Everything but the Beholders: D&D updates core rules, sticks with CC license

Wizards of the Coast has released the System Reference Document, the heart of the three core rule books that constitute Dungeons & Dragons‘ 2024 gameplay, under a Creative Commons license. This means the company cannot alter the deal further, like it almost did in early 2023, leading to considerable pushback and, eventually, a retreat. It was a long quest, but the lawful good party has earned some long-term rewards, including a new, similarly licensed reference book.

Dungeons & Dragons owner Wizards of the Coast (WotC) put the core D&D rules into an Open Gaming License in the early 2000s, inspired by Richard Stallman’s GNU General Public License. The idea was that by making the core mechanics, classes, spells, races, and monsters available for anyone to build on, royalty-free, more versions of games would draw more people into the tabletop roleplaying sphere, and perhaps back to the core D&D games and rule books. It also likely didn’t do much harm to WotC’s properties, as these basic aspects of the game, and bits taken from existing fantasy works, were going to be difficult to copyright.

WotC considered that the Open Gaming License (OGL) was open to revisions, however, and the company proposed changes to the OGL that would require that anyone making certain amounts of money had to report it (over $50,000 per year) or start paying royalties (over $750,000). A leaked version of that license put the higher-level royalties at 25 percent, and only covered printed materials and static PDFs, leaving virtual tabletop and software makers questioning where they might fit in.