Kyle Brink (D&D Exec Producer) On OGL Controversy & One D&D (Summary)

The YouTube channel 3 Black Halflings spoke to WotC's Kyle Brink (executive producer, D&D) about the recent Open Game License events, amongst other things. It's an hour-plus long interview (which you can watch below) but here are some of the highlights of what Brink said. Note these are my paraphrases, so I encourage you to listen to the actual interview for full context if you have time.

OGL v1.1 Events

• There was a concern that the OGL allowed Facebook to make a D&D Metaverse without WotC involvement.
• Re. the OGL decisions, WotC had gotten themselves into a 'terrible place' and are grateful for the feedback that allowed them to see that.
• The royalties in OGL v1.1 were there as a giant deterrent to mega corporations.
• Kyle Brink is not familiar with what happened in the private meetings with certain publishers in December, although was aware that meetings were taking place.
• When the OGL v1.1 document became public, WotC had already abandoned much of it.
• The response from WotC coinciding with D&D Beyond subscription cancellations was a coincidence as it takes longer than that to modify a legal document.
• The atmosphere in WotC during the delay before making an announcement after the OGL v1.1 went public was 'bad' -- fear of making it worse if they said anything. The feeling was that they should not talk, just deliver the new version.
• Brink does not know who wrote the unpopular 'you won but we won too' announcement and saw it the same time we did. He was not happy with it.
• 'Draft' contracts can have dates and boxes for signatures. Despite the leaked version going to some publishers, it was not final or published.
• There were dissenting voices within WotC regarding the OGL v1.1, but once the company had agreed how to proceed, everybody did the best they could to deliver.
• The dissenting voices were not given enough weight to effect change. Brinks' team is now involved in the process and can influence decisions.
• The SRD release into Creative Commmons is a one-way door; there can be no takeback.

One D&D

• The intention is that all of the new [One D&D] updates they are doing, "the SRD will be updated to remain compatible with all of that". This might be with updted rules or with bridging language like 'change the word race to species'.
• Anything built with the current SRD will be 100% compatible with the new rules.
• Brink does not think there is a plan to, and does not see the value, in creating a new OGL just for One D&D. When/if they put more stuff into the public space, they'd do it through Creative Commons.
• WotC doesn't think of One D&D as a new edition. He feels it's more like what happened with 3.5. They think 5E is great, but coud be better and play faster and easier with more room for roleplay, so there is stuff they can do to improve it but not replace it.

Inclusivity

• WotC is leaning on the community to discourage bad actors and hateful content, rather than counting on a legal document.
• They are working on an adaptable content policy describing what they consider to be hateful content which will apply to WotC's work (no legal structure to apply it to anybody else).
• They now have external inclusivity reviewers (as of last fall) who look over every word and report back. They are putting old content through the same process before reprints.
• Previously cultural consultances were used for spot reviews on things they thought might be problematic, but not everything (e.g. Hadozee).
• The problematic Hadozee content was written by a trusted senior person at WotC, and very few people saw it before publication.
• 'DnDShorts' video on the internal workings and management culture of WotC is not something Brinks can talk on, but it is not reflective of his team. Each team has its own culture.
• In the last couple of years the D&D team hiring process has made the team more inclusive.
• When asked about non white-CIS-men in leadership positions at WotC, Brinks referred to some designers and authors. He said 'guys like me, we're leaving the workforce, to be blunt' and 'I'm not the face of the hobby any more'. It is important that the creators at WotC look like the players. 'Guys like me can't leave soon enough'.

Virtual Tabletops (VTTs)/Digital Gaming

• Goal is to make more ways to play ('and' not 'instead') including a cool looking 3D space.
• Digital gaming is not meant to replace books etc., but to be additive.
• The strategy is to give players a choice, and WotC will go where the player interests lie.

​

 

[mamba]

I'm not even sure what he meant by that. Does he want white people to stop working in the game industry?

he wants the D&D creators to reflect the D&D players in diversity, that does mean some white guys will have to make room for / be succeeded by someone different

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Again... this interpretation is just weird. The face of the hobby isn't you now (though in the 70's, for the most part, it was), to think you are the face of the hobby is some weird privilege type thinking. It's a multitude of ethnicities, cultures, and appearances which was his point. And it's not what they want their fans to look like, it is what their fans now look like and those designing the game should represent that. And yes if it's dominated by Cis white males at this point, some may have to go in order to make room for others.

Kicking people because they happen to be white cis males and hiring other people who don't have experience just because they fit the scheme is also not good for anyone. Making a plan to let all kinds of people grow into higher roles seems better, even if it takes a few years.

Of course there is structural racism, but just replacing random people with other random people won't do the trick.

 

[mamba]

Making a plan to let all kinds of people grow into higher roles seems better, even if it takes a few years.

this sounds very much like Kyle’s plan

Of course there is structural racism, but just replacing random people with other random people won't do the trick.

they way you describe it, I’d say it already would be an improvement (picking someone random from a diverse pool instead of from a straight white male pool), even if it could be better still…

 

[MNblockhead]

I'm more interested in Demogorgon's mad machinations than corporate CEOs.

There is a difference? ;-)

 

[Imaro]

Kicking people because they happen to be white cis males and hiring other people who don't have experience just because they fit the scheme is also not good for anyone. Making a plan to let all kinds of people grow into higher roles seems better, even if it takes a few years.

Where did he say anything about hiring people without experience? I love the privilege espoused by those in a favored position in deciding how and when those not should be given equality...

Of course there is structural racism, but just replacing random people with other random people won't do the trick.

No one is advocating this.

 

[wingsandsword]

if you listen to the interview, then the concern was precisely a Meta VTT in the metaverse, or something similar from other large corporations

Somehow I doubt that's the real reason.

For all of Facebook's bluster and hype about the metaverse. . .nobody outside Facebook seems to give a dang about it. The metaverse seems to be an ongoing joke, not a serious tech imitative.

I've been hearing for 30 years how virtual reality is coming real soon and is going to totally change everyone's lives.

"We were afraid of a metaverse VTT" sounds like an excuse that shifts any talk about competition or hostility away from fans and the tabletop gaming community and onto Facebook or some other big tech company.

Still vaporware.

 

[Jer]

Somehow I doubt that's the real reason.

For all of Facebook's bluster and hype about the metaverse. . .nobody outside Facebook seems to give a dang about it. The metaverse seems to be an ongoing joke, not a serious tech imitative.

Just because it's obvious to some of us doesn't mean that high level execs will see it. Not only are they not experts in that particular field they also are generally getting a mix of bad and good data about it and have to figure out which is which without being an expert.

It's like how it was fairly obvious for years that near-term fully self-driving cars were vaporware, but car industry execs at every company were still investing boatloads of money into it. Partly because of sunk cost fallacy, but also because they weren't experts in AI and were buying the hype instead of the reality. Same thing is going on with VR - everyone actually thought Meta was going to be able to crack that nut because they just had the money and Zuckerberg has a reputation that led them to believe that (whether it was actually a reputation he'd earned or not). They weren't expecting Meta to faceplant so hard even as those of us who have watched the VR industry for the last few decades were wondering why everyone was expecting them to succeed.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Where did he say anything about hiring people without experience? I love the privilege espoused by those in a favored position in deciding how and when those not should be given equality...



No one is advocating this.

At the ending, when he was asked he said, they are hiring from the playerbase which is more diverse than ever and that they will naturally grow into high position.

He also was asked about Orion Black, who felt, that they were just a diversity hire. That question should never arise.

 

[OB1]

if you listen to the interview, then the concern was precisely a Meta VTT in the metaverse

This is almost certainly the inciting incident of the entire issue.

When they were planning One, and the large investment of shareholder capital they were going to make on their own VTT, someone identified the OGL as a potential threat to that investment, as Meta or another gaming company could either use the SRD 5.1 to build their own 5e clone or partner with someone like Pazio to build one. Meta was dumping INSANE amounts of cash into development to try and increase sales of Oculus and if they had wanted to, could have easily doubled or tripled the amount that Wizards was planning to spend. A team at Wizards then decided to see if they could make changes to the OGL that would work to protect the investment, and that team went off on its own and came back with something that did that.

They likely knew that 1.1 wouldn't fly and were ready to negotiate to something more appropriate, but because they pushed to hard and far on the initial document, they freaked someone out enough to leak it to the press, short-circuiting the process and having it blow up in WotCs face, thus resulting in the eventual release of 5.1 under CC instead of something closer to the 1.2 doc.

Now WotC has to choose between continuing VTT development with the risk of a competitor using the 5.1 SRD, or abandon the VTT plans as too financially risky. I doubt it will be the later.

 

[Juomari Veren]

Haven’t gone through the whole thing yet, but when he is saying ‘OGL 1.1 was a terrible way to approach the goals we had in mind, which is why it was easy for us to abandon it’, then I do wonder why it looked the way it did… and if you really are concerned about the Disney’s and Meta’s of the world, then the fee kicking in at 750k revenue feels awfully low

It's not unrealistic to assume the first draft was probably handed down by someone at or above Kyle's level, or perhaps just an outside source that lacks a full understanding of TTRPGs. The way the response is structured, when it reached WoTC's hands and they had the power to say no to it to some extent, which is what led to them even being able to walk things back in the end. I wouldn't be surprised if shareholders or execs saw the negative PR and caved too, but it seems very much that Hasbro probably had someone else whose expertise lies in matters of law to draft up the new OGL and then they turned it in and that was that for whatever party was involved, and then they left Hasbro and WoTC to deal with it.