# Mike Mearls On the OGL



## Mathew_Freeman (Jun 19, 2008)

http://mearls.livejournal.com/151714.html

Just saw this go up on Mearls Livejournal...interesting reading.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 19, 2008)

I agree with all of that blog entry and think that it serves as a good summation of the OGL's successes and failures.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

I agree with his observations for the past.


I wonder if Pathfinder might be an attempt to do what was missing so far - a iterative, open development process? 

I think one of the big problems with the iterative process though is that it is a lot easier to deploy a software then it is to "deploy" a game. 
In a way, the gamers are the computer running the game system. Unfortunately, human memories of game rules can't be overriden as simply as computer memory of an application. The computer doesn't try to remember "Hmm, last time I uploaded an FTP File, this was how it worked". He just executes the code, and if has changed, he doesn't care.
Gamers think "Okay, IIRC, Grapple works like this... Oh wait, no, there was this change in 3.76, the size modifier is now ...")

Maybe this means we have to think on larger scales for game system? A software can be updated daily, weekly or monthly if required. 

A game system can only be updated every 4 years (assuming the 3.0 to 3.5 to 4E change)? Maybe Open Gaming just needs more time?

---

Interesting in his observation: The OGL served as a great training ground for designers. But can the GSL ever hope to achieve the same? Or does it not have to, since the OGL is still around, and it is not necessary to train for a specific game system, just for designing in general?


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## Mark Hope (Jun 19, 2008)

Interesting article.  I don't agree with his points about the ogl's failure from an _Iterative, User Driven *What* Now?_ perspective, though.  I'm not saying the ogl has no drawbacks - it has - but I don't think that was one of them.

More specifically, he is looking at its success from that of designers or publishers - and naturally so.  Perhaps from that perspective, his point has merit.  But from the perspective of an end-user, a gamer, it doesn't.

For mearls, it's a point of failure that innovations occured in a fragmentary fashion, but for a gamer that's not such a big issue, except from an ease-of-use consideration.  I can see where mearls is coming from here - innovations were widespread but there was no strong movement to consolidate them into an evolving core ruleset (although it did happen here and there.)

However, for the gamer, the ogl allowed us access to all of these innovations and gave us the opportunity to incorporate them into our own games.  And this, I think, is the real success of the ogl.  It has enriched the games of players the world over - and that's what it's all about at the end of the day.

To take examples from my own homebrew, I use races from a handful of sources (mainly core but also Sword & Sorcery and Arcana Evolved, and athas.org for my DS games.)  Classes come from all over the place (mainly WotC and Malhavoc at the moment).  I use the favoured class rules from ogl Conan, the magic system from Arcana Evolved, monsters from Necromancer, White Wolf and Malhavoc.  For hit points I use Monte Cook's Grace, Health and Breather rules, and have just switched the core combat, xp and advancement system from WotC's to Pathfinder.  And next campaign arc I'll be using armour as DR and defence bonus.

None of that would have been possible without the ogl, so from this gamer's (admittedly anecdotal) perspective, that element of it has been anything but a failure.

I have the impression that mearls would have liked to have seen these innovations be more widely propagated throughout the d20 system, but I think that misses the point.  As he says, not everyone can agree on what changes to make - and nor should they have to.  This is where his computer code analogy fails.  In programming, it's desirable to have uniformity of code.  In gaming, it's not necessary, because the whims and desires of gamers vary widely.  Instead of uniformity, the ogl brought us wild diversity, a huge range of choices, and a big damn toolbox from which to pick and choose our system elements.

(There is also the consideration that the market leader - WotC - did not embrace the innovations of other companies anywhere near as well as it should have.  The widespread propagation of innovation that mearls might have wanted would have been far more successful had WotC started using more ideas from other sources and folding these back into the core rules.  It happened here and there, but nowhere near as much as it could have.)

So I'm not sure that the ogl can be termed a failure from the perspective of the gamer.  Maybe so from the perspective of a publisher or a designer - but then I'd question the assumption that the ogl was intended to benefit designers and publishers as much as it was meant to enrich players.  I'm sure that benefitting publishers and designers was a consideration, but I think that enriching gamers was more important - and rightly so.

All the same, a very interesting read.  Thanks for the link


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## CapnZapp (Jun 19, 2008)

I'm amazed. 

Did mearls really think people would slave away improving the D&D rules when *they are owned by WotC*?!

The comparison to a free ftp client is completely wrong, in my opinion.

The reason the rules improvement of 3E was "fragmented" is precisely because we all know what WotC would do if the industry agreed on publishing a "3E done right" edition. Yes, they would shoot it down.

Besides, the idea of a singular drive forward is flawed from the beginning. The D&D community is far too big and diverse for all gamers to share the same design goals. The emergence of True 20, Pathfinder and Iron Heroes (say) is something good for the community, not something bad or broken.

This is possibly the first article written by an industry heavyweight that I disagree with completely and fundamentally. Even the merest hint the OGL needed to die for the reasons mearls gives suggests to me a deeply regrettable stink of FUD!


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## Treebore (Jun 19, 2008)

WOTC could have come up with Mutants and Masterminds, True 20, gotten a license to do Conan, etc... but didn't. They were too focused/narrow minded to do it in house. SO the fragmentation Mearls talks about occurred because WOTC failed to take the lead. They will fail with 4E too.

If they want to be the "everything" RPG house then they better create and support everything. They can't even give Star Wars the degree of support they give D&D. 

So its a darn good thing the OGL existed and allowed us to have M&M 2E, True 20, Pathfinder, the Midnight setting, Conan, et al...  WOTC sure wouldn't have come up with it, let alone support it as well as they have.

The only problem the OGL had was easily fixable. That was the poorly done products. A problem WOTC could have controlled by creating an over site department with enough people to review and give feedback to a product in about a week.

Something that their current GSL still doesn't address.

The OGL's failures were actually failures on WOTC's part. Failures that they still aren't going to address with the GSL.


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## Maggan (Jun 19, 2008)

CapnZapp said:
			
		

> Did mearls really think people would slave away improving the D&D rules when *they are owned by WotC*?!




I know many people who would. And who do. The D&D fan sites are one aspect of this, with tons of "improvements" to D&D.

The publishers might not want to do this, but I think that many fans/designers do/did it. Come to think of it, suggesting improvements to rules that are owned by someone else is a staple of gamerdom, I've done it lots and lots of times.



> Besides, the idea of a singular drive forward is flawed from the beginning. The D&D community is far too big and diverse for all gamers to share the same design goals. The emergence of True 20, Pathfinder and Iron Heroes (say) is something good for the community, not something bad or broken.




With this I agree, but the existence of a community derived base 3.5 would not exclude True20, Pathfinder or IH. The variants would still be as viable as stand-alone products.

/M


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## Vanuslux (Jun 19, 2008)

Treebore said:
			
		

> The only problem the OGL had was easily fixable. That was the poorly done products. A problem WOTC could have controlled by creating an over site department with enough people to review and give feedback to a product in about a week.




In WotC's defense, an oversight department would be expensive and the only time poorly done products were a serious problem was when there was a glut of publishers putting them out and there was an absurd number of products hitting the market.  Most of that fat has fallen away on its own.


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## wayne62682 (Jun 19, 2008)

While I agree with a lot of Mearls' views, the one thing he's forgetting is that the *reason* there wasn't many of the kind of additions that WotC expected people to do is because hardly anything was added to the OGL.  His analogy to open-source is flawed because with open-source software, *everything* is available for others to make use of and change, and by the GPL it must _remain_ that way.  3.5 had what, the core books, psionics, a few variant rules and that was it?  You couldn't use mechanics from other books, so they pretty much forced publishers to "fork" D&D and make their own systems so they could increase the number of things they could make use of.

WotC clearly just wanted people to supplement "their version" of D&D, not fork it or create their own settings and products.  This is evident by how they reacted to things like Mutants & Masterminds, True20, et all and how these types of products have been squashed by the new GSL.  The thing is, you can't tell people you're going to open your content to help other people make supplements for it... and then not open anything beyond what amounts to version 1 of it.

If the OGL failed, it failed because WotC wanted to keep their position as "king of the hill" and didn't want to share.  In fact, their OGL (and now GSL) are more reminiscent of Microsoft's recent idea of open-sourcing things (basically, we give you some of the code, not all of it, but you can only use it on very specific things i.e. a half-assed way), and not real open-source.


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## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Mister Mearls is a talented game designer but i have t oquestion the notion of  OGL failure.   Or the notion the "experiment" was even close to failure.

Arcan Evolved/Unearthed, Conan, Iron Heroes, Castles & Crusades, True 20, Cthulhu-D20, Mutants and Mastermindsand Spycraft.  Were not OGL failures.

Green Ronin, Necromancer Games, Troll Lord Games, Malhavoc Press, Goodman Games, RPG-objects and Mongoose and more were not OGL failures.

The OGL was a smashing success.  It just wasn't all flowing into the pockets of WOTC.  

"Problems" were not universally identified and fixed in the same manner because of the open nature of the beast.  Not all issues are a problem in all circles.   Art does not have one solution or response to a problem.  RPGs are not software.


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## Maggan (Jun 19, 2008)

wayne62682 said:
			
		

> You couldn't use mechanics from other books, so they pretty much forced publishers to "fork" D&D and make their own systems so they could increase the number of things they could make use of.




Interesting. If WotC had been a custodian of the 3.5 OGC, expanding on the SRD with proven and tested variants and improvements, then the publishers might have felt more motivated to share and improve the core.

/M


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## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Wayne is right on the mark. Wotc didn't maintain the OGL. They did one major rewrite that not everyone agreeed with.

Luckily since wotc has divorced himself from the OGL they have no more voice then all the rest of us in it's future and in practice will have no voice.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> Mister Mearls is a talented game designer but i have t oquestion the notion of  OGL failure.   Or the notion the "experiment" was even close to failure.
> 
> Arcan Evolved/Unearthed, Conan, Iron Heroes, Castles & Crusades, True 20, Cthulhu-D20, Mutants and Mastermindsand Spycraft.  Were not OGL failures.
> 
> ...



That was not the part that failed he is talking about. He was talking more about the "feed-back" cycle. 

There is Arcana Evolved. But there are no products re-using the concepts of Arcana Evolved from other publishers. 
There's Iron Heroes. There is no one that re-used its mechanical elements and build upon that. 

All these True20, Modern20, Arcana Evolved, Iron Heroes, Grim Tales, they didn't build much upon each other. They didn't refine the game. They created new, individual games. They stand on their own, and have their unique appeal. 

Maybe it's true that this can never happen as long as WotC still owns D&D, using their License. But maybe there's just no interest in this. Maybe all people really want are different game systems. They don't need an evolving game, they need only the game for their taste. It's "everyone gets his own FTP Client with his specific features" vs "There is one FTP Client that everyone likes and has all the features". 

Maybe mearls is wrong in believing that this could have happened at all. Role-players are diverse and even the subset of role-players that focus on D&D are to diverse to create an iterative process leading to a _generally_ better game. Judging from our "Edition Wars", that might indeed be the case.


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## Yair (Jun 19, 2008)

Whether the OGL was a failure or not could only be established in the few years to come. If its use continues and grows without WotC's support than it was a success. If its use stagnates and is limited to a few niche games, played by a small part of the gaming community (and practically anything except D&D and WoD currently is, I believe), then it would have mediocre success. If its use diminishes until it is used only by a rare few fringes of the gaming community (like, say, the current Ars Magica fan community) than it would have been a failure, at least for now.

I do kinda agree with Mearls that the OGL has its failings, and lack of repetetive improvement is part of them. The main failing of the OGL, IMHO, is its failure to prevent crippled content. I imagine roleplaying games would be better right now if, for example, Monte Cook's products could be easily utilized by another publisher.


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## wayne62682 (Jun 19, 2008)

Right.  The basis of open-source is that you have people contributing to one central codebase.  In the barest of senses the OGL fulfills that criteria.  But with open-source, either everything is open or nothing is.  You can't make certain modules open and certain modules off-limits (at least to my knowledge.  There are several open-source licenses so maybe one of them does allow that).  The OGL wouldn't be a "failure" (in WotC's eyes) if they were more willing to add content to it, and weren't so afraid of people using their things without paying the "use tax".

What doomed them was that they came in with an expectation (presumably "This will allow 3rd party publishers to support D&D via adventures and additions"), and when faced with people saying "Hmm... I like this rule, but these two have got to go" and making a fork of the system, getting pissed and saying "You weren't supposed to fork our system, you were supposed to use it as-is and add to it!".  That's why the new GSL is so restrictive - they don't want people changing their "perfect" system, even when it's clearly imperfect.  They want to retain the central codebase and let others develop add-ons for it, not modify it.  More Microsoft than PostgreSQL.

I propose that we start calling WotC "WotCSoft" in honor of their new strides towards a proprietary system.


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## philreed (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> There's Iron Heroes. There is no one that re-used its mechanical elements and build upon that.




I wanted to. Hell, I still want to write a PDF of new zones.

These days, though, I don't really have time for many projects.


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## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> That was not the part that failed he is talking about. He was talking more about the "feed-back" cycle.




I've seen rules additions and renovations form many of those products you mentioned turn up over the years. They were not simply closed off-shoots of development.

The "feed-back" cycle only had one point where there was a problem: WOTC.


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## ThirdWizard (Jun 19, 2008)

What about the failure of gaining traction outside of Wizards of the Coast and publishers who got into the market under the OGL blanket? To me the biggest disappointment of the OGL was that it didn't seduce established companies in nor did any new systems really expand upon the base of the game (barring a few very notable exceptions). I guess that can't really be considered a failure exactly, but it does speak for the small traction that I think OGL ultimately has.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

wayne62682 said:
			
		

> Right.  The basis of open-source is that you have people contributing to one central codebase.  In the barest of senses the OGL fulfills that criteria.  But with open-source, either everything is open or nothing is.  You can't make certain modules open and certain modules off-limits (at least to my knowledge.  There are several open-source licenses so maybe one of them does allow that).  The OGL wouldn't be a "failure" (in WotC's eyes) if they were more willing to add content to it, and weren't so afraid of people using their things without paying the "use tax".
> 
> What doomed them was that they came in with an expectation (presumably "This will allow 3rd party publishers to support D&D via adventures and additions"), and when faced with people saying "Hmm... I like this rule, but these two have got to go" and making a fork of the system, getting pissed and saying "You weren't supposed to fork our system, you were supposed to use it as-is and add to it!".  That's why the new GSL is so restrictive - they don't want people changing their "perfect" system, even when it's clearly imperfect.  They want to retain the central codebase and let others develop add-ons for it, not modify it.  More Microsoft than PostgreSQL.
> 
> I propose that we start calling WotC "WotCSoft" in honor of their new strides towards a proprietary system.



You wouldn't be the first to compare them to microsoft. Ultimiately, in many ways it fits. They are often hated, but still have done a lot in their respective field to advance it. But they also hate to give anything away for free or re-used by others. 

The GSLs goals are still to drive the WotC sales by allowing others to enrich the game and thus appeal to more. D&D is the "operating system", and others should provide the software running on the system, but shouldn't muck around with the OS. 

Unlike Microsoft, though, WotC didn't offer secondary services (like training for Adminstrators/DMs and stuff like that). Maybe the DDI can be seen as changing this?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

ThirdWizard said:
			
		

> What about the failure of gaining traction outside of Wizards of the Coast and publishers who got into the market under the OGL blanket? To me the biggest disappointment of the OGL was that it didn't seduce established companies in nor did any new systems really expand upon the base of the game (barring a few very notable exceptions). I guess that can't really be considered a failure exactly, but it does speak for the small traction that I think OGL ultimately has.



That's an interesting aspect. The new World of Darkness game is not using the OGL. Neither is Shadowrun 4E or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. 

There seem to be only smaller publishers that create any non-D&D related games with the OGL. But maybe the OGL is the only reason why they even try to do this, hoping that someone else enhances is with OGL supplements that can drive their original game?


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## wayne62682 (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Unlike Microsoft, though, WotC didn't offer secondary services (like training for Adminstrators/DMs and stuff like that). Maybe the DDI can be seen as changing this?




Would *you* pay $125/exam to take tests to become a WCDM (Wizards Certified Dungeon Master)?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

wayne62682 said:
			
		

> Would *you* pay $125/exam to take tests to become a WCDM (Wizards Certified Dungeon Master)?



No*, but I'd pay 10 € monthly to get the entire service of the DDI. That's a "secondary service" surrounding their "OS". 


*) or would I? If it made me a better DM?


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## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

ThirdWizard said:
			
		

> What about the failure of gaining traction outside of Wizards of the Coast and publishers who got into the market under the OGL blanket? To me the biggest disappointment of the OGL was that it didn't seduce established companies in nor did any new systems really expand upon the base of the game (barring a few very notable exceptions). I guess that can't really be considered a failure exactly, but it does speak for the small traction that I think OGL ultimately has.




 Soem established companies came out with Deadlands D20.  Weird War D20. Tribe-8 had d-20 appendix,  Talislanta had a D20 book,  the Sword & Sorcery imprint of Whitewolf.  WoW D20. Everquest D20.  Harn D20. Chaosium had  D20 Elric book.   Not all giants certainly but many companies.  

OGL small?  Take a look arround an online vendor sometime, anything but small impact from D20.


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## ThirdWizard (Jun 19, 2008)

JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> OGL small?  Take a look arround an online vendor sometime, anything but small impact from D20.




_Anything_ that ends in d20 fits my description of "publishers who got into the market under the OGL blanket." I'm talking about non-d20 things. I'm talking about not the expansion of d20 gaming but the expansion of (edit) the use of (/edit) the _license_. If the OGL remained only for d20 games, then it has no traction in the greater RPG community. If almost all you can find published under the OGL is d20, then it's not much of a movement _at all_ IMO.


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## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Well, honestly, my FLGS hated the OGL.  Sure, it produced some good products, but now every Tom Dick and Harry who could buy the rights from a movie product would create a RPG using D20.  There are rows upon rows of merchndise that will never sell , will never be played, and are just crap products.  Yes, there were gems, and that's awesome, but there were a lot more stinkers than gems.

Second, for the person who said that Opensource software is about one central code base with lots of developers, that's one way to do it.  A more common way to do it now is distributed code bases that serve multiple purposes.  For example, in Pidgin, there is a library called "LibPurple" that connects to various IM clients.  That's used ALL over the place.  It's expanded upon in different projects, and sometimes that code is folded back, sometimes it is not.  Wizards is not a Microsoft because Wizards released their code under the OGL, as it were.  They can't undo it.  If you look at the OGL, you'll see that there's no way to undo what they've done.  

Opensource works because of three key components, and this is from someone  who is an opensource developer.

ONE.  Freedom.  The freedom to do what we want, when we want it, how we want it.

TWO. Code Reuse.  The ability to take leverage large groups of coders to improve functionality in multiple products by providing functionality in ONE product.  

THREE. Code Sharing.  The ability to completely share all forms of code that touches an opensource product without fear of retribution.  

Free software licensed under an opensource licenses is nearly viral, and it's complete for the entire project.  Any code that touches most free software is typically released under the same license.  In one case, it MUST be released under the same license.  The failing of the OGL is it tried to "half-ass" Opensource.  It allowed for the ability to create "closed source" zones.  And when you have that ability, and companies are afraid of their IP wandering off, they will often use it.  

In order for the OGL to be as successful as Opensource, you must get people to believe in the Open Source methodology.  You must not have "Non-covered" zones.  You must have people willing to take and extend the product at their leisure.  

Now I agree that Wizards is not as good as anyone else in this.. but I remember when the OGL came out.  I remember Wizards and people around Wizards coming onto Opensource mailing lists and discussing things like this.  I remember the excitement that people got as we saw opensource flowing in a new direction.  (To that end, we recommneded the GFDL instead of the OGL, but that was shot down quickly.)

I think it's obvious that the OGL has failed.  A major system released under it, and their next revision was pulled out.  No other major system is released under the OGL.   Yes, there are derivatives of D20 that are now OGL'd and will always be.  But until you get the three things I mentioned above, you're not going to see any Open license mimic what the Free Software Movement has done.


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## BryonD (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> That was not the part that failed he is talking about. He was talking more about the "feed-back" cycle.
> 
> There is Arcana Evolved. But there are no products re-using the concepts of Arcana Evolved from other publishers.
> There's Iron Heroes. There is no one that re-used its mechanical elements and build upon that.
> ...



First I must point out that I think you really are not particularly familiar with Grim Tales.  Part of the genius of Grim Tales is that it takes so much of the best of the best and pulled it together into a single system.  It is exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.  Your point is still be valid overall, but Grim Tales is a great counter-example.



> Maybe it's true that this can never happen as long as WotC still owns D&D, using their License. But maybe there's just no interest in this. Maybe all people really want are different game systems. They don't need an evolving game, they need only the game for their taste. It's "everyone gets his own FTP Client with his specific features" vs "There is one FTP Client that everyone likes and has all the features".
> 
> Maybe mearls is wrong in believing that this could have happened at all. Role-players are diverse and even the subset of role-players that focus on D&D are to diverse to create an iterative process leading to a _generally_ better game. Judging from our "Edition Wars", that might indeed be the case.



I think there are two main issues here.
I think there are enough gamers that cling to some degree of "core only" that it was hard to move far from that base.  Obviously the true "core only" gamers were meaningless to the issue because they didn't buy anything else anyway.  But even gamers who bought 3PP supplements would be less inclined to buy supplements derived from other supplements.  So market forces dictated that almost everything stayed within one step of a "wotc only" game.  

Second, WotC decided that the OGL was their enemy a while ago.  I think we were very lucky to get psionics in the ogl.  It has been a while since they lifted a finger to support open gaming.  And I give them full credit, the ogl wouldn't have been there at all if not for them (even if it is a significantly different "them").  And I also don't think they had the slightest obligation to support it.  But if you plant some roses and then never tend to them, it isn't a fair judgment of the roses to say they didn't grow.  

I think a lot of closed mechanics came out and that really hurt the idea of ogl growth.  Obviously just the steady flow of WotC mechanics coming out is going to be a big pressure on how much risk a 3PP can afford to take.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg of their effect.  If 3PPs were allowed to work with more wotc stuff then who knows what could have grown from that.  That should have been the ogl's greatest catalyst, instead of its greatest hurdle.  Also, the more ground that was covered by wotc closed content, then more 3PPs felt obliged to steer clear of that area altogether.  The land mines of closed content in the field of open gaming were scary enough that it just wasn't worth the effort.

Again, I don't remotely think wotc had any obligation to support the ogl.  I just believe that their chosen path was a major element of the story of the ogl.  If you look at it as an experiment, then after the initial set-up they mostly just contaminated the system.  So the end result are very hard to consider really valid.  But that OGL did as well as it did in the face of this is quite a positive indicator.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> That was not the part that failed he is talking about. He was talking more about the "feed-back" cycle.
> 
> There is Arcana Evolved. But there are no products re-using the concepts of Arcana Evolved from other publishers.
> There's Iron Heroes. There is no one that re-used its mechanical elements and build upon that.
> ...




Excuse me? 

With all due respect, MR, you don't know what you're talking about.

Grim Tales was an attempt to do _exactly_ what Mike is grousing about. I'm not going to single GT out because I think it's the best, it just happens to be the one I am most familiar with.

Grim Tales used rules elements of 3e, 3.5, d20 Modern, Spycraft, several PDFs from The Game Mechanics, MMS:WE, and... oh hell, just read the goddamned Section 15. To put it in a nutshell, I used every single good d20 resource I could get my hands on and did the best I could to make them into a cohesive whole, adding new material where I could to fill in the gaps.

And when you are done, look at the S15 for the latest iteration of True20. They did the same thing-- they rolled up every good idea they could get their hands on, and improved upon it (through Steve Kenson, no less, I assume!).

As new things were released _after_ Grim Tales came out, I incorporated those ideas into rolling improvements published in other works or in PDFs, or updated existing GT pdfs.

It's not my fault that, as publishing houses go, I am a fart in a hurricane.



> We never saw a sustained effort to improve the fundamental rules of D&D, and it's debatable that any such improvement would be embraced as such by enough end users.




Mike Mearls is completely, staggeringly wrong here. 

Nobody tried to improve on the rules of D&D? What the hell was Mike doing all those years he was writing Dungeoncraft and Monstercraft and Book of Iron Might and Iron Heroes and... 

The entire life cycle of 3e was populated with a sustained effort to improve on the fundamental rules of D&D.

Maybe Mike doesn't want to count his own work, but it's incredibly insulting for him to discount the work of his fellow designer/publishers. There are so many examples I can only assume it's Mike's specific intent to piss all over everybody else.

So... Where did it break down?

WIZARDS OF THE ING COAST.

They are the ONLY player in a position to grab the best of all that work and incorporate it into the fundamental rules of D&D and ENSURE that those improvements were embraced by the end users. 

It was WIZARDS who dropped the ball. They and they alone are responsible for this perceived failure of the OGL.


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## BryonD (Jun 19, 2008)

Dude, I just SOOOO beat Wulf to the punch.  LOL


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

BryonD said:
			
		

> Dude, I just SOOOO beat Wulf to the punch.  LOL




Yes, but you didn't have to grab the top of your head off the ceiling and jam it back down on top of a steam furnace before you posted.

EDIT: And then edit your response down to just one profanity.

EDIT 2: And I _like_ Mustrum. God forbid I'd responded to someone else.


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## WhatGravitas (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> The entire life cycle of 3e was populated with a sustained effort to improve on the fundamental rules of D&D.



Or they were "supplementing" - and I think that's were it broke down. WotC, but other publishers to a certain extent, tried to a) supplement D&D, and b) explore untouched areas (like IH did low-magic), but not a lot aimed at a "new" core D&D, like Pathfinder does now.

A lot of stuff instead fled into niche business. And when one "big" thing, like Iron Heroes or Arcana Evolved or True20 came out, there wasn't a lot of 3rd party support for that - some adventures, in the best case a bit of settings... and so what?

No publisher did the job and tried to recompile all of that into a singular D&D-esque game. Grim Tales, for example, is cool, but it's also a niche product for Grim & Gritty - it's not D&D Deluxe.

And that was needed. And yes, WotC failed to do that, but until now, only Pathfinder fills that gap. And has now the burden of backwards compatibility.

Cheers, LT.


----------



## carmachu (Jun 19, 2008)

JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> Mister Mearls is a talented game designer but i have t oquestion the notion of  OGL failure.   Or the notion the "experiment" was even close to failure.
> 
> Arcan Evolved/Unearthed, Conan, Iron Heroes, Castles & Crusades, True 20, Cthulhu-D20, Mutants and Mastermindsand Spycraft.  Were not OGL failures.
> 
> ...





Yup. I find Merles words to be more spin on teh heals of the terrible GSL that was released.....


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## Keith Robinson (Jun 19, 2008)

I think the true success or failure of the OGL will be how it stands up now that it is no longer officially supported by WotC (or, if you prefer, now WotC have washed their hands of it).  There have already been a raft of excellent stand alone products produced using the OGL and with Pathfinder still to come, who knows what else we'll see in the future?

For Mike Mearls to say it has been a failure really shouldn't be seen as that much of a surprise - it all seems part of the present WotC war on the OGL.  I don't blame them for that, but I think it's the very success of the OGL that has brought about this attempt to discredit and marginilize it.  Of course, I find it somehwhat ironic that Mearls, who made his name designing OGL products, should now have the nerve to tell us how unsuccessful it was.


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## Glyfair (Jun 19, 2008)

BryonD said:
			
		

> Second, WotC decided that the OGL was their enemy a while ago.



I disagree with this.  It's clear this was true with certain factions in WotC (and later Hasbro).  However, it's equally true that they are strong supporters within the company.  WotC's problem is that this internal powerplay makes it hard to get things done (look at the attempt to get the GSL out the door since last August).


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## Mark (Jun 19, 2008)

The OGL cannot fail the community; the original licenser, as licensee, ceased supporting the OGL as fully as it had at the outset.  It is not a failure of the license that no one is forced to utilize it.  Licensees can fail to use it, or fail to use it correctly, but the license itself cannot fail because it cannot be revoked.  Licensees can have failures or successes, and the community as beneficiary can have times of disappointment and satisfaction, but the license itself is merely a tool used to produce those results.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

The Kyngdoms said:
			
		

> I think the true success or failure of the OGL will be how it stands up now that it is no longer officially supported by WotC (or, if you prefer, now WotC have washed their hands of it).  There have already been a raft of excellent stand alone products produced using the OGL and with Pathfinder still to come, who knows what else we'll see in the future?
> 
> For Mike Mearls to say it has been a failure really shouldn't be seen as that much of a surprise - it all seems part of the present WotC war on the OGL.  I don't blame them for that, but I think it's the very success of the OGL that has brought about this attempt to discredit and marginilize it.  Of course, I find it somehwhat ironic that Mearls, who made his name designing OGL products, should now have the nerve to tell us how unsuccessful it was.



He wrote that an important part of the OGL success he sees was the fact that it trained new game designers. 

The failures of the OGL he sees lie elsewhere. He is not saying that the OGL was a bad idea or total failure. He says it has successful aspects and failed aspects.


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## BryonD (Jun 19, 2008)

Glyfair said:
			
		

> I disagree with this.  It's clear this was true with certain factions in WotC (and later Hasbro).  However, it's equally true that they are strong supporters within the company.  WotC's problem is that this internal powerplay makes it hard to get things done (look at the attempt to get the GSL out the door since last August).



I'm not talking about the voices of individuals within the company.
The moves that WotC took were on the anti-OGL side.
You may be able to claim that it was pure 50/50 internally and the tie simply went to the "do nothing" side.  But that still perfectly fits my point.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Lord Tirian said:
			
		

> No publisher did the job and tried to recompile all of that into a singular D&D-esque game. Grim Tales, for example, is cool, but it's also a niche product for Grim & Gritty - it's not D&D Deluxe.




First of all, I'd argue that AU/AE is certainly a singular D&D-esque game. 

But more to the point, it's hard to blame the publishers for _not pissing in WotCs pool_.

There were plenty of great rules innovations that WotC _could have_ incorporated into D&D. That they chose not to is not a failure of the OGL.

I would love to see Pathfinder take up this mantle but, as others have pointed out, it has backwards compatibility issues. 

WotC and WotC alone was in a position to bring OGC into the core of D&D, to make the hard decisions about what needed changing and what did not, and push it out so that it would be accepted.


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## ThirdWizard (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> The failures of the OGL he sees lie elsewhere. He is not saying that the OGL was a bad idea or total failure. He says it has successful aspects and failed aspects.




Some people have some very selective reading.



			
				mearls said:
			
		

> In the end, it failed to achieve the same type of success as open source software.



But then later he says:


			
				mearls said:
			
		

> That alone makes it a success.




Basically he's saying: it failed in one area (that he deems important), but overall it is a success.

Don't bemoan him as anti-OGL people. If anyone is pro-OGL, its Mike Mearls!


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

I think the true judgment on whether or not the OGL has failed lies not with Pathfinder or other 3.5/3.0 derivs.  I think to see whether the license is a failure or not, we'll need to see other games using completely different systems become successful at it.

Yes, the d20 derivs ARE important.  But Linux isn't successful as opensource because Linus wrote the kernel and released it under the GPL.  It's successful because a compiler was under the GPL, a display engine is under a Free License, a web browser is open source, a desktop system is under the GPL... 

It's not just one system that needs to be open for the "Open source" mentality to be successful in gaming.  It's many successful systems that need to be open.    And it needs to prove viability with those systems being open.

One thing I have learned about being an opensource developer.. and that is you do a lot of things for love first and money second.  It's important to understand that a commercial entity entering into Open products must have altruism or long term goals in mind.  

Personally, I am more in favor of "Data/Engine" type open source for game systems.  Similar to what Id Software did with their past engines, they released it open source.    However, the data files that run in those engines are still retained as IP.

I think for Open RPGs to really have a chance at mimicing the Open nature of opensource software, it will require a license that's more viral, one that makes anything engine related open by rule.


----------



## hexgrid (Jun 19, 2008)

mearls said:
			
		

> I don't think it's fair to say that open gaming was a failure, it just took a different path in gaming when compared to software.




It's strange how many people in this thread claim to disagree with mearls, but counter with the exact argument he was making.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 19, 2008)

> Basically he's saying: it failed in one area (that he deems important), but overall it is a success.




Uh-hu.

This thread is weird. Mearls is saying OGL is ultimately a good thing, but that it didn't quite work like the Open Source software that it was analogous to did, because so many people wanted so many different things than D&D.

I agree.

I don't think this is a bad thing. I think, ultimately, that this makes D&D a better game, because _it's never the perfect game for everyone_. 

I think the new GSL, in limiting the 4e mechanics, won't have nearly the same positive effect on the game, yet True20 and Pathfinder, in remaining open, will continue to improve and modify the d20 system itself.


----------



## chriton227 (Jun 19, 2008)

ThirdWizard said:
			
		

> _Anything_ that ends in d20 fits my description of "publishers who got into the market under the OGL blanket." I'm talking about non-d20 things. I'm talking about not the expansion of d20 gaming but the expansion of (edit) the use of (/edit) the _license_. If the OGL remained only for d20 games, then it has no traction in the greater RPG community. If almost all you can find published under the OGL is d20, then it's not much of a movement _at all_ IMO.




I thought the entire point of the OGL was for publishing d20 system products and derivitives, why would someone use the OGL for something non-d20 when the primary benefit of the OGL was access to using the d20 system in your product?  If you want to open source a non-d20 product, you would be better off using a license better suited for it, whether that be something like Creative Commons or whether you come up with your own tied to the core mechanics of the system you are trying to open, otherwise you are tied in to WotC's restrictions for very little benefit.  This would be akin to using an open source license from Microsoft that gave you specific permission to use portions of the MS code base, but then using it to publish a Java program that doesn't use the MS code base at all.

I also know at least one of those publishers (Pinnacle) that didn't "get into the market under the OGL blanket", at least not unless the OGL was around back in '94-'95 when Pinnacle started publishing Deadlands, Great Rail War, Hell on Earth, etc.  I'm pretty sure White Wolf was around before the OGL too, given that I remember my FLGS reducing the shelf space for D&D 2nd Ed. to make room for V:tM books.

I'm really not understanding the point you are trying to make.  At first, it seemed to me that you were saying that you feel a failing of the OGL is that it didn't seduce established game publishers into producing OGL works, but then when you are provided with examples of established game publishers that did produce OGL works, you hand-wave them away saying "they put d20 at the end of the product title, so they don't count".  Are you trying to say that the failing is that the OGL didn't attract established companies, or is it that the established companies didn't use the OGL to open source their existing products without converting them to d20?

To have companies release their non-d20 system under the OGL, the OGL would need to be maintained by a separate organization rather than a specific player in the market.  The organization could be made up of representatives from many publishers, but as an entity it would need to be independant from any given specific publisher. I know very few companies that would be willing to let a direct competitor unilaterally decide the terms under which their products were distributed, and another publisher opening their proprietary system under WotC's OGL would be doing just that.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> Yes, but you didn't have to grab the top of your head off the ceiling and jam it back down on top of a steam furnace before you posted.
> 
> EDIT: And then edit your response down to just one profanity.
> 
> EDIT 2: And I _like_ Mustrum. God forbid I'd responded to someone else.



I respond to this post because it's shorter. 

You're right and I am wrong. At least towards True20 and Grim Tales, I guess.  It's easy to paint with a broad brush.

But then I say: I don't feel like True20 or Grim Tales are a success. I don't play them. I wasn't even interested in enough to buy them. I don't think that is failure of the quality of True20 or Grim Tales, it might be more a sign of a general symptom - people don't want multiple similar games. And that might indeed indicate a failure of WotC, because if they had created their "GrimTales/True20" variant as an (OGL) D&D game, the OGL might have looked more successful...


----------



## Hussar (Jun 19, 2008)

Honestly, considering that the GSL looks pretty much the same as the STL (Yes, yes, I know it's not the same, sit down in the back), I think that we'll see some pretty decent stuff for 4e, same as we did for 3e.  Let's not forget, it wasn't until after the bubble burst that people dropped the STL.  

For example, Mongoose's Seafarer's Handbook is STL, I believe the original Creature Collection was STL, as was the Book of Eldritch Might.

So, it's not like we were starved for chewy goodness under the STL.  



			
				BryonD said:
			
		

> Second, WotC decided that the OGL was their enemy a while ago. I think we were very lucky to get psionics in the ogl. It has been a while since they lifted a finger to support open gaming. And I give them full credit, the ogl wouldn't have been there at all if not for them (even if it is a significantly different "them"). And I also don't think they had the slightest obligation to support it. But if you plant some roses and then never tend to them, it isn't a fair judgment of the roses to say they didn't grow.




I've seen this repeated time and time again.  And, I've always asked the same question:  What did 3rd party publishers add to the SRD?

Why does everyone get to crap all over WOTC for not putting their books up, but, everyone else gets a free ride?


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> But then I say: I don't feel like True20 or Grim Tales are a success. I don't play them.




This would fall under criteria of "fart in a hurricane" I mentioned earlier. I'm not offended that you don't play my little vanity press game. Honestly.



> And that might indeed indicate a failure of WotC, because if they had created their "GrimTales/True20" variant as an (OGL) D&D game, the OGL might have looked more successful...




I'll repeat: It's incumbent upon WotC to find, incorporate, and therefore legitimize OGC rules innovations.

I honestly don't understand anyone saying that the OGL was a failure because, essentially, nobody succeeded in supplanting D&D with an alternate, albeit improved, ruleset.

Nobody COULD have supplanted D&D even if anybody had WANTED to.

This _specific_ "failure" of the OGL is entirely WotC's.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 19, 2008)

wayne62682 said:
			
		

> I propose that we start calling WotC "WotCSoft" in honor of their new strides towards a proprietary system.



Wouldn't it be much more pithy if we incorporated a dollar sign somehow? Like "WotC$oft"? That's what we like to do, right?


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## Nadaka (Jun 19, 2008)

To say that OGL failed because there was not an iterative design process with a centralized evolving core is not quite correct. It did not develop a centralized evolving core because there was never a system in place to aggregate that core.

For an open project, even in the software world, if you want to receive submissions, you need a method of receiving them. Otherwise you have no choice but to watch your project fork. WotC utterly failed to provide this. If that is what they really wanted, they would have deployed some kind of version control system with an open portal for change/addition submissions. This can be done either manually, by opening a mailbox/email with personel dedicated to reviewing and incorporating submissions into the SRD. or it could be more of an automated system where change submissions are queued automatically and displayed for public review. To be finalized would require sufficient "votes" from the community before being admitted to the "code base". Of course there are other ways of doing this as well.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> I've seen this repeated time and time again.  And, I've always asked the same question:  What did 3rd party publishers add to the SRD?
> 
> Why does everyone get to crap all over WOTC for not putting their books up, but, everyone else gets a free ride?




And I believe you were slapped on this previously. Is it "Thank you sir, may I have another!" time?

3rd party publishers can't "add" to the SRD.

3rd party publishers can release portions of their work as OGC. 

With respect to the aforementioned slapping, it was pointed out to you the vast swathes of 3rd party OGC that was 100% Open.

Start with True20.

And stop asking the same ill-informed question "time and time again."


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## Nadaka (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> And I believe you were slapped on this previously. Is it "Thank you sir, may I have another!" time?
> 
> 3rd party publishers can't "add" to the SRD.
> 
> ...




I picked up a copy of true20 revised yesterday at books a million, it was the last one left sitting right next to stacks and stacks of unsold 4e books.


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## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> I've seen this repeated time and time again.  And, I've always asked the same question:  What did 3rd party publishers add to the SRD?
> 
> Why does everyone get to crap all over WOTC for not putting their books up, but, everyone else gets a free ride?





In effect every single company that relased anything under the OGL added to the SRD.


----------



## Delta (Jun 19, 2008)

I'm somewhat amused by this. I've been in a lot of discussions where I point out that Ryan Dancey's original idea for Open Gaming was to have open, iterative advancement of the mechanics. (That's specifically what brought me back to the 3E.) But whenever I've said that I get massive flack for misunderstanding the goal of the OGL.

Well, here's Mearls now, again saying the exact same thing. It's the first thing he mentions in the article, the biggest section, and the only point of disappointment. 

But once again I'll say that the fault for this not working lies squarely with WOTC. As the 800-pound gorilla, they had to demonstrate that outside rule changes and demands were being incorporated back into the core rules (as stated in Dancey's original FAQ, still up at Wizards.com). They completely didn't do that -- very quickly walking away from Open Gaming, ditching Ryan Dancey, and cooking up 3.5E within 36 months that took off in a completely unpredictable direction. 

In later years the excuse for this has been that WOTC has such spectacular designers in-house that no one else's designs could possibly be useful in comparison. But that's classic "cathedral vs. bazaar" thinking which itself shows that Open Sourcing was being rejected by WOTC before it ever had a chance to prove itself.


----------



## Fifth Element (Jun 19, 2008)

Nadaka said:
			
		

> I picked up a copy of true20 revised yesterday at books a million, it was the last one left sitting right next to stacks and stacks of unsold 4e books.



Did you ask when was the last time they restocked both titles?


----------



## frankthedm (Jun 19, 2008)

The blog brought up what seemed a good point on not enough companies were tweaking the system, but that would be very hard to do since leveling up was kind of a hands off thing for OGL/d20 IIRC. _Plus any tweaks reducing player damage output would have_ nerfed_ book sales...._

'Did any companies do an AC/saves/HP/damage per level revision of 3.5 for players NPCs and monsters?'

A few like True20 went away from HP/Damage, but did any keep them and track them [like 4e now does]


----------



## ThirdWizard (Jun 19, 2008)

chriton227 said:
			
		

> I thought the entire point of the OGL was for publishing d20 system products and derivitives, why would someone use the OGL for something non-d20 when the primary benefit of the OGL was access to using the d20 system in your product?




I'm not saying the OGL was not a _success_. I would never make that claim. I'm saying it wasn't a _movement_. And, there were games published under the OGL that weren't d20, the primary example that comes to mind being FUDGE. But, that's an outlier. And there _are_ others. But, a few outliers do not make a movement.



> I also know at least one of those publishers (Pinnacle) that didn't "get into the market under the OGL blanket", at least not unless the OGL was around back in '94-'95 when Pinnacle started publishing Deadlands, Great Rail War, Hell on Earth, etc.  I'm pretty sure White Wolf was around before the OGL too, given that I remember my FLGS reducing the shelf space for D&D 2nd Ed. to make room for V:tM books.




When I say "market" I'm referring to the OGL market. And when I talk about a movement, I'm talking about traction in more area than WotC based publications.



> Are you trying to say that the failing is that the OGL didn't attract established companies, or is it that the established companies didn't use the OGL to open source their existing products without converting them to d20?




Yes, that exactly. Almost no one opened content unless it was content that was derived from other OGC. There were very few contributers to OGC who were not required to contribute to it under the terms of the OGL.



> To have companies release their non-d20 system under the OGL, the OGL would need to be maintained by a separate organization rather than a specific player in the market.




The fact that no version of the OGL cannot be revoked means that there would not have to be any maintaining going on anywhere. There is no danger in releasing your content as Open in that regard. It isn't really WotC's OGL in that context: genie, bottle, out.

But, my entire point is that the OGL wasn't a true movement simply because it was tied so specifically to Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons and Dragons and never really expanded beyond that. I'm not saying its a failing, exactly, of the license, and I'm certainly not saying the license was a failure. I'm simply pointing out its limitations as an Open Source movement.


----------



## Mark (Jun 19, 2008)

JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> In effect every single company that relased anything under the OGL added to the SRD.






Nope.  Strictly speaking, they added to the pool of OGC which also includes the OGC material from the SRD but the SRD is a separate document.


----------



## Kid Charlemagne (Jun 19, 2008)

Nadaka said:
			
		

> To say that OGL failed because there was not an iterative design process with a centralized evolving core is not quite correct. It did not develop a centralized evolving core because there was never a system in place to aggregate that core.




I think this is a critical point that no one to this point has really brought up before.  People have placed that onus on WoTC, but I don't know that they ever really saw that as their role.  My personal thought at the time was that if systems came into play that were demonstrably better than what WoTC produced that they would then use them.  As Mearls rightly points out, thats a very tough call when you're dealing with something that has so much subjectivity involved.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2008)

Delta said:
			
		

> I'm somewhat amused by this. I've been in a lot of discussions where I point out that Ryan Dancey's original idea for Open Gaming was to have open, iterative advancement of the mechanics. (That's specifically what brought me back to the 3E.) But whenever I've said that I get massive flack for misunderstanding the goal of the OGL.
> 
> Well, here's Mearls now, again saying the exact same thing. It's the first thing he mentions in the article, the biggest section, and the only point of disappointment.
> 
> But once again I'll say that the fault for this not working lies squarely with WOTC. As the 800-pound gorilla, they had to demonstrate that outside rule changes and demands were being incorporated back into the core rules (as stated in Dancey's original FAQ, still up at Wizards.com). They completely didn't do that -- very quickly walking away from Open Gaming, ditching Ryan Dancey, and cooking up 3.5E within 36 months that took off in a completely unpredictable direction.



I think that saying it was WotC fault isn't wrong. They never had the required "feed-back" mechanismn in place. Ryan either didn't think of installing it, or it was just impossible for him (or WotC itself?) to do so.

Thus, the iterative design could not happen in the SRD so that everyone can see it. It is nice if dozens of publishers offer Open Content, but if you have to find these dozen publishers first, it can be off-putting.

So, maybe if we'd want to create the perfect "OGL 2.0", there would need to be a "community repository" where people could present their changes, variants and subsystems. 

The problem might be building the core in the first place now. 3E can only be used in the context of the OGL, 4E only in the context of the GSL. And without these two game systems, it's hard to find a universally accepted system. 
Maybe a bunch of freelance designers could "hack" something together, but would it be accepted?


----------



## chriton227 (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> I've seen this repeated time and time again.  And, I've always asked the same question:  What did 3rd party publishers add to the SRD?
> 
> Why does everyone get to crap all over WOTC for not putting their books up, but, everyone else gets a free ride?




I think it is because the SRD is the intellectual property of WotC, and only they have the right to modify it and still call it the SRD.  The OGL just gave others the right to use the SRD in their products.  Since only WotC has the authority to make changes to the SRD, other companies not making changes to it isn't a "free ride".  And according to the OGL, any crunchy bits published under the OGL _are_ available to other publishers, unlike the majority of the WotC products which were not required to be published under either the OGL or the STL since D&D is their property to begin with.


----------



## Mark (Jun 19, 2008)

Kid Charlemagne said:
			
		

> I think this is a critical point that no one to this point has really brought up before.  People have placed that onus on WoTC, but I don't know that they ever really saw that as their role.  My personal thought at the time was that if systems came into play that were demonstrably better than what WoTC produced that they would then use them.  As Mearls rightly points out, thats a very tough call when you're dealing with something that has so much subjectivity involved.





By that logic, shouldn't 4E have been produced under the OGL?


----------



## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

frankthedm said:
			
		

> 'Did any companies do an AC/saves/HP/damage per level revision of 3.5 for players NPCs and monsters?'




Yes.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Kid Charlemagne said:
			
		

> My personal thought at the time was that if systems came into play that were demonstrably better than what WoTC produced that they would then use them.  As Mearls rightly points out, thats a very tough call when you're dealing with something that has so much subjectivity involved.




That's exactly my point. 

Wizards and Wizards alone is in a position to make those very tough calls.

In fact they _did_ make that call with 4e, on a great many things (alignment, hit points, healing surges, spells per day, fundamental math, on and on).

Not everybody agrees with those changes, obviously, but there's no denying that WotC alone can _force_ those kinds of changes.


----------



## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

there was an anime SRD, a mecha SRD and more built off of the d20- SRD that were released as SRD.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> And I believe you were slapped on this previously. Is it "Thank you sir, may I have another!" time?
> 
> 3rd party publishers can't "add" to the SRD.
> 
> ...




What prevents a 3rd party SRD?

Oh right, 3rd party publishers.  

Yup, 100% open, and when someone comes along and tries to make that material available, they get told in no uncertain terms that they shouldn't.  The aforementioned freakage when someone had the temerity to suggest such an undertaking, for example.

But, yes, in the interests of being 100% pedantically correct, 3rd party publishers cannot add to the SRD.


----------



## Nadaka (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> That's exactly my point.
> 
> Wizards and Wizards alone is in a position to make those very tough calls.
> 
> ...




One of the things that bothers me is that a lot of the changes made for 4e were long discussed and had very similar mechanics released under the OGL. They have taken our "open feedback" and closed it off.


----------



## chriton227 (Jun 19, 2008)

ThirdWizard said:
			
		

> But, my entire point is that the OGL wasn't a true movement simply because it was tied so specifically to Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons and Dragons and never really expanded beyond that. I'm not saying its a failing, exactly, of the license, and I'm certainly not saying the license was a failure. I'm simply pointing out its limitations as an Open Source movement.




It sounds like what is really required for Open Gaming to become a movement like Open Source would be for an independant third party to establish a new license designed for broad use and not tied to any particular product or company.  This could fall under an organization like GAMA, or it could be an entirely new organization founded to promote open gaming made up of representatives from a variety of companies and backgrounds.


----------



## PapersAndPaychecks (Jun 19, 2008)

That blog post was actually a great deal more insightful than I thought it would be.  I'm glad I read it, and thanks for the link.

One phrase I did want to extract from it was:

_Tabletop RPGs continue to survive... precisely because of their DIY nature._

This is only part of the reason they survive.  (Tabletop RPGs survive partly because of their DIY nature and partly because they're social--they have a level of personal interaction no computer game will match in the foreseeable future short of physically taking your laptop to a friend's house and playing a linkup in his front room.)  

But from a licensing point of view it's critical.  The OGL is irrevocable, thank goodness (and thank Ryan Dancey), so DIY tabletop RPGs will continue to be published and played for a long time to come.

I also suspect there's a lot Mike Mearls thinks but can't say.


----------



## PapersAndPaychecks (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> What prevents a 3rd party SRD?
> 
> Oh right, 3rd party publishers.
> 
> ...




I think I've managed to create quite a successful 3rd party SRD, actually.  I don't feel "prevented".


----------



## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> What prevents a 3rd party SRD?
> 
> Oh right, 3rd party publishers.  .




Google SRD you'll find plenty of publishers that embrced the option. Not even all of them use d20.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Nadaka said:
			
		

> One of the things that bothers me is that a lot of the changes made for 4e were long discussed and had very similar mechanics released under the OGL. They have taken our "open feedback" and closed it off.




No mechanics and certainly nothing released under the OGL can be "closed off" by WotC.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

CapnZapp said:
			
		

> Did mearls really think people would slave away improving the D&D rules when *they are owned by WotC*?!




Ryan Dancey did, as that was one of his reasons for supporting open gaming: having the community improve the game they love iteratively.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> Interesting. If WotC had been a custodian of the 3.5 OGC, expanding on the SRD with proven and tested variants and improvements, then the publishers might have felt more motivated to share and improve the core.




Remember, Mearls proposed an OGC wiki exactly for this purpose, and it didn't garner much support from publishers because most didn't want their OGC compiled into a free format.


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> Remember, Mearls proposed an OGC wiki exactly for this purpose, and it didn't garner much support from publishers because most didn't want their OGC compiled into a free format.




And THIS was the point that someone should have taken it and DONE IT ANYWAY.

If the gatekeepers do not allow anyone to alter the open content, you MUST get a new gatekeeper.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> They were not simply closed off-shoots of development.




Yes, they were. They were developed by a closed group of designers and developers, not open to the community. And even today, you don't have open development like that. The closest the industry has come is open alpha/beta testing like Pathfinder is doing.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

wayne62682 said:
			
		

> Would *you* pay $125/exam to take tests to become a WCDM (Wizards Certified Dungeon Master)?




So long as Chris Perkins is the one running the training program, I'd consider it. That man is an uber-DM.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

The Kyngdoms said:
			
		

> For Mike Mearls to say it has been a failure really shouldn't be seen as that much of a surprise - it all seems part of the present WotC war on the OGL.




Last time I checked, "I don't think it's fair to say that open gaming was a failure, it just took a different path in gaming when compared to software." is not calling the OGL a failure.


----------



## Ximenes088 (Jun 19, 2008)

I think it's apt to be a wee bit hard to fold improvements back into core D&D for a couple reasons.

1) Nobody can agree on what the improvements are. WotC's been giving 4e the kind of focus-group studying and playtesting that no third-party publisher can hope to have done, and they still get people screaming at the results.

2) The core rules cannot change rapidly. 3.0 to 3.5 was a relatively minor mechanical tweak, and we all know how that went over. When a new feature or optimization pops up in a piece of software, precious few people start wailing. WotC simply _cannot_ fold in improvements except at 8-10 year intervals without splintering their playerbase into useless little pieces.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 19, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> I think I've managed to create quite a successful 3rd party SRD, actually.  I don't feel "prevented".




Funnily enough, the 3rd party SRD you created had ZERO to do with OGC material.



			
				JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> Google SRD you'll find plenty of publishers that embrced the option. Not even all of them use d20.




Dunno about your Google, but, my Google search of SRD turned up the 3.5 SRD in various forms, the Modern SRD and Spirit of the Century a fair ways down.  That's only the top 50 results, to be honest, but, I'm thinking "plenty" might be stretching things.

Where's the Mongoose SRD?  AEG?  Sword and Sorcery?  Malhavoc?  Green Ronin?  

I keep getting told how these companies are so devoted to the OGF, yet, when the time comes around to add to the pot, everyone's got their hands out to WOTC.

Y'know what?  I keep having this same conversation.  I'm tired of spinning my wheels here.  Some people are obviously convinced that 3rd party publishers cannot do any wrong and that WOTC should be giving away everything they can to the OGF, while 3rd party publishers continue to block any effort to make OGC more available.

That's fine.  You can believe that all you like.  For my part, when the 3rd party publishers jumped up and said, "No way, you cannot take my OGC and reprint it!" they lost any and all sympathy from me.

Which is a shame really.  My gaming shelf is about half and half WOTC and 3rd party.  I LIKE d20 material by and large.  But the actions of those who defend the OGL really leave me cold.


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> That's fine.  You can believe that all you like.  For my part, when the 3rd party publishers jumped up and said, "No way, you cannot take my OGC and reprint it!" they lost any and all sympathy from me.




But you can.

You can take their stuff and reprint it and put it on a wiki or do whatever.  That's what the OGL says.  See, in the opensource world that Dancey was trying to emulate with the OGL, if you get people saying stuff like that, their code gets copied, forked, and replaced.

If you're not willing to do that here, then you really don't care about Open , and you just are doing it for the warm fuzzies.  Fine enough, but, still.. fork it if the people maintaining it are not following the OGL.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

Mark said:
			
		

> Nope.  Strictly speaking, they added to the pool of OGC which also includes the OGC material from the SRD but the SRD is a separate document.




And remember, several key OGC producers objected to having their OGC compiled into something like an SRD.


----------



## PapersAndPaychecks (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Funnily enough, the 3rd party SRD you created had ZERO to do with OGC material.




That's true, although it has quite a lot to do with the concept of Open OSRIC Content.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

redcard said:
			
		

> You can take their stuff and reprint it and put it on a wiki or do whatever.  That's what the OGL says.  See, in the opensource world that Dancey was trying to emulate with the OGL, if you get people saying stuff like that, their code gets copied, forked, and replaced.




I think you're missing Hussar's point.

Yes, by putting out OGC, they were saying "Yes, use my content freely for whatever purpose you wish, whether for personal or commercial use." However, when someone proposes basically making an SRD of all of their OGC, they turned around and said "No, don't use it that freely." That strikes some of us as rather... well... hypocritical. They want to benefit from the concept, but don't really want to contribute to it in the same fashion. And they get a free pass from many in the community because they're not WotC.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 19, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> That's true, although it has quite a lot to do with the concept of Open OSRIC Content.




Heh, well now that's true.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> I think you're missing Hussar's point.
> 
> Yes, by putting out OGC, they were saying "Yes, use my content freely for whatever purpose you wish, whether for personal or commercial use." However, when someone proposes basically making an SRD of all of their OGC, they turned around and said "No, don't use it that freely."




Are you referring to Andy Collins and Unearthed Arcana?


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> I think you're missing Hussar's point.
> 
> Yes, by putting out OGC, they were saying "Yes, use my content freely for whatever purpose you wish, whether for personal or commercial use." However, when someone proposes basically making an SRD of all of their OGC, they turned around and said "No, don't use it that freely." That strikes some of us as rather... well... hypocritical. They want to benefit from the concept, but don't really want to contribute to it in the same fashion. And they get a free pass from many in the community because they're not WotC.




Oh, I get the point precisely.   I know what happened, I watched it happen.  My point is that people should use it that freely ANYWAY.  It IS hypocritical when companies do that, but it's also something that is completely outside their control.

If you want freedom like the software open source movement has, you have to be willing to call people on it when they try to abuse that.  You have to be willing to take the OGC content and move it away from people who "free'd" it but are now deciding it's not free.  

I think people were being FAR too nice in situations where obvious breaches in the OGL occurred.    A company does NOT have the right to say "No, you can't use it for this purpose" after releasing something as OGC under the OGL.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 19, 2008)

redcard said:
			
		

> A company does NOT have the right to say "No, you can't use it for this purpose" after releasing something as OGC under the OGL.




To my knowledge, no publisher ever said "You can't."

I think all publishers from WotC on down are in agreement that there are responsible ways to use those rights, and irresponsible ways to use those rights.


----------



## Remathilis (Jun 19, 2008)

Put on another hat for a minute...

Lets say WotC decided rightly to "evolve" the D&D line by using open d20 rules. To make a constantly compiled D&D ruleset using the creme-de-la-creme of the OGL market.

It would have failed. Why? D&D is NOT software. 

First and foremost, there is no useful method of applying the changes made by improving code. I just downloaded the third edition of Firefox yesterday, but before that I was using 2.0.0.14. That means 14 times I redownloaded Firefox to fix or tweak something on it. If you were a tech-savvy user who used d20srd.org or similar, that would be no big deal to add small changes, but would YOU buy the 14th iteration of the core books because they fixed grapple? 

3.5 was the closest WotC ever got to the concept of an "evolving core ruleset" which did borrow heavily from outside d20 sources (Monte Cooks ranger is the baseline for the 3.5 ranger, for example). And I can recall every person who bemoaned buying the 3.5 rule book because "WotC is selling us the same rules again". 

Duh. Microsoft sells you the same Word Processor every three years. 

For Wizards (who wished to remain a for-profit company) the return on OGL wasn't worth the cost. D&D gained little* in the form of innovation because many people were too busy re-inventing the wheel and making new competing d20 games. Sure Castles & Crusades is a wonderful game, but its materials (from the core books to Castle Zygag) were mostly incompatible with WotC's flagship game. C&C doesn't move PHBs. No more so than Storyteller books sell D&D books. WotC ended up making its own worst enemies (C&C, True d20, Pathfinder) who can better directly compete with D&D than WEG, White-Wolf, or Palladium ever could.

[* There was plenty of people who played nice. I don't want to take away from them. Necromancer Games, S&SS, Goodman Games, Kenzer, Green Ronin before going True d20, and others were very committed to expanding D&D rather than going out on its own.]

So WotC (via GSL) is putting a giant crimp in using its rules to stem the creation of its next level of competition. It sucks, but I can't say I blame them. After the bubble, most d20 products were competition, not enhancement to WotCs carefully constructed and expensively produced ruleset. WotC wants things like Slayer's Guide to Orcs, the Tome of Horrors, or Dungeon Crawl Classics, not Conan d20 or Castles and Crusades. The former doesn't challenge WotCs dominance and it makes people buy PHB2. The latter uses their toys to make new competing entities that doesn't need nor want PHB2. 

Welcome to Open Gaming 2008.


----------



## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> Remember, Mearls proposed an OGC wiki exactly for this purpose, and it didn't garner much support from publishers because most didn't want their OGC compiled into a free format.




Nothing at all other then time and money stopped anyone from building a OGC wiki.  No publisher of OGC material had any ability to do anything but whine once their originated OGC material made it into such a a wiki if properly cited.

The real problem with such a wiki would be the citations, they'd overwhelm the OGC rules on the page for word count.  (As i assume would be the requirment since people could link in to each entry and as such each entry would need a readble section  15 )


----------



## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Where's the Mongoose SRD?




mongoose runequest SRD-
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpg/series.php?qsSeries=39

There is or will be a Traveller SRD.  

So lookie there Mongoose supports open gaming.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> I think all publishers from WotC on down are in agreement that there are responsible ways to use those rights, and irresponsible ways to use those rights.




And therein lies the rub. What is, and what is not responsible, is up to debate, and not at all cut and dried.

Basically, some publishers said "sure you can use our OGC but you'd be a jerk to do it", and others didn't agree on the jerk part.

/M


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> Are you referring to Andy Collins and Unearthed Arcana?




No, I'm talking about the proposed OGC Wiki and the 3rd Party Publisher response to it.

Do you have a link for this Andy Collins/Unearthed Arcana incident you're talking about?


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

JDJblatherings said:
			
		

> Nothing at all other then time and money stopped anyone from building a OGC wiki.




I don't think this is true. I think the decision to respect the wishes of third-party publishers is the primary reason it didn't happen. Doing it would have generated ill-will between those publishers and the maintainer of the wiki, which would have been a bad thing for the community.



> No publisher of OGC material had any ability to do anything but whine once their originated OGC material made it into such a a wiki if properly cited.




No one is disputing that.



> The real problem with such a wiki would be the citations, they'd overwhelm the OGC rules on the page for word count.  (As i assume would be the requirment since people could link in to each entry and as such each entry would need a readble section  15 )




Nah, that wouldn't be a problem. The wiki format would be able to handle that very easily and neatly. The problem was that if a community project has generated ill-will from publishers, the community will probably suffer for it, because it'll make OGC far less prevalent in the future, to avoid that exact situation.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 19, 2008)

> If you were a tech-savvy user who used d20srd.org or similar, that would be no big deal to add small changes, but would YOU buy the 14th iteration of the core books because they fixed grapple?




Well, regardless of anything else, they don't need to re-publish the core rules with every update they could have made. Just re-publish them once every 7-10 years, somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0, y'know, when they have substantial changes. They could even release it as "PHB II" or "The Next Edition," with a host of new options, saying "Your old stuff still works, and now here's some new stuff using a slightly more cohesive ruleset, add these into your campaign as you go, we will use them going forward."

This would have a similar effect to a new edition without the complete disconnect from the previous edition. A "sweet spot" between 3.5's minor changes and 4e's major changes.

That's a false requirement (regardless of anything else).


----------



## Maggan (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> No, I'm talking about the proposed OGC Wiki and the 3rd Party Publisher response to it.
> 
> Do you have a link for this Andy Collins/Unearthed Arcana incident you're talking about?




http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=82908

/M


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> Nah, that wouldn't be a problem. The wiki format would be able to handle that very easily and neatly. The problem was that if a community project has generated ill-will from publishers, the community will probably suffer for it, because it'll make OGC far less prevalent in the future, to avoid that exact situation.




Which would mean that it was all a de-facto closed system anyway.


----------



## Henry (Jun 19, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Where's the Mongoose SRD?  AEG?  Sword and Sorcery?  Malhavoc?  Green Ronin?




Mongoose did release a SRD, maybe two: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/rqsrd.zip

According to the Mongoose Publishing web site, they're also releasing the new Traveller game under the OGL, with an SRD, in July of 2008.

Gold Rush games released the Action! System SRD, but their link to their download page is out, at the moment.

The SRD, JDJ's supposition aside, isn't the important part as much as how much material was opened for playing with under the OGL. For that, most publishers who used the OGL contributed significantly to it, and the pool of available rules.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

redcard said:
			
		

> Which would mean that it was all a de-facto closed system anyway.




Like I said, a lot of publishers were perfectly willing to take from the pot, but balked when it came to adding to the pot.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 19, 2008)

Nadaka said:
			
		

> To say that OGL failed because there was not an iterative design process with a centralized evolving core is not quite correct. It did not develop a centralized evolving core because there was never a system in place to aggregate that core.
> 
> For an open project, even in the software world, if you want to receive submissions, you need a method of receiving them. Otherwise you have no choice but to watch your project fork. WotC utterly failed to provide this. If that is what they really wanted, they would have deployed some kind of version control system with an open portal for change/addition submissions. This can be done either manually, by opening a mailbox/email with personel dedicated to reviewing and incorporating submissions into the SRD. or it could be more of an automated system where change submissions are queued automatically and displayed for public review. To be finalized would require sufficient "votes" from the community before being admitted to the "code base". Of course there are other ways of doing this as well.




This post just made my day.    It's like "alterna-english" or something.  "...deployed...version control system...open portal...change/addition sumissions."

I totally agree with it, btw.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=82908
> 
> /M




Can you be more specific? I don't want to wade through a 28 page thread looking for one or two posts for an incident that happened over four years ago.


----------



## howandwhy99 (Jun 19, 2008)

Does it seem odd to anyone else that one of its executioners is pulling the bell rope for the death knell of open gaming?


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> Does it seem odd to anyone else that one of its executioners is pulling the bell rope for the death knell of open gaming?




No, what seems odd is the amount of people that declare that Mearls is saying open gaming failed, when his blog post concedes that the opposite is true.


----------



## frankthedm (Jun 19, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> Does it seem odd to anyone else that one of its executioners is pulling the bell rope for the death knell of open gaming?



Considering that his current employer wants to be the Executioner, Mearls better be ringing the bells if he likes his job!


----------



## BryonD (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> I don't think this is true. I think the decision to respect the wishes of third-party publishers is the primary reason it didn't happen. Doing it would have generated ill-will between those publishers and the maintainer of the wiki, which would have been a bad thing for the community.



No, you are flat out wrong.
If anything the pro-wiki side got indignant and more than ever committed to doing it to those who didn't want to share.  Respect and avoiding ill-will was NOT a concern.
The reality was that it was going to take a lot of time and effort and frankly, the people most fired up about getting a free collection in one place were the people least inclined to get off their butts and do the work required.


----------



## howandwhy99 (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> No, what seems odd is the amount of people that declare that Mearls is saying open gaming failed, when his blog post concedes that the opposite is true.



Woah, woah, woah.  Please don't read into my post.  He's not declaring it justly dead.  Only that it is so, dead.

EDIT: Or is that my mistake?  Are you not referring to my post at all in your conclusion?


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 19, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> Are you not referring to my post at all in your conclusion?




Not referring to your post. Just talking about the general attitude from people that only seem to look at the blog post title and don't bother to read that he feels it's a success that had a few areas of failure.



			
				BryonD said:
			
		

> No, you are flat out wrong.




Got any objective proof, because opinions don't mean anything to the people that don't hold them?



> If anything the pro-wiki side got indignant and more than ever committed to doing it to those who didn't want to share. Respect and avoiding ill-will was NOT a concern.




There's a difference between ranting on forums about how you're going to do it, and actually going through with the process knowing what can result from it.

I may talk about how I'll hold my landlord accountable for not clearing brush on my hillside, because it's a fire hazard, but when it comes down to the result (us clashing and me probably moving), it's the result that I'm worried about, not the time and effort required.



> The reality was that it was going to take a lot of time and effort and frankly, the people most fired up about getting a free collection in one place were the people least inclined to get off their butts and do the work required.




There are people in every hobby that are willing to do all kinds of tedious work like this. People did it with the hypertext SRD, the Blue Rose SRD and other things like those.


----------



## Remathilis (Jun 19, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Well, regardless of anything else, they don't need to re-publish the core rules with every update they could have made. Just re-publish them once every 7-10 years, somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0, y'know, when they have substantial changes. They could even release it as "PHB II" or "The Next Edition," with a host of new options, saying "Your old stuff still works, and now here's some new stuff using a slightly more cohesive ruleset, add these into your campaign as you go, we will use them going forward."
> 
> This would have a similar effect to a new edition without the complete disconnect from the previous edition. A "sweet spot" between 3.5's minor changes and 4e's major changes.
> 
> That's a false requirement (regardless of anything else).




Ok, but that leads to some problems...

 3.75 syndrome. It took WotC 3 years to come up with a collection of rule changes they felt warranted a sub-edition. If 4e hadn't come around, I could easily see a 3.75 (or revision 2, or whatever) coming out this year. Considering we have about 8-10 years on an edition, this would've meant that before 3e ran its course, we would have had to buy the core rule-books as often as three times, if we wanted to keep to the latest version of the system. (and if you were a publisher, if you wanted to keep up with WotC's changes you'd have to dump stock and adopt 3.75 or be left in the dustbin as so many 3.0 products were after 3.5...)

 New Rulebook, New Rule. Perhaps instead of buying new core-books, we add the rules-addition to a yearly supplement (something 4e is trying). However, if the idea was to change (and not simply add) rules, you'd end up with PHB2, MM3, or other books of that caliber being REQUIRED for play, since the new rules for grapple are in PHB2 you'd need to buy that book to reference them (in say, a Goodman Game's module where the new rules are present). Think how many 3.5 books got the "Swift and Immediate Actions" sidebar reproduced? Times that by the new bard class, the revised grapple rules, the fixed incorporeal description, the new polymorph spell, etc...

 What is an edition. The last (rhetoric) question is; when would the next revision of 3.X become 4e? Would the next revision to the game simply be 3.75 dressed up as 4e? How much of the game would have to change?


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Guys, you're missing a core tenant of the Open Source movement.  It's one of the reasons why most , if not all Open Source projects are FREE as in beer and free as in money.

"Release Early, Release Often" is a best practice in the Open Source software world.  If you cannot do that, you will be successful.  So , the question of "could wizards do it?" is answered simply by stating that they'd probably switch to PDFs , have to go quarterly or monthly, and likely would charge a subscription fee.

Or just put it all on the web for free.


----------



## ThirdWizard (Jun 19, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> Woah, woah, woah.  Please don't read into my post.  He's not declaring it justly dead.  Only that it is so, dead.




If by "dead" you mean "overall a success" ?


----------



## Nadaka (Jun 19, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> This post just made my day.    It's like "alterna-english" or something.  "...deployed...version control system...open portal...change/addition sumissions."
> 
> I totally agree with it, btw.




Its what I do... I am a programmer, this is how I make a living.


----------



## Mark (Jun 19, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> And remember, several key OGC producers objected to having their OGC compiled into something like an SRD.





I think I might remember a few more details on this than you seem to be remembering, or discussing now anyway.  I think some publishers were nervous about the abilities of some re-users to get the copyright and OGL info correct (and that's a fair thing to be nervous about) and some others who went with 100% OGC products felt the community should give them a sell through period before re-using/redistributing it in its entirety (seems kinda fair).  Some small few that had previously went with 100% OGC vowed to trim back that generosity if their stuff was going to be freely distributed in its entirety by others (another reasonable reaction since they had been opening a ton of stuff that had not been required to be open).  I think there were a ton of viewpoints and permutations to this issue and some few people (you in particular) who are discussing it as if it was simple or black and white are ignoring the actuality of things.


You need to reassess the way in which you are broadbrushing OGC pubs, especially if you want to see more of them get involved in projects like an OGC wiki and even moreso if you want them to be as or more open with OGC declarations in the future.  If there are specific publishers you have a problem with, speak of them specifically and link to your evidence of actual wrong-doing, if it exists.  This use of "a lot of publishers" and "several key OGC producers" is starting to make you look like you are just rabble rousing.


----------



## Korgoth (Jun 19, 2008)

redcard said:
			
		

> Well, honestly, my FLGS hated the OGL.  Sure, it produced some good products, but now every Tom Dick and Harry who could buy the rights from a movie product would create a RPG using D20.  There are rows upon rows of merchndise that will never sell , will never be played, and are just crap products.  Yes, there were gems, and that's awesome, but there were a lot more stinkers than gems.




No offense but this is absolute baloney. I mean sure, your FLGS might hate the OGL. But that's not the OGL's fault... it's the FLGS' fault. I mean what, did hit men show up from their distributor and _force_ them to order 50 copies each of "Philately D20" and "The Complete Book of Gastric Disturbance D20"? No. No one forced them to order those unsold books. They ordered those unsold books because of poor business acumen. Sorry but how else to explain it?

If you don't keep up with your industry then you're going to make poor business decisions. If you order a ton of stuff that won't sell, that means you don't know your industry, your customers or both. You can't just tell your distributor "I'll take 5 of everything" and expect to do anything besides take a bath on half your merchandise.

I always hear about this "OGL glut".  Guess what? In capitalism, having a glut of crummy merchandise is a self-correcting problem. People quickly figure out that Goodman Games produces a quality product and Schlamazel Scriptorium does not. One stays in business and the other doesn't.

By the same token, your FLGS, as nice and goodly as they may be, need to learn how to be discriminating in their orders in order to be more profitable... or they too will go down. And that's true whether there's an OGL or not.

Your statement amounts to saying that the OGL was bad because it doesn't allow your FLGS to be clueless.


----------



## redcard (Jun 19, 2008)

Korgoth said:
			
		

> I mean what, did hit men show up from their distributor and _force_ them to order 50 copies each of "Philately D20" and "The Complete Book of Gastric Disturbance D20"? No. No one forced them to order those unsold books. They ordered those unsold books because of poor business acumen. Sorry but how else to explain it?




No, but it was indicated by the distributors that had purchased their own 50 copies of Philately D20 that PD20 was selling better than indicated, since they had to get rid of their copies.  There was a lot of grandstanding in those days about how wonderful this was, and how great the products were.

I'll admit it was their choice to buy it, but there was a lot of people holding a lot of product that shouldn't have been out there, and the FLGS is near the end of that chain.. and sometimes some little white lies were told with regards to sales.


----------



## pawsplay (Jun 19, 2008)

I think Mike Mearls missed the point. OGL was not going to evolve or improve D&D. The fragmented market he talked about, with different solutions to different "problems" is actually the logical result. This fragementation was productive. He used an FTP client as an example, but RPGs are more like "an OS," and there are a zillion of them with slightly different characteristics that are aimed at different requirements. FreeBSD is not the same as Linux, or for that matter, BSDi. 

In a relatively short period of time, the OGL resulted in Conan, Mutants & Masterminds, and Arcana Unearthed, then rapidly spread over to the Runequest games and other stuff. WotC's own Unearthed Arcana became wildly popular with GMs. 3.5 grew and flourished, and the third party market along with it.

Then WotC decided they were done with it. Mike Mearls is declaring the OGL a "failure" basically because his paycheck comes from people who want it to fail. I'm not saying Mr. Mearls is a bad person or deluded or whatever, just that people's opinions definitely reflect their reality. The OGL and similar ideas are very threatening to traditional corporate mentalities, and that definitely describes Hasbro.

WotC is wondering, "What will this show on our balance sheets in the next four quarters?" Whereas hobbyists want to know, "What's the future of gaming? This year? Ten years from now? For my children?"

Corporations tend to be conservative; the OGL is hard to quantify. Corporations are territorial; the OGL questions some assumptions about value. 

WotC is hoping people will want to ride 4e's coattails. That is a reasonable expectation. But what happens when WotC wants to hitch a ride on the OGL? The cat really is out of the bag. The potential was there before for open gaming, but with the biggest player not joining in the game, it was a stiff climb. That barrier is gone. 4e remains inaccessible, but it cannot remain that way forever or it will be abandoned by this new generation of hobbyst/designers Mearls talked about. Who will there be to write 5e?


----------



## Grazzt (Jun 19, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> I think Mike Mearls missed the point. OGL was not going to evolve or improve D&D. The fragmented market he talked about, with different solutions to different "problems" is actually the logical result. This fragementation was productive. He used an FTP client as an example, but RPGs are more like "an OS," and there are a zillion of them with slightly different characteristics that are aimed at different requirements. FreeBSD is not the same as Linux, or for that matter, BSDi.




Yeppers. Torvalds gave us the kernel, and the developers built off of that basically (Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, etc)



			
				pawsplay said:
			
		

> Then WotC decided they were done with it. Mike Mearls is declaring the OGL a "failure" basically because his paycheck comes from people who want it to fail. I'm not saying Mr. Mearls is a bad person or deluded or whatever, just that people's opinions definitely reflect their reality. The OGL and similar ideas are very threatening to traditional corporate mentalities, and that definitely describes Hasbro.




Which is odd, because if not for the OGL Mearls wouldn't have his WotC job. Go figure.




			
				pawsplay said:
			
		

> WotC is hoping people will want to ride 4e's coattails. That is a reasonable expectation. But what happens when WotC wants to hitch a ride on the OGL? The cat really is out of the bag. The potential was there before for open gaming, but with the biggest player not joining in the game, it was a stiff climb. That barrier is gone. 4e remains inaccessible, but it cannot remain that way forever or it will be abandoned by this new generation of hobbyst/designers Mearls talked about. Who will there be to write 5e?




Yep.


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## cr0m (Jun 19, 2008)

Treebore said:
			
		

> The OGL's failures were actually failures on WOTC's part. Failures that they still aren't going to address with the GSL.




Why is being focused on a few products and leaving others for other companies a failure? If it weren't for OGL, we would have had M&M, Conan, etc... they just would have been done with some other game system. IMO OGL gave those games a much, much wider audience than they would have had they used their own custom systems.

_edit:_ didn't notice this thread has 8 pages, so i'm probably late to the discussion... never mind.


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## Henry (Jun 19, 2008)

I do want to correct one thing here, just as other posters did: Mike said, "I don't think it's fair to say that open gaming was a failure" (exact words). He's saying it failed in some ways, but didn't fail overall.

I disagree with his list of failures, but that's a subject already covered by pawsplay and Grazzt.


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## JDJblatherings (Jun 19, 2008)

cr0m said:
			
		

> Why is being focused on a few products and leaving others for other companies a failure? If it weren't for OGL, we would have had M&M, Conan, etc... they just would have been done with some other game system. IMO OGL gave those games a much, much wider audience than they would have had they used their own custom systems.





Conan may have come out but a super hero game built off  of D20 is a super hero game built off of D20.  The M&M attraction was it took D20 and made work in a crowded field in one corner of rpg land.  Other super hero games came out using D20 and failed horribly and other superhero games have come out and gone unnoticed. The OGL does provide a wider audience, but it carries along a larger number of critics as well.


----------



## cdrcjsn (Jun 19, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> WotC is hoping people will want to ride 4e's coattails. That is a reasonable expectation. But what happens when WotC wants to hitch a ride on the OGL? The cat really is out of the bag. The potential was there before for open gaming, but with the biggest player not joining in the game, it was a stiff climb. That barrier is gone. 4e remains inaccessible, but it cannot remain that way forever or it will be abandoned by this new generation of hobbyst/designers Mearls talked about. Who will there be to write 5e?




For every small designer out there, there are several thousand DMs who will never publish anything beyond what their small group of friends will see.

For every person that buys 3rd party products, there are perhaps dozens more that will only buy WotC stuff because it's "official".

The whole OGL thing might be an enduring force in RPGs in the future...but it can just as easily fall away and most gamers that don't frequent internet forums won't notice.  New gamers will enter this hobby because they'll either be introduced by someone they know or see the core 4e books at a game store, Barnes and Noble, Walmart or some other venue...not because some d20 company was able to make a supplement based on an open SRD.


----------



## PapersAndPaychecks (Jun 19, 2008)

cdrcjsn said:
			
		

> New gamers will enter this hobby because they'll either be introduced by someone they know or see the core 4e books at a game store, Barnes and Noble, Walmart or some other venue...not because some d20 company was able to make a supplement based on an open SRD.




Actually, mostly by someone they know.  People rarely impulse-purchase a product that costs more than $50 and contains more text and rules than a degree-level technical manual.

If we're looking for people to join the RPG hobby on an impulse purchase, we need attractive products that look like a game (e.g. in a boxed set), contain everything you need including dice, character sheets, starter adventure etc., can be picked up and played by a novice in an evening, _at an impulse-purchase price point_.

In other words we need something like Basic D&D.  Remember that?


----------



## Scribble (Jun 19, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> If we're looking for people to join the RPG hobby on an impulse purchase, we need attractive products that look like a game (e.g. in a boxed set), contain everything you need including dice, character sheets, starter adventure etc., can be picked up and played by a novice in an evening, _at an impulse-purchase price point_.
> 
> In other words we need something like Basic D&D.  Remember that?




I agree... Supposedly there's an entry level set comming down the road?  Will it be any good? Shrug.

The big black boxed set wasn't "that good" but it got me into the game, and got me to purchase the rules cyclopedia... and then the onaslaught began.


----------



## Mark (Jun 19, 2008)

cdrcjsn said:
			
		

> New gamers will enter this hobby because they'll either be introduced by someone they know or see the core 4e books at a game store, Barnes and Noble, Walmart or some other venue...





There is no doubt in my mind that more gamers come to the hobby either through the Internet or with the Internet as a component of their introduction to this type of gaming than come to the hobby without the Internet at all.  I do not doubt that WotC is aware of this and is gearing up to take full advantage of it.  However, search engines make it quite easy for people with an interest in tabletop roleplay gaming to find all sorts of things they might not have found in a brick and mortar location.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

I don't get what you people are saying.

What I have seen so far is this:

As long as a brand, controlled by a capital, has enough power, OGL as a movement is destined to deal with it. 

Do you want OGL or D&D? You can't have both. 4e has proven this: Wotc, or lets just say the big players capital's power, is not to be trusted as a pure and only condition for OGL's health, if another power is under the big players control.  

The OGL failed because it was attached to D20 and D20 was D&D's system. It did not fight D&D as much as it should. If Conan or whatever was build on another system the OGL would have more power and the D&D brand less power. In this case 4e D&D would be open and D&D as a brand less powerful. OTOH OGL would be more powerful and still accessible to everybody under OGL's conditions.

If you are a pro-OGL guy and the current situation (4e) makes you sad it is not Wotc's fault. It is 3pp's fault that had not been able to give to the OGL more recognition than D&D's D20 system.

What I do not know is this: do 3pp only want to make a quick buck for their pockets or do they want to invest to OGL and its movement and its potential for achieving and making better games? If its the first case the big motivator, OGL is destined to fail. At least as long as it is not the most attractive choice to make a quick buck that is.



I like to hear if anyone sees things differently than this and how so.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Jun 20, 2008)

> Which is odd, because if not for the OGL Mearls wouldn't have his WotC job. Go figure.




Just because Mearls created OGL products doesn't mean it's the sole reason for his job.  

In the past, you submitted articles to Dragon.  Designers and developers submitted articles to Dragon magazine, APAzines, or worked for the competition before working for TSR.  It's very likely he would have submitted games via the official channels if there wasn't an OGL.

If there wasn't an OGL, maybe Mearls would have submitted to Dragon or worked for a non-WoTC company before being recruited.

You can't directly say the OGL is the sole reason Mearls was hired.


----------



## Scribble (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> The OGL failed because it was attached to D20 and D20 was D&D's system. It did not fight D&D as much as it should. If Conan or whatever was build on another system the OGL would have more power and the D&D brand less power. In this case 4e D&D would be open and D&D as a brand less powerful. OTOH OGL would be more powerful and still accessible to everybody under OGL's conditions.
> 
> 
> I like to hear if anyone sees things differently than this and how so.




What I dissagree with is that the OGL "failed..."

The OGL didn't fail... WoTC's orginal intention for the OGL failed, or more correctly, WoTC's intention for the d20 license failed. (which is what I think Mearls is talking about... the combination of the two... which in the early days in WoTC's eyes I think was seen as one...)

The OGL is still alive and kicking. You can still use it.

Since 3e was released under the OGL you can still build a game based on those elements slap the OGL on it and go.

Or you can build you own ideas, slap the OGL on it and go...

D&D 4e just wasn't released under the OGL. Just like GURPS wasn't or WoD, or RIFTS or countless other non OGL games. But at least they still recognize that allowing people to use their trademark in order to support their game is a good idea.


----------



## JDJblatherings (Jun 20, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Just because Mearls created OGL products doesn't mean it's the sole reason for his job.
> 
> In the past, you submitted articles to Dragon.  Designers and developers submitted articles to Dragon magazine, APAzines, or worked for the competition before working for TSR.  It's very likely he would have submitted games via the official channels if there wasn't an OGL.
> 
> ...




He did outstanding work on OGL products. Including some evolutionary work.  I'm sure that previous work done on OGL products , his creativity, ability to work with others and talent surely all had something to do with it.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Scribble said:
			
		

> The OGL is still alive and kicking. You can still use it.
> 
> Since 3e was released under the OGL you can still build a game based on those elements slap the OGL on it and go.
> 
> ...




Possibility and actuality are two different things. What we actually know though is that 4e D&D outsells OGL products. This is a failure of OGL as a movement for now. I am not saying it is a definite failure. It can change -things change. But the conditions of change are those I outlined I think for the reasons I mentioned. This is where I want to hear your opinion.


----------



## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

The only problem I have with the comparison is that's it's apples to oranges. Open source programming has a defined objective goal. Even Mr. Mearls states this. Roleplaying has always been subjective, more of an art form. Mechanics are 'better' or 'worse' based on how a group accepts them. 


It would have been better if the comparison were to various movie making accessibilities, or open student programs (photoshop, illustrator, flash, etc) examples used to improve the industry as a whole.


----------



## Scribble (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Possibility and actuality are two different things. What we actually know though is that 4e D&D outsells OGL products. This is a failure of OGL as a movement for now. I am not saying it is a definite failure. It can change -things change. But the conditions of change are those I outlined I think for the reasons I mentioned. This is where I want to hear your opinion.




I'm not sure really what you want to know?

I don't think the OGL failed... The OGL is a license like any other... it's there, use it how you want to. Just because someone buys more D&D products then games using the OGL doesn't mean it's failed...

I wouldn't call Linux a failure, yet more people use Windows... 

The only thing I see D&D doing is saying we're tired of carrying everyone. If you want to be carried by us, then support us.

d20 logo license / ogl was originally designed to do that. Support D&D and make D&D better by doing so...

But instead people dropped the d20 part and made their own stuff that wasn't D&D, and didn't need D&D, but used the methods and ideas D&D brought to the table.


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## w_earle_wheeler (Jun 20, 2008)

Considering that there was enough OGL material put out that is similar to the current 4e rules, it might be too soon to count out the OGL. 

I still expect an OGL 4e clone to be cobbled together out of any and all open material that resembles, but pre-dates, elements of the 4e system.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Scribble said:
			
		

> I'm not sure really what you want to know?
> 
> I don't think the OGL failed... The OGL is a license like any other... it's there, use it how you want to. Just because someone buys more D&D products then games using the OGL doesn't mean it's failed...
> 
> ...




I am not talking about OGL as a license but as a movement. What I am saying is that as a movement it has failed for now (I accept failure here as a term since 4e outsells now OGL products) because it has been following D&D. The only way that it will prevail as a movement is that it  stops following D&D so it can surpass it. Unfortunately, so far OGL was too attached to D20 and D20 was more D&D and less OGL regarding recognition.


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## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

Scribble said:
			
		

> But instead people dropped the d20 part and made their own stuff that wasn't D&D, and didn't need D&D, but used the methods and ideas D&D brought to the table.





Which is what everyone else has done since the beginning of time. Cars, architecure, art, electronics, weapons, and pretty much everything else that has been invented has gone through this. It's just how things work.


I don't fault the wotc for GSL. It didn't kill OGL. And I  can't really fault wotc bid for game control as survival (regardless of rumors, stocks have fallen). But in the end I think wotc, through the GSL and marketing practices,  just dealt the death blow to d20 if not D&D. 

They're willing to under cut LGS for immediate profits from larger companies such as B&N as well as Amazon. The latter selling the books at a 55% discount from retail, the former not relying on it for survival and still selling at a discount most LGS can't match. Those who sell first and cheapest get the customers, and both companies have proven through early releases that they don't fear wotc's or small business reprisals from the RPG community.

After that, you consider the illegal spread of free scanned books on-line, and a willingness to have a free book as opposed to supporting the games stores. Gaming and hobbies stores will move elsewhere. An example, our FLGS is contemplating removing roleplaying from their stock all together. They make 20 times as much selling GW products per month than they do RP products. This is exacerbated by friends telling potential customers 'dude, I have that on PDF. i'll send you a copy later". 

Once LGS stop selling, what's left to advertise the product? It's word of mouth, as most products will be sold on-line or buryied in a book store. Word of mouth alone will not sell D&D. It isn't vital enough for most peoples life to remian in the forfront of their minds, especially with a possible recession coming.

If we can't afford to carry 4th ed, why would we consider carrying OGL, or even GSL, something that regularly sells less than D&D itself by simple advangtages of time in the market and a bigger production budget?


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

w_earle_wheeler said:
			
		

> I still expect an OGL 4e clone to be cobbled together out of any and all open material that resembles, but pre-dates, elements of the 4e system.




Again I want to say that for OGL to be able to stand on its feet it must stop following D&D and grow strong on its own merits. What you are claiming here is not any help for OGL growing eventually stronger.


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## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Again I want to say that for OGL to be able to stand on its feet it must stop following D&D and grow strong on its own merits. What you are claiming here is not a help to OGL growing eventually stronger.





RUmor is that Paizo is attempting to create a backwards compatible 3.5, and if anyone could re-establish the OGL it would be them. Unfortunately, those rumors were heard before the GSL release. I haven't heard anything since.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> If we can't afford to carry 4th ed, why would we consider carrying OGL, or even GSL, something that regularly sells less than D&D itself by simple advangtages of time in the market and a bigger production budget?




Because in the rpg hobby support comes with the territory. Rpg consumers can be producers too. It is the nature of the thing.


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## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Because in the rpg hobby support comes with the territory. Rpg consumers can be producers too.




But this is less likely to generate revinue. It's similar to saying a movie theater can survive on indie films as well as they could with the big budget productions. This is not the case for either industry. Buying a product that won't sell is lost money, not an investment.

Our LGS isn't looking to local producers. They're looking at removing RPG's altogether. And its one of the biggest hobbies stores in our state.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> RUmor is that Paizo is attempting to create a backwards compatible 3.5, and if anyone could re-establish the OGL it would be them. Unfortunately, those rumors were heard before the GSL release. I haven't heard anything since.




IMO Pathfinder can only but give oxygen to the OGL for now. It can't feed it to make it grow really.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> But this is less likely to generate revinue. It's similar to saying a movie theater can survive on indie films as well as they could with the big budget productions. This is not the case for either industry.




Yet D&D became big as an indy.


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## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> IMO Pathfinder can only but give oxygen to the OGL for now. It can't feed it to make it grow really.





I wasn't looking at pathfinder. Rumors stated the paizo planned to realease a full game under the OGL, including play testing. Again, with the GSL's various clauses, I'm not sure how that will work anymore.
If the game gets bigger than D&D. wizards canpull the GSL for their 4th ed products. Not sute they could take that loss.


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## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Yet D&D became big as an indy.





Look at it in perspective. For RPG's it's the 'Gone of the  Wind' of games. It isn't an indy. It is THE biggest RPG production to exist, and among the oldest. And it STILL isn't helping keep local game store afloat.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> I wasn't looking at pathfinder. Rumors stated the paizo planned to realease a full game under the OGL, including play testing. Again, with the GSL's various clauses, I'm not sure how that will work anymore.




Whatever. If it is a D20 game and not something new it still cannot feed the OGL really. This is what I am talking about.




			
				Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> Again, with the GSL's various clauses, I'm not sure how that will work anymore.If the game gets bigger than D&D. wizards canpull the GSL for their 4th ed products. Not sute they could take that loss.



If you are talking about Paizo I do not think what you are saying holds here. If they manage to make a game that grows bigger than D&D they will be in a better position than they are now. Unless they want to buy the D&D bran that is.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> Look at it in perspective. For RPG's it's the 'Gone of the  Wind' of games. It isn't an indy. It is THE biggest RPG production to exist, and among the oldest. And it STILL isn't helping keep local game store afloat.




IMO this perspective is wrong for the health of the hobby. See what you told before about Wizards. They control D&D but what they are after fright now is quick grabs: not D&D's or the hobby's long term health.


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## Henry (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> I wasn't looking at pathfinder. Rumors stated the paizo planned to realease a full game under the OGL, including play testing. Again, with the GSL's various clauses, I'm not sure how that will work anymore.




http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG

I'm not sure we're talking about the same "Pathfinder." That's the name of their adventure path type stuff, but they're ALSO beta-testing their RPG by that name.


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## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

Henry said:
			
		

> http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG
> 
> I'm not sure we're talking about the same "Pathfinder." That's the name of their adventure path type stuff, but they're ALSO beta-testing their RPG by that name.





I may be wrong then. Thanks for the information.


----------



## cdrcjsn (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> IMO this perspective is wrong for the health of the hobby. See what you told before about Wizards. They control D&D but what they are after fright now is quick grabs: not D&D's or the hobby's long term health.




It can be argued that the financial health of WotC as a game company is vital to the long term health of this hobby...


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

cdrcjsn said:
			
		

> It can be argued that the financial health of WotC as a game company is vital to the long term health of this hobby...




It is wrong. Companies invest their capital in various ways and various fields. What they are after is gaining more capital. Not the health of the hobby.  

What the hobby needs is a way that it can attract and entertain its members.


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## Henry (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> What the hobby needs is a way that it can attract and entertain its members.




It could then be argued, pretty strongly, that D&D is vital to the hobby, because D&D is the "Gateway Drug" for the majority of tabletop roleplayers out there.


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## Erik Mona (Jun 20, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> I would love to see Pathfinder take up this mantle but, as others have pointed out, it has backwards compatibility issues.




This is exactly what we intend to do, and while this is not the thread to discuss them I must say that I think most of the "backwards compatibility issues" are hokum. 

The OGL has not failed. It has hardly even started.

--Erik


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Henry said:
			
		

> It could then be argued, pretty strongly, that D&D is vital to the hobby, because D&D is the "Gateway Drug" for the majority of tabletop roleplayers out there.




What is this D&D gateway drug though? Wotc's management or a recognition attained of various different reasons?


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> "backwards compatibility issues" are hokum.
> 
> 
> --Erik




You are talking some sense. Good to see you are getting the right direction.


----------



## Erik Mona (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> RUmor is that Paizo is attempting to create a backwards compatible 3.5, and if anyone could re-establish the OGL it would be them. Unfortunately, those rumors were heard before the GSL release. I haven't heard anything since.




The rumors are true! More than 20,000 gamers have already downloaded Paizo's Alpha Playtest of the Pathfinder RPG, a free PDF that includes the heart of the system along with some proposed changes. Some folks are worried that some of those changes might affect backwards compatibility, but that's what the year-long open playtest is about.

You can learn more at  Paizo's Pathfinder RPG page.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing


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## Erik Mona (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> IMO Pathfinder can only but give oxygen to the OGL for now. It can't feed it to make it grow really.




The key phrase in your statement, of course, is "for now". We'll see what the future brings. Paizo is 100% committed to open gaming. 

--Erik


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## Nellisir (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> This is exactly what we intend to do, and while this is not the thread to discuss them I must say that I think most of the "backwards compatibility issues" are hokum.
> 
> The OGL has not failed. It has hardly even started.
> 
> --Erik



You're still my hero, Erik.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Do you want OGL or D&D? You can't have both. 4e has proven this: Wotc, or lets just say the big players capital's power, is not to be trusted as a pure and only condition for OGL's health, if another power is under the big players control.
> 
> The OGL failed because it was attached to D20 and D20 was D&D's system. It did not fight D&D as much as it should. If Conan or whatever was build on another system the OGL would have more power and the D&D brand less power. In this case 4e D&D would be open and D&D as a brand less powerful. OTOH OGL would be more powerful and still accessible to everybody under OGL's conditions.



I agree with some of what you're saying (ie, WotC, or any profit-oriented company, cannot be trusted to protect the interests of the OGL movement in the long run), but not other parts.

There are other game systems beyond d20 attached to the OGL.  They have not, as of yet, measurably improved the OGL movement (though this may in large part because they are -different- game systems, and their effect is thereby not readily perceptable from our d20 oriented view).

The d20/D&D attachment is both boon and bane.  Without that link, the OGL movement would be virtually nonexistent.  d20 brought literally thousands of people into contact with the OGL.

It remains to be seen whether an alternative to D&D can grow out of d20.  WotC has broken the d20/D&D connection, forcing the d20 companies out into the proverbial cold.  I don't agree that no game rooted in d20 can outcompete the D&D brand - while it won't happen if everyone slavishly devotes themselves to mimicing 4e, I think most companies will try and learn from 4e and incorporate it into a new iteration of the d20 system.  That iteration then becomes further divergent from D&D of the "now", and will become increasingly divergent as time passes and further editions of D&D are released.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> The key phrase in your statement, of course, is "for now". We'll see what the future brings. Paizo is 100% committed to open gaming.
> 
> --Erik




Of course. 

As you see, what I am talking about above is the D20 system. For the good of the OGL's distant future, OGC has to consider how to grow independently to D20 so it can also best it and overall win any propriety brand powers in terms of overall recognition. 
As long as we keep this in mind I appreciate Pathfinder's effort to breathe some oxygen to whatever open gaming living flame is out-there now. I really do. What you are doing is very important for the good of the hobby.    

Heck 4e being closed will be a good thing for the hobby and open gaming. This way you people may finally see what open gaming movement should have been.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> Without that link, the OGL movement would be virtually nonexistent.




I do not believe this. Someone would have started eventually.



			
				Nellisir said:
			
		

> d20 brought literally thousands of people into contact with the OGL.



Wrong. Wotc's D&D ogl attached system (aka D20) did this. But this tell nothing really. Your father and mother brought you to life. Yet you have to grow up and eventually you have to be able to open your own way if you want to be able to trust yourself. 



			
				Nellisir said:
			
		

> It remains to be seen whether an alternative to D&D can grow out of d20.  WotC has broken the d20/D&D connection, forcing the d20 companies out into the proverbial cold.  I don't agree that no game rooted in d20 can outcompete the D&D brand - while it won't happen if everyone slavishly devotes themselves to mimicing 4e, I think most companies will try and learn from 4e and incorporate it into a new iteration of the d20 system.  That iteration then becomes further divergent from D&D of the "now", and will become increasingly divergent as time passes and further editions of D&D are released.




I disagree. I know the limits of D20. D20 can only expand in surface level really. There are systems that can have less limits by adding more depth. Why not choose the deeper way?


----------



## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Of course.
> 
> As you see, what I am talking about above is the D20 system. For the good of the OGL's distant future, OGC has to consider how to grow independently to D20 so it can also best it and overall win any propriety brand powers in terms of overall recognition.
> As long as we keep this in mind I appreciate Pathfinder's effort to breathe some oxygen to whatever open gaming living flame is out-there now. I really do. What you are doing is very important for the good of the hobby.
> ...






For all intents and purposes, 4e has distanced itself from the original d20 model. The new game is dramatically different from 3rd ed, attempting to capture a different consumer base. This leaves a heck of a base for Paizo and others two work with, especially since most gamers support several gaming systems.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> This leaves a heck of a base for Paizo and others two work with, especially since most gamers support several gaming systems.



4e is D20. It is both an improvement and disimprovement of 3e. 
Systems should look how to improve as far as they can and if they reach their limits they should look for new designs.


----------



## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> 4e is D20. It is both an improvement and disimprovement of 3e.
> Systems should look how to improve as far as they can and if they reach their limits they should look for new designs.





Which would be fine for systems with definite signs for improvement. Unfortunately RPG's are subjective. The only real result is in one's head. Some folks like faster combat, some folks like more comprehensive combat, some like simulationist games, others prefer storytelling. You can't create or evolve a perfect rp system. 

WotC's decision to go to 4e was for sales, not for the improvement of the game.

ANyways, sorry for deviating on the topic. I don't think OGL has failed, but it has opened doors for competition that wizards doesn't want. So the GSL was created.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> Paizo is 100% committed to open gaming.




Both altruistic and conveniently, just plain good business sense.

Paizo's motherlode is Product Identity-- meaning not only what the folks call fluff, but also PI in the larger sense of the Paizo corporate identity: quality writing, cartography, graphic design, customer interaction and responsiveness, etc.

It doesn't matter that their ruleset is Open Content, they'll mine their PI for years to come. The Pathfinder brand-- the Paizo brand-- is so much larger than the OGC. Nobody can duplicate it.

This is a recipe for OGL success. 

This recipe would also have worked for WotC.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> Which would be fine for systems with definite signs for improvement. Unfortunately, RPG's are subjective, as the only real result is in one's head. Some folks like faster combat, some folks like more comprehensive combat, others prefer storytelling. You can't create or evolve a perfect rp system.
> 
> WotC's decision to go to 4e was for sales, not for the improvement of the game.
> 
> ANyways, sorry for deviating on the topic. I don't think OGL has failed, but it has opened doors for competition that wizards doesn't want. So the GSL was created.




OGL has failed in means that D&D is more successful than OGL itself. But this is for now. OGL can win. Nothing is ever settled.

Regarding subjectiveness, this is true. It is a fundamental element of the rpg hobby.  In fact a bigger depth of the basic architecture of a system's design allows more modularity and more surface levels to be picked, expanded and combined to fit one's subjective tastes.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> I do not believe this. Someone would have started eventually.



I didn't say it wouldn't exist.  I said it (meaning the OGL community and movement) would be virtually nonexistent.  Virtually no one would have noticed if some obscure RPG invented the OGL.  Just because it exists doesn't mean it would've been a tremendous success and swamped D&D.



> Wrong. Wotc's D&D ogl attached system (aka D20) did this.



Did you actually read what I wrote?  Because you just said exactly what I said.  D20 brought people into contact with the OGL.  If you're going to disagree, say something different.



> But this tell nothing really. Your father and mother brought you to life. Yet you have to grow up and eventually you have to be able to open your own way if you want to be able to trust yourself.



And yet I will always be the product of my parents' genes and upbringing, and hopefully surpass my parents.  Bad example for you.



> I disagree. I know the limits of D20. D20 can only expand in surface level really. There are systems that can have less limits by adding more depth. Why not choose the deeper way?



Oh, right...you have mystical knowledge, and d20 isn't "deep" enough for you, in whatever subjective way you define depth.  That's pretty far over the line into personal opinion there, so OK.  You have your opinion, and I'll have mine.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I didn't say it wouldn't exist.  I said it would be virtually nonexistent.  Virtually no one would have noticed if some obscure RPG invented the OGL.  Just because it exists doesn't mean it would've been a tremendous success and swamped D&D.




You have a point. 




> Wrong. Wotc's D&D ogl attached system (aka D20) did this.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> OGL has failed in means that D&D is more successful than OGL itself. But this is for now. OGL can win. Nothing is ever settled.
> 
> Regarding subjectiveness, this is true. It is a fundamental element of the rpg hobby.  In fact a bigger depth of the basic architecture of a system's design allows more modularity and more surface levels to be picked, expanded and combined to fit one's subjective tastes.





Following that example every other rpg system is a failure.

As for modular builds, that is also part of the subjective aspect of the game. The heros system has greater modularity and complexity, the storytellers system less so. Both are popular with their perferred groups.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> Following that example every other rpg system is a failure.



Other rpgs did not have the chance to gain as much recognition as it was possible with the OGL. 



			
				Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> As for modular builds, that is also part of the subjective aspect of the game. The heros system has greater modularity and complexity, the storytellers system less so. Both are popular with their perferred groups.




Hero system is not mathematically modular. It uses one basic mechanic: roll 3d6 and add each dice to get result.


----------



## w_earle_wheeler (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> Some folks are worried that some of those changes might affect backwards compatibility, but that's what the year-long open playtest is about.



.

You know -- as long as there is sidebar text indicating major deviations from the old 3.5 ruleset, it shouldn't be a big problem.

The difficulty in the change from 3.0 to 3.5 is that there were so many changes, and the documentation of those changes was not user friendly at all.


----------



## Storyteller01 (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Other rpgs did not have the chance to gain as much recognition as it was possible with the OGL.
> 
> 
> 
> Hero system is not mathematically modular. It uses one basic mechanic: roll 3d6 and add each dice to get result.






Even with that, the OGL couldn't get its recognition without D&D. It puts them in the same boat.


d20 is just as simplicitic at its core.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> Even with that, the OGL couldn't get its recognition without D&D. It puts them in the same boat.



  Yes, I see what you mean.




			
				Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> d20 is just as simplicitic at its core.



I know.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> This is exactly what we intend to do, and while this is not the thread to discuss them I must say that I think most of the "backwards compatibility issues" are hokum.




They might very well be hokum, but that raises the extremely important question, one to which any answer will have ramifications for an entire industry ...

What the heck is "hokum"?

/M

PS. And let me just say, for the record, that backwards compatibility will be the key point for me getting into the Pathfinder RPG.


----------



## Samuel Leming (Jun 20, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> They might very well be hokum, but that raises the extremely important question, one to which any answer will have ramifications for an entire industry ...
> 
> What the heck is "hokum"?



"Just a bunch of song and dance" would be the most polite reading.  I suggest you google it.

Perhaps he really meant bunkum.

Sam

[edit]
I should have taken my own advice and googled it before responding. Connotations can be... regional.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> Some folks are worried that some of those changes might affect backwards compatibility, but that's what the year-long open playtest is about.




It's not about how compatible it actually is, it's about how compatible folks think it is.

There's already considerable fracturing around the edges, and I think Paizo has more work to do to hold onto those players than, "Wait and see."

For the record, I think that _perception_ of incompatibility is wrong, but folks can be petulant about it.


----------



## CapnZapp (Jun 20, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> I know many people who would. And who do. The D&D fan sites are one aspect of this, with tons of "improvements" to D&D.
> 
> The publishers might not want to do this, but I think that many fans/designers do/did it. Come to think of it, suggesting improvements to rules that are owned by someone else is a staple of gamerdom, I've done it lots and lots of times.



Just a clarification (the discussion has moved on): I meant "improve it in a unified way".


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 20, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> It's not about how compatible it actually is, it's about how compatible folks think it is.
> 
> There's already considerable fracturing around the edges, and I think Paizo has more work to do to hold onto those players than, "Wait and see."
> 
> For the record, I think that _perception_ of incompatibility is wrong, but folks can be petulant about it.



Struggling with the perception of things can be the real problem.

Some say "4E is like WoW". I vehemently disagree, but if that's their perception, what can I do? 

Some say "Pathfinder is not backwards compatible to D&D 3.5!". You disagree, but if that's their perception, what can you do?

Well, this is probably a topic for other threads...


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> It's not about how compatible it actually is, it's about how compatible folks think it is.
> 
> There's already considerable fracturing around the edges, and I think Paizo has more work to do to hold onto those players than, "Wait and see."
> 
> For the record, I think that _perception_ of incompatibility is wrong, but folks can be petulant about it.




Wulf
I understand that Paizo's Pathfinder marketing has been about backwards compatibility among other things. But what the heck does backward compatibility practically means? Is it about levels? What levels are about then? Target numbers, Hit Points and average damage? Just make a frickin list and state the desirable values of these parameters for each level. Add if you want guidance regarding special effects such as damage reductions or whatever for each level; just offer such guidance.

Pathfinder's goal for now should be to attract these people that could have been attracted towards 4e but decided not to for various reasons.
Let the people bitch and moan. As long as Pathfinder is not broken and gets people bother with it, it can do good. Its goal should be to be a fun game to play with but without the negativities of 4e (these are loss of verisimilitude and one-dimensional gamist gameplay focused on its limited mini rules - 4e does bring to the max the potential for gamist fun of these rules though: this is 4e's merit, this is what it is all about: to clarify this: 4e does not achieve to be as fun as one can be but what it achieves is to make as fun as possible its limited rules can be-something that 3e did not achieve). 

Pathfinder has to care to two kinds. People that do not like 4e and people that are angry for their 3e investments going down. What it has to eventually do though is to beat 4e: it can't limit itself to be a reprint of 3e. It has to expand and be better than what else its out there.

Erik knows that. Or I believe he does. This is what I take from his messages.

EDIT:
for Maggan



			
				Maggan said:
			
		

> They might very well be hokum, but that raises the extremely important question, one to which any answer will have ramifications for an entire industry ...
> 
> What the heck is "hokum"?
> 
> ...




Maggan since you mention backwards compatibility. If you disagree with my opinion here, please explain how you really see the matter and what you really want.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Maggan since you mention backwards compatibility. If you disagree with my opinion here, please explain how you really see the matter and what you really want.




I haven't given it that much thought, but what I want is simple to say, less simple to do.

What I want is Pathfinder to work seamlessly with my 3.5 books. And that includes the PH. I want to be able to mix freely, and e.g. use one class from the PH with one class from Pathfinder.

That to me is what I want. I realise that such a thing might not be at all possible, but the closer Pathfinder is to such an ideal situation, the larger the possibility of me buying it.

/M


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> I realise that such a thing might not be at all possible, but the closer Pathfinder is to such an ideal situation, the larger the possibility of me buying it.
> 
> /M




Except, of course, if Pathfinder is so much better for your taste that you will still buy it. Right?
What I mean is that the primary focus will be to make something as good as possible overall and the secondary one to respect one certain condition that does not directly have to with the overall quality of the product.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> What it has to eventually do though is to beat 4e: it can't limit itself to be a reprint of 3e.




Nonsense.

Pathfinder doesn't have to beat 4e to be successful.

Which is fortunate, since nothing is going to beat 4e.


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> Nonsense.
> 
> Pathfinder doesn't have to beat 4e to be successful.
> 
> Which is fortunate, since nothing is going to beat 4e.




I think you missed my point.
No, it does not have to beat 4e in sales to be successful. Right now nothing is going to beat 4e as you say. 
But it has to beat 4e in rpg design and appeal to be successful -4e has issues and Pathfinder needs to do better. This is what I am talking about. And when 5e hits the door, if Pathfinder has not come close to this goal, it will have to face even higher competition than it does now. If it can't, it s future will be in serious doubt.


----------



## philreed (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> Paizo is 100% committed to open gaming.




And not alone, if I'm reading the signs properly. 

Now that I see 4e is a non-option for projects, I'm watching Pathfinder very closely. So far, I like what I'm seeing.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Except, of course, if Pathfinder is so much better for your taste that you will still buy it. Right?




Nah. If Pathfinder is not a tool for me to use my existing and extensive library of D&D3.5 books (all of them), then I'll pass. I've got plenty other options, like WFRP and WH40kRP and Call of Cthulhu and D&D3.5 and 4 to play anyways, so I don't really fancy another book which is incompatible with D&D3.5.



> What I mean is that the primary focus will be to make something as good as possible overall and the secondary one to respect one certain condition that does not directly have to with the overall quality of the product.




For me, the quality of the backwards compatibility will be the dealmaker or dealbreaker. Otherwise, I might as well just buy another game, there are loads of good games out there.

/M


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> If Pathfinder is not a tool for me to use my existing and extensive library of D&D3.5 books (all of them)
> /M




What I do not get is this: you say that Pathfinder has to be a tool to use your 3.5 books. But ain't your 3.5 books a tool by themselves designed to be able to be used first hand? How can Pathfinder be a tool for this tools?  This does not make sense to me.


----------



## Sunderstone (Jun 20, 2008)

Bottom Line is that I never bought third party stuff ever, until the OGL. Necromancer Games in particular was an eye opener for me, then Paizo with its Dungeon Mag work, followed by Goodman etc.
As a consumer, Im guessing this had to be great for the hobby as it made me buy more stuff from more 3PP. Im sure I wasnt alone either. Anything that can boost sales for our "niche" hobby is good, again imho.

I really cant see how Mearls can see anything in the OGL as a failure. Im guessing his opinions are more "corporate" in nature, also that he knows where his bills get paid.

Its spin to try and validate some of the overly draconic GSL.


----------



## Mark (Jun 20, 2008)

Sunderstone said:
			
		

> Its spin to try and validate some of the overly draconic GSL.





_Isn't it enough to know they ruined a pony making a license for us?_


----------



## WizarDru (Jun 20, 2008)

Mark said:
			
		

> _Isn't it enough to know they ruined a pony making a license for us?_




Maybe they used too many monkeys.


----------



## Sunderstone (Jun 20, 2008)

Mark said:
			
		

> _Isn't it enough to know they ruined a pony making a license for us?_



My Little Pony 4E! Wasnt that the target audience anyway?


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 20, 2008)

Sunderstone said:
			
		

> Bottom Line is that I never bought third party stuff ever, until the OGL. Necromancer Games in particular was an eye opener for me, then Paizo with its Dungeon Mag work, followed by Goodman etc.
> As a consumer, Im guessing this had to be great for the hobby as it made me buy more stuff from more 3PP. Im sure I wasnt alone either. Anything that can boost sales for our "niche" hobby is good, again imho.
> 
> I really cant see how Mearls can see anything in the OGL as a failure. Im guessing his opinions are more "corporate" in nature, also that he knows where his bills get paid..



Simply actually read his blog entry. 
He is not only saying the OGL was a failure. He is not only saying it was a success. 
He is pointing the things out that it was a success in (and in this, he basically acknowledge that he might not be where he is today without the OGL, when he speaks of the "Designer Training" the OGL allows), and where it fails. He is actually mentioning 3 aspects he sees as successes and one that he sees as a failure. 

It's not a surprise that some people haven't seem to read his actual post, since this is several pages into the thread, but I would still recommend doing so before saying anything about what Mike wrote or ascribing motives to him. 

Excerpts: 
[sblock]
Wwrning: 
They are selective and highlight the "OGL is not a failure" parts of his post. But even there I am selective, and post only the part that highlight - in my eyes - the positive personal effect of the OGL he perceives. I will not post his entire blog here. If you want to read it, visit his blog. If you want to criticize him for things he didn't say, feel totally free to ignore his blog, and just go on. This is the internet, everyone can be wrong about something here.



			
				Mike Mearls Blog said:
			
		

> Training: This is likely the most underrated aspect of the OGL: it allowed freelancers to better migrate skills from one company to the next. Good freelance RPG writers and designers are in critically short supply. Anyone telling you otherwise has low standards. The OGL made it more likely for writers to build and sustain a skill set useful to a number of companies. By extension, gamers saw better designed stuff come from designers who could spend a few years working on the same game.






			
				Mike Mearls Blog said:
			
		

> And So?
> I don't think it's fair to say that open gaming was a failure, it just took a different path in gaming when compared to software. The important thing is that it got people to think like open source developers and act like them on an individual scale, even if we didn't see the same network of successive improvements, bug fixing, and distribution.
> 
> I think that, in the future, we'll look back at this decade as the time that a broad community of RPG players formally took on the mantle of designers. Open gaming, the indie movement, and PDF sales have made it more possible now than ever for a good GM with a knack for writing to put together a book and get it out there for others to see.



[/sblock]


----------



## Sunderstone (Jun 20, 2008)

Sunderstone said:
			
		

> I really cant see how Mearls can see *anything in the OGL* as a failure.




notice what was bolded, I never said the whole OGL.

Again, its all imho as a consumer. As for the motives.... just my opinion. Everyone has one.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 20, 2008)

Sunderstone said:
			
		

> notice what was bolded, I never said the whole OGL.
> 
> Again, its all imho as a consumer. As for the motives.... just my opinion. Everyone has one.



Sorry for jumping on your post, specifically. I have read a few others that might have been more like what I am criticizing, and I just felt I hat to react on that. 

But I think if you want to understand why Mike sees a certain aspect of the OGL as a failure, read his post. Whether it's _really_ a failure or just something a license alone can never achieve is another matter.


----------



## Sunderstone (Jun 20, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Sorry for jumping on your post, specifically. I have read a few others that might have been more like what I am criticizing, and I just felt I hat to react on that.
> 
> But I think if you want to understand why Mike sees a certain aspect of the OGL as a failure, read his post. Whether it's _really_ a failure or just something a license alone can never achieve is another matter.




No harm done. 
Will do, but tbh, Im tired of all the retroactive criticisms of the OGL in light of the new GSL etc. The OGL is a done deal anyway, time for us all to move on. 

Mearls is entitled to his opinion too, everyone has one.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> I think you missed my point.
> No, it does not have to beat 4e in sales to be successful. Right now nothing is going to beat 4e as you say.
> But it has to beat 4e in rpg design and appeal to be successful -4e has issues and Pathfinder needs to do better. This is what I am talking about. And when 5e hits the door, if Pathfinder has not come close to this goal, it will have to face even higher competition than it does now. If it can't, it s future will be in serious doubt.



Someday I'll learn my lesson and stop replying to you.

You're always talking about "success".  The OGL will only be successful if it beats D&D.  Pathfinder will only be successful if it beats 4e.  I think your definition of success might be different from everyone else's.  Storyteller, GURPS, Shadowrun, Runequest -- none of these have beat D&D or 4e, but they're all successes.  Pepsi doesn't have to beat Coke to be a success.  All Pathfinder needs to do to be a "success" is find an sustained audience large enough to pay their bills.  Pathfinder and 4e, though related, are not the same game and will not appeal to the same audiences.  There is no magic formula for an RPG, no one-size-fits-all, even within a narrow category like "combat & exploration-oriented fantasy RPG"


----------



## Erik Mona (Jun 20, 2008)

Maggan said:
			
		

> I haven't given it that much thought, but what I want is simple to say, less simple to do.
> 
> What I want is Pathfinder to work seamlessly with my 3.5 books. And that includes the PH. I want to be able to mix freely, and e.g. use one class from the PH with one class from Pathfinder.
> 
> ...




Do you consider your 3.0 and 3.5 books compatible? If so, I think we're fine. If not, I think we may need to drill down a bit more about just how precise your definition of compatible is.

--Erik


----------



## Erik Mona (Jun 20, 2008)

philreed said:
			
		

> And not alone, if I'm reading the signs properly.
> 
> Now that I see 4e is a non-option for projects, I'm watching Pathfinder very closely. So far, I like what I'm seeing.




Great! I am inspired by your past work and would love to have you join us.

We'll be posting guidelines of how to use a Pathfinder RPG compatibility logo soon, but it will basically amount to inclusion of a couple lines of legal text that pretty much say "This logo is used with permission, but Paizo bears no legal responsibility for the contents of this product and hasn't even read it." That sort of thing.

Using the rules requires no agreement beyond the OGL, of course, because the Pathfinder RPG rules are 100% open. The only thing we're closing off from the entire RPG project so far is the name of our gods in the cleric section. Other than that, it's all free for the use of the community.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing, LLC


----------



## Korgoth (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> Do you consider your 3.0 and 3.5 books compatible? If so, I think we're fine. If not, I think we may need to drill down a bit more about just how precise your definition of compatible is.
> 
> --Erik




Purely as an aside... have you ever thought of statting your Pathfinder adventures for OSRIC (I mean in addition to the 3.x stats)?


----------



## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> Someday I'll learn my lesson and stop replying to you.
> 
> You're always talking about "success".  The OGL will only be successful if it beats D&D.  Pathfinder will only be successful if it beats 4e.  I think your definition of success might be different from everyone else's.  Storyteller, GURPS, Shadowrun, Runequest -- none of these have beat D&D or 4e, but they're all successes.  Pepsi doesn't have to beat Coke to be a success.  All Pathfinder needs to do to be a "success" is find an sustained audience large enough to pay their bills.  Pathfinder and 4e, though related, are not the same game and will not appeal to the same audiences.  There is no magic formula for an RPG, no one-size-fits-all, even within a narrow category like "combat & exploration-oriented fantasy RPG"




What you are saying is correct and I do not disagree. I have not been disagreeing with this. I was talking about the OGL movement though. Isn't OGL movement what this thread is about? And my opinion is that if you want OGL to be sure to succeed as a movement eventually you will have to understand that it will have to be a different thing than D&D's expansion as a principle. So far it's priority had been to expand on D20-D&D. This as a primary goal or rather as principle has to change.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> Do you consider your 3.0 and 3.5 books compatible?




Yep. I use stuff interchangably from 3.0 and 3.5, with minor conversions. So if that's the level of difference, you're set.

/M


----------



## mearls (Jun 20, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> It's not a surprise that some people haven't seem to read his actual post, since this is several pages into the thread, but I would still recommend doing so before saying anything about what Mike wrote or ascribing motives to him.




It's illuminating to me that the motives and reasons for misreading my post are, in some ways, addressed in the next post I'm working on.

In essence, there are a number of factors in the RPG business that make good faith efforts at open source development difficult at best.

You'll notice that organizations like Mozilla are non-profits, though they have other ways of generating revenue other than selling the fruits of the open source development they support.

By the same token, many open source projects produce software that helps a business or organization profit indirectly. Example: The Apache web server is robust, which avoids down time, which makes a company's online store more profitable (less time spent fixing it, fewer customers lost, etc).

The RPG business lacks that layer of user. We have only publishers and users, and, users don't profit via better rules. They might save some time or have more fun with a game, but the superior rules don't make them more money.

OTOH, publishers do make more money off better rules. Yet, only one person can sell a core rulebook, and that's where all the money is.

So, it makes a lot of sense for publishers to utilize open material in the way we saw things develop: publishers creating core rulebook fiefdoms by "forking" the SRD. Economically, that makes sense.

However, that doesn't mean that it makes sense in terms of fostering open source development. We can't rely on economic motivators to drive open source RPG development.

Yet, I believe that open sourced, shared, and interactive design is the best way to foster the next generation of designers and creators. The indie movement centered on the Forge (setting aside the ideological particulars of that movement) showcases how a community founded and centered on design can cultivate and grow a better understanding of RPGs. That's something we need more of, and I think true open development can foster that.


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## Propagandroid (Jun 20, 2008)

Mike,

Will your next post provide a blueprint for future open-source RPG development?


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## PapersAndPaychecks (Jun 20, 2008)

mearls said:
			
		

> OTOH, publishers do make more money off better rules. Yet, only one person can sell a core rulebook, and that's where all the money is.




Well, there are some of us who think rulebooks should be free.  

The problem is that making most of your money from selling core rulebooks leads to splatbook proliferation, which in turn leads to very cynical customers who think, "I could make rules just as good as that".  At which point they see through it all--because the RPG rulebook business is a massive game of Emperor's New Clothes.

You don't actually need someone else to write the rules for you.  You can make them up.  And most of us do, and have, and will again.  (How many people house-ruled in a morale system for 3e?  And come to that how come a game got released without morale rules in the first place?  It's a complete mystery to me.)

You can spend the rest of your life playing a game based on one ruleset.  And some of us do, and have, and will keep doing it.  You don't need to drop several hundred dollars on the next version--you have to have a reason to do that.

So the real creative work--the value added that designers can really give their customers--lies in campaign worlds and adventures and fluff.  I mean, you show me a long-term D&D player, and I'll show you someone who knows who Acererak is.  Or Eclavdra, or King Snurre.  Someone who remembers all those goblins shouting "Bree-Yark!"...

... so that should be the way games companies look for profit.


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## cdrcjsn (Jun 20, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> Well, there are some of us who think rulebooks should be free.
> 
> The problem is that making most of your money from selling core rulebooks leads to splatbook proliferation, which in turn leads to very cynical customers who think, "I could make rules just as good as that".  At which point they see through it all--because the RPG rulebook business is a massive game of Emperor's New Clothes.
> 
> ...




Funny, but I'm the exact opposite.  I would rather have game companies create the rule set, allowing me time to create my own worlds.

Goes back to what Mike said in his earlier blog posting, you can't really please everyone because the ideal game system is different for each person.


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## PapersAndPaychecks (Jun 20, 2008)

cdrcjsn said:
			
		

> Funny, but I'm the exact opposite.  I would rather have game companies create the rule set, allowing me time to create my own worlds.




How many times would you like to re-purchase it?

Do you see yourself as the kind of person who'll be buying 7e in 20 years' time?


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## IanB (Jun 20, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> How many times would you like to re-purchase it?
> 
> Do you see yourself as the kind of person who'll be buying 7e in 20 years' time?




I do. I've bought every ruleset so far, I'm not sure why I would necessarily change that pattern, unless they stop improving the game, which for me has not happened yet.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> Well, there are some of us who think rulebooks should be free.
> 
> The problem is that making most of your money from selling core rulebooks leads to splatbook proliferation, which in turn leads to very cynical customers who think, "I could make rules just as good as that".  At which point they see through it all--because the RPG rulebook business is a massive game of Emperor's New Clothes.
> 
> ...




Not quite. For example rules in D&D are not that different from fluff. The basic rule is one: roll 1D20 and check for success if you beat a target number. All the rest is mechanical fluff that somehow though is framed: you can do that or that and each choice means that. So choose what you want to do.
This is D&D's rules concept really. And as you see it is all an expansion of fluff around the D20 vs a target number.


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## cdrcjsn (Jun 20, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> How many times would you like to re-purchase it?
> 
> Do you see yourself as the kind of person who'll be buying 7e in 20 years' time?




I've been playing for over 25 years and bought every edition released, so yeah probably.

I know that the current 4e set is the best rule set for me.  Yeah, it plays similar to 3e, but as a DM, the changes behind the rules are immense and pretty much what sold me on it and it fixed the problem areas in 3.5 that I had issues with.  

So those 3e/3.5e books and accessories that I spent a couple of thousand dollars on?  Yeah, their utility has lessened (note that I did not say disappear), but I've gotten the use I wanted out of them.  The only thing that's different now is that instead of buying a 3.5e WotC/3rd party supplement every other month or so, I'll be buying a 4e WotC/3rd party supplement every other month instead.


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## mearls (Jun 20, 2008)

Propagandroid said:
			
		

> Mike,
> 
> Will your next post provide a blueprint for future open-source RPG development?




In some ways, yes.

Right now, I'm not sure of the methods, but I'm developing some ideas on the realities of RPGs and how an approach inspired by open source software might take shape.


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## philreed (Jun 20, 2008)

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> We'll be posting guidelines of how to use a Pathfinder RPG compatibility logo soon, but it will basically amount to inclusion of a couple lines of legal text that pretty much say "This logo is used with permission, but Paizo bears no legal responsibility for the contents of this product and hasn't even read it." That sort of thing.




Which sounds perfectly reasonable.


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## Korgoth (Jun 20, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> How many times would you like to re-purchase it?
> 
> Do you see yourself as the kind of person who'll be buying 7e in 20 years' time?




It's funny, isn't it?  Someone else described 4E as WOTC selling you permissions to your own imagination.

Between OD&D, Classic and 1E (not even counting the moderate amount of 2E and the small amount of 3E stuff I own) I definitely don't need any more sets of rules for D&D.  I can run any of those 3 systems 'til my heart is content and never missing having other rules.  If there's a rules widget that I wish I had, I can just make it up.  And those 3 games don't explode when you trim or add rules.  They are _remarkably_ mod-able.

When I think about my best 3E purchase, it was definitely Lords of Madness.  It had some cool ideas that I can use in any version of D&D.  In fact, I'm modifying some of the background material to go in my far future "Dying Earth"-style OD&D campaign.

If a company produce something that has cool ideas then they actually have something to sell me.  If all they have is a slightly different way to handle Armor Class then what good is it to me?  Why should I buy a new set of hardbacks that basically convey the same information that I've already purchased like 5 or 6 times, only this time with less information and an approach that invalidates the huge pile of legacy products that I own and that propel my continued interest in the game?


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## Nellisir (Jun 20, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> And my opinion is that if you want OGL to be sure to succeed as a movement eventually you will have to understand that it will have to be a different thing than D&D's expansion as a principle. So far it's priority had been to expand on D20-D&D. This as a primary goal or rather as principle has to change.



::blink::
OK, that actually made sense.

Yes, in the very, very, very long term, the OGL will have to move beyond the d20 corner of the RPG market.  Note that this has begun, however - Mutants & Masterminds is sufficiently different from core d20 (and occupies a completely different niche) to count as a different type of game, and Runequest and Traveller are or are going OGL, plus Action! and the other lesser ones.

What's only now become evident, however, is the "cycle length" of the OGL.  I suspect it will speed up with time, and we may see another shift in the open/rpg landscape in 4 or 5 years instead of 6-8, but it's hard to tell.  Changes take time to communicate through the system; you can't just upgrade your (hardcopy) books or your (mostly human) rules lawyer with a 30-second download.


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## Nellisir (Jun 20, 2008)

PapersAndPaychecks said:
			
		

> So the real creative work--the value added that designers can really give their customers--lies in campaign worlds and adventures and fluff.  I mean, you show me a long-term D&D player, and I'll show you someone who knows who Acererak is.  Or Eclavdra, or King Snurre.  Someone who remembers all those goblins shouting "Bree-Yark!"...
> 
> ... so that should be the way games companies look for profit.




Amen.  I always run my own campaign world, but I still love reading other campaign settings.  Erik might know the figures better, but I think most people bought Dungeon "just to read it" - not to run an adventure.


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## xechnao (Jun 20, 2008)

mearls said:
			
		

> In some ways, yes.
> 
> Right now, I'm not sure of the methods, but I'm developing some ideas on the realities of RPGs and how an approach inspired by open source software might take shape.




Sounds very interesting. What I want to ask you though is if you (OGL-adopters past and present) are really interested in this kind of open source movement what has happened that made you lose faith in OGL? What were OGL's specific faults that were not visible in the past and are visible now and why were not visible according to you?


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## Kez Darksun (Jun 20, 2008)

Just a quick note on the whole OGL/GSL situation as far as it concerns me as a consumer.  What the revelation of the GSL has done for me is to make me once again excited about the various 3rd party publishers and their products.  I'm still interested in seeing what more 4th edition has to offer in the coming months, and I know I'll get products for 4th edition, but what I realized is that one of the things I really value about 3.x D&D is the OGL and all the material people have come up with to support it.  

I had heard about Pathfinder when the Alpha first came out, but I hadn't payed much attention to it.  Once I saw the GSL and remembered all the cool products I purchased from OGL publishers, I went out and signed up on Paizo's boards so I could download the Alpha and see what it was all about, then I went out and picked up pretty much everything from Dreamscarred Press since I really enjoy Psionics and I wanted to see what they had developed for Psionics.  

It will be interesting to see what people come up with for 4th edition products in the coming months, and while I'm looking forward to seeing the fruits of their creativity for 4th edition, I'm glad there will also be work continuing to be done under the OGL also by some of the same creators.




Hrm...probably more suited to the how does the GSL affect me thread, but was in here when I wanted to post my thoughts and hadn't seen/read that thread yet.  If a mod wants to move my post there, thats fine.  Don't want to cross post.


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## Treebore (Jun 21, 2008)

philreed said:
			
		

> Which sounds perfectly reasonable.





 

No kidding! WOTC should have done that! They should do it with 4E too, since they are apparently going to make no effort to control quality until after the fact.


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