Gamer Geek thread: D & D and the new OGL dustup

I'm starting to hear about it from old gaming buddies who are not the permanently online, wired into 5e Twitter type. Some basically don't play any more but are still hearing about it from non-Reddit and Twitter sources. It has made it into Forbes magazine, so that's pretty much reaching the mainstream. Any of you at a table where this has become part of the discussion?

What’s Happening With The Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License?

 

I haven't paid much attention to D&D since my high school days when it was an excuse to leave the house on Saturday nights. (Most Friday nights were occupied with sports.)

I just found the game too complicated to become a devotee.

 

Well, to some degree it's a tempest in a teapot but there is currently quite an uproar in the tabletop RPG world. To condense things, Hasbro Toys, the corporate owner of the D & D intellectual property, has decided that the corporation isn't generating sufficient profit. Between the corporate moves that have been made, properties acquired, and the recent leak of a new version of the IP licensing agreement ( "the OGL") under which various third party game design firms operate, it has become obvious to the gaming community that Hasbro regards them as mindless sheep to be shorn and the premature release of the new OGL has ignited a storm. People are pissed, and it takes a bit of history to tell the tale.

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the guys who popularized the game, were not businessmen. Gygax pretty much screwed Arneson out of the business early, and the corporate management of TSR was erratic and spotty for years. Eventually they were bought out of bankruptcy by Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the hugely popular Magic the Gathering collectable card game around 2002. WotC released the 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of the game. Editions offered rule refinements and other expansions, and were a profit maker as a changed edition drove sales of the new books and ancillary materials. The Fifth Edition, (5e) a more streamlined and easier to play version, came out in 2012, and it has become hugely popular in a post "Stranger Things" world. Geek culture is much more acceptable than it was 30-40 years ago.

When 5e came out, D&D had maybe 40% of the tabletop RPG market. Under the first version of the OGL, a company could license the use of the D&D IP to write scenarios, modules, cities, beastiaries of monsters, entire gaming worlds. WotC got 40% of the take above a certain dollar volume. There was an explosion of game design firms who sold products in that space, either as their sole product line or in addition to whatever else they sold. This was a very successful move, and D&D now holds around 85% of that market. It's long been a fairly casual community without a lot of corporate sharp elbows and cutthroat tactics.

Now add that there has been Wall Street news re Hasbro. They're under stockholder pressure to increase profits, and because this is standard investor news this is known to any of the gamers who have any interest. The news coming out after recent meetings was that Hasbro was going to start finding ways to increase profitability using micro transactions (normally found in video games, not tabletop) and various corporate tactics. Hasbro recently acquired D&D Beyond, an electronic tabletop that allows internet D&D play over VOIP, projecting maps and icons representing the players and various monsters, etc. It has become obvious that Wizards intends to either squeeze out all other such internet D&D other than those which they own outright, or at a minimum to charge so much money for a license that others can't make enough to survive. They intend to sell cosmetic bells and whistles by microtransaction, ect, and in a general sense to grab every dollar within reach and muscle out an entire community of businesses entirely.

The new leaked OGL 1.1 is completely different. I'm not a lawyer, but the way it is structured any company that sells any product using the D&D IP will have tacitly accepted the terms of OGL 1.1 from the day it is released. Under those terms, any product they release becomes the property of WotC at their will. The percentage they take is adjusted upward. There are other changes, all one sided in the favor of Wizards. A new edition which WotC is calling OneD&D, is to be released in a year to a year and a half. It is Wizard's intention to make 5e obsolete, to do away with it, and all product after the time of its release would be under this new OGL.

The new OGL leaked about a week ago, and it has been a complete nightmare for WotC. It's obvious what is going on, and Wizard's response was that they'd release a statement in a few days to clarify their position. It's been over a week now and they have yet to do so. That PR space has filled with antagonized gamers and designers throwing rocks and poo.

There are inherent structural problems with D&D as a corporate cash cow. The single biggest one is that when a new edition comes out, the purchasing pattern works this way: The Dungeon Master (DM), the guy who makes up the story and adjudicates the rules, he needs several books - the DM's Guide, the Monster Manual, and several others at need along the way. The actual players, 3-6 usually per DM, only need a Player's Handbook, and anymore you if don't own one you can get what you need free on the web. This is a limiting factor in terms of the number of books sold. The obvious plan is to push everyone to an online version that requires a subscription, where a player only has access to book material he has paid for. Then you up-charge them for anything you can think of that they might need or want.

In response, many of the bigger ancillary companies have decided to say to hell with the OGL and giving Wizards a dime. The have banded together to produce and release "Project Black Flag", a new gaming system that essentially duplicates the existing 5e system while making all necessary changes to avoid copyright violations. They can't really copyright game rules and mechanisms, only terms and specific descriptions. So "Strength" and "Dexterity" will become "Power" and "Agility", everything else stays the same, they continue what they're doing, only they no longer pay the 40% rakeoff to WOTC.

It's a mess.


It's a huge deal on Twitter and Reddit in gaming circles, and it just keeps getting jucier. This showed up this morning:



The fly in the ointment for Wizards is that D&D players by their nature are accustomed to finding ways around rules and obstacles. The first, obvious answer is "Fuck 'em. We have everything we need to play 5e. We don't need OneD&D. Those books can rot on the shelves." The second is that whatever new content is generated for 5e will go to Black Flag, not WotC.

 

WotC released a response today. For now, this will largely stop here, although I expect the development of an open source version of 5e to continue. Wizards has blown trust out of the water, and I expect the general response to be "Yeah, you got caught, so you're denying it. We know that you'll just wait a while, rewrite it a bit to make it look less objectionable, and try again after things calm down." The third party producers have an opening to create a system that emulates 5e without being in thrall to the whims of Hasbro/WotC, and they will probably go on and develop it to protect themselves.

We'll see where it goes from here. And yes, there will be a bunch of people taking a victory lap today.

An Update on the Open Game License (OGL)

 

Here is a good article about the entire thing:

Dungeons & Dragons Fans Prepare to Face Their Greatest Adversary: Corporate Greed

 

Kind of seems like the "classic" tale of an executive / authority figure trying to press its advantage, but, overestimating their power in doing so. Yeah, D&D is the dominant name in tabletop RPG, but there is nothing so unique or valuable in the presentation that people can't jump to something else, if the terms are too onerous. A lot of work in the fantasy sphere is ultimately using creatures from folklore, or rule systems that have been tweaked from another rule system. It's not stuff that's easy to lock behind content and pay walls.

 

Excellent article, thanks. The New Republic is the last place I would have looked for a D&D business explainer. I guess gamers are everywhere.

Explained more succinctly than I did:


"Perhaps the greatest change comes with the original OGL, which still applies to previous generations of D&D products and countless third-party products. That version promised a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license” to the d20 system and some of its source material. Under the new OGL, however, the original OCL license is “no longer an authorized license agreement” and “no longer in force.” That could place dozens of independent publishers in legal jeopardy if they continue to rely on previous versions of the d20 system to sell new products. How that change affects their existing products isn’t immediately clear. (Note - the uncertainty regarding the status of existing third party content means that any further sales, and certainly reprinting for continuing sales, of existing products likely stops until their legal status is eventually clarified, an immediate hit to the bottom line of all such companies) - NC

Those who stick with the existing system have to play by Wizards’ rules. Crowdfunded campaigns for new rule books and adventure guides by third-party creators, for example, must give between 20 and 25 percent of their revenue to Wizards. Independent publishers must give a similar slice of any revenue over $750,000 to Wizards directly. Creators large and small who sell new materials under the OGL must label specifically which portions of them fall under the OGL and which are their own intellectual property, as if to make things easier for Hasbro’s in-house counsel to figure out who to sue.

Perversely, while it is still officially described as an “Open Gaming License,” the net effect is quite the opposite. Independent publishers who release books and materials under the new OGL must give Wizards a “nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose.” That would theoretically allow Wizards to print and sell any third-party material developed under the new OGL without sharing any of that revenue with the original creator. The addition of “irrevocable” is particularly pointed in the context of what it is changing: A legal status quo that had allowed an entire industry to flourish may soon be gone forever." (Note - freelancers and 3PP companies that have invested years into writing and developing/playtesting new content are not about to release it when Wizards can simply appropriate and print it as their own) - NC


This article does not touch on electronic table tops for internet gaming, which is a far bigger and more profitable area for Hasbro/Wizards to exploit in the long term. They are going for near monopoly control of the D&D brand in such spaces. This involves software that facilitates the internet play of a large number of different gaming systems on a single host system. There are currently several such competing in this space. Wizards is trying to make the royalties and conditions so onerous that all such gaming involving D&D will fall under their corporate umbrella alone, with the attendant drawbacks to consumers common in monopolies.