GBS

Noticed this while sorting Forests. Two different artists, eight years appart. Is this homage? Inspiration? Some policy of making new art for core sets? I'm very intrigued.

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On scryfall:
Steve Prescott's Lorwyn Forest: https://scryfall.com/card/lrw/300/forest
Jonas De Ro's Origins Forest: https://scryfall.com/card/ori/271/forest
o_O Those are suspiciously similar, down to the trees in the background...
I would guess this was done on purpose because part of Magic Origins took place on Lorwyn, but a lot of Lorwyn-style art doesn't fit with the rest of the set. It looks like they re-painted a location on Lorwyn with an updated style.
 
I would guess this was done on purpose because part of Magic Origins took place on Lorwyn, but a lot of Lorwyn-style art doesn't fit with the rest of the set. It looks like they re-painted a location on Lorwyn with an updated style.
Ooh, it must be that, although it feels weird to want to refer Lorwyn forests but not wanting to use the actual art but redraws in a different style. I checked after your suggestion and from the Forests of Origins two seem to be redraws of Lorwyn forests and the other two are the original art from two Zendikar forests. The other basic lands are either reused art from the planes appearing in the expansion that had been visited or new art for those that had not. The redraw has been only done on these two forests.

Well, this is the random bit of trivia I learned today.

Related scryfall searchs:
Lorwyn forests: https://scryfall.com/search?q=!Forest+set:lrw+unique:prints
Zendikar forests: https://scryfall.com/search?q=!Forest+set:zen+unique:prints
Magic Origins forests (2nd and 3rd are redraws from Lorwyn, 1st and 4th are comebacks of Zendikar art): https://scryfall.com/search?q=!Forest+set:ori+unique:prints
 
Merry Christmas and chag sameach to all. In a strange, strange year, as the new year draws upon us, I'd like to share a poem that I found meaningful at this time of year last year, and which I continue to think about.

599fa63fdd8d0350f4fcee20781c30a8be9cde65.pnj
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Paizo’s pulling the trigger on their “own” OGL variant! It’s going to be perpetual and irrevocable, and it’s not going to be owned by a publisher but by an independent law firm (to be transferred to a yet to be founded neutral foundation at a later date)! Link. They’ve also gone and said Pathfinder 2e doesn’t actually need the OGL, and the only reason it’s mentioned is to enable third parties to create stuff that adds to PF2e. So, now that WotC decided to be a greedy cow, Paizo is going rogue! :D
 
Paizo’s pulling the trigger on their “own” OGL variant! It’s going to be perpetual and irrevocable, and it’s not going to be owned by a publisher but by an independent law firm (to be transferred to a yet to be founded neutral foundation at a later date)! Link. They’ve also gone and said Pathfinder 2e doesn’t actually need the OGL, and the only reason it’s mentioned is to enable third parties to create stuff that adds to PF2e. So, now that WotC decided to be a greedy cow, Paizo is going rogue! :D

This would be exciting if the OGL wasn't just a legal stunt to encourage people to make derivative works instead of competing with D&D directly. :p

OK, that's not the original intent of the license, but that's how WotC has been more-or-less using it.

(Long story short: game rules aren't subject to copyright in the US, and even if they were (and you had to avoid WotC's rules), it's actually shockingly easy to create a new RPG — I have a friend who once wrote one in a single evening, while heavily drunk. The OGL is just WotC offering you the ability to use D&D's prestige in exchange for shackling yourself to their IP and giving them a share of your profits.)

...

Honestly, the hilarious part about the whole situation is that it shows that the suits making these decisions have no damn clue what they're doing. They're approaching the task of squeezing more money out of RPG players the way you'd squeeze money out of TCG players, which requires an incredibly bad read on how RPG players work.

The stuff RPG players spend ridiculous amounts of money on (new dice, miniatures, commissioned art of their characters, novelty t-shirts) and the stuff WotC wants them to spend ridiculous amounts of money on (repackaged versions of rules they already own, some digital tools with reasonably-equivalent free alternatives) have such little overlap that it's not even a venn diagram — it's two separate circles that happen to chill on the same sheet of paper.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Executives will take the bet "50% chance to earn 0.1% more per year, 50% chance someone else has to draft a PR statement and your brand gets ridiculed" every time, regardless of the odds.

Either way they don't need to do any work.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
This would be exciting if the OGL wasn't just a legal stunt to encourage people to make derivative works instead of competing with D&D directly. :p

OK, that's not the original intent of the license, but that's how WotC has been more-or-less using it.

(Long story short: game rules aren't subject to copyright in the US, and even if they were (and you had to avoid WotC's rules), it's actually shockingly easy to create a new RPG — I have a friend who once wrote one in a single evening, while heavily drunk. The OGL is just WotC offering you the ability to use D&D's prestige in exchange for shackling yourself to their IP and giving them a share of your profits.)
Okay, hot take, maybe, but D&D being such a big name, even if it isn't perhaps the best system out there, has been a boon for the RPG hobby. It's always been a rather niche hobby, and it's only because D&D has become so popular that you can easily find other players to play with. In "old" times, before the OGL existed, the TTRPG community was fractured and small, each RPG having its own tiny, shrinking island of players, and it was damn hard to make a living in the industry. The OGL and ensuing ubiquitousness of D&D has given many, many people a solid foundation to build on, and it has grown the TTRPG hobby considerably. I belief this is a good thing.

As an aside, you may call it a "legal stunt", but the OGL ensures a) third party publishers were safe from being litigated by WotC/Hasbro. Being legally in the right has little meaning in the USA, where the wealthier party can effectively bankrupt you by taking you to court, even when they know they're going to lose. And b) it ensured consistent expression of rules throughout the hobby. While copyright doesn't protect game mechanics, it does protect expression (up to a point), and the OGL just flat out gives third party publishers permissiom to use the same expression of the game mechanics. Thanks to the OGL, you don't have to worry about creating a new class in exactly the same formatting as the PHB, or new monsters in exactly the same formatting and wording as the monsters in the Monster Manual. I believe that wouldn't necessarily be the case without the OGL. In any case, it's a very useful document to have around, and without it I have no doubts the entire TTRPG community would have been a lot smaller.

That said, I've already started working on my own adaptation of the ICRPG rules set, which I intend to use for my next campaign, and my players seem to be on board for it :)
 
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