D&D Beyond Twitter Account says OGL will be addressed soon

[aco175]

I figured I would go to their OFFICIAL D&D homepage to see what they are saying. To be fair though, I last seen an article posted in early December about owlbears though. I did see this friendly Fan Content Policy page from November. It talks about all the cool fun you can have making things for your friends and posting things but they have to be free and not hurt the image of Wizards

 

[bedir than]

His replacement doesn't seem to have benefited much from the training.

We don't know if the OGL change was at the studio level, or if it was brand, or the C suite

 

[delericho]

What do people think the best case, realistic case, and worst case are? Don't have to answer all three lol.

Best case: WotC make a fulsome apology, issue an OGL1.1 that is that same as 1.0 but tightens the language guaranteeing that it is irrevocable, and over the next few months things revert to the status quo ante. I don't expect this to happen.

Realistic case: The damage is already done, and it doesn't actually matter what happens with the OGL.

WotC has burned a huge amount of goodwill, the enthusiasm for OneD&D has been seriously dented, they've lost an awful lot of their third-party support, and they've lost a relatively small but relatively vocal chunk of their customer base. The movie fails (not necessarily because of this - there was a good chance it was going to anyway). OneD&D is dogged with a low level of backlash throughout development, and releases to a collective "meh" as the bubble deflates. And we go from there.

Meanwhile, for the 3pp the outlook is pretty dire. A lot of the smaller providers shut up shop. The mid-level providers generally shift away from OGL, as it is no longer the safe harbour they thought. We get a number of competing "D&D substitute" games, but none really gets traction. Some companies go bust, a lot go on but with much lower sales generally (but the overall market share probably remains about the same - 95%+ WotC-D&D, 5% other - just a much smaller pie).

Worst case: WotC double down on OGL1.1, have Kickstarter block any campaign that tries to use OGL1.0, and have OneBookShelf remove all OGL1.0 product from their servers (in the worst case, including already-sold items). Paizo choose to fight, and lose heavily, being bankrupted as a consequence. Emboldened by their win, WotC then sue EN Publishing over Level Up, and ENWorld goes dark as a consequence.

The former 3pp attempt to pivot away from OGL, but suddenly deprived of a market or funding they mostly fail.

And because of the backlash that results from all of this, the D&D movie crashes and burns, D&D sees a huge drop off in subscriptions, OneD&D releases and sells about as well as late 2nd Edition adventures, and D&D is stuffed in the Hasbro Vault of Dead IP.

Gaming as we know it comes to an end, and dogs and cats start living together. Oh, and it turns out that his weekly D&D fix was the one thing stopping Putin launching Armageddon.

I'll just note, I didn't say it was a likely case.

 

[mhd]

I wouldn't be too surprised to hear a lot of apologies and them "asking for time to review the issues presented". Not mentioning that those aren't the concerns of the fans, but the legal holes that came up. And in 1-3 months, we'll get a new OGL 1.2, now with even more "We're gamers, too, LOL" fluff, and more merciless crunch.

 

[NaturalZero]

The longer this goes on without official word and the more I read on here, on reddit, and the discord, the more exciting this cluster-f gets in the community. It's like slowing down to watch a car crash and realizing that a plane could crash into the car crash at any moment.

 

[Jadeite]

Even if they released an unrevocable version of OGL 1.0a, at this point there's a pretty high chance that 3PPs would use it as a base for a 5e continuation instead of supporting WotCs vision of the game. They regained trust once with 5e using the OGL again, but 3PPs would be foolish to trust them again after such a display of willingness(maybe even intent) to harm them. So there's little reason for them to release such a license.

 

[delericho]

Even if they released an unrevocable version of OGL 1.0a, at this point there's a pretty high chance that 3PPs would use it as a base for a 5e continuation instead of supporting WotCs vision of the game.

That's true. And that might be a factor in their thinking - for all the talk about the OGL giving rise to a direct competitor, the actual biggest competitor for OneD&D will be people deciding to stick with 5e-classic.

 

[Yaarel]

Maybe the best case scenario is, Hasbro-WotC goes full Roman Empire, forcing everyone to fight in court?

So the courts can clarify the status of the OGL 1.0a one way or an other.

 

[jgbrowning]

Maybe the best case scenario is, Hasbro-WotC goes full Roman Empire, forcing everyone to fight in court?

So the courts can clarify the status of the OGL 1.0a one way or an other.

IMO, the best case is WotC saying, "We phrased our intent poorly, and to demonstrate that, we're releasing a 1.0b OGL license that is the 10.a license that includes the word 'irrevocable'" If they did that, I believe much of the damage would be assuaged. Sadly, I think that is extremely, unlikely. Extremely, extremely, extremely, unlikely.

joe b.

 

[reelo]

IMO, the best case is WotC saying, "We phrased our intent poorly, and to demonstrate that, we're releasing a 1.0b OGL license that is the 10.a license that includes the word 'irrevocable'" If they did that, I believe much of the damage would be assuaged. Sadly, I think that is extremely, unlikely. Extremely, extremely, extremely, unlikely.

joe b.

For me —and this is really just my hope— is that 1.0a is maintained, or rather updated to include "irrevocable", and that OSR- and Indie-folks can continue doing what they do, with full assurance that they can never be bothered legally by this from here on to eternity.
Whatever happens to ≥5E henceforth is of less interest to me personally. Though for the sake of the whole TTRPG community, I hope WotC is forced on a "walk to Canossa".

If the whole thing leads to the emergence and usage of MORE systems (OGL or no!) I think it's a good thing overall.