An Unexpected Victory, Unconditional Surrender, and Unfinished Business.

[robconley]

The older stuff is going to be fine.

That is what the hobby thought as of November 30th 2022. And now we are here.

 

[Maxperson]

That is what the hobby thought as of November 30th 2022. And now we are here.

Yep. But ONLY because WotC took a shot at 5e. The older stuff was purely collateral damage to that shot. Now that shot is useless to take as it can't do anything, so the older stuff has nothing to be collateral damage to.

 

[pemerton]

The goal I advocate is the independence of the hobby and industry from the D&D brand and the company that owns it.

To be honest, the vibe I get from reading posts on this forum is that identification with the D&D brand and the company that owns is the predominant orientation in RPGing.

Threads about the rankings of WotC-published books on Amazon; posts that reply to discussions of non-D&D approaches to RPGing that reference sales volumes of various indie RPGs compared to D&D; posts in the General RPG sub-forum that nevertheless treat D&D and D&D-style RPGing as normative for RPGing in general. There seems to me to be an almost overwhelming tendency to use D&D as a yardstick and baseline for thinking about RPGing.

@pemerton

We are talking about a commercial licensing dispute. It has two elements - the commercial element, and the legal/licensing element. Despite the endless (virtual) ink that has been spilled on that second element, my view is that it is largely irrelevant.

The better legal view is that the OGL in is current form grants parties to it a power to license to new parties all the material that has been licensed to them. And the most plausible view, particularly when past WotC representations and conduct are taken into account, is that that power survives a withdrawal by WotC of its offer to issue new licences over its material.

Despite this being the predominant view of the legal situation, in post after post the OGL has been decreed "dead".

So what is the point of a revised version of the OGL? Whatever the revised wording, WotC will be able to make assertions about its powers and wishes and so on which, however implausible, are unlikely to be more implausible than some of those that occurred in the current drama. (The continuing widespread lack of understanding about the legal operation and effect of private licensing schemes helps WotC in this respect.)

The relevant dynamic, here, is not a lack of legal protection provided by the OGL but the commercial power of WotC, and the fact that so many RPG publishers have adopted a business model which puts another, much bigger, entity's copyrighted work at the centre of their own business model. And so, suppose, in the future, that WotC purports to withdraw its offer to license the SRD under CC-BY? How will that be any different from the current OGL drama?

Or consider another possibility: suppose that Paizo successfully extricates PF and SF from the WotC-based licensing regime, and starts its own new licensing regime under ORC. And then, suppose that N years down the track Paizo purports to do, in relation to the licensing of its works under ORC, exactly what WotC has done over the past month?

I can't see how changes to the minutiae of the texts of licensing agreements will affect any of this. These are commercial disputes, not legal ones. What changed WotC's mind was almost certainly commercial considerations - loss of subscription, bad press, etc. I find it almost impossible to believe that there was any change in WotC's beliefs about what its legal position was.

Which brings this post back to what I said at its beginning: the RPG hobby seems to be overwhelming oriented around a single commercial publishing house - WotC - together with a handful of others that live largely within its shadow and more or less emulate its model (eg Paizo). There are "lifestyle" reasons for this (eg brand identification in a consumption-based society). There are play preference reasons for this (eg the desire, in RPG play, to have access to an ongoing stream of high quality published stories). There are complex reasons that result from the interplay of those other factor (eg the desire to have ongoing, carefully curated "canon" stories ready to hand as part of the play experience).

I don't see this state of affairs changing in any hurry.

 

[Mistwell]

Dustin_00's reply addresses the intended benefit of ORC over OGL 1.0a. Listing the benefits of ORC over CC would likely look very different, but if we assume it in effect try to do the same things as OGL1.0a it would include things like:

• More convenient use from multiple sources.
• SA default limited in a way that appear acceptable to most companies (No small feat).
• Actually strengthening protection of key IP - something CC cannot provide. This make it more easy to sell in to big IP holders (For licensed RPGs for instance).
• Single license relevant for the domain prevent needing expertise on the tricky field of cross-licensing to enter the market on similar footing as the rest, even as an amateur.

I think the complication with all those points is if you want to use 1.0a content, you're going to also need to also use 1.0a or CC licenses with it. Which makes it more complicated rather than less. If all you're doing is using 100% original stuff with core rules (no copyrighted content) then sure ORC can be a clean method of doing it. But if you want a Beholder in it, you'll need to also include a CC license. In which case just about all of those benefits go away.

 

[Saracenus]

@pemerton,

Right now we are weathered the hurricane accessing the damage done. In this moment of relative calm we can breath a sigh of relief that the worst that could have happened, did not. The insurance we thought we had, the OGL 1.0a, is not a solid as we believed. So, now everyone is casting about trying to figure out how to best weather the next one... Unfortunately, it is too early to tell what it is we need to do to repair the damage and where the safest harbor is for 3PP publishers.

Slipping out of my hurricane disaster metaphor, it is just to early to tell what Paizo (ORC, PF SRD), Kobold Press (Black Flag SRD), and MCDM (unnamed project) are going to do and how successful they will be. ORC is an idea with some goals laid out, we don't have anything solid to make a prediction about what Paizo could or could not do in the future with it. If their word is to believed, they will not be able to break the ORC license once they set it in motion, but that is just words right now.

The creative commons of the SRD 5.1 has a solid and irrevocable license protecting it (no take-backsies). We are just working out the benefits and limitations of that license. Kobold Press has announced a project using this license. It will be interesting to see what they do.

OGL 1.0a, for now, is safe. The 3.0, 3.5, and 5.1 SRD can be used with it (as I understand it) but aside from WotC's word for the moment it still could be potentially "de-authorized." Again, we can speculate till the cows come home about the likelihood and the arguments for an against this position, but until it hits the courts and they makes a ruling, we will never be 100% certain.

Right now any 3PP of D&D compatible material should be talking to their lawyers (they should have been doing so when this disaster first hit) to assess their risk publishing right at this moment. If it were me (I am not a 3PP of D&D content), I would be cautious and let this develop until I had a clearer picture of where this is all going. But then again I don't have skin in the game and I don't have payroll to meet, printers to deal with, etc, etc...

 

[Maxperson]

The creative commons of the SRD 5.1 has a solid and irrevocable license protecting it (no take-backsies). We are just working out the benefits and limitations of that license. Kobold Press has announced a project using this license. It will be interesting to see what they do.

It does. What I believe @pemerton's point is, is that WotC can still make the claim that it is withdrawing that license and that will still sow a lot of doubt in the industry. A lot of people either don't know the law, or don't believe the claims, and/or believe that they could not monetarily survive a legal challenge by WotC despite it being something that they should win if it went to court.

 

[pemerton]

The creative commons of the SRD 5.1 has a solid and irrevocable license protecting it (no take-backsies).

Do you mean the CC licence?

I don't see how that is any more solid than the OGL. Personally I actually think it's clearer that, and how, a withdrawal by WotC of its offer to licence under the OGL has no effect on downstream users, than is the case for the CC licence.

 

[Haplo781]

Do you mean the CC licence?

I don't see how that is any more solid than the OGL. Personally I actually think it's clearer that, and how, a withdrawal by WotC of its offer to licence under the OGL has no effect on downstream users, than is the case for the CC licence.

A CC license can't be withdrawn. That's the entire point.

 

[Saracenus]

Do you mean the CC licence?

I don't see how that is any more solid than the OGL. Personally I actually think it's clearer that, and how, a withdrawal by WotC of its offer to licence under the OGL has no effect on downstream users, than is the case for the CC licence.

CC = Creative Commons. No they cannot take back the SRD 5.1-CC they have given under the CC-BY-4.0. It is irrevocable. Full. Stop.
WotC does not control license.
See: CC FAQ - What happens if the author decides to revoke the CC license to material I am using?

What happens if the author decides to revoke the CC license to material I am using?
The CC licenses are irrevocable. This means that once you receive material under a CC license, you will always have the right to use it under those license terms, even if the licensor changes his or her mind and stops distributing under the CC license terms. Of course, you may choose to respect the licensor’s wishes and stop using the work.

Unless there is some arcane way to undo what the license is designed (has been road tested) to do, I don't know what you are talking about.
The only way an individual author/company could be stopped from using this license is if they do not give the proper attribution as per the CC-BY-4.0 contract terms. And that is an easy fix.
No morality clauses, no medium restrictions, nothing.

 

[Saracenus]

@Maxperson, and I could be hit by a meteor, directly on my head. Anything is "possible."
Sure WotC could stop distributing under CC-BY 4.0 but they have no legal leg to stand on if someone continues to use the material. If WotC even tried there would be so much blow back from beyond our little pond in the TTRPG world that it would make what just happened with the OGL look like the most brilliant idea, ever. I would hate to be in charge of the crowd-sourced money campaign that would spring up for their legal defense.

I would be more worried about the downsides to a CC license. For example I don't think you could make a licensed property with it. That was the point of the OGL, it could separate the Open from the Closed material. IANAL, so do not take this a legal advice.