The D&D 5.1 SRD goes Creative Commons

Illustration of a winged dragon spitting fire.
Friedrich Justin Bertuch,1806 (Public domain)

As I explained in the previous post at the beginning of the year the controversy broke out when Wizards of the Coast (WotC) / Hasbro announced a revision of the OGL in a very draconian terms (notice the irony 🐉) affecting third parties significantly, as you could read, and which caused quite a commotion and scandal followed by a really strong community response.

It seemed that all was resolved and there wasn't a way which WotC would give up with the consequences this would entail (loss of the prestige gained in these years, aparition of the new ORC license and new rulesets and SRD, license changes, etc.).

But past January 27th the surprise occurred when WotC announced that took a step back with the OGL and the SRD 5.1 became available under the Creaative Commons license.

In today's post I will talk about this news item and we will see some related themes.

To begin it's worthy to remember that WotC made available to everyone who wanted the chance of taking part in a game testing, which included the possibility of answering a survey (currently disabled) to know the opinion of all affected.

The results of this survey, with 15,000 participants, were really overwhelming, as is explained in the post making public the license change:

• 88% don't want to publish tabletop roleplaying contents under the OGL 1.2
• 90% would have to change some aspects of their business to accommodate the OGL 1.2
• 89% is unsatisfied with OGL 1.0a deauthorization
• 86% is unsatisfied with the policies drafted regarding VTT platforms
• 62% is satisfied with the inclusion of the Systems Reference Document (SRD) under the Creative Commons and most of them wanted more SRD contents under the Creative Commons

As a result of all this drama WotC / Hasbro offers from now the SRD 5.1 under a dual OGL 1.0a and Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

When the news broke out several breathe easier considering it a great victory, although others (including myself) really don't see it and don't rule out that, in a few years the publisher will go out to the old ways, because although the OGL 1.0a is maintained to not affect the already created contents this has not changed and still isn't irrevocable, meaning that it's possible that future iterations of Dungeons & Dragons, wether it is OneDnD, D&D 6.0 or whatever you call it, may appear under a much more restrictive license, not being OGL or CC By 4.0, thus creating a redoubt completely controlled by the publisher to continue commercially exploiting the golden goose and the Dungeons & Dragons brand, if at that time the brand is still important and recognized... (which probably will be, Let's not fool ourselves).

If you want to know other opinions about this issue you may watch the video by The Rules Lawyer I insert below and read the article WotC Surrenders by Robert E. Bodine.

To finish this post, and waiting to have more information of the ORC license by Paizo (it seems that the first draft will be available during February), I remind you that you have your imagination and that there are a world of games out there with permisive licenses to work with, as you may see in the following list, and also in the Forever Open Source Jam - itch.io (a big list in which I'm sure you will find more than one you will find interesting):

• Blades in the Dark RPG - Github - CC BY 3.0
• Breathless SRD - Fari Games - Breathless - System Reference Document - Itch.io - CC BY 4.0
• Cairn - SRD | Cairn - Cairn - Itch.io - Cairn - DriveThruRPG.com - CC BY 4.0
• Charge RPG - Charge SRD - Fari Games - Charge SRD - Itch.io - CC BY 4.0
• ¿Eres fRáGiL? - CC BY-SA 4.0
• Hopes & Dreams SRD - Fari Games - Hopes & Dreams - Itch.io - CC BY 4.0
• Halberds and Helmets - CC BY 4.0
• MÖRK BORG - MÖRK BORG LICENSE (very permisive)
• NAUFRAGIO d20 DRS v1.1.0 - CC BY 4.0
• Rápido y Fácil - CC BY-SA 3.0 ES
• Trophy System Reference Document - CC BY 4.0
• Wretched & Alone SRD by Sealed Library - CC BY 3.0

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