Dungeons and Dragons Archives

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What’s Up With Wizards and the OGL?

Posted on 28/01/2023 by Graeme Barber

Wizards made a big announcement. They’re moving the entire 5.1 SRD to CC-BY 4.0 International, and the OGL 1.0a is being left as is. They say they listened. They say they heard the fandom. They say they heard the creatives. People are now celebrating this as a definitive victory. Public and vocal support for things like the in-house system by Kobold Press or the ORC licence being spearheaded by Paizo is waning where it isn’t being drowned out by celebratory noise. But if there’s one thing the army has taught me is invaluable after a serious event, it’s an After Action Review. So let’s dive into what happened, what the fallout is, and how things are developing.

NOTE: Posts from Wizards on D&D Beyond are linked using the current links. They may have been edited since their initial releases. Where mentioned, I am referring to the initial release content and not the “oops, we should change the wording and tone” updates.

Real Talk About Wizards

Posted on 13/01/2023 by Graeme Barber

Wizards broke radio silence and released a saccharine, disingenuous statement on the leaked OGL 1.1 and the public response to it. Time to talk about the reality of Wizards, and the reason behind the OGL.

Moving into a Post 5e Era

Posted on 12/01/2023 by Graeme Barber

The fallout from the OGL 1.1 leak as been snowballing from a serious gaffe into a full-blown avalanche of bad press and burnt bridges over the last week. Companies like Kobold Press and MCDM, among the heaviest hitters in the 5e OGL third party publishing world have announced that they’re moving forward with their own proprietary systems after completing their scheduled 5e contents. Other publishers are taking this opportunity to expand their community content programs, such as Pinnacle Entertainment Group (Savage Worlds) and Modiphius (2d20), or are expanding their OGL and SRD documents like Monty Cook Games. So what’s an OGL, what’s Open Source, and what’s available to creators and end users alike in terms of finding new systems to work with?

Bespoke or Kitchen Sink? Character Ancestry in TTRPGs

Posted on 02/11/2022 by Graeme Barber

One of the big challenges around world building is the GM choice between restricting player choices by design or running a kitchen sink type world where anything and everything is available. So let’s dive into the complexities of this situation from the perspectives of both GMs and players.

Better Gaming

The Modern TTRPG Battlespace

Posted on 25/09/2022 by Graeme Barber

Through its nearly 50 years of existence, Dungeons & Dragons has changed the battlespace of the hobby several times. TSR pioneered supporting media as a cartoon, various comic book series, and extensive novel collections. In 2001, now under Wizards, they broke the taboo of controlling your game’s core mechanics and introduced the OGL, launching the d20 era and many careers. In 2016, they pioneered a new level of community content creation with the DMs Guild, creating a closed ecosystem for creators to have free rein on allowed IP. Then in 2017, Wizards did it again with D&D Beyond. Now, as we approach 2024, they’ve announced One D&D, a comprehensive single portal for all things D&D and the best deals on official D&D stuff. But what does any of this mean from the level of A list small publishers to Indie level creators in the hobby?

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