This is an open letter to WotC/Hazbro and a call to action for all players and dungeon masters.

Dear Wizards of the Coast,

 

On behalf of the entire Table Top Role Playing game (TTRPG) community, we are begging you to not go through with the changes you are planning for open game license 1.1 (OGL 1.1). All you will accomplish by doing this is the total destruction of this franchise that so many of us love and adore. We know you think changing the wording of the OGL will magically make you more money, and it will cause all of your competition to just give up or join you. We know you think the proceeds you get from all the creators you are trying to "legally" steal from will bring your company to a whole new level. However, you are wrong. Very wrong. More wrong than staring a Beholder in the eyes. Here is what you don't understand. 

 

We, your customers, the very people you want to buy into your new "lifestyle brand" all have at least two things in common. We are very creative and also very clever. We have to be, especially those of us that DM. What will happen when a fraction of those kind of people, our kind of people, decide we don't want you to own everything we do? When we decide that we will not put hours, days, weeks, months and years of our lives into creating something cool and unique for DnD. Things like a new campaign setting, new live plays, new classes, subclasses, spells, magical items or anything else our clever brains can think of. Just so you can "legally" take it from us. Just so you can take our time and hard work and use it to further profit yourself without so much as a mention of the actual mind behind it. We'll give you a hint, we won't. We won't be doing your jobs for you and not have the chance to be paid fairly for our time and effort. We will find something else.

 

Let me explain something that should be glaringly obvious. Dungeons and Dragon's is great. It is amazing, truly amazing. Some of the best times we have had were been playing 5e. However it's not because of your classes. Its not because of your rule set. It's not because of your spells. DnD is great because of the people at the table with you. That is what makes DnD special, that and the community behind it. We are all a bunch of creative and clever weirdos who have found a family and a place where we belong, all because of DnD. We will always be grateful for that. However, the fact of the matter is. We do not need you. Not anymore. 

 

Don't get us wrong, we were very much looking forward to the One DnD changes and we were so excited to try them out in one of the thousands of campaigns we run and, so were so many players. However, if you go through with OGL 1.1 in anywhere near the state it was leaked in. We will go somewhere else. We will find something else to play with our friends, our family or the random people we meet on the countless LFG boards. Or your worst fear will come true and we will make something else. The OGL as it is makes everyone's life easier and better, the new OGL is designed to put a stop to competitors like Pathfinder and the like but it doesnt prevent anyone from making an entirley new system one that would be built by and for players and DMs alike. We would like to avoid that though, hundreds of new systems will only split the playerbase significantly as dozens of new system rise to take the place left behind once DnD fails. At least until a bigger name picks o e and runs with it. You think the changes you're making will stifle the competition, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Then the masses will flock to that system quicker than a tabaxi monk with haste, and "One DnD" will be forgotten or, more than likely, will be the laughing stock of the TTRPG community for years to come. You can avoid that WotC and continue to enjoy the hundreds of millions of dollars that DnD has just begun to bring you. Or you can continue down the path you've chosen and permanently ruin this game and the community that has been built around it.

 

We dont want that. We don't think anyone really wants that. Least of all you. Lets Imagine, just for a second, if Critical Role stuck with their Pathfinder origins rather than switching to DnD. Or if Stranger Things decided to go with a different name for their first Big Bad than Demogorgon. Where would you be then WotC? You know just as well as we do. So again we are begging you, Imwe can even roll a persuasion check if we need to, do NOT make the changes to the OGL that were leaked. The only change we as a community will accept is adding a single word in part 4 of the OGL which currently states.

 

"Grant and Consideration: In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content." 

 

Please feel free to add the word "Irrevocable" in there like the original creator intended. Otherwise, we will not be coming back for one DnD. We will find a new home.

 

To our fellow players and dungeon masters.

 

Please join us in showing WotC that we will not let them ruin this game that we all love without a fight. You can be certain that OGL 1.1 will ruin everything that makes DnD special. Please consider signing this petition in the hopes that someone high enough in the company will see it and maybe, just maybe, if we took the lucky feat as the variant humans we all are, they will listen to reason. We are also asking you to commit to boycotting OGL 1.1 if they decide to actually release it. If that does happen the we can all join together in creating the next smash hit "Fires and Basements." Together we do have the power to #opendnd that is a promise. 

 

Thank you, 

 

Forever DMs everywhere