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Neither the OGL 1.0 nor WOTC's System Reference Document has ever allowed third parties to use the D&D brand.

In 2003 after Ryan Dancey left the company, WOTC modified the d20 System Trademark License to introduce content review in response to Arthaus releasing the Book of Erotic Fantasy. Dancey thought the trademark license change was a terrible idea. Here's his post from OGF-d20-L, as reprinted in a...

This is a bait and switch. If WOTC wanted royalties on anything in the SRD, it could have kept it out of the SRD. The whole point of the SRD was to be the only stuff WOTC wanted everybody to use and share. There was still a dragon's hoard of IP for WOTC to exclusively profit from that's never...

They don't have to be nice on anything new they share in the future. They don't have to share at all. But they do have to be nice on anything they shared in the past under an open license they created while telling the world it would be around forever and was written to achieve that specific...

No. There are big issues that were not addressed. One is that people should be able to continue to build on existing products created under OGL 1.0. The entire corpus of content derived from the SRD over the past 23 years should not be yanked out of the commons.

As anyone would after 23 years of doing it under an open license promised to last forever and written to achieve that purpose.

I think it's worth more because of the OGL. Ryan Dancey's belief that open gaming would bring more players and profits to D&D through the network effect has been proven over time. Look at where D&D is today, even before the movie comes out.

While this is true, D&D has also conditioned players to accept that the game's rules can undergo substantial changes in each new edition while it still remains D&D. As a player going all the way back to the time of the First Ones, I have six D&Ds in my brain. That greatly expands the definition...

Hasbro could win long, expensive court fights, but it would be taking a huge negative publicity hit throughout that process and the RPG publisher being sued would be supported by a lot of gamers. The case would make the mainstream media and casual gamers would learn of the alternative to D&D...

The OpenD6 games aren't derived from the WOTC System Reference Document, so the only risk to future reuse under the OGL is if Hasbro claims no one can use its copyrighted license on anything anywhere. If it took that position in court it would be a threat to every open source license in...

And the powerful bong hit of nostalgia. I began playing D&D in 1979 and even in years where I wasn't playing at all, I kept buying D&D hardcovers. If Hasbro tries to kill the OGL that streak ends at 44 years.

The OGL has never allowed third-party publishers to use the D&D brand.

Hasbro is not full of gamers. Take a look at its board of directors -- aside from one WOTC exec and a former Discord exec, the management doesn't have anybody who looks like they could be persuaded to appreciate the importance of open gaming...

Rewriting the OGL would've opened a can of worms at Hasbro that the insiders who supported open gaming might not have wanted to open. Ryan Dancey and others had already achieved the miracle of getting the SRD shared under an open license. The original OGL was good enough that Hasbro/WOTC...

I think it's a mistake to believe that if the OGL had included the word "irrevocable" Hasbro/WOTC would not be trying to jackhammer the foundation underneath 23 years of open gaming. If Hasbro was going to come after the OGL it would've found another dubious legal pretense on which to base its...

Yep. When the OGL was created, this was discussed by game publishers and wanna-be publishers who went on to success publishing OGL-licensed games. "You can't copyright mechanics" wasn't as reassuring an environment to create in as the safe harbor that the OGL offered. "Use the SRD and follow...

The Open Gaming Foundation did a few things in the formative years of the open gaming movement. It published the Open Gaming License, hosted the OGF-L and OGF-d20-L mailing lists where the OGL and open gaming movement were born, kept a list of game licenses it considered open, and maintained a...

Technically, the d20 System Trademark License didn't allow products to indicate compatibility with D&D. It allowed them to indicate compatibility with the d20 System. The d20 System mark was created by WOTC at the same time as the OGL to avoid any products doing what Role Aids did in the 1980s...

Reusers of open content can't do that to open content, but Hasbro originated the System Reference Document so that's a different situation.

If there are things in the System Reference Document that Hasbro doesn't want to share any more (hypothetical example: the Derro), instead of attacking the OGL 1.0, could Hasbro achieve that purpose by releasing a new SRD that includes them in the Product Identity clause? This would make future...