D&D’s OGL fiasco made worse by lack of respect for WotC, exec says

Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink says that at least part of the drama surrounding the recent Open Gaming License fiasco came from a lack of respect given to the creative and community teams at Wizards of the Coast. He says that more of these teams will participate in decisions at high levels and that their voices will have more weight going forward.

These statements were made Monday during an hour-long interview by YouTube channel 3 Black Halflings. Taken in full, Brink’s statements point to what appears to be an evolving relationship between Wizards and its corporate owner, toy and game giant Hasbro.

“I was trying to protect the team from distractions,” said Brink, “like discussing a licensing agreement, so we can make the game, so we can make cool supplements and books. It would have been better to have more members of my team present in the meeting. And that’s been corrected going forward.”

Dungeons & Dragons’ Open Gaming License (OGL) has been in place for more than two decades. It provides a legal framework by which people have been able to build their own tabletop RPGs alongside D&D. Proposed changes to OGL created a hostile relationship between Wizards, its community and Wizards almost immediately. Hasbro eventually relented after the backlash was reported in mainstream media.

Following io9’s initial leak of a draft of proposed OGL changes on Jan. 5, neither Wizards nor Hasbro provided an immediate response. On Jan. 13, the unsigned statement was received. Many saw it as nothing more than a pessimistic half-measure. The unsigned statement, delivered on D&D Beyond, read in part as follows:

Here are a few final thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. They will be wrong half the time. They won — and so did we.

“I honestly don’t know who contributed to the unsigned statement before I started posting,” Brink said. “The the statement that came out […] I read it around the same time you did.”

Brink signed a second, much more detailed apology on January 19, and made a statement.

“I was not pleased with what we had posted,” Brink continued. “This is one of the things that inspired me to take a personal… to put myself into this by name and take ownership of this because I — that was not acceptable to me. That’s not us. That’s not who we should be, and I felt like this needed to be less of a committee thing and more of a D&D thing.”

The “committee” that Brink is referring to is described throughout the interview as a collection of management, executives, and the legal counsel tasked with refining the next version of the OGL. Brink claims that there were some dissenting views in the room, and these opinions came from Wizards. The larger group did not take their protests into consideration enough. Brink accepts responsibility for the oversight. You can see the video on YouTube:

Ich würde sagen [the voices of our creative and our community teams] wasn’t loud enough in the room. And that’s what’s changing. We’re giving much more of a voice to the folks on my team, myself included, who are closer to the community and would be able to catch this kind of thing in the future and have enough volume to prevent it.

Brink continued by stating that the Wizards staff are now under the direct control of Cynthia Williams (president of Wizards of the Coast) and Hasbro’s digital gaming division. Williams joined Hasbro from Microsoft in February 2022, where she previously “drove the expansion of Xbox Gaming and the acceleration of game-creator growth” according to a news release.

“I would say greater respect [is being given to Wizards’ team],” Brink added. “Being heard and being respected is important. To Cynthia’s credit, although I have heard a lot about her, she is open to hearing. Based on the information she has, Cynthia does make changes. And she’s one of the most empathetic C-suite people I’ve ever worked with, by a country mile. So I am confident that when she says she’s gonna listen, she’s gonna listen.”

The latest D&D book, an anthology of adventures titled The Golden Vault KeysYou can pre-order the digital edition of, now. Starting February 21, the physical book will become available.