This is the last in a series of three posts on the copyright misuse of Wizards of the Coast (“WotC”). Much of this post relies on the others for context, so it would be better to read the Copyrightability of Stat Blocks and the Copyrightability of Ability and Spells before reading this one, but it’s not strictly required.

WotC introduced the OGL and the System Reference Document 5.0 (“SRD5”) for the noble cause of telling the public which of the material they published was, in their opinion, protected work (i.e., work only they could publish), and which was public domain (i.e., freely useable by everyone without restriction). This isn’t sarcasm; their stated intent was noble. Sure, they called it a license when it clearly isn’t, but if that were their only sin, we could all overlook that. The idea was to avoid as many unnecessary disputes as possible. That’s helpful…