Sunday, January 15, 2023

The Future of Prokopius Press

This is likely the most popular thing
Prokopius Press has ever produced.


WotC has officially responded to players of every stripe cancelling their D&D Beyond subscription and hitting Hasbro the only place that hurts: their pocket book. As far as I am concerned, this move by players is about three years late, but I'll take it. The response by Hasbro was not impressive.

As I stated in my last post, Hasbro has shown itself to be wholly unreliable when it comes to keep up their end of the deal when it comes to the OGL. For all intents and purposes, this means that the OGL is dead. This puts me in a bit of a pickle because I have produced a number of games and modules over the years using the OGL. 

Since most of these have been free or PWYW, I have no real fear of WotC ever bothering to come after me, but I really don't want to be associated with Hasbro at all. You may have noticed, all the various links to my free stuff son't work. While some of that is negligence on my part (Google being Google), I am not going to fix those links until I figure out a way to strip the OGL content from all of my works and/or find another license to operate under.

Matt Finch will be releasing his most recent version of Swords & Wizardry with a new license, Autarch will be producing their own license for the next version of ACKS, and the big boys in the 3rd party world of RPGs (Paizo, Kobold, Green Ronin, Chaosium, etc.) are working on a generic Open Game license that will be known as ORC. I will be looking into each as they become public. Since I am a hobbyist first and publisher second, I have no real need to operate under any of these, especially if I do my due diligence and make all of my stuff truly my own.

I will also endeavor to move away from Google. I will not shut this blog down. Indeed, I probably will continue to post general thoughts, news, and other such posts from time to time. As I work to make make all of my stuff non-OGL, I'd like a space that I feel more comfortable using going forward.

When I land in that new space to share the work I do, I will announce it here and have a permanent link to direct you to the next chapter of Prokopius Press. 

 

3 comments:

shanepatrickward said...

I did the same thing. Good luck.

Janich said...

Full support. And I just panic downloaded all but a single (you don't have access) product again :D

Crouchback said...

Interesting that Fiends & Falchions is your most popular download since in a lot of ways it's the most distinctive. I liked it a lot though I still think you could work dwarves, halflings and elves into that science fantasy/post apocalyptic world. I hope you're able to get another version going.