1.1 Open Gaming License Leaks

Hey everyone!

I imagine many of you will already be aware of the news around the leaked 1.1 Open Game License. If you are better at staying away from social media than I am and aren't up to date with the news yet I won't go into the details here, but you can read about it all in this Gizmodo article by Linda Codega (also linked above), and some of the potential legal ramifications in this blog post by Noah 'My Lawyer Friend' Downs Esq, an IP lawyer who specialises in the gaming industry.

Suffice to say, this leak is bad news for all 3rd party creators and all fans of Dungeons & Dragons in general. It is important to note, this has not been officially commented on in any way by Wizards of the Coast themselves and may not come to pass, but the source has been deemed reputable by multiple large media outlets, and has at least in part been confirmed by Jon Ritter, Director of Games at Kickstarter.

For a bit of a TLDR if the linked articles are more words than you feel like reading on a Friday (understandable) I have taken some words from DMDave, a far better writer than me:

What is the OGL, and why does this matter?

If you aren't familiar with what the open gaming license is, it's the document that third-party creators like myself, The Griffon's Saddlebag, etc. use to create third-party content.

Without it, we would have gone on to make other content. But it made things easy for us because there were very few barriers to entry. So we got to build content with the brand we love and help support them in change.

Now, for the first time in 22 years, they're saying that it's not valid, despite having a very clear clause (section 9) saying that what they're trying to do—erasing the original 1.0a—is impossible.

Why not sign the new OGL?

The new OGL 1.1 is, for lack of a better term, truly awful.

Here are some of the "highlights:"

• All creators earning over $50,000 per year have to report earnings.
• Creators making over $750,000 have to pay a very high percentage of revenue (not profit, mind you) after $750,000. To put this in perspective, I almost barely reach that number (when you factor in Kickstarters), but easily 90%+ of what comes in goes to contractors, cost of goods sold, taxes, platform fees, legal/accounting, etc.
• Wizards automatically has a claim to whatever content you create as a sublicense. This means that they can take my content, repackage it, share it, do whatever they want, and don't owe me a dime and are absolved of all liabilities attached to it.
• Any content that isn't a PDF or book is not allowed. This could severely harm or even lead to the destruction of many major third-party VTTs, such as FoundryVTT, FantasyGrounds, Alchemy, Roll20, etc. It also eliminates board games, video games, miniatures, etc.
• Any past version of the OGL is null and void.  Despite the wording of the original document, which said it is perpetual, irrevocable, and could not be replaced by any new version of the OGL, the new one straight-up says they will no longer honor that agreement.
• They're only giving people until January 13th to sign. This might change since they haven't released an official agreement (it was supposed to come out 2 days ago), but originally they hoped to put it out this week and give people a total of 9 days (or 7 business days) to agree or "suffer our legal wrath."
• This is for every edition. This doesn't just affect OneDND. It affects 3.0/3.5 and its derivatives, including Pathfinder, as well as 5th edition.

Check out the rest of Dave's post here for more insight 

What does this mean for Tom Cartos?

In the immediate future, very little. Until Wizards of the Coasts (WotC) and Hasbro make an official statement about this we won't know what the final terms of the license are going to be. The new OGL was supposed to be released a couple of days ago, on January 4th, but wasn't and WotC haven't said anything publicly about the leaks yet. Until they do we will move ahead as usual, but we are making contingency plans.

If the final version of the 1.1 OGL is along the same lines as the leaked draft it will have an impact on some of our content going forwards. However, and most importantly, my maps and assets are completely system agnostic and not reliant in any way on the OGL, so there will be no change there.

The content that may be directly effected by the new license is the 5e adventures we release, and some of the Creature Tokens. With regards to the 5e SRD Creature Tokens, there is only one set remaining to release. After those are done we had planned to move onto more system agnostic/not specifically 5e content anyway (more about that soon). 

As for the adventure modules, we plan to continue to release 5e compatible adventures as long as possible as we know that is still the most widely played game by many of you. If that becomes untenable I will most likely take a poll to see what you would all prefer.

DMDave is writing a free game system of his own with its own open license, which we will share with you and promote, and we will continue to collaborate with Dave on a regular basis. He has pre-published the next 2 years worth of his 5e Dungeons and Lairs series, and as a sub-licensee we should also be able to continue to release those here.

The content that may be more indirectly effected is our Foundry modules. We fully intend to continue to provide content for and support Foundry VTT, but as noted by Dave above, one of the key issues with the OGL 1.1 document is their attempt to invalidate any VTT platform outside the one WotC are creating in house. Foundry have not put out an official statement yet, but losing the ability to have the 5e system on their platform (and potentially any others that use the OGL like Pathfinder) will likely hurt them.

How can we help?

If you feel as aggrieved by this action from Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro as many of us do, and want to help convince them how foolish this new license would be, you can post on social media with the #OpenDnD.

If you have any questions about this please let me know and I will do my best to answer them, but a lot is unknown until Wizards make an official statement, and even then it may take some time to digest and understand all of the ramifications. We will keep you updated with any news and changes as we have them.

In the meantime, know that myself and the team around me are still working to deliver the best possible content to you and your support means everything to us.