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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Again as with Twitter, I think WOTC have the absolute right to decide who uses their IP via license and contract agreements, if they want to stop everyone left wing, right wing or whatever then that is up to them (and their bottom line). Note you can put whatever opinions you want in games or have them, you just can't do so with their license and IP and that should be their choice to control (or not).

I agree with you in principle, but I think one of the issues here is that the FAQ for the original OGL website heavily implied, and several higher ups working for WotC at the time of its original release outright stated that the original OGL is an irrevocable license. Many of the companies that have relied on the OGL for 23 years (some of which consisting of employees who were working for WotC at the time), believe that WotC cannot legally revoke the OGL 1.0a, but few of them have the money to actually fight a protracted court battle and prove it.

The other issue is that many creators used the OGL as an open license, even when they were making their own material and just wanted it to be available for 3rd Party Publishers to use. Several games that have nothing to do with D&D will be affected by this, including the OpenD6 gaming line (descended from Star Wars D6 and Ghostbusters RPG), which unfortunately had its original creators go bankrupt, and which might not exist in a form where they could easily relicense their product to keep the OpenD6 community able to remix and share their creations as intended.

It also greatly complicates the position of OSR products, inspired by old school version of D&D. Granted, there are already a few OSR games that are compatible with old school D&D, and which are under Creative Commons licenses, like Knave, and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying has been frantically scrubbing all OGL material from their books, and will be re-releasing a 4th edition under a Creative Commons license, so while there will be a hiccup, it does seem like the OSR space will be able to weather this change. Still, it's a pain in the neck to have good portions of the D&D-based gaming space scrambling to change their products just to avoid a lawsuit.

US copyright law is clear that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, but the exact limits of where "game mechanics" end and "creative expression" begin has never been tested in the RPG space. The OGL was the magic feather that made large portions of the publishing space work, especially after how litigious TSR had been when it was the owner of D&D. In terms of the overall health for D&D-like fantasy role-playing, WotC may or may not be able to actually de-authorize the OGL 1.0a (time will tell), but if they are successful it will be a huge blow for the creativity within that publishing space, and a huge change in the status quo for major parts of the industry.

Pathfinder 1E is a good substitute for 3.5

Unfortunately, Pathfinder 1e uses the OGL 1.0a, which is being de-authorized by WotC, and so its continued legality will be up in the air. WotC has claimed that they won't go after previously published products, but considering the whole current OGL controversy is them doing something they promised they wouldn't do 23 years ago, it's hard to see what's stopping them from sending cease and desist letters to every Pathfinder 1e SRD site, every OSR company that uses the OGL, etc., and blowing up a good portion of the RPG space if they want to.

Pathfinder 2e is supposedly safe, and will be re-licensed under the ORC license soon so that 3rd party publishers can publish adventures for it.

agree with you in principle, but I think one of the issues here is that the FAQ for the original OGL website heavily implied, and several higher ups working for WotC at the time of its original release outright stated that the original OGL is an irrevocable license. Many of the companies that have relied on the OGL for 23 years (some of which consisting of employees who were working for WotC at the time), believe that WotC cannot legally revoke the OGL 1.0a, but few of them have the money to actually fight a protracted court battle and prove it.

Oh sure, don't get me wrong I am not defending WOTC's overall actions. Especially that nonsense. Just defending the idea in general that a company should be entitled to decide who gets to use their IP and so on. I think they have had enough bad publicity that Pathfinder 1E is pretty safe.