Comment by mhd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhd | Hacker News Reader

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> If not who on earth needs OGL to publish anything they would want to publish?

Fear keeps the local publishers in line. Wizards of the Coast is basically the only big player in the industry, backed by an even larger corporation.

"Third party publishers" are usually hobbyists or single-person operations, who really benefit not having to work under the threat of lawsuits or even C&Ds.

And the RPG industry does have a history of that: TSR, the originators of D&D, were rather litigious, resulting early game companies like Judges Guild having to really conceal their NPC stats to not use verbiage from AD&D.

Later TSR sued Mayfair for their Role Aids line (IIRC, Mayfair was helmed by one of the chief people now responsible at WotC). And then there was Palladium, makers of quasi-D&D and the ultimate kitchen sink setting Rifts, who really didn't like early online presence.

Never mind that your most likely "publishing house" drivethrurpg.com has WotC as a big partner.

Technically legal is one thing, having a license that's shared by thousands of other people who would be on your side out of poor necessity seems like a better foundation for your small game company.

WoTC was pretty bad too for a while, trying to own the idea of "tapping" a card, and forcing everyone to make up their own terminology for basically the same actions.

I think OGL came from a realization that this sort of thing wasn't good.

> I think OGL came from a realization that this sort of thing wasn't good.

What it was created to do, and what Hasbro is leveraging it to do, are two different things. The same thing happened with 4E/the GSL, which everyone's forgotten but was essentially the beta run at Hasbro trying to invalidate the OGL.

The thing is, Hasbro doesn't even need to invalidate the OGL. They recaptured so much of the market with 5E and the OGL-agnostic, IP-friendly Dungeon Master's Guild that they could just stop publishing and supporting OGL-compatible products altogether. As long as One D&D doesn't botch things as badly as 4E, I don't think the current market would care.

I'd argue that Paizo and Paradox are also decently sized competitors that could go head to head with Wizards in a legal battle if they had to.

Not with _Hasbro_ they can't.

Paradox has net revenue of $1.6B while Hasbro has $4.7B. While Paradox's main business is outside tabletop games, so is Hasbro's. So they're a lot more comparable in size than you might think. Paizo is of course smaller, but googling indicates they're about $50M (being a private company, the figure is obviously less reliable), which is smaller but not "squash like a fly" small. I'd be more worried about the likes of MCDM (Matt Colville's adventure/rules publishing co) or Pelgrane Press (13th Age).

WOTC makes up 70% of Hasbro's value, so Hasbro very much is primarily a tabletop company.

https://magicuntapped.com/index.php/articles/item/501-filing...

How much of that is Magic the Gathering vs Dungeons and Dragons? I suspect MTG has a much larger share of that.

Amusingly, by Hasbro bringing MTG IP into 5E, it gets to be part of this discussion now too.

Paradox is a publicly traded company out of Sweden. Their net revenue is great but they're not rolling in dough the way Hasboro is, and they haven't been in the market anywhere near as long.

Plus there is little reason to pick a fight -- Paradox is an online publisher and has it's own slew of IPs. Not a fight worth picking, and one that might be expensive, esp. against an established player in a different market and country.

Paizo now might be able to, but Paizo wouldn't be what they are with a) the OGL and b) WotCs backing. I can't believe any scenario where WotC goes to D&D 4th edition, and some company just makes a continuation of 3rd edition the way Pathfinder did while sticking to legally distinct but compatible. The game would either be way to close legally, or read too different. But, of course, IANAL.

What Paizo would or could do now is a different matter. They might say that PF 2E is distinct enough, especially if some 2.5E thing would remove some remaining verbiage or direct lifts from old OGL material. They might also just do a deal with WotC. Gates and Jobs at Tanagra.

They never should have OGL'd PF 2E. There was no reason. If they were making a breaking system update, they could've made the changes to do without it. WotC doesn't have a copyright on using a 20-sided die or else no game would exist.

Dumbest decision I've seen Paizo make since the last one.

I mean, I think they were probably genuinely thinking about their own origin and not closing that off for others. Or it could be just that it's good PR to appear as much. So they kept with the license that'd let them mix with the existing OGL ecosystem where it made sense.

In retrospect if that was their goal, it would have made sense to use a different copyleft license for the open content that did not include a clause that paints Wizards as the body to update the license, especially given the mechanics of using PF 1E content in 2E requires subjective decision making compared to the relatively automatic 3.5 -> PF1E or PF1E -> SF compatibility.

Making breaking changes to the OGL-covered system defeats the purpose of making the succeeding content OGL-compatible. If PF2E content required conversion anyway, and they were writing an entirely new core rulebook for those new rules, there was no reason to retain the OGL.

I think the concern was if someone had released the fluff for a adventure or class or something under the OGL, then if you went and did a conversion of that for 2E and wanted to release it you'd have to do it under the OGL, but presumably you'd also want to use content from the PF 2E rulebook which would require you to use its open license, which would be a problem if that wasn't OGL. It's basically like the problem with GPL-incompatible open source licenses.

The purpose for keeping the OGL with pf2e was:

1. simplify things for 3rd party publishers. rather than worry about multiple licenses, just publish under the same one as pathfinder 1e, 3.5e, and 5e, that they already know like the back of their hand

2. save costs. writing a new license is expensive. it apparently would have delayed release of the pf2e system and significantly increased the cost

3. cover their ass just in case WotC thinks pf2e is still too similar to d&d

there’s really no way they could have foreseen a rugpull like this. everyone thought the OGL was ironclad until yesterday. hindsight is 20/20 though.

> I'd argue that Paizo and Paradox are also decently sized competitors that could go head to head with Wizards in a legal battle if they had to.

Could they?

This almost looks like a poison pill to me. If WotC was forward thinking enough, back in the 3.0 days they used the OGL to trick competitors into a trap.

As time has gone on the main competitor to 4e is now Pathfinder... thus taking the oxygen out of the room and leaving less space for non-OGL competition.

Now Paizo has enough of a real business built on Pathfinder, but not the endless war chest of Hasbro. It seems to me like they would probably need to cave and make a deal with Hasbro rather than try to carry on some kind of fight that puts their livelihoods on the line.

And as a player I can be dismayed with what Hasbro is doing, but knowing that Pathfinder is at risk now I have no reason to switch to them. But there's no obvious alternative to 5e and Pathfinder that has any real traction...

Wizards is not that forward thinking, if it was they would have pulled the plug on all the 3E content when 4E was floundering.

I don't think moving from a license which Wizards is trying to rely on ambiguity to claim it allows them to pull the plug to a license which definitively allows them to pull the plug is a business safe move. Especially since the new license requires you to accept the end of OGL v1.0a so there's no way back if you do sign.

Add to that that Wizards has pulled the plug on them before, _twice_, first by kicking them out of their official adventure publishing role, then pulling the plug on their position as an online retailer of first party 3E PDFs, and there can't be much trust for Wizards from Paizo.

Paizo could have made this decision before (without the one way nature, even), and chose not to in the 3E to 4E days. Charting their own path instead took them from the a small adventure path publisher to the #2 publisher in tabletop games, so it worked out for them, so I don't see why Paizo would choose to deal with Wizards here.

Finally, I'm not sure tabletop publishing is that high margin a business. I'm not sure Paizo could afford 25% of their revenue, or even if they got a sweetheart deal like 10% on account of their size. Plus the aforementioned trust issues regarding keeping that split long term would still be there

I'm wondering why WotC/Hasbro isn't seeing the danger here - abusing your monopoly is how you get shut down by antitrust !

While D&D has an unfortunate cultural monopoly in terms of general public mindshare thanks to a network of media deals that have basically turned D&D into a brand more than a game… it has so much competition in the marketplace of traditional style pen and paper role playing games that the very notion of it having a monopoly worthy of antitrust action is laughable.

It might sell the most right now but if this truly is WotC slicing off their own nose to spite their face with overly aggressive legal tactics to extract money and control the market for D&D related goods, and as a consequence the community turn away from them… there’s a huge sea of available options that are completely unrelated to D&D, Champions, Rifts, Genesys, Feng Shui, Fate, Numenera, the plethora of hand that are Powered by the Apocalypse… there’s not just a sea but entire oceans of RPGs out there that don’t descend from D&D in any way and most of them are just plain better RPGs! If the community leaves D&D behind they will find so many better games to play that honestly… I’m starting to hope WotC are about to accidentally cripple the D&D brand. It might just be the best possible thing for the RPG industry and the player community as well.

The courts aren't going to care about that. They are going to care about whether WotC can have a large effect on the RPG (or trading & collecting card) market and whether it was engaging in anticompetitive practices.

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