If you've ever played a tabletop rpg (TTRPG) then you'll have heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Originally released in 1974, the game has seen many new editions over its long and storied history. In 2016 the owner of Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) announced their latest iteration of the game: D&D 5e or 5th edition.

Recent editions of D&D have released with a special licensing agreement known as the OGL 1.0a (Open Gaming License) which allowed 3rd party creators such as Kobold Press and Paizo to create and sell 3rd party supplements to the core gameset of 5th edition. This has resulted in fantastic additions to the game in the form of monsters, classes, spells, magic items, adventures and campaigns that have helped generate an incredible ecosystem of additional content to supplement the game.

Sadly it appears that all good things must come to an end as Wizards (WoTC) have recently announced their intention to release a new version of the OGL referred to as OGL 2.0. The contents of the new version of the OGL have been leaked by employees of D&D Beyond (which was purchased by WoTC in 2022 for $146.3 million dollars) out of concern for the continued health of the game and ecosystem.

Originally posted by popular D&D tiktoker DnD Shorts that the new draft version of the OGL contained shady and underhanded corporate moves to monetize the D&D brand by demanding royalties in excess of 25% gross income on all 3rd party published works under the new and previous OGL.

The leaked document also included provisions that 'deauthorized' the previous version of the OGL making it illegal for 3rd party publishers to publish content that uses or are in active developement using the previous version. Additionally new stipulations also gave WoTC unequivocal, irrevocable access and the right to take 3rd party work and publish it without credit, express permission or financial compensation.

This has been met with massive community backlash that has sent D&D trending into mainstream media for the last few days with bigger platforms such as Gizmodo and The Guardian picking up the story. In response the popular D&D content creators have been urging players to cancel their subscription to D&D Beyond as the WoTC executives have been using this as the primary metric to gauge how severe the backlash will get in response to the new version of the OGL.

It seems to have had an impact as player in droves have been tweeting and posting screenshots (myself included) of them cancelling their subscriptions to send a message to WoTC that they won't stand for this underhanded attempt to shut out 3rd party creators from being able to continue publishing their amazing work under the D&D brand.

A number of promnient legal minds and members of the D&D 'sphere' have posted numerous videos about this topic, however a video posted by Youtuber Critcrab covers this whole debacle in more detail and I highly suggest you give it a watch below:


What do you think of the recent fiasco? Have you ever played D&D or other TTRPG's?

WRITTEN & EDITED BY Solace
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