I think this is interesting to software people because the OGL is clearly inspired by open source licenses, being mostly a permissive license but also borrowing the "or later" clause from GPL, which is herein being abused to try intimidate older license version users and secure additionally rights for Wizards themselves.
I suspect it won't succeed if it ever does end up in a courtroom, but it does raise some interesting questions about where the line is. e.g. GFDL 1.3's Wikipedia can convert from GFDL to Creative Commons clause is arguably a similar claim to the idea that Wizards can now use OGL 1.0 content royalty free on the surface.
The OGL was always, always, always a trap, and it's sad to see it snap shut. The time for Paizo and such to move on from it was with Pathfinder 2E, but they didn't, and now the depressing part happens.
The other shoe to drop is the actual play community. Critical Role is all but in-house already and probably won't be affected, but smaller creators trying to monetize their 5E content are going to start feeling the noose tighten.
> The original OGL granted “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license” to the Open Game Content (commonly called the System Resource Document) and directed that licensees “may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.” But the updated OGL says that “this agreement is…an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement.”
> The new document clarifies further in the “Warranties” section that “this agreement governs Your use of the Licensed Content and, unless otherwise stated in this agreement, any prior agreements between Us and You are no longer in force.”
The hinge of the trap in OGL 1.0a is the "any authorized version" part, here in its more full context:[1]
> 9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.
Hasbro has the money to make legal challenges to that prohibitive, and no other company in the space has remotely similar resources. Good luck, suckers!
Their "this is not specific personalised advice, consult your own lawyer" thoughts were:
1. The license does not specify revocable or irrevocable, but it would be likely a court would find it to be irrevocable because:
- other lanaguage in the license such as the perpetual term and the option to use later versions appears to anticipate it being non-revocable
- the zection on termination only provides for breach of contract and protects sublicenses of the terminated work from being terminated unless the sub licenses were also infringing. The fact that it provides some grounds for terminatioj but "we have a new license" isn't among them hurts their argument.
- There is mutual consideration and this is even spelled out in the contract as being consideration in terms of the derivative content being reciprocally licensed, plus the unspecified benefit to Wizards of having more complements to their product increasing its appeal. The licensee obviously gets the rights to use the covered content.
- The 23 year usage of OGL 1.0a may constitute reliance especially when combined with past clarifying public statements where Wizards official documents and then-active employees indicated it was intended to be non-revocable.
- Clauses in US law for copyright owners to terminate licenses require 35 yeara and do not affect sublicenses, so unlikely a court would assume a stricter unwritten standard of revocability than this
However, they also point out you can waive your rights to use content under 1.0a if you were to agree to 1.1, e.g. to get access to 6e content.
They also touch on the idea of if Wizards could use others OGL 1.0a licensed content under 1.1 which imposes lesser restrictions on wizards than 1.1. They're vaguer on this point, but imply probably not as its too much of a deviation from the previous license and raise the reliance part again
A slight tangent, but it's funny how everyday people are on the hook for legal consequences, even when legal professionals can't agree which laws apply, or even what they mean.
Even more funny how you can't even ask the government in advance how a particular situation would be resolved, as courts don't rule on hypothetical situations. People on the cutting edge in a lot of spaces really just have to do it and find out the legality later.
That post says that the revocability of 1.0a is an unsettled question. There's some precedent in open source licensing that would be hopeful for people hoping to stick with 1.0a, but nobody knows for sure.
> I reached out to the architect of the original Open Gaming License, former VP of Wizard of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, and asked his opinion about the current plan by WotC to 'deauthorize' the current OGL in favour of a new one.
> He responded as follows:
>> Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked.
If intent matters in contract law, then the intent of the license was (per WotC and its representatives at the time) for it to be non-revocable. WotC had publicly stated that this was their intent:
> 7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?
> Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.
> A: An Open Game is a game that can be freely copied, modified, and distributed, and a system for ensuring that material, once distributed as an Open Game will remain permanently Open.
Ryan Dancey, even and maybe especially as the license's author, is not a lawyer nor qualified to talk about how Hasbro found a potential legal loophole in it that he didn't intend.
Also, Dancey didn't issue the license, WotC did. Intent matters, so the WotC FAQ is relevant IMO, but Dancey's personal intent is irrelevant.
He also doesn't have the best track record at anything he touches surviving the experience - Five Rings, Last Unicorn Games, getting laid off from Hasbro two years after the OGL shipped, OPC getting eaten by Alderac, overseeing CCP's marketing during the CCP/White Wolf debacle, architectung the utter failure of Pathfinder Online - such that the guy is like the Forrest Gump of RPG industry failures.
Giving Hasbro an OGL loophole 20 years ago would still be top-3 for him but it's like, did somebody botch an RPG IP decision today? Odds are either Dancey or Jordan Weisman were in the room when it happened, even just coincidentally.
When a contract is ambiguous because one side made conflicting statements, the usual resolution is that the other side gets to pick which interprets to use.
Especially when the equivocating side is the more professional / powerful side.
> Also, Dancey didn't issue the license, WotC did. Intent matters, so the WotC FAQ is relevant IMO, but Dancey's personal intent is irrelevant.
Dancey was the VP in charge of the product at WotC at the time. Obviously what he says is relevant because he wasn’t talking strictly in his name but in the name of the company.
That's great, but Dancey's name isn't on the license, Wizards of the Coast's is. Anyone else at Wizards can contest any statement of intent he makes.
Dancey's statement this week also wasn't from his time at Wizards, nor as a representative of the licenser - indeed, he now works at AEG, a competitor with a catalog including OGL v1.0a-licensed works for sale and a vested financial interest in the OGL v1.0a working the way he describes it.
The WotC FAQ from that time, again, is relevant IMO. Maybe Dancey wrote it. But it's relevant because Wizards published it. 2022 Ryan Dancey is not.
It doesn’t matter than Dansey’s name isn’t on the license. Writing document exists from the time when he was representing WotC where he says that the licence is intended as perpetual which is the point of him commenting on the whole thing. It’s not about 2022 Dancey.
I understand you don’t like the guy but that doesn’t preclude him for saying relevant things.
"where he says that the licence is intended as perpetual"
This is still not relevant here, it is about irrevocible. But apparently he also said that and it was in the official FAQ. If official FAQs are meaningless, then this just gives room for open fraud.
> Also, Dancey didn't issue the license, WotC did. Intent matters, so the WotC FAQ is relevant IMO, but Dancey's personal intent is irrelevant.
Dancey-as-individual may not matter, but Dancey-as-officer-of-company may. At the time he was presumably acting on behalf of WotC and stating what WotC's intent was.
So when he says that the intent at the time of issuance was that it could never be revoked, wouldn't there have to be evidence put forward to contradict it? Either internal documents or from someone else involved in the OGL giving a contrasting opinion?
Actually it does matter since if his testimony and public statements are admissible in court that the legal team at Hasbro or WotC didn't see a problem with the language of his license then any potential loopholes via irrevocability or some such interpretation would still constitute a valid contract even if they didn't see the loophole (ignorance isn't an excuse if you didn't read your own contract/license that you approved for a given set of content).
I wouldn't say that they say the opposite. They simply say that WotC/Hasbro has stated that they have revoked 1.0a, and whether this is possible or not would be something that would be worked out in court.
Those are just facts, not a legal opinion on whether it is revokable at all.
> I do believe that there are potential legal challenges to the revocation of OGL 1.0a, especially given the length of time Third Party Creators have relied upon OGL 1.0a and the speed with which WotC has taken action to revoke it. However, these challenges would have to take place in court.
These “d&d” podcasts seem to basically be playing rules-light systems with a some d&d styling, I bet if WoTC tries to really enforce anything they’ll say “switched to dungeon world” and that’ll be the end of it. It would probably be a more accurate reflection of the play style anyway. (I mean d&d is great because most people aren’t, like, professional voice actors and improv pros, the structure that Critical Roll and their ilk don’t need is why us normal people might want the system in the first place!)
I’m mostly worried about the folks posting settings and adventures on drive through RPG, it seems like they have a ton more exposure. :(
Pathfinder 2E is clearly a derivative work of Pathfinder 1E which is a derivative work of 3.5. It's not clear that none of the content in 2E would cross the threshold of being both (a) copyrightable and (b) sufficiently unmodified from D&D 3E to be under scope. It's not clear how much of Paizo's decision to license 2E under OGL was as a CYA in case someone found that some of the content was derived from D&D 3E, and how much was for continued compatibility with the PF 1E ecosystem, but likely both concerns were considered
This is the first HN comment I've seen that used "derivative work" correctly instead of claiming that derivative works are exempt from copyright (comflating with "transformative work")
Pathfinder 2e's text is completely written from scratch and it has original aesthetics and branding around the various things used in marketing (for example, even the shared dragon types have different art and abilities).
I think would leave the only real copyright and trademark concerns around things that were nominally invented by D&D, like tieflings and balor demons... and even those would be a stretch, since for the most part they're obviously based on preexisting pop culture (70s and 80s comic books for plenty of tiefling-like characters, the balor originally just being a slightly rethemed Tolkien balrog, etc).
> Hasbro has the money to make legal challenges to that prohibitive,
Legal costs do not necessarily scale by size and wealth of the litigant. I'm not a lawyer, but I've dealt with enough license disputes that I'd be lawyering up if I was in the D&D OGL business. This looks to be a pretty simple contract dispute about what paragraph 9 (Updating the License) actually says and if it is actually legal (it probably is). I'd first ask the lawyer if I should suspend selling and distributing, and then ask if it's worth litigating the OGL license change. Suspending the business will also dramatically reduce the cost of litigation because there's going to be minimal damages to argue (which takes a truckload of accountants and extra expensive lawyers to calculate).
I grew up on D&D in the 80s, but I will steer my kids away from it over these kind of shenanigans. The publisher is demonstrably untrustworthy of its fans.
Does it make any sense for Wizbro to fight Paizo, or Green Ronin, or streamers, or Youtube, or roll20, or software based on the OGL? Is there any evidence at all that they are harming or cannibalizing D&D? Youtube/streamers are basically the gateway drug to TTRPGs, and roll20 allowed us all to keep (or start!) playing D&D during a global pandemic! Pathfinder is a thing, but D&D is still bigger than ever. (Though I wonder if Starfinder helped to provide incentive for reviving Spelljammer? I'm happy that both exist actually.)
Maybe it's easier to hire lawyers than to focus on making more D&D products, video games, and licensed media that are actually good.
In any case, it usually isn't a good idea to fight your fans/customers, because they are the lifeblood of your game (and company), as well as its biggest advocates.
From OGL 1.0:
4. Grant and Consideration: In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive License with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content.
9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/OGL%20License
From Gizmodo:
One of the biggest changes to the document is that it updates the previously available OGL 1.0 to state it is “no longer an authorized license”
That part in section 9 doesn't say that it invalidates the part in section 4, though. Reading it strictly, claiming an earlier license is "unauthorized" would merely mean that you can't use the earlier license to redistribute content put out under the later license, not that you can't use the earlier license at all.
Yeah, and crucially, all of the talk of WotC wanting to revoke OGL 1.0 as applied to existing material is speculation based on the leaked draft discussing its authorization -- there's no specific language claiming it is "revoked". My guess would be that they want to make it clear that despite clause 9, you can't distribute 1.1 material under the 1.0 license.
It's a clusterfuck of
1. The leaked license has some really shitty terms in it
2. Folk might be misinterpreting one particular part to mean something other than intended, but its getting the main focus right now (and also treated as absolute fact!)
3. It's leaked so WotC was completely unprepared to answer questions and/or do PR around this
If I was e.g. Paizo I would be very urgently demanding clarification, but since I'm not I'm content to wait and see what happens without getting too outraged, yet.
(I will 100% boycott WotC/D&D/MTG/etc if they actually do try to revoke 1.0 material, though.)
I tend to think that the explosion of compatible d20 system RPGs in the 2000s was a good thing.
The 5e OGL also seems to have been good for gaming, and for D&D as well. D&D is certainly bigger than ever.
As I see it, D&D, Pathfinder, Green Ronin, etc. are all on team RPG; Wizards would do best to focus on expanding the hobby and making players happy, largely by producing high-quality D&D tabletop games and associated products, and supporting high-quality D&D-derived video games, movies, TV, novels, comics, etc..
After seeing what WotC did with the Android: Netrunner license (they pulled it just as the game became extremely popular), I’m not surprised they are doing the same thing to D&D.
Building on top of a WotC-owned IP seems like a bad idea, since they will likely change the license once your product stqrts to get big.
Strictly speaking, WotC didn't pull the A:NR license, they just declined to renew it when the six-year term was up. While we don't know the story, it seems a safe bet that the initial license was seen as a low-effort monetization of an idle property, which they didn't expect to become competition for the MtG cash cow. And while A:NR never became big enough to be a direct competitor (compared to Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh), I think they came to perceive minimal upside in subsidizing a successful LCG model, lest the market lose confidence in "luxury cardboard rectangles" as a speculative asset.
Netrunner has continued as a fairly successful non-profit fan cooperative [0] since, but remains in a very legally shaky position (they've been working on cutting ties with the original IP as much as possible, but if Hasbro wanted to set an example, it might not matter).
The problem with using those numbers as-is as an indicator of game system popularity is that Roll20 sucks for non-5e systems and a lot of people have jumped ship to Foundry VTT [1], which has much better mechanical support for various game systems.
A someone who currently plays in four weekly games, I don't know a single person that has actually switched from Roll20 to Foundry, despite me recommending it and everyone agreeing it's the superior product in many ways.
Roll20 still has the overwhelming supermajority of the VTT market, Foundry is the Linux of VTTs.
I play PF2e and the entire community seems to have switched from Roll20. At least all of the DMs in the online living world I was part of, my regular games, and all of the PF2e games I see listed on various LFG subreddits.
Some of us use d&d beyond with it, some not. I think the dungeon master prefers foundry much more than roll 20.
What it took was the dungeon master saying we shall do this, a session or two to work out the kinks, and one other player who gained expertise enough to explain game play mechanics (e.g., use the x key) to the rest of us (to offload some of that burden from the dungeon master)
The methodology for these numbers changed in Q2 2019[1], so I don't think it's safe to compare 2014 numbers to 2021. However, Q2 2019 is well before FoundryVTT exited beta, so it is safe to look at the 2019 numbers and draw conclusions about online play:
This rules change is aimed specifically at companies such as Paizo. Pathfinder is based on 3.5e, which was covered under the OGL, and going forward they must pay 25% of their revenue to WotC, and cannot sell any content for the system outside of printed material (no video games, etc)
Only for content Paizo makes that's based off of OGL 1.1
What's WotC going to do about all the Pathfinder books out there? Round them up and burn them? Those Pathfinder books are still licensed OGL 1.0 by Paizo.
Who could possibly be claiming that WotC is going to go from house to house looking for already purchased material under a license that was entirely legal at the time?
Also, all copyrights and patents are monopolies. To say that D&D has a monopoly on D&D after revoking permission for the public to create content based on D&D can't be controversial.
Copyright doesn't cover game mechanics, just the specific expression of them.
There are even entire game lines that mechanically recreate older editions of D&D in their entirety, all of which are entirely legal under copyright law.
> Who could possibly be claiming that WotC is going to go from house to house looking for already purchased material under a license that was entirely legal at the time?
Cool. So I copy Pathfinder 1.0's rules, using the license Paizo gave me in the Pathfinder 1.0 rule manual. Its almost the same system as D&D 3.5, but the license is from Paizo, not from WotC.
If WotC lawyers come after me, they can pound sand.
> Also, all copyrights and patents are monopolies. To say that D&D has a monopoly on D&D after revoking permission for the public to create content based on D&D can't be controversial.
They gave it away using OGL 1.0. There are now game systems based off of Pathfinder (itself, also an OGL game). Does WotC's sudden revocation of the license somehow apply to my Pathfinder books?
They didn't even write Pathfinder. It'd be insane for them to try to revoke my Pathfinder license of OGL.
Why is this insane? It seems like you're simply describing derived works. The reason derived works are so reliable in open source software is that the license grants used to do the derivation are irrevocable. But licenses are revocable by default; GPL goes out of its way to be irrevocable. The concern (and Hasbro's recent statements) is that 1.0a does not.
GPLv3 does, but GPLv2 has basically the same language as the OGL v1.0a in terms of the revocability, share-alike nature and "or later" clause, just with GNU replaced by Wizards and software references like the distinction between source and binary removed (in fact, it seems likely the OGL just copied GPLv2)
Apache prior to 2.0, all versions of MIT or BSD also do not go out of their way to be irrevocable.
Yep. I'm not super interested at all in tabletop RPGs, but the licensing controversy here is super fascinating. I've read some reasons for OGL 1.0-reliers to be optimistic, but the whole thing seems pretty unsettled. If 1.0's revocability holds up, most HN'ers assumptions about how licensing of WOTC property works are going to be broken, because we've gotten so comfortable with FOSS's comparatively sane norms.
Like, if Wizards does get their way here, it seems like a death knell for the MIT, GPLv2 and BSD licenses in their current form. It would render them unwise to use in commercial code or as referenced dependencies of open source codebase as the author could revoke it any time, as well as invalid to incorporate MIT or BSD code into GPLv3 or Apache 2.0 licensed projects as you do not have the permission to grant an irrevocable license to your sublicensees
No: the irrevocability of the mainstream FOSS licenses has already been tested.
People are doing a lot of axiomatic reasoning on this thread: "FOSS works this way, so the WOTC license should work similarly". Nope! Your best bet is probably just to go read actual legal analyses (that's all I'm doing, reading and relaying things).
The legal analyses I've found fall on one of two sides:
1. IP licenses, especially one sided take it or leave it licenses, are revocable, sometimes even if the license expressly says otherwise because of restrictions on perpetuities.
2. A license turns into a contract when there is consideration from the other side. Licensing your own work under a license because of a virality/share-alike clause has mixed reactions on if its consideration but more fall on the side that it is than it isn't.
Neither of these positions would seem to be to distinguish the OGL from GPLv2 here, and position 2 would set a position where OGL is not revocable but MIT/BSD are.
Creative Commons also made the same change at about the same time. I wish I knew more about why exactly everyone did this -- I haven't been able to find contemporary discussions that are clear, although I suspect I just haven't looked hard enough.
> 9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.
Just because OGL 1.1 exists doesn't mean that OGL 1.0 / clause 9 stops existing. My license to use OGL 1.0 works seems to continue.
See above. Whether "1.0 keeps working" is (as I understand it) the revocability question. If it's revocable, 1.0 does not keep working. If it isn't, it does.
Only for content Paizo makes that's based off of OGL 1.1
The key here is that this is dependent on whether or not WotC can revoke the older licenses.
Part of the issue here is there's a clause in OGL1.0 that suggests it's possible for WotC to come along at a later time and basically change what is considered an "authorized" license.
The language[1] is in #9:
9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated
Agents may publish updated versions of this License.
You may use any authorized version of this License
to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game
Content originally distributed under any version of
this License.
This reads to me like they can come along at a later time and essentially say "OGL1.0a is no longer authorized" and thus everyone will be forced to move to 1.1 or cease any distribution of content issued under that license.
Whether that's enforceable is really down to what a court says.
That's a non-sequitur. Monopoly is about being powerful enough to engage in anticompetitive practices and the rest of the market not being able to just ignore you, which WotC certainly is here.
I would specifically recommend "Game Wizards" by Jon Peterson. Gygax comes across as a pretty huge jerk, though Arneson isn't entirely sympathetic either.
I have never played D&D but I have some very limited experience with matrix games for wargaming, which I understand to be similar. Can somebody explain the scope of the ruleset(?) that was being licensed under this OGL license? How much would you need to change a game based on OGL licensed rules to make it independent of WotC?
Specifically, what does this mean?
> Much of the original OGL is dedicated to the System Resource Document, and includes character species, classes, equipment, and, most importantly, general gameplay structures, including combat, spells, and creatures.
If your tabletop roleplaying game has an "orc" species and "rogue" class and "sword" equipment, is WotC going to sue you? Or is this pertaining to games that specifically reference D&D documents in their rules?
You can see pretty much the whole original SRD here: https://www.d20srd.org/index.htm Everything in the first two columns is the stuff from that turned into a nice web format.
> If your tabletop roleplaying game has an "orc" species and "rogue" class and "sword" equipment, is WotC going to sue you?
There are plenty of games that already have those. In fact, there's an entire sub-genre of D&D-like game ("OSR") designed around directly emulating older editions of D&D, based on the fact that you can't copyright game mechanics themselves, just the text that expresses them.
Tolkien preferred "ork" in his later writings. There is some discussion of the spelling in his guide to translating names:
> It should be spelt ork (so the Dutch translation) in a Germanic language, but I had used the spelling orc in so many places that I have hesitated to change it in the English text, though the adjective is necessarily spelt orkish.
They've trademarked "Dungeons and Dragons" branding and those bits of the D&D brand that are actually at least somewhat unique rather than directly based on other fantasy sources (this is part of why, for example, tieflings are fairly prominent in newer editions).
There are plenty of things in D&D that would be protected by neither copyright nor trademark because they aren't even close to being original or unique to D&D: fighters, wizards, orcs, dungeons, dragons, taverns, elves, gnomes, the list goes on and on...
What WotC is trying to do now is say their new license invalidates the old license and magically everything under the OGL 1.0a is now licensed as OGL 1.1. The System Resource Document has a lot of non-trademarked content under the OGL 1.0a. Anyone could use those non-trademarked items under that license without any sort of issues.
They don't have a trademark on the word "orc". They have IP covering a fictional "orc" species for a role playing system with some statistics and basic descriptions. This generic "orc" entity was licensed under the OGL 1.0a for anyone to use in their own games. Paizo and others based the "orc" species on the SRD.
That's more trademark than copyright. Anyone can sell a "space marine miniature figure" or make a game featuring "power armor marines in space", but only GW can sell Adeptus Astartes stuff.
The OGL covers specific verbatim rules text, which is copyrighted even if the mechanics aren't. If you want to rewrite every rule in D&D, you can, but it's easier to copy text or reference specific identifiable terms in D&D with the OGL.
The OGL also defines what's protected identity, like the word "beholder" for the monster or specific book titles, and what's not, like the spell named "magic missile".
Regardless of trademark or fair use, if you agree to the OGL then you also agree to not use declared protected identity terms. For D&D, that generally means things related to their setting or branding.
It's not really a trademark issue - WotC has a trademark on D&D, particular styling of that, and other stuff like Beholders. They also hold lots of copyright on stuff that is explicitly not (and never was) under the OGL - the setting of the main D&D adventures and books, for example.
They probably can't copyright the idea of a playable race of Orcs or Elves, likely can copyright (and license) particular descriptions or art of those races, and maybe can copyright the specifics about how those races work. It isn't clear, because this all hasn't been tested in court. Spells are another example - is a spell like "Lightning Bolt" with particular effects something that can be protected by copyright? It didn't use to matter much - anyone could just add the OGL to their publication and be fine - but it might start mattering a bunch more.
Matrix games, as they have become popular in institutional settings, are tabletop simulations where interactions are adjudicated by expert referees. The documentation for a matrix game may be no more than a few pages of backstory, as the operation of the simulation will rely on the experience of the referees.
Tabletop RPGs are (traditionally) built on elaborate systems of rules for managing character traits and interactions. The rule set will strongly influence the structure of the game narrative and your perception of options. Converting settings and scenarios to another system can be a major change. D&D prevails in the market due to the huge inertia, despite the existence of many attractive alternative systems.
> "[The OGL 1.1] takes a strong stance against bigoted content, explicitly stating the company may terminate the agreement if third-party creators publish material that is “blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, trans-phobic, bigoted or otherwise discriminatory.”
I'd just like to point out that such a license, if applied to software, would violate the zeroth essential freedom of free software, "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" And for good reason. That clause essentially gives WoTC the right to revoke your license at any time for essentially arbitrary reasons if they subjectively decide your content is one of those bad things.
Where is the line between a game depicting discrimination and the game material being discriminatory? When Morrowind depicted racist slavemaster Dunmer who shout "N'wah" at you, and allowed the player to align themselves with such factions, was that a depiction of racism, or was the game material itself discriminatory? I think you could make good faith arguments in either direction. Normally finding the line between the two is up to everyone to decide for themselves, but in this new license, WotC gets to decide the line is wherever they want, whenever they decide to snuff you out. Even if the other terms of the new license were agreeable, this term makes the license a trap for any business that would compete with WoTC.
The D&D rules aren't free software, and WOTC has branding concerns that free software projects don't have. The intellectual property issues here are somewhere between those of Mickey Mouse and those of Linux.
Not all games and other material published under the OGL references/uses the WotC SRD (System Reference Document) or D&D material (beholders, magic missile, etc.).
The license changes also affect any non-PDF content, which would include D&D/OGL game streams and YouTube videos, and virtual table tops publishing OGL material (including those for Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc.).
My point is they wouldn't be, even if the rules were software, because the violate the zeroth essential software freedom. I bring this up particularly because the earlier versions of the OGL are compared to free software licenses in this thread. This new license is nothing of the sort.
> branding concerns
That's not special to tabletop gaming, software has branding too and there are certainly advocates for adding "no evil" clauses to licenses, like Douglas Crockford. But addressing such concerns in the license makes that license non-free.
I think everybody in the world is pretty clear about the fact that OGL 1.1 isn't comparable to a FOSS license. It requires revenue reporting and a 25% royalty on all gross returns above a threshold! It's a commercial license, and an onerous one.
Everything has branding, but products and projects exist on a spectrum of sensitivity to branding issues; the representation in media of a Disney character would be at one far end of the spectrum, the uses an open source image editor were put to might be at the other. WOTC's D&D IP is somewhere in the middle.
I mean, of all the reasons why 1.1 isn't a FOSS license, the morality clause is the least of the issues. I have two rebuttals to your original post: first, there's no pretense that 1.1 is a FOSS-comparable license, and second, there are obvious reasons why, even if they had done a more FOSS-acceptable 1.1 in every other regard, they might still need the morality clause.
If what you're saying is that an exclusive, intrusive commercial license without a morality clause is more in the spirit of FOSS than a non-exclusive, non-intrusive free-use license with a morality clause, well, (1) that's a take, (2) I don't agree at all, and (3) we can probably just agree to disagree. At any rate: we've identified the disagreement, so let's take that as a win.
I believe that morality clauses are the greatest threat to Free Software, particularly because they seem like a reasonable abridgement of the zeroth freedom when considered at first glance, and it is sometimes difficult to advocate against such abridgement without having nasty accusations thrown against you. Of all abridgements to software freedom, morality clauses seem to have found the widest popular support among people who style themselves as supporting Free Software.
OGL v1.0a is, and the issue at hand is Wizards is abusing their position as author of a license to try transmute a FOSS-inspired license to a commercial one sided license.
Yes, obviously. But that has nothing to do with the morality clause; it has to do with the fact that WOTC has decided their licenses are completely revocable, and their demonstrated willingness to replace them with onerous commercial licenses. If a FOSS vendor had pulled the rug WOTC did here, the morality clause would be the very least of your concerns.
> Where is the line between a game depicting discrimination and the game material being discriminatory?
One bit of context here to keep in mind is that there have been tabletop releases that have been incredibly clearly on the far side of that line, wherever you might define it - think "literal Nazi propaganda packaged as an at least nominally playable game". I haven't personally seen any use the OGL 1.0a specifically, but there are probably some out there.
Of course, since the OGL 1.0a doesn't imply any particular business relationship with WotC or allow any special association with the D&D brand, any "need" to actually police the OGL 1.1 like this is basically just self-inflicted from how they're conflating what were previously two separate agreements (one for mechanics, one for branding).
> One bit of context here to keep in mind is that there have been tabletop releases that have been incredibly clearly on the far side of that line,
What is "incredibly clear" to you is not necessarily clear to others. I know for a fact that some people consider games having a "dark elf" race to make the game itself racist, and consider much that was normal in fantasy media in the 80s and 90s to be deeply problematic today. Including much of D&D. The game even having racial classes with different characteristics is offensive to some people.
Normally this is simply a point of low-stakes debate between players, but when you add such a clause to a license the subjectivity of the matter becomes a liability to anybody that would make commercial use of the licensed material.
The "incredibly clear" cases I'm talking are games like RaHoWa, where the objective of the game is to play white people and kill all minorities, who oppose you with abilities based on offensive racial stereotypes.
There is no assurance that enforcement of such "no evil" clauses will be limited to such incredibly clear cases. Given the general anti-competitive behavior of WoTC, there is good reason to think it wouldn't be.
Again, I think at this point everybody is clear that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the owners of the 1.1-encumbered WOTC IP are going to be magnanimous, open-minded, or tolerant in any way. What's weird is that we're stuck on this side-show of an issue. 1.1 probably doesn't even need the morality clause; it probably gives Hasbro enough power to revoke any specific relier's license for any reason or no reason at all even without the morality clause. If that's the case, all WOTC is doing with the morality clause is being nice enough to warn you about something that was true either way.
In reality, the morality clause is probably a response to some high-profile tabletop RPG stories involving Nazis; in other words, it's a marketing move, not a legal one.
Most D&D-alikes these days, including D&D and their biggest competitor Pathfinder, have actively repudiated the "orcs: always evil" kind of stuff from the Gygaxian days. Even vampires, demons, and the like occasionally have a place in the narrative as heroes struggling with their own twisted natures.
Of course, part of this for business reasons: they can't sell you The Complete Guide To Southwestern Painted Orcs for $29.95 if a southwestern painted orc can't at least theoretically join a heroic adventuring party.
There is a difference between "all orcs must be killed and a more nuanced scenario.
Also what you do on your table won't be policed, but publications, like pre generated adventures which are more nuanced are typically also more interesting.
The part about racism is interesting in the context of D&D where there are loads of intelligent non-human creatures.
I have an edition of Shadowrun where there is an explicit take on the subject. In the Shadowrun world, the appearance of elves, dwarves, trolls, etc... made racism based on skin tone and other human attributes obsolete, and specie (called metatype) became the new differentiator. So no more white supremacists, but there are now human supremacists taking on elves.
Another corporation embracing the hyperaggressive narcissistic ethos, as if there are nothing else - no other stakeholders, no goodwill, no future, no community, no employee value, no public image etc. - besides making money now. Hasbro is being pressured by investors to monetize their IP more.
It matches the authoritarian, anti-democratic, drive for power in another domain (and often by some of the same people). Nothing else matters.
That's what they tell you, but like many things they and other post-truth sophists say, it collapses immediately with just a little scrutiny: Hasbro has been a capitalist company since they were founded, and created the prior open gaming licesce.
It's a recent trend - all these 'capitalist' companies operated otherwise for most of their existence. And they did for good reasons, and built the most productive companies and economies in history - all that we have today.
This is already having an effect on the community, as people like The Arcane Library (https://www.youtube.com/@TheArcaneLibrary) are shifting away from using/referencing the OGL despite having pre-prints of material using the OGL.
I also find it interesting that WotC/Hasbro have been silent so far (both regarding releasing the official OGL 1.1 or making a statement about the leak to correct any factually incorrect statements).
> I also find it interesting that WotC/Hasbro have been silent so far (both regarding releasing the official OGL 1.1 or making a statement about the leak to correct any factually incorrect statements).
Probably because they are trying to figure out damage control. this leak only happened on thursday.
I would expect a response during the week with them backpeddling a bit.
What's interesting(/blows my mind) though is that unsubstantiated rumours about the new OGL started going around weeks ago. This caused a massive amount of concern and outrage among the community, to the extend that WoTC actively moved up their communication timeline and responded with a post on DndBeyond containing more info about the new OGL (a far more reasonable version) to try and reassure the community and stop the fearmongering. That was all before this leak.
Yet despite all that they've suddenly come out with this draconian agreement which is worse than most of the rumours that had already caused a huge outrage.
"Yet despite all that they've suddenly come out with this draconian agreement which is worse than most of the rumours that had already caused a huge outrage."
Well, they explicitely state, that they are ready to change a bit, if the shitstorm is big enough.
"The document does note that if the company oversteps, they are aware that they “will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We’re more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision.”"
I hope this will get settled in court, though.
The 1.0 Licence seems to be unclear whether it is revokable, but since there was a FAQ section on WoTCs Website explicitely stating you can always ignore changes you don't like, then this is what I would settle for, if I would have invested in it.
> Well, they explicitely state, that they are ready to change a bit, if the shitstorm is big enough.
Yes and there already was a massive shitstorm that they attempted to address before these additional details were leaked. That's the part that confuses me. It should have been crystal clear to WotC that there would be huge outrage over this leaked document. The chain of events so far has been:
- Rumours started about changes in the new OGL to make it more restrictive but with little actual details.
- Creators within the community start worrying and raising a shitstorm based on their negative presumptions of the new OGL.
- WotC post about the new OGL on DndBeyond to address the rumours (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d). They say they hadn't planned to share details so soon but felt they had to to reassure the community due to the shitstorm the unsubstantiated rumours had raised. The details they share seem reasonable, if more restrictive, and WotC say they want to make the process easy for creators.
- The text of the OGL is leaked and it's waaay more restrictive than the blog post implied and arguable worse than most creators originally feared during the initial shitstorm.
> > Well, they explicitely state, that they are ready to change a bit, if the shitstorm is big enough.
> Yes and there already was a massive shitstorm that they attempted to address before these additional details were leaked. That's the part that confuses me. It should have been crystal clear to WotC that there would be huge outrage over this leaked document. The chain of events so far has been:
> - Rumours started about changes in the new OGL to make it more restrictive but with little actual details. - Creators within the community start worrying and raising a shitstorm based on their negative presumptions of the new OGL. - WotC post about the new OGL on DndBeyond to address the rumours (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d). They say they hadn't planned to share details so soon but felt they had to to reassure the community due to the shitstorm the unsubstantiated rumours had raised. The details they share seem reasonable, if more restrictive, and WotC say they want to make the process easy for creators. - The text of the OGL is leaked and it's waaay more restrictive than the blog post implied and arguable worse than most creators originally feared during the initial shitstorm.
Because from their perspective it's more advantageous to slit goose throat than share its golden eggs with competition allowing it to grow and in the future threaten wotc/hasbro position.
It wouldn't surprised me if they leaked it themselves to either see what the outcry would be, or so they can release a version that's not as bad as the leak and people are happier with it even though it's still terrible.
It seems a bit odd, though — card collecting games have always seemed to have a bit of a mercenary streak. I mean buying and trading cards is sort of part of the hobby, right? I think players go into it expecting some level of ongoing costs. With pen and paper RPGs, the sort of mythical ultimate campaign that many only hope to achieve could go for years and years on a couple books. I can’t think of many hobbies that provide as favorable a $:entertainment ratio. This is… not a market that is expecting to spend a lot of money…
Yeah, but isn't the meaningful metric "It would cost X to own a Tier 1 Standard Deck" or something? has that amount gone up? I only play booster draft so no idea tbh
There is a difference between making money and abusing year long commitment of the community to make people spent more money then they think is reasonable (or should afford give their financial spending).
People which have decades of emotional commitment are quite easy to be pressured into "over-spending", through if you do it too much it can cost you your brand and many people their hobby.
To some degree you can compare it to games having "just" in-app purchases in a well balanced way even if it might be a bit pay to win and it a game using all kinds of dark patterns to squeeze out every penny no matter the moral and being pay-hug to even have a chance to compete.
Like for many of the current relevant formats the entry cost for not just playing causal with your friends is around 500€ for a _single_ deck and 1000+€ for going competitive; and just to be clear that's in a context where WotC managed to not (yet) kill of their brand by going too much overboard with pricing.
But it means that if you are not a well earning single that hobby isn't quite affordable anymore. *Anyway WotC basically kicked out anyone who is not at least slightly well of, because they don't make them money and I'm afraid what that could men for D&D*.
It just seems like it would be harder due to the fundamentals of the game to screw over the actual player community of D&D. There’s no competitive aspect, you can write whatever you want on your character sheet, and there’s a strong home brew tendency. If they try to gate the content behind a paywall, players can just… make it up themselves.
They can go after folks publishing settings on drivethroughrpg which will be a bummer. And they can go after the sort of “play d&d on a podcast” groups (until they just switch to a different system). I think the players will be fine, though.
WOTC seems to have filled a room full of rakes and banana peels and decided to sprint through it at full speed. This, D&D ONE, the M:tG 30 abysmal failure.
That's posted Dec 21. The OGL 1.1 leak happened on Jan 4th.
They mention that the OGL 1.1 will only apply to static (ePub/PDF) and printed media, and the revenue terms, but they don't mention the other OGL 1.1 changes that have been causing the current storm, such as:
1. revoking OGL 1.0a;
2. the 1.1 license giving WotC/Hasbro the irrevocable ability to use your content in any way they want to;
3. their ability to terminate your 1.1 license for any reason;
4. their ability to update the terms to the license with a 30 day notice.
Copyright law does not extend to the rules of games themselves (you may notice video games copy mechanics all the time), so it just seems like this will result in people jetesoning references to their original creatures.
Though it's worth noting that there are plenty of things that weren't original to D&D in the first place. For example, the distintive looks of the owlbear and landshark were actually directly based off dime store plastic toys imported from Asia, and various names like "prismatic spray" and "githyanki" actually come from preexisting fantasy novels.
They can, but (as I understand it) there are pretty well-established commercial teams that have invested heavily in the IP-encumbered stuff we're talking about here; this is a little like embedding a PDF rendering library into your program, losing the license to it, and being told "can't you just take a text editor and a compiler and write your own PDF renderer?". Sure, you can.
Lots of people have for decades, and continue to do so. There's a much smaller commercial market for that right now that doesn't interact with the OGL, either though D&D 3E/Pathfinder or D&D 5E.
The question isn't whether you can make it, it's whether you can access the specific markets and marketplaces that make sustainable money from it.
In particular, plenty of indie authors have noted that anything D&D-branded gets exponentially more sales, even if it's otherwise completely identical to something without the direct D&D association.
This comes directly on the back of Hasbro's CEO (D&D's parent company) complaining that D&D is "under monetized" and that they want to grow the revenue through "the type of recurrent spending you see in digital games."
Unrelated to the license, I have been using ChatGPT to create dialogs, extended descriptions, translations, and many other things to complement adventures.
I was thinking about how ChatGPT might be a reasonably decent way to flesh out game depth. Fallout 4 has a ton of hand-crafted content, but the “Radiant” quests are just so obvious and thin.
Verifying a good story is far less work than writing one. This seems like an easy way to address the hollow variable-substituted text of half the quests I get.
“ By ending the original OGL, many licensed publishers will have to completely overhaul their products and distribution in order to comply with the updated rules.”
Is this rug-pull actually true and legal? Seems like a horrible agreement to enter into for this reason.
Legal, is more complicated and likely needs to be decided in court. There is a non-small chance that original OGL license is in no way terminated and people can continue to distribute copyright content under it. Through trademarks can be another issue. And being in right doesn't mean you are not sued or otherwise terrorized by an abuse of the legal system. E.g. see non-Lego brick products which are legal but frequently e.g. stuck in customs due to Lego abusing the legal system. Not even speaking about the 3D trademark nonsense which makes selling compatible figures close to impossible even through the law is very very clearly not meant to be apply that way.
What specifically falls under the license? Surely not the rules or mechanics, only the particular expression of those. The art, sure. Maps, sure. Not sure you can claim right over "orc", "dragon", "wizard" or any of that.
The OGL states that "in consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content".[1] The OGL defines two forms of content:
Open Game Content (or OGC)
...the game mechanic and includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines to the extent such content does not embody the Product Identity and is an enhancement over the prior art and any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License, including translations and derivative works under copyright law, but specifically excludes Product Identity....
Product Identity (or PI)
...product and product line names, logos and identifying marks including trade dress; artifacts; creatures characters; stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, dialogue, incidents, language, artwork, symbols, designs, depictions, likenesses, formats, poses, concepts, themes and graphic, photographic and other visual or audio representations; names and descriptions of characters, spells, enchantments, personalities, teams, personas, likenesses and special abilities; places, locations, environments, creatures, equipment, magical or supernatural abilities or effects, logos, symbols, or graphic designs; and any other trademark or registered trademark...
They seem to be trying to license some things that are just not covered by copyright:
"17 U.S. Code § 102, (b):
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
A federal court in Texas recently ruled that the structure and game play of a card game are not protected by copyright law in DaVinci Editrice S.r.l vs. Ziko Games, LLC et al.
DaVinci Editrice S.r.l (DaVinci) published Bang!, a role-playing card game using Wild West themes, in 2002. Players in Bang! are assigned one of four roles, each with its own winning condition. Each player is also assigned a Wild West-themed character, such as “Calamity Janet” and “Willy the Kid,” each with its own abilities. The game received critical praise and commercial success.
Yoka Games, a Chinese company, and its U.S. distributor, Ziko Games, LLC (Ziko) later introduced Legend of the Three Kingdoms (LOTK), a card game with rules nearly identical to Bang! but set in ancient China. Players are assigned one of four roles with the same functions and winning conditions as in Bang!, and are assigned characters with individualized abilities, with different names and artwork to reflect the different setting.
DaVinci sued Ziko for copyright infringement, asserting that LOTK copied protected features of Bang! Copyright law protects original expression, but does not protect ideas or functional elements such as procedures, processes, systems, or methods of operation. Game mechanics and rules are not entitled to copyright protection, but expressive elements may be copyrightable, including game labels, design of game boards, playing cards, and graphical works, as well as elements of the characters – if they are sufficiently developed. Copyright does not protect “stock” characters.
The court determined that Ziko’s game did not infringe any of the protectable elements of Bang! The game play and interactions of the roles and characters in Bang! are not sufficiently detailed or developed to be protectable expressive content, but instead are unprotectable game mechanics and rules. The characters and roles in Bang! are not considered to have delineated personalities, temperaments, back stories, or other features typical of characters in movies and books that can make those characters protected. Ziko copied unprotectable elements such as rules and system of play, but did not copy aspects of the roles and characters which are expressive (and therefore copyrightable), such as the associated artwork. By adopting an ancient Chinese theme in LOTK, Ziko was able to avoid copyright liability while copying the basic structure and game play in Bang!
For game designers and publishers, this decision clarifies the limitations of copyright law in protecting card games. Copyright law can be effective in protecting the expression in a game (artwork, appearance), but does not protect rules and game play. Detailed original characters may be protected, but not aspects of the character that exist just to drive the system of play, such as how strong they are or how difficult they are to defeat. Trademark law can be effective in protecting your brands (company name, game titles). Patent law can protect the rules and methods of game play, and patents directed to methods of playing card games have been issued (Magic: The Gathering, Apples to Apples). However, the courts’ evolving interpretation of patent-eligible subject matter has made obtaining patent protection on rules and methods of game play more challenging. Game designers and publishers can best protect their products with a combination of intellectual property rights, rather than relying upon copyright alone.
Unfortunately, the current edition of Vampire kind of sucks because of severe mismanagement by Paradox Interactive (the current rightsholders).
By all accounts Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition by Onyx Path (a licensee of Paradox) is quite good, though, as is Vampire the Requiem (a reboot/variant gameline by Onyx Path, now mostly shut down by Paradox, designed around more modern gothic horror/mystery and less of VtM's 90s Blade vibes).
yeah, it's hilarious how convoluted that whole series of games has become while still pretending to be associated with each other. world of darkness vs new world of darkness vs chronicles of darkness, storyteller vs storytelling... vampire the masquerade 20th anniversary isn't the same game as 5th edition but they're both out at the same time, and requiem is something entirely different? and there are two editions of THAT, too?
they need to just make a true blood rpg. they could call it Waitress: The Undressing and people would go nuts over it.
One point of clarification there: New World of Darkness is the same thing as Chronicles of Darkness, with an edition change and some rules rewrites in between. The game line started as the former (as dictated by White Wolf) and then got rebranded to the latter (also as dictated by White Wolf).
I really don't know much about D&D but WotC had reached out to me a while back for an engineering position. The individual was incredibly unprofessional in just about every way imaginable so I cut things off and said I was not interested before we began talking compensation or anything. Weird company!
Basically the whole tabletop industry is like that, though I think a large part of that is that only Wizards and Paizo have enough sales in the first place to even act as workplaces rather than part-time hobbies.
I also had a weird professional experience with them that I'm probably not allowed to give details on. Not exactly shady or unethical, but they didn't comport themselves well. As a player since 1990, I was excited to work with (the inheritors of) D&D, then suddenly very disappointed with them.
> The original OGL granted “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license” to the Open Game Content (commonly called the System Resource Document) and directed that licensees “may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.” But the updated OGL says that “this agreement is…an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement.”
I wasn't under the impression that such an authorization could be revoked... Specifically, if someone is living in a cave with OGL v1.0(a), and churning out works according to its terms, then it isn't their responsibility to check every day if the copy they are using has suddenly become not-authorized.
Nor can Hasbro send them an official notification that they have withdrawn authorization, because they have no way to find said person. And any reseller need not reveal the identity of the cave dweller creator who is still using OGL 1.0.
Perpetual doesn't imply anything about revocability (thats irrevocable). The law doesn't operate in this stupid vacuum like software engineers believe it does.
But from a logistical point of view, is it possible to revoke a license from a person that you don't know the name and address of, and have no way to find it?
I think you'd be hard pressed to tell a court that you want to sue an unnamed person for following the terms of a license that you granted to them, then revoked but haven't told them you revoked, and that you don't know their name or address...
The law doesn't care all that much about logistics, for one. More importantly a license like this only practically matters for published work, and published work is generally not completely anonymous; WOTC doesn't know everyone who has published something under the OGL but they certainly know of Paizo, Roll20, Critical Role, etc. and fundamentally those are the ones they care about. If Jim your local DM keeps writing homebrew they won't know, but it's also not who they're aiming at (yet).
That's true, but it also adheres closely to ideas like "common sense". It's hard to imagine how to interpret the use of "perpetual" in the original OGL that doesn't imply "irrevocable"; certainly nothing else in a blanket license like this is going to be time-limited.
I dunno, but I'd want to see someone cite some case law where a "perpetual" license was allowed to be revoked like this. It certainly smells off to me.
Obviously WotC isn't obligated to license any new content under an older OGL, it can use whatever terms it wants. But as for existing OGL content, I think they're on some very "innovative" ground here, legally.
From the reading I've done, I don't think there's much controversy about this: perpetual licenses aren't automatically irrevocable; they're separate concepts. A perpetual license is just a license without an expiration date. There are other reason I've read that 1.0 could be effectively irrevocable, but the word "perpetual" isn't, I don't think, one of them?
That still seems like an extremely narrow reading of a license that has been in regular use in an industry selling real products for 20 years. Literally everyone, including WotC, has gone on behaving as if this was "irrevocable". And only now it's not, because of a technical reading of the text of the license? That's not really the spirit of this kind of thing, and courts aren't computers.
FWIW: I'll also note that the GPLv2 doesn't contain the word "irrevocable". Do we really believe that software authors of critical societal infrastructure should be empowered to do this kind of rug pull?
Sure, but that's just an estoppel argument, which is exactly the kind of "common sense" thing I'm talking about. You don't get to walk around for two decades with one understanding of a license and then suddenly decide it means something different.
I'm not here to say that 1.0a is defunct, only that there are big questions about whether it is. I've read a bunch of things that are optimistic about 1.0a.
But: you said upthread that perpetual licenses were irrevocable, as "common sense". That is the opposite of the truth. Perpetual licenses are, by default, revocable.
No? I said the common sense interpretation of the OGL was that it was irrevocable. I wasn't making a broad legal point about jargon or meaning, I was saying this particular interpretation was pretty clearly flying in the face of common sense interpretations of the license (of which "estoppel" is one bit of jargon to be applied), c.f. the Dancey quotes elsewhere in this thread.
Clearly WotC itself believed this wasn't a temporary arrangement when they issued the license in 2000, just like the FSF clearly believed the GPLv2 to be a permanent license when they wrote it in 1991, and there is copious evidence on both sides to that effect. Thus an attempt by either party to revoke the license is subject to estoppel, and for the same reason. I guess I don't see why you think there's a distinction here.
You're trying to make a case with me about the 1.0a license. I don't care. If you asked me to bet on the outcome, I'd give it coinflip odds. There are IP lawyers you can read who would strongly bet for WOTC, and others who would strongly bet for the downstream users. Either way: I am here to say that "perpetual" licenses are not "irrevocable", as demonstrated above.
I'll take that bet. No way, zero chance, does WotC manage to get an injunction (much less a decision) preventing Green Ronin or Goodman or anyone else from publishing their existing 5e-compatible content. It won't happen, period. No way is a court going to go there, for precisely the reason that it opens up the entire open source economy to ransom by cranky copyright holders.
Frankly I think you're being silly here, and hiding behind a technical argument with which I never engaged. I agree, FWIW, with your definitional argument. I just don't think it's particularly relevant for exactly the reasons in the GPL link you gave.
> Sure, but that's just an estoppel argument, which is exactly the kind of "common sense" thing I'm talking about. You don't get to walk around for two decades with one understanding of a license and then suddenly decide it means something different.
That's my impression, also. It seems to me Hasbro can refuse to license anything new under the 1.0 agreement but what's out there is out there and they can't change that. They'll just force their competition not to use the new material.
Does anyone know if there is an alternative to the OGL? Like, is there any other Open Sourced ruleset that publishers/homebrewers could get behind that _isn't_ run by WotC/Hasbro?
Much of the tabletop gaming world has embraced Creative Commons in the last decade or so. Off the top of my head, reasonably popular systems that are CC licensed include Pelgrane's GUMSHOE, Evil Hat's FATE and Forged in the Dark systems, Posthuman's Eclipse Phase (although that's a non-commercial license), Trophy, Dungeon World, Quest, and I'm sure I'm missing some significant ones. None of these games are even remotely as popular as D&D, but yeah, there are plenty of options.
It also has some really restrictive terms around using otherwise available material. You can't use it for anything derived from "all works related to the Cthulhu Mythos, including those that are otherwise public domain; and all works related to Le Morte d’Arthur." This is of course to protect their own games, but walling off anything related to the primary source for Arthurian legend is awfully broad. Are all knights related to that?
Also doesn't use "irrecoverable" so it's got the same potential problem as the OGL does, right now. Hopefully they'll change it.
Interestingly Delta Green (a Call of Cthulhu variant) just decided to drop the OGL from their books, which means they're just flat out using a system which is 90% identical to the Call of Cthulhu BRP variant without any license at all. I'm curious how that will go.
"irrevocable" isn't the 1.0a problem, "authorized" is. BRP OGL specifically rewrites that section (section 10 there) to explicitly make products published from older versions retain the older license - you can sell a product published with an older BRP OGL. The authorization question with Hasbro's OGL is whether 1.0a products lose their license because Hasbro allegedly deauthorizes it in 1.1.
Also their license FAQ spells out the Arthurian limits (you can, just not commercially with their system in a BRP OGL product).
You're a better person than I am for providing the links.
Worth noting that for people who aren't comfortable with the PbtA "license," Dungeon World was released under a Creative Commons license and should be enough of a base for anyone who wants to write a PbtA game using a formal license. See https://github.com/Sagelt/Dungeon-World, which is the GitHub of one of the authors.
interesting, I’d think the mechanics and balancing systems for a TTRPG wouldn’t really be CC — they’re closer to how software would be licensed to me but I guess that’s my background showing :)
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadI suspect it won't succeed if it ever does end up in a courtroom, but it does raise some interesting questions about where the line is. e.g. GFDL 1.3's Wikipedia can convert from GFDL to Creative Commons clause is arguably a similar claim to the idea that Wizards can now use OGL 1.0 content royalty free on the surface.
The other shoe to drop is the actual play community. Critical Role is all but in-house already and probably won't be affected, but smaller creators trying to monetize their 5E content are going to start feeling the noose tighten.
> The original OGL granted “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license” to the Open Game Content (commonly called the System Resource Document) and directed that licensees “may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.” But the updated OGL says that “this agreement is…an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement.”
> The new document clarifies further in the “Warranties” section that “this agreement governs Your use of the Licensed Content and, unless otherwise stated in this agreement, any prior agreements between Us and You are no longer in force.”
The hinge of the trap in OGL 1.0a is the "any authorized version" part, here in its more full context:[1]
> 9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.
Hasbro has the money to make legal challenges to that prohibitive, and no other company in the space has remotely similar resources. Good luck, suckers!
1: http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html
Their "this is not specific personalised advice, consult your own lawyer" thoughts were:
1. The license does not specify revocable or irrevocable, but it would be likely a court would find it to be irrevocable because:
- other lanaguage in the license such as the perpetual term and the option to use later versions appears to anticipate it being non-revocable
- the zection on termination only provides for breach of contract and protects sublicenses of the terminated work from being terminated unless the sub licenses were also infringing. The fact that it provides some grounds for terminatioj but "we have a new license" isn't among them hurts their argument.
- There is mutual consideration and this is even spelled out in the contract as being consideration in terms of the derivative content being reciprocally licensed, plus the unspecified benefit to Wizards of having more complements to their product increasing its appeal. The licensee obviously gets the rights to use the covered content.
- The 23 year usage of OGL 1.0a may constitute reliance especially when combined with past clarifying public statements where Wizards official documents and then-active employees indicated it was intended to be non-revocable.
- Clauses in US law for copyright owners to terminate licenses require 35 yeara and do not affect sublicenses, so unlikely a court would assume a stricter unwritten standard of revocability than this
However, they also point out you can waive your rights to use content under 1.0a if you were to agree to 1.1, e.g. to get access to 6e content.
They also touch on the idea of if Wizards could use others OGL 1.0a licensed content under 1.1 which imposes lesser restrictions on wizards than 1.1. They're vaguer on this point, but imply probably not as its too much of a deviation from the previous license and raise the reliance part again
https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/p...
How could it possible for a court to "pre settle" a dispute between 2 private parties , based on only one side presenting their case?
What GP is asking for is a way to get an actual decision from an actual court, before it's needed.
> I reached out to the architect of the original Open Gaming License, former VP of Wizard of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, and asked his opinion about the current plan by WotC to 'deauthorize' the current OGL in favour of a new one.
> He responded as follows:
>> Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked.
* https://www.enworld.org/threads/ryan-dancey-hasbro-cannot-de...
If intent matters in contract law, then the intent of the license was (per WotC and its representatives at the time) for it to be non-revocable. WotC had publicly stated that this was their intent:
> 7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?
> Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.
* https://web.archive.org/web/20060106175610/http://www.wizard...
Further:
> Q: What is meant by the term "Open Gaming"?
> A: An Open Game is a game that can be freely copied, modified, and distributed, and a system for ensuring that material, once distributed as an Open Game will remain permanently Open.
* https://web.archive.org/web/20010429033432/http://www.wizard...
So was WotC lying about intent in the past, or are they lying about intent now? If there was deceit, does that open them up to civil action?
Regardless, it's doubtful that anyone has the money to battle WotC/Hasbro to settle this in court.
Also, Dancey didn't issue the license, WotC did. Intent matters, so the WotC FAQ is relevant IMO, but Dancey's personal intent is irrelevant.
He also doesn't have the best track record at anything he touches surviving the experience - Five Rings, Last Unicorn Games, getting laid off from Hasbro two years after the OGL shipped, OPC getting eaten by Alderac, overseeing CCP's marketing during the CCP/White Wolf debacle, architectung the utter failure of Pathfinder Online - such that the guy is like the Forrest Gump of RPG industry failures.
Giving Hasbro an OGL loophole 20 years ago would still be top-3 for him but it's like, did somebody botch an RPG IP decision today? Odds are either Dancey or Jordan Weisman were in the room when it happened, even just coincidentally.
Dancey was the VP in charge of the product at WotC at the time. Obviously what he says is relevant because he wasn’t talking strictly in his name but in the name of the company.
Dancey's statement this week also wasn't from his time at Wizards, nor as a representative of the licenser - indeed, he now works at AEG, a competitor with a catalog including OGL v1.0a-licensed works for sale and a vested financial interest in the OGL v1.0a working the way he describes it.
The WotC FAQ from that time, again, is relevant IMO. Maybe Dancey wrote it. But it's relevant because Wizards published it. 2022 Ryan Dancey is not.
It doesn’t matter than Dansey’s name isn’t on the license. Writing document exists from the time when he was representing WotC where he says that the licence is intended as perpetual which is the point of him commenting on the whole thing. It’s not about 2022 Dancey.
I understand you don’t like the guy but that doesn’t preclude him for saying relevant things.
This is still not relevant here, it is about irrevocible. But apparently he also said that and it was in the official FAQ. If official FAQs are meaningless, then this just gives room for open fraud.
Dancey-as-individual may not matter, but Dancey-as-officer-of-company may. At the time he was presumably acting on behalf of WotC and stating what WotC's intent was.
So when he says that the intent at the time of issuance was that it could never be revoked, wouldn't there have to be evidence put forward to contradict it? Either internal documents or from someone else involved in the OGL giving a contrasting opinion?
Those are just facts, not a legal opinion on whether it is revokable at all.
> I do believe that there are potential legal challenges to the revocation of OGL 1.0a, especially given the length of time Third Party Creators have relied upon OGL 1.0a and the speed with which WotC has taken action to revoke it. However, these challenges would have to take place in court.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ6iTzeiNY8
I’m mostly worried about the folks posting settings and adventures on drive through RPG, it seems like they have a ton more exposure. :(
I think would leave the only real copyright and trademark concerns around things that were nominally invented by D&D, like tieflings and balor demons... and even those would be a stretch, since for the most part they're obviously based on preexisting pop culture (70s and 80s comic books for plenty of tiefling-like characters, the balor originally just being a slightly rethemed Tolkien balrog, etc).
Legal costs do not necessarily scale by size and wealth of the litigant. I'm not a lawyer, but I've dealt with enough license disputes that I'd be lawyering up if I was in the D&D OGL business. This looks to be a pretty simple contract dispute about what paragraph 9 (Updating the License) actually says and if it is actually legal (it probably is). I'd first ask the lawyer if I should suspend selling and distributing, and then ask if it's worth litigating the OGL license change. Suspending the business will also dramatically reduce the cost of litigation because there's going to be minimal damages to argue (which takes a truckload of accountants and extra expensive lawyers to calculate).
Maybe it's easier to hire lawyers than to focus on making more D&D products, video games, and licensed media that are actually good.
In any case, it usually isn't a good idea to fight your fans/customers, because they are the lifeblood of your game (and company), as well as its biggest advocates.
So it'll be a problem for new products but not for stuff that was licensed under OGL 1.0 already
9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License. https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/OGL%20License
From Gizmodo: One of the biggest changes to the document is that it updates the previously available OGL 1.0 to state it is “no longer an authorized license”
Some more background on the terms: https://www.larsenlawoffices.com/can-terminate-perpetual-lic...
It's a clusterfuck of 1. The leaked license has some really shitty terms in it
2. Folk might be misinterpreting one particular part to mean something other than intended, but its getting the main focus right now (and also treated as absolute fact!)
3. It's leaked so WotC was completely unprepared to answer questions and/or do PR around this
If I was e.g. Paizo I would be very urgently demanding clarification, but since I'm not I'm content to wait and see what happens without getting too outraged, yet.
(I will 100% boycott WotC/D&D/MTG/etc if they actually do try to revoke 1.0 material, though.)
The way the US justice system works is if you have more money than all of your opponents, you win.
https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...
The 5e OGL also seems to have been good for gaming, and for D&D as well. D&D is certainly bigger than ever.
As I see it, D&D, Pathfinder, Green Ronin, etc. are all on team RPG; Wizards would do best to focus on expanding the hobby and making players happy, largely by producing high-quality D&D tabletop games and associated products, and supporting high-quality D&D-derived video games, movies, TV, novels, comics, etc..
Building on top of a WotC-owned IP seems like a bad idea, since they will likely change the license once your product stqrts to get big.
Netrunner has continued as a fairly successful non-profit fan cooperative [0] since, but remains in a very legally shaky position (they've been working on cutting ties with the original IP as much as possible, but if Hasbro wanted to set an example, it might not matter).
[0] https://nullsignal.games/
What an epic bait and switch
Pathfinder: 24%
D&D 5E: 20%
In Q4 2021:[2]
D&D 5E: 55%
Pathfinder 1E+2E+Starfinder: 5%
Pathfinder 1E, 2E and Starfinder all rely on OGL 1.0a content.
1: https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-...
2: https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-report-q4-2021/
[1]: https://foundryvtt.com
Roll20 still has the overwhelming supermajority of the VTT market, Foundry is the Linux of VTTs.
Some of us use d&d beyond with it, some not. I think the dungeon master prefers foundry much more than roll 20.
What it took was the dungeon master saying we shall do this, a session or two to work out the kinks, and one other player who gained expertise enough to explain game play mechanics (e.g., use the x key) to the rest of us (to offload some of that burden from the dungeon master)
Foundry: 7
Roll20: 7
Unspecified: 2
Fantasy Grounds: 1
Discord only, no seperate VTT: 1
Owlbear (never heard of this one before): 2
What's WotC going to do about all the Pathfinder books out there? Round them up and burn them? Those Pathfinder books are still licensed OGL 1.0 by Paizo.
Also, all copyrights and patents are monopolies. To say that D&D has a monopoly on D&D after revoking permission for the public to create content based on D&D can't be controversial.
There are even entire game lines that mechanically recreate older editions of D&D in their entirety, all of which are entirely legal under copyright law.
Cool. So I copy Pathfinder 1.0's rules, using the license Paizo gave me in the Pathfinder 1.0 rule manual. Its almost the same system as D&D 3.5, but the license is from Paizo, not from WotC.
If WotC lawyers come after me, they can pound sand.
> Also, all copyrights and patents are monopolies. To say that D&D has a monopoly on D&D after revoking permission for the public to create content based on D&D can't be controversial.
They gave it away using OGL 1.0. There are now game systems based off of Pathfinder (itself, also an OGL game). Does WotC's sudden revocation of the license somehow apply to my Pathfinder books?
They didn't even write Pathfinder. It'd be insane for them to try to revoke my Pathfinder license of OGL.
Apache prior to 2.0, all versions of MIT or BSD also do not go out of their way to be irrevocable.
People are doing a lot of axiomatic reasoning on this thread: "FOSS works this way, so the WOTC license should work similarly". Nope! Your best bet is probably just to go read actual legal analyses (that's all I'm doing, reading and relaying things).
1. IP licenses, especially one sided take it or leave it licenses, are revocable, sometimes even if the license expressly says otherwise because of restrictions on perpetuities.
2. A license turns into a contract when there is consideration from the other side. Licensing your own work under a license because of a virality/share-alike clause has mixed reactions on if its consideration but more fall on the side that it is than it isn't.
Neither of these positions would seem to be to distinguish the OGL from GPLv2 here, and position 2 would set a position where OGL is not revocable but MIT/BSD are.
Further, there's also quite a well established argument that the GPL v2 would withstand an attempt to revoke the license: https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech8.html#x...
The text that that argument relies on in the GPL v2 is simply not present in the OGL v1.0a.
> 9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.
Just because OGL 1.1 exists doesn't mean that OGL 1.0 / clause 9 stops existing. My license to use OGL 1.0 works seems to continue.
The language[1] is in #9:
This reads to me like they can come along at a later time and essentially say "OGL1.0a is no longer authorized" and thus everyone will be forced to move to 1.1 or cease any distribution of content issued under that license.Whether that's enforceable is really down to what a court says.
[1]: https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/SRD-OGL_V1.1.pdf - Page 2
Specifically, what does this mean?
> Much of the original OGL is dedicated to the System Resource Document, and includes character species, classes, equipment, and, most importantly, general gameplay structures, including combat, spells, and creatures.
If your tabletop roleplaying game has an "orc" species and "rogue" class and "sword" equipment, is WotC going to sue you? Or is this pertaining to games that specifically reference D&D documents in their rules?
> If your tabletop roleplaying game has an "orc" species and "rogue" class and "sword" equipment, is WotC going to sue you?
There are plenty of games that already have those. In fact, there's an entire sub-genre of D&D-like game ("OSR") designed around directly emulating older editions of D&D, based on the fact that you can't copyright game mechanics themselves, just the text that expresses them.
"Orc" would be trademarked for a RPG, but not a book, movie, video game ?? (Wait, is this why Game Workshop's Warhammer's are OrKs ?!)
That is why Pathfinder might have issues, despite having replaced basically all the proper names and stories ??
"Ork" is a 1990s idea of a cool spelling, like "magick".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc
> It should be spelt ork (so the Dutch translation) in a Germanic language, but I had used the spelling orc in so many places that I have hesitated to change it in the English text, though the adjective is necessarily spelt orkish.
There are plenty of things in D&D that would be protected by neither copyright nor trademark because they aren't even close to being original or unique to D&D: fighters, wizards, orcs, dungeons, dragons, taverns, elves, gnomes, the list goes on and on...
They don't have a trademark on the word "orc". They have IP covering a fictional "orc" species for a role playing system with some statistics and basic descriptions. This generic "orc" entity was licensed under the OGL 1.0a for anyone to use in their own games. Paizo and others based the "orc" species on the SRD.
They aren’t Space Marines anymore, they are Adeptus Astartes.
And the Imperial Guard? Those are Astra Militarum.
The OGL also defines what's protected identity, like the word "beholder" for the monster or specific book titles, and what's not, like the spell named "magic missile".
Regardless of trademark or fair use, if you agree to the OGL then you also agree to not use declared protected identity terms. For D&D, that generally means things related to their setting or branding.
They probably can't copyright the idea of a playable race of Orcs or Elves, likely can copyright (and license) particular descriptions or art of those races, and maybe can copyright the specifics about how those races work. It isn't clear, because this all hasn't been tested in court. Spells are another example - is a spell like "Lightning Bolt" with particular effects something that can be protected by copyright? It didn't use to matter much - anyone could just add the OGL to their publication and be fine - but it might start mattering a bunch more.
Tabletop RPGs are (traditionally) built on elaborate systems of rules for managing character traits and interactions. The rule set will strongly influence the structure of the game narrative and your perception of options. Converting settings and scenarios to another system can be a major change. D&D prevails in the market due to the huge inertia, despite the existence of many attractive alternative systems.
I'd just like to point out that such a license, if applied to software, would violate the zeroth essential freedom of free software, "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" And for good reason. That clause essentially gives WoTC the right to revoke your license at any time for essentially arbitrary reasons if they subjectively decide your content is one of those bad things.
Where is the line between a game depicting discrimination and the game material being discriminatory? When Morrowind depicted racist slavemaster Dunmer who shout "N'wah" at you, and allowed the player to align themselves with such factions, was that a depiction of racism, or was the game material itself discriminatory? I think you could make good faith arguments in either direction. Normally finding the line between the two is up to everyone to decide for themselves, but in this new license, WotC gets to decide the line is wherever they want, whenever they decide to snuff you out. Even if the other terms of the new license were agreeable, this term makes the license a trap for any business that would compete with WoTC.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en
The license changes also affect any non-PDF content, which would include D&D/OGL game streams and YouTube videos, and virtual table tops publishing OGL material (including those for Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc.).
My point is they wouldn't be, even if the rules were software, because the violate the zeroth essential software freedom. I bring this up particularly because the earlier versions of the OGL are compared to free software licenses in this thread. This new license is nothing of the sort.
> branding concerns
That's not special to tabletop gaming, software has branding too and there are certainly advocates for adding "no evil" clauses to licenses, like Douglas Crockford. But addressing such concerns in the license makes that license non-free.
Everything has branding, but products and projects exist on a spectrum of sensitivity to branding issues; the representation in media of a Disney character would be at one far end of the spectrum, the uses an open source image editor were put to might be at the other. WOTC's D&D IP is somewhere in the middle.
The Zeroth Freedom is the most important, the freedom to use it.
One bit of context here to keep in mind is that there have been tabletop releases that have been incredibly clearly on the far side of that line, wherever you might define it - think "literal Nazi propaganda packaged as an at least nominally playable game". I haven't personally seen any use the OGL 1.0a specifically, but there are probably some out there.
Of course, since the OGL 1.0a doesn't imply any particular business relationship with WotC or allow any special association with the D&D brand, any "need" to actually police the OGL 1.1 like this is basically just self-inflicted from how they're conflating what were previously two separate agreements (one for mechanics, one for branding).
What is "incredibly clear" to you is not necessarily clear to others. I know for a fact that some people consider games having a "dark elf" race to make the game itself racist, and consider much that was normal in fantasy media in the 80s and 90s to be deeply problematic today. Including much of D&D. The game even having racial classes with different characteristics is offensive to some people.
Normally this is simply a point of low-stakes debate between players, but when you add such a clause to a license the subjectivity of the matter becomes a liability to anybody that would make commercial use of the licensed material.
In reality, the morality clause is probably a response to some high-profile tabletop RPG stories involving Nazis; in other words, it's a marketing move, not a legal one.
Of course, part of this for business reasons: they can't sell you The Complete Guide To Southwestern Painted Orcs for $29.95 if a southwestern painted orc can't at least theoretically join a heroic adventuring party.
Also what you do on your table won't be policed, but publications, like pre generated adventures which are more nuanced are typically also more interesting.
I have an edition of Shadowrun where there is an explicit take on the subject. In the Shadowrun world, the appearance of elves, dwarves, trolls, etc... made racism based on skin tone and other human attributes obsolete, and specie (called metatype) became the new differentiator. So no more white supremacists, but there are now human supremacists taking on elves.
It matches the authoritarian, anti-democratic, drive for power in another domain (and often by some of the same people). Nothing else matters.
It's a recent trend - all these 'capitalist' companies operated otherwise for most of their existence. And they did for good reasons, and built the most productive companies and economies in history - all that we have today.
I also find it interesting that WotC/Hasbro have been silent so far (both regarding releasing the official OGL 1.1 or making a statement about the leak to correct any factually incorrect statements).
Probably because they are trying to figure out damage control. this leak only happened on thursday.
I would expect a response during the week with them backpeddling a bit.
Yet despite all that they've suddenly come out with this draconian agreement which is worse than most of the rumours that had already caused a huge outrage.
Well, they explicitely state, that they are ready to change a bit, if the shitstorm is big enough.
"The document does note that if the company oversteps, they are aware that they “will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We’re more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision.”"
I hope this will get settled in court, though.
The 1.0 Licence seems to be unclear whether it is revokable, but since there was a FAQ section on WoTCs Website explicitely stating you can always ignore changes you don't like, then this is what I would settle for, if I would have invested in it.
The picture of the FAQ:
https://miro.medium.com/max/640/1*ZdwvKxvMZWmS4xQZPcHJHw.web...
from this article
https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...
Yes and there already was a massive shitstorm that they attempted to address before these additional details were leaked. That's the part that confuses me. It should have been crystal clear to WotC that there would be huge outrage over this leaked document. The chain of events so far has been:
- Rumours started about changes in the new OGL to make it more restrictive but with little actual details. - Creators within the community start worrying and raising a shitstorm based on their negative presumptions of the new OGL. - WotC post about the new OGL on DndBeyond to address the rumours (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d). They say they hadn't planned to share details so soon but felt they had to to reassure the community due to the shitstorm the unsubstantiated rumours had raised. The details they share seem reasonable, if more restrictive, and WotC say they want to make the process easy for creators. - The text of the OGL is leaked and it's waaay more restrictive than the blog post implied and arguable worse than most creators originally feared during the initial shitstorm.
> Yes and there already was a massive shitstorm that they attempted to address before these additional details were leaked. That's the part that confuses me. It should have been crystal clear to WotC that there would be huge outrage over this leaked document. The chain of events so far has been:
> - Rumours started about changes in the new OGL to make it more restrictive but with little actual details. - Creators within the community start worrying and raising a shitstorm based on their negative presumptions of the new OGL. - WotC post about the new OGL on DndBeyond to address the rumours (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d). They say they hadn't planned to share details so soon but felt they had to to reassure the community due to the shitstorm the unsubstantiated rumours had raised. The details they share seem reasonable, if more restrictive, and WotC say they want to make the process easy for creators. - The text of the OGL is leaked and it's waaay more restrictive than the blog post implied and arguable worse than most creators originally feared during the initial shitstorm.
Because from their perspective it's more advantageous to slit goose throat than share its golden eggs with competition allowing it to grow and in the future threaten wotc/hasbro position.
1. various creators were sent OGL 1.1 licenses, a contract to sign, FAQ, and an NDA on/around Dec 21 to be signed by Jan 4th.
2. Rumours were circulating about the OGL license changes.
3. Once the NDA lifted on Jan 4th, the various people sent the licenses from (1) sent the OGL 1.1 license to others, including gizmodo.
But I fear like MTG moved to maximize squeezing out money from players on the risk of long term losses D&D will now move there, too.
So I kinda expects this to only be the start of wtf. this isn't what we want moments.
It seems a bit odd, though — card collecting games have always seemed to have a bit of a mercenary streak. I mean buying and trading cards is sort of part of the hobby, right? I think players go into it expecting some level of ongoing costs. With pen and paper RPGs, the sort of mythical ultimate campaign that many only hope to achieve could go for years and years on a couple books. I can’t think of many hobbies that provide as favorable a $:entertainment ratio. This is… not a market that is expecting to spend a lot of money…
“It would cost $3000 a year to own a play set of every new card”
To
“It would cost $50,000 a year to own a play set of every new card”
Like yah for sure it was always for profit. But like the last few years of changes has been extreme.
There is a difference between making money and abusing year long commitment of the community to make people spent more money then they think is reasonable (or should afford give their financial spending).
People which have decades of emotional commitment are quite easy to be pressured into "over-spending", through if you do it too much it can cost you your brand and many people their hobby.
To some degree you can compare it to games having "just" in-app purchases in a well balanced way even if it might be a bit pay to win and it a game using all kinds of dark patterns to squeeze out every penny no matter the moral and being pay-hug to even have a chance to compete.
Like for many of the current relevant formats the entry cost for not just playing causal with your friends is around 500€ for a _single_ deck and 1000+€ for going competitive; and just to be clear that's in a context where WotC managed to not (yet) kill of their brand by going too much overboard with pricing.
But it means that if you are not a well earning single that hobby isn't quite affordable anymore. *Anyway WotC basically kicked out anyone who is not at least slightly well of, because they don't make them money and I'm afraid what that could men for D&D*.
It just seems like it would be harder due to the fundamentals of the game to screw over the actual player community of D&D. There’s no competitive aspect, you can write whatever you want on your character sheet, and there’s a strong home brew tendency. If they try to gate the content behind a paywall, players can just… make it up themselves.
They can go after folks publishing settings on drivethroughrpg which will be a bummer. And they can go after the sort of “play d&d on a podcast” groups (until they just switch to a different system). I think the players will be fine, though.
They mention that the OGL 1.1 will only apply to static (ePub/PDF) and printed media, and the revenue terms, but they don't mention the other OGL 1.1 changes that have been causing the current storm, such as:
1. revoking OGL 1.0a;
2. the 1.1 license giving WotC/Hasbro the irrevocable ability to use your content in any way they want to;
3. their ability to terminate your 1.1 license for any reason;
4. their ability to update the terms to the license with a 30 day notice.
D&D 3.5: http://dndsrd.net/wizardSpells.html
PF 1E: https://www.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?Class=Sorcerer
You can switch up the names, and people do that more these days, but it is a concern.
The question isn't whether you can make it, it's whether you can access the specific markets and marketplaces that make sustainable money from it.
https://kotaku.com/dungeons-and-dragons-dnd-fifth-edition-on...
Is this rug-pull actually true and legal? Seems like a horrible agreement to enter into for this reason.
Legal, is more complicated and likely needs to be decided in court. There is a non-small chance that original OGL license is in no way terminated and people can continue to distribute copyright content under it. Through trademarks can be another issue. And being in right doesn't mean you are not sued or otherwise terrorized by an abuse of the legal system. E.g. see non-Lego brick products which are legal but frequently e.g. stuck in customs due to Lego abusing the legal system. Not even speaking about the 3D trademark nonsense which makes selling compatible figures close to impossible even through the law is very very clearly not meant to be apply that way.
Open Game Content (or OGC)
Product Identity (or PI) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_License"17 U.S. Code § 102, (b): In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
A federal court in Texas recently ruled that the structure and game play of a card game are not protected by copyright law in DaVinci Editrice S.r.l vs. Ziko Games, LLC et al.
DaVinci Editrice S.r.l (DaVinci) published Bang!, a role-playing card game using Wild West themes, in 2002. Players in Bang! are assigned one of four roles, each with its own winning condition. Each player is also assigned a Wild West-themed character, such as “Calamity Janet” and “Willy the Kid,” each with its own abilities. The game received critical praise and commercial success.
Yoka Games, a Chinese company, and its U.S. distributor, Ziko Games, LLC (Ziko) later introduced Legend of the Three Kingdoms (LOTK), a card game with rules nearly identical to Bang! but set in ancient China. Players are assigned one of four roles with the same functions and winning conditions as in Bang!, and are assigned characters with individualized abilities, with different names and artwork to reflect the different setting.
DaVinci sued Ziko for copyright infringement, asserting that LOTK copied protected features of Bang! Copyright law protects original expression, but does not protect ideas or functional elements such as procedures, processes, systems, or methods of operation. Game mechanics and rules are not entitled to copyright protection, but expressive elements may be copyrightable, including game labels, design of game boards, playing cards, and graphical works, as well as elements of the characters – if they are sufficiently developed. Copyright does not protect “stock” characters.
The court determined that Ziko’s game did not infringe any of the protectable elements of Bang! The game play and interactions of the roles and characters in Bang! are not sufficiently detailed or developed to be protectable expressive content, but instead are unprotectable game mechanics and rules. The characters and roles in Bang! are not considered to have delineated personalities, temperaments, back stories, or other features typical of characters in movies and books that can make those characters protected. Ziko copied unprotectable elements such as rules and system of play, but did not copy aspects of the roles and characters which are expressive (and therefore copyrightable), such as the associated artwork. By adopting an ancient Chinese theme in LOTK, Ziko was able to avoid copyright liability while copying the basic structure and game play in Bang!
For game designers and publishers, this decision clarifies the limitations of copyright law in protecting card games. Copyright law can be effective in protecting the expression in a game (artwork, appearance), but does not protect rules and game play. Detailed original characters may be protected, but not aspects of the character that exist just to drive the system of play, such as how strong they are or how difficult they are to defeat. Trademark law can be effective in protecting your brands (company name, game titles). Patent law can protect the rules and methods of game play, and patents directed to methods of playing card games have been issued (Magic: The Gathering, Apples to Apples). However, the courts’ evolving interpretation of patent-eligible subject matter has made obtaining patent protection on rules and methods of game play more challenging. Game designers and publishers can best protect their products with a combination of intellectual property rights, rather than relying upon copyright alone.
Grab a fistful of d10s and let's get to work.
By all accounts Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition by Onyx Path (a licensee of Paradox) is quite good, though, as is Vampire the Requiem (a reboot/variant gameline by Onyx Path, now mostly shut down by Paradox, designed around more modern gothic horror/mystery and less of VtM's 90s Blade vibes).
they need to just make a true blood rpg. they could call it Waitress: The Undressing and people would go nuts over it.
They intend to promote DnD primarily as a digital product.
I wasn't under the impression that such an authorization could be revoked... Specifically, if someone is living in a cave with OGL v1.0(a), and churning out works according to its terms, then it isn't their responsibility to check every day if the copy they are using has suddenly become not-authorized.
Nor can Hasbro send them an official notification that they have withdrawn authorization, because they have no way to find said person. And any reseller need not reveal the identity of the cave dweller creator who is still using OGL 1.0.
I think you'd be hard pressed to tell a court that you want to sue an unnamed person for following the terms of a license that you granted to them, then revoked but haven't told them you revoked, and that you don't know their name or address...
I dunno, but I'd want to see someone cite some case law where a "perpetual" license was allowed to be revoked like this. It certainly smells off to me.
Obviously WotC isn't obligated to license any new content under an older OGL, it can use whatever terms it wants. But as for existing OGL content, I think they're on some very "innovative" ground here, legally.
https://assets.fenwick.com/legacy/FenwickDocuments/Technolog...
"Perpetual means a string of infinite length; irrevocable means a string, of any length, that cannot be cut."
FWIW: I'll also note that the GPLv2 doesn't contain the word "irrevocable". Do we really believe that software authors of critical societal infrastructure should be empowered to do this kind of rug pull?
https://www.zdnet.com/article/no-you-cant-take-open-source-c...
But: you said upthread that perpetual licenses were irrevocable, as "common sense". That is the opposite of the truth. Perpetual licenses are, by default, revocable.
Clearly WotC itself believed this wasn't a temporary arrangement when they issued the license in 2000, just like the FSF clearly believed the GPLv2 to be a permanent license when they wrote it in 1991, and there is copious evidence on both sides to that effect. Thus an attempt by either party to revoke the license is subject to estoppel, and for the same reason. I guess I don't see why you think there's a distinction here.
Frankly I think you're being silly here, and hiding behind a technical argument with which I never engaged. I agree, FWIW, with your definitional argument. I just don't think it's particularly relevant for exactly the reasons in the GPL link you gave.
Why? If you convince judge, world is your oyster.
Also doesn't use "irrecoverable" so it's got the same potential problem as the OGL does, right now. Hopefully they'll change it.
Interestingly Delta Green (a Call of Cthulhu variant) just decided to drop the OGL from their books, which means they're just flat out using a system which is 90% identical to the Call of Cthulhu BRP variant without any license at all. I'm curious how that will go.
Also their license FAQ spells out the Arthurian limits (you can, just not commercially with their system in a BRP OGL product).
FATE moved from OGL to CC BY when they shed the Fudge origins: https://www.faterpg.com/licensing/
Several games, like Eclipse Phase and GLoG, use CC BY-NC-SA: https://eclipsephase.com/cclicense/
Several OSRs dual-licensed as OGL and CC.
PbtA's license isn't really one, for better or worse: http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/policy
A larger list of open-licensed games: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Open_Game_Systems
Worth noting that for people who aren't comfortable with the PbtA "license," Dungeon World was released under a Creative Commons license and should be enough of a base for anyone who wants to write a PbtA game using a formal license. See https://github.com/Sagelt/Dungeon-World, which is the GitHub of one of the authors.