RPG: The Time Of The ORC Draws Near – Paizo Unveils First Draft Of New License
Looks like ORC’s back on the menu, as Paizo unveils the first draft of the new ORC License for RPGs. But will it best Creative Commons?
The ORC License is here. Paizo Publishing and Azora Law have released their first draft for the Open RPG Creative License, aka the ORC. The ORC was originally announced after the OGL debacle back in January. And now, just months after the roller coaster ride that ended with the entirety of D&D’s SRD 5.1 being released into Creative Commons, the first draft of the ORC is at hand.
It’s open for comment, lasting from now until April 21st. So without further ado, let’s dive right in to the time of the ORC.
First Draft of the ORC Licesne
Back in January, Paizo developed the ORC with Azora Law and an alliance of more than 1,500 tabletop RPG publishers. The ORC was to be a system-agnostic, perpetual, irrevocable license that provides a “safe harbor” for sharing rules and allowing for collaboration. Now the first draft is at hand. You can download the whole thing here and dig through for yourself.
Paizo has promised to “continue to refine the license and add to the FAQ based on public feedback provided on the official Discord,” noting that Azora will be taking comments through that platform. If more rounds of comment are required, that’s what we’ll get. In the meantime, here’s a look!
According to the official Answers and Explanations document, the ORC License is meant to be used by anyone, regardless of system. However, as you’ll note above, from just the first page, it looks a bit more complicated than the Creative Commons release. According to Paizo:
“We wish it were less complicated too. We opted for simplicity wherever possible but when we were faced with a decision between precision or simplicity, we opted for precision. We wish it was simpler but slicing copyright in half is challenging.”
You can read more answers and explanations here. But for now, the gist of it is that it’s intended for use with any sort of game, including Digital Rights usages, if you want to create a video game or whatever using an ORC licensed product, you’ve got guidelines for doing so.
Paizo addressed the elephant-sized ORC in the room, though, talking about Creative Commons:
CC BY SA 4.0 is a share-alike license under which the initial licensor can limit their licensed material to the ORC Content. Unfortunately, the share-alike provision requires the downstream community to share their entire work.
And went on to say that companies building on D&D’s SRD would be effectively “trapped in their product” without being automatically relicensed to the gaming community.
Time alone will tell where people fall, but Open Gaming is here to stay, one way or another.
