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So the OGL 1.2 survey dropped today. As promised, there are text boxes everywhere to write in details — and based on my experience, I'm inclined to believe that the insistence that they read this stuff is accurate. At the same time, though, I recognize that allowing Hasbro/WotC to corral the conversation to these text boxes, where nobody else will see, is a terrible mistake. As such, I am posting what I wrote (though not most of my radio button answers; you can assume they reflect the text).

This was all off-the-cuff, so it may not be absolute perfection. Nevertheless, I am reasonably confident in my convictions and my ability to write about them.


2. Now that you've read the proposed OGL 1.2, what concerns or questions come to mind for you?


The OGL 1.2 strikes me as conceding very little. Clearly you're still trying to get your own way, claw back as much as you can, and trick us into accepting things with buzzwords and prettier language. The "literal genie" aspects — such as including the word "irrevocable" because we've been making a stink about it but then missing every point behind that demand, and having your claim that it won't include VTT restrictions be "fulfilled" by spinning those restrictions off into a separate document — are particularly deceitful. "Magician's trick" and "lipstick on a pig" are apt metaphors I've heard applied to this proposed license.

I particularly find myself suspicious of Section 1(b), which both fails to recognize existing technology such as automated character sheets and offloads the VTT question to a separate document which may change; Section 3, which seems like a means of disguising and protecting your intent to steal from third-party creators; Section 5, which seems like a sneaky way to foster a diaspora of licensing that will make future communal interoperability difficult; Section 6(f), which grants you too much unilateral discretion to eliminate material that is too progressive or inclusive for your shareholders to stomach, or even to cook up a pretext to backstab someone for any or no reason; Section 7(b), which is but one of many anti-lawsuit provisions; Section 9(c), by which you allow yourself to pretend to be nice for long periods only to stab us in the back later, which is exactly what we're living through right now as it is; Section 9(e), which unacceptably prohibits class-action lawsuits; and Section 9(g), which asks that we waive an explicit constitutional right. You have also failed to guarantee that you will not attempt to extract royalties from us at a future date.

I am frankly angry that you're trying to pass off your licensing changes as an "open" license at all, when it clearly isn't intended to foster a commons like the original OGL did. It's as though you think that the main problem with 4e's GSL was that it didn't have a beloved brand name behind it. It doesn't help that you also clearly see the OGL as purely a contract between Wizards and everyone else, not as a general-purpose tool as it was meant to be; your "deauthorization" harms people who have used the OGL 1.0a for material that doesn't even compete with D&D. Originally, a separate d20 System License was your tool for keeping some modicum of control. While the revocation of that is a scar the community still remembers, it was something the commons was able to recover from.

Of course, you're also making an unacceptable overreach that the GSL never did: you're trying to freeze our existing commons in place by imagining a right to "deauthorize" the OGL 1.0a and immediately exercising that imaginary "right", making it impossible for us to collectively build on the things we've created over the last 22 years. While freezing the commons is an improvement over the leak's apparent intent to nuke the commons from orbit, it is still not nearly good enough. It's OK if you want to control future official D&D, but the new license terms should in no way alter existing license terms for 3.0, 3.5, and 5e. If you don't want to lose market share to Pathfinder or the next Pathfinder, you need to create a superior product; that's how capitalism is supposed to work. Channel your money into making the greatest D&D you can, not into attacking your support structure.

It is also worth noting that your feint concerning the Creative Commons CC-BY license is clearly a marketing stunt, trying to co-opt the good reputation of an organization that actually is dedicated to open content and use it to burnish your image with those who won't take the time to cross-reference what you actually "released". I did. While I am not a lawyer, my takeaway is that you are only placing things that you believe you could not defend in court under CC-BY — things that would be practically guaranteed to be ruled to be uncopyrightable game mechanics. If you do not release the races, classes, spells, traps and hazards, magic items, monsters (especially animals), public domain-based sample pantheons, and planes that you have excluded from your declaration, then your gesture is nothing more than meaningless sleight of hand.




4. What would be needed to improve your perception of Dungeons & Dragons' future?


Either leave the OGL 1.0a completely untouched, or release the 3.0, 3.5, and 5e SRD material in its entirety under an even more permissive license such as CC0. Furthermore, do not attempt to relicense 3.0, 3.5, or 5e under more restrictive terms. Sign a contract that makes the 20+ year implicit promise of refusal to sue the third-party community that supports you, which was originally implicit in OGL 1.0a, explicit.



7. Do you have any other comments about the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International and/or the content that will be released under Creative Commons?


As I mentioned in a previous section, your CC-BY stunt is clearly a feint to try to foster goodwill and generate positive press while giving us absolutely nothing that you could have defended in court in the first place. You are not giving us things, you are trying to take them away and use Creative Commons as a smokescreen. The idea that you could have sued anybody for such simple mechanics as rolling a d20, adding a modifier, and comparing the result to a difficulty class is laughable. It has not escaped my notice that you have released no races, classes, spells, traps and hazards, magic items, monsters, sample pantheons, or planes under this license. It is particularly egregious that you think that the majority of your expression of traps and hazards, animals, and public domain pantheons is worth gating behind a worse license.



9. Do you have any other comments about the Notice of Deauthorization?


This is a dealbreaker for the community and makes me incredibly angry. I would rate "Satisfaction" at -10 if I could [on the provided scale of 1 to 5] concerning this provision. You are attempting to freeze a commons built up over the course of over 20 years in place, and that only because you could not get away with nuking it from orbit. You are also clearly setting up a pretext by which you can engage in anticompetitive practices, particularly by suing Paizo. If you do anything even *REMOTELY SIMILAR* to "deauthorizing", revoking, or otherwise ending the OGL 1.0a, then I will never buy another D&D product, Wizards of the Coast product, or Hasbro product again. This is the provision that is most significantly stirring boycotts and driving your third-party support structure away. Fire the lawyer that suggested it.



12. Do you have any other comments about the types of content covered and/or the content ownership rights outlined by the proposed OGL 1.2?


Allow me to begin with some historical context. I remain disappointed that Wizards of the Coast gave up on adding much of substance to the 3.0 and 3.5 System Reference Document after the Epic Level Handbook, Deities & Demigods, and Psionics Handbook sold poorly. I have the impression that you thought this was because the idea of open content was a failed experiment. In truth, those books sold poorly because they were of poor quality. That being said, I do appreciate that you nevertheless updated the ELH and deity-related SRD content to 3.5, released a vastly-improved Expanded Psionics Handbook and used that as the basis for an update to the psionics content in the 3.5 SRD, and released Unearthed Arcana as a treasure trove of open content. Unfortunately, even in adding these, you overlooked many sidebars, and sidebars alone are not enough to drive sales. Furthermore, 3.5 represented an opening of the floodgates of new rules content, yet nothing aside from the aforementioned made its way into the SRD. While the 3.5 SRD has brought me many years of enjoyment, it still could have been better.

With that context established, the thing that is most striking to me about the 5.1 SRD is how static it is. It took community effort to even convince you to release important content, such as the Eldritch Blast cantrip that so many of the Warlock's other features unavoidably hinge on, or critical worldbuilding tools such as the Thaumaturgy and Druidcraft cantrips. If the 3.5 SRD was disappointing in its languid growth, than the 5.1 SRD strikes me as reflective of the likelihood that you only came back to open gaming at all with gritted teeth due to the closed 4th Edition's failure.

Contrast your market strategy with that of your closest competitor, Paizo. While they do carefully control the lore of the world of Golarion, they release vast amounts of rules content into their own SRDs, and thus the commons as a whole. And yet, this does not prevent people from buying books; on the contrary, it makes it more likely that they will do so. GMs are often reluctant to allow material from books that they cannot easily reference on their own time. Since most Pathfinder content is easily available online, it circumvents the skinflint effect and thus drives sales. Perhaps you should consider a similar marketing strategy — concentrating on controlling and selling material related to the vast array of settings you own the rights to, and releasing as many of D&D's rules as possible for open reference without a fee.




16. Do you have any other comments about the "You Control Your Content", "Warranties And Disclaimers", or "Modification Or Termination" sections?


Section 5(b) strikes me as fostering an incompatible diaspora of licencing agreements to occur, in direct violation of the spirit of the original Open Gaming License. That being said, I appreciate that you have made strides on this front compared to the 1.1 leak. I simply believe that the original OGL 1.0a had better provisions for this sort of thing.

Section 6(f) is a problem. While I understand that you want to protect your reputation — I do not actually swallow your assertion that you added this in a spirit of inclusiveness — this section gives you a completely unacceptable amount of unilateral power. No amount of honeyed words about diversity will help here. Even within the lifespan of 5e, you have made several racist mistakes. You have also performed takedowns of DM's Guild content that is anticapitalist, pro-LGBTQ, or otherwise too far left-leaning. Therefore, I cannot trust you as a moral guardian. Even if I could, a change of leadership would bring with it a change of standards; thus, an arbitrary, unilateral approvals process is not a foundation upon which we can build supporting material for D&D. The people you claim you want to protect are also very sensitive to the long history — stretching back hundreds of years — of laws, rules, and regulations that claim to "protect" minorites but were actually used as cudgels against them. Again, this is a reason why the separate d20 System License from the 3.0 and 3.5 days was valuable; it allowed a distinction between what you would endorse and what you would not, without giving you undue control over what did or did not make it into print.

Section 7, while an overall improvement over the 1.1 leak, has an unacceptable clause in Section 7(b). We do not want to be forced not to sue you. You are an enormous corporation, with the outsized and unchecked power that implies. Our society is increasingly unjust in part because of the economic inequality corporations such as yours represent, and in part due to clauses such as these. American government was founded on the principle of checks and balances; it has become increasingly clear that our economy needs a similar foundation in order to be just rather than exploitative.




18. Do you have any other comments about the Virtual Tabletop Policy?


This is at best a fundamental misunderstanding of the state of VTT technology, and at worst a naked attempt to monopolize the VTT space with regard to Dungeons & Dragons — and given your desire to make a particularly fancy VTT, I am inclined to suspect the latter. Standard features of VTTs, such as the vision-blocking layers and light sources that most offer, the ability to use animated GIFs of things such as campfires, or the ability to employ existing images for personal use, would be prohibited by this policy. Why is it bad to have a VTT token of an owlbear that conforms to your depictions of the creature, but fair use to print out a small picture of the same and paste it onto a poker chip? To say nothing of the fact that the owlbear was originally based on a toy you did not manufacture in the first place.

What is the line between a VTT and a video game, you ask? It's not animation or "going beyond the tabletop experience". It's the need for a Dungeon Master. That is what makes tabletop role-playing games like D&D special, and capable of adapting to things and encompassing possibilities a video game never could.




21. Would you be comfortable releasing TTRPG content under the proposed OGL 1.2 as written?


(X) No


22. Why do you say that?


I have been thorough in explaining my reasons, but I shall summarize again here.

I believe it is an unfair deal, giving you too much power and ability to abuse me and granting far too little back in return. A more uneven deal is more understandable when dealing with content that is specific to particular settings you own; however, it is a painful reversal and an undue cultural power grab with respect to the broader foundations of D&D.

I believe that the rules of D&D are at their best if they are treated not as a product, but as a language and shared mythos. You say that our imagination belongs to us, but you have made clear that you want to steal it. Your Creative Commons PR stunt belies your lack of good faith.

I do not believe that you actually care about hateful and discriminatory content, but are instead trying to use such rhetoric to paint everyone who does not agree with you as bigots. Furthermore, we all know what happens when one person has unilateral ability to decide what is moral and what is not, who is worthy of protection and who is not. We are seeing it play out in real time in American politics, particularly in Florida. Furthermore, I do not believe that your moral and ethical compass is aligned with mine, not that it would stay that way even if it were.




24. Do you have any other comments about Content Creator Badges?


They're fine, but I feel I cannot rate my willingness to use them meaningfully until the terms of your proposed licenses, policies, and agreements change. In particular, keep in mind that the "deauthorization", revocation, termination, or any other form of ending OGL 1.0a is completely unacceptable.



What other feedback do you have for us (related to the Open Games License or otherwise)?


I believe that you have deeply, fundamentally, and perhaps willingly misunderstood the purpose and appeal of the Open Gaming License. The very fact that you are abandoning everything about the original Open Gaming License, tried to shove through a replacement that was completely contrary to the spirit of the original and carried only the name, and are now trying to trick us into accepting a revised reworking of the latter that is only barely better than what you tried to slip in under the radar is proof of this.

I also believe that you have failed to understand how you, personally, benefit from an ecosystem of open content that includes you. The percentage of sales of your products that can be traced back to a third party's adventure exciting someone, a third party's ability to include people like them where you did not do so yourselves, the ability to mix and match material from a dozen different third-party companies, or even the fact that a third-party company's products for their own game are easily converted to yours cannot be understated, even if you can't easily track them on a balance sheet. Paizo's example proves that you should in fact be more open, not less.

The Open Gaming License 1.0a, and the very specific spirit behind it, mean a lot to all of us. The fact that you are attempting to ruin it all has kept me up at night. While I am not sure that you have the hearts to care, I hope that you at least feel the pain in your wallets. Your attempt at control for control's sake is disgusting.

To the intern reading this, I hope that your ongoing job search is going well.

#OpenDnD

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