Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert here. UM. I recorded this with Jason
Speaker 1: about two days before UM, Wizards of the Coast put
Speaker 1: out an announcement completely backpedaling on everything they had been
Speaker 1: planning to do to the Open Gaming License UM. Of
Speaker 1: survey of fifteen thousand fans said they were not happy
Speaker 1: with the Wizards uh de authorizing UM the one point
Speaker 1: out open gaming license and uh, I mean, what it
Speaker 1: looks like is a lot of people unregistered from D
Speaker 1: and D beyond and UM, a lot of people called
Speaker 1: in complaining and the numbers folks at Wizards panicked. UM.
Speaker 1: And as a result, they are completely folding on the
Speaker 1: plans to uh rescind or de authorize the open Gaming
Speaker 1: License UM, and in factive announced that they are making it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The exact terms they use are irrevocable and UH yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's good. Yeah. And they put everything under an
Speaker 1: irrevocable creative comments license. So this is all just breaking UM.
Speaker 1: But I think it's broadly good news. Anytime a giant
Speaker 1: company chooses to do something kind of crummy with a
Speaker 1: piece of what what I would say is actually pretty
Speaker 1: meaningful intellectual heritage. UH, and then they get slapped down
Speaker 1: and panic and reverse course, that's a good thing. Um.
Speaker 1: It shows a number of things, which one of which
Speaker 1: probably the most important of which is that the community
Speaker 1: of people who recognize their value in these kinds of games,
Speaker 1: in this uh, this pastime, this recreational activity, um also
Speaker 1: fundamentally value the essence of like what is open source ideology?
Speaker 1: Which is nice, Like, it's nice to know that the
Speaker 1: open source folks we can still throw a punch every
Speaker 1: now and again, even if it's just a punch at
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast. So happy ending, everybody, Happy ending. Also,
Speaker 1: the good folks at Pizo sold out of eight months
Speaker 1: worth of Pathfinder books in two weeks, So that's nice too. Uh,
Speaker 1: it could happen. Here is the podcast that you are
Speaker 1: listening to right now. I am Robert Evans. This is
Speaker 1: a show about things falling apart and sometimes putting them
Speaker 1: back together. And today we're we're taking a little bit
Speaker 1: of a different tack. In recent weeks, you've listened to
Speaker 1: us cover a wide variety of issues, from conflicts in
Speaker 1: places like me and mar two conflicts here at home
Speaker 1: in the city of Atlanta, UM, to deep dives in
Speaker 1: history and all that all that good stuff. That that
Speaker 1: you know and love us. For today we are talking
Speaker 1: about a subject that is unusually close to my heart,
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. Now, I'm gonna guess, just given the
Speaker 1: nature of our listenership, a decent chunk of you grew
Speaker 1: up playing D and D UM, and just because of
Speaker 1: how really shockingly suddenly it's become much more popular than
Speaker 1: it than it ever was previously, and much more mainstream
Speaker 1: a lot of you who may have encountered as an adult, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot that's actually been written, kind of sociologically
Speaker 1: on on what Dungeons and Dragons is. At one point
Speaker 1: that some people will make is that it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of the first new game that we had that that
Speaker 1: human beings made up since like Chess, Um, by which
Speaker 1: I mean you you have had war games for a
Speaker 1: very long period of time. But the concept of a
Speaker 1: role playing game and the way that that D and
Speaker 1: D is, where you're essentially sitting down with a group
Speaker 1: of people and engaging in an act of collaborative storytelling
Speaker 1: that's kind of buttressed by a system of rules. That's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty new idea now. Now, elements of this
Speaker 1: have existed forever, UM and In fact, kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting fact you'll run into is that in the late
Speaker 1: medieval period a lot of jousts had role playing elements,
Speaker 1: including ones were like rulers and and their their court
Speaker 1: would dress up as the Knights of the Round Table
Speaker 1: and act in character as those nights. So elements of
Speaker 1: all of this stuff have a existed for a while,
Speaker 1: but when Dungeons and Dragons kind of came together as
Speaker 1: a game for the first time, it was it is
Speaker 1: kind of worth seeing it as as something really new
Speaker 1: and valuable in the history of play and the history
Speaker 1: of human creativity. Um So as a result of that,
Speaker 1: I do kind of think I I personally think there's
Speaker 1: something a little bit sacred about that that basic idea.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's really interesting to me
Speaker 1: about the industry that grew up around Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 1: is that there have always been a lot of people
Speaker 1: in it who I think feel the same way. Um
Speaker 1: And I think one of these people was a guy
Speaker 1: named Ryan Dancey, and Ryan dancy Um was vice president
Speaker 1: in charge of Dungeons and Dragons at Wizards of the
Speaker 1: Coast for a while um and he helped actually negotiate
Speaker 1: the sale of the Dungeons and Dragons property to Wizards
Speaker 1: of the Coast when the company that had been distributing
Speaker 1: it fell apart, and Dancy was a big part of
Speaker 1: the institution in the year two thousand of what became
Speaker 1: known as the Open Gaming License, and they basically what
Speaker 1: this meant is that the set of rules that that
Speaker 1: D and D worked by, and at around two thousand,
Speaker 1: which was I think you would call it like three
Speaker 1: point oh, was the system in place basically got elements
Speaker 1: of the mechanics got effectively open sourced. UM. And so
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast UM went from what had been
Speaker 1: the previous move of the people who had owned D
Speaker 1: and D, which was kind of to oppose people trying
Speaker 1: to make third party content using the ruled source, to
Speaker 1: embracing it and allowing it to do that freely. UM.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to introduce our guest, who is
Speaker 1: one of the people who uh is kind of the
Speaker 1: one of the most influential folks in what happened after this,
Speaker 1: because once the Open Gaming License came into effect, there's
Speaker 1: suddenly this galaxy of new games and supplemental materials that
Speaker 1: people start making, UM, which you know Wizards is not
Speaker 1: profiting from directly, but which the hobby profits from UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the people who has who has been
Speaker 1: most influential in that is our guest today Jason Bollman. Jason,
Speaker 1: you are the the game a lead game designer at
Speaker 1: Piazzo and the creator of Pathfinder, which is the I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not Dungeons and Dragons, but it uses as its
Speaker 1: base that kind of open gaming uh system, and it's
Speaker 1: it's what I play when I get a chance to
Speaker 1: sit down and play a role playing game. So, first off, Jason,
Speaker 1: thank you for several thousand hours of of my my
Speaker 1: childhood and early adulthood UM spent playing path Fighter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well thanks for having me. And yeah, PISO kind of
Speaker 1: spun off from Wizards of the Coast UM, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the early days of the open game license,
Speaker 1: and we were there official publishers of their magazine until
Speaker 1: that kind of came to an end, and then we
Speaker 1: we started making our own game based off the open
Speaker 1: game license. And did I did I? Did I get
Speaker 1: all that right earlier? Do you have any kind of
Speaker 1: clarification she'd like to add before we move further into
Speaker 1: the conflict, And there is a conflict. We're not just
Speaker 1: talking about how cool d Pathfighter are. I think there's
Speaker 1: a There's an interesting thing to note about games. Games
Speaker 1: are kind kind of weird when it comes to copyright
Speaker 1: and ownership, and it's kind of why the Open Game
Speaker 1: License is so important. Right. So TSR, the company that
Speaker 1: owned Dungeons and Dragons before Wizards of the Coast, was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty litigious, as you mentioned, um, but they ended
Speaker 1: up getting into kind of a bind because you know,
Speaker 1: the game itself is one that encourages people to make
Speaker 1: their own content, to kind of homebrew stuff and invent
Speaker 1: their own stories. And what it comes down to is
Speaker 1: that you know, ultimately, game mechanics can't be copyrighted. That
Speaker 1: that's been long held, that that those sorts of things
Speaker 1: you cannot copyright. That's why you see so many versions
Speaker 1: of like Scrabble that aren't Scrabble. Um. Yeah. And it's
Speaker 1: why anyone can make a basketball team or a basketball
Speaker 1: league and play basketball. You don't have to get the
Speaker 1: NBA's approval to play fucking basketball exactly exactly. So the
Speaker 1: Open Game License wasn't about giving everyone permission to use rules,
Speaker 1: which is something that to already kind of do. It
Speaker 1: was about giving them kind of a safe harbor, a
Speaker 1: place that everybody involved kind of knew that this was
Speaker 1: all okay, no one was going to be filing frivolous,
Speaker 1: frivolous lawsuits, and that you could use kind of direct
Speaker 1: references without having to be a copyright lawyer or retaining
Speaker 1: a giant staff. It allowed a lot of very little
Speaker 1: businesses to kind of spring up, making, Hey, here's my
Speaker 1: cool adventure that I ran from my group. You can
Speaker 1: buy it and play it with your group. Now, little
Speaker 1: things like that, and I don't think it's for nothing.
Speaker 1: That number one a huge thing. And this has become
Speaker 1: as Silicon Valley is kind of turned more mercenary. This
Speaker 1: has become less of a thing, but a massive thing
Speaker 1: in the early history of Silicon Valley in the tech
Speaker 1: industry was the open source movement. You know, was the
Speaker 1: idea that a lot of people should be able to collaboratively,
Speaker 1: work and iterate on things without having to worry about
Speaker 1: who owns the basic idea right, you know. Lennox Is
Speaker 1: is a great example of this, and the the ideology
Speaker 1: behind the open source movement was a big influence in
Speaker 1: the open gaming license. I mean Dancy kind of admits
Speaker 1: that himself. There's a quote where he says that, like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we need to embrace some of these ideas
Speaker 1: at the heart of the open source movement, because I
Speaker 1: think it will be a good business decision for Wizards
Speaker 1: of the Coast. It will on the whole, even if
Speaker 1: we're not profiting directly from every sort of like thing
Speaker 1: that people make off of this, the fact that it's
Speaker 1: going to cause the hobby to explode will benefit us.
Speaker 1: And I think he's been proven right in that because
Speaker 1: D and D has gone from this thing that like
Speaker 1: I got bullied for in high school too. There's these
Speaker 1: massive podcast there's been TV shows that are just people
Speaker 1: playing the game like it has reached this level. I
Speaker 1: never really expected it would of like critical and and
Speaker 1: mass acceptance, which has been really cool to see. It's
Speaker 1: been one of the things that I've been happiest about
Speaker 1: watching occurs socially in the last couple of decades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't disagree that the business case wasn't super tight, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: The way that the O g L got all of
Speaker 1: the other game companies, many of which had their own
Speaker 1: entirely different games in the early two thousands, they all
Speaker 1: abandoned them and started making content for D and D UM,
Speaker 1: and that just kind of carried forward a large swath
Speaker 1: of kind of the game industry, which is pretty cottage, right.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of small players. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of large corporations in here. Um. You know, in fact,
Speaker 1: Wizards is by far the largest, And so you've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of small game companies that are are seeing
Speaker 1: this as a great opportunity to kind of play in
Speaker 1: the big pool, and a lot of them followed suit.
Speaker 1: So obviously the recent we are here today is that
Speaker 1: a paul has been cast recently over what has up
Speaker 1: until now been kind of a lovely thing. Um, Wizards
Speaker 1: of the Coast got a new CEO pretty recently, right, Um,
Speaker 1: Cynthia Williams is relatively new. Yeah, And and there is
Speaker 1: basically murmuring coming from the company that's like, we don't
Speaker 1: think D and D is properly capitalized. We we believe
Speaker 1: that there's we are leaving money on the table here.
Speaker 1: And kind of in the wake of some of that
Speaker 1: stuff coming out, they announced a series of changes to
Speaker 1: the Open Gaming license and if you if you kind
Speaker 1: of want to take it from here and explain because
Speaker 1: I've i've i've I've read and listened to a number
Speaker 1: of different folks. I'm saying like, well, it's not as
Speaker 1: bad as people are are fearing, and some folks saying
Speaker 1: like this would effectively kill a huge chunk of the
Speaker 1: hobby and a bunch of the companies that have grown
Speaker 1: up in the wake of the open Gaming license. And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm interested in your take on what what Wizards
Speaker 1: is doing here and what actually kind of is at risk.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think you you you've in plued into
Speaker 1: the start of this, which was in uh early December
Speaker 1: of last year, Hasbro earnings call uh Cynthia basically came
Speaker 1: out and said D and D was under monetized and
Speaker 1: they had been spending the entire previous year really proliferating
Speaker 1: Magic the Gathering, which is their other giant brand, and
Speaker 1: kind of really making a lot of money, like talks
Speaker 1: of like it is a billion dollar brand. And UM,
Speaker 1: as a result, you know, there was kind of some
Speaker 1: murmurings and some rumblings going through December, UM talking about
Speaker 1: a new version of the O g L. Wizards themselves
Speaker 1: came out on December twenty one, so just a few
Speaker 1: days before Christmas and said that a new O g
Speaker 1: L was coming and that it had notes in it
Speaker 1: about royalty reporting and um, you know, mentioning that folks
Speaker 1: won't need to pay until later um, and that um
Speaker 1: you know, really this new license is only going to
Speaker 1: be to make books and PDF. So they said this
Speaker 1: on December twenty one. And the royalty part of that
Speaker 1: is was really quite challenging because it said if you
Speaker 1: make over seven thousand dollars a year, um, you might
Speaker 1: have to pay a sizeable percentage of your your your
Speaker 1: gross profit. Like and that's terrified, which when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a business and and this is not the gaming
Speaker 1: industry does not run on huge margins. Um. No, unless
Speaker 1: you're like making Warhammer models that you're selling for a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty dollars for a piece of plastic that's tied. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the margins are pretty tight. Um. So saying like past
Speaker 1: you know, seven k, your company with however many employees,
Speaker 1: has to give a quarter like that, that'll sink people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of companies, the larger ones, couldn't
Speaker 1: sustain that, right, I mean I think saying your gross
Speaker 1: over seven just basically means make sure you only make
Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars that year. Um I I do think
Speaker 1: that that is that is a real, real dangerous thing
Speaker 1: to a lot of these businesses. Now, for a lot
Speaker 1: of the content creators, this is never gonna matter. But
Speaker 1: I do believe that part of this was, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing gigantic multimillion dollar kickstarters happening and kind of going,
Speaker 1: where's our Yeah, we want a piece of this? Um
Speaker 1: And the answer to that is that, like you know,
Speaker 1: and it's problematic just crediting the creation of D and
Speaker 1: D solely to Gary Gygax, but like the people who
Speaker 1: came up with and play tested and made D and
Speaker 1: D a thing, and then the people who iterated and
Speaker 1: changed and evolved it from you know, the original game
Speaker 1: to a D and D um and the years of
Speaker 1: thacco to two three point oh like like morally, outside
Speaker 1: of like what I think is justifiable in corporate law
Speaker 1: and stuff, Like, morally, I think it's fucked up to
Speaker 1: say that like some company forever gets a piece of
Speaker 1: that when what it is is like human beings coming
Speaker 1: together to try to figure out the most efficient way
Speaker 1: to run an engine for storytelling. UM, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's fucked up to me to think
Speaker 1: about it this way. So they announced this alteration to
Speaker 1: the Open Gaming License, and I'm gonna guess those were
Speaker 1: some dark days at the office. So so yeah, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: most of us at PISO at that point in time,
Speaker 1: we're kind of on vacation and we kind of just
Speaker 1: filed it away and we're like, okay, well it's a
Speaker 1: draft and they're just talking. So um, you know, we
Speaker 1: get to back, you know, from our break and it's
Speaker 1: the beginning of the year and this is now January
Speaker 1: five is when a bombshell article drops on Gizmoto by
Speaker 1: CODEGA and they really laid out kind of what was
Speaker 1: in this proposed license, apparently having had portions of it
Speaker 1: linked to them, and um, you know, it confirmed a
Speaker 1: margin but maybe only for for kickstarters, which then got
Speaker 1: confirmed by someone at Kickstarter on Twitter. Um. And it
Speaker 1: also included a bit in there that there was a
Speaker 1: clause that said watsy could listen to the coast, could
Speaker 1: use any of the content you create under the license
Speaker 1: for free, never having to make pay royalties to you,
Speaker 1: never having to give you any credit. They could just
Speaker 1: take your work, um, and and they phrased it in
Speaker 1: such a way that it sounded like it was, you know, well,
Speaker 1: just in case we make something similar, we don't want
Speaker 1: to get sued. But yeah, and we're talking about just
Speaker 1: to clarify it for people were not talking about like
Speaker 1: if you introduce mechanics, because again that that's not what
Speaker 1: this is. Kind we're talking about. If you create characters,
Speaker 1: if you create, if you build stories, they have a
Speaker 1: right to utilize that story that you've made things that
Speaker 1: are actually copyrightable, right, stories, ideas and expressions are copyrightable.
Speaker 1: Um uh, you know, but rules aren't. So that that
Speaker 1: drops on the fifth and on the night the full
Speaker 1: draft document leaks and you've got streamers and influencers reading
Speaker 1: it live on YouTube, and this thing just starts to snowball. Um.
Speaker 1: And from the ninth forward, things start moving very quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: On the tenth, a number of major kind of third
Speaker 1: party publishers, these are folks who print with the O
Speaker 1: jail um announced that they were not going to go
Speaker 1: with that, and one of the largest ones, you know, announced, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that at all. I'm going to create
Speaker 1: my entire brand new game. I'm leaving all of this behind,
Speaker 1: and the fervor on social media turned into basically a firestorm.
Speaker 1: Um it. It's really a sign of how how much
Speaker 1: more how many people both love and play versions of
Speaker 1: this game that there was so much media attention from
Speaker 1: like major media organs like this. This was not just
Speaker 1: you know, those of us who are into gaming, um,
Speaker 1: you know, freaking out over this change the Wizards of
Speaker 1: the Coast has made. This was like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: was seeing it everywhere. Very few things have like broken
Speaker 1: as widely in my media in ecosystem as as this.
Speaker 1: There was an article, there was a story about it
Speaker 1: today on NPR UM so there was another one. There
Speaker 1: was one other important aspect in the league, um that
Speaker 1: I think is really important. One is that the new
Speaker 1: o g L could be canceled at any time with
Speaker 1: thirty days notice. And they were claiming that they were
Speaker 1: de authorizing the previous o g L, which up to
Speaker 1: this point everyone kind of assumed was irrevocable. Right it had.
Speaker 1: It has clauses in it that say, if we ever
Speaker 1: put on a new version of this license, you can
Speaker 1: ignore it and continue to use this one. Right, but
Speaker 1: it uses this word in there that says you can
Speaker 1: continue to use any authorized version of the license, never
Speaker 1: minding that the contract doesn't mention how you might de
Speaker 1: authorize a license. UM. So there there this draft of
Speaker 1: the O g L says that they're de authorizing the
Speaker 1: previous version, which puts all of the work of the
Speaker 1: past twenty years into doubt. And at this point in time,
Speaker 1: the fans are revolting right there. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of folks canceling their subscriptions to D and D Beyond,
Speaker 1: which is kind of there in house character generation tools
Speaker 1: that you pay a monthly subscription for um. And things
Speaker 1: really start spinning out of hand to the point where
Speaker 1: D and D actually has to respond to it and
Speaker 1: pulled back UM and kind of retreat from this and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna answer your questions. What you saw was just
Speaker 1: a draft um, you know, and UH that was never
Speaker 1: supposed to leak UM. But it was at this point
Speaker 1: in time that we actually launched our own license. We
Speaker 1: had been talking to some of the other publishers, and
Speaker 1: by that I mean we pizo UH to create a
Speaker 1: brand new safe harbor for folks to publish under. Now
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's not gonna be owned by us.
Speaker 1: It's going to be owned by a law firm that
Speaker 1: actually drafted the first o g L. But you started
Speaker 1: to see this giant for happening, um where a lot
Speaker 1: of folks are just abandoning ship, And I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you think this means? Because obviously Wizards has already
Speaker 1: announced a new version of the of the o g
Speaker 1: L beyond like the one that got leaked, and I
Speaker 1: think are kind of in damage control mode. Do you
Speaker 1: think this is something that like there is any way
Speaker 1: for them to pull back from or do you think
Speaker 1: that kind of the inherent instability of the o g
Speaker 1: L now that they're kind of making these claims at well,
Speaker 1: we can actually change the deal anytime we want, has
Speaker 1: that sort of irrevocably altered the ground. I think that
Speaker 1: they've damaged a lot of people's trust in them, right.
Speaker 1: I think over over the past few weeks, especially when
Speaker 1: they went silent and then frankly the first retraction was
Speaker 1: really kind of awkward and filled with kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't lose, we won. This was great. Now we
Speaker 1: learned how to make a better license. Right, they're clearly
Speaker 1: stepping back, stepping back, stepping back, and their most recent
Speaker 1: step back, which just happened, you know, on the eighteenth,
Speaker 1: so you know, a week ago or so, basically said
Speaker 1: that they were going to release the core of the
Speaker 1: game to Creative Commons and their new license was going
Speaker 1: to be irrevocable and last forever. But it still contains
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of poison pills, things like we
Speaker 1: are still the authorizing the first version of the license,
Speaker 1: and we have this morality clause that says, if we
Speaker 1: find your content offensive, we can just kill your license
Speaker 1: without yea, which is fucked up because I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think I need to explain why that's fucked up. Um,
Speaker 1: that that puts that puts a lot of the most
Speaker 1: creative kind of projects to at risk like that. I god,
Speaker 1: that's that's ugly. I mean, I don't think anybody in
Speaker 1: this industry wants to see any you know, deeply offensive,
Speaker 1: problematic content. Um, but there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: is frankly a lot more marginal and explores, you know,
Speaker 1: issues of the human condition that folks might want to
Speaker 1: explore in a game. Who's to say that someone that
Speaker 1: wizards might go, well, sorry, that's offensive to me. You
Speaker 1: don't get to make it. Um. I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: wants to invest their creativity and risk their business on
Speaker 1: what someone they will never have met thinks of their work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem is not that, like I want as the
Speaker 1: most offensive role playing games I can get. The problem
Speaker 1: is like, well, who determines what offensive is? And it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of lawyers in business minute Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 1: At least that's the worry, right, Like, not necessarily that
Speaker 1: that's how it would work out, but you just you
Speaker 1: get no guarantee, and this stuff, this stuff evolves over time, right,
Speaker 1: you know what, what is fine today maybe problematic tomorrow.
Speaker 1: We learned those things and we evolved from them and
Speaker 1: we change. But I don't think anybody wants to have
Speaker 1: kind of the this you know, acts hanging over our
Speaker 1: head of like, well, sorry, that's now offensive, so we're
Speaker 1: going to kill your entire license. Yeah, so where are we?
Speaker 1: Where are we now? Like it looks like Piezo y'all
Speaker 1: are moving forward with the O r C along with
Speaker 1: a number of other people. Can you give me any
Speaker 1: of what that's going to look like? Because one of
Speaker 1: the things that that does concern me is UM and
Speaker 1: this is a very selfish concern, but like I grew
Speaker 1: very comfortable with you know, three point five, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the machinery that underpins Pathfinder, and um, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things like if I didn't play again for
Speaker 1: twenty years, I could probably sit down with the material
Speaker 1: in my head and run a campaign just because so
Speaker 1: much of that stuff is burned into my brain. Are
Speaker 1: we like, what is the mechanics kind of underlying the
Speaker 1: O r C And how is it going to be
Speaker 1: different from what we've we've gotten used to So I'll
Speaker 1: say this, We're we're in the very early days, yes,
Speaker 1: And what what's happening right now is we are you know,
Speaker 1: in coordination with a number of other publishers working with
Speaker 1: a Zoro law and they are the people who wrote
Speaker 1: the original O g l UH and had you know,
Speaker 1: fully intended for it to be a perpetual license, and
Speaker 1: we're working with them to create kind of a rules
Speaker 1: neutral license the entire game industry can use to share
Speaker 1: work because there's there's like a lot of nuance that
Speaker 1: was in the O g l that allowed different companies
Speaker 1: to share creative work together, and a lot of companies
Speaker 1: used it as kind of a bridging license. Even if
Speaker 1: they weren't using Dungeons and Dragons at all, they would
Speaker 1: just use the license as a framework to kind of
Speaker 1: exchange ideas. And that's what we want the ORC to be.
Speaker 1: The ORC needs to be a license that allows everybody
Speaker 1: in the game industry to open up their content and
Speaker 1: share work with each other and iterate and expand and grow.
Speaker 1: That's our real goal, um. And ultimately we are not
Speaker 1: going to own it. No one's going to own it.
Speaker 1: We're actually going to try and find it onprofit to
Speaker 1: administer the license going forward so that we don't ever
Speaker 1: have to worry about this again. Nobody wants to go
Speaker 1: through what we've been going through for the past three weeks,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of that's kind of one half of it.
Speaker 1: The other half is what happens to Pathfinder. UM. And obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, when it came to Pathfinder second Edition, we
Speaker 1: rewrote the game from scratch and it is now fully
Speaker 1: our game. It's something we own and we control, UM.
Speaker 1: So we feel pretty confident that we're just gonna keep
Speaker 1: on rolling with with Pathfinder. And ultimately, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't actually believe that the previous version of the O
Speaker 1: g l even can be rescinded, So I guess we'll
Speaker 1: see how that plays out. I can see this having
Speaker 1: an overall positive outcome, just in that if we get
Speaker 1: this new kind of thing that creators can use um
Speaker 1: as a as a core point to branch off from
Speaker 1: when they are when they're making games that's actually under
Speaker 1: solid legal footing that isn't kind of reliant upon the
Speaker 1: whims of a publicly traded company, then in the long term,
Speaker 1: you know, that is in the long term, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's better for creators because it's more like the
Speaker 1: way things were for the first twenty years of the
Speaker 1: O g l UM do you I mean, like, what
Speaker 1: do you see as kind of some pitfalls and sort
Speaker 1: of trying to trying to make this this happened, trying
Speaker 1: to move things in this kind of more productive direction. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you can always you know, kind of fracture,
Speaker 1: you know, balkanize the market to the point where where
Speaker 1: everybody has such a small slice event that you know,
Speaker 1: no one can really get the kind of numbers they
Speaker 1: need to succeed because you're you're right, it is it
Speaker 1: is a pretty small industry. The margin on. You know,
Speaker 1: printed media isn't exactly great, but I think a lot
Speaker 1: of these companies do have the numbers to survive. But
Speaker 1: I think that right now, everybody's trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to replace parts of what has just been lost. Um.
Speaker 1: Everybody's trying to kind of go in their different directions
Speaker 1: right now, and some of that is going to be
Speaker 1: really good, because I think we're gonna get a lot
Speaker 1: of really great games. Um, And I'm excited to see him. Um.
Speaker 1: But I do think that I think when the worries
Speaker 1: just for the industry is that they kind of all
Speaker 1: had one flag they were rallying around, and now everyone's
Speaker 1: running in different directions and hoping that after all of
Speaker 1: this shakes out, everybody has kind of enough gamers to
Speaker 1: support a community. I think it's gonna work out. I
Speaker 1: think that there's a number of standouts happening already. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, M C, d M and Cobald are obviously
Speaker 1: racing to do things. There's a bunch of kind of
Speaker 1: known players in the industry, US, Cobalt, Chaos, I, UM,
Speaker 1: Green Ronan, all of them are pretty big. Company's position
Speaker 1: to kind of have good player bases with great games
Speaker 1: and mechanics underneath them. So I I think the big
Speaker 1: loser here is frankly to the coast. They you know,
Speaker 1: up up until you know, the end of this year
Speaker 1: or the end of last year, they were undisputedly the
Speaker 1: largest game company in the entire table top role playing
Speaker 1: game industry, and that's still true today. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of cracks in that armor, and it does make
Speaker 1: me wonder how it's going to fracture out or time,
Speaker 1: and how many of their fans, many of which never
Speaker 1: heard of Pathfinder, never heard of you know, these other
Speaker 1: game companies call of Cthulo and stuff, are now suddenly
Speaker 1: exploring these games, and you know, frankly, the wealth of
Speaker 1: smaller Indian zine games that are out there. There's so
Speaker 1: much to play right now, and Watsy has just told
Speaker 1: their fan base, hey, go check it out. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because it it kind of speaks to something that I've
Speaker 1: I've always loved and also found kind of sociologically fascinating
Speaker 1: about table top gaming, which is you just brought up
Speaker 1: call Off Cthulhu, which is a game that is I
Speaker 1: don't believe is under the control of the original company
Speaker 1: that it was made under. People have been playing versions
Speaker 1: of Call Off Cthuloo for a very long time. Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons has gone through multiple owners. Shadow Run, which
Speaker 1: I played a lot of as a kid, has gone
Speaker 1: through multiple owners, and the rules sets change and the
Speaker 1: company that is profiting from the official licensed material changes.
Speaker 1: But no matter what happens, even when those companies go uder,
Speaker 1: the games keep going. And that's there's something I think
Speaker 1: unique there that is, it's not the case even like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's versions of it that happens in in
Speaker 1: PC gaming. But there's also this thing that happens that
Speaker 1: that a lot of gamers I know complain about, which
Speaker 1: is that like periodically should will get removed for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: a company goes under, a game is not supported, and
Speaker 1: that game is just gone. That little piece of culture
Speaker 1: has just gone. And it seems like so far, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say in every case, because obviously there have
Speaker 1: been games that have have you know, people stopped playing
Speaker 1: and stuff in the tabletop space, but it's there's this continuity,
Speaker 1: you know, even in the face of of changing of
Speaker 1: the guards in terms of like what companies are successful,
Speaker 1: um of like people keep playing these the same games
Speaker 1: and iterating them and changing them. And um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's that's always one of the things I found most
Speaker 1: inspiring about the way tabletop works. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: do think the legacy of tabletop role playing games is
Speaker 1: one of cooperation. It was there from the start, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the moment Gary and is Uh and Dave
Speaker 1: and folks you know, got together and started turning their
Speaker 1: you know, miniatures war game and giving characters to them,
Speaker 1: and everyone started building a story together. That spark was
Speaker 1: the start, and it's carried through in a million different
Speaker 1: ways and a million different tables. And even if you know,
Speaker 1: the companies go under or disappear, people with those books
Speaker 1: are still playing those games. There's plenty of people still
Speaker 1: playing a D and D first edition, right, you know,
Speaker 1: they never left and they're fine with that, and and
Speaker 1: I salute them. Yeah, I think about and again, this
Speaker 1: is like one of the reasons this has such a
Speaker 1: place in my heart. I I started playing A D
Speaker 1: and D. But you know, it was my friends and
Speaker 1: I would play at a at cub Scout camp outs,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have access to dice, so we we
Speaker 1: had the rule books. We had like the Monsters Manual,
Speaker 1: in the players guide, and we use those as jumping
Speaker 1: off points and we would bring like a bunch of
Speaker 1: nickels and we would we would figure out way it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: for this action, you've got to get three heads out
Speaker 1: of five flips or something like that, and that's a
Speaker 1: success in this And like so many people have stories
Speaker 1: like that, have variants of that, because it really is
Speaker 1: fundamentally what you need for any of these games, which
Speaker 1: is what makes them so durable, is a group of
Speaker 1: people to want to sit around a table and tell
Speaker 1: a story together, which is rad. Yeah. I mean there's
Speaker 1: nothing else like it right there, really isn't it. And
Speaker 1: that's why I think you're seeing so much fervor over
Speaker 1: this because for a lot of people, this is very
Speaker 1: deeply personal gathering together with your friends and telling a
Speaker 1: story together. That's something you and your friends built. And
Speaker 1: you know, uh, if you happen to find a way
Speaker 1: to make some money off of it, great, that's that's
Speaker 1: your creativity coming to life. And frankly, kind of having
Speaker 1: a big giant corporation come in and say, hey, where's
Speaker 1: my cut is is not really very fun? No, uh,
Speaker 1: And I my heart goes out to to to you
Speaker 1: and your colleagues over how stressful this last three or
Speaker 1: four weeks has been, and I hope that we're past
Speaker 1: the worst of it. Um. It certainly seems like some
Speaker 1: what's going to come out of this is going to
Speaker 1: be pretty exciting. So I'm hopeful. Uh, And it sounds
Speaker 1: like you're hopeful. Yeah, I think you know. Over the
Speaker 1: past couple of weeks there's been a lot of sleepless
Speaker 1: nights and a lot of effency meetings. But frankly, I
Speaker 1: feel more excited and energized about the future of Pizo,
Speaker 1: about the future of gaming, than I have in quite
Speaker 1: a long time. So by Piso's games, pick up some
Speaker 1: Pathfinder books, go to your go to your nearest game store, um,
Speaker 1: and and pick one up or two or three, um, Jason,
Speaker 1: anything else you want up plug at the end here, Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can learn more about Pizo in our games, so
Speaker 1: that would be Pathfinder and star Finder. At Piso dot com,
Speaker 1: we have a blog they're talking about the Orc and
Speaker 1: we'll have undoubtedly have more to say about it here
Speaker 1: in the coming weeks. Uh. As for me, you can
Speaker 1: find me on all the very social media platforms at Backslash,
Speaker 1: Jason Bowman bu l M A h N. Thank you Jason,
Speaker 1: both for sitting down for this interview and for all
Speaker 1: of all of the many, many countless hours I have
Speaker 1: spent playing games that you had a hand in making. Um,
Speaker 1: thank you, Robert. We'll have to get together and roll
Speaker 1: some dice together soon. I would love that. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: that's a sode uh see you tomorrow. It could happen
Speaker 1: here for that's Zone Media and more podcasts on cool
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