Last year, Wizards of the Coast announced that when the three core books that formed Dungeons & Dragons' updated 2024 ruleset were out, the essence of those rules—the System Reference Document, or SRD—would be made available under a Creative Commons licence. And now, it has.
This is a big deal because, while D&D's 5th edition rules SRD was previously available under the terms of the Open Gaming Licence, or OGL, it was potentially subject to revision. Letting the basics of the most popular tabletop RPG be used by third-party developers—who could sell their creations and retain the rights to them—had made more niche publications like Weekend at Strahd's and the Uncaged series possible. But when a draft of a possible restriction to the OGL leaked a couple of years ago, the community reacted with outrage.
