SmiteWorks OGL 1.2 Discussion

[Griogre]

This is great news for 3rd party D&D publishers. All of the uncertainties created by OGL 1.2 just go away. I'm sorry WotC need to take such a hit in credibility to realize OGL 1.2 was a bad idea but am glad they listened in the end. Hopefully in the future they will do a survey *first* if they want to update the OGL again.

[lokiare]

My only question is: Will this apply to 6E?

[LordEntrails]

6E doesn't exist yet But, One D&D is supposed to be fully compatible with 5E. And since any change in mechanics can not be protected anyway, it pretty much means content for use with One D&D will be covered. But, exact text, as well as artwork, will still be protected IP and can not be used as is.

Keep in mind, the OGL 1.0 was intended to protect 3E, but was used for retro clones of OD&D, 1E, & 2E.

So, imo (IANAL), it pretty much means D&D, all editions for the foreseeable future, are given to the community at least enough that 3PP will always be able to publish new works for any edition.

[JonStormbringer]

Throughout this whole event, I've been more concerned about what WOTC plans to do with its VTT and how it views competition with that product. My own perception is that WOTC showed their hand and will be very aggressive about how it "protects" its VTT. I believe they view their new VTT as their primary monetization for the future of D&D and they seem to believe eliminating competition is in their best interest. In regards to their VTT, I believe this will still be the case, even in light of their recent reversals.

It's been suggested by more than one streamer that operational leadership within WOTC is looking to make D&D a billion dollar a year money earner--like the MTG side of the house. I'm certainly not a business genius, but I'm not sure how they get there. IMO the entire 5E product line was over priced, but there won't be an Amazon between us to discount their products 20-55% when they (WOTC) are their own storefront with their VTT/Digital distribution.

I love D&D and I want to see it be successful and I don't mind its parent company making some money. However, driving up prices and eliminating competition is not the way to go here, IMO. I started playing D&D in 1979 and played, primarily, 1st/2nd edition. When 3rd and 4th editions came out, we (my gaming group) never saw the need to move away from 2nd, so we didn't. I never bought a single 3e/4e book. I can see myself doing the same thing with 5E/6E. That is, just staying with 5E and not worrying about 6E. Playing on FG and not the new WOTC VTT. I've invested a fair amount into FG and it works great for me. I think it's a great product and has, IMO, a fantastic and helpful community.

I see a lot of people saying, after WOTC's latest OGL news, that we won the war. I'm not convinced we really understood what war we were fighting. OGL may have been part of their plan to monetize, but I think the battleground is digital/VTT distribution. While I applaud the recently announced OGL reversal, I think we need to keep our eyes on how they handle their approaching VTT.

[damned]

The OGL fight was the most important one.
I dont think there is a way to stop them from doing their VTT thing - and there probably shouldnt be a way to stop them other than the market voting with its wallets.
If the product is good enough people will pay for it.

[JonStormbringer]

The OGL fight was the most important one.
I dont think there is a way to stop them from doing their VTT thing - and there probably shouldnt be a way to stop them other than the market voting with its wallets.
If the product is good enough people will pay for it.

I agree, in principle, with what you're saying. I wrote that later at night after a long shift at work and probably didn't articulate myself the best. I certainly wasn't trying to minimize the fight for the OGL. I believe the more VTTs out there the better it is for the consumer. My concern is not that WOTC develops their own VTT but that they monopolize 6e to their VTT only. In my view that's harmful to the consumer and I can point to several instances where it's been harmful for the content creator/manufacturer.

[damned]

I agree, in principle, with what you're saying. I wrote that later at night after a long shift at work and probably didn't articulate myself the best. I certainly wasn't trying to minimize the fight for the OGL. I believe the more VTTs out there the better it is for the consumer. My concern is not that WOTC develops their own VTT but that they monopolize 6e to their VTT only. In my view that's harmful to the consumer and I can point to several instances where it's been harmful for the content creator/manufacturer.

My guess is that they will do that.
They will make licensed 6e material available only on their platform.
And it will be mixed response and have mixed impact on the other players in this industry.

I think the vast majority of people didnt even notice this months drama.
But many did.
There are already somewhere close to 10,000 RPGs out there.
Its not a lack of competition - its a lack of awareness or accessibility.

Some RPGs will do better because of this but probably only the big ones, the top 10 or 20 games.

How FG and other VTTs fare if WoTC pull licenses will be very much dependent on how many players do move to other systems.
Its very time consuming (and hence expensive unless someone is doing it for love) converting game systems to a VTT.
FG will be hard pressed to justify building out dozens of rulesets hoping that some of them are successful.

[sciencephile]

Well, based on history, I might even doubt whether they will even have a successful VTT, even if they tried. WotC tried this route back when 3.5 was their version of choice and it died in the womb. They forgot that they are not a software development company and that creating software is easier said than actually done (even veteran software companies fail more than they succeed).

But I guess we will see...

[esmdev]

I agree, in principle, with what you're saying. I wrote that later at night after a long shift at work and probably didn't articulate myself the best. I certainly wasn't trying to minimize the fight for the OGL. I believe the more VTTs out there the better it is for the consumer. My concern is not that WOTC develops their own VTT but that they monopolize 6e to their VTT only. In my view that's harmful to the consumer and I can point to several instances where it's been harmful for the content creator/manufacturer.

We don't know what One D&D will look like but from what I've seen it isn't fixing 5E and seems to be amplifying some of it's biggest problems while creating more problems. Just as a single example the decision that some attacks can critical hit and some can't does make some sense mechanically but is going to suck when one player can critical and the other can't. If you are supposedly fixing the game then look at the mechanics that are broken and fix them instead of throwing on a random patch that doesn't really work. Some of their ideas are good but many are broken. Obviously it is still early but their design decisions so far have been omg what are they thinking, to me.

Nothing WotC has released for 5E lately has really interested me enough to buy it, and I buy lots, except I was really pumped for Spelljammer, which I bought and I regretted. The free Spelljammer Academy from D&D beyond was a better introduction to Spelljammer than the official adventure. The actually Spelljamming rules were just sad. So much potential wasted. I have a hard time articulating my feelings about the overall product in polite company, suffice to say it was the final nail in the 5E coffin for me and I've not seen anything to change that.

So this leads to the VTT... first off companies that write computer games for a living announce, develop and cancel games before release at an astounding rate. WotC has a proven track record of either releasing something totally substandard or cancelling before release. They have been talking about VTT since 3.0. What they showed was pretty but what they didn't show was anything but a 3D graphic game board and miniatures. Do you run it locally or do you have to host it on their server? Does it handle the rules or is that on the DM? If you have a miniature can you use it multiple times or do you have to buy it for every instance in an adventure? How complex will it be for the DM, for the player? Will they release a quality product or something that routinely crashes for months on end while they try and fix it. Etc., Etc., Etc.

While it might bring some people to VTT gaming, outside of the lockdown, RPGs are very much a social experience. Probably more people use VTTs than they did 5 years ago it is still probably not a lot when compared to the total number of players out there. Despite having drivethrurpg on their side Astral couldn't generate enough users to carry on in a pretty competitive market. I really don't think that a VTT, 3D or not, is the avenue to a billion dollars that they think it is, and if it even appears to be then the big game studios will start making generic clones because that is what they do with anything that is popular.

In the end, however, it is 16 or so months away and a lot can happen. It is clear that WotC wants to limit what future competition can do. However it is also pretty clear that WotC cannot dictate terms the way they thought they could. So I really don't think people need to worry about One D&D on a VTT because they can't afford to lose Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds revenue if their VTT fails to meet expectations.

[HywelPhillips]

There were many important bits to the OGL fight, and some of those still need addressing - the fact that the OGL underpins a complete ecosystem outside of anything WotC have ever published, for example. Creators are using eg Kobold Press creatures in their adventures or bits from companies and creators long since defunct or even deceased. These works live on in the creative ecosystem of the OGL. Switching to ORC might orphan some of those works, having multiple companies each with their own semi-open licence is not really an improvement.

But what the Open Gamer faction inside WotC have pulled off here is a coup to prevent them yanking 5E out from the community.

They can try to tempt us to 6E, to a new licence, to closed ecosystem D&D Beyond and WotC VTT. But they are going to have to "fight fair" to do it now. Because if 6E isn't an improvement on 5E, if the VTT doesn't live up to the usability of D&D Beyond... the existing audience can stay on 5E. Forever. Which I think is what they were desperately trying to avoid, and acted in bad faith trying to pull a fast one on the community and hope we didn't notice.

One of the things they were trying to do, IMO, was to make sure that no-one could pull a D&D 3.5/Pathfinder 1.0 on them.

Releasing 5E SRD under Creative Commons means that that possibility is now guaranteed. SOMEONE is going to do that, probably several someones. And if WotC don't deliver the goods, Black Flag or whatever becomes the 5E-a-like replacement will steal their lunch just like PF1 did from 4E. Which I think gives a lot of power to the internal voices at WotC that have been saying the the community is a strength, they already had a near-monopoly, all they had to do was go forward with some good products and they would clean up.

It also takes away the impetus internally in the company to revoke the 1.0a OGL, because what I'm sure the company regards as the crown jewels is 5E. Do they REALLY care so much about revocation that they are going to kill PF1 (already defunct) and the whole OSR (let's not kid ourselves, small potatoes) just out of spite when they already gave away the crown jewels via Creative Commons? Having discovered just how united their customer base is in wanting the OGL to stay in place?

They were always free to release 6E under whatever licence they liked, and I don't think many of us would have blamed them for trying to keep it exclusive and go down the closed ecosystem VTT/D&D Beyond monopoly route and see if it works better for them this time than it did for 4E. We'd have said they were probably wrong, but it wouldn't have provoked the outrage. The outrage came from breaking a 23-year-old promise with fallout through the entire industry from OSR grognards playing B/X clones through people playing Traveller, Mutant Year Zero derived homebrews, trying to pre-emptively shut down VTTs not just for D&D but entirely by kneecapping the alternative systems. It was playing very dirty, they got caught at it, and they've been forced to row back on it. And personally I think the Open Gaming folks at WotC used the opportunity to pull a blinder on a par with Ryan Dancey's original OGL by getting the 5.1 SRD released to creative commons under cover of the storm.

Cheers, Hywel