Sword of Dungeons and Dragons by artist Chris RahnImage: Wizards of the Coast | Chris Rahn
Wizards of the Coast, publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, announced today that they will no longer be pursuing deauthorization of the Open Gaming License 1.0a, abandoning plans previously stated in the drafted OGL 1.2. This statement comes after relentless fan backlash against the decision to deauthorize that was revealed after io9 reported on a leaked OGL 1.1. After three weeks of near constant pressure, it appears as if Wizards of the Coast is fully paying attention to the fanbase.
The deauthorization of the OGL 1.0a was a huge sticking point for fans and third party publishers who made a living using the license that was granted nearly two decades ago. Opinions varied on whether or not Wizards of the Coast could even legally deauthorize, with many people, including Ryan Dancey, vocally arguing that it was never intended to be deauthorized and the very act of doing so was not built into the legal wording of the license.
Brink said in the statement that “these live survey results are clear. You want OGL 1.0a. You want irrevocability. You like Creative Commons.” This sentiment was expressed so overwhelmingly in the playtest OGL 1.2 that Wizards of the Coast had to pay attention. Originally they were going to keep the playtest open for two weeks, however Brink writes, “the feedback is in such high volume and its direction is so plain that we’re acting now.”
The concessions D&D makes in this announcement are huge: they will not attempt to deauthorize the OGL 1.0a, they are putting the entirety of the Systems Reference Document for D&D 5.1 into the Creative Commons, and they are abandoning its previously-stated intentions for Virtual Tabletops.
One thing to note is that Brink states that putting the entire 400-page SRD into the Creative Commons means that fans don’t need to “take [Dungeons & Dragons’] word for it.” That Brink would explicitly acknowledge the lack of trust between fans and publishers and Wizards of the Coast is incredible.
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Finally, the company finished the statment with an olive branch, publishing the SRD immediately, and stating, “Here’s a PDF of SRD 5.1 with the Creative Commons license. By simply publishing it, we place it under an irrevocable Creative Commons license. We’ll get it hosted in a more convenient place next week. It was important that we take this step now, so there’s no question.”
[Editor’s Note: This article is part of the developing story. The information cited on this page may change as the breaking story unfolds.]
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Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast finally broke its silence regarding the game’s Open Game License on Friday, attempting to calm tensions in the D&D community and answer questions that were raised after Gizmodo broke the news about the contents of a draft of the document last week.
In a message titled An Update on the Open Game License (OGL), posted on the web site for D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast’s official digital toolset, the company addressed many of the concerns raised after the leak of the Open Gaming License 1.1 earlier in the week, and walked them back—fast. Notable changes include the elimination of royalty structures, and the promise to clarify ownership of copyright and intellectual property.
But it might be too little, too late.
Despite reassurances from the Hasbro subsidiary, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) may have already suffered the consequences of their week of silence. Multiple sources from inside WotC tell Gizmodo that the situation inside the castle is dire, and Hasbro’s concern is less about public image and more about the IP hoard the dragon sits on.
The bottom line seems to be: After a fan-led campaign to cancel D&D Beyond subscriptions went viral, it sent a message to WotC and Hasbro higher-ups. According to multiple sources, these immediate financial consequences were the main thing that forced them to respond. The decision to further delay the rollout of the new Open Gaming License and then adjust the messaging around the rollout occurred because of a “provable impact” on their bottom line.
According to those sources, in meetings and communication with employees, WotC management’s messaging has been that fans are “overreacting” to the leaked draft, and that in a few months, nobody will remember the uproar.
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Licensees are pushing back
But despite any hopes that this all might blow over, well-known publishers who have previously used the OGL—some almost exclusively, such as Kobold Press, and MCDM— have already put out statements saying that they will either be moving away from all versions of the OGL, or explicitly offering up their own gaming licenses for their core games.
The “negative impact of implementing the new OGL might be a feature and not a bug for Wizards of the Coast,” said Charles Ryan, chief operating officer of Monte Cook Games. “A savvy third-party publisher might look at where 5e is in it life cycle,” he said, and if they were planning 5e products, reconsider their investment. Monte Cook Games released their own open, perpetual license for their acclaimed Cypher System last year.
Smaller indie presses have pulled together resources to help people make third-party content for small games. Rowan, Rook and Dekard, for example, released The Resistance Toolkit, a document meant to help ease designers off the 5th edition D&D rules and into writing third-party content for their acclaimed RPG Spire.
One third-party publisher told Gizmodo that they had expected WotC to update the OGL as seen in the leaked documents, but not until 2025, during the full release of DnDOne. Now many third-party publishers have moved up their migration timeline following the publicity disaster surrounding the leaked new Dungeons & Dragons OGL.
One of WotC’s biggest competitors, the independent publisher Paizo, owner of the Pathfinder and Starfinder RPGs, is currently spearheading a campaign to create an Open RPG Creative License (ORC) that would be stewarded by a non-profit foundation. Other publishers, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, and Legendary Games, have already committed to the effort.
Another third-party publisher who asked not to be identified told Gizmodo their company “has already collaborated with other third-party publishers” to mount a legal defense of the original, circa 2000, OGL 1.0(a).
The OGL 1.1 text and the 2.0 FAQ
Last week Gizmodo received leaked draft copies of an “OGL 1.1″, and then a few days later, a Frequently Asked Questions document which referred to an “OGL 2.0.” (This is an important distinction, because while a 1.1 could be considered an update to the original 1.0(a), calling the new agreement 2.0 may indicate it’s being imagined as an entirely new, separate agreement.)
One of the most telling parts of the OGL 2.0 FAQ included a statement that clarified one of the most inflammatory points of the leaked OGL 1.1—whether or not the original OGL 1.0a would be deauthorized. The leaked FAQ said that the “OGL 1.0a only allows creators to use ‘authorized’ versions of the OGL which allows Wizards to determine which of its prior versions to continue to allow use of when we exercise our right to update the license. As part of rolling out OGL 2.0, we are deauthorizing OGL 1.0a from future use and deleting it from our website. This means OGL 1.0a can no longer be used to develop content for release.”
Although many people have come forward to debate the legitimacy of this interpretation, including former WotC executive Ryan Dancey, who helped write the original OGL 1.0, the FAQ continued to push this language. Additionally, the Jan 13 update does not explicitly state that the company will not attempt to deauthorize the OGL 1.0a. “I do not believe that the OGL v1.0a can be deauthorized,” Dancey said in an email to Gizmodo. “There’s no mechanism in the license for deauthorization.”
“When v1.0a was published and authorized, Hasbro & Wizards of the Coast did so knowing that they were entering into a perpetual licensing regime,” Dancey continued. “All the people involved at the executive level – Peter Adkison (who was Wizards’ CEO), Brian Lewis (who was Wizards’ in house counsel), and me (I was the VP of Tabletop RPGs) all agreed that was the intent of the license.”
While the OGL 2.0 FAQ was distributed across multiple teams inside of Wizards of the Coast, sources indicate that this FAQ was not released on January 12 as intended due to the impact of the canceled subscriptions and the rising tide of backlash online.
The FAQ for the OGL 2.0 also stated that “the leaked documents were drafts, and some of the content that people have been upset about was already changed in the latest versions by the time of the leaks.” However, what upset people—including copyright riders and royalties—still seemed to be in place in the FAQ for 2.0.
“The part that of the OGL 1.1 that stated once you publish under the OGL 1.1 other people can use your work as well is very similar to DMs Guild language,” explained Jessica Marcrum, co-creator of Unseelie Studios. “But that’s not ‘open’ language. And it seems like they’re using the guise of the old OGL to to pretend that 1.1 is an open giving license when it isn’t.”
Additionally, multiple sources reported that third-party publishers were given the OGL 1.1 in mid-December as an incentive for signing onto a “sweetheart deal,” indicating that WotC was ready to go with the originally leaked, draconian OGL 1.1.
The ‘Term Sheets’
According to an anonymous source who was in the room, in late 2022 Wizards of the Coast gave a presentation to a group of about 20 third-party creators that outlined the new OGL 1.1. These creators were also offered deals that would supersede the publicly available OGL 1.1; Gizmodo has received a copy of that document, called a “Term Sheet,” that would be used to outline specific custom contracts within the OGL.
These “sweetheart” deals would entitle signatories to lower royalty payments—15 percent instead of 25 percent on excess revenue over $750,000, as stated in the OGL 1.1—and a commitment from Wizards of the Coast to market these third-party products on various D&D Beyond channels and platforms, except during “blackout periods” around WotC’s own releases.
It was expected that third parties would sign these Term Sheets. Noah Downs, a lawyer in the table-top RPG space who was consulted on the conditions of one of these contracts, stated that even though the sheets included language suggesting negotiation was possible, he got the impression there wasn’t much room for change.
Getting it right
In its “Update on the Open Game License” released Friday, WotC promised that the new OGL was still in development and not ready for final release “because we need to make sure we get it right.” The company promised to take feedback from the community and continue to make revisions to the OGL that made it work for both WotC and its third-party publishers.
But it may be too late. “Even if Wizards of the Coast were to entirely walk [the leaked OGL 1.1] back, it leaves such a sour taste in and in my mouth that I don’t want to work with the OGL in the future,” said Unseelie Studios’ David Markiwski.
Meanwhile, the “#DnDBegone” campaign encouraging fans to cancel their D&D Beyond subscriptions continued to gain traction on Twitter and other social media sites.
In order to delete a D&D Beyond account entirely, users are funneled into a support system that asks them to submit tickets to be handled by customer service: Sources from inside Wizards of the Coast confirm that earlier this week there were “five digits” worth of complaining tickets in the system. Both moderation and internal management of the issues have been “a mess,” they said, partially due to the fact that WotC has recently downsized the D&D Beyond support team.
Wizards of the Coast stated in the unreleased FAQ that it wasn’t making changes to the OGL just because of a few “loud voices,” and that’s true. It took thousands of voices. And it’s clear that Wizards of the Coast didn’t make the latest changes purely of their own accord. The entire tabletop ecosystem is holding Wizards of the Coast to the promises that they made in 2000. And now, the fans are setting the terms.
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Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that publishes Dungeons & Dragons, revealed details of its new Open Game License on Friday and attempted to answer questions about the future of the D&D community that were raised after io9 broke the news about the contents of a draft of the document last week.
A leaked copy of an updated “OGL 1.1,” received and reported on by io9 last week, outlined restrictions on third-party publishers including a 25 percent royalty payout for revenues over $750,000, and a copyright clause that appeared to cede ownership of content over to Wizards of the Coast (WotC). All of these concerns were taken up online, as D&D fans, content creators, and third-party publishers responded to the report with concern. Several prominent game publishers announced plans to stop creating new licensed content to focus on their own systems.
The update from Wizards of the Coast says; “the next OGL will contain the provisions… [so that it] covers only content for TTRPGs. That means that other expressions, such as educational and charitable campaigns, livestreams, cosplay, VTT-uses, etc., will remain unaffected by any OGL update. Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected.”
This seems to imply that the Fan Content License, which was previously mentioned in the OGL 1.1 draft as continuing under the new licensing agreement, will be used to protect Wizards from fan content like Actual Play podcasts and videos. The fact that they are also saying that VTTs will be unaffected is a significant change, as earlier editions stated that “non-static” media would be disallowed under the new OGL 1.1. This is likely a massive relief to numerous companies that are working on creating and innovating in the VTT space, but without the fully updated OGL, there are no rock-solid assurances yet.
Another announcement is the fact that any updated OGL “will not contain is any royalty structure.” This is a huge change from the previous iterations, which had a tiered royalty structure that required all commercial projects to report to Wizards of the Coast. One of the reasons for this change seems to be the response that people had to the language about copyright and ownership in the OGL 1.1. The update says, “any language we put down will be crystal clear and unequivocal on that point. The license back language was intended to protect us and our partners from creators who incorrectly allege that we steal their work simply because of coincidental similarities.”
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The announcement goes on to include the expansive IP projects that Wizards is taking on—a movie, a television series, and digital games. It’s clear that Wizards of the Coast cares much more about protecting the cultural currency of Dungeons & Dragons before they think about anything else—including fans, content creators, and third-party publishers.
While the updated OGL 2.0 isn’t going to be released today, it will be coming. There will be no backing down entirely for Wizards of the Coast. They’ve committed too much time, money, and effort into their IP to allow it to be written off totally under the OGL 1.0(a) and the suits in Hasbro will not allow everyone to make off with their name and numbers.
Additionally, the final thing to note about this update is that Wizards of the Coast is doing some incredible spin doctoring in order to lay the groundwork to try to salvage the situation that they find themselves in. The company would love for you to think that this is all part of the plan, but none of this was part of any plan.
The drafts that io9 received were not a thought experiment. They were intended to gauge a reaction, but from individual publishers that Wizards could silence with an NDA, not from the public at large. For all intents and purposes, the OGL 1.1 that was leaked to the press was supposed to go forward. Wizards has realized that they made a mistake and they are walking back numerous parts of the leaked OGL 1.1, saying that, “any change this major could only have been done well if we were willing to take that feedback, no matter how it was provided–so we are.”
However Wizards wants to spin it, the fact is that if hundreds of thousands of fans hadn’t said something on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit, the current capitulation would have most likely happened after the OGL 1.1 was released. “Finally,” Wizards of the Coast ends their statement, “we’d appreciate the chance to make this right… We won’t let you down.” It may be too late for that.
[Editor’s Note: This article is a breaking news story, and the information cited on this page will change as the story unfolds. Our writers are updating this article as new information is released.]
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Indie tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) designers will have some new rules to play with soon. Monte Cook Games announced last week that its core set of tabletop roleplaying game rules, known as the Cypher System, is switching to an open license that will allow anyone to design and sell content using its rules. The game system’s community of dedicated fans and indie game designers has jumped at the opportunity.
While the company isn’t the first to make this move (Wizards of the Coast has long distributed Dungeons & Dragons content under a similar open license) this is a first for Monte Cook Games, which rose to prominence in 2013 with Numenera when Monte Cook, industry veteran and co-designer of the third edition of D&D, launched the company after a record-setting Kickstarter.
The Cypher System is quite different from the likes of your typical Dungeons & Dragons format; the game focuses more on narrative concepts than mechanical frameworks. Put another way, language and thematic ideas are more central than specific classes and party functions played out over rounds of combat. The Cypher ruleset originally premiered in the 2013 publication of Numenera, and reappeared in the company’s follow-up game The Strange before getting its own genre- and setting-neutral release as The Cypher System Rulebook in 2015. A 2019 revision implemented some slight tweaks.
Today the Cypher System enjoys a passionate and dedicated community full of enthusiasm over its alternative takes on the TTRPG formula. Twitch channels like Cypher Unlimited have thriving communities on Discord and Facebook, and several other community members have published their own material via the previously established (and more limited) Cypher Creator System.In a brief comment to Kotaku, Cypher Unlimitedhost Anthony (known as Spiggs18), described the Cypher System’s new open licensing agreement as a “game changer” for the community. (Full disclosure: I composed the opening music for Cypher Unlimited’s streams.)
One of the first products slated to release under the open license comes from Cypher Unlimited itself, a very party-appropriate game titled GM Roulette. Each player gets a chance to reframe the story taking turns as the GM. I’ve had the chance to play an early version of this game on one of their streams and it’s a lot of fun to see a game take unexpected turns when the role of Game Master gets passed around over the course of a single game. It’s also the kind of rule-breaking playfulness that I think emerges very organically from community spaces.
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Accompanying Cypher Unlimited and GM Roulette in this round of early CSOL (Cypher System Open License) games are works from fellow community members and indie publishers Marlowe House and Ganza Gaming.
Marlowe House has released a number of cyberpunk supplements under the older Cypher Creator System license.Image: Marlowe House
Andrew Marlowe of Marlowe House described the freedom in securing funding for Cypher System products being of particular importance for the future of his content. “I’m a fledgling publisher” Marlowe told Kotaku, “and I’m limited in what I can afford to pay freelancers, artists, editors, layout etc.” Having legal clearance to crowdfund his game with an open license dramatically changes the scope of what he’s able to produce. His upcoming book, Blood and Chrome, a cyberpunk setting and sourcebook, was originally intended to come out under the older Cypher Creator System license, which would’ve come with more limits on funding options and limit where it could be sold. He also stated that he’s excited to see “the sorts of things that might be weird and experimental from the community.”
Christopher Robin Negelein of Ganza Gaming also told Kotaku that the CSOL has allowed him the freedom to work on a “licensed property like Mystery Flesh Pit National Park” and that he hopes the upcoming “expanded Cypher ecosystem” will let folks know there are other games besides D&D out there, especially when indie products using these rules will now have the freedom to crowdfund and use print-on-demand services. Part-time indie designers, Negelein said, “have to choose what we can accomplish with the limited time we have” and so having more freedom via an open license means that those choices can be more impactful.
Charles Ryan, CFO of Monte Cook Games, told Kotaku that folks familiar with Wizards of the Coast’s open game license should expect very familiar material here, though he stresses designers wait for the finalized license and source material before making any final product decisions.
Monte Cook Games first conceived of switching to an open license fairly early on, but wanted time to set expectations and standards around its Cypher System products first, similar to how Dungeons & Dragons established its own brand long before Wizards of the Coast launched its open game license with the third edition rules in 2000.
The core rules that powered Numenera will soon be available for anyone to build and sell original worlds with.Image: Monte Cook Games
Ryan said that with so many great creators producing solid material for the Cypher System Creator program, and with so many different settings and rules published by Monte Cook Games in the past 10 years, it’s now time to let community and indie designers help expand the Cypher System world, and his company’s looking forward to seeing what exciting products, both homebrew and commercial, will result.
Following the lead of the official Dungeons & Dragons “Systems Reference Document” (SRD), Monte Cook Games is promising to release a new Cypher System Reference Document this summer. This reference will contain the core rules for free copying and general usage, but several intellectual properties from Monte Cook Games, like the Numenera setting, remain under copyright.
Open licenses in TTRPGs are very much like when a video game developer builds in official mod support, just with added opportunities to transform them into sellable products with a clear legal framework to avoid intellectual property issues. A similar comparison might be the use of the Unreal and Unity engines by indie devs. D&D and others have enjoyed this flexibility across both commercial and homebrew projects for years. Now the Cypher System community will get its shot.