Modification of the Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License

[Husky_Khan]

There was supposedly a leak of Wizards of the Coasts Open Gaming License which allows all sorts of third parties to utilize Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition for their own content. With the upcoming release of One DnD, there were confirmed reports that Wizards would charge a 25% royalty for any DnD related content that made over $750,000 annually.

However these leaked details have revealed that potentially, the new OGL Wizards is releasing will be even more restrictive, exploitative and upon release intends to negate the previous Open Gaming License.

One of the notable changes to the OGl is that:

1. ALL COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS will require their creators to report their work to Wizards of the Coast. Royalties will only be asked of any revenue in excess of 750K. So if you make 800K, you owe 25% royalties on 50K of that. (which was known already) The only exception is money raised on Kickstarter... the royalty then is only 20%.

2. WotC gets the right to use any content that licensees create, whether commercial or non-commercial. Although this is couched in language to protect Wizards’ products from infringing on creators’ copyright, the document states that for any content created under the updated OGL, regardless of whether or not it is owned by the creator, Wizards will have a “nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose.”

3. Creators will be required to use a specific badge in order to publicly and obviously identify their work as covered by the updated OGL, and they will have to give WotC a copy of the publication. The early draft suggests that many of these processes will be handled through the company’s official digital toolset, D&D Beyond.

4. The company “can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason whatsoever, provided We give thirty (30) days’ notice.”

Dungeons & Dragons’ New License Tightens Its Grip on Competition

An exclusive look at Wizards of the Coast's new open gaming license shows efforts to curtail competitors and and tighten control on creators of all sizes.

gizmodo.com

 

[Simonbob]

I'll bet there's all sorts of arguments within the company, with lawyers desperately arguing that they could lose the entire copyright if they're not careful. (I'm not an expert, but I'd guess it'd be much harder than they're saying. Lawyers doing lawyer things.) Added, they want to be able to "Head of contraversy" by putting in anti-LBGWTF stuff. It might be almost nothing. Or, it might kill DnD.


A new CEO, leading to issues because she's used to a different style. Eh, at most, she'll run them into the ground, and we'll play something else.

 

[Zachowon]

Is it Hasbro or WoTC doing it?

 

[Bassoe]

Added, they want to be able to "Head of contraversy" by putting in anti-LBGWTF stuff. It might be almost nothing. Or, it might kill DnD.

At the risk of sounding cliché, /tg/ was telling you all along that it wasn't a strawman...

 

[Pocky Balboa]

Huh, joke I made to my friend back in March of last year about another Williams helping crash DnD to the ground in the future came true.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Is it Hasbro or WoTC doing it?

Well Hasbro is probably ultimately responsible for it. They want to monetize the heck out of Wizards of the Coast and take full advantage of their position as a market leader in TTRPG space. Wizards of the Coast means nothing to them if they aren't constantly growing and making money and yet ironically, despite DnD and Magic The Gathering being big franchises, WOTC only makes up a small portion of the yuge conglomerate that is Hasbro.

Putting Cynthia Williams in charge is meant to make more money and not off of sourcebooks and open gaming licenses. They want movies, and games and to popularize the franchise so they can sell toys and merchandise and shitty streamable fantasy shows that will make Rings of Power look like Lord of the Rings.

 

[prinCZess]

So, I'm thoroughly unqualified to comment since I only barely know D&D and don't know what their having an Open Game License entailed (though it seems relatively easy to put together).
So, in the grand tradition of internet-goers everywhere, I'm going to comment anyways:

And the thing that strikes me is that this seems like a poor business decision and thus I doubt the authenticity? D&D has exploded in popularity the last decade or so it seems like, showing up in the games section of places like Wal-Mart being the one my only-barely-knows-tabletop-games-exist ass noticed and raised an eyebrow at. Part and parcel of that growth seems like it was the ubiquity and overlapping use D&D could have with more niche franchises or homebrew stuff that took-off and found a bigger audience?
Axing that seems very much like killing the golden-egg laying goose. So it seems silly.

On the other side of the coin, businesses making silly, self-destructive decisions in pursuit of short-term profits that breaks their customer base would not exactly be a new thing (arguably D&D has already sorta done this it seems like with a lot of people sticking to older/other systems, right?). So in that respect, after a few more seconds thought, maybe it is more believable as a business decision than I initially thought.

 

[Pocky Balboa]

Axing that seems very much like killing the golden-egg laying goose.

It's not the first time that's happened. Pre-WotC, Lorraine Williams did the same when she took ownership of TSR (and thus DnD) by taking the profits made off DnD and investing it into multiple failed projects, in addition to the lack of playtesting for their releases during her tenure and Williams rumored disdain for DnD customers and gaming in general (a pretty credible one IMO considering Williams-era TSR seemed to do everything you can do to piss off TTRPG customers). And now we have another Williams (Cynthia has no relation to Lorraine, though) in charge of DnD who came in from her previous role as General Manager and Vice President, Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team at Microsoft's Xbox gaming division (the only gaming-related experience she had). Back when the news of her becoming president of WotC came out the DnD fans, both based and woke, all pretty much dreaded heinous monetization schemes like predatory microtransactions being implemented in DnD. Hence my joke to my friend about another Williams ruining DnD when he told me back in March.

 

[ParadiseLost]

TTRPGs will never be mainstream. Its just not viable. Most people don't have a sufficient friend group with sufficient commitment to do it.

Thus why they hired someone from X Box. They probably want to hire someone who can help them expand in the video game area, which is easier to enter than film or television.

Also, I'm surprised they only require royalties for works generating over $800K in revenue. Is that per work or per company?

 

[Culsu]

Well, the only upside I can see of this development is that it'll most certainly drive a wedge between WotC and the whole Critical Role community, because I sincerely doubt Mercer and company are keen to loose 25% of their income to the license holders. I think that's funny because CR pretty much was the mainstream driver of the hobby's wokification.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Be interesting to see if WOTC will carve out special licensing deals with chosen creators like Paizo/Pathfinder or Kobold Press or even Critical Role.

 

[Atarlost]

Be interesting to see if WOTC will carve out special licensing deals with chosen creators like Paizo/Pathfinder or Kobold Press or even Critical Role.

The special deal is OGL 1.0. They can only apply the new license to the new content. OGL 1.1 can't override OGL 1.0 any more than 4e's GSL could. If OGL 1.0 were revocable they'd have done so back then.

 

[S'task]

TTRPGs will never be mainstream. Its just not viable. Most people don't have a sufficient friend group with sufficient commitment to do it.

Thus why they hired someone from X Box. They probably want to hire someone who can help them expand in the video game area, which is easier to enter than film or television.

If they wanted to move into video games they would be behaving totally differently. There's an excellent history of how to monetize DnD for video games that was highly successful and literally built the most famous cRPG company: Bioware. If you look back over the history of DnD the system with the MOST video games made for it was AD&D (AKA Second Edition). This should strike you as utterly ridiculous seeing how AD&D was out of date by 2000 and the video game markets only really exploded AFTER 2000. But that's the case, WotC completely flubbed DnD video games for quite a while. Firstly they pulled the license from Bioware (which is why Bioware had that experimental phase in the late 00s where they went around creating a bunch of experimental new IPs... Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Jade Empire) and never bothered getting a new company to work on proper DnD IP until very recently with Baulder's Gate 3... and even that has been arguably fucked up, with how long it's taken in development and in "open access". I know it will be a high quality game, but the allure of releasing a AAA DnD game overwhelmed the better way to monetize DnD for computers.

What I am referring to is going back to the old "Gold Box" model of DnD video games. That is, have a computer game company build an engine SPECIFICALLY for making DnD games, which is what Bioware did back in the 90s, and then make a series of games converting historical and popular modules and effectively selling those. You don't need fancy cutscenes and voice acting for this model to work, and can, once the engine is built, likely turn out a new campaign for people to buy every six months or so. Make sure it has multiplayer support and a basic chat engine, and you've also got the foundation for a more advanced virtual table top you can spin into competing with those already in exsistence.

Also, I'm surprised they only require royalties for works generating over $800K in revenue. Is that per work or per company?

That's $800k of GROSS profit, not Net. Which means that when you account for all the costs, there's a good chance under this new license that WotC will earn more profit than the companies that are actually doing the writing and publishing of these. It ALSO means that companies will actually want to AVOID earning that much, since as soon as you hit that mark and until you bypass $1.2 million you actually end up making LESS money. (IE, so long as you stay at $799,999, you get to keep all of that, but as soon as you hit $800k, WotC gets a 25% cut, so now instead of $800k you're only making $600k. You will not keep $800k until you manage to make $1.2 million.) That is utterly insane and massively damaging to small companies. Further, this includes things like Kickstarter. Thus, you better hop your KSer is not to popular, as you'll end up losing money if you go past $800k...

 

[Atarlost]

That's $800k of GROSS profit, not Net. Which means that when you account for all the costs, there's a good chance under this new license that WotC will earn more profit than the companies that are actually doing the writing and publishing of these. It ALSO means that companies will actually want to AVOID earning that much, since as soon as you hit that mark and until you bypass $1.2 million you actually end up making LESS money. (IE, so long as you stay at $799,999, you get to keep all of that, but as soon as you hit $800k, WotC gets a 25% cut, so now instead of $800k you're only making $600k. You will not keep $800k until you manage to make $1.2 million.) That is utterly insane and massively damaging to small companies. Further, this includes things like Kickstarter. Thus, you better hop your KSer is not to popular, as you'll end up losing money if you go past $800k...

What I've seen is that it's 25% of gross over 800k so if you earn 800,004$ you pay 1$ nor 200,001$. I also saw a 20% fraction for crowdfunding.

What's going to kill this is that it requires signing over too many rights to WotC. If you make a completely original setting for the One D&D rule set it looks like they can just steal it.

 

[ParadiseLost]

What I am referring to is going back to the old "Gold Box" model of DnD video games. That is, have a computer game company build an engine SPECIFICALLY for making DnD games, which is what Bioware did back in the 90s, and then make a series of games converting historical and popular modules and effectively selling those. You don't need fancy cutscenes and voice acting for this model to work, and can, once the engine is built, likely turn out a new campaign for people to buy every six months or so. Make sure it has multiplayer support and a basic chat engine, and you've also got the foundation for a more advanced virtual table top you can spin into competing with those already in exsistence.

I think that assuming a business model that worked 25 years ago in the infancy of the industry is going to work well today is... pretty strange.

 

[Atarlost]

I think that assuming a business model that worked 25 years ago in the infancy of the industry is going to work well today is... pretty strange.

I think you're both sort of right. S'task is right because AAA gaming is a bubble that has or is in the process of bursting. You're right because Hasbro isn't likely to realize this so they'll act as though they're still profitable in proportion to their development costs.

 

[ParadiseLost]

I think you're both sort of right. S'task is right because AAA gaming is a bubble that has or is in the process of bursting. You're right because Hasbro isn't likely to realize this so they'll act as though they're still profitable in proportion to their development costs.

AAA Gaming is not in a bubble. This is an excuse for executives to lower quality, implement microtransactions, GAAS, price increases to $70, etc.

If you have a good game, it will sell.

The main reason some games are failing is that they are bad, which is usually because greedy corporate executives are stuffing them with microtransactions or slashing their budget to try and increase profits even further.

https://gamerant.com/video-games-2022-worst-bad-disappointing/

Just for fun I looked up a list of the 10 worst games in 2022 to make a point.

Chocobo GP - low effort MarioKart clone by Square.
Crossfire X - XBox exclusive CSGO clone.
Diablo Immortal - trash mobile P2W game that still made bank
Ghostwire Tokyo - I actually really liked this game, but you can tell that they couldn't commit to making it either a true horror experience or a true shooter experience, so it does end up feeling kinda bland.
Gotham Knights - Didn't live up to past Batman games at all. Made too many budgetary, technical compromises.
Overwatch 2 - More like Overwatch 1.5; also the series barely functioned at launch.
Rainbow Six Extraction - Literally a seasonal event in Siege spun off into its own game.
Roller Champions - A made up sports game giving little marketing and trying to hard to copy Rocket League's success.
Saints Row - A complete insult to prior SR titles.

None of this games failed because AAA gaming is in a bubble. Hell, Diablo Immortal didn't even fail. These games failed because they are largely just not market competitive. They don't have enough effort put into them - several are clones of other games, some are unnecessary sequels that utterly fail to live up to prior titles.

If Saints Row had actually been a viable Grand Theft Auto competitor, it would've done great.

 

[S'task]

What I've seen is that it's 25% of gross over 800k so if you earn 800,004$ you pay 1$ nor 200,001$. I also saw a 20% fraction for crowdfunding.

What's going to kill this is that it requires signing over too many rights to WotC. If you make a completely original setting for the One D&D rule set it looks like they can just steal it.

That would make it a bit better, though still on Gross which is bad, since "gross income" isn't actually income.

I think that assuming a business model that worked 25 years ago in the infancy of the industry is going to work well today is... pretty strange.

"Infantry of the Industry" No, the infancy of the Video game industry was in the early to mid 1980s. The Gold Box games straddle that to the early industry period, with the first DnD Gold Box game being published in 1988 and continuing until 1993. Bioware's Infinity Engine games, which followed the same model as the Gold Box games (make engine, public games using that engine), were released from 1998 to 2002. This was also the underlying model for Aurora Engine in (2002 to 2006), though they chose to do two things different there, the first was to release the engine and game as a single package and then sell modules for it as "expansions" while also releasing the toolkit used to make said modules to the public to allow user generated content, which was duplicated with lesser success by the Electron Engine (2006 - 2009).

It should be noted that both the Aurora and Electron engines continue to have active communities using the tools developed for those games to continue to publish user content, and a major update to the Aurora engine was released in 2018. Meanwhile, the Infinity Engine games include some of what are considered the best cRPGs of All Time.

In other words, this model was the model of success for DnD video games for twenty years, and was only abandoned with the shift from 3.5 to 4th edition and the mess that was effectively killing off numerous numbers of DnD projects. From reports it appears that 5th may have been going in this direction too, since apparently as many as five video game projects for 5th have been canceled in anticipation of OneDnD.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I've put a bit of time into researching this in more detail. The exact documents haven't been fully released yet, though Kickstarter has confirmed parts of it and it hardly seems likely that it's hogwash, else WotC would have flat-out said so days ago.

Several big names in the gaming industry have weighed in on this.

Ryan Dancy opines that Hasbro cannot do a take-backsies on a 22-year-old legal document, especially when they've specifically stated in legal forms that they would not do so.

Monte Cook appears quite upset and has noted not only that what Hasbro is trying to do isn't legal, but it's also upsetting the entire industry as now people are treating all Open Gaming Licenses as suspect and it's throttling his business as well.

It's worth noting that there's really not anything to the original OGL anyway. There's long-established legal precedent that a company cannot copyright game mechanics. Fluff yes, names of characters, yes, but not the crunchy bits of the system nor common terms like "Fighter" and "Wizard." So without the OGL, basically the only thing that people would technically need to remove is the WotC logo indicating it's compatible with DnD.

This is also the basis of the legal principle of Promissory Estoppel.

promissory estoppel

www.law.cornell.edu

As people are lamenting, though, all that doesn't matter because whether or not the law is on your side, you can still be bankrupted by lawfare from a company the size of Hasbro no matter how legit your position is.

As further reading, as of last November, Bank of America posted scathing indictments of Hasbro and downgraded their value by a third over mismanagement of the MtG brand, stating that they were destroying long-term value in favor of immediate profits.

About a month ago the CEOs were complaining that DnD is Under Monetized and that they wanted to make playing TTRPGs more like video games with microtransactions and subscription services. This suggests that their actual target isn't the book writers, but Virtual Tabletops that let people play online, dice rolling apps, and similar digital quality-of-life improvements that make the game faster and more fun. It may be that their strategy is to take those out and try to make everybody pay for subscription services and microtransactions for Hasbro's virtual tabletop, their virtual dice roller, their Discord/Zoom app, etc.

 

[Ixian]

I don't think Hasbro has a legal leg to stand on, the OG open gaming license literally stated it couldn't be retroactively changed.