Paizo
| Paizo Publishing | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Alignment | Chaotic Good | |
| Divine Rank | AAA | |
| Pantheon | Tabletop | |
| Portfolio | Pathfinder, ORC | |
| Domains | Actual Listening to Fans | |
| Home Plane | Washington, United States | |
| Worshippers | The former fans of D&D following the Pinkerton incident. | |
| Favoured Weapon | Adventure Paths | |
Paizo Publishing is the company behind Pathfinder and Starfinder and the former publisher of Dragon and Dungeon magazines from 2002-2007. Back when Hasbro bought WotC, a whole bunch of people from the company jumped ship rather than see it get butchered from the inside. About a year after the purchase, Hasbro started slicing off or shutting down a bunch of stuff they got from buying Wizards. Paizo was started up so that the magazines wouldn't die, and took on all the magazine staff still working at Wizards.
Along with the D&D mags, Paizo also took over Star Wars Insider and Polyhedron from Wizards, and later tried starting a generalist gamer magazine Undefeated and a relaunch of Amazing Stories -- neither of which lasted more than about a year. SW Insider didn't last that long with Paizo either, moving to a different publisher due to politicking over the official Star Wars fan club.
When 4E was around the corner, Hasbro made Paizo give back the magazines, after which they were replaced with a digital app. With nothing better to do, Paizo decided they'd listen to all of us who knew that 4E would be shit and started up Pathfinder; the rest is history.
In 2022, Paizo started releasing content for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition starting with a conversion of one of their popular adventure paths, Kingmaker. While people were quick to accuse this on the failure of their new edition, what they all forgot was the fact that this was a backer goal for Owlcat Games' game of the same AP, and that they had another company port it all to begin with.
ORC
In 2023 however, everything changed when Wizards attacked. Releasing the 1.1 1.2 edition of the OGL and attempting to destroy the 1.0 version, people thought this would be the end of Paizo, whose flagship titles originated from the system.
Think again. They only kept the OGL in PF2 books to extend the open license to PF 3rd party. Instead, they announced the creation of the Open RPG Creative License (shortened to ORC) with the help of several other publishers and lawyers who helped pen the original OGL. Under this they have chosen to make an open-source system-agnostic document for all tabletop games, in response to Wizards trying to do the opposite. And ORC is being specifically made with a clause that it can't be revoked later like Wizards is trying to do with OGL as well as being set up in such a way that no company can twist it to their favor. Time will tell whether this will end favorably, though for now Paizo has stated they will fend for itself and other companies like Kobold Press and Chaosium in court if need be.
This transition against the OGL has also given them a significant headwind, as in the direct aftermath of the OGL 1.2 reveal and their counterproposal in the ORC, they've managed to see a massive surge in sales as players bailed from 5E to learn other mainstream systems.