I was hoping this blog post would get to be an exciting advertisement. And, hey- part of it is! So let’s start with the good news, out of Bovidae Studios:
I have completed and published, my first proper third-party adventure for Old School Essentials, a one-shot titled Cult in the Empire of Decadence. You can find it on DriveThruRPG here, for $7.95!
So far it has been very well-received by folks I’ve sent copies to, and I am very proud of it! It took about three months (and a few all-nighters this past week) to complete. It is a digital file and should be fully accessible for screen readers (tagged, alt-text is present, etc.) and is hyperlinked throughout for ease of use in general. Many thanks to my spouse (K), editor (Harvey), friends, and fellow 3PP colleagues for their support as I got this done over the last month!
Now, back to the bad news. The Open-Gaming License (OGL) debacle making waves through the TTRPG space:
While I tend to write for people already in the know, I’m going to govern what we know so far anyway, for clarity. It’s a bit more complex than this, and you can go read other blogs for that, but I’ve shortened it for brevity: Back when roleplaying games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons, first gained popularity, many creators out there wanted to make similar, derivative games, or extra products and modifications compatible with D&D. However, creators feared lawsuits by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) despite not being able to copyright game mechanics. In response to this, the OGL is a license that WotC released a little over 20 years ago, to give everyone peace of mind in creating works similar to D&D without fearing any copyright issues. This sparked the creation of dozens of new game systems, recreations of older editions of D&D (“retro-clones”) and compatible supplements for D&D itself! The current edition of the OGL is 1.0a.
There were rumours recently that WotC was going to stop using the OGL. That no supplements or third-party works would be created that would be compatible with the new upcoming version of D&D (currently known as OneD&D). A few weeks ago, WotC announced that they were working on a new, updated OGL, version 1.1, to help quell fears and to not worry – the OGL was here to stay. WotC mentioned a few disappointing things, like how third-party VTTs and non-static media were not going to be supported at all – sad news for users of Foundry and websites like Kobold Fight Club.
The gaming industry is waiting in anticipation – a lot of folks figuring they could just keep using the 1.0a OGL even if the 1.1 did not work out. OneD&D is said to be compatible with adventures for 5e, so folks decided they wouldn’t need the new licensing agreement, and take the loss of just not creating content for OneD&D.
However, last week, there have since been multiple reliable (but not official nor verified) leaks regarding the new OGL 1.1. The most important of these leaks is that thanks to a minor loophole in one section (9) of the OGL 1.0a, WotC plans to de-authorise the existing license – no new works will be able to be created or modified under the 1.0a license. This may also apply to existing non-static media (not print or PDF books) like websites, VTT modules, etc.
What does this mean? Well, existing third-party publishers (such as myself) will not be able to produce any new content related to products created under OGL 1.0a. This includes major systems such as Old School Essentials (of which I publish for), and the different editions of Pathfinder. The companies that create and own those products will, according to the leaks, have less than one week after the release of the OGL 1.1 to completely revamp their entire business model to create products that have nothing to do with the OGL.
Why does this matter? I hear a lot on various websites about how publishers should have seen this coming – that WotC is just protecting their IP, that the license was never a promise, and so on. Or, that third-party publishers can just remove the OGL-related content from their systems and republish it without the OGL at all, saying”we don’t need it to publish games”! Or how legally, WotC won’t be able to do this at all. And yes – we don’t need the OGL. That’s correct. But we have been using it. And even if WotC tries something that isn’t legal – it’s ambiguous enough that multiple lawyers have been posting on how it will need to go through the courts. Third-party publishers are generally pretty small – I work out of my basement, part-time, while having a different full-time job. We do not have the money to risk lawsuits with Hasbro, or to fight it in court, even if WotC is in the wrong- and that’s what they’re banking on. It’s a bullying tactic – WotC does not care, they had millions of dollars in revenue from their tabletop division. Their parent company, Hasbro, had a 2021 revenue of 6.42 billion. They’ll have to pay less than 1% of their net worth to fight things in the courts, while all the little companies go bankrupt in legal fees fighting it. If the leak is real, WotC is banking on compliance in fear of bankruptcy: “are you really going to sacrifice yourself and your income? Or just let us take a 25% cut?” I love Old School Essentials – I want to keep publishing for it. But it’s not worth the personal risk. But not everyone is in a position like I am, where they can pivot their business in less than a week. Their companies have the potential to go out of business – this is the TTRPG equivalent of sudden massive layoffs. The only solution, if the leaks are true (which I now believe they are) is to band together and fight it. You can sign an open letter to help start the preventative process here. If this plea fails – debates surrounding the OGL will go to the courts. How and in what way, I do not know – but it will likely be a multi-year-long series of lawsuits.
So what does this mean for me, specifically: Well, Cult should stay up – I’ve published it prior to the OGL 1.1 release, so WotC shouldn’t be able to remove it. There’s a chance DriveThruRPG takes things down at the behest of Hasbro – it has happened before, and could happen again – but it is unlikely. Future projects of mine will likely shift into either generic system-agnostic OSR adventures (no stat blocks, no game mechanics), or be published for systems with their own SRDs and licenses (such as Into the Odd, which I am very fond of). All of my other projects are in very early phases where they can be easily pivoted in directions away from the OGL.
To the rest of those affected by this – keep your head up.
Slice of Beef 