Free League Publishing is the next company to announce that they will update their OGL for creators wanting to produce content that works alongside their Year Zero Engine and the soon-to-be-released Dragonbane (Drakar och Demoner) Fantasy roleplaying game.

Year Zero Engine // Free League Publishing

Updated in response to Wizards Of The Coast and the uproar surrounding OGL 1.1, Free League have said...

"The Year Zero Engine in various iterations has been used in most of our RPGs in recent years, including Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Forbidden Lands, ALIEN, Vaesen, Blade Runner RPG, and the upcoming The Walking Dead Universe RPG. The YZE is an accessible, fast, and adaptable rules framework that encourages story-focused and player-driven playstyles.

The new Year Zero Engine OGL is designed to be easy to understand and use for creators. It will give creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document (YZE SRD) and freely publish their own roleplaying material based on it.

Alongside the new YZE OGL, the YZE SRD itself is being given a major overhaul and update, based on the developments of the Year Zero Engine in recent years. The new SRD will include more rules variants and add rules for chases, vehicles, travel, and magic."

Essentially, it looks to remove any of the barriers that existed for those seeking to use the Year Zero Engine previously and offer up a stable ground from which creators can build their own content.

A Module For Dragonbane // Free League Publishing

As well as updating the OGL for the Year Zero Engine, the team at Free League Publishing are also working to bring a new agreement together that allows creators to make content for their new Dragonbane RPG.

"Beside the YZE OGL, we will also release a third-party license for the upcoming Dragonbane RPG, which was successfully Kickstarted last year. This license allows creators to freely publish RPG supplements explicitly compatible with Dragonbane, and to place the special "A Module for Dragonbane" logo on the front cover.

The Dragonbane license is intended for third-party supplements for the game, not new standalone games, and thus does not have an SRD. This license is similar to the Free League Workshop community content program on DrivethruRPG, but allows creators to freely choose where to share or sell Dragonbane modules and without paying any royalties to anyone."

Both of these new OGL agreements will be released in the next few weeks. In particular, I think that the Dragonbane RPG is going to be a very fun new home for a lot of folks leaving the Dungeons & Dragons space.

Free League Publishing also noted that currently, The Lord Of The Rings: Roleplaying and Ruins Of Suymbaroum should not be affected by the changes from Wizards Of The Coast.

Are you going to be checking out Year Zero and Dragonbane as options for your roleplaying games?