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.

I think the more rational course under what's been laid out would simply be for WotC to release all new SRDs under OGL 1.1 and make sure that OneD&D is just different enough to make 5E products feel obsolete, a la 3.5 ... but evil is fundamentally irrational.

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.

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.

Corpos gotta corpo. Short term profits are all that matter as a matter of law (i.e. you could lose your job and be sued into oblivion for failing to do your fiduciary duty to grow the corporation's bottom line for the investors) and Hasbo's sales are way down post pandemic.

So, yes. You should fully expect them to be desperate greedy corpos willing to burn down the industry for another quarter of profits.

Well, I guess I should start eating my hat over thinking WoTC was more focused on digital tool competition and not worried about standard RPGs. They have zero reason to want to make "no longer authorized" the current OGL except to force competition(aka Paizo) over to the 1.1 and steal their money/shut them down.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 06:07:47 AM
For the cooperative minded, I'd be looking at creating a replacement for the OGL... like a Free System License (FSL) that perhaps removes/alters section 7 and adds "irrevocable" to the terms of the license and perhaps a separate OSR-based SRD that has been sufficiently rewritten/stripped of any WotC specific IP as to allow it to stand clear of Hasbro's hungry maw.

This seems like the safest course to take. The OGL is basically tainted at this point. Though I'd think other systems currently using OGL should already be free of WotC IP, unless they were using the DM Guild's licensing that allowed for using Wizard's IP.

Quote from: Dracones on January 05, 2023, 10:08:34 AM
Well, I guess I should start eating my hat over thinking WoTC was more focused on digital tool competition and not worried about standard RPGs. They have zero reason to want to make "no longer authorized" the current OGL except to force competition(aka Paizo) over to the 1.1 and steal their money/shut them down.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 06:07:47 AM
For the cooperative minded, I'd be looking at creating a replacement for the OGL... like a Free System License (FSL) that perhaps removes/alters section 7 and adds "irrevocable" to the terms of the license and perhaps a separate OSR-based SRD that has been sufficiently rewritten/stripped of any WotC specific IP as to allow it to stand clear of Hasbro's hungry maw.

This seems like the safest course to take. The OGL is basically tainted at this point. Though I'd think other systems currently using OGL should already be free of WotC IP, unless they were using the DM Guild's licensing that allowed for using Wizard's IP.

Based on the leaked wording, it doesn't matter if your particular product uses any of WotC's content. Simply using their license agreement, once you're forced to update to 1.1 gives them free irrevocable use of your content forever... did you invent a whole new system and slap the OGL1.0a on it so third parties could make easy supplements? Well, because the license touched it WotC will claim the whole thing and could repackage it with the WotC logo on it, sell it, and not owe you a dime.

Oh, and they can order you to cease all publication of your own version for any reason with 30 days notice while still selling it under their logo.

That's what they're claiming the right to.

Quote from: Dracones on January 05, 2023, 10:08:34 AM
Well, I guess I should start eating my hat over thinking WoTC was more focused on digital tool competition and not worried about standard RPGs. They have zero reason to want to make "no longer authorized" the current OGL except to force competition(aka Paizo) over to the 1.1 and steal their money/shut them down.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 06:07:47 AM
For the cooperative minded, I'd be looking at creating a replacement for the OGL... like a Free System License (FSL) that perhaps removes/alters section 7 and adds "irrevocable" to the terms of the license and perhaps a separate OSR-based SRD that has been sufficiently rewritten/stripped of any WotC specific IP as to allow it to stand clear of Hasbro's hungry maw.

This seems like the safest course to take. The OGL is basically tainted at this point. Though I'd think other systems currently using OGL should already be free of WotC IP, unless they were using the DM Guild's licensing that allowed for using Wizard's IP.

Don't beat yourself up too much. I didn't expect them to reach for the cudgel that fast either.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 10:17:24 AM
Based on the leaked wording, it doesn't matter if your particular product uses any of WotC's content. Simply using their license agreement, once you're forced to update to 1.1 gives them free irrevocable use of your content forever... did you invent a whole new system and slap the OGL1.0a on it so third parties could make easy supplements? Well, because the license touched it WotC will claim the whole thing and could repackage it with the WotC logo on it, sell it, and not owe you a dime.

Oh, and they can order you to cease all publication of your own version for any reason with 30 days notice while still selling it under their logo.

That's what they're claiming the right to.

You may not be forced to update if you drop the OGL 1.0a. As an example, if I wrote a RPG and released it under the OGL that doesn't get rid of my full copyright on the product. I can still release that product under any other license I want in tandem with the OGL licensed copy. This was common for companies to do with software and the GPL(an open software license). They'd release, say, a software library under the GPL and if you needed a library that wasn't GPL you could buy a non-GPL licensed version for your commercial software.

So if I released my product under the OGL nothing stops me from also releasing it under a FGL down the road. The workflow could most likely be:

1> WoTC has stated that the OGL 1.0a is no longer an authorized license. Therefore we will no longer be using the OGL.
2> All our product is now covered under the FGL.

The question would be could Wizards somehow force you into the OGL 1.1 rather than just dropping the OGL 1.0a entirely(since it's no longer a valid license) from your product line in favor of a FGL.

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

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 05, 2023, 09:38:50 AM
I think the more rational course under what's been laid out would simply be for WotC to release all new SRDs under OGL 1.1 and make sure that OneD&D is just different enough to make 5E products feel obsolete, a la 3.5 ... but evil is fundamentally irrational.

Throughout all of these threads and videos, I have come away suspecting it will be as you describe above.  I think WOTC will force creators of content to either choose to stay the course with the old / current OGL path, or else to be part of the new OGL path.  Either Play in the past, or Pay in the future.

If one chooses to Play in the past; they will not be allowed to have "compatibility", with WOTC's future endeavors.

Quote from: Dracones on January 05, 2023, 10:49:42 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 05, 2023, 10:17:24 AM
Based on the leaked wording, it doesn't matter if your particular product uses any of WotC's content. Simply using their license agreement, once you're forced to update to 1.1 gives them free irrevocable use of your content forever... did you invent a whole new system and slap the OGL1.0a on it so third parties could make easy supplements? Well, because the license touched it WotC will claim the whole thing and could repackage it with the WotC logo on it, sell it, and not owe you a dime.

Oh, and they can order you to cease all publication of your own version for any reason with 30 days notice while still selling it under their logo.

That's what they're claiming the right to.

You may not be forced to update if you drop the OGL 1.0a. As an example, if I wrote a RPG and released it under the OGL that doesn't get rid of my full copyright on the product. I can still release that product under any other license I want in tandem with the OGL licensed copy. This was common for companies to do with software and the GPL(an open software license). They'd release, say, a software library under the GPL and if you needed a library that wasn't GPL you could buy a non-GPL licensed version for your commercial software.

So if I released my product under the OGL nothing stops me from also releasing it under a FGL down the road. The workflow could most likely be:

1> WoTC has stated that the OGL 1.0a is no longer an authorized license. Therefore we will no longer be using the OGL.
2> All our product is now covered under the FGL.

The question would be could Wizards somehow force you into the OGL 1.1 rather than just dropping the OGL 1.0a entirely(since it's no longer a valid license) from your product line in favor of a FGL.

Most likely you would be required to destroy every copy and cease digital distribution of every copy with the OGL included in it in order to not run afoul of WotC's "this is no longer using an authorized license" clause.

If this is legit it goes one of two ways...

1. They pull back and then introduce additional restrictions piecemeal to slow boil the frog.

2. They push it out ASAP (it was always coming in "early 2023", what's a few weeks?) banking on the "30 days to comply" blindsiding enough publishers and alternate VTTs that they'll have no time for any alternative other than updating to 1.1 or ceasing distribution until they have an alternative.

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.

Not sure if you've seen the Gizmodo article yet, it just came out https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634

Basically WoTC are really shooting the puppy, it looks like.


Despite reassurances from Wizards of the Coast last month, the original OGL will become an "unauthorized" agreement, and it appears no new content will be permitted to be created under the original license.

Money quote:

The original OGL granted "perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license" to the Open Game Content (commonly called the System Resource Document) and directed that licensees "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." But the updated OGL says that "this agreement is...an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement."

The new document clarifies further in the "Warranties" section that "this agreement governs Your use of the Licensed Content and, unless otherwise stated in this agreement, any prior agreements between Us and You are no longer in force."

According to attorneys consulted for this article, the new language may indicate that Wizards of the Coast is rendering any future use of the original OGL void, and asserting that if anyone wants to continue to use Open Game Content of any kind, they will need to abide by the terms of the updated OGL, which is a far more restrictive agreement than the original OGL.

Wizards of the Coast declined to clarify if this is in fact the case.

Additional money quote from the Gizmodo article...

It addresses new technologies like blockchain and NFTs, and takes a strong stance against bigoted content, explicitly stating the company may terminate the agreement if third-party creators publish material that is "blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, trans-phobic, bigoted or otherwise discriminatory.".

It also cites a date of January 13th, 2023 as the point the new OGL1.1 goes into effect.

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

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.