Wizards of the Coast’s OGL 1.1 (Or at Least Our Thoughts On What We Think We Know So Far)

m

hello my name is tanner wayland and i'm here with my co host and good

friend justin justin how are you doing

good how are you

doing well for you those of you who don't know who we are you know

we are the hosts of a little podcast we like to call how to be

a better d m and in this podcast we explore how each of us can

provide the best world's adventures

oh

and play environment for our players today it's a little bit of a different topic

it's one that i'm not sure if everybody is as tapped into this as we

are but i feel like i've seen everybody talk about it

yeah

it's about the it's about d and d and specifically the ah new o g

l one point one that got leaked um we're going to talk about how that

you know effects us as as d ms you know because that's you know if

we were just doing any old podcast i don't think it would matter as much

but you know d ms are

oh

by by their nature creative and when you create things oftentimes you want to see

how you can you know share it with people and sometimes you know you worry

about things go am i allowed to share this or

ye

create or rip off of it or or make money and that's that we're going

to talk about all of that first off justin what's what's new with you

what's new with me

well well we have so a lot of you don't know in utah which is

where i live me and a couple of friends we are putting on an event

next in two weeks two saturdays kind of a business networking event and you know

that's kind of moving forward the idea is we're going to use d and d

to business network so get people together playing d and and then you know help

them build relationships and connections and so forth and actually cut this out tanner but

you said you wanted to you were you were up for being a dem for

that was that right

so what time is it i

uh

know it's that saturday

yes it's it's the twenty eighth and it's starting at ten a m

ye and a m you say

m

okay that could actually

if not

be possible

no worries

how long do you expect it to last

four to five hours

four to five hours oh man you know what when do you think you'll be

doing the next one of these probably

uh

like

sometime

in a year

in february

or half a year or something february

m

okay so you're planning on doing this regularly then

exactly

uh yeah probably for this one i'm going to have to sit out just because

totally

i'm leaving on a trip the next morning like

oh

early and i won't be able to help with anything else ay saturday is probably

going to be packed for me just getting ready for that and doing all the

stuff i need to

sounds that sounds fine

yep

cool

but i'd love to help with the next one

awesome um let me just be real quick also i'm gonna turn off my camera

because i think there's a little bit of latency so hopefully

that's

that

fine

should fix it

i'll try

anyways

to

anyways uh yeah so we're having this awesome event if you're in the utah area

i'll put the link in the show notes if you want to come we still

have some tickets available but other than that i don't know that too much is

really new just enjoying the new year and and trying out new things here and

there not not big things but just you know little things what about

i mean that sounded pretty big to

uh

me i've never run a pseudo

yeah

business sutouknowgaming

oh

meeting gash

yeah

i

m

mean for me my wife kirsty and i we moved into new town home

yeah

that

yeah

happened basically new year's eve

oh

and since then you know it feels like it's been weve years

yah

but uh

h

but we're doing well

m

you know we're just slowly putting

m

getting furniture

m

putting it together

h

cleaning

m

the house throwing all of our dirt secrets and boxes into the unused bedroom

yeah

and and you know pretending like

yeah

our lives are in order but yeah honestly it's been great it's been really nice

it's just been busy

yeah

otherwise very excited i've got an actual office now

yeah

in office room

he

it's not just mine you know we share it but

oh

kirsty was telling me because i don't know i'm someone that has a hard time

like decorating a room the ways i want because i'm like oh i feel like

i've never had a space that's just mine to decorate you know

yeah

and and so like i see this room and she's like oh you could put

some stuff and she you know emphasized some

uh

because she because

ah

she

yah

was like you can't

h

wreck the office and turn it into some weird nor castle

but

was like

it should be because that's what is awesome

i mean that's what i said

yeah

and then suddenly i'm on the couch and i'm just getting

classic

that never happened but

oh

but honestly i'm excited to decorate a little

yeah

bit maybe who

my

knows put a little neon sign on the

yeah

wall could you imagine

twould be amazing

anyway yeah

oh

so i'm excited with that but

awesome

yeah i mean i think that it's a great month

yeah

and it's going to be a great

oh

year it's already been a very exciting start

heck ya

the year well perfect justin let's

yeah

let's launch in so the topic

ah

the o g l one point one and if anybody is wondering what the o

g stands for you know that's

oh

just the open game license basically back in two thousand

yeah

the original open game license it basically just made it so that creators could develop

their own content inspired by the world of d and d and specifically that wizards

of the coast the kind of company that created and sells d and that kind

of allows a lot of freedom

oh

for creators whereas this new

oh

o g l one point one is really raining

m

that in

yeah

ye

oh

and people aren't happy about it

yeah uh honestly to put it in perspective so if you are in the dungeon

master space on instagram or any of the social media you've probably seen thousands of

mimes about the oil and they are all very funny and i would highly recommend

hm

it as a very great way to spend your day um but the idea behind

the is or at least this whole corfuffl is all about intellectual property and the

idea that ideas can belong to someone so you know this podcast

hm

is the intellectual property of me and tanner and as right now we don't have

any sort of open game license like d and d did in two thousand we

don't have anything like that so if you copied this show or took the show

and kind of made your own version of it um you know we'd probably come

after you not that we have that many resources but the point is the question

behind this is is it legal for d n d to do this is it

moral and do we like it i think those are all kind of the underlying

questions right

yeah absolutely and you know i think i think something to put this in perspective

is just kind of starting point because that's that's something

m

to keep in mind about

m

this reaction because if somebody just just to give you some a little bit of

gritty about what's you know

m

in the new

yeah

o g l that got leaked let's just

yeah

say that it's leaked not

hm

official um and you can bet that after the uproar that have and that it's

not going to remain as it was

at least you help right

at least you'd hope right

oh

they put out some like a response that seems like they you know quite quite

learned

uh

somewhat of a lesson we'll see i mean they they still are focusing on their

bottom line and that you know still means them wanting more control

hm

but but with the l one of the big differences is like oh if you're

a creator over who makes over seven hundred thousand dollars a year then you know

you have pay royalty basically right

hm

and except for of course some of their favored creators you know i'm sure

right

matt mercer you know to mention twenty things

oh

like things like that they're going to be fine but like as everybody knows this

is it's kind of booming creative business space for a d n d and for

tabletop role playing games in general so like there might be more people who make

more than seven hundred thousand off of d and d products

hm

um and so getting back to my point about starting point right like disney if

you made like twenty bucks or a hundred bucks off of selling and creating disney

stuff you know they might come after you if you're

m

doing it in a very like high visibility manner

h

right now

m yeah

probably not actually like twenty hundred bucks but like much less than seven hundred thousand

they'd come at you

hm

if you're going and selling like micky stuff

yeah

as if you

yeah

were disney even though you're not now

m

the o g l is so and if you were disney and they were like

hey you can sell disney branded stuff and like and disney things that and even

like movies and video games based of disney stuff and you know you don't have

to pay royalties until you make seven hundred thousand no one would care

m

well sorry like no one would care that it's like oh my goodness they're giving

us royalties because they'd be like oh my goodness that's actually a lot more than

i expected out

uh

of disney right

yeah

um

yeah

and that this isn't my example this is an example there's this outuber called legal

eagle i thought it was a great example um because on the other side we

have d n d with the o g l which was like hey if you

want to go for it just go like go crazy you know with some limitations

it wasn't like they were you know completely free like they

hm

had some trade marked monsters

oh

and things like that but but in the uh probably not trade marked more like

copyrighted

h

uh but

m

in the end because people had so much freedom that's part of the reason why

dungeons and dragons

yeah

begot became so popular but

yeah

it's also why people are like what the heck because it's you know it feels

like night and day

yeah

you know but it's going from day a little closer

oh

to night so to speak as the other metaphorical example like or fictional example of

disney that would have been like going from night to day because they're like lightening

up on restrictions you know

yeah yeah

where this kind of clamping down sorry that was a lot of thoughts but that's

kind of

no

i thought i've been having

i love it i love it so kind of a simple summary for kind of

the time line of how things have gone down at least from my point of

view and why i think this is happening so two thousand there's the o g

l basically d and d says hey you know community we can make this better

everyone together you guys can take it and run with it like he said and

then tes of the coast came out with i believe it was four point five

which was terrible fourth edition or something like that and so it was so bad

that a company called piso started coming up with their own version of dandy was

it was extremely similar but different in important ways called pathfinder i'm pretty sure you've

probably head of that and

hm

then pathfinder started growing and then five came out and you know five started getting

much more popular so from what i understand is has bro who owns wizard of

the coast looked at the bottom line of wizards costan said hey your d and

d property your dungeon dragon's property is not making as much money as it could

so let's rain in the competitors that we've ourselves read it in a sense and

make it so we

hm

make money from them and we also own their gaming system essentially because it's based

on ours kind of going back to those questions that i ask is it legal

is it moral do we like it so one is it legal hundred percent so

this is essentially brandon

m

sanderson writing a book getting wildly popular and then saying hey you can go write

a book if it's based on my stuff right if it's based on my stuff

that's fine someone else writes a book on that it's based on brandon sanderson stuff

but it changes very important things and it also becomes wildly popular brandon sanderson would

still have the right to be able to say hey i'm going to change things

that are happening in my world that i made you know disney did this essentially

with expanded universe star wars they bought the star wars property and then they fold

all these books that were written in the expanded universe and said these are no

longer cannon we can still have them but they essentially still belong to us but

they're not the actual story right

yeah

and then

yeah

morally i think this is where i draw the line it's one thing to put

something out and say hey this is going to cost you money right like it's

it's one thing for brandon sanderson i guess i'm just sticking with that example to

put out a book and say you know this is mine you have to abide

by this copy right it's another thing entirely for brandon sanderson to put out a

book for free and say anyone can use it change it make frances to it

whatever for twenty years see that someone else is using his stuff and getting rich

off of it and then saying hey we're changing what i said earlier because i

want a piece of that pie i think that's where morally disagree with what wizards

of the coast is doing more hasburoreally what about you tenner

yeah yeah i agree i think that the i mean obviously there are two reasons

why they did it in the first place

oh

right they wanted it to be you know

oh

basically to make it more ubiquitous more wide spread among

yah

people

oh

uh just to you know increase that community and i think it's it's helped them

a lot but then raining it in and being like okay now we reap the

profits everybody sees it for what it is

hm

you know

hm

it becomes

m

very transparent just to go from from very little restriction to restrictions and in as

much as like when they released response they said that it was about like hey

we wanted to reduce discrimina

m

son we want to combat people using our our properties for block chain or f

ts or anything like that right

hm

or cryptoand and we were all like oh so then why is there so much

in there that isn't about that

uh

you know

yeah

and i think that they really shot themselves in foot from from a p r

perspective

hm

like you said it is probably fairly legal now there's some you know hang ups

on like oh the original g l said that it would last you know perpetuity

oh

you know forever

right

but here's the thing in all likelihood we're never going to find out because anybody

who has

hm m

enough money there already changing their system and they're

hm

changing the you know the i p that they're using so that they don't have

to worry about it

exactly

right um like pisa they recently in the past few years like past couple they

put out path pathfinders second edition with like the first edition was very similar to

d and d right and specifically i think they were copying three point five

i believe

is

so

what i think they were doing and but this second edition is very different in

terms of like not only just like the different like haters and things like that

but also the mechanics so it's like easily distinguishable

hm

and and like people like that and other things and like cobalt press and things

they're all developing their own systems because in a way that's another thing that could

happen here and is happening is that hey

m

if people don't want to fight that legal battle then they'll just create their own

systems you know

hm yep

people have had enough time

yeah

to kind of marinate in the in the marinade that

ah

d and d so now they can go out

ah

and create their own thing um but if there was any illegality here it would

take somebody fighting in court for

m

like a lot of money and they

hm

might not win so frankly like yeah there's nothing to really stop them from doing

this because no one is going to actually push it in court that much

right

you know

oh

to the point where a judge would have to rule on it um so yeah

i think that it's i think it from from a perspective of a business who

created something i'm like hey you know it's in their right but from a business

like you said who basically started out on such a different foot and then we're

m

like rug pull

yep

um then i think that it's it's dubious and i don't think it's going to

turn out well for them maybe who knows maybe they monetize

oh

a little bit more with certain people but i think they're going to lose the

widespread appeal you know

yeah i agree and i think what's most important for us to talk about now

you

yes

know with the few minutes we have left is really how this affects dungeon masters

or how we believe this affects dungeon masters as a whole so for now you

and me who play without friends you know in our kitchen and just on the

kitchen table it's not really going affect us other than where our money goes into

whom um for the people who are creating things and putting it on dem gild

or things like that it may affect again how your money or who your money

goes to it also might a how expensive or how much money you can earn

um and it might also affect how much control you ultimately have you know in

the end of the day really other than that though i don't see many differences

for the people listening to this show unless you are you know a very prolific

creator you might have some big changes to make but other than that this probably

shouldn't affect you too much do you have any other opinions on that tenner oh

i know yeah i totally agree with that

oh

i think that for most people even people who are you know putting creating content

and putting it in smaller way

m

in smaller places you're going to probably be fine now keep keep in mind that

oh

that could change and

yeah

they even within the o g

yeah

l one point one leak there were provisions where they could change it and update

it like it they want

hm

uh and so like if they turn all evil empire on

u

us you know maybe even

h

just like small creators

oh

will also have to pay royalty at which point now if you want to do

that cool if you don't i'm sure there's other people out there who won't make

you do that

hm

but but one thing to keep in mind is that like hey you can

m

still get

oh

content from the wizards of the coast and it's great content and if you choose

go elsewhere that's great content to the good news is if you're just having a

friendly game nobody's watching you nobody's making money so nobody cares too

yeah

much about how you how you're doing it they just care that you're having fun

and coming back

yah

yeah

yah yeah that's funny no one cares if you're if you're not making money no

one cares they just care that you're having fun and some day you might spend

money on it you know so that's

exactly

i love it

perfect honestly

yeah

this was once again this was a little bit of a different

yeah

topic but you

yeah

know it's it's out there and i'm sure some people

he

have been curious so uh hopefully you know what if you ere still curious about

this there's a lot of wonderful articles a lot of wonderful youtubevideos

ah

we recommend that you do so but mostly we recommend that you that you just

oh

can and you having a great time now if this doesn't affect you then don't

worry about it more than you need to and get out there gather group of