Official OGL Discussion Thread

[PhoenixPhyre]

Having now been told that 5.1 SRD is the current 5e one, here's the rough breakdown of what is CC. Anything not mentioned is Licensed Content and requires accepting the OGL once published.

Pages 56-104:
Section starting "Beyond 1st Level": Level advancement, multiclassing, Alignment, languages, inspiration, backgrounds, equipment (all of it, weapons, armor, etc, including tables), mounts, vehicles, expenses, Feats (lol grappler), Using Ability Scores (including advantage/disadvantage, proficiency bonus, and skills), time, movement, environment, resting, downtime, combat (including initiative, actions, surprise, creature sizes, attacking, damage, healing, resistance, vulnerability, and the core rules of spellcasting not including any specific spells.

Pages 254-260:
Sentient magic items (not the list of regular magic items), artifacts, and part of the intro to the monsters chapter. This is odd--maybe my copy has wrong page numbers? I'd expect that this was supposed to be just the intro to the monsters chapter and I'm off by about 2 pages. Proper pages in my copy should be 256-263 I think?
Another victim of an old SRD. This is the intro to the monsters chapter without any of the monsters themselves.

Pages 358-359: Something's badly off here. That references 2 random pages at the start of the "beasts" section of the bestiary, but just kinda in the middle. Edit: this is the Conditions stuff and I had an old SRD printing.

---------

So yeah, judging from that, what I'd expect to be covered by CC (once the page numbers get correctly correlated) is all the parts about playing the game that aren't actual content (except feats?). None of the classes, none of the monsters or spells, none of the species. But the descriptions of what a monster has and all the interactions parts.

Which is enough to make a system, but woefully insufficient to make a character or homebrew content (unless you want a pure martial). Likely any use of anything like a monster (including monster stat block formats), mentioning classes (such as making a subclass for an SRD class), or mentioning a spell or magic item is considered (by them) Licensed Content requiring OGL acceptance (or a more specific license).

Edit: looks like I was looking at an old srd version., Which is why the page numbers didn't line up. Conditions for that last block makes total sense.

[Oramac]

Pages 254-260:
Sentient magic items (not the list of regular magic items), artifacts, and part of the intro to the monsters chapter. This is odd--maybe my copy has wrong page numbers? I'd expect that this was supposed to be just the intro to the monsters chapter and I'm off by about 2 pages. Proper pages in my copy should be 256-263 I think?

Pages 358-359: Something's badly off here. That references 2 random pages at the start of the "beasts" section of the bestiary, but just kinda in the middle.

Yea your pages are off a bit. The second section is just the monster basics, and the third section is literally JUST Conditions (blinded, paralyzed, etc).

[Blackdrop]

Yup. For reference, the page numbers listed refer to the SRD thus:

56-104: All the basics. Alignment, Inspiration, Backgrounds, Equipment, Armor, Weapons, Ability Scores, Advantage/Disadvantage, etc.

254-260: Basic Monster Stuff. No stat blocks, but all the info IN a stat block. Hit points, AC, size, types, speed, senses, etc.

358-359: Conditions. Blinded, deafened, paralyzed, etc.

It says, and I quote "The core D&D mechanics, which are located at pages 56-104, 254-260, and 358-359 of this System Reference Document 5.1 (but not the examples used on those pages)"

What are they defining as the examples that can not be used?

This is beyond the fact, and I'll say it loud for the people in the back, YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT GAME MECHANICS!

Yea this one is pretty awful too. Definitely not a fan.

I'm also a little concerned how section 3 interacts with the the part of the termination clause that allows them to cancel your access to the License if you challenge their copyright on Their Licensed Content.

[BRC]

Having now been told that 5.1 SRD is the current 5e one, here's the rough breakdown of what is CC. Anything not mentioned is Licensed Content and requires accepting the OGL once published.

Pages 56-104:
Section starting "Beyond 1st Level": Level advancement, multiclassing, Alignment, languages, inspiration, backgrounds, equipment (all of it, weapons, armor, etc, including tables), mounts, vehicles, expenses, Feats (lol grappler), Using Ability Scores (including advantage/disadvantage, proficiency bonus, and skills), time, movement, environment, resting, downtime, combat (including initiative, actions, surprise, creature sizes, attacking, damage, healing, resistance, vulnerability, and the core rules of spellcasting not including any specific spells.

Pages 254-260:
Sentient magic items (not the list of regular magic items), artifacts, and part of the intro to the monsters chapter. This is odd--maybe my copy has wrong page numbers? I'd expect that this was supposed to be just the intro to the monsters chapter and I'm off by about 2 pages. Proper pages in my copy should be 256-263 I think?

Pages 358-359: Something's badly off here. That references 2 random pages at the start of the "beasts" section of the bestiary, but just kinda in the middle.

---------

So yeah, judging from that, what I'd expect to be covered by CC (once the page numbers get correctly correlated) is all the parts about playing the game that aren't actual content (except feats?). None of the classes, none of the monsters or spells, none of the species. But the descriptions of what a monster has and all the interactions parts.

Which is enough to make a system, but woefully insufficient to make a character or homebrew content (unless you want a pure martial). Likely any use of anything like a monster (including monster stat block formats), mentioning classes (such as making a subclass for an SRD class), or mentioning a spell or magic item is considered (by them) Licensed Content requiring OGL acceptance (or a more specific license).

Edit: looks like I was looking at an old srd version., Which is why the page numbers didn't line up. Conditions for that last block makes total sense.

I think the goal of the CC portion is so that somebody can build their own 5e-like system from the ground up and be confident that WOTC won't come after them.

Which, they probably couldn't anyway, but it's a CYOA. That said, because those mechanics are Creative Commons, people don't need to actually sign onto the OGL to use that! The whole creative commons section is a pure win.

[Ashtagon]

Random thought... suppose WotC decides to arbitrarily take down a product from a 3PP on some tenuous but barely plausible ground. That 3PP is faced with either walk from the development and printing costs, or sue. If they sue, does this draft include a clause that allows WotC to withdraw the licence from that 3PP for all products due to the legal action?

[PhoenixPhyre]

It says, and I quote "The core D&D mechanics, which are located at pages 56-104, 254-260, and 358-359 of this System Reference Document 5.1 (but not the examples used on those pages)"

What are they defining as the examples that can not be used?

This is beyond the fact, and I'll say it loud for the people in the back, YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT GAME MECHANICS!

Examples of examples include:
* The text under multiclassing/spells known and prepared about wizards of particular levels.
* Depending on interpretation, possibly the example backgrounds and feats? Unclear.

As to the not being able to copyright mechanics thing...that's true. But the boundaries of that are exceedingly unclear in this context. So having a specific chunk of text placed explicitly and permanently in the CC domain provides a lot of additional surety against lawsuits and thus has value.

----

As to SRDs before 5.1...that is unclear. A restriction-maximalist reading would say that they're Unlicensed Content and thus cannot be used at all, no matter what, full stop except for previously published work under 1.0(a). I'd bet that that interpretation will not be the actual one, however.

[Psyren]

They could drop the clause.

It's literally the first of their two "core goals" so... good luck with that I guess.

This was also my reading of your posts, Psyren. As far as I know, people aren't putting forward the argument that Wizards can't do this (and that argument isn't within the scope of this thread). They're upset because they think it is a bad thing to do, regardless of whether they have that right. Responding to that with 'well, they have the right to do so' doesn't address the concern.

Fine, dropping this subtopic entirely.

My, uh, lament, is that there is not a way to publish 5e content without accepting the new license. That is, the new license is going to force people to adopt it or cut them off from the system. I think this is a bad thing to do.

Leaving the old license as a viable avenue for new content, violates both "core goals."



Here's what I think we might be able to get them to budge on.

- 1b Works Covered - as currently written, it's not clear what would happen to say, homebrew published on a message board (like this one) or in a wiki, and whether it would be allowed or not, or need to be taken down and then reuploaded as a PDF etc. I understand their intent is to not let homebrew be published into a "non-TTRPG" format, but I don't know that something as simple as a forum post should violate that.

- 9d Severability - Without going into too much detail, I think Brookshw's statement that they have multiple ways to approach this and they chose one of the more severe ones than they needed to is accurate.

- The VTT policy - I think a static image of a spell effect, e.g. a drawing of a magic missile that then travels from one token to another,, is something that you could see at a "dining room table" and something that a VTT could get away with doing without being confused for a video game.

[ToranIronfinder]

I think the goal of the CC portion is so that somebody can build their own 5e-like system from the ground up and be confident that WOTC won't come after them.

Which, they probably couldn't anyway, but it's a CYOA. That said, because those mechanics are Creative Commons, people don't need to actually sign onto the OGL to use that! The whole creative commons section is a pure win.

Yeah, the problems come in with similarities. My thoughts for a setting sort of including taking a world inspired you Tolkien/C S Lewis/Stephen Lawhead and a few other writers which in a sense means removing many core elements of DnD tropes, or rather accretions to traditions from DnD developments (elves seem to be sorcerers more than wizards, the problems in Vancian spellcasting, numerous issues with clerics that are vexing, etc).Probably won't publish it, but others in my community might be interested in the project, for family game nights as it is intended to be family friendly, and less political than standard fare these days, likely using Minisix (good intro for kids). Problem one always has is the issue of similarity.

[Oramac]

It says, and I quote "The core D&D mechanics, which are located at pages 56-104, 254-260, and 358-359 of this System Reference Document 5.1 (but not the examples used on those pages)"

What are they defining as the examples that can not be used?

My guess is things like in the Size Categories table on page 254: Examples: Imp, Sprite, Giant Rat, etc. So you can use the table, but not the Examples column. They definitely need to add clarification here though.

This is beyond the fact, and I'll say it loud for the people in the back, YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT GAME MECHANICS!

Yea, I noticed that too. Lmao. So basically they just took all the crap they can't control anyway and said "here's an olive branch. please like us again".

I'm also a little concerned how section 3 interacts with the the part of the termination clause that allows them to cancel your access to the License if you challenge their copyright on Their Licensed Content.

Yea. There's definitely improvements that need to be made. Many of them.

[Atranen]

It's literally the first of their two "core goals" so... good luck with that I guess.

Leaving the old license as a viable avenue for new content, violates both "core goals."

That's the whole point--what they have identified as 'core goals' are in competition with the best way to have a healthy TTRPG community. It's not a question of 'what we can get them to budge on', it's a question of why have they adopted these as core goals in the first place, given that they must do something bad for the community in order to achieve them?

[BRC]

I'm no lawyer, but at this point the main point of objection I see is section 6f. It's not clear what termination of a license means (Pulling all product from shelves?), but given that the OGL says you are not allowed to contest WOTC's decision, that's the main red flag. Even if we assume they only use it in good faith, an entire industry being dependent on the Standards department of a single company isn't great.

[ToranIronfinder]

I'm no lawyer, but at this point the main point of objection I see is section 6f. It's not clear what termination of a license means (Pulling all product from shelves?), but given that the OGL says you are not allowed to contest WOTC's decision, that's the main red flag. Even if we assume they only use it in good faith, an entire industry being dependent on the Standards department of a single company isn't great.

Yep. Like I said, they lost a customer, all to often, very bad results have come from those who appears to begin with altruistic intentions. My only interest is how something I might post involving OpenD6 or something else will be affected by claims of "similarity."

[PhoenixPhyre]

My guess is things like in the Size Categories table on page 254: Examples: Imp, Sprite, Giant Rat, etc. So you can use the table, but not the Examples column. They definitely need to add clarification here though.

Or the table about multiclassing proficiencies, since they're bound to Licensed Content (the names of the classes and their proficiencies).

Yea, I noticed that too. Lmao. So basically they just took all the crap they can't control anyway and said "here's an olive branch. please like us again".

That has value, but yes. It's a "we're going to carve off the chunks we don't believe we can maintain control of if challenged and promise not to sue about them" olive branch. Which is valuable, but not very valuable.

[Snowbluff]

That has value, but yes. It's a "we're going to carve off the chunks we don't believe we can maintain control of if challenged and promise not to sue about them" olive branch. Which is valuable, but not very valuable.

It seems to be taking into consideration of the people who said WotC would suddenly because very litigious over the license changing. Instead of the game mechanics being an up-in-the-air legal problem, its simply done away with. I've heard a lot of people say WotC would utterly bury anyone working without their blessing moving forward, so this is likely to assuage that fear.

[Psyren]

That's the whole point--what they have identified as 'core goals' are in competition with the best way to have a healthy TTRPG community. It's not a question of 'what we can get them to budge on', it's a question of why have they adopted these as core goals in the first place, given that they must do something bad for the community in order to achieve them?

Given that I fundamentally disagree with the bolded premise I don't think there's anywhere for you and I to go on this point.

I'm no lawyer, but at this point the main point of objection I see is section 6f. It's not clear what termination of a license means (Pulling all product from shelves?), but given that the OGL says you are not allowed to contest WOTC's decision, that's the main red flag. Even if we assume they only use it in good faith, an entire industry being dependent on the Standards department of a single company isn't great.

edit-redacted again

[Oramac]

That has value, but yes. It's a "we're going to carve off the chunks we don't believe we can maintain control of if challenged and promise not to sue about them" olive branch. Which is valuable, but not very valuable.

It seems to be taking into consideration of the people who said WotC would suddenly because very litigious over the license changing. Instead of the game mechanics being an up-in-the-air legal problem, its simply done away with. I've heard a lot of people say WotC would utterly bury anyone working without their blessing moving forward, so this is likely to assuage that fear.

All true. It certainly has value, and as a creator myself, I'm glad for it. But in the grand scheme of things, it's small potatoes by comparison.

[ToranIronfinder]

You can contest their decision, just not via jury trial specifically (9g).

A distinction without a difference. If the clause is enforceable, the problem we will dance around here, or whether it is narrowly to the pulling of a license or more broadly to publicalky defamatory statements that might be made in the process, since these things are far too often done publically.

But I would say it is foolish to sign away ones rights in this manner, and highly suspect thing to insert into a licensing agreement.

[Ashtagon]

When we discuss this OGL and how we can offer constructive feedback, we should remember something important:

For the community (fan writers, 3PPs) to pick up on this licence, it has to be better than both the to-be-made ORC licence and the "you can't copyright game rules" no-licence. An improved version of this draft isn't competing with itself, or the 1.1 "leaked draft", but with those first two options. A revised 1.2 draft can be better than the initial 1.2 draft, and still be immeasurably worse than the ORC licence or the "no-licence".

[verbatim]

Yea, I noticed that too. Lmao. So basically they just took all the crap they can't control anyway and said "here's an olive branch. please like us again".

I feel like a smarter company would have loaded up a bunch of stuff they didn't really need/want in the original draft so that they could give the community the impression of having defeated the Big Bad Dragon that is capitalism who hath been bullied into removing all the extra stuff wotc didn't really care all that much about and couldn't enforce anyways.

This seems a little too scatterbrained and all over the place and also the fact that 1.2 is tripling down on something they will mega lose to Paizo in court over (being able to unauthorize use of the OGL 1.0a for the 3.0 and 5.0 SRD's going forwards) makes me think they didn't think that far ahead.

[johnbragg]

It says, and I quote "The core D&D mechanics, which are located at pages 56-104, 254-260, and 358-359 of this System Reference Document 5.1 (but not the examples used on those pages)"

What are they defining as the examples that can not be used?

Quick scroll through: the Acolyte background(60-61), the Grappler feat (76) are fully described, as an example of "Background" and "Feat". Magic Missile, Bless and Cure Wounds are mentioned in the section on how spells and spellcasting work (100-104

I'd want to know if Wizards considers the 5e skills described under the abilities (80-82) to be examples or mechanics.

This is beyond the fact, and I'll say it loud for the people in the back, YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT GAME MECHANICS!

Which is probably why their putting the Cold damage type under CC, and the Cone of Cold spell under the new OGL.
If this is really about protecting the brand / industry from racial and other culture war controversies, it makes sense to put in various degrees of separation.
The stuff that's Creative Commons probably isn't copyrightable (but you never know until the court decision comes down--maybe a new generation of judges decides that 50-200 pages of copy-and-pasted rules text and spell descriptions from old TSR books DOES constitute copyright infringement by the OSR guys), so if the Lamentations of the Flame PRincess guys want to do that, WOTC can't stop them, but they can point and say "Not *OUR* OGL, that's Creative Commons out of our control."

I'm also a little concerned how section 3 interacts with the the part of the termination clause that allows them to cancel your access to the License if you challenge their copyright on Their Licensed Content.

It means that if you decide to sue them for infringement, they're going to war, and revoking whatever shield the OGL provides.

[Atranen]

Given that I fundamentally disagree with the bolded premise I don't think there's anywhere for you and I to go on this point.

I'm curious about why you disagree with the bolded premise. Thus far, I've seen arguments that WoTC has the right to make changes and that it makes business sense for them to make changes. But I haven't seen any reason why WoTC constructing a walled garden is good for the TTRPG community or beneficial to me as a TTRPG player.

[BRC]

You can contest their decision, just not via jury trial specifically (9g).

6f)
We have the sole right to decide what conduct or content is hateful, and you
covenant that you will not contest any such determination via any suit or other legal action

So I guess you can contest it by starting a twitter poll or whatever.

I'm not saying WOTC intends to do this, but theoretically lets say you publish a module called "Rise of the Dark Cult" and it becomes very successful.

WOTC could say "Oh, your module about an evil cult is Harmful because it says sometimes it's okay to discriminate against people for their religion. We are terminating your license and shutting you down", your book is now Unlicensed, which I guess means you need to pull it from the shelves and can't make any money from it, even if you already spent money printing physical copies.

You have no legal recourse to contest that decision.

Also, the clause includes conduct, not just content. So your module might be fine, but WOTC could pull up a 10 year old tweet from one of your playtesters where they respond "Yum Yum Dead Cows" when a vegan tries to tell them about plant-based alternatives to meat and use that as an excuse to spike your license for "Harassment".


Edit: Also, it's not like theres any guidance that WOTC themselves must follow. They could shut down "Rise of the Dark Cult", then turn around and publish "War Against the Goblins! A Module where the very forces that define "Good" in the universe condone the wholesale slaughter of every goblin you can find!"

[Rynjin]

I'm curious about why you disagree with the bolded premise. Thus far, I've seen arguments that WoTC has the right to make changes and that it makes business sense for them to make changes. But I haven't seen any reason why WoTC constructing a walled garden is good for the TTRPG community or beneficial to me as a TTRPG player.

Based on an unrelated discussion from another thread, Psyren appears to believe that what is good for Wizards is good for TTRPGs as a whole, and vice versa. The new OGL is good for Wizards, and thus D&D, and thus good for the community.

This is something there is probably no way to reconcile. He can feel free to correct me, but this is what I THINK his position was on the matter.

[ToranIronfinder]

6f)
We have the sole right to decide what conduct or content is hateful, and you
covenant that you will not contest any such determination via any suit or other legal action

So I guess you can contest it by starting a twitter poll or whatever.

I'm not saying WOTC intends to do this, but theoretically lets say you publish a module called "Rise of the Dark Cult" and it becomes very successful.

WOTC could say "Oh, your module about an evil cult is Harmful because it says sometimes it's okay to discriminate against people for their religion. We are terminating your license and shutting you down", your book is now Unlicensed, which I guess means you need to pull it from the shelves and can't make any money from it, even if you already spent money printing physical copies.

You have no legal recourse to contest that decision.

Also, the clause includes conduct, not just content. So your module might be fine, but WOTC could pull up a 10 year old tweet from one of your playtesters where they respond "Yum Yum Dead Cows" when a vegan tries to tell them about plant-based alternatives to meat and use that as an excuse to spike your license for "Harassment".


Edit: Also, it's not like theres any guidance that WOTC themselves must follow. They could shut down "Rise of the Dark Cult", then turn around and publish "War Against the Goblins! A Module where the very forces that define "Good" in the universe condone the wholesale slaughter of every goblin you can find!"

Well to be fair, this draws them into conflicts corporations ought to stay out of. But the question and it isn't one for the boards, is whether this is a legally enforceable clause. It is good reason to boycott WOTC IMO, as.I have a hard time construing the intent of this in any positive light, but let's not work on he assumption that it will be something they can act upon.

[Blackdrop]

I'm curious about why you disagree with the bolded premise. Thus far, I've seen arguments that WoTC has the right to make changes and that it makes business sense for them to make changes. But I haven't seen any reason why WoTC constructing a walled garden is good for the TTRPG community or beneficial to me as a TTRPG player.

Based on this thread Psyren seems to be operating under the bizarre belief that TTRPG community and WotC are one and the same. Why he thinks that it is the bigger question.

Edit: Damnit Rynjin *fist shake*

[Saintheart]

Well to be fair, this draws them into conflicts corporations ought to stay out of. But the question and it isn't one for the boards, is whether this is a legally enforceable clause. It is good reason to boycott WOTC IMO, as.I have a hard time construing the intent of this in any positive light, but let's not work on he assumption that it will be something they can act upon.

I am a lawyer, but IP and serious contract law is not my specialty. Not providing legal advice here, and if you did use legal advice from a forum post you're in deeper trouble than I thought.

That clause - plus outright 'deactivation' of 1.0a - means it's still a hard no from me. It is still an attempt primarily to eliminate competition from other, less-known, and in some cases better products, an anticompetitive wolf disguised as a sheep wringing its hands (hooves) about social media criticism.

If WOTC decides they don't like your product issued under the OGL 1.2, they can kill it under this clause. No recourse, no definitions of terms, no fair or equal footing to contest it. WOTC defines what the words mean, just like Humpty Dumpty with Alice. "BuT yoU CaN ALWays TAke It TO CouRT!" Sure. Where WOTC has already primarily written the rules of that combat to favour them by the wording of the licence. And you have to not only get around their definition of the terms, but the clause in the contract that says you can't sue them to contest it. Yeah. Sure. Atticus Finch lives.

It's now a decision for D&D players and weak DMs whether they can accept a monopolistic approach to the market disguised as a concern about moral panics. Simple as that.

[Oramac]

6f)
We have the sole right to decide what conduct or content is hateful, and you
covenant that you will not contest any such determination via any suit or other legal action

So I guess you can contest it by starting a twitter poll or whatever.

snip for space

Well said. I agree wholeheartedly. Section 6f honestly needs a complete rewrite. Will it get one? Unlikely. But it needs it.

[BRC]

Well to be fair, this draws them into conflicts corporations ought to stay out of. But the question and it isn't one for the boards, is whether this is a legally enforceable clause. It is good reason to boycott WOTC IMO, as.I have a hard time construing the intent of this in any positive light, but let's not work on he assumption that it will be something they can act upon.

I mean the positive light is that they want to protect the health of the brand by having a method of excluding offensive or hurtful content.

Of course, it they DIDN'T include such a method, the brand would be fine, because they're not responsible for things others publish. In fact they, quite reasonbly, have a clause elsewhere saying that using the OGL is not proof that they support or endorse your content.

But, by including this clause, they've now put in the de-facto assumption that anything published under the OGL is something they approve of.

[Oramac]

no definitions of terms

I'm no lawyer. I admit that. But I have had a hand in state level legislation, and this part specifically screams at me in big red letters.

[Blackdrop]

I am a lawyer, but IP and serious contract law is not my specialty. Not providing legal advice here, and if you did use legal advice from a forum post you're in deeper trouble than I thought.

That clause - plus outright 'deactivation' of 1.0a - means it's still a hard no from me. It is still an attempt primarily to eliminate competition from other, less-known, and in some cases better products, an anticompetitive wolf disguised as a sheep wringing its hands (hooves) about social media criticism.

If WOTC decides they don't like your product issued under the OGL 1.2, they can kill it under this clause. No recourse, no definitions of terms, no fair or equal footing to contest it. WOTC defines what the words mean, just like Humpty Dumpty with Alice. "BuT yoU CaN ALWays TAke It TO CouRT!" Sure. Where WOTC has already primarily written the rules of that combat to favour them by the wording of the licence. Yeah. Sure.

It's now a decision for D&D players and weak DMs whether they can accept a monopolistic approach to the market disguised as a concern about moral panics. Simple as that.

Agree 110%. My only issue with your post is that a wolf disguised as a sheep would not ring their hand or hooves. They be wringing their paws. Their greedy, anticompetitive paws.