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Dungeons & Dragons' New OGL Will be 'Irrevocable' and Bring Mechanics to Creative Commons

posted by hubie on Monday January 23 2023, @02:34AM   

upstart writes:

Amid all the backlash, Wizards of the Coast is pursuing a radically different strategy for its future open licensing:

Dungeons & Dragons released a statement today saying that the future of its open gaming license will include its core rules being placed under the purview of the Creative Commons. The Creative Commons is "a nonprofit dedicated to sharing knowledge, and it developed a set of licenses to let creators do that," says the newest update from Kyle Brink, the executive producer at Dungeons & Dragons.

This decision is a direct response to a lot of the fears the community had after io9 reported on the initial OGL 1.1 draft on January 5. The CC license will cede Wizards of the Coast's control over the base rules and mechanics of D&D to the nonprofit that stewards the license, which means that Dungeons & Dragons and WOTC will be unable to touch it and will not be able to revoke it. Likewise, content that goes beyond the remit of using core rules will fall under a new OGL, dubbed 1.2, which will contain specific language denoting the license as "irrevocable"—a massive pressure point for creators who used the original OGL 1.0 and were worried about the implications of the 30-day termination clause in the OGL 1.1.

[...] Wizards of the Coast seems committed to having a firm stance on bigoted and hateful content—something that people praised in the leaked draft. "If you include harmful, discriminatory, or illegal content (or engage in that conduct publicly), we can terminate your OGL 1.2 license to our content," reads the statement. [...]

Additionally, Brink states that "what [Dungeons & Dragons] is going for here is giving good-faith creators the same level of freedom (or greater, for the ruleset in Creative Commons) to create TTRPG content that's been so great for everyone, while giving us the tools to ensure the game continues to become ever more inclusive and welcoming." [...]

Previously: Dungeons & Dragons' New License Tightens its Grip on Competition

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Original Submission

• Re:"Irrevocable"Re:"Irrevocable" (Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday January 23 2023, @03:43PM (1 child)

  by MrGuy (1007) on Monday January 23 2023, @03:43PM (#1288190)

  if you violate the terms of the license yourself by doing something that they said they didn't like that's written in the text of the license, then obviously your right to use the licensed stuff is revoked

  I don't see how you specify exactly what "harmful, discriminatory, or illegal content" is in the text of the license. What's "harmful?" "Harmful" to who? Where is the line between parody and poor taste? Will they specify if having Dwarves speak with a Scottish accent is considered "discriminatory" in the text of the license? It'll get awfully long (and get dated super quick) if they try to lock down these definitions in the text of a license document.

  Most likely this means the license will need to refer to some ancillary document (some sort of code of conduct or similar) that WoTC has the power to change at will, or some reference to some policy to have some sort of subjective review process (owned by WoTC) to make a determination on any content that is questionable), or, most likely, both. There's no practical way to "keep up" with the speed at which hateful content is created on the internet without the ability to have the definition be changeable by WoTC unilaterally at their discretion. If you want to keep the fig leaf of objectivity, make it an independent board (though I guarantee WoTC will reserve the right to replace members of that board if they start approving content WoTC doesn't like).

  I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing - cutting down clearly harmful content is a good thing. It just is a goal that can't reasonably be accomplished objectively within the 4 walls of the license text. You have to introduce some subjective process, controlled by WoTC, and that process will almost by definition have the power to retroactively revoke the license to distribute certain content.

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• Re:"Irrevocable"(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday January 23 2023, @06:16PM

  by VLM (445) on Monday January 23 2023, @06:16PM (#1288218)

  cutting down clearly harmful content is a good thing

  Not, its not.

  Notice they VERY carefully don't explain WHO is the protected class.

  How about the stockholders of WoTC or Hasbro as a protected class?

  "We find products manufactured by Pathfinder are harmful to our shareholders thus your license is terminated. Please go out of business in a calm and orderly fashion."

  Similar problem with "hateful" content. Anyone who ever publishes anything thats not total hugbox can be taken down in an instant. Legendarily, elves and dwarves don't get along, paladins and demonborn don't get along, there's tons of hate content in D+D. Or just going out there as a story line and lynching "innocent" goblins or similar mobs/NPCs who never done nothing wrong.

  Technically D+D would have to remove all violence and stick to consensual furry sex to make sure there's no license violation, and even that may be a hate crime if the alphabet people get wound up enough ("what do you mean the male werewolf had secks with the female werewolf, are you some kind of biologist or just a TERF nazi?"

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