Friday, January 27, 2023

The OGL is saved! (Or is it?)

Wizards of the Coast tapped out.

The OGL 1.0a is here to stay . . . for now, with no explicit mention of irrevocability. A minor victory for the OSR, a major victory for communities like the one around Cepheus.

The biggest winners are the 5e players and publishers with the release of the SRD 5.1 under Creative Commons. There's a bit of silliness there though, like Pelor's name and position as a sun god being freely usable, but nothing else about him (or her or it). And unfortunately, I think a lot of the good steam that had gathered around the ORC (Open RPG Compatibility License) is dissipating, to say nothing of the OpenDND movement.

But the people who signed off on the replacement of the OGL because the brand was undermonetized are still there and still in power. They still want to do all that even if they can't at the moment. Why did they fail? From a purely cutthroat perspective, because their propaganda about anyone who opposed the OGL 1.1/2.0/1.2 being a horrible *ist and *phobic CHUD didn't have enough evidence to trick customers into believing their bullshit. Clearly, they need to build up that boogieman.

You will see more of the anti-OSR pieces like PBS did. You will see "problematic" content highlighted by "random" twitter accounts. You will see people saying "dang if only we hadn't forced WOTC to remove the morality clause/release the rules under CC." You will see people talking about the "*ist problem in the D&D community." And you will see WOTC pull this again, with a sigh and a nod, saying  "well we knew this would happen but the community was so vocal, we had no choice."

Or maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic.

2 comments:

  1. It will happen whether WotC is behind it or not people are too addicted to political drama and silencing anyone they dont like.

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