Well, there have, of course, been a few new developments in the last week regarding Wizards of the Coast's new Open Game License (see the last two blog posts if you're not sure what I'm referring to). Honestly, in a way I wish I'd managed to get everything in order and have the Wongery's hard launch on December 21, 2022 like I'd originally planned, so we could openly participate in the conversations about the new OGL and share plans—but another way, I'm thinking maybe it's for the best I didn't, because if I'd already had the Game tab in place and had game stats up for D&D 5E and some of the third-party systems that are now likely to go through changes to remove dependency on WotC Open Game Content, I'd have to revise or remove all of that and would have gone through a lot of effort for nothing.
Anyway, last Wednesday Wizards of the Coast released another announcement, though it didn't really say anything new about the new OGL. (It did say that "proposed OGL documentation" would be released by the 20th and a survey would be open for two weeks for people to give feedback, but it still didn't explicitly address Wizards of the Coast's intentions toward future use of the OGL 1.0(a), which is the vital point that all communications from Wizards of the Coast seem to be suspiciously evading.) There were also a few more announcements by other companies, including, unexpectedly, the German RPG company Ulisses Spiele saying it would sign onto the ORC. (Ulisses Spiele is a significant presence in the RPG scene—I have a lot of their books myself—but to my knowledge they'd never shown any interest before in participating in any sort of open license.)
And then Wizards of the Coast revealed a preview of their new license, which is now not OGL 1.1 or OGL 2.0 but OGL 1.2 for some reason. (Well, "OGL" 1.2; again, despite what WotC is calling it it's not really an open license.) WotC released the core mechanics of the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons under a CC BY license, which was unexpected and good, but doubled down on the bit about OGL 1.0(a) being no longer authorized, which was expected and very bad. (This was no longer part of the license itself, but included in a separate "NOTICE OF DEAUTHORIZATION OF OGL 1.0a", perhaps to avoid arguments that it only applied to those who agreed to the new license.) They later posted a tweet saying they were planning on adding content from previous editions to the material licensed by the OGL and CC, which was also unexpected and good, but not really good enough to make up for the bad parts.
But I'm not going to try to give all the news here of everything that's happening. After all, again, it's going to be almost a year before anyone reads this and this will all be old news by then anyway.
Instead, in light of all that's going on right now with the OGL and ORC, it might be worth some discussion of the Wongery's licensing terms.
Currently, all the text in the Central Wongery mainspace is licensed under a CC BY-SA license. I want to make the worlds in the Wongery available for use; I want to enable and encourage people to use them in their own books and other creative works. But the eventual plan is for all the material in the Central Wongery mainspace to also be released under a second license, which I'm tentatively calling the Static License, but it'll probably end up having a different name, because that's a stupid name. Since I haven't decided on the final name yet, though, I'll just call it the Static License in this blog post.
So what's going to be in the Static License? Mainly, it's going to pertain only to the usage of Wongery material for media that do not involve moving images. (And that don't involve NFTs, but that's for unrelated reasons.) That means books are fine; illustrations are fine; figurines are fine; but it won't apply to movies or most video games. But if you do want to use the material for a purpose for which the Static License applies, you are free to do so, without the ShareAlike provision of CC BY-SA. Basically, it's going to be like CC-BY, except that it can't be used for movies and video games (except video games that only involve text and/or static images, but there aren't many people making text adventures nowadays. Though there are some, and hey, under our licenses they're welcome to make text adventures incorporating Wongery IP if they want to.)
Oh—and while this wasn't part of my original plan for the Static License, because I didn't think it needed to be, given the current OGL kerfuffle I'm going to want to make darn sure that the Static License is clearly and explicitly irrevocable. Again, like CC BY.
The reason the Static License isn't implemented yet is simply because I am not a lawyer, and if I want to have a custom license that actually makes sense legally and covers everything it's supposed to cover, it should probably be drafted by lawyers, so I'm going to wait until I have the spare money to actually pay lawyers to write the text of the license. I do hope to have it done before the hard launch, though.
Why the dual licensing? Well, the idea is that someone using Wongery material can choose to use it under the terms of either the CC BY-SA license or the Static License, whichever better suits their project; they can license their own material under both licenses, but they don't have to. If you're writing a book (whether it's narrative fiction, a sourcebook for a role-playing game, or anything else), you can use the CC BY-SA license, but if you don't want to give your content away you'll probably want to use the Static License, because it doesn't have the ShareAlike requirement. If you're making a computer game or a short film, then you can't use the Static License, but the CC BY-SA has you covered, as long as you're willing to make your content available for others to use (while giving you credit).
You might ask, if we really want to disseminate the Wongery material as widely as possible, why attach a license at all? Why not just release everything to the public domain? Or at least put everything under a CC BY license?
Well, first of all, according to the current licensing, the only time someone would have to work out a custom license with us, rather than just use the Creative Commons License or the Static License, would be if they're making (a) a work involving moving images that (b) they don't want to release under a ShareAlike license. What kinds of works meet those criteria? Well... commercial movies and video games. Look, we're not saying it's likely that anyone's going to make a blockbuster movie or a triple-A video game based on Wongery material, but if it does happen, I don't think it's too greedy for us to want a cut of it. That's mainly what the licensing terms of the Wongery are directed toward.
(Well, that may not be the only way we'd make money. I am considering, after or simultaneous with the hard launch, also creating a Patreon account for the Wongery. I'm thinking patrons would get to have some say over the development of the Central Wongery—not that they'd be able to write articles, or even decide on the content of the articles, but they'd have some influence on which articles we wrote next. Maybe we'd have polls they could vote on; during the first part of the month, patrons could nominate any current red links to be expanded into full articles. During the latter half of the month, they'd vote on the nominated articles to decide on a handful that we'd write during the following month. The red links are all things we plan on writing articles about eventually, anyway, but not necessarily in any particular order, so patrons could help decide that and prioritize topics they're particularly interested in seeing. (I'm not saying this would be the only Patreon perk; there'd probably be others as well; but... well, it's not something we have to plan in detail right now.) And of course nothing prevents us from eventually selling our own branded merchandise, though I don't how many people would actually want it or how successful that would be. Still, the point remains that I don't think it's unreasonable to put measures in place so that in case of the one-in-a-million chance that a studio wants to make a big-budget movie based on some Wongery IP, we have a way to make some money from it. Anyway, I'm not necessarily expecting any of these possible sources of income to pay off big; I'm making the Wongery not because I expect it to be a big moneymaker but mainly just because it's something that I want to exist, and I'll keep it up even if it doesn't end up making any money at all—though obviously I will be happier if it does make money, and it'll enable us to devote more time and resources toward it.)
Of course, the CC BY-SA license doesn't actually forbid commercial work, so I guess this then might bring up the question of why, if we want to reserve the possibility of making money off commercial use of the Wongery, we didn't use a license that did. There is a Creative Commons license that explicitly disallows commercial work, the CC BY-NC-SA, so why didn't we use that one? Well, because we want to make it as easy as possible for people to use Wongery material without completely giving it away. We don't want to discourage people from making and selling indie games and short films without giving us a cut or having to contact us for a custom license; they'd have to agree to the ShareAlike terms of the license, but low-budget indie creators may be okay with that. It's big-budget productions that I'm mostly worried about, and they're not going to want to release under a ShareAlike license and give people legal permission to distribute copies of their work. I think (well, I hope, anyway) the combination of the CC BY-SA license and the upcoming Static License will accomplish what we intend to accomplish.
(And, of course, this keeps our options open. If we did just release everything into the public domain, there's no way we could change our minds later and try to take it back. Once it's public domain, it's public domain. But if we retain some rights to our work, we can always decide to release those rights later. I'm not saying it's likely to happen, but it is in principle possible.)
Alternatively, now that the ORC is on its way? Maybe we should just license everything under that, rather than creating our own custom license? Well... we'll see; the ORC doesn't even exist yet. Depending on its terms, it may do what we need and maybe we won't need the Static License after all. But to be honest, I think that's very unlikely; I have a pretty good idea of what I want out of the Static License that I doubt the ORC would fully satisfy it. (The ORC is being designed for RPG content, after all, and that's one purpose but by no means the only purpose of the Central Wongery.) The game stats for games released under the ORC will, of course, be licensed under the ORC, but unless the ORC ends up happening to have something very close to the terms we intend for the Static License—and I'll be very surprised if that's the case—we won't use it for the Central Wongery mainspace.
And, on a note unrelated to the Wongery's licensing terms but related to the whole OGL business this blog post started with, how are the prospects looking now of the Wongery game material including D&D stats? Eh... a bit better than they were looking last week, but still kind of dubious. We'll see what the finalized new OGL ultimately holds. It's definitely not going to be a priority, though. When I do get the Game tab implemented, I think I'll start out with Basic Role-Playing, Dominion Rules, and GURPS, because those are three longstanding rules systems—dating to 1978, 1999, and 1986, respectively—that, importantly, don't derive in any way from a Wizards of the Coast SRD, and have their own open licenses or online policy terms that don't depend on the OGL and will be unaffected by whatever develops of the new OGL and the ORC. (Chaosium has expressed interest in the ORC and may eventually license Basic Role-Playing under the ORC, but there's an existing open license in place for BRP in the meantime; it'll be a simple matter to switch the license to the ORC if and when the time comes.) I'll add more game systems piecemeal as I get time and, in the cases of those that are still working to divest themselves of vestiges of the WotC SRD and finalize their new licensing terms, as the new licenses are out and the new SRDs are available. But D&D... you know, with the new edition slated for (fall?) 2024, I think we may as well wait till then to make a decision anyway. So, yeah, while I can't guarantee that I won't change my mind, I think for now I'll say that D&D will not be represented on the Wongery Game pages at the time of the hard launch. When One D&D comes out, maybe I'll add it then... but it depends on what's in the new "OGL" and to what extent WotC's shenanigans have by then made it an industry pariah. In fact, what the hey, maybe I'll have that as a subject for discussion in the Wongery forums and see what others think...