D&D’s OGL fiasco was made worse by a lack of respect for WotC, manager says

Dungeons & Dragons Executive Producer Kyle Brink says at least some of the drama surrounding the recent Open Gaming License fiasco stems from a lack of respect shown to the creative and community teams at Wizards of the Coast. In the future, he says, more members of these teams will be involved in high-level decisions, and their voices will carry more weight.

The statements were made during an hour-long interview published on Monday by the 3 Black Halflings channel on YouTube. Overall, Brink’s statements indicate what appears to be a developing relationship between Wizards and its owner, toy and gaming giant Hasbro.

“I was trying to protect the team from distractions,” Brink said, “like discussing a licensing deal so we can make the game, so we can make cool supplements and books. And I should have had more of my team in the room. And that has been corrected in the future.”

The Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License (OGL) has been around for more than two decades. It provided a legal framework through which people could build their own tabletop RPGs alongside D&D. But proposed changes to the OGL almost immediately led to a contentious relationship between Wizards and its community. The backlash was gathering mainstream press attentionand an organized boycott eventually helped convince Hasbro to back down.

After io9 first leak of draft proposed OGL changes On January 5, neither Wizards nor Hasbro responded immediately. When one was delivered on January 13, many saw it as a stubborn half-measure and little more. The unsigned statement, delivered on D&D Beyondread some of the following:

A few final thoughts. Firstly, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today because we need to make sure we’re getting it right, but it’s coming. Second, you will hear people say that they won and we lost because it forced us to change our plans because we made your voices heard. These people will only be half right. You won – and so do we.

“I honestly don’t know who contributed to the unsigned statement before I started the post,” Brink said. “The statement that came out […] I read it around the same time as you.”

A second statement, this time a much louder apology, was issued on January 19 and signed by Brink.

“I wasn’t happy with what we posted,” Brink continued. “That’s one of the things that inspired me to take it personally … to name it and take responsibility for it because I — that wasn’t acceptable to me. That’s not us. We weren’t meant to be, and I felt like this should be less of a committee thing and more of a D&D thing.”

The “committee” Brink refers to is described throughout the interview as a collection of management, executives and legal advisors tasked with refining the next version of the OGL. According to Brink, there were dissenting opinions in the room and they came from the Wizards team. Unfortunately, their protests were not sufficiently considered by the larger group. Brink takes personal responsibility for this oversight. From the YouTube video:

I would say [the voices of our creative and our community teams] wasn’t loud enough in the room. And that is exactly what is changing. We give a lot more voice to the people on my team including myself who are closer to the community and would be able to catch things like this in the future and have enough volume to prevent it.

Brink went on to say that the authority vested in Wizards employees now comes directly from Cynthia Williams, President of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming at Hasbro. Williams joined Hasbro from Microsoft in February 2022, where she previously “led the expansion of Xbox gaming and accelerated the growth of game developers.” a press release.

“I would say more respect [is being given to Wizards’ team]’ Brink added. “It is important to be heard and respected. And I’ll say, to do her credit, I know Cynthia has gotten a lot of negative opinions about her, but she listens. And it changes based on information. And she’s by far one of the most insightful C-Suite people I’ve ever worked with. So I’m confident that if she says she’ll listen, she’ll listen.”

The latest D&D book, an anthology of adventures entitled Key from the Golden Vault, is available now as a digital pre-order. The physical book will be available from February 21st.

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