D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[WinningerR]

I think you're in a better position than most to know how likely WotC would be to send a scary letter.

DMsG creators sign an agreement with R20, not WotC.

 

[MerricB]

Great comment! I just want to point out that I agree the 50% can and should come down. I made the B&M comparison only to put the issue into perspective and illustrate that while 50% is high, it’s not crazy. Apps based on licensed IP distributed through Apple’s App Store (the closest comp to distributing your own Forgotten Realms sourcebook through DMsG) are giving up 45% (Apple’s 30 plus typical licensing cost).

The scariest content deals I've heard rumours about are from Bethesda Game Studio and their fan-made Creations.

And it's "rumours" because I can't find definite figures. They don't make the split public. (Their first attempt at this program, a decade ago, gave the creators a "princely" 25%. And you thought the 50% taken by the DMs Guild was high!)

 

[mamba]

That's how I became familiar with your work. The YouTube algorithm said "well, you've used up all of Matt Colville's advice videos, how about this guy?"

And now I have all the Lazy DM books and Forge of Foes.

that sounds like my story

 

[Shardstone]

Has anyone probed the limits of what DMsG’s “perpetual exclusive right to publish your content” actually means? Can I, for instance, publish an OGL “mass battle system” on DTRPG and simultaneously publish a subset of that system that includes army lists for proprietary D&D settings like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, et. al. via the DMsG? After all, those are certainly not the same product. What if the DMsG product shares the same system, but doesn’t incorporate the actual text of the DTRPG product? What if the DMsG product is just the army lists and customers need to purchase the DTRP product to use them?

Kobold Press among others had stuff on both DMs Guild and their own website.

 

[mamba]

Kobold Press among others had stuff on both DMs Guild and their own website.

DTRPG, not DMsG…

 

[dave2008]

DMsG creators sign an agreement with R20, not WotC.

Do you mean with OBS (the owners of DriveThruRPG)?

 

[Reynard]

Do you mean with OBS (the owners of DriveThruRPG)?

it's the same picture.

 

[SlyFlourish]

That's how I became familiar with your work. The YouTube algorithm said "well, you've used up all of Matt Colville's advice videos, how about this guy?"

And now I have all the Lazy DM books and Forge of Foes.

Yay! Thank you!

 

[TiQuinn]

Well this has been a very educational, fantastic thread!

 

[M.T. Black]

Has anyone probed the limits of what DMsG’s “perpetual exclusive right to publish your content” actually means? Can I, for instance, publish an OGL “mass battle system” on DTRPG and simultaneously publish a subset of that system that includes army lists for proprietary D&D settings like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, et. al. via the DMsG? After all, those are certainly not the same product. What if the DMsG product shares the same system, but doesn’t incorporate the actual text of the DTRPG product? What if the DMsG product is just the army lists and customers need to purchase the DTRP product to use them?

A few of us asked about this in the early years (perhaps 2017). The OBS rep at the time said that they would not allow you to publish substantially similar products on both the DMs Guild and DTRPG. I can't recall the exact language, but the way he spoke suggested a very strict and narrow interpretation of the contract.

Two caveats. The person in question (I won't name him) is long gone from that role. He may have been acting like a martinet, but a more charitable explanation is that it was early days, and no-one quite knew how things should work. I imagine that OBS were especially wary of upsetting WOTC in those early days.

The other caveat is that I spoke to an intellectual property lawyer about this issue several years ago and he read through the DMs Guild agreement. His view was that anything that was not exclusive WOTC IP (Drizzt, Waterdeep, etc etc) still belonged to the creator, and you could do what you wished with it.

In practice, I can't see either WOTC or OBS really caring so long as you don't use their IP.