So, once again, I am no legal expert and certainly not one in this field. Those who are wary of celebrating any grand victory when corporate forces are in charge are right to be skeptical. However, it looks like Wizards of the Coast has reversed course.
Again, I want to seriously preface this with saying I am no more an expert in this stuff than you are. My legal background is that my mom was a lawyer who stopped practicing around the time I was born in the mid 80s - so in other words, everything I'm saying is just what I believe this all means.
The OGL, or Open Game License, is a document that WotC created detailing how other people can use the system they developed (originally 3rd Edition, but this was extended to 3.5 and 5th edition - though not, I believe, 4th). It promises, in what I believe is a legally binding way, that anyone who wants to can make products relating to their game as long as long as there is attribution, and that one does not need permission or to pay royalties. To define what "their game" means, the OGL refers to the System Reference Document, or the SRD.
The SRD is basically a giant block of text that details the rules of the game. It includes the core mechanics as well as stat blocks, spell and item descriptions - basically anything you need to run the game. There are, however, some notable absences here, which allow WotC to preserve their copyright on certain things. Creatures that are original to D&D, including Mind Flayers and Beholders, are not in the SRD, nor are named NPCs like Mordenkainen or Lord Soth (indeed, the rights to Lord Soth and Dragonlance were the source of some legal complexities due to the fact that the setting belongs to its creators, the Hickmans. I don't know if WotC fully bought them out or just got a license to make the recent adventure).
Now, as I understand it, the original plan was to put the OGL under Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that basically holds onto licenses and other documents to protect them from being altered or rescinded by capricious corporate interests... you know, like Hasbro.
The seeming change with this announcement is that not only will the OGL be put under Creative Commons (unchanged from its 1.0a iteration, which is the one people were afraid of losing,) but the SRD will as well.
Now, I don't know to what extent it would profit WotC to retain the SRD. I suppose you could say that in theory, having the OGL unchanged but being able to change the SRD would make the OGL useless. After all, a spiteful WotC could theoretically edit the SRD to say "nothing, you suckers," and make the OGL's license to use it worthless, though that seems unlikely.
This move, though, once they go through with it (and here I understand some fear they'll pull the rug out just because, well, late capitalism is full of such bullshit, though I think they've already been bleeding from one self-inflicted wound in the foot and this would be a coup de grace) would mean that the SRD itself belongs to the public, and would thus mean that, perpetually, 5th Edition D&D remains open and accessible to anyone who wants to make stuff for it.
Now, the big question I have is whether any of this applies to One D&D.
In theory (again, remember that I'm just some dude at his computer who knows as much about this as you do) I believe the SRD as it stands is just the rules for 5th Edition (though there's also got to be rules for 3rd and 3.5). Nothing in this announcement has confirmed that the SRD for One D&D - which they claim is not going to be called 6th Edition but... sort of is, isn't it? - will also be put under Creative Commons. There's a possibility that the reason they acquiesced to the community's demands is that they only have a year or two left of 5th Edition to make stuff for before they move on, and so there's not much to win by holding it under such restrictions.
However, looking at the history of the OGL, I think it would be smarter of them to do this for One D&D as well. Yes, Pathfinder emerged as a big competitor to D&D, built as it was on 3.5 as a system, and it ate 4th Edition's lunch. But that pressure also caused them to make a much more popular system in 5th Edition, and D&D's popularity exploded to heights it had never seen before. Indeed, Paizo, which makes Pathfinder, has even started making content for 5th Edition, given the degree to which WotC has roared back into dominating the hobby.
Now, you could argue that this was really just a matter of making a better game system. But to me, it looks like the way that this sort of game thrives, you want to have a lot of people working on and designing things. If MCDM comes out with a monster book and someone got interested in Matt Colville because of his videos about 2001 a Space Odyssey, they might be interested in picking up D&D. If people watching the Legend of Vox Machina hear that Critical Role put out a book about Tal'dorei, and then realize that they could play an RPG in this setting if they get the D&D rulebooks, that's pretty great for WotC.
And, again, I think Pathfinder is one of the big reasons we got 5th Edition in the first place.
One of the core premises of capitalism is that competition breeds innovation. But over my lifetime, I've mostly seen big corporations do everything in their power to prevent anyone from competing, and to force customers down a single path, where they have no choice but to buy one company's products at the price they set.
In the short term, this strategy is, I'm sure, great for the executive class. But what it does is it erodes out the base of the business they are running, mining out the core purpose the business should be there to serve, and leaves everyone except for some CEO or Board member poorer for having lost a great product or service.
This problem of course applies to much more than just TTRPGs. But at least in this circumstance, the community has enough leverage to - I hope - hold back the tide of self-cannibalizing capitalism... on this one, small front.
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