Adventures of A Female Nerd

What I've seen disgusts me. It's a corporate power and money grab that insults and degrades the creative efforts of people who believed WotC when they released the OGL. 4e was such total fucking garbage, if not for the OGL and the people who used it to develop a system that was fun to play, the brand would have likely suffered. We'd be talking about Pathfinder or something, instead of D&D.

5e is incredible and I just love everything about it. It will likely be the canonical RPG for years to come. And it only exists because people took all the parts of 3.0 and 3.5 (remember, 3.5 was planned from the beginning. It was a deliberate money grab to sell 3.0, knowing it needed work that eventually became 3.5) that were good and kept players engaged during WotC's ill-advised WOW On Paper that was 4e. They did that with the OGL, and I guess it cost WotC some small amount of money. So, of course, WotC is like "Let's fuck the players and the creators right in the face, even though they've been instrumental to our success, because we are leaving literally ones of dollars on the table!"

According to leaks reported last week, the company that owns Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is planning to revoke the open license that has, since the year 2000, applied to a wide range of unofficial, commercial products that build on the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons. The report indicates that this wouldn’t simply be a change going forward, but would affect existing works that relied on the license. The old license would be revoked for existing uses, and people who have used on it will be forced to adopt new terms or renegotiate with the company, Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of game giant Hasbro.

Obviously, this would be a rude and unfair thing to do to people who have accepted the invitation of the open gaming license (OGL) to create new games and stories that build upon Dungeons and Dragons. But would it be legal? Even more interesting, would revoking the OGL actually give some third parties more freedom to operate, given that the OGL forced them to promise not to do some things that copyright and trademark law otherwise permit? Let’s find out.