Goodbye 2022! Also, some Thoughts about Pathfinder 2E after Reading the WotC OGL 1.1 Annoucment

 2022 wasn't as rough as 2020 or 2021, and frankly might have been an ordinary crappy year if it hadn't been preceded by two years that were the poster children of misery and misfortune. So: here's to a long but generally better year than people give it credit, goodbye 2022, and welcome to a hopefully even better and more productive 2023!!!!

Wizards of the Coast announced their plans and design for an OGL 1.1, the content license they want all future D&D-compatible products to function under. Based on what has been released and analyzed it sounds like they have two goals here: to mitigate or remove digital space competition from their planned Digital One D&D product, and to get some sweet, sweet royalties from the companies that they believe make $750K or more a year from D&D-compatible products. Off-hand I know Morrus of ENWorld admits to being in that category, and I would say Kobold Press, Paizo (which dabbled in 5E releases this year), Green Ronin (maybe), and allegedly around 20 publishers in total might fit that bill. I wonder what the criteria for this is, though.....would Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds count? I thought their platforms catered to licensed deals, but maybe WotC considers, say, something like Shard Tabletop to count for its support of third party publishers.

Do smaller groups like AAW games, Legendary Games, and others count? Is the figure based on the sort of money being pulled in from Kicksarters? Kickstarter earnings generally encompass the cost of creation, design, production and whatever is left at the end may be revenue, but the new OGL 1.1 may be looking at a total skim of 30% off the top of raw dollars earned, not after overhead, prodcution and manpower costs.

This is suddenly starting to feel like 2008 all over again with the D&D 4E SRD, but much, much worse. The 4th Edition SRD was a limiter on what could be done with content. The new OGL 1.1 is actively seeking to either profit freely from the competition or to squelch it. Either way it is incredibly bad news for the hobby at large, hobbyists in particular, and ultimately will hit WotC down the road when the generated interest in their product takes a hit from the diminishing creative output from third party sources.

This is where the Paizo and Pathfinder 2E deal comes in. Paizo capitalized on the shift to the SRD in 2008 by sticking with the OGL 1.0a (which remains in perpetuity, thankfully), and produced Pathfinder 1E, effectively a restatement of the 3.5 edition of D&D that people grew to miss following the arrival of 4th edition. There's a new opportunity brewing for someone to do something similar with D&D 5E, and Paizo technically knows (or knew) how to do this.

The problem is that the current Pathfinder 2E ruleset is not an especially great fit as a replacement. It has many virtuous qualities, but it retains a rigidity which D&D 5E does not have, one which is artificially baked in due to the level-scaling design of the game, and which even Paizo admits is not needed, as demonstrated by the optional rules in the Gamemastery Guide to simply redact level-scaling entirely, leaving a more robust and flexible game that caters to the strength of something more akin to 5E's bounded accuracy. That style of game is buried within Pathfinder 2E, but due to a design choice they went with the level scaling mechanic instead, and likely Paizo will never see a way to go differently now that that choice has been made. Worse yet, I am sure Paizo is committed to their current product, which while fine (and fun to play if you can work within its limits), will never be able to capture the average D&D gamer who is maybe disgruntled with the upcoming One D&D project and where it is taking the game. 

Still, this is a chance for Paizo to recapture some of the old market, I suspect. And it is a chance for a new publisher to maybe move in to that space, and offer something up to gamers who prefer not to be held captive to locked down content and platforms. Its a chance for profitable third parties like Kobold Press to consider leveraging their goodwill now with a product line that supports D&D 5E, rather than comporting to WotC's new standards and going to One D&D. 

In my year end posts I mentioned being done GMing Pathfinder 2E. That might certainly have been true, but I sort of feel like I should maybe just consider this a break period for now, and revisit it later on....there's a very good chance, now, that it looks like Paizo may be the best alternative source for a well-supported D&D-like fantasy system that is not carefully regulated into a revenue generating locked content model like WotC is trying to do with D&D. For that alone I feel I need to do more to support Paizo and their product.