Wizards of the Cost scraps plans to revamp the OGL and moves D&D to a Creative Commons licence

It's been a bruising few weeks for Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro, whose plans to monetise the never-more-popular Dungeons & Dragons brand by removing the Open Game Licence 1.0 ran into fierce opposition from fans and fellow businesses alike.

Wizards initially offered a partial compromise, allowing existing OGL products to remain on sale and removing plans for licence charges for successful products using the D&D rules, but confirming they were pressing ahead with eliminating the OGL 1.0 for new products moving forwards. Creators would instead have to sign up to the OGL 2.0, which was still significantly more restrictive than the old 1.0 model that company had employed since 2000, and changes to the rules pertaining to the virtual tabletop (VTT) market would remain in place, effectively forcing online players to use Wizards' own D&D Beyond service with a subscription fee.

However, the creators of the OGL 1.0 voiced doubts that the original OGL could be legally revoked (they'd deliberately included language suggesting not), several companies mulled over legal challenges and multiple other RPG companies announced the creation of a rival open licence, which soon saw a large chunk of the tabletop RPG industry come on board.

Today Wizards of the Coast announced a comprehensive climbdown. They will no longer try to revoke the OGL 1.0, they will no longer try to impose their changes on the burgeoning virtual tabletop (VTT) market (with the 1.0 remaining in place, that's no longer possible) and they are in fact scrapping the entire OGL 2.0 initiative in favour of moving to a Creative Commons licence instead. They are releasing the rules for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition via a Systems Reference Document for use with either licence. Effectively, this is a return to the status quo, with a more comprehensive 5th Edition SRD as a result.

Wizards likely decided on the climbdown after seeing over 40,000 subscribers abandon their D&D Beyond platform in the space of three weeks, as well as a burgeoning campaign to boycott the forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves, which launches on 31 March. The film is the opening salvo of a broad-spectrum D&D assault on the multimedia space, with Hasbro keen to bring the franchise to film and television, as well as reinforcing its presence in video games (the highly-anticipated Baldur's Gate III launches later this year).

Whilst likely to be welcomed by those whose livelihoods were threatened, the climbdown is unlikely to erase the memory of Wizards' behaviour. Other companies have benefitted, most notably Paizo who make the rival Pathfinder fantasy RPG which was previously the dominant tabletop RPG from 2009 to 2015 before D&D supplanted them. Paizo reports selling out of all of its physical stock of its core rulebook in the last fortnight and is rushing reprints to meet renewed demand. Some other RPG creators are also reporting increased sales. Work on the rival open gaming licence is likely to continue.

Tabletop RPG industry in uproar over leaked changes to the Open Game Licence

The tabletop RPG industry has endured a tumultuous week after io9 secured a copy of the proposed 1.1 revision of the Open Game Licence. Version 1.0 of the OGL, popularised by Dungeons & Dragons, has allowed third parties to create and monetise content for the game for almost a quarter of a century. The proposed changes could drive many content creators out of business.

The OGL was introduced when the 3rd Edition of D&D was released by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. Dungeons & Dragons had been created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson via the company TSR in 1974 (although both were gone from the company barely a dozen years later), but significant financial mismanagement and poor investments had driven the company deep into debt by 1997, with the company threatened with bankruptcy. D&D had also dropped in popularity massively, with games like the World of Darkness family (most famously, Vampire: The Masquerade) supplanting its market share. Wizards of the Coast, a relatively young company which had skyrocketed to success with its card game, Magic: The Gathering, bought TSR and D&D in 1998 and set about revising the game for a new generation.

The 3rd Edition of D&D was hugely popular and successful, and was credited with revitalising the entire TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) industry in the early 2000s. Many d20-branded games, using the OGL and rules compatible with D&D, were released to great success and entire companies were created to cash in on the phenomenon. Significant d20 games include the Babylon 5 and Judge Dredd licensed games and Wizards of the Coasts' own Star Wars line of RPGs. 

In 2008 the 4th Edition (4E) of D&D was released under a more restrictive licence, but a similar public outcry saw the OGL maintained. With the 4E rules proving very controversial, this allowed Paizo Publishing to release their own fantasy roleplaying game called Pathfinder, effectively using a fork of the 3E rules set. Vast numbers of Dungeons & Dragons players defected to playing Pathfinder instead. D&D lost significant market share, dropping behind first Pathfinder and then the Star Wars RPG to third place in the rankings.

In 2014, Wizards of the Coast released the 5th Edition of D&D, using a revamped and more popular rules set and returning to the OGL. The company was bolstered by the launch of Critical Role in 2015, a popular web series featuring a group of popular voice actors playing a D&D campaign on screen. In 2016, D&D featured heavily in the first season of the Netflix smash hit success Stranger Things. These factors drove D&D back to its traditional level of popularity and market dominance. Paizo released a 2nd Edition of Pathfinder in 2019 which has done well (and deviated further away from the D&D rules system), but not threatened to unseat D&D's position.

Wizards of the Coast has recently confirmed that the next iteration of D&D is in development. Code-named "One D&D," the new version of the game aims for backwards compatibility with 5E as well as having a less restrictive and more freeform rules system. However, the biggest change sounds like it will be to the Open Game Licence. Wizards and Hasbro will now take a cut of any RPG using the system that makes more than a certain amount of money per year, as well as automatically owning original ideas and creatures from products. More ominously, they are threatening to "deauthorise" anything published under the OGL 1.0 licence, theoretically impacting hundreds of products that are still on sale from dozens of companies.

These are not limited to just tabletop RPGs, but also products including video games such as Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: War of the Righteous by Owlcat Games and Solasta: Crown of the Magister from Tactical Adventures (although Tactical Adventures have indicated they have already been in conversation with Wizards of the Coast over the matter).

The blowback from the industry has been significant in the last few days, and it remains to be seen if Wizards will push forwards with their plans. Notably, they have already received legal pushback from lawyers pointing out that the OGL 1.0 was released as a non-revocable agreement, and Wizards' subsequent quarter-century of honouring that position makes it hard for them to backtrack on it now. However, the legal departments and resources of Wizards of the Coast and their owners Hasbro are formidable, to say the least.

This situation continues to unfold.

Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs

In 1974, wargamers Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created the world's first roleplaying game: Dungeons & Dragons. An immediate, enormous hit, the game fuelled the creation of the TSR company and a quarter of a century of classic gaming products, not to mention power struggles and dubious corporate decisions.

The story of TSR, its rise and fall, has been told before and the narrative is familiar, from Gygax and Arneson's early days in miniature gaming to coming up with the first dungeons and the first campaign settings (Blackmoor and Greyhawk). They then start TSR and Dragon Magazine, Arneson is maneuvered out of the picture and the game's immense success sees Gygax living the high life in Los Angeles trying to get a movie made whilst the company teeters on without him. Then Lorraine Williams takes over, forces Gygax out, and the company sees renewed success in the late 1980s from new campaign settings (such as Forgotten Realms), a second edition of the game and entries to the video game and novel markets, which keeps things going until everything blows up spectacularly in the late 1990s, resulting in the sale of the company to Magic: The Gathering creators Wizards of the Coast.

Whilst the story is familiar, there's a lot more detail in Ben Riggs' book, which calls upon interviews with a huge number of ex-TSR luminaries, although there are two notable absences. Gygax passed away in 2008, so is only represented through archive interviews. Williams declined to be interviewed for the book, so Riggs has to rely on second-hand accounts, interviews with some of her close co-workers and a few archive interviews (particularly drawing on David Ewalt's Of Dice and Men, the last book Williams was interviewed for). This leaves the book feeling oddly structured: a heroic saga where both the main protagonist and main antagonist (who is who depends on your point of view) are absent for large stretches of it.

To be honest, the main narrative of the book is well-known to the point of overfamiliarity to any long-standing roleplaying fans (newcomers who have come to the game in the last few years - and there's a lot of them - will find much more of interest here), so it's more in the details where it shines. The saga of TSR West, the California-based publishing initiative with its own products and an ill-advised idea to branch into comic books (costing TSR it's very lucrative licencing contract with DC in the process), is mostly new to me and fascinating. Additional details on how badly TSR could treat its superstar authors, and how some of the corporates who came in later on simply didn't understand the first thing about the product they were selling, are also intriguing. There some fascinating almost-ran stories, like when TSR nearly acquired the Middle-earth licence but foundered on Christopher Tolkien refusing to grant them permission to publish original fiction.

One of Riggs' biggest successes is getting his hands on hard sales data from TSR. In some cases, some of TSR's own big names were unaware of what the hell was going on with the company's products, and their reactions to learning how bad sales really were in the 1990s are startling. Learning that Forgotten Realms sold well, but not quite as well as some earlier, retired settings was a surprise.

The book is a goldmine of interesting trivia, but the writing tone is inconsistent. Sometimes the tone is serious and analytic, and sometimes jokey and anecdotal, and the tonal shifts sometimes feel random. There's also a marked difference in how Riggs talks about deceased people and folded companies and how he talks about still-living individuals and extant corporate entities. There's also a lack of deeper analysis on well-regarded stories. The suggestion that TSR collapsed due to an overload of campaign settings is taken as fact throughout, and the oft-mentioned idea that D&D faltered in the 1990s more because of an increasingly unwieldy rules set (contrasted to the streamlined rules of its biggest competitor, Vampire: The Masquerade) and the refusal to slay sacred cows with a more thorough revision - seemingly proven by the monstrous success of D&D 3rd Edition after the move to Wizards of the Coast and the even bigger success of the even more streamlined 5th Edition - is not really given any shrift.

There's also a distinct lack of coverage of the video game side of things, which mostly gets a few brief mentions and little more. The book may actually suffer from its conciseness: 278 pages to cover twenty-five years of history is not really enough, and several chapters halt just as they are starting to get interesting. There's also the fact that the revival of D&D's fortunes with 3rd Edition in 2000 and the subsequent appalling misjudgements that led to the ill-conceived 4th Edition in 2008 and the brand's subsequent eclipsing by former allies-turned-competitors Paizo with their Pathfinder game are just as fascinating a story, but the book decides not to pursue the story into that era. That's fair enough, but it seems to leave the book begging for a sequel (which, given Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro's legal firepower, might never happen).

Slaying the Dragon (***½) contains enough new revelations and interesting analysis to be worthwhile for seasoned D&D players, and newcomers to the game unfamiliar with all the old anecdotes will likely enjoy the book far more. But it does feel like the book could have gone into some areas in more detail and depth, and been a bit more consistent in tone.

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SF&F Questions: Will there ever be a PATHFINDER movie or TV series?

The Basics
Pathfinder is a very popular pen-and-paper roleplaying game published by Paizo Publishing since 2009. It is a spin-off of the 3rd Edition of Dungeons and Dragons; in 2008 Wizards of the Coast released the 4th Edition of D&D, but it was extremely unpopular for deviating heavily from the previous ruleset, which had become the biggest-selling and most popular roleplaying game in history over eight years and two sub-editions. Using the "Open Game Licence" (which allows other companies to develop derivatives of D&D 3rd Edition), Paizo created a game much closer to 3rd Edition in scope and rules. Pathfinder is sometimes called "3.75 Edition" for this reason.

Given the immense popularity of Pathfinder, which has spread from the roleplaying game to novels, comics and audio dramas, many people have asked about the possibility of Pathfinder movie or TV series.

The Popularity of Roleplaying Games
Pen-and-paper roleplaying games are a niche field. Not as niche as they once were, but certainly compared to films, video games, novels and even board games, they are a relatively small medium. The biggest-selling RPG of all time is Dungeons and Dragons. Across six major rule sets and editions (along with numerous variant rules and options) published since 1974, incorporating dozens of campaign settings and hundreds of adventures, the entire D&D RPG catalogue has sold just over 20 million copies. This is undeniably impressive, but it's also very modest compared to say, novels; The Lord of the Rings has sold almost 300 million copies by itself and the Harry Potter series has sold over half a billion copies. It's also modest compared to video games: Skyrim sold 7 million copies on its first day on sale in 2011, with lifetime sales now exceeding 30 million copies (and approaching 50 million of the larger Elder Scrolls series). The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sales also closing in on 20 million copies, of a single title in a three-game series.

Of course, D&D is a game where only the Dungeon Master actually needs the rule books and the number of people in a gaming group usually runs from 4 to 6; thus the number of people who have played D&D is far higher than 20 million, but is also impossible to quantify (this extends to all other tabletop RPGs as well, in fact).

Dungeons and Dragons is also an outlier in sales, the only RPG whose new edition rulebooks hit the bestseller lists on a regular basis. It also has unmatched name-recognition among the general public.

On that basis, the sales of Pathfinder are actually quite impressive. It was the biggest-selling P&P RPG in the world between around 2010 and 2014. In 2015 it was pushed back into third place by the arrival of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, which was seen by many as a dramatic return to form, and by Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG (whose success was pushed by the new movies). In 2016/17 Pathfinder recovered its sales position by moving back up into 2nd place, helped by the arrival of Starfinder, an SF spin-off.

Lifetime sales of Pathfinder are hard to judge, because in addition to the physical book sales (which certainly run to at least a couple of million), Paizo offers a subscription model which provides significant new content every month in the shape of magazines and web-exclusive material. However, it's certainly far behind D&D and the various Star Wars RPGs (although given the decades of lead-time those products have over Pathfinder, that's not too surprising).

On this basis, although millions of books sold and tens of thousands of regular subscribers paying monthly for new content is nothing to sneeze at, it's still not at the level that would automatically make Hollywood sit up and take notice.

Spin-Off Sales and Visibility
Dungeons and Dragons is extremely well-known for several reasons. First off is its age and influence as the first, original tabletop roleplaying game, which obviously no-one is going to be able to match. Secondly, it engendered a religious scare in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s among parents concerned about their kids playing a game with demons, magic and fictional deities in it, to the extent of even inspiring a terrible Tom Hanks movie (Mazes and Monsters). Although the scare was ridiculous and died off after a few years, it did raise the game's profile to the point where the name became commonly known.

Thirdly and most importantly, it has had a significant number of very popular spin-offs. The first of these was the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series, which ran for three seasons between 1983 and 1985 and was watched by millions of (mostly young) people and still sells impressively on DVD over thirty years later. This was followed up by an incredibly popular novel line which has comfortably sold over 200 million copies. The Dragonlance Saga has sales of over 30 million copies alone, whilst Robert Salvatore has sold over 50 million copies worldwide of his novels starring dark elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden. Paul Kemp, Troy Denning, James Lowder, Mary Kirchoff, Elaine Cunningham and Ed Greenwood have also sold millions of copies of books apiece. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, each D&D novel published was guaranteed to sell 350,000 copies in its initial print run alone, with Salvatore and Greenwood comfortably doing a lot more than that.

To put this in perspective, R.A. Salvatore by himself has sold more than twice as many copies of his novels as the total number of all D&D RPG materials sold to date.

Sales of the D&D novel line started to tail off in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but new Greenwood and Salvatore novels still sell extremely well.

In terms of video games, D&D has also had an enormous impact. Its "Gold Box" series of 1980s games (such as Curse of the Azure Bonds and Pool of Radiance) sold millions, as did the Eye of the Beholder trilogy in the early 1990s. The Baldur's Gate series has sold around 10 million copies (more with the console spin-offs), with the Neverwinter Nights games not that far behind. Dungeons and Dragons Online, released in 2006, remains active and relatively popular for its age.

The only area D&D has struggled to conquer is film: a live-action movie starring Jeremy Irons released in 2000 bombed and two straight-to-DVD sequels (both made by the producers merely to keep the licence) did not do too well either. A spin-off animated movie based on the Dragonlance setting was also unsuccessful in 2007. Hasbro and Paramount are now developing a new D&D movie for release in 2021 set in the Forgotten Realms world which should do a lot better.

Another tabletop roleplaying game, Shadowrun, has also done well in video games, selling several million copies of two console games released in the 1990s and hundreds of thousands more of an excellent recent trilogy (Shadowrun Returns: Dead Man's Switch, Dragonfall and Hong Kong), as well as rather blatantly "inspiring" the Netflix movie Bright, which has given it a high profile outside the core roleplaying audience.

In stark contrast, Pathfinder has not really done as well in any of these areas. It has a line of novels which has sold decently, but certainly not on D&D's levels. Its attempts to move into video games has been patchy, generating the virtual card-game Pathfinder Adventures from Obsidian Entertainment and the controversial Pathfinder Online, an MMORPG which has struggled to get off the ground despite two successful Kickstarter campaigns. Kingmaker, a single-player-focused CRPG written by the respected Chris Avellone, is also in development with no release date set.

However, Big Finish has released a series of Pathfinder audio dramas and Dynamite have released some comic book series based on the game, both selling reasonably well. Pathfinder has also been used as the rules system in several indie movies from Dead Gentleman Productions and is the game used to fuel the HarmonQuest comedy improv show. So certainly there is scope that the game can translate successfully to other mediums.


So, any chance of a film or TV show?
The chances of a Pathfinder TV show or movie in the near future are both better than they've ever been before, but also still unlikely. If Dungeons and Dragons, the biggest-selling, most well-known tabletop RPG in history with a proven track record for selling novels and video games by the tens of millions, has struggled to get a decent movie made, than a significantly lower-profile game with the reputation (however unfair) of being a D&D spin-off is going to have an even tougher time of it.

That said, fantasy TV is huge at the moment. The Shannara Chronicles was recently cancelled, but Game of Thrones, The Magicians and American Gods have been successful. There are also TV shows in development right now based on The Wheel of Time, The Witcher, Conan the Barbarian, The Lord of the Rings (again) and many other fantasy franchises. These are all based on strong narrative storylines, which Pathfinder doesn't have overall (although individual adventure paths and campaigns, such as Rise of the Runelords, could be adapted). Pathfinder does have a very detailed world and setting, however, which could be used to fuel a new movie or TV series of original storylines. Pathfinder would also come with an enthusiastic pre-built audience who could help pre-sell the project to others.

Answer: a Pathfinder TV show or movie is certainly possible, but highly unlikely until the Dungeons and Dragons movie is a proven success or until Pathfinder develops a big-selling, break-out hit in another area (novels or video games) to help with studio interest. The tabletop RPG audience by itself is too niche to justify such a project at this time.

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Obsidian Entertainment are working on three games

Obsidian Entertainment have confirmed that they currently have three titles at varying stages of development.

A screenshot from the forthcoming Tyranny.

First up is Tyranny, a roleplaying game that they are developing for Paradox, due for release later this year. This game is set in a world where the bad guys have already won and the dark lord is in control of the land.

Second is Pillars of Eternity II. The original Pillars of Eternity (which I really need to get back to) was a big success and made Obsidian a solid amount of profit. A sequel is a no-brainer. However, this is in a rather early stage of development and Obsidian are still considering going back to Kickstarter for the sequel.

Most intriguingly, they have also got a third game under development in secret. This third game is, specifically, being worked on by Tim Cain, the creator of Fallout and former head honcho at Troika, Troika being the company that worked on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines using the then-cutting edge 3D Source Engine. The new game is using the now-cutting edge 3D Unreal 4 Engine, and Obsidian's new partners-in-crime Paradox recently gained the Vampire licence when they, er, bought the entire company lock, stock and barrel. Fans are already running around screaming in hope that Obsidian and Paradox may be collaborating on a new Vampire game with some of the same team who made Bloodlines working on it. Paradox also recently bought the specific Bloodlines trademarks and rights, which would allow them to make a direct sequel or remake the first game. There is also the possibility that this new game might be related to Obsidian's recent partnership with Paizo Publishing to make video games based on the Pathfinder RPG system.

Get tons of PATHFINDER books for just $18

The Humble Store is running a promotion where you can get a lot of Pathfinder roleplaying books if you pay more than the average donation ($17.05 at present). Given that the books separately are worth $354, this is a bit of a no-brainer even if you already own a couple of the books.

Paying that amount of money gets you:

• The Pathfinder Core Rulebook
• The GameMastery Guide
• The Digital Beginner Box
• Player Character Folio
• GM Screen
• Advanced Class Guide
• Advanced Player's Guide
• Inner Sea World Guide
• Strategy Guide
• Bestiary
• Bestiary 2
• Ultimate Equipment
• Ultimate Magic
• Ultimate Campaign
• Ultimate Combat
• Inner Sea Poster Map Folio
• Adventure Path: In Hell's Bright Shadow
• Adventure Path: Turn of the Torrent
• Adventure Path: Dance of the Damned
• Scenario: Between the Lines
• Scenario: Year of the Sky Key Megapack (23 adventures)

If you pay $25 or more (plus shipping), you also get the physical copy of the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box.

On top of all of that you can also get the Inner Sea Primer and Guild Guide free if you sign up to the Paizo newsletter.

As is normal in Humble Bundle deals, a chunk of what you pay will go to charity as well. The deal is running for the next two weeks.

Obsidian and Paizo collaborating on a PATHFINDER project

Obsidian Entertainment, one of the best creators of CRPGs in the world, have teamed up with Paizo Publishing to do something using the latter's highly successful Pathfinder pen-and-paper roleplaying game.

The above picture from this year's GenCon is pretty much all we know so far, but the smart money would be Obsidian making a roleplaying game set in the Pathfinder world. Whether this would be a big-budget, 3D RPG funded by a major publisher or a smaller, lower-budget affair similar to Obsidian's Kickstarter game, Pillars of Eternity (due out before the end of this year), remains to be seen, although I suspect the latter is more likely.

Obsidian and Paizo have expressed their mutual admiration in the past, with Obsidian also suggesting that their Pillars of Eternity world could become a Pathfinder pen-and-paper campaign setting. This is a very good fit, and it'll be intriguing to see what form the project takes.

Update: Obsidian and Paizo Publishing have entered into a long-term licensing agreement. First up is a digital version of the Pathfinder collectable card game. This will be followed by a 'proper' CRPG at a later date.

Obsidian Entertainment, the developer of Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: the Stick of Truth and the Kickstarter phenomenon Pillars of Eternity, announced that they have entered into a long-term licensing partnership with Paizo Inc. to produce electronic games based on its popular Pathfinder Roleplaying Game intellectual property.

Obsidian's first licensed product will be a tablet game based on the highly successful Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players. Players each have a unique character composed of a deck of cards and a set of stats. Characters have classes such as fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric, as well as numbers that define attributes such as strength, wisdom and charisma etc. Players will be able to customize their deck to better suit each individual's vision of their character.

"At Obsidian we have a long history of working with the greatest RPG franchises, and we're thrilled to get to play in the Pathfinder universe now," said CEO Feargus Urquhart. "We're huge fans and can't wait to bring what we do in the electronic gaming world to Pathfinder fans everywhere".

In the world of Pathfinder, players take on the role of brave adventurers fighting to survive in a world beset by magic and evil. The Pathfinder RPG is currently translated into multiple languages, with hundreds of thousands of players worldwide. The Pathfinder brand has also been licensed for comic book series, graphic novels, miniatures, plush toys, apparel, and is being developed into a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game.

"Obsidian is a video game developer at the top of its game", said Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens. "Being able to bring that type of experience and passion to Pathfinder can only mean great things, both for our loyal Pathfinder community and for all fans of great CRPG's."

Obsidian will be at Gen Con 2014 showing off an early prototype of the digital Pathfinder Adventure Card Game in the Paizo booth (#203) and in their own booth (#2151) featuring the first consumer hands on for Pillars of Eternity.