Get Paid For Your D&D Campaign - The Open Gaming License Is Back

[Fanghawk]

Get Paid For Your D&D Campaign - The Open Gaming License Is Back

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/736/736379.jpgWizards of the Coast will finally let players publish custom D&D Fifth Edition content, including campaigns set in Forgotten Realms.

Dungeons & Dragons' Fifth Edition was a return to form for Wizards of the Coast, but if there's one thing fans missed, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/columns/days-of-high-adventure/6412-Full-Circle-A-History-of-the-Old-School-Revival>it was the Open Gaming License. Now content creators are in luck: Wizards has revealed not one, but two systems for publishing custom D&D content. The first is a Fifth Edition OGL, which lets you print and sell original content based on the latest D&D rules. The second is <a href=http://www.dmsguild.com>a "Dungeon Masters Guild" website where players can sell content for Forgotten Realms, D&D's official campaign setting.

Originally released with D&D's Third Edition, Wizard's OGL let anyone publish content under the official d20 rules - and get paid for it. Now Wizards is repeating history with the System Reference Document 5.0, <a href=http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/SRD-OGL_V1.1.pdf>a 400-page file containing all Fifth Edition rules, classes, races, and more. Bundled into the SRD is an open license to use any of its content in your own publications.

Fans were already hoping for a Fifth Edition OGL, but this Dungeon Masters Guild is a whole other beast. The platform, created in conjunction with OneBookShelf, lets anyone upload custom Forgotten Realms content which can be purchased by anyone else. Options for content range from new monsters, to NPCs, to locations, to entire Forgotten Realms adventures and campaigns. The creator can set any price on their content - or give it away for free - with the only caveat being that Wizards of the Coast and OneBookShelf take a 50% cut of the proceeds.

Both announcements have huge implications for the tabletop world. The Dungeon Masters Guild alone is a big deal since it allows anyone to be paid for Forgotten Realms content - something that once required a specific contract with Wizards of the Coast. Then you have the DMSG platform itself, which has the potential to become a kind of Steam Workshop for the D&D brand.

And that's not even getting into the new OGL. The last time Wizards put out an open gaming license, it spawned a tabletop renaissance that directly led to Pathfinder, Mutants & Masterminds, and countless games across multiple genres. And thanks to online distribution, the tabletop RPG market is far bigger now than the year 2000. Who knows what fantastic new games we might see powered by Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition ruleset?

Source: <a href=http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd>Wizards of the Coast

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[vip651]

And even more improvements over the fourth edition! I personally am enjoying 5th edition, though my dm hates it.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

And even more improvements over the fourth edition! I personally am enjoying 5th edition, though my dm hates it.

Has he said why? I'm not fond of the system, but that's just a preference thing, I'm a Pathfinder player myself.

 

[shadowxvii]

Expecting the Temple of the Lava Bears campaign soon(ish). This is great.

 

[vip651]

And even more improvements over the fourth edition! I personally am enjoying 5th edition, though my dm hates it.

Has he said why? I'm not fond of the system, but that's just a preference thing, I'm a Pathfinder player myself.

They are more used to pathfinder and 3.5, but i think its something to do with the power of the player character? oh and somethign about the monster manual being incomplete

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

The OGL was perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to Tabletop Games since Tom Hanks stabbed that hobo. I cannot believe that they are this stupid to repeat their biggest failure of 3rd Edition. There must be some extreme modification to the old system after the stupendous failure of last time.

The only consolation this could possibly have is that the market has finally overcome the stagnation that the first OGL caused, and that changing tastes and market will make it less likely that the OGL will strangle game development again like the oozing, cancerous growth that is the d20 system. 5e is a fine system at least, nothing like the absolute garbage of 3.x, but we don't need another generation of shitty clone systems.

 

[chimeracreator]

Glad to hear it. That means that sites like roll20 will be allowed to automate more 5E rules with standard macros and character sheets.

 

[Grampy_bone]

3E saved D&D from bankruptcy and death, 4th edition split the fanbase and hemorrhaged players. 5th edition and the OGL are an attempt to stop the bleeding, but it's way too late.

The entire point of 4E was to get away from the OGL. WotC (and Hasbro) began to see the 3rd party content as lost sales, so they turned to one designer's (Mike Mearls) homebrew game and slapped the D&D label on it. He basically ruined the game. 4th edition was so rigid, over-balanced, and limited player freedom to the point it felt like a board game. It wasn't popular and most of the old fans stuck with 3E or moved to pathfinder. 4E players were all noobies. 3E games would fill convention halls, 4E games were relegated to one or two tables in the corner.

5E is a half-assed fix attempt. The game is still way too balanced. The combat is not fun. The loot is not fun. The classes are not fun. It's no surprise that there's been no videogames truly based on 4th or 5th edition. Just an MMO that superficially resembles 4E and a crappy indie game that is kinda-sorta like 5E. Pillars of Eternity is practically a 4E game and everyone has the same complaints. Too balanced. Too rigid. Not much fun.

 

[Mister Monkey]

I hope that this brings the third-party and independent publishers back to D&D. Pathfailure is old, clunky, and nowhere near as good as D&D 5E. D&D has already beat out Pathfailure in sales and online virtual tabletop play throughout 2015. Now with the OGL, players will finally be able to ditch the munchkin-based system that 3.5/3.P is, and move on the way people have from AD&D and AD&D 2E.

Who knows, maybe even Paizo will ditch their inferior set of 3.5 house rules and publish Golarion content under the D&D banner like they used to?

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

3E saved D&D from bankruptcy and death, 4th edition split the fanbase and hemorrhaged players. 5th edition and the OGL are an attempt to stop the bleeding, but it's way too late.

The entire point of 4E was to get away from the OGL. WotC (and Hasbro) began to see the 3rd party content as lost sales, so they turned to one designer's (Mike Mearls) homebrew game and slapped the D&D label on it. He basically ruined the game. 4th edition was so rigid, over-balanced, and limited player freedom to the point it felt like a board game. It wasn't popular and most of the old fans stuck with 3E or moved to pathfinder. 4E players were all noobies. 3E games would fill convention halls, 4E games were relegated to one or two tables in the corner.

5E is a half-assed fix attempt. The game is still way too balanced. The combat is not fun. The loot is not fun. The classes are not fun. It's no surprise that there's been no videogames truly based on 4th or 5th edition. Just an MMO that superficially resembles 4E and a crappy indie game that is kinda-sorta like 5E. Pillars of Eternity is practically a 4E game and everyone has the same complaints. Too balanced. Too rigid. Not much fun.

More salt than the sea in this comment. A lot of what you said comes down to personal taste, but saying that 4e was a tiny game played only by new players is factually wrong. Far fewer people stuck with 3.x than the internet would have you believe (Paizo scooped up plenty, but it wasn't a majority), and WotC actually did a decent job at one point about setting up a community network to run the games. It didn't help that they immediately stopped trying to support it, especially in book releases, and that Hasbro set Magic-level revenue targets that D&D would never hit, but it wasn't a failure.

OT: Personally, I don't think that WotC learned the lessons of the original OGL. Sure, it led to an explosion of content (and revenue) for the company, but it also directly created their biggest competitor in the fantasy genre. 3.x came out at just the right time, when nothing major had come out in D&D for a long time and the internet was small enough that neckbeards didn't dominate the conversation with how this new edition was a betrayal of everything D&D stood for. Today, they've punched through several editions in a short period, and there are dozens of universal systems with scads of supplements already out there (not to mention the thousands of games created by one guy in his basement and released for free onto the internet). There's not going to be the same advantage in trading on the d20 license, because the market today is far more used to getting a specific game for their specific campaign idea instead of a repainted D&D.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

I hope that this brings the third-party and independent publishers back to D&D. Pathfailure is old, clunky, and nowhere near as good as D&D 5E. D&D has already beat out Pathfailure in sales and online virtual tabletop play throughout 2015. Now with the OGL, players will finally be able to ditch the munchkin-based system that 3.5/3.P is, and move on the way people have from AD&D and AD&D 2E.

Who knows, maybe even Paizo will ditch their inferior set of 3.5 house rules and publish Golarion content under the D&D banner like they used to?

Pathfinder would, to me at least, honestly be better if they had kinda gone more their own way, then sticking so much to 3.5. Still, i've found Pathfinder mostly to be an improvement on 3.5.

5E is a half-assed fix attempt. The game is still way too balanced. The combat is not fun. The loot is not fun. The classes are not fun. It's no surprise that there's been no videogames truly based on 4th or 5th edition. Just an MMO that superficially resembles 4E and a crappy indie game that is kinda-sorta like 5E. Pillars of Eternity is practically a 4E game and everyone has the same complaints. Too balanced. Too rigid. Not much fun.

Wait, so, you need shit broken classes and players optimizing for the player to have fun? Well, gee, that literally has had no effect on any of my player shenanigans or interesting adventures.

Honestly I don't really see your complaint, as it seems more out of preference then anything else. Which is fair enough, kinda.

 

[BabySinclair]

My only and slightly major gripe with the OGL looking at it is the Classes section is the same as the D&D Basics they put out previously. Each class only has a single archetype/path/school/domain to "choose" from when the core PHB has at least three for each class. I get they want to provide incentive to buy the PHB but the majority of sales should have already happened so not the best call there.

 

[Greg Tito]

My only and slightly major gripe with the OGL looking at it is the Classes section is the same as the D&D Basics they put out previously. Each class only has a single archetype/path/school/domain to "choose" from when the core PHB has at least three for each class. I get they want to provide incentive to buy the PHB but the majority of sales should have already happened so not the best call there.

FYI, we only included one archetype not as incentive to buy the PHB but to create more archetypes and sub-classes.

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/687301415891406848

Also, for everybody in the thread, be sure to check out the official D&D podcast we recorded with those gentlemen dropping on Thursday [https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/403anl/ama_with_wotc_10am_pst_15th_of_january/]. Lots of more information on the DMs Guild will be available then!

Greg