Paizo, the company behind the popular Pathfinder tabletop RPG, has released the first draft of the Open RPG Creative (ORC) license, an initiative aimed at fostering collaboration and innovation within the gaming industry. Announced in January, the ORC license is supported by an alliance of over 1,500 tabletop RPG publishers and is intended for use across various games and platforms, not solely as a Paizo license.
To develop and refine the draft, Paizo has been working closely with Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that collaborates with several game publishers. The current working draft of the ORC license is available for download, along with a FAQ/AxE (Answers and Explanations) document that addresses common questions.
Paizo encourages public feedback on the draft via the official Discord, with Azora Law collecting comments and suggestions until Friday, April 21. Following this deadline, the feedback will be incorporated into an updated draft. If necessary, additional rounds of public commentary will be conducted until a final version of the license is satisfactory for the majority of participating publishers. Paizo aims to complete this process by the end of April.
The ORC license allows creators to incorporate it into their products, giving others the freedom to create modules and associated content for the original system. This arrangement benefits both parties by providing a clear legal framework that is not controlled by any specific developer, including Paizo itself.
Paizo’s commitment to the ORC license comes after Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, faced controversy in January regarding changes to its own ORC. Despite Wizards of the Coast eventually reversing the changes, Paizo continued to develop its ORC in collaboration with Azora Law. The hope is that the ORC license will enable the sharing of common game mechanics across the tabletop gaming space without fear of copyright infringement.
Comments