[HN Gopher] Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Com...
___________________________________________________________________
Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License
(CC-BY-4.0)
Author : xaviex
Score : 155 points
Date : 2023-01-27 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dndbeyond.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dndbeyond.com)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Well. That was unexpected. Given what's been happening to
| Twitter, I didn't have any hope that WOTC would do anything
| sensible.
|
| I suspect they'll pull this bullshit again the next time someone
| looks at a balance sheet.
| roblabla wrote:
| At least the SRD5 is now _irrevocably_ in the creative commons.
| So the situation now is somewhat better, they can 't simply
| revoke the license anymore for that document.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative
| commons.
|
| They changed the underlying law of licenses that makes
| gratuitous licenses revocable at will independent of the
| content of the license? How?
| chrisoverzero wrote:
| You've asserted something like this a few times on HN, and
| your responses are undetailed enough (or flavored with fake
| astonishment, like this one) that you seem to think it's
| obvious.
|
| Isn't the requirement of attribution the consideration in
| cases like this? Which would make it not gratuitous? Here's
| open source lawyer and HN user 'DannyBee saying so, for
| example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14557737
| int_19h wrote:
| As applied to open source licenses, that is a legal theory,
| not settled law, and there are many people, including
| lawyers who professionally deal with F/OSS, who disagree
| with you.
|
| https://lwn.net/Articles/747563/
| [deleted]
| tunesmith wrote:
| Is there actually not a catch here? I'm only somewhat familiar
| with the debate.
| johnday wrote:
| Yep - not only is there no catch _right now_ , but they
| literally can never add one. The SRD is released under CC-
| BY-4.0.
|
| The only point of contention is what happens to their new
| product, One D&D, which will probably retain some nasty payment
| structure, and almost certainly not be OGL'd. That's fine
| though - if they build a walled garden around One D&D, they
| simply won't be able to compete against the open community of
| 5e.
| tonfreed wrote:
| It'll be funny if all those juicy royalties they think
| they're going to get never materialise because no one wants
| to develop for their system.
| gpm wrote:
| CC-BY-4.0 for those wondering _which_ creative commons license.
| That means attribution required, but no significant other
| limitations.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I expected SA "share alike" (aka "viral")
| dragonwriter wrote:
| SA would be worse for WotC; as they move to OneD&D, they
| would rather have the 5.1 derived third party products to be
| separate silos that draw on the 5.1 base rather than cross-
| pollinating. So third parties _not_ sharing-alike is what
| they want.
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| So this is a clean, complete win, right? Once the license
| controversy started, there was no reasonable ask beyond this
| outcome?
| Macha wrote:
| I'd say this is 99% of a win. The one thing it does still leave
| is the claim they can de-authorize 1.0a at will later. For
| active products this is not a problem, as CC BY is a strictly
| more permissive license and they just move to claiming they're
| using the CC license.
|
| However, for second-order derivatives there is still one
| problem.
|
| 1. Third Party A uses OGL 1.0a content from Wizards, licenses
| its own work as OGL 1.0a as a result
|
| 2. Later Third Party A goes out of business
|
| 3. Third Party B reused Third Party A's content under OGL 1.0a.
|
| 4. There's no one left to relicense Third Party A's content
| under CC BY.
|
| But "don't make second order derivatives of abandonware
| content" is a lot easier to work around than "don't make stuff
| compatible with the large existing ecosystem"
| rsstack wrote:
| Note that the license is CC-BY-4.0, not -SA. Doesn't change
| anything material in what you wrote, just FYI.
| Macha wrote:
| Thanks, luckily the edit window is still open so I fixed my
| post
| kubb wrote:
| nice
| krisroadruck wrote:
| What a huge and welcomed about-face. Massive kudos to the
| community of dedicated fans, players, and creators who helped get
| this done.
| [deleted]
| jron wrote:
| WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended
| to be irrevocable. Everything else was a red herring. I'm
| guessing their legal team had more to do with this change of
| heart than consumer/publisher feedback.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors
| intended to be irrevocable.
|
| WotC was the legal author, and gratuitous licenses are
| revocable at will, anyway.
| Macha wrote:
| So the discussions from previous is that having consideration
| in return for a license makes it a contract rather than a
| gratuitous license. In this case the OGL specifies that
| licensing your work as OGL and including the OGL text in your
| work counts as consideration.
|
| If you think the claim for that being consideration is too
| frail, the Artistic License from old Perl versions is a
| similarly permissive license, and Jacobsen vs Katzer held up
| that it counted as a contract with all that implies for
| revocability and (in particular for that case), whether
| failure to uphold your end is copyright infringement or
| breach of contract.
|
| Some more context (and in particular how it applies to open
| source - if you use MIT licensed software, the idea that
| permissive licenses are gratuitous licenses is not a
| precedent you want set): https://lwn.net/Articles/747563/
| jron wrote:
| The original author is on record stating that it was intended
| to be irrevocable. There was also a quote on the official
| WOTC website stating the license couldn't be revoked. IANAL
| but I wouldn't take that case to court.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Sweet. That's nice to see
| imwillofficial wrote:
| And that folks is how you do it. Faith in humanity restored
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> For the fewer than 20 creators worldwide who make more than
| $750,000 in income in a year, we will add a royalty starting in
| 2024. So, even for the creators making significant money selling
| D&D supplements and games, no royalties will be due for 2023 and
| all revenue below $750,000 in future years will be royalty-free.
|
| My "Star Frontiers" fan video game is go!
|
| https://www.starfrontiers.com/
| codazoda wrote:
| As an FYI my browser blocks all your JS because it's served
| over http even though the page is https.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give
| feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that
| are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what
| was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how
| was the communities' desire not implicitly understood?
|
| There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro)
| has enough self-awareness to have realized they were encroaching
| significantly on their core demographic. They chose to do so
| anyway and are backtracking out of an interest of self-
| preservation rather than a customer-first mindset.
|
| I find this shameful enough behavior to warrant a legitimate,
| heartfelt apology. Instead, they present themselves as benevolent
| caretakers listening to their communities' response. This comes
| across as tone-deaf because they've already lost the trust of the
| community and don't seem to have learned how to take ownership of
| that fact.
|
| Still, this is a better result than if they'd stayed their
| advertised course. So, for that, I am thankful.
| pubby wrote:
| > how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood?
|
| IMO it's common for people at the top of a hierarchy to be out
| of touch with those on the bottom. It takes dedication to stay
| in touch, but even with effort a bigwig can't experience the
| community exactly as a peon does. Usually, they have to do
| market research (like this poll) to find out what people really
| think.
|
| I'm not saying this as a defense or anything, but I find it
| helpful to think about.
| TillE wrote:
| Given the extremely fast and extremely comprehensive U-turn,
| it seems like a lot of people near the top did understand the
| community very well.
|
| Somehow, one person or one small faction made a different
| decision, and the overwhelming feedback proved it was the
| wrong decision.
| Macha wrote:
| Well, there were two attempts at more minor climbdowns
| before this capitulation, so it seems more likely that the
| immediate financial impact from mass unsubscriptions was a
| motivating factor than prior understanding from the execs
| who were largely pushing this strategy if leaks are to be
| believed.
| tonfreed wrote:
| The least they could do is sit down once a month with the
| game designers for a session of dungeon crawling. The main
| two in charge have both said they don't play
| roenxi wrote:
| I disagree because the fundamental core of this argument is
| "everyone in a community should think alike". That isn't
| realistic, and using that as a principle leads to bad results -
| we have to be used to having robust communities with
| questionable leadership. The natural state of leadership is to
| be a bit shabby and not quite up to the task. We have the
| internet now, we have great visibility on what leaders actually
| do and they can't meet impossible standards. Although that is
| why decentralisation is so powerful - WOTC doesn't run your
| games night and doesn't send out a goon squad to police that
| people aren't using house rules.
|
| WOTC don't have the same incentives as their community. A
| company producing a game almost never has the same incentives
| as their community. As long as their incentives align with
| folding in the face of solid negative feedback, that is enough.
|
| They made a mistake, they appear to have recognised the mistake
| and course corrected. Asking for more than that is going to get
| less - it encourages lies and bad, blandness.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > has enough self-awareness to have realized they were
| encroaching significantly on their core demographic.
|
| At least where I am in the US, the behavior of many
| corporations seems to indicate they... just don't give a shit.
| People will take what they can get, by and large, and as long
| as it makes the corporation money, they're willing to risk it.
|
| Who actually _likes_ not having a single register open at Wal
| Mart, Home Depot, and the like? Who is for having products be a
| little bit more expensive, but reducing the quanity 10%-20%
| (eg: shrinkflation)? Plenty more examples.
| jbm wrote:
| A minor point, but I am grateful for the self checkout lanes
| -- they have greatly speeded up my checkout, and w/ covid
| spiking I just want to leave asap.
|
| I have never seen "no" registers open though.
| Macha wrote:
| Not the US, but no manned registers happens often enough
| across various store chains here in Dublin at least. To the
| point where you might have to wave down a staff member
| restocking a shelf because the self-service needs someone
| to authorise your alchohol purchase or whatever.
| gspetr wrote:
| >At least where I am in the US
|
| I am somewhat perplexed by that statement.
|
| Are you implying that there are major jurisdictions in the US
| where WotC wouldn't have been able to fully enforce
| compliance with their (originally) overly restrictive
| license?
| tonfreed wrote:
| I think they've completely misunderstood their product. The
| execs in charge of running the show come from video games, and
| watching what they're trying to do with DnD beyond makes it
| pretty obvious they're trying to introduce micro transaction
| hell and loot boxes into the product.
|
| Matt Colville whacked the nail on the head when he said D&D
| isn't really a game, it's a folk tradition and storytelling.
| Those are two very difficult things to monetize.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Yes, that is a critical part. They want to make DnD Beyond
| the core of the product. The main channel, where "ideally"
| both, DMs and players, have to buy each little piece of
| content and an expensive subscription to create their own
| scenarios instead of books, which are expensive to produce,
| ship etc. and then are shared in a group (or kept for DM's
| eyes only) And they "have to" extract as much revenue from
| third parties like Paizo and get consumers of their platform.
|
| If they get rid of story telling etc. they even can look at
| AI DMs leading a Dungeon Crawl to increase time of their
| consumers on their platform, even without fixed groups etc.
| Extract as much value as possible (and destroy the game)
| voakbasda wrote:
| Yup, trust once broken cannot be rebuilt easily. Too many
| companies make these kinds of bad PR moves, backtrack
| temporarily, and then quietly deploy their plans after the
| initial furor dies down. I wager that the winds here will shift
| back to blow against their customers soon enough. Want us to
| believe otherwise? An apology would only be the start; they
| need to swallow a legally enforceable poison pill that prevents
| such from happening.
| crayboff wrote:
| I mean, they did a huge thing that can't be backed out of,
| they released SRD 5.1 under creative commons.
|
| Yeah they did some not great stuff, but let's celebrate the
| successes when we get them!
| tonfreed wrote:
| Paizo's seen the target on their back now, I doubt they're
| going to halt their plans to produce the ORC. I suspect the
| only way WoTC will be able to get any trust back in the
| community is to sign on with that
| gspetr wrote:
| >legally enforceable poison pill
|
| This seems somewhat unlikely IMO. WotC is a subsidiary of
| Hasbro, a publicly traded company.
|
| Measures that can be potentially interpreted as restrictive
| on shareholders' profits seem quite difficult to pass.
| victorvosk wrote:
| Real people have disagreements and work through them. Lets not
| be mad for the sake of being mad. It was completely within the
| rights of WOTC to do whatever they wanted. People complained
| and they decided not to do and guarantee they will never do it
| in the future. Be happy.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, but attempting to revoke a
| widely-used open source license is not just something
| completely within their rights.
|
| Their sudden claim to have ability to "deauthorize" the 20+
| year old OGL and destroy the partners and competitors who
| built businesses on the promises of a perpetual license -
| this was an egregious move that was almost certainly not
| within their rights.
|
| Legal analysts were quite consistent in that it's impossible
| to be certain but this process wouldn't have withstood a
| solid legal test.
|
| WotC, in trying to pull this, was attempting to leverage
| their expensive legal team to bully people into giving away
| their legal rights under the open license. That's shady and
| deeply unethical, and shouldn't be considered to be within
| their rights.
|
| Now for the future content they make, they can release that
| under a closed license if they want and _that_ is within
| their rights even if I don't like that license.
| vaylian wrote:
| A bit more context:
|
| * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which
| owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years.
|
| * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the
| Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of
| products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG
| news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled.
|
| * WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60
| random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-
| tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once
| people from all corners of the community come together to boycott
| this product. The rage is great and enduring.
|
| * WoTC fails to meet expectations and the stock prices plummet
|
| * To do damage control, WoTC/Hasbro annouces a "fireside chat"
| for their shareholders where they try to explain the situation
| but basically just say "we did nothing wrong and we are trying to
| extract a lot of money from Dungeons and Dragons next"
|
| * Unlike the MTG community, the DnD community is very good at
| organizing a unified response and the shitstorm came swiftly and
| took WoTC by surprise. (Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know
| how to call together a group of people)
|
| The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care
| about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad
| things in the future.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| There's only so much water in the well, though, and they might
| well be close to that limit. It's not an infinitely growable
| market, it's a niche product. True, the niche has gotten quite
| large in recent years, but at this point it's at least as
| likely to shrink as to grow.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60
| random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-
| tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once
| people from all corners of the community come together to
| boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring.
|
| Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I
| really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would you
| prefer that everyone can buy their useless commutative coins?
| deeviant wrote:
| > I really don't understand the outrage on that decision
|
| What decision are you claiming people were outraged?
|
| Because the actual reason people where outraged is the very
| existence of the magic 30th edition in the first place. It is
| one of the clearest and starkest examples of a company
| disrespecting it's customer, ever.
| roenxi wrote:
| Also - why are people upset over a product (that doesn't
| affect the game) being sold to people others? I feel like
| important context is missing here over why anyone would be
| upset by this.
| qazwse_ wrote:
| I think that there was a sense that WotC was going to do
| something special for Magic's 30th anniversary - something
| for the community at large. Instead, they released a
| mediocre, $1000 product.
| harimau777 wrote:
| My guess is the feeling that if the product is successful,
| then the corporation might create similar products that are
| less optional. Or they may neglect or discontinue their
| less customer hostile products.
|
| It's also probably reasonable to be upset that they are
| pricing a significant portion of their community out of a
| product that ostensibly celebrates the success of the
| community.
| lbotos wrote:
| Imagine a game with 30 years of history, genre defining,
| that has die hard fans and then take some cards, make
| effectively "fake" versions (not tournament legal) and
| charge $1000 for 60 of them.
|
| They could have done a LOT more cooler things and
| passionate lovers of the game wish that they did.
| freshhawk wrote:
| This is a segment of geek culture that has all sorts of
| ego/identity stuff tied up with these brands. So when they
| don't "act properly" it feels like it reflects on them and
| they take it personally.
|
| That's the downside to having that market segment as your
| customers, the upside is that they are fanatically loyal
| and are not remotely picky or discerning as
| customers/consumers.
| armitron wrote:
| WoTC says it sold out, there's no actual proof of that (in
| fact, some insiders are saying that it was taken off the
| market due to the bad publicity)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Ironically, removing them early from the market further
| increases their value.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| They have never claimed that it sold out, just that the
| sale concluded. Stores are actually on the list to get
| allocation for M30 product to sell.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| So from a little bit of digging around for context (as a non-DnD
| player):
|
| * SRD = System Reference Document [1], is a kind of specification
| of the DnD rules, that people use to create add-on DnD-related
| content.
|
| * OGL = Open Game License [2], which the SRD is licensed under.
|
| * There was a(n apparently very unpopular) proposal to move to
| OGL 1.2 (which I guess is more restrictive).
|
| * Now it seems like SRD 5.1 will be dual-licensed under both OGL
| 1.0a and Creative Commons.
|
| (I can feel a rabbit hole awaiting me if I dig further, and I've
| gotten enough of a gist to satisfy myself, so I didn't look into
| what a VTT policy is.)
|
| [1]
| https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/System_Reference_Doc...
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_License
| [deleted]
| Macha wrote:
| For more context:
|
| Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast (the company that has owned D&D for
| the last 20 years) released the rules text and some basic
| creative content like classes, some monsters, etc. for D&D 3.5
| under a custom open source inspired license called the OGL.
| It's sort of a weird blend of GPL-esque virality clauses but
| the actual restrictions it places are much more akin to a
| permissive license like Apache. This led to an explosion of
| third party content.
|
| When D&D 4e came around, Wizards felt they didn't want to
| compete with that so they released D&D 4e under a new license
| called the GSL which was much more restrictive to allow them to
| shut down competitors, which caused third parties to shun 4e
| and continue publishing 3.5e content.
|
| Partly because of the continued existence of the 3.5e ecosystem
| (along with some controversial video game inspired gameplay
| changes), 4e largely failed and alienated the fanbase. So they
| released 5e with a number of peace offerings to the community,
| one of which was that 5e would use the OGL again.
|
| Now Wizards are on the cusp of releasing OneD&D (6e). Part of
| their strategy for 6e is their own virtual tabletop (VTT)
| product. A virtual tabletop is effectively a software product
| which gives players a chatroom + shared map and drawing tools
| so they can effectively play tabletop games which are designed
| around more props online. Wizards plan for their own VTT
| includes a very video game inspired monetisation model where
| they would sell skins, spells, subclasses etc.
|
| The problem they have is this: they are a very late comer to
| the VTT market, since they haven't launched their product yet,
| while their competitors (especially roll20) have been going for
| near a decade now. And these competitors were perfectly in
| their right under the OGL 1.0a license to use enough content to
| enable their players to play D&D on it. Wizards did not feel
| having more content and a higher fidelity product was going to
| be sufficient to drive players to their microtransaction filled
| product, so they did not want to release 6e under OGL.
|
| But they remembered the 3.5e/4e problem. They didn't want to
| release their new, more locked down 6e and have everyone just
| keep playing 5e and 5e derived content under the OGL. So they
| decided they would try exploit some of the wording of OGL 1.0a
| to de-authorize it and replace it with a new OGL 1.1 which was
| a very draconian license given Wizards royalty-free unlimited
| licenses to other 1.1 content, yet imposing royalties,
| attribution, registration and field of use restrictions on
| third parties. That way nobody could keep making 5e VTT
| plugins, 5e addons, etc. and everyone would have to go to 6e
| and the competitor VTTs would die from not being able to
| support the most popular game.
|
| This leaked when they asked third parties to sign it, to much
| bad press, so Wizards announced OGL 1.2. It did roll back many
| of the more egregious restrictions from the 1.1 version, but it
| still kept veto power with wizards (wrapped up in an anti-
| hateful content clause, but one that was so broad and required
| waiving a right to contest to the extent wizards could define
| competing too closely with them as hateful behaviour), and it
| still put limits on what VTTs could do and allowed them to
| change the rights of VTTs at any moment.
|
| Players still felt this was not enough and did largely vote
| with their wallet by cancelling subscriptions to D&D beyond,
| D&D's online content distribution and character builder service
| that was to be the baseline of the new planned VTT, to such a
| level that Wizards have now had to capitulate and roll back
| their planned changes to existing and older editions at least.
| djur wrote:
| VTT is a virtual tabletop. It's useful to be able to load the
| game's rules into the software so it can keep track of stats,
| equipment, etc.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| Disappointed this is only the 5e srd and not the 3.0/3.5 one.
| lincolnq wrote:
| Can someone explain more about what happened here?
| genderwhy wrote:
| WotC licenses some of their content using the Open Gaming
| License. It ostensibly covers both the rules* of D&D as well as
| key elements of the setting -- particular monsters, characters,
| place names, spells, etc.
|
| That license has allowed products and content creators to build
| on top of a shared platform -- using and reprinting portions of
| D&D's content to build their own worlds, stories, systems, etc.
| Note: not everything D&D publishes is covered by the OGL, just
| a set of core items they call the SRD -- Systems Reference
| Document.
|
| WotC/Hasbro leaked that they were working on OGL 1.1 which had
| a bunch of ambiguous (and many argued harmful) language that
| required creators to do things like license their content back
| to WotC, pay fees to license content, control what and what was
| not appropriate to build on top of OGL, etc.
|
| The OGL 1.1 was met with _huge_ community backlash, and wotc
| has been fumbling for some time to figure out the next steps.
| It looks like they are taking those steps now.
|
| * Aside, it's not clear that the rules of D&D are even
| something that can be licensed in this way, as game mechanics
| are not protected the same way as copyrightable characters are.
| Wistar wrote:
| Here is a transcript of piece about the debacle from NPR from a
| few days ago.
|
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1151474346
| eslaught wrote:
| Here are a few of the prominent past HN posts:
|
| Dungeons and Dragons' new license tightens its grip on
| competition https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264777
|
| An Update on the Open Game License (OGL)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34370340
|
| Basically WotC wanted to not only change their future content
| to a more restrictive license, they also wanted to
| _retroactively_ switch _older_ content to that license. It
| seemed like an obvious legal land-grab. Fans objected, and (at
| least to my surprise, others here seem to be more cynical) WotC
| did a 180 on the license and adopted CC-4.0-BY.
| teach wrote:
| This is oversimplified but hopefully close enough.
|
| A couple of versions ago, Wizards of the Coast released a
| subset of the D&D rules for free with a pretty open license.
| That free subset was called the SRD and the license was the OGL
| 1.0a. It allowed third-parties to publish D&D-compatible
| adventures and such without royalties. And, crucially, the OGL
| had a clause that seemed to make it irrevocable in the future.
|
| Essentially, "if you build on our system, we won't come after
| you for money or with lawyers, forever, we promise."
|
| The result was an explosion in third-party content and overall
| an explosion in the popularity of D&D as a whole.
|
| Recently, WotC released a draft of a new license that a lot of
| people interpreted as going back on this promise. The community
| was up in arms, then WotC released several waffling non-
| apologies.
|
| This, at least, sounds like they realized they can't put the
| genie back in the bottle and have given up trying.
| tonfreed wrote:
| It wasn't even a released draft. It was a leak of what was
| essentially a shakedown that WoTC tried to bully independents
| into signing earlier in January.
|
| That they even now keep referring to it as a draft is pretty
| indicative that they're not acting in good faith
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Wizards tried to change their license so that all third party
| material (books, virtual table tops, anything using the srd)
| was treated the way videogame mods are, and charge 30% of
| revenue (this was ogl 1.1). Players unsubscribed from the
| subscription based en mass, and their largest competitor
| (paizo, who owns pathfinder, and came about because of the last
| time they tried this) created an equivalent of the Linux
| foundation for srd licenses, and sold 8 months of product in 2
| weeks.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Paizo basically exists to take advantage of bad moves made by
| WoTC. The cancellation of their license to print _Dungeon_
| and _Dragon_ magazines being the inciting event for the
| company to release its own product, and the disaster that was
| 4th edition being the rocket fuel that launched it.
| Pathfinder, a derivative product, was more popular than its
| parent for a couple years!
| danjoredd wrote:
| TBH I like Paizo better. Pathfinder generally feels more in
| tune with the spirit of D&D than D&D itself does sometimes.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| After an earlier history of legal action against 3rd party
| publishers (TSR essentially bullying competitors to
| bankruptcy)[0], D&D's core rules were released under a license
| called the "Open Gaming License", which includes a license
| update provision reading "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."
|
| The promise of that license built an ecosystem of people making
| and publishing their own content compatible with the official
| D&D rules.
|
| WotC recently declared that they were switching to an updated
| version of the license, _and_ that they were deauthorizing the
| previous version.
|
| The new license included rules such as revenue sharing,
| limitations on how the rules can be implemented in software
| tools, and giving WotC the ability to revoke your license to
| the content. People are largely not happy about this change,
| especially with WotC's plan to retroactively cancel the current
| license and replace it with this worse one.
|
| This has led to Paizo announcing their own open license with
| many other publishers on board [1], and a lot of D&D's vocal
| fanbase talking about moving their games to other systems with
| more favorable licensing.
|
| Pathfinder 2, Paizo's competing system, apparently sold out
| what should have been an 8-month supply of their printed books
| in the last two weeks [2], and that's a system that puts all
| the official rules content online for free.
|
| This announcement today of the SRD being released under CC-
| BY-4.0 is means WotC is canceling their plans to only license
| their system under the proposed OGL revision, since the CC-BY
| license more definitely can't be revoked once you've licensed
| content under it.
|
| [0] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/04/bols-prime-the-
| many-...
|
| [1] https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v
|
| [2] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/01/pathfinder-sells-
| eig...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I should add, they're currently working on a new rules
| edition (playtest titled "One D&D", as 5E was "D&D Next").
| Remains to be seen if this will be called "5.5E" or "6E" or
| what, and we don't know what they'll do with its licensing.
| Maybe it will be under a newer more restrictive license,
| maybe it won't be.
|
| That's fine by me, they can do what they want with One D&D
| licensing and people can make their own decisions on how they
| react to it going forward.
|
| But trying to pull the rug out from the existing OGL for
| current and previous editions was a real dick move.
| djur wrote:
| D&D 5th Edition (and some earlier editions) was released in a
| way that allowed third parties to create their own compatible
| content by referencing a document called the "SRD", licensed
| under the so-called Open Game License. This document contained
| the basic rules and content necessary to play D&D. If you
| wanted to include a zombie in your published adventure you
| could use the stat block from the SRD. The license also had
| some rules to make sure you didn't pass off your content as
| official, that kind of thing. There is a substantial market for
| third-party D&D content, and there are numerous companies that
| make it a core part of their business.
|
| The OGL was written before VTTs (virtual tabletops) were really
| a thing, so it doesn't explicitly authorize them. Instead, VTT
| developers arrange their own deal with Wizards directly.
|
| Wizards has also been in a conflict recently with a company
| affiliated with one of the children of Gary Gygax, co-creator
| of D&D. As I understand it, this company is promoting itself as
| a throwback to the good old days when tabletop gaming wasn't
| "woke", and are using OGL content in provocative ways as part
| of this campaign.
|
| Finally, Wizards is preparing a new version of D&D, "D&D One".
| All of this was the backdrop to a leaked plan to update the
| OGL. The new license explicitly said it only applied to printed
| content, not software like VTTs or games. It also had language
| allowing them to revoke the license if applied to offensive
| material. It included a royalty schedule for larger companies
| to pay on sales of licensed content. Most significantly, the
| plan was to declare the previous versions of the OGL no longer
| "authorized", retroactively forcing new terms on existing
| content published under OGL.
|
| This resulted in a massive backlash. Wizards had an initial
| response where they tried to clarify the VTT issue and promised
| to get rid of the royalties, but that didn't really help. They
| announced a "playtest" where existing users could review the
| new license and provide feedback. As this announcement says,
| the response was resoundingly negative. So they are pretty much
| going back on the entire plan. And since the OGL has now lost
| the trust of the community, they're also licensing that content
| under a Creative Commons attribution license they don't
| control.
|
| Worth noting that this post doesn't mention D&D One at all. It
| seems likely that they are still considering an updated license
| for the new version of the game, which means there's likely to
| be more conflict. But I don't think anyone could argue that
| they don't have the right to release their new game under
| whatever license they want -- the big deal here was the attempt
| to retroactively relicense the existing content.
| djur wrote:
| Great news. I notice they don't say anything about the licensing
| of "D&D One", and I'm guessing there's a good reason for that,
| but there's a huge difference between using a different license
| for your new product and trying to change the license of your
| existing one.
| ivanstojic wrote:
| My TTRPG group has been playing together for several years - on
| and off. We'd been mostly playing D&D 5e, even though we had
| members clamoring for other systems. After the WotC fiasco
| started blowing up, we finally bought a couple of Pathfinder 2e
| books, ran a few trial characters and one-shots. We are now in
| process of starting a new campaign entirely based on Pathfinder
| that we expect could take a couple of months to play out.
|
| It really only took us one session to figure out the major
| mechanical systems in the gameplay, and a few we are still
| learning about. The major component remains the role playing
| experience which is the same, no matter which dice you throw to
| decide outcomes of situations.
|
| I think Hasbro will soon realize that while the social impact of
| the name D&D is deep, the stickiness of the system is much lower
| than they gambled on. It's unlikely that any of my member group
| will soon buy anything new from them.
| throw0101c wrote:
| So no morality clause either?
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Morality clauses aren't compatible with any Creative Commons
| license as far as I'm aware.
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