What the heck is an Open Gaming License?

And why should you care?

The Open Gaming License, or OGL, is what lets people sell D&D-compatible adventures and supplements without getting Hasbro’s specific permission to do so.

So if you’re someone making D&D-compatible stuff, you should probably care about the OGL quite a bit, since it’s one of only two ways to do that. (The other being the Dungeon Masters Guild, which we’ll talk about later.)

But most of you watching this probably aren’t trying to sell D&D-compatible stuff. You’re probably just trying to run and play in your Saturday night sessions. So why should you care?

Well, probably because a lot of the stuff you love and use in your games has been produced using the OGL. And if it isn’t, then there’s a ton of really amazing stuff out there that you should really check out.

For example, maybe you’re a fan of Critical Role. If so, you may be familiar with the Tal’Dorei campaign setting book. They were only able to publish that because of the OGL.

Or maybe you’ve played Adventures in Middle Earth, the 5^th Edition compatible Lord of the Rings roleplaying game. Again, OGL.

Maybe you’re a fan of my work, in which case you might be familiar with the adventures I’ve published with Fantasy Flight Games, Atlas Games, and others. Again, none of these would exist without the OGL. There’s a lot of content on my website, the Alexandrian, that wouldn’t exist without the OGL.

Okay, so the OGL makes cool stuff possible. So where does it come from? How does it work? Why is everyone screaming and yelling about it?

WIZARDS AND D&D

Well, the OGL has been around for about twenty years now. It was first released in 2000. But to really understand its roots, we have to go back a few years before it existed.

In 1997, a company called Tactical Studies Rules — TSR, Inc. — was going bankrupt. There were a lot of complicated reasons for this, and we’re not going to dive into it here. But this was significant because TSR was the original publisher and still owner of Dungeons & Dragons. The thing to understand is that D&D was in real jeopardy here: TSR’s assets were going to be hacked up and its parts divvied out among its many, many creditors.

It was very possible that someone would end up owning D&D who had no interest in publishing a tabletop roleplaying game: They’d exploit the IP for novels, video games, TV shows, or whatever, but they wouldn’t necessarily publish an RPG. D&D as we know it would be dead.

Fortunately, a company called Wizards of the Coast had published a little indie card game called Magic the Gathering a few years earlier. You may have heard of it. They used the money they’d gained from Magic to purchase TSR outright. D&D was now in the hands of people who loved the roleplaying game. D&D was saved.

Now at this point a couple things happen pretty fast: First, Wizards of the Coast begins developing the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Second, in 1999, just a couple years later, Wizards itself is bought out by Hasbro, a huge toy and game conglomerate.

A year later, in 2000, the 3^rd Edition of D&D is released. And a major pillar of its marketing campaign is the Open Gaming License: Anyone could publish third-party supplements that were compatible with the official version of D&D.

And they did: When the Player’s Handbook was released at Gen Con in the summer of 2000, two compatible modules were immediately available the same day. Atlas Games’ Three Days to Kill by John Tynes and Green Ronin’s Death in Freeport by Chris Pramas.

HOW THE OGL WORKS

The OGL can actually apply to a lot of different types of products, but to keep things simple we’re just going to talk in terms of RPG supplements published as books.

There are three key things to understand about the OGL.

First, not everything in a book published under the OGL is free to use with the license. Instead, the publisher must explicitly declare what content in the book is Open Game Content. This is material that other people can use in their own OGL books. The only requirement is that any open game content you use from someone else MUST be declared as open content and credited in the copyright section of the copy of the OGL you print in your book.

Second, the publisher of an OGL book can also choose to declare Product Identity. This might be trademarks or character names or artwork. There’s lots of stuff that can be Product Identity. The key thing is that Product Identity can never be open game content, even if the declaration of open game content would otherwise apply.

This provides a safety net that makes it easy for publishers to avoid accidentally opening their trademarks or other IP. For example, if they declare that “trugglewomps” are product identity and they declare that “everything in Chapter 2 is open content,” then trugglewomps won’t be open content even if they appear in Chapter 2.

This is good because it will encourage publishers to use the OGL, since they won’t have to worry about accidentally voiding their IP rights. It’s also good because it encourages liberal and clear declarations of open game content.

If product identity didn’t exist, for example, a publisher might only declare very small parts of Chapter 2 open content, to make sure they didn’t accidentally put trugglewomps on the open market.

The third thing to understand is that the D&D core rulebooks were NOT released under the OGL.

Instead, Wizards of the Coast copied SOME of the rules and lore from the core rulebooks into a digital file called the System Reference Document. It was this System Reference Document — or SRD — that was released under the OGL, and thus made available to other publishers using the OGL.

The final thing to know is that the OGL is unrevocable. Once you release open game content under the OGL, it will ALWAYS be open game content. There’s no Undo button. Not even for Hasbro.

So why did Wizards do this?

Well, they had two goals.

First, Ryan Dancey — who was in charge of D&D at the time and schemed up the OGL — believed that Wizards needed to be publishing a lot fewer supplements and adventures for D&D. He’d seen TSR’s books and he believed flooding the market with D&D books had been a major factor in the company’s failure.

There were certain core titles — including the core rulebooks — which were far and away the most profitable books TSR published. Dancey believed Wizards should focus on producing those books. The most profitable ones. He called them evergreen titles.

But he also knew that supplement support was important for an RPG to thrive. The Open Gaming License would get other publishers — publishers who didn’t have the huge overhead of Wizards and would be much more successful in turning profits on smaller print runs — to provide a constant flow of adventures and other support material for D&D.

That support material would make more people interested in buying and playing D&D. And this, in turn, would grow the network externality of D&D.

I’m not going to dive into network externality at length, but the short version is that the more people there are playing D&D, the more likely it is that someone looking to play a roleplaying game will find a group playing D&D. That will make it more likely that they become a D&D player, which increases the number of D&D players, and therefore increases the likelihood that the NEXT player will ALSO become a D&D player.

Dancey’s argument, in short, is that D&D’s biggest strength is that it’s the roleplaying game you’re most likely to find when you go looking for a roleplaying game, and the open gaming license was designed to make that even more true.

Second, the OGL meant that D&D would never again be at risk of being killed due to corporate malfeasance. Remember that just a couple years earlier D&D had almost died as a result of TSR’s bankruptcy, and now it was owned by Hasbro, who could decide at any time that they weren’t interested in publishing a tabletop roleplaying game.

But the OGL has no Undo button. Once the rules of D&D were placed under the OGL, it could never truly be taken out of print by the actions of a single corporation.

In addition to the OGL, Wizards also released the D20 System Trademark License. Basically, they wanted a method by which third-party publishers could indicate their compatibility with D&D, but they didn’t want to let them use the D&D trademark. So they created a new “D20 System” trademark, including logo, and let the publishers use that.

The D20 System Trademark License required publishers to use the OGL, but it added a number of restrictions. For example, books published under the D20 System Trademark License couldn’t include any rules for character creation.

The most notable of these restrictions, however, was the D20 System Trademark License could be unliterally canceled by Wizards of the Coast at any time, after which publishers would have to stop selling any books that used the D20 System trademark.

(Spoilers: This will be significant later.)

THE PROBLEM WITH SUCCESS

The OGL ended up being more successful than anyone could have imagined. Dozens of companies began publishing third-party support for D&D. Entirely new companies were founded, many of which have become major players in the RPG industry. And for players and DMs there was an unprecedented wealth of amazing material – new adventures, new classes, new settings.

All of this fueled a D&D renaissance.

But not everything was going according to plan.

First, Dancey’s evergreen books – like the Epic Level Handbook and the Psionics Handbook – weren’t selling the way he had hoped they would.

Second, the thing about a plan to design and publish fewer books is that you can downsize the design department. And the design department at Wizards of the Coast had some strong opinions about that.

Third, competition between third-party publishers was driving a radical improvement in production values. Wizards of the Coast was still making the softcover, black-and-white books they’d always been publishing. OGL publishers, on the other hand, were producing full color books in hardcover. Wizards’ books, which should have been premiere products, instead looked cheap and second rate.

By 2003, leadership at Wizards of the Coast was also changing. Most of the designers of 3^rd Edition were gone, and Dancey had also left the company. The new leadership was, at best, skeptical of the OGL. According to many accounts, they were actively hostile to it.

But, of course, they had a problem: the OGL couldn’t be revoked.

Go to Part 2

C. writes:

Someone on Twitter posted a meme suggesting that players can’t do anything creative in D&D because the DM won’t allow it. What’s your reaction?

Okay, so the hypothetical GM in this meme is clearly a bad GM. Anyone who has had anything remotely resembling a positive experience playing an RPG can look at that dialogue and know instantly in their gut that there’s something deeply wrong about it.

The more interesting question, I think, is exactly why this GM is bad. Where did they go wrong? And what should they have done?

Player: Can I say “Hello” to the barmaid?

DM: No, that’s not a rule.

If you think a PC can’t do anything unless there’s an explicit rule allowing you to do it, then you have misunderstood the core identity of an RPG and also misapprehended the primary function of the GM, whose mechanical role at the table is at least 90% making rulings about stuff not explicitly covered by the rules.

That’s the first place they went wrong.

The second place is the most prima facie: Their first reaction to player creativity is shutting it down. If all you’re interested in are players interacting through rigid mechanical structures, play a boardgame or a wargame. RPGs literally exist for the sole purpose of NOT doing that. There’s a reason that Default to Yes is a fundamental principle of effective GMing.

And it’s not like this is some kind of big secret. The 5^th Edition Player’s Handbook explicitly tells the DM that this is what they should be doing:

IMPROVISING AN ACTION

Your character can do things not covered by the actions in this [Combat] chapter, such as breaking down doors, intimidating enemies, sensing weaknesses in magical defenses, or calling for a parley with a foe. The only limits to the actions you can attempt are your imagination and your character’s ability scores…

When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.

(PHB, p. 193)

And, in addition to ability score checks, 5E gives the GM some very powerful tools for making rulings. Despite this, I am continually amazed at the number of people running the game who ignore:

1. Group checks (PHB, p. 175)
2. Contests in Combat (PHB, p. 195)
3. Improvised advantage/disadvantage (PHB, p. 173)
4. Improvised damage (DMG, p. 249)

With these tools in hand, let’s take a quick look at how our hypothetical GM could have easily resolved these proposed actions.

SHOVING BOOKCASES

Let’s start with the easiest one:

Player: Ok, so what if I try to knock over that bookcase over there, trapping the bandit underneath?

This is pretty obviously a contest in combat. It’s going to be some kind of Strength check for pushing over the bookcase (probably Athletics) opposed by some sort of Dexterity check by the bandit (probably Acrobatics or a Dexterity saving throw).

What effect would this have if successful? Well, the bandit would obviously be knocked prone and I’d probably rule that they need to succeed on some kind of Strength check to shove the bookcase off before they could get up.

Alternatively, if the PC was going to try to actively hold them down (perhaps standing on the bookcase), I might instead resolve the whole thing as a grappling attempt with the bookcase granting advantage on the check.

LIGHTING SWORDS ON FIRE

Player: Can I light my sword on fire?

This one is a bit trickier, but that’s mostly because we don’t have enough information. So I’d start by asking them exactly how they were planning to “light their sword on fire.”

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the player has some oil and they want to douse their sword with it and then light it on fire with their torch.

Our ruling will again boil down to resolution and effect.

I don’t think any kind of check is actually required here. So, in terms of resolution, the pertinent question is really: How long does it take? Well, this is an object interaction: Dousing the sword is one interaction. Lighting it is another. Your first object interaction on your turn is free; your second costs an action.

And then what’s the effect of lighting the sword on fire? Well, this seems to boil down to two questions:

• How long does it burn for?
• How much damage does it do?

In terms of duration, I’d say 1d6 rounds. Maybe you’d say 1d4 or 1d8 rounds. But it’s not like a sword is really designed to hold a lot of oil, right?

And how much damage does it do? Well, we could look at the Improvising Damage table (DMG, p. 249) and figure that this is pretty similar to “burned by coals,” in which case it would deal 1d10 fire damage. On the other hand, we might consider the fire to be equivalent to an improvised weapon, which would suggest 1d4 fire damage. Something in that range feels reasonable.

For more on burning oil, check out Running the Campaign: On the Efficacy of Burning Oil.

STABBING PEOPLE IN THE EYE

Player: Can I aim for the weak parts of the monster? Like stabbing it in the eye?

Adjudicating this one requires some subtlety. The player is requesting a called shot here, and I discuss these in more detail (and give a framework for resolving them) in Untested 5^th Edition: Called Shots, but here’s the short version.

First, if their primary goal is to “stab them where it will do the most damage,” then we have a mechanic for resolving that: It’s the attack roll. Literally any time you make an attack in D&D, you’re trying to hit your target in a vulnerable spot and deal the most damage possible.

Second, when making combat rulings like this, something you should double check is whether or not there’s a reason that the PC wouldn’t do it every single time.

• Our bookcase ruling passes this test, because you can only do it when there’s a bookcase.
• Lighting your sword in fire for some extra damage is nice, but you have to pay for the oil (in both gold and encumbrance), plus our ruling included an action cost to get the sword lit in the first place.

But “I stab ‘em in the eye for more damage” fails this test because there’s no reason you wouldn’t just say that every time you make an attack.

With all that being said, however, if the player has some other goal in mind than just dealing damage – e.g., they want to temporarily blind the monster — then there are ways to handle that (and you can check out the article linked above for more details on that).

DESCRIBING YOUR ATTACKS

Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

In fact, letting players describe their successes is a great technique that can be developed in a lot of different ways. You may find it profitable to set it as the expected outcome at your table, or you may find it most appropriate when applied as a spice for significant moments (e.g., “Describe how you finish off this bandit!”)

You can even take this a step further by decoupling 0 hit points from death and instead, when that threshold is met, prompting the player to tell you what the defeat of the NPC means. Do they

• Kill them?
• Take them prisoner?
• Knock them unconscious?
• Send them fleeing for their lives?

But at this point we’re probably drifting a bit off-topic. What are your favorite examples of players getting creative at the table, and how did you resolve them?

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #10

One of the more fundamental divides in tabletop roleplaying is between those who have a gaming group and those who are going to play a game.

It seems subtle, but it’s actually huge.

If I have a group, we all need to find something we can enjoy together. That’s true whether it’s an RPG or a book club.

But if I say, “I’m running a game about dragonslayers, who’s interested?” that’s different.

“I have dracophobia! I don’t want to play a game with dragons!”

Great! Maybe the next game will work for you!

This isn’t some radical notion.

If I say, “Hey, let’s all go see a movie next week,” we need to agree on a film we all enjoy.

If I say, “I’m going to see Encanto, anybody want to come?” then you just don’t come if that’s not a movie you’re interested in.

Each event has a different premise. And when it comes to books, for example, people have no difficulty understanding the difference between book club selections and personal selections.

In tabletop roleplaying games, on the other hand, there’s a good portion of the fanbase who only reads books in book club and many of them simply assume that it’s the only way to read books. So they interpret a statement of “this is the book I’m reading” to mean “I’m going to kick you out of the book club if you don’t read it with me.”

You’ll frequently see people online, for example, replying to statements like “this is the game I’m running” as a “red flag” revealing that the GM is some sort of tin-pot dictator forcing their players into misery.

Those who aren’t in a movie club, on the other hand, are baffled by a claim that it’s some sort of ethical failing to arrange a group outing to see a specific film.

(The Geek Social Fallacies may also play a role here.)

THE LOCAL POOL

For context, rather than having a gaming group, what I have is a local pool of a few dozen people that I will pitch specific games to: These might be roleplaying and storytelling games (like Blades in the Dark, Ars Magica, or Brindlewood Bay). They might also be board games (like Captain Sonor or Gloomhaven).

Those interested in that game join. Those who aren’t, don’t.

I’ve built this pool primarily through my open tables, which make it a lot easier not only to introduce new players to RPGs for the first time, but also to invite existing players into my circle. (One of the many reasons I suggest that, if you want to increase the amount of gaming you do, having an open table in your pocket is an essential tool.)

I also have a couple of specific social groups active at the moment that stick together between campaigns or who got together as a group first and then figured out what game to play next. For those groups, of course, we find the game that everyone wants to play.

Returning to board games for a moment:

Sometimes we’re getting together to play Captain Sonor.

Sometimes we’re getting together to play with Peter and Hannah.

These are different premises.

They’re both okay.

Go to Table of Contents

Doing a deep pull from the archives today. Back in 2008, when the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons came out, I did a remix of Keep on the Shadowfell, the quickstart adventure that was used to launch the new edition.

One of the things I did was expand the Kobold Lair. You can see my original map of the new version of the lair here:

John Leftwich has now created an impressive set of battlemaps which can be used with virtual tabletops or printed out for your home gaming table. You can click the images below to grab full-res images.

LIGHT

NO LIGHT

Back to Shadowfell Remix

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 30D: A Plague of Wraiths

“Tee!”

Turning around at the sound of Dominic’s cry, Tee spotted a lamia-shaped wraith and a minotaur-shaped wraith hovering nearby – held at bay only by the divine energy that Dominic was still channeling through his holy symbol. Tee started to move into a firing position, but as she did the wraiths slipped around the far corner and disappeared into the room with the iron cauldron.

Gathering the others they followed the wraiths into the cauldron room. The two larger wraiths were lurking in the shadows here, along with two smaller ones.

Elestra cursed. “It got all of them? We have to kill them all over again?”

Here’s a thing that I don’t think happens nearly as often as it should in a D&D game.

PCs have a habit of leaving big piles of dead bodies in their wake.

You know who loves big piles of dead bodies?

Necromancers.

(Also strange necromantic miasmas, unfathomable alien spirits from beyond our plane of reality looking for a body to inhabit, toxic chemical spills, experimental zombie viruses, etc. etc. etc.)

The point is that if you’ve got a setting where undead are common + the PCs are constantly killing people, it just makes sense that they’re going to see some familiar faces when the shambling hordes show up.

This isn’t just a great seed for restocking your dungeons or dynamically keeping your sandbox in motion: It personalizes what would otherwise be generic undead encounters, while also getting the players to think about the long-term consequences of their actions. (Do we really want to be leaving all these corpses lying around?)

Once you’re thinking in these terms, of course, it’s not much of a leap to realize that this doesn’t have to be limited to slain enemies. Dead friends and allies are an equally fertile field. (Or, since we’re talking about undead, I suppose it might be whatever the opposite of a fertile field is?) This trope — of a one-time friend or family member returning as an undead monster — is actually quite common in horror films, so it’s surprising we don’t see it more frequently at the game table.

(I suspect this is because published adventures generally have to either eschew this sort of thing or take considerable effort to contrive the outcome: The can’t just say “…and then Lord Harlech comes back from the dead!” because they don’t know whether or not Lord Harlech has died in your campaign. But at your own table, of course, you don’t have to worry about infinite possibilities: You know who ranks among the dead. But I digress.)

Regardless, this technique is a great way to ratchet up the stakes and emotional investment of the players in the bad guy.

There is no greater enemy than one who was once a friend.

Campaign Journal: Session 31A – Running the Campaign: When Players Reincorporate
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index