I was working on a blog post with no connection to the OGL hoo-ha that's been discussed in the last three posts, but then some news arose about that that was big enough that I feel it would be odd not to mention it here, even if I'm writing this more than eleven months before the hard launch so this will, once again, be very old news by the time anyone reads this. I was going to tack the news on to the beginning of the otherwise unrelated post I was writing, but... nah, it makes more sense to make a brief, separate post about this, and then I'll put the other post I was working on up tomorrow or the next day.

So what's the news (I ask, as if anyone reading this who would interested in the news didn't already know it)?

Wizards of the Coast has finally promised to keep its hands off the OGL 1.0(a). "We are leaving OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched."

That was surprising to me. Despite their backing away from the royalties and other objectionable content of their earlier draft licenses, they'd been consistently insistent about the OGL 1.0(a) being no longer authorized, and it really seemed like this was a sticking point they weren't going to give up. But apparently there was enough pressure that they gave. This is very, very good news... but it was certainly unexpected.

Not quite so unexpected, however, as the following: They have now released the entire SRD 5.1 under a CC BY license.

This is... wow. Holy cow. I absolutely did not see this coming. Like I said, I'd been following this matter on several different fora, and I read posts by people reporting they'd said in the OGL 1.2 survey that Wizards of the Coast should release the SRD 5.1 under a CC BY license, but I thought they were making an absurd request; I didn't think there was any chance that WotC would do this. I am definitely not unhappy to be wrong.

(Among other things, this means that some classic D&D monsters, like aboleths, gelatinous cubes, otyughs, owlbears, rust monsters, and xorn, are now officially Creative Commons content. I mean, sure, there are iconic monsters like beholders and mind flayers that WotC has always reserved for itself and never released as Open Game Content and so aren't included, but still, this is huge.)

[Edited later to add: Yes, yes, beholders and mind flayers are mentioned in the SRD, along with "slaadi" and "yugoloth" and some other terms that had previously been claimed as Product Identity, possibly just because Wizards of the Coast just forgot they were there and neglected to edit them out. Still, this at best means that these words are now in the Creative Commons; that doesn't mean the full description and powers of a beholder, for instance, are in the Creative Commons, and that you're free to use beholders, just as they appear in the 5E Monster Manual, however you want. Still, that does seem like a bit of an oversight.]

The only other thing I could ask for at this point (well, the only other thing I could ask for that has a better chance of happening than the proverbial snowball in Hell) is that the earlier SRDs from third edition and d20 Modern also be released under a CC BY license... but honestly, this is already a whole lot more than I expected. I mean, after the utter debacle that preceded this, I can't say this entirely restores whatever faith I had in Wizards of the Coast, but it's certainly a big step in the right direction.

Anyway, the entire SRD 5.1 being released into Creative Commons I think is enough to say, yeah, I'll go ahead and have D&D 5E content included on the Game pages at launch. Sure. At this point whatever Wizards of the Coast does, the 5E rules have been released to the world. In fact, I guess I may as well make it one of the initial systems I'll start the Game pages with, along with BRP, Dominion Rules, and GURPS. And we'll go ahead and release the 5E stats for Wongery material under CC BY as well, because there's no reason not to.

Whether there will be Game tabs for One D&D content remains to be seen, since Wizards of the Coast's "leaving OGL 1.0a in place" does not necessarily preclude their releasing One D&D under a different, far more restrictive license. But that's a topic for another time.

Now, hopefully this is the end of the matter and I won't feel obligated to make any more blog posts about this...