Battlezoo Shares The OGL v1.1

Battlezoo, the YouTube channel which shared the initial leak of the new Open Game License, has shared the PDF of the OGL v1.1 draft which is currently circulating. This draft is, presumably, the same document obtained by Gizmodo last week. It's not currently known if this is the final version of the license.

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[mangamuscle]

The percentage of ones upset about the OGL debacle is probably in the single digits. In our echo chambers like this one, it feels bigger, but remember there are MILLIONS of D&D players.

You are not seeing the bigger picture. They are trying to ensalve (as opposed to merely "upset") the creators in the community, who will therefore not write anything to support any product with a wotc label for the rest of their lives. If Microsoft made the same to all windows programmers all over the world, would you really think windows will be fine since "programmers represent less than 1% of the total userbase"?

 

[Haplo781]

I can bet you that is not the case, quite the oṕposite any rewriting they might be doing at the moment is merely to amplify the "shock & awe" intimitadition factor, in their minds this is a already fait accompli and their are already planning later stages of their plan of world domination of the tabletop.

It's not a fair accompli if nobody signs on. And word on the street is nobody has signed on.

 

[Andrew Anderson]

I have a question for the technical and legal experts gathering here.
As I'm understanding it, OGL 1.1 limits its license-holders only to creating "static text" documents...and I think I specifically saw them mention .pdf files.
Is this meant to exclude web pages with some kind of device responsive design? Or material stored in a collaborative application, say, Google Docs?

Also, one final bit of snark.
Is anyone else unimpressed that the recreators of the hadozee propose to sit in judgement over other peoples content and punish them for bigotry?
Or am I just getting grumpy in my old age...

 

[Haplo781]

So is 13th Age, maybe more so than PF2 is - at least in my opinion.

13A is at least in the middle of playtesting a new edition, so they're much better situated to pivot.

 

[jerryrice4949]

You are not seeing the bigger picture. They are trying to ensalve (as opposed to merely "upset") the creators in the community, who will therefore not write anything to support any product with a wotc label for the rest of their lives. If Microsoft made the same to all windows programmers all over the world, would you really think windows will be fine since "programmers represent less than 1% of the total userbase"?

Respectfully disagree. If WoTC backtracked, apologized and rolled out new leadership and One D&D is more popular than even 5E I think a lot of 3PP, even ones who have sworn to never support WoTC, would come back.

 

[Greg K]

2) This isn't going to hurt 1D&D. I would be surprised if the outrage was big enough to hurt the sales on Keys or the box office on the movie.

Maybe, maybe not. One petition has over 15K signatures in just a couple of days- a day or two ago there was only a thousad. Another petition on change.org has even more (and there are several pages of smaller petitions). So this may just be getting started.
Several gamer friends on FB are also just learning about what is going as are many of their gamer friends I don't know. I posted a link to two petitions and asked my friends to share it with others. Tonight, I will be posting another FB link to one petition asking my non-gamer friends to sign an online petition

 

[Retreater]

I have a question for the technical and legal experts gathering here.
As I'm understanding it, OGL 1.1 limits its license-holders only to creating "static text" documents...and I think I specifically saw them mention .pdf files.
Is this meant to exclude web pages with some kind of device responsive design? Or material stored in a collaborative application, say, Google Docs?

Also, one final bit of snark.
Is anyone else unimpressed that the recreators of the hadozee propose to sit in judgement over other peoples content and punish them for bigotry?
Or am I just getting grumpy in my old age...

From what I've heard from more knowledgeable people than me - sites like encounter builders, character builders, etc. - would not be allowed.

 

[GreyLord]

Heh...why does this remind me of Williams....

At this rate, the Williams name is not going to be remembered with great favor among some circles.

 

[ersatzphil]

Likely they're in full spin/damage control mode

 

[humble minion]

The percentage of ones upset about the OGL debacle is probably in the single digits. In our echo chambers like this one, it feels bigger, but remember there are MILLIONS of D&D players.

It'll be interesting to see. My gut feel is that stuff like the dreaded youtube algorithm might help us a little here.

Ten years in the past, this would have been a storm in a teacup. If you weren't actively on ENWorld or similar, you'd probably have never heard about any of this (unless post facto you saw stuff disappearing from the shelves of your FLGS and asked the guy behind the counter why).

Now, we have the algorithms. Even a casual D&D player has probably at some point watched an episode or two of Critical Role, or checked out WotCs Dragonlance trailer, or whatever. The algorithm remembers, and once you've done that, it'll feed you related videos forever. Right now, pretty much every bit of D&D content going up on youtube (and probably tictok etc too, but I'm not on there so i don't know!) is all about this OGL stuff, and that's going to affect recommendations. It's going to bring the issue to the attention of a whole lot of more casual players who probably have never heard of ENworld or even the OGL at all. Whether or not they actually watch the videos or care is another matter, but it'll be harder for people to be completely oblivious to it.

And as I've said before, Critical Role have enormous power here, should they choose to use it. They have nearly 2 million subscribers on Youtube alone, and then there's Twitch etc. I wouldn't expect them to criticise WotC publicly over this while OGL 1.1 still hasn't been officially released, but if they did eventually speak out, they'd bring the issue to the attention of a vast number of people, and that'd be a PR nuke that even WotC would find hard to withstand.