In other news, Chaosium’s generic Basic Roleplaying System rules used in Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest is on sale for 99 cents.
I’ve come to mind that Free League, that I know a lot of people here have kickstarted in various functions, has released several games recently, under the OGL - The Lord of the Rings 5E, and Ruins of Symbaroum, their own game world, set to use D&D systems.
Ruins of Symbaroum was a major kickstarters and it, and Lord of the Rings 5E has subsequently also sold on Free Leagues own websites of course and in stores. They must have a rather vested interest in this whole mess as well.
WOTC is pumping the brakes
Things have not gone as planned.
Almost like doing a really bad anti-consumer thing will cost you a lot of consumers.
Hey, great time to check out excellent non-WotC content overall, right? Well, preorders for Pasion de las Pasiones , the Powered by the Apocalypse game of living out an enormously melodramatic telenovela with your friends, are finally up! Physical goods ship Soon™️, but in the interim, you get the PDF! pasion – Magpie Games
Speaking of non-WotC…
Chaosium issued its own (non-WotC) Open Game License for its Basic Roleplaying System in 2020, enabling designers to create their own roleplaying games using the Basic Roleplaying rules engine, royalty-free and without further permission from Chaosium.
At the time, Chaosium raised concerns about serious deficiencies and legal uncertainties in the WoTC OGL, especially if it was being used for non-D20 games.
“Although Chaosium has never used the WotC OGL we are very happy to be working with the rest of the industry to come up with a system-wide OGL that anyone can use.” said Chaosium vice president Michael O’Brien.
Crikey, Paizo’s site is 502/503! I assume they must be getting some crazy traffic.
I suspect WOTC has screwed the fucking pooch big time on this and it does not matter what back-tracking they try to do now - their intent has been signalled and the future WOTC want has been made clear. The 3rd party sector will have nothing to do with - can’t in fact as the new OGL is practically an existential threat to their businesses! The horses have bolted at this stage, I think. They aren’t coming back.
Moreover, I wouldn’t be surprised if these larger publishers are all committing to some kind of mutual/joint defence fund to ensure existing works are protected if/when challenged and even to fight for the release of future 5E compatable content (whether native or made so by tools), whether released under under OGL1.0a or not.
Of course, it will come down to the players playng the games, but a 20 year envirionment of co-opetition for WOTC is about to become decidely more purely competetive.
I predict new leadership at WOTC inside 12 months.
Our very own @BiggerBoat:
Simply put, I want to enable and support your Ironsworn -related creations. You keep full ownership of anything you make that is derived from the Ironsworn family of games, and retain all revenue from your creations.
A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we.
Sure, Jan.
Interview with Paizo president Jim Butler on ORC.
So, how long will it take? We expect a first draft released for feedback in February, and the final iteration depends on the publisher feedback we receive, finding or establishing the right foundation to protect the ORC, setting some standards agreeable to all publishers, and other elements vital to the long-term health of the ORC. Ultimately, the timeline will be driven by Azora Law, and they won’t release the final version until it’s ready.
The Open Gaming License was meant to benefit all game companies in the hobby games space. As the leader in that space, Wizards has the largest network of players and therefore is most positively benefited by the OGL. We’re baffled by the business rationale that drove the leaked OGL 1.1 and the negative impact to the entire hobby industry that its loss would create.
The ORC will not be limited to just print books and static PDFs. As technology changes, publishers will be empowered to take advantage of the same license and spread their works far and wide. From AR/VR to virtual tabletops; from screen readers to narrated novels; the Open RPG Creative license will let publishers plot their own course and open their works to legions of fans who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to know about them.
Free League announces their own OGL.
https://mailchi.mp/frialigan/newsletter-ogl
The Year Zero Engine in various iterations has been used in most Free League RPGs in recent years, including Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Forbidden Lands, ALIEN, Vaesen, Blade Runner RPG , and the upcoming The Walking Dead Universe RPG . The YZE is an accessible, fast, and adaptable rules framework that encourages story-focused and player-driven playstyles.
The new Year Zero Engine OGL is designed to be easy to understand and use for creators. It will give creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document (YZE SRD) and freely publish their own roleplaying material based on it.
Alongside the new YZE OGL, the YZE SRD itself is being given a major overhaul and update, based on the developments of the Year Zero Engine in recent years. The new SRD will include more rules variants and add rules for chases, vehicles, travel, and magic.
I’ve been getting really excited to run the game for my kids here soon. They had three copies of that kickstarter bundle at my FLGS last week… I wonder if any are left?
It’s so pretty!
One of my friends is into SF RPGs. I haven’t played Stars Without Numbers yet, but I was duly impressed with the Sectors Without Number website. It auto-generates many solar systems with a surprising number of cool points of interests.
I suppose this could be used for other systems or story generators, too.
The rumored Humble Bundle is live.
I’ve honestly never heard of a bunch of these.
Ewww 5e