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D&D Licensing Agreement
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What they give you with the OGL is largely what can’t legally be copyrighted anyway, and in turn they saddle you with extra obligations.
The reason it seemed generous in the first place is that TSR’s prolific lawsuits poisoned the marketplace. The OGL was reassurance that Wizards won’t come for you if you make more content compatible with their game.
Most OGL gaming products could strip off the OGL label, reformat and change some names, and still be in the clear, per the EFF. The real question is if the chilling effect of the mere potential of lawsuits will stop people who would otherwise work in the field.
I imagine the answer is yes.
The author of that article appears to be the same lawyer who wrote the game Thirsty Sword Lesbians. They share the same name, at any rate.
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Legal Eagle has done a video with a particular focus on game rules not actually being something copyright can be applied to.
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@Roz said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
game rules not actually being something copyright can be applied to.
Yeah it’s an interesting subject though. Because while you can’t copyright an idea, you can comment an expression.
So FS3’s generic concept of “roll a number of D8 equal to ability+attribute versus a TN of 6 and count successes” is definitely an idea, not coypyright-able. Any game could use that same basic mechanic (and in fact FS3 is inspired by other games that have a similar one, like Shadowrun and Storyteller).
The specific FS3 player’s guide text is definitely an expression, copyrighted (but made available to games under a Creative Commons license).
But there’s a gray area in the middle where it seems like a lawyer could potentially argue that the rule is an expression. Like the specific effects of a spell, which is kind of rooted in lore. I don’t know - I’m not a lawyer myself - but I think the main benefit of the OGL is the companies being comfortable that they don’t have to worry about defending even a dead-end lawsuit.
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@Faraday said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
But there’s a gray area in the middle where it seems like a lawyer could potentially argue that the rule is an expression. Like the specific effects of a spell, which is kind of rooted in lore. I don’t know - I’m not a lawyer myself - but I think the main benefit of the OGL is the companies being comfortable that they don’t have to worry about defending even a dead-end lawsuit.
This seems like a lawsuit no one should ever want to bring, because the decision might set a precedent the plaintiff really doesn’t want. Like, if a judge decides that D&D can’t copyright its rules, then that’s it, anything a writer produces for an RPG can become unpaid work for any yahoo who wants to steal it.
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@GF said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
This seems like a lawsuit no one should ever want to bring, because the decision might set a precedent the plaintiff really doesn’t want. Like, if a judge decides that D&D can’t copyright its rules, then that’s it, anything a writer produces for an RPG can become unpaid work for any yahoo who wants to steal it.
Don’t disagree. I’m just saying that it’s enough of a gray area that the mere possibility would keep game companies away from even trying to make custom D20 games/adventures/whatever if it weren’t for the OGL. Nobody wants to find out if the rules are really copyright-able.
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Even a lawsuit you win can bankrupt you.
fr fr
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What boggles my mind is… the Dungeons and Dragons movie is coming out in less than two months. Compared to a freakin’ big tent movie (plus stuff like toys, etc) the profits from table-top products are nothing.
I am definitely not saying a bunch of nerds boycotting the film will make a dent in the box office. But the bad press, less word of mouth on social media, etc might damage its profits anyway - compared to the same nerds happily spreading the hype, cosplaying everywhere they go, etc.
Why do all this now. The timing is just… bad.
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@Arkandel something something ‘before the end of the fiscal quarter’ I guess.
That’s usually why businesses make bad time-related decisions from what I can tell.
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Total and complete capitulation by WOTC isn’t what I expected, but it was all too clear they had shot themselves in the foot. Maybe this was the only way to control damage.
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@Selira Forever and always using this as my future example to shut people down when they insist ‘well, it’s not like boycotting Harry Potter will affect anything’
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@Jennkryst said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
@Selira Forever and always using this as my future example to shut people down when they insist ‘well, it’s not like boycotting Harry Potter will affect anything’
I think there’s a difference between this and other situations. TTRPGers love shit like rules lawyering and there are a lot of lawyers in TTRPGs who were able to effectively call out WotC/Hasbro for their bullshit and how it would be awful for the vast majority of TTRPGers.
There are still a shit ton of transphobes who still have no issue lining Rowling’s pocket with more money.
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@Rucket said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
There are still a shit ton of transphobes who still have no issue lining Rowling’s pocket with more money.
There were also the ride-or-die folks who were never going to abandon D&D, who had no issue lining Hasbro’s pocket with more money. So because of them, the boycott actually would never have worked!
… except it did work. Because people actually had solidarity for it.
The fact that there are people who call themselves allies but who are going to still spend money on the game ‘because boycotts never work’… like I said, I’ve got a very recent, very visible boycott that DID work to call them out on their bullshit.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@Jennkryst said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
‘because boycotts never work’… like I said, I’ve got a very recent, very visible boycott that DID work to call them out on their bullshit.
Absolutes are rarely correct, so of course we can’t say that boycotts never work.
One can say, though, that boycotts rarely work. But don’t take my word for it, listen to the economists:
“The typical boycott doesn’t have much impact on sales revenue.” (source: Institute for Policy Research https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2017/king-corporate-boycotts.html)
“If the aim is to hurt company sales, boycotts rarely succeed.” (source: NYT https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2017/02/07/when-do-consumer-boycotts-work)
“most [boycotts] fail to have any noticeable impact.” (source: Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2012/08/when-do-company-boycotts-work)
etc.
There are plenty of obstacles to getting enough critical mass behind a boycott to matter, and the perception of “eh, it probably won’t work anyway” is only a small part.
Those articles do note that with the right conditions, boycotts can be successful. Usually it’s negative press that matters more to the companies than any impact to the bottom line, and occasionally it’s possible to drum up enough support to make a dent to sales.
With WotC I’d speculate it was a perfect storm: the negative press was killing them (after all, their whole business model relies on other companies trusting them enough to make games on their platform), and it’s a small market to begin with (fewer actual humans must be motivated to impact the bottom line).
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@Faraday said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
@Jennkryst said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
‘because boycotts never work’… like I said, I’ve got a very recent, very visible boycott that DID work to call them out on their bullshit.
Absolutes are rarely correct, so of course we can’t say that boycotts never work.
One can say, though, that boycotts rarely work. But don’t take my word for it, listen to the economists:
“The typical boycott doesn’t have much impact on sales revenue.” (source: Institute for Policy Research https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2017/king-corporate-boycotts.html)
“If the aim is to hurt company sales, boycotts rarely succeed.” (source: NYT https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2017/02/07/when-do-consumer-boycotts-work)
“most [boycotts] fail to have any noticeable impact.” (source: Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2012/08/when-do-company-boycotts-work)
etc.
There are plenty of obstacles to getting enough critical mass behind a boycott to matter, and the perception of “eh, it probably won’t work anyway” is only a small part.
Those articles do note that with the right conditions, boycotts can be successful. Usually it’s negative press that matters more to the companies than any impact to the bottom line, and occasionally it’s possible to drum up enough support to make a dent to sales.
With WotC I’d speculate it was a perfect storm: the negative press was killing them (after all, their whole business model relies on other companies trusting them enough to make games on their platform), and it’s a small market to begin with (fewer actual humans must be motivated to impact the bottom line).
To this, I’d add that the company had a specific metric that it was using (D&D Beyond subscriptions) that could be directly impacted in ‘real time’ by people in a measurable way (canceling said subscription), as well as already including data collection of WHY that metric was changing (the cancelation page asks you why you’re canceling - I specifically indicated the OGL and I’m sure others did likewise).
This made it quite easy for decision makers to rapidly see what impact customer action was having on their profit base, and to know why. Most boycotts - especially for products with a national or international platform - don’t have that luxury.
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@Pyrephox said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
@Faraday said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
@Jennkryst said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
‘because boycotts never work’… like I said, I’ve got a very recent, very visible boycott that DID work to call them out on their bullshit.
Absolutes are rarely correct, so of course we can’t say that boycotts never work.
One can say, though, that boycotts rarely work. But don’t take my word for it, listen to the economists:
“The typical boycott doesn’t have much impact on sales revenue.” (source: Institute for Policy Research https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2017/king-corporate-boycotts.html)
“If the aim is to hurt company sales, boycotts rarely succeed.” (source: NYT https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2017/02/07/when-do-consumer-boycotts-work)
“most [boycotts] fail to have any noticeable impact.” (source: Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2012/08/when-do-company-boycotts-work)
etc.
There are plenty of obstacles to getting enough critical mass behind a boycott to matter, and the perception of “eh, it probably won’t work anyway” is only a small part.
Those articles do note that with the right conditions, boycotts can be successful. Usually it’s negative press that matters more to the companies than any impact to the bottom line, and occasionally it’s possible to drum up enough support to make a dent to sales.
With WotC I’d speculate it was a perfect storm: the negative press was killing them (after all, their whole business model relies on other companies trusting them enough to make games on their platform), and it’s a small market to begin with (fewer actual humans must be motivated to impact the bottom line).
To this, I’d add that the company had a specific metric that it was using (D&D Beyond subscriptions) that could be directly impacted in ‘real time’ by people in a measurable way (canceling said subscription), as well as already including data collection of WHY that metric was changing (the cancelation page asks you why you’re canceling - I specifically indicated the OGL and I’m sure others did likewise).
This made it quite easy for decision makers to rapidly see what impact customer action was having on their profit base, and to know why. Most boycotts - especially for products with a national or international platform - don’t have that luxury.
Additionally, given that is their metric, the proliferation of news online was far more likely to reach the target demographic.
Whereas news about an author’s socio-political views aren’t necessarily going to seep into the consciousness of the millions of people who are fans of their work and its off-shoots.
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All very reasonable and true, but still:
Fuck JK rowling. And that game.fr fr
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@hellfrog said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
All very reasonable and true, but still:
Oh just to be clear - I’m not trying to say people shouldn’t boycott. By all means, stand on principle. I was specifically commenting on the idea that “boycotts never work” was BS.
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@Faraday said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
@hellfrog said in D&D Licensing Agreement:
All very reasonable and true, but still:
Oh just to be clear - I’m not trying to say people shouldn’t boycott. By all means, stand on principle. I was specifically commenting on the idea that “boycotts never work” is BS.
Oh, absolutely. Boycotts, protests, strongly worded letters, all of that. They may be ineffectual by themselves, or in many circumstances, but if you don’t try then you won’t know the result.
ETA: And you get to look your trans friends in the eye afterwards.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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Does anyone who has RTFM know how or if the new agreement applies to virtual table-top?
I think that’s the real ‘battlefield’ here. The profits WOTC and other vendors stand to make from physical books is probably less than monthly subscriptions.
The other factor is these services hard lock players into one specific ecosystem in a way table-top doesn’t. After all if you and your buddies go “oh FUCK Hasbro!” all you need to do is replace those gaming manuals on your table between the pizza boxes with another company’s. But once you have been using D&D Beyond, everyone’s handbooks are linked there with character sheets and all those convenient automations tied to it… it’s a much harder decision to make.
Does it look like WOTC can change their minds in a year and make that sort of investment backfire?
