14 ms·

An Update on the Open Game License (OGL)

135 points by Macha 4y ago

Macha 4y ago
Prior events: 1a: Dungeons and Dragons’ new license tightens its grip on competition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264777 - Jan 2023 (203 comments) 1b: Wizards of the Coast Trying to Retroactively Cancel OGL 1.0a: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271687 - Jan 2023 (233 comments) 2: An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34314448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34314448 - Jan 2023 (356 comments) 3: Paizo announces system neutral OpenRPG license: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363991 - Jan 2023 (58 comments)
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  io9's take on this response from wotc - https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-license-wizards-of-the-coast-wotc-1849985196 https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-license-wizards-of-...
  - Y_Y 4y ago
    This should be the link
- havblue 4y ago
  Here's one of my favorite (old) articles on their transition from being gaming nerds to becoming a large corporation: Death to the Minotaur: How Wizards of the Coast sacrificed its geeky, Gothic, sex-for-all idealism for Pok March 23, 2001 https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/ https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
  - markus_zhang 4y ago
    On the geeky side I really really like the slightly more complicated Adnd 2e as well as the Planescape/Spelljammer settings.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    There's been 2x as much time between today and that article, as between that article and WotC's founding. It's not relevant to the issues today, and the author paints an extremely rose-tinted picture of the period. The people he accuses of ruining the company's vision were also early employees (and although the author couldn't know it, would go on to found Paizo and today be the heir apparent to his presentation of WotC's vision).
djur 4y ago
The proof will be in the pudding, but this seems like a near-total capitulation to me. That's a relief if so. I enjoy other systems, but I do also love D&D, and I'd hate to abandon it.
- lalaland1125 4y ago
  Not quite. WoTC has said that they are still planning on banning third party publishers from releasing anything new based on old OGL 1.0 content. EDIT: Oops, accidentally said "in this post", when WoTC's announcement was in the FAQ that got leaked. > Can I keep using OGL 1.0a to develop fifth edition content? > > No. OGL 1.0a only allows creators to use "authorized" versions of the OGL, which allows Wizards to determine which of its prior versions to continue to allow use of when we exercise our right to update the license. As part of rolling out OGL 2.0, we are deauthorizing OGL 1.0a from future use and deleting it from our website. This means OGL 1.0a can no longer be used to develop content for release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU
  - wotcthrrrrow 4y ago
    I don't see that mentioned anywhere in this post? It even explicitly states "Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected." (though ideally they'd, you know, make that legally binding.)
    - sklargh 4y ago
      The implication being that the OGL going forward will be 1.1.
    - msoucy 4y ago
      Content already released, yes. The post says nothing about being able to make new things under 1.0a, which is where a lot of the nervousness comes in for people.
      - wotcthrrrrow 4y ago
honkycat 4y ago
Their latest supplement, Spelljammer, was SHAMEFUL. Total shovelware. Between the magic 30th anniversary debacle, the lowering of quality in their products in general, and their clear attempts to milk as much money out of their customers as possible, WOTC has lost the plot.
- msoucy 4y ago
  WotC: "We want to avoid hateful content, that's all!" Also WotC: creates highly racist caricatures of an enslaved race (Hadozee) in an official book
  - Brigand 4y ago
    What is racist about inventing a fantasy race in a fantasy world? Please elaborate.
    - msoucy 4y ago
      This post[1] explains it better than I have the mental energy or experience to [1]: https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-hadozee-racist https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-hadozee-rac...
      - spoiler 4y ago
        I don't know how I feel about that analysis. Just because something is inspired by historic events (slavery in this case), doesn't mean it's advocating those events as good. Is it dark? Yes, and I think it's meant to be. If anything, I think it's actually great that they're doing this because I believe RPG games are a great and safe mediums to acquaint people with these difficult subjects. I can't be the only person with this opinion? Are people calling Marvel racists or anti-Semitic because Hydra was inspires by some parts of the Nazi military being obsessed with the supernatural? I think calling these racists (or xist) is a failure of imagination; kinda weird to see it come from the RPG community, too
        4y ago
milliams 4y ago
Regardless of what future license they apply to content, what they need to do first is release an OGL 1.0b which contains "irrevocable" and ensure it is applied to all current 1.0a content as this was the original intention of the OGL [1]. Then they can release any 1.1 they want. [1] There was a published FAQ from WotC (copy available at https://www.rpglibrary.org/articles/faqs/ogl.php https://www.rpglibrary.org/articles/faqs/ogl.php) saying: > 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. where section 9 of OGL 1.0a says: > 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.
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VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I wonder if it's too little too late. All WotC really has going for it at this point is the D&D name and player goodwill, and they just shot the latter out of a cannon into the sun. DMs and PCs alike have already shown their willingness to migrate over to alternative D&D-like systems. And moreover Paizo et al know they have no reason to trust WotC not to try this again as soon as people get complacent. I'm sure they won't back down, and are going to go full steam ahead with their scheme to sidestep WotC, not unlike Valve working around Microsoft's boneheaded Windows decisions with SteamOS and Proton. Also, hiding behind "we want to prevent discriminatory content" is a pretty shameful attempt to salvage their image by appealing to the zeitgeist. The hobby has become so inclusive the last decade or so, more than I ever would have imagined.
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- PaulKeeble 4y ago
  Accusing the community of being racist as the reason they had to put on a 30% royalty fee to control all the content. That will go down well for what IMO is one of the most inclusive communities on the internet.
  - EamonnMR 4y ago
    Especially rich from the company that published Spelljammer last year, a supplement that somehow got out the door despite including formerly enslaved sentient _monkey_ characters that gave people minstrel vibes.
    - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
      It seemed to give some Americans that vibe. I read up about the Hadozee and black Americans comparison, it's pretty tenuous. I guess if you're looking for racism, you find it.
  - wincy 4y ago
    Based on the stuff Wizards of the Coast considers racist, it’d be really easy to unintentionally be caught up in their nullifying your license too. This includes changing language around a race of evil, gypsy like people that are subservient to a vampire lord (which hews very close to the writings of Bram Stoker’s Dracula), or a species of flying monkey-like creatures being enslaved and later freed as part of a fantasy setting (this was removed and Wizards apologized for being terrible and racist). Talk about an absolute landmine of potential for offense.
Mindwipe 4y ago
Gods, that's an awfully written statement. Painful. Notably, the idea that it was just a draft is simply a lie - the OGL 1.1 was sent to content creators to sign. That's not an internal draft. It just isn't. There is no way to look at that section as anything other than a deliberate falsification on Hasbro's part. Secondly, the notion that the main driver was to prevent hateful content is also just nonsensical. It's not like you accidentally dropped a typewriter down the stairs and it suddenly required a 30% royalty, and the notion that any business put that in and it wasn't the primary motivation is fanciful, especially when Hasbro's own financial statement explicitly says that they were expecting to drive significant additional monetisation from D&D. If Hasbro want to start earning trust back here, not including two easily provable lies in the first, massively overdue statement would be a good start.
- y-curious 4y ago
  I am not much of a DND player- what sort of hateful content are they trying to prevent? Is there a Nazi-flavored campaign they want to curtail?
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    There's a handful of explicitly Nazi/White Supremacist TTRPGs out there. AFAIK none of them actually use OGL content, and Hasbro just wants to make sure it remains that way as they really don't want D&D associated with that.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Sadly, there actually is some explicitly white supremacist third party rpg content. One of Gygax's kids is involved in this.
  - KVFinn 4y ago
    >I am not much of a DND player- what sort of hateful content are they trying to prevent? Is there a Nazi-flavored campaign they want to curtail? https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-files-lawsuit-to-stop-publication-of-tabletop-game-alleging-trademark-violation-and-reprehensible-content/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-files-law...
Whatarethese 4y ago
Who is running these companies. This isn't the first time a company has tried to screw over their customers. Why do they keep doing this shit when they should know what is going to happen. It must just be pure stupidity on the C level folks at these companies. Shame on them.
- rcthompson 4y ago
  I'm guessing the people making the decisions are separated from the people who interact with customers by many layers of managers (and also the decision makers exist in a different socioeconomic bubble than the customers), and the only message able to penetrate all those layers with any speed or urgency is "we're losing money".
- msoucy 4y ago
  If I had a nickel for every time WotC tried to change the OGL and the community got pissed, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice! (The first time is what gave us Pathfinder 1e in the first place, for those who don't know - they took D&D 3.5e, under the OGL 1.0, and made modifications and continued its spirit)
  - Throw10987 4y ago
    I thought I was the only one old enough to remember that we have been here before. Back in the day I even had an email thread with Ryan Dancy about making software tooling based on the OGL, which was pretty non-committal and discouraged me from proceeding with any efforts.
    - trynewideas 4y ago
      My understanding of that discouragement in general was in how the exclusive nature of the OGL prevented it from being combined with software licenses. Implementing OGL-covered rules in or with code covered by a different license was fraught, which makes OGL software development difficult unless you get permission (aka, a commercial license) from the copyright holder (WotC/Hasbro).[1][2] The existence of OGL-implementing tools is more a factor of WotC/Hasbro reserving attempts to enforce that on small fish in a small pond, but could be deployed against anything even marginally successful that wasn't tithing enough. (One example of a discussion around that is re: Pathfinder Online, another Ryan Dancey project, which avoided the OGL question entirely by implementing a different ruleset. https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lhu1?One-is-the-Loneliest-Number#12 https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lhu1?One-is-the-Lo...) 1: https://archive.ph/yNaJT https://archive.ph/yNaJT > ... you have to give all the recipients the right to extract and use any Open Game Content you've included in your application, and you have to clearly identify what part of the software is Open Game Content. > One way is to design your application so that all the Open Game Content resides in files that are human-readable (that is, in a format that can be opened and understood by a reasonable person). Another is to have all the data used by the program viewable somehow while the program runs. > Distributing the source code not an acceptable method of compliance. First off, most programming languages are not easy to understand if the user hasn't studied the language. Second, the source code is a separate entity from the executable file. The user must have access to the actual Open Content used. 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20060913004016/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/oglfaq/20040123i https://web.archive.org/web/20060913004016/http://www.wizard... > NOTE: The biggest problem we've found with software and the OGL is that programmers aren't paying attention to Section 8 of the OGL. Section 8 states: "If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Content." This doesn't mean you can say "all rules in my program are Open", the users need to be able to see all that Open Content. You can do this by putting Open Content in a format that is easy to understand. Popular solutions have been to place everything in text files that the program pulls info from, having everything in a viewable database within the software, using Java script on a webpage (viewing the source of the webpage will display the code and Java script is relatively easy for a user to interpret). The key is that the user has to see everything that is Open Content that the program uses and be able to understand it without too much effort. The whole point of the OGL is that once information is declared Open everyone has free access to it under the OGL. Compiling that information into a program denies the user that access and violates the spirit of the Open Gaming License.
charcircuit 4y ago
>It also will not include the license back provision that some people were afraid was a means for us to steal work. That thought never crossed our minds. Under any new OGL, you will own the content you create. We won’t. Any language we put down will be crystal clear and unequivocal on that point. The license back language was intended to protect us and our partners from creators who incorrectly allege that we steal their work simply because of coincidental similarities. It seems like a lot of people were misunderstanding the terms of the license due to people not being familiar with them. It could have been better when asking for feedback if they had annotated it with more clear reasoning as the intended audience are not lawyers.
- msoucy 4y ago
  It would have been even better if they actually asked for feedback, instead of trying to get people to sign it in secret as a finished document
- krisoft 4y ago
  > It seems like a lot of people were misunderstanding the terms of the license due to people not being familiar with them. I’m not sure if you are satirical here. But just to be clear that part of the leaked agreament was crystal clear. They would have had the right to throw your book in a photocopier and start selling the copies. They would have even had the right to sell the same right to a third party. Were they intending to do that literally? Probably not. Would they have picked this and that from the most succesfull publications? Why not? They have the right for it. You signed it away for them.
david2ndaccount 4y ago
Classic corporate gaslighting. The notion that the changes were to prevent “hateful” content is ridiculous when it includes a massive royalty scheme. Besides, it violates the principles the original license was grounded in — WotC is not supposed to be an arbiter for what kind of products can be made with OGL-licensed material. That was the whole point of it! You didn’t have to ask them for permission!
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lalaland1125 4y ago
> Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we. Talk about tone deaf
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- LesZedCB 4y ago
  people may accuse me (rightly) of being very cynical, but reading stuff like that from self-described 'community-oriented' corporations makes me feel quite justified in that belief. holy shit
karaterobot 4y ago
> not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose. Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? $750k in revenue is not the cutoff for a major corporation. Their new license targeted like, 5 person shops.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  This just reeks of desperate MBA energy who, instead of trying to develop their own products and IP further, just see that Critical Role is selling a lot of merch and desperately want to rent seek on it. This is probably Hasbro slitting the stomach of the goose trying to get the golden eggs. They had essentially infinite long term revenue of people buying D&D rulebooks (myself and many of my friends included). Now most people in the community know the fundamental integrity of WotC is compromised by suits and feel slighted, tabletop RPGs is just too small of a space to get away with shady business. Personally I'm never buying a WotC product again.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  > Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? I have at least one theory on that. - In the middle of all this OGL mess, WotC also cancelled a raft of unannounced video games. Their in-house D&D games this most recent cycle so far were either flops or revivals. - At almost the same time, Hasbro and Wizard CEOs were hyping to investors the potential for "the kind of recurrent spending you see in digital games" in non-DM D&D players that comprise 80% of the market but a minority of spending. What's the primary RPG merch for players today? Custom or specialized dice, customized minis, folios — stuff that's hard to manufacture at scale while keeping high profit margins. Wizards wants to move them into higher-margin, video-game-like digital spaces, especially virtual tabletops. So Hasbro buys D&D Beyond outright in April and announces in August an Unreal-powered 3D VTT, and the D&D One next-edition rules set/marketplace, which OGL 1.1/2.0 was meant to support. Whatever the hook in D&D One toward monetizing non-DM players is meant to be,* it'd attract competitors in the space beyond the current batch of VTTs and niche publishers. An OGL 1.0a-licensed ruleset could facilitate well-backed companies to build their own D&D One-compatible clones using non-Wizards settings. Companies with experience putting out D&D-ruleset multiplayer games. Companies like Beamdog, acquired in April 2022 by a subsidiary of Embracer Group, who's rolling in settings and IPs that would be delightful to play. Yeah, that door's already open with D&D Beyond/5E/OGL 1.0a, and Embracer doesn't need OGL hooks to enter the market. But from Hasbro's perspective, why on earth would they leave that door open? * Wizards already has a long-running framework for systematically dispensing durable rewards to players that could easily go lootbox-a-like if moved to digital: the Adventurer's League, their organized play program (which ironically, like the OGL, also has roots in a Ryan Dancey invention). Paizo runs their own long-running organized play system, Pathfinder Society, which drives quite a lot of Paizo business. Scenarios are distributed almost exclusively online, and Society GMs have the popular option to run games entirely online via VTT or even play-by-post. Wouldn't it be neat if the new OGL also gave Wizards a way to legally challenge its existence by claiming that makes Pathfinder Society a digital product that requires a license? If Pathfinder Society isn't a digital product, then what's D&D One?
milliams 4y ago
Can anyone explain the "NFT" argument they're putting forward? What in the new license protects them more than existing copyright law, trademark law or OGL 1.0 does not? The OGL does not allow people to use the D&D branding, nor any famous monsters or named spells (i.e. no Tasha's Anything or Beholders) and so if anyone made a D&D NFT they'd already be in conflict.
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  "People think NTFs are stupid, right?" "Yeah." "Ok, tell them we were doing to to stop people making NFTs."
  - milliams 4y ago
    I guess that shows that they think we're stupid. The NFT bubble has burst and no one cares any more. Maybe 6-12 months ago when they started planning this internally it was a big thing but it just shows how behind they are.
- schlauerfox 4y ago
  This statement is a baldfaced lie in PR crisis template form. Gaslighting that the community are overreacting and they were just protecting us from the racists that play d&d, and NFTs, and big scary corps (who? they don't say). It was clear people were expected to sign this, so the reporting says, so the entire statement is callow and untrustworthy. Nobody should believe WOTC, now the fibbing has started, to try to save reputation. The community really wants to turn the screws, start challenging their trademark on DND and Dungeons and Dragons on what has clearly become Generic for this sort of game.
echohack5 4y ago
This is straight up gaslighting. The original language says NOTHING about NFTs and barely anything about acceptance use or community guidelines. Hasbro is down 40% YoY. It's very, very plain that the entire goal of this was to drive players into DnDBeyond and then charge them a subscription fee because DnD's primary customer is DMs and not players. The entire point is to delete their competitors like Roll20, Foundry, or 3rd party sellers in the digital space. This blog post is a smokescreen under the guise of "feedback". They were asking folks to SIGN the OGL 1.1. There wasn't a feedback period or words about how this was an early early draft that would change based on feedback. SHESH. Hasbro tried this with 4th edition by making the rules of the game more wargame-like to force regular players to buy minis (there were even rules initially that for official dnd events that you could only use OFFICIAL minis) but they backed down on this even too. Same thing, different go to market. The fools in Hasbro's executive suite are NOT decades-old players of DnD and they have no idea what they're doing. They have no commitment to players: Hasbro shareholders is where their loyalties lie. I've played TTRPGs for 25+ years and this behavior is also completely unsurprising from Hasbro/WoTC.
- feoren 4y ago
  > The fools in Hasbro's executive suite are NOT decades-old players of DnD and they have no idea what they're doing. This is nearly every single corporation in America. We are veritably infested with a caste of the "business class" who are completely unqualified to run anything, and indeed don't even care about running these companies. Instead they hop from company to company, ripping out the internals of whatever made that company great in the first place, laying off talented people, randomly closing down "cost centers", and doing everything they can to get an immediate stock price bump now, even if it literally destroys the company down the road. They don't care; by then they will have jumped to a different company. That's the game, and it's played an entire echelon of C-level Harvard Business School grads whose daddies helped them get admitted. The dystopia where corporations are ruthless profit-seeking entities would be better than what we have now, which is that corporations are the playthings of a caste of modern-day corporate raiders. The rest of us look at the decisions made by giant corporations and ask "how can they be so stupid?" They're not being stupid, they're being viruses, and viruses can still be successful even when they sometimes kill their hosts.
doesnt_know 4y ago
I think for a subset of the table-top community, the damage is already done. Our group will be finishing up our campaign (probably about a month or so left) and then switching to a new system. That means a bunch of dropped dnd beyond subscriptions and us no longer purchasing digital source/adventure books. DnD has insane brand recognition but the system itself isn't anything overly special. We have stacks of indie table top books thourgh various sales over the years sitting there waiting for us to try out.
rychco 4y ago
Hey, I’ve seen this one! “Public company ruins their reputation by intentionally making their products worse in an attempt to extort longtime customers.”
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snapcaster 4y ago
This and the magic 30th debacle really sucks. I don't play D&D but magic is my favorite game and what's messed up is that it's still really good. I play primarily draft and felt like 2022 was a great year for content yet the business practices are so short sighted and dumb it feels like they're going to run this thing I love into the ground. Good luck to D&D players hope you guys can influence Hasbro to stop being stupid
- bargle0 4y ago
  We don’t need WotC or Hasbro.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  What was the Magic 30th debacle? The super expensive cards with only nostalgia value seemed strange, but I can't see that as a debacle.
  - sogen 4y ago
    I think they reprinted cards that they had promised would not be printed again, thus devaluing the whole market.
    - User23 4y ago
      The reprint policy specifically excludes reprints that aren't tournament legal[1] and I'm pretty sure it always has. [1] https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/official-reprint-policy https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/official-rep...
    - Kerrick 4y ago
      There was no appreciable devaluation from the move. The new reprints honoring old cards that they promised not to reprint were not actual Magic cards, they have an alternate card back that makes them not Magic cards, not tournament legal, and a completely different class of cardboard for collectors. (Heck, plenty of players and some collectors actively want Magic to go back on that promise—called the "Reserved List"—because it prices otherwise-potential players out of playing certain forms of the game.) As an example, let's examine, one of the cards they printed an homage to is Volcanic Island--the most-available, lowest-cost real English Magic printing (Revised). Its average price on Oct 1, a few days before the 30th anniversary announcement, was (according to mtgstocks.com) $799. Its average price today is $779 (the $20 difference is within normal seasonal variation). A more-collectible printing, Unlimited, had an average price on Oct 1 of $1342.50. That's its exact average price today. The much-more-collectible Beta printing was $12,500 on Oct 1, and $14,999 today. No, the uproar from the community had much more to do with the way they marketed and sold the product in which these homage prints existed, the way their messaging about its sales performance seemed sketchy, and most importantly the price of the product.
mhd 4y ago
Decent damage control that rolls back a few things they simply couldn't sell but keeps a lot of the problematic parts – or at least keeps them unresolved. But boy, that's grade 1A "My fellow kids" language: "However, it’s clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1." Yuck. "Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we." We all won! Just like in D&D! There's a time for making the audience feel like you're one of them. You might even be. But read the room first. This clearly was a time for a more somber treatment of the fandom/customers.
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bob1029 4y ago
I'd recommend listening to Hasbro's leadership explain to institutional investors how they intend to make more money off MTG & DnD: https://investor.hasbro.com/events/event-details/ubs-fireside-chat https://investor.hasbro.com/events/event-details/ubs-firesid... I feel like following the investor relations can paint a much deeper picture than is otherwise apparent at press release time.
IYasha 4y ago
Don't you dare! OGL stands for OpenGL! Don't force millions of us to re-train! )
- IYasha 4y ago
  Oh, shift, it's too late (
xracy 4y ago
Hasbro Suits: "Hear me out, if we kill the WotC goose, we'll get all the Golden eggs." I really wish they would sell WotC and that it would go private. Not everything needs to become a billion-dollar idea. Why can't we just have simple consistent million-dollar ideas that sustain our sense of fun and joy.
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marcus_holmes 4y ago
What I don't understand about this is how they're able to retroactively change the licence terms. As I understand it (and I'm not an expert, hence the question), Pathfinder is based on D&D as released under the OGL, and has been a successful commercial product for years. How is it legal for WotC to change the terms of the OGL licence and invalidate Pathfinder's ability to use the D&D content retroactively? Surely Pathfinder can point to the original OGL release and say "all our content is based on this release which you released under an open licence". Secondary question: does this apply to OSS as well? Can (e.g) Postgresql wait until the whole world is relying on their software, and then pull a licence change that makes it non-free/libre and requiring a paid licence fee?
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  The OGL 1.0(a) includes this text: > 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. Wizards is claiming (I think erroneously, as it contradicts past published statements to the contrary regarding its intent) that this gives them the right to declare previous versions of the OGL as no longer "authorized" and thus invalid. I suspect this won't hold up in court should it come to that but testing it in court would be the only way to find out. Most FOSS licenses do not include a clause like this.
- racingmars 4y ago
  > What I don't understand about this is how they're able to retroactively change the licence terms. I think the concern is around provision 9 of the OGL: "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." IANAL so I have no idea what all the implications of this actually are, or how a court might understand it. But at face value, the "any authorized version of this License" makes people think WotC would no longer authorize the 1.0 license and only authorize the 1.1 license, so further copying and distribution of material originally distributed under v1.0 would only be possible under the v1.1 license if it becomes the only "authorized" license. Does contract law allow for such a thing? I don't know. > Secondary question: does this apply to OSS as well? Can (e.g) Postgresql wait until the whole world is relying on their software, and then pull a licence change that makes it non-free/libre and requiring a paid licence fee? No, because free software licenses don't tend to have that confusing "Updating the License" or any way to retroactively change the conditions that the OGL has. OSS projects could always re-license (at least the code that the project has copyright ownership of) going forward, but that wouldn't affect copies you already got under the previous terms.
User23 4y ago
It's already completely legal under US copyright law to clone D&D or any other tabletop game's gameplay. What exactly is the OGL offering on top of what the law already gives anyone the right to do?
- karaterobot 4y ago
  I've always kinda wondered this myself. The copyright office seems very clear about not being able to claim ownership of the mechanics of a game. I always assumed the additional grants in the OGL were for content like (for example) monster, deity, and item descriptions, and maybe to the language used in the instructional material, not just the raw mechanics.
raydiatian 4y ago
> A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we. I laughed and cringed at this sentence.
ankaAr 4y ago
They must to update the ogl 1 deleting the article 9, and maybe people will trust a little bit.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  Why would we ever trust them again. I still don't trust MS because of the days of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". I can trust a people or persons, but never a corporation.
suprjami 4y ago
Lies. The community won and WotC are in damage control.
gabereiser 4y ago
As a D&D lover and as a game developer, Wizards is customer hostile. They employ litigation and control lawyers to protect their own commercial interests instead of letting a community of fans expand upon their works with their own creativity. TSR and crew would be ashamed. It's always been about imagination and creativity within a ruleset. The ruleset books and core are Wizards IP. OGL was to take the "math and systems of rules" that made that possible and enable others to create works of their own. I used OGL extensively when building text-based adventures and muds as well as the foundation for mmorpg's. Restricting it in legalese to "Table Top Only" is grounds for all sorts of law suits against Roll20 and the likes that employ the OGL rulesets for non-Wizards-like games. Fuck, this is why Pathfinder forked 3.5 rules. Wizards only cares about milking their already aging customer base. They had a really good effort on 4th ed. on bringing new folks in but then they showed how shallow the walled garden is and people left. Shame on you Wizards, shame. OGL should be open. Open Source, Open Ideation, Open Arms, Open Hearts. Wizards should do this, or give up the IP and stick to Magic The Gathering where they have a huge install base with Magic Online.
kmeisthax 4y ago
>And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose. "Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two pictures." "They are the same picture." There is no legal difference between "fans playing in your sandbox" and "major corporations using your work for their commercial purposes". Under current copyright law, fans are just really unscrupulous thieves, and writing a legal distinction between the two that won't immediately be run roughshod by Hollywood, book publishers, or the music industry is extremely difficult if not impossible. If you want a license that turns off major corporations, pick CC-BY-SA. Yes, I know CC-BY-NC-SA exists. That sounds like it'd do what WotC would want: draw a line cleanly between fans and corporations. However, the notion of commercial use in the law is so broad as to cover basically everything. The only two cases in which I'd say CC-BY-NC-SA[0] confers any rights is either... - You are an individual sharing the work on a filesharing network - You can categorically prove to a judge that you had no "commercial advantage or private monetary compensation" The latter category excludes literally all fan works. Even if you just drew them yourself and posted them online, that still gives you social capital: likes, reshares, and algorithmic attention. That is a commercial advantage for you. Even if you exclude that, the platform you posted the works on is still getting a commercial advantage from you being on there, so they have violated the license that you sublicensed to them. That's why the NonCommercial clause in that license has to say "filesharing is not commercial", because existing case law already says the opposite. If it's a draw, it's commercial. Copyleft & ShareAlike clauses don't have this problem, because they ride atop established legal definitions rather than murky notions people have of being able to infringe copyright a little. All they say is "if copyright law says you made a derivative, then you have to also license it back to the commons you took from". Quick, simple, and most importantly, court-tested[1]. And no profit-seeking corporation will play ball. The standard practice of negotiating a license in exchange for royalties is so lucrative that it starves other forms of funding creative work. For the same reason, you don't see people making big-budget SCP films[2], because you can't window a release that you are legally allowed to CAM[4]. Of course, Wizards doesn't want that either, because... well, they also can't negotiate a license in exchange for royalties in that scenario. The market for exception selling is actually not that big. Even if it does serve to separate fans from large corporations now... what stops the corporations from just buying or hiring the fans later on once they figure out a viable business model under CC-BY-SA? The circle that Wizards is trying to square is that they want a license that is functionally worthless, so that when the corporations jump in to buy out the fans, they can pull the coin out of the vending machine and steal the surplus that those other corporations wanted. [0] Or it's even weirder cousin, CC-BY-NC-ND, which is basically just a fancy covenant not to sue BitTorrent users [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp.#GPL_and_the_US_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation... [2] There are plenty of indie films out there, of course, and they do largely play ball with CC-BY-SA, Andrey Duksin[3] notwithstanding. [3] A Russian SCP creator that trademarked the SCP logo and tried to extract monetary demands from the SCP Wiki's Russian language branch. Their shenaniganery has largely been forgotten due to the ongoing situation of Russia being a genocidal ethnofascist death cult. [4] Movie piracy scene term for "point a camcorder at a screen and press record". Prohibited by many state laws but I'm pretty sure you couldn't enforce it on a CC-BY-SA work.
parasense 4y ago
I don't think most folks care about the licensing, it doesn't impact them playing table-top. That's why Hasbro is going after online games, anything on the block chain, or whatever their stupid rational is... Most folks will continue to use DnD, but the big time online games will have to re-invent themselves.

135 points by Macha 4y ago

Prior events: 1a: Dungeons and Dragons’ new license tightens its grip on competition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264777 - Jan 2023 (203 comments) 1b: Wizards of the Coast Trying to Retroactively Cancel OGL 1.0a: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271687 - Jan 2023 (233 comments) 2: An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34314448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34314448 - Jan 2023 (356 comments) 3: Paizo announces system neutral OpenRPG license: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363991 - Jan 2023 (58 comments)

nickthegreek 4y ago
io9's take on this response from wotc - https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-license-wizards-of-the-coast-wotc-1849985196 https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-license-wizards-of-...
- Y_Y 4y ago
  This should be the link
havblue 4y ago
Here's one of my favorite (old) articles on their transition from being gaming nerds to becoming a large corporation: Death to the Minotaur: How Wizards of the Coast sacrificed its geeky, Gothic, sex-for-all idealism for Pok March 23, 2001 https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/ https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
- markus_zhang 4y ago
  On the geeky side I really really like the slightly more complicated Adnd 2e as well as the Planescape/Spelljammer settings.
- morelisp 4y ago
  There's been 2x as much time between today and that article, as between that article and WotC's founding. It's not relevant to the issues today, and the author paints an extremely rose-tinted picture of the period. The people he accuses of ruining the company's vision were also early employees (and although the author couldn't know it, would go on to found Paizo and today be the heir apparent to his presentation of WotC's vision).

djur 4y ago

The proof will be in the pudding, but this seems like a near-total capitulation to me. That's a relief if so. I enjoy other systems, but I do also love D&D, and I'd hate to abandon it.

lalaland1125 4y ago
Not quite. WoTC has said that they are still planning on banning third party publishers from releasing anything new based on old OGL 1.0 content. EDIT: Oops, accidentally said "in this post", when WoTC's announcement was in the FAQ that got leaked. > Can I keep using OGL 1.0a to develop fifth edition content? > > No. OGL 1.0a only allows creators to use "authorized" versions of the OGL, which allows Wizards to determine which of its prior versions to continue to allow use of when we exercise our right to update the license. As part of rolling out OGL 2.0, we are deauthorizing OGL 1.0a from future use and deleting it from our website. This means OGL 1.0a can no longer be used to develop content for release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU
- wotcthrrrrow 4y ago
  I don't see that mentioned anywhere in this post? It even explicitly states "Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected." (though ideally they'd, you know, make that legally binding.)
  - sklargh 4y ago
    The implication being that the OGL going forward will be 1.1.
  - msoucy 4y ago
    Content already released, yes. The post says nothing about being able to make new things under 1.0a, which is where a lot of the nervousness comes in for people.
    - wotcthrrrrow 4y ago

honkycat 4y ago

Their latest supplement, Spelljammer, was SHAMEFUL. Total shovelware. Between the magic 30th anniversary debacle, the lowering of quality in their products in general, and their clear attempts to milk as much money out of their customers as possible, WOTC has lost the plot.

msoucy 4y ago
WotC: "We want to avoid hateful content, that's all!" Also WotC: creates highly racist caricatures of an enslaved race (Hadozee) in an official book
- Brigand 4y ago
  What is racist about inventing a fantasy race in a fantasy world? Please elaborate.
  - msoucy 4y ago
    This post[1] explains it better than I have the mental energy or experience to [1]: https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-hadozee-racist https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-hadozee-rac...
    - spoiler 4y ago
      I don't know how I feel about that analysis. Just because something is inspired by historic events (slavery in this case), doesn't mean it's advocating those events as good. Is it dark? Yes, and I think it's meant to be. If anything, I think it's actually great that they're doing this because I believe RPG games are a great and safe mediums to acquaint people with these difficult subjects. I can't be the only person with this opinion? Are people calling Marvel racists or anti-Semitic because Hydra was inspires by some parts of the Nazi military being obsessed with the supernatural? I think calling these racists (or xist) is a failure of imagination; kinda weird to see it come from the RPG community, too
      - 4y ago

milliams 4y ago

Regardless of what future license they apply to content, what they need to do first is release an OGL 1.0b which contains "irrevocable" and ensure it is applied to all current 1.0a content as this was the original intention of the OGL [1]. Then they can release any 1.1 they want. [1] There was a published FAQ from WotC (copy available at https://www.rpglibrary.org/articles/faqs/ogl.php https://www.rpglibrary.org/articles/faqs/ogl.php) saying: > 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. where section 9 of OGL 1.0a says: > 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.

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VyseofArcadia 4y ago

I wonder if it's too little too late. All WotC really has going for it at this point is the D&D name and player goodwill, and they just shot the latter out of a cannon into the sun. DMs and PCs alike have already shown their willingness to migrate over to alternative D&D-like systems. And moreover Paizo et al know they have no reason to trust WotC not to try this again as soon as people get complacent. I'm sure they won't back down, and are going to go full steam ahead with their scheme to sidestep WotC, not unlike Valve working around Microsoft's boneheaded Windows decisions with SteamOS and Proton. Also, hiding behind "we want to prevent discriminatory content" is a pretty shameful attempt to salvage their image by appealing to the zeitgeist. The hobby has become so inclusive the last decade or so, more than I ever would have imagined.

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PaulKeeble 4y ago
Accusing the community of being racist as the reason they had to put on a 30% royalty fee to control all the content. That will go down well for what IMO is one of the most inclusive communities on the internet.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  Especially rich from the company that published Spelljammer last year, a supplement that somehow got out the door despite including formerly enslaved sentient _monkey_ characters that gave people minstrel vibes.
  - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
    It seemed to give some Americans that vibe. I read up about the Hadozee and black Americans comparison, it's pretty tenuous. I guess if you're looking for racism, you find it.
- wincy 4y ago
  Based on the stuff Wizards of the Coast considers racist, it’d be really easy to unintentionally be caught up in their nullifying your license too. This includes changing language around a race of evil, gypsy like people that are subservient to a vampire lord (which hews very close to the writings of Bram Stoker’s Dracula), or a species of flying monkey-like creatures being enslaved and later freed as part of a fantasy setting (this was removed and Wizards apologized for being terrible and racist). Talk about an absolute landmine of potential for offense.

Mindwipe 4y ago

Gods, that's an awfully written statement. Painful. Notably, the idea that it was just a draft is simply a lie - the OGL 1.1 was sent to content creators to sign. That's not an internal draft. It just isn't. There is no way to look at that section as anything other than a deliberate falsification on Hasbro's part. Secondly, the notion that the main driver was to prevent hateful content is also just nonsensical. It's not like you accidentally dropped a typewriter down the stairs and it suddenly required a 30% royalty, and the notion that any business put that in and it wasn't the primary motivation is fanciful, especially when Hasbro's own financial statement explicitly says that they were expecting to drive significant additional monetisation from D&D. If Hasbro want to start earning trust back here, not including two easily provable lies in the first, massively overdue statement would be a good start.

y-curious 4y ago
I am not much of a DND player- what sort of hateful content are they trying to prevent? Is there a Nazi-flavored campaign they want to curtail?
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  There's a handful of explicitly Nazi/White Supremacist TTRPGs out there. AFAIK none of them actually use OGL content, and Hasbro just wants to make sure it remains that way as they really don't want D&D associated with that.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Sadly, there actually is some explicitly white supremacist third party rpg content. One of Gygax's kids is involved in this.
- KVFinn 4y ago
  >I am not much of a DND player- what sort of hateful content are they trying to prevent? Is there a Nazi-flavored campaign they want to curtail? https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-files-lawsuit-to-stop-publication-of-tabletop-game-alleging-trademark-violation-and-reprehensible-content/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-files-law...

Whatarethese 4y ago

Who is running these companies. This isn't the first time a company has tried to screw over their customers. Why do they keep doing this shit when they should know what is going to happen. It must just be pure stupidity on the C level folks at these companies. Shame on them.

rcthompson 4y ago
I'm guessing the people making the decisions are separated from the people who interact with customers by many layers of managers (and also the decision makers exist in a different socioeconomic bubble than the customers), and the only message able to penetrate all those layers with any speed or urgency is "we're losing money".
msoucy 4y ago
If I had a nickel for every time WotC tried to change the OGL and the community got pissed, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice! (The first time is what gave us Pathfinder 1e in the first place, for those who don't know - they took D&D 3.5e, under the OGL 1.0, and made modifications and continued its spirit)
- Throw10987 4y ago
  I thought I was the only one old enough to remember that we have been here before. Back in the day I even had an email thread with Ryan Dancy about making software tooling based on the OGL, which was pretty non-committal and discouraged me from proceeding with any efforts.
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    My understanding of that discouragement in general was in how the exclusive nature of the OGL prevented it from being combined with software licenses. Implementing OGL-covered rules in or with code covered by a different license was fraught, which makes OGL software development difficult unless you get permission (aka, a commercial license) from the copyright holder (WotC/Hasbro).[1][2] The existence of OGL-implementing tools is more a factor of WotC/Hasbro reserving attempts to enforce that on small fish in a small pond, but could be deployed against anything even marginally successful that wasn't tithing enough. (One example of a discussion around that is re: Pathfinder Online, another Ryan Dancey project, which avoided the OGL question entirely by implementing a different ruleset. https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lhu1?One-is-the-Loneliest-Number#12 https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lhu1?One-is-the-Lo...) 1: https://archive.ph/yNaJT https://archive.ph/yNaJT > ... you have to give all the recipients the right to extract and use any Open Game Content you've included in your application, and you have to clearly identify what part of the software is Open Game Content. > One way is to design your application so that all the Open Game Content resides in files that are human-readable (that is, in a format that can be opened and understood by a reasonable person). Another is to have all the data used by the program viewable somehow while the program runs. > Distributing the source code not an acceptable method of compliance. First off, most programming languages are not easy to understand if the user hasn't studied the language. Second, the source code is a separate entity from the executable file. The user must have access to the actual Open Content used. 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20060913004016/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/oglfaq/20040123i https://web.archive.org/web/20060913004016/http://www.wizard... > NOTE: The biggest problem we've found with software and the OGL is that programmers aren't paying attention to Section 8 of the OGL. Section 8 states: "If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Content." This doesn't mean you can say "all rules in my program are Open", the users need to be able to see all that Open Content. You can do this by putting Open Content in a format that is easy to understand. Popular solutions have been to place everything in text files that the program pulls info from, having everything in a viewable database within the software, using Java script on a webpage (viewing the source of the webpage will display the code and Java script is relatively easy for a user to interpret). The key is that the user has to see everything that is Open Content that the program uses and be able to understand it without too much effort. The whole point of the OGL is that once information is declared Open everyone has free access to it under the OGL. Compiling that information into a program denies the user that access and violates the spirit of the Open Gaming License.

charcircuit 4y ago

>It also will not include the license back provision that some people were afraid was a means for us to steal work. That thought never crossed our minds. Under any new OGL, you will own the content you create. We won’t. Any language we put down will be crystal clear and unequivocal on that point. The license back language was intended to protect us and our partners from creators who incorrectly allege that we steal their work simply because of coincidental similarities. It seems like a lot of people were misunderstanding the terms of the license due to people not being familiar with them. It could have been better when asking for feedback if they had annotated it with more clear reasoning as the intended audience are not lawyers.

msoucy 4y ago
It would have been even better if they actually asked for feedback, instead of trying to get people to sign it in secret as a finished document
krisoft 4y ago
> It seems like a lot of people were misunderstanding the terms of the license due to people not being familiar with them. I’m not sure if you are satirical here. But just to be clear that part of the leaked agreament was crystal clear. They would have had the right to throw your book in a photocopier and start selling the copies. They would have even had the right to sell the same right to a third party. Were they intending to do that literally? Probably not. Would they have picked this and that from the most succesfull publications? Why not? They have the right for it. You signed it away for them.

david2ndaccount 4y ago

Classic corporate gaslighting. The notion that the changes were to prevent “hateful” content is ridiculous when it includes a massive royalty scheme. Besides, it violates the principles the original license was grounded in — WotC is not supposed to be an arbiter for what kind of products can be made with OGL-licensed material. That was the whole point of it! You didn’t have to ask them for permission!

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lalaland1125 4y ago

> Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we. Talk about tone deaf

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LesZedCB 4y ago
people may accuse me (rightly) of being very cynical, but reading stuff like that from self-described 'community-oriented' corporations makes me feel quite justified in that belief. holy shit

karaterobot 4y ago

> not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose. Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? $750k in revenue is not the cutoff for a major corporation. Their new license targeted like, 5 person shops.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
This just reeks of desperate MBA energy who, instead of trying to develop their own products and IP further, just see that Critical Role is selling a lot of merch and desperately want to rent seek on it. This is probably Hasbro slitting the stomach of the goose trying to get the golden eggs. They had essentially infinite long term revenue of people buying D&D rulebooks (myself and many of my friends included). Now most people in the community know the fundamental integrity of WotC is compromised by suits and feel slighted, tabletop RPGs is just too small of a space to get away with shady business. Personally I'm never buying a WotC product again.
trynewideas 4y ago
> Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? I have at least one theory on that. - In the middle of all this OGL mess, WotC also cancelled a raft of unannounced video games. Their in-house D&D games this most recent cycle so far were either flops or revivals. - At almost the same time, Hasbro and Wizard CEOs were hyping to investors the potential for "the kind of recurrent spending you see in digital games" in non-DM D&D players that comprise 80% of the market but a minority of spending. What's the primary RPG merch for players today? Custom or specialized dice, customized minis, folios — stuff that's hard to manufacture at scale while keeping high profit margins. Wizards wants to move them into higher-margin, video-game-like digital spaces, especially virtual tabletops. So Hasbro buys D&D Beyond outright in April and announces in August an Unreal-powered 3D VTT, and the D&D One next-edition rules set/marketplace, which OGL 1.1/2.0 was meant to support. Whatever the hook in D&D One toward monetizing non-DM players is meant to be,* it'd attract competitors in the space beyond the current batch of VTTs and niche publishers. An OGL 1.0a-licensed ruleset could facilitate well-backed companies to build their own D&D One-compatible clones using non-Wizards settings. Companies with experience putting out D&D-ruleset multiplayer games. Companies like Beamdog, acquired in April 2022 by a subsidiary of Embracer Group, who's rolling in settings and IPs that would be delightful to play. Yeah, that door's already open with D&D Beyond/5E/OGL 1.0a, and Embracer doesn't need OGL hooks to enter the market. But from Hasbro's perspective, why on earth would they leave that door open? * Wizards already has a long-running framework for systematically dispensing durable rewards to players that could easily go lootbox-a-like if moved to digital: the Adventurer's League, their organized play program (which ironically, like the OGL, also has roots in a Ryan Dancey invention). Paizo runs their own long-running organized play system, Pathfinder Society, which drives quite a lot of Paizo business. Scenarios are distributed almost exclusively online, and Society GMs have the popular option to run games entirely online via VTT or even play-by-post. Wouldn't it be neat if the new OGL also gave Wizards a way to legally challenge its existence by claiming that makes Pathfinder Society a digital product that requires a license? If Pathfinder Society isn't a digital product, then what's D&D One?

milliams 4y ago

Can anyone explain the "NFT" argument they're putting forward? What in the new license protects them more than existing copyright law, trademark law or OGL 1.0 does not? The OGL does not allow people to use the D&D branding, nor any famous monsters or named spells (i.e. no Tasha's Anything or Beholders) and so if anyone made a D&D NFT they'd already be in conflict.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago
"People think NTFs are stupid, right?" "Yeah." "Ok, tell them we were doing to to stop people making NFTs."
- milliams 4y ago
  I guess that shows that they think we're stupid. The NFT bubble has burst and no one cares any more. Maybe 6-12 months ago when they started planning this internally it was a big thing but it just shows how behind they are.
schlauerfox 4y ago
This statement is a baldfaced lie in PR crisis template form. Gaslighting that the community are overreacting and they were just protecting us from the racists that play d&d, and NFTs, and big scary corps (who? they don't say). It was clear people were expected to sign this, so the reporting says, so the entire statement is callow and untrustworthy. Nobody should believe WOTC, now the fibbing has started, to try to save reputation. The community really wants to turn the screws, start challenging their trademark on DND and Dungeons and Dragons on what has clearly become Generic for this sort of game.

echohack5 4y ago

This is straight up gaslighting. The original language says NOTHING about NFTs and barely anything about acceptance use or community guidelines. Hasbro is down 40% YoY. It's very, very plain that the entire goal of this was to drive players into DnDBeyond and then charge them a subscription fee because DnD's primary customer is DMs and not players. The entire point is to delete their competitors like Roll20, Foundry, or 3rd party sellers in the digital space. This blog post is a smokescreen under the guise of "feedback". They were asking folks to SIGN the OGL 1.1. There wasn't a feedback period or words about how this was an early early draft that would change based on feedback. SHESH. Hasbro tried this with 4th edition by making the rules of the game more wargame-like to force regular players to buy minis (there were even rules initially that for official dnd events that you could only use OFFICIAL minis) but they backed down on this even too. Same thing, different go to market. The fools in Hasbro's executive suite are NOT decades-old players of DnD and they have no idea what they're doing. They have no commitment to players: Hasbro shareholders is where their loyalties lie. I've played TTRPGs for 25+ years and this behavior is also completely unsurprising from Hasbro/WoTC.

feoren 4y ago
> The fools in Hasbro's executive suite are NOT decades-old players of DnD and they have no idea what they're doing. This is nearly every single corporation in America. We are veritably infested with a caste of the "business class" who are completely unqualified to run anything, and indeed don't even care about running these companies. Instead they hop from company to company, ripping out the internals of whatever made that company great in the first place, laying off talented people, randomly closing down "cost centers", and doing everything they can to get an immediate stock price bump now, even if it literally destroys the company down the road. They don't care; by then they will have jumped to a different company. That's the game, and it's played an entire echelon of C-level Harvard Business School grads whose daddies helped them get admitted. The dystopia where corporations are ruthless profit-seeking entities would be better than what we have now, which is that corporations are the playthings of a caste of modern-day corporate raiders. The rest of us look at the decisions made by giant corporations and ask "how can they be so stupid?" They're not being stupid, they're being viruses, and viruses can still be successful even when they sometimes kill their hosts.

doesnt_know 4y ago

I think for a subset of the table-top community, the damage is already done. Our group will be finishing up our campaign (probably about a month or so left) and then switching to a new system. That means a bunch of dropped dnd beyond subscriptions and us no longer purchasing digital source/adventure books. DnD has insane brand recognition but the system itself isn't anything overly special. We have stacks of indie table top books thourgh various sales over the years sitting there waiting for us to try out.

rychco 4y ago

Hey, I’ve seen this one! “Public company ruins their reputation by intentionally making their products worse in an attempt to extort longtime customers.”

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snapcaster 4y ago

This and the magic 30th debacle really sucks. I don't play D&D but magic is my favorite game and what's messed up is that it's still really good. I play primarily draft and felt like 2022 was a great year for content yet the business practices are so short sighted and dumb it feels like they're going to run this thing I love into the ground. Good luck to D&D players hope you guys can influence Hasbro to stop being stupid

bargle0 4y ago
We don’t need WotC or Hasbro.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
What was the Magic 30th debacle? The super expensive cards with only nostalgia value seemed strange, but I can't see that as a debacle.
- sogen 4y ago
  I think they reprinted cards that they had promised would not be printed again, thus devaluing the whole market.
  - User23 4y ago
    The reprint policy specifically excludes reprints that aren't tournament legal[1] and I'm pretty sure it always has. [1] https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/official-reprint-policy https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/official-rep...
  - Kerrick 4y ago
    There was no appreciable devaluation from the move. The new reprints honoring old cards that they promised not to reprint were not actual Magic cards, they have an alternate card back that makes them not Magic cards, not tournament legal, and a completely different class of cardboard for collectors. (Heck, plenty of players and some collectors actively want Magic to go back on that promise—called the "Reserved List"—because it prices otherwise-potential players out of playing certain forms of the game.) As an example, let's examine, one of the cards they printed an homage to is Volcanic Island--the most-available, lowest-cost real English Magic printing (Revised). Its average price on Oct 1, a few days before the 30th anniversary announcement, was (according to mtgstocks.com) $799. Its average price today is $779 (the $20 difference is within normal seasonal variation). A more-collectible printing, Unlimited, had an average price on Oct 1 of $1342.50. That's its exact average price today. The much-more-collectible Beta printing was $12,500 on Oct 1, and $14,999 today. No, the uproar from the community had much more to do with the way they marketed and sold the product in which these homage prints existed, the way their messaging about its sales performance seemed sketchy, and most importantly the price of the product.

mhd 4y ago

Decent damage control that rolls back a few things they simply couldn't sell but keeps a lot of the problematic parts – or at least keeps them unresolved. But boy, that's grade 1A "My fellow kids" language: "However, it’s clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1." Yuck. "Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we." We all won! Just like in D&D! There's a time for making the audience feel like you're one of them. You might even be. But read the room first. This clearly was a time for a more somber treatment of the fandom/customers.

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bob1029 4y ago

I'd recommend listening to Hasbro's leadership explain to institutional investors how they intend to make more money off MTG & DnD: https://investor.hasbro.com/events/event-details/ubs-fireside-chat https://investor.hasbro.com/events/event-details/ubs-firesid... I feel like following the investor relations can paint a much deeper picture than is otherwise apparent at press release time.

IYasha 4y ago

Don't you dare! OGL stands for OpenGL! Don't force millions of us to re-train! )

IYasha 4y ago
Oh, shift, it's too late (

xracy 4y ago

Hasbro Suits: "Hear me out, if we kill the WotC goose, we'll get all the Golden eggs." I really wish they would sell WotC and that it would go private. Not everything needs to become a billion-dollar idea. Why can't we just have simple consistent million-dollar ideas that sustain our sense of fun and joy.

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marcus_holmes 4y ago

What I don't understand about this is how they're able to retroactively change the licence terms. As I understand it (and I'm not an expert, hence the question), Pathfinder is based on D&D as released under the OGL, and has been a successful commercial product for years. How is it legal for WotC to change the terms of the OGL licence and invalidate Pathfinder's ability to use the D&D content retroactively? Surely Pathfinder can point to the original OGL release and say "all our content is based on this release which you released under an open licence". Secondary question: does this apply to OSS as well? Can (e.g) Postgresql wait until the whole world is relying on their software, and then pull a licence change that makes it non-free/libre and requiring a paid licence fee?

ryukafalz 4y ago
The OGL 1.0(a) includes this text: > 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. Wizards is claiming (I think erroneously, as it contradicts past published statements to the contrary regarding its intent) that this gives them the right to declare previous versions of the OGL as no longer "authorized" and thus invalid. I suspect this won't hold up in court should it come to that but testing it in court would be the only way to find out. Most FOSS licenses do not include a clause like this.
racingmars 4y ago
> What I don't understand about this is how they're able to retroactively change the licence terms. I think the concern is around provision 9 of the OGL: "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." IANAL so I have no idea what all the implications of this actually are, or how a court might understand it. But at face value, the "any authorized version of this License" makes people think WotC would no longer authorize the 1.0 license and only authorize the 1.1 license, so further copying and distribution of material originally distributed under v1.0 would only be possible under the v1.1 license if it becomes the only "authorized" license. Does contract law allow for such a thing? I don't know. > Secondary question: does this apply to OSS as well? Can (e.g) Postgresql wait until the whole world is relying on their software, and then pull a licence change that makes it non-free/libre and requiring a paid licence fee? No, because free software licenses don't tend to have that confusing "Updating the License" or any way to retroactively change the conditions that the OGL has. OSS projects could always re-license (at least the code that the project has copyright ownership of) going forward, but that wouldn't affect copies you already got under the previous terms.

User23 4y ago

It's already completely legal under US copyright law to clone D&D or any other tabletop game's gameplay. What exactly is the OGL offering on top of what the law already gives anyone the right to do?

karaterobot 4y ago
I've always kinda wondered this myself. The copyright office seems very clear about not being able to claim ownership of the mechanics of a game. I always assumed the additional grants in the OGL were for content like (for example) monster, deity, and item descriptions, and maybe to the language used in the instructional material, not just the raw mechanics.

raydiatian 4y ago

> A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we. I laughed and cringed at this sentence.

ankaAr 4y ago

They must to update the ogl 1 deleting the article 9, and maybe people will trust a little bit.

kneebonian 4y ago
Why would we ever trust them again. I still don't trust MS because of the days of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". I can trust a people or persons, but never a corporation.

suprjami 4y ago

Lies. The community won and WotC are in damage control.

gabereiser 4y ago

As a D&D lover and as a game developer, Wizards is customer hostile. They employ litigation and control lawyers to protect their own commercial interests instead of letting a community of fans expand upon their works with their own creativity. TSR and crew would be ashamed. It's always been about imagination and creativity within a ruleset. The ruleset books and core are Wizards IP. OGL was to take the "math and systems of rules" that made that possible and enable others to create works of their own. I used OGL extensively when building text-based adventures and muds as well as the foundation for mmorpg's. Restricting it in legalese to "Table Top Only" is grounds for all sorts of law suits against Roll20 and the likes that employ the OGL rulesets for non-Wizards-like games. Fuck, this is why Pathfinder forked 3.5 rules. Wizards only cares about milking their already aging customer base. They had a really good effort on 4th ed. on bringing new folks in but then they showed how shallow the walled garden is and people left. Shame on you Wizards, shame. OGL should be open. Open Source, Open Ideation, Open Arms, Open Hearts. Wizards should do this, or give up the IP and stick to Magic The Gathering where they have a huge install base with Magic Online.

kmeisthax 4y ago

>And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose. "Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two pictures." "They are the same picture." There is no legal difference between "fans playing in your sandbox" and "major corporations using your work for their commercial purposes". Under current copyright law, fans are just really unscrupulous thieves, and writing a legal distinction between the two that won't immediately be run roughshod by Hollywood, book publishers, or the music industry is extremely difficult if not impossible. If you want a license that turns off major corporations, pick CC-BY-SA. Yes, I know CC-BY-NC-SA exists. That sounds like it'd do what WotC would want: draw a line cleanly between fans and corporations. However, the notion of commercial use in the law is so broad as to cover basically everything. The only two cases in which I'd say CC-BY-NC-SA[0] confers any rights is either... - You are an individual sharing the work on a filesharing network - You can categorically prove to a judge that you had no "commercial advantage or private monetary compensation" The latter category excludes literally all fan works. Even if you just drew them yourself and posted them online, that still gives you social capital: likes, reshares, and algorithmic attention. That is a commercial advantage for you. Even if you exclude that, the platform you posted the works on is still getting a commercial advantage from you being on there, so they have violated the license that you sublicensed to them. That's why the NonCommercial clause in that license has to say "filesharing is not commercial", because existing case law already says the opposite. If it's a draw, it's commercial. Copyleft & ShareAlike clauses don't have this problem, because they ride atop established legal definitions rather than murky notions people have of being able to infringe copyright a little. All they say is "if copyright law says you made a derivative, then you have to also license it back to the commons you took from". Quick, simple, and most importantly, court-tested[1]. And no profit-seeking corporation will play ball. The standard practice of negotiating a license in exchange for royalties is so lucrative that it starves other forms of funding creative work. For the same reason, you don't see people making big-budget SCP films[2], because you can't window a release that you are legally allowed to CAM[4]. Of course, Wizards doesn't want that either, because... well, they also can't negotiate a license in exchange for royalties in that scenario. The market for exception selling is actually not that big. Even if it does serve to separate fans from large corporations now... what stops the corporations from just buying or hiring the fans later on once they figure out a viable business model under CC-BY-SA? The circle that Wizards is trying to square is that they want a license that is functionally worthless, so that when the corporations jump in to buy out the fans, they can pull the coin out of the vending machine and steal the surplus that those other corporations wanted. [0] Or it's even weirder cousin, CC-BY-NC-ND, which is basically just a fancy covenant not to sue BitTorrent users [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp.#GPL_and_the_US_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation... [2] There are plenty of indie films out there, of course, and they do largely play ball with CC-BY-SA, Andrey Duksin[3] notwithstanding. [3] A Russian SCP creator that trademarked the SCP logo and tried to extract monetary demands from the SCP Wiki's Russian language branch. Their shenaniganery has largely been forgotten due to the ongoing situation of Russia being a genocidal ethnofascist death cult. [4] Movie piracy scene term for "point a camcorder at a screen and press record". Prohibited by many state laws but I'm pretty sure you couldn't enforce it on a CC-BY-SA work.

parasense 4y ago

I don't think most folks care about the licensing, it doesn't impact them playing table-top. That's why Hasbro is going after online games, anything on the block chain, or whatever their stupid rational is... Most folks will continue to use DnD, but the big time online games will have to re-invent themselves.