Accusing the community of being racist as the reason they had to put on a 30% royalty fee to control all the content. That will go down well for what IMO is one of the most inclusive communities on the internet.
Based on the stuff Wizards of the Coast considers racist, it’d be really easy to unintentionally be caught up in their nullifying your license too. This includes changing language around a race of evil, gypsy like people that are subservient to a vampire lord (which hews very close to the writings of Bram Stoker’s Dracula), or a species of flying monkey-like creatures being enslaved and later freed as part of a fantasy setting (this was removed and Wizards apologized for being terrible and racist).
Talk about an absolute landmine of potential for offense.
This is more closely related to (for example) the company that's currently trying to reprint Star Frontiers, an 80s game to which WotC holds the rights, except they're adding racism.
Good open licenses don't need a morals clause. Once you start licensing people to put your logos on their products, you need to think about it.
This comment is not intended as approval of the OGL 1.1 in any way, but I think the objections to the morals clause on the basis that it's not needed are missing context.
I like the phrase, "Good open licenses don't need a morals clause".
By and large we are all adults here. Some people may play D&D with sexuality or kink or racism or massive slaughter campaigns on a scale that rivals any battle sim.
They're adults. They are allowed to do that, even if you or I personally find it distasteful.
Other people may want to do such things. Hasbro and WoTC shouldn't have the ability to unilaterally rug pull their users because they're worried about getting a stain on the carpet.
This whole thing was botched from the beginning. They should have phrased it as, "This is what we are thinking, please provide any feedback..." to the community. They would have still been eviscerated but people would say, "At least they started with talking it over and with the goal of making sure everyone was happy with the changes first. Could you imagine what it would be like if they just walked in and tried to dominate the community into submission because of some stupid copyright paperwork? God, they could have killed their brand!"
Especially rich from the company that published Spelljammer last year, a supplement that somehow got out the door despite including formerly enslaved sentient _monkey_ characters that gave people minstrel vibes.
It seemed to give some Americans that vibe. I read up about the Hadozee and black Americans comparison, it's pretty tenuous. I guess if you're looking for racism, you find it.
