They they better hope 6e is so freaking amazing that everyone will need to play it
Agreed. What terrifies me most is not 1.1, but that One DND/6E is so incredibly balanced and not just player centric that I will not want to run anything else as a DM.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination."- T. Moldvay
This was a canard; a distraction. This is a non-problem. Nobody was making D&D NFTs; nobody of any size anyway. The trend is more or less dead at this point, and WotC is using a boogeyman to try and scare you into line.
Reason Two: Protecting Wizards from racism and other forms of bigotry being published with their branding.
Hasbro doesn't get to legislate taste; people are allowed to make horrible products, you are allowed not to patronize them. Using official D&D branding is already a violation of existing copyright law; that's what that little "R" in a circle (registered trademark sign) means next to the big "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" on book covers. This is another boogeyman; notice that both of these first two are appealing to your emotions and not your reason.
Reason Three: Data collection.
There are enough Corporations trying ti filch my personal information without WOTC joining the queue. They want data: do market research like everybody else, not establish the D&D inquisition.
Reason Four: “Exploitation” (Wizards’ word) of Wizards’ IP by third-parties.
Wizard's IP... as if 90 percent of it wasn't stolen from Lord of the Rings, Celtic/Germanic mythology and the public domain to start with. Or did you think they came up with Halflings all on their own? TSR/WOtC didn't even come up with the idea of most of their rules to start with: 1.0 D&D was adapted from Chainmail.
Reason Five: Recapturing Lost Revenue.
Ah "Lost revenue"; the same argument games companies put forth to say "every copy of a game pirated is a lost sale!"... and has been debunked so many times it's hard to keep track. Hasbro just wants to make more money than already owning the most successful TTRPG (not for long by the looks of it) on Earth does. And to do it they are turning small businesses and players alike upside down and shaking them for all they're worth.
I feel like OP's initial post is a bit of a strawman argument.
WotC could have created a new license without killing the old ones, thus allowing 3PP to make content for 3e and 5e using those older licenses.
They could still can do that. At this point in time, we don't know for sure what is happening. I am getting more and more concerned by the minute, but I do think it is important to note that one way or another, we don't know for certain whether or not the leaked OGL 1.1 is an accurate leak. Even if it is, the blowback might have caused Wizards of the Coast to change their minds.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
Reason 1 is valid-ish. Reasons 2 thru 5 are not even remotely valid. Just ain't. Sorry.
Your premise is that things have changed since its inception. But points 2 thru 5 existing when OGL1.0 were very first released. So your point in invalid.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I find the idea that Wizards needed to update their terms to be more restrictive on what people can do narratively with the product to be frankly abhorent; If I want to do a setting that explores themes of Racism, Religion, Slavery, Furry, Fetishism, Economics, Narcotics or Ergonomics using the rough ruleset of d20 I should be free to do so and If I choose to market it then so F***ing be it! Let the masses reject or embrace it and the Execs at Hasbro claim with full sincerity that they neither support nor acknowledge the product that I have birthed into the world.
I feel like OP's initial post is a bit of a strawman argument.
WotC could have created a new license without killing the old ones, thus allowing 3PP to make content for 3e and 5e using those older licenses.
They could still can do that. At this point in time, we don't know for sure what is happening. I am getting more and more concerned by the minute, but I do think it is important to note that one way or another, we don't know for certain whether or not the leaked OGL 1.1 is an accurate leak. Even if it is, the blowback might have caused Wizards of the Coast to change their minds.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I agree that Hasbro should get a small share of the profit others make from using the OGL, based on the IP that Hasbro owns.
I also agree that the OGL needed to be structured to better allow for integration of 3rd party content into D&D beyond. We've all wanted this for a long time.
However, you can't whitewash the way they did it by arguing that OGL1.0a needed to be replaced.
10% royalty on all profit above 50k, and I'm right there with Hasbro. Allow Hasbro to take their share in kind with online distribution rights (determined somehow).
What they are proposing is stupid, short sighted and greedy.
Agreed. Integration is one thing, but assimilation is totally another. And this is a most wicked assimilation approach.
I agree that Hasbro should get a small share of the profit others make from using the OGL, based on the IP that Hasbro owns.
I also agree that the OGL needed to be structured to better allow for integration of 3rd party content into D&D beyond. We've all wanted this for a long time.
However, you can't whitewash the way they did it by arguing that OGL1.0a needed to be replaced.
10% royalty on all profit above 50k, and I'm right there with Hasbro. Allow Hasbro to take their share in kind with online distribution rights (determined somehow).
What they are proposing is stupid, short sighted and greedy.
Why did the OGL need an update to better integrate content into DND Beyond?
Actually, fun note on the topic: are you aware that DND Beyond was created using the existing OGL, and then later purchased by Wizards? Or that virtually all of the other interactive web-based products to support online play have been created by third parties? Or that all similar future development will be prohibited by OGL 1.1? Like, not just royalty sharing-- third parties will simply be prohibited from making things like npc generators, encounter managers, new or special-use character sheet management systems, VTTs, etc., unless they negotiate separate license agreements.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
The problem, though, is that almost every source I've seen is just repeating information from other places, rather than actually bringing new things to the table. The one place I have seen the full contract is at Ogl.battlezoo.com, and it is very much a possibility that this seemingly new anonymous website is wrong or made things up to fit into what the Gizmodo article said the new Open Game License would be.
I haven't seen any videos or sources reviewing an independent version of the License, and it would be highly illegal if they did. So my guess is that most of the other people talking about this are just looking over the sources we've already read rather than independently verifying anything. Griffon Saddlebag is the one person I have seen to speak out about the leak, and it seems really iffy because the only way it makes sense for him to have independently gotten a version of Open Game License 1.1 would be to sign a contract not to talk about it.
So if there are really any YouTubers independently verifying this, then please give me links. There are no terms on the forums that should outlaw you from doing this, and the fact that you are refusing to link the sources you've been mentioning does feel like a bit of cop out.
P.S. I know some people are going to talk about how non-disclosure-agreements are bad and make the Open Game License situation even more suspicious, but A) Companies use them all the time and B) The fact that you don't want them to be used doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
The problem, though, is that almost every source I've seen is just repeating information from other places, rather than actually bringing new things to the table. The one place I have seen the full contract is at Ogl.battlezoo.com, and it is very much a possibility that this seemingly new anonymous website is wrong or made things up to fit into what the Gizmodo article said the new Open Game License would be.
I haven't seen any videos or sources reviewing an independent version of the License, and it would be highly illegal if they did. So my guess is that most of the other people talking about this are just looking over the sources we've already read rather than independently verifying anything. Griffon Saddlebag is the one person I have seen to speak out about the leak, and it seems really iffy because the only way it makes sense for him to have independently gotten a version of Open Game License 1.1 would be to sign a contract not to talk about it.
So if there are really any YouTubers independently verifying this, then please give me links. There are no terms on the forums that should outlaw you from doing this, and the fact that you are refusing to link the sources you've been mentioning does feel like a bit of cop out.
P.S. I know some people are going to talk about how non-disclosure-agreements are bad and make the Open Game License situation even more suspicious, but A) Companies use them all the time and B) The fact that you don't want them to be used doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Christian Mehrstam—who puts out Whitehack—has announced that he has ceased distribution of his game for now.
TROLL LORD, NECROTIC GNOME, and other publishers have released statements concerning the leaked document, commented on how the revocation of the Open Game License would put their games and livelihoods in peril, and are already making plans to weather what is most likely coming.
I trust these people much, much more than I trust the mere speculations of players with little to nothing to lose and who just need to tell themselves that Wizards can do no wrong.
I heard about the BFRPG community rallying to help Gonnerman bleach out everything OGL/SRD. It's very inspirational to see a situation like that right now, where the community is driving the momentum in response to what surely will still be something more undesirable to 3rd party publishers than what has been in place before, which fostered them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination."- T. Moldvay
I agree that Hasbro should get a small share of the profit others make from using the OGL, based on the IP that Hasbro owns.
I don't, because:
1) When good stuff is made and sold/streamed, DnD becomes more popular and more core books are sold, thus increasing Wizards/Hasbro profit already. This is exactly what the OGL 1.0 was designed to do - a collaborative win/win for everyone involved. Changing that dynamic means the end of it all. Creators go from implicitly promoting Wizard's DnD products for free (in a mutually beneficial arrangement - i.e. quid pro quo) to then also padding Wizards/Hasbro's bottom line. Does Nike demand/deserve a portion of the salary/winnings of every athlete that wears their gear? If they wrote up some document asserting that, what do you think would happen? Wizards already has a monopoly on publishing the core rules (and whatever content they make for the game themselves). That is the benefit they get from their IP through the OGL.
2) I don't see Wizards paying royalties to Tolkien and all the other sources whose material DnD sprang from.
3) Any percentage at all would require the same onerous, intrusive bookkeeping from creators that 1.1 is demanding.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
This is an important distinction. The original OGL was written in 2000 (I believe) Kickstarter was founded in 2009. To be honest, the OGL should have been re-written in 2010. WoTC is sorely late to the party in this respect. However it does need "Modernized." As it stands now the OGL is being used to essentially subsidize the competition. What isn't helping is their continued silence, but that's a conversation for the many other threads on this forum.
You, however, are correct in all of your points and this does need to happen. I, personally, hope its the staff at Wizards and not the lawyers at Hasbro that are driving the OGL changes.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
The problem, though, is that almost every source I've seen is just repeating information from other places, rather than actually bringing new things to the table. The one place I have seen the full contract is at Ogl.battlezoo.com, and it is very much a possibility that this seemingly new anonymous website is wrong or made things up to fit into what the Gizmodo article said the new Open Game License would be.
I haven't seen any videos or sources reviewing an independent version of the License, and it would be highly illegal if they did. So my guess is that most of the other people talking about this are just looking over the sources we've already read rather than independently verifying anything. Griffon Saddlebag is the one person I have seen to speak out about the leak, and it seems really iffy because the only way it makes sense for him to have independently gotten a version of Open Game License 1.1 would be to sign a contract not to talk about it.
So if there are really any YouTubers independently verifying this, then please give me links. There are no terms on the forums that should outlaw you from doing this, and the fact that you are refusing to link the sources you've been mentioning does feel like a bit of cop out.
P.S. I know some people are going to talk about how non-disclosure-agreements are bad and make the Open Game License situation even more suspicious, but A) Companies use them all the time and B) The fact that you don't want them to be used doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Frankly, at this point, it is very clear which way Occam's Razor is slicing.
It is more likely than not that the leaked document is accurate of at least the state of OGL 1.1 mid-December. To keep trying to deny that we have no idea what the terms of the proposed license are is reeeeeeaaally stretching it at this point and pretty much calls into question investigative journalism in general - like we have no idea if Senator McScandal was involved in some controversy unless the Senator himself publicly says "Yeah it was me!" LOL!!
Assuming that Linda Codega did get a copy of it (as well as numerous YouTubers) and then an "anonymous website" wrote up an entire document that matched the leaked information and totally faked the rest, but Gizmodo and everyone else who saw it previously (including WotC!) all decided to just stay quiet and not point out that the made-up document is fake is getting into very silly conspiracy theory land.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
The problem, though, is that almost every source I've seen is just repeating information from other places, rather than actually bringing new things to the table. The one place I have seen the full contract is at Ogl.battlezoo.com, and it is very much a possibility that this seemingly new anonymous website is wrong or made things up to fit into what the Gizmodo article said the new Open Game License would be.
I haven't seen any videos or sources reviewing an independent version of the License, and it would be highly illegal if they did. So my guess is that most of the other people talking about this are just looking over the sources we've already read rather than independently verifying anything. Griffon Saddlebag is the one person I have seen to speak out about the leak, and it seems really iffy because the only way it makes sense for him to have independently gotten a version of Open Game License 1.1 would be to sign a contract not to talk about it.
So if there are really any YouTubers independently verifying this, then please give me links. There are no terms on the forums that should outlaw you from doing this, and the fact that you are refusing to link the sources you've been mentioning does feel like a bit of cop out.
P.S. I know some people are going to talk about how non-disclosure-agreements are bad and make the Open Game License situation even more suspicious, but A) Companies use them all the time and B) The fact that you don't want them to be used doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Frankly, at this point, it is very clear which way Occam's Razor is slicing.
It is more likely than not that the leaked document is accurate of at least the state of OGL 1.1 mid-December. To keep trying to deny that we have no idea what the terms of the proposed license are is reeeeeeaaally stretching it at this point and pretty much calls into question investigative journalism in general - like we have no idea if Senator McScandal was involved in some controversy unless the Senator himself publicly says "Yeah it was me!" LOL!!
Assuming that Linda Codega did get a copy of it (as well as numerous YouTubers) and then an "anonymous website" wrote up an entire document that matched the leaked information and totally faked the rest, but Gizmodo and everyone else who saw it previously (including WotC!) all decided to just stay quiet and not point out that the made-up document is fake is getting into very silly conspiracy theory land.
The fact that this was an early draft (as is for now most likely) means absolutely nothing. Lawyers make crazy early drafts all the time without planning to make them public. The document we saw isn't fake, but it most likely isn't the final version either.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
Right now, there is nothing stopping Amazon or any other large company from mass producing mass-scale products rivalling D&D.Recently, Amazon dipped its toes in the D&D business with their publication of Critical Role’s Vox Machina.While Critical Role did an admirable job respecting Wizards’ rights with the show, Amazon is not exactly known for being the most respectful of other people’s products and designs.An updated OGL will prevent someone like Amazon from releasing a product at a scale unprecedented by existing third-party contributors.
You've used Amazon in particular here because of how large and disliked they are, but if even they as a big evil multinational company come into the tabletop market and produce a definitively better product and poor Hasbro can't compete... Good? We get a better product and WotC have to step up to compete.
Now if Amazon were to do anti-competitive bullshit, like refusing to stream twitch games of D&D while promoting twitch streams of their new game thats a cause for outrage, that's different. That would be a big company using their ownership of certain markets to bully a smaller company out of the space (What WotC are trying to do now).
The big thing here is... It's not Amazon is it? It's very obviously Paizo. WotC aren't worried about a big giant outside competitor their worried they might facilitate smaller opposition rising to a state where they might challenge their market dominance.
What's considered and what's done are two very different things. People and companies consider cutthroat things all the time, but they rarely actually go through with it. At this point all we can do is wait to see what's published, and then wait months or years more to see what actually happened.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
Almost all the points are, well, pointless because they are covered in other things then an OGL would have, except for that point of them losing money. Wizards and Hasbro are a huge money maker already. It is not their fault if 3rd parties cater to the needs and wants of the borader playerbase then they do. It shows they failed to understand what their playerbase wants out of D&D. 5e, and honestly I suspect One D&D until official books come out for it to prove otherwise, has been rather lacking and strip down. Fun, but still feel a lack of something that is filled by 3rd party groups. Honestly instead of punishing those groups by trying to siphon cash off them maybe Wizards needs to look internally and see what they're doing wrong in what they are focusing and not focusing on. Their loss of revenue is not the fault of 3rd parties, it is the fault of Wizards failing in some core way. I don't see this being a problem in other, less profitable TTRPG companies who also have their own lot of 3rd party support.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
The problem, though, is that almost every source I've seen is just repeating information from other places, rather than actually bringing new things to the table. The one place I have seen the full contract is at Ogl.battlezoo.com, and it is very much a possibility that this seemingly new anonymous website is wrong or made things up to fit into what the Gizmodo article said the new Open Game License would be.
I haven't seen any videos or sources reviewing an independent version of the License, and it would be highly illegal if they did. So my guess is that most of the other people talking about this are just looking over the sources we've already read rather than independently verifying anything. Griffon Saddlebag is the one person I have seen to speak out about the leak, and it seems really iffy because the only way it makes sense for him to have independently gotten a version of Open Game License 1.1 would be to sign a contract not to talk about it.
So if there are really any YouTubers independently verifying this, then please give me links. There are no terms on the forums that should outlaw you from doing this, and the fact that you are refusing to link the sources you've been mentioning does feel like a bit of cop out.
P.S. I know some people are going to talk about how non-disclosure-agreements are bad and make the Open Game License situation even more suspicious, but A) Companies use them all the time and B) The fact that you don't want them to be used doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Frankly, at this point, it is very clear which way Occam's Razor is slicing.
It is more likely than not that the leaked document is accurate of at least the state of OGL 1.1 mid-December. To keep trying to deny that we have no idea what the terms of the proposed license are is reeeeeeaaally stretching it at this point and pretty much calls into question investigative journalism in general - like we have no idea if Senator McScandal was involved in some controversy unless the Senator himself publicly says "Yeah it was me!" LOL!!
Assuming that Linda Codega did get a copy of it (as well as numerous YouTubers) and then an "anonymous website" wrote up an entire document that matched the leaked information and totally faked the rest, but Gizmodo and everyone else who saw it previously (including WotC!) all decided to just stay quiet and not point out that the made-up document is fake is getting into very silly conspiracy theory land.
The fact that this was an early draft (as is for now most likely) means absolutely nothing. Lawyers make crazy early drafts all the time without planning to make them public. The document we saw isn't fake, but it most likely isn't the final version either.
A number of 3PPs have now stated that this "draft" of the CGL 1.1 was received with a contract for them to sign.
This is an excellent (long) video where Stephen Glicker ( long time 3PP) discusses the now publicly available CGL 1.1 (after having spoken to his lawyer). He knows and works with many people in the industry, including writers from Paizo (and the OG Pathfinder), WotC, and EN World. From some of these people he learned that the "draft" CGL 1.1 was received with a contract.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
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Agreed. What terrifies me most is not 1.1, but that One DND/6E is so incredibly balanced and not just player centric that I will not want to run anything else as a DM.
"The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination."- T. Moldvay
Let me just rapid-fire these...
Reason One: NFTs
This was a canard; a distraction. This is a non-problem. Nobody was making D&D NFTs; nobody of any size anyway. The trend is more or less dead at this point, and WotC is using a boogeyman to try and scare you into line.
Reason Two: Protecting Wizards from racism and other forms of bigotry being published with their branding.
Hasbro doesn't get to legislate taste; people are allowed to make horrible products, you are allowed not to patronize them. Using official D&D branding is already a violation of existing copyright law; that's what that little "R" in a circle (registered trademark sign) means next to the big "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" on book covers. This is another boogeyman; notice that both of these first two are appealing to your emotions and not your reason.
Reason Three: Data collection.
There are enough Corporations trying ti filch my personal information without WOTC joining the queue. They want data: do market research like everybody else, not establish the D&D inquisition.
Reason Four: “Exploitation” (Wizards’ word) of Wizards’ IP by third-parties.
Wizard's IP... as if 90 percent of it wasn't stolen from Lord of the Rings, Celtic/Germanic mythology and the public domain to start with. Or did you think they came up with Halflings all on their own? TSR/WOtC didn't even come up with the idea of most of their rules to start with: 1.0 D&D was adapted from Chainmail.
Reason Five: Recapturing Lost Revenue.
Ah "Lost revenue"; the same argument games companies put forth to say "every copy of a game pirated is a lost sale!"... and has been debunked so many times it's hard to keep track. Hasbro just wants to make more money than already owning the most successful TTRPG (not for long by the looks of it) on Earth does. And to do it they are turning small businesses and players alike upside down and shaking them for all they're worth.
They could still can do that. At this point in time, we don't know for sure what is happening. I am getting more and more concerned by the minute, but I do think it is important to note that one way or another, we don't know for certain whether or not the leaked OGL 1.1 is an accurate leak. Even if it is, the blowback might have caused Wizards of the Coast to change their minds.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Reason 1 is valid-ish. Reasons 2 thru 5 are not even remotely valid. Just ain't. Sorry.
Your premise is that things have changed since its inception. But points 2 thru 5 existing when OGL1.0 were very first released. So your point in invalid.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I find the idea that Wizards needed to update their terms to be more restrictive on what people can do narratively with the product to be frankly abhorent; If I want to do a setting that explores themes of Racism, Religion, Slavery, Furry, Fetishism, Economics, Narcotics or Ergonomics using the rough ruleset of d20 I should be free to do so and If I choose to market it then so F***ing be it! Let the masses reject or embrace it and the Execs at Hasbro claim with full sincerity that they neither support nor acknowledge the product that I have birthed into the world.
The entire draft has now been leaked online by multiple YouTubers, all 9000 words. I won't link to it here because I assume some shill mod will ban me for it, but I'm certain you can find it by googling or watching some of the more recent you tube videos on the subject.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
.
Agreed. Integration is one thing, but assimilation is totally another. And this is a most wicked assimilation approach.
"The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination."- T. Moldvay
Why did the OGL need an update to better integrate content into DND Beyond?
Actually, fun note on the topic: are you aware that DND Beyond was created using the existing OGL, and then later purchased by Wizards? Or that virtually all of the other interactive web-based products to support online play have been created by third parties? Or that all similar future development will be prohibited by OGL 1.1? Like, not just royalty sharing-- third parties will simply be prohibited from making things like npc generators, encounter managers, new or special-use character sheet management systems, VTTs, etc., unless they negotiate separate license agreements.
I'm sure that'll be great for the hobby!
The problem, though, is that almost every source I've seen is just repeating information from other places, rather than actually bringing new things to the table. The one place I have seen the full contract is at Ogl.battlezoo.com, and it is very much a possibility that this seemingly new anonymous website is wrong or made things up to fit into what the Gizmodo article said the new Open Game License would be.
I haven't seen any videos or sources reviewing an independent version of the License, and it would be highly illegal if they did. So my guess is that most of the other people talking about this are just looking over the sources we've already read rather than independently verifying anything. Griffon Saddlebag is the one person I have seen to speak out about the leak, and it seems really iffy because the only way it makes sense for him to have independently gotten a version of Open Game License 1.1 would be to sign a contract not to talk about it.
So if there are really any YouTubers independently verifying this, then please give me links. There are no terms on the forums that should outlaw you from doing this, and the fact that you are refusing to link the sources you've been mentioning does feel like a bit of cop out.
P.S. I know some people are going to talk about how non-disclosure-agreements are bad and make the Open Game License situation even more suspicious, but A) Companies use them all the time and B) The fact that you don't want them to be used doesn't mean that they don't exist.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I heard about the BFRPG community rallying to help Gonnerman bleach out everything OGL/SRD. It's very inspirational to see a situation like that right now, where the community is driving the momentum in response to what surely will still be something more undesirable to 3rd party publishers than what has been in place before, which fostered them.
"The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination."- T. Moldvay
I don't, because:
1) When good stuff is made and sold/streamed, DnD becomes more popular and more core books are sold, thus increasing Wizards/Hasbro profit already. This is exactly what the OGL 1.0 was designed to do - a collaborative win/win for everyone involved. Changing that dynamic means the end of it all. Creators go from implicitly promoting Wizard's DnD products for free (in a mutually beneficial arrangement - i.e. quid pro quo) to then also padding Wizards/Hasbro's bottom line. Does Nike demand/deserve a portion of the salary/winnings of every athlete that wears their gear? If they wrote up some document asserting that, what do you think would happen? Wizards already has a monopoly on publishing the core rules (and whatever content they make for the game themselves). That is the benefit they get from their IP through the OGL.
2) I don't see Wizards paying royalties to Tolkien and all the other sources whose material DnD sprang from.
3) Any percentage at all would require the same onerous, intrusive bookkeeping from creators that 1.1 is demanding.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
This is an important distinction. The original OGL was written in 2000 (I believe) Kickstarter was founded in 2009. To be honest, the OGL should have been re-written in 2010. WoTC is sorely late to the party in this respect. However it does need "Modernized." As it stands now the OGL is being used to essentially subsidize the competition. What isn't helping is their continued silence, but that's a conversation for the many other threads on this forum.
You, however, are correct in all of your points and this does need to happen. I, personally, hope its the staff at Wizards and not the lawyers at Hasbro that are driving the OGL changes.
Frankly, at this point, it is very clear which way Occam's Razor is slicing.
It is more likely than not that the leaked document is accurate of at least the state of OGL 1.1 mid-December. To keep trying to deny that we have no idea what the terms of the proposed license are is reeeeeeaaally stretching it at this point and pretty much calls into question investigative journalism in general - like we have no idea if Senator McScandal was involved in some controversy unless the Senator himself publicly says "Yeah it was me!" LOL!!
Assuming that Linda Codega did get a copy of it (as well as numerous YouTubers) and then an "anonymous website" wrote up an entire document that matched the leaked information and totally faked the rest, but Gizmodo and everyone else who saw it previously (including WotC!) all decided to just stay quiet and not point out that the made-up document is fake is getting into very silly conspiracy theory land.
The fact that this was an early draft (as is for now most likely) means absolutely nothing. Lawyers make crazy early drafts all the time without planning to make them public. The document we saw isn't fake, but it most likely isn't the final version either.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
You've used Amazon in particular here because of how large and disliked they are, but if even they as a big evil multinational company come into the tabletop market and produce a definitively better product and poor Hasbro can't compete... Good? We get a better product and WotC have to step up to compete.
Now if Amazon were to do anti-competitive bullshit, like refusing to stream twitch games of D&D while promoting twitch streams of their new game thats a cause for outrage, that's different. That would be a big company using their ownership of certain markets to bully a smaller company out of the space (What WotC are trying to do now).
The big thing here is... It's not Amazon is it? It's very obviously Paizo. WotC aren't worried about a big giant outside competitor their worried they might facilitate smaller opposition rising to a state where they might challenge their market dominance.
They should be more worried about Kobold Press than Paizo, since KP are already planning on releasing a new open system.
Fantasy Grounds Ultimate Licence Holder
What's considered and what's done are two very different things. People and companies consider cutthroat things all the time, but they rarely actually go through with it. At this point all we can do is wait to see what's published, and then wait months or years more to see what actually happened.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
Almost all the points are, well, pointless because they are covered in other things then an OGL would have, except for that point of them losing money. Wizards and Hasbro are a huge money maker already. It is not their fault if 3rd parties cater to the needs and wants of the borader playerbase then they do. It shows they failed to understand what their playerbase wants out of D&D. 5e, and honestly I suspect One D&D until official books come out for it to prove otherwise, has been rather lacking and strip down. Fun, but still feel a lack of something that is filled by 3rd party groups. Honestly instead of punishing those groups by trying to siphon cash off them maybe Wizards needs to look internally and see what they're doing wrong in what they are focusing and not focusing on. Their loss of revenue is not the fault of 3rd parties, it is the fault of Wizards failing in some core way. I don't see this being a problem in other, less profitable TTRPG companies who also have their own lot of 3rd party support.
A number of 3PPs have now stated that this "draft" of the CGL 1.1 was received with a contract for them to sign.
This is an excellent (long) video where Stephen Glicker ( long time 3PP) discusses the now publicly available CGL 1.1 (after having spoken to his lawyer). He knows and works with many people in the industry, including writers from Paizo (and the OG Pathfinder), WotC, and EN World. From some of these people he learned that the "draft" CGL 1.1 was received with a contract.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj5dsiDXeUw&ab_channel=RollForCombat
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?