Dungeons and Dragons He issued an official apology for his recent handling of proposed changes to OGL and stated his plans to involve the community while working on a new OGL. Earlier today, D&D Executive Producer Kyle Brinks posted an apology for D&D Beyond apologizing on behalf of Wizards of the Coast for bringing up a controversial new Open Game License (OGL) that would have had a significant impact on Dungeons and Dragons Third Party Content. “I am here today to talk about a way forward,” Brinks wrote. “First, though, let me start with an apology. We’re sorry. We made a mistake.”
This marks the first apology from Wizards of the Coast for the controversy that erupted nearly two weeks ago, when Roll for Combat and io9 revealed details about a new OGL that included a harsh ownership structure, revoking the license of previous OGLs despite numerous communications stating that they could not The repeal of the previous OGL, and the Back Language License provided Wizards with a royalty-free license to use content produced under the new OGL.
“Our language and requirements in the OGL draft were upsetting to the creators and not in support of our primary goals of protecting and growing the overall gameplay environment and limiting OGL to TTRPGs,” Brinks wrote. “Then we compounded matters by staying silent for so long. We hurt fans and creators, when frequent, clear communications could have prevented a lot of this.”
In an effort to get the community involved in rolling out a new OGL, Brinks said they will collect public feedback on future drafts through surveys, similar to the way the D&D design team collects feedback on test run materials. “We’ll listen to you, and then we’ll share with you what we heard, just as we do for the Unearthed Arcana and One D&D tests,” Brinks wrote. “This will be a strong conversation before any future version of OGL is released.” Wizards of the Coast previously provided what they described as drafts to third party creators under a non-disclosure agreement along with a contract binding them to said draft. In exchange, the creators were reportedly offered a 15% royalty fee instead of the 25% royalty fee planned under the new OGL. It’s not clear how many creators have signed the reported OGL draft, nor is it clear if they will still be bound by the terms of what Wizards has claimed is draft language.
A public draft of the new OGL will be released on Friday, followed by a two-week poll period to get feedback from the community. Brinks also noted that the new OGL will not affect many areas, including video content, VTT content, DM syndication content, materials published under the current OGL 1.0a, or contracted services. In addition, Brinks reiterated that the new OGL would not have any royalty, financial reporting requirements, or license restoration requirements. It is unclear whether the new OGL will attempt to “de-license” the existing OGL, thus preventing new work from being published under it.
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