Re: The 1.1 Open Gaming License

Hey folks,

We know you have had some questions regarding what we know about the new Open Gaming License and how it could affect things around here. Unfortunately, I couldn't say much about it because 1) we wanted to protect our sources and 2) without an official source backing up what we knew, we knew it'd be easy for Wizards of the Coasts to paint us as "paranoid" or "liars."

Earlier today, Gizmodo received a copy of the leaked 1.1 open gaming license and broke it all down. You can read the article above. It's pretty long, But then again, so is the new Open Gaming License.

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 yesterday), 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.

Had I built my business on such elements, that'd be one thing. But I intentionally did not build my platform using DMsGuild, etc. because, frankly, I'm a better marketer than that, and I didn't feel like giving 50% of my hard work to Wizards of the Coast (or any company!), so they could own it outright, as they would have with DMsGuild. Once something is on DMG, you can't share it anywhere else. Not even for free!

What does this mean for DMDave?

Fortunately, we've been making quiet preparations for this for the last month. 

Dungeons & Lairs will (carefully) continue until 2025.

You may have noticed that there are a whole lot of new Dungeons & Lairs to which you may not have access. These were all published before the new year to ensure that they were under the protection of OGL 1.0a. So we have over 100 new adventures to polish and release with art, etc., until 2024 and a little beyond.

Of course, Wizards could still come after us if they wanted and say it doesn't count. But for now, we plan to continue to publish 5e content as we edit the existing documents.

We can't create new Kickstarters or any other content.

However, we will no longer be able to create any content beyond that, not unless they backpedal significantly. 

We don't plan to support Wizards in any way beyond protecting our Patrons and contractors.

This Patreon was built on Fifth Edition content and we have a lot of contractors employed. As such, we will continue to produce Fifth Edition content.

Even so, I'm very angry about this. 

When they announced they were doing OneDND last year, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assured my colleagues that they wouldn't destroy the 1.0a. That they couldn't if they tried. They tried to do it with 4th edition, and it was a bloody disaster. 

But I was wrong. 

And in fact, it's even worse than what we feared.

I'm not sure I could support a company so willing to harm its good faith with the third-party community that spent the last decade helping them build their brand.

But isn't this Wizards of the Coast IP? 

Some folks argue that this is Wizards' thing, so they should be able to do what they want. 

And maybe that's true. 

But that's not the company we spent five years building. We chose D&D because 

1) we love D&D and I, personally, have been playing for 31+ years, and 

2) the terms of the original OGL said very clearly that the license was easygoing

In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content.

And since section 9 said that there was no way they could replace it even if they wanted to (and there are blog posts that used to be on their site that say the exact same thing), it made sense.

But understand that the Open Gaming License was directly responsible for bringing back Dungeons & Dragons back from the dead in the early 2000s. TSR basically bankrupted itself, trying to keep up with content demands in the '90s. The OGL helped lighten the load and made 3.0/3.5 one of the most successful editions ever. 

Then they made 4th edition and tried eliminating the OGL with the GSL. Big mistake. Not only did the 4e system kinda suck, but it had zero support from the third-party community. Five years later, they ended it and started 5th edition.

Well, here we are again. But this time, they "learned their lesson." 

Unfortunately, it was the wrong lesson. 

This time they don't want anybody to play with their toys.

This is a massive, massive mistake since people like me and others with huge followings (think of literally anyone... Mercer, Colville, DNDShorts, Griffon's Saddlebag, Tom Cartos, etc.) are influencers for the brand. We drive people to purchase their products and reinforce the image.

Now all of that is going to go away.

Protecting the DMDave brand legally.

We've been speaking with an attorney about all of this since PaxUnplugged. Noah Downs and his firm specialize in this area of law and are actually creators, too. Plus, Noah has like... 12 degrees or something (joke, but still). It's nuts. And the guy is a huge nerd. Perhaps more than me. If that's possible.

So far, here's what he's offered:

• We can't fight this in court, even though we're confident we'd win. It would be extremely expensive and take two years just to get a verdict. And then we can expect another 4+ years of appeals just to have Wizards settle in the end. During that time, the courts could file an injunction preventing me from publishing anything. 
• We have a contractual agreement in place to protect us in case one of our third-party contractors is under Wizards' new license. I hate doing this since I love my contractors and trust them, but now I have to basically say, "If you sign anything with Wizards, we can't hire you because they could come after us."
• We have a new OGL for our own system. If you didn't know already, we're working on a new system. In fact... it's done. I've personally spent a lot of late nights putting it together and already have a 100-page document put together. We'll share more about this in a follow-up post. This new system will fall under our own Creator Original Open License (COOL), which is a true open license and not this bullshit that Wizards is trying to shill on us. We plan to fully back every bit of content that comes out of it, too.

I understand if you want to continue playing Fifth Edition.

Let me say we don't want to stop making Fifth Edition content. We planned on doing this, well, forever. It's a fun system, and it's been a helluva ride creating stuff for it. 

But this new agreement doesn't work with the business model we've spent the last 5 years creating. 

We know that some of you will continue to play Fifth Edition, and that's fine. 

And that's the point! 

The game is about choices and freedom. 

It's about escaping from your normal life each week for a few hours at a time. 

This game is bigger than Wizards of the Coast, DMDave, or any of us. 

Monopolizing the system, which originally prided itself on being "open" goes against that. 

Wizards of the Coast doesn't care about the game. They only care about money, control, and power, and that much is obvious in their agreement and in their own statements.

Feel free to ask questions.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, we can answer more questions regarding OGL 1.1 and how it affects the community. Keep in mind that WotC hasn't put out an "official" statement yet, and we fully expect them to backpedal (in fact, we had knowledge that the real agreement should have dropped yesterday), so they could change a lot of this stuff. 

But in the meantime, we'll work with what we have and what Gizmodo (and many others) shared. Already, Kickstarter has corroborated that part of the stuff is true, and other major news outlets are already picking up the story. 

Thank you all!

Anyways, thanks to all of you who've been supportive so far. Hopefully, 2023 will give us some new opportunities, and we'll forge a path to freedom of content this year and beyond.

- Dave