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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
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday January 23 2023, @03:53PM
Diplomacy is actually a somewhat interesting test case for this. I've been out of the hobby for awhile, but I played online in the early days, and notably when Avalon Hill was acquired by Hasbro.
The basic terms that Hasbro offered was that they would not shut down online code that implemented their rules (things like The Judge engine that was state of the art for Play by Email at the time) were OK, provided that the rules themselves and the accompanying documentation wasn't published. So, you could play the game online if you knew how to play, and create rule variants and maps, but you couldn't publish the manual to teach someone new how to play (on the theory, presumably, that everyone playing online would have to buy the game once to get the rules).
I'm sure the terms of this accord have changed wildly in the last 20 years (heck, wizards.com publishes the actual diplomacy manual online now), but there is a world where a large company can manage to pull this off without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Diplomacy again is a great example - like D&D, you can't possibly complete CLOSE to a real game in a single play session, and online/play by email was a huge boon to building the playerbase back in the 90's.