A potentially shattering day for the RPG industry with alleged leaks suggesting that WotC is going to attempt what's been considered impossible: a revocation of the OGL.
I wrote a bit this morning on what it means, and why it's important to consider even if the leaks prove false.
@appelcline Shattering? Or could it be a day of unprecedented opportunity?
@Yora Yeah, I think I'd go with shattering. There are any number of companies that have built their products on the OGL, from Paizo to Kobold Press. I don't see any new opportunities in the OGL 1.1 for them, just the possibility for big problems. So, if the leaks hold, they've got some very difficult decisions ahead.
Sure, they might find new niches that make them happy, but some won't survive, and those niches might not be as big.
Opportunities for us as players w/new products? Maybe.
@Yora @appelcline If the 1.0a OGL is *not* "deauthorized", then, WOTC's new license is much less valuable to them; people will still be able to churn out 5e (and PF, etc.) stuff under the existing licenses, which creates the competition they don't want. I can't see of a legal way to split the baby and let all the existing OGL content (22 years worth, 100s of millions of words!) continue to be used and *derived from* while somehow also limiting anything "new" to be under the new license.
@Yora @appelcline Def. Shattering.
Everyone forgets the OGL <> D&D. If the license is "deauthorized" (never an intended ability for WOTC), it would mean no new Pathfinder material could be written, for example. It would mean I'd never be able to finish my PF2 Gamma World clone (not that I'm likely to ever finish anything, but that's another issue). And while I believe FATE has several license options, there's other non-D20 SRDs that do not.
@LizardSF @Yora It always seemed very messy those other publishers using the OGL directly.
But, yep, Fate and GUMSHOE both backed up their OGL with a creative commons license. I don't think Mongoose did for RuneQuest (though Mongoose's ability to open RQ has since been called into question) or Traveller.
@appelcline @Yora It shouldn't have been messy; it increases the power of the license. Because the license has no content walls, you can adapt the mountain of OGL D20 stuff to any other OGL system. That's a huge trove of material to mine for ideas and concepts. (Oh, I forgot, Mutants and Masterminds is still OGL. So if the OGL is "deauthorized", what happens?) Any new M&M would need to be written so as to have nothing "derived* from the original material. Ditto PF/PF2.