Well for what it’s worth they’re likely changing the license of D&D in the upcoming edition which will be more restrictive. There are also leaks from inside the company that they are basically considering the pen & paper market dead and are going to move to focusing on the online game in their proprietary VTT app in that edition.
So existing editions under the OGL or CC are safe, but the future edition is going to be much more of a walled garden.
The proposed change to the OGL caused such an inferno of negative reactions that Wizards of the Coast backed off of the license change. If they go through with it in the future anyway, though, then it’s still really easy to avoid. Just don’t play that version of D&D, use one of the existing ones. Or one of the innumerable other systems for TTRPGs.
Really, it’s not hard to not use a particular tool for this stuff. Dig out the old paper books if you want to go really old school.
They backed off of making any retroactive changes to existing editions. Given the information that was leaked in January, I highly doubt they will release the new edition under any open license. They’ve made it clear that they are investing hard in a proprietary VTT experience and their goal is to monetize that VTT heavily.
Yep, they backed off because people are starting to realize WOTC needs the players more than the players need WOTC. It’s a very odd reversal compared to most industries. WOTC could explode tomorrow and people could keep happily playing D&D for years to come without any issues.
That remains to be seen since one dnd isn’t licensed at all yet. The possibility is there for them to use a different license for the next SRD, but it given the backlash they got at the beginning of the year, I think it’s as likely they continue with Creative Commons on mechanics (which debatably aren’t copyrightable in the first place).
Well for what it’s worth they’re likely changing the license of D&D in the upcoming edition which will be more restrictive. There are also leaks from inside the company that they are basically considering the pen & paper market dead and are going to move to focusing on the online game in their proprietary VTT app in that edition.
So existing editions under the OGL or CC are safe, but the future edition is going to be much more of a walled garden.
The proposed change to the OGL caused such an inferno of negative reactions that Wizards of the Coast backed off of the license change. If they go through with it in the future anyway, though, then it’s still really easy to avoid. Just don’t play that version of D&D, use one of the existing ones. Or one of the innumerable other systems for TTRPGs.
Really, it’s not hard to not use a particular tool for this stuff. Dig out the old paper books if you want to go really old school.
They backed off of making any retroactive changes to existing editions. Given the information that was leaked in January, I highly doubt they will release the new edition under any open license. They’ve made it clear that they are investing hard in a proprietary VTT experience and their goal is to monetize that VTT heavily.
Then go with the second half of what I recommended above and continue using one of the older editions.
You don’t have to use the most recent version of D&D. You don’t have to use D&D at all.
Yeah I wholeheartedly agree. In fact I’m about to start running a PF2e session in about 10 minutes lol.
Yep, they backed off because people are starting to realize WOTC needs the players more than the players need WOTC. It’s a very odd reversal compared to most industries. WOTC could explode tomorrow and people could keep happily playing D&D for years to come without any issues.
Well Pathfinder was created for this reason, time to move on.
That remains to be seen since one dnd isn’t licensed at all yet. The possibility is there for them to use a different license for the next SRD, but it given the backlash they got at the beginning of the year, I think it’s as likely they continue with Creative Commons on mechanics (which debatably aren’t copyrightable in the first place).