Wizards of the Coast has canceled their plans to announce Dungeons & Dragons OGL 2.0.
OGL 2.0 has had the Dungeons & Dragons community in an uproar, but if you don’t play tabletop RPGs, you may think you know what’s going on but not really have any idea what the deal is. So let’s start with a little explainer.
Introduced in 2000, OGL stands for open game license. This is a public copyright license, meaning, it’s a license granted to Dungeons & Dungeons fans. This allows anyone to make their own maps, campaigns, characters, etc, without being sued for copyright infringement by Wizards of the Coast.
The way the OGL works is similar to some Creative Commons licenses. They are considered derivative works under the law, meaning Wizards of the Coast keeps their ownership of the Dungeons & Dragons IP, but the creator of the OGL licensed content also keeps their own copyright and IP rights for what they made. The OGL also has a share-alike clause. What this means is that whatever derivative content fans create have to use the same OGL license the Dungeons & Dragons game itself uses.
Finally, the language of the OGL itself clarifies that the license excludes Product Identity, AKA any content that can be identified that is already owned by someone else.
In practice, the OGL has allowed other entities, and even other companies, to directly compete with Wizards of the Coast with new campaigns, characters, etc. While it has kept Dungeons & Dragons popular, Wizards has struggled with this dilemma for years. They even attempted to replace it with a new license called the GSL (Game System License) in 2008, for the 4th Edition.
Today however, Wizards of the Coast is going a step further. The document for OGL 2.0 includes this language:
“the Open Game License was always intended to allow the community to help grow D&D and expand it creatively. It wasn’t intended to subsidize major competitors, especially now that PDF is by far the most common form of distribution.”
“OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.”
Without going into all the details, the new OGL is deliberately written to render the original OGL null and void, closing the door for other companies to make Dungeons & Dragons related content. Wizards of the Coast also includes a new Fan Content Policy, that basically allows fans to make free content.
Wizards of the Coast includes many other provisions and requirements. For example, regardless of who is making the content, they have to now register it with Wizards of the Coast. Wizards also says they may reach other to companies who have made Dungeons & Dragons related content about making their own agreements.
At this very moment, however, Wizards has to face down the harsh reaction the new license is receiving from fans. They may end up changing provisions, or preemptively making new deals with companies like Paizo, the creators of Pathfinder, the most successful OGL licensed Dungeons & Dragons content made and sold outside of Wizards of the Coast.
For now, it remains to be seen if Wizards of the Coast will even go through with announcing OGL 2.0.
