Dungeons & Dragons Community Holds Breath as Wizards of the Coast Prepares New OGL

By Christian Hoffer

A leaked copy of a new and more restrictive Open Gaming License has put a large portion of the thriving ecosystem surrounding Dungeons & Dragons into a nervous standstill. Yesterday, io9 published excerpts from a reported draft version of the OGL 1.1, a public copyright license that can be used by developers to make third-party material for Dungeons & Dragons. The reported new version claims to "deauthorize" previous versions of the OGL, which would require publishers to opt-in to a more restrictive license in which publishers and creators have to report their OGL work, pay royalties on revenue over $750,000 (regardless as to a project's profitability), and grants Wizards of the Coast a "nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license" to use content created under the OGL for any purpose. 

The OGL is one of the reasons for Dungeons & Dragons' decades-long dominance of the tabletop roleplaying game market. First published in 2000, the OGL encouraged third-party creators and publishers to produce their own work using D&D's game mechanics as a framework. OGL-produced work provided Dungeons & Dragons with two immense benefits – all of this third-party material was in essence free advertisement for their game and it also gave D&D a larger footprint within TTRPGs without expending additional resources. Instead of learning a new game to play a science-fiction themed story, players could instead use a reskinned D&D that contained laser guns and aliens. The OGL encouraged designers to use D&D as the foundation for their games instead of creating bespoke game systems, which not only created competition within the D&D ecosystem which in turn raised the quality of D&D design, something that ultimately benefitted Wizards of the Coast as well.  It also limited the number of viable competitors to D&D by keeping people using the system even when they weren't playing D&D and kept the game in a dominant market position, even when the brand struggled in the early 2010s. 

One key to the Open Game License is that Wizards of the Coast has previously stated that, while they had the right to change the License (by publishing a new one), creators could still use older versions of the OGL, which has given creators confidence to publish material using the license. In a 2004 FAQ originally posted on Wizards of the Coast's website, Wizards states that "even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway." However, according to io9, the new version of the OGL states that previous versions of the license would become an "unauthorized" document, meaning that publishers would only have the option of using the new OGL. Lawyers have pointed out that the original OGL is not an "irrevocable" document, despite whatever its creators or Wizards of the Coast had intended, a point that will almost certainly play out in court if the new OGL tries to deauthorize past versions.

Rumors surrounding the OGL have swirled for weeks, putting many creators on edge. And while Wizards of the Coast previously sought to reassure creators who use the OGL to publish their own D&D material for profit that changes to the OGL would be minimal and would only impact a handful of creators, the new leak has caused many publishers to pause their upcoming projects as they wait to read the new OGL and make a final determination about whether to support Dungeons & Dragons. 

ComicBook.com has spoken with over 20 small to mid-sized creators who have said that in-progress projects set to be published under the OGL have been placed on hold due to yesterday's leak. Some projects were set to launch on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding projects but were placed on hold while waiting to see whether they could be published under the current OGL 1.0a. Others were looking at alternative game systems to use, and more than a handful of creators worried about whether they'd be able to recoup their development costs if they chose not to opt into the new (and still unreleased) OGL.

"Web DM's next book is in early development, and we had intended to write it using the OGL," said Emma Lambert, a longtime creator of D&D material, whose last Kickstarter raised over $340,000 in 2021. "If the current information on 1.1 is accurate, we will be changing course; even though we would be unlikely to pay royalties at present, reporting our revenue, signing away permission to use our work (even theoretically), and chancing that [Wizards of the Coast] may decide to adjust their royalty threshold at any time to affect us are risks far too great for our business to bear. We are adjusting our next book to exclude any content that would require us to be subject to any OGL."

"I have a Kickstarter that's very nearly ready to launch, but my finger's hovering over the button because I don't want to publish it under OGL 1.1," said E.R.F. Jordan, a well-known, Ennie Award-nominated designer told ComicBook.com. "I'm worried the new license will drop partway through the Kickstarter and include some ridiculous terms that I can't agree to, and I'll have to abandon the project and all the art and writing I've sunk into it." Jordan told ComicBook.com that she's put $1,200 into the project for commissioned artwork already on top of the hundreds of hours of unpaid work she's put in.

Other creators stated that they didn't see many other options but to use the new OGL, even if it came with more unfavorable terms. Alastor Guzman, who wrote an adventure for the Wizards of the Coast book Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, stated that their publisher Axo Stories' next D&D project was put on hold after the OGL leak, although Guzman said that they will probably opt into the new OGL as they have a project that raised over $45,000 that is deep in the editing phase. Guzman noted that Axo Stories was the livelihood of five people who relied on the income from D&D projects. "While we do indie projects, those are not what pays the bills," Guzman said. "Some smaller creators well under the $750,000 threshold that are actively living with this are going to have to adapt to [the new] OGL unless it is extremely awful. 

Even projects that weren't "D&D adjacent" have been impacted. Dale Critchey of Wyrmworks Publishing told ComicBook.com that he was considering changing the rewards for a planned Kickstarter involving miniatures of disabled characters. "We're still planning a February Kickstarter with disabled minis," Critchey said. "It was going to include a PDF that could be ordered separately with the 5e stat blocks. If necessary, we will release that free under fan content, which will definitely be a big financial loss, but everything is already paid, so we don't have a choice." Critchey also said that he was also considering re-working a follow-up adventure using those characters to avoid using the OGL, which meant creating a new syntax guide, rewriting game mechanics to avoid Wizards of the Coast terminology and then releasing stat blocks for NPCs and monsters under a separate fan content document.  

Some creators who have been part of the D&D ecosystem for years have said that they are considering stepping away from making Dungeons & Dragons projects entirely. Designer Steve Fidler said that he's paused work on two upcoming projects. "I am putting these projects on hold indefinitely as I am re-evaluating my relationship with the Dungeons & Dragons product," Fidler said. "The leaked terms of the OGL have obliterated my trust in Hasbro and the Open Game License as a stable and reliable publishing license. I am looking into alternative licenses under which to release these projects and speaking to other designers and publishers about a group effort to create a competitor product to D&D with its own open license."

Other publishers have stated they were moving away from 5E in favor of creating their own system. Houndsong Games stated on Twitter that they were moving away from 5E in favor of a new self-created system called Relict, although founder C.D. Corrigan said to ComicBook.com that there would be sunk costs because of the move. "We're pivoting over to our own system and trying to salvage as much as possible," Corrigan said. 

The rumored new OGL even impacts products not made for Dungeons & Dragons. Both Pathfinder and many OSR (Old School Reniassance) games were published under versions of the OGL and creators have expressed concerns that they may also find themselves impacted. Humza Kazmi of Hydra Collective noted that their OSR project has been put on hold despite being on the last stages of layout. "We're not sure if the retroclone we've been planning to use, Old School Essentials, will continue to be a valid publishing option under WotC's proposed changes to the OGL," Kazmi said, noting that the project has been years in the making. 

Keep in mind that all of this uncertainty comes despite Wizards of the Coast not actually releasing its new OGL. While the version read by io9 was due for release on January 4th, that deadline has passed. However, even the rumor of radical change and the possibility that Wizards will try to revoke previous versions of the OGL has created an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty for many who make their living making Dungeons & Dragons adventures and material. ComicBook.com has reached out to Wizards of the Coast about the most recent OGL leaks, but have not yet received a response.

It's unclear whether Wizards can even "deauthorize" previous versions of the OGL – some creators are exploring the possibility of a class action lawsuit while Ryan Dancey, one of the architects of the original Open Game License, recently told ENworld that they intended for the license to never be revoked. If a new OGL does attempt to restrict the D&D ecosystem, it will likely be years before the legal issues are definitively resolved. 

While the Dungeons & Dragons brand has never been bigger thanks to mainstream exposure on shows like Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory, the ecosystem that surrounds the game, one that not only makes the game better but also allows hundreds of creators and designers to make a living doing the thing they love, is seemingly under threat. That ecosystem has always existed under an air of goodwill – one that provided creators with the freedom to publish and own their own work despite using a license from another party. With the leak of the new OGL (which had already been shared by many creators under NDA), that goodwill has been significantly eroded and puts a sub-industry that's over 20 years old at risk. 

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