I have bought a ton of books on D&D Beyond, but no longer intend to buy anything here, or from Wizards of the Coast, until they specify, in a legally-binding way, that all 5e content is forever irrevocably bound by the conditions of OGL 1.0a.
I can accept the idea of applying a different license to OneD&D material, though I think it's foolish to do so. But changing the terms under which the existing 5e materials were released is unacceptable as it breaks a promise to creators and fans. I know that the latest statement says that existing material continues to be covered by 1.0a, but there are two issues with this statement: there's no legal guarantee they can't change their minds later, and there's no clarity regarding what happens if people want to create new products based on 5e SRD materials in the future. Both of these things need to be fixed.
I feel very sad writing this letter because I've been a fan of D&D since the 1970s. I've recruited new fans. But I find WotC's attempt to change the rules abhorrent, and can no longer support it as I don't want to be associated with an organization that thinks this is acceptable. I'm spending this weekend reading up on Pathfinder and other games.
I suspect that the Hasbro Board of Directors doesn't read this message board. But on the off chance that you are: you've chosen poor leaders for the organization. They've embarrassed the firm publicly, creating an unnecessary public relations nightmare. They've cost you money (in terms of cancelled subscriptions and future lost sales), and shown without doubt that they fail to understand their audience. CEOs have been fired for far less.
Our language and requirements in the draft <-This word is a LIE, start your honesty there and we might be able to move forwardOGL were disruptive to creators and not in support of our core goals of protecting and cultivating an inclusive play environment and limiting the OGL to TTRPGs. Then we compounded things by being silent for too long. We hurt fans and creators, when more frequent and clear communications could have prevented so much of this.
Your OGL 1.0a content. Nothing will impact any content you have published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a.- If you are De-authorizing OGL 1.0a than you are failing the community. You didn't talk about future content, so yeah you're still planning to kill 1.0a. If you want a separate OGL for 6e/OneDnd than go make a separate license. Of yeah, you are making it compatible with 5E, so you screwed yourself.
Your ownership of your content. You will continue to own your content with no license-back requirements. - This isn't the problem, WOTC's clause to be able to publish that work and make money from it is a larger part of the issue. How about instead, WOTC tries to make better content? Your current offerings are weak in comparison to what 3rd parties bring to the table. 5E has completely ignored LORE, write something that includes it.
I think this is a great summary of the main issues (not all of them, but the main ones)
What I can't seem to wrap my head around is what Hasbro and WotC actually believe that they have as a 'product' in the OGL/SRD. Literally anyone can (and have) put out a functionally equivalent d20 based system, and there is nothing Hasbro can do about it. I mean, this is how we got Pathfinder, just as a way to have something similar to 3.5E when 4E licensing was too much of a bother to deal with. And really, the OGL just allows you to include the SRD in your published works... so rather than including it, or modifying it to make it your own, you can just have a one-liner saying 'please reference the SRD for clarification on rules', and done. No OGL really needed because you are not publishing the SRD. Not all that different than TCoE referencing a spell and telling players to reference the PHB. Really, the OGL is not the issue here, and nobody really cares about the OGL itself, because it is too easy to side-step, if not ignore completely. The real issue at hand here is... what value does D&D bring to the table? It brings a brand name, a couple campaign settings (my kids are loving Strixhaven!), some memorable characters and monsters... and... well, really that is about it isn't it. And if we are doing homebrew, then we aren't using D&D's setting or characters. At this point all that they bring to the table is their brand name, which they keep dragging through the mud. Now, if D&D Beyond became a publishing platform (which it can and should be) so that users can purchase modules and homebrew, and publishers can have tight integration with D&D Beyond and a store front... now that would be value. Make it a requirement for claiming to be One D&D compatible, and there you have a value worth taking a cut from. But that has nothing to do with the OGL, or SRD. Don't mess with those! A store front and integration is what will bring the publishers and players. But instead we are all leaving because they can't just leave what is working and innocuous alone! So short-sighted.
At the end of the day, this is a Hasbro problem. CEO of Hasbro is Chris Cocks, who ran WotC for 6 years before his promotion a year ago. One of his first big moves was buying D&D Beyond... and now the big fancy toy is losing subscribers. Should make for a fun earnings call in a few weeks.
Maybe WOTC could have gotten away with changing the OGL to explicitly exclude hate speech or crypto schemes, but at this point the only thing that's going to really work for the third party industry is 1.1 being the same text as 1.0a with the word "irrevocable" added after "perpetual." And I get the impression that admitting that the OGL 1.0a is not revocable is a non-starter for Hasbro.
I'm still hazy on the crypto/nft thing because mostly they just steal copyrighted art and branding--exactly the "product identity" things that the OGL specifically states are not part of the open content. And they don't care about copyright or really understand it--witness the Dune book stupidity where they bought a copy of a book and thought that meant they owned the copyright.
Then calling it a draft is the same as my 9 year old shouting “I’m not touching you” while intentionally getting a close as physically possible to her sister to annoy her. Writing a legal document is commonly referred to as “drafting” so every version, even the final version is technically a “draft” but they’re also fully aware that they’re speaking to writers, where draft has a different meaning, so they’re trying to use a technical term to imply something different than what it really was. It was intended to be the final “draft” hence contracts and deadlines and incentives to sign quickly, but since that’s clearly not happening, then can now refer to it as just another draft, because they’ve already internally got at least one but likely many newer versions.
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I have bought a ton of books on D&D Beyond, but no longer intend to buy anything here, or from Wizards of the Coast, until they specify, in a legally-binding way, that all 5e content is forever irrevocably bound by the conditions of OGL 1.0a.
I can accept the idea of applying a different license to OneD&D material, though I think it's foolish to do so. But changing the terms under which the existing 5e materials were released is unacceptable as it breaks a promise to creators and fans. I know that the latest statement says that existing material continues to be covered by 1.0a, but there are two issues with this statement: there's no legal guarantee they can't change their minds later, and there's no clarity regarding what happens if people want to create new products based on 5e SRD materials in the future. Both of these things need to be fixed.
I feel very sad writing this letter because I've been a fan of D&D since the 1970s. I've recruited new fans. But I find WotC's attempt to change the rules abhorrent, and can no longer support it as I don't want to be associated with an organization that thinks this is acceptable. I'm spending this weekend reading up on Pathfinder and other games.
I suspect that the Hasbro Board of Directors doesn't read this message board. But on the off chance that you are: you've chosen poor leaders for the organization. They've embarrassed the firm publicly, creating an unnecessary public relations nightmare. They've cost you money (in terms of cancelled subscriptions and future lost sales), and shown without doubt that they fail to understand their audience. CEOs have been fired for far less.
I think this is a great summary of the main issues (not all of them, but the main ones)
What I can't seem to wrap my head around is what Hasbro and WotC actually believe that they have as a 'product' in the OGL/SRD.
Literally anyone can (and have) put out a functionally equivalent d20 based system, and there is nothing Hasbro can do about it. I mean, this is how we got Pathfinder, just as a way to have something similar to 3.5E when 4E licensing was too much of a bother to deal with. And really, the OGL just allows you to include the SRD in your published works... so rather than including it, or modifying it to make it your own, you can just have a one-liner saying 'please reference the SRD for clarification on rules', and done. No OGL really needed because you are not publishing the SRD. Not all that different than TCoE referencing a spell and telling players to reference the PHB.
Really, the OGL is not the issue here, and nobody really cares about the OGL itself, because it is too easy to side-step, if not ignore completely. The real issue at hand here is... what value does D&D bring to the table? It brings a brand name, a couple campaign settings (my kids are loving Strixhaven!), some memorable characters and monsters... and... well, really that is about it isn't it. And if we are doing homebrew, then we aren't using D&D's setting or characters. At this point all that they bring to the table is their brand name, which they keep dragging through the mud.
Now, if D&D Beyond became a publishing platform (which it can and should be) so that users can purchase modules and homebrew, and publishers can have tight integration with D&D Beyond and a store front... now that would be value. Make it a requirement for claiming to be One D&D compatible, and there you have a value worth taking a cut from. But that has nothing to do with the OGL, or SRD. Don't mess with those! A store front and integration is what will bring the publishers and players. But instead we are all leaving because they can't just leave what is working and innocuous alone! So short-sighted.
At the end of the day, this is a Hasbro problem. CEO of Hasbro is Chris Cocks, who ran WotC for 6 years before his promotion a year ago. One of his first big moves was buying D&D Beyond... and now the big fancy toy is losing subscribers. Should make for a fun earnings call in a few weeks.
Maybe WOTC could have gotten away with changing the OGL to explicitly exclude hate speech or crypto schemes, but at this point the only thing that's going to really work for the third party industry is 1.1 being the same text as 1.0a with the word "irrevocable" added after "perpetual." And I get the impression that admitting that the OGL 1.0a is not revocable is a non-starter for Hasbro.
I'm still hazy on the crypto/nft thing because mostly they just steal copyrighted art and branding--exactly the "product identity" things that the OGL specifically states are not part of the open content. And they don't care about copyright or really understand it--witness the Dune book stupidity where they bought a copy of a book and thought that meant they owned the copyright.
Looks like it's going back to hardcover books and making things up on the fly again, oh well and I thought the digital version was a stayer...
Don't look up, cos I could be looking down :)
Then calling it a draft is the same as my 9 year old shouting “I’m not touching you” while intentionally getting a close as physically possible to her sister to annoy her. Writing a legal document is commonly referred to as “drafting” so every version, even the final version is technically a “draft” but they’re also fully aware that they’re speaking to writers, where draft has a different meaning, so they’re trying to use a technical term to imply something different than what it really was. It was intended to be the final “draft” hence contracts and deadlines and incentives to sign quickly, but since that’s clearly not happening, then can now refer to it as just another draft, because they’ve already internally got at least one but likely many newer versions.