The OGL Scandal: One Year Later

What Would Have Happened If WoTC Had Their Way?

About a year ago, the tabletop RPG fans, primarily D&D fans, were rocked by what would be known as The OGL Scandal.

Wizards of The Coast were trying to revoke the entirety of the Open Gaming License and own everything while cutting major players sweeter deals than you or I would ever see behind the scenes. We found out. We pushed back but, what if that never happened? What if it were never leaked? What if we didn’t know…until it was too late?

I’m going to put on my foil hat for this one but, given how they’ve acted before, during and since that scandal, I don’t see what I list or what you’ll even list in the comments below, as a stretch.

Let’s start with the material you see there. There are books there that use Original D&D rules, Basic & Expert rules, Rules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition and even third-party items for D&D 5th Edition.

I think most of these third-party items you see would vanish as some would not be able to afford the extortionary prices that WoTC would have set for them. Kickstarters wouldn’t be a thing because WoTC would take a huge bite out of anyone producing for their games, edition, be damned. On top of that, if they couldn’t take a financial bite out of you, they’d just own your work outright through shady legal maneuvering that you’d have to literally fly to Seattle and battle them in court there in order to get it thrown out and then, even if you win, how many years have passed? How much has the PDF been pirated and run to print shops? WoTC was going to bank on you being so broke you couldn’t afford the attorneys they had. Theft of your work was always on the table.

Would I have been affected? Well, there are books that I wasn’t able to photograph but imagine Dungeon Crawl Classics, Mutant Crawl Classics, Dystopian Dawn, Castles & Crusades, Old-School Essentials and many others suddenly wiped from your library, physically.

I have good reason to believe that the Pinkertons would have been sent door-to-door to confiscate books by Wizards of The Coast. Granted, that’s a bit of a stretch but look, I just posted this photograph to my pinned thread on Twitter last night where my friend, Jon, The Basic Expert just published this Print-on-Demand with an offset print coming in the weeks and months ahead.

This particular game is set in the Ancient Aztec Empire and uses the rule set from Original D&D. This is a great game and I do recommend picking it up but it would take no time at all for The Pinkertons to find posts like this one or the pinned thread on my Twitter, compile a list of names and, at best, start harassing people with phone calls and, at worst, going door-to-door. If they’ll do it over one of WoTC’s screw-ups over Magic: The Gathering cards, yes, your books are on the table as well. Even if they’re in the wrong, what would you do?

As a side note, this was just an example. This book actually uses the creative commons attribution and the SRD 5.1 thus, not part of the OGL stuff that we’re mentioning.

So on top of eliminating third-party creation of work on supplements for your D&D game and possibly going after your own books. You’d have to have the capital for teams of attorneys to let you know where you were safe in the “artistic expression” of game mechanics. Game mechanics, those can’t be copyrighted or trademarked but the artistic expression of the mechanics can be trademarked.

The next thing you’d see is the sudden disappearance of any D&D channel or podcast.

I’m not joking. If I’m running WoTC and this succeeds, I’m keeping only the ones that speak about us in a positive light that have the largest followings. Want an idea of which ones I’d keep? Any of the ones that Kyle Brink made his Apology Tour Appearances, those ones. The rest would be subject to a nightmare of legalese and financial penalties that would make most just walk away. Fledgling channels just sprouting up to talk RPGs would be restricted to only talking about current year D&D in a good light. If you run such a channel, you’d be nothing but advertisement for WoTC that would pay them in a double-dip sort of style. You’d push their product, no matter how good, bad or indifferent it is, then you’d pay them on top of that. Anything they send you…they can request that you send it back or someone from a certain agency will be knocking at your door. Games, podcasts and even fan films that you didn’t know about would be gone from the marketplace of ideas. Unless they were paying Wizards of The Coast, handsomely, to promote their IP, which is all it is to them at this point, that’s all that would exist.

Ever wondered why Critical Role made a switch? Yep, that’s why. Your channel or podcast would now have to cover other RPGs, whichever ones were left.

To be fair, most companies such as Troll Lord Games, Elf Lair Games and others have gone through their back catalogues (some still are) and scrubbed any references to the OGL entirely in order to distance themselves from WoTC.

By the time this leaks, it’s too late, the legal machines have already been fired up and we would have had no recourse.

But why do I say this? It’s simple.

At one point, Twitch owned D&D Beyond and there was the partnership with WoTC over it. Twitch had a license in perpetuity to make content for D&D 5th Edition. So WoTC went with an offer to purchase Beyond, Twitch declined and WoTC told them that it was fine, they’d allow the deal made for Twitch to come up with stuff in perpetuity. WoTC, however, would just make a new edition and not grant them any licensure. Where would the new players play then?

No one ever thought to tell them, “Yanno there are other platforms, right?” Instead, they got scared, buckled and sold.

Well, WoTC is going to do it anyway and guess what? I’m going to speculate that the entire new edition would have been digital. I hesitate to call it a “walled garden” but it would have been more of a “consumer prison.” Look at Magic: Online and how that has been run. Jeremy Hambly of The Quartering was locked out of his account entirely and had to fight to get back in in order to sell the cards he had on his account just to get something back so that he wouldn’t be out the money he’d spent in there. At least with physical ownership of the cards themselves, that’s not a problem.

Owning these cards, I don’t need WoTC to tell me how to play, when I can play, if I can play, so on and so forth. I also bought a ton of these cards second-hand, got them as gifts, etc. Honestly, I love the aspect of physical ownership.

WoTC, in my opinion would have slowed physical ownership to nothing or next to nothing. Local gaming stores would have had much of their revenue stream cut away because they’d have to advise you that the reason they don’t hold Friday Night Magic or Saturday D&D games is because it’s mostly done online these days and, with WoTC moving distribution to an in-house model (same thing Marvel attempted in the 90s to disastrous results) that it wasn’t cost-effective for them to continue buying and holding WoTC stock. They can order it for you but they won’t actually hold it. Good luck playing a D&D clone or finding a meetup to play one. If you bought into the grift that any who play D&D old-school via the OSR clones and now that’s what you’re stuck with because somehow, you got that copy of OSRIC awhile back sitting on your hard drive? That’s an even harder sell to those who refuse to give up the new edition now. If you thought the OSR was so racist, then does that mean you give up all rights to anything you’ll theoretically “own” and are now forced to rent in order to join a table or do you risk having to admit that you were wrong and run the game as-is if not sit down at a table and stop applying labels to your fellow players and GM?

Make no mistake, playing with those you labelled before might change your mind as long as you’re willing to just game for awhile and take the chance that you’re about to have some fun for once in your life but now you’ll be labelled by your former peers as they ventured into territory that you cannot morally, ethically or financially accept.

Should I shorten this? I think that would be a good idea.

In short, WoTC sought to own your entire D&D experience. Entire. Get that? They’d have confiscated more settings, supplements and materials by force and would have gaslit you into thinking that they came up with it entirely on their own. Anyone claiming different, they’d have taken to court for defamation. The executives at WoTC and Hasbro were more than just a little ready, willing and able to cut out everyone else and you were next.

I still do believe WoTC & Hasbro’s executives are all about that. Sure, there were things being put into the Creative Commons but I don’t think any of the newer rule sets moving forward will be. I don’t have a lot of confidence in them and neither do many other people. Sure, the normies that don’t know about this type of thing and don’t care will still purchase it but that’s why those of us like you and I exist. We’ve seen the bad behavior and are willing to call it out for what it is; bad behavior.

If Garth of Wayne’s World were here I think he would let us know “WoTC…is nobody’s friend. If WoTC were an ice cream flavor, they’d be pralines…and diiiiick.” and I think that would be appropriate, given what they tried to do.

Now I know they backtracked on it. I know that they’ve gone and restored the OGL and claimed they were going to leave it alone and then they put stuff into the Creative Commons and claimed “We can’t touch that now” but do you really trust them? I don’t think you should. I think some were far too ready to just forgive, forget and move on while still throwing labels and shade at people for not doing so. I think the people who are still holding onto their wallets against WoTC are right to do so. I do believe that, eventually, WoTC will announce that they’ll only push starter sets into the stores, if you want to go further, you’ll have to join D&D Beyond. I say, avoid anything WoTC has to sell you. They’re clearly in dire straits. Instead, Castles & Crusades, Wasted Lands, Old-School Essentials, OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy RPG, Shadowdark, Lamentations of The Flame Princess, Crimson Dragon Slayer d20, White Box: FMAG, Dark Places & Demogorgons, Amazing Adventures, etc should be on the table of games you’re willing to sit down and try and there are so many others out there. If you’re still stuck on 5th Edition, then use third-party and independent material. Whatever it is you do, the one thing I urge and encourage all of you to do is to walk away from D&D Beyond and use a virtual tabletop like Foundry or just go over a messenger like Guilded instead.

Some things are just better old-school and if you gave it a try, I think you might find you enjoy it more.