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Nope. Remember 4e? The outrage for that began a year before its release. . .it didn't blow over. It stayed. It lingered. It ensured that 4e was generally a flop. The outrage over 4e didn't die until 5e came out. These boards were enveloped in edition wars for YEARS.

Nuking the OGL, which has been a major part of D&D fandom for 22 years, isn't something that blows over in a few days. I suspect that the reason that WotC isn't trying to defend this or comment on it is that this was a strategic leak, intentionally performed, to see just how much outrage it...

I think it's more that some lawyer at WotC came up with the "unauthorized" concept as a way to try to rescind the OGL. It's pretty clear that the intention of the OGL was that it be permanent and irrevocable, even though WotC's probably wanted to rescind the OGL since circa 2008 when 4e came...

As I recall, someone compared the two once and it was a matter of hyphenating one word that was supposed to be hyphenated. They released 1.0. . .then realized there was a minor typo, corrected it, and released it as 1.0a shortly thereafter which was substantially the same but had a very minor...

That's excellent. I gave up trying to debate the issue on Reddit because everywhere I was trying to argue it, making much the same legal points, I was getting people shouting at me that they had a link to some blog post by some lawyer saying WotC could do it, or that it was "obvious" that WotC...

Given that Pathfinder was clearly D&D 4e's biggest competitor, it always seemed obvious that if WotC thought they could rescind the OGL, they would have. This whole idea of the 1.1 OGL rescinding the 1.0a OGL sounds like some novel legal theory someone in their legal dept. came up with and...

I do wonder if this was a controlled, intentional leak to test the waters and see JUST how controversial this would be in the community and what the responses would be.

I'll be honest, I always wondered what White Wolf did that ruined them. I remember when NWoD was coming out, I recall it had much improved game mechanics and a substantially improved system. . .but the setting/lore stuff was much worse than original WoD. I recall a brief scandal about them...

In the late 90's, for a little while circa 1997/1998, Vampire was selling as well as D&D. This was when White Wolf was still doing quite well, and D&D was at its all time nadir, but there definitely was a period in the mid-to-late 90's when White Wolf was in the same tier as TSR in terms of...

Yeah, after this the only way I could see them getting goodwill back is to release a version of the OGL that is the OGL 1.0a. . .but with one small alteration. . .a clause specifically saying it is irrevocable and that it cannot be rescinded, unapproved, "de authorized" or anything similar by...

I'm no IP lawyer, just a law student. . .but that's a very good point. My legal thinking (such as it is, again IANAL) is that the parol evidence rule also comes into play. Specifically, the idea of if a version of the existing OGL can be "de authorized", as the entire meaning of "authorized"...

The D&D subreddit r/DnD is absolutely blowing up about the topic at this moment. I'm bowing out because too many amateur lawyers are trying to be instant experts at IP law about the OGL right now.

So, the OGL 1.1 now supposedly "deauthorizes" all prior versions of the OGL, supposedly meaning nobody can use the old version. Needless to say, I'm seeing a meltdown elsewhere on social media about this. So, the question comes, can a new version of the OGL really rescind authorization for an...

Probably never will go away, not in our lifetimes at least. They stopped calling it spell memorization 22 years ago in 3e and replaced it with "preparation", I still hear plenty of people call it "spell memorization". People tend to use the terms and language from when they learned the hobby...

. . .they weren't alone in that.

I think a bit of historic context as to why the OGL was created, and the SRD's released, would also help clear the air. Back in the 1990's, TSR (who, for those who don't remember, was the company that used to make D&D more than a quarter-century ago) was extremely litigious. They were...

Yeah, this isn't anything new. They said it in both 1e and 2e works repeatedly. They downplayed it/ignored it in 3e and later, as the broader D&D multiverse got downplayed in official works, but indeed they've said it before. If anything, this is the first time in about a quarter century...

Probably something contractual. I remember when WotC had the rights to do Star Wars and Wheel of Time RPG's. . .their material/webpages for those just disappeared into the ether with almost no notice, as soon as the licenses expired and with little-to-no fanfare. From 2008 to 2010, there was a...

Why isn't it possible to make historically oriented D&D materials anymore? Seriously, with the OGL you could make historically based materials for D&D 3e/3.5e or 5e, or d20 Modern. The last official historic D&D material I know of was the stuff for a 12th century Robin Hood campaign in one of...

Well, "Lizardmen" became "Lizardfolk" all the way back in 3rd edition. I guess it's not TOO much of a surprise.