The Walled Garden - the Open Gaming License, History and Future

We're back! We're doing audio and video now like a couple-a lunatics! We're doing a deep dive on the open gaming license and its impact on the entire tabletop RPG world, and we're blaming it on Kevin Siembieda! Not really. Maybe a little.

TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to No Plot, Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every

night are Josh and Chris. You can find us on all podcast platforms or check us out at noplotonlylore.com.

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Welcome back to No Plot Only Lore. This week brought to you in beautiful

Technicolor. I'm 3D.

Are you though? No, I am singledimensional.

There's no depth to me. Fantastic.

Um, yeah, we we finally decided to get on the video train. We're going to we're

going to become YouTube stars. Yeah, I have the YouTube face for radio.

No. Uh I I I briefly flirted with YouTube um fame like 15 years ago. Uh in

that I had two decently viral videos that circulated on Something Awful. Uh

Wow. That is taking it back. Yeah. Yeah. Back when back when something awful existed. And uh uh yeah,

it was me and a guy from Calgary uh eating really stupid hamburgers that

were created when there was this like I don't want to say trend, but this like

recurring thing of uh restaurants putting up burger customization tools on

their website. Um, and so, oh, was this like kind of the same era as like none pizza with left beef?

Kind of. Yeah. Thinking now that's probably more than 15 years ago, which is

Yeah. Uh, but anyways, uh, no, the So, the first was Burger King put one up and

someone created what they called the Noah's Arc burger, which is Okay. I think pretty self-explanatory from the

name. Like two of every animal. Um, and so how many animals? a lot of animals. Um,

okay. And beef. It was every possible meat filling that

you could find on their menu duplicated and then put into a burger, including

like fish and bacon and the different like types of burger patty. Um, so he

did it in Calgary and put his up first on the the forums and then I saw that

and was like, "Well, someone from Calgary is doing it. I have to do it better." cuz he complained and said it tasted like rubber bands and his video

quality was poor. He didn't really finish it. So, I got some people together and we went to a Burger King

here. I ordered the same thing and managed to get it all down. Um,

regretfully, it was I appreciate the implication that it was actually tasting an awful lot like

rubber bands. It was it was I didn't find it tasted like rubber bands, but it did just taste

like a lot of hot grease, which I think might have been the problem is that his his grease was bad, like stale or

whatever happened. So, uh, that probably impacted things a lot. So he saw it. We

went back and forth a little bit and decided to later um Red Robin put up a

tool where someone created what they called the onion infinite burger um which had a bunch of different onion

things and the idea was the the infinite part was that it was a recursive burger. So the center layer of the burger was

another copy of that burger. Um so wow.

So, we got together and our plan was to we the way we could order it is

basically like we got two burgers of all of like the components and then stuck

one inside the other. Um and ate that. Uh I brought along some like skewers

that we used to hold it all together. Um, right. That one was I it was more fun to film

because there was like an audience cuz like a couple of cooks from the back came out and were like, "What the hell

is going on?" Um I I appreciate that the people that read Robin were like, "Somebody is up to some

fuckery." Yeah. And they thought it was funny. They're like, "Oh, this is great." Um, so Rob tried to eat his rotisserie

style, which I thought was a really weird choice for a burger, but I also knew like he's a he was at the time at best half my size.

Um, and I Yeah, I was me. Um, so I did

actually finish it because it tasted really good because for those of you who don't know, Red Robin was like a good

burger chain. Um they're not around here anymore, but I remember Robin like just down the

street from me. Yeah. Like Alberta is just like not for us. But uh there's a place now called

the Varsity that just took their old location and does everything exactly the same. Just a new company name.

Fantastic. Uh talking about the Burger King one. Yeah. I was thinking when you were

talking about the Burger King one that the best place to do that and also the worst place to do that would be Arby's.

Oh, well, first of all, they're not burgers. Um, but yeah, like because you can order

the what is it? The meat mountain from there. Is there a thing called the meat? I

haven't been in an RB. I think if you go up and order the meat mountain. So, I've been

probably every like six months or so cuz I used to live like a block away from one and like their curly fries are good.

They're just good. Um, so I I don't your idea

of going to an Arby's every six months sickens me. No, I I always got the um they did a

like a Montreal smoked meat, like a Reuben type thing. That was actually like really good. Um so yeah, every once

in a while my kids would be like, "Oh, let's go, you know, get some like don't get me wrong, their cheap

stuff is the cheapest. Like the the cheesy sauce that's on like the beef and sheds or whatever is that's it's just

plastic. They just they took like craft singles and melted down the whole thing. So, I wouldn't recommend that at any

point, but you know, they have some items on there that are passable. But yeah, recipe that I was looking at today that

required a pound of American cheese and I was like, where do you buy that by the pound? So, I will say um you can get

from like like uh Costco has their like uh business side, but you can buy like

American cheese that comes in like a large um yeah, like it's like a two-lb block

where like the slices are like it's like a loaf of bread made of American cheese and then the slices are just like long

horizontal slices that are like a foot long each. Um but no Great for

sandwiches. Sure. Sure. Which is their intent, but no home cook should be buying that much

American cheese. It was for some sort of like dipping sauce, like a cheesy dipping sauce.

Cheese. It's not that hard to make cheese sauce. I think they were trying really hard to

avoid a rue. Why? Like

I don't know. You have milk, you have flour, you have

butter. Like, you can make a bashimal and just throw grated real cheese in

there. The fact that you've said bashimal just lost so many people. Sorry. Sorry.

You're right. Yeah. No, it's it's my fault. Like, I used to cook a Well, I still cook a lot, but like I used to,

you know, once upon a time, like right out of high school, I for a hot minute, I thought I was going to be a chef. Um,

but yeah, it's Yeah, I I I tried. I genuinely did. And the industry was just not for me. Um,

I know how to cook things. So, yeah, my my the thing that got me out of cooking was cooking for people that I

didn't know. Like, I love cooking for people. I love cooking for people that I do know. And

like, you've been to a couple of my like Christopher Feeds Everyone events where I just like make a ridiculous amount of

food and feed everyone I've ever met. Um, but like putting my heart and soul into

making like a perfectly well like cooked medium rare steak and having somebody

send it back to me saying that it's like too raw and so I throw it on the grill for a couple more seconds, send it back

out, it comes back again because now it's too well done and they're just trying to get a free steak. I cannot handle that. I get so mad.

That's fair. I mean, have you have you seen Chef the movie?

Yeah. Yeah. Like that it resonates in a lot of ways. My friends I have a couple of

friends who have tried to make um the culinary world their their career. One

has basically like he he worked his way up through like some of the the better

restaurants in town, but has gone independent now and kind of does his own thing. And that's what allows him to not go crazy is that he's like you're coming

to me for what I do. like I don't have to accommodate you. Um, and then the other one just gave up and became a teacher. So, but he teaches

food. So, I just I I gave up on the the cooking world entirely. The the two movies, if

you want to watch, two movies that really capture what it is to work in restaurants. Uh, Chef and Waiting.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like very opposite ends of that spectrum, but like waiting

is possibly the most authentic version of working in like a normal restaurant

that I've ever seen with with the exception of all the ball sack stuff. Yeah, it's it's pretty

accurate. When I was working in restaurants, there was a weird amount of ball sack.

There there was zero in mind, but I always worked at like fairly corporate places. So I never did. No. All of my All of my

work was like I I worked at a casino for a little bit and that was incredibly corporate and the other restaurants that

I worked at were all very like Yeah. homegrown. The people who are working

there are the kids of the people that own their Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair.

Uh do you know what one of my favorite moments in all of role playing game history is?

In all of role playing game history. Um, I'm trying to think of actual moments

that matter in role playing game history. Uh, I don't know. Was it

uh the release of fourth edition? No. Oh, no. It wasn't. Uh, one of my

favorite points of history in role playing games ever is Wizards of the

Coast, a tiny little production company out of Reton, Washington, put out a book

that said that it would let you convert characters from one system to another

system. Oh. And they had the gall to say that one of the systems that you could do

this with was Padium Fantasy. Yeah, we all know they're super chill over at the paladium.org

or whatever it is. Yeah. Um well, I part of it is that like

I I kind of understand where Simveda and Co were coming from in that like

when you have a trademark Yeah. and it's a relatively weak trademark to be honest.

Yeah. you have a legal responsibility to defend it. Well, with any trademark, you you have

to show defense of it, otherwise you'll lose it. Yeah. And in the case of like weaker

trademarks, if you don't do that at all, there's a very good chance that you're not going to be able to to stand up in court the next time it happens or the

next time somebody does something more egregious. And so, yeah, they they went pretty legit latgigious on it. and uh Wizards

of the Coast had to stop production on all of their role playing game stuff while this lawsuit was going on. And so

Peter Atkinson went to visit his friend and math professor and asked if there

were any games that he had kicking around on the back burner that he could maybe do while this like lock was on.

Yeah. and his math professor, Richard Garfield, said, "Yeah, I've been working on a thing."

Yeah. Just Just a little thing. Just a little thing. Just a casual thing. Casually invented one of the most

perfect game designs ever. Yeah. Yeah. So he gave Peter Atkinson

Magic the Gathering and then Magic the Gathering made all the money

and continues to make all of the money and continues to make a significant portion of money and uh from the money

that they got from that after the the lawsuit was done. So they they settled out of court. Sure. Uh, Wizards of the Coast had to

pay an undisclosed amount of money to Padium. And I don't recall if there was

like a public apology or like a retraction or anything that came out of

that. But, uh, there was some sort of like deal that

they made and then Coast was allowed to make role playing games again. So, they just bought Dungeons and Dragons.

Oh, okay. That seems like a

So they're just like, "Hey, we like this. Let's just own it." Uh, sort of like TSR

as a company. So like early Dungeons and Dragons when we're talking like the the like second edition stuff that was

coming out. We're like right in the tail end of the satanic panic in the 1980s,

1990s. the brand isn't doing well, right? Like

the the sales are down. There's a bunch of like mismanagement that's happening on the business level. They're not

making any money. And so Peter Atkinson and Wizards of the Coast were able to make a deal for like low

millions. I want to say it was a million dollars.

That's because that still seems like a lot for the time. Oh yeah. Yeah. This was like late '9s.

So like a million dollars was like lottery type money, right? Like it was it was huge. But it was nothing compared

to what they were making off of magic. True. Like cuz at that point it' been like what six, seven years and they were just

raking in money from it. Yeah. Like Peter had to start stuffing

his mattress with it cuz like the banks wouldn't take his money anymore. It was just that's so much [ __ ] money.

And yeah, so he he had always been a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons and just bought TSR and got them out of the the

debts that they were in and started making Dungeons and Dragons. And that was a big deal. But one of the the

interesting like fallout pieces of that for me is that because Palladium was so like

stringent on that trademark. Sure. there was an internal push to do

something a little different. Okay. And I think and I I I can't speak for

like their team or like their legal team or the like direction that they went in from that. I personally think that that

experience getting the pants sued off of them for like mentioning another role playing game system um is what prompted

Wizards of the Coast to create the open gaming license. Gotcha. Gotcha. At least that version of

the OGL. Yeah. Yeah. Like the earliest version of the OGL where it was like because you got to

keep in mind like the OGL was revolutionary. Yeah.

Yeah. Nobody else was doing it. Right. Like you had some stuff in like the the software sphere for like um open

source Yeah. programming and stuff, but like nowhere near the level of just like we

have put together an agreement that you can use swaths of our IP to make your

own thing. Yeah. Yeah. And Yeah. So, it was it was a huge deal and I think it contributed quite a bit

to the incredible popularity of third edition

D&D. I mean, I would still say it's it's probably the second most popular

out of everything they've done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially if you consider that like Pathfinder is still

making bank, although they've moved to bit a bit more of a fourth edition thing and made a bunch of people very mad. Good. Good.

Yeah. Um, no, like the Yeah, the OGL was huge

because it meant that like everybody who was making fan stuff, all the people who were making like, I made a dungeon in my basement and it's

great and I should be able to publish it. Now you just [ __ ] can. Yeah. Yeah. You just throw it on drive through

RPG and it gets buried a week later. Well, I mean, yeah, at the time it was

also just like a lot of like print press stuff. Yeah. And like you couldn't walk into a a

games shop without seeing a wall of OGL material.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean I I have some on the shelf behind me right now like that from like the

current stuff where it's just like, "Yeah, by the way, right on the back it just says like 5e, like it's compatible with this. Just do what you want."

Mhm. Well, and I actually remember like early early in my like game design

experiences. I was talking to one of the guys who ended up working in Wizards of

the Coast uh UK, Scott Earl. Um, and he had put together a game called Slay

Industries with some friends of his and eventually Wizards of the Coast bought them out. And uh, I was talking to him

before the buyout and I was like, "So, this is what I'm thinking about doing with my game. I have like my own system that I'm working on." And he's like,

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. Why would you make anything that isn't a D20 game?"

Yeah. Right. There's absolutely no reason for you to make a game that isn't third

edition compatible right now. If you're not making third edition right now, it's crap. Makes sense.

So yeah, they they took over the world and then uh they hated it. Yeah.

Yeah. Really diluted the market, made it so that there was so much stuff available

and then there were a couple of companies that figured out a fun little loophole. Um,

I remember the one that I first saw that I thought was like that this is going to change the game was um

the folks at Guardians of Order who made like the big ice small mouth game.

Yeah. Were commissioned to make a D20 compatible version of a Song of Ice and

Fire. Mhm. And they had figured out that if you just replace the character creation

rules Yeah. you don't have to site them. Oh,

you don't have to Yeah. Cuz like the the part of the way that the OGL worked was that you could

make your own stuff. But for all of the character creation stuff, you had to go through the three core books,

right? So anything that was going on in the the three core books, character classes, feats, all of that stuff, um

had to be referenced back to the D&D main books, right? But if you just replace it all

Yeah. I mean, with a different system, that's devious,

right? And so a bunch of people figured that out and they started putting out their own books

and Wizards of the Coast started seeing their sales drop. I mean, part of it, I think, was also just like glut. Like,

there was so much D&D 3.5 out there that like you didn't need more core

books. Sure. They were already they'd already gone through the the core books that they were going to sell. So, part of the

fourth edition push, part of the fourth edition revival was to scale back

that open gaming license in a big big way. Right.

until you jumped on. Yeah. Like I hopped in and fourth because I'd seen

Well, and I think the scaling back was actually what appealed to me cuz like I I'd been D and D adjacent for years. And

I just saw book after book after book like, "God, I want to try this out, but there's so much out there. I don't know

where to start. Uh I don't know where I'm going with it. It seems like I can't just buy the basic three books and go

along with it because nobody I ever saw play it pulled out the basic three. They're just like, "Oh, well, here's

this other supplemental. Here's this other thing I'm using." And then with the release of fourth edition, I was

like, "Oh, well, I can start fresh like everybody else and be on the same page,

right?" Um, and then mechanically there was all the stuff that I liked about it. And

people even early on made the like wow

uh accusation that like oh this is just like you know wow on tabletop. And at

the time I was a big WoW player. So I was like oh great perfect like I know all this stuff. I'll do that. Um,

so jumping ahead a little bit, this was something that I kind of wanted to talk to you about today is like we've been looking at Orcus. Yeah.

Which is like the the fourth edition OGL version thing that we're going to talk about in a bit.

One of the things that I've noticed going through that book is that it feels a lot less like World

of Warcraft. And I think a lot of it has to do with the visual design. Oh, 100%. Yeah. I the visual design cuz

like uh what is the phrase they use? Wow. is everything is a heroic scale. So

big head, big shoulders. Um make the armor look like pop from a distance

through the use of the shoulders and the shoulder like plates. Um, but everything in this people seem I don't want to say

they're like skinny, but they're like a little more

life and and and agile and grounded than like, oh, like my tank is actually tank.

Not everybody is dwarf scale, you know? Yeah. That isn't even really the the visual design that I'm thinking though.

Like the stuff that I'm thinking about is like the color coding of abilities.

Right. Like you you look at an Atwill and you know that it's an Atwill because of the color of the box that it's in.

Yep. And everything was like very clean and clear with straight lines, easy to read,

easy to gro. And I think that that like as a designer, as somebody who has dealt

with like bad visual design before, y fourth edition is brilliantly put

together for people to very quickly understand what's going on. And I think that might have like rubbed some people

the wrong way, which I I don't understand. I mean, like all they really did was like add some

clarity to like how often should I expect to be using these things? like uh you know your your your at wills were

green, your encounters were red, and your dailies were gray. Like the stuff that you should use a lot was popped out

at you. Um and well, I think it made like so fourth edition put out a

ton of content like as far as like options and and and character building

stuff, right? because of sort of the necessity of like the the um

the system that they designed that they like utilized like powers for everything, right? So they had to give

you lots of options for powers because that's just how it worked. And so when every time you got a new one, it was

much easier to just quickly scan through the list of what was coming based on color and like, oh cool, I know I'm like

this is going to be maybe a more powerful thing I can take, but I'm going to use it less often, right? So, it made decision-m super clean. Like, if I was

like, "Oh, well, I've got tons of utility for for the fights right now.

Maybe I'll just get something that I use once a day for a big boss." Was like, "Okay, cool. There you are." Right? And

then it was like it even broke up like the way the character progressed cuz you knew like, "Oh, I get Atwills now, you

know, encounters later, dailies after that." And you could sort of see just scanning through the list of powers for

your class. this is how I expect to progress. So, I'm going to have to lean on this power for this amount of time

and then this is when I'm going to get to upgrade it. Right? There's actually kind of an interesting parallel that happens with like third

edition to fourth edition to fifth edition and that's the the shift in iPhone

design where when third edition was big, they were

very big into what's called skumorphic design. Okay. And that's design that's meant to look

like another thing, right? So your icon doesn't just have like a compass in like

a flat relief on it. It's supposed to look like a compass, right? So it has like a very realistic compass on it and

it like breaks the frame a little bit. Um, and that was very very big when third edition was around. And then

slowly they started moving to a flat design where everything is like icons instead of like a picture of a thing.

Right? Okay. So, when you open up your your notes app, instead of being like lined piece of paper that you're typing

onto in like a a handwriting type font, it's just like a white screen with a a text font with like a serif on it.

Gotcha. And the design difference there, like if you

if you look at the two editions of D&D side by side, they kind of follow that same like pattern where like the

skuorphic stuff, everything's supposed to look like another thing. You've got like handdrawn diagrams of weapons on

like paper that's meant to look a little aged. And then you move to fourth edition and it's like clean white big green box,

right? Like all of it is very like clearly cleanly designed. And I think like that

there there's like something subconscious there I think that suggests

digital and I think that might have like pushed a bit towards the the fourth the fourth

edition is woow direction right because the people coming from third were still very much like pen and

paper is the way that you play these games and it should look like pen and paper

like my should look like somebody drew this with a pencil. Gotcha.

So, no, I I think that that's really interesting because like going through Orcus, it doesn't feel like that.

No. Right. It has a very different like visual aesthetic attached to it both in

like the illustration side of it and the like visual design part. It's funny. that cuz like when I looked

at it, my first instinct was like this seems like unpolished,

right? Which is like Yeah. Yeah. Which is like maybe that's intentional though. Like they don't want

it to look too polished because then you're Apple and you're not, you know, our good oldfashioned guys sitting at a

table, right? It's it's now you're the fantasy thing, not the classic thing, which is never we've we've talked so

many times about the fet fetishization of of vintage and and yeah, you know, nostalgia that

Well, and I think like part of it is probably unintentional because it is

like these are not professional designers, right? Right. They are amateurs like Yeah. And that's fine. like it's a

really good product considering the the level of polish that they're able to put onto it, right? These are people who I

assume have full-time jobs, right? So, like the fact that they were able to put

out a product at all, I think is a miracle. But, don't get me wrong, I I appreciate what they're doing, but at the same time

though, I I my feeling is that it's kind of like, yeah, the heavy lifting was already done. Like,

yeah. Okay, so let's let's get back to the OGL stuff for a second. So fourth edition, part of what they changed, part

of what they they made happen in fourth edition is that so the third edition, you could just make whatever the hell

you wanted, right? Like as long as you were citing the rules, you could make whatever the hell you wanted. And that led to a couple of products that Wizards

of the Coast was not super keen on. Like the book of Carninal something or other,

right? Like Yeah, that's my first thought. Yeah. Sex book, right? Yeah. like you

you have the weird kink book and there's nothing you can do about it because you

just let people make whatever you want. And so part of what they did is make an application process.

Oh yeah. So you actually had to like apply to Wizards of the Coast to get a like

permissions a license to make your thing. You had to get a license to do the

thing. You had to get a license to do the thing. Um and that

killed the third party market very much intentionally I feel um like the the big

players in that realm your your green Ronins's um

still felt a hit from it because they they had to change their processes and they weren't able to put out as many

products and there was like a bottleneck now on it but your like 15th grade press

I have put out like three splat books. All of them were terrible and used like

third party art that I got from Fiverr. Um, those just disappeared.

Fiverr, the Chad GPT of the early internet. You know what? At least Fiverr is

people. Yeah, at least it is people. But it was like, what's the cheapest way I could just get someone to make my idea real?

We're we're going to go back to AI. Like that. That's a conversation we have to have soon cuz I things in that AI

episode that I regret real dad. I was right. I was right again.

You were right about everything as you always are. Yeah. Um so yeah, the fourth edition backlash

was huge. Not just because of the the OGL stuff, not just because of the um

like new application process and the death of the third party, but just because like people didn't like the game. Yeah.

Well, and they're wrong. It's it's it's fine and good. It's just different. Yep. And like we're we're starting to

see a nostalgic revival of that kind of role playing game. Like Lancer is

incredible and it's definitely got like fourth edition bones

in it. Um with like you've got powers that you're using on a fairly regular basis.

It has to be played on a like a battle grid. That was another thing that people really didn't like about fourth edition is that you just had to have a grid. it.

Well, fourth edition was bas was very much like theater of the mind is gone.

It's just dead. We want to sell you the miniatures and we want to make sure that

you buy the ancillary products to make the battlefield happen, which I was

already on board with because I like the I like autumal when it comes to my

games. I buy all the little like upgrades and widgets and whatnot. But you've been playing Warhammer for a

minute, too. So, like minions were not a a weird place for you to be. No, not at all. Um, but like I I was

playing the D and D miniatures game before I was playing D and D. I was buying D and D miniatures just to play

their war game, right? But like I I don't get so there was um

there was a a series I'm not going to mention because the creator is problematic. Um, but

seeing what they thought was D and D where it was literally just like we're going to throw some we're going to put some miniatures in the middle of the

table just so you know what this looks like, but every other part of combat is just going to be like we'll figure it out was so like clunky and foreign and

weird for me. And it felt like like here's what it felt like. It felt like

the power dynamic was in favor of the DM and right his ability to sort of like

maybe not fully explain things to you unless you asked. Uh and fourth edition took that power, put it in the hands of

the players and was like you were going to make the decisions about how this encounter resolves because you have more

tactical control. Yeah. And I think tactical is very much like the descriptor for it. like it is a

tactical miniature war game with a role playing game kind of tacked onto it. Um,

and I think that really worked for the game that it was. Yeah.

Um, it did not work for a lot of people.

Sure. Um, it's it's when we started to see like the the old school renaissance really take off. Um,

yeah. people were not keen on the the tactical war game aspects of it. They

were disparaging all of the like minis in the World of Warcrafts and all of

that nonsense and they they really wanted to go back to good old brass tax DND

and so we got D and D next. Yeah. So I I think part of the problem

too is I know they compare it to World of Warcraft and I don't think World of Warcraft is the right specific computer

game to like compare it to, but I do think computer game might be the right

place to look for some of the inspiration. Like if you played the classic Fallout games like one and two or just a lot of those like isometric

RPGs that cropped up on PC games from about like 95 to 2005. I played a lot of

different ones and it definitely was like, hey, the the fights and the the

the character like progression side of it is

more central to the gameplay than the narrative or whatever. Like there's there's obviously like Fallout being the

one of the classic examples. They're always the games that have a really good narratives that you want to like dig into and explore and find these things.

But um they're less like obviously they are driven by

character choices and your choice as a player, but they're a little more like on rails and less like um free form in

the way that you handle them. I think that's what the 3 and 3.5 people, especially like the old school people

were really missing was that the their idea of creativity

was replaced. Right. It's funny that you mentioned

Fallout because Fallout is just built on groups. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, it's just like a digital version of a Steve Jackson game and it's

brilliant. They honestly I think if you take any Steve Jackson game and you just

let a computer run it, the system is fantastic. Yeah.

You kind of have to do that to make it playable. But uh no, I I really

appreciated Fallout when it came out cuz I I had been playing Gersps at the time. Yeah. As well. But uh

and I want the other I started with Fallout and have no idea what GPS is. The uh the fact that we're at a place

where like it's like DND gave us Final Fantasy, right? Like

without D and D, Final Fantasy wouldn't have existed. Sure. And then there's like an entire genre of computer and console role

playing games that has spawned out of that. And then it's gotten to the point

where the designs in those are so keyed in that role playing games are starting to borrow back.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's good. That that is a good thing for the genre. That's a good thing

for design. If you have good stuff, steal it. It's I think it's an inevitable cycle.

like it's it's you're going to go back and forth between the two. I mean, you know, the early role playing games informed the

early PC role playing games, you know, and then like Plscape Tournament or like

Neverwinter Nights, like these things were just straight up D and D things. And then they

had to innovate for different reasons. And then, oh, people who were playing tabletop stuff are like, oh well, that's

actually an interesting mechanism. I bet you I can make that work on tabletop. But like they just go back and forth between each other, right? Like I don't

It's actually really too bad that we didn't get like a Neverwinter Nights style game in fourth edition cuz like

the game is so perfectly keyed for tactical combat. Yeah.

Um yeah, I I would have played the heck out of it uh just because it was familiar. The only reason I didn't play more

Neverwinter Nights and Balders's Gate stuff was because 3.5 was impenetrable

to me and and I wound up playing like games like Arkinum and Fallout because

at least it was new and they knew that they had to communicate more directly to me how to like those earlier games felt

like there was a level of knowledge you had to bring in with you. Like you kind of understood the system already so then

you can make good decisions. But none of those things applied to Yeah. Aranom and

and and follow. So then fifth edition happened.

And then fifth edition happened. And fifth edition is kind of in an interesting place for like the licensing

stuff because there there is a version of the OGL

that is around, but they like they they took some of the lessons from

the original OGL and made it so that you can't make like sexually explicit content

and like that there isn't an application process for the license anymore, but

like the Part of the issue, I think, is just

trust, right? Like people do not trust Wizards of the Coast to not [ __ ] with the agreement.

Well, they already tried to. Like, we went through that whole thing. What, two years ago? Like, y they tried

and then everyone said, uh, hell no. Um, and we're still living in a world that's

that's working through the repercussions of that. I mean, Daggerheart would not exist without them [ __ ] with the OGL.

Straight up. Well, and something that we didn't even really touch on is that when fourth edition came out, that's when the

Pathfinder thing happened, right? Like Yeah. Um the the folks at Piso had been

working directly with the people at Wizards of the Coast to put out Dungeon and Dragon magazine and like RIP Dungeon and Dragon because

his magazines were great, but they were kind of like sideswiped by the

change. I I'm sure they had a bit of like insider knowledge, but Wizards of the Coast basically came out and said,

"Yeah, no, we're going to take that in-house. Um, we're switching to a completely different version of D and D

that you guys don't know yet." And, uh, good [ __ ] luck, I guess. And so, they

took their ball on their bat and they went and made a new company that just continued to make 3.5 DND.

I mean, we're very keen on As much as I think it's kind of stupid

from like a business perspective, like I would never I I still never think it's a

great idea to make your business based on someone else's business like and kind

of beholden to them. Like

there are a lot of like accessory companies that exist

that I feel are different than like what these supplemental companies were cuz

like nobody needs like card sleeves or life counters and stuff like that for magic. But without magic those things

wouldn't have existed. But now they become like their own thing that crosses game systems. If you're like, I make

accessories specifically for Magic the Gathering and only at their like

goodwill. I feel like that's like zombie token that has a one one printed on it.

Yeah. Yeah. It it is like I think it was just kind of dumb for them to hitch. I I don't I think you

should always assume that the business that you are leeching on leeching is the

wrong word but like that you are are um

symbiotic with might turn hostile at any minute you know um

and I don't have a lot of knowledge about like the the beginnings of Kaiso

um right like I I don't know where exactly they came from or how they came to get the Dungeon and Dragon license. I would have

to do some research on that. Now I'm going to because I'm curious. Yeah. Um but I I do wonder if maybe they were

part of Wizards of the Coast at one point and they just kind of like spun off on their own thing at some point

because that that is something that I have seen sometimes where like a a big company will just like spin off a little company that's doing its own thing

and just it to its own devices. Um, I don't know if that's the case here

because I think Wizards of the Coast would have owned a the controlling share in Piso, in which case them leaving

wouldn't have worked the same way. They would have had to like quit and start their own company or something. But on that now, I have to look it up.

If that's if that was the case, they still should have the impetus to like actively start trying to make your own

thing like um Okay, so news this week. Uh designer

Cole Worly is leaving Leader Games. Uh Cole has been the the lead design for

Root, Oath, Arcs, uh big games like Root's huge. Uh

and he so it seems like the leaving is amicable. Uh Leader Games actually sold

Oath and Arcs to the new company that he's making. Um, and he's still working

on new content for Arcs. But

if he started his new company and spent half of his time continuing to just like

make supplemental stuff for Root, like I would almost be

like in favor of that company failing. That's fair. That's fair. Like if if

your if your only existence is to just like sponge, come on, man. Like you're

you're not only are you in a weak position when they inevitably like staunch that bleeding, but

what what what are you doing creatively? Like make your own thing. Do your own stuff.

I don't know. We had more to talk about. I think I think we're going to have to like wrap

that up then. Maybe we should like talk about Orcus again at another I I think we need to talk more directly

about Orcus cuz I'm actually kind of excited about it because the OSR has finally caught up to

something that I care about. Um if you just wait long enough, the OSR

will hit your version of a thing that's old school. So, um, but like I I'm

excited for them to I understand that Orcus is just fourth

edition with the numbers filed off and they're like, "Hey, it's fully compatible." Meanwhile, they're just like, "By the way, literally in the book

it's like, oh, a priest is a cleric." Like, right. Um, what I'm excited about

is that them now putting a name to like because I could always just play fourth of this if I wanted to. It's tough to

get new people into it to be like, "Hey, I like this old thing better. Can you

buy the books?" No. But now there is a thing where I can be like, "Hey, I'm actually playing this. I have all this

other supplemental stuff that is essentially just homebrew for me." Um, but there's here's this thing you can go

get new stuff for and they're making new stuff, right? Yeah. And I think that

excites people more is that, oh, like I can be part of new things and get new content and not just live in the past,

right? Well, and as a Yeah, I'm stoked for it. Um my like the the thing that brought Orcus

to my attention is that one of the onepage RPGs that I put together um

really wanted a big crunchy system attached to it, right? Like it's a game

that is about system and you need to have a system that is

actually like worth [ __ ] around with for that. And so Orcus is very exciting

for me because I love fourth edition D and D and fourth edition is full of that crunch

and I want to [ __ ] around with it. Me too. I mean I did not get to play as

much fourth edition as I wanted to because life but I

still like to this day occasionally pick up like Primal Power or something like that. I'm like, "Oh man, I would have

loved to have been able to like invest into a cat uh into a campaign enough to like hit this paragon path or this epic

destiny and try out some of these cool crunchy options that just [ __ ] a paragon path." The fact that

there's a name for that is so cool. God damn it, I like fourth edition.

their their three tier system of like this is how characters progress and this is like you start with really broad

strokes of what an archetype does and then you start narrowing it down to these cool little individual things is

so great. Um and [ __ ] broken though. Oh, of course, of course. But you're

you're literally like this the level of gods and able to do godlike things. But

they also like with all those epic destinies, they all still felt like it's

like the Warhammer thing where it's like if everything's broken, nothing's broken. Everyone got to do a broken thing in a unique and different way,

which I love. Other than like those [ __ ] on the internet that are like,

I broke this power so you don't have to. Here's how you can build a guy that can kill God at level four. You don't need

those guys because Epic Destinies were all about like, "Hey, we broke our own game so you don't have to."

Uh, that's where I'm killing it.

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