But they were all of them deceived, for another license was made. In the land of Seattle, in the headquarters of Wizards of the Coast, the Dark Lord Hasbro forged in secret a master license, to control all others. And into this license, he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life. One license to rule them all. OneD&D.
Here's Alexander Macris' take on the OGL. And my own selections from his text. I can certainly say that I'd hate to be a full-time OGL-dependent game designer right now. Your business just dies almost overnight, and you now have to find a "real" job quickly in a declining market, or take a terrible gamble on divorcing yourself from the D&D brand entirely, even as a copycat fantasy heartbreaker. As a person who just went through a layoff and rehire within the last few months, I can sympathize with having your livelihood yanked out from under you with little to no warning like that, but at least I could pivot to doing my same job for another company. I doubt many people who have been game designer entrepreneurs can do the same as easily. It's a tough spot to be in, and to make it worse, Hasbro isn't doing it because they have a legal right to, or because they have ethical or moral permission to; they're doing it knowing that they have none of that, and yet also knowing that they can get away with it anyway, most likely. What a bunch of scumbags.
What does this new license mean? Where do we go from here? Before we go further, please note that while I am a trained attorney (Harvard Law magna cum laude, in fact), I’m not a practicing intellectual property specialist. My thoughts should not be construed as legal advice about what you should do. These are just my thoughts about the situation Autarch has now found itself in, and what we need to do.
Can They Really Do That?!
When people learn that WOTC is deauthorizing the OGL, the first question they ask is “can they really do that?” It’s a fair question. After all, for more than 20 years we’ve all relied on the OGL to be irrevocable.
But the question isn’t whether they can do. They are doing it. Right now, on our watch. No, the question is “who is going to stop them from doing it?”
And the answer might be “no one.”
If you’re under the illusion that we live in a country with a court system that rewards the righteous, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. The American justice system is pay-to-play, and the amount you have to pay is unfathomable to those who haven’t gone through it. I consulted with one of New York’s top IP litigators last week to find out how much money I’d have to raise via GoFundMe to fight Wizards. When I asked him if $100,000 would be enough, he laughed. He said I’d need $500,000 to even have a chance of summary judgment, and $4 million for a trial. Wizards has a war chest measured in millions and will fight this out for 4-6 years.
Imagine if WOTC sued Autarch claiming that my game Ascendant was violating their copyright. Ascendant is a d100 superhero game that has nothing in common with D&D and uses no language from the SRD. WOTC would have legitimate claim whatsoever. If we had $4,000,000 to fight, we’d certainly win. But… we don’t have the money. So, we’d lose.
In real life courtroom dramas, the good guys don’t win. The rich guys win.
But Our Rich Guys Will Fight… Won’t They?
We do have a few “rich guys” that are affected by this situation, foremost among them the mighty Paizo. The OGL 1.1 is certainly an existential threat to Paizo’s business. But does that mean Paizo will litigate?
We can certainly hope so. They would be the greatest champions of the Open Gaming movement if they did. Lisa Stevens is a person of great integrity who has dealt with treachery from WOTC before. Erik Mona has a warriors ethos that has stood him in good stead in the struggle against WOTC. Few people can claim to have beaten WOTC at their own game!
Even so, we cannot be certain that Paizo will fight. In most cases, major companies work very hard to avoid law suits with their well-funded competitors; and even when there are lawsuits, they usually get settled privately in ways that don’t help or affect anyone else.
Imagine this hypothetical: Paizo files a lawsuit against Wizards. A year later, after about $500,000 of expense on motions, they begin to proceed to trial. Their lawyers estimate they have a 70% chance to win. At this point, WOTC now offers to settle, offering Paizo a perpetual irrevocable license for the 3.5E SRD in exchange for Paizo’s agreement not to exploit the 5.1 SRD in any way and other minor concessions. If you’re Paizo, do you spend another $3.5 million and 3 years in trial for a 70% win — or do you take that deal?
Most companies take that deal.
So we cannot rely on the hope that some rich litigator, some hero, is coming to save open gaming. We have to assume no one is coming to save us. Perhaps, given sufficient numbers, we could assemble a class action — but how many companies would still be alive after 2, 3, 4 years of being unable to safely invest in new product? Because according to Wizard, if you litigate with them, you immediately lose your license.
What Is to Be Done?
So here we are. It feels surreal. I’ve been writing OGL material for 12 years and now it’s all in jeopardy. What is to be done?
The OGL 1.1 is a non-starter. From its unconscionable claim on licensee IP to its grotesque provisions for termination, it is entirely unacceptable to us. Autarch will not agree to its terms. If that’s the hill we die on, so be it.
The OGL 1.0 is unreliable. What does being deauthorized actually do? No one knows, and only a court can say for sure. What does WOTC mean when it says that after January 13, 2023 we can’t “publish” work under the original OGL — does it mean publish new work, or publish legacy work? No one knows except Nick Mitchell, and he isn’t talking. An unreliable license is no basis to build a business on.
Therefore, the only choice is to abandon the OGL entirely. Going forward, Autarch will no longer produce material under the Open Game License. We will be launching our upcoming Adventurer Conqueror King System: Imperial Imprint (ACKS II) in May without any WOTC SRD material. We will put in place a new license - a truly open license — that will make the core rules of ACKS II available to every other OSR developer in the space. And all of our future products, on DriveThruRPG, Kickstarter, Patreon, and elsewhere, will be released to be compatible with ACKS II or Ascendant, not with anything owned or touched by WOTC.
Whether we will be able to continue to publish our existing OGL games remains to be seen. Our intent is to continue to do so until forced to stop. Whether we will be de-platformed also remains to be seen. If so, we will find or build new platforms. I’ve done it before.
To my comrades in the OSR community — I know that your situation is similar to mine, perhaps even more difficult if your game of choice is closer to TSR/WOTC’s designs. What will happen to OSE — can a perfect replica of BX be sustained without the OGL? What will happen to DCC? What will happen to LL, to LOTFP? Every developer in the OSR is endangered. I welcome any and all collaborators who would like to build on ACKS II and support any independent efforts you are making to help reclaim a space for open OSR gaming. Reach out, friend.
To my comrades in the 5E community — You deserved so much better from WOTC than you have been given. I was gratified to learn that a number of independent developers are already working on a 5E-compatible but WOTC-free SRD that will be available under the creative commons. These fine people have the right idea and I hope they will gain your support. My own work is not and has never been 5E compatible, but these efforts have my full support all the same.
With the deauthorization of OGL 1.0a and the release of OGL 1.1, Wizards of the Coast has attempted to bring an end to the open gaming movement which has made our hobby more popular than ever. But if our movement sticks together, this does not need to be the end of open gaming. This can be a new beginning.
Now, I'm not a publisher, I'm just a homebrewer. I do have my own game, which does not rely on the OGL, although as a mark of respect and whatnot, I used to include the OGL with it anyway. Even though I'm not a publisher, I'm still going through my document and removing or changing anything at all that might even give the appearance of having been based on any of the SRDs. I want to ensure that my game is completely stand-alone, and obviously so. I don't trust Hasbro, even if I'm just a guy with my personal game as a pdf on Google Drive for the heckuvit, not a publisher.
The management at WotC are sociopaths. And frankly, I don't trust the designers either. The YouTube channel Diversity & Dragons has done a decent job of documenting much of their sociopathic behavior on twitter and elsewhere. I'm sure that there are some decent people in the WotC offices just keeping their heads down and quietly trying to keep getting a paycheck doing what they thought was going to be their dream job. But between 1) the woke developers and designers insulting and castigating their core audience because of their unmitigated hatred and bigotry, 2) the terrible developers and designers who haven't managed to put out a decent product in many years now because their focus (and even the reason that they're there at all) is DEI (otherwise known as anti-white resentment, covetousness and hatred), and 3) the terrible management who stabbed their fans and partners in the back because the brand was "under-monetized", I am determined to completely and utterly refuse to do any business with WotC anymore. They are terrible people, they produce terrible products, and they treat their customers and partners/collegues like crap. They have no ethics, no morals, and are largely motivated by hatred of normal white guys, who are their core customer base. Which implies a very toxic resentment/dependency relationship too.
Not only will I refuse to engage with them in any fashion, but I hope to see this blow up in their faces, and I hope—as we've seen with Hollywood in general and Disney in particular—to see their business fail, crash and burn because of the decisions that they have made to drive away their customers, because of their arrogance, their entitlement, and their narcissistic tendencies to think that they can get away with anything. I hope an entire ecosystem of "point and laugh" YouTubers, influencers, and amateur newshouds appears that makes the most of every single failure that WotC has, just as has happened for fantasy and science fiction pop culture more generally. Their hatred, their toxicity, and their wokeness only make it all the more easy to feel no hesitation or remorse on taking schadenfreude in watching—hopefully—their unethical and probably illegal OGL power grab be their Titanic iceberg moment.
WotC is the new Amber Heard, or Meghan Markle. And just as public opinion has turned on them and they now find themselves victims of their own hubris, I will take some amusement and satisfaction in seeing the same happen to WotC. I hope that D&D fans are as principled as Lord of the Rings fans turned out to be when Amazon created their travesty of a take on the material. But I doubt it, sadly.
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