WotC Unveils Draft of New Open Gaming License

As promised earlier this week, WotC has posted the draft OGL v.1.2 license for the community to see.

A survey will be going live tomorrow for feedback.

Starting the OGL ‘Playtest’

In this article, you can review a draft of OGL 1.2, submit feedback via survey, and learn about a Creative Commons license that puts D&D's core mech...

www.dndbeyond.com

The current iteration contains clauses which prohibit offensive content, applies only to TTRPG books and PDFs, no right of ownership going to WotC, and an optional creator content badge for your products.

One important element, the ability for WotC to change the license at-will has also been addressed, allowing the only two specific changes they can make -- how you cite WotC in your work, and contact details.

This license will be irrevocable.

The OGL v1.0a is still being 'de-authorized'.

 

[mamba]

lol I hope that number is true and draws some eyes.

You can pretty much see where the news started affecting the stock price

 

[ilgatto]

Also, even if we decide that Wizards of the Coast are good, open-minded folks (and after the past two weeks, there are a lot of people who won't give them the benefit of the doubt), this is a club with which a future management team can use against future third party publishers.

If future management is a bunch of homophobes, this language is broad enough to say that mentioning the existence of LGBT NPCs could be enough to say a work is obscene. If that seems unlikely, I point you in the direction of Google News, where you will find a lot of contemporary examples of this happening.

Exactly this.

After all, it wouldn't be the first time WotC or, indeed, TSR has changed its mind under new management citing half-truths and using corporate speak.

 

[Xohar17]

"Your Content. This is your creative contributions to your works that are not Our Licensed Content or Our Unlicensed Content. This license permits you to combine Your Content with Our Licensed Content and distribute the resulting works as authorized by this license."

sounds like it does that to me, otherwise it is just restating

"Our Licensed Content. This license covers any content in the SRD 5.1 (or any subsequent version of the SRD we release under this license) that is not licensed to you under Creative Commons. You may use that content in your own works on the terms of this license."

Not the original poster but I think they mean combine your work with the work if others in the community as allowed in the old ocg, this only allows to use yours and wotc content.

 

[mamba]

Moreover, owlbear and magic Missile were just examples. They aren’t including any monsters, spells, traps, magic items, races, or classes in the CC license whatsoever.

which makes perfect sense, that is what the OGL is for.

 

[Matt Thomason]

This is a really good point.

The way OGL 1.0a works, everything relying on OGL 1.0a is automatically itself licensed under OGL 1.0a (with certain limits for non-mechanics and story elements/"Product Identity"). If you deauthorize OGL 1.0a, and the deauthorization is valid, are those licenses still valid? The answer might be yes but it's unclear, which creates a lot of uncertainty for publishers. WOTC can re-license its own content under OGL 1.2 and presumably Paizo and some other big players would be cooperative about re-licensing their stuff too but that wouldn't necessarily extend to more minor or now-defunct players.

There appears to be very little legal argument (none whatsoever, in fact) that WotC's deauthorization can extend beyond their own licenses, and probably only in the issuing of new ones, because there is no mechanism for them to deauthorize existing ones.

If your license is with a third party, it would require them to deauthorize it, at the very least, assuming they could even find a mechanism to do so. WotC cannot affect a contract that exists solely between two other parties, unless said contract specifies a mechanism for them to do so.

They may possibly be able to affect the sublicensing of SRD content via that license, that one really needs to go to court to get a proper answer, but I believe they can't seeing as they made an irrevocable grant to do so in that license. Still, that one's not something I'd want to bet my continued solvency on.

All of this said, whether WotC is in public recognition of any of this is another matter. If they decide to initiate legal proceedings over it (even if they know they'll lose, simply to bully the other party into backing off before it goes that far), someone would have to stand up and fight back in order for this to have any effect. Therefore, it would be preferable for us to badger WotC to answer this question definitively.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Folks, as much as I know gamers love to think of ourselves as the center of the universe, this OGL news has had little impact on HASBRO stock. Hasbro is much more than just D&D tabletop RPG. And it's stock price over the past year is very similar to many companies. There is no correlation between their stock price and when they made their various announcements of the OGL. There are a lot of other factors at play here that have more impact. Like BoA downgrading them long before this OGL thing was going nuts (due to MtG news).

 

[Incenjucar]

Folks, as much as I know gamers love to think of ourselves as the center of the universe, this OGL news has had little impact on HASBRO stock. Hasbro is much more than just D&D tabletop RPG. And it's stock price over the past year is very similar to many companies. There is no correlation between their stock price and when they made their various announcements of the OGL. There are a lot of other factors at play here.

That can't really be stated as a hard fact. Financial groups are reporting on this.

 

[Sacrosanct]

That can't really be stated as a hard fact.

yes it can. Why? Because we can look to what happened when the stock dropped. Like BoA downgrading them back in November, and the debacle of MtG (has everyone already forgotten about that?). And before that (what started the tumble) was earnings report that had nothing to do with D&D, let alone the OGL

Their stock isn't down because of the OGL. That's a fact. We know that because we can see the real reasons.

 

[Scribe]

View attachment 273152

You can pretty much see where the news started affecting the stock price

I know the market swings up and down, but yeah.

 

[Vivificient]

I plan to send the following feedback in the survey:

• WOTC proposes to deauthorize the OGL 1.0a, in contravention of the document's clear intent and in defiance of WOTC's previous assurances that the OGL 1.0a could not be revoked. This is treacherous and unlawful (i.e., chaotic evil). Do not attempt to unilaterally revoke rights that were granted perpetually and which have been relied on by an entire industry.
• The OGL 1.0a includes a perpetual license to sub-license the granted content. It is completely unclear how existing and previously published works can remain licensed under the OGL 1.0a without retaining the right to sub-license content under OGL 1.0a.
• The proposed OGL 1.2 is written as a license agreement solely between a user and Wizards of the Coast, and defines the "licensed content" solely as WOTC's IP. This does not reflect the purpose and nature of the original OGL as an open license with a "share forward" function.
• Hundreds of publishers have contributed Open Game Content to the commons under the existing OGL. WOTC does not have the moral or legal right to unilaterally restrict access to this vast body of work.
• According to section 9 of the OGL 1.0a, Open Game Content licensed OGL 1.0a can be used under any authorized version of the OGL! It is EXTREMELY unclear what would become of this large body of work which would effectively be "inherited" by the OGL 1.2, since the OGL 1.2 only contains provisions for the use of content owned by WOTC. Do not authorize a new version of the OGL that fails to clearly state the status of existing material already designated as Open Game Content and as Product Identity!
• The proposed OGL 1.2 appears to "claw back" content which was previously released as Open Game Content by WOTC, namely the SRD's for 3e, 3.5, and d20 Modern. This is inappropriate and unacceptable. All existing Open Game Content must remain open.
• Under OGL 1.0a, it is possible to combine material released as Open Game Content by multiple publishers. For example, it is possible for a creator to take a monster released as Open Game Content in Paizo's "Pathfinder Bestiary 3", and use it together with the content released under the 5e SRD. There is no clear mechanism to do so under OGL 1.2. This VASTLY reduces the amount of resources available for creators to draw on when creating OGL products.
• The OGL 1.0a allows publishers to fully support their OGL product lines with any type of content including software tools (character managers, random treasure generators, etc.) and video game adaptations. The proposed OGL 1.2 appears to unlawfully restrict these widely used (and perpetually granted) rights.
• The original OGL 1.0a created a safe habour for publishers, by making it clear that publishers who followed the clearly defined terms of the license would be protected against any interference or legal action by WOTC. The proposed OGL 1.2 introduces ambiguous terms about harmful or obscene content, and allows WOTC the power to terminate the license based on these ambiguous terms, thus introducing a new risk to businesses seeking to operate under the OGL 1.2.

In consideration for reading this forum post, You are granted a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable license to use, copy, modify, distribute, and potate it for any purposes including but not limited to WOTC surveys.