(Hi folks, future Kim here. As of the 9th of January, the below post appears to have been confirmed, as the supposed full OGL 1.1 has been linked. It can be found here: http://ogl.battlezoo.com/)
Hello again folks,
I hadn’t expected to be talking about the OGL again so soon, but since the last article was written, some more information has come to light. I was originally going to wait until the OGL 1.1 was officially released, but with the recent leaks, there are some things I think are worth looking it.
First things first: These have not been officially confirmed, but there are definite indications that they are in fact real. There have been two separate leaks (Roll for Combat had theirs happen live on stream (here, about 40 minutes in) and Gizmodo here) and parts have been confirmed by Kickstarter Director of Games Jon Ritter on Twitter.
Also, I AM NOT A LAWYER. And while I have some IP and Copyright law knowledge from my degree in marketing management, it is nowhere near enough to untangle this one. Furthermore, there are differences between EU and US law that would need to be taken into account as well.
That said, here we go.
As a player, why should I care?
Well, if you only ever purchase books and the like from Wizards of the Coast (and/or DnDBeyond now that they’re the same thing) this is unlikely to affect you, except that you’ll see a lot of discussion about this, and potentially a drop off in new players and content.
Now, if you’re NOT solely a Wizards of the Coast player, and enjoy more 5e content than that, then there are a few passages in the OGL that should worry you. The first one is this “You own the new and original content You create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose” and the second is “We can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason whatsoever, provided We give thirty (30) days’ notice. We will provide notice of any such changes by posting the revisions on Our website and by making public announcements through Our social media channels”.
So – if you agree to the new OGL 1.1 license (which supposedly automatically happens “if you want to publish SRD-based content on or after January 13, 2023, and commercialize it, your only option is to agree to the OGL: Commercial.”) you give Wizards of the Coast the right to anything you create that uses the SRD. Not only that, but they can take YOUR rights away at the same time. So let’s say you make a new 5e Campaign Setting called “Next Hot Thing.” Next Hot Thing gets really popular, and you Kickstart it, and it gets attention from the fanbase. You even get to cross past the 750K mark mentioned in the last post about all of this, and it’s now THE thing that everyone talks about. Great! You pay your royalties, and your book now comes out and everyone is happy.
You start planning your next “Next Hot Thing: Expansion Stuff,” but suddenly you hear from Wizards of the Coast.
“Sorry. You’re no longer allowed to use the OGL 1.1, and this is your 30 days notice. 30 days from now, you can no longer sell “Next Hot Thing” or anything related to that.” – And not only do you after those 30 days discover that Wizards of the Coast have taken your content and put it into “Next Hot Thing (WOTC EDITION)” but they’ve actually sublicensed that out to someone else. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
That is the reality that you could be looking at, as a creator. But this assumes that you’re using 5e, where there is an argument to be made that you have created something using WotC’s IP, if indirectly.
However, the OGL license does NOT specify Dungeons & Dragons, it only talks about itself, and many creators have treated the OGL as a version of an Open Source License (such as the Creative Commons licenses that many artists use), so as to avoid worrying about legalities and allowing others to use their creations as well. But others, according to the previous OGL are not allowed to grab your Intellectual Property, so while they could use your fighter subclass, for example, they could not grab your setting. With 1.1 Wizards of the Coast, the way we’ve seen it phrased – can.
But, so what? It’s only D&D right? No. It also affects Pathfinder, Sword & Sorcery, innumerable OSR games – all based on the d20. At an extreme, you can argue that they at least share a common base with D&D.
But there are other games out there that have used the OGL for the License, and to allow others to play with them. You might have heard of some of these: (And yes, I’m leaving out the most obvious ones)
- 13th Age
- Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea (1e for sure, not certain about 2e)
- Adventures in Middle-Earth
- Call of Cthulhu d20
- Fudge
- Open D6
- World of Warcraft the RPG
And there are a lot more, that I’d never even think about.
And there is a bigger issue with these. The OGL was used for certain big IPs too, names you might recognize from computer games, with Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) probably being the biggest.
And this is where it gets tricky — a lot of these are still available in some form or another and were published using the 1.0 or 1.0a version of the OGL. But the new version, that they’d be under if republished (or perhaps even continued for sale) gives the setting and IP rights to Wizards of the Coast. And maybe I’m wrong, but I really doubt that Disney would want to give Wizards of the Coast the rights to Star Wars, or that Activision-Blizzard (soon to be Microsoft) would want them to have World of Warcraft, not to mention Chaosium, who is still publishing a non-OGL and non-d20 version of Call of Cthulhu. Think they want to give up their rights? Or should they even HAVE to?
There is far more to be dug into here than I possibly can in a single article, especially considering that it was recently called out that D&D was considered “under-monetized compared to video games” by the higher-ups within Hasbro. And seeing as some of their higher-ups are from the computer game world, those who engage in both tabletop and computer games know that those are some bleak words.
Most of us here probably don’t mind an expansion to a game we love – hey, it’s more chance to play, as long as the expansion is done well. But where we start to step off the bandwagon is microtransactions, DLC, cosmetics, loot boxes, and in-game currency.
And yeah, I would not be surprised if those are part of Wizards of the Coast’s plans for their Virtual Table Top. DNDBeyond already requires you to have a subscription (minimum cost of $2.17 per month, but if you want to share your content with others (like your players) it’s $4.58. Of course, you have to BUY those books to share your content. And you can buy cosmetic dice as well.
But if this goes through, as a VTT I expect there to be microtransactions for things like character model appearance, perhaps even animations, dice, effects (lights, sound effects, and music), digital currencies, and how about “level-up boosts”? I know that most DMs would balk at that, and laugh at any player who suggests it at the gaming table, but what happens if that’s built into the VTT, and new players are brought directly into that? They will think it is the norm.
Boy, do I hope I’m wrong on both the OGL and the monetization.
Kim Frandsen
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