Free Tabletop License (FTL) for the Year Zero Engine and a Third-Party License for the Upcoming Fantasy RPG Dragonbane
Free League Publishing today officially released its two new open game licenses for community creators: a Free Tabletop License (FTL) for the Year Zero Engine and a third-party license for its upcoming fantasy RPG Dragonbane. The Year Zero Engine FTL comes with an updated Standard Reference Document (SRD). All three documents are now available for creators to use.
Both new community content licenses are royalty-free and irrevocable, meaning that they can be updated but creators will always be able to use any published version.
The work on these new licenses was initiated in 2022, but was intensified during the debates in early 2023 around Wizards of the Coasts’ OGL v1.0, on which the previous Year Zero Engine (YZE) license was based. The two new licenses are completely independent, developed by Free League and the US law firm Nolan Heimann.
The new Year Zero Engine FTL is designed to be fair and easy to understand and use for community creators. It gives all creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use the Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document (YZE SRD) and freely publish their own roleplaying material based on it. The YZE FTL can be found here.
Alongside the new YZE FTL, the YZE SRD itself has been given a massive overhaul and update, based on the developments of the Year Zero Engine in recent years. The new SRD adds rules for chases, vehicles, travel, and magic, and introduces the new “step dice” version of YZE found in Twilight: 2000 and the Blade Runner RPG. The new YZE SRD (version 1.0) can be acccessed here.
The Year Zero Engine (YZE) in various iterations has been used in most Free League 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.
Dragonbane Third-Party License
Free League today also officially released a third-party license for the upcoming Dragonbane RPG, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter last year. This license allows creators to freely publish RPG supplements explicitly compatible with Dragonbane and the original Swedish game Drakar och Demoner.
The Dragonbane third-party license (version 1.0) can be found here (English) and here (Swedish). It lets creators place the A Supplement for Dragonbane logo (above and here, Swedish version here) on the front cover. Dragonbane is a translation of Free League’s new edition of Scandinavia’s first and biggest tabletop RPG Drakar och Demoner.
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 and Drakar och Demoner modules and without paying any royalties.
Dragonbane
Release: Q3 2023
A legend is reborn. Dragonbane is the new and reimagined edition of Sweden’s first and biggest tabletop roleplaying game Drakar och Demoner. A new take on the classic fantasy RPG full of magic, mystery, and adventure. The new edition is designed from the ground up to facilitate fast-paced fantasy adventures, with very little prep time and adventures that are a breeze to run.
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