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.

​

 

[darjr]

Please note this is also an example of how otherwise good people can support something bad. If you ever find yourself in a similar position speak up. Apparently folks inside did and must have been shut down, before the OGL 1.1 leaks.

For now it looks like they rule the day.

 

[darjr]

Oh! He said the SRD will be updated to be compatible to one dnd!!!

But that way could be bridging language.

Does that mean cc?

And he guarantees it’ll be 100% compatible.

Finally note, people at corporations come and go.

 

[OB1]

20 minutes in, these interviewers are great! Really digging into the fundamental questions.

I think the biggest fear driving WotC was Meta deciding to drop several hundred million dollars into a 5e clone VTT for Oculus. And I could see why investors would be concerned about the money WotC is spending to create its own VTT with that type of competition out there. Anyhow back to listening!

 

[Scribe]

3.5 SRD going into CC??

 

[Jer]

Haven’t gone through the whole thing yet, but when he is saying ‘OGL 1.1 was a terrible way to approach the goals we had in mind, which is why it was easy for us to abandon it’, then I do wonder why it looked the way it did

I've said it elsewhere, but I have a strong suspicion that everything we saw from the outside was actually just the visible part of the iceberg that was a whole bunch of internal politics going on inside of Wizards/Hasbro. I suspect that there were people making exactly the argument that OGL 1.1 was the wrong approach to begin with, but were shouted down/ignored/deliberately frozen out/some other corporate political maneuver you use when you're sure you're right and you're in power. And when it blew up in the faces of the people who were pushing it, the group who was telling them they were wrong all along had a plan to recover, though even there I suspect "put it under CC-BY" was a move they weren't intending to do and only felt like they had to because the OGL's reputation had been tainted so badly that they knew people didn't trust it.

Usually in a company bad ideas happen because one dummy with a lot of power has a bad idea, the people around them are yes-men who won't contradict them, and the folks who know it's a bad idea are frozen out of the decision making process because they aren't yes-men. This whole debacle has all of the hallmarks of that. (I've seen far too many of these things over my life - the result of working for a number of large corporations and then universities - the dynamics aren't that different, just the bad ideas).

 

[Haplo781]

20 minutes in, these interviewers are great! Really digging into the fundamental questions.

I think the biggest fear driving WotC was Meta deciding to drop several hundred million dollars into a 5e clone VTT for Oculus. And I could see why investors would be concerned about the money WotC is spending to create its own VTT with that type of competition out there. Anyhow back to listening!

That part is understandable. Doesn't excuse all the other crap they tried to pull.

 

[darjr]

My gosh tbh is so good! I love these folks.

 

[overgeeked]

@5:30, he says that the royalties were supposed to be a disincentive to keep major companies (e.g. Meta or Disney) from making monetized content via the OGL v1.0a.

EDIT: Reworded the above for clarity.

It’s a really egotistical position to take. And kinda self-delusional on WotC’s part. If Disney had any interest whatever in their IP, through the incredibly limited and limiting OGL, they have had 23 years to exploit it. And haven’t done so. WotC’s IP released into the OGL just isn’t that unique.

 

[Scribe]

Usually in a company bad ideas happen because one dummy with a lot of power has a bad idea, the people around them are yes-men who won't contradict them, and the folks who know it's a bad idea are frozen out of the decision making process because they aren't yes-men. This whole debacle has all of the hallmarks of that. (I've seen far too many of these things over my life - the result of working for a number of large corporations and then universities - the dynamics aren't that different, just the bad ideas).

My own employer is going through this right now. Get the wrong folks at the top, and they can absolutely take the ship in the wrong direction, and it can happen with surprising speed.

 

[Scribe]

It’s a really egotistical position to take. And kinda self-delusional on WotC’s part. If Disney had any interest whatever in their IP, through the incredibly limited and limiting OGL, they have had 23 years to exploit it. And haven’t done so. WotC’s IP released into the OGL just isn’t that unique.

I think it just proves the point.

Wizards doesnt consider the settings, or any story/character as the IP that they worry about. This is kind of obvious when we look at 5e.

They consider (or at least those who instigated this) the rule set as the only IP that matters, and kind of like I said at the start of this, they have these software folks saying "Our source is in the wild, and we have nothing else to put our name on?"

Disney/Meta (lol) absolutely could put a better '5e VTT Clone' out, than Wizards could with the 5e SRD.