OGL 1.1 Disaster

Blades in the Dark
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Hi - just posting here in the hopes of getting a response from Evil Hat or John Harper.

Many of us here will probably be aware of the debacle going around surrounding the leaked 1.1 version of the D&D Open Game License, which (if it goes ahead) will have drastic implications for countless producers of content released - whether in the future or products already published - under the existing 1.0a version. Basically (as I understand it) Wizards of the Coast will be demanding: pre-approval on products to be published; details of income for any products; and the right to take from any publications under the OGL and republish, without any form of compensation to the original authors. They may also be able to block VTT apps from using their properties.

Obviously, this is egregiously greedy and appalling behaviour from a giant multinational company against an entire industry based on their previous license.

I’m assuming that BitD (and any FitD games not involving any WotC IP), being based on entirely separate ruleset and setting, would not be affected by any of this - but it would be good to have confirmation of this from Evil Hat or John.

It would also be nice if they would confirm that they have no intention of going down this route themselves…

I’m asking this because I actually don’t think that the powers that be around here would do anything like this. John has shown himself to be committed to - and in touch with - the community, and the EH team have always seemed to be trying to do their best to do the right thing. I trust them in ways that I would never trust the people at the top of Hasbro, who I’m sure don’t have a clue about the products they sell, and are just trying to hold a monopoly on the industry while also milking their franchises for whatever they can.

This is a potentially earthshaking time for RPGs, and I’d just like to get some clarification on behalf of creators and players.

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I’d like to take this time to point out that Blades in the Dark is not using the OGL license, doesn’t use any Wizards IP, and neither Jon nor Evil Hat have ever had a repressive view to hacks even for non officially sanctioned material - as should be noted by all the links to 3rd party Forged in the Dark games and hacks that are linked on the Blades site, or the fact that you can find a lot of Jon’s games online for free.

I know this seems like a big deal, but nobody - not Jon or Sean or Evil Hat or even Hasbro, can actually stop us from playing, talking about or making roleplaying games. And I think it’s really important that people remember this fact.

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Hi hi. Sorry this is a short reply but the FitD license doesn’t use the OGL at all (we used CC-BY) so it won’t be affected no matter what Wizards does.

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Thanks for the responses and reassurance. I was fairly certain this was the case, but it’s good to get confirmation. Also, Sean, thanks to EH for not being the kind of arseholes who would do this sort of thing.

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Game rules are inherently open source.

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