We All Won – The OGL Three Years Later

[Deset Gled]

To my knowledge, and someone can go get me a quote if I'm wrong, they only promised the 3.5 SRD in the CC which they haven't done.

@LaTia J , who is a D&D Community Manager at WotC, made this statement saying 4e also intended to be updated to CC in this post:

D&D General Post in thread 'Any movement/update on Creative Commons SRD for previous editions?'

Aug 14, 2025

...But not 4E?

4th edition is also included, but based on what i've seen in previous discussions on the topic, 3.0 and 3.5 feel like what the community would like to see next. My being exclusionary doesn't reflect what we're thinking internally; apologies if it seemed that way!

• LaTia J

• 
• 

But I'm not finding an official announcement that makes it as clear as she did, unofficially.

 

[Pedantic]

I disagree. The CC license is much more sweeping and permissive than the OGL was and there's even less question about it being revocable -- and challenging that would bring legal responses from a lot more parties, which makes WotC even less likely to screw with it.

I don't agree. If anything, an updated OGL would serve this role better.

I don't disagree that it would be nice to see WotC publicly concede that they screwed up, but there were clearly internal battles going on and what we got was almost certainly hard-fought and the result of political compromises in-house. Powerful folks within Hasbro coming out and saying "we were wrong; we're sorry" was incredibly unlikely to happen and, three years on, even less so.

This is definitely true, but is not at all exculpatory, and certainly not worth celebrating.

 

[SlyFlourish]

And you have them?

I do! Why would I have posted to a forum if I didn't want to hear opinions?

 

[Dire Bare]

From the lawsuits of the '80s to the OGL, D&D has been actively hostile towards other games for decades. "Trickle-down gameonomics" may or may not be a thing. I'd need to see some numbers, honestly. Even if it did turn out to be true, it'd have to be an awful lot of gamers to offset the bad practices of D&D as a brand.

D&D is a game, and has not been actively hostile at all.

The company publishing the game, first TSR and then WotC, have taken various actions over the past 50 years that have been negative, hostile, and also positive and supporting. Both companies had changing leadership over the years and always had many folks working there with different ideas and actions regarding the flagship game.

If some gamers can't separate the game from the negative actions of the company and so would prefer to avoid D&D . . . fine. IMO, their loss, but it's fine. There have always been other TTRPGs to play, and good ones at that.

But for many of us, we can separate the game we love from the negative actions of the company behind the game. Especially as TSR, and then WotC, wasn't all hostility all the time towards the community, and the folks actually designing the game tended to be pretty awesome folks.

But everyone draws the line in different places. That's okay. I just get irritated when folks like me, who love D&D in all of it's glory and imperfection, are seen as apologists, ignorant, or even unaware of the mistakes the company behind the game has made over the decades.

 

[bedir than]

I don't agree. If anything, an updated OGL would serve this role better.

how would a boutique gaming license that's little understood and without any legal definition be better than the widespread and participatory license used around the world?

 

[SlyFlourish]

@LaTia J , who is a D&D Community Manager at WotC, made this statement saying 4e also intended to be updated to CC in this post:

D&D General Post in thread 'Any movement/update on Creative Commons SRD for previous editions?'

Aug 14, 2025

...But not 4E?

4th edition is also included, but based on what i've seen in previous discussions on the topic, 3.0 and 3.5 feel like what the community would like to see next. My being exclusionary doesn't reflect what we're thinking internally; apologies if it seemed that way!

• LaTia J

• 
• 

But I'm not finding an official announcement that makes it as clear as she did, unofficially.

Not to defend them on this, but I think what she was saying is that that was under discussion, not a promise. 3.5 was promised by Kyle Brink to multiple video producers on YouTube during the apology tour.

 

[Dire Bare]

And you have them? Look, I respect you, and your opinions. But let's not pretend. Your OP doesn't ask if we won or lost the OGL fiasco, it takes a clear side. But really, even framing the whole thing as if there's a winner at all is already seeding for a more confrontational discussion.

I don't think you do respect his opinion, based on your posts in this thread.

Shea isn't "taking sides", he's expressing his opinion that the "OGL Crisis" was bad, but the industry three years later is stronger for it. And he asked for our thoughts on that idea.

You disagree, which is okay, but also seem to take umbrage with his very premise. How dare he have an opinion that differs from yours? That's how you are coming across, to me at least.

 

[SlyFlourish]

To describe my "off-ramp" idea a bit, since it's related to what you were and are saying:

I think the most (universally) valuable ramification of releasing the 3.5 SRD as CC BY (or, IMO, ideally CC BY-SA) would be that it'd make possible a domino effect of letting 3.5 SRD-derived products relicense under CC BY(-SA) in order to move to what I think is inarguably a stronger/more understood license in the CC licenses. If I hop over to the OGL v1.0a page in 13th Age 2E, because it has a long line of copyright notices, they cite copyrights for WotC (2000 SRD), Paizo (2009 Pathfinder RPG), Troll Lord (2004 Castles & Crusades), a ton of Fire Opal Media and Pelgrane Press (most everything 13th Age), and a couple smaller publishers beyond that. IANAL either but I believe it'd be possible for Paizo to go "great, Pathfinder is stronger under the same CC terms, let's offer that", and ditto with Troll Lord, and Fire Opal Media, and so on until everyone has essentially ported to what should be more solid license terms, without reverse engineering.

That, I think, would be a good thing, regardless of whether or not the OGL is actually poisoned or just perceived to be, and whether they picked CC BY or CC BY-SA, my preferences aside. Unfortunately, that has no value to WotC, who would have to kick it off, and if nothing else it probably weakens their future options for no tangible community goodwill (unless a huge stink suddenly materializes).

EDIT: and I just realized that 2000 was the 3.0 SRD, not 3.5 SRD, so maybe my off-ramp is dead in construction. But you get the idea. That'd be the only value for anyone in relicensing it now, I think.

So again, IANAL, but I think a lot of those games could switch from the 3.5 SRD to the 5.1 SRD if their material was different enough. I think 13th Age almost certainly is but they also have a lot of other material that was also under the OGL that they referenced and, because of the viral nature of the OGL, you're sort of stuck with it. I think you'd have to have like seventy products switch to the CC docs to unravel them and that's too much.

But I bet, almost any new product one made these days, could change very little and comform to just using the CC BY 5.1 SRD (or any of the other 5e SRDs).

 

[SlyFlourish]

I don't agree. If anything, an updated OGL would serve this role better.

You seriously would trust another OGL license published by WOTC?

I'm not a fan of it, but I'd be more likely to support ORC which is made specifically to replace the OGL in the same way.

But man, I much prefer CC and trust it a lot more.

 

[Scribe]

3.5 was promised by Kyle Brink to multiple video producers on YouTube during the apology tour.

Who promptly dipped, or was fired.