WotC Talks OGL... Again! Draft Coming Jan 20th With Feedback Survey; v1 De-Auth Still On

Following last week's partial walk-back on the upcoming Open Game Licence terms, WotC has posted another update about the way forward.

The new update begins with another apology and a promise to be more transparent. To that end, WotC proposes to release the draft of the new OGL this week, with a two-week survey feedback period following it.

WotC Walks Back Some OGL Changes, But Not All

Wizards of the Coast has finally made a statement regarding the OGL. The statement says that the leaked version was a draft designed to solicit feedback and that they are walking back some problematic elements, but don't address others--most notably that the current OGL v1.0a is still being...

www.enworld.org

They also list a number of points of clarity --

• Videos, accessories, VTT content, DMs Guild will not be affected by the new license, none of which is related to the OGL
• The royalties and ownership rights clauses are, as previously noted, going away

OGL v1 Still Being 'De-Authorized'
However, OGL v1.0a still looks like it's being de-authorized. As with the previous announcement, that specific term is carefully avoided, and like that announcement it states that previously published OGL v1 content will continue to be valid; however it notably doesn't mention that the OGL v1 can be used for content going forward, which is a de-authorization.

The phrase used is "Nothing will impact any content you have published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a." -- as noted, this does not make any mention of future content. If you can't publish future content under OGL 1.0a, then it has been de-authorized. The architect of the OGL, Ryan Dancey, along with WotC itself at the time, clearly indicated that the license could not be revoked or de-authorized.

While the royalty and ownership clauses were, indeed, important to OGL content creators and publishers such as myself and many others, it is also very important not to let that overshadow the main goal: the OGL v1.0a.

Per Ryan Dancey in response this announcement: "They must not. They can only stop the bleeding by making a clear and simple statement that they cannot and will not deauthorize or revoke v1.0a".

Ryan Dancey -- Hasbro Cannot Deauthorize OGL

I reached out to the architect of the original Open Gaming License, former VP of Wizard of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, and asked his opinion about the current plan by WotC to 'deauthorize' the current OGL in favour of a new one. He responded as follows: Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does...

www.enworld.org

Amend At-Will
Also not mentioned is the leaked draft's ability to be amended at-will by WotC. An agreement which can be unilaterally changed in any way by one party is not an agreement, it's a blank cheque. They could simply add the royalties or ownership clauses back in at any time, or add even more onerous clauses.

All-in-all this is mainly just a rephrasing of last week's announcement addressing some of the tonal criticisms widely made about it. However, it will be interesting to see the new draft later this week. I would encourage people to take the feedback survey and clearly indicate that the OGL v1.0a must be left intact.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Okay, so this is a slight expansion on their previous statement about what they won't do going forward, but they still manage to avoid the biggest issues of all: there's no statement saying that they've abandoned their plans to try and revoke the OGL v1.0a, and there's nothing about them dropping the provision that they can change the OGL v2.0 (née v1.1) anytime they wish.

Everything else is them just giving minor ground, especially since without any notice to the contrary, they're apparently keeping their right to walk all of this back later in reserve.

That’s because getting rid of the original OGL is their main goal, everything else WotC doesn’t really care about much and is willing to “compromise” on.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I'm not sure that it's all that significant, to be honest. Changes get made to legal documents all the time leading up to the moment of execution. And the presence of a watermark on a document doesn't mean that parties can't execute it - though they may with to add an initialled note saying something like "the parties agree that the watermark on this document does not form part of its terms".

It means, at the very least, that the party who prepared it would have reason to believe that the document wasn't ready to go out to a counterparty for execution for whatever reasons.

It's not a perfect world, and folks do all kinds of strange things with contracts. In my, admittedly limited, experience, large public companies like Hasbro typically have controls in place to prevent such potential shenanigans. They have stakeholder responsibility matrices that map out involvement by risk management, general counsel, etc. many of whom have to sign-off on these things.

Perhaps my expectations are warped, but it strains credulity that the documents sent to third parties were somehow incomplete from WoTC's perspective yet ready to be executed.

 

[Fandabidozi]

The other question worth asking here is how they plan to communicate that to someone that's just got the 3.5 SRD and OGL files off a dusty floppy disk and decides to take advantage of the license offer on them. What exactly makes the new (prospective) licensee responsible for going and checking with WotC that the offer is still open?

Please leave my dusty floppy disk out of this.

 

[CapnZapp]

As with the previous announcement, that specific term is carefully avoided, and like that announcement it states that previously published OGL v1 content will continue to be valid; however it notably doesn't mention that the OGL v1 can be used for content going forward, which is a de-authorization.

Thank you for not just reporting the news, but also slicing through the corporate speak.

(You also openly declare your interests thus clarifying you are not a neutral commentator in this matter, which )

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That’s an interesting take. It’s certainly possible that this could be the case - that the part they’re omitting is the fact that they can’t actually stop you from publishing new content under 1.0a. If that’s the case, we’d have to wait to see the full wording to confirm it. Though also if that’s the case, I don’t think it would restore 3rd party publishers’ trust enough to get them to come back, so it may be a moot point.

Well it’s be moot from a macro lens. Not so much for anyone who does want to keep making OGL 1.0a content.

Also I propose if they do try it, we collectively start referring to OG(L) 5e as “5.0a”.

Yeah, while there's been some conspicuous misses (like the wording of the Hadozee gliding ability), and some massive goofs gotten through when material has not gone to UA (the Peace cleric), I can remember several times when feedback has clearly been adopted. Limiting the Fairy flight to when the PC is not wearing heavy armour, for instance, or the kender's magic pockets, or making the Squire of Solamnia feat more useful for martial rather than spellcasting characters.

Yeah the last 8 years is littered with iterative design based on fan feedback. Hell, large scale, that’s what Monsters of The Multiverse is.

I know someone around here (can’t recall who) genuinely thinks that the Next playtest was just PR and wotc had a mostly finished ruleset in 2012, so I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people really think they’ve been ignoring all feedback, but…come on.

Is the confirmation bias against anything wotc has ever done really that strong?

If the ruling came down for WOTC it would still be better. Heck I wish OGL 1.0a had never happened in the first place.
It was bad for the hobby! That is the point our hobby got distorted into what it is today. Our hobby used to have hundreds of rpg's based on imaginative and truly unique ideas. Then WOTC conquered everyone by opening up their rule set so EVERYONE could abandon their own ideas and come feast on the OGL.

This is completely false. The hobby never stopped having hundreds of RPGs based on imaginative and truly unique ideas. Many OGL games don’t even use the SRD and have nothing to do with dnd, they just use the license because it has always been viewed as a very solid open license, so even within the OGL there are many such games.

We want D&D forced to battle other rpg's in an ever-evolving fray. Survival of the fittest! Only in this way will the game change to meet our needs

Ugh. No thanks.

We are all better off having all of and indie scene, stuff that has risen from the indie scene to rival any game that isn’t dnd like the Powered By The Apocalypse and Forged In The Dark scenes, established but not huge games like WoD, FFG’s Star Wars, publishers like Cubicle7 and Free League, stuff like the various AGE systems and Numenara and the Cypher System, Savage Worlds, Fate, just to name the big names I can’t think of at the moment, and D&D’s “Big Tent” with its requisite OGL ecosystem.

It is good for the hobby that there is a flagship, and that said flagship shares design language and formatting with a host of other games, that can lead new players gradually into the greater gaming community.

The hobby might not even be so prone to open licenses and shared ideas without the OGL, and who knows if games like Eclipse Phase would be under a Creative Commons license?

The hobby very well might be smaller, in fact it almost certainly would be, without the OGL and the general spirit of open gaming surrounding the biggest player in the field.

Either way though, my hope is the way things have been done for decades now is over. The safety of staying under WOTC's umbrella has been revealed to be less than ideal. Now, finally we should begin to see growth again and new attempts at something better.

Did you sleep through the last couple decades?

There are multiple movements of rpg design that don’t branch off from OGL D&D, much less use it.

 

[guachi]

They dropped the ownership clause, royalties, declaring income, and so much more. They've dropped almost everything. And the other side has dropped nothing and only added more demands.

This is silly. This isn't a negotiation where both sides willingly decided to negotiate. Hasbro made demands. The other side rejected them.

Your post remind me of someone trying to convince someone else to go out with them and getting mad they won't say yes. 'No' is an acceptable response. 'No' is always an acceptable response.

 

[reelo]

For me, the continued usability of 1.0(a) for future NEW content is the heart of the matter. Substantial parts of the OSR depend on it.
If they don't back off from that, all the rest is just smoke and mirrors.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Given how much Indian food Britons eat, do you think an inexpensive/unpretentious Mexican (or Mexican-American) restaurant would flourish over there? Unless someone is showing off, most of it isn't any spicier than a lot of the curry being eaten in the UK nowadays.

Absolutely, and it is beginning to appear but it's not the intensity (which is lower than British-Indian and Peri-Peri Chicken - another British favourite, nicked from South Africa I believe), it's just they don't get the flavours right. Like, I had a burrito a few months ago, and it just didn't taste of much. Like, technically everything in it was correct. they just hadn't put it together in a way that had the flavour. That seems to be fairly typical for now. Hopefully it improves over time.

 

[jgbrowning]

It's clear that WotC has a unilateral power to cease offering to licence the SRD to all comers on the terms of the OGL v 1.0a. What effect that would have on the rights of existing licensees to create new works using WotC's OGC, and/or to license others to use the WotC OGC that those existing licensees have used under licence, is in my view an open question, though not one about which it is impossible to reason. In the "lawyer PSA" thread, various posters with relevant expertise have canvassed some of the relevant legal arguments.

Is it clear? (not being snarky)

Once material has been released as Open Game Content via the 1.0a license, where in the license does it say that such content can be "unreleased" from all of the restrictions and freedoms the license grants on the Open Game Content?

And if that is the case, if such a thing exists, can I (Expeditious Retreat Press) decide to "unrelease" my previously released OGC as OGC via a public declaration in the same manner?

And if not, where does being the copyright holder provide such an ability that is withheld from any other party who agreed to the terms of the license in order to release OGC to begin with?

joe b.

 

[pemerton]

Is it clear? (not being snarky)

Once material has been released as Open Game Content via the 1.0a license, where in the license does it say that such content can be "unreleased" from all of the restrictions and freedoms the license grants on the Open Game Content?

And if that is the case, if such a thing exists, can I (Expeditious Retreat Press) decide to "unrelease" my previously released OGC as OGC via a public declaration in the same manner?

And if not, where does being the copyright holder provide such an ability that is withheld from any other party who agreed to the terms of the license in order to release OGC to begin with?

The relevant general principles are:

* A gratuitously-made offer, whether made to a particular individual on a particular occasion or a standing offer to all the world (a la Carlill vs Carbolic Smoke Ball), can be withdrawn at any time;

* An offer that is made pursuant to a binding contractual obligation cannot be withdrawn at will.​

WotC's offer to license part of its 5e SRD (ie all the parts that it has labelled OGC) pursuant to the OGL is a gratuitous offer. WotC can withdraw it at any time. It seems clear to me that they intend to do that, at least as per all their recent statements.

If X is a licensee of WotC pursuant to the OGL, then X is contractually bound to offer to license its OGC to all comers. So X is not in the same situation as WotC is, as X is not making a gratuitous offer.

I can't give legal advice to you or Expeditious Retreat Press, for a variety of reasons the most obvious of which is that I'm not licensed to do so either in my jurisdiction or in yours.