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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 8879107" data-attributes="member: 6879661">There are a couple of questions that are floating my head.Q - Can WOC issue a licence that is more favorable to them? (Reporting, royalties etc) A - Yes of courseQ - Can they force third parties to accept it?A - Maybe. Which is the same as yes if they have an army of lawyers and 95% of licensees don’t have the funds to challenge it in court. That said it only needs one gambling person with deep pockets to challenge it successfully in court.Q - Are they likely to upset the 3pp to that extent.A - It depends on whether they feel they have cover from a PR/Community point of view towards 3pp by offering free use up to a point.My gut feeling is that WOC considers the IP theirs - particularly the stuff they have developed recently.We know that D&D 5e is an order of magnitude bigger than it was then the OGL was released.We know that they wish to monetize the brand further and free use of IP probably stings like a fishhook in the ass.Ryan Dancey unfortunately no longer works for WOC and WOC can easily say circumstances have changed. They can say that 5e is a fundamentally different product, and that they are spending money developing and promoting something that didn’t exist when the OGL was created.WOC/Hasbro almost certainly have lawyers who are advising them that there is either enough cover or possibility that they can win to make the change worth it.I suspect they are gambling that the majority of 3pp will accept the new license - if grudgingly because it’s terms aren’t too onerous. Those that won’t because they are of a size that it is onerous are competition for D&D anyway and either aren’t producing content for 5e (Paizo) or aren’t big enough/are to dependent to find it worth fighting them (EN Publishing), Kobold Press etc etc.Cleverly by getting this out of the way now they are ensuring that the fallout happens now, rather than during the launch of whatever the One D&D playtest turns into. I’m not surprised it’s leaked early.</blockquote>

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