# OGL To Be Renamed Game System License (GSL)



## charlesatan (Feb 1, 2008)

From Gamer Radio Zero episode 27 (12:20):



> *Mike:* Why is Wizards of the Coast calling it the OGL when it really doesn't seem quite open?
> 
> *Linae Foster:* We decided that yeah, OGL isn't the best name for it. So we're going to call it The Game System License from now on or GSL.


----------



## DaveMage (Feb 1, 2008)

charlesatan said:
			
		

> From Gamer Radio Zero episode 27 (12:20):




So "open" gaming is finished, eh?


----------



## Darrin Drader (Feb 1, 2008)

DaveMage said:
			
		

> So "open" gaming is finished, eh?




It sounds to me like 3rd edition will remain open. 4th edition is a whole new deal.


----------



## charlesatan (Feb 1, 2008)

DaveMage said:
			
		

> So "open" gaming is finished, eh?




More like 3E OGL is OGL, 4E d20 is  GSL.


----------



## Pale (Feb 1, 2008)

You mean the supported edition that most people will be buying and stores will bother to stock is a whole new deal?

Isn't this pretty much what they had _before_ the OGL when it came to third parties?

I know that this will keep a lot of bad product from showing up on shelves... but it also prevents the next Necromancer Games, Green Ronin or Privateer Press from seeing the light of day as well.

I think that it also crushes a lot of dreams out there.


----------



## charlesatan (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> You mean the supported edition that most people will be buying and stores will bother to stock is a whole new deal?
> 
> Isn't this pretty much what they had _before_ the OGL when it came to third parties?
> 
> ...




For me it's better calling it the SGL rather than constantly referring to "oh, that book is the 3.0 OGL while that book is the 4.0 OGL".

And no, the SGL doesn't prevent third parties from using the 4E rules. THIS IS the license that allows them to use the 4E rules for the game, it's just not as loose as the original OGL, but probably a step ahead of the d20 license. For me this is good because if they didn't rename it, we'd be having two kinds of OGL out in the market.


----------



## Pale (Feb 1, 2008)

So what are the restrictions on the GSL that make it not as open as the OGL?

I mean, if it costs cash to use it at all free fan products are out the window.


----------



## The Ubbergeek (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> You mean the supported edition that most people will be buying and stores will bother to stock is a whole new deal?
> 
> Isn't this pretty much what they had _before_ the OGL when it came to third parties?
> 
> ...




I prefer the culling and stop of bad third party products. Don't trust them myself, frankly. Okay, somes are made by old veterans, but others....


----------



## Gundark (Feb 1, 2008)

I predict a lot nerd rage with this thread.


----------



## Haffrung Helleyes (Feb 1, 2008)

*well*

Since 4E is derivative of 3E, and 3E had the OGL, someone will be able to replicate the mechanics of 4E and release a product under the OGL that will be somewhat compatible with 4E, regardless of what the GSL says.

What they won't be able to do is use WoTC exclusive IP, or use the d20 Logo.

I'm wondering if part of the drive towards feats with florid names (golden wyverns tail, or whatever) is to associate mechanics with fluff that WoTC can claim as protected IP.  In other words, a OGL derived game like Grim Tales could pick up a 4E rules mechanic, but they'd have to change its name because the name is not Open.  But that's just a wild guess.

At least, that's my perception of the situation.   Would anyone care to correct me?

Ken


----------



## Pale (Feb 1, 2008)

The Ubbergeek said:
			
		

> I prefer the culling and stop of bad third party products. Don't trust them myself, frankly. Okay, somes are made by old veterans, but others....




That sounds pretty much like throwing the baby out with the bath water to me.


----------



## The Little Raven (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> So what are the restrictions on the GSL that make it not as open as the OGL?
> 
> I mean, if it costs cash to use it at all free fan products are out the window.




3rd-party products cannot be published in a way that makes the core books unnecessary. So, no more "complete" games that reprint large chunks of the core books. Instead, publishers will have to focus on content that references the core books (the SRD now being an actual reference document that points to "open content," rather than a container for OGC) rather than reprinting it. So, this sounds like the Advanced Player's Guide is just fine, but something like the WoW RPG (which reprints over 100 pages from the SRD) is not.


----------



## Mystaros (Feb 1, 2008)

Haffrung Helleyes said:
			
		

> Since 4E is derivative of 3E, and 3E had the OGL, someone will be able to replicate the mechanics of 4E and release a product under the OGL that will be somewhat compatible with 4E, regardless of what the GSL says.




Doesn't work that way. Wizards of the Coast carved out a provision in the OGL that material it released was distinctly not a part of the OGL unless listed in the SRD. Save for one monster in one of the Monster Manuals, most of the Psionics system, and some of Unearthed Arcana, none of the material ever published by WotC (outside the core SRD) was considered OGL. That same would apply to the 4E materials.

What calling it the GSL instead of the OGL essentially is locks it out from those who would say, "Well, the 4E SRD is covered by the OGL, therefore I can use any prior version of the OGL if I so choose, therefore I don't have to pay any attention to the release dates." It takes any kind of soothing of Part 9 of the OGL out of consideration for use of the 4E SRD, as the 4E SRD is not covered under the OGL, it is covered under the GSL.

As the materials in 4E do not fall under the OGL, using the 3.5E SRD to recreate them falls into a very dangerous spot, legally. The system IS in fact so substantially different that to make the tortuous gyrations with 3.5E to make it work like 4E would be looked upon with an unkind eye by any judge who has to deal with such a situation.

WotC isn't doing this to bash the fans; fans will do whatever they want, really. They are doing it to keep publishers who would try to sell such products out of the running, and rightfully so. The distinction is a major hammer that can be used to stop anyone trying to publish such material; when money really is involved, that hammer is a good weapon.


----------



## Alikar (Feb 1, 2008)

Honestly I like that the new system requires the book. The less money I'm paying for reprinted material the better. I'm sick of looking at the feat section of books and seeing the PHB in front of me. That is why I was a huge fan of things like the Iron Kingdoms Character guide, which was full of new concepts and information. Now I understand that this could stand in the way of creativity, so hopefully it will be something that restricts you from reprinting feats, skills, talents, class, spells from the PHB. That way it will force people to make new material.


----------



## Hussar (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> You mean the supported edition that most people will be buying and stores will bother to stock is a whole new deal?
> 
> Isn't this pretty much what they had _before_ the OGL when it came to third parties?
> 
> ...




Not quite.  ((WARNING = PERSONAL OPINION))  What is means is, you won't have companies like Green Ronin taking the OGL and the SRD and building an entirely new game that has nothing to do with D&D that takes players away from D&D while piggybacking on all the mechanics that WOTC developed.

So, you will see, say, Necromancer Games, a company which produces nothing but D&D material, still produce D&D material.  What you won't see is a Mutants and Masterminds, which is completely divorced from D&D, using 4e mechanics.

In other words, indie publishers will be forced to create their own mechanics instead of making yet another d20 clone.


----------



## Pale (Feb 1, 2008)

> _Originally posted by Mourn_
> 3rd-party products cannot be published in a way that makes the core books unnecessary. So, no more "complete" games that reprint large chunks of the core books. Instead, publishers will have to focus on content that references the core books (the SRD now being an actual reference document that points to "open content," rather than a container for OGC) rather than reprinting it. So, this sounds like the Advanced Player's Guide is just fine, but something like the WoW RPG (which reprints over 100 pages from the SRD) is not.




OK, that sounds way better than what was going through my mind. Thanks for the clarification.



> _Originally posted by Hussar_
> In other words, indie publishers will be forced to create their own mechanics instead of making yet another d20 clone.




I would have to call this a good thing, too, then. One thing that got on my nerves about OGL was no one creating their own game mechanics from scratch anymore... as well as companies throwing out their own, perfectly fine game mechanics to hop on the D20 train. Bring on the diversity!


----------



## charlesatan (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> So what are the restrictions on the GSL that make it not as open as the OGL?
> 
> I mean, if it costs cash to use it at all free fan products are out the window.




The details on the OGL/SRD can be found at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080108a

The restrictions I see is a) you won't be able to publish material until 2009 unless you fork over $5,000.00 (no big deal in the long run) and b) you need the core books to play the game (so you can probably create an Arcana Evolved/Iron Heroes game using the GSL but not a True20 or Mutants & Masterminds game).


----------



## The Ubbergeek (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> That sounds pretty much like throwing the baby out with the bath water to me.




The good ones, the strong ones can stay.

i don't want a glut of half-baked bad products.


----------



## Henry (Feb 1, 2008)

I figured this is what WotC would have to do to release a 4e "OGL" without getting into murky legal waters. Whether it winds up "forking" the gaming market and eliminating best successes of the OGL remains to be seen, or whether as most predict people will just go along with the market leader and completely leave the OGL.

What I do predict, is that you will see 4e-compatible products released under the OGL, but without the compatibility language and licensing, and products like True 20, C&C, and OSRIC have already blazed the trail for it.


----------



## Owen K.C. Stephens (Feb 1, 2008)

This is one of the rare occasions when I think game design logic applies to a real world situation.

At Wizards, I was taught that two rules should be the same, or be different. Having two rules that are -almost- exactly the same, but have just a few differences, but use the same name, or some of the same template text, is bad. It causes confusion. Either have the two rules work the same and be worded the same, or admit they are different and word them differently, and make sure they are really different.

The new license clearly isn't the OGL we're used to. That's already causing confusion. I think having a new name is a good idea.

Owen K.C. Stephens


----------



## I'm A Banana (Feb 1, 2008)

> What you won't see is a Mutants and Masterminds, which is completely divorced from D&D, using 4e mechanics.




Actually, my bet is that you will see that.

At least, you'll see it as much as M&M uses 3e mechanics.

Which is to say, derivative, perhaps compatible, but without actual reference to the D&D books in any way.

Because mechanics can't and won't be copyrighted.

M&M could take the concepts of "flat math," of a d20 vs. a DC, of Tiers, of Feats, the mechanics for Skills, the idea of per-encounter/per-day/at-will powers, etc., put them in it's own terms, and still publish a completely compatible product and still be on fairly solid legal ground.

They wouldn't be able to take text wholesale from the PHB and reprint it, but they didn't really need to in the first place. A nudge here, a tweak there, to better suit it for their own purposes....perfection.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

This nicely ends the problem of the OGL specifying that all versions of the OGL are valid, and any content can be used under any version. 4e is NOT being released under the OGL, period, full stop. 

Among other things, this means all currently open content -- huge volumes of it -- is 'closed' to 4e. Publshers who wish to convert their existing products must be careful that they own 100% of the content. Looking at the 'Section 15' of many products, this is often not the case. Specific ownership of individual bits and pieces of merged open content must be tracked down, difficult since the OGL did not require identifying sources -- indeed, it mandated against it.

For example:

Company 'A' publishes a sourcebook. Its S15 lists books 1,2, and 3.
Company 'B' published a book which uses some bits of Book A. Its S15 now lists itself+1,2,3. However, the author of 'b' doesn't know which bits from 'a' came from which sourcebook. 
Company 'C' uses a paragraph from Company 'B's books. Problem expands. Since S15 is additive, it is nigh-impossible to know which particular bits of formerly open content belong to who. Only if a book references just itself and the SRD can it be safely upgraded -- and then only by the original copyright holder.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> 3rd-party products cannot be published in a way that makes the core books unnecessary. So, no more "complete" games that reprint large chunks of the core books. Instead, publishers will have to focus on content that references the core books (the SRD now being an actual reference document that points to "open content," rather than a container for OGC) rather than reprinting it. So, this sounds like the Advanced Player's Guide is just fine, but something like the WoW RPG (which reprints over 100 pages from the SRD) is not.




So what this means is a lot of wasteful book-flipping.

It's worth noting that the original D20 STL had the "Requires the use of the PHB" clause in it, and this did not stop games like Spycraft 1.0, the Everquest RPG, and many other "complete" games from appearing. Since it is VERY unlikely anyone would be playing a D20-derived game who did not already own a PHB, the 'lost sales' from such games are minimal. 

Basically, this new license is as unlike the OGL as it can be. The whole point of the OGL was to encourage code re-use, make the D20 system "the" system for playing in every kind of game and genre, and mandate sharing of material derived from open content. The current GSL is, basically, an old-fashioned 'license to print supplements', ala the old Judges Guild stuff. It will not surprise me if it is non-viral, as well -- Necromancer's derived material will not be open to, say, Mongoose, and vice-versa.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 1, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> 3rd-party products cannot be published in a way that makes the core books unnecessary. So, no more "complete" games that reprint large chunks of the core books.




Only if you're intent on borrowing the fiddly-bits from 4e.

M&M is as possible today as it ever was, because all that 3e material is open forever.

So someone who wants to make something using the considerable R&D investment in 4e WoTC just laid out will have a few more restrictions, but there's still plenty of OGL complete games to be made using 3.x material.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> So what this means is a lot of wasteful book-flipping.
> 
> It's worth noting that the original D20 STL had the "Requires the use of the PHB" clause in it, and this did not stop games like Spycraft 1.0, the Everquest RPG, and many other "complete" games from appearing. Since it is VERY unlikely anyone would be playing a D20-derived game who did not already own a PHB, the 'lost sales' from such games are minimal.




Right, but "losing PHB sales" shouldn't be their only concern. At least imo it shouldn't be.

Especially right out of the gate, asking folks to use the new material Wizards just spent a lot of time and money developing to support THAT MATERIAL seems not only good common sense on their part, but also just plain polite. 

If you want to make a complete OGL book but can't using 3.x material, I guess this would limit you. I really don't see how that would be the case though. 



> Basically, this new license is as unlike the OGL as it can be. The whole point of the OGL was to encourage code re-use, make the D20 system "the" system for playing in every kind of game and genre, and mandate sharing of material derived from open content.




That might have been the original idea but we both know it didn't really work that way. The only material that got re-used in large part was Wizards' material. 

Because let's face it, we're all proud but poor cobblers here. You have your way of making shoes, and I have mine, and I like mine better. This isn't the same as open source software, which was the analogy being used.

There's no objective way to say "mechanic X works better". Even the most widely lauded 3rd-party derived mechanic I can think of, the Damage Save, is not everyone's cup of tea. 



> The current GSL is, basically, an old-fashioned 'license to print supplements', ala the old Judges Guild stuff. It will not surprise me if it is non-viral, as well -- Necromancer's derived material will not be open to, say, Mongoose, and vice-versa.




I don't think this will necessarily be true. We have no reason to suspect that the license won't allow you to use Mongoose's content in your book as long as it requires the 4e PHB.

But again, I don't see this as a huge barrier, because however much the 3e license might have allowed real open source development, that's not how it worked in practice anyway.

Chuck


----------



## Cassandra (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Company 'A' publishes a sourcebook. Its S15 lists books 1,2, and 3.
> Company 'B' published a book which uses some bits of Book A. Its S15 now lists itself+1,2,3. However, the author of 'b' doesn't know which bits from 'a' came from which sourcebook.
> Company 'C' uses a paragraph from Company 'B's books. Problem expands. Since S15 is additive, it is nigh-impossible to know which particular bits of formerly open content belong to who. Only if a book references just itself and the SRD can it be safely upgraded -- and then only by the original copyright holder.



I agree that Company C will not be able to use any of the material it got from B's book, nor will B be able to use the material it got from A's book. However, Company A, since it knows what material it used from where, could possibly republish _only its own content_.

Of course, it should go without saying that all Open Content published under the OGL was by definition derived from the 3E SRD, which itself falls under the Open Gaming License. It seems to me that such content would, in effect, have to be "re-derived" from the new SRD to be able to be published under the Game System License.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

> The whole point of the OGL was to encourage code re-use, make the D20 system "the" system for playing in every kind of game and genre, and mandate sharing of material derived from open content. The current GSL is, basically, an old-fashioned 'license to print supplements', ala the old Judges Guild stuff. It will not surprise me if it is non-viral, as well -- Necromancer's derived material will not be open to, say, Mongoose, and vice-versa.




A game system is not "code" to be "re-used".  It's not the GPL.

d20 can do a lot, but I don't think it can do everything.  The ones that "stretch" the system aren't really d20, can you really mix M&M, Spycraft, Arcana Unearthed, and D&D together without SOME conversion?

"Mandate sharing of material"--how much of that was really done?  I think most publishers did their own thing, and didn't make a lot of cross-compatible products.  The virus was mostly D&D to their own campaign setting or variant PHB.  WoTC stopped creating OGL stuff outside of a few books.  

Honestly, it was a great experiment.  But I think it was a failure.  WoTC primary market is selling "core books".  The PHB has always sold more than the supplements.  I think it was mentioned while Millions PHBs were sold, only 300,000 of the FR 3e Campaign Setting were sold.  This has always been true--Gary Gygax once mentioned millions of D&D players but only 100,000 subscribed to Dragon magazine.  Having the rules on-line may have hurt sales.  I even suggested maybe the best thing to do with Unearthed Arcana would be not to convert it to on-line format, since I thought that the best way to reward WoTC for doing that would be to buy the book and show that you'd publish it.

No other major publisher has adopted a similar method for their created game systems--White Wolf hasn't opened the Storyteller System, Steve Jackson hasn't opened GURPS, etc.  If the concept of open gaming is so great, wouldn't other publishers have followed suit?

And for those that still believe in the OGL, continue using the third game!  Honestly, the people who are complaining the most are those who wanted 4e open.  Wizards has said "no, it's not".  So, if your primary goal is to support open gaming, using 3e INSTEAD OF 4e.  It'll keep at least one thing I liked about the OGL--keeping a form of D&D alive if the parent company died.

Trying to "reverse engineer" 4e is just going to prove some hypocrisies.  It's Wizards choice to use a different license system.  I don't think there would be an ethical way to "reverse engineer" it.  Granted, you might be able to legally do this.  However, I'd personally take a dim view of a publisher that decided to do that.  Wizards has their own license which (hopefully) allow you to keep your own product identity, so using anything other than the GSL would no be required.  And unlike OSRIC, you're not trying to support a "dead" game with no license.  

If you're trying to do something "completely different", why even bother making it 4e compatible?  The question is, since (a) Wizards is offering a license and (b) those using the existing OGL can still use the 3e game, why would somebody like Green Ronin decide to upgrade M&M to be 4e compatible.

Honestly, what I think will happen is that instead of trying to make 4e compatible cames, you'll see more game companies come up with truly original ideas and not try to make many minor variations of the same ruleset.  Those that make major changes could just as well create their own new games.  Why make a knockoff of D&D when you can create your own game?  With the d20 glut, I have a feeling people would rather get a totally new thing than another umpteeth edition of D&D.

I honestly think this is a good thing, the market had much more creativity before the d20 animal, and we lost some of that "bio-diversity" when everybody rushed into the d20 market.  Now, we'll have those people who are cool with the more restrictive license who want to suppliement WoTC products or produce their own settings.  And, we'll see more creative games.




> Of course, it should go without saying that all Open Content published under the OGL was by definition derived from the 3E SRD, which itself falls under the Open Gaming License. It seems to me that such content would, in effect, have to be "re-derived" from the new SRD to be able to be published under the Game System License.




Technically, D&D is not derived from the SRD, the SRD is derived from D&D.  D&D itself isn't subject to the OGL.

But even if so, I believe one of the major reasons for changing the whole "fluff" or background is to make elements of D&D require WoTC.  The new planes, world like the Feywild and Shadowfell, new creatures, the new cosmology, etc.  The key thing is to make the new elements so integrated with the game and so desirable that you'll want to use the GSL.  I'll bet the GSL allows you to use all the "fluff" in an adventure or supplement, while the OGL will not.


----------



## Shroomy (Feb 1, 2008)

How many companies regularly used another companies product?  Paizo seems to be the only one to do it regularly, though I thought that Goodman Games used some ToH in some DCCs (not sure which ones though).


----------



## The Little Raven (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> So what this means is a lot of wasteful book-flipping.




So, having to flip through a book you're expected to own is worse than paying money to buy the same content twice because a publisher wants a "complete" game that only contains a small percentage of new content? I don't think so. God forbid I have to flip through the PHB I already own instead of getting the combat chapter repeated, word for word, from some lazy developer.



> The whole point of the OGL was to encourage code re-use, make the D20 system "the" system for playing in every kind of game and genre, and mandate sharing of material derived from open content.




If that was the point, then it has failed pretty definitely.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 1, 2008)

Shroomy said:
			
		

> How many companies regularly used another companies product?  Paizo seems to be the only one to do it regularly, though I thought that Goodman Games used some ToH in some DCCs (not sure which ones though).




It didn't happen much. 

Myself as an example, RPGObjects has used significant OGL content in exactly one product in the last 6 years.


----------



## 2WS-Steve (Feb 1, 2008)

Shroomy said:
			
		

> How many companies regularly used another companies product?  Paizo seems to be the only one to do it regularly, though I thought that Goodman Games used some ToH in some DCCs (not sure which ones though).




A bunch of companies support M&M via both OGL and more formally through Superlink.  Adamant dual-stats VIA OGL to Spirit of the Century.  Fiery Dragon and Mystic Eye supported Arcana Unearthed.  I used a few elements from 3rd party folks in my books.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Shroomy said:
			
		

> How many companies regularly used another companies product?  Paizo seems to be the only one to do it regularly, though I thought that Goodman Games used some ToH in some DCCs (not sure which ones though).




I used (with permission and help) the underwater combat rules from "Against The Tide Of Years" (Atlas) in the work I did for FFG (Seafarer's Handbook), and I've seen, in turn, Seafarer's Handbook (with it's reference to ATTOY) cited in many S15s of books which dealt with the same topic.

The S15 for the B5 RPG cites, among other things, Deadlands D20.

Reuse is more common than you might think. It's often just not very blatant, and the chain of derivation is easily lost. Forex, suppose someone wanted to use, oh, a feat from Seafarer's Handbook. That feat has nothing to do with ATTOY, but the S15 of the new book must include the full S15 from SFH.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> So, having to flip through a book you're expected to own is worse than paying money to buy the same content twice because a publisher wants a "complete" game that only contains a small percentage of new content? I don't think so. God forbid I have to flip through the PHB I already own instead of getting the combat chapter repeated, word for word, from some lazy developer.




Ah, but what happens when, say, 10-20% of the chapter is different? 30%? 50%?

Let's say I want to do a dark&grim Sword & Sorcery setting for 4e. I want to make some changes to combat to reflect the kind of world I want to model, one where there's sudden death for even the greatest of heroes, and where a horde of faceless minions can overrun the mighty. I don't need all-new combat rules; I need to tweak them in a lot of different places.

Which works better:

a) "In paragraph 3, change sentence 2 to read "Unless surrounded by three or more opponents".
b) Reprinting paragraph 3, changing the sentence as needed in the context of a full chapter on combat, with proper flavor text and examples to fit the new setting.

Multiply by a few dozen pages of rules.

Since rules can't be copyrighted, the whole VALUE of the OGL was in the ability to reuse text. Remove that, and what have you got? Damn little of worth.

If WOTC didn't want to continue the OGL, they had a chance to say so -- in August, when they said, contrary to the current facts, that they WOULD be continuing it. Changing things now makes them look as bad as people speculated they were when the OGL was first announced and "WOTC will STEAL your GAMES!" was the cry from the suspicious.


----------



## Psion (Feb 1, 2008)

Gundark said:
			
		

> I predict a lot nerd rage with this thread.




I think the rage on this issue has already been spent. We already knew the license was not so open as it claimed.

What this does do is alleviate the head scratching about how they could legally do this. Plus give me bragging rights for predicting this is what they would (need to) do. 

Oh, yeah, I guess this will give someone some ammo to say they "lied" when they said they still intend to support the OGL with 4e.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Psion said:
			
		

> Oh, yeah, I guess this will give someone some ammo to say they "lied" when they said they still intend to support the OGL with 4e.




What term do you use to describe someone saying they'll do something and then not doing it?

Best excuse I can make for them is that the people saying "We will use the OGL" meant it when they said it, and higher-ups then changed policy.


----------



## Psion (Feb 1, 2008)

Shroomy said:
			
		

> How many companies regularly used another companies product?  Paizo seems to be the only one to do it regularly, though I thought that Goodman Games used some ToH in some DCCs (not sure which ones though).




Discounting all the companies using WotC's SRD? 

Yeah, not so many... at least in the D20 heyday. The big effect of the OGL was really "plug into D&D".

Many authors are just in it to make their own extensions to d20. Still, some of the better ones (IMO) always did. Some did so extensively. Bret Boyd's books like Temporality and Dread Codex. Lots of folks reused Tome of Horrors material. Dreamscarred Press plugs into the excellent Hyperconscious by Malhavoc.


----------



## Psion (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> What term do you use to describe someone saying they'll do something and then not doing it?




I didn't say it was entirely unjustified. But unless they knew it was wrong when they said it, I think of it more as "breaking their word" than "lying".

I can't read their minds about that, but when confronted about the technical problems with "closing" the OGL, they seemed surprised. I don't get the idea that the current staff really got the technicalities of the license that their predecessors wrote.


----------



## Pale (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Which works better:
> 
> a) "In paragraph 3, change sentence 2 to read "Unless surrounded by three or more opponents".
> b) Reprinting paragraph 3, changing the sentence as needed in the context of a full chapter on combat, with proper flavor text and examples to fit the new setting.




or
c) "Follow standard combat rules with the following exceptions." Then write what you want with the assumption that your reader is familiar with the core combat rules and you don't have to waste space reprinting them.

A much better presentation of your option 'A', I admit, but it doesn't need to read like a technical manual to work well under the new licensing.


----------



## Darrin Drader (Feb 1, 2008)

We liked to use a liberal amount of other company's OGC with Bastion's Oathbound line. Just check out the section 15 in Wildwood.



			
				Lizard said:
			
		

> What term do you use to describe someone saying they'll do something and then not doing it?
> 
> Best excuse I can make for them is that the people saying "We will use the OGL" meant it when they said it, and higher-ups then changed policy.




How can you expect consistency in policy from a company that has had a revolving door of higher ups over the past eight years? The people who created that policy aren't around anymore and the new people in charge are being a little more aggressive in not giving away everything they spent so much money developing. I think its a completely reasonable thing to do from a business point of view. WotC only makes money if the players have to use their products. If not, they just turned over hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars worth of manpower on research and development to their competition.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> How can you expect consistency in policy from a company that has had a revolving door of higher ups over the past eight years?




Yes, but we're talking about statements made in August of 2007 by people who are still there and still in charge of 4e, with no evidence such statments were made without authorization.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Psion said:
			
		

> I can't read their minds about that, but when confronted about the technical problems with "closing" the OGL, they seemed surprised. I don't get the idea that the current staff really got the technicalities of the license that their predecessors wrote.




That's....interesting.

I mean, the legalities of the OGL are a matter of public record and constant debate, and the "any version" clause was a major selling point, a way of protecting early adopters from sudden shifts in the license. To be ignorant of it, and yet, in charge of implementing it for 4e is...well...insert some adjective of your choice here.


----------



## Jürgen Hubert (Feb 1, 2008)

OK, so we know the following:

- The new license is called the GDL, not the OGL.
- This means you can't interchange it with the earlier OGL license.

Do we actually know anything else about it that _isn't_ rumor, hearsay, and speculation? Something that isn't merely supported by off-the-cuff remarks which could mean any number of things?

Since I plan to publish under the GDL, I'd dearly like to know.


----------



## Psion (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> That's....interesting.
> 
> I mean, the legalities of the OGL are a matter of public record and constant debate, and the "any version" clause was a major selling point, a way of protecting early adopters from sudden shifts in the license. To be ignorant of it, and yet, in charge of implementing it for 4e is...well...insert some adjective of your choice here.




I'm not really surprised. They cycled out a lot of their staff, especially after Hasbro took charge. In the days when they were continually adding material to the SRD/MSRD, that would have been unthinkable. But after that stopped, and Andy Collins expressed umbrage over people reproducing UA... you could begin to sense that the new guard didn't have the appreciation of the OGL that the old guard did. (And/or perhaps, their corporate masters didn't.)


----------



## Darrin Drader (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Yes, but we're talking about statements made in August of 2007 by people who are still there and still in charge of 4e, with no evidence such statments were made without authorization.




WotC is pretty careful in how they phrase things, particularly when legalities are involved. This just means that when they say something, they might be withholding information. There might be an angle there that you aren't considering and they don't expect you to consider. I'd be willing to bet that if you go back and look at their actual statements, you'll see that they haven't actually contradicted anything.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> WotC is pretty careful in how they phrase things, particularly when legalities are involved. This just means that when they say something, they might be withholding information. There might be an angle there that you aren't considering and they don't expect you to consider. I'd be willing to bet that if you go back and look at their actual statements, you'll see that they haven't actually contradicted anything.




Go here: http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e#ogl


			
				WOTC on OGL said:
			
		

> "There may not be a D20 STL in 4e *just the OGL* Nothing has been decided with respect *to the d20 STL*."




Emphasis mine.

NOTE: The _STL_ is noted as being "undecided". It is very clear that, as of August, 2007, WOTC was planning to use "the" OGL -- not "a license", but THE OGL. Those are the words. They were delivered, as others have noted, to an audience composed mostly of businesspeople representing competitors of WOTC, and delivered by the employee charged with dealing with the issue of the license. This isn't some random developer posting on his personal blog "I think there'll be some kind of open whatsis, I dunno". It's an official statement of a business plan, and it was allowed to stand for five months, long after any internal debate might have changed it. If "We didn't understand how the license _we wrote_ worked" is their excuse, I sure hope no one sues them, because the judge will hurt himself laughing.


----------



## The Little Raven (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Which works better:




Well, Pale already answered with what I would have.

And secondly, this doesn't change my direct point: people who reprint whole chapters, word-for-word (like in the WoW RPG) without a single change simply to be able to call it a "complete" game.



> If WOTC didn't want to continue the OGL, they had a chance to say so -- in August, when they said, contrary to the current facts, that they WOULD be continuing it. Changing things now makes them look as bad as people speculated they were when the OGL was first announced and "WOTC will STEAL your GAMES!" was the cry from the suspicious.




The OGL is continuing. It's not changing at all.

And your fixation on the fact that they said "OGL" is approaching obsession. Yeah, they said OGL, because at the time, the term OGL was the only point of reference they really had that dealt with the idea of sharing a game's system with others. It's kinda like how people use the term Kleenex (a specific brand) to refer to all tissues, despite Kleenex being a distinct kind of tissue (as the OGL is a distinct type of "open" license).

And listening to the actual 4e OGL panel, you will get the clear and distinct knowledge that they are not putting 4e under the previous OGL, but a new one (which later was renamed the GSL to avoid people using the "I can use any content under any previous version of the OGL" argument to reprint large chunks of 4e as well).


----------



## Dragonblade (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Go here: http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e#ogl
> 
> 
> Emphasis mine.
> ...




You don't know what you are talking about. If the judge hurts himself laughing it will be at the plaintiff for bringing such a frivolous suit. Hope the plaintiff can afford to pay WotC's legal fees.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> And your fixation on the fact that they said "OGL" is approaching obsession. Yeah, they said OGL, because at the time, the term OGL was the only point of reference they really had that dealt with the idea of sharing a game's system with others.




Because, y'know, no other game companies had ever issued licenses to third parties to produce compatible products, right? Not Steve Jackson Games, not Hero Games, not Far Future Enterprises, and not, oh, what company was that? TSR or something? What game did THEY make again? 

Licensing third parties has been around since 1975 or so, when Judges Guild was "authorized" to make D&D supplements. The OGL was unique and different from those prior licenses, and it is not a "generic" term in any sense of the word, any more than GPL or Creative Commons are. WOTC referred to using one license, then chose to use another. Maybe they always planned this; maybe they really were ignorant of what the license they wrote actually said and had to backpedal something fierce when the truth hit them. We will never know.

Face it -- in your eyes, NOTHING WOTC does is wrong, questionable, or even simply poorly handled.

Those poor, poor, kittens.

'nuff said.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> You don't know what you are talking about. If the judge hurts himself laughing it will be at the plaintiff for bringing such a frivolous suit. Hope the plaintiff can afford to pay WotC's legal fees.




Company A says to their competitors "This will be our policy, going forward, regarding our licensing of our product to third parties, such as Company B."
Company B then makes business plans based on that public announcement.
Company A suddenly changes their policy, costing company B money.

You don't think Company B has a case? This is pretty standard shady business dealing.

Ever read the huge boilerplate disclaimers most corporations put on any kind of public announcement, denying this announcement actually means what it says, just in case they change their minds later?

It's VERY unlikely anyone would sue over this, since the money just isn't there. But to claim it's not at least borderline is odd.


----------



## The Little Raven (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Because, y'know, no other game companies had ever issued licenses to third parties to produce compatible products, right? Not Steve Jackson Games, not Hero Games, not Far Future Enterprises, and not, oh, what company was that? TSR or something? What game did THEY make again?




What do a bunch of closed licenses (all of which involved royalties) offered to specific individual companies for specific products have to do with an open license available to anyone that chooses to follow the rules? Nada.

That's like comparing the GPL to the licenses that id software uses with the people that buy their engines. Yeah, they're both licenses for software, but their similarities end there.



> The OGL was unique and different from those prior licenses, and it is not a "generic" term in any sense of the word, any more than GPL or Creative Commons are. WOTC referred to using one license, then chose to use another.




Kleenex isn't generic, but is used as a generic term by most people, just as OGL is used as a generic term by most people to refer to "open source roleplaying games." Your fixation on the belief that when they mention an OGL, they explicitly mean _*THE OGL*_ appears to be bordering on frothing at the mouth. I mean, if I asked you to hand me a Kleenex while pointing to a box of generic tissues, are you going to give me some dissertation on not calling non-Kleenex brand tissues that, instead of just following the modern vernacular and handing me a damned tissue?



> Maybe they always planned this; maybe they really were ignorant of what the license they wrote actually said and had to backpedal something fierce when the truth hit them.




Or maybe they weren't expecting a conspiracy theorist to analyse every minute detail of everything they said and recast it into a way that supports his pre-conceived anti-WotC/4E stance.



> Face it -- in your eyes, NOTHING WOTC does is wrong, questionable, or even simply poorly handled.




They put out Pokemon. That alone is a travesty. But hey, people make mistakes.

On the other side of the coin, you seem almost fanatical about your anti-WotC, anti-4e stance that it seems you jump on anything they say, no matter how small or how far in the past compared to the current state of things, and fixate on it to the point of obsession.

Try actually listening to the entire OGL panel at GenCon, since that contains all the actual facts about what they said. It's abundantly clear they're talking about an entirely new license for 4th Edition with the OGL as the closest reference point.


----------



## The Little Raven (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> You don't think Company B has a case?




Considering that the "announcement" in question was actually a discussion with the competitors and they were told "You'll get more final details in January" (which they did)? No. They don't have a case. Any intelligent judge would see they started work on their product with full knowledge that the terms of the license were far from finalized, and thus any loss of revenue because of changes to an incomplete license is not the fault of the licensor.



> This is pretty standard shady business dealing.




If you're wearing a tin-foil hat. Somehow their GenCon panel to discuss the future of the OGL  in regards to 4th Edition morphed into an official final announcement of the terms in your mind, and there's no logical way you could have come to that conclusion if you actually listened to the discussion in question.

In short, Lizard, I think you've gone off the deep end. Sadly, this means you make my ignore list.


----------



## Dragonblade (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Company A says to their competitors "This will be our policy, going forward, regarding our licensing of our product to third parties, such as Company B."
> Company B then makes business plans based on that public announcement.
> Company A suddenly changes their policy, costing company B money.
> 
> You don't think Company B has a case? This is pretty standard shady business dealing.




Companies make forward looking business statements all the time and they are not legal contracts. Companies are not bound to forward looking business statements. Only to the law and to legally binding contracts they have entered into. Company B has no claim against Company A unless they had a specific legal agreement. 

If I sell racing kits for Honda cars, and Honda decides they will now only sell Acuras, I have no claim against them unless we had a specific legal agreement. Sure, I based my whole business on theirs, but that is not their fault I did so, and they have no obligation to me. So it would be with WotC and third parties.


----------



## The Little Raven (Feb 1, 2008)

As for the "OGL" means "THE OGL," even the Open Gaming Foundation (the supposed hub of the movement) has a section called "open gaming licenses" that include more than just the specific D&D OGL, so the idea that people would use "OGL" to refer to open gaming licenses in general isn't so far-fetched.


----------



## Melan (Feb 1, 2008)

Lots of smart points raised in this thread (by Lizard, JohnRTroy, etc.); the most interesting possible side-effect to me could be the closing of the 3rd edition OGC corpus before the 4th edition GSL. In particular, I am interested how this could affect Necromancer's ability to put out a revised "Tome of Horrors" type product for 4e; the 3e book was produced under a special legal agreement, and it remains to be seen if the 4e GSL will allow Necro to transfer its contents to the new edition. Scary.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 1, 2008)

Psion said:
			
		

> I didn't say it was entirely unjustified. But unless they knew it was wrong when they said it, I think of it more as "breaking their word" than "lying".
> 
> I can't read their minds about that, but when confronted about the technical problems with "closing" the OGL, they seemed surprised. I don't get the idea that the current staff really got the technicalities of the license that their predecessors wrote.




It was probably more a matter of the executives saying "we want something like the OGL, only add this provision, and that provision, and oh yeah, this other thing!"

And when the lawyers looked at what new provisions the execs wanted, they informed them they couldn't do it under the old license.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 1, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Company A says to their competitors "This will be our policy, going forward, regarding our licensing of our product to third parties, such as Company B."
> Company B then makes business plans based on that public announcement.
> Company A suddenly changes their policy, costing company B money.
> 
> ...




No, I don't think so, because their "policy going forward", the OGL, is the same as it ever was. 

The OGL is eternal, and any book released under the OGL is still as viable as it ever was.

So if the OGL is that policy going forward you were talking about, nothing has changed.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 1, 2008)

charlesatan said:
			
		

> From Gamer Radio Zero episode 27 (12:20):



GSL, huh? It's like a rip-off of the other TLI, GPL (General Public License).

So, does that means OGC will be GSC (Game System Content), making it difficult to use 4e "open" material with OGLv1?

Sighs. It's _OA_ and _Rokugan_ all over again. Yet another disagreeable decision from WotC. :\


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 1, 2008)

Mystaros said:
			
		

> Doesn't work that way. Wizards of the Coast carved out a provision in the OGL that material it released was distinctly not a part of the OGL unless listed in the SRD. Save for one monster in one of the Monster Manuals, most of the Psionics system, and some of Unearthed Arcana, none of the material ever published by WotC (outside the core SRD) was considered OGL. That same would apply to the 4E materials.
> 
> What calling it the GSL instead of the OGL essentially is locks it out from those who would say, "Well, the 4E SRD is covered by the OGL, therefore I can use any prior version of the OGL if I so choose, therefore I don't have to pay any attention to the release dates." It takes any kind of soothing of Part 9 of the OGL out of consideration for use of the 4E SRD, as the 4E SRD is not covered under the OGL, it is covered under the GSL.
> 
> ...




Respectfully, Mystaros, I don't think that was what the poster you were responding to meant. 

The 4E materials in the GSL won't be part of the OGL in any way; we know that. However, it's perfectly legal to take the existing materials in the OGL and reconstruct them to mimic the GSL materials as closely as they can (including by writing similarly new material).

The 4E pit fiend is a good example of how that'd work. It's called a "Large immortal humanoid (devil)." Now, that's part of the GSL - there's no reason I couldn't write an OGL product introducing the "immortal" creature Type, with "humanoid" as a subtype, and "(devil)" as a secondary subtype, or descriptor, etc. So long as I don't reprint any text from the GSL word-for-word, or use any original intellectual property in the GSL (e.g. the names of brand new monsters), there's nothing I couldn't use the OGL to replicate.

While such a system wouldn't be perfect, I'm guessing it could get upwards of 90% compatibility with 4E (if not closer to 99%). This was the same thing that OSRIC did to basically replicate OD&D using the OGL, and it worked great (especially since they were copying a system that was very different from the base OGL materials). With such a system, companies can then make products that are, for all intents and purposes, 4E-compatible, while avoiding the tighter restrictions of the GSL, since they're publishing them under the OGL instead. 

At some point, someone is going to make an OGL-replication of the GSL (and if someone else doesn't, I will   ).


----------



## Voadam (Feb 1, 2008)

Mystaros said:
			
		

> Doesn't work that way. Wizards of the Coast carved out a provision in the OGL that material it released was distinctly not a part of the OGL unless listed in the SRD.




What provision are you talking about? I don't see it.

OGL:[sblock]The following text is the property of Wizards of
the Coast, Inc. and is Copyright 2000 Wizards of the
Coast, Inc (“Wizards”). All Rights Reserved.
1. Definitions: (a)”Contributors” means
the copyright and/or trademark owners who have
contributed Open Game Content; (b)”Derivative
Material” means copyrighted material including
derivative works and translations (including into
other computer languages), potation, modification,
correction, addition, extension, upgrade, improvement,
compilation, abridgment or other form in which an
existing work may be recast, transformed or adapted;
(c) “Distribute” means to reproduce, license, rent,
lease, sell, broadcast, publicly display, transmit
or otherwise distribute; (d)”Open Game Content”
means the game mechanic and includes the methods,
procedures, processes and routines to the extent such
content does not embody the Product Identity and is
an enhancement over the prior art and any additional
content clearly identified as Open Game Content by
the Contributor, and means any work covered by
this License, including translations and derivative
works under copyright law, but specifically excludes
Product Identity. (e) “Product Identity” means product
and product line names, logos and identifying marks
including trade dress; artifacts; creatures characters;
stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, dialogue,
incidents, language, artwork, symbols, designs,
depictions, likenesses, formats, poses, concepts,
themes and graphic, photographic and other visual
or audio representations; names and descriptions
of characters, spells, enchantments, personalities,
teams, personas, likenesses and special abilities;
places, locations, environments, creatures, equipment,
magical or supernatural abilities or effects, logos,
symbols, or graphic designs; and any other trademark
or registered trademark clearly identified as Product
identity by the owner of the Product Identity, and
which specifically excludes the Open Game Content;
(f) “Trademark” means the logos, names, mark,
sign, motto, designs that are used by a Contributor
to identify itself or its products or the associated
products contributed to the Open Game License
by the Contributor (g) “Use”, “Used” or “Using”
means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify,
translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of
Open Game Content. (h) “You” or “Your” means the
licensee in terms of this agreement.
2. The License: This License applies to any
Open Game Content that contains a notice indicating
that the Open Game Content may only be Used under
and in terms of this License. You must affix such a
notice to any Open Game Content that you Use. No
terms may be added to or subtracted from this License
except as described by the License itself. No other
terms or conditions may be applied to any Open Game
Content distributed using this License.
OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a
3.Offer and Acceptance: By Using the Open
Game Content You indicate Your acceptance of the
terms of this License.
4. Grant and Consideration: In consideration
for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors
grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive
license with the exact terms of this License
to Use, the Open Game Content.
5.Representation of Authority to Contribute: If
You are contributing original material as Open Game
Content, You represent that Your Contributions are
Your original creation and/or You have sufficient
rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License.
6.Notice of License Copyright: You must update
the COPYRIGHT NOTICE portion of this License to
include the exact text of the COPYRIGHT NOTICE
of any Open Game Content You are copying,
modifying or distributing, and You must add the title,
the copyright date, and the copyright holder’s name
to the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any original Open
Game Content you Distribute.
7. Use of Product Identity: You agree not to
Use any Product Identity, including as an indication
as to compatibility, except as expressly licensed in
another, independent Agreement with the owner of
each element of that Product Identity. You agree not
to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any
Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction
with a work containing Open Game Content except as
expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement
with the owner of such Trademark or Registered
Trademark. The use of any Product Identity in Open
Game Content does not constitute a challenge to the
ownership of that Product Identity. The owner of any
Product Identity used in Open Game Content shall
retain all rights, title and interest in and to that Product
Identity.
8. Identification: If you distribute Open Game
Content You must clearly indicate which portions of
the work that you are distributing are Open Game
Content.
9. Updating the License: Wizards or its
designated Agents may publish updated versions of
this License. You may use any authorized version
of this License to copy, modify and distribute any
Open Game Content originally distributed under any
version of this License.
10 Copy of this License: You MUST include
a copy of this License with every copy of the Open
Game Content You Distribute.
11. Use of Contributor Credits: You may not
market or advertise the Open Game Content using
the name of any Contributor unless You have written
permission from the Contributor to do so.
12 Inability to Comply: If it is impossible for
You to comply with any of the terms of this License
with respect to some or all of the Open Game Content
due to statute, judicial order, or governmental
regulation then You may not Use any Open
Game Material so affected.
13 Termination: This License will terminate
automatically if You fail to comply with all terms
herein and fail to cure such breach within 30 days of
becoming aware of the breach. All sublicenses shall
survive the termination of this License.
14 Reformation: If any provision of this License
is held to be unenforceable, such provision shall be
reformed only to the extent necessary to make it
enforceable.
15.COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Open Game License v 1.0a Copyright 2000,
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
System Reference Document Copyright 2000-
2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan
Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich baker,
Andy Collins, David Noonan, Rich Redman, Bruce R.
Cordell, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax
and Dave Arneson.[/sblock]

Note that the MMII OGC monster and the Unearthed Arcana OGC material are OGC but not in the srd. They are included in the website www.d20srd.org but not in the actual srd.

Stuff not released under the OGL is simply not OGC. Whether you can modify OGC material to create stuff that is equivalent to nonOGC stuff without crossing boundaries is not explicit.

The license explicitly prohibits compatibility statements with trademark stuff (like D&D) without an agreement such as the d20 STL or using OGL product identity without such an agreement. 

4e stuff is not going to be released under the OGL and therefore cannot be product identity. The OGL only prohibits indications of "compatibility or co-adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content." I expect 4e to have some trademarks which cannot be used, but that is irrelevant to whether you can make an OGC version of compatible stuff under the OGL deriving from OGC.

The OGL is not a barrier to making stuff compatible to nonOGC things outside of the compatibility indication prohibitions.

Normal copywright laws apply to works designed to be compatible with 4e rule mechanics absent other agreements such as the new GSL.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

> While such a system wouldn't be perfect, I'm guessing it could get upwards of 90% compatibility with 4E (if not closer to 99%). This was the same thing that OSRIC did to basically replicate OD&D using the OGL, and it worked great (especially since they were copying a system that was very different from the base OGL materials). With such a system, companies can then make products that are, for all intents and purposes, 4E-compatible, while avoiding the tighter restrictions of the GSL, since they're publishing them under the OGL instead.




OSRIC does serve a purpose, to support a game system Wizards won't license, and its creator said he'd shut it down if there was a legal version of it available similar to the 3e OGL license.

Most publishers--the truly professional ones, the ones who want to create complimentary and supplementary products from D&D, the ones who would pay the license fee to get the early adopted ruleset--will likely want to use the GSL.  I'll bet there are enough incentives for them to use it--can say "D&D compatible" on it--and it will also likely protect their own derivative works from being reused.  They want to make a decent amount of money.

One of the problems with the OGL is that a lot of people used it in an exploitative manner.  I'm not even talking about publishers who creating alternate PHBs.  I'm talking about the people who would compile OGL rules on-line for free from people's products.  Here are examples.

Wizards releases a 100% OGL content book, Unearthed Arcana.  People start taking the whole book and making it part of their online OGL-SRD collections.  Instead of showing support for this with buying the book, people just cut-and-paste the whole thing on-line.  I think Andy Collins was right to be annoyed.

David Pulver said GOO released their own SRD for their D20 rules.  When they released D20 Mecha, lots of clones showed up immediately, making GOO's own product redundant.

Somebody puts up a SRD clone of Green Ronin's True20 ruleset.  He then defends himself online saying that's what the OGL is about, and that you "shouldn't use it if you don't want this to happen".  And some people would berate people like Monte Cook for releasing what they called "Crippled OGL", since sometimes he'd keep certain monster names and other items from being reused.

So, basically, the OGL in my opinion is flawed because of this viral nature.  It's a virus all right, it's like a contagion.  I fully suspect the new license is designed to be complementary to people allowing the secondary publishers to protect themselves from behavior like this.

There's a lot of people out there who want a free lunch.  The OGL was too open.  I think this new license would help the secondary publishers protect their own content.  Unless the GSL is incredibly draconian, it will be embraced by most publishers and I think many fans as well, in fact it may offer the protections they need to prevent the freeloaders from taking their hard work.  

If you want total control over your IP, make your own game, don't reverse engineer D&D.  

If you want to support the OGL, use the 3e rules.  Be like Richard M. Stallman, show that you will only play 3e because of the OGL.  He only uses Free Software, he doesn't try to go reverse engineer Windows or the latest game, he takes a moral stance.

The only incentive to "reverse engineering" the 4e D&D game and attempting to release it under the OGL is to continue the exploitation, to say "f--- you Wizbro, I'm gonna take your game and publish it online".  You have the GSL, and the game is still being published, so there's no excuse that you can't use it freely.  If you say "game rules can't be copyrighted", then do it but don't use the OGL as an excuse or a shield (and I think if Wizards wanted to push an RPG might seem more like a book than a game, legal precedent could someday be set protecting RPG's copyrights, but that's an aside).

I personally would take a dim view of anybody doing that, and I hope Wizards decides to make an example of anybody who does.


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> OSRIC does serve a purpose, to support a game system Wizards won't license, and its creator said he'd shut it down if there was a legal version of it available similar to the 3e OGL license.




A 4E-style OGL work would serve a purpose too - to allow for 4E-compatible products that otherwise can't be published under the GSL. Likewise, there'd be no need for such a work if the GSL didn't have the restrictions that it has.



> _Most publishers--the truly professional ones, the ones who want to create complimentary and supplementary products from D&D, the ones who would pay the license fee to get the early adopted ruleset--will likely want to use the GSL._




It's fallacious to suggest that only publishers who want to pay the license fee are the "truly professional ones." There are many who simply can't afford it. Similarly, there are plenty of publishers who want to make complementary (not complimentary, though I'm sure they'd want to do that too   ) and supplementary D&D products, but can't because they wouldn't meet the nebulous "community decency" clause, or because they want to make something that isn't medieval fantasy, but are bound to refer to the PHB.



> _I'll bet there are enough incentives for them to use it--can say "D&D compatible" on it--and it will also likely protect their own derivative works from being reused.  They want to make a decent amount of money._




All businesses, and people involved in business, want to make money. But that doesn't have anything to do with having their derivative works being reused, necessarily. We don't know that the GSL won't have clauses about Open Game Content, and such a feature was a high point in the OGL.



> _One of the problems with the OGL is that a lot of people used it in an exploitative manner.  I'm not even talking about publishers who creating alternate PHBs.  I'm talking about the people who would compile OGL rules on-line for free from people's products.  Here are examples._




Actually, it's wrong to say "a lot" of people exploited the OGL. Almost no one did; there were just a few individuals who republished large tracts of OGC. That aside, people who created alternate PHBs weren't necessarily exploitive. They were also just operating from a business standpoint; it's easier to market their books as not needing another book to be used.



> _Wizards releases a 100% OGL content book, Unearthed Arcana.  People start taking the whole book and making it part of their online OGL-SRD collections.  Instead of showing support for this with buying the book, people just cut-and-paste the whole thing on-line.  I think Andy Collins was right to be annoyed.
> 
> David Pulver said GOO released their own SRD for their D20 rules.  When they released D20 Mecha, lots of clones showed up immediately, making GOO's own product redundant.
> 
> Somebody puts up a SRD clone of Green Ronin's True20 ruleset.  He then defends himself online saying that's what the OGL is about, and that you "shouldn't use it if you don't want this to happen".  And some people would berate people like Monte Cook for releasing what they called "Crippled OGL", since sometimes he'd keep certain monster names and other items from being reused._




Far more people purchased those books than used the OGC-derivatives. Some revenue was lost, yes, but the purpose of the Open Gaming License was to put the materials out there for ease of use without making money the primary concern. In some cases some people took this to an extreme that was frowned upon, but that isn't a reason to scrap the entire system. 

There is also a happy medium between a book being 100% Open and a book that uses "crippled content." Most books in the d20/OGL community do a good job of finding this medium. 



> _So, basically, the OGL in my opinion is flawed because of this viral nature.  It's a virus all right, it's like a contagion.  I fully suspect the new license is designed to be complementary to people allowing the secondary publishers to protect themselves from behavior like this._




I respect your opinion, but I disagree with it quite a bit. Likewise, the existing OGL already has provisions to allow publishers to protect themselves from this type of behavior. There are guidelines for declaring aspects of books PI, which protect the contents of the works just fine.



> _There's a lot of people out there who want a free lunch.  The OGL was too open._




I disagree. First, I don't think anything can really be "too open," unless it poses some sort of danger to the public (I certainly wouldn't want to see the guidelines for how to make nuclear bombs available online, for example). Regarding people who want a "free lunch," who wouldn't take something that's freely and legally offered? Similarly, the publishers know what they're doing when they release something to be 100% OGC. If they offer it for free reproduction, my sympathy for them is somewhat mitigated when someone reproduces it free online. There is a way to make things OGC in a manner that belies legally cut-and-pasting the entire book.



> _I think this new license would help the secondary publishers protect their own content.  Unless the GSL is incredibly draconian, it will be embraced by most publishers and I think many fans as well, in fact it may offer the protections they need to prevent the freeloaders from taking their hard work.  _




I have no doubt it will be embraced, but I don't think that anyone will be particularly rejoicing over its having additional restrictions; those restrictions might not be particularly reviled, but I personally don't think the publishers are cheering for having these additional restrictions added to the GSL - especially since we've yet to see any particular restrictions around open content, and the reproduction of open content (since that's what you seem to be talking about).

As it stands now (so far as I know) there's nothing to stop a publisher from making a 100% open book under the GSL.



> _If you want total control over your IP, make your own game, don't reverse engineer D&D._




Actually, total control over your own game would entail not using any sort of open-license system at all, which includes the OGL and GSL.  



> _If you want to support the OGL, use the 3e rules._




The OGL unto itself encourages the creature of new rules; doing so does support it.



> _Be like Richard M. Stallman, show that you will only play 3e because of the OGL.  He only uses Free Software, he doesn't try to go reverse engineer Windows or the latest game, he takes a moral stance._




I don't understand the idea of "playing 3E because of the OGL." Are you saying that if 3E had no OGL, people shouldn't play it at all?   

I don't know much about Richard Stallman, so I can't really comment on that, but there's nothing "moral" in what you're advocating. You're advocating good business sense, which is removed entirely from morality.

I think that open content is the moral stance, because it doesn't concern itself with business practices. When something is open, the creator gives it to anyone who wants it, free of all restrictions and restraints - which include asking for money for it - no matter what the product is. Whether it's a game or an appliance or a medicine, letting people have it as they want it, without being concerned with how much profit is in it for you, is (I think) a moral stance.

The GSL might be good from a business sense; I don't know, since I'm not a businessman. But I personally don't like that it imposes additional restrictions, compared to the OGL, so that WotC and other publishers can maximize their profits. I'm personally more concerned with keeping the game open to as many people as possible, without putting profitability into the equation. I have that luxury because my finances don't depend on making money from the game.

I don't think the two necessarily have to work at cross-purposes though. I think that you can have open content (in a game, at least) and still be able to turn a profit with it. I just think that the OGL is the best example we've seen of that.



> _The only incentive to "reverse engineering" the 4e D&D game and attempting to release it under the OGL is to continue the exploitation, to say "f--- you Wizbro, I'm gonna take your game and publish it online".  You have the GSL, and the game is still being published, so there's no excuse that you can't use it freely._




Unless what you want to make falls under its restricted terms. In that case, such a person has no recourse to legally publish what they want to make (they can put it out as a for-free netbook or similar work, but even that's technically illegal).



> _If you say "game rules can't be copyrighted", then do it but don't use the OGL as an excuse or a shield (and I think if Wizards wanted to push an RPG might seem more like a book than a game, legal precedent could someday be set protecting RPG's copyrights, but that's an aside)._




Games aren't books, so they can copyright everything that isn't part of the rules already, but as you said, that's an aside.

The OGL isn't meant to be "an excuse" or "a shield," as it's quite forward in serving its purpose: to make the mechanics published under it usable by anyone, free from restrictions.



> _I personally would take a dim view of anybody doing that, and I hope Wizards decides to make an example of anybody who does._




Fair enough. I personally would take a shining view of anyone who makes a 4E-compatible OGL product. I do hope Wizards would try to make an example of them, though, because such efforts would likely fail, helping to legitimize such activities further.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

Here's my point.

Basically, it is up to a content creator to license their work as they see fit.  

If Wizards wants to use a different license for 4e, more power to them.  They are using a new license which I think most people will agree with.  

You have the right to make products under 4e under the new rules.
You have the right to make products under the 3e ruleset with the OGL.
You DON'T have the right to make products under 4e as part of the OGL.



> I think that open content is the moral stance, because it doesn't concern itself with business practices. When something is open, the creator gives it to anyone who wants it, free of all restrictions and restraints - which include asking for money for it - no matter what the product is. Whether it's a game or an appliance or a medicine, letting people have it as they want it, without being concerned with how much profit is in it for you, is (I think) a moral stance.




But it's up to the individual to decide.  The person who rips off another person's property is not moral.  It's the "Golden Rule".  I don't consider making a profit to be immoral.  You bring up medicine but one product saves lives.  I would think it wrong for a company to sit on a product while people are dying--Tamiflu had threats to reverse-engineer it when there was a rumor of a shortage during a potential pandemic.  I can understand from that perspective.

But an RPG is pure entertainment.  There's no moral right to have "Free D&D".  It's like the talk about file sharing.  When people say artists should be paid, some people say "hey, you can't stop file sharing, musicians don't have a right to an income, soon it will be people who love it just for the music".  What a load of bull.  Can't afford music?  Fine, do without or seek legal means to get it.  Don't download stuff for free.

When it comes to entertainment, I follow the golden rule..."Do Unto Others as You Would Have The Do Unto You".  I wouldn't take somebody's content and put it up for free online because I wouldn't want somebody to do that to me, and even if I disagreed with the right to make a profit for my own work I want the creator to have that choice.  

3e is Free.  4e is not.  "Forcing" it to be Free is something I think only people with impure intent would do.  You won't see Necromancer, Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, etc, attempt some of the stuff some people are suggesting.  They've been run by freelancers who understand how the business works, and would follow the Golden Rule.  And I think most fans of the products understand this.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> But it's up to the individual to decide.  The person who rips off another person's property is not moral.  It's the "Golden Rule".  I don't consider making a profit to be immoral.  You bring up medicine but one product saves lives.  I would think it wrong for a company to sit on a product while people are dying--Tamiflu had threats to reverse-engineer it when there was a rumor of a shortage during a potential pandemic.  I can understand from that perspective.




Using the OGL *as written* isn't "ripping someone off".

"Here, take this sandwich. It's free."
"Free? Really?"
"Sure, it's yours. Take it if you want it, it's good."
"Uh...sure! OK!"
"Thief!"

Doesn't work.

No one was forced to use the OGL, but, if they chose to do so, they accepted the viral nature of the license and opened their work. To complain that someone else does exactly what the license explicitly permits them to do is somewhere beyond "disingenuous".

I cannot speak for other creators, but when I see my work reused in someone else's product, I am thrilled, because it's the most sincere compliment I can be paid by another developer:"You did this better than I could, so I'm using it."


----------



## Voadam (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Here's my point.
> 
> Basically, it is up to a content creator to license their work as they see fit.
> 
> ...




The OGL gives the right to make derivative products from OGC. If you can get 4e stuff from OGC then the OGL does give you the right to make products using that OGC derived stuff.

WotC irrevocably gave people the right to produce stuff under the OGL. They licensed their work as they saw fit at the time and made that decision irrevocable under the license they issued.

If wizards wants to offer a different license for 4e stuff or even offer no license at all that is within their rights, but it does not change what people can legally do under the old license.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

I wasn't aiming the "ripping off" comment at the OGL use in 3e.  

It's being aimed at the people who want to adapt 4e, which is NOT OGL, into an OGL, for whatever reason they feel justified to do so.  I've got no problem with people continuing to use the 3e OGL, just not for adapting 4e rules.

But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule.  Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...

But considering the fact that Wizards has decided to get rid of the OGL as it stood in the past, I have a feeling part of the change was based on this "ripping".


----------



## Lizard (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I wasn't aiming the "ripping off" comment at the OGL use in 3e.
> 
> It's being aimed at the people who want to adapt 4e, which is NOT OGL, into an OGL, for whatever reason they feel justified to do so.




Yeah, well, good luck with that, whoever tries it. I think a lot of the changes in 4e were done solely to make that as difficult as possible.



> But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule.  Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...




Since those books took advantage of the SRD, how is it wrong to do unto them what they did unto WOTC?

(UA is a very interesting case. The only reason to publish a Big Book of OGC is to have it be used, then WOTC went out of their way to make it as hard to use as possible. The frak?)



> But considering the fact that Wizards has decided to get rid of the OGL as it stood in the past, I have a feeling part of the change was based on this "ripping".




May be, but this then leads to the question of why they designed it that way in the first place. This isn't some odd loophole; it's a design intent, explicitly stated so in the SRD FAQ.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

> Since those books took advantage of the SRD, how is it wrong to do unto them what they did unto WOTC?
> 
> (UA is a very interesting case. The only reason to publish a Big Book of OGC is to have it be used, then WOTC went out of their way to make it as hard to use as possible. The frak?)




Legally it's not wrong.

Ethically?  I think verbatim copying of entire rule sets crosses a grey line.  I'll bet UA was meant to test to see if an OGL book would sell better.  Maybe they thought some campaign settings would adapt specific rules like the Sanity rules, the Taint rules, Incantations, the Bloodlines, etc.  

But ripping the whole thing into an on-line product that directly competes with and discourages people from buying the book and instead going with the substitute can be seen as predatory.  And I'm sorry, just creating a hyperlinked set of rules does not "add significant value" IMO.   It's not really a complementary or supplementary product, it's a substitution product.

I have a feeling the new GSL will have provisions to allow people to create derived products and protect their own derived product.  This will make it more fitting for creators.


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Basically, it is up to a content creator to license their work as they see fit.




I agree, but that stance necessitates accepting that, once they see fit to open-source their work, they're voluntarily relinquishing control over it. If they don't like what someone else does later, that isn't the fault of that person making whatever it is that the creator doesn't like. That includes adapting it to mimic or otherwise recreate other works.



> _If Wizards wants to use a different license for 4e, more power to them.  They are using a new license which I think most people will agree with.
> 
> You have the right to make products under 4e under the new rules.
> You have the right to make products under the 3e ruleset with the OGL.
> You DON'T have the right to make products under 4e as part of the OGL._




I don't anticipate most people having a problem with the GSL either, and certainly most of those who do have a problem won't feel that it's enough of one to take any sort of action.

However, those who do feel so inclined to take action are within their rights to use the OGL to do so, so long as they violate none of its guidelines. You can't, technically speaking, "make products under 4e as part of the OGL" because 4E itself isn't part of the OGL. You can, however, make products under the OGL that are otherwise compatible with 4E.



> _But it's up to the individual to decide.  The person who rips off another person's property is not moral.  It's the "Golden Rule".  I don't consider making a profit to be immoral._




I don't consider making a profit to be immoral either; I just don't consider it to be necessarily moral either. If morality is in part made up of altruism, then doing something for one's own profit must run, if not against that, then at least not with it.

It's up to the individual to decide, but that idea means that you could very well have someone who makes a 4E-like system under the OGL from a moral position.



> _You bring up medicine but one product saves lives.  I would think it wrong for a company to sit on a product while people are dying--Tamiflu had threats to reverse-engineer it when there was a rumor of a shortage during a potential pandemic.  I can understand from that perspective.
> 
> But an RPG is pure entertainment.  There's no moral right to have "Free D&D"._




There's already a free D&D, namely the d20 mechanics released under the OGL. The question you've raised is about the morality of altering that to be (more) compatible with 4E D&D, and I think that it's certainly possible.



> _It's like the talk about file sharing.  When people say artists should be paid, some people say "hey, you can't stop file sharing, musicians don't have a right to an income, soon it will be people who love it just for the music".  What a load of bull.  Can't afford music?  Fine, do without or seek legal means to get it.  Don't download stuff for free._




As Lizard pointed out, this is a false analogy. No one is stealing anything from anyone, and no one is intentionally attempting to deny someone else from making money - the latter may happen, but that's a side-effect that occurs whenever there's economic competition.



> _When it comes to entertainment, I follow the golden rule..."Do Unto Others as You Would Have The Do Unto You"._




As do I.



> _I wouldn't take somebody's content and put it up for free online because I wouldn't want somebody to do that to me, and even if I disagreed with the right to make a profit for my own work I want the creator to have that choice._




And I want the people to have that choice. If there's a set of restrictions out there that I disagree with, my interpretation of the Golden Rule is that I would have others selflessly try to remove or bypass them for my sake - likewise, I want to do that for their sake.



> _3e is Free.  4e is not.  "Forcing" it to be Free is something I think only people with impure intent would do._




And I disagree with the idea that only people of "impure intent" would do that. The GSL restrictions mean that a lot of great 3E products will never have the chance to exist in the 4E paradigm, and on behalf of those who would write such works, as well as those who would read and purchase them, I don't like that. 



> _You won't see Necromancer, Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, etc, attempt some of the stuff some people are suggesting.  They've been run by freelancers who understand how the business works, and would follow the Golden Rule.  And I think most fans of the products understand this._




Strictly speaking, you can't have a company "run by freelancers," since by definition freelancers aren't employees of a company -  you can have one run by former freelancers.

I doubt the bigger companies would published 4E-style OGL materials, since they feel it would be discourteous to WotC. That's certainly a fair point, and I don't begrudge them that. But I feel the current restrictions are discourteous to the fans, so I (and perhaps some smaller companies) would. My interpretation of the Golden Rule is focused on the people who play the games, not the people who make them.

And I think most fans of the products would understand this, too.


----------



## Oldtimer (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule.  Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...



Violates a "Golden Rule"? I'm sorry, but that is complete nonsense. This is just old-fashioned protectionism at its worst.

Ryan Dancey understood it, but I see there are still many people who don't understand it at all. I can just hear Gollum... _it's mine... mine... my precious..._


----------



## Cergorach (Feb 1, 2008)

*shrugs*
A lot of what's in 4E is and was already being done by a lot of folks/companies, progressing this further isn't that strange. But I do expect other folks to call foul and start claiming that X 'ripped off' a certain rule/concept from 4E.

Examples of 3E products with 4E features (a few):

General changes
- More core classes available.
- More 'balanced' ways of calculating the CR/EL (Upper_Krust).
- Generally moving away from instant death effects (damage instead save or die).
- Rewriting of Grappling rules (Morrus).
- Removing or simplifying Attacks of Oppertunity.
- Many discussions about removing PrCs and folding the abilities into Feat like powers.

Unearthed Arcana
- Attempts to rectify multiclassing inconsistencies for spellcasters.

Arcana Evolved
- 'Standard' levels go up to level 25 (using the same rules as the first 20).
- Racial levels.
- Removing and streamlining skills (Move Silently + Hide = Sneak).
- No alignment.

Dragonstar
- Half dragon PC race (ie. Dragonborn).

SpyCraft
- Action points.
- More Feats and Powers per level.
- 'Simple' NPC generation.
- Level based bonus to AC.
- A lot of bonuses are based more on Feats and Powers then on direct level bonuses.

Book of the Righteous
- Shedding alignment restrictions for 'Paladins'.
- Different Cosmology.
- Suggestion to remove the 'pokemon' mount.

Iron heroes
- Removing the requirements for Magic Items in an adventuring party.

Path of Sword/Shadow/Magic/Faith
- Legendary Classes.


----------



## Jim Hague (Feb 1, 2008)

Pale said:
			
		

> I think that it also crushes a lot of dreams out there.




It's already been said, but..._come on_.  Other games existed, thrived and were innovated before the OGL, there will be the same after.  Could we _please_ lay off the repeated myth of the Eeeeeeevil Corporate Guys Crushing the Gamers schtick?  If anything, closing the license _encourages_ 3rd parties to innovate to keep up with the market leader.


----------



## Delta (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Ethically?  I think verbatim copying of entire rule sets crosses a grey line... But ripping the whole thing into an on-line product that directly competes with and discourages people from buying the book and instead going with the substitute can be seen as predatory.




Not surprisingly, this was addressed back when Open Gaming was first introduced, in the SRD FAQ at Wizards.com: ( http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/srdfaq/20040123c )



> *Q: Can I use the SRD verbatim?*
> 
> A: Sure.
> 
> ...


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

Which is why it's being abandoned.

Honestly, I think this is a good move.  Too many kids today keep thinking content is free.  The Internet has commoditized information.  That's part of the reason newspapers are suffering--everybody started giving away information to get "eyeballs".  

The OGL started to commoditize the D&D game ruleset.  Hopefully, 4e's GSL will allow people to create without allowing the leeching of content.


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Which is why it's being abandoned.




With all due respect, you're not in a position to say why WotC is using the GSL rather than the OGL for 4E. It's also hard to say that WOtC didn't like how open the OGL was, since we have yet to receive any information regarding the particular use of open content in the GSL. It won't reprint rules per se, but nothing so far has indicated anything regarding third-parties using open content.



> _Honestly, I think this is a good move.  Too many kids today keep thinking content is free._




This statement has a lot of sweeping generalizations. How do you know that "too many" kids think this? What range of people do these kids encompass (are they kids up to age twelve, age fifteen, age twenty)? What, exactly, is "content" and why is it bad that it be free?



> _The Internet has commoditized information.  That's part of the reason newspapers are suffering--everybody started giving away information to get "eyeballs"._




Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I think that the proliferation of information is a good thing. I certainly think that it can be said, in a fairly objective manner, that the internet has done more good than harm for the human race as a whole. Likewise, new technologies and information always displaces old ones; that's simply natural. When cars were invented, the horses and buggies quickly died out (or at least, the buggies did   ), making that industry suffer, but no one still seems particularly upset over that now.  



> _The OGL started to commoditize the D&D game ruleset.  Hopefully, 4e's GSL will allow people to create without allowing the leeching of content._




Again, I disagree with this. Given that a commodity is just a product and not a service, D&D has always been a commodity, rules and all. It was just widened with the advent of the OGL, which I believe to be a good thing, since it allowed many, many people to create things that wouldn't have existed otherwise. The incidents of "leeching" that you mention were all relatively few and far between - plenty of people were able to create things without their content being "leeched" due to Open Game Content.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

> With all due respect, you're not in a position to say why WotC is using the GSL rather than the OGL for 4E. It's also hard to say that WOtC didn't like how open the OGL was, since we have yet to receive any information regarding the particular use of open content in the GSL. It won't reprint rules per se, but nothing so far has indicated anything regarding third-parties using open content.




The fact that they didn't make most of their supplementary content OGL sort of lets us know how they feel.  



> When cars were invented, the horses and buggies quickly died out (or at least, the buggies did  ), making that industry suffer, but no one still seems particularly upset over that now.




This statement is always brought up by people who complain about DRM, the RIAA, etc.  It's getting old.  I think what's happening now is that people are starting to realize and reverse the trend of content being given away for nothing.  

Open Source programming might make sense since you need experienced people to develop for it.  Open Gaming doesn't help the industry that much.  Licensed gaming maybe, but a license that allows any person to take everything and post it for free isn't a very good license.  Some say the d20 glut hurt gaming.

If the GSL gives authors better incentives than the OGL, I have a feeling it will be better liked.  It would certainly allow Green Ronin to make new products without having insensitive people ripping it into an on-line free format.


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 1, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> The fact that they didn't make most of their supplementary content OGL sort of lets us know how they feel.




I disagree. The fact that WotC chose not to make most of their D&D books contain OGC doesn't mean that they didn't like or support their own OGL. If that were true, they wouldn't have expanded it several times to include material from books such as _Deities and Demigods_, the _Epic Level Handbook_, and the _Expanded Psionics Handbook_. It's not for non-employees to say why WotC made the decisions they did, unless they choose to tell us.



> _This statement is always brought up by people who complain about DRM, the RIAA, etc._




Actually it's always brought up when people complain about new technologies making industries dealing in replaced technologies "suffer," which is why I brought it up.



> _It's getting old._




And yet, there's still no rebuttal for it.



> _ I think what's happening now is that people are starting to realize and reverse the trend of content being given away for nothing._




Are you talking about with D&D, or with everything? If it's the former, then I disagree, as open sourced materials has never been about content being given away for nothing - that was a byproduct of some books being almost entirely OGC, and since (as I've mentioned before) we don't know what (if any) open content restrictions will be in the GSL, that could still be the case in 4E.

If it's the latter, then I still disagree, but that's rather off-topic.   



> _Open Source programming might make sense since you need experienced people to develop for it.  Open Gaming doesn't help the industry that much._




I think it does help the industry that much, as it allowed many new companies to form based around d20 products. Not all such companies lasted, but many are still around, and now making new games of their own, and feeding the new market, even after the "glut" has largely ended.



> _Licensed gaming maybe, but a license that allows any person to take everything and post it for free isn't a very good license._[/quote
> 
> The Open Gaming License didn't do that - publishers who made their books (almost) totally Open Game Content did that.
> 
> ...


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 1, 2008)

And yet, there's still no rebuttal for it.

Yes there is.

While there is such a thing as progress, it doesn't mean that you can't try to protect industries or the livelyhood of people.  Entertainment industries like the music business, movies, television, books, and video games can continue.  Some of it will require adaptation, some will require DRM (of a type that doesn't interfere with people's enjoyment, like Valve's Steam or Apple's FairPlay, some will require laws that actually punish people who steal, some will require education.  People always assume DRM will never work while all their stuff will be encrypted and anonymous and completely protected.  It's a false statement, and shows short-sighted thinking on their part.  

People who state "the market should adapt", never usually condemn people who steal this stuff.  It shows their moral caliber.

I have no problem condemning the actions of people who rip the content, because they aren't thinking of the creators.  Now, the OGL allows this, but I still think it's shady.  If you truly cared about the game, you'd support the writers, because payment is the incentive for them to create.

But those that attempt to use the OGL and pre-existing content to end-run the GSL and produce 4e compatible modules--well, don't expect me to say kind words about those people.  "Unethical thief" is what I'd have to say.  There's really no moral defense for doing that, Alzrius, if there's an existing license that gives you the leeway to create derivative products.


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> And yet, there's still no rebuttal for it.
> 
> Yes there is.
> 
> While there is such a thing as progress, it doesn't mean that you can't try to protect industries or the livelyhood of people. Entertainment industries like the music business, movies, television, books, and video games can continue. Some of it will require adaptation, some will require DRM (of a type that doesn't interfere with people's enjoyment, like Valve's Steam or Apple's FairPlay, some will require laws that actually punish people who steal, some will require education.  People always assume DRM will never work while all their stuff will be encrypted and anonymous and completely protected.  It's a false statement, and shows short-sighted thinking on their part.




This isn't a rebuttal. We already have (on a national level) mechanisms in place to try and protect jobs, and provide assistance for reemployment. That doesn't rebut the fact that new industries and technologies do, as a natural consequence, replace their predecessors.

But again, that's getting off-topic.



> _People who state "the market should adapt", never usually condemn people who steal this stuff.  It shows their moral caliber._




This is a blanket statement, made about a non-specific number of non-specific people, attributing something to them that they've never necessarily claimed. In other words, this isn't a very good point.



> _I have no problem condemning the actions of people who rip the content, because they aren't thinking of the creators.  Now, the OGL allows this, but I still think it's shady.  If you truly cared about the game, you'd support the writers, because payment is the incentive for them to create._




I personally think that if you truly cared about the game, you'd support the fans, because they're the ones who pay for the writers to keep making such materials (and despite claims that the OGL lets people legally rip people off, that's just for a few very small, isolated instances).



> _But those that attempt to use the OGL and pre-existing content to end-run the GSL and produce 4e compatible modules--well, don't expect me to say kind words about those people.  "Unethical thief" is what I'd have to say.  There's really no moral defense for doing that, Alzrius, if there's an existing license that gives you leeway._




The problem is that the license doesn't give leeway for all the kinds of products that people could do with the OGL, and that's the part I take issue with. Making an OGL product that mimics 4E is thus neither thieving, nor unethical from that standpoint.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 2, 2008)

> I personally think that if you truly cared about the game, you'd support the fans, because they're the ones who pay for the writers to keep making such materials (and despite claims that the OGL lets people legally rip people off, that's just for a few very small, isolated instances).




Fans will by the D&D game regardless of the license used.  The people who even give a damn about the OGL aspect of it are a very vocal minority.  The OGL doesn't affect fans of D&D, so I'm not sure how supporting the OGL supports the fans.

So I don't see how the OGL "helps" the fans at all.  I support the fans.  I don't support the "rippers", who could arguably be fans but don't seem to care enough about the health of the publishers or freelancers.


----------



## Cergorach (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Open Source programming might make sense since you need experienced people to develop for it.  Open Gaming doesn't help the industry that much.  Licensed gaming maybe, but a license that allows any person to take everything and post it for free isn't a very good license.



Who do you think are working on 4E? Do you think that Mike or Ari (and others) would be working on 4E if the OGL hadn't existed? The same rules apply for the OGL as for the GPL, the usual production methods don't allow for maximum profit, you need to change them. Already society is changing, it's moving from an information based society (copyrights and patents) to a service based society.



			
				JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> If the GSL gives authors better incentives than the OGL, I have a feeling it will be better liked.  It would certainly allow Green Ronin to make new products without having insensitive people ripping it into an on-line free format.



Are you naive, or willfully overlooking the fact that people are already posting closed licence material online. It might not be legal in a lot of countries, but that doesn't stop the majority of the population. Slavery might seem something of the past, but we're all wage-slaves, unable to live in this world withouth selling ourselves to someone else for money. While many kids think that content is free, a lot of the 30+ crowd thinks that information _should_ be free and not owned by 'immortal' corporations...

Many years ago there was no copyright or patent and Michael Angelo could make a living, every one is now using his ideas, because there's no copyright or patent on them. Shouldn't those rights then not also be protected (for his heirs)? How about the Bible, the church sure could probably use the extra income. There are many artists that have a subsidy from the state, Wolfgang Baur creates material through patronage, surely there are other ways to provide for creators of content?


----------



## Alzrius (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Fans will by the D&D game regardless of the license used.




I'm not sure if you mean in general, or 4E D&D specifically. If you mean in general, then I disagree; we've certainly heard from a lot of people, both here on EN World and in the magazines, that say they stopped playing the game when it became Second Edition. I also believe that there's some people for whom the third-party products are more enjoyable than the D&D game itself, so the license used does make a difference.



> _ The people who even give a damn about the OGL aspect of it are a very vocal minority._




That's very hard to say for certain, since "the OGL aspect" could be understood to mean just people who are debating the nature of open gaming the way we are, or it could be understood to mean everyone who uses/cares about third-party compatible products. If it's the latter, then I don't think that it's that much of a minority - it's hard to say for certain, since I don't know how integrated third-party products are as far as casual gamers go.



> _ The OGL doesn't affect fans of D&D, so I'm not sure how supporting the OGL supports the fans._




The OGL does affect fans of D&D, because it allows for there to be products that work with the game they enjoy. Being a fan of D&D does not, by definition, exclude being a fan of third-party material.



> _So I don't see how the OGL "helps" the fans at all.  I support the fans.  I don't support the "rippers", who could arguably be fans but don't seem to care enough about the health of the publishers or freelancers._




As for how the OGL helps fans, see above. WotC said, very early after the 4E announcement, that the third-party community is important, and that's why they're still having 4E be open in some fashion (forgive me for not having a specific source to cite).

As for the "rippers," if you mean people who illegal distribute products online, then I doubt anyone in the industry, be it fans or publishers, supports them. Beyond, plenty of fans, and businesses, care a lot about the health of publishers and freelancers. I'm just also mentioning the fans who also care about what's available for the other fans.


----------



## Emil (Feb 2, 2008)

I'll preface this post by saying I'm not sure what exactly the GSL will entail when it's finalized.

It is my understanding that the original mission of the OGL and d20 STL was to allow creators to develop settings and splatbooks without the need to pay WotC a license fee or ask permission. This was meant to foster exactly the kind of glut that occurred with a multitude of publishers making a whole lot of content that was all compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition.

It seems to me that the GSL is being drafted to work in a similar way. Publishers are allowed to develop all sorts of content that is compatible with 4E.

What I thought was a "noble mistake" in the original OGL was the concept of Open Game Content, especially in the instance of releasing all the basic game rules as OGC (in the System Reference Document). Now, legally speaking, intellectual property laws do not cover game rules. Text can be copyrighted, but the game system itself can't be copyrighted or patented. Why not get around the legal complexities and release the text under a license that allows re-publication? The intention, I believe, was to keep publishers from rewriting all of the rule text in a slightly different fashion so that it could be used as-needed to clarify new content that is developed by 3rd-party publishers.

While, I don't think it really turned out all that bad, I think that WotC feels that the spirit of the license has been damaged. I think it's great that a number of creators have been able to reuse and expand on each other's creations, making the d20 system much richer than it was at the outset. On the other hand, there have been a large amount of "broken" or "pigeon-holed" products brought to market. I don't think that these less-than-stellar productions have really harmed the market all that much, honestly.

In my mind, the crowning achievement of the OGL was the ability for publishers to create whole new games inspired by the d20 system. Unfortunately, due to the licensing restrictions on the d20 STL, not all of these games are able to carry the d20 logo and advertise their similarity or near-compatibility.

The thing is, there's no way any revision to the OGL, or releasing D&D 4E with a different license entirely can keep anyone from creating a new game that uses the basic d20 mechanic. In fact D&D 4E _still uses the major elements of d20_. I'm pretty sure that the new GSL will still allow publishers to create settings and splatbooks that are compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Also, the original OGL already paved the way for derivative (though closely related) game systems that will continue to produce supplements.

I know a lot of people that play Dungeons & Dragons don't care about the impact of the d20 system itself, but it's definitely made quite a mark, and I don't think WotC really has much power over the proliferation of the system (even if publishers aren't allowed to call their products by that name). Sure, 4th Edition is changing classes, changing level progressions, introducing some mechanics, but they're not really changing the basic elements of d20: 6 Ability scores (and their bonuses), hit points, a basic defense score (AC), a scaled bonus to attack (BAB), level-based advancement, skill lists, and _the combination of the stat bonuses with a single roll of a 20-sided-die against either a set difficulty or another roll_. People that know how to play D&D3e won't really have to learn a new rule system for 4e, just some style changes. That is the whole idea behind the d20 system to begin with.

In my mind, D&D 3E, D&D 4E, True20, Mutants & Masterminds, Conan OGL, etc _are_ all d20 games. The D&D 3E SRD exists and isn't going anywhere. It will always remain as a template from which to develop these games. And even if the D&D 4E SRD does not include a license for free use (to create variant game systems and character creation rules), I can't imagine that it can be so different from 3E's SRD to consider it a separate game system.

Basically, what I'm saying is, the GSL will not invalidate the current OGL. d20 games will continue to be made. Even if they can't use the new elements of D&D4E verbatim, 4E will certainly have an impact on future products (even the ones that don't "require" the Player's Handbook to play).


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 2, 2008)

Cergorach said:
			
		

> Who do you think are working on 4E? Do you think that Mike or Ari (and others) would be working on 4E if the OGL hadn't existed? The same rules apply for the OGL as for the GPL, the usual production methods don't allow for maximum profit, you need to change them. Already society is changing, it's moving from an information based society (copyrights and patents) to a service based society.
> 
> 
> Are you naive, or willfully overlooking the fact that people are already posting closed licence material online. It might not be legal in a lot of countries, but that doesn't stop the majority of the population. Slavery might seem something of the past, but we're all wage-slaves, unable to live in this world withouth selling ourselves to someone else for money. While many kids think that content is free, a lot of the 30+ crowd thinks that information _should_ be free and not owned by 'immortal' corporations...
> ...




I think you're confusing two separate issues here.

One being whether or not artists should get paid for their work. There might have been no copyright in Michaelangelo's time, but he was well paid for his work while he was doing it.

Contrast this with Cervantes, who wrote a wildly popular novel (Don Quixote) but was almost penniless because of all the pirated copies out there.

So clearly some art forms need some reasonable copyright protection so that the author of the work can receive his just due, or at least something close to that.

But you're confusing this issue, which I think most people agree with, with the notion that copyrights, trademarks and other protections should be used to allow a bunch of lawyers and corporations (often not the creators) to keep work closed and propietary *forever*.

For example, even if Time Warner loses their legan wranglings to keep Superman out of the public domain, they have already slapped so many trademarks on him that it doesn't matter much. Meanwhile the creators and their children don't have access to it.

One is reasonable, one isn't.

I myself think the OGL leans closer to the former than the latter, but there is an important distinction.

You seemed to be arguing that creators should have to depend on patronage, rather than being able to just release their books into the market and make money that way.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 2, 2008)

The rationale for the OGL: to create a "safe harbor" for people to use and expand on the D&D game. That is, to avoid a repeat of the Judges Guild/Roleaids/Usenet type debacles. The rationale: game mechanics can be patented but not copyrighted anyway, and there is already a strong precedent for people producing books about other people's games. The reason: to preserve a unified gaming market and enthuse players.

Problems with the new situation (not a lawyer, IMHO, etc):
- Essentially, WotC cannot prevent anyone from using their game mechanics. They may enjoy the fantasy that they "own" a game system, but this is simply not respected by copyright.
- They have some strong trademarks. Strength as the name of an ability score? Not so much. Anything that is merely descriptive--or that refers to WotC's text specifically-- is fair game. I can't reprint Awesome Blow without some kind of permission, but I can include the name Awesome Blow on pretty much anything I want as long as I am referencing their work and not presenting it as my own.
- There is already an OGL industry out there. Some of it is parasitic, but some of it is very dedicated and creative. Are they going to take their toys and go home? Many feel that promises have been broken.
- The industry now faces a divide. 4e will be in competition with OGL material. It's a lopsided competition, but it's something that didn't exist before. It also means that third party design also faces a divide. 

We already have generic drugs, generic turn signal bulbs, generic vacuum cleaner bags. Does WotC think they are somehow immune to antitrust legislation? Didn't we already see Microsoft vs. third party add ons? 

I keep coming back to one central hypothesis: that WotC management does not understand intellectual property except in a pragmatic "cease and desist" sort of way. I am really mystified what they are trying to do... do they _want_ to have to sue people? No rational business wants to sue people. 

The "safe harbor" offered by the OGL minimized the chances of needing to sue someone while maximizing the argument they were protecting their IP and still owned it.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 2, 2008)

Mystaros said:
			
		

> As the materials in 4E do not fall under the OGL, using the 3.5E SRD to recreate them falls into a very dangerous spot, legally. The system IS in fact so substantially different that to make the tortuous gyrations with 3.5E to make it work like 4E would be looked upon with an unkind eye by any judge who has to deal with such a situation.



Are you a judge?  As others have already pointed out, this exact situation already exists with OSRIC and 1e.  Furthermore, many of the "innovations" in 4e were first presented in 3e OGL works by 3rd-edition publishers.  I find it interesting certain people are so quick to accuse 3rd-party publishers of "low morals" or "low ethics" for recognizing when WotC has a good idea, while simultaneously assuming no one at Wizards - not even Mearls, possibly the most prolific OGL freelancer -- ever learned or borrowed a concept or idea from outside WotC products.  The exchange of ideas has gone both ways; WotC just doesn't acknowledge it.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> No other major publisher has adopted a similar method for their created game systems--White Wolf hasn't opened the Storyteller System, Steve Jackson hasn't opened GURPS, etc.  If the concept of open gaming is so great, wouldn't other publishers have followed suit?



Mongoose was under no obligation to open up Runequest, but they have.  Frankly, that's a big incentive to me to explore that system.



> Trying to "reverse engineer" 4e is just going to prove some hypocrisies.  It's Wizards choice to use a different license system.  I don't think there would be an ethical way to "reverse engineer" it.



It's not "reverse engineering"; it'd be parallel evolution.  Basically what you're saying is that no one should try to build a 4e-like game out of 3e, -whether it's better or not-, or -whether it's legal or not-, or really, -whether they thought of it first or not-, because you'd find it ethically questionable.  



> Honestly, what I think will happen is that instead of trying to make 4e compatible cames, you'll see more game companies come up with truly original ideas and not try to make many minor variations of the same ruleset.  Those that make major changes could just as well create their own new games.  Why make a knockoff of D&D when you can create your own game?



If you have to ask....  

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it".  That's called common sense.  If there are a set of rules out there that would work in part or in whole for your game, and are already familiar to millions of people, you'd have to be an idiot not to use them. Just because something is derived from something else doesn't mean it's automatically bad.  It certainly makes things easier on the consumer, who doesn't have to invest as much time and energy learning a new ruleset that he or she may not like at the end.



> With the d20 glut, I have a feeling people would rather get a totally new thing than another umpteeth edition of D&D.



And yet, out of all the gamers in my gaming circle, almost none own anything other than d20/D&D (I think a few radicals might have old Vampire books).  No GURPS, no Rifts, no Shadowrun, no new World of Darkness, no Warhammer, no Blue Planet.  Heck, I'm the only one out of 20 or so that bought Dragon magazine.



> And, we'll see more creative games.



Unfortunately, creative does not equal good.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 2, 2008)

Melan said:
			
		

> ...I am interested how this could affect Necromancer's ability to put out a revised "Tome of Horrors" type product for 4e; the 3e book was produced under a special legal agreement, and it remains to be seen if the 4e GSL will allow Necro to transfer its contents to the new edition. Scary.




I've wondered the same.  We don't know the exact agreement between WotC & Necromancer; it might allow for different editions and updates.  Or it might be restricted to "original" Necromancer material from TOH 2&3, though I hope not.  A 4e TOH would probably be more valuable than the last one, since there will likely be a much longer interval before WotC publishes the "older" monsters (vs stuff from MM2-5).


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> And some people would berate people like Monte Cook for releasing what they called "Crippled OGL", since sometimes he'd keep certain monster names and other items from being reused.



The phrase is crippled OGC, not crippled OGL, and if that (sometimes...certain monster names...) was all there was to it, there wouldn't be an issue.  Unfortunately, it's more complex than that.  



> So, basically, the OGL in my opinion is flawed because of this viral nature.  It's a virus all right, it's like a contagion.  I fully suspect the new license is designed to be complementary to people allowing the secondary publishers to protect themselves from behavior like this.



And we'll be back at square one.  IMO, people and publishers were finally starting to learn how to work with the OGL and how to "properly" reuse OGC.  Now, we're back to every Tom, Dick, and Harry reinventing the ranger, except this time it'll be mandated.  Under the OGL, if you invented a Dread Pirate prestige class, other people could use it if it was really good.  Now, in your theory, everyone has to invent their own Dread Pirate Paragon Path, irregardless of whether or not it should be reinvented.  Choke off the OGL just as it was starting to work.


----------



## Emil (Feb 2, 2008)

As far as I know, nothing is keeping a creator from publishing a splat (class, feat, item, path, spell, whatever) that would work with 4E as Open Game Content. If you write it, you own it and can apply whatever licensing or lack thereof you want.

There's nothing keeping the creator of the Dread Pirate Prestige Class from publishing a conversion addendum to adapt it as a Paragon Path.

In fact, I think it might be a good idea for some creators that end up developing Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies for use with 4E to include an optional version as a 3E Prestige Class.

UPDATE: If there is some strange language to the GSL discouraging content intended for 4E from using the OGL, just use a Creative Commons license.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 2, 2008)

Here's a question: is WotC planning on revoking the d20 license and demanding a "cure" at some point?


----------



## Emil (Feb 2, 2008)

WotC states in the d20 STL, Section 1: Copyright & Trademark that WotC owns the d20 license and logo and they're free to bar anyone from putting the logo on new printings.

However, except in situations of borrowed Open Game Content, the creators/publishers still own their creations/publications. So even if WotC declares fiat and requests people to stop using the d20 logo on their "outdated" products. I don't think they can really stop them from continuing to release subsequent printings of _the exact same product_ without the extraneous d20 logo.

UPDATE: The subsequent printings would probably also have to lose all references to "Dungeons & Dragons" such as "Requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, Third Edition, published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc." (IIRC, there was a book that came out at some point that said "requires the use of the worlds most popular fantasy roleplaying game" in place of the "requires D&D text")


----------



## Cergorach (Feb 2, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> I think you're confusing two separate issues here.
> 
> One being whether or not artists should get paid for their work. There might have been no copyright in Michaelangelo's time, but he was well paid for his work while he was doing it.
> 
> ...



I am of the believe that content creators should be provided for, for their works to the public. The easiest way in current society is to compensate the creator with money, the easiest way to guarantee that is with copyrights. Only copyrights have been seriously 'misused' (as I indicated above).

Personally I would like to see the following (over the course of time):
1.) Only humans can hold the copyrights to their own property.
2.) Limit copyrights to a period of time that will allow the creator ample time to be compensated. Say, 5 years.
3.) Remove copyrights, but with social changes that will make sure that the creator is still provided for his work. Be that through governmental subsidy or by donation (yeah, humanity needs to be more giving for that to really work).

Because option 1 and 2 are currently very difficult to attain through conventional means (the corporate lobby is far to big to allow this in democratic countries), 'free' thinkers have developed Open Source Licences, especially the viral kind. If you follow the OSS news a bit, you'll notice that it's actually working. Big companies like SUN and IBM are embracing it, even companies like The New York Times are providing funding to OSS (WordPress). The biggest alternative to Windows is Linux (with OsX gaining quickly), an OS Operating System. Companies that develop such software don't make their money selling their software, they make money providing services, such as support (but installation and schooling are also quite common).

Look at the internet services such as ENworld, they don't make money in the traditional sense, money is earned through advertising and donation. While ENworld might not be the best example as they don't have a paid staff, there are many examples of sites that do have paid staff supported through adds. WotC is also starting to move in the service support direction with their digital initiative (online gaming, character creation, discussion, etc.). 

Computer games are also moving to a service based model, MMOs require a monthly payment. While many games still require you to buy them initially and major expansions (World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, etc.), others only require only monthly payments (Eve Online, Jumpgate, etc.), still others are free but allow certain ingame features through micro payments (Rappelz, Sword of the New World, etc.).

While D&D is a solid brandname and the a lot of the rules changes are a step forward (a lot of the fluff changes aren't as good imho), 3.xE is open and 4E isn't really. Sure your allowed to publish material for it, but only under some very strict rules and oversight. Although we don't know the exact details, we do get the idea... With the move to 3E there were a lot of folks that said they would stay with 2E (or 1E, or Basic, or whatever edition they wanted to play). That was a choice based on preffered edition and a bit of rebbeling against a new edition (that made most of the 2E books redundant), now there is also the license issue. You would be suprised how many people prefer to use OSS over closed Software on principle (provided of course that it does what you want it to). Expect the same with 3.xE vs. 4E.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 2, 2008)

> You would be suprised how many people prefer to use OSS over closed Software on principle (provided of course that it does what you want it to). Expect the same with 3.xE vs. 4E.




It's still a significant minority, both with OSS (otherwise Microsoft wouldn't be number 1), and with D&D.  Compare the sales of all third-party games to those of WoTC.  

I honestly think the rules and setting changes will matter a lot more to people than what license it has.  After all, D&D is a game, the license really only matters to those who want to publish content for the system, and the players far outnumber the publishers.  No license restricts the ability of us to whip out our products and play the game.

Ultimately, the factor for me and others to buy any product is "is it useful/fun".


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Ultimately, the factor for me and others to buy any product is "is it useful/fun".




No, based on your posts on this subject for the past couple of months, I'd say the ultimate factor for you is, "Does it offend your ethics?"


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 2, 2008)

Sorry Wulfbane, wrong.  My purchase of 4e will depend on whether or not its a good game or not.

I purchased OGL products, and non OGL products.  My discussions about licenses is separate from the 4e issues.  I don't think the majority of the audience really care about what license it's under if they just play the game.  

My ethical arguments are based at people who seem to think the OGL/"copyleft"/etc, is the "one true way", and who seem to have trouble understanding having respect for authors and publishers.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 2, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> Here's a question: is WotC planning on revoking the d20 license and demanding a "cure" at some point?




I believe a WOTC rep has said the STL will *not* be revoked. If I am remembering correctly and this is not changed, props to them. (The OGL cannot be revoked, so it's a non-issue.)

The main benefit is that anyone still publishing using the D20 logo does not have to recall/shred product. I'm sure both of them will be very happy.


----------



## Cergorach (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> My ethical arguments are based at people who seem to think the OGL/"copyleft"/etc, is the "one true way", and who seem to have trouble understanding having respect for authors and publishers.



While I understand your point of view, I think we all do. But while you speak about respect for authors/publishers, you dismiss people who have a different point of view and/or don't agree with yours. You designate people as thieves, leechers, and insinuate worse. That does not come across as respectful or even civilized, I hope you understand that does not sit well with people that are either the target of your disapproval or do not agree with such manners. While you might not intend to come across as offensive or arrogant, please keep in mind that if you look carefully at some of the comments here, some clearly believe you are acting that way. Judging other folks and saying "your wrong" and "that is right" is not the most effective way to get your point across. I know this is a topic that's very close to everyone's hearts (for many different reasons), and it's only natural that it sometimes gets a bit heated in the discussions. Clearly you have a strong believe about copyrights, but please keep in mind that others have an equally stung believe in the OGL/"copyleft"/etc. While you perceive others as stating that is the 'one true way', you take the same stance on the other side of the fence. While I don't particularly have a problem with that, you do have a tendency to throw everyone that's not with you on the same pile, and that is a bit annoying from in my humble opinion.

Sure it's important that a game is good and that should be the only standard you should judge a book by (and not it's cover), but reality is a bit different. 4E allows the publishing of 3rd party products, the exact scope of what you can and cannot publish is not yet clear, but it is clear that you don't have the perpetual freedom of the OGL. If at some point in the future WotC decides that the GSL isn't necessary anymore or it's detrimental to their sales, they could easily further close what you can use and make with the GSL, or even end the entire GSL. This might or might not happen, but WotC has the power to do so at the push of a button. I for one don't want to heavily invest in a game system that might close up even further, while the current 'open' system works perfectly well (with some tweaks), forking then seems like a perfectly good option (for me at least). While I'm not a publisher, I am someone who likes to share what he creates, the GPL and OGL allow me that, while making sure that it goes on being 'open'. And what I mean by investment is more time and creativity then money spent on books.

I for one will be buying D&D 4E whether it's good or not, it's the mainstream Fantasy RPG, I'll get my money's worth even if I only stare at the pretty pictures. But if I run a 'D&D' game, it's most likely with the 3.5 rules that are 'open' (even if it requires some tweaks).


----------



## jgbrowning (Feb 2, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> I believe a WOTC rep has said the STL will *not* be revoked. If I am remembering correctly and this is not changed, props to them. (The OGL cannot be revoked, so it's a non-issue.)
> 
> The main benefit is that anyone still publishing using the D20 logo does not have to recall/shred product. I'm sure both of them will be very happy.




I believe that the license will expire, meaning that no new products can be released under the d20 license, but that no products will be required to be recalled or shredded. Basically WotC has let we smaller 3rd party people sell through what we've produced and let the license die slowly instead of quickly. We've removed the d20 logos from our most recent OGL products to speed that process out of consideration for their wishes.

joe b.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 2, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Sorry Wulfbane, wrong.  My purchase of 4e will depend on whether or not its a good game or not.
> 
> I purchased OGL products, and non OGL products.  My discussions about licenses is separate from the 4e issues.  I don't think the majority of the audience really care about what license it's under if they just play the game.
> 
> My ethical arguments are based at people who seem to think the OGL/"copyleft"/etc, is the "one true way", and who seem to have trouble understanding having respect for authors and publishers.




As an author (meaning, "someone who actually gets paid real cash money for writing"), I think respect for authors is of paramount importance. I also think respect for contracts matters -- it's how a civil society works. We make deal with each other, and the role of government is to arbitrate and enforce those deals.

Stealing copyrighted work is wrong. Copying work placed under a copyleft-style contract is not wrong. *It's what the author agreed to do*. There is no disrespect to a writer if you re-use work he voluntarily agreed to allow to be re-used. Indeed, as I noted earlier, it is an act of respect -- you're saying the work is worth re-using.

As a programmer, I'd be much less productive if I couldn't use the "cut and paste model of object inheritance". I recently sped up a process by literally 20 times via a quick web search to find optimized code for what I needed to do. Could I have done it myself? Sure. Was it faster/easier to use a snippet someone else wrote and placed on the Web? Sure was. Was it "disrespectful" that I used code the original writer put out with the intent of it being used? Don't see how...

The OGL kept me in the "d20 space" for eight years, and caused me to keep buying WOTC books because I was actively playing D20 games, even if I also bought other products. If, as seems likely, the 4e "space" will be much more constrained, I will buy FEWER WOTC products, since they won't contain material I can 'harvest' for non-D&D games.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 2, 2008)

Just to be clear, I don't really object to "free content", "open source", etc.  I use it to, I've used a creative-commons like copyright for a project, etc.  

I guess my major objection is that I believe it is Wizard's choice to change the style of license, so I think they have their rights to do so, even if people think it might be more restrictive.  The OGL is not as "viral" as the GPL or anything like that.  Wizards always maintained ownership of the game, etc.



> The OGL kept me in the "d20 space" for eight years, and caused me to keep buying WOTC books because I was actively playing D20 games, even if I also bought other products. If, as seems likely, the 4e "space" will be much more constrained, I will buy FEWER WOTC products, since they won't contain material I can 'harvest' for non-D&D games.




While I can understand some who feel that way, I really don't think the existence of the D20/OGL is the most important thing on people's minds.  I sort of felt like the OGL was good in the beginning, but I realized that it was specific projects I liked, not how "open" they were.  Most people are not authors, they are gamers.  I think Wizards has more sales than all the third parties combined.  

Keep in mind--nobody can restrict you from playing a third-party product.  The OGL won't prevent creative GMs from entertaining their own parties.  So it won't affect the DMs, it just affects publishers.  

Keep in mind too the third party license market is not going away.  I have a feeling the GSL will not be as restrictive as some think.  You may even get to write an adventure featuring beholders, mind flayers, yuan-ti, etc.  

In fact, I'm hoping they allow various levels of licenses, similar to how the creative commons licenses work.  If some want their derivative content to be viral, let them.  If some don't, restrict it.  If some want to give all their rights to Wizards, let them.  This will truly give the authors better control, and I think it's a superior situation than the "one license" the OGL is currently using.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 3, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I guess my major objection is that I believe it is Wizard's choice to change the style of license, so I think they have their rights to do so, even if people think it might be more restrictive.



No one has said they don't have the right to change the license, so there goes your major objection.  Having the right and utilizing that right, though are not the same thing.


> I think Wizards has more sales than all the third parties combined.



So much for a d20 glut hurting WotC. 



> So it won't affect the DMs, it just affects publishers.



That's remarkably shortsighted.  It's also wrong, but I'm tired of explaining it to people.  Suffice to say some private citizens like to be legally  creative, and not have their work only exist at the sufferance of a corporation that could (and has) demanded its removal for any reason.



> I have a feeling the GSL will not be as restrictive as some think.



Yup, that's what I thought -- until I heard the details they've released.  The most they've indicated they'd do is quite a bit less than the minimum I'd hoped.



> You may even get to write an adventure featuring beholders, mind flayers, yuan-ti, etc.



Don't care.  Already wrote them out.



> In fact, I'm hoping they allow various levels of licenses, similar to how the creative commons licenses work.



There are already two levels - the $5000 level, and everyone else.  We've heard nothing that prevents WotC from putting a similar time delay restriction on using new GSC (Game System Content), and I honestly expect that they will - so don't plan on using any GSC for at least  6 months from its release date, unless you pony up $5000 (I think it'll be 12 months, really).  But that's within their rights.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 3, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I wasn't aiming the "ripping off" comment at the OGL use in 3e.
> 
> It's being aimed at the people who want to adapt 4e, which is NOT OGL, into an OGL, for whatever reason they feel justified to do so.  I've got no problem with people continuing to use the 3e OGL, just not for adapting 4e rules.



Until the GSL have a different term (as I stated in my first post in this thread), OGC is OGC. I can use it, modify it, whatever I want.

Since 4e is already a derivative of _d20 Modern_ -- which can be found in the *Modern System Reference Documents* -- it's not too hard to clone the 4e rules concept.




			
				JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule.  Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...



Unfortunately, not many follow the Golden Rules as much as not many made good-quality _d20_ products in the early years. You have to take the bad with the good, which is why _d20_ and OGL are still here.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 3, 2008)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> Since 4e is already a derivative of _d20 Modern_ -- which can be found in the *Modern System Reference Documents* -- it's not too hard to clone the 4e rules concept.



Yes, but then you would be _eeevvvviiillll_....

And, you know, it doesn't matter if you had an idea first - if WotC publishes something like it later on, you're still _eeevvvviiillll_....


----------



## I'm A Banana (Feb 3, 2008)

Hell, half of the 4e ideas already existed in one form or another with 3rd party products. I mean, check out FFZ. All of this was written pre-4e and it has more levels, more even math, more cinematic focus, less reliance on magic items...d20 modern has a basic tier system. Iron Heroes has encounter-traps and per-encounter/per-day/at-will powers....

_Information wants to be free_, _you can't put the genie back in the bottle_, _et cetra_.


----------



## kunadam (Feb 3, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> Yes, but then you would be _eeevvvviiillll_....



I can live with that much more than with the fact that I cannot legally translate the SRD and put it on my website. With that I was catering to an audience that won't buy WotC product at that moment (they do not know the language), but once they are captured by the game, they might later on.
And publishing RPG in Hungary is a way to financial disaster. The market is tiny, and by the time a translated rules set / supplement comes out the core fans have the book in English already.

So I hope someone will come out with a rules set that is OGC and 99% compatible with 4th edition.

An WotC will get my money anyway as I'm a fan of D&D, and will buy 4th ed to have a look.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 3, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Hell, half of the 4e ideas already existed in one form or another with 3rd party products. I mean, check out FFZ. All of this was written pre-4e and it has more levels, more even math, more cinematic focus, less reliance on magic items...d20 modern has a basic tier system. Iron Heroes has encounter-traps and per-encounter/per-day/at-will powers....



I totally agree.  (what's FFZ, though?)  I've said almost exactly the same thing, even (I said 70%, though).  I don't think it makes a difference to JohnRTroy, though -- we're already "contaminated" by our knowledge of 4e, and to attempt to create anything that vaguely resembles 4e makes us immoral, unethical, and worthy of the wrath of lawyers.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 3, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> Yes, but then you would be _eeevvvviiillll_....
> 
> And, you know, it doesn't matter if you had an idea first - if WotC publishes something like it later on, you're still _eeevvvviiillll_....



Ideas cannot be copyrighted, only a particular expression of an idea in a body of work can.

If I'm evil to clone their game concept, then so be it.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 3, 2008)

> I totally agree. (what's FFZ, though?) I've said almost exactly the same thing, even (I said 70%, though). I don't think it makes a difference to JohnRTroy, though -- we're already "contaminated" by our knowledge of 4e, and to attempt to create anything that vaguely resembles 4e makes us immoral, unethical, and worthy of the wrath of lawyers.




You misunderstand me.  And I never used the word "evil".

I saved my criticism for those who are specifically and deliberately trying to create a 4e compatible system because they don't like the 4e license (which they haven't seen yet), because they put the "spirit of the OGL" above whether or not even 4e is good.  

If there are rules that are similar, so be it.  But a specific deliberate attempt, in my mind, to end-run around the new license by using the old license is wrong, since I respect that the game system belongs to Wizards and they are free to license a new version of it however they see fit.  

I have more respect for the people who will do one of two things.

1)  Take a moral stand and stick with 3e.  If you truly feel that the OGL is important, stick with the 3e ruleset.  If enough people do it, that will show Wizards that people care more about the license than the game.

2)  Accept that 4e has a different license, and make products under that license.

To me, it's the same type of argument as filesharing.  Don't like the high price of music, use the legal free alternatives (radio), complain but still buy it, or do without.  Don't download pirated versions.

But *sigh*, those who want to try to do it will do it.


----------



## Oldtimer (Feb 3, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> But a specific deliberate attempt, in my mind, to end-run around the new license by using the old license is wrong, since I respect that the game system belongs to Wizards and they are free to license a new version of it however they see fit.



So only Wizards has the divine right to do as they see fit? Why is that?

We were given the OGL by Wizards at one time and using it to whatever purpose it can be used is not unethical or wrong in any way. Wizards don't own the ideas behind 4e.

And please stop bringing filesharing into the discussion. I promise you it will get ugly...


----------



## Oldtimer (Feb 3, 2008)

kunadam said:
			
		

> I can live with that much more than with the fact that I cannot legally translate the SRD and put it on my website. With that I was catering to an audience that won't buy WotC product at that moment (they do not know the language), but once they are captured by the game, they might later on.
> And publishing RPG in Hungary is a way to financial disaster. The market is tiny, and by the time a translated rules set / supplement comes out the core fans have the book in English already.
> 
> So I hope someone will come out with a rules set that is OGC and 99% compatible with 4th edition.
> ...



QFT!

I'm in a similar situation in my small country of the world.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 3, 2008)

> So only Wizards has the divine right to do as they see fit? Why is that?
> 
> We were given the OGL by Wizards at one time and using it to whatever purpose it can be used is not unethical or wrong in any way. Wizards don't own the ideas behind 4e.




Well, I am thinking of the people who worked hard to create 4e, and then to have others take there work and reverse-engineer it is wrong.  4e is a different animal.  

If you guys don't understand that Golden Rule statement I made, I doubt you ever will, so I guess I can't really argue about it anymore.   :\ 



> And please stop bringing filesharing into the discussion. I promise you it will get ugly...




Considering you're from the country that has the Pirate Party, Piratbyrån, and The Pirate Bay, I can see why you'd think that.

I have a feeling some of those revolutions will lead to some reforms, but other aspects of it will be similar to the United States "hippie movement".  We never did end up living in communes and legalizing hallucinogens.  I think once certain industries get hurt and people start realizing people have abandoned their creative efforts because they can't make a living off of them, some of those elements will be reversed.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 3, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> 1)  Take a moral stand and stick with 3e.  If you truly feel that the OGL is important, stick with the 3e ruleset.



I think this is the core sticking point here - you've got it in your head that the OGL = 3e.  It never has.  The entire point of the OGL was to evolve a better game system.  How does that happen?  Alot of people look at the ruleset and make changes.  They get the idea for those changes from looking around and looking at other rulesets.  1e.  2e.  Shadowrun.  d6.  GURPS.  M&M.  Now what you're really advocating is people should stop looking around, and just navel-gaze - or that WotC should at least be afforded some sainted position, since their ideas miraculously came to them out of their own navels.

Anyways, this has gotten silly. You came out of the woodwork to exult the miracle that is Wizards, and I suspect you'll go back into the woodwork by year's end.  You're not going to change your mind, and I'm not going to change mine.  Enjoy 4e; I intend to.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 3, 2008)

> I think this is the core sticking point here - you've got it in your head that the OGL = 3e. It never has. The entire point of the OGL was to evolve a better game system. How does that happen? Alot of people look at the ruleset and make changes. They get the idea for those changes from looking around and looking at other rulesets. 1e. 2e. Shadowrun. d6. GURPS. M&M. Now what you're really advocating is people should stop looking around, and just navel-gaze - or that WotC should at least be afforded some sainted position, since their ideas miraculously came to them out of their own navels.




The "point" of the OGL seems to be different depending on who you ask.  Depending on who you ask, it was a method of licensing the D&D rules, the ability to share everything for free, the ability to improve, etc.  That's how weird it is--some people put the emphasis on how open it is, some people are concerned about D&D compatibility, etc.

The OGL is a game license, that is owned and copyrighted by Wizards.  Most of the people who argue about the existence of the OGL are using the core rules from D&D.  So 3e is relevant.  Why do you think people are so mad about the OGL not being used by Wizards for 4e.  



> Anyways, this has gotten silly. You came out of the woodwork to exult the miracle that is Wizards, and I suspect you'll go back into the woodwork by year's end. You're not going to change your mind, and I'm not going to change mine. Enjoy 4e; I intend to.




I've contributed in several threads mind you.  You seem to think that just because my opinion is _unpopular_ here it is _invalid_.  The only reason this particular thread is active is because of the license announcement.

I'm not a defender of Wizards all the time.  I don't think the radical revamp of the Forgotten Realms is a good idea.  I think they've made mistakes from marketing.  I think that the statement that playtesters shouldn't make negative comments about 4e is dumb and I get a different vibe from this.  I think the 90's legal threats from TSR were wrong.  I wish they would release "abandoned" property.

I hate some abuses of Trademark, Patents, and Copyrights.  I dislike it when individuals get screwed.  But I also dislike the new meme where "information wants to be free", the passive-aggressive stance that "you can't put the genie back in the bottle", etc.  

Some people are jumping on me for bringing up ethics and morals as well.  Well, I'm sorry if it sounds arrogant, but I believe certain things are wrong, and that there is an objective morality, which the law may or may not agree with.  Is it legally okay for somebody to create an SRD from somebody else's contributions.  Yes.  Is it right?  Well...the biggest disconnect is that the license says this is possible, and then you get people who think it's sleazy when you "rip" that stuff, against people who quote the license and say "it's allowed and you should expect it".  Maybe I'm trying to make people think that their actions have consequences.

I personally think the OGL was a too permissive license, and I'm hoping that the new license is popular enough and protects the rights of creators derivative works.  I don't want some of the freedoms to go away, but I don't mind if some of what I consider the more blatant rip-offs are destroyed.  I see nothing wrong with having a "morals clause", a "right to revoke",  etc.  This is still a license of the other game, and I think they should have more restrictions.

Everybody is jumping on Wizards thinking they're gonna shut all creativity down.  Why not wait and see what the license allows.  If the new license is really bad, I'll definately condemn it.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 3, 2008)

The OGL was too permissive, eh? It seems to me that really, you're made at WotC for not following your vision of how things should be done. The ownership of ideas is just not workable. I don't think anyone really knows yet what will work. I think the consensus is that the OGL was good for third parties and WotC both, that it created a lot of goodwill and protected all parties from needless litigation. If you want to argue against that, you're going to have an uphill battle. 

I don't think 4e is ultimately intended to be that "closed" anyway. I suspect that WotC simply feels they need to retrench their market share, and that they can convince the industry to play ball with them for about two years in order to bolster's 4e's bottom line. I imagine that in the long run you will be able to do just about anything other than write a Mutants & Masterminds.

And in the long run, games like M&M have plenty to work from with the OGL we have now. The thing that bothers me is the potential landmine if someone strays a little too close to the 4e design. I hope that WotC would have the good sense to not go off half-cocked and allow a reasonable remedy if infringement were claimed, but I know from my time in the corporate world that the legal team sometimes acts independently from other segments in a company.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 3, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I've contributed in several threads mind you.  You seem to think that just because my opinion is _unpopular_ here it is _invalid_.




I don't think anyone thinks your opinion is invalid. Incoherent, possibly. Unworkable? Most likely. Against the mainstream of opinion on a d20 fan site? Oh, yes. Not based on international IP laws? Already been established. 

You are welcome to your opinion but it seems to be based on personal feelings that others don't share.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 3, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I personally think the OGL was a too permissive license, and I'm hoping that the new license is popular enough and protects the rights of creators derivative works.



Can you give actual examples of how the OGL is "too permissive" and/or fails to protect the rights of a creator?  Without resorting to WotC and Unearthed Arcana?


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 4, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I personally think the OGL was a too permissive license,



"Too permissive"? Are you seriously trying to make me spit my soda all over my PC?

   

If I didn't know you better, I'd think you're one of the old TSR lawyers.

Just ... hehehe ... kidding.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 4, 2008)

Oldtimer said:
			
		

> Wizards don't own the ideas behind 4e.




Actually, I'm fairly certain Wizards does own the ideas behind 4e, legally, morally, ethically and by any other standard one would normally apply to "ownership".

They used a very talented, well-compensated staff, supplemented by newly hired personnel and freelancers for an R&D project that took several years, and that ultimately led up to 4e.

So yeah, they own the ideas behind it. 

Chuck


----------



## xechnao (Feb 4, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> Actually, I'm fairly certain Wizards does own the ideas behind 4e, legally, morally, ethically and by any other standard one would normally apply to "ownership".
> 
> They used a very talented, well-compensated staff, supplemented by newly hired personnel and freelancers for an R&D project that took several years, and that ultimately led up to 4e.
> 
> ...




No, you can't be certain on answering what people question in this thread. There is no 1 golden rule regarding commerce and trade -be it ideas or material goods. It depends on the circumstances of the relative situations. 

Now, one may try to guide the circumstances so to educate towards a certain situation. This is politics: economic politics.

Some people are happy with the current model of economy and politics -the current global capitalistic model. OTOH some people disagree with it.

This is what they are talking about and you can't just say you are certain about one kind of policy.


----------



## Yair (Feb 4, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> Actually, I'm fairly certain Wizards does own the ideas behind 4e, legally, morally, ethically and by any other standard one would normally apply to "ownership".
> 
> They used a very talented, well-compensated staff, supplemented by newly hired personnel and freelancers for an R&D project that took several years, and that ultimately led up to 4e.
> 
> ...



Ehm.... that they invested money into something really has little to do with whether they have ownership over it. I agree that I'd like to compensate them for their troubles and encourage them and others to make similar efforts in the future. But that doesn't mean they own the ideas. It means that I will buy 4e, and I will (already have preordered, actually). 

Wizards doesn't own the ideas because they didn't (I think) patent them. They own the copyrights, which isn't at all like owing the game concepts or mechanics. I'm glad this is the case for while I like for people to be paid to develop and publish better games, I don't really like the idea of people owning any idea, whatsoever. At best it's a necessary evil.


What I'm disappointed with is that it seems I'll now have to create a homebrew system. Or find another system, that isn't D&D. There are several changes to 4e that I suspect I won't like, but would be willing to put up with for a better overall gaming experience. But now that it has become clear to me that I couldn't do what I actually intended to do with 4e - start an entirely OGL game - I will have to cobble-up or find a more esoteric ruleset anyways. Which is a lot of work I was hoping to avoid, and will limit my enjoyment of online content and message-boards, and gaming options. Arrgh.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 4, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> Actually, I'm fairly certain Wizards does own the ideas behind 4e, legally, morally, ethically and by any other standard one would normally apply to "ownership".




Unfortunately, you're wrong. "Ownership" mostly and usually applies to the right to possess and use an object. When applied to intellectual property, ownership is a metaphor. For instance, if I "own" idea, you can't deprive me of it. Intellectual properties are a restriction on how information is used, whereas traditional ownership is the ability to use something. I can't save IP, nor do am I deprived of anything if I share it or give away the information. Furthermore, someone else could have the same idea somewhere else, and neither one of us would be the poorer for it. So intellectual property has some distinct differences from ordinary ownership. What you "own" is an economic prerogative, not the idea itself. So much for normal standards.

Now, let's hit the list. Legally, they don't own the ideas behind 4e. First of all, that's pretty much impossible. You might be able to patent some specific game inventions, but AFAIK there's not a single thing patentable about 4e. You can find prior art of absolutely everything I've seen. Second of all, 4e did not arise in a vacuum. A lot of D&D was actually based on things created by other people, some of whom weren't even compensated. Armor Class was a concept adapted from wargames, ents and orcs were taken from Tolkien, Law/Chaos from Moorcock, etc. 

Morally, it depends on your morals. Ethically is another way of saying morally. I don't consider owning an idea to be within the realm of possibility, so there are no ethical dimensions to that "ownership." What do we owe to the creators of 4e? Are we not to profit from their work? They have profited from the work of others. Do we not have the right to create a competing product? In the US, we have a right to create a competing product. 

In the end, 4e is a stack of books. WotC no more owns the ideas in those books than R.A.Salvatore owns the idea of a misunderstood outsider, or Margaret Weis owns the idea of a gathering army of evil, or some chef owns the idea of a pie crust. Moreover, 4e is a set of instructions for playing a game, and the idea that some company could own the form of game you play in your house is just ridiculous. That would be like claiming that because I created a recipe for Mexican omelettes, you cannot also create a recipe for Mexican omelettes.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 4, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> Unfortunately, you're wrong. "Ownership" mostly and usually applies to the right to possess and use an object. When applied to intellectual property, ownership is a metaphor. For instance, if I "own" idea, you can't deprive me of it. Intellectual properties are a restriction on how information is used, whereas traditional ownership is the ability to use something. I can't save IP, nor do am I deprived of anything if I share it or give away the information. Furthermore, someone else could have the same idea somewhere else, and neither one of us would be the poorer for it. So intellectual property has some distinct differences from ordinary ownership. What you "own" is an economic prerogative, not the idea itself. So much for normal standards.




Let's be 100% clear of the point I was making and the context in which I was making it. 

As I read it, people in this thread were openly advocating attempting an end run around the license to rip the guts out of 4e, which Wizards wants to put some restrictions on with the GSL, port them into the OGL, and use that end-run around the license to do whatever they want with 4e (within the bounds of the OGL).

You can try to convince yourself with a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo that they don't own it, but ripping the guts out of a game system, or an operating system, or a car, and using those "ideas no one can own" is stealing. 

It's stealing just as much as pirating software, or scanning a comic and bit-torrenting it on pirate bay.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 4, 2008)

It's stealing just as much as reverse engineering software... which is completely legal.

EDIT: I think I read your post just fine. It looks like a restatement of a position I still consider indefensible and illogical.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 5, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> You can try to convince yourself with a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo that they don't own it, but ripping the guts out of a game system, or an operating system, or a car, and using those "ideas no one can own" is stealing.



First of all, no one is "ripping the guts out" of anything.  The point of ripping out guts is to disable or kill something; no one is "killing" D&D.

Second of all, I like pawsplay's analogy.  Why is it wrong to create a game that has similar features to an existing game?  Why is it wrong in this particular instance, but it's not wrong for any other game, or software, or tv show?  Should there be only one word processing program?  One search program?  You can only *bold * in Wordperfect, and only underline in Word?  Why is it OK for WotC to do it, and no one else?  Where do you draw the line?  People keep insisting that "we" stick with 3e -- that's it?  That's our only choice?  What's the point of the OGL, then?


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 5, 2008)

> Second of all, I like pawsplay's analogy. Why is it wrong to create a game that has similar features to an existing game? Why is it wrong in this particular instance, but it's not wrong for any other game, or software, or tv show? Should there be only one word processing program? One search program? You can only bold  in Wordperfect, and only underline in Word? Why is it OK for WotC to do it, and no one else? Where do you draw the line? People keep insisting that "we" stick with 3e -- that's it? That's our only choice? What's the point of the OGL, then?




The problem is, your analogy is a little flawed.  WordPerfect and Word, while doing similar things, had differences.  Different interfaces, different methodologies, etc.  Lots of little and sometimes big differences.  Word had style sheets, WP had codes.  Software manufacturers try to add their own distinctions and own methodologies.

Before the d20/OGL glut, people did this.  We had other RPGs.  DragonQuest, RuneQuest, Shadowrun, GURPS, Deadlands, RIFTS, etc.  Most publishers really try to make themselves distinctive, and not derivative.  (Heck, with games like Traveller and Gamma World you had whole different systems each revision!) You rarely had people making things too similar to D&D.  You either asked their permission or some did it anyway, sometimes risking lawsuits, othertimes being ignored.  But for the most part, people competed by doing similar things--statistics for hit points, armor, resistance rolls, etc.

Most people don't want to be known as a cheap knock-off, the types of products that are knock-offs from third-world countries that look like another product, with a vague name that is similar to another trademark, such as the time I saw in the 80's a couple of cheap action-figured named "Dynacats", which looked like Thundercats, in a drugstore.  They want to create on their own.  Especially when it comes to creative works (as opposed to functional products like drugs where you can have "generics", for instance), you make your move by being distinctive.  

Even the professional publishers are doing this.  Stuff like True20 and Spycraft are trying to make themselves as different from the other publishers as possible.  I can see a strategy over the last several years...the publishers are actually making their products as different so it will be a distinct game from D&D.  Maybe they might abandon the OGL rules that are based on D&D and create a new game system after it becomes distinctively difference, so they can control their own properties after that.

I think Vigilance and I are targeting those specific individuals who want to copy 4e completely, making an OGL version of the game rules, when the publisher is actually making so many radical changes that it's a completely different system, to get "99%" of the rules.  
I think he and I would agree if you did that with GURPS, Storyteller, and any other game and tried to make it an OGL game--which you could do, since as you say, you can't copyright game rules--it wouldn't go over well, either with the publishers or the public.  How come people aren't asking to do that?

When I say "stick with 3e", I see it as this.  Wizards gave you the 3e rules under the OGL.  The OGL is still a license, graciously given to you by WoTC.  This is more than any other publisher of games systems ever did in the past (to my knowledge).  But they've decided for their own purposes, they don't want to use it with their new iteration.  Which I respect, it's their right.  If they tried to say all released products are invalid, I'd complain, but they aren't doing that.

Since they are giving a new license, you have an option to create 4e compatible products.  If you don't like the terms of the license, you can still use the non-revocable 3e license.  I'm sure we'll see some guys do the one, other guys do the others.

It's not that you can't take any ideas from 4e once it's out, but I think a wholesale creation of a 100% clone would be frowned on.  Professional publishers wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole, fans of WoTC would denounce it, and people like myself would likely see it as akin to a "cheap Mexican/Chinese knockoff".  (I also have a feeling it's gonna be somewhat difficult to do).

When I say "stick with 3e", I'm saying that if you really want to send a message about open gaming, using the game system that is under the OGL "as is", without changing it to 4e, would send a message--along with not buying D&D 4e.  It would say--"here, WoTC, we would rather play the older version of D&D because of the OGL.  We care about the more open system, so we will support it than your new system"  But if you decide to "end run" the new license, you'd be spitting in WoTC's face, saying "doesn't matter, we'll take your game anyway, you can't stop us".  It will look more like you just want a game system "for free", or are trying to say Wizards has no right to set the terms of their licenses to people.  3e and 4e are different animals.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 5, 2008)

_It will look more like you just want a game system "for free", or are trying to say Wizards has no right to set the terms of their licenses to people._

Now you're finally getting it. 

Because, you see, Wizards has no right to restrict 4e concepts to people. None. First of all, they probably didn't invent them, second of all, they're probably not patentable, third, if they were, they didn't bother to patent them. That leaves copyright and trademark. Neither one prevents anyone from creating a similar game.

As a courtesy, you want to avoid nullifying someone's hard work. As a matter of prudence, you want to avoid the appearance of a "derivative work."

But _if WotC decides to make an end run around the OGL concept and the accepted scope of IP laws_ I don't think they deserve any special respect. I think it's contemptible what they have done to the OGL and I think it's immoral to "license" something for $5000 that already belongs to public by virtue of it being a common application of the art. I.e. there is likely nothing in 4e that is not already a part of the everyday design toolkit of RPG writers. Various novel patents have been rejected... along with the boardgame case law, it appears very, very, very unlikely you could defend a roleplaying system as anyone's IP. 

I suggest you educate yourself better on the distinctions between copyright, trademark, and patent, as well as between actual ownership and intellectual property rights.


----------



## Delta (Feb 5, 2008)

John, what business are you in? You commented on how one poster's being in Sweden would bias his opinion, where do you practice your work? 

It really sounds like you must have some heavy incentive to spend so much time arguing against public domain and openly accessible works. I'm guessing that you work in a company of some moderate size in the proprietary publishing or software business, and feel that the issue generally affects your bottom line.

The crux of the issue for me is earlier where you argued that "Most people are not authors, they are gamers." Philosophically, I (and most people I know) would completely disagree. I feel that everyone should have the _right_ to be an author. Moreover, all gamers actually participate in the _act_ of authorship by writing their own gaming scenarios and characters -- hey, that's the magic that let D&D take off in the first place. And in the age of the internet everyone also has the capacity to _publish_ their works -- practically everyone has a blog these days.

So why would anyone spend so much time trying to prop up restrictions, and trying to create a wall between gamers and authors -- that doesn't have to be there, legally, ethically, or technically? I certainly get more mileage out of open source software and movements that firmly support free speech than those that fight against them in favor of some tiny company's tentative profit. 

Artistically, I'm in a punk band where the philosophy is "Anyone can do it," and I firmly defend the rights of everyone to create their own stuff and participate in the culture; no one is specially annointed. The social effects on bands that have had to deal with the large copyright-industry labels are pretty uniformly devastating, if you read up on them. My band provides almost all of our stuff for free downloads online, and it's exciting to try and support ourselves in the new era when everyone can publish and get access.

And I'll definitely be sticking exclusively with 3E. It was specifically Open Gaming that brought me back to the D&D game in 2000, and if WOTC doesn't support it anymore, then the future value of their products isn't enough for me to bother with.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 5, 2008)

It would be interesting to see what the next generation ruleset "branches" are going to be ... assuming 3e/SRD is the first-gen "root." You will have 4e from WotC (who claimed that we are already playing 4e through 3e) and many clones from third-party publishers, although one could argue that _Arcana Unearthed_ is pretty much a second-gen engine.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 5, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> The problem is, your analogy is a little flawed.  WordPerfect and Word, while doing similar things, had differences.  Different interfaces, different methodologies, etc.  Lots of little and sometimes big differences.  Word had style sheets, WP had codes.  Software manufacturers try to add their own distinctions and own methodologies.



Semantics.  Different methodologies, same result.  Any OGL product is going to have different methodologies than 4e.  We are talking about a legal OGL product that creates the "feel" of 4e, not a word-for-word copy of the 4e core rulebooks.



> Most people don't want to be known as a cheap knock-off.... They want to create on their own.  Especially when it comes to creative works (as opposed to functional products like drugs where you can have "generics", for instance), you make your move by being distinctive.



So if I want to write my own setting, I need to write an entire game system?  I don't think so.  The fact is, you don't know what the GSL will allow.  You think it'll allow "enough"; I think it's already sunk below my most pessimistic forecast with the two-tiered approach and publication restrictions.  I have no confidence that I can maintain my wiki under the GSL, or publish house rules that modify parts of the 4e core rules.
Also, I'm not sure I'd call Arcana Evolved, Spycraft, True20, and Mutants & Masterminds "cheap knockoffs".



> Even the professional publishers are doing this.  Stuff like True20 and Spycraft are trying to make themselves as different from the other publishers as possible.



So are they derivative or creative?  You can't have it both ways.



> I think Vigilance and I are targeting those specific individuals who want to copy 4e completely, making an OGL version of the game rules, when the publisher is actually making so many radical changes that it's a completely different system, to get "99%" of the rules.



If a majority of the changes already exist in the body of OGC lore, how is it a "completely different system"?



> I think he and I would agree if you did that with GURPS, Storyteller, and any other game and tried to make it an OGL game--which you could do, since as you say, you can't copyright game rules--it wouldn't go over well, either with the publishers or the public.  How come people aren't asking to do that?



I don't know.  I don't play any of them, and neither does anyone I'm familiar with, so if I had to point a finger, I'd say "market fragmentation".  The number of people familiar with the OGL and interested in converting GURPS is probably pretty small.



> When I say "stick with 3e", I see it as this.  Wizards gave you the 3e rules under the OGL.  The OGL is still a license, graciously given to you by WoTC.  This is more than any other publisher of games systems ever did in the past (to my knowledge).  But they've decided for their own purposes, they don't want to use it with their new iteration.



They didn't do it for 1e either.  Is OSRIC a cheap, immoral knock-off?



> It's not that you can't take any ideas from 4e once it's out,



Ah, thank you.  How many?  Can you give me a line between "cheap Mexican/Chinese knockoff" and "creative"?



> but I think a wholesale creation of a 100% clone would be frowned on.



You do recall we're speaking about a legal system, right?  The only way to get a 100% clone would be to scan and copy the rulebooks, and no one here wants that.  If I wanted to pirate material, I wouldn't hassle with the OGL.

And finally, to wrap up this post, a new product from the world's greatest Mexican/Chinese RPG writer...Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might 


			
				Monte Cook's Website said:
			
		

> So Monte took a break from his fiction work to compile this book, a collection of the house rules he currently uses in his own games. These include a spell progression system that ranks spells from levels 1 to 20, new rules for healing and curative magic, magical disciplines for spellcasters that always give them an active power and a way to contribute, and much more.
> 
> This book also includes an entirely new base class, the runeblade, for players wanting a character that combines magic and martial skill without the use of spells. New rules for wizards, clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers are provided, offering each class magical disciplines like Godhammer, Eldritch Bolt, and Nature's Senses. And, of course, the book also offers dozens of new spells, feats, and magic items.
> 
> ...


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 5, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> Because, you see, Wizards has no right to restrict 4e concepts to people. None. First of all, they probably didn't invent them, second of all, they're probably not patentable, third, if they were, they didn't bother to patent them. That leaves copyright and trademark. Neither one prevents anyone from creating a similar game.
> 
> But _if WotC decides to make an end run around the OGL concept and the accepted scope of IP laws_ I don't think they deserve any special respect. I think it's contemptible what they have done to the OGL and I think it's immoral to "license" something for $5000 that already belongs to public by virtue of it being a common application of the art.




Actually, I started another thread in the 4e section suspected that Wizards might actually have a patent or two planned for 4e.  We will see.

They may not have rights under the law, but most professional developers have a common courteously to respect that.  You've finally admitted your motivation--your pissed that they decided the OGL is not a good license for them and want revenge.  You also haven't seen the 4e rules, so you can't really say how "derivative" they are.  And, like I explained in yet another thread, the OGL was a license of their own property, they never gave up their rights to that.  



> John, what business are you in? You commented on how one poster's being in Sweden would bias his opinion, where do you practice your work?




The US--computer programming.  I don't own my work or want to.  I've done creative things for gratis.



> It really sounds like you must have some heavy incentive to spend so much time arguing against public domain and openly accessible works. I'm guessing that you work in a company of some moderate size in the proprietary publishing or software business, and feel that the issue generally affects your bottom line.




Nope.  I have not argued against the public domain or openly accessible works.  What I have argued about is that it is up to the author themselves to decide how it should be accessed, not "the people".  I tend to be different than most of my peers because I tend to follow authors over properties.  I followed Gygax to his latest games, I follow the writers of comic books rather than the characters, etc.  I have a good empathy towards them, and I want to see them get compensated.  I defend the right to companies to have that as well since if we abolish the rules for companies we'd abolish the rules for individuals.



> The crux of the issue for me is earlier where you argued that "Most people are not authors, they are gamers." Philosophically, I (and most people I know) would completely disagree. I feel that everyone should have the right to be an author. Moreover, all gamers actually participate in the act of authorship by writing their own gaming scenarios and characters -- hey, that's the magic that let D&D take off in the first place. And in the age of the internet everyone also has the capacity to publish their works -- practically everyone has a blog these days.




What my intent to say was, most people who are playing D&D are not trying to enter the publishing side of things, be it "for free" or "for pay".  The lack of an OGL license never stopped them from doing this before.  And I also expressed that statement because most people just want to play the game.  They don't seek to get published and seek financial renumeration.

Basically, my point was I think very few of the fans care how "open" it is.  They care if they like the game.  So I think whether or not the OGL is used for the 4e rules will matter little to the rank and file who play the game.  It obviously matters to you, but similar to the fact that most people seem to plan to go to 4e, I'd be very surprised if the difference in licensing terms will make all that difference.



> So why would anyone spend so much time trying to prop up restrictions, and trying to create a wall between gamers and authors -- that doesn't have to be there, legally, ethically, or technically? I certainly get more mileage out of open source software and movements that firmly support free speech than those that fight against them in favor of some tiny company's tentative profit.




I never fought against open source.  What I fight for is the right for anybody, be it sole individual or multinational corporation, the right to set the terms how they release their creations.  I have nothing against open source.  I dislike the people who say everybody should be forced to release it that way, we need to abolish copyright, etc.  Wizards, despite being the "800lb gorilla", has the right to set their terms and decide their future products won't be OGL compatible, and I support the same way I support the individual authors have that same control.

People assume it's the "big corporation" that evil.  Somebody brought up Microsoft earlier.  Well, Microsoft got successful not from "stealing ideas", but because they worked hard and a lot of the other guys they competed with had many issues--dBase, WordStar, Borland, IBM, Novell, etc., all did some very stupid things that killed them.  (For a good read, look for "In Search of Stupidity, 2nd Edition"--and yes, the book is critical of Microsoft when deserved).  And now I see Google getting the same hatred. People forget these monopolies are not caused by mergers or acquisitions, they're caused because the people made their choice and the companies produced good product.  

I'm a bit critical of the OGL because I believe Wizards gave up a little too much control.  I personally would not have done this with a game I created it, for various reasons.  I see what's happening with 3e and 4e as similar to if a video game publisher released a first trilogy of games under the GPL, then decided they would build a whole new engine and use a more restrictive license.  It's their right to do so.  



> Artistically, I'm in a punk band where the philosophy is "Anyone can do it," and I firmly defend the rights of everyone to create their own stuff and participate in the culture; no one is specially annointed. The social effects on bands that have had to deal with the large copyright-industry labels are pretty uniformly devastating, if you read up on them. My band provides almost all of our stuff for free downloads online, and it's exciting to try and support ourselves in the new era when everyone can publish and get access.




I agree, labels can be restrictive.  But also keep in mind for every success there are a few dozen failures, and the labels eat that cost.  Basically, my argument is that is your choice.  Others choose to be part of labels.  I'm against saying people shouldn't get paid or royalties for music.  



> And I'll definitely be sticking exclusively with 3E. It was specifically Open Gaming that brought me back to the D&D game in 2000, and if WOTC doesn't support it anymore, then the future value of their products isn't enough for me to bother with.




Cool!  I am not hostile to people who choose third edition.  You still respect that WoTC is the controller of D&D.  If enough people think like you that will send a message, and you have the moral high ground.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 5, 2008)

I'd like to throw this out there also, because I know I tend to get a bit snarky and sarcastic in my replies - John RTroy, while I disagree with you in some particulars (and I suspect fewer of those than might be obvious), you've done an excellent job of maintaining your temper and poise throughout this thread, and I admire that.  Well done, sir!


Now bugger off and let us get down to ripping the guts out of 4e.


----------



## Oldtimer (Feb 5, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> Actually, I'm fairly certain Wizards does own the ideas behind 4e, legally, morally, ethically and by any other standard one would normally apply to "ownership".



Maybe your by standards. They don't agree with the legal, moral, ethical or other standards elsewhere, though.

Ideas are NOT owned. As simple as that.


----------



## Oldtimer (Feb 5, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Well, I am thinking of the people who worked hard to create 4e, and then to have others take there work and reverse-engineer it is wrong.  4e is a different animal.



You think it's wrong. That doesn't make it wrong.



			
				JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Considering you're from the country that has the Pirate Party, Piratbyrån, and The Pirate Bay, I can see why you'd think that.



And those things sure makes me proud to live in this country.



			
				JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I have a feeling some of those revolutions will lead to some reforms, but other aspects of it will be similar to the United States "hippie movement".  We never did end up living in communes and legalizing hallucinogens.  I think once certain industries get hurt and people start realizing people have abandoned their creative efforts because they can't make a living off of them, some of those elements will be reversed.



And I think you're wrong. This is not a "hippie movement". This is the end of a short parenthesis in our history. Copyright in its present form is as doomed as Titanic after hitting that iceberg. Some are bound to stay on the deck and complain that the ship's tilt is ruining their game of shuffleboard. Others are busy making other plans.


----------



## Oldtimer (Feb 5, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> You can try to convince yourself with a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo that they don't own it, but ripping the guts out of a game system, or an operating system, or a car, and using those "ideas no one can own" is stealing.
> 
> It's stealing just as much as pirating software, or scanning a comic and bit-torrenting it on pirate bay.



You really need to read up on the legal definition of "stealing". None of the above are stealing.


----------



## Urizen (Feb 5, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Here's my point.
> 
> 3e is Free.  4e is not.




Unless I'm mistaken, 4e is not free, only if you want to buy in on the Phase 1 developers kit.

After June 2008, publishers will have free access to the new SRD BUT won't be able to publish anyhting until January 2009.

What I'm wondering right now is, exactly what material is being left out of the new SRD?

Does anyone know?


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 5, 2008)

_They may not have rights under the law, but most professional developers have a common courteously to respect that. You've finally admitted your motivation--your pissed that they decided the OGL is not a good license for them and want revenge._

I don't know how you would misread my post that way. Revenge is not a consideration at all. I am saddened by WotC's misjudgment. It probably won't affect me personally any time in the near future, but it is still very unfortunate. I also feel frustrated that over the past 10-15 years, corporate America seems to have lost its senses when it comes to IP and has little understanding of the law or the practical consequences of trying to "own" culture.


----------



## Bacris (Feb 5, 2008)

I don't know that anyone has actually seen the OGL, let alone the SRD.  Remember, the process for early-access to the SRD / rules was "Sign NDA, get GSL, pay, get rules" - I don't think the GSL is actually finished yet, is it?

If the GSL isn't finished, the SRD isn't available yet.

But, my gut tells me the new "SRD" will simply say something to the effect of "Section X of PHB is open content", etc.


----------



## Urizen (Feb 5, 2008)

Since it's been said that the GSL will not be as "open" as the Ogl was, then - in my mind  - that's the most important issue here: What will we be able to reference? What can we build on as far as rules and supplemental material?

I for one would love to expand on talent trees and things of that nature.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 5, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> What I have argued about is that it is up to the author themselves to decide how it should be accessed, not "the people".



It looks like you're dismissing "the people".
Copyright serves two functions - first, it protects the rights of an author to his own work.  Secondly, and often forgotten, copyright acts for the greater good by terminating the rights of an author or creator after a period of time (initially 15 years in the US, now life+75?).  An author does not always act in the best interests of the people or his work; reversion to the public domain helps protect those interests.

Now, this isn't directly related to the matter at hand.  D&D is still safely copyrighted.  But the fact of the matter is that the people's interests are not, and ought not to be, automatically subjugated or subordinated to the rights of the author.


----------



## xechnao (Feb 5, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> What I have argued about is that it is up to the author themselves to decide how it should be accessed, not "the people".




It is always "the people". Humans are social creatures and this is proven. There is not such a thing as "free will" -or at least proven scientifically. What exists is happiness or misery -comfort or stress. Will OGL make Wotc stuff miserable eventualy? This is the debate over here.


----------



## occam (Feb 6, 2008)

Oldtimer said:
			
		

> And I think you're wrong. This is not a "hippie movement". This is the end of a short parenthesis in our history. Copyright in its present form is as doomed as Titanic after hitting that iceberg.




I'm curious, as someone who has clearly stated the extreme position on this side of the IP argument, how you think a world without copyright would work? What would be the incentives for continued production of books, music, movies, etc.? Open source software works because its developers usually have "real" jobs (often writing proprietary software), or customers are willing to pay for support or other ancillary services. If books, songs, and movies are generally made available to all as free downloads (which is what I assume you mean by the death of copyright and the support of organizations such as Pirate Bay), how do authors, musicians, actors, directors, producers, etc. make a living? Who pays people to produce artistic works, if they have no control over distribution?

I'm genuinely curious about how people see this working with a serious consideration of human nature; I don't, but maybe I'm suffering from a failure of imagination.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 6, 2008)

Urizen said:
			
		

> What I'm wondering right now is, exactly *what material is being left out of the new SRD?*
> 
> Does anyone know?



Answer: Content that you can copy-n-paste.

The new SRD will give you page references from core rulebooks (and future supplements) as to what you CAN use with the GSL.

Good luck to designers and publishers from getting repetitive twisting neck injury (looking back-n-forth between the new SRD and the core rulebooks).


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 6, 2008)

Urizen said:
			
		

> I for one would love to expand on talent trees and things of that nature.



You could use the *Modern System Reference Documents* since it introduces the talent trees concept.


----------



## Cergorach (Feb 6, 2008)

occam said:
			
		

> I'm genuinely curious about how people see this working with a serious consideration of human nature; I don't, but maybe I'm suffering from a failure of imagination.



As I stated previously, this needs social change, the basis is already there. Ask a plantage owner 200 years ago if the abolishment of slavery was possible, they would have reacted much the same as you do now. The same goes for racism, equal rights for women, freedom of religion, gay rights, etc. All these things weren't introduced overnight and certainly weren't easy. I'm not trying to equated copyrights with slavery, but rather pointing out that even difficult changes have ways to succeed.

Even now Open Source Software is being developed for 'free'. Certain companies dedicate programmers to the development of OSS, because this makes the software more valuable to them (and in turn to the rest of the world). There will always be people who love what they do and will do it whether they are paid for it or not. But the question is then of course whether this is enough material to sustain the entertainment of mankind and if it's of high enough quality. If it's not, then you'll get folks that want something better, they'll pay something to create. Whether that's n individual that finances a writer for a book or a community that finances a film, or a state that does both. Imagine that instead of paying for all the copyrighted you buy now, you'll pay a 'tax'. That is a huge amount of money, no one is trying to get rich off it, so essentially everything can go to the creators, instead of all the support staff (marketing/finance/it support/management/etc.).

Technology also plays a huge role in this. We're moving away from media carriers such as paper, disc, and tape. Music can be easily downloaded and played on a digital media player, television and movies can be streamed (or downloaded), and books can already be read on digital paper that can be reused for a decade. Actors can already be almost be replaced with 3D characters (Beowulf/LotR battles) and music can be created without an actual instrument.

Imagine that when you go to the movies, you don't actually pay for the movie, but for the huge screen and soundsytem that is used for the duration of the film. Hardware you'll need to buy, because those still are physical products, and cannot be copied infinitely without consuming resources. But the development process could work in the same way as the software/media as described above.

Will this happen? Possibly. When will it happen? The next decade will make the technology readily available and the newer generations will get more comfortable with Open Source, not to mention the idea that information should be 'free'. Currently the corporate funded institutions that try to fight 'file sharing' (such as the Riaa) are already ineffective at stopping consumers, and instead concentrate more on groups that earn money with 'piracy'. Many governments already allow some form of file-sharing without legal consequence...


----------



## PapersAndPaychecks (Feb 6, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> OSRIC does serve a purpose, to support a game system Wizards won't license, and its creator said he'd shut it down if there was a legal version of it available similar to the 3e OGL license.




I did say that, and I still say it.


----------



## kunadam (Feb 6, 2008)

occam said:
			
		

> If books, songs, and movies are generally made available to all as free downloads (which is what I assume you mean by the death of copyright and the support of organizations such as Pirate Bay), how do authors, musicians, actors, directors, producers, etc. make a living?




In Hungary - and I think in other countries too - we do pay some extra money when we buy an empty CD/DVD copy machine that is collected by some central copyright agency and then redistribute. Yes I do pay authors, musicians, whatnot even when I write out my e-mails, work, photos that I take.
I do not suggest that it is a good system, or that this is the future. But it is a gross simplification that all downloading is theft (as far as I know it is legal in Hungary as far as you don't earn money, but sharing it is not legal).

It will change, as one cannot stop filesharing.

Do I pay for e-books or PC games? No. I buy them to support the developers/authors to create yet another good book/softwerw. Thus in my view I'm actually invest in the future (otherwise I would feel stupid to pay for something I can have for free).
Do I buy books because I cannot download them? No. I buy them because after staring at the screen for 12 hours a day I love to sit down and read a physical book (and printing out dowloaded books is against the environment).
See, people would pay for comfort, or to say "well done!"


----------



## Urizen (Feb 6, 2008)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> You could use the *Modern System Reference Documents* since it introduces the talent trees concept.




Yeah I'd figured that was where the talent trees were coming from. Thanks for the advice.

It's going to be pretty interesting to see what they do with them.

Right now I'm thinking  of doing:

*Race books

A Blood Throne Conversion

Class-specific books.
*


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 6, 2008)

I don't claim this answers all the questions, but it is a fact that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Mozart all worked in the absence of meanginful copyrights, and the early 20th century, a time when jazz, boogiee woogiee, ragtime, blues, and rock n roll all came into existence and matured, was a time of relatively weak copyright.


----------



## Fifth Element (Feb 6, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> I don't claim this answers all the questions, but it is a fact that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Mozart all worked in the absence of meanginful copyrights, and the early 20th century, a time when jazz, boogiee woogiee, ragtime, blues, and rock n roll all came into existence and matured, was a time of relatively weak copyright.



True, but copying was also difficult. They didn't have electronic copies of everything to worry about.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 6, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> I don't claim this answers all the questions, but it is a fact that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Mozart all worked in the absence of meanginful copyrights, and the early 20th century, a time when jazz, boogiee woogiee, ragtime, blues, and rock n roll all came into existence and matured, was a time of relatively weak copyright.




Ah, but those are all performance arts. Performance arts are always safer because they rely on, well, a performance.

On the other hand, Shakespeare, as an example, was very cautious about written copies of his work getting out before his company was done performing them. Because as soon as written copies were available, others were perfoming his plays, paying no royalties to him, because there was no law against that.

As a counter example, Cervantes wrote one of the most successful novels of all time, in an era of cheap and easy replication (the printing press) and died a pauper, while publishers sold his books worldwide.

So performance art and other hard to replicate art (say, the Sistine Chapel) were indeed safe before copyright.

But other artforms have not fared as well historically.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 7, 2008)

And PDFs require on computers and bandwidth. I don't see an argument there, just an observation.


----------



## Vigilance (Feb 7, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> And PDFs require on computers and bandwidth. I don't see an argument there, just an observation.




Wait, are you arguing that computers are a limiting factor to replication without the creator being rewarded?

I think computers have made such replication easier, not harder.

That's an argument FOR reasonable protections.

Not to be confused with unlimited copyright as it stands, but your argument, that copyright should regress to where it was during Aristophanes' lifetime isn't any less extreme.


----------



## occam (Feb 7, 2008)

I'm responding to the part of your post that addresses my question: How does a creator make a living? Arguments about the inevitability of free information and the like are side issues, IMHO, to what I think is most pressing: How do you prevent the destruction of a vibrant culture of widely available artistic works in an era where duplicates of such work are distributed freely?



			
				Cergorach said:
			
		

> There will always be people who love what they do and will do it whether they are paid for it or not. But the question is then of course whether this is enough material to sustain the entertainment of mankind and if it's of high enough quality. If it's not, then you'll get folks that want something better, they'll pay something to create. Whether that's n individual that finances a writer for a book or a community that finances a film, or a state that does both. Imagine that instead of paying for all the copyrighted you buy now, you'll pay a 'tax'. That is a huge amount of money, no one is trying to get rich off it, so essentially everything can go to the creators, instead of all the support staff (marketing/finance/it support/management/etc.).




Self-funded or patron-funded art will never be enough to replace what we have now; there simply isn't the money or the will. Let's discuss the other option, some sort of taxpayer funding for creative works.

You'll still need staff. You'll still need marketers, people looking at finances, lots of IT support, etc. Perhaps not as much if you have essentially single-payer entertainment in the form of a government, but then you have government itself discovering and promoting artists, negotiating with them, making decisions as to what is and isn't worth funding: an Orwellian scenario if I've ever heard of one.

Alternatively, you can have government functioning as an intermediary with corporate representatives of artists, which is pretty much like what we have now, except that instead of being compensated directly (more or less) by consumers, these representatives' revenues come indirectly from government. You still have the possibility of government having a greater hand in deciding what's worthy of funding, but more immediately, you've removed most of the incentive the artistic representatives have to find and produce quality creative works. Either the representatives are funded by sheer volume of the works they produce with only minimal quality controls, or you have government directly assessing the quality of creative works. If you think the market is swamped with pablum now, just wait until the era of government-funded entertainment.

I still don't see how any of these options work without a dramatic loss in the variety and/or amount of creative products we enjoy today.


----------



## occam (Feb 7, 2008)

kunadam said:
			
		

> It will change, as one cannot stop filesharing.
> 
> Do I pay for e-books or PC games? No. I buy them to support the developers/authors to create yet another good book/softwerw. Thus in my view I'm actually invest in the future (otherwise I would feel stupid to pay for something I can have for free).
> Do I buy books because I cannot download them? No. I buy them because after staring at the screen for 12 hours a day I love to sit down and read a physical book (and printing out dowloaded books is against the environment).
> See, people would pay for comfort, or to say "well done!"




The problem is that, according to your premise, this is still self-defeating. So you'll occasionally pay for a book or game or other creative work to support the creator, or to enjoy the convenience of a physical product. However, as more and more people are comfortable with using only the freely distributed work, the prices of paid goods go up in order to cover the costs involved in creation. How many people are going to pay $50 for a mass market paperback book, or $300 for a video game, when they could have it for free? Not enough. Eventually, no amount of price increase will support the cost of creation when only a few are willing to pay.

Again, the question is, where does the money come from to pay creators to create?


----------



## Cergorach (Feb 7, 2008)

*@occam:*
1.) The government doesn't need to generate a profit.
2.) It doesn't need a multi million/billion marketing budget to promote something new (to make it a 'success').
3.) To date government 'management' has been a big mess, but (at least around here) serious attempts at streamlining government 'management' have been going on for the last few years. It isn't perfect (yet), but it's getting there.
4.) Salaries for content creators can be more balanced. Why should a singer (who can't really sing) receive a multi million salary, while a good historical writer gets a pittance?
5.) If there isn't enough, then people will be motivated to finance it themselves.

Government funded and directed entertainment isn't such a bad thing imho. Many years ago we only had two public dutch channels (we had one paid for movie channel). The only time you had commercials was around the news segment (at six and eight I believe). The quality of the programming was high (relatively to what is available now). Since then we now have around ten channels, more commercials then actual programs (slightly exaggerated), and just too many crappy programs. I've kicked out my TV a long time ago, I watch the series I like on my computer (I have a reasonably big DVD collection), and maybe watch something twice a year on my parents TV. I'm not the only one that complains about the quality of the programming (reality TV is the curse of the demented mind).

The same goes for music, maybe I'm old (31), but most of the good music came from before 1990. Records are sold more on sex appeal then actual singing quality, I might have complained about Madonna twenty years ago, but her (live) voice is like an angel compared to most of the 'talent' of this day and age. The actual decent music is often produced by the smaller bands that don't have large contracts.

Entertainment is starting to look like a crap shoot, if it doesn't make you millions right away, you flush it. And with enough marketing millions, even the crappiest production can become successful.

[edit]
*@Lizard:*
I would agree with you, if it where not for guys 10 years younger saying the same damned thing, DJs no less. I'm not saying there isn't any good music around, but less imho.
[/edit]

But I think we're getting a bit off topic ;-)


----------



## Lizard (Feb 7, 2008)

Cergorach said:
			
		

> *@occam:*
> 
> The same goes for music, maybe I'm old (31), but most of the good music came from before 1990.




Bwaahahahah!

No "maybe" about it, dude. YOU'RE OLD.

Chief sign of aging? Not senility. Not grey hair. Not starting to keep track of your bowel movements. It's when you say "This stuff these days isn't music! It's noise! It's all a bunch of commercial pap produced by record companies and marketers! Back in MY day, we had REAL music!"

Everything you say has been said before, for every decade going back to, probably, the Stone Age.

"Ugh. New music made hitting wood on rocks. This stupid. Real music mad hitting ROCKS on rocks. Kids this epoch, no idea what music is. Good music stopped in paleolithic. Neolithic so-called music just noise. Ugh."

And I would dread a world where the only art was that which the government saw fit to fund. It would come in two varieties: Patriotic, jingoistic propaganda when the right wing was in charge, and meaningless, incomprehensible trash when the left wing was in charge.


----------



## Piratecat (Feb 7, 2008)

Back on topic, please, folks. It's an interesting topic, but is veering off-track.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 8, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> Not to be confused with unlimited copyright as it stands, but your argument, that copyright should regress to where it was during Aristophanes' lifetime isn't any less extreme.




I wasn't making that argument, I was simply refuting the argument that no copyright = no incentive to create.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 9, 2008)

The whole discussion of copyright and other rights is why I think ultimately the OGL is flawed.  Since this ties in together, I'll link the two, hopefully not veering off course   .

Creators create for many reasons.  However, there needs to be incentive to create.  In a free market society, writers and creators expect to get paid.  It is very short-sighted to say "people will still play music regardless of whether they get paid".  Well, having a hobby is one thing, but I think it would prevent many people from creating, outside of short term creative spurts while they are in High School or College, then they gotta get a job for financial security and have to give up their time.

It's erroneous to think that creators will do it solely for the pure joy of creation.  Mark Evanier has some words of wisdom in his three part (1 ,2 ,3 ) essay on this, and how that attitude can be exploited.  JMS of Babylon 5 fame stated, when asked by a fan why he wouldn't release the final chapter of Rising Stars during a time when he was arguing with Top Cow, stated it would make a writer look like a patsy if they gave up their creation "just for the sake of the fans".  

That's where copyright (and trademarks/patents) come in.  It allows people to control their ideas.  I believe in private property rights, and I believe that a person who creates should be rewarded.  Heck, I also believe we in the US should adopt the "Moral Rights " doctrine European countries respect.  

The complaint about "Intellectual Property" not being a real term flies in the face of what I believe is the right of people to make income of their expression of ideas.  I see a lot of the "piracy is not theft" arguments as akin to Euphemisms  that are designed to make people feel less guilty.  

I think that trumps the rights of the public to get free content.  I am against copyright abuse, but I also think that unlike when a drug or invention loses a patent, whether or not Mickey Mouse ever enters the public domain is a minor issue in the needs of a society.

I think it's a bit erroneous to complain about the "rich people", when they deserve the compensation.  Charles Schulz is an example of a creator who got very rich off his ideas which I think he rightfully deserved--in fact, he didn't even get off the ground with the definitions of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Linus for almost 5-6 years.  If some people had their way it might never have taken off before it became public domain.

Removing copyright altogether would lead to a form of "info-socialism", but instead of being owned by the state it would be owned by the public--and it would still be exploited by the mass media--somebody would collect all the hard work of authors and repackage them for their own benefit.  This flies in the face of basic economics.  Socialism might have some benefits for key municipal needs, but the capitalistic market (with some regulation) seems to be the better way to foster economic growth.  

Here's how the OGL ties into all these theories.

The OGL allows the basic 3rd Edition D&D ruleset--or at least the key subsets to it--to be copied for free.  It turns the rules of D&D into a commodity.  It also doesn't not protect the others from their contributions.  It basically forces a price--any rules innovation is "free".  

What this does is create a weird market situation.  You have transformed the D&D space into  one where there is a perfect competition.  The rules are free.  Perfect Competition when the price competes with free is no profit.  People have to differentiate via things like settings and situations.  

While it's great to be able to use the D&D rules in your own creation is great for the fans, and created a lot of creative products, it can hurt D&D's bottom line, and the guys running D&D were foolish to turn into a commodity the item that represents the majority of their income.  I would say it's actually harder to design a full-fledged game than write a scenario.  So, I understand it from their perspective.  And, I think if D&D gets significantly hurt from this, it will actually affect the whole marketplace.  Until another game overtakes D&D in the tabletop market, the whole health of the industry relies on this factor.

Finally, I just wanted to say when I argue these points it's not to troll, it's to get people to critically think about things.  Sometimes people follow their own dogmas or repeat things without thinking about the facts.  When I referred to the anti-copyright movements as akin to hippies, it was based on how I see similar arguments, some sort-sighted ideals that might not take off in reality.  Or when I say that the ISPs might find a way to stop piracy via technology.  (After all, big companies still control the master pipes).  I have no problem with some of the ideals Stallman, Lessig, etc, have adopted, but I also don't want to see the whole system dismantled.

One should truly study history and trends to understand how things will eventually shake out.  When I make these arguments, I want people to consider if they are arguing a point because that's what they believe will happen, or if it's something they just want or hope will happen.  I was a little idealistic back in my early 20's and thought "hey, wouldn't it be great if big companies didn't sue and people would create and share for free", and somebody pointed out "that's why we have libraries".  We also have PBS.  But they don't replace what we have today.  

I may be a bit more cynical but I also believe we need to gain a bit more wisdom when considering the future.


----------



## Delta (Feb 9, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> The US--computer programming.  I don't own my work or want to.  I've done creative things for gratis.
> 
> I never fought against open source.  What I fight for is the right for anybody, be it sole individual or multinational corporation, the right to set the terms how they release their creations.  I have nothing against open source.  I dislike the people who say everybody should be forced to release it that way, we need to abolish copyright, etc.
> 
> I'm a bit critical of the OGL because I believe Wizards gave up a little too much control.  I personally would not have done this with a game I created it, for various reasons.




So, kind of like I thought, you're working in an industry where your income derives partly from the existing copyright regime. I might also say "I can see why you'd think that".

You're clearly "against open source", as you've spent so much time arguing against the philosophical underpinnings of the movement. You actively "dislike the people" who say we need to abolish copyright. You don't think that "the people" should have any right in defining copyrights. You just compared open source to socialism above. 

So, we disagree. There are more things than raw profit in the world, and personally I do think that the welfare of "the people", as you say, trumps the profits of corporations or individuals. Of course, that's written right in the US Constitution, that the only legitimate rationale for copyrights is if they "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" -- profits to writers are supposed to be only a limited tool to that end.

There are lots of examples around the world of regulations meant to enhance or protect certain forms of art, even at the expense of a theoretically more profitable industry. (e.g., global music, particular local brands of cheese or wine in Europe). I'm personally exceedingly glad that the people who bought D&D in 2000 decided to release the mechanics of the game, partly to increase the art form openly in future years. I do understand that you wouldn't have done the same, so I'm glad that WOTC owners took the opportunity when they had the chance.


----------



## pawsplay (Feb 9, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> Sometimes people follow their own dogmas or repeat things without thinking about the facts.




No way!


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 9, 2008)

> So, kind of like I thought, you're working in an industry where your income derives partly from the existing copyright regime. I might also say "I can see why you'd think that".




I don't own my code.  I don't get paid royalties, or own the copyright, so I don't know what you're talking about.



> You're clearly "against open source", as you've spent so much time arguing against the philosophical underpinnings of the movement. You actively "dislike the people" who say we need to abolish copyright. You don't think that "the people" should have any right in defining copyrights. You just compared open source to socialism above.




I am not against open source, per se.  I think in the computer industry it makes sense, because computer software is very complex and you usually need people working on custom solutions, so programmers will still be needed.  I dislike the people who want to change the rules and *mandate* that all software must be open source, or who say all copyright must be abolished.  That is taking away the right of the individual who chooses what method they release things.  The government serves the minority as well as the majority.

That's why I compared it to socialism, because you are actually taking away the freedom of the individual to choose their methodology.  It's like saying "you can no longer have a house, the government now owns everything".  Anybody who's in a creative effort will suffer and thus you'll have less creative types working.



> So, we disagree. There are more things than raw profit in the world, and personally I do think that the welfare of "the people", as you say, trumps the profits of corporations or individuals.




But I think people think that suddenly it will be some sort of utopia.  It's not going to be.  What you'll have in the creative world will probably be akin to some sort of socialistic system where everybody has sub-par work--you'll see more "remixing" of existing content than people creating something new.  Do you really think that eliminating the protection laws will help things.  

And basically, it's a selfish attitude.  "I can have all the music, movies, and books I want for free, nobody can stop us, VIVA REVOLUTION!".  That's what some people think.  Well, yeah, but when the pool starts drying up of new content I have a feeling that will be the consequence, as the talented person who might be the next Bruce Springsteen or JRR Tolkien or Gary Gygax sticks with his 2 jobs instead of fulfilling his dream.  And we'll probably suffer for it in terms of our entertainment.  You can't have a successful movie industry without those protections, who will pay for those special effects?  Or the programmers of video games?  Economies are important, because if you ignore them, you ignore a key part of civilization.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 9, 2008)

I keep asking myself one question: Would D&D and the state of table-top RPGs be better today if WotC hadn't released the OGL?  
I absolutely do not think so.  The d20 sphere around D&D has made it a better game, and the designers & developers better designers & developers.

That's what it comes down to, IMO.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 9, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> I am not against open source, per se.  I think in the computer industry it makes sense, because computer software is very complex and you usually need people working on custom solutions, so programmers will still be needed.  I dislike the people who want to change the rules and *mandate* that all software must be open source, or who say all copyright must be abolished.  That is taking away the right of the individual who chooses what method they release things.  The government serves the minority as well as the majority.




And who here is saying anything like that?

Indeed, the open source movement relies on copyright, as does OGL. Open Source<>Public Domain. Open source specifies rules about how material can be copied and who has the right to do it, hence, copyright. It is only by copyright law that open source can be "viral", that it can mandate anyone who uses it must share their additions and modifications. The OGL is even more protective of creator rights, allowing the protection of non-derived portions of a book and only opening that which derives from previously open material. I don't see how this is socialism -- the OGL was written very heavily with the intent of protecting the commercial use of work.

My "beef" with WOTC is that they stated, in August, that D&D 4e would be released under the Open Gaming License. It isn't. This has two meanings:

a)They never intended for it to be, and deliberately obfuscated the point to keep competitors off-balance. ("Oh, we meant 'a' Open Gaming License. Just not the one we created, we hold the copyright to, we've always used, and which is the only one with any significant following in the game world.")

b)They intended to release it under a "modified" OGL, but didn't understand their own license well enough to know that modifying it would be pointless. This is the more likely interpretation.

Neither choice is very flattering, and if there's more to it than that, we'll probably never know, since we are not privy to internal corporate debate and it's doubtful anyone who IS privy would ever air any details on the matter.

I spent a lot of time defending WOTC against the conspiracy theorists (First with the OGL, then with the open call for submissions which ultimately produced Eberron.[1]) when they (WOTC) were in the moral right, and now that they're in the moral wrong, I have no problem calling them on it.

[1]"They just want to STEAL OUR IDEAS!" Yeah, buddy. Like your ideas -- a half page description of a world -- are remotely worth stealing. Ideas are easy; development is hard.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 10, 2008)

I'm just wondering...

If the new SRD will be page references of OGC (or whatever legal term they're going to call it), will someone here do the dirty work of copying them and compiling them for copy-n-paste publishing?

Sorry, *JohnRTroy.* The OGL is only flawed because it does not specifically instruct nor permit the use of OGC in computer software without the WotC trademarks. Other than that, there is no other flaw. OGC does not mean Public Domain. If you don't want anyone to use it, designate it as Product Identity.

Perhaps what WotC could have done in the first place is not provide content-filled SRD, but a page-indexing SRD, which is what they're doing for the 4e SRD.

Ryan Dancey got it right the first time.


----------



## JohnRTroy (Feb 10, 2008)

> And who here is saying anything like that?




Cergaroach and Oldtimer, I've seen comments like that back in the thread.



> Sorry, JohnRTroy. The OGL is only flawed because it does not specifically instruct nor permit the use of OGC in computer software without the WotC trademarks. Other than that, there is no other flaw. OGC does not mean Public Domain. If you don't want anyone to use it, designate it as Product Identity.




It's still a license.  Restricting software is not flawed--they didn't want the CRPG industry competing with the D&D license.  The flaw was WoTC--at least from their perspective--is that they gave away too much.



> If the new SRD will be page references of OGC (or whatever legal term they're going to call it), will someone here do the dirty work of copying them and compiling them for copy-n-paste publishing?




There probably won't be what we think is an SRD.  I'm sure they will restrict this practice.


----------



## Ranger REG (Feb 11, 2008)

JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> It's still a license.  Restricting software is not flawed--they didn't want the CRPG industry competing with the D&D license.



Who says the software industry want to make _D&D_ labeled software? I didn't say that. I say why not permit them to use OGC in software.




			
				JohnRTroy said:
			
		

> The flaw was WoTC--at least from their perspective--is that they gave away too much.



Not much, from my perspective. I consider OGL to be generic, not proprietary.

They kept much of the good useful mechanics from _The Book of Nine Swords_ from third-party publishers. Or let third-party companies besides AEG to use _OA_ (minus the _Rokugan_ cra-, err stuff).

Right now, I don't see an incentive to ride on WotC's coattail with 4e (except among hardcore _D&D_ fans, but they always prefer WotC over somebody else).


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Feb 11, 2008)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> If the new SRD will be page references of OGC (or whatever legal term they're going to call it), will someone here do the dirty work of copying them and compiling them for copy-n-paste publishing?




I consider it inevitable.

I also predict the new license is going to be a _mess_.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 11, 2008)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> If the new SRD will be page references of OGC (or whatever legal term they're going to call it), will someone here do the dirty work of copying them and compiling them for copy-n-paste publishing?



I suspect there'll be a mechanism to prevent that.  It might be as simply as requiring any GSL product to have X% of new/original Game System Content.  It'll might be tough to pull together an "official" SRD if you have to provide an equal amount of new content.


----------



## kenmarable (Feb 11, 2008)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> I consider it inevitable.
> 
> I also predict the new license is going to be a _mess_.



Agreed. Although I will be gladly proven wrong, I somehow don't think "restrictions" and "simplicity" fit well together in legalese. Something more restrictive in what you can produce will most likely either wind up vague (and therefore potentially abused) or onerously convoluted (and still potentially abused). I remember the circling arguments over OGL software just between the d20 STL restriction on "interactive" and the OGL requirement of "OGC being clearly defined". If those restrictions generated endless debate among well-informed people, I'm pretty sure more restrictions will just cause more debate and confusion.

*shrug* But the ball's in WotC's court to sort all that out however they want. We're unfortunately just spectators (unlike 3.0 where drafts of the OGL were posted on a publishers list for comments before it was finalized, I forget if the d20 STL also had publisher review or not).


----------



## kenmarable (Feb 11, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I suspect there'll be a mechanism to prevent that.  It might be as simply as requiring any GSL product to have X% of new/original Game System Content.  It'll might be tough to pull together an "official" SRD if you have to provide an equal amount of new content.



Personally, I think that would solve a lot of problems without being too onerous or vague of a restriction. (Of course, there would still be debate surrounding it, but I think it's something that the industry could reasonably work with.) I could quite happily live with WotC including a clause like that in the GSL (hint hint if any of you are reading this).


----------



## Lizard (Feb 11, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I suspect there'll be a mechanism to prevent that.  It might be as simply as requiring any GSL product to have X% of new/original Game System Content.  It'll might be tough to pull together an "official" SRD if you have to provide an equal amount of new content.




Define "new and original" content.

Here's 200 pages of "extracted" 4e rule in ASCII format.
Here's 200 pages of random names, with tables associated with them (making them "gaming content" -- hey, you can roll on them!)

Presto! Exactly as much "original gaming content" as there is extracted material.

The more you try to define things like "original content", the more convoluted the license becomes. And we're, what, some 30+ days beyond the original announcement of the terms for the license? A month of development time is pretty severe if GenCon is the goal, and if you can't make GenCon, you might as well not shell out $5000.00. And if you don't, you won't make new products until Jan 2009, which means the 4e launch will be a bit sad and empty compared to the 3e launch, with no new crunch books until October.

I don't know what the cutoff will be for developers who want quality products for Gencon, but let's assume a month for production (checking bluelines, last minute corrections, printing, shipping), so that means finished by mid-July. If WOTC releases the license today, that's roughly 5 months to:
a)Review the licenses, do sales projections, and decide if you can make back 5K on top of all your other costs and still turn a bigger profit than you could be allocating your resources elsewhere.
b)Learn the 4e rules well enough to write quality product for them.
c)Write a product, playtest it, assign art for it, lay it out, etc.

This isn't impossible, but it's tight, and getting tighter. I don't know what the 'drop dead' date will be for a lot of companies, but I'd be guessing if it's not here by early March, there will be few takers for early adopter status. (And a lot depends on the terms of the new license, as well. Some envisioned products might not be possible.)

My prediction? Most of the larger companies will either not go 4e or wait until January. Necromancer, by virtue of their close relationship with WOTC, will become the "Judges Guild" of 4e, producing the bulk of third-party D&D-compatible products. (And this isn't a dig at Necromancer; I think they'd agree that being called "the new Judges Guild" is high praise from a grognard like me. At the least, it's SUPPOSED to be high praise, so I do not wish anyone to take offense at it.)


----------



## ssampier (Feb 11, 2008)

It's a concern for sure, how "open" the GSL will be.

I care for several reasons: My favorite publisher, Necromancer Games (working with Paizo), will continue to produce good stuff; I can legally publish campaign bits online; I can legally "borrow" bits from others for my own use and publish any changes.


----------



## kenmarable (Feb 12, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Define "new and original" content.
> 
> Here's 200 pages of "extracted" 4e rule in ASCII format.
> Here's 200 pages of random names, with tables associated with them (making them "gaming content" -- hey, you can roll on them!)
> ...



But if WotC includes a revocation clause in the GSL, then they can define "new and original" however they want after the fact with their lawyers. I'm certainly not saying that's ideal, but blatant attempts to bypass a requirement like that with junk can be prevented.

I don't want to argue that WotC *should* have a revocation clause in the GSL since that's some scary power and further makes it a license to use WotC material and not material between 3rd parties. But it is something they could easily throw in there if they feel it's necessary.

With or without a revocation clause, I still think that a "X% original content" clause would be more helpful than not. No matter what terms you come up with, there will be loopholes. But that policy seems to be one that is clear and easy to follow and enforce.


----------



## Hussar (Feb 12, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I keep asking myself one question: Would D&D and the state of table-top RPGs be better today if WotC hadn't released the OGL?
> I absolutely do not think so.  The d20 sphere around D&D has made it a better game, and the designers & developers better designers & developers.
> 
> That's what it comes down to, IMO.




I think a better question would be, Would D&D and the state of table-top RPG's be better or worse today if WOTC had released only the STL?

It appears that's what 4e is going to look like, IMO.  The license will allow you to make D&D products, pretty much exclusively.  If you want to make anything else, you're on your own.  Now, that's just speculation of course, and I could be totally wrong.

But, in my mind, a lot of the "new" d20 games came out after the bubble burst.  Your Spycraft, Mutant's and Masterminds, Mongoose licensed products, are all the results of d20 publishers frantically trying to distance themselves from reliance on D&D for their bread and butter after the switch to 3.5.  Under the original OGL, many of the products released were STL.  It wasn't until pretty late in the game that everyone abandoned the STL.  

If there was no OGL, and only the STL, would it have made any difference in the first three or four years of 3e?  I don't think so.  

What's going to suck hard for the d20 publishers now though is they won't be able to use the 4e SRD (in whatever form) to create that distance.  They won't have the OGL to fall back on if 4.5 edition hits in a few years.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 12, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Define "new and original" content.



Oh, goodie.  We're finally at the part of the show where I use common English terms, and someone picks them apart as not "legal" enough, or clear enough (in the general context of the OGL and licenses in general, which part of "new" is unclear?), or points out a "loophole" - fairly irrelevant, since I'm actually -not- writing the GSL (you're shocked, I know).

So, "new and original" content?  Any content that you hold the copyright on AND have the right to distribute as defined under section 1 of this license. 



> Here's 200 pages of "extracted" 4e rule in ASCII format.
> Here's 200 pages of random names, with tables associated with them (making them "gaming content" -- hey, you can roll on them!)
> Presto! Exactly as much "original gaming content" as there is extracted material.



Congratulations! You have not won anything.  This is not a real loophole.  It's still 200 pages of new content.  Cheap, kinda crummy content, but new and original nonetheless.  Yay you!  (I won't buy it.)

And moving on to other things...yeah, WotC needs to get the license out or everyone is going to go home.  I'd be pretty irked right now if I was Paizo, Necromancer, or anyone else really hoping to get in at the ground floor.  But I'm impatient.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 12, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> But, in my mind, a lot of the "new" d20 games came out after the bubble burst.  Your Spycraft, Mutant's and Masterminds, Mongoose licensed products, are all the results of d20 publishers frantically trying to distance themselves from reliance on D&D for their bread and butter after the switch to 3.5.  Under the original OGL, many of the products released were STL.  It wasn't until pretty late in the game that everyone abandoned the STL.



I don't think Mutants & Masterminds was ever STL/d20.  Other than that, your point stands.  The GSL will still provide some "sphere-ness" around D&D, just smaller and tighter.

I guess I was thinking primarily about designers, and how, with a smaller "sphere" around D&D, you'll probably have fewer freelancers drawn into it and fewer avenues to design in.  Alot of todays designers and developers made their rep in the d20 market, and WotC is reaping the benefit of their experience without having to support their education on the way up.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 12, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> Oh, goodie.  We're finally at the part of the show where I use common English terms, and someone picks them apart as not "legal" enough, or clear enough (in the general context of the OGL and licenses in general, which part of "new" is unclear?), or points out a "loophole" - fairly irrelevant, since I'm actually -not- writing the GSL (you're shocked, I know).




Yup. If you're going to propose a solution to a problem, you'd better be prepared to defend it better than "Let the lawyers work it out; my work here is done."

We use legalese because 'plain English' doesn't cut it. If you can't define it in legalese, it can't be defined in a way that's useful.



> Congratulations! You have not won anything.  This is not a real loophole.  It's still 200 pages of new content.  Cheap, kinda crummy content, but new and original nonetheless.  Yay you!  (I won't buy it.)




You don't need to buy it. It's free on the net. THAT'S what WOTC is trying to prevent, right?

So your solution to the problem of free SRDs, by your own admission, doesn't actually keep anyone from putting up a free SRD. So...uh...what's the point?

To prevent spinoff games like Spycraft, et al? They will easily have more original material than copied if they're going to be worth buying at all, so that's a non-problem, too.


----------



## Hussar (Feb 12, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I don't think Mutants & Masterminds was ever STL/d20.  Other than that, your point stands.  The GSL will still provide some "sphere-ness" around D&D, just smaller and tighter.
> 
> I guess I was thinking primarily about designers, and how, with a smaller "sphere" around D&D, you'll probably have fewer freelancers drawn into it and fewer avenues to design in.  Alot of todays designers and developers made their rep in the d20 market, and WotC is reaping the benefit of their experience without having to support their education on the way up.




My bad about Mutants and Masterminds.  Sigh, too much crap to keep track of.  Never post late at night.  

But, there is a difference to be aware of now as well.  There is such a large pool of talent already in existence from 3e, do they really need to expand that pool at all?  When 3e came out, the pool wasn't much more than a puddle.  But, seven or eight years down the road, we have a rather large number of people who are doing this professionally, full time, and a swath (is that an actual measurement) of part time and amateur talent around the bend.


----------



## Voadam (Feb 12, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I suspect there'll be a mechanism to prevent that.  It might be as simply as requiring any GSL product to have X% of new/original Game System Content.  It'll might be tough to pull together an "official" SRD if you have to provide an equal amount of new content.




So then no modules that use only core rules monsters, traps/hazards, and magic items.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 12, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Yup. If you're going to propose a solution to a problem, you'd better be prepared to defend it better than "Let the lawyers work it out; my work here is done."



I defined the phrase you found confusing.  Other than that, I don't think it needs much defending.

If you want to define something, lets define the argument here.  On one hand, we've got an optimistic view that WotC (who have stated they want to end the cut-and-paste SRD) can't or won't effectively end the cut-n-paste SRD.  They'll just outsource it to geeks on the internet who want to Put It To The Man.
On the other hand, we've got pessimists like me, who think WotC's legal team might actually be able to put something together that does prevent a cut-n-paste SRD.  I took one stab at a possible restriction (not a "solution"; I think it'd suck). You seem intent on tearing it down, but I'm not really sure why.  Do you really think WotC is just going to handwave away someone ripping the SRD out of the core books?  Or do you think they're going to enforce it some other way?  If so, how?

Believe me, I'm not going to be happy about restrictions on GSC content, but I also think they'll be there.  I'd rather be wrong than right, but I'd also rather be prepared.



> We use legalese because 'plain English' doesn't cut it. If you can't define it in legalese, it can't be defined in a way that's useful.



That's silly; that's like saying if you can't plan out a house you can't hire an architect to do it for you.  I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not going to play make-believe and spout gibberish any more than I'd waste my time trying to engineer a truss system for the next house I build.  I wasn't writing a license; I was voicing a possible restriction on freely replicating GSC, a restriction based (at least conceptually) on one already extant in the d20 license.



> You don't need to buy it. It's free on the net. THAT'S what WOTC is trying to prevent, right?



I don't know what WotC is trying to prevent.  I know they're trying to steer people towards their actual books and away from SRDs, which I assume (at my own risk) includes 3rd-party for-profit SRDs.  I know that because they've said so.  Beyond that, I prefer not to speculate much about their motives and ultimate goals (but I do anyways, and in this very post!)



> So your solution to the problem of free SRDs, by your own admission, doesn't actually keep anyone from putting up a free SRD. So...uh...what's the point?



Actually, my "solution" (which isn't a solution), makes free SRDs more likely than for-profit SRDs.  However, it also introduces a barrier to casual reproduction that your "solution" doesn't eliminate.  Your solution surmounts the barrier, but you expend effort in doing so.  It in no way eliminates or bypasses the barrier.



> To prevent spinoff games like Spycraft, et al? They will easily have more original material than copied if they're going to be worth buying at all, so that's a non-problem, too.



That's a valid point.  WotC wants to keep people referring to their books, so it not unreasonable to guess that eliminating stand-alone games is a goal.  I don't think all stand-alone games "easily" have more original material than copied, but some do.  So the restriction will probably be more onerous, not less.

Then again, I did say "x"%.  50% was an example.  Maybe it'll be 90% original material.  Mutants & Masterminds is the only game I can think of offhand that has a likelyhood of hitting that mark.

Maybe a "starting point" restriction rather than an "end-point" restriction; no more than 5% of the GSC in the PH, DMG, or MM can be reproduced in a single work.  You could still make 20 free partial SRDs, so that's probably not the right answer either, but it does allow for just-core traps and monsters in a 3rd-party product.

Or maybe they'll define GSC in inviolate "units"; a spell; a feat; a race; a class; a trap; a monster; and tightly restrict how many units you can copy per product, and not allow changes to the units.  That'd establish a single standard for D&D rules and go a long way towards feeding things back into the core rules. Again, there is a precedent for this in the d20 STL.

Or they could just define what types of products are allowed; I don't know exactly how they'd say it (see above for IANAL speech), but maybe they'll just limit the license to splat books, monster books, and adventures.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 12, 2008)

Voadam said:
			
		

> So then no modules that use only core rules monsters, traps/hazards, and magic items.



Which probably makes my first restriction alone unlikely.  It could be pared with something else, though -- see my other post (up one or tw) for more pessimistic scenarios.  Come up with your own!  Share them with your friends!


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 12, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> But, there is a difference to be aware of now as well.  There is such a large pool of talent already in existence from 3e, do they really need to expand that pool at all?  When 3e came out, the pool wasn't much more than a puddle.  But, seven or eight years down the road, we have a rather large number of people who are doing this professionally, full time, and a swath (is that an actual measurement) of part time and amateur talent around the bend.



Right.  We have that "rather large number" because d20 established a rather large pool for them to grow in.  Those people, however, are going to retire out of the industry (Roger Moore), or form their own company (Chris Pramas, Monte Cook), or switch to video game design (Sean K Reynolds).  The large pool of amateur talent (and by amateur I mean mostly unpaid, not freelancers) is made possible by the large d20 sphere.  A smaller sphere will cut off some of that talent as they defect or lose interest in a more defined ruleset with fewer outlets for public review (translation: smaller 3rd-party product market).  I'm sure Lizard remembers the days when Dragon was the only place for an amateur to get published; that's a pretty damned small pool by todays standards.

Right now, d20 design is a 10-lane superhighway, and there's a pretty good number of people on it.  It's got lots of exits, but it's also got alot of on-ramps.  It looks like WotC is going to choke that down to a 6-lane, or maybe even a 4-lane highway.  Some of the people on the highway now are going to look for exits, or alternate routes.  Transit time will slow down as there's less room to maneuver, design-wise (I know I'm mixing metaphors a bit, but you can't learn from Iron Heros if no one writes IH in the first place).  And ultimately, there will just be fewer people on the road for WotC to choose from.


----------



## smetzger (Feb 12, 2008)

I hate to say it, because I don't want this to happen, the easiest way to prevent a cut-and-paste SRD on the internet is to require a fee for use of the license and a right to refuse the license.

A $1k - $5 k license fee will keep individuals out of this game.  Of course then people will band together in non-profit orgs and raise the money.  But if WOTC has a fee and review process it will greatly decrease the amount of policing they have to do.

With no fee and no review process.  Anyone can post anything on the web and it becomes very difficult to reign in.

I really hope WOTC doesn't do this.  I would like to keep supplying my little game aids.


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 12, 2008)

smetzger said:
			
		

> I hate to say it, because I don't want this to happen, the easiest way to prevent a cut-and-paste SRD on the internet is to require a fee for use of the license and a right to refuse the license.
> 
> A $1k - $5 k license fee will keep individuals out of this game.  Of course then people will band together in non-profit orgs and raise the money.  But if WOTC has a fee and review process it will greatly decrease the amount of policing they have to do.



I think WotC will keep the $5000 buy-in program, adding incentives to get new companies to sign up over time.


----------



## Lizard (Feb 12, 2008)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I think WotC will keep the $5000 buy-in program, adding incentives to get new companies to sign up over time.




Which would be interesting in light of the fact they've announced they won't -- of course, this was before the license went back for retooling, so who knows? They might find the only way to "save" the license is to make it purely commercial, so that while it will be *possible* to put out a "free" SRD, the only people legally capable of doing so would be those who shelled out 5K, and thus would have very little motive to do so.

OTOH, if I thought I could earn money via google ads if I paid 5K for the rights and was the only person with a legal "free" SRD online...well...


----------



## Nellisir (Feb 13, 2008)

Lizard said:
			
		

> Which would be interesting in light of the fact they've announced they won't -- of course, this was before the license went back for retooling, so who knows?



Do you have a quote on that?  I remember the outlined benefits of the 5k stopped around Dec 31, since anyone could publish under the GSL after that time, but I don't recall anything actually saying they would stop it.  Implied, maybe, but not "announced". Giving the 5k companies a permanent 6 (or 12) month lead on new GSC would be a pretty simple incentive to start with.

And like you said, who knows?  They also announced they weren't working on 4e and that the 4e they weren't working on would use the OGL, not the d20STL.  :\


----------

