http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/SRD-OGL_V1.1.pdf

Uses the 2000 OGL, I see. Sweet. :cool:

They seem to be playing it smart this time. Essentially, you can use the new OGL, and that lets you design and put out your own 5E D&D products (including your own campaign worlds) just fine.

At the same time, they've got a new Dungeon Master's Guild, which works on a different basis - you can't self-publish DM Guild stuff and you can't put out your own campaign world through it, but you can write Forgotten Realms material for it, you get to sell your product on the DM Guild website (basically a new section of OneBookShelf, kind of like dndclassics but for new third-party stuff instead of old first-party stuff), and stuff you put out through that avenue will be considered by Wizards for use in promoting D&D and inclusion in more "official" supplements and videogames.

The DM Guild is obviously a bad deal for publishers and anyone who wants to keep control of their own work, but cleverly Wizards aren't presenting it like that - instead, they're pushing it as a way for DMs and hobbyists to put out their stuff in a venue which will be visible to the wider D&D community and get a shot at some official love from the game's publishers, which if you just want to put out a few kewl new classes you and your buddies have cooked up and dig the idea of competing for Wizards' attention and approval is just fine. You can charge for your stuff and the money is split 50-25-25, with you getting half, OBS getting 25%, and Wizards getting 25%, so if your product is a runaway success you'll still get a healthy cut of the coin (whilst of course for their part Wizards will profit off all sales of everything on the store).

On top of that, based on the more complete explanation on the site it looks like if you're cooking up DM Guild products you'll get access to a bunch of content and resources to draw on in producing your product, and also whatever you put out on there will become available for other people to draw on in their own products, which sounds like it could open up the way for some really interesting collaborative worldbuilding. Or, of course, some really awful competitive worldsmashing, we'll have to see. It also looks to be curated for appropriate content by Wizards, so you'll have to take the OGL route for the 5E Book of Erotic Fantasy you've been writing. Neatly, there's no poison pill this time - getting into the DM Guild doesn't stop you putting out other products under the OGL.

What I find clever about this is that there's no publisher-oriented equivalent this time of the D&D trademark licence. The OGL is decidedly publisher-friendly, but doesn't let you use the D&D trademark. The DM Guild is more for lone hobbyists who are either big enough fans that they don't mind Wizards having a stake in their work or who figure they can get more exposure through that route than by going their own way, or who really, really want to see the official D&D logo on their product. And of course you only get to put out PDFs via the official page, rather than the print product.

I guess Wizards have come to the conclusion that they can use the trademark as a badge of quality (which is really what trademarks are supposed to be used for in the first place) - keep an eye on the DM Guild PDFs that are coming out, splat anything which would make the game line look bad and push anything you think works well, and use the Guild as a think tank for producing top-notch content for more profitable venues, and you can let the third parties out there put out all the "Compatible with Fifth Edition" products they like; that way customers can be assured that the print products bearing your trademarks are of a standard you consider to be acceptable, and if they go dabble in OGL content then they know they're going into the Wild West.

In short, they've avoided the embarrassment of another D20 logo-bearing Book of Erotic Fantasy on the one hand whilst on the other put out a licence that's far more acceptable to publishers than the 4E one ever was. I like it.

(The FAQ also hints that they might open up the DM Guild to other settings later, but for now it's strictly Forgotten Realms-only. Which is only fair - you can't seriously expect Wizards to let a random third party have 50% of the revenue on their homebrewed 5E Dark Sun/Planescape/Ravenloft/whatever core book and steal the thunder on an official release, after all.)

Agreed Warthur, the strategy looks really good, and this is a really handy resource for players & GMs too.

The SRD is also quite cunningly crafted; if you wanted to, I guess you could use it in conjunction with the free Basic D&D PDFs to add some extra classes and whatnot to your Basic 5E games, but at the same time it doesn't provide all the class options and a lot of other details, with the upshot that you couldn't use it by itself to run your own games whilst simultaneously putting enough out there to make third party products viable. As far as I can tell there's more or less no project you could possibly want to do with the OGL that you wouldn't be able to do, unless it involved ripping on people's product identity shamelessly or flat-out reprinting the 5E core books.

Quote from: Warthur;873138at the same time it doesn't provide all the class options and a lot of other details

This strikes me as a very salient point. What's in the 5E SRD is greater than what's in the 5E Basic PDF (which is closed content anyway), but far less than what's in the Core Rulebooks. That is, the 5E SRD has only a single feat (grappler), only one sub-race for each race, and only one sub-class for each class. Heck, the warlock's eldritch blast spell isn't in there!

The draw for DM's Guild seems to be, if I'm reading it right, that material published under it can use any of the D&D 5E material that WotC has put out, OGL or not, so if you want to use other sub-races, sub-classes, feats, etc. if your adventure, then you absolutely can...but it will need to be a DM's Guild adventure, rather than an OGL one.

I have to admit, this is a brilliant move on WotC's part if they wanted to back away from how open the 3.X era of OGL materials was. Instead of trying to force people to not do something, they're giving just enough of what was asked for while simultaneously offering an incentive to do something else.

Wow, this is a really interesting move. It's like a DIYers' dream vehicle — actually more like two of them. New settings and content here, expanding existing FR content there, a very sensible direction compared to before.

For all my complaints about Org Play adventures, it's an opportunity to pitch how I think LFR could be better and see if the market likes it.

Quote from: Alzrius;873145Heck, the warlock's eldritch blast spell isn't in there!

So apparently Mike Mearls has tweeted that this was an oversight. As such, it'll probably be fixed soon.

While I think this is a worthwhile endeavour to enable DMs to share their material, it's also more evidence to me that WotC is dramatically cutting the publishing output of D&D books, and is primarily interested simply in keeping the brand alive. And call me superficial and materialist, but one of the things I enjoy about the tabletop gaming hobby is being able to buy professionally-produced materials for inspiration and to use at my table. I'm at a state in my life when I'm willing and able to pay for commercial-quality gaming material. And this is just another signal that WotC is no longer in a position to supply it.

Is there a default 5e template for InDesign out there? A bunch of releases already in the marketplace seem to all use the same layout. I can't find anything like that anywhere on the site (just art packs).

Pointed this out to some friends putting together a 5e D&D game in Wyoming, as the information in here can help them set up their game with broader information than the basic free 5e. Thanks for the heads up.

Quote from: Haffrung;873152... And call me superficial and materialist, but one of the things I enjoy about the tabletop gaming hobby is being able to buy professionally-produced materials for inspiration and to use at my table. I'm at a state in my life when I'm willing and able to pay for commercial-quality gaming material. And this is just another signal that WotC is no longer in a position to supply it.

I understand where you're coming from and, to some extent, I agree, but I think that some of the best stuff to emerge for 5E has already been made by third-party publishers, tip-toeing around the OGL. Primeval Thule is fantastic. Previews for the upcoming Kobold Press Tome of Beasts look great. Various other projects are already underway, ranging from rogue's galleries to new settings, one-shot adventures, expanded races, spell lists, etc. Some of the fan-based sites (like monster-a-day on reddit) are even better.

Yup, there will be a lot of junk, but there will be plenty of gems.

As for Wizards ... most of what I've heard people asking for consists of updates to their own settings. But I have to ask myself if I really need or want that. I already have the original materials and they aren't that hard to convert. And it just seems to me like I'd be paying a premium for re-canning a lot of stuff I already have.

Also, without getting into any deep political discussions, a lot of what WotC has done with the official 5th edition books seems very cautious in terms of keeping the products appropriate for a younger or more sensitive audience. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, but it's nice to know that we'll have alternatives available.

Quote from: Saplatt;873159Previews for the upcoming Kobold Press Tome of Beasts look great.

Thanks for the heads-up. Kobold do quality work. I see that they're also putting out a Tome of Lairs, which is something I will definitely pick up. I just find it kind of sad that I've been turning to 4E and 3E books to find cool settings, NPCs, factions, gazetteers, etc., and do the conversions myself, when I'd happily pay WotC to do it for me.

Quote from: Haffrung;873166Thanks for the heads-up. Kobold do quality work. I see that they're also putting out a Tome of Lairs, which is something I will definitely pick up. I just find it kind of sad that I've been turning to 4E and 3E books to find cool settings, NPCs, factions, gazetteers, etc., and do the conversions myself, when I'd happily pay WotC to do it for me.

WotC's problem is that while you will pay for it, not enough other people will to give them a decent ROI.