Hold On To Those Open License Games

Don't sell them. Don't give them up. And never stop playing them.

If a game cuts itself off and puts part of its rules or class designs behind a paywall, it isn't worth your time. It is all but garbage. If you need to play the game fully and it isn't open content, the rest of the game gets infected by a closed-source license.

Don't be fooled.

Even the defunct OGL is superior to many of these closed-source games. Hold on to those too. D&D 3.5E, Pathfinder, 1st Edition Mongoose Traveller, and others - preserve these.

ORC? Creative Commons? Other open "share alike" licenses that allow data portability? Good games. They deserve your time and support. Be careful with these; some lock parts away behind their paywalls, and the game doesn't work fully. These are bad games and not worth your time. If games start "pulling support back for open licensing," then you do the same.

Open-license games will be the last games they allow us to have when pen-and-paper gaming goes "AI streaming" and nothing is allowed to be owned. It will all be rentals. You won't own anything.

This is already how it is going in the video game space. Nothing is owned.

Games with open licenses are the last ones you will ever be allowed to own, share, and talk about.

Everything else will be locked into a subscription model.

Even housing is being forced down that path.

The OGL Crisis was not about D&D; it was about data ownership and freedom. It was about AI. It was about weaponizing IP law and having the state enforce rental schemes. It was about taking a game's math and data, putting it in a JSON file, and watching it blow away like dandelion seeds.

If you play a closed-source game, you're part of the problem. I don't care about friends or feelings, or how nice the books are. They aren't, and you are supporting rental models which forbid ownership and freedom. Some of these companies are now extending ownership rights in what you are allowed to say about a game, or they will take it away from you. Just look at AAA gaming. Free speech limitations are a part of the EULA.

If anything could be owned or shared, nothing could be forced into rental.

You can't take away a game everybody owns.

Refuse to rent.

Support open gaming.

The only games worth owning are the ones that allow full sharing.