Everything except the viewer: D&D updates core rules and sticks to CC licenses

Wizards of the Coast has released the System Reference Document, the heart of the three core rulebooks that make up Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 gameplay under the Creative Commons license. This means that the company is unable to make further changes to its deal, as it did in early 2023, leading to a significant pushback and ultimately a setback. It was a long quest, but the legitimate good party has earned some long-term rewards, including a new, similarly licensed reference book. The owner of Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), was inspired by Richard Stallman's GNU General Public License, to put the Core D&D Rules into an Open Game License in the early 2000s. The idea was that by allowing you to create core mechanics, classes, spells, races and monsters, more royalty-free games would pull more people into tabletop role-playing spheres, perhaps returning to the core D&D games and rulebooks. It is also possible that these basic aspects of the game and bits taken from existing fantasy works would have been less harmful to WOTC properties, as they would be difficult to copyright. WOTC believes that the Open Game License (OGL) is open for revisions, and the company proposed a change to OGL, so those who make a certain amount of money report it (over $50,000 a year) and start paying royalties (over $750,000). The leaked version of that license brought high levels of royalty to 25%, covering only the covered printed material and static PDFs, questioning where virtual tabletops and software makers would fit.