WotC Backs Down: Original OGL To Be Left Untouched; Whole 5E Rules Released as Creative Commons

Hundreds of game publishers sigh in relief as, after extensive pressure exerted by the entire open gaming community, WotC has agreed to leave the original Open Gaming License untouched and put the whole of the 5E rules into Creative Commons.

So, what's happened?

• The Open Gaming Licence v1.0a which most of the D&D third party industry relies on, will be left untouched for now.
• The whole of the D&D 5E SRD (ie the rules of the game less the fluff text) has been released under a Creative Commons license.

OGL 1.0a & Creative Commons

Over the past few weeks you, the community, have made your voices heard. And we’ve listened. OGL 1.0a will remain untouched AND the entire SRD 5.1...

www.dndbeyond.com

WotC has a history of 'disappearing' inconvenient FAQs and stuff, such as those where they themselves state that the OGL is irrevocable, so I'll copy this here for posterity.

When you give us playtest feedback, we take it seriously.

Already more than 15,000 of you have filled out the survey. Here's what you said:

• 88% do not want to publish TTRPG content under OGL 1.2.
• 90% would have to change some aspect of their business to accommodate OGL 1.2.
• 89% are dissatisfied with deauthorizing OGL 1.0a.
• 86% are dissatisfied with the draft VTT policy.
• 62% are satisfied with including Systems Reference Document (SRD) content in Creative Commons, and the majority of those who were dissatisfied asked for more SRD content in Creative Commons.

These live survey results are clear. You want OGL 1.0a. You want irrevocability. You like Creative Commons.
The feedback is in such high volume and its direction is so plain that we're acting now.

1. We are leaving OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched.
2. We are also making the entire SRD 5.1 available under a Creative Commons license.
3. You choose which you prefer to use.

This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don't control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It's open and irrevocable in a way that doesn't require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there's no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There's no going back.

Our goal here is to deliver on what you wanted.

So, what about the goals that drove us when we started this process?

We wanted to protect the D&D play experience into the future. We still want to do that with your help. We're grateful that this community is passionate and active because we'll need your help protecting the game's inclusive and welcoming nature.

We wanted to limit the OGL to TTRPGs. With this new approach, we are setting that aside and counting on your choices to define the future of play.
Here's a PDF of SRD 5.1 with the Creative Commons license. By simply publishing it, we place it under an irrevocable Creative Commons license. We'll get it hosted in a more convenient place next week. It was important that we take this step now, so there's no question.

• SRD 5.1-CC

We'll be closing the OGL 1.2 survey now.

We'll keep talking with you about how we can better support our players and creators. Thanks as always for continuing to share your thoughts.

Kyle Brink
Executive Producer, Dungeons & Dragons

What does this mean?

The original OGL sounds safe for now, but WotC has not admitted that they cannot revoke it. That's less of an issue now the 5E System Reference Document is now released to Creative Commons (although those using the 3E SRD or any third party SRDs still have issues as WotC still hasn't revoked the incorrect claim that they can revoke access to those at-will).

At this point, if WotC wants anybody to use whatever their new OGL v1.x turns out to be, there needs to be one heck of a carrot. What that might be remains to be seen.

Pathfinder publlsher Paizo has also commented on the latest developments.

We welcome today’s news from Wizards of the Coast regarding their intention not to de-authorize OGL 1.0a. We still believe there is a powerful need for an irrevocable, perpetual independent system-neutral open license that will serve the tabletop community via nonprofit stewardship. Work on the ORC license will continue, with an expected first draft to release for comment to participating publishers in February.

Over 1,500 Publishers Support Paizo's Upcoming Open RPG Creator's License

Paizo has revealed some of the 1,500+ tabletop RPG publishers who have expressed an interest in their new Open RPG Creator's License (ORC), describing the group as the 'ORC Alliance'. The license itself is still being worked on, so these 1,500 publishers have not actually seen it or signed...

www.enworld.org

 

[Cadence]

It’s released under CC-BY. You can use it, as long as you “attribute” the CC work, eg say where you got it from. You DO NOT need to release your own work under the CC or include a CC license. That would be CC-BY-SA, “share alike”.

The required attribution text is on the first page of the SRD.

CC experts correct me if I’m wrong.

IANACCE. I think the only requirement is that all of the derivatives of someone else's CC-BY product need to be under something at least as restrictive as CC-BY (so that the attribution can't go away down whatever chain of future derivations there are, if any). This could be CC-BY, CC-ND-NC, CC-SA, or copyright.

 

[Ashtagon]

Maybe I wasn't clear. Under OGL 1.0a you can designate portions of the work as open or closed content so other people can use it (ToB monsters in an adventure, for example). If I understand it correctly, you can't release a book under CC and reserve a portion of it from being CC. So it is a fundamentally different model and not as friendly to the concept of Open Gaming.

This is part what I've been saying. The workaround is that any publisher wanting to release some of their book's content to CC has to create a separate and freely available document with the CC content and nothing but the CC content. You can't just include a statement in your paid-for book identifying which parts are CC (because that puts the nominally CC content behind a paywall, which is against the CC rules).

That could be done by contributing to some kind of shared wiki or by creating a free pdf. Not insurmountable, but it is an extra step.

 

[Bosen]

That's it then.

They're not updating the language of the OGL 1.0a, but we've won?

Yes. We did.

 

[Ondath]

It totally can. In order to use CC material, you have to credit it as CC material by using that licence in your book. All the old books use OGL licencing. So all the old material will need to be re-written to be safe.

There's a replacement for the OGL 1.0a foundation stone that everyone currently uses, but actually replacing that foundation stone in each and every product is a non-trivial task. In contrast, adding three words to the OGL 1.0a (to make an OGL 1.0b) would be a trivial task.

The necessary OGL changes (I'm sure an actual lawyer can translate this to proper legalese) are:

1 - change "any authorised version" to "any version ever authorised".

2 - change "perpetual" to "perpetual and irrevocable".

Making this 1.0b OGL would change the future-proofing task from one of reading through each book line by line to ensure it is valid under the CC and 5.1 SRD (remember, a lot of legacy content was based on the 3.0/3.5/d20m SRDs, which are similar but not fully overlapping), editing as needed, to swapping a single page (the one containing the OGL).

As a trivial example, if you used the exact wording from the 3.5 SRD for something in your product, but the wording for the equivalent item in the 5.1 SRD is different (quite likely, its a different rules set after all), you'd be in breach of copyright if you then dropped the OGL in favour of CC without also rewording your body text. And you'd be vulnerable to a new legal challenge by WotC if you don't drop the OGL 1.0a while no OGL 1.0b is available.

I'm not denying that transfering the foundation stone of the OSR to SRD 5.1-CC will require some arduous work. I imagine writing OSRIC from the ground up was no easy task.

That said, your initial post said the following:

So what you are saying is that their ODR SRD relies on the WotC SRD as a foundation stone? If the foundation on which your structure is built can be removed, then then there's still a problem.

Existing OSR works rely on 3E SRD as a foundation stone, yes. And that one's security is still uncertain (that said, there's the point I made in my follow-up comment i.e., that Wizards has very little reason to deauthorise the OGL now. They lost the battle and released what they never wanted to release into Creative Commons. There's little reason for them to question OGL's perpetuity now).

However, the foundation stone of OSR as a scene (i.e., the idea of using open game content to make your retroclones) is certainly under no risk anymore. A new OSRIC can be built under SRD 5.1-CC. It'll be bitter work, but it can be done. I'm guessing most retroclones these days heavily reword the 3E SRD anyway (for instance, one one of the positive sides of OSE is how it simplifies the B/X rules, so I'm guessing they use very little of the 3E SRD verbatim), and those should be more easily transferred to SRD 5.1-CC than not.

This whole debacle has been a headache and a half, and it creates a lot of unnecessary work that could be avoided if WotC didn't try to be needlessly greedy. But at least the community will never have to deal with this thanks to the CC release.

 

[Michael Linke]

IANACCE. I think the only requirement is that all of the derivatives of someone else's CC-BY product need to be under something at least as restrictive as CC-BY (so that the attribution can't go away down whatever chain of future derivations there are, if any). This could be CC-BY, CC-ND-NC, CC-SA, or copyright.

I don’t see any such requirement on the Creative Commons site.

Maybe I wasn't clear. Under OGL 1.0a you can designate portions of the work as open or closed content so other people can use it (ToB monsters in an adventure, for example). If I understand it correctly, you can't release a book under CC and reserve a portion of it from being CC. So it is a fundamentally different model and not as friendly to the concept of Open Gaming.

You could release that part separately as CC, then use it as a basis for a commercial product.

You must attribute the creator when you provide material to the public by any means that is restricted by copyright or similar rights.

Your commercial product would still have to attribute the SRD, and you CAN also attribute your own work, but you wouldn’t need to, since your authorship of the work grants you a copyright. Hasbro will not need to attribute the SRD if they rereleased the 5e rules.

 

[Dausuul]

Because so far, WotC hasn't solved to OGL problem. They have only pulled back from deauthorization, not modified 1.0a to ensure it is safe going forward. After sleeping on it, it doesn't actually seem like WotC gave in as much as it initially felt.

In a technical sense, sure, they've left open the possibility of a future attempt at deauthorization.

But the brilliance of the CC release is that, while it has not taken away the possibility, it has annihilated the incentive. Even if you totally dismiss all benefits to Wizards from open gaming, there is no longer any conceivable profit for them in attacking the OGL. In the long run, I think that's a better shield than any legalese.

 

[ThorinTeague]

Why stop with 3.x?

At this time, 3.x and 5 were the only ones that were open, and I am not asking to open other versions of the game that were never open. (Although I wouldn't mind--but that's not really the point). The point is, publishers been given a promise that OGL1.0a will be there forever, the same promise the community got in 2000-2022, and we can see where that led. The 5 SRD has been sent to CC which shouldn't (can't as far as I know) be rolled back, but I don't see any reason whatsoever to trust them. Some decisions have to be made IMO.

My opinion shouldn't be taken too seriously though. I'm just going to ride this wave into new territory and stop default to D&D, maybe stop playing it entirely. It's a good excuse to branch out and try new things.

 

[ThorinTeague]

I mean, no, that’s not worth a whole lot IMO. If it’s not actually true under the common law of contracts, what’s the point in someone currently at WotC making such a statement?

On the other hand, they’ve created a truly irrevocable practical disincentive to ever bother withdrawing their offer under the OGL, since they’ve released their game to the commons.

If that still isn’t enough security, licensing another publisher’s IP maybe isn’t the best option.

I mean if I were publishing, I wouldn't be going back to OGL1.0a. I know many existing publishers already altered course and don't intend to turn around now. Getting complacent could be unhealthy.

 

[teitan]

This is part what I've been saying. The workaround is that any publisher wanting to release some of their book's content to CC has to create a separate and freely available document with the CC content and nothing but the CC content. You can't just include a statement in your paid-for book identifying which parts are CC (because that puts the nominally CC content behind a paywall, which is against the CC rules).

That could be done by contributing to some kind of shared wiki or by creating a free pdf. Not insurmountable, but it is an extra step.

You mean exactly what basically happens now minus the step of putting it in the published product itself?

 

[Reynard]

I don’t see any such requirement on the Creative Commons site.


You could release that part separately as CC, then use it as a basis for a commercial product.



Your commercial product would still have to attribute the SRD, and you CAN also attribute your own work, but you wouldn’t need to, since your authorship of the work grants you a copyright. Hasbro will not need to attribute the SRD if they rereleased the 5e rules.

So it is still extra work and therefore an impediment to open gaming.

Too many people are only thinking of this situation from the perspective of a consumer who just wants a shiny new 5E book. This is about creators, and it is also about Open Gaming as a culture and philosophy.