Pathfinder Remaster: The Plan™ (Patreon)

Many of you have been wondering what my plan is with the Pathfinder Remaster. The release of Howl of the Wild has brought this to the fore, so I figured I’d write a proper answer to fill you all in – and in the process, get some of my own thoughts clear.

tl;dr  Yes I’m making character sheets for the Remaster, but it’ll take longer.

Let’s start with some context. Feel free to scroll down if you already know all this.

Where did the Remaster come from?

The OGL crisis of January 2023 shook up the RPG industry. For decades, publishers large and small had been building their games on the Open Gaming License because it offered them safety from being sued by Wizards of the Coast – provided they followed the rules. Now, not only was the upcoming edition of D&D going to be released without the familiar OGL, but Wizards were trying to revoke it for previous editions as well. The proposed replacement would take a large bite out of every third-party’s revenue, in a market that already runs on very thin margins. The solid ground we were all standing on started to slide away, and everybody was looking for somewhere to jump to.

Paizo, the biggest third-party publisher, loudly declared that the reason they’d used OGL for Pathfinder Second Edition in 2019 was not because they needed to use any property owned by WotC, but only so they could open their content up to other publishers. Was that true? It’s debatable, but it was their chosen line in the sand. WotC could only challenge it by stepping over that line into a courtroom, potentially costing a lot of money for a very uncertain result, and further cratering their already free-falling public image.

In place of the OGL, Paizo announced they’d commission a replacement open licence, designed for many games, with a more solid legal wording than the minimal, easy to read OGL. They would pay for this effort, the OpenRPG Creative License, or ORC, and they would release it into the world for free. It would not be owned by Paizo or anyone else, so it could not be revoked.

Of course, Paizo were serving their own interests here as well. Partly because it was great publicity for them, which translated into an immediate sales boost; and partly because the first-party benefits most from an open market.

There was just one problem with this plan: Pathfinder 2e was already out under the OGL. You can’t just re-release existing books under a new licence. Both licences explicitly forbid re-releasing content under different licence terms, and while Paizo could maybe do that and weather the litigation, third-parties would have no such luxury. It was too soon for Pathfinder 3 – the market wouldn’t tolerate it, and it would split their player base (remember, plenty of people still play Pathfinder 1, and D&D 3, and AD&D).

What exactly is the Remaster?

Paizo turned that dilemma into an opportunity.

The Pathfinder Remaster is not a whole new game, but it’s a chance for them to fix a lot of little things in Pathfinder 2e; more than just an errata, it was a wholesale refinement of the game. The core rulebooks would be rearranged to make them easier to use and more friendly to pick up. It would strip out lingering words from D&D that might be copyrighted, or even just that are more evocative of D&D, and outdated concepts like alignment would be dropped entirely. It’s not a new game, but it is an across-the-board upgrade.

For clarity, I’m going to refer to pre-remaster PF2e content as “Legacy” since that’s what Archives of Nethys calls it.

The Remaster is a complete game, in that it starts with the Player Core, GM Core etc – you don’t need to own any Legacy books to play it. However, it remains compatible with existing content from the Legacy books, such that you can mix and match. You can play a Legacy elf, Remaster Druid; or a Remaster elf, Legacy Druid.

The Remaster is legally distinct from Legacy. The new books are released under the ORC License, and its ORC Notice does not reference any of the legacy books. However, there is a slight blurring in that Howl of the Wild was released under OGL since it came out before the Remaster, but while the Remaster was in the works, so it includes some references to Remaster changes. Just not legally.

In fact, the ORC Notice in the newly released Howl of the Wild doesn’t reference any previous books, not even the Player Core. This is an interesting choice.

While the core classes and ancestries are being remastered, a lot of content probably won't be. This includes the non-core classes like the Magus and Kineticist, ancestries like the Shoony, Lizardfolk and Grippli, and archetypes like the Pathfinder Agent or Red Mantis Assassin. Compatibility between the Legacy and Remaster keeps all those options on the table for players.

What does the Remaster mean for character sheets?

I am, of course, working on updating the character sheets for the Remaster. But a bunch of things make the work more complicated for me than you might think, all at once:

1 – Legal

The first set of problems I have is legal. Remember above when I said that both licences explicitly forbid re-releasing content under different licence terms? That means you cannot legally publish one product that is both OGL and ORC at the same time.

(Okay, the A5e people have since done just that, but it’s complicated, and they have bigger legal cajones than I do.)

The only way you can do it is to split your product into two or more neatly-separated parts: an OGL part and an ORC part. In a paper book that’s relatively straightforward: you need your legal smallprint to say that, for example, pages 1 to 189 are OGL, and pages 190 to 316 are ORC. As long as you word it right and don’t fuck up – and it is incredibly easy to fuck up if you’re doing this – then it should in theory be legally sound. Or at least, close enough to dissuade anyone from suing you.

It’s harder to do in software when all the parts are supposed to work together. I could make two completely separate websites for the two editions of Pathfinder 2e, but doing so would deny my users the perfectly reasonable opportunity to combine content from Legacy and Remaster sources in one character. How do I bring them together while also keeping them apart?

The answer I’ve got so far is:

• Offer people a choice of which edition to play with, including ‘both’ as a combined option.

• Keep the two editions separate in source and compiled forms. They only get combined at the last step, as part of building a character sheet, and only if the user chose to use both.

• Include a suitable copyright/license header in every single source file (using automation to get it right).

• Write a very detailed legal page on the website making clear where the boundaries are.

2 – Technical

Now comes the question of how to implement it.

When I wrote the new (JavaScript, YAML and HTML-based) engine for making character sheets for Pathfinder 2, I didn’t anticipate the need to combine multiple game editions in a single character sheet. But I did anticipate the need to have more than one package of sources co-exist.

My character sheets in this system are built out of “units”. A unit is a file describing a set of layout additions it makes in a YAML DSL, along with some JavaScript, SCSS and assets (eg images) that go with that unit. Each class, subclass, background, ancestry, heritage etc is a unit, as are all manner of smaller things like “animal companion”, “full size inventory” and “large print”. Some units exist only to provide reusable parts, like the Spellcasting section on class pages.

Every character sheet draws its units from three packages (that I call “systems”):

• “Common” – units that apply regardless of the game you’re running. Includes the main visual theme, options like “large print”, etc.

• Pathfinder 2e – all the units specific to the game system, including the common pages, the class-specific pages, and various other options.

• Premium – units that cannot legally be part of the main open-source repo because they’re governed by a different licence. In practice this just contains the two specialist fonts, Dyslexie and Lexend, both of which cost money and can’t be redistributed as open source.

In the future when I add other games, those will be new systems.

To make the Remaster work, I’ll be adding a new system for Pathfinder 2e Remaster, entirely separately from the Pathfinder 2e one. A character will need to be built entirely from Remaster units without any Legacy units at all, which means duplicating a lot of them.

Name clashes are an issue, and not for the first time. The 2e Core Rulebook included a Gladiator background, while the APG had a Gladiator archetype; and there are no doubt other overlaps, especially when you bring third-party in. If the website relied on the name alone, that could result in building the wrong character sheet, so instead it uses IDs like <base/character> or <class/apg/witch>.

Two units in the same system can’t have the same ID; but in different systems they can. To make the crossover work, some units will need to be overriden so that you don’t end up with both versions at once. Other units need to not override, so the builder can tell whether you’re requesting the Legacy or Remaster version. The first need to have the same unit IDs between systems, the second need to not have the same name. Working out which is which will be complicated.

For example, a user wants to play a Grippli Wizard. The Grippli is a Legacy ancestry, but they want to play a Remastered Wizard. In building a character, my site needs to pull units from both systems (as well as the common system). The Grippli has a unique ID so it gets pulled from the Legacy system; the Remaster Wizard has a unique ID so it gets pulled from the Remaster system; but the Spellbook page has the same ID on both sides, so the top system (which is Remaster) gets priority.

3 – Ergonomic

Pathfinder 2e already has a wealth of options to pick from, and if I’m honest, my website’s way of organising and presenting those options already isn’t the best. You need to remember which book your preferred background or class comes from, or click around for ages to find it. I have no idea how I’d add a whole second edition there without it getting painfully messy and frustrating.

It isn’t just scale any more. The new site will have the confusion of two things with the same name. Are you building a character sheet for a Legacy Bard or a Remaster Bard? Somehow it needs to make that clear.

I’ve been aware for a long time that I need a new website. The current site’s low colour contrast is hard to read, especially for those with dyslexia or visual impairments. If I want to be worthy of the name I’ve picked, I need a whole new design. And that should be launched at the same time as the Remaster character sheets, unless I want to do the legal legwork twice.

Of course I’ve tried to make a new website before. It has been my job, after all. Several times over the years I’ve started the project, but none of those attempts were truly satisfying, either visually or technically. I might be a little bit picky, maybe even perfectionist when it comes to my decade-old baby.

After much iteration I’ve finally settled on a site design and implementation plan that I’m happy with, but there’s a lot to do to actually make it.

4 – Temporal

Player Core 2 will be coming out in August, filling in the second half of the remastered core and APG classes. The second batch will include some of the more complex classes to remaster, so I can anticipate more complications and less copy-paste in my own remaster effort, compared to the first batch.

A bigger complication on the horizon is Starfinder Second Edition, coming out in 2025. We know that it will use the PF2e engine and be fully compatible and cross-playable with it. It’ll use the ORC License as well, of course, but players will still be able to combine Starfinder content with both Pathfinder Remaster and Legacy content.

This means that whatever mechanisms (technical and legal) I put into place now for handling two editions need to be flexible enough to handle three or more in the future.

In theory, I'd like to add more games. But given the workload, that's clearly not happening any time soon.

5 – Legacy

I know a lot of you still play Pathfinder 1, Starfinder 1 or D&D 3.5, including loyal patrons, so those character sheets need to stick around.

The new website will need to preserve all the functionality of the current one, despite the big change in both the front and back end. That means remaking the existing build forms for those games in a way that matches the new style. Then I'll need to copy over the actual PDF engine for building character sheets. Luckily I already did the work of porting the PDF engine from Scala to Node.js, so it should fit neatly into the new server.

I have, at times, dreamed of bringing the older games to the new HTML-based process, but it was always too much work and too little benefit. As long as the new website supports them, their future will be secure for years to come.

The Plan™

And now finally, the bit you clicked the headline for: what I plan to do about it.

• Split Pathfinder 2 into two separate game systems, legally and technically distinct, but you can combine them at point of use

• A completely new website

I have a new website in the works, which includes a complete redesign of the character sheet builder to better manage the wealth of options. It's also a visual refresh with much better colours, and will enable me to add a few long-wanted features, like translations for the website.

At the start of making a character sheet, players will be offered a choice of edition – Legacy, Remaster or both. Once Starfinder 2 releases it will be added to that, along with an “all 3” option.

Behind the curtain, though, I need to treat the two editions like they're totally different games. All the source files for the Remaster need to be in a different folder from the source files for legacy. The compiled data will likewise be kept separate. I need to be able to point to certain files on disk and say, “these ones.”

Each of these two games needs to fully work without needing any parts from the other. But to get them to cooperate when the user chooses “both”, I need to be able to pull units from both piles, and ensure those units play nice. As discussed, that means working out which units to duplicate, which should have the same ID and which should avoid it.

To avoid any legal uncertainty, source files – in whatever language – should start with a copyright/license comment. Since there's thousands of those files, and thousands more to be added in the future, I intend to use an automated tool to ensure that every file gets an appropriate header, depending on what folder it's in.

How long will this take? 

I have no idea.

Looking at all the above, there's a lot for me still to do before any of it's even ready to preview. I'll be pleased if I can manage a patrons preview before the end of 2024 – but that’s not a promise.

When I do have something worth trying out, patrons will get first access to it. Until then progress reports will appear mostly on Discord.