A lot of the reason I (and my players) didn't care that much about the whole mess is that... I didn't expect better of them, or of any other RPG company. They're companies, not friends. Paizo is no more your friend than WotC; CC/BY is a vastly superior license for downstream creators than ORC.
Exactly. People were praising these other companies for t5hjeir announcments and saying "this is how a compnay should be run!" at teh end of the day those companies were jsut taking advantage of the blood in the water and trying to catch some fish while hoping the bait gets eaten up completly. Their whole intention is to make money. first and foremost.
As long as they never try to pull something like that again.
They couldn't even if they wanted to, because the SRD is in Creative Commons now, there's no going back. Maybe they do end up deauthorizing the OGL at some point in the future anyway (or trying to) - but even if they do, everyone who was relying on the OGL for {insert product} can just switch to that, as long as they follow the (imo much more robust on both sides) rules for that license.
p0ersonally i dont care about the OGL. In my opinion it was teh worst and best thing ever to happen to D&D. For 3rd edition it created a whole lot of junk to be published with a handful of gems. It also created a good amount of deferent genres that still survive today. I am a firm believer of "the owner of the product deserves to be paid something if others create of off their work"
I agree with this to a point. A royalty or similar payment is reasonable if you're making millions off someone else's IP. But that should only be for the big players/rivals in an industry.
p0ersonally i dont care about the OGL. In my opinion it was teh worst and best thing ever to happen to D&D. For 3rd edition it created a whole lot of junk to be published with a handful of gems. It also created a good amount of deferent genres that still survive today. I am a firm believer of "the owner of the product deserves to be paid something if others create of off their work"
The major issue IMO, is the first OGL promised it was in perpetuity and then they tried to reneg on it. You can't create a contract between your company and 3rd party creators, and then try to unilaterally change that contract after people have built their careers based on the terms of that contract. If they had just changed the contract for the new revision there would have been a significantly different response, disappointment for sure and people would have voted with their feet when it came to the new version but there wouldn't have been the boycott.
p0ersonally i dont care about the OGL. In my opinion it was teh worst and best thing ever to happen to D&D. For 3rd edition it created a whole lot of junk to be published with a handful of gems. It also created a good amount of deferent genres that still survive today. I am a firm believer of "the owner of the product deserves to be paid something if others create of off their work"
The major issue IMO, is the first OGL promised it was in perpetuity and then they tried to reneg on it. You can't create a contract between your company and 3rd party creators, and then try to unilaterally change that contract after people have built their careers based on the terms of that contract. If they had just changed the contract for the new revision there would have been a significantly different response, disappointment for sure and people would have voted with their feet when it came to the new version but there wouldn't have been the boycott.
This kind of mistaken legal analysis of the original OGL is part of why folks were so upset.
OGL 1.0 was not a contact - it was an offer of a contract. An offer of a contract holds no legal weight until accepted—in OGL 1.0’s case, the act of publishing material under OGL 1.0 constituted acceptance of the terms for that product and thus was the moment a contract was created.
Wizards never tried to unilaterally change the terms of a contract—they never even hinted that any existing OGL 1.0 license rights would be modified in any way. What they did attempt to do was change their offer—they wanted to introduce a new OGL which would apply to any future content. That is something they absolutely can do—you have a unilateral right to revoke or change your offer up until the moment there is acceptance.
The problem came because laypeople fundamentally did not understand what OGL 1.0 was—they thought it was a statement of rights they, as players, were entitled to, rather than the offer of rights, which had to be accepted pursuant to its terms to actually confer any rights or obligations between the parties.
p0ersonally i dont care about the OGL. In my opinion it was teh worst and best thing ever to happen to D&D. For 3rd edition it created a whole lot of junk to be published with a handful of gems. It also created a good amount of deferent genres that still survive today. I am a firm believer of "the owner of the product deserves to be paid something if others create of off their work"
The OGL appears to have had a few purposes. Several of which it failed at, and some of which probably came from different people.
TSR was notorious for suing fans. This was non-productive, and Wizards needed at least a truce and a fan content policy that allowed ordinary fans to share their work. It accomplished this, though it was more than was needed for that end.
Historically speaking, adventures sell a whole lot worse than sourcebooks. Farming out the adventure creation to third parties while keeping a monopoly on the core books seemed like a good idea. However, the way they tried to do this (involving, for example, not putting rules for rolling up stats in the SRD) was entirely inadequate for this goal... so it failed.
At least some people appear to have been enamored by GPL-style copyleft, which is a sticky license so if someone uses your IP, they have to release all their connected IP. However, the way the OGL permitted designating product identity effectively sabotaged this goal. The ORC is the spiritual successor to this goal. Personally, I'm reasonably confident that much of the success of the OGL was because it failed at copyleft; a copyleft license effectively sabotages the ability of a downstream creator to make money unless they manage to work around the copyleft.
What most people fail to realize is that the OGL covers 5e. It does not cover any new material. If 3rd party creators start producing products based on the 2024 releases, wotc will unleash their lawyers again.
WotC has said they'll put out a new SRD. I see no reason at this time to assume they won't.
What most people fail to realize is that the OGL covers 5e. It does not cover any new material. If 3rd party creators start producing products based on the 2024 releases, wotc will unleash their lawyers again.
SRD 5.1 is current 5e, there will be a new one for 2024 5.5e that third-party creators can use. This is not new information.
p0ersonally i dont care about the OGL. In my opinion it was teh worst and best thing ever to happen to D&D. For 3rd edition it created a whole lot of junk to be published with a handful of gems. It also created a good amount of deferent genres that still survive today. I am a firm believer of "the owner of the product deserves to be paid something if others create of off their work"
The OGL appears to have had a few purposes. Several of which it failed at, and some of which probably came from different people.
TSR was notorious for suing fans. This was non-productive, and Wizards needed at least a truce and a fan content policy that allowed ordinary fans to share their work. It accomplished this, though it was more than was needed for that end.
Historically speaking, adventures sell a whole lot worse than sourcebooks. Farming out the adventure creation to third parties while keeping a monopoly on the core books seemed like a good idea. However, the way they tried to do this (involving, for example, not putting rules for rolling up stats in the SRD) was entirely inadequate for this goal... so it failed.
At least some people appear to have been enamored by GPL-style copyleft, which is a sticky license so if someone uses your IP, they have to release all their connected IP. However, the way the OGL permitted designating product identity effectively sabotaged this goal. The ORC is the spiritual successor to this goal. Personally, I'm reasonably confident that much of the success of the OGL was because it failed at copyleft; a copyleft license effectively sabotages the ability of a downstream creator to make money unless they manage to work around the copyleft.
What most people fail to realize is that the OGL covers 5e. It does not cover any new material. If 3rd party creators start producing products based on the 2024 releases, wotc will unleash their lawyers again.
Right, because their last attempt at that went so well for them. If the issue of their proposed change to the original OGL had gone to court, they'd have won the case. Now, their market share would have taken a heavy hit from all the people jumping ship either out of protest to the changes or because the various influencers who pounced on the initial juicy gossip would have more than doubled down on all that in the interim- not to mention Paizo would undoubtedly take the opportunity to play white knight again, but the courts upholding their right to retract an offer going forward would have been all but certain. If they wanted to have this fight, they'd have had it out. The only reason they backed down was because of the PR furor that got stirred up, and if they try anything that gets made out to be that aggressive again, they'll have the same result.
This "oh, just you wait" stance people have taken honestly comes across as ridiculous; the original OGL was already put up on a pedestal as some kind of pinnacle of a licensing agreement (it wasn't, it was a quick and dirty napkin contract they wrote up before they realized just how much the game would blow up and they risked some sensationalist running a "D&D product with an official license from WotC promotes X bad thing" headline), and the agreement that would have codified the same basic rights and allowed content creators to use D&D's trademarked logo on their product as long as they didn't make the news as the aforementioned kind of product a la Gygax's stunt with Star Frontiers. It would have been a win for both sides, but instead the anti-WotC crowd beat their chests until that got nixed and we returned to the status quo, and yet we still get arguments that basically seem like they can't accept that they won already.
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Exactly. People were praising these other companies for t5hjeir announcments and saying "this is how a compnay should be run!" at teh end of the day those companies were jsut taking advantage of the blood in the water and trying to catch some fish while hoping the bait gets eaten up completly. Their whole intention is to make money. first and foremost.
They couldn't even if they wanted to, because the SRD is in Creative Commons now, there's no going back. Maybe they do end up deauthorizing the OGL at some point in the future anyway (or trying to) - but even if they do, everyone who was relying on the OGL for {insert product} can just switch to that, as long as they follow the (imo much more robust on both sides) rules for that license.
I agree with this to a point. A royalty or similar payment is reasonable if you're making millions off someone else's IP. But that should only be for the big players/rivals in an industry.
The major issue IMO, is the first OGL promised it was in perpetuity and then they tried to reneg on it. You can't create a contract between your company and 3rd party creators, and then try to unilaterally change that contract after people have built their careers based on the terms of that contract. If they had just changed the contract for the new revision there would have been a significantly different response, disappointment for sure and people would have voted with their feet when it came to the new version but there wouldn't have been the boycott.
This kind of mistaken legal analysis of the original OGL is part of why folks were so upset.
OGL 1.0 was not a contact - it was an offer of a contract. An offer of a contract holds no legal weight until accepted—in OGL 1.0’s case, the act of publishing material under OGL 1.0 constituted acceptance of the terms for that product and thus was the moment a contract was created.
Wizards never tried to unilaterally change the terms of a contract—they never even hinted that any existing OGL 1.0 license rights would be modified in any way. What they did attempt to do was change their offer—they wanted to introduce a new OGL which would apply to any future content. That is something they absolutely can do—you have a unilateral right to revoke or change your offer up until the moment there is acceptance.
The problem came because laypeople fundamentally did not understand what OGL 1.0 was—they thought it was a statement of rights they, as players, were entitled to, rather than the offer of rights, which had to be accepted pursuant to its terms to actually confer any rights or obligations between the parties.
The OGL appears to have had a few purposes. Several of which it failed at, and some of which probably came from different people.
WotC has said they'll put out a new SRD. I see no reason at this time to assume they won't.
SRD 5.1 is current 5e, there will be a new one for 2024 5.5e that third-party creators can use. This is not new information.
Right, because their last attempt at that went so well for them. If the issue of their proposed change to the original OGL had gone to court, they'd have won the case. Now, their market share would have taken a heavy hit from all the people jumping ship either out of protest to the changes or because the various influencers who pounced on the initial juicy gossip would have more than doubled down on all that in the interim- not to mention Paizo would undoubtedly take the opportunity to play white knight again, but the courts upholding their right to retract an offer going forward would have been all but certain. If they wanted to have this fight, they'd have had it out. The only reason they backed down was because of the PR furor that got stirred up, and if they try anything that gets made out to be that aggressive again, they'll have the same result.
This "oh, just you wait" stance people have taken honestly comes across as ridiculous; the original OGL was already put up on a pedestal as some kind of pinnacle of a licensing agreement (it wasn't, it was a quick and dirty napkin contract they wrote up before they realized just how much the game would blow up and they risked some sensationalist running a "D&D product with an official license from WotC promotes X bad thing" headline), and the agreement that would have codified the same basic rights and allowed content creators to use D&D's trademarked logo on their product as long as they didn't make the news as the aforementioned kind of product a la Gygax's stunt with Star Frontiers. It would have been a win for both sides, but instead the anti-WotC crowd beat their chests until that got nixed and we returned to the status quo, and yet we still get arguments that basically seem like they can't accept that they won already.