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Somebody at WOTC had to greenlight the decision to produce and release new SRDs after 2007. There are probably people inside WOTC who understand and champion the OGL even now. I hope there are enough of them to make a difference now that it has become evident that a lot of D&D customers...

If WOTC hated the OGL in 2007, it wouldn't have kept releasing updated SRDs through 2016 and continued to offer the current one for download. Hasbro didn't start asking "who will rid me of this turbulent license?" until last month. In 2008, Hasbro had a problem with the d20 System Trademark...

I just noticed your avatar is my childhood nemesis. We meet again, Yellow Dragon!

Starfinder is derived from the SRD. Here's the Section 15 of the Core Rulebook (from a PDF I bought a few years ago):

I was there on the OGF-L and OGF-d20-L mailing lists where the OGL was born in 2000. I wouldn't call it a trick when Ryan Dancey came right out and said that the OGL and the SRD were being offered because of WOTC's strong belief that it would bring more players to D&D and sell more copies of the...

You're missing the point. The OGL was created in 2000. Dungeon Masters Guild was launched in 2016. It would be chronologically impossible for the OGL to be a trick devised by WOTC to force people to share profits on their game content creations with DM Guild.

I'm having trouble seeing how Cure Light Wounds is so distinctive that another game having a healing spell under a different name would be an infringement. Every fantasy RPG I've ever played on a table or a computer had healing spells. Gary Gygax believed TSR's lawsuit to stop Dangerous...

Drawmij might have been more than an homage to Ward. He could have created and named the character while playing in Gary Gygax's campaign. If so, he would've had to sign away the rights to TSR way back when for it to be unquestionably the company's IP. Ward didn't fight WOTC on the issue of...

I don't think Fast Forward Entertainment was forced to pulp the four books that used WOTC IP without permission. The company offered to do that to resolve the issue. Jim Ward (FFE founder and president) sounded at the time like he wasn't enjoying being a d20 publisher.

The OGL does not permit anyone to use the D&D brand or any other brand owned by Hasbro/WOTC. All of your hypothetical normie freakouts could happen because of anything published in any role-playing game. Singling out the OGL as something that could be modified to alleviate these concerns is...

I agree that care should be taken in drafting the ORC. But I don't see how a license can be open and allow an entity to revoke permission for content-based reasons. That control makes it a closed license. Open gaming has grown for 23 years without that kind of control. If people want a central...

They have always been able to issue an updated OGL but the license states that users can choose to use the earlier version instead, which makes it pointless to issue a more-restrictive version.

There's a difference between creating a license that has a content restriction from day one and trying to add a content restriction to an open license on day 8,415.

This seems like two separate issues to me. WOTC exploiting its distinctive settings for D&D in movies and TV shows has nothing to do with the OGL because the IP of their settings are is not shared with anybody. The D&D brand is not shared with anybody.

Wendy's Feast of Legends RPG was not licensed under the OGL.

No, it doesn't mean that. An open license means "do what you want with this under the terms of this license." The control I was referring to was an entity having the power to approve or reject licensed works based on their content, which is what you're asking for.

This is an argument against all open gaming and open source licenses. They don't control what people create using the licenses because that would require a license that is the opposite of open.

If everything can damage D&D what's the point of dragging the OGL out back and murdering it? At least the OGL licensees have agreed to a set of restrictions that others have not, such as never using Product Identity as an indication of compatibility.

WOTC getting that many cancellations in a couple weeks is a big deal. Angering so many customers ahead of the launch of OneD&D and the movie is a PR and marketing nightmare. It's probably time inside Hasbro to begin the process of selecting scapegoats.

Speaking from experience, having an accurate understanding of one's legal position requires the ability to repeatedly answer the question "have you sent another $5,000 for my retainer?" with the word yes. No matter how frequently you get asked.