D&D General New OGL survey

[Umbran]

Which, again, the only meaningful difference being you cannot publish hateful content with the OGL but you can with CC. Is that your objection?

Mod Note
Keep chasing the "gotcha" and you are apt to find yourself out of the race.

 

[haakon1]

Dragonborn are included in the new 1.2. The only difference between 1.0a for dragonborn, and 1.2, is you could not distribute racist or otherwise hateful content with it. Is that your objection?

So, if you don’t like OGL 1.2, it must because you want “hateful” content.

I’m not falling for WotC gaslighting the D&D community. Hard pass.

 

[haakon1]

My chief objection … my two chief objections ... my three chief objections:

1) It revokes 1.0a and allows only SRD 5.1. In other words, it bans new content for 3e, 3.5e, PF1, and anything else built on OGL 1.0a, probably including OSR variants and smaller games. 3.5e is my favorite edition, so they are banning content for me.

2) They are gaslighting the D&D community, setting us up to pretend this is gamergate. “We’re only against them because we’re hateful” is the spin they’re planning. You saw it already in this thread. Like the NFT thing, it’s a red herring.

3) The precedents of they can change it at will is set. This is the lull us draft part, before the slink back and do it again part.

… and an almost fanatically devotion to supporting the 3rd party community!

 

[Mistwell]

So, if you don’t like OGL 1.2, it must because you want “hateful” content.

I’m not falling for WotC gaslighting the D&D community. Hard pass.

A mod warning was giving on this topic. Let's drop it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I can understand the part about to nothing of hateful speech, but here we can't agree about the limits. For example the vampires from Ixalan setting wear helms as the morrion used by the Spanish conquerors. Then I can say a story where the villains are ersatz of Spanish conquerors are promoting the Hispanophobia and the black legend against the Spanish empire. Not everybody would agree, of course, but here we have enough troubles and a pain in the neck. Or a story set in Ravenloft where the antagonist is a "dark sinnister" style cardenal Richelieu with dark powers. Then other could say if the evil character was based in the leader or founder of a Protestant sect then that wouldn't be OK. Double standards, to use to different sticks to measure? I feel seriously offended with the image of the Vatican church in the rpg 7th Sea. Those tropes aren't only annoying, but potentially dangerous.

Something allowed in 2020 could be offensive for the generation of 2035. Let's remember for example now in the current movies the characters shouldn't be smokers, but this was normal in older productions from previous decades.

And the entertaiment industry should worry about to be enough ideologically neutral. One thing is to promote ethical values as the respect for the human dignity to stop bigotry, and an other different thing is to use the speculative fiction for propaganda in the cultural war.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I can understand the part about to nothing of hateful speech, but here we can't agree about the limits. For example the vampires from Ixalan setting wear helms as the morrion used by the Spanish conquerors. Then I can say a story where the villains are ersatz of Spanish conquerors are promoting the Hispanophobia and the black legend against the Spanish empire. Not everybody would agree, of course, but here we have enough troubles and a pain in the neck. Or a story set in Ravenloft where the antagonist is a "dark sinnister" style cardenal Richelieu with dark powers. Then other could say if the evil character was based in the leader or founder of a Protestant sect then that wouldn't be OK. Double standards, to use to different sticks to measure? I feel seriously offended with the image of the Vatican church in the rpg 7th Sea. Those tropes aren't only annoying, but potentially dangerous.

Something allowed in 2020 could be offensive for the generation of 2035. Let's remember for example now in the current movies the characters shouldn't be smokers, but this was normal in older productions from previous decades.

And the entertaiment industry should worry about to be enough ideologically neutral. One thing is to promote ethical values as the respect for the human dignity to stop bigotry, and an other different thing is to use the speculative fiction for propaganda in the cultural war.

There is no reason that, if in 2035 something that was OK in 2020 is viewed as hateful, the OGL wouldn't restrict it.
What will serve to limit NuTSR's content in 2024 will work against hateful content in the 2035 as well, as long as WotC can make it stick.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

With all the respet, if you can't guess what is going to happen before the end of this year, you can't know how will be the society of 2035. The rules about politically corectness could change again. Maybe they are going to have a different opinion about what is hate speech and what no.

Other example, the anime "Ramma 1/2", a comedy of martial arts, some times showed partially nudity of 16y characters. Today this couldn't be allowed because they are underage.

In the older movies of Far West the native Northamericans, the "redskins", were the antagonists, the bad guys, but today people these suffered a true genocide in the hands of the WASPs. Maybe in the next years we could see reports by Spanish-speaker community about the image of the Spanish empire in Hollywood production and the black legend created by the propaganda war.

Any elements of the sitcom "Friends" aren't tolerated in the eyes of youngest generations.

Maybe 20 years in the future the society is more conservative.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My chief objection … my two chief objections ... my three chief objections:

1) It revokes 1.0a and allows only SRD 5.1. In other words, it bans new content for 3e, 3.5e, PF1, and anything else built on OGL 1.0a, probably including OSR variants and smaller games. 3.5e is my favorite edition, so they are banning content for me.

2) They are gaslighting the D&D community, setting us up to pretend this is gamergate. “We’re only against them because we’re hateful” is the spin they’re planning. You saw it already in this thread. Like the NFT thing, it’s a red herring.

3) The precedents of they can change it at will is set. This is the lull us draft part, before the slink back and do it again part.

… and an almost fanatically devotion to supporting the 3rd party community!

While I very much appreciate the humor (albeit with some chagrin at how applicable it is), we are getting a chance to address these concerns. We can, both publicly and privately, tell WotC that them being the sole arbiter of such things is not acceptable for a variety of reasons. Further, we can push for just that little bit more to be put into the Creative Commons, so that it no longer matters what WotC chooses to do or what hypothetical dark futures, be they abusive or absent (e.g. WotC collapses and the rights go into copyright hell)--I don't begrudge WotC seeking to protect stuff like spells (a lot of those are pretty clearly tied to D&D specifically, such as the "named wizard" spells), monsters (many of which were Product Identity under OGL 1.0a), and cultural/setting details. Having a clear "safe haven" for the really ultra-fundamental stuff, though, one that is genuinely and permanently free of the fear that WotC could bring suit that a little publisher could never afford to defend even if they'd almost certainly win, would be enough of an olive branch that I could accept some of the other terms.

If someone did the work of drafting up all their own spells, subclasses (and new base classes), monsters, backgrounds, non-baseline species, etc., and gave them all their own genuinely distinct cultures and contexts etc., that sounds like doing all the real design work and simply borrowing an effective framework for doing so. I, personally, see the inclusion of the really really basic classes and races in the Creative Commons as perfectly cromulent, and realistically, a recognition of the already existing state of affairs. As I said...I dunno if it was in this thread or another, but D&D has already failed to enforce a claim on many of its classes and races anyway, particularly classes: Druids as shapeshifters is a quintessentially D&D concept, but World of Warcraft has been doing that for nearly 20 years and there's been nary a peep about that being a problem. Same goes for things like Paladins and Warlocks, but even a few other things like dragon-people (which WoW has like...five variations thereof), friendly dark elves, human(oid)s that can shift between human and beast form, etc.

Recognizing that these things have become part of the RPG cultural zeitgeist is simply being practical about it. That doesn't mean WotC should give up their copyright on things like Arkhosia (much as I would LOVE for that to become Creative Commons, I know it never will) or the history of Shifters in Eberron or the unique twists of (say) minotaurs in Krynn. Just means that the fundamental ideas like "dragon person who breathes fire/ice/whatever" or "person who can use magic because great-granddad had a fling with a dragon" have grown bigger than WotC and become part of the general lexicon in the same way that the concept of a "feat" which provides a hefty chunk of well-defined mechanical benefits is sufficiently generic that anyone should be able to use it.

Maybe 20 years in the future the society is more conservative.

We don't even need to speculate. As I said in another thread, we have examples literally right now where, in other media things, ANY depiction of LGBTQ+ characters is portrayed as being inherently obscene, corrupting the youth, etc. It doesn't take more than a couple people in leadership positions to have things suddenly take a very, very dark turn.

Even if I believed the WotC of today would genuinely never, ever abuse this "we have sole absolute discretion to determine whether you or any of your employees have done wrong, and if you have, to terminate your license permanently, and you can never challenge or appeal these determinations" power, I cannot trust that there will never be a future WotC that would abuse it. And because the proposed license is irrevocable and (for all but a couple relatively trivial sections) unalterable, we'd be handing over this power permanently and without ANY ability to fix it if something goes wrong.

Or, if people would like a real-world, TTRPG example: What would you do if Hasbro went belly-up, and the rights to D&D got bought by White Wolf Games--you know, the people who literally included "neo-Nazi" as an example for characters of Clan Brujah (with some at the very least incredibly unfortunate gaffes...if not dogwhistles) or the use of the anti-gay pogroms in Chechnya as a plot point? (Note: this is mostly old news, Paradox basically fired most if not all of the employees of White Wolf once they stopped having a hands-off policy regarding WW's game development, and WW is now just a holding company for the license.) There are way too many plausible ways for someone to be crappy and abuse the power given by the proposal as written.

That doesn't mean I'm totally opposed to WotC having remedy for people using their game content to make horrible things. I just want the determination to come from a court of law, not one of the two participants nor a closed-door arbitration (which almost always amounts to the same thing as just letting the powerful corporate participant dictate the terms themselves, just with more steps.)

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

My chief objection … my two chief objections ... my three chief objections:

1) It revokes 1.0a and allows only SRD 5.1. In other words, it bans new content for 3e, 3.5e, PF1, and anything else built on OGL 1.0a, probably including OSR variants and smaller games. 3.5e is my favorite edition, so they are banning content for me.

Just to be clear: the OGL 1.2 draft does not revoke or de-authorize OGL 1.0(a). WotC is doing that under a separate action.

 

[Stormonu]

Waiting for the survey, but one funny thing I noticed. The OGL 1.2 says it uses the 5.1 SRD, and the 5.1 SRD says it is ONLY usable through the OGL 1.0a ...

Permission to copy, modify and distribute the files collectively known as the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD5”) is granted solely through the use of the Open Gaming License, Version 1.0a.