SmiteWorks Official Statement about OGL 1.1 and Open Gaming Licenses

[Zeruel_Kagenie]

It's about control and money. Nothing else.

Among the things that most affect Smiteworks and Fantasy Grounds are:

1) Wizards of the Coast is the one who defines what a VTT is for its competition based on a very vague description of replicating the experience of getting together with friends around a table to play D&D, but later they summarize it to be a replacement for a book + a space where a group meets + a calculator.

A VTT must be a virtual space that allows anyone to play a board game with digital tools, augmented reality, or virtual reality, whatever they are. Just like it is around a real table, where if I want to create a battle map, I can draw it, show an image or video on a tv, create one with miniature terrains or a shoebox, play with or without music, with ambient lights, or whatever the group wants and has at their disposal.

2) With the DEAUTHORIZATION of OGL 1.0a I think they are eliminating their biggest competitor for D&D ONE which is D&D 5e and I think that is the true intention of the new OGL. I think that nothing will be able to be published / developed for 5e and any other system that has been using any version of the OGL prior to the next OGL. I'm not even sure if these products can be sold in the future. Furthermore, the document mentions the obligations that any VTT or website has under the DMCA to remove them. If the document is approved as such, it seems to me that Smiteworks will be forced to remove any module or extension that uses the current OGL.

[damned]

Doug you most certainly will want to look at the verbiage of the VTT section (I'm not telling you anything you don't already know I suppose). The statements about only doing what you can at the table and not displaying a Magic Missile crossing the screen can be extrapolated to not being able to show Fog of War, LoS, lighting, water ripples, other effects, etc....

It isn't super clear, probably should be survey noted, but one could also argue that Fog of War, LoS, Lightning, Water Ripples, and other effects are not actually animations connected to a game element (like a magic missile animations) and thus are not within their power to regulate.

VTT piece I found extremely relevant...

Please do remember that the 2E and 5E products on FG are not used under an OGL license.

I point this out, not defending the OGL 1.2, but highlight that the 2E and 5E Core products on Fantasy Grounds are licensed directly with WoTC not under an OGL.

[damned]

FG supports multiple OGL systems.

I think these guys are all rewriting any OGL content and moving forward without it.
For a lot of products the OGL thing was almost habit to include.
A product like Castles and Crusades Classic Monsters needs a lot of work but most products do not need that much and then WoTC has no hold on them at all.
Ultimately it will likely benefit these companies in the end as they will own all of their content instead of most of it.

[bayne7400]

Using Creative Commons is basically the same thing as saying "WOTC" can take your stuff. Just Google commercial use of CC license. Anyone can take your creation remix and sell it. All they have to do is give attribution. So a 3pp could make something awesome using CC. Anyone including WOTC could take it make a few changes and sell it with attribution.

https://creativecommons.org/about/cc...ntical%20terms.

Let's take it a step further. Let's say Smiteworks adapts a game using CC to FG. That work also has to use CC. What does that mean for Smiteworks IP which is locked into the code?

[Zeruel_Kagenie]

Please do remember that the 2E and 5E products on FG are not used under an OGL license.

I point this out, not defending the OGL 1.2, but highlight that the 2E and 5E Core products on Fantasy Grounds are licensed directly with WoTC not under an OGL.

That could be the case with official products licensed with Wizard of the Coast. But, what will happen to the same SRD 5.1 created by Smiteworks, or products made by Kobold Press, MCDM, AAW Games, Paizo, or any other product that has OGL 1.0a written in the module once the deauthorization of the OGL 1.0a?

[esmdev]

I got the link right before I posted and I’ve only had time to read the announcement and what was mentioned in my meeting with WOTC. I had other personal commitments. They mentioned a desire to prohibit video games while still allowing VTTs and I expressed concern that it would be very hard to legally differentiate the two. They asked me to read over it and provide my feedback. It sounds like that section is not going to work out for us. They addressed much of my original feedback, but there are still a few problematic areas I think should be removed or rewritten. All in all, I still view this as a positive step forward. We will keep working with them to hopefully get a version that satisfies the vast majority of the RPG community.

I hope to be able to read through it fully tomorrow. Your feedback is very helpful.

Also, the Creative Commons license sounds good at first glance. Do you think this causes any negative, unforeseen consequences?

I was thinking about WotC's view of a physical tabletop and what is possible in the 80s vs. now vs. 10 years from now, and things have really changed. In the 80s my friends and I sat around the living room with books, paper and dice. These days we sit around with laptops on TV trays, some people have big screen monitors built into their tabletops. Technology is only increasing and nothing they can do is going to stop that. With the current version of the VTT license it is possible that 10 years from now VTTs will be less capable than what can be done at home.

I don't claim to know the future but just seeing how gaming has changed especially in the field of VR and AR it seems like making a lightning effect go from one figure to another should be pretty possible 10 years from now.

The WotC definition looks like it was written by someone who watched Stranger Things and assumes that is what it looks like today with no understanding of how things have been changing. The.WotC VTT license is also a massive overreach because it says for you to be a VTT in their licensing FG cannot provide the ability to perform animations which ripples to every other ruleset that they don't own because they can argue if it can be unlocked for one ruleset it could potentially be extensioned on D&D. That seems dangerous and to comply you might end up having to maintain two separate software systems.

There are so many unforeseeable potential side effects from the VTT license because it is not a forward looking license but backwards, and that is not something to ever do in computing.

[esmdev]

I think these guys are all rewriting any OGL content and moving forward without it.
For a lot of products the OGL thing was almost habit to include.
A product like Castles and Crusades Classic Monsters needs a lot of work but most products do not need that much and then WoTC has no hold on them at all.
Ultimately it will likely benefit these companies in the end as they will own all of their content instead of most of it.

So here is an unanswered question that the new OGL and VTT don't address. If a product (let's say C&C) is written for FGU assuming the 1.0a license rewrites their whole game to be no longer OGL but is still layered on the 5E ruleset are they compliant with their change of license just for the fact it is 'called the 5E ruleset'. One could argue that it is simply mechanics that are being used but they could argue that the mechanics are irrelevant because when you load the game in Fantasy Grounds the chat window explicitly states that it is built on the CoreRPG > 5E > Whoever... The argument here is that even if you argue that your only using the mechanics just the term 5E can be considered a reference to prior licenses due to it being considered an industry standard term.

This is a problem with losing 1.0a is that even changing your books isn't enough, even changing your modules might not be enough.

[esmdev]

Please do remember that the 2E and 5E products on FG are not used under an OGL license.

I point this out, not defending the OGL 1.2, but highlight that the 2E and 5E Core products on Fantasy Grounds are licensed directly with WoTC not under an OGL.

My statement wasn't about the OGL it was about the VTT license wherein WotC tries to define what is and isn't a VTT in a technology blind statement which if implemented as written would leave near infinite room for ambiguity to define what specific animation elements constitute at or not at table features. They set themselves up as the final arbiter of what a VTT is and isn't allowed to do.

In clearer terms my argument was that it must be clearly defined that the animation limitation must only refer to animations of elements that they can copyright. They cannot copyright water effects, lightning effects, weather effects, lighting, fog of war, etc., despite trying to say you cannot use them, or are they? You see it is unclear because they just half-elf'd the whole statement by just declaring 'animations' to be the difference between a video game and a virtual table top (which is really a type of video game).

[ddavison]

Okay, I just finished my review of the OGL 1.2 and I posted my thoughts in a new thread. This will allow us to keep the discussion based on the latest, current version of the draft OGL.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...027#post675027

[esmdev]

Maybe lock this one?