Quote from: S'mon on January 05, 2023, 09:41:25 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 08:49:16 AM
And?

Do you think Hasbro cares an iota about the state of the non-WotC RPG industry? They would be perfectly happy if it all went bankrupt tomorrow. They are not your friends, they are corporate parasites whose duty is to maximize their short term profits at all costs.

Yes, but the reality is they do benefit a lot from the rich third-party ecosystem. Maybe they don't realise that, despite what happened with 4e. The new people seem to have no corporate memory.

Or they thing there is critical mass for D&D as a lifestyle brand without an actual game being a good seller.

I think they are wrong and they are looking at the crest of a wave thinking they are on a flat surface, but they might be right.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 05, 2023, 11:30:49 AM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on January 05, 2023, 09:24:22 AM
If WotC tries it, welcome to crowd funding.  It will take some time, but WotC will lose that fight and they know it.  A lot of people are going to fight Wotc over this if they try to take their IP.  And then comes the very bad will it will generate towards Wotc from the people in the industry.  I believe even the deballed types like Colville or Mercer might stop supporting D&D and look at a different game system altogether.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Fundation) might be of help since Hasbro taking the OGLto court to nulify it would set a precedent for Open Source Software.

So the front to fight this might be way bigger than WotC thinks.

https://www.eff.org/es

If they came on board they also have experience fighting this and winning their own precedents.

Given the discussion of how the OGL was inspired by and supposed to be a game version of the GPL they could be strong allies, especially on WotC claiming they always intended to be able to remove material already under OGL 1.0

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 11:35:38 AM
ETA: the biggest poison pill in this is their attempt to claim free use of any IP distributed under the OGL. "You must update your license or be in noncompliance" and as soon as you have "we can now release our own version of your product with a WotC logo on it and not pay you a cent... oh, and you have 30 days to cease publication of your own version."

You own it, but you can't use it, while they can use it free forever. Which basically means they own it.

If they try to enforce that it would probably be their biggest issue in court. Back handed attempts to obtain other people's rights have a mixed history at best.

Quote from: FingerRod on January 05, 2023, 12:19:17 PM
The best thing existing content creators can do is kick the original OGL out of new printings of their work. Stop using it.

This is the only logical step. The 1.0 OGL will soon be a liability.

But I disagree with most of the people here who think that WotC is going to try to legally void the OGL 1.0. Their plan seems to be much simpler: To make a product for 6e, you need to use OGL 1.1 and if a company uses 1.1 they cannot release any product under OGL 1.0.

This forces companies to make the choice, either support the current version of D&D and abandon earlier versions or stick to making products only for early versions and try to survive. I'm 100% sure all the big companies will stop using OGL 1.0 on these conditions.

Then the next step is to not sell PDFs for 6e on any platform that sells products under OGL 1.0. Forcing sites like DriveThruRPG to make a similar choice.

Both of these things can be accomplished with absolutely zero need for lawyers.

The RPG market is just too fragmented to create a competing product simply because 6e is almost identical mechanically to 5e so their is no need for players to stick to older versions like there was when 4e came out.

Quote from: jhkim on January 05, 2023, 01:20:31 PM
That's possible - but why not use Creative Commons instead? It seems like reinventing the wheel to write a new license from scratch that hasn't been tested in court. Incidentally, as a resource, one can look at the legal database of Creative Commons, which has a history of dozens of court cases and legal texts related to CC and other open licenses.

https://legaldb.creativecommons.org/

Is CC BY-SA as flexible as the OGL? Can you keep some things private (usually people do that for names and such) by only licensing some text CC or do you need to license the whole document as such and then either let everything go or us CC BY-NC?

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 01:40:21 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 05, 2023, 01:20:31 PM
That's possible - but why not use Creative Commons instead? It seems like reinventing the wheel to write a new license from scratch that hasn't been tested in court. Incidentally, as a resource, one can look at the legal database of Creative Commons, which has a history of dozens of court cases and legal texts related to CC and other open licenses.

https://legaldb.creativecommons.org/

In part, because...

1) I need something that distinguishes content types. For example, you can't just release your whole RPG book as open content if you don't actually own all the content. I'm thinking specifically of artwork, which is often licensed from third parties and therefore unable to legally be offered as part of an Open License.

2) I also desire to retain a small amount of Product Identity for my own projects (specifically the proper names of specific NPCs and places in my setting). For the record, I don't care if you want to use the raw statblock for "Kalla Blackthorne" for some NPC named "Karina Desdemona" (or whatever) in your own derived product. I DO care if you put a character named Kalla Blackthorne in your work as a temple prostitute or release a module where every member of the Free Cities' of Old Praetoria Warden Council is a raging tranny pedophile.

In my admittedly not exhaustive searches through options I've yet to see a Creative Commons license that really addresses these issues.

OK, fair points. I think it's possible to release a work that is only partially under Creative Commons - such as not including licensed illustrations. You would just declare the parts that the license applies to. However, it isn't the standard way that people use CC, and the CC licenses don't explain how to do so. The same is true of the GNU Free Documentation License.

I wonder about the point of it all, though. In practice, most OGL work has not been "share alike". It's only been a one-way flow down from the original sources. It's rare for anyone downstream to use shared material. For example, when I published an SRD of open content from the True20 system in 2008, Green Ronin had problems with that. I discussed that here:

https://jhkimrpg.livejournal.com/67263.html

I feel what most people want is for mechanics to be open and shared, but other content to not be open or shared. But I don't know the best way to get that.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 05, 2023, 04:23:01 PM
This forces companies to make the choice, either support the current version of D&D and abandon earlier versions or stick to making products only for early versions and try to survive. I'm 100% sure all the big companies will stop using OGL 1.0 on these conditions.

That I can see being successful.

Quote
Then the next step is to not sell PDFs for 6e on any platform that sells products under OGL 1.0. Forcing sites like DriveThruRPG to make a similar choice.

That I am much less sure they can pull off. Sure, DM's Guild makes the parent company a lot of money, but comes with restrictions. Plenty of other companies use the OGL and have licensing programs that make DTRPG a lot of money as well with fewer or no strings. The parent company may crunch the numbers and decide lost sales plus added costs of excluding OGL 1.0 is greater than money made via DM's Guild.

I have no insight, but that isn't an out of the question possibility.

Quote from: jhkim on January 05, 2023, 04:34:26 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 01:40:21 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 05, 2023, 01:20:31 PM
That's possible - but why not use Creative Commons instead? It seems like reinventing the wheel to write a new license from scratch that hasn't been tested in court. Incidentally, as a resource, one can look at the legal database of Creative Commons, which has a history of dozens of court cases and legal texts related to CC and other open licenses.

https://legaldb.creativecommons.org/

In part, because...

1) I need something that distinguishes content types. For example, you can't just release your whole RPG book as open content if you don't actually own all the content. I'm thinking specifically of artwork, which is often licensed from third parties and therefore unable to legally be offered as part of an Open License.

2) I also desire to retain a small amount of Product Identity for my own projects (specifically the proper names of specific NPCs and places in my setting). For the record, I don't care if you want to use the raw statblock for "Kalla Blackthorne" for some NPC named "Karina Desdemona" (or whatever) in your own derived product. I DO care if you put a character named Kalla Blackthorne in your work as a temple prostitute or release a module where every member of the Free Cities' of Old Praetoria Warden Council is a raging tranny pedophile.

In my admittedly not exhaustive searches through options I've yet to see a Creative Commons license that really addresses these issues.

OK, fair points. I think it's possible to release a work that is only partially under Creative Commons - such as not including licensed illustrations. You would just declare the parts that the license applies to. However, it isn't the standard way that people use CC, and the CC licenses don't explain how to do so. The same is true of the GNU Free Documentation License.

I wonder about the point of it all, though. In practice, most OGL work has not been "share alike". It's only been a one-way flow down from the original sources. It's rare for anyone downstream to use shared material. For example, when I published an SRD of open content from the True20 system in 2008, Green Ronin had problems with that. I discussed that here:

https://jhkimrpg.livejournal.com/67263.html

I feel what most people want is for mechanics to be open and shared, but other content to not be open or shared. But I don't know the best way to get that.

How about a wrapper license. The Gaming Commons License (layman's quick version) would be:

1. The following is product identity: $FOO. It is not licensed for any usage by other publishers.
2. Anything not product identity is licensed under CC BY-SA (or even CC BY).

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 05, 2023, 04:23:01 PM

Quote from: FingerRod on January 05, 2023, 12:19:17 PM
The best thing existing content creators can do is kick the original OGL out of new printings of their work. Stop using it.

This is the only logical step. The 1.0 OGL will soon be a liability.

But I disagree with most of the people here who think that WotC is going to try to legally void the OGL 1.0. Their plan seems to be much simpler: To make a product for 6e, you need to use OGL 1.1 and if a company uses 1.1 they cannot release any product under OGL 1.0.

This forces companies to make the choice, either support the current version of D&D and abandon earlier versions or stick to making products only for early versions and try to survive. I'm 100% sure all the big companies will stop using OGL 1.0 on these conditions.

Then the next step is to not sell PDFs for 6e on any platform that sells products under OGL 1.0. Forcing sites like DriveThruRPG to make a similar choice.

Both of these things can be accomplished with absolutely zero need for lawyers.

The RPG market is just too fragmented to create a competing product simply because 6e is almost identical mechanically to 5e so their is no need for players to stick to older versions like there was when 4e came out.

The reason I think they'll try to void the past OGL is because they tried not doing that with 4E and look how that turned out. They aren't going to make that mistake again which is why they're pushing the 1.1 out well ahead of 6e... they want the board cleared BEFORE they launch.

Also of note; the tweet from the Kickstarter games rep said they talked the royalty fees DOWN to 20% of the gross for OGL project Kickstarters. That means the amount WotC plans to collect from their general license will be higher still.

And they can update the new OGL whenever they want to lower the royalty threshold and, to put the rotten cherry on top of the turd sundae, further reading into the 9000 word license (by comparison OGL1.0a is 900), under OGL1.1 you also waive your right to sue WotC for any reason.

How about:

"Except X,Y,Z and the art all text in this book is under the public domain"

I don't see how that wouldn't apply for CCBySA

As for the FDL it was written by talibans so it might have a provision where you can't do so, haven't read it in full and I'm not a lawyer.

Quote from: PulpHerb on January 05, 2023, 04:23:42 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 05, 2023, 01:20:31 PM
That's possible - but why not use Creative Commons instead? It seems like reinventing the wheel to write a new license from scratch that hasn't been tested in court. Incidentally, as a resource, one can look at the legal database of Creative Commons, which has a history of dozens of court cases and legal texts related to CC and other open licenses.

https://legaldb.creativecommons.org/

Is CC BY-SA as flexible as the OGL? Can you keep some things private (usually people do that for names and such) by only licensing some text CC or do you need to license the whole document as such and then either let everything go or us CC BY-NC?

What I (not a lawyer) would personally do in that situation to avoid issues is license a clearly-defined part of the work (the text and tables in subsection 1.2.3, for example) as CC-BY and the rest under standard all rights reserved copyright.

You can mix your own CC-BY-SA content with proprietary content because you can give yourself special permission but no one downstream will be able to add their own proprietary content, which might defeat the purpose of the license to attract third-party commercial supplements. Similar situation with NC.

CC-BY-SA is a copyleft license like the GNU GPL. If that's your goal, awesome, but then you probably wouldn't want to mix in proprietary content in the first place. 

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 12:03:09 PM

Quote from: Mithgarthr on January 05, 2023, 11:57:42 AM
Pretty good argument for them not being able to undo the old OGL:

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2023/01/section-9-of-open-game-license.html

Good argument. Who wants to spend the $$$ to get it in front of an actual judge is the real question.

It's called crowd funding.  All it will take is for WotC to try to sue one publisher and WotC is dead in the court of public opinion and then comes in the millions of dollars from 50 year old+ D&D players/dms who are in their prime earning years really pissed off about how WotC treated them and their game.

What this new "reimagining" of the OGL is a threat and nothing more.  The moment WotC initiates litigation they have lost.  They have heavily courted leftards and will have to contend with unions going after their workers if they go after a leftist kickstarter and if they go after a small company in the OSR they'll do with previously said 50 year old+ with a lot of money and an axe to grind against WotC.  Either way it will be a crowd funded lawsuit and WotC doesn't have the money to win such a campaign.  Remember what happened with the H3H3 production and its crowd funded lawsuit for fair use?  This will end up the exact same way.

Even worse for WotC would be if companies just dropped the license completely and quit publishing content for 5E and worked together to form a competitor.  In the past, TSR realized the benefit of 3rd parties for content creation to sell books.  WotC will learn that lesson in the future.

I think you both overestimate how much money the OSR has and underestimate how much lawyers make  Lawyers fees could be in the tens of millions.

The other thing is that WOTC is more or less in kahoots with DTRPG. So they have an easy way to enforce the new OGL, even if it doesn't stand up in court. They could have DTRPG simply decline to carry problems that don't use the new OGL. And that's like 95% of the PDF market, with I guess itch.io the rest

Quote from: JeremyR on January 05, 2023, 05:51:48 PM
I think you both overestimate how much money the OSR has and underestimate how much lawyers make  Lawyers fees could be in the tens of millions.

The other thing is that WOTC is more or less in kahoots with DTRPG. So they have an easy way to enforce the new OGL, even if it doesn't stand up in court. They could have DTRPG simply decline to carry problems that don't use the new OGL. And that's like 95% of the PDF market, with I guess itch.io the rest

The Electronic Frontier Fundation can be enlisted to help fight this battle since it would impact them too.

You underestimate the power of crowds and social media.  A lot of people love D&D and really hate the shit WotC pulled on the older content.  It will not be hard to get influencers to help donate to fight WotC if they try get squirrely and break their license.  WotC knows they have not a single foot to stand on with how the license is written.  WotC goal would be to run them out of money which they won't.  Someone with 5 or less years of contract litigation can run this case and win.  WotC is trying to change an existing contract and then force your older content to fall under the new content and they get full access to whatever you created to sell?  Really?

WotC benefited from 3rd party content under the old license.  With a new version of the game, they can create a new license for it, and they should win in a court, but not for the license that covers the existing content.

I've already seen influencers break with WotC over this and stop making content for WotC, this is just the beginning.  The only reason D&D is doing well is do social media.  And a lot of these social media fucks WotC courted are weak sisters.  Matt Mercer was actually coerced through a few tweets to his account to quit playing in a black DM's game because Matt was playing an Asian character.  Matt Mercer was coerced to break a contract with Wendy's over catchup because a few tweets threatened his virtue signal image because Wendy's doesn't use unionized catchup (the fuck is that?) and donated to Trump /heaven's I's gots the vapors -faints).  Do you think how easy it would be for a bunch of twitter folks to pressure Mercer into supporting a lawsuit against WotC when they paint him as a bully for supporting WotC over creators.  Mercer is a giant feckless pussy, he's an easy one to knock over.

With proper pressure they could probably force Mercer to play D&D B/X ed as protest for example.