Wizards of the Coast Shares Plans and First Draft OGL 1.2 Documents for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

Following last week’s disastrous response to community outrage over the leaked Open Gaming License 1.1 document, Dungeons & Dragons is trying again. Executive producer of D&D, Kyle Brink, released a new statement discussing the team’s goal for a new OGL document. You can find the entire post on D&D Beyond, but I wanted to point out a couple things and then dive into the first draft of the new OGL 1.2.

As for Brink’s claim, it’s way better than the bullshit done previously. This statement appropriates many of the mistakes Wizards of the Coast made during this fiasco. I still take this with a grain of salt, but it definitely seems more sincere and real than the first answer given. Secondly, Brink points out that the new OGL 1.2 will be more community oriented and handled similarly to the playtest materials for Unearthed Arcana and A D&D where they’ll share the draft, take feedback for at least two weeks, and then feed back to us with what they’ve heard from the community. Brinks also promised the following items:

Your video content. Whether you’re a commentator, streamer, podcaster, liveplay cast member, or other video creator on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, you’ve always been covered by the Wizards Fan Content Policy. The OGL doesn’t (and won’t) touch any of this.

Your accessories for your content. No changes to the OGL will affect your ability to sell miniatures, novels, clothing, dice, and other items related to your creations, characters, and worlds.

Unpublished works, such as contracted services. Use the OGL if you want to publish your work referencing Fifth Edition content through the SRD. This means that work for hire, paid DM services, consultancy, etc. are not affected by the OGL.

VTT content. Any updates to the OGL will still allow any creator to publish content on VTT and will still allow VTT publishers to use OGL content on their platform.

DM Guild content. The content you release on DMs Guild is published under a community content agreement with the Dungeon Masters Guild. This is not changing.

Your OGL 1.0a content. Nothing will have any impact on the content you have published under OGL 1.0a. This will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a.

Your income. There will be no royalties or financial reporting requirements.

Your ownership of your content. You will continue to own your content with no licensing requirements.

This statement was very refreshing and I appreciated it. Then, the next day, Brink made another post with the first draft of OGL 1.2. At the time of writing, I haven’t had time to dig into the current included OGL 1.2 document, but I wanted to highlight what Brink has put into the post. If you’ve read the actual doc, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

There is quite a bit to cover here. First, D&D will use a Creative Commons license for the core mechanics of the game. This means that anyone can use the mechanic, and because it’s going through the non-profit Creative Commons, it doesn’t hold the license and can’t suddenly take it back. That said, it should also allow WotC to still achieve their goal of preventing people attempting to use the license from creating “offensive or offensive content” depending on the terms they’ve set out in the license.

Second, it is designed to affect only published tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) content, including books, electronic publications, and virtual tabletops. This means that your real playback podcast or video series or stream are all safe. If you are not doing D&D supplements or VTT content to use with D&D, you have nothing to fear.

Thirdly, they are still aiming to deauthorize OGL 1.0a. The team admits this is a pain point, but the idea is to plug the gaps so that someone who creates “offensive or hurtful content” can’t just bail out by claiming OGL 1.0a instead of OGL 1.2.

Fourth, OGL 1.2 will be completely irrevocable except for the part about how you must cite Wizards in your business and the part about how you and Wizards may contact each other. These are both reasonable exceptions in my opinion as no one can predict the future.

In my quick look at everything, this is a step in the right direction, but nowhere near perfect. I know a lot of people will yell about how you can’t protect game mechanics, and you’re right. However, copyright phrasing and other aspects used in the mechanics can be used. For example, WotC may have a copyright on the “attack of opportunity” terminology and so while you may want to use that mechanic, you may not use the phrase “attack of opportunity” in the same context and would have to say something along the lines of “attack when their attention is diverted” or something else. I will defer this point to a real game designer, Jessica Marcrum which had a decent, short thread that briefly touched on OGL 1.2.

Addendum for all of you “you can’t protect the mechanics, so this doesn’t make sense” folks: YOU CAN protect the formulation that makes the mechanics work. PbtA, Caltrop Core, Belonging Outside Belonging and my systems all have CC licenses, among others. This isn’t new.

— Unseelie Jess🐈 (@Miss_Jess03) January 19, 2023

Another moot point is that OGL 1.2 will decommission 1.0a and will only support System Reference Document 5.1 which rules out use for other iterations including the ever popular 3.5E. This is something that should definitely be considered. Also, a big red flag for many is that “offensive or offensive content” will be under WotC’s complete discretion, and you can’t fight them if they decide your content falls under that umbrella. This is very dangerous in my opinion.

I also want to discuss a very stupid point about the VTT policy they put on display. Overall, I don’t think there are too many problems in the 1 page document, but the following paragraph is just stupid.

What’s not allowed are features that don’t replicate the narrative of the dining room table. If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile hurtling across the board to hit your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, this isn’t the tabletop experience. It’s more like a video game.

Look, I am against NFTs and think they are stupid. However, to say that VTTs can’t allow you to have animations for things is just silly. If I want to allow my players to rain a fireball animation, WotC shouldn’t have a say in whether it’s allowed. This is not real content and therefore looks extremely arbitrary. I understand that they want to try and control video games and force people into things like that Baldur’s Gate 3but it becomes real.

I’m sure there are a lot of other things I missed, but I think this is a step up. There are many other steps they should and can take, it’s just a matter of willingness. What do you think needs to be changed other than making OGL 1.0a irrevocable?