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Here's a link to a comprehensive video about the entire OGL fiasco. The Wikipedia page on the OGL is also fine.
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SO it didn't have MUCH to do with Paizo.
WotC tried to change the OGL in ways that would allow WotC to monetize content created by third parties under the previous OGL, And interfere with the ability of THird-Party creators to monetize their own creations.
They were doing this surreptitiously, but got caught when it was leaked in violation of an NDA to the public. There was a public outcry. WotC lied trying to cover it up, but it was confirmed by more sources. They apologized, not through the Hasbro site, or the WotC site, or the D&D site, but through DNDBeyond.
Then they tried to draft a new OGL, pretending this had been their plan all along, but it was still seen as predatory.
This is when Paizo decided to say "Screw it we'll make our own OGL," and then with input from Indie TTRPG companies and Indie makers, creacted the Open Rpg Creative License (ORC License) and they started the Remaster process, as partial major rework of some thing that were pain points, but also to purge their stuff of anything even remotely OGL.
WotC also sent Pinkertons (Private police infamous for violent union busting) to a MT:G fan's/content creator's house after WotC accidentally sent him cards before release date and made videos about them.
Paizo doesn't have to be who you chose, though I hope it is, but you really should look to move away from D&D as long as they're owned by WotC/Hasbro.
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Zoken44 has a pretty accurate and fair summary of it.
The only thing I would mention in addition is that the ORC license isn't owned by Paizo. Though it was primarily their hands (and funding) that created it.
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As further info:
WotC abandoned their plans to violate the OGL (a move that was on shaky legal grounds and would have required them to throw lawyer money at any challenges until they went away) and as an attempt to claw back some good faith they added a bunch of 5e content to a creative commons license. However, their obvious willingness to sacrifice the OGL whenever it would be deemed profitable to do so meant that Paizo no longer felt it could leave its business at the mercy of the OGL, and potentially drowning in legal fees fighting a future whim of Hasbro.
Some uninformed people try to jump to the defense of Hasbro saying they walked it all back, and everyone is making too big a deal about it, but those people didn't have their livelihoods at stake.
If people hadn't leaked the OGL scandal, Hasbro would have had enough signees to force it all through. It was like they had a gun to the heads off all the unsuspecting independent TTRPG jobs that relied on the OGL and they pulled the trigger but it misfired. That's how close it was to catastrophically destroying the TTRPG market, and how it felt as a company to be targeted by the move.
No amount of walking back and apology touring erases the fact that they attempted to throw the entire 3rd party market and OGL-ecosystem under the bus for a quick buck, and will *absolutely* do something like that again if it sounds profitable enough.
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I'm almost impressed by how intent WotC/Hasbro is on absolutely torpedoing the good will and nostalgic fondness they had built up since the release of 5e.
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WotC also sent Pinkertons (Private police infamous for violent union busting) to a MT:G fan's/content creator's house after WotC accidentally sent him cards before release date and made videos about them.Small clarification here, those cards were provided by the guy's LGS, not by WotC themselves. The difference between the set the creator wanted and the set coming out afterward was something like one letter on the boxcode and the LGS got them mixed up. Totally reasonable thing to do that in no way warranted the Pinkertons. Then again I'm not sure anything really warrants the Pinkertons.
I think we can safely say the Pinkertons, as an organization, should not exist.
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If it wasn't for the OGL mess these would have never happened, The backlash and response from the community is an important part of the OGL mess history too.
A Message From WotC About OGL .
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The other controversy surrounding WotC started when it was discovered an artist for the Giant-themed book had used "AI*" to touch up a number of other Artist's work witbout thwir knowledge or consent, which caused public Outrage and caused WotC to issue an AI policy that WotC seem to violate or toe the line of every few months like a dog trying to sneak up on an unattended plate.
*I refuse to dignify Large Language Models by implying any actual intelligence is involved in their function, but if I used more descriptive terms fewer people would know what I was talking about, so you get sarcasm quotes instead.
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*I refuse to dignify Large Language Models by implying any actual intelligence is involved in their function,
I will happily second that sentiment.
I usually switch to 'content generative algorithm' or something similar once it's clear the conversation is about 'AI'.
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The suits at Hasbro that decided "we should alter the OGL so it benefits us more" really didn't have Paizo in their sights. If you read the proposed alteration, the point was really more "Critical Role is making *how* much money and not getting any of it?" It's just that "Hasbro's lawyers apparently believe they can alter the OGL despite the language in the license including 'permanent' and 'irrevocable' and similar words" was news to Paizo (and a bunch of other gaming companies) which lead to the creation of the ORC as an OGL alternative.
Note that it is not implausible that Paizo et al would have succeeded in a legal challenge that OGL 1.1 can't actually be revoked, but it would have involved paying lawyers instead of authors and artists.
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For some additional context, WOTC (and, specifically, the MTG and D&D franchises) accounts for the bulk of Hasbro's profits and there seems to be consistent pressure from Hasbro corporate for WOTC to monetize, monetize, monetize. Hence, it's very understandable to worry that tolerating changes to the OGL would lead to more aggressive changes designed to keep growing that revenue stream w/ ever-increasing licensing fees etc.
Yeah, it's likely this whole thing started because some executive who doesn't know anything about any particular industry, looked around and thought "Dungeons & Dragons is popular, and it's well-known, but it's not very profitable- let's change that" which got the ball rolling here.
Whatever that would eventually look like, if successful, it likely didn't have a lot in common with the traditional model of "you buy books from your FLGS and play with your friends."
Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?
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Whatever that would eventually look like, if successful, it likely didn't have a lot in common with the traditional model of "you buy books from your FLGS and play with your friends."
Yeah, and most notably it would start treading into territory mentioned in this video here:
Revolutionary Acts .
Where you don't have control over the characters of your own making or your own role-playing. The argument being that the basic building blocks of 'Fighter' and 'Elf' came from the book that you bought and licensed the content from, so therefore anything that you create through your own imagination and artistic creativity is also due royalty payments.
And as I understand it, that isn't an exaggeration. That is what was leaked. That they were planning on going after Critical Role and other role-play streaming groups and their broadcasts of their own acting.
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Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?
At this point, I am not sure that it matters.
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I moved this one over to a different forum. I appreciate that the discussion has remained respectful, so please keep it that way.
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Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?At this point, I am not sure that it matters.
Gonna say 'bad thing', Activision-Blizzard does some really scummy stuff.
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Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?At this point, I am not sure that it matters.
Yeah, shared history aside, at this point with the game more or less fully remastered "What's going on with D&D" has about as much to do with us Pathfinder folks as "what's going on with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay" - in that all of the above are games with elves in which you roll dice.
They can do their thing over there, and we can do our thing over here and they don't have much to do with each other.
Gonna say 'bad thing', Activision-Blizzard does some really scummy stuff.Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?At this point, I am not sure that it matters.
Actually, I was more concerned because this implies that Hasbro/WotC is going all in on the digital initiative. Will they be dropping paper books?
Gonna say 'bad thing', Activision-Blizzard does some really scummy stuff.Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?At this point, I am not sure that it matters.Actually, I was more concerned because this implies that Hasbro/WotC is going all in on the digital initiative. Will they be dropping paper books?
Oh! Gotcha.
I don't think they'll fully drop their physical books because a good chunk of D&D's cultural cache is purely aesthetic and the books make for a good luxury item but we can already see the way the wind is blowing with stuff like D&D Beyond.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The suits at Hasbro that decided "we should alter the OGL so it benefits us more" really didn't have Paizo in their sights.
I don't believe that this is correct. Like, as one of the steps in their walk-back, WotC pretty much specifically said "We're not targeting the small-time creators. We're trying to get money out of the large multi-million-dollar companies" Paizo is one of the few of those, and (as far as I'm aware) the most prominent.
Also, there had prior to this been a lot of churn online about people evangelizing PF2 in 5e spaces, with some success. I absolutely believe that WotC was seeing Paizo as a competitor and that this was an effort to eat their lunch.
Sure did backfire, though.
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Yeah, after all this stuff I have little, if any reason to look at wotc/hasbro for any of my gaming needs. Paizo secured that position lol.
The suits at Hasbro that decided "we should alter the OGL so it benefits us more" really didn't have Paizo in their sights.I don't believe that this is correct. Like, as one of the steps in their walk-back, WotC pretty much specifically said "We're not targeting the small-time creators. We're trying to get money out of the large multi-million-dollar companies" Paizo is one of the few of those, and (as far as I'm aware) the most prominent.
Also, there had prior to this been a lot of churn online about people evangelizing PF2 in 5e spaces, with some success. I absolutely believe that WotC was seeing Paizo as a competitor and that this was an effort to eat their lunch.
Sure did backfire, though.
I believe Critical Role was the primary target.
Didn't work out for WoTC on that front either.
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The suits at Hasbro that decided "we should alter the OGL so it benefits us more" really didn't have Paizo in their sights.I don't believe that this is correct. Like, as one of the steps in their walk-back, WotC pretty much specifically said "We're not targeting the small-time creators. We're trying to get money out of the large multi-million-dollar companies" Paizo is one of the few of those, and (as far as I'm aware) the most prominent.
Also, there had prior to this been a lot of churn online about people evangelizing PF2 in 5e spaces, with some success. I absolutely believe that WotC was seeing Paizo as a competitor and that this was an effort to eat their lunch.
Sure did backfire, though.
I believe Critical Role was the primary target.
Didn't work out for WoTC on that front either.
It may have started with one target or the other, but that's kind of academic. They were not going to stop at one lunch when they thought they could steal the entire table. If there's one thing a corporate entity is bad at, it's self-control. Any initial target was, no doubt, quickly swamped by greed.
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There is one other Thing going on causing controversy through WotC/Hasbro.
A very clear attempt to drive monetization on D&D. They have stopped allowing character options and monsters to be bought out of books piece meal, you must now buy the whole book lore and all.
And what many people thin is coming with their VTT, the attempt to implement AI GM's.
WotC also recently posted a job description for an AI engineer, which many people worried might be used to generate more AI art and content, though this is only speculation.
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yes, it could have done a lot of damage, not only cost a lot of third party people their livelihoods, but also put them at risk for punitive action from Hasbro
The new ORC as was pointed out, is not owned by Paizo. They intentionally formatted it's status so that no company, including themselves, could abuse it.
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Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?
I read Microsoft and my mind is made up.
IIRC some other formerly MS executives in Hasbro/WotC were involved in the OGL debacle too BTW.
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Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?I read Microsoft and my mind is made up.
IIRC some other formerly MS executives in Hasbro/WotC were involved in the OGL debacle too BTW.
Considering the incredible BS Microsoft has pulled over the years, that tracks.
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I mean, the OGL shenanigans are more indicative of "you cannot trust Hasbro/WotC" not "they are incapable of good work."
The reason Paizo, Critical Role, et al went their own way separate from the OGL is because there's no reason to believe that some executive won't try something like this again in a few years, so preemptive action was taken a la "we'll be fine in that eventuality."
The reason some of the bigger fish in this pond were so quick to sign on with the ORC was basically because the main reason they were using the OGL to begin with was mostly "so other people can license our rules to publish supplements for our system." Being able to say "Attack of Opportunity" and "Flat-Footed" and "Magic Missile" is ultimately less valuable than that.
Yeah, after all this stuff I have little, if any reason to look at wotc/hasbro for any of my gaming needs. Paizo secured that position lol.Baldur's Gate 3 (and to a lesser extent the D&D movie) are the only cracks in that plan for me.
Neither of those interested me in the least - the former looks ok, but the latter had me worried for my stance for all of negative minus zero no-seconds after I watched any scenes/trailers etc. Mind excoriating guff.
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I mean, if we're going to complain about D&D, can we complain about the unclear and half-A'd "One D&D" or "D&D 2024" or whatever they want to call it. LIke they've barely changed most stuff, but changed enough that it is not really compatible. At least Paizo was clear: Remaster, same thing, but trying to fix things. Not a Full new edition.
But D&D ...
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I mean, if we're going to complain about D&D, can we complain about the unclear and half-A'd "One D&D" or "D&D 2024" or whatever they want to call it. LIke they've barely changed most stuff, but changed enough that it is not really compatible. At least Paizo was clear: Remaster, same thing, but trying to fix things. Not a Full new edition.
But D&D ...
I would love to but I think it is outside of what is permitted in this forum. So send as a link to another place to discuss it in a couple of weeks when there are people who can publically talk about it.