What a monster first month of 2023 for Tabletop and Dungeons and Dragons communities After the month began with the private exchange and the week deadline for D&D creators to sign a new Open Gaming License (OGL), to want to gather crowd feedback for an OGL 1.2, and now with a preview of the community results Wizards of the Coast has announced today via a new D&DBeyond post that it will not be making any changes to the Dungeons and Dragons OGL 1.0a.
The poll for OGL 1.2 was meant to be open from last week until February 3, and then Kyle Brink, EP of D&D, he stated that there would be comments on or before February 17th, but in just a week the new post indicates that there have been over 15,000 responses… and he was not very supportive of the OGL 1.2 draft. Some of the key statistics highlighted in the blog post were:
- 88% do not want to publish TTRPG content under OGL 1.2.
- 90% would have to change some aspect of their business to accommodate OGL 1.2.
- 89% are not satisfied with the deprecation of OGL 1.0a.
- 86% are dissatisfied with the VTT policy project.
- 62% are satisfied with the inclusion of Systems Reference Document (SRD) content in Creative Commons, and the majority of those who were not satisfied requested more SRD content in Creative Commons.
Before reaching the closing date of the survey, it was decided that the voice of the community and creators had been heard, so they will “leave OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched” and that too ” will make all of SRD 5.1 available under a Creative Commons license.” This latest change is an expansion of the few pages that had been made part of Creative Commons in the previous post.
With this announcement, those currently working on projects can continue to create content, and those interested in creating D&D 5e content need not fear for their IP, or accidentally create something WOTC deems hateful. With this change, any concerns related to the implementation of VTT or the creation of spell effects are also removed.
This full return walk is a huge win for many members of the #OpenD&D community who have been looking to Wizards of the Coast to see the error of their path in trying to block Dungeons and Dragons knowing how the community is a central aspect of the brand. As for the next steps in the coming days, we will see how the community of creators and players responds to the return to 1.0 and their relationship with the game and the brand.