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.

​

 

[Sacrosanct]

i think the “hate” part is a reaction to NuTSR. Maybe.

Or Venger Satanis, who has a whole line that is problematic. There's a reason he was banned from running his games in stores.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yes. And you bring up a good point. Could be something else entirely. Though even so I think NuTSR played a role. Was the osr adventure they tried to make OGL? I dint remember.

many of their "products', including the most recent Pesky Goblinz, should be using the OGL, because they are using the same presentation as in the OGL. I bet they aren't, because LaNasa doesn't understand copyright like, at all. But he should be using it based on what he's publishing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What are the selling points of Castles and Crusades, if you don't mind?

Castles & Crusades is AD&D running on a modified D20 engine. So it has a unified resolution system (the SIEGE Engine, which is slightly different than the standard D20 system), but things like different XP charts per class to balance them rather than balance by level, by default spell-less rangers and paladins but multiple multiclassing systems that allow you to easily recreate rangers and paladins with spells -- or assassins with spells, fighters with spells, etc.

A large portion of the basics of 5E appear to be strongly inspired by the answers C&C had come up with years before, although it has less character customization/power than 3E and 5E have. (No feats for instance, and skills are largely abstracted.)

The game is comically easy to adapt anything from OD&D through 3E (and, I'd guess, 5E) into C&C on the fly. I ran C&C through the 4E era and found it incredibly easy to run and easy to say "yes" to players wanting to bring in outside concepts or to homebrew ideas. If I was running it again today, I'd say yes to even more, since it's extremely hard to break.

If you like old school aesthetics and feel, but don't like how stripped down many OSR games are in comparison to modern games, C&C is a great option.

Although they've produced a ton of content -- including stuff with Gary and Luke Gygax -- the products are very much a labor of love by a handful of Dr. Pepper-loving gamers, who seem to be deeply good guys.

Honestly, the only ding against the books is that the Troll Lords don't sweat typos and such the way that most publishers do. This drives some folks to distraction but is no big deal to their biggest fans.

Castles & Crusades is a great, great system, especially for folks who came up with 1E.

 

[Alzrius]

You can get the PDF of the previous (7th) print PHB for free, so you can check yourself.

For those interested, you can find the Castles & Crusades Players Handbook (affiliate link) on DriveThruRPG.

 

[humble minion]

• 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.

Personally, I find this line of argument about 1.1 being designed as a shield against Disney or Facebook or someone moving in and stealth-annexing D&D or replacing it with a VR environment to be unbelievable. As in, I literally don't believe it.

If that was the case, 1.1 would not have had all that language about 'the OGL was never intended to enable our major competitors', which was aimed very squarely at Paizo and Pathfinder. If that was the case, there would never have been the requirement about sending WotC a copy of everything published under the OGL, because how do you send someone a copy of the Metaverse? And even before all that, pretty much all the $750k threshold clauses, obscenity clauses, WotC approval clauses etc etc etc are utterly redundant as a Meta-deterrent because OGL 1.1 already explicitly ruled out products other than books or pdfs. These measures in 1.1 were aimed very squarely and deliberately at 3pps, and to me, any claim otherwise looks entirely implausible and unsupported by the black and white text of 1.1.

There's quite a bit of massaging of history going on here, it looks to me. Clearly Brink is on a PR reputation repair tour here, he's going around every major D&D youtuber or whatever and trying to mend bridges. Fair enough, there's a lot of bridges to mend. And yeah, I have no reason to doubt what he says when he claims that he and/or the D&D team had little involvement in the design of the new OGL and weren't happy when it came out. But right now, the guy has a job to do and that job is to fix his employer's reputation with the customer base. I think he is, to be charitable, putting the most WotC-friendly spin on the facts as he possibly can (which is only to be expected, really). For instance, he knew that these interviews were coming, he knew what his job was, and the sort of questions that he was likely to be asked. But he's pleading ignorance about what happened in the NDA-covered meetings with the 3pps, and who wrote the 'we won too!' press release? I've done presentations to stakeholders, and rule one is that you prepare. He could have very easily gone to the people who WERE in the meeting with the 3pps and asked. He could have gotten his hands on the meeting minutes, or the presentation notes that WotC used to run the meeting in the first place, or the post-meeting reports etc. Not doing this looks a lot to me like a choice, that conveniently allows him to plead ignorance.

I'll be interested to see how the WotC line evolves in subsequent interviews. But as Brink himself says, I'll judge on actions rather than words. Personally, I still won't believe that WotC has legit changed their spots until we start seeing a few high-level departures from the executive over the next few months.

 

[ValamirCleaver]

Perhaps they feel they don't need to buy anything from them because current product is not being marketed to them?

I just dropped $250 on Castles and Crusades.

Last week I dropped $400 for hardcopies of Adventures Dark and Deep. I prefer reactive, emergent gameplay & combat as war.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

• There has been increasing diversity in the pool of designers while maintaining quality.

There might have been increasing diversity in the pool of designers, no issues there, but the quality of products over the last couple years has been the worst I've seen in over 20 years. Totally not saying it is diversity's fault but the quality has been just terrible.

Nah quality has been top notch. I’d rather have Tasha’s, DL:SoTDQ, Fizban’s, and Spelljammer, over anything published for 3.0.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Yes. And you bring up a good point. Could be something else entirely. Though even so I think NuTSR played a role. Was the osr adventure they tried to make OGL? I dint remember.

Still. Interesting.

So Di you think it’s something else we dint quite know of yet?

I have never had anyone give me a good example of any OGL hate product. Occassionally I will see someone that people feel has problematic views (people's milage varies on that), but not an actual product.

So I have heavily discounted such claims as it is all based on who the people are vs. the materials.

 

[HectorsNemesis]

That's very clearly what Brink means. But when he says "guys like me can't leave soon enough for this hobby," those last three words tend to present the rest of the sentence in a way that's almost begging for misinterpretation.

If Kyle Brink really believed what he said there, he would resign.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh this was in the works for a while. Before he came to WotC over two years again. And they were afraid if Disney big in the digital space!

Disney has an image that it works very hard to maintain, and D&D doesn't really fit that image.