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.
Source: I own a tabletop RPG publisher.
I still don't understand the value of the OGL spelling out reserved IP. That's already protected if the only open-licensed part is the rules text, which (not a lawyer) happens with a CC BY SRD and any other copyright license on the derived works.
Wizards leaving reserved IP in their official SRD was a bug, not a feature. Back when Paizo still self-hosted Pathfinder 1E's SRD, they solicited pointers to and removed protected terms that they accidentally left in it so it'd be more ergonomic for publishers.
Some specific troubles:
- Most game mechanics cannot be copyrighted they can only be patented. I believe CC recommended the OGL contain a patent grant similar to the one in the (software license) Apache License 2.0, though one directly as such did not make the final OGL. (There is something of an implied grant, but no specific clause and definitely not as well spelled out as Apache License 2.0.)
- Many elements are more subject to trademark laws than copyright laws. Things like the names of spells or skills or things like that. A TTRPG has to explicitly define which "vocabulary" is subject to trademark enforcement in a way that doesn't turn the trademarks into generics that puts them at risk of loss in a court case.
- The very nature of splitting an SRD from other game materials is somewhat unique to this TTRPG model. A lot of the OGL is legally trying to explain what an SRD even is and how it differs from any other book in the "same" RPG (so that it can then limit the scope of most things back to "just the SRD is open").
That said, there's a unique community of CC licensed games on itch.io especially and it certainly seems to work well when the entire game is licensed that way. Most of those authors and companies don't have a lot of trademarks to defend.
I could still see a usefulness in that community for some sort of easy to apply patent-grant license, though. (I was debating the other day if a dual-license situation where you did something like CC-BY/Apache License 2.0 could work if you have some way to add the legal language equivalent of "where and as these systems/rules define algorithms, those algorithms are considered to be open source under the Apache License 2.0" to try to broadly apply a patent grant.) I'm curious to see what Paizo does with ORC as maybe that's something their lawyers might help them address in a reusable way even for small RPGs.
>According to several lawyers who have weighed in on the situation, if a document does not specifically say it is “irrevocable,” it can be revoked. While the old OGL uses the term “perpetual,” it does not use the word “irrevocable” in writing, and Dancey’s use of the word in interviews and emails may not be sufficient for the courts.