If the license is written correctly, it doesn't matter.  Either the justice system will enforce the license, and you're free and clear for declaring that orcs are a race (WotC believes this is racist), that some races have penalties or bonuses, even to Intelligence (a lot of proto-woke guys ran away from this), or even that female fighters can't have above 18/51 (or whatever it was in AD&D) strength (much of the industry argues that this is sexist, and I'm not even aware of an OSR entry with caps or penalties to strength for human females)....
Or, the justice system will decide against you for being an ebil knot-see debil-man, regardless of what the law says.

So a good license either keeps everyone free, or it gets swept away along with your right to breathe The People's Oxygen.  Since the latter isn't something you can solve with a license, you focus on what CAN be solved with a license.

And as a further aside- in the software world, we've seen leftists, social justice warriors, and the latter day woketards infest the SHIT out of many free and open source software groups.  We've seen them enforce "codes of conduct" meant to kick out white men, or even explicitly allow racism (as long as it is anti-white opinions exclusively) and sexism (as long as it is anti-male opinions exclusively), and we've seen them engage in retarded renaming schemes, such as changing the name of "master" or "whitelist".  But for all their great labors, they've never managed to fuck with the licensing, and I think they know it's because it would actually fuck up their golden goose.


Which brings us back to the ORC.  There is no ORC.  There's an announcement to CREATE said ORC, and they've told us nothing about it except that it will be irrevocable and meant to be held by the Linux Foundation or similar eventually.  These are not groups that enforce their leftist politics with software licenses, so it's extremely likely that the plan is that the ORC will not include such language.  As a policy without a specific company on top, it would be difficult to write stuff anyway.  For instance, if the ORC exists and allows me to publish under it BUT Paizo is a nanny entity that can scold me for applying a cap to female strength by taking away my rights, then they haven't granted me any irrevocable rights in the first place.  And if the nanny entity is whomever ostensible owns said rights, then do I get sued by an arbitrary number of them?  I'm sure there's a way that a lawyer could write it to try to punish normal people, but I just don't think it would pass muster as an open license.

We are months away from seeing whether the goal of the ORC is to create open gaming, or do something nefarious.  Thus far, every single thing Paizo has announced sounds absolutely perfect and good, without any holes left for politics or other retarded shit.  Just because Paizo is wokesters who have tried to get rid of the lich's phylactery (offense to Jews, see), and race (replaced with ancestry, super double racist, see), does not mean that they will inject this crap into an open source license.

So I'm cautiously hopeful.


Hasbro leading with "well the REAL reason the OGL 1.0a needs to be replaced is, cis male whites" is obviously crap, and they are hoping to fool everyone with it.  Even the reddit threads don't seem to be taken in on that, which is absolutely shocking given how infected an anus reddit is.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on January 13, 2023, 11:13:22 AM
The OGL is being held by a Lawfirm and eventually the SRD and License will be in a trust similar to the Linux Kernel.

Paizo is paying to make this happen. 

Shit on Paizo all you want for being a woke, garbage tier, virtue signaling company but in this instance they are going about it The Right Way. No one publisher will ever hold this license to use against another.

Are they?

This move by Baizuo is done out of pure cynical self-interest.

Baizuo was 100% down with the status quo until WotC threatened to take their OGL toy away.

As others have pointed out; Baizuo is, and always has been a pack of woke weasels.

This is just a cunning PR move to portray themselves as the POC paladin riding in to save the day.

Literally:


If they didn't do an alternate OGL, another 3pp would have. They were all talking about it before Baizuo's calculated corporate virtue-signal jump to the front of the train.

Now all the bad press about their cutthroat internal business practices, and nasty corporate culture that came out of the unionizing scandal has all been washed away and made clean.

Well played Baizuo, well played...

Quote from: Jaeger on January 13, 2023, 03:07:14 PMAre they?

This move by Baizuo is done out of pure cynical self-interest.

Baizuo was 100% down with the status quo until WotC threatened to take their OGL toy away.

I was thinking the same thing yet I see so many people praising Paizo for just doing what they need to do to survive.

The thing is, because you can't copyright game mechanics, the only point of a OGL (or ORC) is to offer some protection against lawsuits should the owner of the IP decide to sue. Yet the only company who profits from a lawsuit in this situation is Hasbro. There's no way that Paizo will sue a company making Pathfinder adventures as that would set the precedent that they couldn't do it either.

Therefore, any company that is willing to release their game content through some iron clad OGL, is a game company that wouldn't sue people for making products for their game. These open gaming licences only protect people that don't need protection. IOW, they are completely pointless unless WotC uses them.

It would be better for everyone if companies just created a simple license agreement that gave permission to others to make products for their game. That way they can allow the 3rd party publishers to use certain aspects of the Product Identity without worrying about that IP becoming open just by requiring the inclusion of some sort of "Copyright Paizo used with permission".

I don't trust Paizo.  They will inevitably jam in their politics.  There will be a tranny clause, a Harrison Bergeron Clause, etc.  There's no way they don't jump at the chance to virtue signal in their license.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Quote from: JRR on January 13, 2023, 03:52:10 PM
I don't trust Paizo.  They will inevitably jam in their politics.  There will be a tranny clause, a Harrison Bergeron Clause, etc.  There's no way they don't jump at the chance to virtue signal in their license.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

It's a distinct possibility yes, it's why I'm holding my praise for Paizo until we can see the actual text of the ORC to see if there's anything like that or not.

Don't sign a contract with those evil Nazis, sign one with us, the fun-loving Communists! Our gulags have ABC *and* CBS!

Quote from: JRR on January 13, 2023, 03:52:10 PM
I don't trust Paizo.  They will inevitably jam in their politics.  There will be a tranny clause, a Harrison Bergeron Clause, etc.  There's no way they don't jump at the chance to virtue signal in their license.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

So how do you think they would do this?  Remember the ORC is meant to be held by a non-profit, for the stated goal of being open.  Lets compare it to an existing license with a somewhat wokeist clause, Monte Cook's Cypher system.
https://csol.montecookgames.com/license/
Neither the Work nor any advertising, promotions, press releases, or other documents affiliated with the Work may contain racist, homophobic, discriminatory, or other repugnant views; overt political agendas or views; depictions or descriptions of criminal violence against children; rape or other acts of criminal perversion; or other obscene material.

Now, lets say you make a product with a race of transhumans who are born subservient and pretty, and get emotional pleasure from obeying commands. Lets assume it also has a race of transhumans who are born strong and violent, with an inborn hatred for normal people.  Would Monte Cook be mad enough to take you to court for your serial-number-filed-off, name-change versions of Sine Nomine's Houri and Anakim?  These make a case for genetic tinkering that results in problematic changes to humans, after all- the foundation of racism as at least some people with Monte Cook's outlook and opinions would view it.

So lets assume he hates it, and bitches loudly about it on twitter, to thunderous upcummies and re-bleats.  But you continue to sell your product and don't back down.  Now since in this hypothetical you published under his license, he has to take you to court to make you stop, and he has to ultimately claim you don't have the right to use his copyrighted stuff (which in this example you did, you used his license and presumably some of his things).  You and Monte Cook are now in some awful court, where he is trying to claim that your imaginary creatures are racist, and therefore the product is racist, and therefore in violation, and therefore the rest of the license (which grants you the ability to use his stuff) doesn't apply.  A sane court would throw him out for such nonsense, but really, do you know if you'll have a sane court? 

Ok, so that's how this would all work with the Monte Cook license.  This is because Monte Cook's company owns and issues that license, similar to WotC and the OGL (it even has about the same language about "authorized versions", though of course, they would never pretend it was suddenly revocable as WotC has done- my point is just that it's mostly a lightly altered OGL that they issued).

The ORC isn't supposed to be owned by Paizo or any of the other companies, it's supposed to be a common ground.
How could it accomplish this with said wokester clause?  What would it even LOOK like?

Quote from: Effete on January 13, 2023, 12:30:41 PM

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on January 13, 2023, 10:56:37 AM
while I fully support the idea of a rock-solid OGL, Paizo is one of the primary reasons the RPG hobby is where it is today

Paizo and WOTC basically introduced the sanitized, hyper-woke, corporate, "Disney D&D" model to the public. While that brought in more people to the hobby, it also turned it into an activist-run, corporate / globalist sphere.

Paizo whining about Hasbro's changes to the OGL is like Robespierre being led to the guillotine

So... use the ORC to distribute based, shitlord gaming content just for the lulz. What's Paizo gonna do? They won't own the license, and with an IP law firm holding stewardship, I'm sure they KNOW nothing could be done.

They might still include the clause about bigoted content. Unless they realise it's ripe for abuse and people won't trust it with such a clause.

Quote from: Venka on January 13, 2023, 04:45:10 PMThe ORC isn't supposed to be owned by Paizo or any of the other companies, it's supposed to be a common ground.
How could it accomplish this with said wokester clause?  What would it even LOOK like?

An open gaming license by itself doesn't do anything. It only functions if a company releases content using that license. So any restrictions to the use of the content comes from the company that originally produced it. I don't see why any company would release their content using a license if they end up with no control over how it is used. They might as well just release it to the Public Domain.

I will laugh if people go from one teat to another and end up sucking down the same sour milk.

Quote from: FingerRod on January 13, 2023, 05:30:41 PM
I will laugh if people go from one teat to another and end up sucking down the same sour milk.

Yeah. That seems to be the real issue, doesn't it? The math will sort itself out I'm sure. It's about to be the Jungle again... and now everyone gets to eat what they kill.

Quote from: Venka on January 13, 2023, 04:45:10 PM
So how do you think they would do this? Remember the ORC is meant to be held by a non-profit, for the stated goal of being open.  ...

Who cares?

Why would I ever trust people that hate me?

Looks like Pinnacle Games weighed in and they're supporting ORC if only to be supportive. It has nothing to do with their own licensing system.

Quote from: tenbones on January 13, 2023, 08:18:03 PM
Looks like Pinnacle Games weighed in and they're supporting ORC if only to be supportive. It has nothing to do with their own licensing system.

How do you kill a 500 pounds Gorilla?

With a hundred 50 pounds Chimps.

Not peyorative, just keeping it to the primate theme.

on the plus side... it looks like I might be doing the Savage Worlds Talislanta add-on for the new Epic Edition Kickstarter that will be dropping in the near future...