Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[Thomas Shey]

Today you get a lot of BitD spin-offs, PbtAs, or d20/5e spin offs, etc. Which is better?

There's still a lot of others. They just tend to be one-and-done. I could probably pull 20-out of my pdf collection given ten minutes.

I'd actually say what's less common is new systems that actually get any significant follow-up. It still happens, but less often.

 

[Maxperson]

confidence yes, but how many that run now would fight then? Not many more can financially afford it I guess, and while it is unfortunate that it comes down to money, that still holds true tomorrow, so I am not sure how much safer they are then

Less would run. Most are saying right now that WotC should create OGL 1.0b with the word irrevocable in it. It wouldn't fix it for everyone, but it would go a long way.

 

[mamba]

Less would run. Most are saying right now that WotC should create OGL 1.0b with the word irrevocable in it. It wouldn't fix it for everyone, but it would go a long way.

It would because it would essentially show a victory over WotC, not because it would make the license much safer. Whether WotC can de-authorize the license would e.g. not really be addressed by that. Bad actors will always be able to find some angle to cast doubt

 

[Maxperson]

It would because it would essentially show a victory over WotC, not because it would make the license much safer. Whether WotC can de-authorize the license would e.g. not really be addressed by that. Bad actors will always be able to find some angle to cast doubt

Irrevocable means something in law. There's a reason why they are doing it with perpetual and folks are wishing it had said irrevocable. WotC would likely never have tried this if it had said irrevocable.

 

[S'mon]

Well, perhaps more to the point, a lot of them are now saying "You say you're not going to try to revoke old uses of the OGL this week; what about next?" It doesn't matter if its personal or not for at least some people, it matters that they no longer trust WOTC (and Hasbro) not to conduct an abusive legal maneuver if they think its convenient.

To some extent, contract law is always about trust, because as noted by a couple people, it has no intrinsic force. All it does is provide you a (potential) hammer if other people in the agreement misbehave, but using that hammer is not an effort and cost free process, and no one really wants to do it (unless they're abusing process themselves and getting that hammer was the whole point).

As such, damaging trust of potential people who might want to make deals with you has a price.

I do think this was very well put. I'm going to try to at least mention this when I'm teaching Contract this semester. It's an easy thing for academics to overlook as we focus on the substantive law. We focus on the rights and obligations under the Contract; but the ability to trust the other party is often more valuable, than the rights/remedies you hold against them. For instance it's one reason why e-commerce/remote commerce is far more successful in high trust societies than in low trust societies. Many of my students come from low trust societies where the idea of giving a faraway someone money, and then trusting them to send you stuff, feels distinctly dodgy.

WoTC's current position is that they are attempting to renege on the terms of their OGL 1.0 licence contract with existing parties. The licence gives those parties the right and obligation to licence the use of OGC, including WoTC SRD material. WoTC appears to be saying they can no longer do that. Which puts WoTC in breach of contract, afaict, although a court might construe the situation in some other way. But the most important immediate impact seems to be that WoTC is now "not agreement capable" in the eyes of other parties. You can't tust them to stick with a deal.

 

[S'mon]

Sure, but my point is, that's a perfectly reasonable stance to expect a 3PP to take. It's unusual for that to be the stance the end-user takes. Or at least, a significantly large and vocal subset of it.

One issue for the end user is that compared to eg Paizo or Kobold Press WoTC produces very little gaming material, and what they produce is generally not of very high quality. Williams thinks the D&D brand is 'under monetised', but considering how little D&D material WoTC put out, they get a huge income from the game! A big reason for that is that GMs can use 3PP material that better suits their needs, and is often of higher quality, than the D&D material. So 'cancelling the OGL' has a major direct impact on D&D players, the end users.

I think this is a major difference from Games Workshop. GW do actually produce a very large amount of gaming material, their miniatures. In creating their closed ecosystem, GW do the work. WoTC appear to have no intention of doing the actual work needed to support the actual game. What use is a pretty VTT if there's nothing good to play on it? How many times do they expect me to run Forge of Fury?

 

[S'mon]

One issue for the end user is that compared to eg Paizo or Kobold Press WoTC produces very little gaming material, and what they produce is generally not of very high quality. Williams thinks the D&D brand is 'under monetised', but considering how little D&D material WoTC put out, they get a huge income from the game! A big reason for that is that GMs can use 3PP material that better suits their needs, and is often of higher quality, than the D&D material. So 'cancelling the OGL' has a major direct impact on D&D players, the end users.

I think this is a major difference from Games Workshop. GW do actually produce a very large amount of gaming material, their miniatures. In creating their closed ecosystem, GW do the work. WoTC appear to have no intention of doing the actual work needed to support the actual game. What use is a pretty VTT if there's nothing good to play on it? How many times do they expect me to run Forge of Fury?

Just watching this video on WoTC's leaked future plans for the VTT. Apparently they plan to ban to actually ban homebrew content at the base tiers - they won't even allow GMs to do the work for them! Instead they plan on AI DMs running WoTC adventures for the D&D 'fans'.

 

[The Stray]

Just watching this video on WoTC's leaked future plans for the VTT. Apparently they plan to ban to actually ban homebrew content at the base tiers - they won't even allow GMs to do the work for them! Instead they plan on AI DMs running WoTC adventures for the D&D 'fans'.

She's slightly late to the party on this, as we've been discussing this on the various OGL-related threads for some hours now, but yeah. They want to turn D&D into a bad MMO, and it's exactly as horsepucky as it sounds.

 

[S'mon]

She's slightly late to the party on this, as we've been discussing this on the various OGL-related threads for some hours now

That's a pretty harsh standard for a Youtuber! DnD Shorts who confirmed the leak says he won't release his video on it until Wednesday!

 

[mamba]

Irrevocable means something in law. There's a reason why they are doing it with perpetual and folks are wishing it had said irrevocable. WotC would likely never have tried this if it had said irrevocable.

I doubt it, back in 2000 perpetual meant ‘perpetual and irrevocable’. There is a reason why they talk about de-authorizing and not revoking