D&D General Interview with Chris Cocks on D&D AI, the OGL, and more

[Mistwell]

You can release new versions of the OGL. It's just that people can use material released for any version of the OGL along with any other version of the OGL – essentially meaning you can never make it less permissive.

A new OGL does nothing for prior releases, unless those companies/people re-release under the new version. Which they could already do right now with the CC. In other worse, there is NOTHING that can return the situation to the status quo prior to what happened. You can't make people re-release material under the new OGL. Releasing a new OGL doesn't return all those prior books to being under the that new OGL. Some of those companies don't even exist anymore or involve people no longer in the industry.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:
@mamba and @Alzrius

The two of you are being exceedingly rude, by way of making it about each other rather than about your points. It looks like at least one of you has decided to stop, but do know that your interaction style was seen and noted.

 

[Art Waring]

I can't say that his attempt at an apology is not genuine, but his comments are quite revealing about how little he understands the original point of the OGL, and how little he understands the creators that have contributed 24+ years of work to a collective pool of ideas that make up the entirety of the OGL.

The original OGL was both a promise to the gaming community that they wouldn't do exactly what they tried to do during the OGL 1.1 debacle, and it was also a safeguard for the game itself, to protect it from any corporation or individual that would try to destroy the games legacy (a stark lesson from the TSR days when the game almost died).

I think that he could benefit from reading Wotc's original OGL FAQ, which already covered many of these topics in detail.

Furthermore, their IP was never in any danger from anyone. The OGL specifically prohibits the use of any dnd IP, and it even restricts you from being able to use real world terms that they have claimed in their PI (like the word Hades, Elysium, Acheron, ect).

Quoted from the OGL 1.0a

The following items are designated Product Identity, as defined in Section 1(e) of the Open Game License Version 1.0a, and are subject to the conditions set forth in Section 7 of the OGL, and are not Open Content: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master, Monster Manual, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, d20 (when used as a trademark), Forgotten Realms, Faerûn, proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items), places, Red Wizard of Thay, the City of Union, Heroic Domains of Ysgard, Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo, Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Infinite Layers of the Abyss, Tarterian Depths of Carceri, Gray Waste of Hades, Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, Nine Hells of Baator, Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, Twin Paradises of Bytopia, Blessed Fields of Elysium, Wilderness of the Beastlands, Olympian Glades of Arborea, Concordant Domain of the Outlands, Sigil, Lady of Pain, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti.

All of the rest of the SRD is Open Game Content as described in Section 1(d) of the License.

 

[occam]

I don't see "we are wrong, we are sorry,"

He literally said:

"we did it wrong." (= "we are wrong")
"And we apologized." (="we are sorry")

I see "That was a long time ago and we already said sorry, why won't people stop harping on it?"

You don't think you're bringing something extra to this?

 

[Charlaquin]

He literally said:

"we did it wrong." (= "we are wrong")
"And we apologized." (="we are sorry"


You don't think you're bringing something extra to this?

Apologized. Past tense. That communicates a different sentiment than “we are sorry,” present participle.

Also, “that was a year and a half ago,” suggesting that we should consider that amount of time having past as a relevant factor in interpreting the response.

Also, “I think we quickly made amends.” Generally not good form to assume the other party’s acceptance of your apology.

 

[mamba]

"we did it wrong." (= "we are wrong")
"And we apologized." (="we are sorry")

eh, that feels like a bit of a stretch, ‘we did it wrong’ does not mean we were wrong to me, that goes with the ‘foot and mouth disease’ and means our communication was bad even though our intent was good. The ‘we apologized’ reads more like a ‘why are we even still talking about this, time to move on’ than a renewal of the apology.

It’s his version of the ‘I am sorry if my comment offended you’ non-apology. I am not at all impressed with how he handled that question, could not have been much worse short of insulting 3pps and customers

 

[Charlaquin]

Also, unimportant nitpick, but to put your foot in your mouth is an idiom meaning to “say or do something by accident that might embarrass or upset someone.” foot-and-mouth-disease is a viral infection in cloven-hoofed animals that causes fever and blisters on the hooves and mouths.

 

[tetrasodium]

eh, that feels like a bit of a stretch, ‘we did it wrong’ does not mean we were wrong to me, that goes with the ‘foot and mouth disease’ and means our communication was bad even though our intent was good. The ‘we apologized’ reads more like a ‘why are we even still talking about this, time to move on’ than a renewal of the apology.

It’s his version of the ‘I am sorry if my comment offended you’ non-apology. I am not at all impressed with how he handled that question, could not have been much worse short of insulting 3pps and customers

You left out a pretty important reason to go with the ones that you mentioned for why people are justifiably skeptical over a statement like "we did wrong" ... Namely the fact that this was the second time they tried to kill the OGL. The GSL was their first failure at doing it "right". OGL 1.1 was the second and some of the initial reports on it were dismissed on the idea that nobody at such a large company would be stupid enough to try a second bite at it after the GSL did so much to help drag 4e down. Saying "we did it wrong" implies that there is a right way and leaves open the door for a third try at figuring out how to accomplish the goal of murdering d&D's open license "right".

 

[Scribe]

and it even restricts you from being able to use real world terms that they have claimed in their PI (like the word Hades, Elysium, Acheron, ect).

 

[Helena Real]

At some point soon I need to start a thread explaining how we use AI for our games. But I will briefly mention the aspect I think has been most useful. We digitally record all our sessions (with player permission), run the audio through a speech to text AI that formats it pretty well with character and NPC names and such, then run a template summary AI page over that text to provide a "Last Session" summary. The last session summary includes a summary of what happened, treasure found, spells and other resources used, goals achieves, goals established but still outstanding, and more. And we use that at the beginning of our next session.

I cannot emphasize how useful this is for our sessions. We used to spend 10 minutes going over what happened before, forgot treasure all the time, that sort of stuff. Now, we have this cool one-sheet that covers it all and we're up to speed much faster.

I have my DM's permission to provide more on this in it's own thread and will do so hopefully soon. It's....pretty rad.

I'm sorry but this sounds terrifingly dystopian to me. The day I use monstrous LLMs to replace the beautiful and organic "last session recap" where all players get to contribute and reminisce, getting us all pump up for the upcoming session, is the day I'll stop playing RPGs