Ben Riggs' response to a proposed tactical pathway for Paizo and allies to supplant D$D

[Pathfinder Way]

A Paizo-related question recently asked on Ben Riggs' "Reading D&D Aloud" Patreon Discord channel:

Hi, my name is Sionainn (formerly known as Travis Henry). I’m the CEO of Twelvefold Works Publishing. One thing I’m proud of is that I provided detailed feedback on drafts of the ORC license via conversations with Eric Mona on Discord, pointing out several things which apparently everyone else missed, which resulted in several specific revisions and improvements. (If you don’t believe me, I could show you the conversation screenshots and the resulting changes.)

I’m writing because I watched an Indestructoboy video recently where he jadedly opined that there’s no magic sword which will overcome D&D/WotC/Ha$bro.

I’d like offer my vision of a magic sword. [BTW, I hereby release all original content within this post to the Public Domain, via the Creative Commons Zero license.]

Is it doable? If Ben Riggs proposed this idea to Eric Mona and others, could it become a reality?

Here are the features:

1) For a provisional name, let’s call this: “The TRPG Alliance,” or the “Alliance” for short.

2) This Alliance would be a tactical, practical, visionary cross-publisher alliance of Paizo and potentially all of the other established “non-Hasbro” TRPG publishers. Let’s say for example, including the likes of Kobold Press, MCDM, Goodman Games, Monte Cook Games, Green Ronin, Pelgrane Press, Free League, Modiphius, KenzerCo, Necrotic Gnome, Chaosium, and Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

3) Unlike, say the totally open ORC license, and the DTRPG Community Content Programs (e.g. Pathfinder Infinite), this would be an invitation-only business alliance. Paizo would be central, and would only invite participants who bring a commensurate backlist of stored value and proven track record of quality and reliability.

4) One goal would be for any and all of each company’s (wholly-owned) adventures and worldbooks/setting sourcebooks, monster books, etc. to become available in all of the house systems of the Alliance.

5) “Available” could mean anything from a simple (but official) bare-bones conversion doc, a full-blown PDF conversion, print-on-demand, hard copy retail publication, and/or crowdfunded products.

6) There would be a private inter-company file sharing cloud where all of the member companies would upload and share the original design files of all of their backlist adventures and sourcebooks.

7) Trust and goodwill. It would be an unprecedented agreement which would spell out from the start that member companies wouldn’t even have to ask permission to convert any of those products, and could even use the original art, fonts, and graphic design! And just add their own house system stats, and other necessary modifications and adaptations—whatever revisions are considered essential to that rules system.

8) Mutually lucrative. The Alliance agreement would feature a no-hassle royalty laid out up front, with no further permissions or pre-review required. That is one reason why only trusted companies would be invited.

9) However, as a trial experiment, this agreement could have a limited timeframe (e.g. 3 years? 5 years? 10 years?) and a limited number of titles shared per company. With the option of renewal and expansion, if the parties found the Alliance beneficial.

10) This could mean for example, that the 40+ Pathfinder Adventure Paths would eventually become available in all of the other rules systems: Tales of the Valiant, Draw Steel, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Cypher System, Adventure Game Engine, 13th Age, Year Zero Engine and Mörk Borg, 2d20, Hackmaster 5E, Old School Essentials, and Savage Worlds.

11) The existing Savage Pathfinder sourcebooks and adventure paths (Savaged! Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne) are great examples of what can be done.

12) And vice versa, the Dragon Empire, Ptolus, Old Gods of Appalachia, Deadlands, Freeport, etc. could become available in Pf2 and all of the other Alliance rules systems as well.

13) Smaller stalwarts or up-and-coming companies with a proven presence in the TRPG space could be invited to join the Alliance eventually, such as Dungeon Coach (DC20), Nimble 5E, 9th Level Games (MAZES), Evil Hat (FATE), Lumpley Press (Powered by the Apocalypse), Square Hex (The Black Hack), The Questing Beast (Knave), Troll Lord (C&C), Rebellion (Tunnels & Trolls), etc.

14) It would be an especial coup for Renegade Games to join the Alliance, with their Essence 20 system, since they are close IP partners with Ha$bro. Though their wholly-owned IPs are relatively few (e.g. Kids on Bikes).

15) Since any sale of a converted product would provide a royalty to the original publisher, there could even be interlinked pages at Drive Thru RPG…and even on their own website storefronts. So that the consumer can find whichever rules adaptation fits their table.

16) The Alliance would make a webpage which showed which products are available in which Alliance house systems.

17) There’d also be an Alliance quality mark/logo, which could be displayed on books to build awareness of this shared pluri-centric Alliance culture.

18) Another goal of the Alliance is to instill a culture of pluri-system familiarity, respect, and usage among consumers. So that’s more and more gamers are used to nonchalantly trying out many different systems. For example, in this culture, it would become common for players to convert their PC from one system to another, with different GMs playing in a shared world, but using different Alliance rules systems.

19) In other words: a pluri-centric but intentional and formative culture. In contrast to the monolithic/monocrop culture of D&D/Ha$bro.

20) To foster this culture, there ought to eventually be a robust, official conversion app between all of the Alliance rules systems.

21) Another goal: The Alliance intentionally produces Public Domain (Creative Commons Zero) SRDs for all editions of the traditional fantasy game. *Exact* clones ruleswise, except for using a completely different terminology (synonymy), and a different presentation (i.e. completely different explanatory text and chapter order).

22) And, with Azora Law Firm as consultant, the Alliance prepares from the start to fully defend the explicitly stated US copyright law that “game mechanics cannot be copyrighted.”

23) So that the Original Era, Blue Era, First Era, Magenta Era, Red Era, Second Era, 2.5 Era (Skillful Power Era), Karma Deck Era (card-based game mechanics), Cyclopean Era, 3.0 Era, 3.5 Era, Fourth Era, 5.0 Era…and even the 5.2 Era…game mechanics are fully entered into the Public Domain (not only the OGL, CC, or ORC). Including not only the Core rules, but even all of the published variant, optional, supplemental, and expanded game mechanics, seen for example in the splatbooks and magazines. Each and every detail of the game mechanics are released into the Public Domain.

24) In this way, all of the Alliance’s adventures and settings could now be published in all of the legacy rules editions. For example, all of the 40+ Pf APs, Old Gods of Appalachia, Dragon Empire, MCDM’s Strongholds & Followers, etc etc., could be purchased in OE, 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E, and 5E versions.

25) If there is still perceived value in other legacy systems (for example, the FASERIP system), these could be extracted for the Alliance’s Public Domain SRDs as well.

26) Yet another goal of the Alliance: The agreement would provide a means for testing the waters of a limited but “official” “megaverse” (polyverse/alloverse) which begins to slightly connect the setting IP of all the Alliance members. Basically, the agreement would be something like this: Any new product from an Alliance publisher can refer to one copyrighted proper name (e.g. world name, placename, person, or organization) from each of the Alliance members. The surrounding paragraph (up to say, 200 words) can make any claim to connection with that proper name, with no review or veto from the IP owner necessary. Again, this is where trust and goodwill come in.

27) Though this “one copyrighted name” experiment would end if or when the Agreement ended, the Agreement would stipulate that, once published, the name can be forever included in reprints of that particular product, without having to revise it if the Agreement ends.

28) Yet another goal of the Alliance: Bringing the wholly-owned worlds of TSR/WotC-credited authors into the Alliance Polyverse. Since the Alliance is aiming to supplant the D&D/Ha$bro culture as a whole, the Alliance seeks out luminaries (and their wholly-owned, non-Ha$bro worlds), such as Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (World of Darksword, World of Sovereign Stone), R.A. Salvatore (World of Corona), Ed Greenwood (World of Falconfar), Elaine Cunningham (World of Changeling Detective Agency), Bruce Heard (chief designer of Mystara > now with his wholly-owned World of Callidar), Larry Elmore (World of SnarfQuest), Luke Gygax (World of Okkorim), Sean K. Reynolds (World of Five Moons), Rob Kuntz (World of Kahlibruhn), Jeff Grubb (World of Toricandra), Chris Pramas (World of Dragon Fist, formerly WotC-owned, now owned by Chris), the Estate of James Ward (World of Metamorphosis Alpha, World of Green Races and Dungeon World), Steve Sullivan (World of Illion, the implied setting of the 1982 D&D Comic Strips), Chris Holmes (World of Caladan, seen in J.E. Holmes Maze of Peril novel), etc.

29) So as to add those “TSR/WotC-adjacent”, non-Ha$bro worlds to the Polyverse and its Alliance house systems.

30) Same for Appendix N worlds. Jointly-negotiated, multi-rule-system Alliance agreements would be sought with those Literary Estates, where feasible.

31) “It’s all T×T.” ‘This last proposal is more tentative, but the Alliance could seek to develop a shared trademark which phonetically “evokes” the legacy editions. Perhaps through a shared agreement with the current owners of Tunnels & Trolls, the Alliance might be name itself the Table×Top Alliance…T×T…pronounced “tee ‘n tee.”

32) In these ways, perhaps Paizo and its Alliances would be in a position to supplant the hopelessly corporatist D&D with an ethical culture of T×T.

33) Lastly, to the extent that the T×T Alliance itself needed any sort of separate legal embodiment, it could be minimally incorporated as a certified B-Corp, with a unionized staff, affiliated with United Paizo Workers.

So that’s my question, Ben, would you help present this actionable vision to Paizo and other industry leaders?

***

Ben Riggs replied:

D&D is a language and a culture as much as it is a game and a product.
Asking how to supplant Hasbro is asking how to replace English as the common language of the world.
In both cases, I would point out that the dominance of D&D and the dominance of English are, in fact, side-effects and by-products of other circumstances.
If you want to supplant D&D as the dominant game, the way to do it is in fact simple. Make a game that's so good that old players stop playing D&D to play it instead, while simultaneously doing a better job at getting new players into your game.
This has happened in fits and starts across the history of the industry.
There was a time when White Wolf games were both better at bringing people in and people stopped playing D&D to play them.
The rise of Paizo was very much people stopping playing D&D to play Pathfinder.
So while I love the idea of cooperation in the TTRPG economy, and cooperation often benefits all, I am skeptical that it is a key to ending the dominance of D&D.

[Anguish]

Sorry, but I can't take you seriously when you throw "Ha$bro" in there. Not once, but multiple times. Businesses are businesses, in the business of making money. That is not an unusual trait; it is the central purpose for a business. That you feel it is necessary - or helpful - point out the money-centric nature of Hasbro strongly suggests you think other businesses are not money-centric.

If you want to pitch a business model, be professional about it. Cutesy monikers like "Micro$oft" have never gotten anyone taken seriously.

I mean this in a friendly and helpful manner.

[Dancing Wind]

A proposed tactical pathway for Paizo and allies to supplant D&D
---------------------

I'm curious about why you think that Paizo would want to supplant D&D. So far there's been no indication that they want to do that.

Where did you get the idea that that is one of their corporate goals?

[Pathfinder Way]

Dancing Wind wrote:

A proposed tactical pathway for Paizo and allies to supplant D&D

---------------------

I'm curious about why you think that Paizo would want to supplant D&D. So far there's been no indication that they want to do that.

Where did you get the idea that that is one of their corporate goals?

Oh right, I missed the part in their Mission Statement where it said: "Our goal at Paizo is to forever sell less than the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game"!

I did note in a recent interview where Eric Mona noted that a leaked sales report of post-OGL 2024 D&D sales were (my paraphrase): "perilously to Pathfinder sales numbers."

It seems to be not too great a leap to suggest that Paizo holds an awareness of and interest in the standing of Pf vis-a-vis D&D...the World's Premier RPG and the World's Most Popular RPG.

My strategic pitch is to see PF (and its allies) become both.

[StarMartyr365]

Dancing Wind wrote:

A proposed tactical pathway for Paizo and allies to supplant D&D

---------------------

I'm curious about why you think that Paizo would want to supplant D&D. So far there's been no indication that they want to do that.

Where did you get the idea that that is one of their corporate goals?

Paizo have stated before that their main priority as a business is to be successful enough to continue telling the kinds of stories that they want to tell. Paizo being a positive force in the industry and a part of a rising tide that lifts all boats is a part of that priority and in my opinion the part that makes them successful. Paizo only come considers themselves to be in competition with themselves to make Pathfinder the best TTRPG it can be.

[Pathfinder Way]

StarMartyr365 wrote:

Paizo have stated before that their main priority as a business is to be successful enough to continue telling the kinds of stories that they want to tell. Paizo only come considers themselves to be in competition with themselves to make Pathfinder the best TTRPG it can be.

Nothing in my strategic proposal is at odds with those good goals.

Quote:

Paizo being a positive force in the industry and a part of a rising tide that lifts all boats is a part of that priority and in my opinion the part that makes them successful.

As I describe points #3 through #11, it would be even more of a big lift for all boats if Paizo were to open all of their Adventure Paths for conversion into all allied systems, with all established non-Hasbro publishers' house systems: Savage Worlds, Tales of the Valiant, Draw Steel, DC20, Year Zero Engine, Cypher, BRP, OSE, etc.

Which would mutually benefit Paizo, by elevating sustained interest in the World of Golarion. And via a simple royalties received by Paizo for these conversions.

But that's only part of the way. Please see all 33 points.

[Master Han Del of the Web]

Pathfinder Way wrote:

StarMartyr365 wrote:

Paizo have stated before that their main priority as a business is to be successful enough to continue telling the kinds of stories that they want to tell. Paizo only come considers themselves to be in competition with themselves to make Pathfinder the best TTRPG it can be.

Nothing in my strategic proposal is at odds with those good goals.

But it does though. D&D 5e fans want a specific balance between tactical rules and flexibility, to put it as kindly as I am able to. Pathfinder's balance is completely different. D&D fans want the hit of nostalgia that comes with the IP controlled by the company and cultural cache. Paizo has needed to deliberately and expediently move away from those for legal reasons.

Trying to take D&D's market share would necessitate trying to actively peel away D&D's core audience which would in turn necessitate trying to fit into a shape familiar enough to them that they make the jump. That is a compromise to the core identity of a game that has spent most of PF2e's history trying to forge a unique identity.

I enjoy picking on D&D as much as the next guy and will never pass up on an opportunity to badmouth WotC and Hasbro but talking in terms of trying to forge alliances and take market share is not what I want the people in charge of my favorite game to really be worried about.

Let Hasbro run D&D into the ground, let it alienate their creators and influencers again and again. Being the second biggest name is not some sort of failure.

[keftiu]

Showing up with immediate condescension to a community you're new to is an interesting approach.

[Evanfardreamer]

I would love to have the fruits of such an agreement, I just can't imagine it happening anytime soon. Agreed that Savage Pathfinder is an excellent proof of concept; it's apparently done well enough to continue the line with additional adventure and supplements, but I think it's somewhat telling that when Paizo made a conversion of their Abomination Vaults, they didn't target a Savage license (or even a partnership project) but instead made a 5e version. Collaboration isn't a hurdle; Kobold Press, and likely others, for years put out products under multiple systems. That we've not seen many others doing the same at scale, suggests that they aren't terribly lucrative compared to the efforts involved.

I'm one of those strange folks who bought Secrets of Magic for the in-world lore, not the specific 2e rules elements. Same with most of the Lost Omens books, actually. I don't need multiple copies for each discrete system I happen to run games in, and I suspect that many folks like myself can easily take the lore and work within their systems of choice. And this isn't even looking at the adventures; which to my understanding sell way fewer copies than splatbooks of rules elements. Converting Runelords and Crimson Throne on the publisher side sounded less like plug-and-play stat blocks for the new system, but rather a retooling from the ground up because SW makes completely different assumptions about playstyle, game balance, etc. So unfortunately it's not quite as easy as changing out one set of plates to work seamlessly with some or all of the other potential partners to this agreement.

Overall I don't think it's an unworkable idea to establish such cooperation, and hopefully with the new ORC license kicking around we'll see companies take different steps towards producing their materials for various systems. With that said, though, I just don't see it being the replacement for D&D. I think that the blue avian social site is an apt analogy - after making some significantly and self-inflicted unpopular changes, they've certainly lost people to competing platforms. However, different groups moved to various platforms that suited their particular needs; all these other sites saw an increase in their membership and traffic, but even together they're not challenging its dominance - and it's still operating despite the naysaying. I think Ben hit the nail on the head that the only thing which could really challenge D&D is a game so good and easy to get into that players flock to on their own.

[thejeff]

Evanfardreamer wrote:

I think Ben hit the nail on the head that the only thing which could really challenge D&D is a game so good and easy to get into that players flock to on their own.

From what I can tell, the only thing that's every really challenged D&D's dominance is a failure of D&D itself. The dropoff at the end of 2nd Edition and the problems with acceptance of 4th.

D&D is so dominant in the hobby that it's only dissatisfaction with D&D itself that drives players away in bulk. Many of them leave the hobby entirely, but some switch to other systems. Recruitment into the hobby drops off drastically.

It's possible some other game could be good enough to supplant a strong D&D, but there've been a lot of good games in the past that haven't been able to overcome the 900lb gorilla.

Just to emphasize this: Ben's quoted in that first post as saying "The rise of Paizo was very much people stopping playing D&D to play Pathfinder."
That's true, but misleading. The rise of Paizo was initially people wanting to keep playing 3.5 D&D rather than switch to 4e. That was the Paizo marketing point

[xroot]

The thing preventing people from switching to other systems isn't the availability of other content. There is a glut of content, and the #1 competitor is effectively free. Telling people "Oh you can try the pretty straightforward one you've heard of or you can choose from a massive swath of options you've never heard of with various strengths and weaknesses you get to research in niche Internet forums" isn't going to slay the dragon in my imagination. Pretty much the only thing that will cause a significant exodus will be another strong effort on Hasbro's part to make D&D a walled garden that somehow requires a subscription to fully enjoy. I'd assume they still want this but have been scared straight by the past few years and will hedge their bets enough to simply irritate people some more.

And yes, the Ha$bro thing is childish name-calling and you won't be winning any hearts and minds with it. If you're presenting a business idea, be professional.

[Master Han Del of the Web]

I mean, if you want to get down to it, presenting a proposal for a company you are not directly in a business relationship with on their customer forums is a misguided plan at best. It's like walking into Brussels and telling the EU they should ally with a handful of South American countries and invade Canada.

[QuidEst]

So, I'm just going off bog-standard corporate anti-trust training videos, but this has a lot of buzzwords that'd get it shut down elsewhere. "Mutually profitable", "cross-publisher alliance", "private inter-company file sharing cloud", "jointly negotiated", "invitation-only business alliance", and the general nature of making tons of material readily convertible between systems with royalties in place, all sound like it's a stone's throw away from illegal industry price-fixing. Even if everything was above board, it could easily have the appearance of something illegal.

It's not just about the price that the end customers pay, but also the price that creators get paid- if "everybody but Hasbro" shows up to collectively bargain with Ed Greenwood, then there isn't anywhere except Hasbro for Ed Greenwood to turn to if he doesn't like what "everybody but Hasbro" is offering collectively.

[Pathfinder Way]

QuidEst wrote:

So, I'm just going off bog-standard corporate anti-trust training videos, but this has a lot of buzzwords that'd get it shut down elsewhere.

Happily, you're not a lawyer. And I can pretty well assure you that an anti-trust suit would never be initiated by the U.S. govt. versus any segment of the tabletop roleplaying industry! This is not an essential infrastructure to the U.S. economy.

Nor that Hasbro would ever attempt to initiate such a thing--talk about negative publicity!

[TriOmegaZero]

They don't have to. Any company would just not engage due to the concerns of them bringing action.

[Pathfinder Way]

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

I mean, if you want to get down to it, presenting a proposal for a company you are not directly in a business relationship with on their customer forums is a misguided plan at best.

If you'd read the proposal, I would gladly respond to any substantive thoughts you had about the actual content.

Other than that--one customer telling another customer what is "misguided" about another customer creatively expressing what he would like to see in the future product line, is misguided, at best.

[Pathfinder Way]

Evanfardreamer wrote:

I would love to have the fruits of such an agreement

Well said -- agreed! Thank you.

[Rue Dickey]

Hey all, stepping in to ask that we keep this conversation a little more calm. Please refrain from insulting each other or folks on other forums!

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

Obviously any attempt to free content from litigation and make it as widely available to as many people is a good idea in my opinion. Making all such content entirely free so as to remove barriers to entry would be a bonus.

However I’m not sure that any of this will come to pass. I don’t see two let alone a dozen of those *bu$ine$$e$* even embarking on talking about such an alliance.

[Master Han Del of the Web]

Pathfinder Way wrote:

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

I mean, if you want to get down to it, presenting a proposal for a company you are not directly in a business relationship with on their customer forums is a misguided plan at best.

If you'd read the proposal, I would gladly respond to any substantive thoughts you had about the actual content.

Other than that--one customer telling another customer what is "misguided" about another customer creatively expressing what he would like to see in the future product line, is misguided, at best.

I did and I outlined my concerns in an earlier post. To reiterate my concerns and some salient points others made about the content:

Your proposal and responses seem to place your intent soundly outside of what Paizo has indicated they want to be and what they want PF2e. This would likely involve considerable compromise of the culture and game we enjoy and are invested in.

Additionally, even if it is legal, this does still go against the spirit of anti-trust regulations as this would be a merger in all but name. If it works as you intend, that's putting a massive amount of power into one organization's hands opening us up for a future where the UPW is powerless, other unionization efforts have been kneecapped by cross-industry union busting efforts, and the ORC is being used as a new bludgeon to try and extort smaller indie devs a la the OGL. I don't want to see that future. Let Paizo be Paizo. They don't need to dominate the market.