In advance of the Random Party Generator livestream tonight (7pm Central), I assigned myself a bit of homework: read and react to the WotC statement on D&D Beyond so that I can ensure I can speak, if not intelligently, at least without ignorance. So buckle up. Here we go.

Preamble

I’m not (yet! Mwa ha ha, etc.) a 100K+ follower influencer on this stuff. But the blow-up over WotC’s apparent plans run smack into MY plans for the next few years.

In 2022, I launched Old-School Solo Adventures with encouragement behind the scenes from Necrotic Gnome.

As always, I wrote and said, “hey, I’m doing to do some support for your system, this is what it is, hope you don’t mind.” No, I don’t have to do that, which is what this OGL thing is all about…but it’s the polite thing to do. Gavin was encouraging, and the project went on to break almost every record for me. Most backers, most followers, most new customers, etc. I don’t know if I quite hit maximum revenue, but it was certainly a top earner for me in 2022. Largest successful project of my publishing career, actually.

Old-School Solos seemed to have been well received, too.

In any case, I have been planning to try again. The cards I made with the Old-School Solos were popular, and I wanted to do more with them. The TFT versions of such things were done in an escalating campaign with stretch goals, but I don’t need to do that this time. Right off the bat, it would be 172 PC/NPCs of various class, level, and implied background. You could game for many months and never meet the same random character, and all of them have a bit of interesting stuff to hang on.

I’d also scheduled out at least nine other projects over this year and the next just in the space covered by the OGL 1.0a.

Well. That got ugly.

The leaked version of what was called OGL 1.1 has been met with extreme pushback. A minimum of 66,000 signed the open letter demanding OGL 1.0a be retained. I signed it too.

So, I’m not going to rehash the LEGAL arguments here.

I’m less interested in those as to why I was so happy to be able to do stuff under OGL1.0a in the first place: It was more or less a promise that as long as you take some precautions, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast, formerly TSR (They Sue Regularly!) would not drop the billion-dollar-brand legal hammer on you even if technically they could. Stick to the SRD or your own material and they wouldn’t bother you. For 22 years folks sailed into that safe harbor. Even games that weren’t remotely D&D used the license, because as flawed as it may be, it was the standard tool to indicate “this stuff is mine; this belongs to someone else but I can use it because of this agreement, and YOU can use anything not precluded by the product identity section for each of the bits, so have at it.”

The deep sigh of relief one could breathe meant that is “all” one had to worry about was having an idea, committing it to paper, raising money, getting art, printing, shipping, delivery, customer service…oh, right. Lots of stuff that gets folks into quite enough trouble already, mostly at little to no profit. So not having to worry about being sued and adding insult to insolvency? Most excellent.

That brings me to the public statement from WotC today, which was a reaction to the pushback. I’ve seen some fine, fine prognostication of what this was going to contain, but I’m going to just go through and give my own narcissistic perspective here. “What does it mean to ME?”

I’m going to do my best to not get too “woe is me, evil corporations, Do You Hear the People Sing?!” here. That’s not my style. At least going forward, WotC can (try) and do what they like with whatever they conclusively own. Hasbro is a toy company, and then can always take their toys and go home.

What I hope they both do not and cannot do is say “and I’m erasing all the fun that was had beforehand.” So…let’s see:

Statement and Reaction

I’ll put the WotC press release, copy and pasted from D&D Beyond in red/quotes.

When we initially conceived of revising the OGL, it was with three major goals in mind. First, we wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products.

I very, very much doubt this was the first thing on the mind of those who wanted a new OGL. The comment from WotC was that they thought the D&D brand was “under-monetized.” So the reason they did it was money. The existence of potentially hateful and discriminatory products by third-party folks done through the existing Open license? Doesn’t touch them at all unless they let it.

I do believe that between being dragged into the fracas over TSR trademark infringement and an emphasis on inclusivity/sensitivity suggest this isn’t pure boilerplate – it’s a concern and likely always on their list of care-abouts. Just not “first,” but I could be wrong there.

Second, we wanted to address those attempting to use D&D in web3, blockchain games, and NFTs by making clear that OGL content is limited to tabletop roleplaying content like campaigns, modules, and supplements.

This is pretty legit, I think.

And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose.

This was not the point of the OGL when it was created, and so the above is a projective statement rather than a historical one. Go ahead and innovate, just don’t make money. The most major of major RPG corps saying that the smaller fry are “major” corporations are not to make money is pretty rich, if you pardon the pun.

And let’s look for a moment: Paizo is likely #2. They made $12M in top-line revenue and employ roughly 120 people (Google says 125, but 120 makes the math easy). That’s almost precisely the $100K per employee rule of thumb for viability, but remember: that’s loaded with benefits and other overhead. And profits. This is not a fat-cat corporation. This is lean operation. WotC is listed as having about $1.3 billion in revenue in 2021, on 1,500 employees. That’s $866K per employee.

WotC is basically printing money in terms of revenue. But what about net income? Again, these guys are doing great, supposedly bring in on the order of $550M in operating profit in 2021, which more or less out-earned all the rest of Hasbro by a factor of three.

And they felt the D&D brand was “under-monetized.”

Now, “monetization” didn’t HAVE to be a bad thing! Mostly the folks who buy stuff are probably those running games. And those are outnumbered by those playing games by 3–6 to 1. This could have been “we will release such a trove of pure awesome, from big-name movies, to a AAA video game allowing you to tromp all over our IP in a top-flight open world experience, maybe to include VR, to more merchandize, miniatures lines, VTT-ready maps, tokens, soundtracks, character art, a suite of player tools, background generators, etc.” We’re going to do this until you say “shut up and take my money.”

But still, it appears to me likely that the operating profits of WotC (which to be fair is probably mostly Magic the Gathering) dwarf the combined revenue of all other players by 10× or more.

So: “large corporations?” Please.

Driving these goals were two simple principles: (1) Our job is to be good stewards of the game, and (2) the OGL exists for the benefit of the fans.

I can’t disagree with this.

Nothing about those principles has wavered for a second.

Except for all that wavering over the last week or more. This one is just PR speak and their actions do not match their language.

That was why our early drafts of the new OGL included the provisions they did. That draft language was provided to content creators and publishers so their feedback could be considered before anything was finalized. In addition to language allowing us to address discriminatory and hateful conduct and clarifying what types of products the OGL covers, our drafts included royalty language designed to apply to large corporations attempting to use OGL content. It was never our intent to impact the vast majority of the community.

At least one of these “drafts” is said to have gone to prospective contractual partners to be signed, based on where they came from and the Nord Games report that at least one anonymous company had signed. Most others told WotC to, in the immortal words of Nick Fury “keep on steppin’.”

The only way one could construe what we’ve seen as “draft” is that all contracts are in draft form until executed. If I was presenting a contract to a potential partner that said “hey, you give me your stuff, and I pay you NET90 terms,” that is, I don’t pay you for a full quarter after I get my stuff, they might counter with “no, you pay me 100% FIRST and then I ship you your stuff after your check clears.” In the end, we agree on 80% prior to ship approval, 20% after factory acceptance, NET30 terms for both events. THAT gets signed and is no longer a draft.

So this is disingenuous and misleading, and I’m not having any of it.

However, it’s clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1. It has become clear that it is no longer possible to fully achieve all three goals while still staying true to our principles. So, here is what we are doing.

Snark temporarily enabled. Yes, ha ha, you rolled a 1. Crit fail, etc. This feels patronizing as heck to me, but I’m told that there’s a movement afoot in the legal area to deliver both contracts and statements such as this in more natural language. Well, keep trying.

The next OGL will contain the provisions that allow us to protect and cultivate the inclusive environment we are trying to build and specify that it covers only content for TTRPGs.

But this still seems to preserve some sort of veto power over what third-party folks can do. That’s not crazy talk: I vet all of my Powered by GURPS and The Fantasy Trip concepts with Steve Jackson Games either before or (since I do tend to get excited and just start doing stuff) shortly after development begins. We have a fantastic relationship, so it’s never been a problem

But do you know what that license is not? Open. Not at all. I feel privileged and proud to be trusted as a licensee of both the Dungeon Fantasy RPG as well as The Fantasy Trip. But it’s not an OPEN license.

And if WotC wants to retain what is effectively veto power over what gets created, this ain’t open either.

 That means that other expressions, such as educational and charitable campaigns, livestreams, cosplay, VTT-uses, etc., will remain unaffected by any OGL update.

This is excellent, I want to see it spelled out in precise language using both of the 2023 magic words “perpetual” and “irrevocable,” not to mention “royalty free” and perhaps even “unencumbered” or some such. Paws off.

 Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected.

…and there it is. Content already released. So if you’re one of the lucky few with evergreen titles that don’t require constant outflow of support materials … booyah. If your long-tail curve looks more like Half-Dome in Yosemite than Kilimajaro, then “no new content” is just “you’re dead right this instant.”

For the established players, you’re just dead later.

For me, it probably means that I can’t really sustain my business on “just” my SJGames licenses. There just aren’t enough people and buying power to be the vendor of choice four to six times a year, plus smaller periodic releases.

So unless you retain the ability to create NEW content using works under OGL 1.0a, you’re still just as out of business unless you’re not in it for the money.

I made this my 100% day job after I was laid off from Tech R&D in mid to late 2020. Was that my choice? Yep. Still is, every day. I can always put my resume back in the pile.

But I’d rather not. I dig trying to make Gaming Ballistic one of those major corporations WotC deigns to notice. I dream of the moment I can hire my first employee or three and start doing more and more creative work. Maybe even talk to an actual person, a co-worker even, during the workday. I can dream, right?

What it will not contain is any royalty structure. It also will not include the license back provision that some people were afraid was a means for us to steal work.

Good.

That thought never crossed our minds.

Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, and this assertion feels good but is not binding in any way.

Under any new OGL, you will own the content you create. We won’t. Any language we put down will be crystal clear and unequivocal on that point. The license back language was intended to protect us and our partners from creators who incorrectly allege that we steal their work simply because of coincidental similarities.

This language was fundamentally the same as that for the DM’s Guild, which is another agreement I ran from and will not touch. It absolutely can be read as meaning “if we see a cool thing, thanks, yoinked.”

If intent mattered, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? The very words on the WotC website that stayed up for, what, two decades or so? Said that creators could just keep using OGL1.0a if they didn’t like a revision.

Yet here we are. Sniff test? Failed.

As we continue to invest in the game that we love and move forward with partnerships in film, television, and digital games, that risk is simply too great to ignore.

So, I know this happens in movie production all the time, which is why you get things like Valmont and Dangerous Liaisons seeming awfully familiar and showing up at the same time. So this can’t be ignored, but I have to figure that there are standard and better ways of dealing with it. In industry they call them BKM, “Best Known Methods.” I suppose “crush all before you and hear the lamentations of the creatives” might be the BKM, but I have to think there must be a close runner up?

 The new OGL will contain provisions to address that risk, but we will do it without a license back and without suggesting we have rights to the content you create. Your ideas and imagination are what makes this game special, and that belongs to you.

The older terms of the GSL and the current terms of the DM’s guild suggest otherwise.

A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming.

Well, I hope that it comes late enough that I can get my next project launched.

Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we.

I think pushing this back was certainly an excellent outcome of the public pressure campaign, and it has started to do what it was set out to do.

No one has “won,” because it’s not over yet.

It won’t be over until and unless WotC says “you can still publish in the game lines that existed before the new license,” to include OSR stuff, third-edition era games like Pathfinder and the built-from-scratch Pathfinder 2^nd Edition (whose thunderous tomes landed on my table yesterday), to some really excellent work in the 5E space. Not to mention (as he mentions it) my own Dragon Heresy, a 5E game that can only be described as a fantasy heartbreaker even if, of course, I think it’s quite good. I still have 1,000 copies in a warehouse in Tennessee. Any takers? They’re 33% off?

Or it will be over when it’s adjudicated to be over in a court of law. That’s the option that Ryan Dancey described for compelling reasons as “playing with nuclear fire.”

Our plan was always to solicit the input of our community before any update to the OGL; the drafts you’ve seen were attempting to do just that.

Not buying this at all. The contracts were there to be signed and leaked in an unsigned state for most, and this indicates to me at least that “draft” just means “not executed,” not “we didn’t want this.”

Am I assigning intention without just cause? I don’t think so. I think what’s been seen is pretty suggestive that whomever they invited to the “Voice of the Customer” meetings about this did not include someone representing the D&D player and creator base. They were optimizing to other criteria – and note I don’t blame them for optimizing for revenue and profit. That’s what corporations do, and it’s not always a bad thing if you’re delighting the customer while you do so.

Oh, look…there’s that phrase that I learned in mini-B-school with the Big Consulting Firm and during my time in a Fortune 500 company… wait for it …

 We want to always delight fans and create experiences together that everyone loves.

…there it is!

The fans create those experiences though, and this market is a sandbox, not a railroad. As a creator and a publisher, my job is to enable others to have fun. Make it easy. Make it smooth. Make it convenient, and compelling enough to (a) pay me and (b) come back asking for more.

This is a campaign, not a convention game, and they forgot.

 We realize we did not do that this time and we are sorry for that. Our goal was to get exactly the type of feedback on which provisions worked and which did not–which we ultimately got from you. Any change this major could only have been done well if we were willing to take that feedback, no matter how it was provided–so we are.

I think this is probably best face on it that can be made, but it still feels like the classic “lipstick on a pig” comment. The delay we’ve seen in the OGL1.1/OGL2.0 actual release was to see what the feedback was, and it was:

• Enough folks leaving D&D Beyond to make the server management take real notice
• Paizo, Frog God, Troll Lord, and other Big Dogs created the Open RPG Creative License, gleefully abbreviated ORC, because of course. Matt Finch is creating an open license for OSR games as well. These are to be handed off to neutral third parties (they named the Linux Foundation as an example).
• Folks are stripping the OGL out of products that don’t really require it
• Lawyers are loudly and frequently questioning whether there’s enough “consideration” in the license to be worthwhile; in fact, maybe much like card games you can’t do anything of the sort?
• Importantly, there’s a substantial body of evidence by credible players who are basically pulling an Aslan: “Do not quote the deep magic to me, witch: I was there when it was written.” Enough such that some normally conservative lawyerly types are wondering out loud if recognizing that OGL1.0a was always intended to be irrevocable would be a simple case to press before a judge, rather than a protracted conflict.

So they definitely got feedback. And the nature of that feedback is likely going to change the third-party landscape quite a bit, and quickly I suspect.

Thank you for caring enough to let us know what works and what doesn’t,

Yes, folks care when you are seen to threaten their livelihood. I promised limited snark, but come on.

 what you need and what scares you. Without knowing that, we can’t do our part to make the new OGL match our principles.

You know what works, I’m told? Asking. Sometimes you have to ignore the answer (I do this frequently when preparing meals for my kids, after all), and sometimes you had better not (that would be interactions with my wife, for example). But try asking.

Finally, we’d appreciate the chance to make this right. We love D&D’s devoted players and the creators who take them on so many incredible adventures. We won’t let you down.

Fool me once, etc. I’m sure that they want time, and that they will come forward with something that tries to accomplish whatever goals they have, both direct monetization and IP corral. That’s cool … for them.

…and Gaming Ballistic?

I can’t do what I need to do for my family and dozens of loyal customers (well, slightly more) with any sort of future risk. So, for Gaming Ballistic:

• I can and will still publish for Powered by GURPS and TFT. I’ve got project in work right now with David Pulver. I’ve got fifteen projects in the next two years planned, including some doozies. That’s not even including what independent authors might bring me. All of my GURPSy product in 2021 came from not-me.
• I’m going to hustle like heck to get my next OSE project into “publication” before the hammer drops. Regardless, I’ve looked at it and it will not be released under any version of the OGL. It’s more or less devoid of anything but mechanics and my own IP. I’m also going to release the same product under Kevin Crawford’s World’s Without Number system unless he objects (I expect him to say “I don’t care, have at it” and he’s said as much generically on Reddit). That’s two different non-OGL vectors.
• I’m going to keep a weather eye on the ORC License as well as Matt Finch’s OGL license. When I do my hoped-for second OSR project this year, it’ll use one of those if needed.
• I’m likely to only use a license when I have to until/unless the dust settles on the SRDs. Just prudent to avoid pulling myself into something that is effectively the same “what can I do now?” place as now.
• Dragon Heresy, my 5e game, was slated to get a whole slew of stuff over the next few years. That needs to wait until things are more clear too…but I have time to wait on those.

In closing: This blog post is roughly one third the rumored length of the OGL 1.1. Let that sink in while we’re at it.