What's All This About The OGL Going Away?

This last week I've seen videos, tweets, and articles all repeating an unsourced rumour that the OGL (Open Gaming License) will be going away with the advent of OneD&D, and that third party publishers would have no way of legally creating compatible material. I wanted to write an article clarifying some of these terms.

I've seen articles claiming (and I quote) that "players would be unable to legally publish homebrew content" and that WotC may be "outlawing third-party homebrew content". These claims need clarification.

What's the Open Gaming License? It was created by WotC about 20 years ago; it's analagous to various 'open source' licenses. There isn't a '5E OGL' or a '3E OGL' and there won't be a 'OneD&D OGL' -- there's just the OGL (technically there are two versions, but that's by-the-by). The OGL is non-rescindable -- it can't be cancelled or revoked. Any content released as Open Gaming Content (OGC) under that license -- which includes the D&D 3E SRD, the 5E SRD, Pathfinder's SRD, Level Up's SRD, and thousands and thousands of third party books -- remains OGC forever, available for use under the license. Genie, bottle, and all that.

So, the OGL can't 'go away'. It's been here for 20 years and it's here to stay. This was WotC's (and OGL architect Ryan Dancey's) intention when they created it 20 years ago, to ensure that D&D would forever be available no matter what happened to its parent company.

Open Game License v1.0a

What's an SRD? A System Reference Document (SRD) contains Open Gaming Content (OGC). Anything in the 3E SRD, the 3.5 SRD, or the 5E SRD, etc., is designated forever as OGC (Open Gaming Content). Each of those SRDs contains large quantities of material, including the core rules of the respective games, and encompasses all the core terminology of the ruleset(s).

When people say 'the OGL is going away' what they probably mean to say is that there won't be a new OneD&D System Reference Document.

System Reference Documents

System Reference Documents (SRDs) are compilations of Open Gaming Content, usually released under the terms of the Open Gaming License (OGL).

www.enworld.org

Does That Matter? OneD&D will be -- allegedly -- fully compatible with 5E. That means it uses all the same terminology. Armor Class, Hit Points, Warlock, Pit Fiend, and so on. All this terminology has been OGC for 20 years, and anybody can use it under the terms of the OGL. The only way it could be difficult for third parties to make compatible material for OneD&D is if OneD&D substantially changed the core terminology of the game, but at that point OneD&D would no longer be compatible with 5E (or, arguably, would even be recognizable as D&D). So the ability to create compatible third party material won't be going away.

However! There is one exception -- if your use of OneD&D material needs you to replicate OneD&D content, as opposed to simply be compatible with it (say you're making an app which has all the spell descriptions in it) and if there is no new SRD, then you won't be able to do that. You can make compatible stuff ("The evil necromancer can cast magic missile" -- the term magic missile has been OGL for two decades) but you wouldn't be able to replicate the full descriptive text of the OneD&D version of the spell. That's a big if -- if there's no new SRD.

So you'd still be able to make compatible adventures and settings and new spells and new monsters and new magic items and new feats and new rules and stuff. All the stuff 3PPs commonly do. You just wouldn't be able to reproduce the core rules content itself. However, I've been publishing material for 3E, 3.5, 4E, 5E, and Pathfinder 1E for 20 years, and the need to reproduce core rules content hasn't often come up for us -- we produce new compatible content. But if you're making an app, or spell cards, or something which needs to reproduce content from the rulebooks, you'd need an SRD to do that.

So yep. If no SRD, compatible = yes, directly reproduce = no (of course, you can indirectly reproduce stuff by rewriting it in your own words).

Branding! Using the OGL you can't use the term "Dungeons & Dragons" (you never could). Most third parties say something like "compatible with the world's most popular roleplaying game" and have some sort of '5E' logo of their own making on the cover. Something similar will no doubt happen with OneD&D -- the third party market will create terminology to indicate compatibility. (Back in the 3E days, WotC provided a logo for this use called the 'd20 System Trademark Logo' but they don't do that any more).

What if WotC didn't 'support' third party material? As discussed, nobody can take the OGL or any existing OGC away. However, WotC does have control over DMs Guild and integration with D&D Beyond or the virtual tabletop app they're making. So while they can't stop folks from making and publishing compatible stuff, they could make it harder to distribute simply by not allowing it on those three platforms. If OneD&D becomes heavily reliant on a specific platform we might find ourselves in the same situation we had in 4E, where it was harder to sell player options simply because they weren't on the official character builder app. It's not that you couldn't publish 4E player options, it's just that many players weren't interested in them if they couldn't use them in the app.

But copyright! Yes, yes, you can't copyright rules, you can't do this, you can't do that. The OGL is not relevant to copyright law -- it is a license, an agreement, a contract. By using it you agree to its terms. Sure WotC might not be able to copyright X, but you can certainly contractually agree not to use X (which is a selection of material designated as 'Product Identity') by using the license. There are arguments on the validity of this from actual real lawyers which I won't get into, but I just wanted to note that this is about a license, not copyright law.

If you don't use the Open Gaming License, of course, it doesn't apply to you. You are only bound by a license you use. So then, sure, knock yourself out with copyright law!

So, bullet point summary:

• The OGL can't go away, and any existing OGC can't go away
• If (that's an if) there is no new SRD, you will be able to still make compatible material but not reproduce the OneD&D content
• Most of the D&D terminology (save a few terms like 'beholder' etc.) has been OGC for 20 years and is freely available for use
• To render that existing OGC unusable for OneD&D the basic terminology of the entire game would have to be changed, at which point it would no longer be compatible with 5E.

 

[darjr]

I doubt it would go well. Not doubting the talent, just designers with different ideas about the direction of the game and wanting to tailor it to their specific needs / goals...

Yea. Though I imagine this being more a license thing. Or a sort of pact that the OGL kinda is already but with voiced commitment. A sort if 3rd party union.

Less shared design or game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"From the moment that 4th Edition had been announced, we had trepidations about many of the changes we were hearing about. Jason's report confirmed our fears—4th Edition didn't look like the system we wanted to make products for." is how you phrase "Hell no" in a relatively diplomatic fashion.

Not really. It just doesn't express the animus you're projecting on to it, not even as subtext. It's also an extremely long time "after the fact" so likely to be the product of retcon to some extent. I have zero doubt that if 4E was broadly more well-regarded, she would have something a bit different to say.

But unless you're saying Lisa Stevens is lying in the blog post, Pathfinder RPG was not a foregone conclusion. I think that in the short run at least, she would probably have been happier if 4e were more to the tastes of her and her designers, and had been released under the OGL so they could have focused on the stuff they were good at: adventures.

I love how people talk about "being diplomatic" then jump immediately to grandiose claims that that other people have to be making accusations of "lying". Come off it. She's by your own token, "being diplomatic" in pretty much exactly the same sense.

I'm saying that at the very least, they were contingency-planning Pathfinder in case there was an opportunity or necessity, and nothing in her statement contradicts that in any way that matters. They're not idiots, they read the writing on the wall, and her statement her is basically a reasonable "retcon" of the facts which paints Paizo in the most favourable possible light (no denying it does that). That's not lying in a serious way, it's just a thing people, especially serious business people (which Lisa undeniably is), absolutely do. Indeed not doing it in a public statement like that would be bizarre and a little unprofessional.

The cold fact is, WotC had essentially gone from valued allies to ceasing all diplomatic relations with Paizo by stripping them of the Dragon/Dungeon licences, which Paizo had run extremely well, and delaying the licence was essentially moving massed tank divisions to Paizo's border! There was over a year between those events, notice. I am quite sure that when they lost those licences, and given WotC had gone silent about the OGL (I think if you go back to that period on these boards you can find discussion of that very fact) re: 4E, that was when they must have at least started planning in a fairly serious way.

As for inevitable, I think it was inevitable given the delayed licence, which made it obvious it was hostile, and inevitable given the GSL. I don't think the rules had much to do with it, not compared with WotC's obviously hostility to and contempt for 3PPs, which again, Paizo got to know about over a year before the licence arrived. Put it this way - if 4E had been virtually identical to what Pathfinder was, but WotC had still been as hostile to 3PPs in general and Paizo specifically, and had still been delaying the licence then pushing the GSL, I have no doubt Paizo would have still created Pathfinder. I don't think the rules really mattered, that seems illogical and very much a retcon as I said.

Re: the implied idea that they'd have "preferred to just focus on crafting adventures", I think that's laughable and a little insulting to the people at Paizo, like they saying they have no ambition. They were a pretty aggressive company already (not in a bad way). They weren't some bunch of carpenters dedicated to turning out traditionally-made cabinets. They were and are a media company, full of people with ambitions, who wanted to succeed, and who a saw a massive opportunity created by the absolute multi-layered idiocy of WotC re: 4E. I mean, let's not go into that, but WotC just really put a huge effort into scoring multiple own goals before the launch of 4E. We do seem to be seeing hints of the same behaviour with 1D&D, but I think they'll manage it better this time.

I think that if anyone's going to release the next D&D Heartbreaker, it will be MCDM. Matt seems to have some very specific ideas on how he wants the game to run, heavily influenced by both old-school D&D and 4e, and once they're done with their monster book I could see them moving into other rules.

Interesting!

I'll have to keep an eye on them, as "influenced by old-school D&D and 4E" sounds like a pretty ideal combination to me (though also 5E could be described that way to some extent).

 

[EpicureanDM]

Deleted.

 

[Beleriphon]

I don't know about zero content, but Mutants and Mastermind has just a skeleton of d20 rules and then offers no classes and turns levels from advancement into levels of power (and it's a character point build system.) It probably has even less d20 content because I think they got rid of feats in one edition. It also has no hit points because it invented a "Damage Save" that produces new conditions. Geez, how old is M&M now?

M&M started as a level-based system heavily derived from 3E. Thus, the OGL content, the idea was you could take an orc and play it more or less straight.

The addendum there is that Green Ronin wanted people to use their rules and make superhero stuff, so the OGL let other people use GR's OGC stuff. It wasn't necessarily about GR using WotC SRD, so much as me using GR Open Gaming Content. Which is why 2E M&M and 3E M&M use the OGL still, since the first iteration of the game used it, so they're kind of stuck with it now.

Complete aside, GR also has their own license for M&M 3E so you can make a Freedom City adventure and use that setting.

The important thing with the OGL is that I could in theory make a brand new game, not D20 related at all and release it under the OGL. Look at FATE for example.

As for what the change will be I suspect that the new version of D&D is more like an edition change between reference books. It updates with new info and ideas that have come along, but the basic structure is still the same and I can likely get along using the older book in conjunction with the new book.

 

[Art Waring]

As for what the change will be I suspect that the new version of D&D is more like an edition change between reference books. It updates with new info and ideas that have come along, but the basic structure is still the same and I can likely get along using the older book in conjunction with the new book.

At the moment, all we really have is speculation due on part to their lack of information (they claim backwards compatibility, but history has shown this statement to not always be the case).

Yes they have made a statement in response to the OGL rumor, but those that are familiar with the OGL & the SRD know that their statement wasn't really saying anything we didn't already know (no they won't be discontinuing the OGL, because they can't. creating a new SRD for O1e is another matter that will likely not see an announcement until relsease, two years from now).

 

[glass]

But unless you're saying Lisa Stevens is lying in the blog post, Pathfinder RPG was not a foregone conclusion

"Lying" is a strong term, and no product is a "foregone conclusion" until it is at least announced (arguably not until it is shipped). But I would certainly call it "spin". I can certainly believe that all of the top folks at Paizo's initial impressions of 4e were somewhat negative, but obviously once they had announced their own competitor it obviously made sense to play up that negativity.

 

[darjr]

Mike talks about the subject. Mentioning this thread and Russ' podcast alot. Refering to them as good resources.

 

[Kannik]

Recent sales? Have you posted about it in the MCDM Reddit or Discourse?

Recent, aye! Not a tonne, but there's been handful of sales over the past year. But I haven't posted about them to the MCDM Reddit... I'll have to check it out!

 

[darjr]

Recent, aye! Not a tonne, but there's been handful of sales over the past year. But I haven't posted about them to the MCDM Reddit... I'll have to check it out!

Check out their discord too. He’s made a few new 4e fans

 

[overgeeked]

No idea how verified this all is.