We All Won – The OGL Three Years Later

[Koloth]

And when that happens, what will the 5E holdout community look like? Will there be a Pathfinder like move by someone with the 5E ruleset? With 2 5E contenders in place -- ToV and A5E -- it seems like some portion of the base would continue playing 5E, but how many? How many current D&D players care about the specifics of the system?

Even assuming that 6E has a CC published SRD, there will be some folks that delay buying new stuff as they finish up current campaigns. Far easier to keep playing whatever version of 5E the group has years invested into then deal with piecemeal conversions as yet another 6E book trickles out. Also the cost of buying yet another edition will put some folks off even if they are D&D fans.

But to tie back to the 'Best of Times' topic, there are already lots of 3rd party support for 5E and variants using a license that would be very difficult for Hasbro to cancel. Even if Hasbro commits a License PR oops V3, lots of RPG options for folks to pick from without any delay. There was a delay while Paizo spun up Pathfinder after the 3.5 -> 4 licensing mess.

 

[SlyFlourish]

For the debacle to have never happened.

But seeing as that's not possible, claiming that anyone won after a completely unnecessary, damaging and hurtful actions were taken is ... kind of sad. Sure, lessons may have been learned and people might be better now than they were before, but damage has happened. Claiming victory is completely belittling the damage was done.

It's like a celebrity making an ugly racists or sexists comment to someone in public and then a third party claiming 2 years later that we are all better now because we have learned not to be racist or sexists and the celebrity has sort of apologized.

A better outcome? How about as others said, WotC actually carry through with the promised to release to CC all the other SRDs? What about a true sincere apology? What about true transparency on what the actual decision process and decision makers were? And what their honest intentions were?

But yea, what we got was about the least worst outcome we could reasonable expect, but not hope for.

Oh I by no means condone what WOTC did. I'm not saying I'm glad they did it or that it didn't harm folks – I know it did.

But if it hadn't happened, I don't know that we'd be better off now. Maybe that leaves a bad taste in our mouths – I can see that – but it doesn't mean we're not in a better place than if they hadn't done it.

I get what you mean – I don't think it's "good" that it happened. But I really think, at this point, the people hurt the most by it are WOTC themselves because some of us will never forget and many will never forgive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm pretty sure D&D One was first announced the year after A5E launched. Because we were like "Typical. How could D&D NOT announce a new edition immediately after we announced a major version of the current edition?"

I mean, it’s fair enough. It’s their game. But just our luck with the timing!

I know that was probably frustrating, but given what 5.5 turned out to be, I'm really glad you published your game before we knew anything about it!

 

[SlyFlourish]

Level Up is compatible with 5e, and works great on its own.

Kobold Press only has one line, ToV. If you are talking about adventures, they are similar enough that there is not much difference, i.e. you need two sets of monster stat blocks and subclasses but that is about it - and that other 'line' is not really yours, it is WotC's, and when you are operating in the 5e space, you are competing with it and the 3pps regardless of whether you also offer your own compatible core game or not


Every 5e adventure works for ToV just as well, you may be missing out on subclasses or have to put a little work in to adjust them to ToV.

Ultimately this is no different than for a TTRPG that is not 5e-compatible, arguably those have it worse because they cannot make use of 5e's ecosystem the way ToV can


Nice, other than ToV I am not sure I can say that any specific TTRPG was made as a consequence of the OGL crisis, but the OGL certainly made me look around and I found games I like better, so I consider that a win for me too

I think Kobold Press said they already had ideas for Tales of the Valiant before the OGL crisis but accelerated it once that happened.

 

[SlyFlourish]

now I'd like some actual proof they've learned and built an institutional norm that will prevent anyone from trying to do anything similar.

What would that look like?

 

[mamba]

the OP largely rests on the idea that 5E being in the CC means that D&D is forever. That only tracks if one assumes 5E is not just the best but the last version of D&D. That's silly, IMO.

no, it rests on the idea that anyone can continue creating 5e compatible material even if WotC has moved on to an incompatible 6e, much like the OSR does today for an older version of D&D.

Whether anyone will and how popular it will be remains to be seen, but the opportunity will exist indefinitely

 

[Cergorach]

From my perspective no one won, some just lost less then others.

WotC stopped using the OGL, they now use CC and thsoe two are not exactly compatible with each other...
The license field shattered with new ones popping up all over the place.
Many publishers vowed support for some license (ORC), most didn't go through with it (making most indie publishers about as trustworthy as WotC in that aspect).
Many publishers stopped using an 'Open' license all together. And those that still do now use licenses that are not compatible with older stuff.

WotC did a TON of damage to the OGL, and then most indies started jumping on the corpse.

 

[SlyFlourish]

If there is a "win" for the community that comes out of OGL, I haven't yet seen it. I don't really think a whole lot has changed. As I said earlier, I mostly just don't understand how so much positive momentum for the brand was allowed to wither away without much of anything being done with it.

For me, the vast array of high-quality RPGs we have with vastly different takes on the game is an example of a big change. That's why I think right now is the time to look at it. Last year we had so many fantastic RPGs released that, in my mind, are of equal production quality to D&D and I think a lot of that energy came from companies going their own way after the OGL crisis.

We don't have access to an alternative universe where it didn't happen but it's hard for me to imagine a better one.

I agree, but even without stirring the 2024 pot, the OP largely rests on the idea that 5E being in the CC means that D&D is forever.

D&D is forever. Absolutely. Look at Old School Essentials. That's BX for crying out loud and it has a huge array of new products that came out and are coming out for it. Absolutely support for 5e will continue to come out as long as there's interest in it and I can't imagine their won't be interest. It's so big.

Of course, this gets into the long argument of what "D&D" actually is. I'm less worried about who holds the trademark than I am about what we have on our shelves and in our hearts that we call D&D.

Additionally, by picking CC-BY rather than CC-BY-SA, Wizards has abandoned part of the principle of the commons, the "copyleft" nature, of the OGL. Beyond the possibility of changing the license for 6E, as above, there's no guarantee that the most popular 5.2 SRD fork, which will plausbly come to pass when WotC abandons it for 6E, will remain open. Between this and poisoning the OGL 1.0a in some folks' eyes, they've hurt the community. Not a ton, compared to the damage they could have done, but I don't think these actions were a net add to the hobby by any means.

This is another argument I've seen for a while and I don't think there's a right answer. Some like the copyleft nature, some don't. I think the copyleft nature boosts the top producers more than it helps those below unless the top producers produce everything under it. Paizo seems to but when Kobold Press was using ORC, for example, they were holding stuff outside of ORC so they could maintain control but not offering that to those below. KP eventually released Black Flag under CC BY and now put no such restrictions on downstream producers which I am really really glad to see.

I can see how some don't like that CC BY doesn't restrict downstream producers from releasing their own material and I've seen how that manifests with other publishers but I still much prefer CC BY and now it doesn't matter because it's been released and can't be taken back.

it seems like some portion of the base would continue playing 5E, but how many?

How many does it need to be? If there are six people playing it, it's still alive. Lots of games with small audiences seem to still be producing cool products. I think it'll be a long time before we stop seeing any new 5e published material.

 

[SlyFlourish]

From my perspective no one won, some just lost less then others.

WotC stopped using the OGL, they now use CC and thsoe two are not exactly compatible with each other...
The license field shattered with new ones popping up all over the place.
Many publishers vowed support for some license (ORC), most didn't go through with it (making most indie publishers about as trustworthy as WotC in that aspect).
Many publishers stopped using an 'Open' license all together. And those that still do now use licenses that are not compatible with older stuff.

WotC did a TON of damage to the OGL, and then most indies started jumping on the corpse.

I think the rise of bespoke licenses is a problem, yeah. I also think, though, that with the main D&D rules and terminology released under the CC, if we're building anything remotely like that, we can always go back to the source.

As an example, Shadowdark has a limited license in that you can't republish the rules of Shadowdark directly, but Shadowdark uses the 5.1 SRD under the CC. You can pretty easily reverse engineer a Shadowdark-like main rulebook from the 5.1 SRD without ever needing to touch material in Shadowdark itself.

I have this sort of dream of someone writing a CC0 cross-compatibility guide for all the various OSR games that opens them up a bit more based on the 5.1 SRD. Given that both OSE and Shadowdark are based on it, it seems possible.

 

[Retreater]

So Darrington Press announced they were working on Daggerheart in April 2023, which was after the OGL debacle (January 2023). Daggerheart has been one of the best experiences I've had running a tabletop RPG in the past twenty years. I'm not sure if Daggerheart was created directly in response to the OGL issue (though the timing lines up). But - in any case - I'm happy playing what I'm playing and don't need to care what WotC is doing with D&D. To be honest, I haven't thought about D&D in a couple years now.

What did hit strangely... Last night, a friend from our neighborhood texted my wife to ask if she could make a character and join our "D&D" game. We've been trying to encourage her to join our neighborhood campaign for a couple years, and this is the first time she expressed interest. My wife explained that we were playing "Daggerheart" but she would probably like it - especially since she had never tried D&D before to know rules, expectations, etc.

So she came, watched the game for an hour, then left. She didn't want to play because it wasn't "name brand" D&D and she wanted to learn how to play so she could also join other groups that were playing "name brand" D&D.

Never in my 30+ years of playing has that happened.