D&D: 4E is not OGL

A couple posts ago I was talking about 4th edition D&D. I decided to go check on the 4E SRD and learned something interesting: 4th edition is not released under the Open Gaming License (OGL)!

(Standard disclaimer: The following is how I understand these things work. But I'm not a lawyer or copyright expert, and so I guess that means I'm largely speaking out of my ass on this. Just be aware of the sort of material that comes from most people's asses.)

Default state: You cannot copyright or trademark game rules or mechanics, per se. You could probably patent them if they are new ideas, as they are a process (but please don't, because such patents would suck). And you might be able to trademark certain specific words or phrases used in the game description. Or course, applying for a patent or registering a trademark costs money.

However, though the rules or mechanics themselves are not copyright-able, any particular instantiation of the rules in writing is covered by copyright as soon as it is written.

So all this means you could technically take any (non-patented) game rules, read them and put them aside, and then completely rewrite the same mechanic in your own words. This would be a lot of work though--especially for something as large as D&D. (And if someone did take offense from any resulting similarities, could you really afford to defend it in court?)

3E and OGL: But then along came Wizards of the Coast's Open Gaming License. As long as you adhere to the OGL rules--which mainly involve keeping the OGL itself attached to the resulting work--you are free to copy verbatim, redistribute, add to, or change any game rules (or other content) released as Open Gaming Content under the OGL.

Wizards then released the majority of the core D&D rulebooks as a System Reference Document (SRD) under this OGL. (The SRD didn't include certain flavor text and product identity--such as certain names, deities, some monsters, or how to create or advance characters.) So people could do practically whatever they wanted with the text of all these SRD rules (provided they followed the OGL in doing so).

In addition, there was a d20 System Trademark License (STL) and d20 System Guide (which are no longer easily available from their site). Together, these specified how you could use the d20 logo to claim that your game was d20 compatible. Generally, this meant you could not redefine any of the standard conditions or special abilities of d20, do anything indecent, or describe how to create or advance a character.

Note how the OGL and STL are separate licenses. You can take the SRD and make a stand-alone game (including how to create characters); you just can't claim it's still d20 and use the d20 logo if you do.

4E and GSL: Now things work differently with 4E, which is neither OGL or d20. Instead, there's the Gaming System License (GSL). (This was released just last week.) This is more like the the STL of 3E: it describes what you need to do to create a 4E-compatible game or supplement. If you follow these rules, you get to use their special D&D logo and the many D&D-specific terms, as laid out in the new SRD. Note that this new SRD no longer contains all the rules, as it did for 3E; instead, it's largely just a list of terms. In short, it's all the phrases you'd need to be able to describe D&D characters, abilities, and monsters in the context of a game supplement--but you'd need the D&D core books to look up all the rules and definitions for them.

Also, the GSL applies only to the production of books: hardcover, softcover, or digital (PDF). It specifically excludes software and websites. Another interesting rule is that if a company switches any part of one of their product lines from OGL to 4E, they need to switch all of it over.


So, what's this change mean? The major ramification is that the 4E rules will not be freely available. I can honestly see why Wizards did this. I mean, I never bought the 3.5 books because I could use online or downloadable versions of the SRD, which were actually faster to use for quick reference. And I was planning to do the same for 4E. Just excluding character creation and advancement rules wasn't enough to ensure sales of the core rulebooks.

It also means that software products--such as all those little character generating apps and online RPG tools that understand D&D characters--could get in trouble for making 4E versions. Something generic like a character with 6 abilities scored between 3 and 18+ isn't going to be a problem. But you're probably going to want to have your software list all the various possible standard powers for the different 4E classes. But this is copyrighted product identity (as specifically listed in the new SRD); using it could be seen as creating a derivative work--and you have no license now to grant you a special dispensation to break copyright. So this could suck. I guess Wizards is planning to release some DMing software, but (unless some later license grants these rights), you're not going to have any legal alternatives.

Another concern is the fan websites that post their character details and game histories. Technically, these are derivative works too. I doubt Wizards would go after such fan material, though. In addition, they're already planning to release a separate license for fan websites to cover this.

The thing that pisses me off the most though is that they're releasing all this new license stuff under the wizards.com/d20 URI. It's not d20! d20 is history as far as Wizards is concerned (since they've pulled all links to their d20 STL and System Guide.

OGL is still here though, and we'll always have the 3.5 SRD floating around. That's some consolation, I suppose. (Another bonus for Drudge, which will still be OGL!) But it looks like publishers that want to stay on the D&D bandwagon will have to abandon OGL. That probably won't be a major stumbling block for them, though, since most are in the business of producing compatible product identity material of their own. The new GSL still lets them do that.

Anyway, check out the licenses for yourself: http://wizards.com/d20. This "plain English" version of the GSL from ENWorld is handy too.