Ryan Dancey -- Hasbro Cannot Deauthorize OGL

I reached out to the architect of the original Open Gaming License, former VP of Wizard of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, and asked his opinion about the current plan by WotC to 'deauthorize' the current OGL in favour of a new one.

He responded as follows:

Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked.

Ryan also maintains the Open Gaming Foundation.

As has been noted previously, even WotC in its own OGL FAQ did not believe at the time that the licence could be revoked.

7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?

Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.

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[GMforPowergamers]

my initial reply was to

'it' being 4e, not sure what 4e > PF tells us about the relation of 3e to 4e

I am walking away please don't tag me, I don't want to go against Umbral here,

 

[Mecheon]

I am going to keep this as calm as I can but...

We know their employee numbers though -- and WotC's D&D employees, too. That tells you all you need to know.

At D&D's nadir, they were down to about 6 (SIX) full-time employees at WotC working on D&D. Paizo's full-time employees were at about 80. C'mon. You can't be sure? Really? Really? This is willful blindness now.

I wouldn't call it 'willful blindless', I'd call it 'Underestimating the staying power of the brand Dungeons and Dragons'

To illustrate, here's Google Trends from Jan 01 2009 until today on Pathfinder (Just the word, blue, so may be grabbing some other stuff) versus Dungeons and Dragons, the specific term, in red.

The one unambiguous spike above it? November, 2012. Well after 4E was dead.

 

[Reynard]

Looking online, they are simply sheltered under the 1.0a 5.1 SRD. It's royalty free.

Am I missing something? Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Yeah, that stone in my WotC shoe is still there it seems.

I mean, you were on the website. It was right there.

 

[MoonSong]

Isn’t the fact that no one seems to agree whether or not the license is revocable evidence that it isn’t clear?

contra proferentem There seems to be a principle that in take it or leave it agreements any ambiguity shall be held against the party who redacted the contract.

 

[Reynard]

did not see any terms in the announcement that they licensed the SRD and would have been surprised to find any. They are under an NDA, so I would be surprised if all they had were the OGL and free access. Assuming they paid nothing, your initial point stands

Apparently because you didn't want to? It's not a secret. They made an ecstatic announcement.

 

[Haplo781]

Well, we cannot go by what WotC said for the obvious reason I already pointed out, they were talking about initial sales and cannot have meant lifetime.

So we are left with how did WotC act, and having a revision 2 years after the initial release is not a sign of health. That revision being dropped two years later altogether is not either. Product lines being cancelled before they even started (Dragonlance 4e) because sales fell off a cliff also does not improve that picture.

So yes, we have no definitive numbers, but if 4e had outsold 3e, then WotC behaved pretty erratically during that time.

It did outsell the previous edition, as every iteration of D&D has since 1e.

It didn't hit Hasbro's ridiculous sales goals of $50 million per year, so they decided it was a "failure".

 

[MoonSong]

Since @RyanD is here, I wonder if the OGF would be the natural host for a legal defense fund on GoFundMe or similar. Some folks may have some dollars that were going to be spent on the new edition.

And overpriced luxury cardboard rectangles...

 

[Steel_Wind]

I mean, you were on the website. It was right there.

You need to read it. That's just the 1.0a, it's royalty free. I linked to it.

 

[tomBitonti]

Here's my thoughts on the matter, for what they're worth.

This means that any previously publish work under the OGL is fine providing that you don't agree to the new license, because the new license says that the user agrees to alter previously existing licenses how WotC wants them altered.

joe b.

Additional text omitted. My problem is how the modification is stated. I’m not seeing how a simple assertion of fact, which may or may not be true, has any meaning in a contract. I can imagine wordings that might work. I don’t see the simple assertion doing anything.

TomB

 

[mamba]

Apparently because you didn't want to? It's not a secret. They made an ecstatic announcement.

I don’t think that says what you think it does… they can use the SRD, sure, but they are not doing so under the OGL. They would not be under an NDA if that were all it was (or really had anything worth announcing for that matter)