like with your material.
Isn't Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder (definitely not Pathfinder 1e) mostly using the OGL as a formality and safety net for homebrewers and 3pps at this point? You can't really copyright game mechanics themselves, but some things might need to be renamed (drow (only d&d to my knowledge associated drow with elves as they are otherwise a type of troll) and Tarrasque (it uses two r's instead of one r like the mythical creature)) and redesigned (the Pf Tarrasque looks pretty similar to the D&D Tarrasque). In theory they might need to also rename ability scores (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma) but they can go for similar names and even some repeating ones (strength, agility, endurance, logic, intuition, and charisma). But for the most part they should be in the clear, yeah? Sure they'd need to reprint things and wouldn't be able to sell until those names are changed (if they even have to go that far).
Maybe I'm just being hopeful that this won't hurt Paizo as much as WotC hopes it will. I'm nervous but honestly looking forward to the 13th because then we can finally see what the damage will be as opposed to having to speculate.
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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.
Isn't Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder (definitely not Pathfinder 1e) mostly using the OGL as a formality and safety net for homebrewers and 3pps at this point? You can't really copyright game mechanics themselves, but some things might need to be renamed (drow (only d&d to my knowledge associated drow with elves as they are otherwise a type of troll) and Tarrasque (it uses two r's instead of one r like the mythical creature)) and redesigned (the Pf Tarrasque looks pretty similar to the D&D Tarrasque). In theory they might need to also rename ability scores (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma) but they can go for similar names and even some repeating ones (strength, agility, endurance, logic, intuition, and charisma). But for the most part they should be in the clear, yeah? Sure they'd need to reprint things and wouldn't be able to...
Michael Sayre said that PF2e mostly has the OGL 1.0a so it has access to 'traditional' names (e.g. magic missile) and in case freelancers or other parties inadvertently inject 3.0 SRD material into Pathfinder 2e but that otherwise PF2e uses no SRD content.
Starfinder however copy-pastes rules from the SRD in several sections.
Isn't Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder (definitely not Pathfinder 1e) mostly using the OGL as a formality and safety net for homebrewers and 3pps at this point? You can't really copyright game mechanics themselves, but some things might need to be renamed (drow (only d&d to my knowledge associated drow with elves as they are otherwise a type of troll) and Tarrasque (it uses two r's instead of one r like the mythical creature)) and redesigned (the Pf Tarrasque looks pretty similar to the D&D Tarrasque). In theory they might need to also rename ability scores (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma) but they can go for similar names and even some repeating ones (strength, agility, endurance, logic, intuition, and charisma). But for the most part they should be in the clear, yeah? Sure they'd need to reprint things and wouldn't be able to...
Michael Sayre said that PF2e mostly has the OGL 1.0a so it has access to 'traditional' names (e.g. magic missile) and in case freelancers or other parties inadvertently inject 3.0 SRD material into Pathfinder 2e but that otherwise PF2e uses no SRD content.
Starfinder however copy-pastes rules from the SRD in several sections.
Well that definitely sucks for Starfinder then. Also sucks because that's the one my IRL group plays the most between the two. Well, thanks for the info and fingers crossed the revoking of 1.0a doesn't go through at the very least.
^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.
^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.
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Maybe it's time for Starfinder Second Edition?
I think it's the best long-term solution to getting out from under WOTC control permanently. But really hope it's not the best short-term solution. I'd hate to see the last 2 parts of drift hackers and ports of call get canceled.
Interesting take from a couple of weeks back
The above, coupled with statements regarding PF2 including the OGL as a nicety is making me revisit some of my previous assumptions. I still don't think anyone (including WotC/Hasbro) has any certainty for what is coming down the line, but:
A) IF the OGL is only required for publications that replicate text from the SRD (), then regardless of what WotC/Hasbro do with OGL 1.1, Pathfinder 2 and the myriad of other spinoff systems that don't use anything from the SRD can continue business as usual.
Given that said RPGs don't use any material actually copyrighted by WotC, it should also permit any VTT to continue working with those systems at least.
B) IF the OGL 1.0(a) can be legally revoked (), then anything that relies on the SRD must immediately cease being sold unless the publisher wants to comply with OGL 1.1 - notably including Pathfinder 1 as last I checked it had big chunks of text pulled from the SRD.
Assuming point A) is true, the more brutal - and likely desired by WotC - outcome is the impact on VTTs. Namely they immediately remove the ability to support 5E (and 3.5) from all but Roll20 and FG, then in 2024 give the last 2 the 30 days notice, leaving only the Hasbro VTT as the sole VTT that "official" D&D can be played on. It would be nice to dream that people will switch systems to protect their favourite VTT... But the more likely outcome is that a lot of VTTs are going to go out of business.
C) If the OGL 1.0(a) can't be legally revoked and this is upheld in court... then given the body of work around the discussion of the OGL at the time of its creation, WotC/Hasbro just nuked their reputation and good will for not much of anything, as people can continue to make material for 5E and earlier and play them on VTTs?
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Michael Sayre said that PF2e mostly has the OGL 1.0a so it has access to 'traditional' names (e.g. magic missile) and in case freelancers or other parties inadvertently inject 3.0 SRD material into Pathfinder 2e but that otherwise PF2e uses no SRD content.
I think either there was a miscommunication or he's getting a lot of work out of the phrase "access to 'traditional' names", because PF2 in fact uses quite a lot of SRD monsters, for instance, that aren't in the public domain. Just glancing through the PF2 Bestiary, there's the aasimar, aboleth, barbazu, brain collector, chuul, drider, gelatinous cube, gelugon, gibbering mouther, glabrezu, kolyarut, lillend, mu spore, ochre jelly, otyugh, owlbear, quasit, remorhaz, roper, rust monster, tiefling, xorn... and it's entirely possible that I missed some. All of those are original to D&D and only available for use in Pathfinder because they're in the SRD.
Could Paizo just change the names? In many cases, sure; the concept of a person with some celestial or fiendish blood is generic enough that they can give the aasimar and tiefling different names and otherwise keep them pretty much as is, for instance. (And there are some monsters Paizo did change the names of between PF1 and PF2, like ankheg to ankhrav, sahuagin to sea devil, and troglodyte to xulgath.) But there are others, like the otyugh and the xorn, that are distinctive enough that even if they change the names their D&D origin is going to be obvious. Of course, Paizo could also change the descriptions, but there's a delicate balance to be struck there, because the closer they stay to the D&D concepts the more legal jeopardy it might put them in, but the farther they take the monsters from their original versions the more players might miss the originals. (The same goes for just removing those monsters entirely, which is of course another option; a lot of players like those monsters and would be disappointed to see them gone.)
That's not to say Paizo can't excise all traces of the SRD from Pathfinder. Sure, it can be done, and I'm sure if it becomes necessary they'll do it. But it might involve more changes than I think a lot of people realize.
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This was just posted by a person named Noah Adams, "a licensed attorney with a focus on business, and intellectual property issues in the tabletop and digital gaming industries" on medium.com.
Let’s Take A Minute To Talk About D&D’s Open Gaming License (OGL).
This guy is not only an IP lawyer, he also specializes in tabletop gaming.
His conclusion is pretty stark.
The key point is that OGL 1.0a never says that it is irrevokeable. Therefor, Hasbro can revoke it at any time.
There are cascading effects, which are as dire as you might expect: once revoked, no one can produce or SELL anything based on that license.
So everything in the warehouse, and everything paid for but not yet delivered is illegal to sell. Eating those inventory costs will be deadly.
And, in the future, no one can produce any materials that use the 1.1 license without giving Hasbro an unlimited, royalty-free license to do whatever they like with your material.
My problem with his take is that he doesn't address precedents in Open Software Licensing cases, which is relevant as the OGL is based off of those licenses.