Wizards of the Coast Do Not Understand the OGL

It was recently announced that Cynthia Williams, CEO of Wizards of the Coast, the company which controls the Dungeons and Dragons brand, will be resigning.  Wherever else she goes on to, within the D&D hobby, Cynthia Williams will forevermore be known as the woman who oversaw the OGL scandal and completely tanked all brand trust for the official D&D brand.  I originally wrote this last year in January, during the height of the OGL fiasco.   Before I could publish it, WOTC completely folded to public pressure and released the entire SRD 5.1 under a CC-BY license.  Despite the last-minute act to salvage public good will, the OGL scandal continues to plague WOTC and D&D.  With the recent announcement that Cynthia Williams will be leaving, I thought it worthwhile to revisit the OGL fiasco.

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My last post was a very long break-down of the OGL situation, describing how the OGL works, its purpose, the nature of what Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) are doing, and what I hope would happen.

Since writing that, more news in the area has occurred, including the draft OGL 1.2.

What is clear to me, is that many people, including WOTC, do not understand even what the OGL is in the first place.  So in this post I just want to clarify in as brief a way I can how the OGL works, how it does not work, and why this is a big deal.

This is going to be a very in-depth look at the legal wording of both the original OGL 1.0, and the proposed OGL 1.2.  My thesis in this is, that WOTC do not understand the OGL 1.0, do not know what it is, and have been misconstruing it (deliberately or not) in order to push forward with their plans.

D&D is Not the Forgotten Realms

I recently watched the D&D movie, despite having sworn never to see it.  And it's actually a pretty decent movie.  It's got some good laughs and an interesting story.  It entertained me, and so fulfilled its only purpose.

from the original 1980s D&D cartoon

If you knew nothing about D&D, you might still know it's a game that nerds play on a table with pens, paper, dice, tiny statues, and tons and tons of rulebooks.  So you might wonder how a game with pens, paper, dice, statues, and rulebooks could be turned into a movie.  And if you think about it, you might come up with a few obvious ways to do this.

The most obvious is a fantasy-themed Jumanji.  Some kids start playing D&D and get sucked into their own game world and have to battle skeletons and dragons with swords and spells.  There was an early 1980s Saturday morning cartoon based on that premise.  But that isn't what the movie is about.

Another might be something like a dice-rolling Scott Pilgrim, where the characters are governed by the rules of the game world.  They roll dice when they attempt feats, either literally rolling one or the screen displaying a die above each character's head.  When they swing a sword, damage and HP meters show up, then experience points tick up.  There are several popular web comics built on this premise.  But that also isn't what the movie is about.