WotC To Give Core D&D Mechanics To Community Via Creative Commons

Wizards of the Coast, in a move which surprised everbody, has announced that it will give away the core D&D mechanics to the community via a Creative Commons license.

This won't include 'quintessentially D&D" stuff like owlbears and magic missile, but it wil include the 'core D&D mechanics'.

So what does it include? It's important to note that it's only a fraction of what's currently available as Open Gaming Content under the existing Open Gaming License, so while it's termed as a 'give-away' it's actually a reduction. It doesn't include classes, spells, or magic items. It does include the combat rules, ability scores, and the core mechanic.

 

[guachi]

Those wishing to continue fanning this flame until the brand is in ashes, you are free to do so as you wish, but I am not supporting the idea of seeing D&D burn so a few people can feel warm. We're making progress. This was a huge step forward.

How is what we see a step forward from what already exists?

 

[Prime_Evil]

Open Game Content (OGC) is not even a notion defined or existing in the licence... 23 years of OGC are now not even usable in new publication under this licence...

There's also the issue that games completely unrelated to D&D that used the OGL are still screwed. In some cases, the original publisher is still around and can update the license. But this is not always the case - consider Open Game Content such as the Action System from Gold Rush Games or the OpenD6 System from West End Games. Neither of these use any WoTC IP, but the community loses access to remix the OGC if WoTC can redact the right to produce future non-D&D materials under v1.0a of the OGL. And then there's stuff like the Anime SRD from Guardians of Order. Guardians of Order died around 2005 - 2006, so this material will also be lost to the community forever. A smarter move by WoTC would be to revoke the OGL v.1.0a for works derived from D&D but allow its continued use by third-parties operating outside of the D&D ecosystem.

 

[treps]

There's also the issue that games completely unrelated to D&D that used the OGL are still screwed. In some cases, the original publisher is still around and can update the license. But this is not always the case - consider Open Game Content such as the Action System from Gold Rush Games or the OpenD6 System from West End Games. Neither of these use any WoTC IP, but the community loses access to remix the OGC if WoTC can redact the right to produce future non-D&D materials under v1.0a of the OGL. And then there's stuff like the Anime SRD from Guardians of Order. Guardians of Order died around 2005 - 2006, so this material will also be lost to the community forever. A smarter move by WoTC would be to revoke the OGL v.1.0a for works derived from D&D but allow its continued use by third-parties operating outside of the D&D ecosystem.

Except they published their SRD under a licence that was perpetual, so they have no way to retract part of it from the license ! Once the SRD (3, 3.5 or 5.1) became OGC it's for ever !
The deauthorization of the 1.0a for some parts of what have been licensed is not even possible... And by saying that everything published with 1.0a is still "legal" they just that, even for their own SRDs...

 

[Staffan]

As a rule of thumb, if a term exists in a dictionary of the English language, it is laughable for Hasbro-WotC to claim to "own" it.

They can't own "gnome". They have a much better chance of owning "rock gnome that is highly intelligent, fairly resilient, have a life span of centuries, can see in darkness, is resistant to mental magic, knowledgeable about artifice, and is good at building clockwork devices"

 

[Lucas Yew]

Probably only a laughable fraction of the rules expressions. And will most likely have the NonCommercial and NonDerivative poison pills too.

Cynical? They gave me all the signs to be...

 

[Staffan]

The fundamental problem I see is that Wizards seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the Open Gaming License. They see it as "the thing that lets people make stuff for our game." That's like saying that clerics are for healing. To be sure, that is/was a large portion of what it's used for in practice, but it's not the whole picture.

The OGL is a method for building a web of interconnected relationships. Wizards publishes a rule set, Malhavoc Games a book of spells, Necromancer Games a book of monsters, and I can use them all in making an adventure and then Mongoose can incorporate the magic items I made in my book in yet another thing*. The OGL 1.2 focuses exclusively on licensing the 5.1 SRD from Wizards, nothing else. There's no virality to it. That means it's no good at fostering the kind of collaborative environment the OGL 1.0(a) does.

Further, many other companies have used the OGL as a means of encouraging similar structures for their own material, such as Mongoose's BRP version via Runequest and Legend, Evil Hat's FATE, or Free League's Year Zero Engine. The claim to "deauthorizing" the OGL 1.0(a) causes a lot of legal confusion for these materials.

And that, of course, leaves aside the point of whether they can even deauthorize the OGL 1.0(a) in the first place. Signs point to "no", but legal minds here have opined that it's not as clear as it sounds.

The thing is that they could do pretty much everything they claim to want to do by returning to the way things were done in the early 00s, by using dual licenses. License the SRD under the OGL, and the brand under a different license. The brand license would allow people to use the creator badges, and ideally some kind of unambiguous statement of compatibility. That's where you can put requirements on actually maintaining said compatibility as well as morality clauses and whatnot.

* Yeah yeah, these are either gone or not doing much with d20 these days, I don't keep up with the current 3PPs.

 

[Minigiant]

The fundamental problem I see is that Wizards seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the Open Gaming License. They see it as "the thing that lets people make stuff for our game." That's like saying that clerics are for healing. To be sure, that is/was a large portion of what it's used for in practice, but it's not the whole picture.

The OGL is a method for building a web of interconnected relationships. Wizards publishes a rule set, Malhavoc Games a book of spells, Necromancer Games a book of monsters, and I can use them all in making an adventure and then Mongoose can incorporate the magic items I made in my book in yet another thing*. The OGL 1.2 focuses exclusively on licensing the 5.1 SRD from Wizards, nothing else. There's no virality to it. That means it's no good at fostering the kind of collaborative environment the OGL 1.0(a) does.

Further, many other companies have used the OGL as a means of encouraging similar structures for their own material, such as Mongoose's BRP version via Runequest and Legend, Evil Hat's FATE, or Free League's Year Zero Engine. The claim to "deauthorizing" the OGL 1.0(a) causes a lot of legal confusion for these materials.

And that, of course, leaves aside the point of whether they can even deauthorize the OGL 1.0(a) in the first place. Signs point to "no", but legal minds here have opined that it's not as clear as it sounds.

The thing is that they could do pretty much everything they claim to want to do by returning to the way things were done in the early 00s, by using dual licenses. License the SRD under the OGL, and the brand under a different license. The brand license would allow people to use the creator badges, and ideally some kind of unambiguous statement of compatibility. That's where you can put requirements on actually maintaining said compatibility as well as morality clauses and whatnot.

* Yeah yeah, these are either gone or not doing much with d20 these days, I don't keep up with the current 3PPs.

WOTC fully understands what an OGL is and its purpose.

They don't want an OGL because it takes too much power out their hands..
WOTC only accepted an OGL because they wanted to nsure D&D's survival should they fall like TSR and continued it because the community wanted it.

The issue now is that they have thought the Net Profit with a real OGL is a lot less that the Net Profit without a OGL or with a hallf-OGL.
Until the community can explain that Net Profit with a real OGL is the highest, every company (if it lives long enough) will attempt to remove its OGLs over and over. It's just logical.

 

[Morrus]

@Morrus, since you guys reworded everything in the SRD and 5E's core engine is released in this way, do you think it would be possible to continue making Level Up content only with the CC rules? I know it's too early to give a specific answer, but to me this sounds like you guys don't need to de-OGLify Level Up anymore!

That’s exactly what I’ll be asking our lawyer.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

out of these the only one that is even the least bit interesting (as in, you cannot simply take it because it is public domain anyway) is the displacer beast. Dwarf, Elf, ... does not depend on WotC, neither does Fighter, Cleric, ... and the two most basic spells, great choice

It's less about if they own elves, clerics and dwarves, and more about the wording and creative choices behind their iteration of these things. Sure you can just recreate a virtually equal elf, but it's easier to build a network of collaborative works around it if you have all the basics spelled out, and you can safely reference stuff like detect magic, turn undead and fey ancestry by name. The ideal scenario would be all the SRDs in CC-BY from first to last page. The CC-BY stuff is clearly a peace offering, but a document without classes, races or a single statblock is almost like a mockery.

 

[Mortus]

The supposed need to revoke OGL 1.0a by WOTC for fear of being associated with hateful material may be a smokescreen. Questions for any lawyers out there (I’m not one) : Couldn’t a racist parody or satire of the game be created at any time in the US? Maybe someone could take WOTC’s public missteps in that area and super exaggerate it?