我们和创造者们心连心。

All I ever wanted to do is make cool dragon mechanics and give them to people for free. But we just can't have nice things.

Hasbro has declared war on third-party content creators everywhere. This is nothing but pure, undisguised corporate greed. A year from now, we will either have banded together and defeated this thing, or creative use of D&D will be rotting in the sun. This isn't just a threat to homebrewers and third-party creators, either, but a precedent for how the entire franchise will be treated going forwards.

Don't let giant corporations bully you, or your favorite creators. Sign OpenDND, boycott WotC—or better, Hasbro—and tell them in no uncertain terms what you think of the OGL 1.1. We either lean on one-another and stay informed on this sort of trickery, or they will take any opportunity they can to force honest creators out of their ecosystem and lock down on over-monetizing a beautiful creative hobby.

Don't ever forget: Hasbro needs its consumers more than we will ever need them.

My current opinion on #opendnd is that Dungeons and Dragons and the D20 engine that drives it ever forward is reaching the end of its lifecycle. Executives cling to a decaying corpse, frantically picking what few morsels of flesh still cling to the bones of a once great leviathan.

The updated OGL version 1.1 is a fear based reaction that is attempting to slow the inevitable decentralization of business in the gaming industry. With the ease of sharing information and knowlege the average gamer is just beginning to realize that creating ttrpg content isn't actually that difficult. It just takes dedication and hard work. There is no need to placate a corporate entity to gain access to the content we want. We can simply create and support it.

However, the final nail in the coffin for WotC will be the large scale realization that creating unique dice engines and balanced rule sets is also not difficult and fun to do. When the consumer has the capability to generate unique dice engines and content what need is there for a corporate entity that distributes said content on a large scale? This is WotC's worst fear. When we realize that we can apply concepts derived from our own imagination to dice engines that we can devise ourselves the demand for their products will plummet.

I also feel that the OGL 1.0 is, in some ways, restricting creativity in the ttrpg space. There seems to be this obsession with perfectly mimicking D&D 5e content. My opinion is that it would be nice to see new experimental content laid out in bold new styles.

I say let WotC build their content prison. I'll simply find new ways to apply meaning to my D20 rolls. That's it. That's all this is. If you want to break out of the D&D matrix reconcile the fact that your mind has limitless power to apply meaning to the 7 polyhedral shapes that we have all grown to love. Use your imagination. Build your own engine. Design your own content. Most importantly, support each other.

It's clear to me that the ttrpg space is in desperate need of something new. D&D is great, it always will be in our minds, but life must go on. If D&D is not meant to progress forward then we must find a way to continue without it, but we will continue together.

I understand that many people have built businesses off of the OGL 1.0. This may sound harsh, but the success of a business owner is predicated on the owner's ability to pivot when necessary. Is it worth it to continue creating in a space where the creator has no rights? Changing the form your content takes does not mean changing your business. If you need an expedient solution for content creation to keep your business alive seek greener pastures, find a new game or make one. My opinion is that D&D is no longer a green pasture and business owners must find a way forward. I wish all of the ttrpg creators in this space luck and prosperity and I will support where I can. Thanks for reading.

(This is not legal advice. "You must do what you feel is right of course." -Obi-Wan)

Update: We Won. 5e has been released under the Creative Commons.



Just to chime in... Every voice counts here. Wizards of the Coast has already delayed going public once. There needs to be absolute pressure on them to understand cannot make this overreach.

To answer a lot of questions I've gotten on this or seen around my community:


Can they legally actually do this?


No one really knows. If someone tells you they know, doubt. Lawyers are of mixed opinions, but when lawyers are of mixed opinions, that's what courts are for, and courts are very expensive. Most seem to lean toward WotC being more likely to lose than not... but the cost of fighting that is out of reach of almost every 3rd party publisher, and could potentially take years.

WotC is far more vulnerable in the court of public opinion than the court of law, particularly in the short term. Make your voices heard.


Does this effect 5e?


Yes. Simply put. This is not a problem for the future, or a problem for people switching to One D&D. This is a problem for everyone. WotC has gone the route of trying to argue OGL 1.0a is no longer authorized, effective as of the OGL 1.1 update. The 5e SRD is under the OGL 1.0a, which will no longer be available unless people sign the OGL 1.1 and all that implies.


Can I just not sign OGL 1.1 and be fine?


No. If that was an option, no one would sign OGL 1.1. The core problem is that OGL 1.1 deauthorizes OGL 1.0a (regardless if you personally sign it or not), meaning that OGL 1.0a would no longer be available. This means that if you wanted to publish anything using the OGL, according to WotC, you would have to sign the new OGL 1.1.


Is WotC actually going to sue anyone for using the OGL 1.0a.


We have every reason to believe they would. They have spent a lot of time and effort on this, and they didn't do it for fun.


Can I just publish without the OGL and ignore this?


It is somewhere between inconvenient and impossible depending on what you are making.

As long as you steer very clear of using any 5e (or other OGL-based game) language, this could be option. It is strongly recommend that if you use anything that's particularly close to the game language (such as spell names, monster names, mechanical terminology, etc) you have an IP lawyer read anything you're going to publish this way. That being that case, the answer to this question can be rephrased as "what is your projects budget for an IP lawyer?"; if the answer is $0 (or you have to ask how much an IP lawyer would cost...) the answer is probably publishing without the OGL would be very challenging for most projects that provide compatible mechanics.

Obviously the other exception is publishing under the Fan Content Policy, so...


Does this effect the Fan Content Policy?


As most people know, most of the work published to /r/UnearthedArcana is under the Fan Content Policy. This might not be immediately impacted, but people that use it should still care. The keen eyed among you may notice that there seems to be a lot of overlap between what they say the OGL Non-Commercial will cover and the Fan Content Policy. We don't have the OGL Non-Commercial yet... but we should be suspicious of why they'd need it with the Fan Content Policy in place. Let's not let them divide up chunks of the community to fight them one at a time.


This is just a leak. Is it real? Is it a draft?


It is real. It is not a draft. People have already unfortunately signed the OGL 1.1. Through vocal community outreach, we hope that more creators (isolated under NDAs) will not be pressured into signing the OGL 1.1 thinking it's what they have to do keep their business afloat. WotC is intentionally dividing the community as much as possible with their use of NDAs to send this out to "key creators", but thanks to the widespread reporting this divide and conqueror strategy is failing as the community is getting unified and informed.


Will public backlash do anything?


It's hard to say, but it's more likely to work than not, and bigger the backlash the more likely it is to work. WotC was spoked by the backlash enough to delay going public. The backlash has only grown by an order magnitude since then. WotC has piles of money and dreams of making more, but they need to sell people their new game. They have a movie they want people to go to. They cannot afford for social media by swamped.

WotC delayed posting the OGL 1.1 publicly. They skipped their automated marking post on Friday. They see what is happening, and they are worried. This is effected them, and we have good reason to believe they are frantically trying to figure out how to spin the OGL 1.1 for take two in the face of this.


Is WotC insane? Why would they do this?


Potentially, but most likely they are out of touch. WotC has a new suite of executive level members with very little history in the TTRPG gaming industry. They are not familiar with the OGL and its history, and there were unaware the scope and scale of the backlash trying to take it down would engender. It's our hope to catch them up to speed on this, and make them decide that it is not viable to treat to the TTRPG market like a software-as-a-service market.



EDIT: Updates & Bonus Questions


Can I get a link to read it for myself?


Someone has now leaked the full text of it..


Does this effect Pathfinder?


Wasn't going to do this one here as it's a 5e sub, but since it's come up: Yes. Pathfinder 1 and 2 would be impacted. They could conceivable write a Pathfinder 3 that wouldn't, but it would require a fairly extensive rewrite to remove spell names, monster names, and more. Things like "magic missile" are something of a grey area as far as copyright, but Paizo explicitly avoids that in their non-OGL work, so we can assume they at least believe things like that would not be protected without the OGL. Writing a D&D adjacent or inspired system without the OGL is certainly possible, but not trivial. And, of course, having to cease creation of Pathfinder 1 and 2 content would be a huge blow.


Can people still sell things created before the deadline?


Currently we believe so. If you read the text linked above, it says "created on or before", rather than "sold on or before", so continued sales of OGL 1.0a products after the deadline should still. That said, what entails "created" is something that is going to come under scrutiny. If a book is created and then extensively updated (i.e. some part of it) was released before the deadline, it is not clear where the line would be drawn (likely WotC would opt to pursue legal action; the whole point is pressure people into signing the OGL 1.1, but now I'm just speculating.



What you can do:


Sign the Open Letter Here: https://opendnd.games/
Use the hashtag #OpenDnD if you happen to use the bird app (unfortunately where WotC watches the closest).
Let folks know what's up. Invested communities like this are the heart of the D&D audience. Each passionate bloke here is where a lot of their friends get their D&D news. Communities like this have vastly more reach their numbers suggest, and their numbers are already pretty large. Combined, content creators have more reach than WotC themselves do.


Good luck, folks. It's a stressful time for many, but there is no inevitable doom here. If you have any questions you'd like me to weigh on, I can, though I don't know all that much more than most blokes, beyond being neck deep in all of this for a week.