#OpenDND
www.opendnd.games

More Information:

https://youtu.be/WXTdoUW8nxo

https://youtu.be/lGbcHyQ2v3c

What is the Open Gaming License?

The Open Gaming License (OGL) is a legal framework that allows creators to use the rules and ideas of roleplaying games in their own works. Initially released in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast, it has become a pillar of the tabletop gaming industry, fueling the popularity and accessibility of games such as Pathfinder, 13th Age, and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.

The OGL has done more to foster creativity and innovation in the tabletop gaming ecosystem than any other element. By allowing creators to use and collaboratively build upon the core mechanics and concepts of existing games, the OGL has created a wide variety of new games and game products, ranging from minor independent releases to large, commercially successful titles.

End of an Open Era

However, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has announced an updated OGL (version 1.1)—an attempt to dismantle the entire RPG industry. This new license intends to completely revoke the old OGL, a perpetual license designed by WotC themselves to be irrevocable.

Nothing about this new license is “open.” It chokes the vibrant community that has flourished under the original license. No matter the creator, it locks everyone into a new contract that restricts their work, makes it mandatory to report their projects and revenues to Wizards of the Coast, and gives WotC the legal right to reproduce and resell creators’ content without permission or compensation. The new license can also be modified with worse terms or terminated at any time without any recompense by creators.

For the largest creators in the industry, WotC is imposing an impossible tax of 25%—based on their total sales above $750K, not profit. This is anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior designed to crush small businesses that collectively employ hundreds of designers, writers, and artists. Under this tax, it becomes impossible for creators to put books on game stores’ shelves or run Kickstarters for large audiences. Even though this only affects some companies in the space, those targeted are still tiny compared to Wizards of the Coast, which made $1.3 billion in 2021.

On top of that, games such as Pathfinder 1E and 2E, 13th Age, Fudge, and Traveller—which use the 1.0 OGL as the backbone of their existence—will need to cease sales of upcoming products or give WotC 25% of their revenue to stay in compliance with the new license.

Furthermore, under the new license, virtual tabletops (VTTs) cannot operate. They can no longer support OGL systems, and creators can no longer release modules and adventures on popular digital platforms such as Foundry, Alchemy, or Shard.

If this new license gains wide adoption, the tabletop landscape will fracture and lose its biggest onboarding mechanisms, shuttering the small businesses that populate your local cons and putting a stop to their creations. Innovation in the gaming industry will evaporate; your favorite games will be trapped in the past, instead of being allowed to migrate to your phone, virtual reality, and beyond. Diversity in the industry will shrink away, as projects from marginalized creators are effectively written out of the future.

We expect Wizards of the Coast to attempt expensive and illegal lawsuits to enforce compliance with their new agreement. Even if they aren’t successful in court, they will irrevocably damage the tabletop industry.

#OpenDnD

#OpenDnD is a rallying cry under which creators and fans have unified to demand that WotC revoke the draconian 1.1 OGL and pledge to support the existing 1.0 OGL into future editions of their games. This isn’t an opportunity to litigate and tinker with a new license, but to return to the values of open gaming. Our community deserves an open future if we want our favorite games to not only survive, but thrive!!

If you are a creator, #DontSign the new agreement. If you love roleplaying games, let WotC know we won't support them without an #OpenDnD!

WotC has shown that they are the dragon on top of the hoard, willing to burn the thriving village if only to get a few more gold pieces. It’s time for us to band together as adventurers to defend our village from the terrible wyrm.

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Yeah the OLG 1.1 stuff only applies to third party publishers who want to make D&D 6 books. Other RPGs are completely unaffected, as their publishers can choose what license if any they want to publish their material under, as are already-published works under the previous version of the OGL, as is any book that gets published for the game "Bungeons and Bragons ;)" since you cannot copyright the act of rolling a dice and adding a number to it. I also don't think they could have sunk Pathfinder 1, since PF1 has its own OGL and its own SRD and that was the entire point behind making it.

    The main people getting hosed are people making companion apps or Virtual Tabletops or other derivative works, which are now explicitly prohibited from making money under the license.

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      PF actually does still use the same OGL, but they've moved away from it to the extent that PF 2E doesn't actually use any OGL content from D&D - they keep it around though because it makes it easier for third party publishers. Reddit comment from a design manager at Paizo, 10 months ago:

      That's less true than you think. D&D already keeps their most defensible IP to themselves and every word of PF2 was written from scratch. Many of the concepts (fighter, wizard, cleric, spell levels, feats, chromatic dragons, etc.) aren't legally distinct or defensible except under very specific trade dress protections that Paizo's work is all or mostly distinct from anyways, and game mechanics aren't generally copyrightable even if PF2's weren't all written from the ground up. Most of the monsters that touch WotC's trade dress protections (i.e. real-world monsters modified heavily enough to have a distinct WotC version that's legally protectable) have already been reworked or were just always presented as legally distinct versions that don't require the OGL, and things like Paizo's goblins have always been legally distinct for trade dress law and protected for many years despite being released as part of a system using the OGL.

      Considerations like keeping the game approachable for 3pp publishers, the legal costs of establishing a separate Paizo-specific license, concerns about freelancers not paying attention to key differences between Paizo and WotC IP, etc., all played a bigger role in PF2's continued use of the OGL than any need to keep the system under it. Not using the OGL was a serious consideration for PF2 but it would have significantly increased the costs related to releasing the new edition and meant that freelancer turnovers would have required an extra layer of scrutiny to make sure people weren't (unintentionally or otherwise) slipping their favorite D&Disms into Pathfinder products. It would have also meant all the 3pps needed to relearn a new license and produce their content under different licenses depending on the edition they were producing for, a level of complication deemed prohibitive to the health of the game.

      It's possible and even likely that the next edition doesn't use the OGL at all but instead uses its own license specific to Paizo and the Pathfinder/Starfinder brands. It's just important to the company that they be approachable to a wide audience of consumers and 3pps; this time around the best way to do that was to continue operating under the same OGL as the first edition of the game.

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think they could have gone after Pathfinder in the early days when they had stuff like this in their marketing but I'm not a lawyer so who knows.

      • booty [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        lmao those adventurers are melting. pathfinder's art has always been embarrassingly bad.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          D&D's 4th Edition's art direction wasn't doing so well itself with le epic glowing eyes everywhere and Rob Liefield anatomy and grimaces all over the place. It was trying way too hard to visually be World of Warcraft.

          5th Edition's art was much better, impressively so.

          With the corporate sent seeking skullduggery happening with 6th/One(tm)(r), it won't matter to me what the art looks like because I'm not going anywhere near it.

          • booty [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            It was trying way too hard to visually be World of Warcraft.

            Not just visually from what I remember of the gameplay. Tbf though I only played a little 4e.

            But yeah I like pathfinder despite the hideous art. I even think they've got cool ideas to their visual design, like I enjoy their freaky alien elves, but it's all either terribly drawn like in this example, or its a combination of enough design elements to build an army all crammed into one character.

            Sometimes both. Not usually though.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Not just visually from what I remember of the gameplay.

              Yeah. It tried way too hard to pigeonhole every class into "tank/healer/dps" roles and tried to make "solo bosses" play like "raids" and be just as tedious for people that don't really enjoy spending hours doing tedious synchronized mechanics to take down some big boss. The storytelling was kind of Blizzardesque too, where each character was presented as simultaneously LE EPIC HERO from the start but in a way that made it seem like LE EPIC HEROES came out of a factory somewhere and that everyone else was a placeholder or set decoration, in a way making "NPCs" seem even more like the modern concept of "NPC" that way. Older D&D used to stat block even a city guard to make them seem like they played by the same rules, but now that same city guard was supposed to be instantly in awe of the LE EPIC HEROES that came fresh off the factory line to chase a few pre-selected LE EPIC DESTINIES that generally assume some kind of vague godhood as a matter of course.

          • booty [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            See the problem with these ones is that they're technically well done but egregiously overdesigned. This bird motherfuckers got like 14 ambiguous dangly trinkets, complex patterns on everything, etc. It's ugly for a completely different reason