After the hiatus, I started recruiting new players and DMs, and getting reconnecting with former players with the intention of getting back up and running sometime after 2023 began.
And then... the funniest thing happened...
Folks, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Did I jump into a cold Michigan river in November? Yes. Did I see how many marshmallows I can stuff in my mouth and still talk? 21. Did I try launch myself off my roof to see if I could get to Ralph's via catapult? My calculations were only slightly off... Did I just eat two triple bean burritos and wash it down with a quadruple fire water espresso? Ye...OH, GOD!!!
Well I forgot where I was going with that whole thing but I did want to talk about OGL 1.1 a little more--and then it's going to bed for good... at least 'round these parts. So I spent a pretty sizable portion of the past couple months on hiatus from actual roleplaying. In the interim I was working on my campaign world (where I could find the time of course). And I got a lot done.
One of the bigger things I've done is to stuff the 5.0 OGL into the worldbook, thus setting the stage for house ruling─but honestly it's more of a rewrite, it's becoming more unrecognizable with each passing week─and that was the idea. Spells, races, classes, abilities, skills, and more─all reworded or reworked. I was almost starting to think that by the end of 2023, a first draft of Syseria might be finished.
Just then, the funniest thing happened.
Before I get into that, indulge me for a moment. Let's set the wayback machine to 1999. TSR (which had been Wizards of the Coast for a couple years already, but hadn't really told anyone yet), ran a promo in Dragon Magazine in anticipation of the upcoming open gaming license. We're going to create a contest where fan made homebrew worlds will be considered for publishing, said WoTC. How magnanamous, right?! In their own words, they recieved tens of thousands of entries. A number of my friends at that time were excitedly suggesting that I submit Syseria to this contest, which thankfully I never did; I knew what they were up to then and I know what they're up to now. The final winner ended up being Eberron by the way. Limp Bizkit (stick with me, it's related) in 2004-2005ish put out the word that they needed a new guitar player. They asked that applicants send them their recordings so they can listen and assess. What's the catch?! You might ask yourself. If you're smart, anyway.
The catch is that your creations legally become the intellectual property of WoTC and Limp Bizkit, which you agreed to either in writing or just by submitting your material for review. Limp Bizkit collected a few hundred (or thousand, I'm not sure) demo recordings and abruptly closed the search and announced that they were not going to hire a new guitarist after all. And, wouldn't you know, suddenly their new album with tons of shiny fresh new riffs came out that year. If that don't put the "dink" in "coinkydink", I don't know what does. And jump back (kiss mahsef) to 1999 with the campaign worlds contest. There was some big stuff in store for 2000: D&D 3rd Edition and the Open Gaming License. This was an unprecedented opening up of the platform for anyone to get involved and share their creativity, even within the specific mechanics of the system. (Something that was always sticky in the past, and really tended to draw the ire of T$R as it was stylized back then). So you see, knowing that this was coming, WoTC, once again truly putting the "dink" in "coinkydink", had effectively just removed tens of thousands of potential competitors from the playing field. The playing field they knew would be open to the public within a year. Their world was now the property of WoTC, and even though OGL was in effect starting in 2000, that does not authorize anyone to violate IP.
What the hay, though, at least someone actually won the WoTC contest.
I was trying to explain this to the aforementioned friends enthusiastically encouraging me to submit Syseria to WoTC, but I don't think they really got the idea. I didn't want to give up the copyright on my material in exchange for the one in 50,000 shot that Syseria might be the one published.
What WoTC did in 1999/2000 I truly did not believe was an egregious violation of goodwill and trust toward the brand, it was sneaky but legal. Applicants should have been doing their homework if they wanted their worlds to remain their own property.
Okay, that was a story. Now let's jump forward again to present day. (YAY PRESENT DAY! I LOVE PRESENT DAY!)
Today the big buzz in the TTRPG world is of course the attempted revoking of the former OGL, which has been buzzing for a little more than a week. In a move one could only describe as "untoward", although perhaps "rude" would be a good choice, although "dick move" certainly has its merits, or maybe "let's go ahead and draft a deal with Satan, maybe see how that plays out"... okay, maybe there are a few ways one could describe it, Hasbro drafted the OGL 1.1 which seeks to make several jarring and alarming changes to the former agreement. Among other things, Hasbro is keen to claim intellectual property rights to anything published under the license, as well as a lion's share of the top earners' income (no business could suffer the tax they are trying to levy, there is no question the companies at the top will not agree to this new license). Oh and one more little detail, OGL1.1 wants to nullify all previous OGL's.
Author of the original OGL in 2000 says, "no, it cannot be revoked. We did not intend any future company to have the power to take the open gaming license back." Lawyers say, "yes, it can, because you chose the word 'perpetual' and not 'irrevocable'."Hmmmm.... this story sounds somehow familiar... Oh right, I remember, they tried the same shit and failed miserably in 4e/2008!
The results of that ill-advised decision were that they spawned the biggest and most popular competetitor to the D&D game of all time: Pathfinder. Paizo had been publishing for D&D under the OGL, but, not wanting to be yoked to the terms of this new agreement, they struck out on their own. Pathfinder went on to outsell D&D for a period of time─this would be the first time in RPG history that any [roleplaying] game outsold D&D.
So let's try that again! Awesome idea, great meeting guys.
Now the responses have been like a tsunami, with an entire spectrum of different thoughts, mostly valid. I would say to the "it's not final, let's just wait and see" crowd that there are now too many big name, trustworthy insiders sounding alarm bells and announcing drastic course changes for their company, to ignore. To the "it doesn't affect me" (the average player), yes it does, it definitely does. The brand is being put to the torch before our very eyes. Pathfinder is going to happen all over again, and the huge crowd that came back to D&D 5e may not return for Dn_Done. But it will right itself eventually. Already we are seeing major course changes announced from big companies (especially those earning enough to cross that threshold of 20 high earning content creators).
So on to Syseria. I spent the last few months on hiatus working (as time permitted) on the worldbook. In a pretty ill-advised choice of action, mechanics were emphasized over lore and world-building. Ha! Guess what, says the universe... you get to flush all that now! Actually, the new system will probably make some use of the core ideas. Beyond that I don't know much, other than I will not be agreeing to any new OGL.
Okay, well I just started brainstorming on what kind of RPG system I want to make. I was almost starting to think this might be done this year... nevermind that. But anyway, we're just going to play 5e this year, I don't want to finish writing Syseria for 5e since it's a waste of time. It's not going to be totally as-is, the norm of the past won't be changing too much, but a lot of the wilder and unfinished work done in the past few months will not be used.
Now I just have to go through and frantically edit the worldbook to remove all the references to the new mechanics and stuff that now will not be implemented, so as not to confuse new, incoming players.
As I have consistently said in the past, my position on this whole debacle has consistently been, "jeepers."
You can quote me on that.
For those of you who are unaware, Hasbro has some big changes to the open gaming license brewing, most or all of which have already been leaked. If instated, it would place serious restrictions on independant content publishers as well as siphoning a larger share of their profits. Most of the community reaction that I've heard has been negative.
Up to this point, the open gaming agreement has been that the majority of the game is open source, and anybody is free to write adventures, supplements, et. al., that follow a few basic guidelines. For example, independant content creators cannot use any of WoTC's intellectual property (signature beasts such as mind flayers, beholders, et. al, signature characters such as Mordenkainen, Elminster, etc. etc. so forth). Otherwise, everything in the entire universe is pretty much fair game. Any independant publisher could create content for the game within a few completely reasonable boundaries.
The new OGL being proposed by Hasbro is significantly stricter. Just in terms of size, the current OGL is about 900 words, and the new one, as it stands now, is 9000 words. One of the biggest and most egregious changes to the OGL is that it wishes to nullify all previous versions. Now, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and I would not recommend putting too much weight on my words. But I was under the impression that this was attempted for 4th Edition and failed miserably. Nullifying the old OGL did not hold up in court then, and I don't know why it would now. But... Hasbro has an army of lawyers ready willing and able to engage in any malevolent treachery it may take to advance Hasbro's agenda. This alone puts quite a few publishers' tits in a ringer: Paizo, Green Ronin, Kobold Press and more. They are probably shitting their pants and/or scrambling to update their business model as quickly as possible... assuming they're not going to accept the new license. (Which seems to me like a safe assumption).
A large philosophical shift is taking place in the OGL as well. Quoting Hasbro:
The “OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.”Hasbro appears to be stating that any future use of an OGL earlier than 1.1 is not valid, and any publishers wishing to create open gaming content will be beholden to this new agreement going forward. (Fun rumor, I hear Disney's Star Wars d20 game is using the OGL, and many in the community are chomping at the bit to see a Disney vs. Hasbro legal battle. I'd be willing to guess if Hasbro thinks it's going to be a problem Disney will just get grandfathered in.)
The problem, Hasbro, is that these publishers are not your competitors. Okay, well, Paizo is. But they weren't before 4e, and they only became your competitors because of essentially the same shenanigans you are attempting right now, and the others are all continuing to provide content and expand the D&D multiverse. This basic shift in philosophy is extremely problematic and egregious. Even if nullifying the old licenses did stand in court, I wonder (again, not a lawyer), if this would merit an anticompetition lawsuit. Paizo Inc., publisher of the Pathfinder RPG, D&D’s largest competitor, have remaind conspicuously silent on the matter. They have stated only that "the rules update was a complicated and ongoing situation." Reading between the lines, I'm guessing they're figuring out what needs to be done to wash their hands of it and become entirely their own thing. PF2.0 is unique enough that they didn't even have to call it open gaming, but they did anyway, I think to encourage 3rd party publishers to develop material for Pathfinder.
Another problematic portion of the new OGL requires all publishers to report everything they're making back to WoTC/Hasbro. A publisher earning greater than a certain threshold of income from their open license materials will have to pay royalties to WoTC/Hasbro. This all adds up to a lot of restrictions and barriers being constructed by WoTC/Hasbro to impede or prevent the little guy from creating/sharing/profiting.
To be fair, some of what has been leaked seems pretty reasonable to me. The overall philisophical shift of wanting some degree of power over what publications can bear this license makes sense, and the new license now enables WoTC/Hasbro to revoke its authorization for any publisher provided they give at least 30 days notice. (Which is not a lot at all, that could seriously fuck or even sink a smaller producer who was already invested neck deep in OGL projects but not progressed enough to have them on the market within 30 days). But at any rate, I don't disagree with this. I've seen some of what the darker side of this phenomena can be, and it's not pretty. Putting the keibosh on Justin LaNasa and his ilk is necessary and merited─lest someone get the impression that such ideas are in line with what RPG's are about.
At any rate, all this adds up to a couple implications for Syseria and me personally.
That's about it for now. More as things develop.
