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Following last week’s disastrous response to community outrage regarding the leaked Open Gaming License 1.1 document, Dungeons & Dragons is trying again. Executive Producer of D&D, Kyle Brink, released a new statement talking about the team’s goal for a new OGL document. You can find the entire post over on D&D Beyond, but I wanted to point out a couple of things and then dive into the first draft of the new OGL 1.2.
As for Brink’s statement, it is so much better than the crap put out previously. This statement takes ownership of a lot of the mistakes that Wizards of the Coast has made during this fiasco. I still take it with a grain of salt, but it definitely comes across as more sincere and real than the first response put out. Second, Brink outlines that the new OGL 1.2 will be more community-driven and handled in a similar way as playtest materials for Unearthed Arcana and One D&D where they will share the draft, take comments for at least two weeks, and then get back to us with what they heard from the community. Brinks also promised the following items:
Your video content. Whether you are a commentator, streamer, podcaster, liveplay cast member, or other video creator on platforms like YouTube and Twitch and TikTok, you have always been covered by the Wizards Fan Content Policy. The OGL doesn’t (and won’t) touch any of this.
Your accessories for your owned content. No changes to the OGL will affect your ability to sell minis, novels, apparel, dice, and other items related to your creations, characters, and worlds.
Non-published works, for instance contracted services. You use the OGL if you want to publish your works that reference fifth edition content through the SRD. That means commissioned work, paid DM services, consulting, and so on aren’t affected by the OGL.
VTT content. Any updates to the OGL will still allow any creator to publish content on VTTs and will still allow VTT publishers to use OGL content on their platform.
DMs Guild content. The content you release on DMs Guild is published under a Community Content Agreement with Dungeon Masters Guild. This is not changing.
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.
Your revenue. There will be no royalty or financial reporting requirements.
Your ownership of your content. You will continue to own your content with no license-back requirements.
This statement was very refreshing and I appreciated it. Then, the next day, Brink made another post with the first draft of OGL 1.2. As of writing, I have not had the time to thoroughly look over the actual OGL 1.2 document included, but I wanted to highlight what Brink put into the post. If you have read the actual document, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
There’s quite a bit to cover here. First, D&D will be using a Creative Commons license for the core mechanics of the game. This means that anyone can use the mechanics and because they’re going through the Creative Commons nonprofit, they don’t hold the license and can’t suddenly take them back. That being said, it should also allow WotC to still accomplish their goal of stopping people who try to use the license to create “offensive or hurtful content” depending on the terms they set in the license.
Second, it is designed to only affect published tabletop RPG (TTRPG) content including books, electronic publications, and virtual tabletops. That means that your actual play podcast or video series or stream are all safe. If you are not making D&D supplements or VTT content to use with D&D, you have nothing to fear.
Third, they are still aiming to deauthorize OGL 1.0a. The team admits that this is a sore spot, but the idea is to close loopholes so that someone who makes “offensive or hurtful content” can’t just get out of trouble by claiming OGL 1.0a instead of OGL 1.2.
Fourth, OGL 1.2 will be completely irrevocable except the part that talks about how you must cite Wizards in your work and the part that talks about how you and Wizards can contact each other. These are both reasonable exceptions in my opinion as no one can predict the future.
With my cursory glance at everything, this is a step in the right direction, but nowhere near perfect. I know a lot of people will be yelling about how you can’t copyright game mechanics, and you’re correct. However, you can copyright phrasing and other aspects used in the mechanics. For example, WotC could have a copyright on the terminology “attack of opportunity” and so while you may want to use that mechanic, you could not use the phrase “attack of opportunity” in the same context and would need to say something along the lines of “attack when their attention is diverted” or something else. I will defer this point to an actual game designer, Jessica Marcrum who had a decent and short thread briefly touching on OGL 1.2.
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