Reliable numbers are difficult simply because we don’t know unless WotC releases those figures. We’ll know if Amazon tells us how many of each book they sale, and that’s something I guess. The important thing is that WotC was suddenly faced with a real contender to take their spot, something they’re not overly accustomed to.
A good video addressing mechanics versus expression.
One thing I like that he mentioned is that if it does go to trial, the jury might not have any knowledge of DND. In fact, having knowledge of it might get them excused from the jury pool. As I type that, though, how many judges will have this knowledge? Do judges specialize the same as lawyers do?
I haven’t seen any other updates from any of the big players at this time.
I agree and I think it made the hobby better! Gosh, competition does work! 
https://koboldpress.com/raising-our-flag/
While I don’t know what they agreed to or with WotC, they seem to be going the route of a new system.
The only reason so many games and settings used the OGL and 5E mechanics was because of its accessibility and ubiquity, not because it is inherently superior or a good fit for every setting. There are plenty of other flexible systems out there such as Savage Worlds, Powered by the Apocalypse, Cypher System, Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying, et cetera that can be adapted to different settings and genres as well as generic d20 OSR systems for people who just have to role an icosahedral die and 2D6 and 3D6 systems for people who want to use their Yatzee dice. These systems and settings don’t have the same cachet as Dungeons & Dragons in the public consciousness but all it would really take is for some influencer like Critical Role to explicitly switch to a different system.
Stranger
How many of them have an Open Game License?
I mean Games Workshop has been lawsuit crazy, suing anyone and everyone, even trying to Copyright the term “Space Marines”, etc.
Remember, we have not actually heard for WotC. That was a un-official draft.
Cypher System and Chaosium Basic Roleplaying have actual OGLs.
Savage Worlds has several levels of permission/licensing, though not an actual OGL; they have tiers for fans and small creators to use their system without a formal license, as well as offering licensing of their system to larger publishers.
It’s not clear to me if Powered by the Apocalypse has an OGL, but it does sound like the creators encourage others to use and hack their system.
Also, for what it’s worth, Fate also has an OGL.
I feel like there must be enough meat on those unofficial bones in the industry to warrant Kobold making a statement and plans like that. 5e supplements and settings are a big part of their portfolio (and I’d guess the lion’s share of their revenue based on Kickstarters I’ve seen)
Yeah. It sounds like the end of the world…but then I have only seen Youtube videos on it. It harkens back to the time when outsourcing was taking off and we had a run of recessions for a couple decades…then all of a sudden THE WORST RECESSION EVER! happened…which didn’t seem so bad to me unlike others. Turns out it was the first recession that hit news reporters hard so they blasted how horrible it was with bullhorns on rooftops.
So it could be like that.
My uneducated view is that everyone benefited from a very favorable open license allowing people to make money confiscation-free for a long time and WOTC benefited from having an inexpensive and highly effective marketing campaign. It seemed to pay off very well for them but now they likely think the market is near peak and it is time to ‘bring it home’ and bone down on making some serious money.
I actually hope D&D 5e, One D&D whatever they call it gets hurt by this. Not because I hate D&D 5e…but because it only does one thing well. Heroic Fantasy. You want over-the-top powerful demi-god like characters slaying hordes of weak monsters then 5e is the way to go! I have done several 5e campaigns as a DM and I embrace the over-the-top-ness and it works well. It’s just that you get tired of the same thing and want to DM something different. A gritty fantasy…after-the-apocalypse…war…fighting Lovecraftian monsters…A good Space Opera.
The only problem is that D&D OWNS like 95%+ of the players (and I am being conservative). These players will ONLY play D&D 5e and will not consider something else. If you want to be a player and see a Space Opera-type game advertised, it is highly likely you will see “Using D&D 5e rules” or some nonsense. If you try to ‘get creative’ with D&D, players come to the table with expectations that they can be anything they want (which usually just happens to be the most OP) and if you try to build a different type of campaign, these players get all crotchety about ‘limiting their creativity’. It has gotten so bad that I have just been placing my campaigns in my own homebrew world which I derisively and secretly call 'Generic D&D World 1.0". You just want to play or DM something DIFFERENT!
If I advertise a D&D 5e campaign in Roll20 or other forum, I get 50 responses within an hour. I advertise anything else…crickets. It gets old.
So I hope HOPE D&D suffers. Not goes away because D&D has its place, it just needs to be trimmed down…well a lot. Make room for other great gaming systems out there and hopefully get the “I will only play D&D” players, well some of them anyway, to expand their horizons. I would think the lack of DMs would do this, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
So I hope WOTC gets hurt from this but not for hate, just for more possible diversity.
Most of these system have some kind of permissive licensing or use scheme, and frankly you don’t actually need an “Open Gaming License” to file off the serial numbers and use the basics of a system unless you actually want to market it as being based on that system for popularity. Chaosium, for instance, is actually pretty dedicated to promoting community-generated content, and their Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system has actually become the basis for an entire family of “D100” game mechanics with no attempt by Chaosium to try to control the use. The OGL (any version) didn’t actually prevent any of “Old School Renaissance” (OSR) games from essentially using Basic/Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (e.g. 0E and1E) rules with a bit of tweaking to make them behave like players want to remember the games as playing; it was basically just a way to encourage small publishers to promote their system and get some free publicity (and with OGL 1.0a, a free revenue stream)
The Games Workshops lawsuits (primarily Games Workshop Inc. v Chapterhouse Studios LLC which is the only one that actually made it into a court and was settled by summary judgement) were over actual IP pertaining to the setting and not their pretty generic game mechanics.
It was clearly floated by Wizards of the Coast to see what the public response would be. They may temper some of the terms of their “revised” gaming license but their business model is predicated on driving people away from 5E content and into their “One D&D” product suite, so unless the abandon that plan wholesale they’re going to release something like this license.
Stranger
“You don’t need the OGL to publish DnD books (and you never did)”:
Stranger
Altho true, D&D is a Fantasy RPG, 5e characters are hardly demi-god like. You want overpowered, then look at some 3.5 builds with dips in several.many prestige classes.
Lovecraftian monsters… Call of Cthulhu.
A good Space Opera- several space games, a couple of which are based off D20. And now you can do Space with 5e- Spelljammer.
Maybe you can let Games Workshop and it’s large team of lawsuit happy solicitors/lawyers know that?
A Lawsuit doesn’t have to make it to court to squash competition. Most indy game designers and artists can’t afford lawyers to fight GW dozens of suits.
“Clearly”? 
All of your examples are threats or suits over details pertaining to art and other setting content which is obviously trademarked and copyright protected intellectual property. My statement pertained to the use of game system mechanics that are not considered to be protected by copyright and which can be used by anyone just by removing any trademarked or characteristic terminology.
Yes, “clearly”. Floating a position or strategy as a ‘leak’ is a very standard way of gauging public response. This wasn’t some document left behind in a bar or accidentally attached to an email; it clearly made its way to current and potential licensees to see how they would respond to these extensive changes to the current OGL.
Stranger
In case you didn’t watch the video I posted, there is still a question of expression.
If I say a spell creates a blast of fire at mid range to a single target and does moderate damage that scales with ability, that’s probably fine. But what if I say it like this?
Fire Blasting
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60’
Components: V, S, M (small red gem)
Duration: Instantaneous
As the wizard hold his hands in a square in front of him, he uses that to aim at a target in range. That target must make a Dexterity saving throw or take 1d6 damage.
At Higher Levels: Damage goes up to 2d6 damage at 5th level, 3d6 damage at 11th level, and 4d6 damage at 16th level.
Is the second one an expression specific to DND and therefore more protected? I don’t know that’s what the video talks about. I could see them using that to show how it is IP. Let’s say to be safe, someone publishes it as my description. If a DM has to translate it to the spell, I can’t see it selling as well as the second one.
I agree that it does high fantasy but not that it does it well or demi-god like. 5E characters never feel demi-god like to me. Having said that, I agree with the idea that the evil, greedy corporation should be the one to take the hit.
If you are copying whole swaths of text verbatim without explicit permission then that is definitely IP theft. (There are “fair use” exceptions that are intended to be able to excerpt text as an example, or for the purpose of parody, or so forth, but not to just pilfer someone else’s intellectual property purely for your own use). However, the concept of a “fire blast” spell is pretty common in magical fantasy literature and media, and the idea that a spell has range and duration limits, requires time or components, and does some quantifiable damage are pretty generic mechanics that can’t really be identified as intellectual property. (The D&D spell casting system, by the way, is so clearly based upon the Dying Earth series magic that it is frequently referred to as “Vancian”, and any attempt to claim that the system overall is original intellectual property is risible, although they might be able to claim that specific spell names are implicitly trademarked or copyright.)
Now, people want to use a very standardized rule set as the basis for their niche game so they don’t have to go to the business of writing an entirely new set of mechanics and because players/GMs are more willing to try a new game that doesn’t have the large learning curve of a new set of mechanics, so being able to say that your game is based on “5E” or some other licensed SRD that players are familiar with clearly has some appeal but that really argues for just not making your mechanics overly complicated and keeping the fundamentals sufficiently generic to adapt to any setting or genre. If you can’t explain basic conflict resolution mechanics in a few minutes, it is too complicated to play smoothly,.
As for how adaptable 5E is different genres, I suppose that is a matter of taste but frankly D&D has its origins in miniature wargaming with all of the narrative aspects and character development grafted on as an afterthought through various editions. It is specifically constructed to allow players to become progressively more powerful through experience until they are virtually unkillable heroquesters, which works fine for heroic fantasy but it is an awkward fit with a more grounded genre or a narratively focused game, which is not to say that you can’t use it in those ways but it often requires a lot of house-ruling and massaging by the DM rather than having mechanisms that facilitate simulationist or narrative gameplay.
Stranger
So, who exactly got it, and how? I would agree, “possible” even “likely” but not with the sort of certainty you have here. There is a lot of false info circulating around this.
It was fanart. Suing fan artists is a dick move.
Well, some of the 20th level capstone abilities are pretty super. But I have never played in or seen a PF or 5e campaign that got much higher than 17th level.
Other than a unofficial draft, we don;t know WotC is evil.
Remember, they released the original OGL, which was a nice gesture.
What “false info” is “circulating around this”?
The original Open Gaming License wasn’t a “nice gesture”; it was a canny move to revitalize a moribund industry by expanding adoption of the WotC core game mechanics by independent small house publishers. It expanded their core D&D business. The change to the unpopular 4th Edition and the more restrictive Game System License undermined all of that and fed WotC’s largest former licensee into becoming a competitor because they wanted all of the treasure instead of just royalties. The 5th Edition OGL 1.0a was (mostly) a return to a more community/third party support modality and is what made that edition remarkably popular.
This latest business shift to subscription services to milk as much money from players (which is not speculation; this is a stated fact) and the “unofficial draft” of an OGL 1.1 that attempts to “de-authorize” previous licenses is clearly an attempt to force people to adopt their new business platform and drive people away from producing, using, and promoting 5E content. This seems to be concrete enough that Kickstarter negotiated a special deal to limit the royalty payments to 20% for content promoted on KS platform.
Stranger
All over Facebook.
You can have a nice move and still make a profit over it.
Cite? And please not that one line comment about D&D “being under monetized”.
Not that I am saying it wont happen, but this is still speculation and rumors, based off an un-official leaked draft and a comment at their Investors meeting. Nothing has actually happened. It could, mind you. It is possible. But it is not confirmed.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned since 2016, when some crazy person is telling me they’re going to do crazy things, I believe them. When executives start using the same language that video games companies have been using, well, that’s the crazy person telling me they’re going to do something crazy. Getting rid of the original OGL is part of WotC’s strategy to combat the under-monetization of D&D by making sure you have to go through them for your D&D wants and needs.
WotC’s response so far has been “Been a lot of questions about the OGL. We’ll talk soon”
That alone tells me that this is legit or very close to it. If this was all some hoax, I’d expect them to be saying “That’s trash, ignore it”. But this is a circle-the-wagons, buy some time response to try to spin the changes as actually ever so good for players and content creators.