D&D AND THE OPEN GAMING LICENSE

[Xisiqomelir]

Yo thanks for the free 5.1 pdf guys

https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/3 ... icense.pdf

Hopefully this learns Hasbro a good one (it won’t)

[Rogue 9]

Piazo responded to the news on Twitter and says to expect a blog post in the near future, but to the point: they will continue to work on the ORC regardless of this news since, after all, the OGL still isn't system neutral, and there is no trust between 3PP and Wizards to be had anymore.

The OGL doesn't actually specify a game system; plenty of other systems are licensed under it (WEG's Star Wars D6 system, for one, not to mention all of Paizo's current offerings). The problem now is the stewardship, not the system.

[Formless]

It doesn't specify one on paper, but in theory it was for WotC to license out their game systems to the rest of the community. They did not anticipate anyone licensing their own works under the OGL for the purpose of sublicensing, and certainly Lisa Stevens wouldn't have predicted she would be using the license that way herself 8 years after it was authorized. They saw it as giving people the keys to the D20 system, not just any system even though it lacked specificity on that point. The fact that WEG's system was at threat by the OGL de-authorization despite that system having nothing to do with D&D and AFAIK predating the OGL entirely is what Piazo is talking about-- decoupling the license from any one company keeps companies like WEG from being in such weird and ambiguous legal waters in the future by making explicit what was already being done in practice; this license is for any game, not just the few that are derivative of WizBro products.

[Formless]

Ghetto Edit: one thing I keep seeing people say on ENWorld is that they think WotC is kneecapping the ORC by releasing the 5.1 SRD on the CC-BY license, but I'm just not seeing it. ORC will be useful for non-WotC companies to license out their unique systems, but also for a couple other reasons. One, CC licenses are apparently notorious for being unwieldy to sublicense and sometimes really makes it hard to cross license with. I don't have any direct experience with the matter, but I can imagine. Two, CC-BY has no sharealike clause, for better and for worse. This way other publishers can use it commercially, but on the other hands it doesn't mean those creators own works necessarily enter the commons like it would with a share-alike clause. But the problem is that the share-alike variants don't have the ability that the OGL had to designate what elements are share-alike and which elements are to remain closed. Third, and related, is that the license is all or nothing. The 5.1 SRD on CC-BY had as much Product Identity elements as possible removed that WotC could find. The easiest to notice is the list of deities: the OGL version has lists of fictional D&D deities, but the CC version leaves only the public domain Greek and Nordic pantheons. Moreover, its already been noticed that WotC didn't catch that there are references still in the SRD to three PI elements from the OGL version. Specifically, Beholders, Illithids/Mind Flayers, and Strahd the vampire. So while you can't use Strahd's stat block or the exact stats used in D&D for mind flayers and beholders, anyone can now invent new creatures with these names and be covered legally by the terms of Creative Commons. Presumably this is the kind of thing ORC is going to be written to avoid just like the OGL was.