In case you haven't seen it here is an interesting clarification.
Wizards of the Coast Executive Producer Kyle Brink started doing the tabletop media circuit explaining the company’s point of view of the OGL controversy. Starting with an interview with the YouTube channel 3 Black Halflings on Monday and continuing with Teos Abedia aka Alphastream on Wednesday, Brink provided details about what happened behind the scenes with Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro during the month-long period. According to Brink, the impetus to change the OGL was fear that Facebook would create a “D&D Metaverse” without their involvement and the brand would become associated with adult content (even though this would not be allowed under the OGL v1.0a as it does not give access to D&D branding, logos, or other trademarks). The royalties in OGL v1.1 were intended as a deterrent against large corporations with the $750,000 mark determined as a demarcation line between industry publishers and large corporations outside the TTRPG industry attempting to enter it. Much of the 30-person Dungeons & Dragons team were unaware of the intended changes as the company placed a “wall” between creative staff and executive decisions in order to avoid distracting them. The reason for the lack of comment between the leak of the OGL v1.1 and the official announcement of OGL v1.2 that those within the company felt anything they said would make things worse and wanted to wait until they had the updated OGL available before making an official comment. Now that the SRD has been placed under a Creative Commons license, which Wizards of the Coast admits cannot be undone in any way, the company no longer sees deauthorizing the OGL v1.0a as important. The company is also looking into releasing other SRDs such as the v3.5 (covering the rules for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition) in the future but must first review the document to ensure they are not accidentally releasing material into Creative Commons they don’t intend to.
This was very intresting to read. I have been following it. My youtube wall,.is covered with videos of it. As we discussed a bit at the game about it. The impact on our game will be minimal, unless they have to take down the SRD or something like that. As for D&D one (6e). That seems to be something that we would never get into. Which is what I thought, prior to all the OGL stuff. Maybe we can look forward to a Pathfinder 3rd edition, in the future. But who knows. And would ever be worth it to convert. As I have said in posts before. I wish combat was just a little more simplified with PF 1.0 . 5th has just a move, action and free, that's it. And PF 2.0 has that 3 action system. I have actually tired to see if there PF 2.0 3 action system could be converted to 1.0. Some of it works, but for the rest, it would just be way to much changed this and that. I wonder if all these companies may come together and make a whole new game, between them all. That I would be very intrested to see.
I agree with all your thoughts. In the end the game we play is the game. We love it and simply want the stuff we play available. If it wasn't then that would be a significant issue.
Over the course of the last week, more than 1,500 tabletop RPG publishers, from household names going back to the dawn of the hobby to single proprietors just starting out with their first digital release, have joined together to pledge their support for the development of a universal system-neutral open license that provides a legal “safe harbor” for sharing rules mechanics and encourages innovation and collaboration in the tabletop gaming space.
The alliance is gathered. Work has begun.
It would take too long to list all the companies behind the ORC license effort, but we thought you might be interested to see a few of the organizations already pledged toward this common goal. We are honored to be allied with them, as well as with the equally important participating publishers too numerous to list here. Each is crucial to the effort’s success. The list below is but a representative sample of participating publishers from a huge variety of market segments with a huge variety of perspectives. But we all agree on one thing.
We are all in this together.
Alchemy RPG
Arcane Minis
Atlas Games
Autarch
Azora Law
Black Book Editions
Bombshell Miniatures
BRW Games
Chaosium
Cze & Peku
Demiplane
DMDave
The DM Lair
Elderbrain
EN Publishing
Epic Miniatures
Evil Genius Games
Expeditious Retreat Press
Fantasy Grounds
Fat Dragon Games
Forgotten Adventures
Foundry VTT
Free RPG Day
Frog God Games
Gale Force 9
Game On Tabletop
Giochi Uniti
Goodman Games
Green Ronin
The Griffon’s Saddlebag
Iron GM Games
Know Direction
Kobold Press
Lazy Wolf Studios
Legendary Games
Lone Wolf Development
Loot Tavern
Louis Porter Jr. Designs
Mad Cartographer
Minotaur Games
Mongoose Publishing
MonkeyDM
Monte Cook Games
MT Black
Necromancer Games
Nord Games
Open Gaming, Inc.
Paizo Inc.
Paradigm Concepts
Pelgrane Press
Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Raging Swan Press
Rogue Games
Rogue Genius Games
Roll 20
Roll for Combat
Sky Flourish
Tom Cartos
Troll Lord Games
Ulisses Spiele
You will be hearing a lot more from us in the days to come.
Video from a youtuber that has some interesting thoughts, opinions and ideas in the situation. To name some of the major ones -fighting this are Paizo Inc. (of course the biggest), EN Publishing, Chaosium, Necromancer Games, Fat Dragon Games, Monte Cook Games and many, many more! Let;'s hope the win against the gaming tyrant! As you know I've not been a WotC/Hasbro fan for quite some time thus the switch to Pathfinder. This simply justifies my opinion to switch and be a happy gamer w/o the brand name of D&D. Damn them as I would like to.
WotC is updating the OGL. A couple of paragraphs of the new OGL have been leaked, and it's basically terrible news for anyone making a living creating content for D&D.
I highly suggest watching this video by The Rules Lawyer, whom is an actual lawyer: https://youtu.be/oPV7-NCmWBQ
But in a nutshell, the leaked paragraphs shows the new license trying to revoke the old license, meaning 3rd party content can no longer be created for any version of D&D using the OGL - which is 3e, 3.5, 5e, "One D&D" - without agreeing to the OGL 1.1.
And anyone agreeing to OGL 1.1 automatically gives WotC an irrevokable, royalty free license to any content they make for D&D to do with 100% as they please. On the other hand, WotC can revoke the license agreement with another company or person, yet they'll still keep the license to the work created by the 3rd party. Basically, WotC holds all the power, the 3rd party publisher holds none.
This basically means that a company like Kobold Press could make Tome of Beasts IV, and then WotC could revoke their license and sell the book themselves - whilst KP would no longer be able to sell their own book, even if they technically own the rights to the content. Or WotC could take any or all creatures from Tome of Beasts IV and put them in one of their own books, without even having to as much as ask KP.
Granted, it remains to be seen whether or not this'll still be in the actual OGL 1.1 when it rolls out any day now.
As an aside, I did see a comment about how this might be what is actually a somewhat common marketing tactic: Making something completely unacceptable to cause a backlash, then amending it with a less terrible (but still bad) version that'll seem much better in comparison, and therefore be accepted. It's like wanting to sell something worth $50 for $100 and saying it costs $150 to the buyer, then the buyer haggles it down to $100 and feel satisfied enough, but the seller got the price they actually were aiming for. There's definitely a chance it's that, though time will tell.
Personally, I've pretty much decided not to buy into "One D&D" already and go back to 3.5. But I'll definitely be following the developments of this thing, out of pure interest.
In case you haven't seen it here is an interesting clarification.
Wizards of the Coast Executive Producer Kyle Brink started doing the tabletop media circuit explaining the company’s point of view of the OGL controversy. Starting with an interview with the YouTube channel 3 Black Halflings on Monday and continuing with Teos Abedia aka Alphastream on Wednesday, Brink provided details about what happened behind the scenes with Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro during the month-long period. According to Brink, the impetus to change the OGL was fear that Facebook would create a “D&D Metaverse” without their involvement and the brand would become associated with adult content (even though this would not be allowed under the OGL v1.0a as it does not give access to D&D branding, logos, or other trademarks). The royalties in OGL v1.1 were intended as a deterrent against large corporations with the $750,000 mark determined as a demarcation line between industry publishers and large corporations outside the TTRPG industry attempting to enter it. Much of the 30-person Dungeons & Dragons team were unaware of the intended changes as the company placed a “wall” between creative staff and executive decisions in order to avoid distracting them. The reason for the lack of comment between the leak of the OGL v1.1 and the official announcement of OGL v1.2 that those within the company felt anything they said would make things worse and wanted to wait until they had the updated OGL available before making an official comment. Now that the SRD has been placed under a Creative Commons license, which Wizards of the Coast admits cannot be undone in any way, the company no longer sees deauthorizing the OGL v1.0a as important. The company is also looking into releasing other SRDs such as the v3.5 (covering the rules for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition) in the future but must first review the document to ensure they are not accidentally releasing material into Creative Commons they don’t intend to.
This was very intresting to read. I have been following it. My youtube wall,.is covered with videos of it. As we discussed a bit at the game about it. The impact on our game will be minimal, unless they have to take down the SRD or something like that. As for D&D one (6e). That seems to be something that we would never get into. Which is what I thought, prior to all the OGL stuff. Maybe we can look forward to a Pathfinder 3rd edition, in the future. But who knows. And would ever be worth it to convert. As I have said in posts before. I wish combat was just a little more simplified with PF 1.0 . 5th has just a move, action and free, that's it. And PF 2.0 has that 3 action system. I have actually tired to see if there PF 2.0 3 action system could be converted to 1.0. Some of it works, but for the rest, it would just be way to much changed this and that. I wonder if all these companies may come together and make a whole new game, between them all. That I would be very intrested to see.
Some other news which is awesome!
Over the course of the last week, more than 1,500 tabletop RPG publishers, from household names going back to the dawn of the hobby to single proprietors just starting out with their first digital release, have joined together to pledge their support for the development of a universal system-neutral open license that provides a legal “safe harbor” for sharing rules mechanics and encourages innovation and collaboration in the tabletop gaming space.
The alliance is gathered. Work has begun.
It would take too long to list all the companies behind the ORC license effort, but we thought you might be interested to see a few of the organizations already pledged toward this common goal. We are honored to be allied with them, as well as with the equally important participating publishers too numerous to list here. Each is crucial to the effort’s success. The list below is but a representative sample of participating publishers from a huge variety of market segments with a huge variety of perspectives. But we all agree on one thing.
We are all in this together.
Alchemy RPG
Arcane Minis
Atlas Games
Autarch
Azora Law
Black Book Editions
Bombshell Miniatures
BRW Games
Chaosium
Cze & Peku
Demiplane
DMDave
The DM Lair
Elderbrain
EN Publishing
Epic Miniatures
Evil Genius Games
Expeditious Retreat Press
Fantasy Grounds
Fat Dragon Games
Forgotten Adventures
Foundry VTT
Free RPG Day
Frog God Games
Gale Force 9
Game On Tabletop
Giochi Uniti
Goodman Games
Green Ronin
The Griffon’s Saddlebag
Iron GM Games
Know Direction
Kobold Press
Lazy Wolf Studios
Legendary Games
Lone Wolf Development
Loot Tavern
Louis Porter Jr. Designs
Mad Cartographer
Minotaur Games
Mongoose Publishing
MonkeyDM
Monte Cook Games
MT Black
Necromancer Games
Nord Games
Open Gaming, Inc.
Paizo Inc.
Paradigm Concepts
Pelgrane Press
Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Raging Swan Press
Rogue Games
Rogue Genius Games
Roll 20
Roll for Combat
Sky Flourish
Tom Cartos
Troll Lord Games
Ulisses Spiele
You will be hearing a lot more from us in the days to come.
Video from a youtuber that has some interesting thoughts, opinions and ideas in the situation. To name some of the major ones -fighting this are Paizo Inc. (of course the biggest), EN Publishing, Chaosium, Necromancer Games, Fat Dragon Games, Monte Cook Games and many, many more! Let;'s hope the win against the gaming tyrant! As you know I've not been a WotC/Hasbro fan for quite some time thus the switch to Pathfinder. This simply justifies my opinion to switch and be a happy gamer w/o the brand name of D&D. Damn them as I would like to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxd-0mXF4uE
Here is what's Happening:
WotC is updating the OGL. A couple of paragraphs of the new OGL have been leaked, and it's basically terrible news for anyone making a living creating content for D&D.
I highly suggest watching this video by The Rules Lawyer, whom is an actual lawyer: https://youtu.be/oPV7-NCmWBQ
But in a nutshell, the leaked paragraphs shows the new license trying to revoke the old license, meaning 3rd party content can no longer be created for any version of D&D using the OGL - which is 3e, 3.5, 5e, "One D&D" - without agreeing to the OGL 1.1.
And anyone agreeing to OGL 1.1 automatically gives WotC an irrevokable, royalty free license to any content they make for D&D to do with 100% as they please. On the other hand, WotC can revoke the license agreement with another company or person, yet they'll still keep the license to the work created by the 3rd party. Basically, WotC holds all the power, the 3rd party publisher holds none.
This basically means that a company like Kobold Press could make Tome of Beasts IV, and then WotC could revoke their license and sell the book themselves - whilst KP would no longer be able to sell their own book, even if they technically own the rights to the content. Or WotC could take any or all creatures from Tome of Beasts IV and put them in one of their own books, without even having to as much as ask KP.
Granted, it remains to be seen whether or not this'll still be in the actual OGL 1.1 when it rolls out any day now.
As an aside, I did see a comment about how this might be what is actually a somewhat common marketing tactic: Making something completely unacceptable to cause a backlash, then amending it with a less terrible (but still bad) version that'll seem much better in comparison, and therefore be accepted. It's like wanting to sell something worth $50 for $100 and saying it costs $150 to the buyer, then the buyer haggles it down to $100 and feel satisfied enough, but the seller got the price they actually were aiming for. There's definitely a chance it's that, though time will tell.
Personally, I've pretty much decided not to buy into "One D&D" already and go back to 3.5. But I'll definitely be following the developments of this thing, out of pure interest.