What's All This About The OGL Going Away?

This last week I've seen videos, tweets, and articles all repeating an unsourced rumour that the OGL (Open Gaming License) will be going away with the advent of OneD&D, and that third party publishers would have no way of legally creating compatible material. I wanted to write an article clarifying some of these terms.

I've seen articles claiming (and I quote) that "players would be unable to legally publish homebrew content" and that WotC may be "outlawing third-party homebrew content". These claims need clarification.

What's the Open Gaming License? It was created by WotC about 20 years ago; it's analagous to various 'open source' licenses. There isn't a '5E OGL' or a '3E OGL' and there won't be a 'OneD&D OGL' -- there's just the OGL (technically there are two versions, but that's by-the-by). The OGL is non-rescindable -- it can't be cancelled or revoked. Any content released as Open Gaming Content (OGC) under that license -- which includes the D&D 3E SRD, the 5E SRD, Pathfinder's SRD, Level Up's SRD, and thousands and thousands of third party books -- remains OGC forever, available for use under the license. Genie, bottle, and all that.

So, the OGL can't 'go away'. It's been here for 20 years and it's here to stay. This was WotC's (and OGL architect Ryan Dancey's) intention when they created it 20 years ago, to ensure that D&D would forever be available no matter what happened to its parent company.

Open Game License v1.0a

What's an SRD? A System Reference Document (SRD) contains Open Gaming Content (OGC). Anything in the 3E SRD, the 3.5 SRD, or the 5E SRD, etc., is designated forever as OGC (Open Gaming Content). Each of those SRDs contains large quantities of material, including the core rules of the respective games, and encompasses all the core terminology of the ruleset(s).

When people say 'the OGL is going away' what they probably mean to say is that there won't be a new OneD&D System Reference Document.

System Reference Documents

System Reference Documents (SRDs) are compilations of Open Gaming Content, usually released under the terms of the Open Gaming License (OGL).

www.enworld.org

Does That Matter? OneD&D will be -- allegedly -- fully compatible with 5E. That means it uses all the same terminology. Armor Class, Hit Points, Warlock, Pit Fiend, and so on. All this terminology has been OGC for 20 years, and anybody can use it under the terms of the OGL. The only way it could be difficult for third parties to make compatible material for OneD&D is if OneD&D substantially changed the core terminology of the game, but at that point OneD&D would no longer be compatible with 5E (or, arguably, would even be recognizable as D&D). So the ability to create compatible third party material won't be going away.

However! There is one exception -- if your use of OneD&D material needs you to replicate OneD&D content, as opposed to simply be compatible with it (say you're making an app which has all the spell descriptions in it) and if there is no new SRD, then you won't be able to do that. You can make compatible stuff ("The evil necromancer can cast magic missile" -- the term magic missile has been OGL for two decades) but you wouldn't be able to replicate the full descriptive text of the OneD&D version of the spell. That's a big if -- if there's no new SRD.

So you'd still be able to make compatible adventures and settings and new spells and new monsters and new magic items and new feats and new rules and stuff. All the stuff 3PPs commonly do. You just wouldn't be able to reproduce the core rules content itself. However, I've been publishing material for 3E, 3.5, 4E, 5E, and Pathfinder 1E for 20 years, and the need to reproduce core rules content hasn't often come up for us -- we produce new compatible content. But if you're making an app, or spell cards, or something which needs to reproduce content from the rulebooks, you'd need an SRD to do that.

So yep. If no SRD, compatible = yes, directly reproduce = no (of course, you can indirectly reproduce stuff by rewriting it in your own words).

Branding! Using the OGL you can't use the term "Dungeons & Dragons" (you never could). Most third parties say something like "compatible with the world's most popular roleplaying game" and have some sort of '5E' logo of their own making on the cover. Something similar will no doubt happen with OneD&D -- the third party market will create terminology to indicate compatibility. (Back in the 3E days, WotC provided a logo for this use called the 'd20 System Trademark Logo' but they don't do that any more).

What if WotC didn't 'support' third party material? As discussed, nobody can take the OGL or any existing OGC away. However, WotC does have control over DMs Guild and integration with D&D Beyond or the virtual tabletop app they're making. So while they can't stop folks from making and publishing compatible stuff, they could make it harder to distribute simply by not allowing it on those three platforms. If OneD&D becomes heavily reliant on a specific platform we might find ourselves in the same situation we had in 4E, where it was harder to sell player options simply because they weren't on the official character builder app. It's not that you couldn't publish 4E player options, it's just that many players weren't interested in them if they couldn't use them in the app.

But copyright! Yes, yes, you can't copyright rules, you can't do this, you can't do that. The OGL is not relevant to copyright law -- it is a license, an agreement, a contract. By using it you agree to its terms. Sure WotC might not be able to copyright X, but you can certainly contractually agree not to use X (which is a selection of material designated as 'Product Identity') by using the license. There are arguments on the validity of this from actual real lawyers which I won't get into, but I just wanted to note that this is about a license, not copyright law.

If you don't use the Open Gaming License, of course, it doesn't apply to you. You are only bound by a license you use. So then, sure, knock yourself out with copyright law!

So, bullet point summary:

• The OGL can't go away, and any existing OGC can't go away
• If (that's an if) there is no new SRD, you will be able to still make compatible material but not reproduce the OneD&D content
• Most of the D&D terminology (save a few terms like 'beholder' etc.) has been OGC for 20 years and is freely available for use
• To render that existing OGC unusable for OneD&D the basic terminology of the entire game would have to be changed, at which point it would no longer be compatible with 5E.

 

[teitan]

Both Tal'dorei campaign setting books - the Green Ronin edition and their recent self-published update - were published under the OGL. (Although it appears they did a Dungeon Crawl Classics and didn't actually release any of their stuff as open content.) Only Wildemount was published through Wizards as a non-OGL product.

You forgot Call of the Netherdeep.

 

[teitan]

I think there was an expectation that creators would be contributing to the code, so to speak. New rules would be added to the collective and the best of them would be reintegrated into the base code. Obviously, that didn't happen for a lot of reasons not worth belaboring here (from what I'm aware of, it's a problem that affects other large open source projects as well, android and chromium being good examples).

a lot of 5e is built on 3pp OGC without credit. The save and skill system/proficiency is Castles & Crusades. The spell casting system is directly lifted, almost zero changes, from Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed/Evolved which also introduced the specific form of racial feats.

 

[Nylanfs]

a lot of 5e is built on 3pp OGC without credit. The save and skill system/proficiency is Castles & Crusades. The spell casting system is directly lifted, almost zero changes, from Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed/Evolved which also introduced the specific form of racial feats.

Except mechanic's can neither be copyrighted nor OGC, the expression of them can (which is where the OGL cam into play) But the mechanic's themselves can't

 

[UngeheuerLich]

What an absolutely wild thing for Wizards to even consider, let alone go ahead with.

As the MTG Community declared, correctly.

View attachment 271302

I still don't get it...

the magic complaint is so contradictory:

1. They release reserved cards, so our originals are not worth a lot anymore.

2. They release proxies, you could print yourself for mich cheaper at a very high price.

So taken together, those statements make no sense in conjunction. Only one can be true... Probably neither is. They just put out what they thought would be cool. Official collectibles for people with too much money... which anyome else can just ignore.

 

[Oofta]

I was an avid World of Warcraft player for over a decade. What I learned in that time is that most "leaks" are clickbait spun by trolls to prey on the hopes or fears of the audience. They look reasonable because they chew up everyone's best speculation and spit it back at you. And the few leaks that are real, tend to be a summery of a recap of an incomplete draft, passed along in a game of telephone and stripped of the context needed to fully understand them.

In other words, it's probably fake and if it's not fake it's nothing suitable to genuine analysis and action.

A lot of people need to go back and read the very first post of this thread again. There's a lot of clickbait out there, some of it likely posted by people that are well intentioned, others by people who just want eyeballs.

 

[Remathilis]

Well whoever suggested that WotC needed an Elon Musk, be careful what you wish for...

 

[Art Waring]

I still don't get it...

the magic complaint is so contradictory:

1. They release reserved cards, so our originals are not worth a lot anymore.

2. They release proxies, you could print yourself for mich cheaper at a very high price.

So taken together, those statements make no sense in conjunction. Only one can be true... Probably neither is. They just put out what they thought would be cool. Official collectibles for people with too much money... which anyome else can just ignore.

Your own statement is quite contradictory however, because its not an either/ or situation. The MtG community is not a single cohesive unit like you portray it as.

Collectors, Investors (& speculators), Players (casual), Hardcore players, & Whales are all part of the Mtg community, a community which is often times at odds with itself.

Collectors and Investors want RL cards to be expensive for various reasons. Casual players just want to have access to cards. Whales keep prices high on sealed product. Nobody really wins except the people printing the cards (wotc).

Your point #1 applies to collectors and investors in a different way than others in the community, many players don't care what a card costs, only that they can use it in a game.

Your point #2 applies simply to greedy business practices, and that directly affects how consumers interact with that product. See the thread about Hasbro's stock being downgraded and their stock losing almost 40% of its value, with the banks directly citing MtG as part of the problem.

 

[teitan]

Except mechanic's can neither be copyrighted nor OGC, the expression of them can (which is where the OGL cam into play) But the mechanic's themselves can't

Which is beside the point of what I was replying to. The argument is that OGC didn’t feed into D&D and I provided two examples of where it did. I didn’t make an argument for anything related to your response.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Your own statement is quite contradictory however, because its not an either/ or situation. The MtG community is not a single cohesive unit like you portray it as.

Collectors, Investors (& speculators), Players (casual), Hardcore players, & Whales are all part of the Mtg community, a community which is often times at odds with itself.

Collectors and Investors want RL cards to be expensive for various reasons. Casual players just want to have access to cards. Whales keep prices high on sealed product. Nobody really wins except the people printing the cards (wotc).

Your point #1 applies to collectors and investors in a different way than others in the community, many players don't care what a card costs, only that they can use it in a game.

Your point #2 applies simply to greedy business practices, and that directly affects how consumers interact with that product. See the thread about Hasbro's stock being downgraded and their stock losing almost 40% of its value, with the banks directly citing MtG as part of the problem.

So now is a good time to actually buy in?

 

[see]

I'm absolutely terrified that if this is true, they could try to use it to take Paranormal Power away from me to publish it, themselves. Just straight up "Oh, yeah, well. We own your work. So we're gonna sell it and give you nothing since you agreed to license it to us by using the OGL!"

Okay, from the OGL FAQ, as published on the WotC site on February 9, 2001:

---

Q: Does this mean that someone could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, and then put it in a product and sell that product to someone else?

A: Yes.

Q: To be clear: Does this mean that Wizards of the Coast could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, put it into a Dungeons & Dragons product and make money off it?

A: Yes.

Q: And they wouldn't have to ask my permission or pay me a royalty?

A: No.

---

So, well, yes, WotC has always had the ability to take your OGC and use it themselves. They explicitly came out and said that more than two decades ago.

Heck, at one point Ryan Dancey himself actually compared the situation of the small OGC producers in such cases to that of black musicians in the 1950s who saw white artists' covers of their songs become major hits. (I don't know where to find that statement now, but I was quite struck by it at the time, because I knew that those black musicians generally had sold the rights to their songs to record labels for a flat fee, and so saw not a dime of the royalties on the cover versions.)

And while under normal circumstances WotC only could take your OGC and use it under the terms of the OGL 1.0a like everyone else, every draft and version of the OGL had a Section 9 equivalent, which allows WotC to write new terms and then use the OGC under those new terms WotC just wrote. Pretty much the very first thing people said when we saw the update provision in the original discussion draft "OGL 0.1" was "Of course, WotC could use this provision to take OGC and then use it any way they like."