Free League Releases Two Free Tabletop Licenses – Year Zero Engine and Dragonbane
Free League steps up the Open Gaming challenge with the release of two new “Free Tabletop Licenses” for the Year Zero Engine and Dragonbane.
Big news on the Open Gaming front today, as Free League unveiled two new Free Tabletop Licenses. These FTLs are open, irrevocable licenses that allow community content to be created royalty-free. While these licenses may be updated, any published version will be viable for creators.
This follows not long after the Year Zero Engine’s recent foray into the System Reference Document (SRD) world. Which brings it fully out of the OGL and into a license of Free League’s own creation. Let’s take a look.
Free Tabletop Licenses For Year Zero Engine and Dragonbane
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 accessed here.
This new Year Zero Engine license makes use of the new SRD, as you can see above. This is the same RPG rules system that powers games like the Alien RPG and the recently released Blade Runner RPG.
But Free League’s upcoming new fantasy RPG, Dragonbane, gets a license all its own as well. Dragonbane is itself a translation Drakar och Demoner and is the newest edition of Scandinavia’s “first and biggest” tabletop RPG.
The Dragonbane third-party license can be accessed here. It’s intended for third-party supplements like adventures, rather than new standalone games, according to Free League, which is why they won’t be releasing an SRD.
Dragonbane itself is due out later this year. It’s a new take on Drakar och Demoner and promises “fast-paced fantasy adventures” with minimal prep for the beleaguered GM. You can learn more about Dragonbane right here.
All of this opens a new door for Open Gaming. But it also marks yet another Open License that releases ahead of the ORC.
