The Great Unhappening

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pathfinder-remaster-drow-ogl-retcon/

Drow, chromatic dragons, and so many other concepts are being weeded out of the Pathfinder 2E revision and, as I suspect, many other games.

Wizards and D&D used to have this "soft lock" on expectations of what constitutes a fantasy world and setting. Therefore, anytime a game repeated the "familiar old things," it was an admission that "D&D would always be the best representation." The "kiss on the king's ring" and a soft admission of loyalty cemented D&D as the mindshare leader. It kept people from making their own video games and online experiences, as they were still determining ownership, yet they were okay to use in printed games.

Kiss the ring.

The drow and chromatic dragons are Creative Commons now - but, as I suspect, Paizo wants to break free from that and plant the seeds of a new license. This means doing away with the legacy concepts in the CC 5E SRD so they have a "clean base" to build upon. They do not want to include the CC content, so it is all being purged. I do see a fork between the CC games (Swords & Wizardry) and the ORC games, and this is likely one of the most significant splits in the community to have ever happened.

This was the ultimate "soft lock" on a mental IP - fantasy gaming - ever. The most critical virtual mind-space would be fantasy gaming and superheroes. Control those mental concepts, and control billions.

Now that everyone is rewriting their games, the D&D mindshare is being tossed into the bin.

This will be the most significant impact of the OGL disaster and one Wizards could have never predicted.

The lore they let everyone use was the lore that kept them the market leader.

Now, all that is gone. People are making their own stuff. The idea of what fantasy "is" will be many different things. The language and concepts will be different. The "open source" monsters and "dark elves" will diverge from "the Wizards versions." These new things will be open, which will be used more and eventually replace the closed source versions.

Don't get mad or depressed; they did this to themselves. It does prove why the current crowd there aren't the best stewards of the game. They lost what is arguably the most crucial jewel in that crown.

The one that made them a king.