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

 

[Alzrius]

 

[jgbrowning]

As I understand it though, now that the SRD 5.1 is in the Creative Commons, even if WotC were to try again to de-authorize the OGL at some point in the future, that wouldn't necessitate any 3PPs redoing their books and rules at all, except just to remove the OGL.

It would be a minor inconvenience at best, while they switched to the ORC or something. Which now has a much less urgent purpose and use-case.

There are a lot more SRD's than just the 5.1 version, so the 1.0a OGL remains important.

joe b.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Well that's that (for now, at least). D&D is back on the menu. Hell, I'll even go see the movie despite not really being optimistic about it.

I think the end result for me is that I've become more aware of 3pp options, so in that respect, this is a complete win. It still remains to be seen what the final fallout from all this is though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They've already done it. The 5e SRD CC-BY is here.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/SRD5.1-CCBY4.0License.pdf

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I think they wanted this settled before the next playtest was put out because the upcoming playtest surveys would have been rubbished.

Still mad this seems to have killed Arcadia.

 

[Jer]

This also means that ONE DND will NOT be compatible with 5e.

I mean, intentionally fragmenting the game at this point would be stupid. They do dumb things so I'm not saying it's out of the question, but it would be really dumb to do so.

I think it's more likely that they realized that there's no way to get the growth they need to maintain with the storm they created and having control of a smaller pool of players under their "OneD&D" plans is more detrimental than leaving the game open and finding another way to get the restrictions they want.

They still control the D&D trademark, they still have D&D Beyond. They still have DM's Guild. They have all kinds of ways to offer carrots to people to control their behavior, they don't need the sticks.

If they get their VTT off the ground they'll have another carrot to offer folks to stay in their garden instead of leaving for others.

They have all of the leverage in the D&D market. This entire debacle of the last month has been an own goal over an outcome they didn't even need.

 

[The Sigil]

This is a wholly unexpected but certainly not unwelcome development.

I like to think of people - even people that are a work of legal fiction such as corporations - as rational actors. What does this latest development suggest to me? To me it further strengthens the arguments of those that have speculated that WotC sees the future of monetizing D&D not so much in traditional paper (or PDF) publishing but rather in other arenas (VTT- or VTT-adjacent software, movie licensing deals to trade on the name, etc.); otherwise there was no reason for them to give the SRD away under a Creative Commons license.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The posts by naysayers opining that Hasbro will succeed in killing 1.0a and we should all just resign ourselves to the bad ending will have rapidly aged like milk in the past fifteen minutes or so.

It was a completely reasonable belief, based on WotC's behavior to that point.

Saying there was nothing to be worried about all along requires ignoring everything that was actually happening.

Something big happened inside Hasbro to make this happen. I suspect some folks will have different job titles next week than they had last.

 

[MoonSong]

KIND of.

We'd still need to use something like the ORC to make cross-attributable material available between publishers, or some other license specific to that end.

But with 5.1 in CCBY4 it's just a huge benefit to 3rd party publishers, whatever happens to 1.0 in the future.

I'm still going to work on finally getting PT (my heartbreaker but for urban/hidden fantasy and inspired by RQ and DSA ) off the ground. I hope ORC is available by then.

 

[dave2008]

This also means that ONE DND will NOT be compatible with 5e.

No it doesn't.