March 17, 2025
D&D, Why? The Open-Gaming License Controversy
The popular tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is taking advantage of the tail end of what many are calling the “Golden Age of TTRPGs” by releasing a new suite of books. It would seem, however, that not much has changed with the more controversial elements of the publisher’s business model.
Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of D&D, has been accused of questionable market practices in the past. Its most recent scandal has been the attempted revocation of a previous version of what’s called the Open Game License (OGL). OGL 1.0 enabled fans to create and sell their own content based on WotC’s intellectual properties that would normally fall under copyright. This allowed fans to publish their own “homebrew” content as full-fledged supplements to the game. The OGL is sometimes credited as starting the Golden Age of TTRPGs, as new content was released at a steady rate, including even entire new systems based off of the fundamental rules of D&D.
Proposed changes to the OGL centralized derivative content under Wizards of the Coast, requiring publishers to provide WotC a full 25% of revenue if the company was above a certain threshold. The proposed license, OGL 1.1, would also require all content published under the license to be clearly marked. Most importantly to the controversy, however, is that any content made under OGL 1.1 would be property of Wizards of the Coast and could be used for official products without the creator’s consent or even notification, and without payment.
In the aftermath, OGL 1.1 was struck down, and OGL 1.0 would not be revoked. However, no further product produced by Wizards of the Coast will fall under OGL 1.0’s license. The new suite of books are the first not to use the OGL since the controversy. The revisions are mostly rules many players had already used in practice, and WotC has been accused by some as quickly getting the new content under the new SRD license and pushing players away from the previous books still under OGL 1.0.