FINALLY, A PAIZO UNION UPDATE

If you care about the changes to OGL then you NEED to cancel your DND Beyond subscription. I know that's annoying but this will be worse! The only reason they're making these changes is greed.

So, what is the OGL and why are DnD creators thoroughly screwed?

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

And maybe consider other TTRPG systems for the time being, Pathfinder’s Paizo has been much nicer to the community, their workers are unionized and are far more healthy overall

Huh, I didn’t know Paizo was Union. That’s fucking cool I think I’ll have to take a hard look at what’s going on over there. Maybe WotC and Hasbro could learn something.

https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22726765/paizo-workers-form-union-demands-cwa-pathfinder-starfinder

JoD4HAP: Issue Three is LIVE

I'm so excited about this issue, folks. I know I say that every time, but I mean it every time, and I especially mean it this time. #JoD4HAP #Issue3 #TTRPG #Journal

I’m so excited about this issue, folks. I know I say that every time, but I mean it every time, and I especially mean it this time. We have interviews, beautiful art, editorials, and supportive thoughts on the Paizo unionization. Not only that, but this issue is my best design work yet. I am happy to share it with all of you. Let us know what you think! And be on the lookout for the next open…

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Since Wizards of the Coast is torpedoing all the good-will they have with DnD to wring more money out of it, I want to make a guide for people who recognize they should jump ship, but don’t know alternatives.

If you’re deeply invested in DnD and want something as similar as possible, Pathfinder 2 is what you want. It’s the next biggest game in the tabletop scene (in the US), you can find physical copies in stores easily, and Paizo allows free resources online to exist without constant threat of being taken down like WotC does. It will remain free to play on any VTT while DnD will require you to subscribe to their proprietary one.

Most importantly, though, it improves on almost every aspect of DnD. Combat and class balance is extremely well thought out and makes all combats engaging and difficult in a fun way, requiring teamwork and clever thinking. Roleplay is integrated into character creation and play better, and you no longer have to choose between being good in combat or exploration or roleplay, you get to play and feel useful during all aspects of the game. It’s hard to emphasize how much better it is without just playing, if you still want something like DnD, play Pathfinder 2.

If you like high fantasy adventuring but are willing to get more out there, Fellowship and Dungeon World are good options. Fellowship is a more free-form adventure game focused on creating a cinematic experience over getting bogged-down in rules-heavy play. If you want to play a Lord of the Rings style campaign and have it feel like the movies, Fellowship is the way to go.

Dungeon World is called “Powered by the Apocalypse” which means it was inspired by Apocalypse World, an amazing ttrpg that revolutionized the scene and became the gold standard for interweaving roleplay and gameplay. Dungeon World is meant to be a bridge between DnD and indie rpgs, and it’s good for that, though there are better PbtA games. It’s a good introduction to principles like failing forward and playing to find out what happens (and hell, a good introduction to games having principles lol). There’s also an Avatar the Last Airbender licensed PbtA game that’s very good, if that’s your thing!

Speaking of licensed games, Free League Publishing sets the benchmark for rpgs built for existing intellectual properties, and while I haven’t played all of their games, I’m a big fan of what I have played. They also have independent settings, like Twilight 2000, a really good apocalypse survival game set in a collapsing warfront between an alternate-history NATO and Soviet Union as the two dying empires bring all of society down in their death spiral. I’m using it as the base for my Halo rpg, it’s very good.

Blades in the Dark is another big name in the indie scene, and for good reason. It’s a heist game that has been adapted to lots of other settings (games that say they’re “Forged in the Dark” take inspiration here) and it’s clear to see why so many have used it as a foundation once you’ve played, it’s an exciting crime procedural where you play a group of scoundrels punching above your weight and facing the consequences

There’s a million other amazing rpgs I could mention here, and I’m sure people will talk about plenty of lovely ones I’ve missed in the notes, but I think the most important thing I want to convey with this is that there’s a whole world of diverse and interesting rpgs at all levels of production, from big corporate teams to one girl with a laptop who barely knows how to make a pdf, and there’s no better time to start exploring them.

A common refrain is that DnD can be modified to do anything, but once you’ve played other rpgs you’ll see why that’s not true, and why those creative efforts would be better spent in other systems. Hacking rpgs is as old a tradition as rpgs themselves, but if the only tools you know are DnD, you’re being limited with what you can create more than you could possibly know. There’s no better time to leave this Plato’s Cave and see the beauty and wonder of the whole ttrpg scene

so at what point do you just start pointing at pathfinder to get people to try smth other than 5e

so this is clearly bait but whatever im taking it

Pathfinder is barely any different than 5e, despite what its fans clamour it has the same issues at its core, the focus on realism over fun, the bigotry, basically everything is replicated in Pathfinder, its just better at hiding it because it has like a billion options PF2e fixes some of these issues but at its core it has many of the same problems. Paizo has also historically been a horrible place to work at, and while the recent union helps it's just that, recent. Do not support paizo, they're just a WOTC that's slightly smaller (and tbf, a lot better, but still bad)

you NAILED it when you said a lot of indie ttrpgs are "rigid when i need openness and open where i need structure" like there is an art (and science) to deciding which mechanics fit the tone and intent of a game (and, frankly, and art/science to which mechanics even allow for fun) and I feel like that often gets glossed over in indie spaces.

Thanks! As a caveat, I am someone who primarily plays D&D, and a lot of my indie game knowledge beyond one-pagers is purely academic: it comes from a combination of watching actual play that uses different systems; discussions with friends who play different systems; and for lack of a better term informal research (following game designers, reading rule books).

This also means, frankly, that my primary experience with indie spaces (rather than games) has been through their absolute dregs: the specific sort of person who lurks in social media spaces searching for people mentioning either the games they Don't Like in a positive manner or the games they Do Like in a negative one, and then getting smarmy in the comments before the OP beats them with a spiked bat and blocks them and then they go off and make 2003 Nerd Media Forum Man comments of "oh...if only they would listen to my Logic and see the Truth" on their own blogs.

Most of the indie discourse has absolutely nothing to do with game mechanics, let alone setting or tone of the game, even though those are all crucial. People say the words "player agency" a lot but they don't actually mean it, since I guarantee if their players all unionized and said "hey instead of Crispy Dino Tender Knights, the d12 system for which your old roommate ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, could we play D&D?" they would tell those players to fuck off. Most of it is part of the general culture of identity through consumption, in which, in this space, you are not best described as a person who loves or plays horror or adventure or high fantasy (what you like and do) or even as someone with an interest in specific mechanics (a d20 system, a dice pool system, games based on tarot/oracle/playing cards, drawing/journaling games, GM-less games) but rather simply as someone who follows the arbitrarily correct companies. This is why Paizo (established in 2009; at one point was publishing the most popular TTRPG in the world; documented history of underpayment of artists and mistreatment of employees) is inexplicably treated, in many of these spaces, as more of an indie darling than Darrington Press.

(Sidebar: I think it's valid to not purchase from companies with values you find problematic and my point in bringing up Paizo is to point out that it's the second-largest name in the space and far from innocent, as well as to note that Hasbro has done some unbelievably awful stuff as of late. My problem is that indie spaces seem to overwhelmingly treat the two very separate and independently potentially true statements of "I don't like this company's practices, either for valid reasons of exploitative capitalism or for various personal gripes" and "the game system put out by this company is thoughtful, well-designed, and fits many people's needs, even if it does not fit mine" as entirely dependent on each other.)

A much shorter way to put it is how a number of smart people in the space have put it: when you ask for game recs and provide clear guidance on what you're interested in, the vast majority of people do not listen to you at all but instead bring up their favorite game even if said game is out of print, is prohibitively costly, and/or is truly unsuited for what you are intending to do. Because many, many people in the indie space, particularly the ones who engage with posts coming from those newer to it, seem to have defined themselves by their favorite game and then retroactively come up with reasons why it's the best and why everyone who plays something else, especially D&D, is stupid. This general second-banana mentality, of course, permanently cements them in that place, because they're so busy bashing everything they see as more popular that they define their favorites as games that are less popular and forget to explain why their favorites are actually good and back themselves into the corner we're seeing, in which people who champion one game will endlessly bash games that are remarkably similar and in doing so underline that this was never about gameplay or mechanics. (This is also really true in actual play spaces, and honestly a lot of nerdy media spaces.)

ANYWAY I think there absolutely should be a wide variety of games, and I even think it's good to have games with pretty strong similarities that are different enough to support different genres! I think more choice is great! But yeah, I think a lot of people who disparage specific mechanics (like a d20 system) on the whole do not actually think about what the game that uses those mechanics are trying to achieve. Again, I think PbtA as an engine does sound pretty fitting for its original use as Apocalypse World, but, not gonna lie, Monsterhearts is never going to be my thing and while I'm not sure it ever would, I think it could have been closer to my thing had the mechanics been customized to the setting more. I think games that put most of the rules onto RP segment of gameplay have a place, but it's really genre dependent! D&D does not support the same type of story as Good Society, and it's just as stupid to try to run the heroic fantasy system in the comedy of manners system as vice versa - and a lot of people do not understand that. Mechanics that make it easy to succeed (D&D) and mechanics that make it much harder (Blades in the Dark) and mechanics that ensure eventual failure (Dread, 10 Candles) all have their place, and both players and designers should be prepared to speak to their choices.

Paizo, AI Art, and Copyright

So you may have seen that Paizo, the (unionized) tabletop roleplaying company behind Pathfinder, has decided to ban AI art and writing from both its own products and its community-created marketplaces. As you might expect, this has caused a certain amount of righteous indignation among pro-AI tech bro types. 

I think one thing that the tech bros who are screaming about Luddites and the inevitability of market forces and blah blah are completely ignoring is that we're not talking about personal use of AI art and text - we're talking about commercial uses of AI art and text. That means what really matters here is contracts and copyrights.

In case you haven't heard, it is very well-settled law that art produced by non-humans cannot be copyrighted. More specifically, the U.S Copyright Office has repeatedly ruled that AI-generated pictures and comic book art cannot be copyrighted.

No matter how much you say that you "created" something by typing into a search bar and hit a button over and over again, if you don't own the copyright to a piece of art, you can't sell it because you don't actually own it. Which means that Paizo isn't going to buy it, because they can't purchase the copyright to it as part of the contract, which means they can't sell any products that use it.

also i know i keep talking about switching to pathfinder 2e lmao, and it’s not going to happen until i’ve finished out my current 5e campaign, but here are my main reasons for wanting to do so:

combat design. 5e’s combat starts falling apart when the PCs are about level 5. the 6-8 encounters per adventuring day metric for balance is one i really detest. challenge rating is horribly inaccurate and without a lot of homebrew, your encounters will end up being laughably easy for the players or wildly swingy. all of this is my main reason for wanting to try a different, crunchier system.

more rules. i may end up disliking this about pf2e, but 5e’s attitude of shrugging and letting the DM decide what most rules mean is actually very annoying??? i find myself wishing for more official rules that guide the gameplay in a more consistent way.

GM support. this is very related to the other two points, but pf2e (from what i can tell so far) actually has a lot of tools to support the GM in designing and running a campaign, which can’t be said for d&d 5e.

paizo as a company. i’m not gonna shill for them or anything but last year, paizo employees unionized and something like that is important to me. most of the core rules and character building stuff is 100% free online. i would really hesitate to switch to a system that would require a lot of literal buy-in from my players. also, paizo frequently publishes well-received modules and adventures, which is less important to me as a homebrewer but i think reflects well on the company as a whole. also i just fucking hate wotc lmao.

“Paizo is just as bad as WOTC” they’re literally a fraction of the size, union owned, put all their content online for free, and are going to pay to make an open license for TTRPGs that will be owned by a nonprofit.

What are you huffing

OH SHIT Paizo has officially unionized

Paizo is in The New York Times today!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/business/economy/biden-harris-amazon-starbucks-union.html

There’s been a bit of talk concerning Paizo’s wages towards artists. As an artist: I will say they are low, although the people who reported on them have shared very old wages and current wages may differ.

I am however choosing to share the words of the workers at Paizo themselves about what is their current situation, and how to actually help them in case you are concerned. It’s important to note Paizo is not even 1% the size of Wizards of The Coast, which was the first brand to reach 1$ billion for Hasbro. 

Paizo’s yearly revenue is 12 Million, for reference. 12 million is about what CR managed to collect in a single Kickstarter for their animated series. It’s not that much when you take into mind they currently have 125~ employees (vs WOTC’s 1000 employees).

Again: As an artist, the wages they are currently playing are low. But they have an union (being still the first union in the TTRPG sphere), and they have been using it to fight for better conditions. Employees themselves are publicly asking for people to stand back and let them negotiate it themselves. They are confident these negotiations are headed in a good direction. I will hold Paizo accountable if, given an increase in their revenue, they do not raise their wages, but I’d rather believe what people currently working for them ask for.

(Also, please do not harass Paizo’s employees about this. Do not harass individual employees over ANY of this, no matter the company.)

And of course, it’s important to ask why and who is currently trying to defend WOTC, and what is WOTC currently doing to their employees. Here’s what DnD Shorts managed to get from the employees themselves at WOTC:

Wow so uh, some shit has been going down in the TTRPG space lately. I didn’t exactly intend for this to become a TTRPG blog, but oh well that’s what brain has decided and I’m not one to argue against it. Wouldn’t go well anyway.

I do however want to talk about “holy shit Paizo are absolute fucking mad lads and I respect the shit out of them.”

Let me get one thing clear: I trust any company about as far as I can throw them. Often times, if given the chance and the choice, most companies will gladly stab you in the back if it means a few extra coins in their pocket. Hell, Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro have shown that perfectly fine this month and a bit. But I would also be lying if I said I didn’t have trust in Paizo, because as far as I have seen and as far as I can tell, they do basically everything right and everything I could ever hope for in the TTRPG space.

Everything a player needs to play the game is available for free by Paizo on sources like Archives of Nethys, which reduces the barrier of entry to basically nothing and heavily encourages the “try before you buy” mentality that more of every industry needs to adopt more of. They have really solid and respectful representation of so many people across so many different walks of life, as well as do a lot to actually look after their players and ensure that everyone has a good time. Hell they even became a union without a fight. And this is to say nothing of their community outreach, how well they encourage third party creators to make stuff, the actual quality of their works, etc. etc. If anything my biggest complaint is that it’s hard to find their books in local game stores, which isn’t really much of a complaint.

But the announcement of the ORC? Holy shit. I was not expecting that. 

I was absolutely expecting Paizo to have something in their back pocket. A “break glass in case of Wizards of the Coast” plan if you will. Something to ensure that they can stay afloat, and maybe even fight WotC in court or something. Comments they’ve made in the past have suggested such things anyway. Paizo did that and so much more. Seriously I cannot do the whole thing enough justice, I really recommend reading it for yourself. The fact that Paizo have effectively said “we waited for your response Wizards, we were there when the original OGL was forged, we have not forgotten. So we’re making our own OGL, with blackjack and hookers” and came out with the Open RPG Creative License (or ORC License, which I just find is a delightful name). Then in that same post, openly and publicly stating that they are ready to legally fight Wizards of the Coast is one hell of a move. Not to mention the not insignificant number of other sizeable members that are behind the creation of this new ORC, and Paizo’s plan to not own the license so there’s no chance of history repeating itself. It’s as if Paizo saw everything that’s happening now, and was like “right, make this even more watertight and so that none of this can ever happen to it.” 

I gotta say, I respect the fuck out of Paizo for that. The absolute audacity to slap down Wizards, come out with their own license with blackjack and hookers, and futurerpoof to ensure this can’t happen again. 

The question now is simply: where does this leave Wizards of the Coast? 

Now I’ll admit, I’m no legal or marketing expert... ignore the Tumblr handle real quick. But I can’t see this possibly ending well for them, at least not with the D&D division. This whole situation has caused the biggest backlash I think I have ever seen to something like this. Such is the case that several major news outlets and even non-TTRPG based content creators such as Linus Tech Tips or Moist Critical are covering this and going “my dude, what are you doing?” Coupled with the backlash being such that they’ve had to completely cancel announcements relating to the OGL, and now the campaign to mass unsubscribe from services like D&D Beyond...

Thing is, even if they do in fact perform a 180 and cancel all OGL 1.1 plans, that’s still a net loss for Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro. They’ve shown their hand now, they’ve shown that they are a bad faith actor that cannot be trusted, so why would anyone willingly enter any deal with them? Why would anyone trust that they won’t continue trying to undermine the OGL? And now with the ORC, why would anyone not go for that instead? Even if this somehow does result in some short term monetary gain for Wizards, they’ve lost the one resource that is incredibly difficult to renew: good will. A resource that Paizo and other companies are now drowning in. That can only do harm to D&D in the long term. Leaks show that they’re banking on the community just simply forgetting and moving on. Were this the gaming industry, I’d say that’s a safe bet. This isn’t the gaming industry. I’ve found that people in the TTRPG space have long memories and harbour deep grudges. This is certainly something that’s going in The Book.

Personally? I’m excited for the whole thing. I’ve been saying for a while that D&D’s soft monopoly is hard to beat; that the brand name of Dungeons & Dragons is incredibly powerful and often analogous with TTRPGs themselves. But they may have just undone that monopoly themselves. I don’t expect D&D to just shrivel up and die, it’s still a very big name after all. I do, however, expect other systems to gain a surge of popularity following recent events, and that much is even already starting to happen. I do hope that other systems will get the light of day they deserve, and that it’ll now be easier to convince those new to the hobby to try other systems. 

With this latest announcement, I think the future is starting to look quite bright for TTRPGs. 

A SWORD DREAM

For my whole life, I have been casually worldbuilding, roleplaying solo and in small groups, and playing video game rpgs of various kinds. Over the last year, I rediscovered an interest in tabletop roleplaying, after Paizo employees unionized (seriously, that put it back in my newsfeeds).

But I've discovered the joy of hacking up your own system; these are notes toward a mission statement.

Over the next few days I plan on launching out into the world some more of my thoughts.

What do I want?

I want high magic. Magic taken for granted. Magic everywhere. Magic and technology, not magic versus technology. Magitechnology, homage/pastiche of the console rpgs of my youth.

I want to keep the part of the Pathfinder experience where a birdperson and a gnome and a spiderperson and a talking puppet team up and go on a journey.

I want the rules to be simple enough to learn through play. Into the Odd cracked open my skull and took over my brain and now I can't imagine adding modifiers to an attack roll for the rest of my gaming life.

I want play at different time-scales to feel fractal, self-similar, with turns and actions behaving at least somewhat similarly.

I want combat to be an option, but I also want the overall feel of helping out your fellow Folks. I love how Roots and Flowers frames things:

You are the local community's troubleshooters. Your community turns to you for aid in things big and small. You resolve them by means of innovation, knowledge, technology, mediation, and ancestral guidance.