Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast, owners of the Dungeons & Dragons brand and roleplaying products, announced the release of the OGL (Open Game License) and SRD (System Reference Document.)
What does this mean for FG?
Well, first off, it means that we can now include all this amazing data with Fantasy Grounds for free. In fact, if you run a Check for Updates, you'll see that we've already done that.
I'm very impressed with the amount of content that is available. If people had any concerns about their ability to play D&D with only the 4 races and 4 classes from the D&D Basic Rules, I can bet that those concerns are now a thing of the past. Every single class and race are present in the SRD content. With the included modules, you can build characters just like you can with the official products. As a DM, you can build encounters full of D&D monsters and build treasure parcels full of equipment and magic items to award your players.
What's the catch though?
Well, there are some small ones, but they are very minor. For each of the races that have subtypes, they will only give you a single option instead of a choice of options. For classes, you'll get a single archetype instead of a selection, or a single domain instead of your pick from a wide range of domains. The spell list is pretty robust and all but a select handful of spells is included. The same is true for magic items and the entire equipment list is included. A few items and spells have been renamed and descriptions have been altered to remove IP that belongs to Wizards of the Coast, but it is super usable as-is. The Bestiary is full of a few hundred monsters, but the descriptions and images are removed, along with some of my favorite monsters from D&D history. For the DD5E SRD Bestiary that we just finished building, however, we were able to link these with tokens that we already give away for free. These are nice top-down style tokens that we licensed from Raymond Gaustadnes a year or so ago.
As new official products for D&D are released, we will continue to publish these simultaneous with the release of the product in print format. You will still get the option of picking up all the ready-to-run adventures and settings books as they release. In addition, you can still get the Complete Core Class Pack, Complete Core Monster Pack and Complete Dungeon Master's Guide.
It's a great time to be a tabletop RPG gamer.