EN Publishing & The OGL

Like everybody else in the Open Gaming community, we at EN Publishing have been scrambling to understand what WotC's leaked plans mean for us as a company, and how best to proceed forward. We feel a deep responsibility not only to our customers, creator community, freelancers, and employees, but also to the wider Open Gaming community. We have been publishing under the OGL for over 20 years...

Like everybody else in the Open Gaming community, we at EN Publishing have been scrambling to understand what WotC's leaked plans mean for us as a company, and how best to proceed forward. We feel a deep responsibility not only to our customers, creator community, freelancers, and employees, but also to the wider Open Gaming community. We have been publishing under the OGL for over 20 years, supporting and expanding the game we love.

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At present, we do not know how this will all play out. Whatever happens, it is clear that we cannot operate in an environment where our very existence lies at the whim of another company, and so we are taking steps to secure the core of our business in the future. To this end we are looking into the practicalities of a two-pronged approach.

1) We will be investing more heavily in What's OLD is NEW, our in-house lifepath/d6 dice-pool system, beginning with a new starter set. This will be available to third party creators under the most open, non-revocable license* we can find.

2) We have begun investigating the possibility of 'de-OGL-ifying' Level Up: Advanced 5E. This is a big task, but we have a head-start in that in A5E we rewrote every word of the 5E SRD (and expanded it greatly), with only names (spells, classes, etc.) remaining the same. There are legal nuances to this, so we can't go into too much detail, but rest assured we will make sure we are covering ourselves. Again, we will make this available under the most open, non-revocable license* we can find.

We are at very early stages with both of these projects, and the exact approach -- or even viability -- is yet to be determined, whether that is via Kickstarter or some other method. We will keep you posted.

What about projects we currently have planned? Level Up's To Save A Kingdom and Voidrunner's Codex, as well as our new starter set, are well along the development path. If we can still release them under the OGL v1 as planned, we will. Otherwise, we will try our best to figure out some other way to get those products to you.

We don't know what the future holds for Open Gaming, but we at EN Publishing are committed to it. Open Gaming was essential to D&D 3E's growth in the early 2000s; it has been a large part of 5E's popularity; and it has supported a massive community of amazing, talented creators and indie publishers, amongst whom we are proud to be counted.

*We have not yet chosen a license, and will be taking advice before we do so; options might include Creative Commons, or a new license, but rest assure it will be (a) genuinely open and (b) genuinely non-revocable.
 

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Knightfall

World of Kulan DM
A few days ago, I decided to invest in two of the main Level Up books (as well as many other OGL PDF books from other publishers) in support of those creators that are going to be affected by the OGL 1.1, if WotC does try to pull the rug out from those publishers using the OGL.
 

Knightfall

World of Kulan DM
Yup if WotC doesn't change path, Dragonlance will be my last purchase from them. I mainly brought it from nostalgia anyway. And would happily heck a re publishing of all the A5E books I already have, fingers crossed the backlash is big enough. But outside us hardcore types, I'm not sure it will even make a ripple in today's player base, come into the hobby in multi media wake
I still haven't bought the Spelljammer set, and, now, I'm not sure I even want to buy it... even though I LOVE Spelljammer. I just bought the Starfinder version of Starjammer. I'm going to probably use that instead for one of my key homebrewed settings.
 

Wonderful! My only comment is that this shouldn't be done in a vacuum. Kobold is rallying the troops, so (IMO) the best path forward is an industry partnership dedicated to releasing a truly open source game system.
Agreed. It would certainly be a beneficial if LevelUp could tap into an alternative network externalities cluster, if it's cut off from D&D.
 

Prime_Evil

Adventurer
I have concerns about a potential proliferation of licensing schemes. At the moment, many creators are leaning towards Creative Commons. But some are working towards their own open licenses. I don't doubt everyone's sincerity. But this makes it hard to reference or combine open content from multiple publishers. Is there any chance EN Publishing could work with other companies to determine a common licensing approach? Or at least agree to a dual licensing scheme of some kind?
 




BMaC

Adventurer
Somewhat disappointed enworld is not taking as strong a stance as Frog God or Goodman Games.
 
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