A screenshot showing full title "ORC License", registration number "TX0009307067" has a claimant of "Azora Law".

ORC 2-ish years later

It’s been 2-ish years since Paizo “finished”1 “ORC License: The Final Version is Here!” (29 June 2023) Paizo <paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sico> their Open RPG Creative License (ORC)2 “Open RPG Creative License” Paizo <paizo.com/orclicense> (more on that in a bit) so it seems like a good enough time to see how the new license is coming along, what sort of momentum has it built, what was the overall outcome. Did it revolutionize tabletop role-playing games (“TTRPGS”)? And what was the overall significance and involvement of Azora Law?3 Azora Law <azoralaw.com/>

The Azora Law logo which is very specifically designed ot look like a d20... not well, by very specifically.
Tell me you want to be the premier law firm for TTRPGs without telling me you want to be the premier law firm for TTRPGs.

Azora Law is, according to a publication in the Washington State Bar News – June 2021, it is “one of Seattle’s oldest virtual law firms”.4 Brian Lewis “Three Big Developments in Soft IP Law” Washington State Bar News (Washington US, June 2021) at 30 This seems to be the singular instance of it claiming to be a virtual law firm, which is an odd claim since if they’re all in Seattle and they have a registered office address… that means they just let staff work from home if they want? Pretty sure that was the standard in mid 2021.

Unless they also had a presence in the Metaverse at some stage.

Anyway, I thought ORC sucked… but I’ve been known to be wrong.5 Kim Wincen “The ORC has landed. It kinda sucks” (2 June 2023) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com/2023/07/02/the-orc-has-landed-it-kinda-sucks/>

My name is Kim. I am not a lawyer, certainly not a US lawyer specializing in copyright and most importantly I am not your lawyer. I am a law graduate in New Zealand who has a passion for role-playing games, and you should not consider anything I post to be legal advice (or take legal advice from blogs or social media posts in general). Also please, understand – absolutely nothing you say to me falls under lawyer-client privilege – especially if you do it in the comments.

Okay, now that’s done, let’s look at this.

Table of Contents

I. ETERNAL OR EMPHERAL?
A. Library of CongressVI. LEGAL & BUSINESS
B. Copyright DepositA. Legal Tests – Nil
C. Singular Point of FailureB. Legal Press – Nil
II. PERFECT FOR YE, BUT NOT FOR MEC. Business Press – Nil
III. A VALUED COMMUNITY…VII. TO THE MOON?
IV. OTHER BIG NOT TINY PLAYERSA. The (Abandoned) Discord
A. ChaosiumB. Paizo Web Site
B. Kobold PressC. What Say Ye Counsel?
C. Matt ColvilleD. The Reality of the TTRPG Market
D. Bottom LineVIII. COULD IT BE FIXED?
V. IN THE WILDA. International Law and Contracts
A. Pathfinder GM CoreB. International Law and Copyright
B. Basic Roleplaying (BRP)C. The Culture of Sharing
C. Black Flag RoleplayingD. No Topic for Laypeople
D. PathwardenIX. CONCLUSION
E. Songs and Sagas
F. Fantastic Stories

I. ETERNAL OR EMPHERMERAL?

One of the weirdest things about the ORC license is that all the PDF copies of it have [Interim] on the “Final” copy… because they were waiting for their registration number for when it would be made available in perpetuity in the Library of Congress! 🎉🎉🎉

Imagine this, but his champagne isn’t flat.

A. Library of Congress

Paizo’s web site promises that it’s available in there now! They even give this cool reference number TX 9-307-067. So let’s check out how to access it there.

When you search in the Library of Congress web site, it doesn’t return anything like that when you enter that number in fact they don’t even have a reference number search like that. But you know who does?

The US Copyright Office, which happens to fall under the Library of Congress’s jurisdiction – at least for now. Who knows what’ll happen with Trump Admin 2.0 and DOGE… particularly given that the Copyright Office is already in the hands of incompetent political hires.6 Neda Ulaby “The President has named a new Acting Librarian of Congress. It’s his former defense lawyer” (12 May 2025) NPR <https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/nx-s1-5395879/trump-todd-blanche-librarian-congress>

And when we use the reference there we find that the license is registered to Azora Law… not Paizo… just Azora Law.7 “Detailed Record View TX0009307067” (Registered: 17 August 2023) US Copyright Office <https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/voyager_35444491>

A screenshot showing full title "ORC License", registration number "TX0009307067" has a claimant of "Azora Law".

Also oddly Azora Law just refer to this as a “Copyright registration” on their own site. 8“ORC License” Azora Law <http://azoralaw.com/orclicense/>

Now, theoretically this is still “held” by the Library of Congress but not in a way that is useful to someone or what you think of as being held within a library. This is misleading and raises questions about the intentions of ORC from the beginning. But okay, let’s engage with it as it is:

B. Copyright Deposit

So not only is this a far cry from the claim the license would be maintained in perpetuity by a non-profit ala the Open Source and Creative Commons projects… it is just an outright lie. Barring any changes to US copyright law in the next century, we know the exact date it will expire, because its prescribed by law regarding work-for-hire: 29 June 2118.9 “How Long Does Copyright Protection Last?” U.S Copyright Office <https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html>

I’ll definitely be dead by then, but that’s not the point. In fact there is no point to this, any of this – the registratration or my dramatization.

It’s pointless because a document registered at the Copyright Office isn’t accessible to the public – you can’t download a copy of ORC or verify the exact wording. It does literally nothing to guarantee a singular authentic copy of ORC other than (theoretically) give Azora Law the (theoretical) right to sue for infringement of copyright infringement.

Think about it, if you could just freely access anything with a registered copyright – why would anyone pay for anything? Of course copyright deposits are locked down tight and hidden from the light of day.

In fact, there are only 3 situations under which the copies of ORC held as Copyright Deposits can be accessed:10 United States Copyright Office “Obtaining Access to and Copies of Copyright Office Records and Deposits” <https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ06.pdf>

  1. Written authorization is provided by the claimant or the owner. That means Azora law, the firm. Keep that in mind.
  2. The Copyright Office is satisfied it is necessary to proceed with some form of litigation.
  3. The court orders access to be made available to someone.

Since copyright is primarily concerned with creative decisions, not technical or legal decisions, it is extremely unlikely that the ORC License actually qualifies for attracting copyright when challenged in court. It is not really the done thing to try to use the copyright office as a filing system, and they’re unlikely to accept any other sort of litigation as valid – only lawsuits over the copyright of the license itself.

So basically the only way those copies will ever be accessed is if Azora Law files a written request for one. Assuming the 2024 Trump Administration doesn’t accidentally shread it because they mistake it for having something to do with DEI. 11Chris Boccia “DOD says it ‘mistakenly removed’ Jackie Robinson, other content from website amid DEI purge” (20 March 2025) ABC News <https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dod-mistakenly-removed-jackie-robinson-content-website-amid/story?id=119955477>

It is completely and fundamentally useless to a random user who comes across an ORC license disclosure in a book and wants to take a copy to their lawyer to ask if its right for them.

Much like the ORC Trademark, which was registered on 12 January 2023 and abandoned on 7 February 2024 due to failure to response.12 United States Patent & Trademark Office (7 Feburary 2024) Case ID: 97752594 <https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn97752594&docId=ABN20240207090327&linkId=1#docIndex=0&page=1>

C. Singular Point of Failure

Early in the piece, Paizo announced that one of the features of ORC that would make it able to continue in perpetuity was it would have a nonprofit stewardship. 13Paizo (@paizo) (28 January 2023) X née Twitter <https://x.com/paizo/status/1619101146190053376>
Paizo Inc “Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License” (12 January 2023) Paizo Blog <https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v>

The artwork for "Open RPG" whcih is a valiant paladin pointing her sword forward and letting out a might battle cry.
Onward! For we shall rule eternal!

This is a common thing in the world of open source software and is essentially what allows people to have confidence using a project created by a corporation. Of course, sometimes the “non-profit” turns out to be the CEO in a trenchcoat,14 Josh Collinsworth “If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed” (27 September 2024, updated 11 January 2025) Josh Collinsworth Free Blog <https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt#the-wordcamp-us-fallout-and-matts-abuse-of-power> at “
The WordCamp US fallout and Matt’s abuse of power” but by and large, the theory is workable. A non-profit steward means that it can always be maintained by multiple interests and staff can be replaced as needed, it can be beholden to no one but the cause. Only when interest disappears does funding and people disappear.

That didn’t happen for ORC. Instead the only authority on ORC is Azora Law, which consists of two lawyers and some paralegals (one of whom is married to one of the lawyers).15 Above, n 3 If the firm goes into bankruptcy, if the partners all split and dissolve the firm, if they die in a tragic natural disaster – then there’s no one left to speak for ORC.

Indeed, if Wizards of the Coast were the cartoon villains that many thought – they could potentially buy the copyright from the estate if the firm goes bankrupt simply by outbidding competitors. Then they’d own the right to decide who can and can’t publish the license.

Regardless: Copies of the license are being held by Paizo, Chaosium, Gen Con and numerous other parties but the stated intention of the license was that none of them would be more authoritative than the other. If they all update their sites later and remove ORC, or place it somewhere else, you’ll just have to pray you can find a credible archive of their site.

This recreates the problem with the OGL where as much as Brian E Lewis wanted to say it was meant to be eternal etc, Wizards of the Coast were the actual owners of it, all the documentation of the time had long fallen off the web, and his authority from decades ago when he was an executive and general counsel did not translate to authority in the present day where he is just some guy.

And remember, the “pure” copy being held as a copyright deposit can only be accessed with written permission from Azora Law, or as part of litigation. If Azora Law goes under then you literally have to start legal action to get to a copy.

Truly, this is shaping up to be the NFT of open licenses. That bodes well. Sure.

II. PERFECT FOR YE, NOT FOR ME

How great is ORC as an open license? Well, it’s so great that Paizo didn’t not only not rush in to use it for all their own properties… they write a giant wall of text to explain how they are definitely not using it on the stuff that matters but they’d be using it on stuff soon.16 Mark Moreland “Pathfinder Infinite and the ORC License” (14 November 2023) Paizo Blog <https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sig4> This is particularly funny when you remember that back at the time, Jim Butler was claiming this had been in the works for years, a thing Paizo was eager to apply to their own work.17 Lin Codega “Paizo President Jim Butler Reveals Palns for a Universal RPG License” (13 January 2023) Gizmodo <https://gizmodo.com/paizo-universal-rpg-license-interview-jim-butler-1849986745>

The artwork for "Open RPG" whcih is a valiant paladin pointing her sword forward and letting out a might battle cry.
Onward! You will last eternal… so go ahead of me!

The long and short of it, while the license is explicitly designed to allow you to include things like characters, lore, setting, etc if you want to – Paizo does not want to allow that so for anything to be published in their setting, with their characters, you have to use their special ultra-limited license for that. So really, they never had any reason to care how effective it was for sharing lore related material, the thing they were never going to use it for.

Working out what they released requires some detective work and literally buying the products because as much as they don’t advertise which ones are covered under ORC, or even mention it, in the following post.18 Paizo Community Blog “Find Your Path – Nov. 2023” Paizo (15 November 2023) <https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sig5?Find-Your-Path-Nov-2023>

Well it’s the “Pathfinder Core” which is just a reprint of the Pathfinder 2nd Edition which was released in August 2019. But also, here is where the flaws with ORC come into focus. More on that later.

An important thing to remember is, ORC is included inside the book so the only way to find out how much value you’ll get out of the ORC is to either look at a preview or buy a copy and then check. Paizo do not include information on what ORC will and will not cover in their summaries or samples.

So really, they’re giving you permission to use the material they arguably can’t enforce copyright over on the condition you make all your improvements/updates/material you don’t/can’t exclude available for everyone else to use.

Essentially if you are a person who is good at refining and innovating on mechanics, tables, etc you are going to be hamstringing yourself. Your innovations are already hard to defend, but now they’re explicitly up for grabs and you have an extra layer to overcome if you want to complain about people stealing.

If you’re someone who primarily writes the material that is not mechanics, then you’re not really able to work with Paizo’s products in any meaningful way other than to make legally distinct “we have Pathfinder at home”.

That’s a far cry in value and usefulness vs the Systems Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD5.2.1”) which lets you download and use the relevant content for free. It is, in fact, so far from it a suspicious person might think it was mostly a ploy to sell people who already play Pathfinder 2E a second copy of the core materials and even encourage them to buy more products.

III. A VALUED COMMUNITY…

As part of the build up for ORC, they set up a Discord so that the community could get involved and guide the creation of the license – not be bullied into agreeing to something that served the interest of the big players.

Pretty much no big players were present in that Discord, and early in it became clear that you were invited to mostly just do quality assurance for free – since they quickly announced it would not be having any “morals clause” unless there was a wide spread demand for it from the community (who were prohibited from discussing it).

There was a straight up a section for NFTs in the main “ORC Discussions”. It’s still open, you can still post in it if you want to. Nobody does, but you can.

A screenshot from the Discord. The "ORC Discussions" list is: #orc-general, #ogl-developments, and #nfts There is another category "orc-adjacent".
As a side note: I still have no idea how the license is supposed to apply or relate to them.

I have checked the introductions multiple times and I couldn’t find a single well established creator in them, in fact many of the people straight up introduced themselves as having never created anything. A good number of them seemed to be there primarily to talk shit about WotC and explain how they were definitely going to make a game at some point.

IV. OTHER BIG NOT TINY PLAYERS

Remember this all kicked off because there was a concern that after decades of no interference, Wizards of the Coast might be out there making RPGs woke and charging the few publishers who made more than $1 million on an OGL product royalties.

In the TTRPG industry, that’s a very short list – most of whom are barely a full time business with double digit employees. It’s impossible to talk about the market here with stress that Wizards of the Coast towers over all d20 competitors, and Paizo towers over all the other competition by an astounding margin.

So, setting aside how many people were more concerned about the “morals clause” than the impact on the industry, let’s see how the few publishers who were likely to pay royalties embraced ORC.

A. Chaosium

Chaosium Inc is the long time publisher in this mix, a truly “old school” creator of nerd games having been established in 1975, literally the year after Dungeons & Dragons was. They’ve been most famous for their “our world by with fantasy elements” games Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon.

A screenshot of the promotion for BASIC ROLEPLAYING: Universal Game Engine. "Hone from years of refinement..."

They’ve applied ORC to exactly one product, which is basically the system their others games run on – Basic Roleplaying, Universal Game Engine (“BRP”). They’ve attempted to kickstart development of games using this system with a refreshingly generous and ethical “challenge” that seems to be more of a grants program than a competition.19 Brian Holland “The Basic Roleplaying Design Challenge!” (4 March 2024) <https://www.chaosium.com/blogthe-basic-roleplaying-design-challenge/>

BRP isn’t a new thing. It’s actually been available and in circulation in varies forms since 1981. It’s also a thing which is the least risk and least protected by copyright. While the various core books are 200 – 400 pages long, the meat of it is basically mechanics where a professional has worked out the process for you.

So, a very kind toe in the water, but still a very cautious toe in the water with a product that’s hard to measure the succeess of given the presence of previous versions and the difference in markets.

B. Kobold Press

A relative newcomer but one that has essentially be credited to being viable due to the d20 SRD, without the direct connection to Wizards of the Coast, and thus the one probably the most exposed to risk. Like Chaosium, they have applied ORC to a singular product, specifically a gaming system: Black Flag Roleplaying (“BFR“).

That product is freely available, and is, itself, based in Wizards of the Coast System Reference Document 5.1 (for pre-2024 5th Edition), under the Creative Commons 4.0. It’s basically Kobold Press’s own version but under ORC.

This fairly generous dip in the water has not been going well for them, since essentially it places them as at a disadvantage people are noticing that while you can try to make your own unique products with D&D 2024, you can’t with BFR unless you’re willing to forgo all the unique elements you create – and Tales of the Valiant isn’t covered at all due to being independently licensed use of the BFR rules.

Essentially, they’re done the seperation they would have done if they’d used a standard (non-ORC) open license to separate the mechanics from the lore, and created confusion and upset in the market.

A screenshot from the ORC Discord: First poster (30 April 2025) "I don't have an issue with them not published under the ORC; what annoys me is the way they announced and marketed Black Flag heavily imiplied ToV would be, and the only way I had to discover it wasn't was to buy the books." Second poster (3 May 2025): "Same. TOV/Kobold Press is dead to me." (1 thumbs up)

Now, for absolute clarity – you don’t need to buy 2 products here, you can just download the Black Flag Roleplaying resources off Kobold Press’s site – but if you bought Tales of the Valiant thinking they would take advantage of the unique feature of ORC (to be able to license mechanics, and selective bits of the prose, while leaving other parts exclusive) then you were sorely mistaken.

C. Matthew Colville

A games developer and YouTuber, Matt is probably the person that Wizards of the Coast were thinking of when they talked about fundraising via Kickstarter since he’s had a few very successful runs for very generic D&D supplement products. He was very dramatic20 Matt Colville (@mattcolville) (11 January 2023) X née Twitter <https://x.com/mattcolville/status/1612868210369646598> during the entire OGL fiasco:

A screenshot of a quote post by Matt Colville, he is quoting Kobold Press's "Raising Our Flag" announcement of Black Flag with a gif from Anor: Kino Loy announcing that "I'd rather die trying to take them down than die giving them what they want."
That this is a gif from the Andor series adds a flavour of irony that I couldn’t make up.

Despite this and practically tripping over himself to talk to LegalEagle,21 Matt Colville (@mattcolville) (16 January 2023) X née Twitter <https://x.com/mattcolville/status/1614808419617366019> he hasn’t had anything to say about the ORC License that I could find (I’m not watching his videos) and he quickly got back in bed with Wizards of the Coast, while working on his own system which has been released with effectively no open license other than some vagueries around the monster book, backer kits and “it’s at your own risk!”.22 MCDM Productions LLC “Draw Steel Creator License” MCDM <https://www.mcdmproductions.com/draw-steel-creator-license>

It’s also worth remembering that while most people know Matt for his channel where he abuses the term verisimilitude – he is pretty much the iconic creator that warranted seeking royalties. He sells products, receives support on Patreon and also runs huge Kickstarters that get millions in funding to release generic products that basically lock Wizards of the Coast out of releasing something similar.

He’s been pissing in the water since day one, that’s what I’m saying.

D. Bottom Line

Now the threat of royalties is over, the biggest of the small studios (who are, to be fair, tiny in comparison to Wizards of the Coast, like ridiculously tiny), are not getting terribly invested in the OGL. They aren’t coming to save you from Wizards of the Coast, or allow yourself to fend them off. Frankly that’s more than fair.

A screencap from John Wick of Viggo hugging his son, adjusted subtitle: "Wizards of the Coast will come for you, and you will do nothing because you can do nothing."

No shame in it, just a necessity for us to be honest about it. These are small operations and all they can do is all they can do.

The really telling factor is though, that they clearly don’t see it as having the legs it was promised and don’t trust it with their important properties. Rather than use it as a single license you could put in a book with clarifiers what was and wasn’t covered, the two that used it opted to make their own SRDs with no lore included.

From that respect, there’s not really that much benefit from just putting together a customer license based on the Attribution-Sharealike Creative Commons 4.0 (“CC BY-SA 4.0”).

That’s why Wizards of the Coast did it for D&D 2024.23 Chase Carter “Dungeons & Dragons will release its 2024 ruleset under a Creative Commons licence” (7 May 2024) Dicebreaker <https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/dungeons-and-dragons-5e/news/dungeons-and-dragons-2024-srd-wont-be-another-ogl-fiasco>

V. IN THE WILD

The ORC license was (allegedly) always intended to be bigger than Paizo so I decided to see if I could find it in the wild – first step was putting a search into Google with “drivethrurpg” as an extra key word to see if I could find anyone linking to it.

That took me, straight to Necrotic Gnome’s Old-School Essentials Third Party License for Old-School Revival (OSR).24 Necrotic Gnome “Old-School Essentials Third Party License for Old-School Revial (OSR)” (26 May 2021, Updated: 14 February 2023) DriveThruRPG <https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/358786/old-school-essentials-third-party-license> Which predates the ORC by two years. I did get more results when I used a more advanced search.

We all know Google sucks now. It’s only good for making glue pizza, and measuring how many rocks to eat per day25 Liv McMahon “Glue pizza and eat rocks: Google AI search errors go viral” (25 May 2024) BBC <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o> – but let’s try with using it to search Itch.io.

Those results I found via a site search for DriveThruRPG?

Alright, so lets dig into the various offerings available in the wild. Some textual foraging if we will.

A. Pathfinder GM Core

I figured where better to start than with Paizo’s own flagship product, and the book that has to include all the most complicated stuff. The magic items that blend lore and mechanics, the world details that really define what the players are going to experience etc. And the implementation of it is fucking pathetic.

The only factor they seem to have paid attention to with the ORC License in the back is making sure everyone is individually credited on the credits and other than that it just uses the bare minimum text. It doesn’t include the license, it just tells you to look it up on Paizo’s site or Azora Law’s site – though it also misleadingly claims that there is a copy held in the Library of Congress.

A screenshot of the ORC Notice, which includes extensive crediting information (requiring all creators to be credited, along with Paizo generally) but no expressly designated material. It also says it was "Printed in China."
I bought the PDF, I have no idea how a PDF is printed in China.

So, it remains only as long as those web sites remain – after that its susceptible to dispute over what it actually says and theoretically it could be changed by Paizo without notice. Worse still, there’s no guide where the lines on what you can or can’t use are, so you’re just going off the hope that you don’t incur Paizo’s ire.

So, what is supposed to be our gold standard is a litigation nightmare waiting to happen – so everyone who copies it is going to be a litigation nightmare wating to happen as well. Great.

Also, as an experiment I bought what is apparently their first module under ORC (The Dacilane Academy’s Show Must Go On) still includes the weird claim that there’s a copy in the Library of Congress (and gives the copyright number for reference) and is still completely half-arsed with its distinctions.

B. Basic Roleplaying (BRP)

Like Paizo, Chaosism doesn’t include the actual ORC License – however they do somewhat better by the fact they at least put that its at various locations and provide some clarity as to what is and isn’t covered and provide this cool seal thing.

The "Powered by Basic Roleplaying" seal. Chaosium.

Basically they limit you from using the trade dress… but also don’t really include the specifications for that seal (do you need to include the background, can you change the colour, etc).

Unfortunately, they still copy the claim that the license is held in the… License of Congress? With the copyright registration as the reference. So um… not sure if that is better or worse.

BRP: Universal Game Engine Notice This product is licensesd under the ORC License held in the LIcense of Congress at TX-307-067 and orclicense, www.azoralaw.com/orclicense, www.gencon.com/orclicense and others. All warranties This product is the original work of Chaosium.

I’m not convinced they’re getting any value out of this since the book is kind hefty priced, and putting it under ORC with limits only on trade dress means that theoretically people could just copy-paste.

However, since Chaosium has a pretty cool fanbase, it seems that nobody is doing that. Well done Chaosium.

C. Black Flag Roleplaying

Kobold Press has made their ORC License item a freely available in a reference document and… same deal, license is on the front.

Interestingly, this cites the SRD 5.1 and specifies the Creative Commons license for it, but I’m not seeing any way in which Kobold Press benefits from the ORC over the CC BY SA 4.0 license.

Even then, its seems that from a commercial perspective they probably want to split content so some of it does not come with demanding Share Alike.

D. Pathwarden

This one illustrates one of the hazards of ORC pretty well. The product itself is on an ORC license from Pathfinder Player Core and thus, must also include its own ORC license.

Without being familiar with Pathfinder, it is impossible to decipher what is from that product and what is unique to this product. So if I bought this product, would I feel kind of screwed over if I then bought Pathfinder Player Core? Because the only way I’ll ever know is if I do that and then compare.

If I, without buying Pathfinder Player Core, ORC License this material and happen to recreate elements of the original – what then? Say, they simply or exclude some mechanics and I re-add them by re-inventing them, or I accidentally make a character/spell/item with the same name.

I didn’t intend to do so, I couldn’t confirm I wan’t infringing without paying Paizo but infringement has happened. Who is responsible and what duties did parties have?

Problems like this are why the law is always adapting and expanding.

E. Songs and Sagas

This one is a great example of how confusing things can get, because the creators have gone to great lengths to try to make a good SRD and be up front about the referencing etc in the Creator section.

But they’ve put it down as licensed under ORC and under Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0.

A screesnhot of the "License" (singular) which starts with announcing ORC, then CC BY 4.0 Attribution, then ORC again.

Now to be clear, you can do this – but best practice is to do like Wizards of the Coast did with SRD 5.1 and make two versions, each with the different license in front. In this case, the creators have made it extra confusing by not only putting them together but also sandwiching the CC-BY 4.0 license into the middle of the ORC info.

I want to stress, I don’t think this is the fault of the creators – I think it shows how the material around ORC is confusing and inaccessible to the lay person.

F. Fantastic Stories

This one also has an interesting double up issue. The license appears on the Itch.io page and in a briefer version on the bottom of each card.

The longer version in the shop front adds all the characters, setting etc to things that you can use under ORC – but that the version which is also theoretically susceptible to change. So you have two versions, one set in stone and one theoretically changable.

Again, I don’t think this is an issue that the creator should have anticipated and fixed, they’re (presumably) not a lawyer and are trusting the law firm that announced they were doing this right.

Also, I don’t really see how they get any advantage with ORC over CC BY SA 4.0.

VI. LEGAL & BUSINESS

Okay, but let’s not get too nerdy. This whole fiasco started because someone leaked documents from a subsiduary of a mega-corporation to various peoples, starting with reactionaries and then moving on to a young journalist. It was about corporations, laws and your rights.

So let’s see how the people who deal with that sort of thing have talked about it.

A. Legal Tests – Nil

I checked Court Listener, Google Scholar and every other free resource I could find and there is… nothing. Nobody had tested it, nobody has commented on it in a suit, nobody has done anything.

This is unsurprising since for a copyright suit to be worth engaging in, you pretty much need it to be in the hundreds of thousands or millions to make it worth taking all the way to court.

What was more worrying is, I also couldn’t find any related work by Azora Law or its lawyers – at least a federal court level. The only mention I can find of Azora Law in Court Listener is… they’re a creditor (vendor) in the FTX bankruptcy, along with over 9 million other parties.28 FTX Trading Ltd., 22-11068, (Bankr. D. Del.) Document 574, page 9 (#2836)

Suddenly it’s a lot clearer why they allowed an NFT channel in the Discord… wait was SBF the guy they were hoping would set up a trust to make it unassailable!? Were they thinking this would be a great pitch to helping FTX further their agenda?

If so.: All of the LOLs lol

B. Legal Press – Nil

I can’t find anyone in Law circles talking about the ORC License, or Azora Law. Looking for such thing mostly shows that Azora’s actual focus has been not with complex questions of copyright but in branding information such as trade marks and domains names.

Honestly the law of press, and the lack of general press I can find on this mostly just creates the impression the Azora Law were even more unqualified to create a shared license than I ever previously thought.

In fact the closest I can find, is commentary by YouTube lawyers.

Canadian lawyer Ian Runkle (aka Runkle of the Bailey) on his dedicated TTRPG commentary channel Roll of Law where he, like myself, is quite critical of it. Why I’m Against the ORC License (24 April 2023), A Lawyer Explains the ORC License, Clause by Clause (18 July 2023), The ORC License: Worse than the OGL (20 July 2023) and Pathfinder Bans ORC Licensed Work from Pathfinder/Starfinder Infinite (16 November 2023). You’ll find a lot his criticisms to be similar to the ones I’ve been bringing up.

The Rules Lawyer, who rose to prominence during the OGL debaccle and is a massive Paizo fanboy stopped caring about it during the feedback stage with a video that begins with him stating “I’m a lawyer and I don’t know what the *** I’m reading”: Lawyer analyzes the ORC License: Is it better than the Creative Commons used by D&D?

His first and biggest observation is that the license is too complex to be accessible to non-lawyers (though weirdly blames Wizards of the Coast for that). Ultimately he thinks it’s a step up from Creative Commons specifically because it forces you into the “open gaming” space (assuming that specialists say its viable and we can force people to publish under it).

So… no real press, but the not-press is not great – even when they try to blame Wizards of the Coast.

C. Business Press – Nil

I can’t find any discussion of this in the business press. I could find articles about the lawsuit with nuTSR, I could find articles about Elon Musk cheating at Path of Exile 2, and countless other topics.

Far as I can see, nobody in mainstream business cares about this – because it doesn’t have broad implications for business.

This is one piece of scholarly work from a school of business I was able to find, Codex of Curses, is a singular experiment by a creator testing to see how a new product did after the OGL fiasco. It proposes ORC has supplanted the OGL, but offers no real evidence of it (citing nothing but Paizo’s own press release) and makes numerous assumptions – largely being an excuse to rant that Hasbro needs to engage in better brand management. It was published on 25 April 2024, and at time of writing has 0 citations according to Google Scholar, and the product 0 reviews on Drive Thru RPG.

Also there’s a Finnish piece on localizing games from English to German but… I don’t read Finnish and don’t trust Google Translate.

VII. TO THE MOON?

So how has the masterpiece of one of Seattle’s oldest virtual law firms whose past clients apparently include one of the greatest cryptocurrency scams? Is it going to the moon? Or a classic rug pull?

How has Paizo, the ones who would save us from the tyranny of the OGL promoted and supported the project since release?

To be clear, I haven’t reached out to any parties because since this project is supposed to be infinitely scalable and last until the heat death of the universe, it seems it should be able to sustain without outside queries.

A. The (Abandoned) Discord

Since ORC launched there have been zero interactions by Paizo staff on the ORC Discord. This is pretty wild given that they have a FAQ channel for how to use the ORC license but do not seem to have ever posted in it since release.

It looks like fellow ORC critic, Roll of Law (above) has done more to help users with questions about ORC than Paizo has – at least in this Discord.

B. Paizo Web Site

Paizo’s web site has officially sod all to say about it since the license went live, generally the only mentions of it that appear after that are in products and in the case of the module I looked into – it was only mentioned in the comments, not in the product description itself.

That’s an even worse since than the radio silence in the Discord. The Discord was only intended for people who wanted to get involved in ORC – but the company web site is supposed to be for every customer and potential customer.

C. What Say Ye Counsel?

Far as I can tell, Brian E. Lewis has had pretty much nothing to say about ORC – he just tossed it into the wild like a naked baby in the woods and went back to work.

Theoreticaly, this is because the project is finished – eternal and immutable, but with his experience in business he’d know that it’s not enough to build a better mousetrap, you need to let the world know the mousetrap exists.

The only acknowledgement of it it though is a small link in the bottom right hand corner which takes you to an unformatted, unsecured page (SSL licenses are available for free now) which links to:

  1. A copy of the ORC License with no letterhead
  2. A copy of the ORC Axe on letterhead, with a disclaimer on every page that the advice on how the license is to work is not legal advice (even though it’s explaining their own legal document, that they drafted for your use)
  3. A scan of the confirmation that it was registered with the copyright office (WHICH DOES NOT MAKE IT AVAILABLE TO ACCESS IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS!)

D. The Reality of the TTRPG market

The TTRPG is dominated by Wizards of the Coast not because they have the best shit, but because they have massive brand dominance, development resources and marketing expertise, budget and opportunities far in excess of anyone else. As much as weird nerds love to obsess over the OGL and insist it and D&D Beyond are going to tank Hasbro, they’re incidental to the vast majority of customers.

Most people want a game to play, not a sick license referenced in the game to brag about during the game. The actual shit that impacts Hasbro’s share price is things like inventory mis-reporting and mismanagement.29 Gillian R Brassil “Hasbro Execs Sued for Stock Hit of Post-Pandemic Inventory Issue” Bloomberg Law (Virginia USA, 6 February 2025)

Before you can find yourself in need of a botique share alike license, you first need to have a product which sells in the millions and creates a big enough and engaged enough fan base that they can create a self-sustaining environment. At that point, you can afford a lawyer and don’t need to rely on Azora Law.

For ORC to dominate, it would first need to become inseparable from a dominating system in the same way the OGL was inseperable from D&D. The whole appeal of the original OGL was it meant that you could not only make materials without reinventing the wheel, but you could be confident there was already a huge market for people who liked games kind of like that and would pick it up easily.

The biggest product with ORC is Pathfinder, which does not enjoy a reputation as an accessible system and is often seen as a nerd’s version of D&D. Also the way they’ve implemented it is extremely quarter-arsed, so basically there is nothing to actually push it into the market and make it a thing that builds a new company the way that the OGL basically built Paizo.

VIII. COULD IT BE FIXED?

I didn’t reach out to Azora or Paizo over this because, as they made much fuss over – there’s no real point. Nothing in ORC is to be altered, amended, etc. This makes it convenient from a public relations standpoint because it looks the same whether they’re treating it as their legacy project to be remembered for, or plopping it and and abandoning it like a naked baby in the woods.

A. International Law and Contracts

A lot of the criticism of ORC by lawyers is the reality that ORC is difficult to decipher unless you’re very familiar with the relevant law. This is important with contracts, because the core of a contract is an intention to be bound by an agreement – a fatal misunderstanding of what you’re agreeing to can dramatically and unpredictably impact the outcome of a contract dispute.

A strange eccentricity of the ORC is that it is intended for international use, but does not specify what legal system dictates its interpretation and enforcement. The ORC AxE explicitly states that there is no specific jurisdiction, rather it will be the jurisdiction of the creator.

This is generally the default within international law, but leads to many potential complications if you’re actually expecting wide spread use or you live in a jurisdiction which has laws that are inherently different to many other areas. After all, if you wanted to enforce it you’d probably have to do so in the jurisdiction of the other party.

The overall trend in international private law is that if there’s no place specified then the law of the area when the issue took place, but the lawsuit can take place anywhere. Foreign law is treated as a matter of fact, supplied by expert witnesses.

So, imagine this – you’re a mid-sized TTRPG company, which means you’re basically a garage operation with maybe a handful of salaried employees. You find that someone has abused your ORC License in another country. You now need to not just find counsel who can work out the law in that country, but also work out what country to sue in and if differences in law and language are going to be an issue.

It’s a nightmare and there’s no fixing that.

B. International Law and Copyright

Contrary to what randos on YouTube will tell you – copyright does operate exactly everywhere in the world except for South-East Asia. It works differently in different countries, even different countries that primarily speak English.

England, Australia and New Zealand all recognize the “sweat of the brow” rule, which means that tabulated and gathered information can attract copyright, with the iconic case being a betting sheet.30 Ladbroke v William Hill [1964] 1 All ER 465 The US finds this approach unconstitutional, with the iconic case being one about phone books.31 Feist Publications, Inc v Rural Telephone Service Co. 490 US 340 (1991)

So in those countries, your list of historical items and weapons with their average size, weight, etc that you lovingly researched before putting in a book can attract copyright – but in the United States it cannot. This seems pretty relevant to TTRPGs – a hobby famous for creating tables.

Some nations recognize moral rights, some nations do not. Some nations have “fair use”, some have “fair trade” and some use variances in what is required to become a copyright violation in the first place.

Different countries use different tests, as previously covered ORC assumes that the nation is either using or will be happy to adopt the “sufficiently delineated character” test. I’m not convinced that New Zealand, for example, would be comfortable importing this test wholesale due to a lawsuit over nerd books.

Creative Commons, the simplest open license, written in the USA, wasn’t even impervious to arguments about interpretation of contract in the Ninth Circuit.32 Great Minds v Office Depot Inc 18-55331 (9th Cir. 2019) Nothing as complicated as ORC has any hope.

There is no magic combination of words you can use that will address the concerns of copyright in TTRPGs particularly given that unless your judge will (even if they are a fellow nerd) require you to explain all the concepts as you would to a child (because they need it on the record).

C. The Culture of Sharing

Ever since we’ve had the Internet, people have wanted to use it to share. Writing, art, software code, nudes, everything.

This culture of sharing is much more important when it comes to Open licenses such as Open Source and the need to make them versatile, easily updated and creates a centralized understanding is why the Creative Commons project exists. The licenses give confidence to people with deep pockets who want to use the material (like, say, governments) but are primarily there as a gesture of sharing.

ORC proposes that there really only one way to share in the TTRPG space and it’s one that means knowing what is and isn’t shared requires some knowledge of the fundamentals of intellectual property and limiting the value via the “share alike”. ORC AxE referred to it as a “virtuous circle” but that’s misleading, this isn’t something that creates a mutually beneficial cycle.

Rather what it creates is a system where content haphazardly ends up locked into a share-alike arrangement. You use their system, you make a product using the portion offered it and others can copy your product, but not the original product.

This conveniently places the original publisher at the top and in a position to essentially exploit their fanbase. They create a fantasy TTRPG, you create a new expansion that does moderately well – but is a little rough and needs polishing. They can essentially file the serial numbers off it, put in fresh creative material, polish it up and sell their version with specific protections. They’ll have the bigger platform, the better product and the expertise with the license they can use for you. The opposite of a virtuous circle.

This in fact poisons the culture, which is probably why Paizo hasn’t been very aggressive about it and seems more interested in it as a thing for other people – not for their community. It’s the kind of thing that seems great in a board room pitch, but clashes with the reality of the environment.

Also, let’s be real – unless you’re also a millionaire if you receive a cease-and-desist from Paizo over your product that uses Pathfinder mechanics via the ORC License – your most effective strategy isn’t going to be to fight them in court, it’s to fight them in the court of public opinion.

D. No Topic for Laypeople

One of the hazards of hanging out in the ORC discord, or having assess to it at least is people make all kinds of weird claims and talk as authorities while not having the first clue about what they’re talking about. With the exception of a few outliers, most of them had no real knowledge of how copyright or licenses work.

There are numerous myths about copyright that simply refuse to die. All official information on copyright in New Zealand includes a pleading reminder that the US principles of Fair Use do not apply in New Zealand law. That’s before we talk about how many people assume copyright infringement is boiled down to percentages of the total product.

Every complication is a hurdle that people who don’t have a well established understanding of the fundamentals will not just trip over but will manage to land crotch first on and some how flip up and hit themselves in the face.

IX. CONCLUSION

ORC sucks. Pass it on.

The license pitched as an ultimate solution has limited applications, only reliably works in present day United States of America, and is really likely to harm creative communities and create vicious fights over low stakes.

It’s completely unfit for purpose – being a complex legal document that requires substantial familiarity with US copyright law to understand, and being distributed to people who have no law training. The complexity and the background provides this illusory security, when in fact it is easy to give away content you don’t mean to, create a hostile situation for people who want to build on your work and accidentally invalidate your own licenses.

The original OGL that Brian E. Lewis worked on was over simplified, and didn’t include enough wording or contingencies. The ORC is over complicated and contains far too much wording and token gestures towards being an eternal solution that will outlive the copyrights and relevance of any product.

But the reality is you can’t use it for anything, because the comforting vagueness of the OGL has been replaced with a anxiety-inducing haze of legalise interpretation that is equally vague, but ultimately no different to Matt Colville’s “use at your own risk” approach.

At the end of the day you’re better off learning the ins and outs of Creative Commons, and working on making the kind of things you want to make. If you start to get to the level where you need to start renting office space and hiring a contract lawyer for your full-time creative staff, then you can start worrying about boutique contracts on your products.

If you ever do reach the level of success where you need to consider something as complex as ORC – hire your own lawyers in the specific jurisdictions where you have the most need for the licensing.

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