Paizo announces Pathfinder 2e "Remastered"

[137beth]

Paizo has announced a "remaster (https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6siae?Pathfinder-Second-Edition-Remaster-Project)" of the Pathfinder 2e core rules, coming in 2024.

They say the rules will not change much and it will mostly be compatible. They also say they will be removing alignment, although they seem to be replacing it with something similar.

[pabelfly]

I'm guessing the reason they did this was for this part: "notably the removal of alignment and a small number of nostalgic creatures, spells, and magic items exclusive to the OGL". I would say they've done this to divorce their content from the OGL and prevent any issues in the future, if WOTC decides again to revoke the 3e open licence. The other stuff is just being done for ease of use for new players and the like, I would guess.

It doesn't sound like it's going to be as different as, say, the leap from 3e to 3.5.

[catagent101]

I mean yeah, there are limits to how much they can do given the time window they had for this.

I think this makes sense given the circumstances. The bestiary in particular needed another look since it is kinda similar to the original 3.5e SRD roster.

[Kurald Galain]

I completely missed that the OGL "caused so much controversy earlier this year". What's up with that? I thought WOTC was legally incapable of revoking the OGL (and that's why PF1 existed in the first place).

Other than that, this seems mainly a reason to reprint the books with all errata (and PF2 has a ton of errata); which is a good step but not an exciting one.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I completely missed that the OGL "caused so much controversy earlier this year". What's up with that? I thought WOTC was legally incapable of revoking the OGL (and that's why PF1 existed in the first place).

Other than that, this seems mainly a reason to reprint the books with all errata (and PF2 has a ton of errata); which is a good step but not an exciting one.

If I remember well, they said they couldn't remove it, but they still could alter it for new content released later, including taking a fee for sold homebrew books and other high-value OGL contents, like online content. There was a big uproar in the community after someone leaked WotC's projects, and they were forced to cancel it, though not early enough to prevent Paizo from saying they were creating their own OGL (called ORC, for Open RPG Creative license) and invited any number of creators to join it and publish under it.

[pabelfly]

I completely missed that the OGL "caused so much controversy earlier this year". What's up with that? I thought WOTC was legally incapable of revoking the OGL (and that's why PF1 existed in the first place).

WOTC changed their mind and decided that they could revoke it, and were going to release a new OGL. But there were some rather different terms. They wanted reports on all money made from content using the OGL, a cut of 20 or 25% from content using the OGL from kickstarters making over 750K, wanted the rights to revoke content at their discretion (for being "blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, trans-phobic, bigoted or otherwise discriminatory", and while these terms weren't defined, WOTC would decide what fit in this), wanted the right to claim and sell product made under the OGL, and they wanted a cut of video streaming profits for larger DnD-themed streamers. I'm probably missing stuff, it's been four months. If you liked DnD content that didn't come straight from WOTC, it wasn't good news.

As to whether they could or not... intellectual property court is expensive and it would be far too impractical for even Paizo to spend money to sort it out, regardless of whether WOTC were in the wrong or not.

This caused a lot of anger with DnD gamers: people cancelling subs for dndbeyond, people leaving 5e for Pathfinder 2e, indie devs that made 5e content instead decided to make their own RPG systems. Eventually, WOTC partly relented on a few clauses, and when that didn't solve the problem, a few weeks later, after feedback from players, they backpedalled hard - they weren't going to change the OGL, and released an OGL for 5e too, and apologized for what they did.

This was a good move on their part, but given WOTC's previous behaviour, if I were using the OGL, from a business standpoint, I'd be doing all that I could to dissasociate myself from it, in case WOTC again changed their mind about it later.

[Kurald Galain]

WOTC changed their mind and decided that they could revoke it, and were going to release a new OGL. But there were some rather different terms.

Wow. That's a big deja vu from back when 4E was released, when WOTC demanded that everybody stop printing 3E material forever, and that third parties would cede all IP rights to WOTC, and would destroy all their D&D books if WOTC asked them to. And this caused a lot of backlash and directly led to Paizo abandoning D&D and starting Pathfinder as the replacement...

[Eldonauran]

I'm of mixed feelings on this. I was around to witness 4e D&D and jumped on the Pathfinder bandwagon, so this isn't a new thing for me. On one hand, I support Paizo sticking it to Wizards AGAIN and doing their own thing. On the other hand, I don't LIKE some of the things they are doing (namely the alignment changes). I am certainly not going to back to Wizards though. So, I'll watch and wait.

[Raven777]

a few weeks later, after feedback from players, they backpedalled hard - they weren't going to change the OGL, and released an OGL for 5e too, and apologized for what they did.

They did much more (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1439-ogl-1-0a-creative-commons) than that: beyond the lenses of 3.5 which is covered by OGL 1.0a, they released the entire SRD 5.1 available under a Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 license (https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/SRD5.1-CCBY4.0License.pdf). Which really is irrevocable. Forever. This is literally the hardest one could backpedal short of releasing it in the public domain. This is backpedaling so hard, it left indelible burnt marks.

But yeah, 3.5 is still under the OGL only.

[Aldrakan]

Wow. That's a big deja vu from back when 4E was released, when WOTC demanded that everybody stop printing 3E material forever, and that third parties would cede all IP rights to WOTC, and would destroy all their D&D books if WOTC asked them to. And this caused a lot of backlash and directly led to Paizo abandoning D&D and starting Pathfinder as the replacement...

The funniest part was Paizo responded by announcing their own version of the OGL (ORC), as though saying "hey remember when you made a big misstep and we went from being one of your 3pps to your largest competitor by providing an alternative? Well, we do".