DnD OGL 1.1 Creator Crisis - an Ultimately Good Thing or a Bad Thing for TTRPGs?

[The Anti-Targ]

I've watched a few videos on the subject by some content creators, and I have a friend who just started a 5e Twitch/Youtube campaign about a year ago.

Ultimately if this new licence drives creators away from DnD that's probably good for TTRPGs as there will be greater diversity. But I wonder if any company that creates a successful world, lore and game system will have any less draconian 3rd party conditions than what OGL 1.1 is shaping up to be.

One can understand that a company seeing people compete in their space and profit off their creation better than them would want to bring those profits to them. But the theory of capitalism is that you make a better product than your competitors rather than kill off your competition. But what WOTC seems to be doing is exactly how capitalism works in practice: kill off all the competition to become a monopoly. But perhaps what WOTC will only end up doing is having a monopoly over DnD and other people will simply move onto something else or create something entirely new, since the one thing WOTC doesn't and can never own is TTRPGing itself. 

But this last 10 years or so might have been a golden age for TTRPGs as third party entertainment products, and with nothing like the original OGL ever existing again the golden age may soon be over forever.

[BigFatCoward]

I have no idea what this is about, but that is without a doubt the ugliest thread title in board history. 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

I have no idea what this is about

Wikipedia to the rescue.

I doubt Hasbro's/WotC's aim is to "kill" its ecosystem. It wants to monetize the third-party content creators and make them pay them royalties if they're successful. The fact that they reached out to Kickstarter to negotiate a separate royalty rate for projects Kickstarted on them (some OGL-related projects have raised literally millions of dollars) underscores this. The reporting requirements for products making more than $50,000  also underscores this. And so too does the requirement that all products using the OGL 1.1 license be reported to them. They basically want to know how much money they're leaving on the table.

The real problem from what I can see is that the particularly draconian part is that they're trying to deauthorize the 1.0a OGL (which I think probably won't stand up in court, especially as Ryan Dancy, who spearheaded the OGL, has explicitly come out stating that there was never an intention that 1.0 could be deauthorized -- which, I know, contract law may disagree with, but 20 years of people building businesses around 1.0 has to carry some weight), and they're trying to force anyone who does OGL 1.1 material for D&D 6e (or One D&D or whatever it's called) to voluntarily accept the revocation of 1.0a, which I guess means they'd be stopped from producing stuff for 5e.

I have no real problem with them asking for a royalty, though I think it'll be counter-productive unless they provide some tangible benefits for those who succeed in meeting the royalty requirements such that they decide it's actually worth it to do. But anyways, these projects that are earning millions would not be earning millions if they weren't explicitly targeted at 5e.  I do think they should drop any language suggesting a deauthorization of 1.0 and any language requiring use of 1.1 to mean you repudiate 1.0. They can require 1.1 to be used for 6e content, that's fine, but trying to force the ecosystem to move to it through these methods is just going to shake trust in the whole thing.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

I think a 25% royalty crippling for creators who actually finally start to hit the moderately big time after putting in a shitload of blood, sweat and tears of their own into their creative work. That could be the entirety of the profit, as the creators commenting on the leak say the royalty applies to the gross revenue not the net. So if you produce a book costing $4 million and make $5 million in gross sales all the profit goes to WOTC.

They also basically want to steal and use the creative work of the third parties and not pay any royalties in return.

[Poobah]

Leave it to capitalism to butcher the golden goose to make the line temporarily go up a little bit more. 

[Ran]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

shitload of blood, sweat and tears of their own into their creative work.

I mean, it's a shitload of blood, sweat and tears into their own creative work which is derivative of someone else's property. 

They have to decide for themselves whether the royalty is worth the built-in userbase and exposure that doing 6e-compatible stuff gives them access to. They could go do their own thing, and keep 100% of the 50% of what they'll make creating content for something with a smaller user base, or decide that 75% of 100% is a better deal.

  ETA: All TTRPG Kickstarters that are over $1 million and are not entire RPGs in themselves with their own systems (like the new edition of Seven Seas or Free League's new One Ring 2nd edition, etc.) are tied to 5e or OGL. It's not until you go to the sub-$1,000,000 where you come across a Kickstarter using the licensed Cypher System.

1 hour ago, Poobah said:

Leave it to capitalism to butcher the golden goose to make the line temporarily go up a little bit more. 

Capitalism created D&D, so it's fitting.

Edited January 10 by Ran

[Mentat]

I haven't read the OGL myself, but most of the D&D YouTubers I follow consider the terms of the agreement you have to sign in order to publish D&D content extremely draconic. Paying royalties to Hasbro/WotC might seem reasonable (the amount seems exhorbitant to me, but that's a matter of opinion), but surely the ability of Hasbro/WotC to unilaterally change any part of the deal (like the amount of said royalties) at any time with only 30 days notice, or granting WotC the ability to reuse or reprint any 3rd party content without permission from or compensation to the authors are not.

[Ran]

Yeah, that stuff seems like dumb over-reach, but at the same time as I understand it this is all leaked-draft stuff and speculative. Has WotC even remarked on it?

To me the attempt to deauthorize OGL 1.0 is the most significant issue.

 

[Werthead]

This may backfire on Wizards of the Coast dramatically. Twice before Dungeons & Dragons has been the most popular and successful TTRPG in existence, dominating the tabletop space to the near-exclusion of all other games, and twice before it has managed to fuck itself over so badly that it lost not just the top spot but the several top spots to other companies. In the early 1990s it was overtaken first by World of Darkness and then a whole host of other games until by the end of the decade it was way down the pecking order and effectively went bust, and had to be bought out by WotC in the first place.

Then D&D returned to the top of the pile in the early 2000s with 3E (3rd Edition), partially propelled there, ironically, by the OGL and the massive stack of d20-compatible 3rd-party products. At first that was seen as a good thing but then people started getting annoyed with it because of the phenomenon we've seen much more prominent recently, namely that people who started out in RPGs by learning D&D 3E refused to learn to play anything else, so every RPG on the market basically had to develop a d20-compatible subline to try to compete. That actually ended up financially damaging a bunch of companies and their brand: Pinnacle almost went bust after trying to create a d20 version of Deadlands, alienating some of their OG fanbase (like most TTRPGs of the time, or since, Deadlands uses a skill-based rather than level-based system, so creating what was seen as an inferior level-based variant pissed off a lot of fans) but managed to haul back from the brink, and  subsequently adapted Deadlands into their own universal system, Savage Worlds, which is now one of the most popular TTRPG systems in existence (though fairly behind 5E, obviously, and Pathfinder).

Of course, WotC managed to fuck themselves massively by releasing D&D 4E too quickly - barely five years after 3.5E and only eight after 3E itself - and also trying to tie in a new, restrictive licence system into it, plus creating some pretty shitty rules (the designers were rushed and later released a much more refined and superior set of the same rules in the 13th Age game). Paizo used the Open Game Licence to create Pathfinder, which is basically D&D 3.75E, and it rocketed past 4E in sales almost immediately. Somewhere around 2011 or so, D&D actually lost so much market share that they fell back into third place between Pathfinder and Star Wars. It was only really the triple punch of releasing the better (if not great) 5E in 2014, the start of Critical Role in 2015 and Stranger Things making D&D a thing again in 2016 which propelled them back into the mainstream and market-leading position.

5 hours ago, Ran said:

  ETA: All TTRPG Kickstarters that are over $1 million and are not entire RPGs in themselves with their own systems (like the new edition of Seven Seas or Free League's new One Ring 2nd edition, etc.) are tied to 5e or OGL. It's not until you go to the sub-$1,000,000 where you come across a Kickstarter using the licensed Cypher System.

Capitalism created D&D, so it's fitting.

That's not correct. The most popular TTRPG Kickstarter of all time is Avatar Legends, based on the Avatar: The Last Airbender property, which raised over $9.5 million. Avatar Legends uses the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

 

That's not correct. The most popular TTRPG Kickstarter of all time is Avatar Legends, based on the Avatar: The Last Airbender property, which raised over $9.5 million. Avatar Legends uses the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system.

I saw that one but assumed it was a unique rule set for them. Fair enough. Still, that is a licensed setting from other media, and it's still a complete RPG rather than a third-party supplement to an existing rule system.  All of the ones that earned $1 million+ are explicitly for 5e, like Matt Colville's multi-million dollar projects and similar things. I assume many of the people producing 5e content who decide not to jump aboard OGL 1.1 and 6e are going to hope to do... what? Create their own RPGs? Seems unlikely for most. Maybe supplements for Pathfinder, assuming OGL 1.0 isn't somehow found to be deauthorized?

Who else has a substantial system with an OGL-like structure welcoming third-party content?

Edited January 10 by Ran

[Werthead]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

I saw that one but assumed it was a unique rule set for them. Fair enough. Still, that is a licensed setting from other media, and it's still a complete RPG rather than a third-party supplement to an existing rule system.  All of the ones that earned $1 million+ are explicitly for 5e, like Matt Colville's multi-million dollar projects and similar things. I assume many of the people producing 5e content who decide not to jump aboard OGL 1.1 and 6e are going to hope to do... what? Create their own RPGs? Seems unlikely for most. Maybe supplements for Pathfinder, assuming OGL 1.0 isn't somehow found to be deauthorized?

Who else has a substantial system with an OGL-like structure welcoming third-party content?

It doesn't matter for Pathfinder. Fortuitously, Paizo switched to a new rules system completely divorced from the OGL/3E/3.5E fork in 2019. They maintained use of the OGL for the convenience of their own 3rd party ecosystem and to allow them to continue to sell legacy products from the OG version of Pathfinder.

All they need to do is remove all mention from the OGL from the 2nd Edition Pathfinder products and remove their legacy products from sale (which will hurt a bit, but it kind of helps Paizo in the transfer from 1E to 2E of their own game, with a lot of holdouts refusing to budge because of Edition Wars reasons) and there's nothing WotC can do even if they are upheld in everything they want to do.

In fact, since game rules cannot be copyrighted, I'm wondering if someone will try to do what Paizo did in 2008 and try to continue 5E in a different guise and hoover up the current D&D fans who have no interest in moving to One D&D (aka 6E, probably). That'll be harder without the OGL or a similar document, and Hasbro's lawyers would be more strict, but not impossible.

There are other systems with open-ish rules or reasonable licence arrangements. Steve Jackson Games with the venerable GURPS (even if that playerbase is relatively small these days), and ironically Powered by the Apocalypse could do well off the back of the free advertising from the Avatar Legends tie-in. Savage Worlds also has something of an open-ish approach, although it's not as open as the OGL. They've been trying to get a toe into this area by licensing a Pathfinder variant of Savage Worlds (after apparently being turned down by WotC to do D&D directly) which has done very well. Perhaps they could get a leg up there, especially because their ecosystem already has a ton of different settings and product lines in different genres (like the d20 system).

[The Anti-Targ]

Talking to my friend, whose DnD Youtube campaign channel I will shamelessly plug here https://www.youtube.com/@DiceLegenz albeit he is far too small at this stage to hit even the $50,000 level he said right from the start he's been careful to only use the rule set in his campaign and all his written content contains nothing connected to DnD, places, names, monsters, races, deities etc are all his own creation or are non-licensable by WOTC as they are pre-exist DnD, like orcs, elves, dwarves, dragons etc. All derivative of LOTR and (mostly) European folklore and mythology, so DnD itself is substantially derivative. As long as his published content doesn't use DnD stat blocks in any books he believes WOTC will have no claim on his material under OGL 1.1. I do wonder though if since the campaigns are using DnD rules if they could claim royalty-free useage rights to his creation on that basis.

The likelihood of getting big enough for WOTC to even notice him is pretty low, but he's took precautions even before OGL 1.1 became a thing none-the-less.

 

[IlyaP]

So, wait, so....Hasbro wants to make people who used a license pay them? 

Man, I'm so confused by this. (Legalese language and me - we're not friends, not even a little bit.)

[Ran]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

So, wait, so....Hasbro wants to make people who used a license pay them? 

They had basically an "open source", free-to-use license for the System Reference Document which basically just provides the rules of D20 and so on, so you could make compatible products to 5e. With OGL 1.1, it's still free-to-use, but at a certain level of income from commercial products you make using the license you will owe them royalties.

They could just do away with the OGL entirely and not allow third-party content without individually negotiated licenses, but they clearly see a benefit to continuing the OGL, they just want to squeeze some more money from it.

Though, reading further on RPG.net, what Hasbro has said when it talked about D&D being undermonetized... is that the players buy one or two books and then that's it, almost everything else is geared to DMs, so that basically 80% of the players have no incentives to keep buying D&D books besides the Player's Handbook and maybe the Dungeon Master's Guide. But this is a publishing issue, and they'd have to figure out how to retool publications to make them equally appealing to players as to DMs.

[Relic]

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

They could just do away with the OGL entirely and not allow third-party content without individually negotiated licenses, but they clearly see a benefit to continuing the OGL, they just want to squeeze some more money from it.

Third party content is the only reason D&D is still alive. WotC couldnt giveaway 4th edition handbooks for free, and if it wasnt for Critical Role and Covid this OGL fiasco wouldn't even be an issue. Instead of figuring out a clever way to work hand in hand with 3rd party creators and look for profits elsewhere, WotC is aiming for a quick cash grab. I hope it backfires on them in every way possible. I hope the brand dies, and people move on to different systems. I'd love to see Critical Role adopt Mercer's own system and take their millions of followers with them.

Fuck Hasbro, and fuck WotC. 

[Relic]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

But this is a publishing issue, and they'd have to figure out how to retool publications to make them equally appealing to players as to DMs.

They already tried that with 3.5. They released a TON of books aimed at players, and over saturated the entire enterprise to the point of fatigue. AND THEN, they decided to drop 3.5 completely and move on to 4e, which left the people who were willing to pay for all the bloat holding a bag of out-dated dog-shit books. 

There are MANY ways to get creative, i have a few ideas of my own on that matter, but revising a document that has existed for 20 years and pulling the rug from out content creators feet is NOT the way to go. 

 

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

They had basically an "open source", free-to-use license for the System Reference Document which basically just provides the rules of D20 and so on, so you could make compatible products to 5e. With OGL 1.1, it's still free-to-use, but at a certain level of income from commercial products you make using the license you will owe them royalties.

They could just do away with the OGL entirely and not allow third-party content without individually negotiated licenses, but they clearly see a benefit to continuing the OGL, they just want to squeeze some more money from it.

Though, reading further on RPG.net, what Hasbro has said when it talked about D&D being undermonetized... is that the players buy one or two books and then that's it, almost everything else is geared to DMs, so that basically 80% of the players have no incentives to keep buying D&D books besides the Player's Handbook and maybe the Dungeon Master's Guide. But this is a publishing issue, and they'd have to figure out how to retool publications to make them equally appealing to players as to DMs.

I'm a bit out of date on AD&D, @Ran, so if you have the spoons to explain: how does Open D&D (I think it's called?) relate to this, if at all? I seem to recall a friend telling me about how WotC were trying to tap into the online space with a more friendly online system, for the purchasing/downloading of PDFs, etc. 

Is that in any way related to/germane to this? Or is that a separate thing altogether?

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Talking to my friend, whose DnD Youtube campaign channel I will shamelessly plug here https://www.youtube.com/@DiceLegenz albeit he is far too small at this stage to hit even the $50,000 level he said right from the start he's been careful to only use the rule set in his campaign and all his written content contains nothing connected to DnD, places, names, monsters, races, deities etc are all his own creation or are non-licensable by WOTC as they are pre-exist DnD, like orcs, elves, dwarves, dragons etc. All derivative of LOTR and (mostly) European folklore and mythology, so DnD itself is substantially derivative. As long as his published content doesn't use DnD stat blocks in any books he believes WOTC will have no claim on his material under OGL 1.1. I do wonder though if since the campaigns are using DnD rules if they could claim royalty-free useage rights to his creation on that basis.

You can't copyright rules but you can the text delivering the rules, so I believe the issue is that not people using the rules, but making the language and terminology around the rules so ubiquitous that it'd be impossible to talk about them without confusing people (i.e. if someone wanted to carry on with D&D, they'd be on shaky ground using the term "attack of opportunity," and would have to use a term like "reflex attack" or something, and you'd have to apply that to everything).

10 hours ago, Ran said:

Though, reading further on RPG.net, what Hasbro has said when it talked about D&D being undermonetized... is that the players buy one or two books and then that's it, almost everything else is geared to DMs, so that basically 80% of the players have no incentives to keep buying D&D books besides the Player's Handbook and maybe the Dungeon Master's Guide. But this is a publishing issue, and they'd have to figure out how to retool publications to make them equally appealing to players as to DMs.

That's been a problem since 1974, even Gygax recognised that early on and they tried various ways of overcoming that. One way was putting basic combat rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide, which encouraged players to buy the DMG as well, and then the various player-focused rulebooks throughout the 2E period.

They've never really overcome it though. Since the launch of 2E in 1989, it's been perfectly possible for 5+ people to enjoy a game of D&D with one copy of the Player's Handbook alone and almost nothing else, and of course that's been much more the case with the internet. And most games have only one core sourcebook, which makes it even easier to have everything you need in one massive rulebook and you never need to buy a supplement again.

"Must-have" supplements for D&D have been pretty rare through its history, with maybe only the 1E Unearthed Arcana and the 2E "Option" line of books (which allowed high-level play and a bunch of combat options which prefigured what was coming up in 3E) really counting.

6 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I'm a bit out of date on AD&D, @Ran, so if you have the spoons to explain: how does Open D&D (I think it's called?) relate to this, if at all? I seem to recall a friend telling me about how WotC were trying to tap into the online space with a more friendly online system, for the purchasing/downloading of PDFs, etc. 

Is that in any way related to/germane to this? Or is that a separate thing altogether?

"One D&D" is the prototype version of the next edition or half-edition of D&D (it's also being referred to as 5.5E or 6E). Think of it as an open beta in video games. People are playtesting the next version of the rules and Wizards and Hasbro are talking about a subscription model where people (players and DMs) pay a monthly price to get access to future sourcebooks, supplements, adventures etc, and an online space where their D&D material will live. However, during 5E WotC has released a relative paucity of content and, for the last 2-3 years, most of the content they've released is poor (reaching a nadir with the new Spelljammer material), so unless they're going to reverse course on that with the next edition, that's not a very tempting prospect.

A lot of people think that's bullshit, they just want their core rulebooks and a piece of A4 paper with their stats on and don't want to piss about with an app or online sub, although of course some people would use it.

Edited January 11 by Werthead

[Werthead]

Interesting stuff with the creator of the OGL.

 

[horangi]

You'd think, considering the paucity of good official adventure modules, WotC would be embracing ways to bring in some of the more popular and creative 3rd party content into the 'official' fold.  I wove one of their supposedly 'best' modules into my otherwise home brewed campaign, having been too busy to develop my own content at the time, and it was pretty clear to the players since it was just so generic. Battle after battle of scrub mobs and little to no critical thinking or puzzle solving required.  It was nice to have some background for NPCs, but they tended be super tropes of Dwarfy MacDwarfison and Evil Badguyson.  It did end with a bit of levity when the ultimate battle ended on Turn 1 when the rogue's critical sneak attack nearly eviscerated Drizzt-do-Glasscannonmage to the point he surrendered immediately (per the module instructions), at which point the rogue just slit his throat and tossed him in a pit instead of letting him explain his dastardly plan.  The entire party then celebrated the end of that distraction in the campaign to go back to home brewed content (including me, the DM).