OGL 1.1 live chat with a lawyer at Roll for Crit.

[DEFCON 1]

No, I think the leadership will be seen either as bumbling, or greedy.

Uh... this is HASBRO. I'm pretty sure those two adjectives have already been thrown at the company for years. This is nothing new for them and nothing they are that concerned about.

Just like EA was crying all the way to the bank when they kept receiving those "Worst Corporations In America" awards on the internet a decade or so ago.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Such a tempest in a teacup that the very announcer of OneD&D, Ginny Di is totally ignoring it.

Or not.

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Yeah and we're still at the stage where WotC could easily back out of it. The obvious approach is:

< Read this in as silly a voice as you like > "This was an early draft of merely one approach we were merely considering some months ago and it's very unfortunate that someone chose to create this kerfuffle by so cruelly leaking it! Here's what we were always actually going with!"

Then put out something more resembles what WotC said on Beyond, and doesn't do any "deauthorizing" or similar craziness, just links access to the 1D&D SRD and possibly other perks to OGL 1.1.

The issue is, if WotC is anything like other corporations (and all signs are that they are), working out what they want in it/changed, drafting, sending it back and forth for approval, double-checking, and making ready a new, less offensive OGL 1.1 could easily take a week. And probably at least 2-3 days absolute best case, and that's assuming every could agree on what they needed to change on day 1 of those 2-3 days (and it'd probably be closer to 3). And that's business days. I know the US works more hours than the UK, but still usually don't work on weekends, and it's nearly the weekend.

 

[Umbran]

I hope not, love it or hate it they HAD to at least suspect this is what would happen...

"This" is non specific.

They should have known "this" reaction would happen once the terms became known, but by reporting, the initial timeline called for decisions before reaction could have impact.

They could have hoped "this" leak didn't occur, though.

 

[Umbran]

Uh... this is HASBRO. I'm pretty sure those two adjectives have already been thrown at the company for years. This is nothing new for them and nothing they are that concerned about.

Yeah, but I think folks still had some thought that WotC had not been fully Hasbrodized. This is probably disabusing a lot of folks of that notion.

 

[Dausuul]

I doubt that third-party companies will forget about this anytime soon, and while a lot of them are small outfits, a few of them have not-insignificant reach in terms of making themselves heard by at least a portion of the fan-base.

What I can't figure out is the timing in all of this. If 1D&D, and presumably a 1D&D SRD, isn't coming out for eighteen months, why try and revoke the OGL v1.0a next week? If WotC wants people to sign on to the OGL v1.1, what are they supposed to produce under it between now and mid-2024?

There were many things that sank the first GSL (chief among them being that it was just an appalling license with terms that no one in their right mind would take), but one of the contributing factors was that it came out super late -- after the launch of 4E itself, if I remember right. If you want 3PPs producing content for your big launch, they need a lot of lead time, and that means they need to know the terms they'll be producing under. And if you expect to be doing some negotiating, you need to leave time for that too.

That among other things makes me think that this is not a cunning and elaborate scheme by Wizards -- it's just the usual shortsighted, "see money, grab for money" thinking that is so common at big corporations. Whoever came up with GSL 2.0 was genuinely clueless about the reaction it was going to get.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think what's surprising to me here when I consider it, is that the OGL 1.1 we have seems to be "All stick, no carrot". I know when they put out the Beyond post, I was really expecting there to be significant carrot, and a whole less stick than this. (As an aside I'm pretty sure Linda Codega isn't just keeping the carrots from us - if they were there, they'd have said.)

 

[Greg Benage]

Reposting from last week. For posterity.

 

[Branduil]

I think what's surprising to me here when I consider it, is that the OGL 1.1 we have seems to be "All stick, no carrot". I know when they put out the Beyond post, I was really expecting there to be significant carrot, and a whole less stick than this. (As an aside I'm pretty sure Linda Codega isn't just keeping the carrots from us - if they were there, they'd have said.)

Oh, it's simple, the terms are

1) WotC gets to eat the carrots, all of the carrots
2) If you have a problem with that, you get the stick

 

[Retreater]

You are correct. Average fans have no idea. At least not yet. Look at D&Ds Facebook page and not a single person mentioned it until I did.

Casual fans won't notice it ... yet. The ripple effect, they will not be able to avoid.

Let's say MCDM (Matt Colville's studio) stops producing D&D content. Not a single word mentioned of the game again on his YouTube channel. That's 418,000 subscribers who will notice.
Let's say Matt Mercer doesn't want to sign the agreement to basically give WotC permission to publish his works without giving him royalties. That's 1.86 MILLION subscribers.

If Wizards goes through with this, D&D is going to lose market prominence. And I'm not being hyperbolic. After the struggles with MtG, if they slaughter their only remaining cash cow, there are going to be heads rolling.

 

[Alzrius]

I think what's surprising to me here when I consider it, is that the OGL 1.1 we have seems to be "All stick, no carrot". I know when they put out the Beyond post, I was really expecting there to be significant carrot, and a whole less stick than this. (As an aside I'm pretty sure Linda Codega isn't just keeping the carrots from us - if they were there, they'd have said.)

My guess is that WotC honestly thinks that getting to publish content for 1D&D – with an Official Badge^TM and everything! – is the carrot.