Kyle Brink (D&D Exec Producer) On OGL Controversy & One D&D (Summary)

The YouTube channel 3 Black Halflings spoke to WotC's Kyle Brink (executive producer, D&D) about the recent Open Game License events, amongst other things. It's an hour-plus long interview (which you can watch below) but here are some of the highlights of what Brink said. Note these are my paraphrases, so I encourage you to listen to the actual interview for full context if you have time.

OGL v1.1 Events

• There was a concern that the OGL allowed Facebook to make a D&D Metaverse without WotC involvement.
• Re. the OGL decisions, WotC had gotten themselves into a 'terrible place' and are grateful for the feedback that allowed them to see that.
• The royalties in OGL v1.1 were there as a giant deterrent to mega corporations.
• Kyle Brink is not familiar with what happened in the private meetings with certain publishers in December, although was aware that meetings were taking place.
• When the OGL v1.1 document became public, WotC had already abandoned much of it.
• The response from WotC coinciding with D&D Beyond subscription cancellations was a coincidence as it takes longer than that to modify a legal document.
• The atmosphere in WotC during the delay before making an announcement after the OGL v1.1 went public was 'bad' -- fear of making it worse if they said anything. The feeling was that they should not talk, just deliver the new version.
• Brink does not know who wrote the unpopular 'you won but we won too' announcement and saw it the same time we did. He was not happy with it.
• 'Draft' contracts can have dates and boxes for signatures. Despite the leaked version going to some publishers, it was not final or published.
• There were dissenting voices within WotC regarding the OGL v1.1, but once the company had agreed how to proceed, everybody did the best they could to deliver.
• The dissenting voices were not given enough weight to effect change. Brinks' team is now involved in the process and can influence decisions.
• The SRD release into Creative Commmons is a one-way door; there can be no takeback.

One D&D

• The intention is that all of the new [One D&D] updates they are doing, "the SRD will be updated to remain compatible with all of that". This might be with updted rules or with bridging language like 'change the word race to species'.
• Anything built with the current SRD will be 100% compatible with the new rules.
• Brink does not think there is a plan to, and does not see the value, in creating a new OGL just for One D&D. When/if they put more stuff into the public space, they'd do it through Creative Commons.
• WotC doesn't think of One D&D as a new edition. He feels it's more like what happened with 3.5. They think 5E is great, but coud be better and play faster and easier with more room for roleplay, so there is stuff they can do to improve it but not replace it.

Inclusivity

• WotC is leaning on the community to discourage bad actors and hateful content, rather than counting on a legal document.
• They are working on an adaptable content policy describing what they consider to be hateful content which will apply to WotC's work (no legal structure to apply it to anybody else).
• They now have external inclusivity reviewers (as of last fall) who look over every word and report back. They are putting old content through the same process before reprints.
• Previously cultural consultances were used for spot reviews on things they thought might be problematic, but not everything (e.g. Hadozee).
• The problematic Hadozee content was written by a trusted senior person at WotC, and very few people saw it before publication.
• 'DnDShorts' video on the internal workings and management culture of WotC is not something Brinks can talk on, but it is not reflective of his team. Each team has its own culture.
• In the last couple of years the D&D team hiring process has made the team more inclusive.
• When asked about non white-CIS-men in leadership positions at WotC, Brinks referred to some designers and authors. He said 'guys like me, we're leaving the workforce, to be blunt' and 'I'm not the face of the hobby any more'. It is important that the creators at WotC look like the players. 'Guys like me can't leave soon enough'.

Virtual Tabletops (VTTs)/Digital Gaming

• Goal is to make more ways to play ('and' not 'instead') including a cool looking 3D space.
• Digital gaming is not meant to replace books etc., but to be additive.
• The strategy is to give players a choice, and WotC will go where the player interests lie.

​

 

[billd91]

It is an issue in Germany too. For. Long it is acknowledged that women in higher up positions are underrepresented.

There are solutions in place, which are still controversial in parts.

You think that's controversial? Just wait until Germany starts redressing its history of anti-Turkish discrimination...

 

[doctorhook]

I’m still suspicious of WotC and not super interested in their products currently, BUT I’m cautiously optimistic from Kyle Brinks’ responses. (But but I’m also not inclined to fully trust a corporate mouthpiece who lacks authority to speak for the entire company either.)

Anyway, if this is true… I will cautiously consider WotC products in the future. Still like other producers better, but maybe we can’t escape the gravity of 5E now anyway. (If the d20 System was a gravity well that swallowed everything after OGL 1.0, then CC + SRD 5.1 is a supermassive black hole that this hobby might never escape.)

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Would you specify?

At least three (likely) outright lies:

1. "the document was made public we had already abandoned a lot of the things that were problematic because the feedback we were getting we just hadn't published that update yet"

Given the very short timeframe from the date the document was leaked, until the planned deadline for 3PP publishers to sign on (or have their villages razed to the ground), this does not ring true.

Define "a lot of." "A lot of" could be punctuation changes.

2. "from [...] a fan perspective [it may seem] that nothing actually changed until the decline in D&D Beyond subscriptions; like "that can't be a coincidence surely!"; well it it also can [be a coincidence] because it takes a long time to actually modify a legal document when you have a lot of stakeholders it you can't turn on a dime and so it can't it actually couldn't have been turned around in response to the decline in subscriptions because that would have been too fast it would have been too short a time period for a corporation our size to pull that off with a legal document with a bunch of stakeholders um and so we were already working on that document before the folks who decided to stop subscribing decided to stop doing that it's the main reason that we weren't ready."

This is likely to be an outright lie.

Look: His and their salaries depend on stopping the D&D Begone movement. This is not a court of law. Words which imply that "it can be a coincidence" can be inwardly "meant" to actually mean "co-incide", so that there's technically no lie.

In any case, Three Black Halflings are not the FBI or Federal Securities Commission. Brink is empowered and coached to say certain things which disempower and deflect the momentum of D&D Beyond cancellations. Whatever it takes.

The phrase "it takes a long time to modify a legal document" for "a corporation of our size to pull that off" does not ring true. It sounds like a mixed “awe-inducing” (we are BIG and lawyered) + “humble admission” (gee, we’re a big corporation).

3. "I honestly don't know who contributed to the unsigned statement before I started posting[.]"

That is unlikely. Picture the WOTC office environment, and the news-making repercussions of that announcement. It is not easy to imagine that he does not know. Even if the rest of his statement is true (that he didn't know of the announcement until it was posted), it is very likely that he and others in WOTC management (at all levels) asked around, to find out what the heck was going on, and who wrote these news-making words. He may be defining "know" in the casuistic sense of "officially know", and in the pragmatic sense of: "know and be able to tell you without losing my job." Which, in the everyday sense, would be a lie.

Look: any name attached to that infamous gaslighting statement would have their career ruined for a decade or more. It is almost certainly a firm internal policy to not reveal who the "anonymous" "committee" is...and they may very well include among them a high-powered lawyer / law firm, who could sue for slander or breach of confidentiality.

Again, it's not like Brink is being interviewed by the FBI. Outside of a "federal case", folks in these business positions define "know" in whatever way matches the strategy which is demanded by the one who signs the paycheck (and thus the house-payment, childrens' college tuition, etc.).

What does the phrase "contributed to" really mean? It could very well mean: "I cannot or will not confirm the name of literally every person who was officially involved in 'contributing to' the unsigned statement. In other words, I cannot or will not list the names who made up the 'committee' of persons in the room when the statement was crafted, the name of the typist, and the webmaster who put the statement up. Or at least, it's my job to say I don't know, and to not ruin their careers by saying their name(s)."

Note: Later he refers to that statement as being drafted by "committee." It is very likely he informally knows who was in the "committee." Even if he, by policy: "does not know."

Since according to Brink, the "committee's" bumbling was the chief inspiration/reason for him stepping up to serve as a personalized voice of WOTC. One does not step up to serve as a community punching bag without knowing who and what got one into this position. Brink is likely getting paid 'hazard pay' for this sacrificial role! I'm also not saying that Brink isn't doing his job in a courageous-ish way. A person can take courageous action within a business context and still be mixing strategically disempowering lies with powerful, revelatory, empathy-evoking truths.

The rest of the statement may be true: "and [Brink] saw it the same time we did. He was not happy with it."

Mixing an untruth with a powerful, empathetic truth is a technique.


***
Of course I am not in a position to say 100% whether these three statements are true or false. I am saying that it is reasonable to suggest they are examples of strategically crafted words (i.e. outright lies), which are intentionally blended with empathy-evoking truths.

***
Lastly, in regard to the supposed fear of Facebook Metaverse and Disney...this sounds to me like a total fabrication, just to turn the audience's view toward an even larger "corporate scare." Like: "See, we're not a big bad corporation...we were afraid too! We were afraid of these even bigger corporations! Look!"

And since Brink isn't accusing FB and Disney of doing anything "wrong", those companies don't care whether Brink uses their names in his "scary" story. It may be true that WOTC execs may have "talked about" the FB and Disney concerns at one time or another. But that does not preclude the execs being actually primarily motivated by the factors which appear more obvious to a reasonable observer, including such reasonable observers as former VP of WOTC, Ryan Dancey. In other words: clear the field of all TRPG "competition", take all their stuff, lock all d20 companies into an eternal taxation scheme which will stifle the arising of any mid-sized entity (such as Paizo)...in addition to the VTT stuff, which apparently motivated Chris Cao.

However, if those "fears" were actually any factor, it shows an astounding ignorance of what a pencil & paper tabletop RPG actually is, and what the actual ecosystem is which sustains that...and how we could not care less whether FB or Disney made a RPG based off the d20 system!

If some higher-up's fears of FB and Disney were true, it reminds me of how a Hasbro lawyer during the 3E era convinced WOTC not to take the offered Middle-earth license and make a Middle-earth d20 RPG, out of (an eccentric and unreasonable) fear of WOTC being targeted by the government as a monopoly. (!) Sometimes company lawyers and execs strangely champion their own eccentric scary "pet cause" just to justify the importance of their job.

Clearsighted leadership sees through this sort of shtuff! (Though it may be a total fabrication.)

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Of course I am not in a position to say 100% whether these three statements are true or false. I am saying that it is reasonable to suggest they are examples of strategically crafted words (i.e. outright lies).

Which is a much different statement than you originally made. So I am thankful to @darjr for asking you to provide back up and to you for coming forward to add more detail.

 

[Scribe]

3. "I honestly don't know who contributed to the unsigned statement before I started posting[.]"

That is unlikely. Picture the WOTC office environment, and the news-making repercussions of that announcement.

I mean he could "honestly" not know, if he was "honestly" not told and never asked. Plausible deniability.

There is literally zero, zero, chance, he could not find out or be told who it was.

 

[EthanSental]

Is chris cao (ceo at hasbro) and autocorrect or intentional misspelling of his name or is there another guy with the Cao last name? I’ve seen that cao through out the last few OGL threads and was curious,

 

[Minigiant]

The phrase "it takes a long time to modify a legal document" for "a corporation of our size to pull that off" does not ring true.

It could be if its an incomplete statement.

It doesn't take a long time to modify a legal document.

As someone who worked in corporate, it might take a long time to get all the approvals to change a legal document and get everything down the chain to get everything done.

Chances are... someone saw what was happening and got some of the stuff ready or was in preparation for when they got the calls from the down the chain from the higher up,

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Which is a much different statement than you originally made. So I am thankful to @darjr for asking you to provide back up and to you for coming forward to add more detail.

Huh? My original statement was:

"There are probably at least three outright lies in that interview."

That's what I said.

 

[mamba]

I think the misunderstanding we're having here is that Kyle doesn't seem to consider one D&D as needing an entirely new SRD. So he's referring to the existing SRD.

No he doesn't, just listened to it again. Go to 27:00, the question is then cut off a little, but you are right at his answer

Or if you are too lazy, here is not exactly a transcript, but close enough

"3BH: Is it the intention of WotC to add 1DD content to the SRD?

Kyle: 1DD is not finished, but the intention is that all of the rule updates, including 1DD, the SRD will be updated to maintain compatibility with that. How exactly compatibility is maintained is up to the rules designers.
One thing I can guarantee is that it will be 100% compatible, anything you build with the SRD will work within the rules."

Obviously the last reference to SRD is to the future SRD, not the existing one, notice 'will be compatible'

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Huh? My original statement was:

"There are probably at least three outright lies in that interview."

That's what I said.

You are correct. My bad for going from memory instead of checking. Sorry!