Wizards Douchebaggery: D&D 4th Ed vs. Open Gaming

[Mr. Analog]

With the launch of the third edition of the popular game eight years ago, Wizards had sponsored an open licensing scheme. This license, called the Open Gaming License, or OGL, was a kind of open source license designed for game publishers. The result was an explosion of third party game companies supporting D&D and establishing their own game lines. Many of these companies became quite large and successful, notably Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin Publishing, and others.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/21/1215234

Now I've not been following D&D4e so this came as a bit of a surprise when i read the /. summary but it seems to me like Wizards is making a licensing cash-grab.

Many people have griped about the "WoWification" of 4th Edtn but this takes it to a new level. Most of us don't look outside the core books but there have been several successful offshoot games using the OGL.

A quote from Scott Rouse, D&D Brand Manager for Wizards of the Coast seems to add some light to the kind of thinking at Wizards today:

"We have invested multiple 7 figures in the development of 4e so can you tell me why we would want publishers to support a system that we have moved away from?"

Gosh, I don't know Scott maybe because they've build a business model around OGL?

The way I see it, this is gonna "fork" the d20 system. You're gonna have all these publishers who won't move to 4e to keep their OGL and the current "3.xe" d20 based rules and you're gonna have Wizards (and maybe other companies) pumping out 4e modules under the new GSL.

Way to split the RPG community you've inadvertently formed Wizards. The part that's amusing to me is that if 4e turns out to be a dud (which isn't improbable) Wizards will have a mess on its hands. You'll have money making OGL holdouts and you'll have a bunch of failed GSL licensees not wanting to deal with you in the future.

That's my take at least.

[Thorin]

I read the actual announcement from Wizards:

Wizards of the Coast is pleased to announce that third-party publishers will be allowed to publish products compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game system under the new Dungeons & Dragons 4E Game System License (D&D 4E GSL). This royalty-free license will replace the former d20 System Trademark License (STL), and will have a System Reference Document (SRD) available for referencing permissible content.

The D&D 4E GSL will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in fantasy settings with the D&D 4th Edition rules, and publishers who register with WotC will be granted the right to use a version of the D&D logo that denotes the product as compatible with the D&D 4th Edition Roleplaying Game, in accordance with WotC?s terms and conditions. The effective start date for sales of D&D 4E GSL publications will be October 1, 2008.

The license associated SRD will be available on June 6, 2008, at no cost. A small group of publishers received advanced notice and will receive these documents prior to June 6, at no cost, in order to prepare for publication of compatible materials by the effective start date. If you haven?t already been contacted by WotC, you will be able to access the documents on the Wizards website beginning on June 6, 2008.

Wizards is also working on the details of a second royalty-free license, the d20 Game System License (d20 GSL). This license will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in non-fantasy settings with the 4E rules. The exact details for the d20 GSL will be released as they become available.

What's interesting is that they say they will have an SRD with rules that can be referenced by other publishers and that they make no mention of companies not being allowed to publish for older versions of D&D if they're publishing under the new version.

The other big thing to notice is that the D&D4EGSL is set to replace the D20STL, which is not the same as the OGL that we're all familiar with.  In the end, though, I think enough pressure will be applied on Wizards by the tens of thousands of fans that frequent the boards that they'll allow third-party publishers to continue their fine work.

Last but not least, the GSL has not been published yet so we really don't know what it will or won't allow.