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Hi everyone!

Well, 2023 kicked of with a vengeance, didn't it? I am sure by now most of you have heard about the new OGL 1.1 leak from WOTC. If you aren't sure what it's all about and why it is bad, here's a quick summary by DMDave (you can see his full post on it here, he did a really good job laying everything out):

  • All creators earning over $50,000 per year have to report earnings.
  • Wizards automatically has a claim to whatever content you create as a sublicense. This means that they can take my content, repackage it, share it, do whatever they want, and don't owe me a dime and are absolved of all liabilities attached to it.
  • Any content that isn't a PDF or book is not allowed. This could severely harm or even lead to the destruction of many major third-party VTTs, such as FoundryVTT, FantasyGrounds, Alchemy, Roll20, etc. It also eliminates board games, video games, miniatures, etc.
  • Any past version of the OGL is null and void.  Despite the wording of the original document, which said it is perpetual, irrevocable, and could not be replaced by any new version of the OGL, the new one straight-up says they will no longer honor that agreement.
  • Creators making over $750,000 have to pay a very high percentage of revenue (not profit, mind you) after $750,000. To put this in perspective, I almost barely reach that number (when you factor in Kickstarters), but easily 90%+ of what comes in goes to contractors, cost of goods sold, taxes, platform fees, legal/accounting, etc.
  • They're only giving people until January 13th to sign. This might change since they haven't released an official agreement (it was supposed to come out yesterday), but originally they hoped to put it out this week and give people a total of 9 days (or 7 business days) to agree or "suffer our legal wrath."
  • This is for every edition. This doesn't just affect OneDND. It affects 3.0/3.5 and its derivatives, including Pathfinder, as well as 5th edition.

Thankfully, my maps are system agnostic - so not a whole lot will change there... however, our encounters are threatened.

For now, however, since WOTC hasn't actually released anything official yet, we continue as we were. New encounters will be released, as well as everything else. For now, we continue unchanged, while keeping a close eye on the TTRPG news. Wish us luck! 

Here's hoping WOTC decides not to destroy the entire industry.

Comments

Jasper van Nieuwenhuijzen

I've been pissed off about this for days. This move by WotC and Hasbro is so incredibly predatory. I'm boycotting them as much as I can, I don't want them to earn another cent of me. Even if they were to walk everything back, I'm done.

Tsumi

Cant Foundry just stop supporting dnd and move on without being destroyed?

dww

I actually editing that part out - you are right, Foundry should be ok.

dww

Completely agree. I cannot wrap my head around this decision at all.