I'm trying to get on to Paizo's site but I think its having traffic issues right now. Erik Tenkar broke it on his blog here, though: https://youtu.be/GV1pVNPPkxk
An open game license not specifically tied to any one SRD or any one company, stewarded by an independent legal firm and then independent nonprofit....I feel like maybe this was something that could have been done ages ago, had we all just noticed the canary coughing, but it is great that it is being done now.
Kudos to Paizo! Glad to be a customer of theirs, no matter how much I gripe about Pathfinder 2E at times.
I do not get too caught up in this stuff. It appears that the same people/lawyers who created the first OGL are the ones commenting that there needs to be a better one/mechanism, etc. To me that says something - not good. Was the proposed roll out of the new OGL a mess - yes. But, it changed - and it was going to change - it was obvious. Paizo - wants to take the lead but, honestly, its products are not that great - Paizo is a better communicator - I give it that and its PF1 SRD is really good. But PF1 system is a god awful mess - totally bloated and unbalanced. At high levels the game is cumbersome (20-page character sheets) and boring. I played games in the system for many years and only did so because my DM was such a good storyteller, world creator. SF is another system with problems. The campaign setting is blah, starship combat is a nightmare, and the adventure paths that I have played in or GM'd are not that great. I never felt any pull to PF2 - so I cannot comment on it. I do, however, play 5E - and maybe because in the end, I find it comfortable - - and I have no problem to continue. It is always about the story. My only "outside" system that I have played is mothership, and as you know it is story driven - and i like it. While I support small biz and the like, at the end of the day - these are corporations - be it Paizo, Hasbro, or whatever. Any many people/corporations made a lot of money off of DND. I only really care about the "small guy" in this. I might be old and am on the back 9, but I do not want to learn new systems - just want to have fun playing a game with good people and great stories. That is my rant.
ReplyDeleteFair points, and you won't see me arguing about Pathfinder's many issues (either 1E or 2E), the game in either edition could use retooling and trimming. I do wonder though if looking at this from the player perspective vs. the GM perspective might influence one's thoughts on this. As a GM almost exclusively (until quite recently), the OGL situation does affect me. I run 5E with mostly 3PP support because WotC mostly caters to prepublished modules and has put out very little material of use to a GM who is trying to design their own setting and campaign. For that reason, publishers like Kobold Press or Legendary Games are a lot more useful to me. I have picked up every WotC product, though....but I usually end up shelving them as they rarely contain enough content for me to bother with (of the sort I can use). I've also published before, including under the OGL, so knowing the impact of writing a game product that I intend for use with D&D and being able to make sure it works as written for D&D is a huge deal. This likely gives me more empathy for smaller publishers as well, but..and most importantly....I am also a business owner myself, and I do not look at Paizo as a "big guy." I think based on what I can estimate and eyeball that they probably bring in more gross than my company but probably have enormous overhead on their publishing, distribution and operational costs overall. They employ about 125 people which is sizeable but hardly what I think of as big (huge for a gaming company I suppose, sure). I do not consider them a big business. WotC, on the other hand, is being chided by its parent company in a shareholder meeting for only netting about 150 million with D&D, so I rather do feel like this change to the OGL is a reactionary punching down. But again....these two companies are a world apart from every other publisher in the business, even ones like Kobold Press, Troll Lord, Legendary Games and so forth.
ReplyDeleteI agree that no one wants to have to learn new systems here. So why is WotC making a move that will smash the community they built with the OGL apart and force us to have to consider going back to the dark days of the 1980's and 1990s? What will happen to D&D when it turns out the only way to access and play content is with a gated D&D Beyond environment filled with microtransaction landmines? We all have the old books of whatever edition we want, so for old guys like us this doesn't impact as much.....but I am getting tired of watching Very Large Corporations find ways to screw my son over in the future, and he has no idea what a normal unscrewed media existence will look like.
I get it and support content creators (picked up a sci fi 5E game at PAX last month) - - and those terms are draconian and onerous. I just always felt that people were going to do what they wanted anyway. Maybe I am naive. And, if not WOTC - - then who - - everyone has warts. But what I was thinking about the other night was in the end it is the fans who are in control - - and that cannot be disputed by recent events. [I have a son too and I get it]
ReplyDeleteWhat sci fi 5E game did you find? I'm in the market for suggestion!
DeleteIt's called Dark Matter, by Mage Hand Press. The books is a bit light on setting, but that is intended. It's a little of everything to get one started for a sci fi game. Still going though it. Played a session at PAX that a fan ran. It was fun. The way our group approached the session, it ended up having virtually no combat - - more of an investigative feel.
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