Recently, leaked documents allegedly from Wizards of the Coast have called the legal future of the Open Game License 1.0 into question. I have to admit, I’m pretty upset about this. It’s very disruptive to the tabletop RPG industry because our confidence in the license is shaken.
The Tower tarot card from the Rider Waite deck.
Shewstone Publishing affirms our commitment to open gaming and to the open gaming community. The tabletop RPG industry is flourishing in large part because we’re all sharing rules systems instead of hoarding them. Our flagship product, Magonomia, was made possible by Evil Hat Production’s generous decision to publish Fate under open licenses.
Our Use of Open Licenses
We published Magonomia core rules, including all of the original spells, under the Open Gaming License 1.0a (OGL 1.0a) in 2021. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
We no longer regard the OGL 1.0a as an effective open license. The leaked documents point out a fatal weakness in the license language that Shewstone and our lawyer can’t fix.
Effective immediately, future open Shewstone Publishing products will use a trusted open license such as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0).
We’re considering relicensing Magonomia under CC BY-SA 4.0 as well. When and how we proceed will depend partly on how the legal situation develops.
Moving Forward
We’re in a good position to make a smooth transition to a Creative Commons license, thanks to Evil Hat Productions’ decision to dual license Fate under both OGL and CC BY-SA. Thanks, Evil Hat!
Shewstone Publishing stands in solidarity with the open gaming community. We look forward to continuing to create great things together and to giving back as much as we can.