WotC Announces OGL 1.1 -- Revised Terms, Royalties, and Annual Revenue Reporting

There has been a lot of speculation recently about WotC's plans regarding the Open Gaming License and the upcoming One D&D. Today, WotC shared some information.

In short, they will be producing a new Open Gaming License (note that the previous OGL 1.0a will still exist, and can still be used). However, for those who use the new OGL 1.1, which will be released in early 2023, there will be some limitations added with regards the type of product which can use it, and -- possibly controversially -- reporting to WotC your annual OGL-related revenue.

They are also adding a royalty for those third party publishers who make more than $750K per year.

Interestingly, only books and 'static electronic files' like ebooks and PDFs will be compatible with the new OGL, meaning that apps, web pages, and the like will need to stick to the old OGL 1.0a.

There will, of course, be a lot of debate and speculation over what this actually means for third party creators, and how it will affect them. Some publishers like Paizo (for Pathfinder) and others will likely simply continue to use the old OGL. The OGL 1.0a allows WotC to update the license, but allows licensees to continue to use previous versions "to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License".

OGLs, SRDs, & One D&D

We love the interest and passion the community has for D&D. We love D&D, too. So, when we see the D&D community concerned by rumors and misu...

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1. Will One D&D include an SRD/be covered by an OGL?

Yes. First, we’re designing One D&D with fifth edition backwards compatibility, so all existing creator content that is compatible with fifth edition will also be compatible with One D&D. Second, we will update the SRD for One D&D as we complete its development—development that is informed by the results of playtests that we’re conducting with hundreds of thousands of D&D players now.

2. Will the OGL terms change?

Yes. We will release version 1.1 of the OGL in early 2023.

The OGL needs an update to ensure that it keeps doing what it was intended to do—allow the D&D community’s independent creators to build and play and grow the game we all love—without allowing things like third-parties to mint D&D NFTs and large businesses to exploit our intellectual property.

So, what’s changing?

First, we’re making sure that OGL 1.1 is clear about what it covers and what it doesn’t. OGL 1.1 makes clear it only covers material created for use in or as TTRPGs, and those materials are only ever permitted as printed media or static electronic files (like epubs and PDFs). Other types of content, like videos and video games, are only possible through the Wizards of the Coast Fan Content Policy or a custom agreement with us. To clarify: Outside of printed media and static electronic files, the OGL doesn’t cover it.

Will this affect the D&D content and services players use today? It shouldn’t. The top VTT platforms already have custom agreements with Wizards to do what they do. D&D merchandise, like minis and novels, were never intended to be part of the OGL and OGL 1.1 won’t change that. Creators wishing to leverage D&D for those forms of expression will need, as they always have needed, custom agreements between us.

Second, we’re updating the OGL to offer different terms to creators who choose to make free, share-alike content and creators who want to sell their products.

What does this mean for you as a creator? If you’re making share-alike content, very little is going to change from what you’re already used to.

If you’re making commercial content, relatively little is going to change for most creators. For most of you who are selling custom content, here are the new things you’ll need to do:

1. Accept the license terms and let us know what you’re offering for sale
2. Report OGL-related revenue annually (if you make more than $50,000 in a year)
3. Include a Creator Product badge on your work

When we roll out OGL 1.1, we will also provide explanatory videos, FAQs, and a web portal for registration to make navigating these requirements as easy and intuitive as possible. We’ll also have help available to creators to navigate the new process.

For the fewer than 20 creators worldwide who make more than $750,000 in income in a year, we will add a royalty starting in 2024. So, even for the creators making significant money selling D&D supplements and games, no royalties will be due for 2023 and all revenue below $750,000 in future years will be royalty-free.

Bottom line: The OGL is not going away. You will still be able to create new D&D content, publish it anywhere, and game with your friends and followers in all the ways that make this game and community so great. The thousands of creators publishing across Kickstarter, DMsGuild, and more are a critical part of the D&D experience, and we will continue to support and encourage them to do that through One D&D and beyond.

 

[Voadam]

They just want us to spend 150 dollars again for books we already bought 10 years ago.
Tell me a different hobby where you have to only spend 150 dollars every 10 years...

Sure.

I buy running shoes as my normal knocking about shoes year round. I spend literally zero extra dollars to go out my back door and hit the trail behind my house about three times a week.

I still use the weights I was using in the 80s.

I have read a lot of books and listened to a lot of audio books from the library. 20 years of library audio books as part of my regular commuting.

Of course I don't need to buy anything to play RPGs. I have plenty of existing stuff I could use for the rest of my life. The SRDs for 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder 1e are all sufficient to play (I used them to DM games without owning the core books for years, I spent my RPG budget on modules, settings, sourcebooks, and such instead). There are plenty of other free great games to be found online. I have played plenty of RPGs where I did not own any of the books at the time (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Star Frontiers, GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire the Masquerade, Mage the Ascension, others). I buy lots of RPG stuff as part of my RPG hobby, but I don't need to at all. I have friends who have played for decades without buying anything.

WotC putting out the 3.5 SRD got me reading and being engaged with 3.5 day one and then playing and buying 3.5 stuff right away.

WotC not putting out anything similar for 4e led to me entirely ignoring 4e for a couple years until I was in a group that played 4e. WotC had partially switched policy then by at least releasing the H1 Shadowfell basic rules packet as a free PDF which eased the transition a lot for me. I was happy with a lot of 3.5 when 4e came out and I had a ton of d20 stuff that I enjoyed including a lot of d20 adventures that looked fun that I had not run yet so I was happy with the not current D&D stuff.

Paizo putting out their big fairly comprehensive SRD got me reading and then playing Pathfinder fairly right away in both Beta and 1e.

5e was similar to 4e initially, the initial lack of SRD and such meant I put the new books on an Amazon wishlist but kept playing and actively buying Pathfinder stuff until the group I was in started playing 5e a number of years into the edition. I had downloaded a playtest packet and my group tried it out once but went back to Pathfinder and Vampire and such fairly quickly. I vaguely remember at 5e's release there was a basic rules packet and no initial SRD, I downloaded the basic rules but it was not enough for me to really be engaged and dive in. When they did release an SRD I was glad there were finally OGC terms for dragonborn and warlocks but I was shocked at how little stuff there was for players, a warlock built out of the SRD could not even cast eldritch blast. It was not like the 3e or Pathfinder SRD where you could explore fairly full core options so I quickly put 5e stuff aside until my group decided to get into it.

I really like both 4e and 5e, but there are plenty of things I would potentially really like that I am not going to focus the majority of my hobby time on if my group is not doing it and I am happy with stuff I have. I am currently happy with a lot of 5e.

 

[Zardnaar]

You can see how your situation isn't universal, though, right? And it doesn't serve to undermine the position that D&D is among the cheapest hobbies out there when measuring expenditure to hours of entertainment, right? I mean, if we really wanted to quibble, wouldn't you have to include everything you have spend on your PC (or whatever you are using to play those games with)?

Old PC Paradox games don't require high end PCs.

And it's using multi purpose devices. I can play Stellaris on gamepass on the Xbox for example.

We gonna own a tv regardless the PS4 was an insurance replacement, and we own Xbox and PCs anyway.

The consoles get used more to run TV apps vs gaming machines.

I use the PC for retrogaming as well. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri dates from 1999.

 

[Greg Benage]

Complaining about the cost of a hobby is a time-honored tradition (I just spent $250 on foot pegs for my motorcycle), but complaining about a company that literally gives you a basic, playable version of their game for free seems a bit whack. Hasbro can pursue all the monetization strategies they want (that's the business folks' job, after all), but none of them will produce unless they provide something people are willing to spend money on.

So this usually amounts to complaining about what fellow hobbyists are willing to spend money on. I get this too: For example, MMO players seem very interested in spending money to avoid playing the game, and I feel this negatively impacts my experience.

And here's the thing: I could see this becoming an issue in D&D, too. If Hasbro adds a bunch of expensive sizzle to the experience, and most players want to spend money on the sizzle, it might become difficult to find players for a free or low-budget game. I'm already guilty of this when I go look for a game on Roll20: I want to play in a game with dynamic lighting and compendium support, so I limit my searches to games where the DM has ponied up for that. The free or low-budget DM probably has more players than they can handle, so they won't miss me. But if Hasbro makes it so that players have to pay up to play in my game with all the features I want to use...yeah, I'm probably going to expect my players to pay up. If most DMs think like I do, then yeah, it could absolutely become a lot more difficult to play on the cheap.

Hasbro still has to bring the goods, though. No one's going to spend money on sizzle that sucks (I hope, probably naively).

 

[Zardnaar]

Complaining about the cost of a hobby is a time-honored tradition (I just spent $250 on foot pegs for my motorcycle), but complaining about a company that literally gives you a basic, playable version of their game for free seems a bit whack. Hasbro can pursue all the monetization strategies they want (that's the business folks' job, after all), but none of them will produce unless they provide something people are willing to spend money on.

So this usually amounts to complaining about what fellow hobbyists are willing to spend money on. I get this too: For example, MMO players seem very interested in spending money to avoid playing the game, and I feel this negatively impacts my experience.

And here's the thing: I could see this becoming an issue in D&D, too. If Hasbro adds a bunch of expensive sizzle to the experience, and most players want to spend money on the sizzle, it might become difficult to find players for a free or low-budget game. I'm already guilty of this when I go look for a game on Roll20: I want to play in a game with dynamic lighting and compendium support, so I limit my searches to games where the DM has ponied up for that. The free or low-budget DM probably has more players than they can handle, so they won't miss me. But if Hasbro makes it so that players have to pay up to play in my game with all the features I want to use...yeah, I'm probably going to expect my players to pay up. If most DMs think like I do, then yeah, it could absolutely become a lot more difficult to play on the cheap.

Hasbro still has to bring the goods, though. No one's going to spend money on sizzle that sucks (I hope, probably naively).

I'm not complaining about my expenditure on 5E. It's around 2k but hard to say due to exchange rate fluctuating.

I've played Alpha Centauri more and it cost me $10 iirc.

 

[Greg Benage]

I'm not complaining about my expenditure on 5E. It's around 2k but hard to say due to exchange rate fluctuating.

It definitely sounds like you should stop doing that, though I gather you already have. Thumbs up!

 

[Zardnaar]

It definitely sounds like you should stop doing that, though I gather you already have. Thumbs up!

I don't mind as I loved the books. The newer books are kinda bland fluff wise though meh.

Not sure on 3E era but probably looking at 5-10k maybe more if you include minis.

D&D lifestyle brand holds 0 appeal. In the 90's a D&D book was about a weeks rent now it's dinner for two at a pub. Weeks rent is two books.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

It occurs to be they will likely release the next packet before they release the One D&D SRD.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm not seeing why. Financial success = success. Is there a game out there you're thinking of that's financially unsuccessful but is successful in some other way? Or the reverse, financially successful games that fail in other ways? I'd be very curious to see this game that's wildly financially successful but is a terrible game everyone hates.

Monopoly?

But quite aside from @overgeeked's excellent answer, the financial success of the shareholder does not require, and may even oppose, the long-term health of the company and its product. If Hasbro takes actions that juice its share price for a quarter, and I sell my shares during that quarter, I have profited even if those same actions harm the company a few years down the line*.

From what I've seen, long-term success requires a mix of profit motive with the desire to do good work that produces genuine value. Without the first, you lose sight of the realities of the business world and go bust. Without the second, you end up parasitizing your own company until it shrivels.

*In a world with perfect information and perfectly rational investors, this could never happen, since investors would see the long-term consequences and knock down the share price. Also in such a world, no one would ever invest in a Ponzi scheme. Since Ponzi schemes exist, we can conclude that we do not live in such a world.

 

[GDGD]

I use the PC for retrogaming as well. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri dates from 1999.

My favourite game is still the original Pool of Radiance, 1988 IIRC. All the goldbox games are on gog now, so the temptation is always there to sink a few hundred hours more playtime into them.

On the subject of value per hour, while it's hard for a TTRPG to compete with a video game, one thing I would note is that it's possible to include time spent on D&D aside from literal play time. You had mentioned 3 hours per week, but there's also time spent writing adventures, crafting campaigns, creating characters, drawing maps, and so on. If that isn't your thing, then it's irrelevant, but I know for myself I spend exponentially more time on all the other stuff than I do on actually playing, and I absolutely consider those hours to be part of the value I get from the game.

 

[Reynard]

If you asked your question with an agenda in mind beyond getting a fair answer, that's not their problem, to be honest.

Lol. I didn't ask a question. I made an assertion, one that's pretty self evident.