Back to the OGL thing for just a minute. Mike Shae still talks about it a lot on his weekly show, it’s like listening to someone in therapy work through their trauma (hey, fair enough, he just saw his career flash before his eyes).
(I’m not going to re-cap the whole OGL debacle of January 2023. Surely you remember it; if not, these two articles by Linda Codega will catch you up: Dungeons & Dragons’ New License Tightens Its Grip on Competition and Dungeons & Dragons Scraps Plans to Update Its Open Game License.)
Anyway, I really like Mike Shae’s perspective on all this. If I may paraphrase:
Now that the 5e SRD is in the Creative Commons, D&D belongs to us, the people, like never before. Nobody can ever again claim ownership of D&D (except of the trademark itself). It’s out there, anyone can publish D&D stuff now.
And the division between “official” D&D content from WotC and “3rd-party” content from everyone else… is erased. When anyone publishes D&D stuff, whether they are a big hitter like Paizo or Kobold Press, or a sole auteur like M. T. Black or Keith Baker, or you or me, it’s just as “official D&D” as anything from Wizards.
I like that.
Outside The Red Box 