Since the beginning of January there has been a huge fuss about the Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast. The storm of indignation was so loud that en masse D&D products were to be boycotted by the fans. Again and again it was called not to buy books or to subscribe to the online service DnD Beyond. The boycott even extended to the forthcoming film and the first voices against Baldur’s Gate 3 were raised. Now Wizards is finally giving in and undoing just about everything.
Why all that? Wizards of the Coast planned to revise their open gaming license (dubbed OGL) to gain more control over other companies’ or fans’ DnD projects and claim financial participation. You can read all about it in detail here:
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That’s why there’s a lot of trouble about D&D right now
Wizards of the Coast admits defeat
A few weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast was increasingly uncertain about their actions. Although should a revised version of the new license already ensure that the fans calm down again, but at this point the revolt was already in full swing and could no longer be pacified with an adapted version of the new OGL 1.2.
Because of this, Wizards began collecting feedback from players and launching a poll for all participants to express their opinions. Actually, this survey should have run until February 3rd, but now the publisher has closed the doors early and announced a decision: There will be no changes.
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That’s what came out of the survey
The survey was closed earlier than expected because Wizards could already see very clearly where the journey was going and obviously wanted to approach their fan base with positive news. A total of around 15,000 people took part in the survey. The following results were achieved:
- 88 percent do not want to publish content for tabletop roleplaying games under the OGL 1.2.
- 90 percent would have to adapt parts of their business in order to be able to work with OGL 1.2.
- 89 percent are dissatisfied with invalidating the original OGL 1.0a.
- 86 percent are dissatisfied with the draft approach to VTT (Virtual Tabletop).
- 62 percent are satisfied with including the game system in Creative Commons, and the majority who were dissatisfied wanted more content in Creative Commons.
As a result of this clear result, the OGL 1.0a now remains exactly as it has existed since the year 2000. There will also be no new additions regarding digital content. Wizards notes in the statement that they wanted to protect the game with the new OGL and are counting on fans to participate in this protection to keep it inclusive and welcoming.
You can see what has happened since the Early Access release of Baldur’s Gate 3 in the trailer:
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Baldur’s Gate 3: Developers look back on a year and a half of progress
What’s next?
For now, the argument about the new OGL is settled. In the next step, Wizards of the Coast released an updated version of the DnD 5 rulebook under the original OGL, which you can view here.
It remains unforeseeable how much damage this heated debate has now caused. It was definitely lost a lot of trust from the fans and getting that back might take quite a while. Especially since some other publishers have used the controversy to side with the fans. For example, Wizards competitor Paizo (publisher of Pathfinder) announced its own open gaming license. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough to weaken Dungeons & Dragons’ dominance in the role-playing game market.
