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The new Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License, a document which allows a vast group of independent publishers to use the basic game rules created by D&D owner Wizards of the Coast, significantly restricts the kind of content allowed and requires anyone making money under the license to report their products to Wizards of the Coast directly, according to an analysis of a leaked draft of the document, dated mid-December.
Despite reassurances from Wizards of the Coast last month, the original OGL will become an "unauthorized" agreement, and it appears no new content will be permitted to be created under the original license.
The original OGL is what many contemporary tabletop publishers use to create their products within the boundaries of D&D's reproducible content. Much of the original OGL is dedicated to the System Resource Document, and includes character species, classes, equipment, and, most importantly, general gameplay structures, including combat, spells, and creatures.
[...] One of the biggest changes to the document is that it updates the previously available OGL 1.0 to state it is "no longer an authorized license agreement." By ending the original OGL, many licensed publishers will have to completely overhaul their products and distribution in order to comply with the updated rules. Large publishers who focus almost exclusively on products based on the original OGL, including Paizo, Kobold Press, and Green Ronin, will be under pressure to update their business model incredibly fast.
[...] This sentiment is reiterated later in the document: The "OGL wasn't intended to fund major competitors and it wasn't intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear."
[...] While there is plenty more to parse, the main takeaway from the leaked OGL 1.1 draft document is that WotC is keeping power close at hand. There is no mention of perpetual, worldwide rights given to creators (which was present in section 4 of the original OGL), and one of the caveats is that the company "can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason whatsoever, provided We give thirty (30) days' notice."
[...] Wizards of the Coast is clearly expecting these OGL changes to be met with some resistance. The document does note that if the company oversteps, they are aware that they "will receive community pushback and bad PR, and We're more than open to being convinced that We made a wrong decision."
WOTC takes a dump on the D&D OGL community.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tekk on Wednesday January 11 2023, @11:09PM (1 child)
That was from the 4E days, which is the last time Wizards went and tried to kill the 3rd party publishing market with a license change. Paizo refused to play that game and essentially forked D&D 3.5 under the OGL. Now of course it's happening again: Kobold Press (the biggest publisher of 3rd party 5e content I'm aware of) has just announced that they'll be designing their own core RPG system. I personally would rather they just start writing for PF2E, which I like a lot, but it's definitely a different beast from 5E.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday January 23 2023, @03:17AM
I switched to Pathfinder 1e when D&D moved to 4th Edition - I had no interest in the dramatic change to play style they took. Apparently many others did too - Pathfinder was eating 4th Edition's lunch for quite a while. It's no mistake that 5th Edition has much more in common with 3rd Edition than 4th - it walked back a lot of mistakes.
I've stuck with Pathfinder 1e even though they've now moved to a different ruleset now - too invested in the d20 system! D&D 5E is a bit too simplistic for my taste - not as much customization for characters, and not as much 'crunch' in the combat rules.
I agree that 3rd parties publishing for Pathfinder would be great, as Paizo are in a perfect position to learn from WoTC's mistakes and be the well-behaved custodian of their ruleset.