I’m not trying to be belligerent, sorry if I came out like that.
So, your entire point is that you need to change MORE than the fluff on some pleces?
I don't think anyone has disagreed with that, but I might be wrong.
I think a lot of people are dancing around it and pretending it’s not nearly as big an issue as it is.
First among them being Paizo’s and it’s “we only included the OGL in PF2 as a formality.”
I dismiss that they are too incompetent to know how concept stacks = copyright. Which means they are lying through their teeth.
This is probably because they want all their customers and potential new customers to think what they’re going to have to release after Hasbro drops its OGL2.0 bomb will look exactly like the off-brand D&D everyone’s grown accustomed to over the last two decades and not some mutant hybrid where some concept or another critical to each person’s favorite race or class is going to have to change in some way so it’s not as clear a carbon copy of WotC’s copyrighted concept stack.
Either that or they’re banking on someone (perhaps even themselves) stepping up to defend the OGL1.0a that allows access to the 3.5eSRD or that Hasbro won’t come after all the third parties they hoped to capture in their 1.1 net who refused to step into their “oh so clever” trap (its not clever, but I’m sure they think it was and they’re butthurt in a way that dwarfs even Wile E. Coyote after the Roadrunner sticks out his tongue and zips away… ego is a helluva drug).
Regardless. I think a lot of people (not necessarily here) are indeed downplaying all the mechanical and artistic changes that are going to end following on from needing to match things up with different concept stacks.
I think to an extent it’s understandable too. The Hasbro/WotC OGL1.1/2.0 is a bit like a sudden cancer diagnosis for a non-trivial part of the industry. It means even if you survive nothing will be the same again and cycling through the stages of grief/loss (one of which is denial) is pretty natural and even healthy part of dealing with it.
But the acceptance stage is everyone’s favorite offbrand D&D system is going to be changed in some way if no one defends the OGL1.0a and it’s NOT going to be exactly the system it was before if they want to keep releasing new products… and each content creator who carries on will be prioritizing which parts of their concept stacks are critical to keep and which they can afford to throw away in going forward.
And I do think looking at a bunch of the “never OGL” systems is a good idea. Less for the “they have X so we can use it outside the OGL” and more at “they have X, but here’s Y and Z that are different in their expression of it” because that’s where the important lesson of landing outside what an ego-bruised Hasbro/WotC exec can reasonably go after lies.
Lord knows, with WotC likely to be extra litigious in the near future and while I’m finishing up my art, my parameters have shifted towards more wizard magic = sufficiently advanced technology” and anachronistic post-apocalyptic attire (ex. visible zippers, golems that are clearly robotic rather than animated armor) just because that’s one step further away from the D&D concept stack.
By contrast, before this all exploded I was much more cagey about the nature of my setting’s pre-Cataclysm world and that wizard magic “could” be sufficiently advanced technology or more traditional depending on an individual GMs desires. Now a GM is still certainly able to mix it up however they desire, but the default presented will now be a more deliberately Thundarr-like environment with clearly hypermodern ruins and stylings for clothing, weapons and armor.
Yes, some D&D settings have had their wacky sci-fi ruins… but most of those haven’t been central to D&D’s published settings in quite some time (rather it has been more crystals and togas style with magic aping modern conveniences) and post apocalypse filled with magic and superscience is generic enough an expression that my concept stack is neither Thundarr nor any of the old D&D settings which had a few such elements in them.