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Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

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Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#41
post #23

Is there actually not a catch here? I'm only somewhat familiar with the debate.

Yep - not only is there no catch right now , but they literally can never add one. The SRD is released under CC-BY-4.0. The only point of contention is what happens to their new product, One D&D, which will probably retain some nasty payment structure, and almost certainly not be OGL'd. That's fine though - if they build a walled garden around One D&D, they simply won't be able to compete against the open community o…

It'll be funny if all those juicy royalties they think they're going to get never materialise because no one wants to develop for their system.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#42

Well. That was unexpected. Given what's been happening to Twitter, I didn't have any hope that WOTC would do anything sensible. I suspect they'll pull this bullshit again the next time someone looks at a balance sheet.

At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative commons. So the situation now is somewhat better, they can't simply revoke the license anymore for that document.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#43

The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood? There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro) has enough self-awareness to have realized the…

> has enough self-awareness to have realized they were encroaching significantly on their core demographic.

At least where I am in the US, the behavior of many corporations seems to indicate they... just don't give a shit. People will take what they can get, by and large, and as long as it makes the corporation money, they're willing to risk it.

Who actually _likes_ not having a single register open at Wal Mart, Home Depot, and the like? Who is for having products be a little bit more expensive, but reducing the quanity 10%-20% (eg: shrinkflation)? Plenty more examples.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#44

Well. That was unexpected. Given what's been happening to Twitter, I didn't have any hope that WOTC would do anything sensible. I suspect they'll pull this bullshit again the next time someone looks at a balance sheet.

At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative commons. So the situation now is somewhat better, they can't simply revoke the license anymore for that document.

> At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative commons.

They changed the underlying law of licenses that makes gratuitous licenses revocable at will independent of the content of the license? How?

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#45

So from a little bit of digging around for context (as a non-DnD player): * SRD = System Reference Document [1], is a kind of specification of the DnD rules, that people use to create add-on DnD-related content. * OGL = Open Game License [2], which the SRD is licensed under. * There was a(n apparently very unpopular) proposal to move to OGL 1.2 (which I guess is more restrictive). * Now it seems like SRD 5.1 will be…

[deleted]

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#46

So from a little bit of digging around for context (as a non-DnD player): * SRD = System Reference Document [1], is a kind of specification of the DnD rules, that people use to create add-on DnD-related content. * OGL = Open Game License [2], which the SRD is licensed under. * There was a(n apparently very unpopular) proposal to move to OGL 1.2 (which I guess is more restrictive). * Now it seems like SRD 5.1 will be…

For more context:

Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast (the company that has owned D&D for the last 20 years) released the rules text and some basic creative content like classes, some monsters, etc. for D&D 3.5 under a custom open source inspired license called the OGL. It's sort of a weird blend of GPL-esque virality clauses but the actual restrictions it places are much more akin to a permissive license like Apache. This led to an explosion of third party content.

When D&D 4e came around, Wizards felt they didn't want to compete with that so they released D&D 4e under a new license called the GSL which was much more restrictive to allow them to shut down competitors, which caused third parties to shun 4e and continue publishing 3.5e content.

Partly because of the continued existence of the 3.5e ecosystem (along with some controversial video game inspired gameplay changes), 4e largely failed and alienated the fanbase. So they released 5e with a number of peace offerings to the community, one of which was that 5e would use the OGL again.

Now Wizards are on the cusp of releasing OneD&D (6e). Part of their strategy for 6e is their own virtual tabletop (VTT) product. A virtual tabletop is effectively a software product which gives players a chatroom + shared map and drawing tools so they can effectively play tabletop games which are designed around more props online. Wizards plan for their own VTT includes a very video game inspired monetisation model where they would sell skins, spells, subclasses etc.

The problem they have is this: they are a very late comer to the VTT market, since they haven't launched their product yet, while their competitors (especially roll20) have been going for near a decade now. And these competitors were perfectly in their right under the OGL 1.0a license to use enough content to enable their players to play D&D on it. Wizards did not feel having more content and a higher fidelity product was going to be sufficient to drive players to their microtransaction filled product, so they did not want to release 6e under OGL.

But they remembered the 3.5e/4e problem. They didn't want to release their new, more locked down 6e and have everyone just keep playing 5e and 5e derived content under the OGL. So they decided they would try exploit some of the wording of OGL 1.0a to de-authorize it and replace it with a new OGL 1.1 which was a very draconian license given Wizards royalty-free unlimited licenses to other 1.1 content, yet imposing royalties, attribution, registration and field of use restrictions on third parties. That way nobody could keep making 5e VTT plugins, 5e addons, etc. and everyone would have to go to 6e and the competitor VTTs would die from not being able to support the most popular game.

This leaked when they asked third parties to sign it, to much bad press, so Wizards announced OGL 1.2. It did roll back many of the more egregious restrictions from the 1.1 version, but it still kept veto power with wizards (wrapped up in an anti-hateful content clause, but one that was so broad and required waiving a right to contest to the extent wizards could define competing too closely with them as hateful behaviour), and it still put limits on what VTTs could do and allowed them to change the rights of VTTs at any moment.

Players still felt this was not enough and did largely vote with their wallet by cancelling subscriptions to D&D beyond, D&D's online content distribution and character builder service that was to be the baseline of the new planned VTT, to such a level that Wizards have now had to capitulate and roll back their planned changes to existing and older editions at least.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#47
post #20

WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended to be irrevocable. Everything else was a red herring. I'm guessing their legal team had more to do with this change of heart than consumer/publisher feedback.

> WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended to be irrevocable.

WotC was the legal author, and gratuitous licenses are revocable at will, anyway.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#48
A bit more context:

* Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years.

* WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled.

* WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring.

* WoTC fails to meet expectations and the stock prices plummet

* To do damage control, WoTC/Hasbro annouces a "fireside chat" for their shareholders where they try to explain the situation but basically just say "we did nothing wrong and we are trying to extract a lot of money from Dungeons and Dragons next"

* Unlike the MTG community, the DnD community is very good at organizing a unified response and the shitstorm came swiftly and took WoTC by surprise. (Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people)

The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#50

The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood? There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro) has enough self-awareness to have realized the…

Real people have disagreements and work through them. Lets not be mad for the sake of being mad. It was completely within the rights of WOTC to do whatever they wanted. People complained and they decided not to do and guarantee they will never do it in the future. Be happy.
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