D&D General Looking for Articles about Third Party D&D creators Impacted by OGL not being available for 4th Edition D&D Released

[DNDElise]

Looking for articles, blogs, or forum posts about how third party D&D creators impacted by OGL not being released for 4th edition D&D released and related OGL history.

Worried we are headed toward change in OGL for new editions when it comes to D&D's upcoming future and the impact that it is going to have on the TTRPG community of creators. I think looking into the 4e transition and OGL not being available for some eidtions will help us brace for impact regarding the current situation we are facing as indie creators. #OpenDND

 

[Omand]

There is an entire thread about how the OGL cannot go away right below your post (at the moment) in this very forum:
WotC - What's All This About The OGL Going Away?

Long story short, the OGL cannot go away.

Cheers

 

[Voadam]

So for 4th WotC did not release any of it under the OGL. They did not rescind or alter the Open Game License, they just did not put out anything under it that would allow others to easily use the OGL to produce 4e material.

They originally were planning on licensing out 4e third party rights for $10,000 per license, then scrapped that and put out the restrictive 4e GSL with no buy in cost, but lots of restrictions including the option of having stuff taken away at any time. WotC revised the 4e GSL at one point to take out an OGL poison pill section that the original GSL had that would have required people to give up publishing anything under the OGL forever for a product line that they used the GSL for, even if their rights under the GSL were terminated.

Some 3rd party companies put out some 4e stuff under the OGL. Early Goodman Games 4e stuff was done so while they switched to the GSL for later 4e products. Kenzer whose principal is an IP lawyer and has been publishing D&D compatible stuff since 2e, put out a 4e campaign book under no license.

A number of companies used the 4e GSL to put out 4e 3rd party products, but it was nowhere near the number that put out stuff for 3e under the OGL or for Pathfinder 1e under the OGL.

4e was mechanically fairly different from anything published under the 3e srd, so without an OGC system reference document of open game content 4e base rules to work off of that was clearly authorized under the terms of the OGL, a number of companies were hesitant to touch 4e type stuff under the OGL, or to take up the restrictive GSL, particularly when there was the easy to use Pathfinder SRD OGC OGL material to build off of and pathfinder was doing well.

Just going onto say DrivethruRPG if you can narrow a search by product type you can get some numbers for comparison.

 

[Dire Bare]

There is an entire thread about how the OGL cannot go away right below your post (at the moment) in this very forum:
WotC - What's All This About The OGL Going Away?

Long story short, the OGL cannot go away.

Cheers

No, but it didn't during 4E either . . . . gamers tend to move along with new editions, and not be terribly interested in 3rd party products writing for the previous edition. So, if One D&D doesn't have an OGL, or has a delayed one, it can impact those writing for the game.

The lack of an OGL tied to the 4th Edition pushed some interesting changes in the industry, and was the catalyst for the Pathfinder game and the entire OSR movement. Creators found a way around the "no OGL" problem, but it definitely had an impact on creators and their ability to reach the audience.

That said, I'm not worried about it. There is ZERO evidence that WotC is thinking about ditching the OGL again, and One D&D isn't going to be that different from the existing 5th Edition game. Folks writing for 5th Edition D&D have very little to actually worry about.

However . . . . anybody tying their main income to writing for somebody's else's game does have to realize at some point that WotC might move in a direction that leaves them behind. That's exactly why Paizo created Pathfinder, to break that reliance on WotC. It was a wise move.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Even if there's no SRD for 1D&D, from the playtest materials we've seen so far 1D&D uses more or less the same terminology as 5e, so it should be fairly simple for 3rd party publishers to produce 1D&D compatible material based only on the 5e SRD.

 

[billd91]

Part of the issue with 4e moving away from the OGL was replacement with the more restrictive GSL, which included provisions a lot more threatening to a 3rd party publisher’s business model.

A particularly influential publisher was Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games. He objected to the initial version of the GSL and, even after they revised it, thought it was still too damaging or risky to his company’s IP. This was a pretty big hit for the 3pp community because Clark was a HUGE cheerleader for D&D and had been very positive about the impending 4e revision.

Here’s a thread with some of the story:

paizo.com - Forums / Alpha Playtest Feedback: General Discussion: Necromancer Games, Clark, and the Paizo

 

[billd91]

And here’s a thread started by Erik Mona about the issues they had in the time period preceding the 4e release.

paizo.com - Forums: 4th Edition: 4.0: PAIZO IS STILL UNDECIDED

 

[aco175]

I have not seen much from a lot of companies that was around. I'm sure most are still around and doing fine, but not as D&D or not as a focus for their line. Companies like Green Ronin, AEG, and Mongoose had stuff I bought, but now, I'm not even sure they are making anything.

 

[dave2008]

Looking for articles, blogs, or forum posts about how third party D&D creators impacted by OGL disappearing when 4th edition D&D released and related OGL history.

Worried we are headed toward change in OGL when it comes to D&D's upcoming future and the impact that it is going to have on the TTRPG community of creators. I think looking into the 4e transition and the loss of OGL will help us brace for impact regarding the current situation we are facing as indie creators. #OpenDND

The OGL can't go away and didn't go away during 4th edition (I mean that is precisely why we got Pathfinder). You can create 4e based content using the OGL. There are very few things that were part of the GSL (the 4e license) that were not part of the OGL/OGC. People chose not too do that (mostly) and the mostly chose not to publish under the GSL as well. This may have more to do with 4e than whole OGL/GSL issue.

 

[DNDElise]

Part of the issue with 4e moving away from the OGL was replacement with the more restrictive GSL, which included provisions a lot more threatening to a 3rd party publisher’s business model.

A particularly influential publisher was Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games. He objected to the initial version of the GSL and, even after they revised it, thought it was still too damaging or risky to his company’s IP. This was a pretty big hit for the 3pp community because Clark was a HUGE cheerleader for D&D and had been very positive about the impending 4e revision.

Here’s a thread with some of the story:

paizo.com - Forums / Alpha Playtest Feedback: General Discussion: Necromancer Games, Clark, and the Paizo

These are some great links. Thank you for sharing me. Wonder if history is going to repeat itself.

 

[dave2008]

These are some great links. Thank you for sharing me. Wonder if history is going to repeat itself.

As has been noted many times, not likely. '24 D&D is, at this point, very similar to current 5e. A new SRD is not likely to be needed for 3PP to create products for '24 D&D. Just like one hasn't been needed since 2016, the last time the 5e SRD was updated. 3PP have being creating products just fine for the last 6 years without a new SRD and will like be able to do so past 2024.

However, I do hope they update the 5e SRD as things have been added since 2016 (like the artificer and mythic monsters, which are not in the SRD) that would be nice to have.

 

[gametaku]

The lack of an OGL tied to the 4th Edition pushed some interesting changes in the industry, and was the catalyst for the Pathfinder game and the entire OSR movement. Creators found a way around the "no OGL" problem, but it definitely had an impact on creators and their ability to reach the audience.

Except that the OSR predates 4th edition by a least a couple of years.

 

[billd91]

These are some great links. Thank you for sharing me. Wonder if history is going to repeat itself.

I doubt it. At least, I would hope that WotC had learned a valuable lesson to avoid poison pill provisions in any of their licenses. Plus, it's hard to imagine many big changes with OneD&D that will diverge enough from the 5e materials.

That doesn't mean that there aren't new factors that they may leverage. For example, D&D Beyond adds a new wrinkle that may involve special licensing for a 3rd party publisher to gain access, same with any other developments along the lines of virtual tabletops. My guess is that's the area where there will be a lot of new license considerations to work out.

 

[TerraDave]

The most extreme case would be no 5.50 SRD or its equivalent, second most extreme would be a new license linked to 5.50 (which is essentially what happened to 4e). Yet, from the promises around the 2024 edition it should not even matter: its all compatible!

You would also have to wonder what the problem is that is being solved. With 3.0 a lot of stuff came out, or very mixed quality. It was called a glut. 5e has some good 3rd party material, but nothing like that has happened. DMs guild also channels a lot of that energy into a forum over which WoTC presumably has some control, and maybe a cut.

 

[humble minion]

You would also have to wonder what the problem is that is being solved. With 3.0 a lot of stuff came out, or very mixed quality. It was called a glut. 5e has some good 3rd party material, but nothing like that has happened. DMs guild also channels a lot of that energy into a forum over which WoTC presumably has some control, and maybe a cut.

Without having crunched any numbers, I suspect there's a vastly greater amount of material available for 5th ed than there was in the d20 glut. Stable and routine markets for electronic products, the rise of the crowdfunding economy, accessible PoD, and DMsGuild's art licencing policy have vastly lowered the cost barriers to entry in the market. A brand new publisher can whip something up in their spare time as a labor of love, and not have to come up with funds ahead of time to pay for printing, art etc, and then try to work out a way to get in contact with distributors and publishers, and then convince jaded game shops to physically stock the thing.

There's no equivalent, these days, of the game shops stuck with shelves upon shelves of low-quality d20 shovelware and heartbreakers that are money losers. That was where the real problems with the d20 glut came home to roost. It costs almost nothing for DMSGuild or DTRPG to add new products to inventory, or keep them permanently available once they're there. And while I suspect a lot of it has very low sales, and I know as a fact it's of widely varying quality, an unsuccessful modern 3pp publication just sits in DTRPGs archive, rather than gathering dust and taking up space for years on a game store's shelf. The failure percentage is, I suspect, similar, but not as visible now.

 

[DNDElise]

I doubt it. At least, I would hope that WotC had learned a valuable lesson to avoid poison pill provisions in any of their licenses. Plus, it's hard to imagine many big changes with OneD&D that will diverge enough from the 5e materials.

That doesn't mean that there aren't new factors that they may leverage. For example, D&D Beyond adds a new wrinkle that may involve special licensing for a 3rd party publisher to gain access, same with any other developments along the lines of virtual tabletops. My guess is that's the area where there will be a lot of new license considerations to work out.

Thank you for sharing your insights! Hopefully there won't be too much change in regards to OGL with D&D5.5.