At Cresthaven RPG, we’re committed to providing an enjoyable and accessible tabletop role-playing experience. When it came to choosing a licensing model for our game system, we had to consider the needs of our players and the broader gaming community.
We considered the Open Game License (OGL) from Wizards of the Coast, which is used by many tabletop RPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons. While the OGL provides a solid framework for game designers, it comes with certain limitations that we felt could be problematic for our community.
First, the OGL requires that any use of the licensed content must be explicitly declared as such. This can be difficult to implement in practice and may limit the ways in which players can use our content.
Second, the OGL has commercial restrictions that could impact our ability to make our game available to a wider audience. For example, the OGL requires that any commercial use of licensed content must be done through a separate agreement with Wizards of the Coast.
Because of these issues, we decided to use the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license for our game. This license allows players to use and share our content freely, while still maintaining our right to control how the content is used commercially. This means that we can still make our game available to a wider audience while also protecting our brand and ensuring the integrity of our content.
In conclusion, we chose the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for our game because it provides us with the flexibility and control we need to make our game available to as many players as possible, while still protecting our intellectual property. We believe that this license will help us build a strong and engaged community of players, and we look forward to seeing the amazing adventures that they create in Cresthaven RPG.
Further Reading
- The D&D OGL controversy, explained – The Washington Postwashingtonpost.com
- Open Game License – Wikipediaen
- d20 system – What does the OGL mean for things based on d20
- D&D will move to Creative Commons license
