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.

​

 

[Reynard]

No. I don't.
They've absolutely read my website and never contacted me for violating the OGL by not publishing under it

EN World isn't violating the OGL by existing

I'm just telling you what the fan content policy says.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

A "fan content policy" is just that, a policy.

It can change at any time. WotC can just arbitrarily say they don't allow fans to produce anything for D&D, at any time, at their discretion.

It's as revocable as OGL 1.1, so it's meaningless and worthless.

dude they have had this policy since the 90's they COULD revoke it anytime...but why would they? and why would we worry about some weird thing they MIGHT do?

 

[bedir than]

I'm just telling you what the fan content policy says.

I'm just telling you that this is settled case law.
Fan fiction isn't illegal. Twilight exists, it made billions.

 

[wingsandsword]

dude they have had this policy since the 90's they COULD revoke it anytime...but why would they? and why would we worry about some weird thing they MIGHT do?

They've had OGL 1.0a for 22 years. . .nobody thought they could ever revoke it.

. . .so just because something has been around a long time or nobody thought it would happen has just been proven irrelevant by WotC's recent actions.

 

[Reynard]

I'm just telling you that this is settled case law.
Fan fiction isn't illegal. Twilight exists, it made billions.

I was specifically talking about game mechanics.

 

[bedir than]

I was specifically talking about game mechanics.

If you think WotC is going to go after every publication of not for profit game mechanics then you are insisting that every single table playing the game is in danger of a lawyer knocking on their door.

Since every table has at least one mechanical variant are you really suggesting that WotC is going to forbid playing D&D?

 

[rcade]

Here's something I've been thinking about. Any publisher who decides to fight this is going to have to be super-comfy with their own implementation of the license and with Hasbro lawyers combing through all their published materials looking for violations/breaches. And in many cases, I assume those potential issues will themselves fall within gray areas subject to interpretation by a court.

I would not have felt super-comfy with any such process during my time running the RPG business at FFG.

Yep. OGL 1.0 created a safe harbor that even the smallest RPG publishers could trust.

Hasbro's actions have already cast into serious doubt whether there's going to be a safe harbor at all. If you're a small- to medium-sized RPG publisher putting out a new game that was going to be OGL-licensed and derived from the SRD, the risk is likely to be unbearably high.

 

[Reynard]

If you think WotC is going to go after every publication of not for profit game mechanics then you are insisting that every single table playing the game is in danger of a lawyer knocking on their door.

Since every table has at least one mechanical variant are you really suggesting that WotC is going to forbid playing D&D?

Why are you constructing straw men? All I said was if you post mechanics online you are technically under the OGL not the Fan Content Policy. That's all. Whether WotC would be motivated to pull a TSR and attack such content wasn't an assertion I made.

If you are looking to attack a WotC defender, you got the wrong person. I'm not. I'm just trying to help bring clarity where I can in a discussion that is absolutely rife with misunderstanding, misinformation, and, frankly, purely fanciful assessments of the situation.

 

[rknop]

If you think WotC is going to go after every publication of not for profit game mechanics then you are insisting that every single table playing the game is in danger of a lawyer knocking on their door.

Two things to keep in mind. First, TSR did go after fan sites in the 1990s, not with lawyers in person, but with cease & desist letters.

Second, automated copyright enforcement is a thing and has been a thing for some time. It's not universal, it's capricious and (apparently) random, but people have settled for thousands with the RIAA and MPAA, YouTube videos get taken down by copyright bots, etc.

It's entirely reasonable to suppose that WotC may go after fan sites in addition to Paizo, Kickstarter, dtrpg, etc. And while they have a seemingly friendly fan policy now, they are also signaling a propensity for removing friendly policies on short notice- even ones they promised never to removed, and that they previously said they legally couldn't remove.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

They've had OGL 1.0a for 22 years. . .nobody thought they could ever revoke it.

. . .so just because something has been around a long time or nobody thought it would happen has just been proven irrelevant by WotC's recent actions.

I mean we have had "what if they took out the OGL" threads on here since 4e. SO no it's not that nobody thought they could it's that popular opnion was it would be hard to not possible.

I never said it wasn't possible they change the fan policy, I said there is no reason to assume they will and worry about it now. So far the new OGL isn't fully open and isn't as generous as the old... but it still allows for 80-90% of creators (those making less then $750k a year) to keep on going with only a little change.

I work 40-50 hours a week, my fiancé is closer to 40-42 and just picked up a side job for 8-10 more hours (at better pay) starting next week. My mother lives with us and gets both retirement, social security AND a pay out from and IRA (mandatory min pay outs) if you add all 3 of us together we don't make 750k a year. If you add my friend who works at a comic shop, and my friend that works at Walmart in to make 5 of us (even though we don't live together) we don't make $750k a year. (TBF I did choose the lowest paid friends not the highest there)

There are problems. There are REAL victims, including the guy who makes it possible to have this conversation... you a fan with some fan works are NOT the victim here. People could lose there main source of income over this. Keep that in mind.