The Day Has Come! It's An OGL! And A Store To Buy & Sell D&D 5E Products!

The day has finally come! WotC has just announced a Dungeon Master's Guild. "There’s a new way to buy and share D&D adventures. With the Dungeon Master’s Guild, you’ll be able to self-publish material set in the Forgotten Realms using monsters, spells, characters, and locations." You can self-publish D&D materials, and buy, sell, and share it. It's a partnership between WotC and OBS (the company which runs DTRPG and RPGNow) and they take 50% of the revenue. The guild is only accepting 5E material set in the Forgotten Realms. Not only that, but there's also a new SRD (System Reference Document) for use with the Open Gaming License (OGL)!

So the store, called the Dungeon Master's Guild, is here. It already has some stuff in it. The System Reference Document is here. I'm sure that over the coming days, there will be plenty of in-depth analysis of what all this means. The SRD is an enormous 360-page PDF containing the rules of the game - as yet I haven't had chance to look closely art what's there and what's not. You have two options - publish under the OGL using the SRD, or publish in the Dungeon Master's Guild. The former lets you do more varied stuff, while the latter has tempting nuggets like the possibility of publication by WotC. The OGL route - as far as I can see at first glance - doesn't offer a way to indicate compatibility, or any kind of logo you can use.

There's a bunch of information on the DG (I'll call it that for the moment, because typing out the whole thing is already getting arduous - we need an acronym, and DMG is already taken!), and here are the salient points as far as I can tell:

• You can use a bunch of WotC's IP, including brand names and other vital stuff.
• It's affiliated with DTRPG, and if you charge money it costs you 50% of your revenue (DTRPG normally charges 40% or so).
• There are resources - templates stock art, et. you can use.
• Your work has to be set in the Forgotten Realms. Additional settings may open up later. [UPDATE - you can publish setting agnostic stuff, but if it's in a setting, that setting must be FR]
• You have to agree to a Community Content Agreement (below).
• You cannot sell your stuff elsewhere. It's an exclusive deal.
• You keep ownership of your own IP, but others can use it.
• Your work might be selected for use in an official D&D product or video game.
• There's no approval process, but they reserve the right to withhold payment and pull your content if you break the content guidelines.

​

[h=4]The Community Content Agreement[/h]
For those having trouble finding it, here it is:

This Community Content Agreement (this “Agreement”) is a binding agreement between you, the individual identified by your customer account on this website or the legal entity you represent, and OneBookShelf, Inc. (“OBS”) the parent company of website marketplaces including DriveThruRPG, RPGNow and more.


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Changelog


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[Iosue]

That's a direct contradiction of this bit from the DMGuild FAQ:

Is the FAQ wrong, or is it another case of Mearls not knowing his own rules?

The FAQ is broad. Per the podcast, eventually decades of published material will be available, but like D&D Classics, they're going to open things up slowly but steadily.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I hope I misheard Mike, and that the Realms really is wide open.

It'd be a real pain in the neck to deal with a "this Realms content is OK to use, that's not OK to use" scenario for the foreseeable future, and one that is always in flux.

But if not, not worries. I will just have to focus on the areas listed in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and do my best.

I'll also have to lobby like crazy for WotC to include the map to the adventure Lashan's Fall in the next map pack release (as found in the Old Grey Box, and in Elminster's Guide to the Forgotten Realms).

I have an adventure of my own devising that uses repurposed content from Lashan's Fall, and that makes use of story elements from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, that I'd like to convert to 5E

 

[Henry]

I think it's a fantastic measure of good will to the community, which probably would have never come about if 5E were not as successful as it has been; it gives exactly what's needed for publishers to fill the space left by desire for more material. Just the release of the monster stats and magic items alone gives us the breathing room for publishers to make their publications in line with what wotc's been turning out.

At least gasoline is cheaper now, so i can better afford all these micropurchases i'll be making in the future.

 

[bmcdaniel]

Is it possible to use public domain art (for example, art where copyright has lapsed) in DMs Guild products?

 

[Mark CMG]

I hope I misheard Mike, and that the Realms really is wide open.

It'd be a real pain in the neck to deal with a "this Realms content is OK to use, that's not OK to use" scenario for the foreseeable future, and one that is always in flux.

For those working with the OGL and SRD only, it's a good idea to get out of the mindset that you're using 5E to create stuff and not refer to the books. I'd imagine for those working with the DMGuild, it would be wise to stop thinking about FR-related ideas and start keeping an eye on the list of what is available and let that be your guide. Folks thinking of FR ideas and THEN referring to the list of available IP are going to be one of the biggest complain generating machines of the coming year. Make a mental note each time it comes up.

 

[Kris]

Is it possible to use public domain art (for example, art where copyright has lapsed) in DMs Guild products?

The way I'm reading it is that artwork is treated exactly the same as the text (so you'll have to own the piece in question*, and you'll be sharing it exclusively with the DMsGuild).

Or as they put it:

"You're free to choose from the library of art and maps that we'll be providing, or you can create or commission your own. Paying for art and maps that you commission is your responsibility. All such art and maps must also adhere to our content guidelines and Community Content Agreement."

*so I'm guessing you also couldn't buy/licence some 'publisher art' from RPGNow for example, and then use it in a DMsGuild product.

 

[Jester David]

Looking through the Guild, I think my biggest problem is that publishers cannot be seen. This is a HUGE problem, as it means you cannot search by known names or follow the world of reliable publishers. Everything is just "DM Guild".

 

[Iosue]

Public domain artwork would definitely be a good way to go, because the rights are totally cleared. While your work with that artwork would be copyrighted (and exclusively licensed to DMGuild), the artwork by itself would not be. It remains in public domain.

The only possible pitfall is that it'd have to be public domain in the US. Some things are public domain in other countries but not the US, and vice versa.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I'd imagine for those working with the DMGuild, it would be wise to stop thinking about FR-related ideas and start keeping an eye on the list of what is available and let that be your guide.

This is good advice.

I'm sure you can imagine the frustration, however, when the marketplace is billed as a place where all of the Realms is open to play with, only to see that it aint so.

It's not so much pulling the rug out from underneath, as pulling the whole planet out, minus one slice of one continent.

Folks thinking of FR ideas and THEN referring to the list of available IP are going to be one of the biggest complain generating machines of the coming year.

Complaining for the sake of complaining is always bad, in my book.

But complaining that not enough Realms material is open for use, well to me that's a good thing. I hope people raise hell, constructively.

How? By demanding (if that's not too strong a word) that Wizards of the Coast make it as simple as possible for Guild Member to figure out what is open to use and what isn't.

Consider the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. It's open for use, per the podcast, and Baldur's Gate is certainly on the Sword Coast. The SCAG gives it about a page and a half of treatment.

Yet in that same podcast Mearls corrects (Christopher) Lindsay by saying that content from a novel set in Baldur's Gate isn't open for use, right after Lindsay waxed enthusiastic about gamers deciding to share something on the Guild website that they were originally inspired to create because they read a Realms novel set in Baldur's Gate.

What?

Are content creators really supposed to zero in on all the lore, to differentiate between an idea they had ten years ago and one they had the other day? This doesn't jive with WotC's selling point about people being able to convert their best campaign material into salable content. And how are WotC's staff, who review the content and look for the cream of the crop, supposed to tell? Not everyone has encyclopedic Realmslore knowledge.

Presumably, Murder in Baldur's Gate isn't allowed to be used, but I imagine a lot of new-to-D&D gamers only know Baldur's Gate through that adventure. But, if it inspired you to add on to the adventure or send your campaign in a new direction, tough luck.

Giving a list of allowed books isn't sufficient for content creators.

And on a different note: one side effect of the Guild program seems to be that people are purchasing the core rulebooks that might not otherwise. I don't own them, so the head of a game company I write for is sending me a set, as the SRD has some big holes in it and we want a full grasp of the rules.

 

[77IM]

Regarding the timing of this announcement: I'm not sure they planned it this way, but this timing is very shrewd.

• Wizards has released a major product every few months to keep up the buzz. But it's been a while since OotA dropped and excitement is starting to die down. Maybe the next adventure isn't ready to be announced yet?
• It's after the holidays. Imagine this announcement before the holidays; suddenly a deluge of questionable-quality material is competing with official releases for people's Christmas budget, and may be confusing to non-players trying to buy gifts for their D&D friends.
• They waited over a year to open the floodgates, and in that year they focussed efforts on Adventurer's League and adventure paths. They spent that year establishing a new, unified baseline for what the D&D play experience is supposed to be like. Now people submitting things to DM's Guild are going to be thinking things like, "How will my product be most useful to people playing PotA or OotA or HotDQ or whatever Wizards releases next?" If they had opened the floodgates right away when 5E launched, many OGL authors would be thinking, "How will my products be most useful to PF/4E players?" because that's what everybody was back then.