Statement on OGL from WotC

Wizards of the Coast has made a short statement regarding the ongoing rumors surrounding OneD&D and the Open Gaming License. In a short response to Comicbook.com, the company said "We will continue to support the thousands of creators making third-party D&D content with the release of One D&D in 2024. While it is certain our Open Game License (OGL) will continue to evolve, just as it has since its inception, we're too early in the development of One D&D to give more specifics on the OGL or System Reference Document (SRD) at this time."

Dungeons & Dragons Clarifies Support for Third-Party Material as New Edition Draws Near

Wizards of the Coast has responded to rumors of changes to the Open Game License and System [...]

comicbook.com

It's not clear what WotC means when they say that the OGL will 'continue to evolve' -- while there have been two versions of the license released over the years, each is non-rescindible so people are free to use whichever version of the license they wish. Indeed, that is written into the license itself -- "Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License."

During the D&D 4th Edition era, WotC published a new, separate license called the Game System Licence (GSL). While it was used by third party publishers, it was generally upopular.

 

[delericho]

The word 'edition' in this context only has whatever meaning we attach to it.

Indeed. The only authority you might bow to is that of WotC, in which case they've produced three editions: 3e, 4e, and 5e - they've stated that 3.5e, Essentials, and the upcoming OneD&D are all not new editions.

But as noted in the quote from Shannon Appelcline up-thread, the community view was quite different (even in the case of Essentials, which has a much stronger case to be the same edition than 3.5e did). It remains to be seen, of course, what the community view will make of OneD&D.

 

[Morrus]

Indeed. The only authority you might bow to is that of WotC,

I wouldn’t say that. It’s not a defined term, but I wouldn’t suggest that any particular entity has the power to define it any more than a company can define ‘book’. I guess it’s an edition if you think it is, and it’s not if you don’t. Honestly, the word doesn’t matter; it’s just a word. It doesn’t do anything.

 

[delericho]

I wouldn’t say that. It’s not a defined term, but I wouldn’t suggest that any particular entity has the power to define it any more than a. Company can define ‘book’. I guess it’s an edition if you think it is, and it’s not if you don’t. Honestly, the word doesn’t matter; it’s just a word. It doesn’t do anything.

Hence 'might'.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

They're pretty careful to avoid calling it a new edition, but they are pretty clear that 5E and One D&D are not the same thing, and that One D&D material will be backwards compatible with 5E (rather than it simply being one and the same as 5E).

Honestly, having looked at the verbiage they used in the 3.5 PHB, it's all sounding awful similar to how they described 3.5 vs. 3.0.

3 years vs 10 years...
a hell of a difference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

3 years vs 10 years...
a hell of a difference.

The "it's been 10 years" argument is in favor of WotC properly making a new edition that updates the game to what they think all their new players want, not the "not an edition change" half-measure they appear to actually be producing.

 

[Umbran]

There's a whole lot of angst here over so little actual information.

 

[glass]

I believe he means SRD. You cannot actually remove anything from OGL. Once it's declared OGL, that's it.

There is one partial mechanism. If you bring out a new OGL document (book, SRD, whatever) and declare something PI in that, anyone who wants to use that document has to respect that declaration, even if that something was completely open before. OTOH, they obviously still have the option of not using that new document, in which case its previously open status still holds.

At least, I am pretty sure that is how it all works. IANAL, TINLA.

Wizard's own language emphatically rejected designating OneD&D as a new edition. They could not have been more blunt about it.

At the risk of repeating myself, Wizards also claimed the 3.5 was not a new edition. It was naughty word then and (if the finished game looks anything like the playtests so far) it is naughty word now.

 

[Umbran]

It was naughty word then and (if the finished game looks anything like the playtests so far) it is naughty word now.

It would be really great if you raised the level of rhetoric above using curse words.

 

[Hussar]

There is one partial mechanism. If you bring out a new OGL document (book, SRD, whatever) and declare something PI in that, anyone who wants to use that document has to respect that declaration, even if that something was completely open before. OTOH, they obviously still have the option of not using that new document, in which case its previously open status still holds.

At least, I am pretty sure that is how it all works. IANAL, TINLA.

I don't believe that it actually works that way. Since new versions of the OGL don't supersede previous ones. So, even though 4e had the GSL which covered specific 4e terminology, the OGL still applied to anything that appeared in 4e that also appeared in 3e.

So, if WotC tried to bang out a new OGL that restricted, say, (and I'm totally spitballing here obviously) dwarves as IP, it wouldn't really matter since you could simply use the older OGL and publish under that.

Ryan Dancey was pretty smart in how he framed the OGL. He future proofed it as much as he possibly could IMO.

I mean, heck, if you could actually bring out a new OGL document that declared something that was previously OGC as PI, they wouldn't have bothered with the GSL. After all, if you can simply update the OGL and that invalidated previous OGL's, then Pathfinder could never have happened.

At least, that's how I understand it. @Morrus, could you shed more light on this?

 

[glass]

I don't believe that it actually works that way. Since new versions of the OGL don't supersede previous ones. So, even though 4e had the GSL which covered specific 4e terminology, the OGL still applied to anything that appeared in 4e that also appeared in 3e.

So, if WotC tried to bang out a new OGL that restricted, say, (and I'm totally spitballing here obviously) dwarves as IP, it wouldn't really matter since you could simply use the older OGL and publish under that.

I never said anything about a new OGL, I said a new book or SRD.

For example, my homebrew setting contains a plane called The Dreaming. The Dreaming is also the name of a (different) plane in A5e's cosmology, and is declared as PI there. If I decided to write my homebrew setting up as a commercial product and release it under the OGL, and I wanted to include A5e in my s.15 for some reason, I would have to change the name of that plane (or I could ask @Morrus for a separate licence to use the name). If there was nothing I wanted from A5e OTOH, I could continue to use that name with impunity.

EDIT: So to continue your example, if WotC brought out a 5.5 SRD and declared "dwarves" to be PI, one could simply not use the 5.5 SRD, but one could not use the5.5 SRD and use dwarves (without a separate licence).

Unless I have misunderstood something.