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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Good riddance to the Open Gaming License

Last week, Gizmodo’s Linda Codega caught a fantastic scoop — a leaked report of Hasbro’s plan to revoke the decades-old Open Gaming License, which subsidiary Wizards Of the Coast promulgated as an allegedly open sandbox for people seeking to extend, remix or improve Dungeons and Dragons:

https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634

The report set off a shitstorm among D&D fans and the broader TTRPG community — not just because it was evidence of yet more enshittification of D&D by a faceless corporate monopolist, but because Hasbro was seemingly poised to take back the commons that RPG players and designers had built over decades, having taken WOTC and the OGL at their word.

Gamers were right to be worried. Giant companies love to rugpull their fans, tempting them into a commons with lofty promises of a system that we will all have a stake in, using the fans for unpaid creative labor, then enclosing the fans’ work and selling it back to them. It’s a tale as old as CDDB and Disgracenote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB#History

(Disclosure: I am a long-serving volunteer board-member for MetaBrainz, which maintains MusicBrainz, a free, open, community-managed and transparent alternative to Gracenote, explicitly designed to resist the kind of commons-stealing enclosure that led to the CDDB debacle.)

https://musicbrainz.org/

Free/open licenses were invented specifically to prevent this kind of fuckery. First there was the GPL and its successor software licenses, then Creative Commons and its own successors. One important factor in these licenses: they contain the word “irrevocable.” That means that if you build on licensed content, you don’t have to worry about having the license yanked out from under you later. It’s rugproof.

Now, the OGL does not contain the word “irrevocable.” Rather, the OGL is “perpetual.” To a layperson, these two terms may seem interchangeable, but this is one of those fine lawerly distinctions that trip up normies all the time. In lawyerspeak, a “perpetual” license is one whose revocation doesn’t come automatically after a certain time (unlike, say, a one-year car-lease, which automatically terminates at the end of the year). Unless a license is “irrevocable,” the licensor can terminate it whenever they want to.

This is exactly the kind of thing that trips up people who roll their own licenses, and people who trust those licenses. The OGL predates the Creative Commons licenses, but it neatly illustrates the problem with letting corporate lawyers — rather than public-interest nonprofits — unleash “open” licenses on an unsuspecting, legally unsophisticated audience.

The perpetual/irrevocable switcheroo is the least of the problems with the OGL. As Rob Bodine— an actual lawyer, as well as a dice lawyer — wrote back in 2019, the OGL is a grossly defective instrument that is significantly worse than useless.

https://gsllcblog.com/2019/08/26/part3ogl/

The issue lies with what the OGL actually licenses. Decades of copyright maximalism has convinced millions of people that anything you can imagine is “intellectual property,” and that this is indistinguishable from real property, which means that no one can use it without your permission.

The copyrightpilling of the world sets people up for all kinds of scams, because copyright just doesn’t work like that. This wholly erroneous view of copyright grooms normies to be suckers for every sharp grifter who comes along promising that everything imaginable is property-in-waiting (remember SpiceDAO?):

https://onezero.medium.com/crypto-copyright-bdf24f48bf99

Copyright is a lot more complex than “anything you can imagine is your property and that means no one else can use it.” For starters, copyright draws a fundamental distinction between ideas and expression. Copyright does not apply to ideas — the idea, say, of elves and dwarves and such running around a dungeon, killing monsters. That is emphatically not copyrightable.

Copyright also doesn’t cover abstract systems or methods — like, say, a game whose dice-tables follow well-established mathematical formulae to create a “balanced” system for combat and adventuring. Anyone can make one of these, including by copying, improving or modifying an existing one that someone else made. That’s what “uncopyrightable” means.

Finally, there are the exceptions and limitations to copyright — things that you are allowed to do with copyrighted work, without first seeking permission from the creator or copyright’s proprietor. The best-known exception is US law is fair use, a complex doctrine that is often incorrectly characterized as turning on “four factors” that determine whether a use is fair or not.

In reality, the four factors are a starting point that courts are allowed and encouraged to consider when determining the fairness of a use, but some of the most consequential fair use cases in Supreme Court history flunk one, several, or even all of the four factors (for example, the Betamax decision that legalized VCRs in 1984, which fails all four).

Beyond fair use, there are other exceptions and limitations, like the di minimis exemption that allows for incidental uses of tiny fragments of copyrighted work without permission, even if those uses are not fair use. Copyright, in other words, is “fact-intensive,” and there are many ways you can legally use a copyrighted work without a license.

Which brings me back to the OGL, and what, specifically, it licenses. The OGL is a license that only grants you permission to use the things that WOTC can’t copyright — “the game mechanic [including] the methods, procedures, processes and routines.” In other words, the OGL gives you permission to use things you don’t need permission to use.

But maybe the OGL grants you permission to use more things, beyond those things you’re allowed to use anyway? Nope. The OGL specifically exempts:

Product and product line names, logos and identifying marks including trade dress; artifacts; creatures characters; stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, dialogue, incidents, language, artwork, symbols, designs, depictions, likenesses, formats, poses, concepts, themes and graphic, photographic and other visual or audio representations; names and descriptions of characters, spells, enchantments, personalities, teams, personas, likenesses and special abilities; places, locations, environments, creatures, equipment, magical or supernatural abilities or effects, logos, symbols, or graphic designs; and any other trademark or registered trademark…

Now, there are places where the uncopyrightable parts of D&D mingle with the copyrightable parts, and there’s a legal term for this: merger. Merger came up for gamers in 2018, when the provocateur Robert Hovden got the US Copyright Office to certify copyright in a Magic: The Gathering deck:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/14/angels-and-demons/#owning-culture

If you want to learn more about merger, you need to study up on Kregos and Eckes, which are beautifully explained in the “Open Intellectual Property Casebook,” a free resource created by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/openip/#q01

Jenkins and Boyle explicitly created their open casebook as an answer to another act of enclosure: a greedy textbook publisher cornered the market on IP textbook and charged every law student — and everyone curious about the law — $200 to learn about merger and other doctrines.

As EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kit Walsh writes in her must-read analysis of the OGL, this means “the only benefit that OGL offers, legally, is that you can copy verbatim some descriptions of some elements that otherwise might arguably rise to the level of copyrightability.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators

But like I said, it’s not just that the OGL fails to give you rights — it actually takes away rights you already have to D&D. That’s because — as Walsh points out — fair use and the other copyright limitations and exceptions give you rights to use D&D content, but the OGL is a contract whereby you surrender those rights, promising only to use D&D stuff according to WOTC’s explicit wishes.

“For example, absent this agreement, you have a legal right to create a work using noncopyrightable elements of D&D or making fair use of copyrightable elements and to say that that work is compatible with Dungeons and Dragons. In many contexts you also have the right to use the logo to name the game (something called “nominative fair use” in trademark law). You can certainly use some of the language, concepts, themes, descriptions, and so forth. Accepting this license almost certainly means signing away rights to use these elements. Like Sauron’s rings of power, the gift of the OGL came with strings attached.”

And here’s where it starts to get interesting. Since the OGL launched in 2000, a huge proportion of game designers have agreed to its terms, tricked into signing away their rights. If Hasbro does go through with canceling the OGL, it will release those game designers from the shitty, deceptive OGL.

According to the leaks, the new OGL is even worse than the original versions — but you don’t have to take those terms! Notwithstanding the fact that the OGL says that “using…Open Game Content” means that you accede to the license terms, that is just not how contracts work.

Walsh: “Contracts require an offer, acceptance, and some kind of value in exchange, called ‘consideration.’ If you sell a game, you are inviting the reader to play it, full stop. Any additional obligations require more than a rote assertion.”

“For someone who wants to make a game that is similar mechanically to Dungeons and Dragons, and even announce that the game is compatible with Dungeons and Dragons, it has always been more advantageous as a matter of law to ignore the OGL.”

Walsh finishes her analysis by pointing to some good licenses, like the GPL and Creative Commons, “written to serve the interests of creative communities, rather than a corporation.” Many open communities — like the programmers who created GNU/Linux, or the music fans who created Musicbrainz, were formed after outrageous acts of enclosure by greedy corporations.

If you’re a game designer who was pissed off because the OGL was getting ganked — and if you’re even more pissed off now that you’ve discovered that the OGL was a piece of shit all along — there’s a lesson there. The OGL tricked a generation of designers into thinking they were building on a commons. They weren’t — but they could.

This is a great moment to start — or contribute to — real open gaming content, licensed under standard, universal licenses like Creative Commons. Rolling your own license has always been a bad idea, comparable to rolling your own encryption in the annals of ways-to-fuck-up-your-own-life-and-the-lives-of-many-others. There is an opportunity here — Hasbro unintentionally proved that gamers want to collaborate on shared gaming systems.

That’s the true lesson here: if you want a commons, you’re not alone. You’ve got company, like Kit Walsh herself, who happens to be a brilliant game-designer who won a Nebula Award for her game “Thirsty Sword Lesbians”:

https://evilhat.com/product/thirsty-sword-lesbians/

[Image ID: A remixed version of David Trampier's 'Eye of Moloch,' the cover of the first edition of the AD&D Player's Handbook. It has been altered so the title reads 'Advanced Copyright Fuckery. Unclear on the Concept. That's Just Not How Licenses Work. No, Seriously.' The eyes of the idol have been replaced by D20s displaying a critical fail '1.' Its chest bears another D20 whose showing face is a copyright symbol.]

#pluralistic #copyfraud #wizards of the coast #wotc #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ogl #open gaming license #eff #fair use #kit walsh #consideration #licenses

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rustedportal · 4 months

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Coming Soon! AtR: Survivor Starter, a 5th Edition DND Compatible campaign starter for Apocalypse the Risen Campaign Setting. Follow now, back at launch for a free adventure pdf and 6 free Perilous Hunts, deadly encounters, 4 released weekly during the campaign.

#apocalypse the risen #dnd5e #dnd #ttrpg #horror #kickstarter #crowdfunding

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quillowisp · 1 month

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From my Phandelver and Below: Shattered Obelisk handout pack on Etsy.

One of my D&D Harpers faction symbols

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carolinelikesdinner · 8 days

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How the Fablehaven characters would play DND

Kendra

It's her first ever game, and she’d study the rules extensively before even trying to make a character. Takes several days for her to land on a backstory she likes. Would play a druid, either a half elf or a wood elf with a little animal companion. More into roleplay than combat and exploration, but surprisingly good at timing her actions when fighting. Takes extensive notes of each session.

Seth

Also his first ever dnd game, did NOT study the rules. Had to be told in session 0 that he couldn’t have a legendary item at level 1. Would play a rogue or a sorcerer tiefling (cause he thinks their design is the coolest). He’d min-max his stats to hell and back. His character starts out being super one dimensional with a vague backstory, but gets more fleshed out as he plays. Keeps forgetting how combat works.

Warren

Dnd veteran, has played almost every race and class but enjoys bard the most. Switches between being a player and DM constantly, but leans more towards DM. Dice goblin, will just give you dice if you ask nicely. Enjoys making lore about his campaigns, but is bad at incorporating the players' backstories into it. Super loose with the rules, if everyones having fun it’s fine. Also is weirdly good at character voices.

Vanessa

Played like one oneshot in college and hasn't touched the game since. Gets into the swing of things pretty fast, enjoys the combat and puzzles. Her character is a monk but she’d play a more unconventional race, like Yuan-Ti or Harengon. Has exactly one set of dice and doesn't see any reason to get more.

Tanu

Is a little familiar with dnd. Would play a ranger tabaxi or dragonborn, enjoys exploration a lot. The main starter of roleplay between the players. Is also the designated snack bringer.

Bracken

Never even heard of dnd before. Attempts to read the rules and only understands about 30% of it. He’d play a paladin character, maybe elf. Really confused on which dice to use at any given time. Keeps pointing out the inconsistencies between the dnd lore vs. how magical creatures actually are.

Ronodin

Has been playing since it first came out in the 70s. He’s been in a couple long term campaigns but he's mostly played one shots. Isn’t really familiar with 5e but gets used to it after a while. Plays a dark elf rogue or warlock. His character's backstory is just similar enough to his own past to get a few eyebrow raises. Fakes a good roll if he’s had a bunch of bad ones in a row.

#guys youll never guess what my two hyperfixations are #-#fablehaven #dragonwatch #dnd #dungeons and dragons #kendra sorenson #seth sorenson #warren burgess #vanessa santoro #tanugatoa dufu #bracken #ronodin

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masterangst · 3 months

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General Headcanons that play a part in Post!game long fic of mine

This could also could just be seen as random headcanons I have of the characters based on my playthrough

For starters, Wyll became a Paladin in my playthrough, and I actually think it fits his character very well. Oath of the Ancients, to be exact.

He's in the Hells with Karlach in the beginning, but he still comes and checks on things above

He has no problem living up to the Ancients tenants, and the powers he gained are quite helpful to him in the Hells.

The reason I chose to do this, is because Wyll embodies what a Paladin does. He strives to inspire others and beat back against despair and to help others. He preaches hope and wishes to inspire it in others. He loves his friends and cares deeply about his father and his city and isn't afraid to voice it/do what it takes to protect them.

Though, he struggles with his belief that because he's still tied to Mizora, that he's unworthy of the position, but believes he can do more good than he could before. Considering it's a very powerful combo.

He's also come to accept being a warlock under Mizora, deciding to see the powers given to him because of it as a gift instead of curse.

He's main focus is helping Karlach at the beginning and may develop into something more 👀

Astarion

Him and my Tav, Axel, have become bounty hunters of sorts. It's a great way for Astarion to find people to kill and drink from. "Nobody actually cares about murder, as long as you murder the right people"

He's grown a lot more comfortable with his body and with sex. He still likes to enchant people with his charm, but now he does it cus its fun sometimes

He forces Axel to sleep in luxury and not in a bedroll every night. Also, it is the one that keeps Axels' appearance in check and repairs both of their clothes if they get damaged.

They created a technique together to take down their enemies. Sometimes treating it like a dance as seeing themselves in battle turns them both on. (I can make another post that goes into their relationship a bit more)

Now that he's not malnourished, his eyes have turned less red and his teeth are now not constantly pointy. In other words he appears more human/elfish to others now. He uses that to his advantage

He also has discovered a few abilities that spawn have that Cazador hid from him. Such as spider climbing, though he struggled with it at first. Only Axel knows of this.

Bg3 has almost it's own rules than just normal DnD. Because of this, and based on what is stated and shown in the palace. There is no evidence that the spawn were bound by their coffin like normal dnd. So in my story, that isn't a thing. And I stick with the notion that Astarion isn't forced to sleep during the day, but must at least trance once a day

He also is not the best as writing letters to everyone, but he's always watching over Axels shoulder and butting in to make corrections or add something

Shadowheart

She has a little cottage where she homes Scratch and the Owlbear.

She's not very good at gardening but she's trying. She's determined to have a small garden by the beginning of spring (story is set in winter)

Also went on a few trips to find her connection with Selune

She struggles with overcoming her trauma with her parents and with Shar and feeling worthy of being a follower of Selune

Mostly been traveling and learning more about her parents for now. Has evaded Shar assassins and has a small map of locations she's knowledgeable about of Shars followers. She intends to use it someday, but not yet.

I imagine she gets lonely and wishes to be with the others again. Though she sleeps with Scratch every night and the Owlbear sleeps on the floor by her bed.

Scratch accompanies her on her travels and makes sure she's eaten and lifts her spirits when she's sad

Her and Axel write to each other all the time and she sees him like an older brother even though hes younger (she's 48, he's 39)

The only other person she's spent time with is Gale. She stayed with him when she went to the temple of Selune in Waterdeep. They also write occasionally.

Gale

Gale is quite content with being a professor. He feels like he doesn't have that dying need to prove himself all the time anymore

Though he still wishes to be recognized by his peers at the academy

Also has tried to rekindle his relationship with Elminster, but hasn't seen him in person yet

He still feels very lonely, however, and frustrated he's having to rebuild his career in a sense. He misses being on adventures and the people he considers his real friends

He keeps in regular contact with Wyll and Axel the most. Gale helps keep Wyll informed of upstairs news and gives him new things to read to keep him company. Also has decided that Wyll must be his invite to the Blackstaff ball.

Wyll forces Gales to practice his dancing and they exchange recipes as well

Gale considers Wyll his best friend, but won't say it aloud or admit to it. It's like a mother who says she doesn't have a favorite child but clearly does.

Wyll also considers him a best friend, but also besides Karlach

Karlach

She didn't want to go back to the Hells. She was terrified and was ready to die, but having someone there helps.

She's tired of constantly fighting, I mean it's fun and all, but it's also tiring

She wants to settle down in Baldur’s Gate and have a place big enough for all her friends to visit her

The reunion party reminded her why she's still fighting. So she can come home and go on adventures again

Her and Axel are the closest. Axel was the first leader Karlach ever fully admired and didn't grow to regret it. She's also the only one who knows things others do not about him, and she takes pride in that.

She loves the color Pink and she can't wait to wear pretty dresses at the Blackstaff Ball no one tell Gale she's coming too

Sneaks away to relieve her sexual tension and lies about it. She lives with the guilt.

Is much like Astarion when it comes to letter writing. She looks over Wylls shoulder and makes comments about what he should write and how dumb the companions are sometimes.

Lae'zel

She won't be in my story very much, because she's off trying to fight/negotiate a war, since Orpheus was sacrificed.

To be frank, Lae'zels arc is my my favorite one. Especially if you choose the route to go against her queen. She's a beautiful character. Anyways.

She's a bit busy with the rebel forces but she holds onto a memento given to her by Axel to remind her that peace sometimes works better than violence.

She misses her friends on the Material plane and fully intends on seeing them in the flesh once her battle is done.

Also checks in a lot with the hatchling Xan

She can't write to her friends, but she knows they are rooting for her

By the end of the game, her and Shadowheart had made up their differences and actually became friends

In terms of everyone together. I like to imagine that a permanent side effect of the worm is that now everyone must rebuild their stats.

I'm sure I have more, so maybe I will make another post. But I was thinking of the things that play into my long fic as well.

#i just love all the characters #also im half asleep so excuse the mess #astarion #Lae'zel #wyll ravengard #bg3 gale #karlach #shadowheart bg3 #bg3 tav #bg3 spoilers #post game #my thoughts #baldur's gate 3 #astarion x tav #Karlach/Wyll #bg3 headcanons #gale of waterdeep #astarion ancunin #shadowheart

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dm-paul-weber · 2 years

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Dragons of Stormwreck Isle My map renditions

Download them all from my drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kXXBlaDcIhoQpkXV3qULRIYpQoZDEHHv/view?usp=sharing

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orchestrated-haunting · 4 months

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Random dnd headcannons I had for some characters of the epic cycle because I just had neurons activate. This is gonna be long so they’re mostly under the cut.

Odysseus would be the DM, making riddles and puzzles for the party that he thinks is pretty easy to solve, but the party still spends the entire session trying to solve it.

He likes to fuck around with everyone. Has a doppelgänger infiltrated the party? Yeah probably. Has someone been following the party? Most likely. The party has to be on their toes at all times.

Odysseus plans far in advance for his sessions and somehow (like every dnd party does) the party goes in the completely opposite direction, so Odysseus is improving the majority of the sessions, but thanks to his storytelling abilities literally no one can tell unless Odysseus expresses how much he’s flying by the seat of his pants.

Achilles would prefer to play martial classes like fighter or barbarian. It’s not that he doesn’t like the spell casting classes, he just prefers to be on the front line. Give him a lvl 20 fighter and that man will go HAM.

He falls head over heels for every NPC he meets. He wants to smooch every single one. The rest of the party just sigh at his antics.

He and doors hate each other (he spent like 5 turns trying to open a locked door before he eventually got pissed off and just broke it down).

Patroclus prefers tanky classes that can also support the others so cleric and paladin are the classes he tends to play.

That being said he still loves to do damage. His main build is almost always a battle cleric so he can still heal but leave the majority of it to someone who is exclusively a healer.

Hector, man, he’d likely multiclass between something that’s support but also a martial class. I could see him playing a Paladin build the most often.

I think he tried to play a full caster class once and decided there was just to many things to keep on top of for himself, but he still enjoyed how useful spells are so he doesn’t mind a half caster class.

And while the majority of the party are probably chaotic neutral, he plays almost exclusively lawful characters. His characters almost always have a strict set of morals and a code that they follow.

I could see Paris playing caster classes. Give him any charisma caster, warlock, bard, etc. and he is having the time of his life.

Like Achilles I think he would try and romance so many NPCs, and boy does he use that charisma stat to its full potential. If he’s a bard you better assume he’s also using bardic inspiration on himself.

Penthesilea and Achilles are always trying to one up each other. She almost exclusively plays barbarians and if Achilles is playing one as well they WILL keep a kill count to see who ends up having killed the most by the end of the campaign.

She’s the starter of the tavern brawls, to which Achilles and Patroclus gladly join in. She’s also the one who is always the test dummy if the party is afraid of traps or failing a puzzle.

“What if it’s trapped??”

“I open the door.”

“Take 2d6 fire damage.”

At first you’d think Circe would play spellcasting classes but she does enough of that as is she’d want to do something completely opposite like a rouge. She’d love that.

I can see her giggling after pick pocketing one of the other party members while she just waits for them to figure it out. She’s a menace in a different way than either Achilles of Paris.

She’s not trying to romance any NPCs if she wanted to romance someone she’d just choose a real person. But boy her characters have sticky fingers.

#the epic cycle #homer’s illiad #homer’s odyssey #homeric epics #odysseus #achilles #hector of troy #paris of troy #penthesilea #circe #orchestrated writing

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