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Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

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Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#41

Post by Pet_Ant »

sswezey wrote: post #36
mcv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you're certain you'd win a lawsuit, you'd still have to be able to afford that lawsuit. As we saw in the Google vs Amazon case of the Java API, such lawsuits can be long and complex, and most RPG publishers are tiny. WotC is probably bigger than the entire rest of the industry put together. Even if technically game mechanics are fair use, where exactly to draw that line has never been tested in court, and in…

I think you mean Google vs Oracle for the Java API copyright lawsuit.

No, if precedent wasn’t a thing, then I’d be for Oracle vs Google. Google wanted to free-ride without contributing. If they could have they’d have made their own language from the beginning. Even then, they didn’t really support real Java but it’s evil twin brother Dalvik. When you are Google-scale you should pay. Noblesse oblige.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#42

Post by kmeisthax »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #41
sswezey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean Google vs Oracle for the Java API copyright lawsuit.

No, if precedent wasn’t a thing, then I’d be for Oracle vs Google. Google wanted to free-ride without contributing. If they could have they’d have made their own language from the beginning. Even then, they didn’t really support real Java but it’s evil twin brother Dalvik. When you are Google-scale you should pay. Noblesse oblige.

Uh, no. Hard no. Literally any legal principle in which Google has to pay for 20 lines of API declarations (which is the thing that Oracle was able to claim copyright over in court) means pretty much the end of software freedom, since reimplementation is how FOSS was bootstrapped. This means that Microsoft could sue Valve for offering Proton on the Steam Deck. GNU and BSD become legally radioactive. Ruffle survives only through detrimental reliance[0]. The entire console emulation community gets sued for hilariously large sums.

Oh, and Oracle now has to pay billions of dollars to Amazon for providing an S3-compatible storage API, completely ending their cloud ambitions and cementing the AWS monopoly.

[0] Adobe published documentation on SWF specifically to encourage browser vendors to reimplement.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#43

Post by bovermyer »

bhickey wrote: post #39

It's unclear to me why CC-BY isn't sufficient for SRD material. I'm glad that Paizo is throwing off the yoke of Hasbro altogether, but I don't have a good understanding for what a new license will do that CC doesn't.

This discussion is also happening in publisher circles. I think the argument is that the ORC (Paizo's proposed license) will differentiate between reserved IP and open content. I'm not certain, though.

Source: I own a tabletop RPG publisher.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#44

Post by danaris »

labster wrote: post #19
ninth_ant wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I wasn’t expecting them to revoke the previous license, but instead remove the OGL from new versions Well, to be fair they did do exactly that with D&D 4e and the GSL. Which bombed spectacularly, as their audience continued to play 3.5 and Pathfinder which continued to use the OGL. This is actually WotC learning from their mistakes. If they launched 5.5e with a regressive and user-hostile licence, people would…

I don’t think you understand the hobby at all. Every game master, without exception, is a content creator. Most of them want to try new systems just to see what they are like. If they decide to go to other systems, that’s it for D&D. They can make all of the movies and books they want, but that won’t make people DM it. It doesn’t matter if they succeed in court or not. People will stop writing right now (and write fo…

My interpretation of ninth_ant's comment is not that they believe those things about this being A Great Idea on WotC's part, but that that's what WotC believes. And I think they're absolutely right.

WotC's (and, further up, Hasbro's) management has shown in several ways in recent years that they do not understand, respect, or like their core gaming customers. (In fact, there was another leak recently from someone purporting to be a Wizards insider [0] that claims they primarily see customers as "obstacles between them and their money".) Between the OGL 2.0, some of the other things they're doing with "One D&D", and many of the changes they've been making to Magic: The Gathering in recent years, I strongly suspect that they're effectively gutting their golden-egg-laying goose in hopes of getting even more gold out of it.

[0] https://twitter.com/DnD_Shorts/status/1613576298114449409

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#45

Post by danaris »

Good on Paizo for this. It's been heartening to see them turn themselves around in recent months, as they got rid of some toxic management and unionized their workers, as well as putting out one of the better crunch-heavy TTRPGs in recent times (Pathfinder 2nd Edition).

This move will likely cement them for some time to come as the major tabletop gaming company that actually cares about their customers.

From where I sit, the only better outcome we could see from this OGL debacle is if some coalition of TTRPG designers could get together and come up with a fully open TTRPG in the same basic mold as D&D and Pathfinder.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#46

Post by Pet_Ant »

kmeisthax wrote: post #42
Pet_Ant wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if precedent wasn’t a thing, then I’d be for Oracle vs Google. Google wanted to free-ride without contributing. If they could have they’d have made their own language from the beginning. Even then, they didn’t really support real Java but it’s evil twin brother Dalvik. When you are Google-scale you should pay. Noblesse oblige.

Uh, no. Hard no. Literally any legal principle in which Google has to pay for 20 lines of API declarations (which is the thing that Oracle was able to claim copyright over in court) means pretty much the end of software freedom, since reimplementation is how FOSS was bootstrapped . This means that Microsoft could sue Valve for offering Proton on the Steam Deck. GNU and BSD become legally radioactive. Ruffle survives…

> if precedent wasn’t a thing

It's the size of Google that I feel makes it lose rights. When you are a giant you should lose to compensate for all the power you have as a consequence to the natural accumulation of power. So that Google should pay, doesn't follow that a small start-up should. Unfortunately, the laws are not written that way.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#48

Post by rkangel »

miiiiiike wrote: post #38
BerislavLopac wrote: post #17

While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open and by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...

> [...] game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place. This is something that I've been seen written over and over again. While the mechanisms themselves are not subject to copyright, the rules , as authored by Wizards of the Coast, are. That is the specific implementation of those mechanisms (e.g. the definition of…

> When I pick up a book and see dex/str/con/wis/int/cha my eyes glass over. I want D&D to fade, I want publishers to create new, entirely novel, systems, and I don't care what it means the status quo

The conclusion I've drawn from this is that the system doesn't really matter. The game rules are incredibly secondary to the concept of role-playing - the universe, the people, the motivations, the personalities etc.

We've got a system, it works and everyone knows how to use it. We've met the bar for a foundation we can build our universes on (until now, and this controversy).

That said, I don't think I've spent enough time playing other systems to really be sure of my feelings on this - the above is based on the situation we've got to. I've got Call of Cthulu on the shelves next to me and plan to run a game, partly because I want to answer that question: "does the different stat and mechanics system really bleed through and affect how you experience the world"?

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#49

Post by CuriouslyC »

mhd wrote: post #28
BerislavLopac wrote: post #17

While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open and by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...

> We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D And we never needed Apple's permission to have overlapping windows. Alas… There was a long history of C&D letters and outright lawsuits. Heck, up until recently one of the head honchos of WotC was working at one of the companies being targeted by TSR in the 90s for their "Role Aids". A detente where you didn't have to worry about that as a small time publi…

Magic missile by itself is questionable since that language never gets used outside of D&D references, but it is also suitably generic. If you also used Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Charisma and Wisdom as stats, and had hit dice, and so on, that would be problematic. If you chose new names for everything but the rules were otherwise identical that would be completely safe.

Part of the problem is this is a gray area even in the law, just look at the kerfuffle around the Warhol prince print that is still ongoing.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#50

Post by dleslie »

rkangel wrote: post #48
miiiiiike wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place. This is something that I've been seen written over and over again. While the mechanisms themselves are not subject to copyright, the rules , as authored by Wizards of the Coast, are. That is the specific implementation of those mechanisms (e.g. the definition of…

> When I pick up a book and see dex/str/con/wis/int/cha my eyes glass over. I want D&D to fade, I want publishers to create new, entirely novel, systems, and I don't care what it means the status quo The conclusion I've drawn from this is that the system doesn't really matter. The game rules are incredibly secondary to the concept of role-playing - the universe, the people, the motivations, the personalities etc. We'…

> I've got Call of Cthulu on the shelves next to me and plan to run a game, partly because I want to answer that question: "does the different stat and mechanics system really bleed through and affect how you experience the world"?

In my experience, they do because of the sort of players they attract and the engagement required of them.

Complicated games with many source books attract rules lawyers, who dominate the group experience by way of using their knowledge of obscure rules to control the play.

Whereas overly simple games, like FATE, lack enough structure to guide more timid players through the experience, and so play becomes dominated by the prominent story tellers in the party.

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