The Headless Animal
Posted 28th September 2009 at 09:29 AM by pawsplay
Wizards of the Coast gave birth to a wondrous beast, then, in true fairy-tale fashion, abandoned it, only to have the creature fostered by others. Wizards cannot truly revoke the OGL, at least, not without some kind of legal precedings that would spell the end of their existence as an entity. The original license was granted to the gaming world in general. Since then, it has replicated, each license imitating its parent, all clones of a document copyrighted to a parent who no longer loves or nurtures the thing.
There are several consequences to this decision. Obviously, the abandonment has led to a lack of an obvious industry leader. As a result, Paizo has taken the role as the publisher of the Pathfinder RPG as the unofficial banner carrier for the third edition D&D rules as a living, breathing system. The community is necessarily fan-based and democratized, since there is very little in the way of brand support behind new projects. The OGL functions, in many ways, as a shibboleth of independent designers working in a third edition language. It imparts no uniformity, imposes no laws, and most importantly, lends little aura of connectedness to the gaming industry. The Pathfinder license has resources behind it, and hence legitamacy. Pathfinder is a brand on which a castle may be built.
The second consequence is the increasingly complicated and tortuous sharing of OGC. What was once assumed to be a viral process has become tangled by rather rigid copyright declaration requirements. To summarize, every OGL product needs a copyright declaration, which includes its own copyright plus a copy of the copyright declaration of every product whose OGC it "uses." While this produces a pleasant way to track a product's lineage, it means that an OGL work, as a whole, has a declaration. Works that draw on several sources will generate an increasingly byzantine declaration. Even if I reproduce only a single original feat from Generic Publishing's Book of Feats, I reproduce the copyright declaration of every OGL work the book draws on, as a requirement of the license.
At one time, this process could be midwifed by Wizards. In the Monster Manual II, two OGC creatures appear: the Scorpionfolk and the Razor Boar, both created by Necromancer Games. However, if you look carefully, you will find that these creatures were not licensed under the OGL. Surprised? Confused? Well, the OGL declaration at the back of the book lists no copyright for those two creatures. Therefore, I can only assume Wizards of the Coast received the rights to use and modify the text in a separate agreement or license, including the right to relicense the material as OGC.
If, in fact, you wish to create a product that is mostly open, as opposed to one that merely supplements other works, it would probably behoove you to contact the original copyright holder and work out some arrangement to license the material rather than yoink it directly with the OGL. If mutally acceptable, there is no reason your agreement could not include a mention of their copyright in the Copyright Declaration. Of course, you would then have to be very careful they were the originators of the material you are contributing.
Wittingly or not, Wizards built in some interesting complications to making second or third generation OGL products.
There are several consequences to this decision. Obviously, the abandonment has led to a lack of an obvious industry leader. As a result, Paizo has taken the role as the publisher of the Pathfinder RPG as the unofficial banner carrier for the third edition D&D rules as a living, breathing system. The community is necessarily fan-based and democratized, since there is very little in the way of brand support behind new projects. The OGL functions, in many ways, as a shibboleth of independent designers working in a third edition language. It imparts no uniformity, imposes no laws, and most importantly, lends little aura of connectedness to the gaming industry. The Pathfinder license has resources behind it, and hence legitamacy. Pathfinder is a brand on which a castle may be built.
The second consequence is the increasingly complicated and tortuous sharing of OGC. What was once assumed to be a viral process has become tangled by rather rigid copyright declaration requirements. To summarize, every OGL product needs a copyright declaration, which includes its own copyright plus a copy of the copyright declaration of every product whose OGC it "uses." While this produces a pleasant way to track a product's lineage, it means that an OGL work, as a whole, has a declaration. Works that draw on several sources will generate an increasingly byzantine declaration. Even if I reproduce only a single original feat from Generic Publishing's Book of Feats, I reproduce the copyright declaration of every OGL work the book draws on, as a requirement of the license.
At one time, this process could be midwifed by Wizards. In the Monster Manual II, two OGC creatures appear: the Scorpionfolk and the Razor Boar, both created by Necromancer Games. However, if you look carefully, you will find that these creatures were not licensed under the OGL. Surprised? Confused? Well, the OGL declaration at the back of the book lists no copyright for those two creatures. Therefore, I can only assume Wizards of the Coast received the rights to use and modify the text in a separate agreement or license, including the right to relicense the material as OGC.
If, in fact, you wish to create a product that is mostly open, as opposed to one that merely supplements other works, it would probably behoove you to contact the original copyright holder and work out some arrangement to license the material rather than yoink it directly with the OGL. If mutally acceptable, there is no reason your agreement could not include a mention of their copyright in the Copyright Declaration. Of course, you would then have to be very careful they were the originators of the material you are contributing.
Wittingly or not, Wizards built in some interesting complications to making second or third generation OGL products.
Tags: ogl, publishing
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