WotC Backs Down: Original OGL To Be Left Untouched; Whole 5E Rules Released as Creative Commons

Hundreds of game publishers sigh in relief as, after extensive pressure exerted by the entire open gaming community, WotC has agreed to leave the original Open Gaming License untouched and put the whole of the 5E rules into Creative Commons.

So, what's happened?

• The Open Gaming Licence v1.0a which most of the D&D third party industry relies on, will be left untouched for now.
• The whole of the D&D 5E SRD (ie the rules of the game less the fluff text) has been released under a Creative Commons license.

OGL 1.0a & Creative Commons

Over the past few weeks you, the community, have made your voices heard. And we’ve listened. OGL 1.0a will remain untouched AND the entire SRD 5.1...

www.dndbeyond.com

WotC has a history of 'disappearing' inconvenient FAQs and stuff, such as those where they themselves state that the OGL is irrevocable, so I'll copy this here for posterity.

When you give us playtest feedback, we take it seriously.

Already more than 15,000 of you have filled out the survey. Here's what you said:

• 88% do not want to publish TTRPG content under OGL 1.2.
• 90% would have to change some aspect of their business to accommodate OGL 1.2.
• 89% are dissatisfied with deauthorizing OGL 1.0a.
• 86% are dissatisfied with the draft VTT policy.
• 62% are satisfied with including Systems Reference Document (SRD) content in Creative Commons, and the majority of those who were dissatisfied asked for more SRD content in Creative Commons.

These live survey results are clear. You want OGL 1.0a. You want irrevocability. You like Creative Commons.
The feedback is in such high volume and its direction is so plain that we're acting now.

1. We are leaving OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched.
2. We are also making the entire SRD 5.1 available under a Creative Commons license.
3. You choose which you prefer to use.

This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don't control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It's open and irrevocable in a way that doesn't require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there's no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There's no going back.

Our goal here is to deliver on what you wanted.

So, what about the goals that drove us when we started this process?

We wanted to protect the D&D play experience into the future. We still want to do that with your help. We're grateful that this community is passionate and active because we'll need your help protecting the game's inclusive and welcoming nature.

We wanted to limit the OGL to TTRPGs. With this new approach, we are setting that aside and counting on your choices to define the future of play.
Here's a PDF of SRD 5.1 with the Creative Commons license. By simply publishing it, we place it under an irrevocable Creative Commons license. We'll get it hosted in a more convenient place next week. It was important that we take this step now, so there's no question.

• SRD 5.1-CC

We'll be closing the OGL 1.2 survey now.

We'll keep talking with you about how we can better support our players and creators. Thanks as always for continuing to share your thoughts.

Kyle Brink
Executive Producer, Dungeons & Dragons

What does this mean?

The original OGL sounds safe for now, but WotC has not admitted that they cannot revoke it. That's less of an issue now the 5E System Reference Document is now released to Creative Commons (although those using the 3E SRD or any third party SRDs still have issues as WotC still hasn't revoked the incorrect claim that they can revoke access to those at-will).

At this point, if WotC wants anybody to use whatever their new OGL v1.x turns out to be, there needs to be one heck of a carrot. What that might be remains to be seen.

Pathfinder publlsher Paizo has also commented on the latest developments.

We welcome today’s news from Wizards of the Coast regarding their intention not to de-authorize OGL 1.0a. We still believe there is a powerful need for an irrevocable, perpetual independent system-neutral open license that will serve the tabletop community via nonprofit stewardship. Work on the ORC license will continue, with an expected first draft to release for comment to participating publishers in February.

Over 1,500 Publishers Support Paizo's Upcoming Open RPG Creator's License

Paizo has revealed some of the 1,500+ tabletop RPG publishers who have expressed an interest in their new Open RPG Creator's License (ORC), describing the group as the 'ORC Alliance'. The license itself is still being worked on, so these 1,500 publishers have not actually seen it or signed...

www.enworld.org

 

[Michael Linke]

It felt clear to me that you couldn't try and set it up where the attribution to what you adapted could be done away with by future adaptors.

And the chart on adapting in the CC FAQ explicitly shows releasing your adaptation under that or a more restrictive CC license.

It does not explicitly say that your derivative product could be copyright protected (as long as DRM doesn't flag the original), but I have never found anything saying otherwise and it feels like there are things that have incorporated CC-BY material that are not under CC.

It says which licenses you CAN use in that case. It doesn’t say you must release under a CC license. For CC-BY, all you need to do is include the attribution. The work is yours. People who want the free part can find it because the attribution itself tells them where to look for it.

 

[Ashtagon]

So you’re going to pay for all that stuff to get reissued and all the work?

Of course not. You're missing my point. Not deliberately, I would hope.

For a dead legacy publisher, we're basically stuck with 1.0a (or 1.0 for the really old stuff; depending on which it was published under). Nothing can really protect their old content absolutely, but if a 1.0b exists, even though that wouldn't be part of the legal contract around those books, it would at least help defend that content should a future challenge be made against 1.0/1.0a material, but demonstrating a continuity of intent on how the licence should work both before and after the books were published.

For a moribund legacy publisher, they typically won't have the resources to do the line-by-line check needed to ensure compatibility with CC, let alone do the work of designating the old material of theirs that they want to be shareable as CC, so republishing the old content with CC instead of OGL would be a non-starter. But if they had a 1.0b OGL available, they can easily just swap out that single page to 1.0b and be confident about calling it good.

 

[Cadence]

It says which licenses you CAN use in that case. It doesn’t say you must release under a CC license. For CC-BY, all you need to do is include the attribution. The work is yours. People who want the free part can find it because the attribution itself tells them where to look for it.

Exactly. I must not have made clear what I thought I would as saying.

 

[Alzrius]

Everything that was used in the 3E SRD (to walk back on something I said, psionics as it exists for monsters is included in the SRD, so even psionics can be recreated!) to create OSRIC and other retroclones already exists in SRD 5.1.

You might be right, but I remain skeptical. The 5.1 SRD is far and away more limited than the 3.5 SRD, even overlooking the epic, psionic, and divine rules that the latter has. Some of that is the sheer volume of monsters, others are spells and magic items, but overall there's simply more to work with in the 3.5 SRD.

It's entirely possible that a 5E-derived OSRIC could be made, but it would require a lot more filling in of gaps for 1E content which has no 5.1 SRD equivalent. Maybe that could work for something recreating original 1974 D&D or Holmes Basic, but AD&D 1E seems like it would be much harder.

And that's just for the OSR; you're not going to be able to do that for other 3.5-inspired games such as Pathfinder 1E. As someone who still plays that game, I'd prefer to go a route which sees all of the old stuff be open, rather than just a particular segment of the market. And that means sticking with the OGL, because even if the 3.5 SRD is put into Creative Commons, that won't be enough for derivative works (particularly where the publishers of those derivative works have closed their doors).

For instance, Studio M— is a small publisher that releases content for the "akashic magic" subsystem of Pathfinder 1E. But that system (which is a "serial numbers filed off" verison of 3.5's Magic of Incarnum) was actually developed by Dreamscarred Press. Naturally, it relies upon PF1, which itself relies on the 3.5 SRD.

But Dreamscarred Press, as far as I know, hasn't been active since 2018.

So given that there's derivative "chain" of the 3.5 SRD -> PF1 -> Dreamscarred Press -> Studio M—, porting that stuff over to CC means that it has to go in that order, and any break in the chain (cue Fleetwood Mac) for whatever reason means that isn't possible.

And here's the thing: those chains are actually much, much harder to port over than the above example makes them look like, because they require that everything in a given work's SRD be ported over first. So if Pathfinder uses a book from Malhavoc Press (which it does: the Book of Experimental Might), then Monte Cook would need to dust off that company heading and release that title to Creative Commons before the Pathfinder 1E Core Rulebook could release its Open Game Content (which would need to be parsed into its own SRD-like document so they don't release their IP into the CC the way WotC just did) into the Creative Commons.

And given that I'm not sure how Creative Commons works anyway (what's a "share-alike" version of the license, and what's the significance of the fact that WotC didn't release the 5.1 SRD under it?), I'm not sure the recursive use of content that the OGL allows for could even be done there.

The entire thing, in other words, would be a mess.

I know I'm rambling at this point, and long since gone past the issue of the OSR and recreating AD&D 1E with the 5.1 SRD in CC, so I'll try and wrap this up:

I'm glad that WotC put the entire 5.1 SRD under Creative Commons. I think that's a good thing, in what it allows for, but the guarantee that it makes regarding the D&D 5E rules doesn't cover literally everything else that's been released under the OGL over nearly a quarter-century. For that, we need better protections for the OGL, and I'm still waiting for WotC to do that as part of their show of contrition and making amends.

I want to guarantee that the entire community is covered, or at least as much of it as possible, rather than any particular segment of it.

 

[Matt Thomason]

And given that I'm not sure how Creative Commons works anyway (what's a "share-alike" version of the license, and what's the significance of the fact that WotC didn't release the 5.1 SRD under it), I'm not sure the recursive use of content that the OGL allows for could even be done there.

CC is pretty much out as far as using it as a drop-in replacement for the OGL. That much has been made evident in the ORC licensing discussions - CC just doesn't have the mechanism needed to seperate Product Identity from Open Game Content.

CC-BY is fine for publishing your work under, if you're happy for people to use 100% of that work. CC-BY-SA is fine if you want to do that in a "chain" of works by different people. Neither of those would be suitable for a work where you want to specify which bits are "open" and which are not.

You can use CC-BY if you produce a seperate SRD-like document by stripping your work down to just the things you want to share, and publish that - and that's extra work most publishers would sooner avoid. Adding a paragraph to explain what is open and what is closed - that's far easier, but requires a license that uses that mechanism. CC-BY-SA would be the worst possible option for most publishers, because it does not allow them to reuse the source material unless they also open all of their contributions under that same license - the mechanics, the setting, every line of text.

In summary - CC-BY works fine for "root SRDs" of game systems, but doesn't provide a mechanism to indicate anything equivalent to "Open Game Content". CC-BY-SA is too viral. The system in the OGL worked exactly the way most publishers want to use it, and now we've seen some dangerous loopholes in the OGL we're working together on replicating that functionality as close as possible with ORC while closing those loopholes.

(The biggest "loophole" of all being that the OGL is under the control - both in terms of copyright and the ability to create new versions of the license - of one company that is in competition with all the others using it. We've certainly identified some other things we'd like reviewed, because this is the best chance we're going to have to "get it right this time.")

 

[Retreater]

Those of you saying that "everything" is under Creative Commons, I can tell you a few things that are not: Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saving throws.
This is just one part of the engine that 3.x used - which Pathfinder (and other systems use). Those games are not based on 5e, and can be challenged at any time.
This is not a complete win. It's only a win if you're a 5e player. We need to stick together and not abandon those who play other systems to the whims of WotC.

 

[pemerton]

They have no control over a Creative Commons license. They essentially handed it to a third party.

All that CC means is that instead of drafting their own licence terms, WotC picked some terms of the shelf. It doesn't change the ownership of anything that anyone cares about, and it just swaps one set of legal questions for a new set - which may be easier, but are not obviously so. There has been litigation over CC licences - which is to say, they are not proofs against disagreements between the parties.

In that case, what changes to the text of the OGL would change its legal operation to the point of preventing WotC from throwing its weight around (ideally while making as few other changes as possible)?

Nothing. See just above re CC.

The core issue here is that a number of parties have built their commercial activities and/or their hobby culture around a set of texts which belong, in copyright terms, to a large commercial publisher. They are therefore inherently vulnerable to the decisions that publisher makes about how to protect its legal interests. The only ultimate recourse is litigation (that is, being prepared to defend copyright infringement claims by pleading licences in defence).

 

[dave2008]

It's CC-BY, not CC-BY-SA. There is no sharealike requirement.


If not actually having a case does not absolutely prevent lawfare under OGL then it does not prevent it under the CC either. Although it does probably make it rather less likely.


We cannot. To quote Maya Angelou once again, "When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time."


You cannot live in the modern world without trusting multiple corporations every day. The trick is that trust should never be absolute, and should be reassessed when a company does something as monumentally monstrous as what WotC attempted to do.


That was the stated aim, but two playtest packets in we have only seen a tiny subset of the full proposed game and they have already introduced multiple significant incompatibilities.


"Hate" may not quite be the word, but "has contempt for" certainly fits. EDIT: Not everyone who works for WotC of course, but a non-trivial portion of their senior management.


It wouldn't hurt, but they already did that and it did not prevent the recent shenanigans (although it may be why the partially backed down rather than powering through).


You get that CC-BY has no sharealike requirement at all, right? So you indignation against people wanting partial but not total downstream licensing seems rather misplaced.


They could, but why would they. With all the people declaring victory and patting themselves and WotC on the back, the pressure for further concessions has evaporated.


I don't get why both you and @Mistwell stated that there is nothing they can do about it, and then immediately list the thing they can do about it. They could release a 1.0b which is identical to 1.0a except that it includes the word "irrevocable" in a couple of prominent places and gives a sensible definition for "authorised", and then release their SRDs under it. Section 9 would pretty-much take care of the rest. EDIT: Nothing is completely proof against bad actors, but that applies to the CC too. Nonetheless, everything you close off or clarify makes misbehaviour less likely.


No, they did not. They said they are not deauthorising it right now. They have not promised that they will never try again in the future, nor admitted that they lack the power to do so.

It totally can. In order to use CC material, you have to credit it as CC material by using that licence in your book. All the old books use OGL licencing. So all the old material will need to be re-written to be safe.

There's a replacement for the OGL 1.0a foundation stone that everyone currently uses, but actually replacing that foundation stone in each and every product is a non-trivial task. In contrast, adding three words to the OGL 1.0a (to make an OGL 1.0b) would be a trivial task.

The necessary OGL changes (I'm sure an actual lawyer can translate this to proper legalese) are:

1 - change "any authorised version" to "any version ever authorised".

2 - change "perpetual" to "perpetual and irrevocable".

Making this 1.0b OGL would change the future-proofing task from one of reading through each book line by line to ensure it is valid under the CC and 5.1 SRD (remember, a lot of legacy content was based on the 3.0/3.5/d20m SRDs, which are similar but not fully overlapping), editing as needed, to swapping a single page (the one containing the OGL).

As a trivial example, if you used the exact wording from the 3.5 SRD for something in your product, but the wording for the equivalent item in the 5.1 SRD is different (quite likely, its a different rules set after all), you'd be in breach of copyright if you then dropped the OGL in favour of CC without also rewording your body text. And you'd be vulnerable to a new legal challenge by WotC if you don't drop the OGL 1.0a while no OGL 1.0b is available.

I am most likely wrong, but I don't think it works that way. You can't make a new document and say its terms apply to all the old documents, legally. So, if you make an OGL 1.0b with the changes you describe, everyone would still have to replace the 1.0a license with the 1.0b license. Again, I could very easily be wrong as this is just my common sense understanding.

You can't change my 1.0a license (to 1.0b) without my consent. So I would need to replace the "a" with the "b" to consent. At least that is how I basically understand it. Maybe @pemerton can clarify?

 

[dave2008]

Those of you saying that "everything" is under Creative Commons, I can tell you a few things that are not: Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saving throws.
This is just one part of the engine that 3.x used - which Pathfinder (and other systems use). Those games are not based on 5e, and can be challenged at any time.
This is not a complete win. It's only a win if you're a 5e player. We need to stick together and not abandon those who play other systems to the whims of WotC.

While I agree with you to certain degree, I suspect they will release the 3e/3.5e SRD as the already hinted they would. However, though I would love to be wrong, I don't think we will see 1e, 2e, or 4e SRDs. They would have to create those from scratch and I don't seem them doing that much work, nor do I feel that should be a requirement to accept their appeal to us.

 

[pemerton]

I am most likely wrong, but I don't think it works that way. You can't make a new document and say it terms apply to all the old documents, legally. So, if you make an OGL 1.0b with the changes you describe, everyone would still have to replace the 1.0a license with the 1.0b license. Again, I could very easily be wrong as this is just my common sense understanding.

You can't change my 1.0a license (to 1.0b) without my consent. So I would need to replace the a with the b to "consent." At least that is how I basically understand it.

I'm not sure if this answers your question: but each licensee who is a party to a licence with WotC, on the terms set out in the OGL v 1.0/1.0a, has agreed (in section 9) to allow their work to be licensed by downstream users using any authorised variant that is promulgated by WotC.

What would count as a "variant" is a matter of contractual interpretation. But if WotC were to release such a variant, then downstream users could use that variant to license upstream OGC.