> It is my understanding, however, that Pathfinder Second Edition is pretty much a full rewrite and only includes the OGL as a way for third parties to build content around Pathfinder Second Edition.
Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them? And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast? If they used the OGL to allow third-parties for Pathfinder, not D&D, what does this have to do with WotC? And cannot they simply switch to another license, if 2nd edition is truly a full rewrite?
There's something I'm definitely missing here.
Lawyers cost money.
> And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast?
The theory is that they are not.
> If they used the OGL to allow third-parties for Pathfinder, not D&D, what does this have to do with WotC?
People point out that the PF2 works have OGL licenses.
I'm sure we'll all find out in the coming weeks/months
Why would they when there's a well-known and (before recent events) fully trusted license already established within the community?
Even if all the actors in this dramedy are profit-driven businesses, I can't wrap my head around the OGL not being driven by a consortium. How on earth does WotC have final say?
In any case, they are probably regretting it now. I hope this sets a precedent.
Not necessarily. In software we have the MIT license. Anyone can freeze any version of the product and use/distribute it freely in perpetuity regardless of whatever relicensing may happen later to other versions.
It sounds like the OGL was written in that spirit. Whether its legal language will back that up in court, maybe we'll find out.
When you release software under an open source license such as those, you are not using a license designed and solely controlled by your business competitor!
The OGL situation would be like Microsoft releasing Windows under a license designed and solely controlled by Apple.
I see the new management of Wizards of the Coast as now arguing that "the OGL was never meant to fund competitors [to D&D's owners]". It seems they are echoing my sentiments!
Whether what they are attempting is lawful is besides the issue: what matters is that Paizo and whoever wouldn't be at risk had they not chosen a license designed by -- and completely controlled by -- their business competition!
Of course, but that's not what happens when you use someone else's license at all. And no, whoever used OGL with their project is not at any risk at all - unless they used or made derivative works of existing WotC's content licensed under OGL, in which case they had no other choice than to use OGL anyway.
> Of course, but that's not what happens when you use someone else's license at all. And no, whoever used OGL with their project is not at any risk at all - unless they used or made derivative works of existing WotC's content licensed under OGL, in which case they had no other choice than to use OGL anyway.
Other people in this comments section are arguing otherwise! Whose interpretation should I trust? Yours? Theirs? Wizards'?
The issue with Pathfinder is that it was a derivative work of D&D, and although it has been rewritten since it's not clear whether the rewrite still is or not. If it is, then it couldn't be licensed on anything else than OGL and may be affected by OGL 1.1; if it's not, then it's simply unaffected by OGL 1.1 (or at least not in a way that will cause any troubles), since it's not up to WotC to decide how is this work being licensed.
Yes, they are. Use CTRL+F to find out. People here are arguing this can be interpreted to impact even games that are unrelated to D&D mechanics or setting. People are freaking out in a sense that would seem disproportionate if this only affected Paizo.
Also, please read the open letter mentioned in the link.
Of course, feel free to argue with them (either the commenters here or with the authors of the letter) if you want, but please not with me: I'm the one asking questions, not offering explanations.
To guard myself from such situation, I'd have to state that I'm licensing it under OGL 1.0a only, at a cost of potentially making it incompatible with content released on a future version of the license - just like some GPL projects do (most notably Linux, which is GPLv2-only).
> I'm the one asking questions, not offering explanations.
And I'm offering explanations :)
Microsoft also publishes software under open-source licenses [0]. The license is short and well-understood, it's not like a large piece of software that might contain backdoors. Also, people trust(-ed) that license.
> If you can do a major rules rewrite [...], surely you have the know-how to design your own license?
Yes, but you'd just end up with a similarly worded license that people don't know. Why spend that money?
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but I can easily see why they decided against that. Also, Paizo is probably sufficiently funded by now that suing them is a bit dangerous for WotC, as they risk a bad precedent.
[0] Which are not necessarily competitors, but might also not be friendly towards MS.
Until not that long ago, Microsoft considered open source licenses a "cancer". While they have changed their stance since then, I'm sure they did some major risk assessment and have safeguards in place of the kind a company like Paizo simply isn't capable of. More importantly, the core MS line of products isn't licensed with a license they don't control.
"Not necessarily competitors" makes all the difference here! This is not a minor detail, but a major one. Look at how Wizards of the Coast is framing the issue, and I quote them [0]:
> “the Open Game License was always intended to allow the community to help grow D&D and expand it creatively. It wasn’t intended to subsidize major competitors, especially now that PDF is by far the most common form of distribution.”
and
> “OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.”
[0] source: https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-ga...
Maybe, but a license is just an agreement between two parties on how they can use a copyrighted work. And in the original text, there was no means for WotC to revoke the license from other companies. It would be like if you released software using GPL2, then the GNU project released GPL3 which was much more restrictive, required you to pay rms for any software you release and tried to claim that anything licensed with GPL2 was now licensed with GPL3. You'd think that crazy, and nobody would be asking you why you released software with a license you didn't design.
Yes, but that's not so hard to imagine, it's basically:
Imagine the GPL is issued by a for-profit company not an ideological nonprofit, and imagine the “X or any later versiom” clause is replaced by or “Any authorized version clause”, and imagine that the for-profit company decides that the use of the older versions are contrary to its existing interests?
Heck, there is a reason that even as it is written, and even with the FSF being a nonprofit with a stable ideology, some people, when licensing their own work, usd GPLvWhatever without the or-any-later version clause.
The FSF doesn't compete with your business and doesn't want a cut of your business.
Moreover, if you are going to use a license designed by a competing business for your main line of products (e.g. Pathfinder) you better make sure your competitor is not the sole arbiter of that license! A consortium of businesses would make more sense.
No? This kind of thing happens all the time with various kinds of contracts, e.g. in finance if one bank comes up with some kind of instrument most of their competitors will try to follow the same thing. It's like asking why would you use a file format designed by a direct business competitor.
The bank analogy also doesn't match. A closer analogy would be if your bank must use their competitor's installations and infrastructure, and risk bankruptcy whenever the competitor thinks they don't want to lend them their installations anymore.
Using your direct competitor's license, fully under their control, is closer to handing them the keys to your company for no obvious benefit, right?
No it isn't? The license is just the contractual agreement. Like, I'm not sure if the second bank to offer overnight repurchase agreements literally copied the first one's contract and just changed their name, but they certainly could've, and that's been normal practice with some newer financial products.
> Using your direct competitor's license, fully under their control, is closer to handing them the keys to your company for no obvious benefit, right?
No, not at all? How is it "under their control"? They can publish a new version of it but that has nothing to do with you unless you want it to.
> No, not at all? How is it "under their control"? They can publish a new version of it but that has nothing to do with you unless you want it to.
It is under their control because they are the only ones that can modify, add or remove provisions to the license. This is like a file format where only one company can determine the standard: it sucks for everyone else! At best you're playing catch-up, at worst the owner can bar you from using the format. A consortium would be less risky.
And apparently the current situation shows it was very risky indeed!
Hold on, we're just talking about the license, aren't we? I thought the question was about why they were using the OGL, which is very much just the legalese/contract.
Some people seem to think the OGL is the "blood" of these third party companies, without which their business model doesn't exist. Surprisingly -- but I have trouble believing this -- some think OGL-licensed games are at risk even if they are unrelated to the D&D franchise and its gameplay mechanics (I hope this is just a misunderstanding!).
But let's say this is just legalese. Does it seem wise to let your core product be sold under contractual terms defined by your direct business competitor, which by their own admission has no interest in "funding the competition"? (they've been quoted saying this).
I think it's probably fine. Like, if WotC is willing to sell their product on these terms, it's probably safe for me to sell my product on the same terms, especially if we're direct competitors. Obviously there's a risk, but there's a risk in not competing too. Compare price matching.
The most reasonable opinion I have read on this is that Paizo themselves are not entirely convinced the second edition can be legally seen as an untainted full rewrite and use the OGL out of precaution.
They should be able to relicense but Hasbro might sue them arguing actually the licensing situation isn’t that clear.
Why do organizations other than the FSF use the GPL?
The OGL doesn't look much like the GPL. Wizards of the Coast is a business in direct competition to others using the OGL. It's also crazy that something under the OGL falls in WotC's jurisdiction even if it uses no rules or settings from D&D -- I must have misunderstood this because this is simply too crazy to be true.
GNU can and has changed the rules of one of their licenses. Specifically the GFDL 1.3 was released to allow all the wikis licensed under GFDL 1.1+/GFDL1.2+ to migrate to CC-BY-SA.
This is arguably a case of using the power for good, but fear of them using the power for bad is exactly why e.g. Linux is GPLv2-only rather than GPLv2-or-later
If you publish something under an X+ license, aren't you effectively saying "the conditions of this or a later revision apply"? You are willingly choosing to use this version or a later one. So if a later one changes one of the provisions of the prior version, this isn't a retroactive change but something you explicitly wanted when you used version X+. Version X isn't changed at all, it's just that you explicitly said you accepted version X+1 whenever it became available.
Is this the same situation with the OGL and Paizo? Is Pathfinder licensed under OGL version X+? Seems... unwise. Not like the GPL or whatever, because the GPL is not aimed at restricting your business success and is not designed by your direct business competitor!
Yes.
There are two reasons for this, one is that the first edition of pathfinder had to be, because it used material from D&D 3.5, and then the second edition didn't want to break compatibility with the first edition's ecosystem, and the second is it would violate the copyright of the OGL itself to use a modified version without an "or later version" clause. The same would be true for the GPL, except the GPL expressly provides a mechanism to choose to use the or later clause or not.
In hindsight, it looks like a terrible decision for Pathfinder to have accepted those terms. Had I been then, I would have made an entirely new game "in the spirit" of 3.5 but starting from scratch. I guess they opted for the more appealing route of trying to more directly appeal to disgruntled fans or D&D, and now they are facing the downsides of that. It sucks, agreed.
I guess this is a lesson about the risks of trying to ride another company's success instead of making your own thing. And yes, it happens with software as well.
(I'm still not convinced this will affect companies/games using the OGL for things entirely unrelated to D&D. That'd be surreal!)
Does OGL 1.1 mean that /all/ branches are affected?
The software equivalent would be if the FSF found some sneaky legalese, and came out with a hostile GPL 5 and simultaneously invalidated all previous versions of the GPL. Thus rendering everyone pre-v5 unable to publish going forward, with the only recourse to “upgrade” to the new version.
It’s sick, and likely not legal, but in the D&D example Hasbro have a much bigger legal team than the people they are trying to bully. So the threat of a potentially expensive lawsuit to force small fish into a legally dubious license.
I don't know their exact reasoning, but I always add licenses when publishing software I write, and they always are ones I didn't design (because I've never written a license myself). I don't think it's that crazy to use an established license that seems to be working well in a community you'd like to emulate when trying to launch you're own; I doubt Paizo had any more idea than the rest of us that WotC would pull something like this.
> And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast? If they used the OGL to allow third-parties for Pathfinder, not D&D, what does this have to do with WotC? And cannot they simply switch to another license, if 2nd edition is truly a full rewrite?
My (admittedly primitive) understanding of licensing was that once something was released publicly with an indefinite license, it generally wouldn't be possible to retract that later. The copyright holder can change licenses as they see fit, but nobody will be bound by the new license unless they accept it or use a new version of the product that doesn't offer the old license. This leads me to theorize that one of a few things could be going on here:
1. The new version of the OGL (1.1) disallows you to continue using the old version (1.0) once you start using something with it. If this turns out to be the case, then people would be able to continue using the materials as-is at the last point where the OGL 1.0 was offered, but they wouldn't be able to use any future changes without accepting version 1.1 as a replacement for all of the preexisting content as well. WotC might have only intended this, but due to poor communications and/or wording in the license change, people got worried and then the narrative got out of control 2. The license works like I described in option 1 due to WotC knowing that they can't actually retroactively change the license for people already using it, but they intentionally obfuscated this to try to scare people into switching to using the new version even if they shouldn't technically have to * The license does actually a say that it's overriding the previous one, which is not actually something a license is supposed to be able to. WotC either doesn't realize this or is hoping that in a legal battle they either can either prolong it to starve their opponents of resources or manage to convince a judge to rule against the existing consensus and establish a new precedent.
I think that option 2 is the most likely by a slight margin, but I might be biased as someone who played PF1 and now plays PF2. Option 3 would be the scariest to me given that a prolonged legal battle seems like it would be the most insulated from public opinion, which I think is mostly against the new license right now.
I understand this, but you don't use licenses designed by your business competitors whose main product is in direct competition to your own. The analogy here would be Microsoft using a license designed by Apple for Windows and MS Office! Or whatever their major line of products is nowadays.
A software platform is not a license. But also, Apple moved to GCP, problem solved. This doesn't seem to be the same situation as Paizo's, is it?
It also doesn't change the fact that Wizards could argue they have an OGL v1.0a+ license, and use OGL v1.1 to put pathfinder 1e srd on their new vtt without paying paizo for example
If I were Paizo I would sever Pathfinder entirely from the OGL, especially if they rewrote their game from scratch, and ask modules writers to switch to the new licensing. But what do I know?
Let's imagine a scenario:
1. Paizo releases Pathfinder 1E. It's uses material from D&D 3.5 SRD which requires it to use the OGL.
2. A third party releases a campaign for pathfinder 1E. It uses material from pathfinder 1E which requires it to use the OGL
3. Paizo releases Pathfinder 2E. They change to CC BY-SA for their open components.
4. I now want to update that campaign to the 2E rules. But the original campaign publication insists I must use OGL, and Pathfinder 2E insists I use CC BY-SA and now I cannot.
I think a mix of (a) the scenario above, (b) legal CYA in case it was found Pathfinder 2E was too close to 3.5e material and (c) using what they're used to led to the decision to continue to use OGL for Pathfinder 2E.
All the "fun" of software licensing, only for pen and paper games. It's like we are already in hell.
I understand the dedication to 3.5 - it was years, if not decades of experience, commitment, and buy in. It can’t be helped to see the several editions since as desperate effort to get more sales from WoTC
If you just want to perform improv-roleplay out some scenarios, then Dread is probably the best. The only action the players do is:
1. Pull piece out of the Jenga Tower
2. Roleplay the result (success == You succeeded at the current situation. Tower-falls == you die).
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There's better systems out there (aka: Dread) if you really just wanted simplicity. World of Darkness is probably the more mainstream "simple / roleplay heavy" game of importance. (Dread is perhaps overly simple, but that's the point of it. Its basically improv / roleplaying simulator and that alone)
D&D, for all of its faults, is a fully specified battle simulator. It doesn't mean that everything makes sense (what were the grapple rules again?), but most everything has been thought out, and what "should happen" is often written down somewhere.
On the other hand, many people prefer improv / rules-free systems (like Dread, or World of Darkness to a lesser extent).
Anyway, there's plenty of other games. But the niche of D&D is the well specified set of rules of how magic and physical interact with each other. (This magical force field has X HP and 30 Hardness, interacting with your Adamantine sword that ignores hardness 20 and less, etc. etc.)
Still I’m firmly in the camp of those thinking D&D focus a lot of attention to the insanely boring and uninteresting part of role playing - aka how a sword interacts with a magic shield in excruciatingly tedious mathematical details - and very little attention to what’s actually fun which is, well, playing a role.
I think its rules, its prevalence and the fact it’s mostly played in somewhat bland heroic fantasy settings have been a major turndown for a lot of people who would actually enjoy roleplaying so in a way I guess I should celebrate anything making it less popular.
Roleplayers are here for the improv / acting.
Rollplayers are here for the combat. D&D absolutely is combat focused.
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Lets take an example: When a Wizard casts Disintegrate, and a friendly Druid casts "Wall of Stone" to block it, what should happen? Are you interested in debating / improvising the result? Do you want it to be defined?
Improv players want this to be ill-defined. They want to make something up, depending on the current situation / feel of the game. If its a big boss fight and the Wizard is the evil big bad guy, maybe the Disintegrate goes through and hits the players. If its just some mook, maybe its a "weaker disintegrate" and gets blocked by the stone wall.
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This is terrible for combat / tacticians. A tactician wants to know that Disintegrate _always_ makes exactly a "one 10-foot cube" hole in the stone structure (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm), and always counters-and-dispels Force effects. Because the tactics + interactions have been agreed upon ahead of time, it means that the tactics of the game are focused. Its a battle closer to chess, or perhaps war-simulators / war-gaming, where you need to know what interacts with what, and how, to proceed.
You can't just make stuff up in a war-simulator. They need to have pre-defined actions. Knowing that this level 5 spell (Wall of Stone) can effectively counter a level 6 Disintegrate is an oddity in the hierarchy of magic (usually, you need an equal, or higher-level spell to counter other magic). But taking advantage of resource-management (they spend level 6 spell, you spend level 5 spell, so you have more resources left over afterwards) is just part of the game.
Alas, that's not how games work. Someone casts "Insanity", can it be removed with Dispel Magic? What about Antimagic Field? What happens if you kill the person, then resurrect them, do they come back with the insanity effect?
The story must go on. You either decide that you want it ill specified (ie: whoever improvs the best gets the decision), or you have a rulebook that carefully lays out the interactions.
You don't have to know the interactions. Simply knowledge that millions of other players have come across this game, and have likely already come across this situation and have analyzed the rules + made a decision is enough.
No person wants to memorize rulebooks. But we dungeon masters do so to ensure fairness in our decisions. If someone doesn't like the ruling, i can always point out the rulebook (or if not the rules, then an online discussion of a similar situation) that will settle the debate.
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Because if you know a thing about players, they will try everything to "Just for flavor, have that +5 Magic Sword on their Gorilla because its awesome" (when they really just want to roll more damage than everyone else in the party).
If I let the Druid effectively have twice the magic items of everyone and letting his pet-gorilla play a Fighter, then everyone else loses (because there's no way they can keep up with the damage output of a Gorilla using weapons locked to martial class). Martial weapons are locked to martial classes for a reason: those classes lose spellcasting but gain more damage to gain another role (the damage-dealing role) to play in this game.
In effect: the 1d8 fists of a Gorilla are there and balanced against the needs of everyone else. The Druid + Pet-Gorilla already play with two turns per... turn. They're already considered quite strong in the game, I as the dungeon master, need to know where "too much damage" starts to seep in and where "Improv rulebreaking" can start making the Druid stupidly overpowered.
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I've played with lots of "Improv" people. Even with their best interests at heart, the game innately becomes a "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show".
Maybe you don't do it, but *someone* in the group always tries to do this. You need to cut them down and restrict them so that their power level remains roughly on the same level as everyone else in the party. Knowing the limitations of spells, as well as the limitations of weapons, is a good starting point to ensuring fairness at the table.
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Going back to the top. Insanity is 7th level and is explicitly stated that only 7th level spells and above (like Limited Wish) can remove it. Trying to bullshit a 3rd level spell (Dispel Magic) into removing Insanity means that the Wizards / Sorcerers become overpowered, relative to the abilities of everyone else. You have to make them spend a 7th level slot to heal this particular curse.
Plenty of games work this way thankfully.
What you describe after is hell. That’s exactly what I hate about RPG. You don’t have to care about balancing power level and people “bullshiting“ their powers if your game simply doesn’t have these mechanics. I don’t want to have to play through a detailed combats ever especially in a heroic fantasy setting. That’s as far removed from fun a situation as I can imagine.
It’s interesting because our discussion makes it obvious that there are entirely orthogonal way of enjoying RPG with next to no overlap.
D&D is not only tedious to me, it's also a "mechanicist" (for lack of a better word) approach to fantasy. It's rules-based rather than fun-based. It doesn't tell a story, it tells how spell X interacts with weapon Y and how to read charts and stats. A fight in movies doesn't happen like that, the flow and thrill is entirely different.
I'm ok rolling dice, it's fun! But give me a result fast and make it narratively meaningful, nothing breaks immersion like arguing whether a level 35 Pastamancer can cast Fireball against a level 5 shield of enchanted wood.
If we look at real life games, such as Fencing... and less "combat" like games, like Football or Baseball, we end up with huge rule systems to fairly resolve conflicts.
One can say "I just want to throw a ball and have fun". But there is no _GAME_ here. If you want to play "Basketball", and get good at "Basketball", it becomes very important to define a fowl.
Same thing in the D&D world. You may not necessarily have to define what is or isn't a fowl in your games, but should combat grow intense and adversarial, then it becomes a necessity.
I disagree about your sports analogy. D&D is the worst possible engine to simulate the fast paced flow of a sports game.
Or a fight. It's a mechanistic simulation, way too emphasis on interactions between low level rules. It's like attempting to design a good soccer game by writing lots of rules about the physics of the ball, how each bristle of the grass interacts with the ball, how the materials of the shoe affect the kick -- and all of this must be consulted in several charts every time there is a kick!
A wargame designer I know once put it like this: if your rules take an your of play to simulate something that in real life takes a few minutes, you are doing something wrong!
> The story must go on. You either decide that you want it ill specified (ie: whoever improvs the best gets the decision), or you have a rulebook that carefully lays out the interactions.
> You don't have to know the interactions. Simply knowledge that millions of other players have come across this game, and have likely already come across this situation and have analyzed the rules + made a decision is enough.
You need a way to resolve conflicts. But that doesn't need to be some kind of zillion-layer spell simulation game (and in fact I'd argue that that just lends itself to its own kind of bullshitting, where people find ways to do things like the peasant railgun or locate city nuke).
> Going back to the top. Insanity is 7th level and is explicitly stated that only 7th level spells and above (like Limited Wish) can remove it. Trying to bullshit a 3rd level spell (Dispel Magic) into removing Insanity means that the Wizards / Sorcerers become overpowered, relative to the abilities of everyone else. You have to make them spend a 7th level slot to heal this particular curse.
OK so why bother having specific named spells with specific mechanics? Just say that guy's a level 7 wizard so his spell has strength 7+d6, my guy's a level 3 wizard so my spell has strength 3+d6, we make our rolls and the explanation of what happens (he bewitches my mate to make him insane and I try to dispel it) is purely flavour? That's no less objective, no less easy to be fair about (in fact it gives me far fewer avenues to try and bullshit you), but it doesn't require us to go memorize a textbook's worth of spell names and interactions.
Think about how you as a DM resolve non-combat conflicts in D&D - I want to persude the King's council to do this, another party member wants to blackmail the chancellor to vote against me - something that's a far more interesting part of most RPG games than "the party kills all the orcs". Why isn't that worth simulating in all this mechanical detail? Or is it that simulating it in such detail wouldn't actually enhance the experience? Then why not treat combat the same way?
Which doesn't exist in the game. When the last peasant lets go of the object, it falls to the grown on the same square as the peasant.
It only becomes "bullshit", when the improv player comes in and argues that because the object traveled 500-squares in less than 5-seconds, it must be going at X speed or Y momentum and carries forward.
But that's just bullshit. There's nothing in 3.5 that discusses "momentum", or "acceleration". It is "It is a move action to hand an object to another player". That's the rule.
People who mess with shenanigans are the problem, including peasant railgunners.
This is very much not an improv-player attitude IME; improv-players mostly want in-genre things to happen. When you simulate the nuts and bolts, you're more likely to attract the kind of player who sees that as an abstract puzzle to optimize and does so.
(And I note you skipped the Locate City nuke, I guess because that does work in-game? Fundamentally rule-based magic systems tend to be exploitable, because if you want the kind of things that fictional magic does in-genre to be possible, you have to make your magic be able to do impossible things, but the rules that allow that will tend to allow other impossible things which are more min-maxable).
> People who mess with shenanigans are the problem, including peasant railgunners.
Sure. My point is that adding more detailed mechanics does nothing to deter that; quite the opposite.
Hardly. Everyone likes to pretend "they're just in it for the story", but in my experience, they just want to give themselves advantages in my experience.
> And I note you skipped the Locate City nuke
3.5 is known to be pretty busted. I'm not aware of this sequence of events being possible in Pathfinder, which is my preferred crunch.
There are certainly busted things in Pathfinder (see Summoner). But upon recognition, I talk with the player and we work something out. (see Summoner Unchained).
If something is busted and truly too much for the system to handle, I stomp down as dungeon master. That's my duty above all, to ensure fairness in the game.
Meh, at some point the only solution is "get better players". I've had if anything the opposite problem, with players who enjoy doing a dramatic death scene so much that they'd rush to these moments of sacrifice and loss even when they weren't really necessary. Improv-oriented players as I know them enjoy telling a story and are there for that; the problem you get is every player trying to hog the narrative spotlight (often with their moments of tragic suffering) rather than every player trying to be more powerful than the others.
If your players are anything like my players, they'll cast Dominate Person on the King's Council. I'll have to note with them that the King's Council are elite and therefore expected to have Mind Blank, offering them immunity to their attempts.
They can work with persuasion, but if they are under the effect of Glibness, the King's Wizard would be able to see Glibness as an aura. The King's Paladin may use Zone of Truth to counteract the effects of Glibness, or maybe point out Glibness as "cheating" in the King's Court.
(Mind Blank doesn't help vs Glibness. Glibness simply makes the party's Bard's lies more believable. Its not an actual enchantment upon the King's Court, but instead a "buff" given to the Bard. So additional levels of security for the King's Guard are needed.)
As such, the battle of spells, trust, and other such interactions becomes a game. How well have the players prepared for the social encounter? Are they trying to use spells to "cheat"? How are the king's guards, Wizards, and Clerics trying to prevent the cheating?
Should I let the players get away with cheating? Well, I don't decide. I let the dice decide. As well as the rules that the game are around.
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Maybe the party is able to successfully hide the Glibness through some means. If they thought through their attempts to +40 Bluff check to convince the King's court of their intentions, I will grant them the +40 bluff check.
But if their Glibness / attempts at cheating are discovered, I'll grant a heavy penalty (-15) to their interactions for the rest of court.
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Players _WILL_ attempt to cheat (aka: use a spell to "solve") social encounters. This is just part of the game, and part of the fun. Are you, the dungeon master, ready to offer them a proper game of wits and preparation?
> OK so why bother having specific named spells with specific mechanics? Just say that guy's a level 7 wizard so his spell has strength 7+d6, my guy's a level 3 wizard so my spell has strength 3+d6, we make our rolls and the explanation of what happens (he bewitches my mate to make him insane and I try to dispel it) is purely flavour? That's no less objective, no less easy to be fair about (in fact it gives me far fewer avenues to try and bullshit you), but it doesn't require us to go memorize a textbook's worth of spell names and interactions.
Notice the above interactions. Glibness, despite level 3, avoids the Mind Blank preparation. Mind Blank does protect vs the more direct forms of enchantment (ex: Suggestion, Dominate Person, Geass), but it isn't a complete defense for the King's guard.
Of course, maybe the King's Dragon simply casts Anti-magic field and negates all magical preparations for the encountrer.
Note that Artifacts (aka: items from god) are immune vs mortal magic, and are one able to avoid the effects of Anti-magic field. This is where the DM has an opportunity to override the rules of the system and provide a story. (You can, at any time, "win the bullshit" fest by declaring an item a special artifact).
But you want to ensure that if you ever do declare a god-level artifact in play, that the players "saw it coming" to an extent (foreshadowing), or otherwise works in your story.
This is far more tactical, and even story-driven, than rolling a d6 and saying "my dice was higher than yours therefore I win".
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A skilled DM will also do this when its story-appropriate. I would _NEVER_ have an Orc-King's court pull these shenanigans (outside of maybe one Half-Orc Cleric who the players would be familiar with). But the opposite problem may happen, the Orc-King, upon losing an argument to skill alone, may claim the adventurers were cheating at the argument/debate through magic and it'd be up to the players to prove (to a non-magical being) that they were in fact, not using magic.
Etc. etc.
With skill, you can setup good stories more easily through these interactions.
> Players _WILL_ attempt to cheat (aka: use a spell to "solve") social encounters. This is just part of the game, and part of the fun. Are you, the dungeon master, ready to offer them a proper game of wits and preparation?
> This is far more tactical, and even story-driven, than rolling a d6 and saying "my dice was higher than yours therefore I win".
Yes and no. You can offer the players a tactical game of spells, but to the extent that you folow the standard rules this is inherently an abstract puzzle, not really any more attached to the story than rolling a die. Some players enjoy puzzling out a magic system, but many do not. And to the extent that you make it depend on story-relevant artifacts, the rules framework isn't really helping you set things up.
How do the players "win" or "solve" the puzzle? Either they make the sensible, competent, mainstream move - which is fine, but not really narratively relevant and not worth spending a lot of time on - or they find a loophole in your magic system (or in the border between your magic system and common sense), which will almost certainly be against narrative and genre, and you'll have to either allow it or disallow it and either one is pretty unsatisfying - or they notice specifics of the story you've been foreshadowing - something you can do just as well without a standard mechanical magic system. (Yes, if you're very skilled then maybe you can work with the logic-puzzle approach and create an artifact which interacts in a novel way with some standard spell, and the player spots a way to use that that you intended. But more likely they spot a different, more powerful interaction than the one you meant for them to, and then we're back to finding a loophole in the magic system).
> With skill, you can setup good stories more easily through these interactions.
Maybe. In my experience even in genre fiction the best stories aren't, and shouldn't, really be about the magic or the tactics - they're about the deep human themes, trust, betrayal, arrogance and all that Shakespearean stuff. Gandalf fighting the Balrog isn't about him realising that Moria stone was carved by the dwarves and would be vulnerable to magic, it's about him realising that this enemy is undefeatable and sacrificing himself for the sake of his fellows.
The best and most satisfying way for a player to "win" or "solve" a scenario, IME, is a) for them to notice setting or character details that they can exploit (maybe the younger prince is jealous of the elder? Maybe the chancellor is obeying the tenets of a less-popular faith that a party member has ties to?) or b) them to come up with something creative that I hadn't thought of but that is still genre-appropriate and sufficiently "realistic". And I don't think a detailed mechanics system helps a lot with either of those, because at the end of the day either the detailed mechanics system gives you an answer that lines up with common sense or it gives you one that doesn't, and either way it's not helping much.
Through fun, ultimately. Maybe its fun if they don't win.
So they try something, they fail. Its just a social encounter, now the King's guard is distrustful of them and the story continues. No biggie, I can handle that as a dungeon master.
Win or lose, the story continues. The importance is that the players have agency in the process, as well as knowing the limits of their own powers and capabilities.
> The best and most satisfying way for a player to "win" or "solve" a scenario, IME, is a) for them to notice setting or character details that they can exploit (maybe the younger prince is jealous of the elder? Maybe the chancellor is obeying the tenets of a less-popular faith that a party member has ties to?) or b) them to come up with something creative that I hadn't thought of but that is still genre-appropriate and sufficiently "realistic". And I don't think a detailed mechanics system helps a lot with either of those, because at the end of the day either the detailed mechanics system gives you an answer that lines up with common sense or it gives you one that doesn't, and either way it's not helping much.
Or they could just... ya know... beat me (the Dungeon Master / chief antagonist) in the game. Or defeat the foes that I've laid out before them.
Generally speaking, social encounters shouldn't be high risk. The high-risk actions in my experience should be combat. If the players die, they know trouble will happen as the bad guys move forward and wreck the kingdom or whatever.
> Maybe. In my experience even in genre fiction the best stories aren't, and shouldn't, really be about the magic or the tactics - they're about the deep human themes, trust, betrayal, arrogance and all that Shakespearean stuff. Gandalf fighting the Balrog isn't about him realising that Moria stone was carved by the dwarves and would be vulnerable to magic, it's about him realising that this enemy is undefeatable and sacrificing himself for the sake of his fellows.
I don't need a story to play Axis and Allies.
> The importance is that the players have agency in the process, as well as knowing the limits of their own powers and capabilities.
Sure; my point was: what is it that makes the difference between the players winning or losing? If it's about whether they spotted (narratively relevant) connections, understood things, had good ideas, that's interesting. If it's about whether they had a clever leap of genre-appropriate logic, that's interesting. If it's about whether they solved an abstract logic puzzle, that's less interesting; if it's about whether they out-argue you or browbeat you that's deeply uninteresting. But distinguishing between "came up with a clever way to use the detailed abstract magic system" and "came up with some bullshit" is, if anything, harder than distinguishing between "came up with a clever piece of imaginative improv" and "came up with some bullshit"; better for a powergamer to come up with something stylish and genre-appropriate that benefits them than for them to find some bizarre spell interaction that does something absurd that benefits them.
(If it's about whether they rolled higher or lower that's not really interesting, but it's quick and avoids interrupting the flow, so that's fine for a low-stakes moment. Certainly making one roll for a narratively unimportant encounter is better than making dozens).
> Generally speaking, social encounters shouldn't be high risk. The high-risk actions in my experience should be combat.
Why? D&D pushes you towards doing it that way, but it's not narratively satisfying. Making a lot of dice rolls can give a certain kind of player the illusion that they had agency in winning or losing (particularly important if you want them to accept the death of their character), but in reality it all averages out and who wins a given combat is largely a question of what everyone's stats look like going into it. (Or you allow the players to come up with tactics that you consider clever enough to give them advantages - but then we're back to you having to judge whether they've come up with something good or some bullshit).
> I don't need a story to play Axis and Allies, Chess, Go, or a myriad of other games though. When playing an adversarial game with my friends, its not about story. Its about combat and adversaries.
Right - but roleplaying and adversarial games go poorly together. If a game is adversarial then players have to do mechanically optimal things (and, as you say, will look for every excuse to give their characters a mechanical advantage) rather than the narratively interesting things. Why should a player to try to act in-character when it can only disadvantage them?
Because D&D is a combat board game.
If you want to play roleplaying, try Dread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_(role-playing_game)
> Making a lot of dice rolls can give a certain kind of player the illusion that they had agency in winning or losing (particularly important if you want them to accept the death of their character), but in reality it all averages out and who wins a given combat is largely a question of what everyone's stats look like going into it. (Or you allow the players to come up with tactics that you consider clever enough to give them advantages - but then we're back to you having to judge whether they've come up with something good or some bullshit).
That's like saying Chess or Backgammon isn't satisfying because you're just moving pieces around or rolling dice.
People can love the game itself. Positioning, selection of spells, cooperation with allies. Etc. etc. D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder is a good game at its core.
The same cannot be said of all systems of combat. (IE: World of Darkness). World of Darkness's dice seem more like a randomization element. But then again, this is a roleplaying game, rather than a rollplaying game.
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All the "roleplayer" wants is a random element. Someone to have randomly decided to have been the winner / loser, and then to roleplay the new situation. From this perspective, D&D is counterproductive.
So don't play D&D. Play the myriad of other, roleplay heavy games (like Dread, World of Darkness, Changeling, Vampire, etc. etc.). They're perfectly good games.
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> but it's not narratively satisfying
Don't turn D&D into something it isn't. If you're not satisfied by the combat of D&D, then do not play it. There are plenty of other games that have far better focus on the roleplaying aspect of this genre.
EDIT: Moods shift. Sometimes I feel like combat. I use D&D / Pathfinder / etc. etc. for that. Maybe Ikusa or Axis and Allies as well.
Sometimes I feel like roleplaying. I pull out World of Darkness instead
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Like, if the 400-pages of spell-interactions and obscure flanking rules is counterproductive to your enjoyment of the game... maybe don't choose that system? But I've derived plenty of enjoyment from these systems (3.5, Pathfinder, etc. etc.) so I can say its worthwhile... if you're into it. But don't force yourself to like it if you're not into it...
I enjoy playing Mordenheim-style small squad miniatures combat games (and that's what D&D is at its heart) on occasion. But I've never found a game that can succeed at being both a competitive game and a roleplaying game at the same time (not just RPG-style games, I had this problem with Android the board game too). One can't be a servant of two masters.
> So don't play D&D. Play the myriad of other, roleplay heavy games (like Dread, World of Darkness, Changeling, Vampire, etc. etc.). They're perfectly good games.
Right. You seemed to originally be claiming that having a less mechanically detailed, more roleplay-oriented system inherently made games less balanced and more unfair. "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show" is a problem in fully freeform systems, but you don't need a detailed combat system to resolve it; light systems where conflict is a simple roll (even WoD is a bit heavy for my tastes personally) handle fair conflict resolution just fine. (And I'd argue that they end up being fairer than mechanically heavy systems where the powergamers with min-maxed builds have an advantage over players who just picked a build that felt fun).
I've zero interest in LARP'ing or "acting" my role, but also zero interest in crunchy stats-heavy combat. I prefer light adventures with fast paced combat where not every fart is regulated by a chart. A Frostgrave level of complexity is about right for me; or Risus.
I do find narrative experimental games such as Trophy Dark appealing, but they may require too much from players.
Indeed: there are spells (Phantasmal Killer, Baleful Polymorph, Dominate Person, Power Word Kill, Banishment), that ends combat in a singular turn.
You're right in that 4e combat was much slower and purposeful. I'm... neutral to this. I can say that 3.5 / Pathfinder 1.0 combat is unusually brutal... to a non-intuitive degree. 3.5 / Pathfinder 1.0 heavily relies upon resurrection magic in practice due to its unusual brutality.
It felt like it was designed by people who thought the kids are playing World of Warcraft instead of D&D, and tried to design a game that would appeal to them with similar party roles and a layout of cards in front of you that perhaps would remind you of a WoW inventory with all its timers. The problem with that while the same people might want to play both a table-top RPGs session and raid night, they don't like them for the same reasons.
5e's approach was much smarter: simplify a few annoying things (like level 1 damage), tweak the design and add a bunch of cool stuff, but otherwise just let D&D be D&D and lean on marketing the aesthetic/nostalgia and the ability to play without needing to find someone local to teach it to you and your friends.
It is my understanding, however, that Pathfinder Second Edition is pretty much a full rewrite and only includes the OGL as a way for third parties to build content around Pathfinder Second Edition.
There are a great deal of adaptations, under the OGL, of the original 'Moldvay' Dungeons and Dragons BECMI rules (Basic and Expert rules from the 80s) and the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules as well.
As it was originally written, backed up by testimony from 'the guys in the room', the orignal OGL was to be considered 'unrevokeable'.
So there are kind of two bad scenarios if Hasbro/Wizards goes ahead with their current plans. One scenario is, OGL 1.1 applies to 'One D&D' and therefore you'd have to sign and abide the 1.1 OGL if you want to build content (and only 'textual printed/pdf content' if I'm reading it right) for 'One D&D'. The worse scenario is that they attempt to revote the 1.0 OGL which basically means a bunch on in-print content evaporates because their publishers do not want to deal with 1.1 OGL.
An extended wrinkle being that 'One D&D' based on their current plans seems to be more of a Edition 5.5 than a new ruleset entirely.