Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
That is of course providing that WotC can actually de-authorize the OGL 1.0a. Which is an open question.
Level Up (A5E) Questions From Someone Who Was Looking At A5E Right Before The WOTC/OGL Nonsense
Matt Thomason
Adventurer
It's also providing 3PPs want to continue with the risk of using the OGL after all of this anyway. The threat alone has been enough to trigger "fire sales" of people clearing out their OGL inventory, and for a number of large players to decide to set up an alternative license with clearer terms to assure us it will always be there. The problem is that until there's a test case, that risk of de-authorization will always hang over our heads. So it's a case of examining alternatives to decide if there is an option with less risk, and weighing up all the pros and cons.
For a game that doesn't use anything from WotC's SRDs and has zero risk of them claiming copyright infringement, it seems pretty clear-cut that there are - or at least will be - better licensing options. For a game that is based on their SRDs, it's obviously far more complicated and would require a lot of effort to totally divorce it from those SRDs and therefore any dependency on the OGL (Paizo seem to be happy that PF2 has done so)
Tazawa
Adventurer
Not necessarily. Assuming that you can keep selling existing Level Up rule books, which WotC does not seem to be contesting and rests on very solid legal foundation, you can make an abbreviated reference document under a new license that allows 3PP to support Level Up.
That reference document would contain only the original, non-derivative content in Level Up (of which there is plenty) that you want to share. It could also contain the basic non-copyrightable game mechanics (d20 resolution system, armor class, saving throws, hit points, advantage/disadvantage, etc.). It may be interesting to look at the impact of declaring that these are non-copyrightable game mechanics.
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Tazawa
Adventurer
The point is, there are a ton of 5e players out there with tons of 5e Player’s Handbooks. Level Up is likely the game that is closest to 5e, to the point that content from one game can be used in the other.
Make it easy for those players to pick up a Level Up adventure and play it. Most of an adventure is ‘Product Identity’ and rule content is either new for that adventure or referred to indirectly (e.g. 6 goblins in the bushes—everyone knows where to get the stats).
There’s no need to change the game: dexterity to agility, spell levels to spell circles, etc. These are all game mechanics that exist in hundreds of non-WotC games and can not be copyrighted.
Keep Level Up as it is and use a new license to open up support. But also allow those brave enough to use OGL 1.0(a) to support it using the Level Up SRD and other existing open game content.
Faolyn
(she/her)
A friend of mine really likes that setting. It's basically, "What if Sauron won?" A bleak setting where the evil god and his minions are in charge and the other gods ran off and sealed the world behind them, everyone becomes undead because souls can't travel to the afterlife, most people are enslaved, etc.
Larnievc
Hero
Crikey. Sounds like a grim place.
Faolyn
(she/her)
Larnievc
Hero
Sounds like a great interpretation of a Dying Earth setting.
Nebulous
Legend
Midnight was originally a 3.x setting from Fantasy Flight games, imagined as if Sauron had won the war of the ring, subjugated the world, and the heroes are the only resistance left. It was epic, dark, fun, and had a huge amount of sourcebooks to go with the original game. I don't know what the remake will look like (different developer) but I can attest that the 3.5 corebook was amazing.
I played in a game with that premise that used Iron Heroes. Had a blast.
