If you've been living under a rock, you might have missed that Wizards of the Coast announced yesterday that the OGL 1.0a would not be deauthorized. On its own, this would have been huge news. Not only does that save the future of countless works that have been released as open content under the OGL, such as Open D6, but it reassures hundreds of 3P publishers that were on tenterhooks for the past three weeks wondering if they'd have to close down operations, or at the very least, scrap years of work. What made this news earth-shattering was the announcement that the SRD 5.1 would be entered in its entirety into Creative Commons CC-BY-4.

This is huge news! Included in the SRD 5.1 are a bunch of references to a number of protected creatures, including "the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich, for instance" (pg. 30). Since Creative Commons doesn't differentiate by context, this means that anything in the SRD 5.1 that wasn't intended to be used by the community is now available for use through the Creative Commons, although, only what's listed in the SRD. In Strahd's case, you have his name, and he can be a vampire, but you have access to nothing else, whether it be his actual character or the lore around him. If you read through the SRD, you'll find many other things that WotC trademarked that are now available, such as Telor, or the Beholder.

All of that aside, I had planned on releasing Star Fall under an open content license, protecting only my artwork. Although there is no DnD content in the work, I had originally intended to release it as OGL 1.0a content. In addition to making me work on the game as my main project, the revelation that WotC would deauthorize the OGL 1.0a followed by Paizo's announcement of the Open RPG Creative License (ORC), compelled me to open a gamepage and list my game as being eventually released under the ORC.

That has not changed. Though the OGL fiasco has passed, it is still in danger. The Achilles Heel has been exposed. There are countless other systems that have been released under the OGL 1.0a, including the above-mentioned Open D6, and Pathfinder 2E, neither of which use any OGL content. They had been released under the OGL to grant us free use of their content. As long as the OGL 1.0a is owned by WotC, those other systems will always be at risk of being locked behind a legal quagmire in the future set in place by WotC.

That will not be permitted for Star Fall. As one of the 1500 developers that Paizo selected to seek our opinion on the ORC license, I can see the thought processes behind its creation and seeing the genuine love for the community put forth into its creation, I have more confidence in it than ever. The ORC is moving forward and Star Fall will be an ORC product.