Howdy!
I’ve been closely watching the OGL (open game license) dumpster fire started by our friends at Wizards of the Coast. The short version of the controversy is that WotC is trying to go back on a 20-year-long promise and claw money from small press publishers. They’re doing it in a way that could negatively affect a lot of the community’s favorites, like Kobold Press, Paizo, Arcane Library, etc. There’s a lot of opinions out in the wild about what they can or can’t do, but that’s the short version. The other part of the short version is the community of third party DnD publishers and their fans are unhappy.
If you subscribe to Runehammer on Patreon (and you should! for $1 a month it’s the best bang for your buck around) or are a Discord member, Hankerin has shared his thoughts there. To paraphrase:
- Runehammer was never reliant on the OGL. ICRPG, VDS, and other games do not use OGL 1.0 or 1.0a. Runehammeria and the shield wall can keep on grooving.
- Despite not being directly affected by the WotC rugpull, Runehammer is supporting ORC, Paizo’s new system-free, independently owned and litigated open gaming license that is coming soon.
For the record, ICRPG is released under a creative commons license, if you check the front page of your book. There’s guidance on how to publish compatible stuff from Alex here. The shield wall is a font of creativity, there’s tons of fan created and third party published goodness for Runehammer games. The DIY spirit of the game means you should jump in there and start hacking, remixing, and express your own creative ways of being a big ol’ badass. Take a hero coin!
You can follow the creation of the new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) spearheaded by Paizo. It’s a system neutral open gaming license that will be placed in the custody of a nonprofit to prevent someone from doing a WotC in the future. A number of other publishers have signed on in support of the eventual license when it comes out, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and Battlezoo… and our very own Runehammer!
If you’re worried about the changes, you can also sign onto the petition for #OpenDnD. Ryan Dancey, who created the OGL at WotC back in the day, has a Change.org petition too.
And there’s a number of other things that fans are doing to register their displeasure, Including cancelling D&D Beyond subscriptions.
The hopeful note is that maybe more folks will look into other game systems, or get into making their own rules! If you’re reading this because you came here to check out Runehammer while looking for other game systems besides Wizard’s version of our hobby, welcome to the shield wall!
EDIT: Hank covered his take on the OGL drama in his recent AMA (2023, Jan 18, @30m 5s)