While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open <i>and</i> by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are <i>NOT</i> copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...</a>
This is exactly the sort of thing I hoped to see from Paizo once news of WotC's new license leaked. Good to see it!<p>Really curious to see if the new license will be closer at all to something like Creative Commons or FOSS software licenses than the OGL was, or if it'll stay relatively close. My suspicion is Paizo will still want to keep control over their story/setting/etc so it'll likely lean towards the OGL in that way.
> Ultimately, we plan to find a nonprofit with a history of open source values to own this license (such as the Linux Foundation).<p>I'm not sure if the Linux Foundation is just a relevant example here or an actual contender to be the steward.<p>I kind of hope it's the latter. TTRPG rules are close enough to code right? Structured instructions executed by humans with some flavor text at least.
Lots of other RPG publishers are joining in too so the license is definitely finding broad acceptance in the community. Curious to see WotC's next move.
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.
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).<p>This move will likely cement them for some time to come as the major tabletop gaming company that <i>actually</i> cares about their customers.<p>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 <i>fully open</i> TTRPG in the same basic mold as D&D and Pathfinder.
Some great news comes out of the WotC OGL controversy, with Paizo announcing a new open license and taking a strong legal stand against WotC.<p>They will be looking towards groups like the Linux Foundation to own the license once developed.<p>(Site has been overwhelmed with traffic, thus archive.org)
It's fine to include archive links in the thread, for example if a server is overwhelmed, but please post the original source as the top URL.<p>"<i>Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.</i>" - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a><p>We've changed the URL from <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230112230330/https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20230112230330/https://paizo.com...</a> now.
Pathfinder is an even bigger, overly complex bloat than D&D. I don't get it why people don't make their own systems. It's not rocket science...