Free League Publishing Announces Plans to Make Year Zero Open Gaming License After Dungeons & Dragons OGL Controversy

Free League Publishing is moving forward with plans to develop an Open Gaming License for its Year Zero game system, as well as a separate license to make third-party adventure modules for its upcoming fantasy RPG Dragonbane. In a statement released this morning, Free League noted that plans for both licenses were already in development but were accelerated as a result of Wizards of the Coast's recent proposed changes to its Open Gaming License (OGL) . Free League used Wizards of the Coast's Open Gaming License 1.0 as the basis for the current Year Zero License. Under the reported terms of Wizards' new OGL, all previous versions of the OGL would be de-authorized. 

"It's clear that it is high time for Free League to have an OGL that is fully our own," said Free League CEO Tomas Härenstam, in a statement announcing the change. 

The planned Year Zero Engine OGL will give creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use the accompanying Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document to freely publish roleplaying material, which includes their own games, based on the Year Zero Engine system. Free League currently uses Year Zero as the foundation for many of its games, including Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Forbidden Lands, ALIEN, Vaesen, and Blade Runner RPG.

Seperately, Free League is also working on a separate license to make adventure modules for Dragonbane, the English translation of the classic Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner. Unlike the planned Year Zero license, the Dragonbane license is specifically meant to create RPG material compatible with Dragonbane instead of creating separate games that uses Dragonbane's underlying mechanics. As such, the Dragonbane license will not have a SRD but it will allow creators to freely create and share Dragonbane compatible material without paying a royalty fee. 

Both licenses will be released to the public in the coming week. 

Free League Publishing also noted that, based off of Wizards of the Coast's most recent announcement, they believed that their two product lines published under the current Wizards of the Coast OGL – The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying and Ruins of Symbaroum – will be "mostly unaffected" by changes to the OGL, but that Free League will continue to monitor the situation.