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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[Tazawa]

This is the thing I was complaining about up thread. I don’t think it’s in the spirit of the license to declare everything outside of the source SRD as Product Identity, but what’s you can do about it? Probably not much of anything.

It isn't in the spirit of the license or against the spirit of the license to not create additional open game content. It simply is.

The goal of the license isn't to create open content for its own sake, it is to create gaming material that is compatible with D&D and spread its network of influence.

The reason Pathfinder (for example) adds open game content (they don't have to) is that they want to allow people to create compatible content and spread Pathfinder's influence.

 

[kenada]

It isn't in the spirit of the license or against the spirit of the license to not create additional open game content. It simply is.

The goal of the license isn't to create open content for its own sake, it is to create gaming material that is compatible with D&D and spread its network of influence.

The reason Pathfinder (for example) adds open game content (they don't have to) is that they want to allow people to create compatible content and spread Pathfinder's influence.

That’s fair. I just dislike that it’s possible to draw from the pool of OGC without having to contribute anything back. It’s the same how I prefer copyleft licenses like the GNU GPL for software over permissive ones like the BSD or MIT licenses.

 

[Micah Sweet]

figured as much Would be so nice if not everything were apparently completely up to interpretation

That used to be the whole point of the OGL.

 

[Staffan]

That’s fair. I just dislike that it’s possible to draw from the pool of OGC without having to contribute anything back. It’s the same how I prefer copyleft licenses like the GNU GPL for software over permissive ones like the BSD or MIT licenses.

I think the d20 STL used to require that a certain percentage of the work (5%?) was OGC. Not necessarily new OGC, but at least OGC.

 

[mamba]

I think the d20 STL used to require that a certain percentage of the work (5%?) was OGC. Not necessarily new OGC, but at least OGC.

what is the point of forcing 5% of existing OGC to be included? Either you need new content under it or I fail to see the point of the requirement

 

[Ondath]

what is the point of forcing 5% of existing OGC to be included? Either you need new content under it or I fail to see the point of the requirement

Perhaps making sure that your d20 system uses at least the common foundation as the other d20 systems? The point of the d20 system was to standardise D&D's d20 mechanic for different genres and allow people to jump from one game to another (so a person who played a d20 World of Darkness game could go "Huh, this game was cool, I guess I could give D&D 3.5 a try").

 

[Staffan]

what is the point of forcing 5% of existing OGC to be included? Either you need new content under it or I fail to see the point of the requirement

Presumably because then you need to have a way to define what's new OGC and what isn't. For example, stat blocks are generally OGC, right? But what if I have a stat block of a caster with a bunch of spells from the SRD? Is that part of the stat block new OGC (because it's a stat block I wrote) or is it old OGC (because they're all old spells)?

 

[Staffan]

Perhaps making sure that your d20 system uses at least the common foundation as the other d20 systems? The point of the d20 system was to standardise D&D's d20 mechanic for different genres and allow people to jump from one game to another (so a person who played a d20 World of Darkness game could go "Huh, this game was cool, I guess I could give D&D 3.5 a try").

That was a different part of the d20 STL. There was a long list of terms you were not allowed to change, in order to make sure d20-branded stuff was actually compatible with D&D.

 

[Reynard]

So it is up to me whether my 'Goblin Dragonarcher' is OGC or not, there is nothing that says it has to be... which was my point

This is super shakey ground and I have seen people argue that you can't, in fact, designate the stat block of the Goblin Dragonarcher as PI. You can designate the name and likeness and story and ecology as PI, but not the stat block.

Now, I am not a lawyer or even adjacent, but I have been freelance writing and designing since the inception of the OGL. I have worked on specially licensed products (Gamma World d20) and for small and big publishers (I have designed monsters for Starfinder, for example). I don't mean that as an appeal to authority, just to illustrate that I have been involved for a long time. And in my experience most people who I have worked for have followed the interpretation that anything derivative of OGC is itself OGC and publishers that try and PI their game mechanics are at least working against the intent of the OGL, if not in violation of it.

 

[Reynard]

what is the point of forcing 5% of existing OGC to be included? Either you need new content under it or I fail to see the point of the requirement

the d20STL went away a long time ago but if I remember correctly the point was that you weren't supposed to use it to vanity press your novel or generic world book. it existed to support D&D in a much more explicit (and restrictive) way than the OGL.