[HN Gopher] An Update on the Open Game License (OGL)
___________________________________________________________________
An Update on the Open Game License (OGL)
Author : Macha
Score : 114 points
Date : 2023-01-13 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dndbeyond.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dndbeyond.com)
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| Classic corporate gaslighting. The notion that the changes were
| to prevent "hateful" content is ridiculous when it includes a
| massive royalty scheme. Besides, it violates the principles the
| original license was grounded in -- WotC is not supposed to be an
| arbiter for what kind of products can be made with OGL-licensed
| material. That was the whole point of it! You didn't have to ask
| them for permission!
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| > not major corporations to use for their own commercial and
| promotional purpose.
|
| Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not
| major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers,
| etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license
| the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under
| OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they
| were fighting against?
|
| $750k in revenue is not the cutoff for a major corporation. Their
| new license targeted like, 5 person shops.
| trynewideas wrote:
| > Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are
| not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv
| producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd
| have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they
| weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister
| major corporations they were fighting against?
|
| I have at least one theory on that.
|
| - In the middle of all this OGL mess, WotC also cancelled a
| raft of unannounced video games. Their in-house D&D games this
| most recent cycle so far were either flops or revivals.
|
| - At almost the same time, Hasbro and Wizard CEOs were hyping
| to investors the potential for "the kind of recurrent spending
| you see in digital games" in non-DM D&D players that comprise
| 80% of the market but a minority of spending.
|
| What's the primary RPG merch for players today? Custom or
| specialized dice, customized minis, folios -- stuff that's hard
| to manufacture at scale while keeping high profit margins.
| Wizards wants to move them into higher-margin, video-game-like
| digital spaces, especially virtual tabletops.
|
| So Hasbro buys D&D Beyond outright in April and announces in
| August an Unreal-powered 3D VTT, and the D&D One next-edition
| rules set/marketplace, which OGL 1.1/2.0 was meant to support.
|
| Whatever the hook in D&D One toward monetizing non-DM players
| is meant to be,* it'd attract competitors in the space beyond
| the current batch of VTTs and niche publishers.
|
| An OGL 1.0a-licensed ruleset could facilitate well-backed
| companies to build their own D&D One-compatible clones using
| non-Wizards settings. Companies with experience putting out
| D&D-ruleset multiplayer games. Companies like Beamdog, acquired
| in April 2022 by a subsidiary of Embracer Group, who's
| _rolling_ in settings and IPs that would be delightful to play.
|
| Yeah, that door's already open with D&D Beyond/5E/OGL 1.0a, and
| Embracer doesn't need OGL hooks to enter the market. But from
| Hasbro's perspective, why on earth would they _leave_ that door
| open?
|
| * Wizards already has a long-running framework for
| systematically dispensing durable rewards to players that could
| easily go lootbox-a-like if moved to digital: the Adventurer's
| League, their organized play program (which ironically, like
| the OGL, also has roots in a Ryan Dancey invention). Paizo runs
| their own long-running organized play system, Pathfinder
| Society, which drives _quite_ a lot of Paizo business.
| Scenarios are distributed almost exclusively online, and
| Society GMs have the popular option to run games entirely
| online via VTT or even play-by-post. Wouldn 't it be neat if
| the new OGL also gave Wizards a way to legally challenge its
| existence by claiming that makes Pathfinder Society a digital
| product that requires a license? If Pathfinder Society isn't a
| digital product, then what's D&D One?
| kneebonian wrote:
| This is here I think hits the nail on the head. As soon as
| they annouced that 1D&D would be an online only subscription
| based affair I knew they were trying to move to a VG,
| subscription based, pay to play model where the margins are
| high, the cost is low, and the labor is cheap.
|
| That's when I realized I never wanted to support them again.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| This just reeks of desperate MBA energy who, instead of trying
| to develop their own products and IP further, just see that
| Critical Role is selling a lot of merch and desperately want to
| rent seek on it.
|
| This is probably Hasbro slitting the stomach of the goose
| trying to get the golden eggs. They had essentially infinite
| long term revenue of people buying D&D rulebooks (myself and
| many of my friends included). Now most people in the community
| know the fundamental integrity of WotC is compromised by suits
| and feel slighted, tabletop RPGs is just too small of a space
| to get away with shady business. Personally I'm never buying a
| WotC product again.
| milliams wrote:
| Can anyone explain the "NFT" argument they're putting forward?
| What in the new license protects them more than existing
| copyright law, trademark law or OGL 1.0 does not?
|
| The OGL does not allow people to use the D&D branding, nor any
| famous monsters or named spells (i.e. no Tasha's Anything or
| Beholders) and so if anyone made a D&D NFT they'd already be in
| conflict.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| "People think NTFs are stupid, right?"
|
| "Yeah."
|
| "Ok, tell them we were doing to to stop people making NFTs."
| milliams wrote:
| I guess that shows that they think we're stupid. The NFT
| bubble has burst and no one cares any more. Maybe 6-12 months
| ago when they started planning this internally it was a big
| thing but it just shows how behind they are.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| This statement is a baldfaced lie in PR crisis template form.
| Gaslighting that the community are overreacting and they were
| just protecting us from the racists that play d&d, and NFTs,
| and big scary corps (who? they don't say). It was clear people
| were expected to sign this, so the reporting says, so the
| entire statement is callow and untrustworthy. Nobody should
| believe WOTC, now the fibbing has started, to try to save
| reputation. The community really wants to turn the screws,
| start challenging their trademark on DND and Dungeons and
| Dragons on what has clearly become Generic for this sort of
| game.
| milliams wrote:
| Regardless of what future license they apply to content, what
| they need to do first is release an OGL 1.0b which contains
| "irrevocable" and ensure it is applied to all current 1.0a
| content as this was the original intention of the OGL [1]. Then
| they can release any 1.1 they want.
|
| [1] There was a published FAQ from WotC (copy available at
| https://www.rpglibrary.org/articles/faqs/ogl.php) saying:
|
| > 7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that
| I wouldn't like?
|
| > Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will
| happen to content that has been previously distributed using an
| earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made
| a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an
| earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words,
| there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the
| community of people using the Open Gaming License would object
| to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.
|
| where section 9 of OGL 1.0a says:
|
| > 9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may
| publish updated versions of this License. You may use any
| authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute
| any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of
| this License.
| [deleted]
| echohack5 wrote:
| This is straight up gaslighting. The original language says
| NOTHING about NFTs and barely anything about acceptance use or
| community guidelines.
|
| Hasbro is down 40% YoY. It's very, very plain that the entire
| goal of this was to drive players into DnDBeyond and then charge
| them a subscription fee because DnD's primary customer is DMs and
| not players. The entire point is to delete their competitors like
| Roll20, Foundry, or 3rd party sellers in the digital space.
|
| This blog post is a smokescreen under the guise of "feedback".
| They were asking folks to SIGN the OGL 1.1. There wasn't a
| feedback period or words about how this was an early early draft
| that would change based on feedback. SHESH.
|
| Hasbro tried this with 4th edition by making the rules of the
| game more wargame-like to force regular players to buy minis
| (there were even rules initially that for official dnd events
| that you could only use OFFICIAL minis) but they backed down on
| this even too. Same thing, different go to market.
|
| The fools in Hasbro's executive suite are NOT decades-old players
| of DnD and they have no idea what they're doing. They have no
| commitment to players: Hasbro shareholders is where their
| loyalties lie.
|
| I've played TTRPGs for 25+ years and this behavior is also
| completely unsurprising from Hasbro/WoTC.
| feoren wrote:
| > The fools in Hasbro's executive suite are NOT decades-old
| players of DnD and they have no idea what they're doing.
|
| This is nearly every single corporation in America. We are
| veritably _infested_ with a caste of the "business class" who
| are completely unqualified to run anything, and indeed don't
| even _care_ about running these companies. Instead they hop
| from company to company, ripping out the internals of whatever
| made that company great in the first place, laying off talented
| people, randomly closing down "cost centers", and doing
| everything they can to get an immediate stock price bump now,
| even if it literally destroys the company down the road. They
| don't care; by then they will have jumped to a different
| company. That's the game, and it's played an entire echelon of
| C-level Harvard Business School grads whose daddies helped them
| get admitted. The dystopia where corporations are ruthless
| profit-seeking entities would be _better_ than what we have
| now, which is that corporations are the playthings of a caste
| of modern-day corporate raiders. The rest of us look at the
| decisions made by giant corporations and ask "how can they be
| so stupid?" They're not being stupid, they're being _viruses_ ,
| and viruses can still be successful even when they sometimes
| kill their hosts.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The question then becomes: Why does the market keep rewarding
| these decisions with short-term stock price increases, if
| they are obviously bad decisions for the long-term health of
| the company?
| Kerrick wrote:
| Because the phrase "make hay while the sun shines" can
| convince people it's good even when they could've otherwise
| kept the sun out longer.
| carapace wrote:
| The market is only about as intelligent as a dog?
| drblue wrote:
| Because Hasbro is in the S&P 500. There's a constant bid
| wall from 401ks purchasing it.
| [deleted]
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I wonder if it's too little too late. All WotC really has going
| for it at this point is the D&D name and player goodwill, and
| they just shot the latter out of a cannon into the sun. DMs and
| PCs alike have already shown their willingness to migrate over to
| alternative D&D-like systems.
|
| And moreover Paizo et al know they have no reason to trust WotC
| not to try this again as soon as people get complacent. I'm sure
| they won't back down, and are going to go full steam ahead with
| their scheme to sidestep WotC, not unlike Valve working around
| Microsoft's boneheaded Windows decisions with SteamOS and Proton.
|
| Also, hiding behind "we want to prevent discriminatory content"
| is a pretty shameful attempt to salvage their image by appealing
| to the zeitgeist. The hobby has become so inclusive the last
| decade or so, more than I ever would have imagined.
| [deleted]
| runesofdoom wrote:
| Yes, it is probably too little and too late. They gave everyone
| using the OGL a short, sharp shock and this mealy-mouthed bit
| of gaslighting isn't going to change enough minds to make a
| difference on that.
|
| It might stop D&D Beyond from bleeding out, but the folks
| who've built successful small businesses around the SRD and the
| OGL aren't going to forget what they just learned. There will
| soon be at least one new SRD and Open License that will be more
| along the lines of Creative Commons licensing and have nothing
| to do with WotC.
| jeegsy wrote:
| > the folks who've built successful small businesses around
| the SRD and the OGL aren't going to forget what they just
| learned
|
| Regardless of what happens, THIS is ALWAYS a good lesson to
| keep in mind when businesses are built on the platforms of
| others.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| At this point they should be considering an (equity financed)
| sale of DnD to Paizo. Don't see how else they can rehabilitate
| their image.
| labster wrote:
| How on Faerun would Paizo repay the private equity without
| doing the same things WotC is doing? Hasbro has an inflated
| idea of what it's worth already.
| trynewideas wrote:
| > All WotC really has going for it at this point is the D&D
| name and player goodwill, and they just shot the latter out of
| a cannon into the sun. DMs and PCs alike have already shown
| their willingness to migrate over to alternative D&D-like
| systems.
|
| D&D survived the 4E attempt to overhaul the OGL, the backlash,
| the GSL that resulted from it, the backlash from that, and the
| backlash from 4E as a whole, and the mass migration at the time
| from 3.5E to Pathfinder/d20 instead of 4E. The brand's too
| valuable to die. "Heroin" used to be a brand name and there'll
| be people who call any and all fantasy TTRPGs "D&D" until the
| collapse of civilization.
|
| What might die is Hasbro's interest in spending money and
| effort on the tabletop RPG part of the brand as a first-party
| content producer, which is frankly also fine by everyone. The
| market and content available today is broader and more diverse
| than ever. The 5E library alone could truck on with players and
| new content for decades without the need of any corporate
| steward, much less Hasbro.
|
| Even most of the people who comprise D&D's content team right
| now came up through the barren years pre-3E and/or during-4E.
| If Hasbro cuts every one of them, they'd all land well,
| especially Wyatt and Schneider who've now covered just about
| every base possible in a single RPG writing/editing career.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I disagree, I think that with 5e DND got super lucky, because
| they hit upon an unexpected gold mine, with the pandemic,
| stranger things, and Critical Roll all happening at the same
| time. Instead of recognizing this as a valuable opportunity
| to move forward TTRPG and usher in a new renissance on that
| front, they instead got high on all the money they made for
| reasons largely beyond their control and assumed it would
| continue forever, because the corporate suits considered
| their players "undermonitized" their quote not mine.
|
| I was suspicious of the 1D&D crap moving to a subscription
| model anyway, so I am quite frankly glad about this.
| trynewideas wrote:
| > I disagree
|
| What's weird is I agree with everything else in your
| comment.
|
| I don't think D&D's survival is a virtue, it's just
| inevitable. It's a generic brand for fantasy tabletop
| roleplaying whether anyone playing it likes it or not.
|
| Hasbro's shenanigans are irrelevant to tabletop D&D's
| survival. They only endanger its success as a product line.
| ajross wrote:
| > All WotC really has going for it at this point is the D&D
| name and player goodwill
|
| ... "All"?
|
| Branding is everything in this industry. Artwork and game
| mechanics are commoditized. The barrier to entry for new RPG
| systems is, and has been for decades, zero. But people don't
| buy anything else, because everyone likes playing "D&D".
|
| The fatal mistake here is IMHO exactly the opposite: they
| torched their brand (the valuable part!) trying to protect
| their margins from low-uptake third party vendors who were
| never a threat in the first place.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| At this point their biggest asset is the fact that DnD has
| become synonymous with RPG among potential customers. The fact
| that they've cheesed off existing customers doesn't affect
| that.
| kbelder wrote:
| My impression is that nearly nobody begins playing with a
| group of people composed solely of people who haven't played
| before. New players are almost always introduced by an
| experienced player, who _does_ have strong opinions about
| what companies to support.
| labster wrote:
| Reposting a bit I wrote last night in the last thread:
|
| Every game master, without exception, is a content creator.
| Most of them want to try new systems just to see what they
| are like. If they decide to go to other systems, that's it
| for D&D. They can make all of the movies and books they
| want, but that won't make people DM it.
|
| We're not in the era where people buy the box set and try
| out this new hobby; almost all new players will join
| experienced groups. The people deepest into the guild, the
| person willing to GM, ultimately decides what everyone
| plays.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| WotC also has MTG, but they've done a poor job of making it
| usable. It seems that for a while now, Hasbro (Hasbeen?) has
| been milking the WotC stuff and would have been BK long ago if
| they had not acquired it.
| madrox wrote:
| People already started making moves to protect their livelihood
| in case the OGL was revoked. This response by WotC is not
| enough to make them reverse course.
|
| I hate to say it, but they should've just stuck to their guns
| on the OGL update just so they only got hit by traffic coming
| from one direction instead of both.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Accusing the community of being racist as the reason they had
| to put on a 30% royalty fee to control all the content. That
| will go down well for what IMO is one of the most inclusive
| communities on the internet.
| wincy wrote:
| Based on the stuff Wizards of the Coast considers racist,
| it'd be really easy to unintentionally be caught up in their
| nullifying your license too. This includes changing language
| around a race of evil, gypsy like people that are subservient
| to a vampire lord (which hews very close to the writings of
| Bram Stoker's Dracula), or a species of flying monkey-like
| creatures being enslaved and later freed as part of a fantasy
| setting (this was removed and Wizards apologized for being
| terrible and racist).
|
| Talk about an absolute landmine of potential for offense.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I recognize Ravenloft[0], but what's the flying monkeys?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_(module)
| djur wrote:
| Hadozee from Spelljammer.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Especially rich from the company that published Spelljammer
| last year, a supplement that somehow got out the door despite
| including formerly enslaved sentient _monkey_ characters that
| gave people minstrel vibes.
| BryantD wrote:
| This is more closely related to (for example) the company
| that's currently trying to reprint Star Frontiers, an 80s
| game to which WotC holds the rights, except they're adding
| racism.
|
| https://www.thegamer.com/tsr-dave-johnson-star-frontiers-
| pla...
|
| Good open licenses don't need a morals clause. Once you start
| licensing people to put your logos on their products, you
| need to think about it.
|
| This comment is not intended as approval of the OGL 1.1 in
| any way, but I think the objections to the morals clause on
| the basis that it's not needed are missing context.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I like the phrase, "Good open licenses don't need a morals
| clause".
|
| By and large we are all adults here. Some people may play
| D&D with sexuality or kink or racism or massive slaughter
| campaigns on a scale that rivals any battle sim.
|
| They're adults. They are allowed to do that, even if you or
| I personally find it distasteful.
|
| Other people may want to do such things. Hasbro and WoTC
| shouldn't have the ability to unilaterally rug pull their
| users because they're worried about getting a stain on the
| carpet.
|
| This whole thing was botched from the beginning. They
| should have phrased it as, "This is what we are thinking,
| please provide any feedback..." to the community. They
| would have still been eviscerated but people would say, "At
| least they started with talking it over and with the goal
| of making sure everyone was happy with the changes first.
| Could you imagine what it would be like if they just walked
| in and tried to dominate the community into submission
| because of some stupid copyright paperwork? God, they could
| have killed their brand!"
| Qworg wrote:
| Paizo is moving forward with the OpenRPG Creative (ORC) license
| anyways - it is too late. Hasbro exposed that the OGL goodwill
| should have been papered and owned by a foundation:
| https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/23553389/dnd-ogl-paizo-...
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| This whole discussion has me wondering if we need to work on
| hardening FOSS licenses against corporate shenanigans.
| Apparently, in the US authors have a pretty broad power in
| revoking licenses after 35 years.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| UkiahSmith wrote:
| Where did you read that license can be revoked after 35
| years?
|
| Does this include licenses that say "irreversible" in them?
| mattkrause wrote:
| In the US, it's part of the Copyright Act and it applies
| regardless of the license. Per 17 USC 203(a)(5):
|
| "Termination of the grant may be effected notwithstanding
| any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to
| make a will or to make any future grant."
|
| More info on terminations/transfers generally:
| https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html
| mhd wrote:
| Decent damage control that rolls back a few things they simply
| couldn't sell but keeps a lot of the problematic parts - or at
| least keeps them unresolved.
|
| But boy, that's grade 1A "My fellow kids" language:
|
| "However, it's clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1."
|
| Yuck.
|
| "Second, you're going to hear people say that they won, and we
| lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our
| plans. Those people will only be half right. They won--and so did
| we."
|
| We all won! Just like in D&D!
|
| There's a time for making the audience feel like you're one of
| them. You might even be. But read the room first. This clearly
| was a time for a more somber treatment of the fandom/customers.
| [deleted]
| raydiatian wrote:
| > A couple of last thoughts. First, we won't be able to release
| the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right,
| but it is coming. Second, you're going to hear people say that
| they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us
| to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They
| won--and so did we.
|
| I laughed and cringed at this sentence.
| gabereiser wrote:
| As a D&D lover and as a game developer, Wizards is customer
| hostile. They employ litigation and control lawyers to protect
| their own commercial interests instead of letting a community of
| fans expand upon their works with their own creativity. TSR and
| crew would be ashamed. It's always been about imagination and
| creativity within a ruleset. The ruleset books and core are
| Wizards IP. OGL was to take the "math and systems of rules" that
| made that possible and enable others to create works of their
| own. I used OGL extensively when building text-based adventures
| and muds as well as the foundation for mmorpg's.
|
| Restricting it in legalese to "Table Top Only" is grounds for all
| sorts of law suits against Roll20 and the likes that employ the
| OGL rulesets for non-Wizards-like games. Fuck, this is why
| Pathfinder forked 3.5 rules. Wizards only cares about milking
| their already aging customer base. They had a really good effort
| on 4th ed. on bringing new folks in but then they showed how
| shallow the walled garden is and people left. Shame on you
| Wizards, shame. OGL should be open. Open Source, Open Ideation,
| Open Arms, Open Hearts. Wizards should do this, or give up the IP
| and stick to Magic The Gathering where they have a huge install
| base with Magic Online.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > Second, you're going to hear people say that they won, and we
| lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our
| plans. Those people will only be half right. They won--and so did
| we.
|
| Talk about tone deaf
| LesZedCB wrote:
| people may accuse me (rightly) of being very cynical, but
| reading stuff like that from self-described 'community-
| oriented' corporations makes me feel quite justified in that
| belief. holy shit
| [deleted]
| snapcaster wrote:
| This and the magic 30th debacle really sucks. I don't play D&D
| but magic is my favorite game and what's messed up is that it's
| still really good. I play primarily draft and felt like 2022 was
| a great year for content yet the business practices are so short
| sighted and dumb it feels like they're going to run this thing I
| love into the ground. Good luck to D&D players hope you guys can
| influence Hasbro to stop being stupid
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The design team is mostly doing a good job. Kamigawa and
| Dominaria United were both great formats. Balance isn't
| fantastic but it's fairly good, and since they're incentivized
| to print busted cards to move packs that's about the best you
| can expect.
|
| The way they've handled Arena has been a total joke though,
| which is pretty funny considering it's basically Hasbro's top
| product.
| bargle0 wrote:
| We don't need WotC or Hasbro.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| What was the Magic 30th debacle? The super expensive cards with
| only nostalgia value seemed strange, but I can't see that as a
| debacle.
| sogen wrote:
| I think they reprinted cards that they had promised would not
| be printed again, thus devaluing the whole market.
| User23 wrote:
| The reprint policy specifically excludes reprints that
| aren't tournament legal[1] and I'm pretty sure it always
| has.
|
| [1]
| https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/official-
| rep...
| Kerrick wrote:
| There was no appreciable devaluation from the move. The new
| reprints honoring old cards that they promised not to
| reprint were not actual Magic cards, they have an alternate
| card back that makes them not Magic cards, not tournament
| legal, and a completely different class of cardboard for
| collectors. (Heck, plenty of players and some collectors
| actively want Magic to go back on that promise, called the
| "Reserved List" because it prices otherwise-potential
| players out of playing certain forms of the game.)
|
| As an example, let's examine, one of the cards they printed
| an homage to is Volcanic Island--the most-available,
| lowest-cost real English Magic printing (Revised). Its
| average price on Oct 1, a few days before the 30th
| anniversary announcement, was (according to mtgstocks.com)
| $799. Its average price today is $779 (the $20 difference
| is within normal seasonal variation). A more-collectible
| printing, Unlimited, had an average price on Oct 1 of
| $1342.50. That's its exact average price today. The much-
| more-collectible Beta printing was $12,500 on Oct 1, and
| $14,999 today.
|
| No, the uproar from the community had much more to do with
| the way they marketed and sold the product in which these
| homage prints existed, the way their messaging about its
| sales performance seemed sketchy, and most importantly the
| price of the product.
| IYasha wrote:
| Don't you dare! OGL stands for OpenGL! Don't force millions of us
| to re-train! )
| IYasha wrote:
| Oh, shift, it's too late (
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Gods, that's an awfully written statement.
|
| Painful.
|
| Notably, the idea that it was just a draft is simply a lie - the
| OGL 1.1 was sent to content creators to sign. That's not an
| internal draft. It just isn't. There is no way to look at that
| section as anything other than a deliberate falsification on
| Hasbro's part.
|
| Secondly, the notion that the main driver was to prevent hateful
| content is also just nonsensical. It's not like you accidentally
| dropped a typewriter down the stairs and it suddenly required a
| 30% royalty, and the notion that any business put that in and it
| wasn't the primary motivation is fanciful, especially when
| Hasbro's own financial statement explicitly says that they were
| expecting to drive significant additional monetisation from D&D.
|
| If Hasbro want to start earning trust back here, not including
| two easily provable lies in the first, massively overdue
| statement would be a good start.
| y-curious wrote:
| I am not much of a DND player- what sort of hateful content are
| they trying to prevent? Is there a Nazi-flavored campaign they
| want to curtail?
| KVFinn wrote:
| >I am not much of a DND player- what sort of hateful content
| are they trying to prevent? Is there a Nazi-flavored campaign
| they want to curtail?
|
| https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-files-
| law...
| plorkyeran wrote:
| There's a handful of explicitly Nazi/White Supremacist TTRPGs
| out there. AFAIK none of them actually use OGL content, and
| Hasbro just wants to make sure it remains that way as they
| really don't want D&D associated with that.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sadly, there actually is some explicitly white supremacist
| third party rpg content. One of Gygax's kids is involved in
| this.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| This announcement is one step above what James Sterling[0]
| calls the Solemn JPEG: a single image posted on a branded
| Twitter account whose contents are just themed[1] text of a
| half-assed non-apology. How thoughtful /s
|
| [0] James Stephanie Sterling, Bastard -
| https://www.youtube.com/@JimSterling
|
| [1] i.e. brand-specific fonts and colors
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Typical corporate non apology and partial climb down with a
| massive fistful of gaslighting.
| ankaAr wrote:
| They must to update the ogl 1 deleting the article 9, and maybe
| people will trust a little bit.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Why would we ever trust them again. I still don't trust MS
| because of the days of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". I can
| trust a people or persons, but never a corporation.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content
| creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and
| the community--not major corporations to use for their own
| commercial and promotional purpose.
|
| "Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two
| pictures."
|
| "They are the same picture."
|
| There is no legal difference between "fans playing in your
| sandbox" and "major corporations using your work for their
| commercial purposes". Under current copyright law, fans are just
| really unscrupulous thieves, and writing a legal distinction
| between the two that won't immediately be run roughshod by
| Hollywood, book publishers, or the music industry is extremely
| difficult if not impossible.
|
| If you want a license that turns off major corporations, pick CC-
| BY-SA.
|
| Yes, I know CC-BY-NC-SA exists. That sounds like it'd do what
| WotC would want: draw a line cleanly between fans and
| corporations. However, the notion of commercial use in the law is
| so broad as to cover basically everything. The only two cases in
| which I'd say CC-BY-NC-SA[0] confers _any_ rights is either...
|
| - You are an individual sharing the work on a filesharing network
|
| - You can categorically prove to a judge that you had no
| "commercial advantage or private monetary compensation"
|
| The latter category excludes literally all fan works. Even if you
| just drew them yourself and posted them online, that still gives
| you social capital: likes, reshares, and algorithmic attention.
| That is a commercial advantage for you. Even if you exclude that,
| the platform you posted the works on is still getting a
| commercial advantage from you being on there, so _they_ have
| violated the license that you sublicensed to them. That 's why
| the NonCommercial clause in that license has to say "filesharing
| is not commercial", because existing case law _already says the
| opposite_. If it 's a draw, it's commercial.
|
| Copyleft & ShareAlike clauses don't have this problem, because
| they ride atop established legal definitions rather than murky
| notions people have of being able to infringe copyright _a
| little_. All they say is "if copyright law says you made a
| derivative, then you have to also license it back to the commons
| you took from". Quick, simple, and most importantly, _court-
| tested_ [1]. And no profit-seeking corporation will play ball.
| The standard practice of negotiating a license in exchange for
| royalties is so lucrative that it starves other forms of funding
| creative work. For the same reason, you don't see people making
| big-budget SCP films[2], because you can't window a release that
| you are legally allowed to CAM[4].
|
| Of course, Wizards doesn't want that either, because... well,
| they _also_ can 't negotiate a license in exchange for royalties
| in that scenario. The market for exception selling is actually
| not that big. Even if it does serve to separate fans from large
| corporations _now_... what stops the corporations from just
| buying or hiring the fans later on once they figure out a viable
| business model under CC-BY-SA? The circle that Wizards is trying
| to square is that they want a license that is functionally
| worthless, so that when the corporations jump in to buy out the
| fans, they can pull the coin out of the vending machine and steal
| the surplus that those other corporations wanted.
|
| [0] Or it's even weirder cousin, CC-BY-NC-ND, which is
| _basically_ just a fancy covenant not to sue BitTorrent users
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation...
|
| [2] There are plenty of indie films out there, of course, and
| they _do_ largely play ball with CC-BY-SA, Andrey Duksin[3]
| notwithstanding.
|
| [3] A Russian SCP creator that trademarked the SCP logo and tried
| to extract monetary demands from the SCP Wiki's Russian language
| branch. Their shenaniganery has largely been forgotten due to the
| ongoing situation of Russia being a genocidal ethnofascist death
| cult.
|
| [4] Movie piracy scene term for "point a camcorder at a screen
| and press record". Prohibited by many state laws but I'm pretty
| sure you couldn't enforce it on a CC-BY-SA work.
| Macha wrote:
| Prior events:
|
| 1a: Dungeons and Dragons' new license tightens its grip on
| competition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264777 - Jan
| 2023 (203 comments)
|
| 1b: Wizards of the Coast Trying to Retroactively Cancel OGL 1.0a:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271687 - Jan 2023 (233
| comments)
|
| 2: An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the
| Coast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34314448 - Jan 2023
| (356 comments)
|
| 3: Paizo announces system neutral OpenRPG license:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363991 - Jan 2023 (58
| comments)
| nickthegreek wrote:
| io9's take on this response from wotc -
| https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-license-wizards-of-...
| Y_Y wrote:
| This should be the link
| havblue wrote:
| Here's one of my favorite (old) articles on their transition
| from being gaming nerds to becoming a large corporation:
|
| Death to the Minotaur: How Wizards of the Coast sacrificed its
| geeky, Gothic, sex-for-all idealism for Pok March 23, 2001
| https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
| markus_zhang wrote:
| On the geeky side I really really like the slightly more
| complicated Adnd 2e as well as the Planescape/Spelljammer
| settings.
| morelisp wrote:
| There's been 2x as much time between today and that article,
| as between that article and WotC's founding. It's not
| relevant to the issues today, and the author paints an
| extremely rose-tinted picture of the period. The people he
| accuses of ruining the company's vision were also early
| employees (and although the author couldn't know it, would go
| on to found Paizo and today be the heir apparent to his
| presentation of WotC's vision).
| rychco wrote:
| Hey, I've seen this one! "Public company ruins their reputation
| by intentionally making their products worse in an attempt to
| extort longtime customers."
| [deleted]
| Whatarethese wrote:
| Who is running these companies. This isn't the first time a
| company has tried to screw over their customers. Why do they keep
| doing this shit when they should know what is going to happen. It
| must just be pure stupidity on the C level folks at these
| companies. Shame on them.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I feel like execs are still not used to the idea that people
| with niche hobbies can form large groups over the internet,
| and, moreover, immediately take action in a way that hurts the
| company's bottom line. [0] Just think about how this would have
| gone down in the 80s or even the 90s. A few grumbles on a BBS
| or forums, but for the most part, no one is reading the fine
| text of the license in the book. There is no news about it,
| maybe a fanzine talks about it, but those only have so much
| distribution. People aren't informed enough to have an opinion,
| let alone do something about it.
|
| [0] Subscription-based models are a double-edged sword like
| that. Anyone can say, "well I won't buy the next edition's
| books", and even if they mean it, Hasbro can ignore that threat
| until they're out. But if people can instantly end their
| subscriptions, well, that's different.
| Macha wrote:
| The current execs are recently from Microsoft's Xbox division
| so they're also probably more used to ineffectual video gamer
| boycotts, but because tabletop is not such a large group, a
| larger proportion of the audience is more likely to be
| plugged into the goings on specific to that industry.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > The current execs are recently from Microsoft's Xbox
| division
|
| Well, that explains pretty much everything.
| Tossrock wrote:
| "D&D has never been more popular, and we have really great fans
| and engagement," Williams began. "But the brand is really under
| monetised." - The CEO a month ago
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| So, first thing we do is piss off all our most ardent
| customers...
| trynewideas wrote:
| Really cannot stress enough how little Hasbro corporate
| would care if the hardcore D&D market were rounded up and
| shot immediately. They'd probably pay to have it happen if
| they could wrangle it from a project-management standpoint.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| It works well in video games. All sorts of dark patterns that
| pump money from players.
| havblue wrote:
| It sounds similar to Sears attempting to turn its customers
| into members. They don't have to worry about selling books:
| they can just sell app subscriptions, micro transactions and
| expansion content for campaigns involving everyone being
| tethered to their phones instead of their character sheets.
| feoren wrote:
| It's the Principal Agent problem. These decisions aren't being
| made by the company, they're being made by _people_. People who
| benefit enormously from a short-term stock price bump, but can
| easily jump to a different company once the long-term effects
| of their destruction start to show up.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| do the people make the system, or does the system make the
| people?
|
| system being somewhat narrowly the executive duty to
| quarterly growth metrics for shareholders, the same
| shareholders which make up the board who chooses the execs,
| etc...
|
| while i absolutely believe there are plenty of people with
| questionable-at-best ethics, these people don't just
| magically become executives in a vacuum, or by themselves.
| feoren wrote:
| The top 2 to 5 people in a corporation of 10,000+ don't
| "make the system". If the captain of a ship ordered it to
| ram into a giant rock, because he had taken an insurance
| policy out on the ship, that's not the ship deciding to
| wreck itself. That's the captain being a corrupt virus
| destroying value for his own personal gain. That is the
| game being played: extracting value that is "locked up" in
| corporate assets and long-term shareholders into the
| pockets of the short-term C-suite and high-level
| shareholders who will move on to another company later.
| Pump up this year's stock price as high as you can by
| laying people off, squeezing your customers, eliminating
| employee benefits, whatever you can do. Get your payout,
| then sell out and move to the next company while employees,
| customers, long-term shareholders, and long-term corporate
| partners are fucked.
| [deleted]
| rcthompson wrote:
| I'm guessing the people making the decisions are separated from
| the people who interact with customers by many layers of
| managers (and also the decision makers exist in a different
| socioeconomic bubble than the customers), and the only message
| able to penetrate all those layers with any speed or urgency is
| "we're losing money".
| msoucy wrote:
| If I had a nickel for every time WotC tried to change the OGL
| and the community got pissed, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't
| a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice!
|
| (The first time is what gave us Pathfinder 1e in the first
| place, for those who don't know - they took D&D 3.5e, under the
| OGL 1.0, and made modifications and continued its spirit)
| Throw10987 wrote:
| I thought I was the only one old enough to remember that we
| have been here before.
|
| Back in the day I even had an email thread with Ryan Dancy
| about making software tooling based on the OGL, which was
| pretty non-committal and discouraged me from proceeding with
| any efforts.
| [deleted]
| djur wrote:
| The proof will be in the pudding, but this seems like a near-
| total capitulation to me. That's a relief if so. I enjoy other
| systems, but I do also love D&D, and I'd hate to abandon it.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Not quite. WoTC has said that they are still planning on
| banning third party publishers from releasing anything new
| based on old OGL 1.0 content.
|
| EDIT: Oops, accidentally said "in this post", when WoTC's
| announcement was in the FAQ that got leaked. >
| Can I keep using OGL 1.0a to develop fifth edition content?
| > > No. OGL 1.0a only allows creators to use
| "authorized" versions of the OGL, which allows Wizards to
| determine which of its prior versions to continue to allow use
| of when we exercise our right to update the license. As part of
| rolling out OGL 2.0, we are deauthorizing OGL 1.0a from future
| use and deleting it from our website. This means OGL 1.0a can
| no longer be used to develop content for release.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU
| wotcthrrrrow wrote:
| I don't see that mentioned anywhere in this post?
|
| It even explicitly states "Content already released under
| 1.0a will also remain unaffected."
|
| (though ideally they'd, you know, make that legally binding.)
| msoucy wrote:
| Content already released, yes. The post says nothing about
| being able to make new things under 1.0a, which is where a
| lot of the nervousness comes in for people.
| wotcthrrrrow wrote:
| Sure, but "not being explicit" is very different than the
| way OP phrased it ("WoTC says in this post") -- it made
| me think I'd missed some explicit mention of it.
|
| FWIW, I don't even believe they ever wanted to try to
| claw back e.g. the 3.5 SRD, so I'm not as concerned as
| other folk here. (But it's also clear that if they have
| no such intent, they'd need to make it legally binding
| for folk to trust them.)
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Content already released is not the same being able to
| release new content under 1.0a. They might try and force
| all new content to be under the new OGL. The issue is they
| are tapped out of good will from the community and have
| shown themselves to use weasel words. So all press releases
| from them should not be given any benefit of the doubt.
| sklargh wrote:
| The implication being that the OGL going forward will be
| 1.1.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Oops, wasn't in this post, but it was in the FAQ that got
| leaked today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU
| > Can I keep using OGL 1.0a to develop fifth edition
| content? > > No. OGL 1.0a only allows creators
| to use "authorized" versions of the OGL, which allows
| Wizards to determine which of its prior versions to
| continue to allow use of when we exercise our right to
| update the license. As part of rolling out OGL 2.0, we are
| deauthorizing OGL 1.0a from future use and deleting it from
| our website. This means OGL 1.0a can no longer be used to
| develop content for release.
| mesebrec wrote:
| Where do you see that? I can't find that language.
| advisedwang wrote:
| The first paragraph says their intention was to exclude
| "major corporations" from benefiting from the license. When
| they talk about revisions, they mention protecting
| "educational and charitable campaigns, livestreams,
| cosplay, VTT-uses, etc" - which is basically saying non-
| commercial use.
|
| With those two bits, I expect OGL 1.1 to only allow
| commercial use.
|
| They do explicitly say "Content already released under 1.0a
| will also remain unaffected" though!
| xracy wrote:
| Hasbro Suits: "Hear me out, if we kill the WotC goose, we'll get
| _all_ the Golden eggs. "
|
| I really wish they would sell WotC and that it would go private.
| Not everything needs to become a billion-dollar idea. Why can't
| we just have simple consistent million-dollar ideas that sustain
| our sense of fun and joy.
| [deleted]
| honkycat wrote:
| Their latest supplement, Spelljammer, was SHAMEFUL. Total
| shovelware.
|
| Between the magic 30th anniversary debacle, the lowering of
| quality in their products in general, and their clear attempts to
| milk as much money out of their customers as possible, WOTC has
| lost the plot.
| [deleted]
| msoucy wrote:
| WotC: "We want to avoid hateful content, that's all!"
|
| Also WotC: creates highly racist caricatures of an enslaved
| race (Hadozee) in an official book
| Brigand wrote:
| What is racist about inventing a fantasy race in a fantasy
| world? Please elaborate.
| falcolas wrote:
| If you could replace the fantasy race with a real-world
| race and not have to change any other thing, it's probably
| never going to be received well by modern society.
|
| With one notable exception: if it's merely the starting
| point of a campaign to enact major change (perhaps also if
| used as a vehicle to display how bad the system really is).
| Brigand wrote:
| You could replace the orcs in lotr with the germans, and
| their leader as sauron. Does that make lotr racist? I
| don't think so.
| falcolas wrote:
| Do a quick google search for LOTR and racism, and you'll
| find for yourself that the line isn't quite so clear.
|
| That said, I"m fairly sure you'd have to change a number
| of things to make "goblins/orcs" match up with real world
| Germans (such as the cannibalism) But it's been some
| years since I read LOTR.
| msoucy wrote:
| This post[1] explains it better than I have the mental
| energy or experience to
|
| [1]: https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-
| hadozee-rac...
| adamrezich wrote:
| outsourcing personal opinions wholesale to articles that
| others have written, without being able to
| reformulate/articulate said opinions in your own words,
| does not make for an especially compelling argument.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Do you have anything to saw about the actual opinion?
|
| If you had read the article provided, you'd have also
| seen that Wizards agrees with the opinion and has
| modified their backstory:
| https://www.polygon.com/23339180/dnd-spelljammer-racist-
| hado...
| adamrezich wrote:
| I don't care what WotC thinks, I don't care what Polygon
| writers think, and I don't care to argue about something
| as volatile yet useless as drawing comparisons between
| real-world races and fantasy races, because I also think
| that's all really, really stupid and tiring, and being
| offended on the behalf of others is not a very productive
| use of my time.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why insert yourself into a conversation so beneath you,
| then, throwing insults?
| adamrezich wrote:
| whom did I insult?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Do you have anything to saw about the actual opinion?
|
| So, no, you just have stuff to say about who is making
| the opinion and that it's "not a productive use of your
| time" to argue about it.
|
| For something not being a productive use of your time,
| you sure are dedicating an awful lot of time being
| contrarian to it.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I wrote two short replies expressing my thoughts using
| entirely my own words. it probably took me less than four
| minutes to write both comments plus this one. I'm not
| sure what you're trying to prove, other than your
| frustration at my unwillingness to engage with these
| tired, played-out contemporary-politicization-of-fantasy
| talking points?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That for someone who doesn't want to engage, you sure are
| engaging a lot.
|
| Either you don't care, in which case you wouldn't bother
| to continuing to reply, or you do actually care but just
| don't want to express what you know is an unpopular
| opinion, and are just side-stepping it with this whole
| "I'm better than this argument" attitude.
| adamrezich wrote:
| the "aha, I baited you into replying to my reply to your
| comment, see, you _do_ care after all, if you really didn
| 't care then you wouldn't reply" schtick is incredibly
| tired and played-out too, as well as insultingly petty
| and completely unbecoming.
|
| if you were willing to rephrase whatever opinions you
| assimilated from _plural_ Polygon articles into your own
| words and ask what I think about them, then I might have
| been slightly more likely to engage with them (your
| opinions). but merely repeatedly linking to something
| someone else wrote and saying "so what do you think
| about that, huh?" is not exactly interesting discourse.
| there is no "intellectual curiosity" (HN rules) happening
| here, just weak attempts at baiting the same old tired
| Internet arguments from the past decade, which many
| people, myself included, are long since exhausted with.
|
| what do you expect to gain from this continued exchange?
|
| (note that I'm posing a question to you, _inviting_ you
| to reply to me, if you so choose, and, if you do, I _won
| 't_ mock or belittle you for replying, because this is a
| discussion website, and that would be silly.)
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Once again, for someone who has said multiple times that
| they don't care to engage and are above all these "weak
| attempts at baiting", you sure are putting a lot of time
| continuing to engage.
|
| It's very hard to pretend to not care when you write
| multiple impassioned paragraphs about what you consider
| interesting discourse and what is beneath you. Your
| continued insistence of this "I'm better than you and
| this argument" does nothing but show that you do, indeed
| continue to care.
|
| So maybe put all of this time that is so beneath you to
| read the article, and then you can proceed to insult it
| rather than just insulting the lowly people beneath you
| and our petty arguments.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I care more about _this_ website and the quality of
| discourse on it (since that 's all there is to it) than I
| care about what Polygon opinion piece writers think about
| being offended on the behalf of others over fantasy
| writing--you seem to have these priorities reversed,
| hence your ongoing "aha, I baited you into replying to
| me" schtick, which is _not_ interesting, curious,
| intellectually-stimulating discourse, and neither is
| "just read these articles I didn't write in order to
| learn what my opinion is so I can argue with you about
| that instead of mocking you for replying to me."
| spoiler wrote:
| I don't know how I feel about that analysis. Just because
| something is inspired by historic events (slavery in this
| case), doesn't mean it's advocating those events as good.
|
| Is it dark? Yes, and I think it's meant to be.
|
| If anything, I think it's actually great that they're
| doing this because I believe RPG games are a great and
| safe mediums to acquaint people with these difficult
| subjects. I can't be the only person with this opinion?
|
| Are people calling Marvel racists or anti-Semitic because
| Hydra was inspires by some parts of the Nazi military
| being obsessed with the supernatural?
|
| I think calling these racists (or xist) is a failure of
| imagination; kinda weird to see it come from the RPG
| community, too
| wardedVibe wrote:
| The analogy says black people were subhuman until they
| were magically uplifted. That's the offensive part.
|
| Contrast that with the gith, another slave race that
| broke their bonds. Just as gritty, but not racist.
| jeegsy wrote:
| The analogy itself is the problem. If I wanted to assign
| a racism value to the creation of a fantasy race with
| certain characteristics and the resulting analogy by some
| to black people in this instance, the analogy would
| always have a higher racism value.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Yeah, that's why its a gross trope that needs to die.
| honkycat wrote:
| The tone of the spelljammer setting is not dark. It is
| more marketed towards kids in its latest iteration.
|
| I think people just don't want to deal with slavery and
| race bullshit in their fantasy setting, which I
| understand.
|
| So it's just annoying and tone deaf and doesn't add
| anything, plus the fact they are simian and transported
| on tall ships and auctioned off as slaves.
|
| If you can't see why someone would would say "wow, a
| slave monkey race transported on ships. That sucks." Then
| you aren't arguing in good faith. It is not that much of
| a stretch to see it as a little demeaning.
|
| Depictions od people of color as animalistic is
| undeniably a thing people used to do to be demeaning to
| them.
|
| So I would argue you are having a failing of imagination.
| Communitivity wrote:
| An enslaved monkey race that rose up to fling off the
| chains of their evil Wizard master.. I am paraphrasing, but
| not by much. Slave race of monkey-like humanoids. That
| never should have made it past the editor in this day an
| age.
| Brigand wrote:
| I don't know of a monkey-like humanoids in the real
| world. Humans look very much different from monkeys, esp
| from the ones in the illustrations. That is really a long
| shot.
|
| I really don't follow this, on a similar absurd reasoning
| one could claim elves in lotr are racist because the have
| light skin.
|
| It's just a story set in a fantasy world. If you mean to
| it's always possible to twist anything into being
| offensive.
| honkycat wrote:
| They also implied the monkey people, who were transported
| via spelljammer ships, were actioned off.
|
| I mean I don't care that much but it was a little tone
| deaf.
|
| The real problem was there was a rules bug that let them
| move insanely fast
| thebooktocome wrote:
| > Humans look very much different from monkeys
|
| Didn't stop _generations_ of racists from making
| offensive comparisons. Doesn 't stop them from continuing
| to do so.
|
| Racism's value system doesn't care about rationality or
| truth.
|
| > On a similar absurd reasoning one could claim elves in
| lotr are racist because the have light skin.
|
| Amusingly enough, Tolkien did in fact hold racist
| beliefs, despite his fervent opposition to the Nazis
| during WWII. Both of those things can be and are true.
| His elves are very explicitly Old Norse expys (read his
| letters if you don't believe me) and his constant fawning
| over them (as pale, beautiful, skilled, and wise) in
| contrast to orcs (as dark-skinned, ugly, brutish, and
| enslaved) was criticized then and is still criticized
| now.
|
| > If you mean to it's always possible to twist anything
| into being offensive.
|
| It is justified to take offense at something that is, in
| fact, offensive.
| westmeal wrote:
| I think you're reading a little bit too much into this my
| man
| charcircuit wrote:
| >It also will not include the license back provision that some
| people were afraid was a means for us to steal work. That thought
| never crossed our minds. Under any new OGL, you will own the
| content you create. We won't. Any language we put down will be
| crystal clear and unequivocal on that point. The license back
| language was intended to protect us and our partners from
| creators who incorrectly allege that we steal their work simply
| because of coincidental similarities.
|
| It seems like a lot of people were misunderstanding the terms of
| the license due to people not being familiar with them. It could
| have been better when asking for feedback if they had annotated
| it with more clear reasoning as the intended audience are not
| lawyers.
| krisoft wrote:
| > It seems like a lot of people were misunderstanding the terms
| of the license due to people not being familiar with them.
|
| I'm not sure if you are satirical here. But just to be clear
| that part of the leaked agreament was crystal clear. They would
| have had the right to throw your book in a photocopier and
| start selling the copies. They would have even had the right to
| sell the same right to a third party.
|
| Were they intending to do that literally? Probably not. Would
| they have picked this and that from the most succesfull
| publications? Why not? They have the right for it. You signed
| it away for them.
| msoucy wrote:
| It would have been even better if they actually asked for
| feedback, instead of trying to get people to sign it in secret
| as a finished document
| suprjami wrote:
| Lies. The community won and WotC are in damage control.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I'd recommend listening to Hasbro's leadership explain to
| institutional investors how they intend to make _more_ money off
| MTG & DnD:
|
| https://investor.hasbro.com/events/event-details/ubs-firesid...
|
| I feel like following the investor relations can paint a much
| deeper picture than is otherwise apparent at press release time.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| What I don't understand about this is how they're able to
| retroactively change the licence terms.
|
| As I understand it (and I'm not an expert, hence the question),
| Pathfinder is based on D&D as released under the OGL, and has
| been a successful commercial product for years.
|
| How is it legal for WotC to change the terms of the OGL licence
| and invalidate Pathfinder's ability to use the D&D content
| retroactively? Surely Pathfinder can point to the original OGL
| release and say "all our content is based on this release which
| you released under an open licence".
|
| Secondary question: does this apply to OSS as well? Can (e.g)
| Postgresql wait until the whole world is relying on their
| software, and then pull a licence change that makes it non-
| free/libre and requiring a paid licence fee?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| The OGL 1.0(a) includes this text:
|
| > 9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may
| publish updated versions of this License. You may use any
| authorized version of this License to copy, modify and
| distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under
| any version of this License.
|
| Wizards is claiming (I think erroneously, as it contradicts
| past published statements to the contrary regarding its intent)
| that this gives them the right to declare previous versions of
| the OGL as no longer "authorized" and thus invalid.
|
| I suspect this won't hold up in court should it come to that
| but testing it in court would be the only way to find out.
|
| Most FOSS licenses do not include a clause like this.
| racingmars wrote:
| > What I don't understand about this is how they're able to
| retroactively change the licence terms.
|
| I think the concern is around provision 9 of the OGL: "9.
| Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may
| publish updated versions of this License. You may use any
| authorized version of this License to copy, modify and
| distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under
| any version of this License."
|
| IANAL so I have _no_ idea what all the implications of this
| actually are, or how a court might understand it. But at face
| value, the "any authorized version of this License" makes
| people think WotC would _no longer_ authorize the 1.0 license
| and only authorize the 1.1 license, so further copying and
| distribution of material originally distributed under v1.0
| would only be possible under the v1.1 license if it becomes the
| only "authorized" license.
|
| Does contract law allow for such a thing? I don't know.
|
| > Secondary question: does this apply to OSS as well? Can (e.g)
| Postgresql wait until the whole world is relying on their
| software, and then pull a licence change that makes it non-
| free/libre and requiring a paid licence fee?
|
| No, because free software licenses don't tend to have that
| confusing "Updating the License" or any way to retroactively
| change the conditions that the OGL has.
|
| OSS projects could always re-license (at least the code that
| the project has copyright ownership of) going forward, but that
| wouldn't affect copies you already got under the previous
| terms.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I'd also recommend reading Paizo's response on thier blog it
| was enlightening to say the least.
| Kerrick wrote:
| This article from a lawyer who also plays D&D explained things
| in a way I better understood:
| https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...
|
| The key is that the old OGL was perpetual but not irrevocable.
| knaik94 wrote:
| It's not that clear cut. There is no lanuage about when a
| license can be revoked. That's not how the contracts of these
| types work. You can only argue that new people will not be
| able to use the old license. It's similar to the situation
| with an MIT license. Companies have come out and said they
| would take WotC over this if necessary.
| User23 wrote:
| It's already completely legal under US copyright law to clone D&D
| or any other tabletop game's gameplay. What exactly is the OGL
| offering on top of what the law already gives anyone the right to
| do?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I've always kinda wondered this myself. The copyright office
| seems very clear about not being able to claim ownership of the
| mechanics of a game. I always assumed the additional grants in
| the OGL were for content like (for example) monster, deity, and
| item descriptions, and maybe to the language used in the
| instructional material, not just the raw mechanics.
| doesnt_know wrote:
| I think for a subset of the table-top community, the damage is
| already done. Our group will be finishing up our campaign
| (probably about a month or so left) and then switching to a new
| system.
|
| That means a bunch of dropped dnd beyond subscriptions and us no
| longer purchasing digital source/adventure books.
|
| DnD has insane brand recognition but the system itself isn't
| anything overly special. We have stacks of indie table top books
| thourgh various sales over the years sitting there waiting for us
| to try out.
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