I realize that I've devoted too many posts to this issue lately, so this may be the last one for a while. Plus, I don't know that I have anything else meaningful to say after this is done or not.
I have a funny relationship with Paizo. I mean, one-sided, of course. They don't know who I am. I like some of what they've done, and I like their attitude of stepping up to "save" D&D from WotC back in the 4e and GSL debacle. Ultimately, this led to the creation of the Pathfinder game, which created enough meaningful competition for WotC that they rapidly (relatively speaking) shifted gears and produced 5e, which was—from what I gather—a crowd pleaser. It looks like Paizo are at it again, not only drawing a legal line in the sand that the OGL cannot be "deauthorized" and bringing on board their own legal counsel to assert that opinion—legal counsel who ironically was WotCs legal counsel and writer of the original OGL that WotC is now asserting that they can cancel, but also created a new, more iron-clad version of the OGL, that they're calling ORC. (I didn't ask them if ORC is supposed to represent a black guy, but what can I say? It's been a busy couple of days.)
This is pretty admirable. I don't really care about questions of "the D&D community" and I think people who get too wrapped up in using their hobbies as their identity are making poor life choices in general, but valuing that community and being willing to do stuff to protect it are admirable nonetheless. Besides, that community is Paizo's customer base and their business model depends upon its health.
That said, I don't really care for very much of Paizo's products. Not only are the adventure paths not the kind of product that I like, and I've highlighted that many times here, even facepalming when they had a side-bar that said that although railroading is bad and nobody likes it, you should do it here; just be subtle about it so your players don't know that you're railroading them. Ghastly design.
I've never been a particular fan of their systems either. I was already over 3.5 and its Byzantine over-regulated environment. Not that 4e was what I wanted either, but when Paizo decided to make Pathfinder be 3.5 except even more 3.5ish, I knew that I was going to have to part ways with them system-wise. Their more newly released 2e might be better, but I still doubt that it's gone in a direction that I'm interested in; I think their designers are just too system-junkie and tactics-minded to ever produce anything that I'd be very interested in playing.
Whatever. The same applies to almost anyone, though. I have my own homebrew system that I'd prefer to use anyway, and I'm not going to be very pleased with running anything else ever again other than that. I really don't need any RPG product anymore, honestly, although I am still interested in stuff that inspires me with good ideas that I can borrow or adapt. The more "system agnostic" and "fluffy" a product is, the more likely I am to enjoy it. I don't think that this perspective is common, but it applies to everything for me no matter who makes it. It applies to the WotC campaigns that I've read, like Saltmarsh or Curse of Strahd, it applies to Paizo adventure paths, or Kobold Press's Midgard setting material, or anything else that I might stumble across in the RPG environment. I'm much less interested in mechanics—I literally have almost no more use for them at all at this point—and much more interested in the softer side of products, because they at least (potentially) give me something to work with. Not that the "fantasy superhero furries" vibe of a lot of this newer material is very intriguing to me, but sometimes someone manages to publish stuff that works regardless.
That said—Paizo's other big problem from a product standpoint is their egregious, incredibly obnoxious wokeness. And this, of course, makes even their softer stuff very hard to like or work with. To be fair, few products outside of the OSR don't suffer from this, however. and I'm not super interested in the OSR for other reasons. And even then, you can't get away from wokeness even in the OSR or OSR-adjacent stuff. I like a lot of Professer Dungeon Master's videos, but even he talks about "safety protocols" with a straight face and admits that most of his players are die-hard feminists. Talking about safety protocols for an activity that is inherently not in the least dangerous is stupid and obnoxious beyond all reason. This isn't a gun range or a bull-riding paddock, its your kitchen table and you're having a conversation with your friends and rolling some dice. The only safety you need to worry about is accidentally choking on a Cheetoh while laughing at something one of your players did.
Of course, WotC is full of weirdos and SJWs too. In fact, as much as gamers often bristle and get defensive at the notion that "normies" think that they're a bunch of real weirdos, I have to wonder if all those "normies" aren't right. My experience with the game is mostly that I've played with normal people all along, but I think the normal people, to the extent that many of them are left, tend to gravitate towards the OSR, or OSR-adjacency. I don't know the last time I saw an OSRian talk about his pronouns. And I don't know the last time I tried to look for a decent Pathfinder or D&D actual play podcast or videocast that had pronouns where there wasn't at least one if not multiple weirdos who couldn't figure out how the English language does pronouns, and had something strange listed. Of course... physiognomy is real. One glance and it didn't surprise me that the person in question was seriously confused about their sexuality.
I actually wonder sometimes how much I really want to be a gamer, and certainly how much I want to associate with the gamer community. I like gaming, and I like talking and blogging about gaming, but I have little in common with "the community" and less interest in knowing more about these people beyond their game. Just because I like gaming and blog about it doesn't mean that "gamer" is my identity. There are all kinds of other things more important to me with regards to my identity than my hobbies, and even if we do get down to hobbies, I think "hiker" would be at least as much a part of my identity as gamer, if not more.
Anyway, long story short (too late!) I doubt I have anything else that needs to be said about the OGL situation. I already don't play 5e, and I only have some of the books for background reading—mostly campaigns, because I can borrow any system neutral ideas out of those, when they manage to have good ideas. And the quality of those books and how useful they would be has gone downhill over time. Heck, even Curse of Strahd, largely considered the pinnacle of 5e campaign design, was a reworking of older material that was released in (at least) 1e and 3e before being released in 5e. Paizo, as noted, isn't doing much that I love either, although at least their content is new, if not necessarily innovative or exciting. I don't really care what happens to D&D as a brand, nor do I care about any competitors to it. I'm not likely to use them for anything for the foreseeable future.
Of course, while I'm typing this, I'm seeing more information from WotC: specifically a lying, gaslighting, much delayed response to the backlash. Surprise, surprise... they're the same as the kind of lying, gaslighting stuff that Hollywood corporations, financial corporations, and everyone else says. Nobody trusts this nonsense anymore. I'm curious to watch this play out, but it's just academic, schadenfreude kind of curiosity. I don't actually care about the resolution very much. And that just validates my approach. To heck with them all; I'm going my own way.
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