Black Flag in Creative Commons!

Flashback to a few years ago and there was a bit of turmoil in the TTRPG industry. There was a lot of confusing press coverage about what was going to happen with the Open Game License and 3rd party creators were very concerned about the future. During this time, Kobold Press announced that they would be creating a system, similar to 5e D&D, but distinct enough to be able to offer a license independent from Wizards of the Coast. I was very excited. When it was announced that the newly minted Black Flag Reference Document would use the ORC license, I became a little more hesitant. To be clear, I am not a lawyer, so I often have to rely on what I can read/interpret and seeing how things seem to interpreted by the community. I liked the spirit of the ORC license, but it seemed like there were ways that it could be abused, so we have avoided using it. Unfortunately, that meant that we also had to pass on using any of the amazing resources available in the BFRD… 

As of this morning the Black Flag Reference Document is now in the Creative Commons! This means that it will be available under CC BY 4.0, allowing for more creators to feel comfortable with the legalese of using this incredible resource! This is amazing news and I look forward to making our future projects available using the BFRD. 

“This is about opening doors for creators … By licensing the BFRD under Creative Commons, we’re providing a stable legal foundation—one that’s compatible with how people actually build, share, and play tabletop RPGs.” 
~ Wolfgang Baur (Founder of Kobold Press)