General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
To be blunt here: That's just male cow excrement, and it will stay that, no matter how often they will repeat this opinion.
I don't know what is their "true" opinion, or if they really believe it, but that's what it is. None of the adventure paths I have played in os far (Dungeon or Pathfinder) contained anything that couldn't be converted storyline wise to 4E. In fact, that is exactly what we have done with Savage Tides and Curse of the Crimson Throne (and a little bit with Rise of the Runelords.)
That I agree with.
It's worth remembering that we've had the rug yanked out from under us by WotC once already. The loss of the magazine license was actually handled pretty graciously and nicely by WotC—it could have been a LOT worse for Paizo, but WotC was very generous with the event (as seen by their extending our license by several months so we could finish out Savage Tide).
Yet still, having the license taken away was an incredibly frightening thing. As in, a lot of us were afraid that by the end of the year we'd be out of a job. We took a risk with starting up Pathfinder and it paid off big. We're taking an even bigger risk with the Pathfinder RPG and that's looking like it's gonna pay off even bigger.
Personally... speaking for only myself... after being laid off from WotC once, and after losing the magazine license... I'm pretty much all through with putting my fate in someone else's hands. I'm really proud of what we're doing with the Pathfinder RPG, and even though I think that the 4th edition rules are really elegant and well designed (I'm a bit less fond of the changes to the game's flavor and traditions)... it's still not the game I helped build.
Call it male cow excrement if you want, but my TRUE opinion is that Pathfinder RPG (and by extension, 3.5) is a better system to build the games that I want to write, develop, edit, and play. It's an opinion that everyone at Paizo shares, and that's the main reason we're supporting our own game rather than looking to officially support 4th edition at this time.
That may not have been the case 1 or 2 or 5 years ago. It's certainly the case now.
EDIT: In any case, it's the "We can pull the plug on your license for doing something we don't like because it's too R-rated" part of the GSL that I really mean when I say that the GSL won't let us write the type of adventures we want to write. Especially since there's no definition of what might or might not trigger that reaction from WotC... what's appropriate to one reader isn't to another, and all that.
Maybe Clark's problem is just that he doesn't like the quality of BoEF, rather than the topic?
(Note: I've never read BoEF all the way through, just skimmed it. I'm not saying it is or isn't good. I'm saying that just because he thinks Book X is garbage, it doesn't necessarily follow that he objects to the topic of Book X.)
Yeah, when Anthony announced his company, I was excited at first because I thought it would be cool to have a company pushing the darker edges of D&D. I didn't realize that he was going for gamer pr0n. It isn't that I have an issue with pr0n, but after looking at the BoEF, I don't think it really fits the game at all. In fact I was kind of repulsed by it. Now if the concept would have been more along the lines of Book of Vile Darkness volumes 2 - 10, I could have jumped onboard that.
__________________ Darrin Drader
Freelance Writer/Game Designer
Previously posting as Whisperfoot
Silly question again.... The old NEtobook of CArnal Knowledge including STDs, etc. All these things are possible in a fantasy world as disease is often a major problem....so without the gratuitous sex, could this trigger a "mature" rating and cause for alarm and termination of a GSL? opinions not legal advice requested....not trying to put anyone on the line, just throwing out an idea.
Yeah, when Anthony announced his company, I was excited at first because I thought it would be cool to have a company pushing the darker edges of D&D. I didn't realize that he was going for gamer pr0n. It isn't that I have an issue with pr0n, but after looking at the BoEF, I don't think it really fits the game at all. In fact I was kind of repulsed by it. Now if the concept would have been more along the lines of Book of Vile Darkness volumes 2 - 10, I could have jumped onboard that.
I find it funny that the BoEF is really the only OGL book that I regularly see in almost any Borders store; I'm surprised that more 12 year olds haven't figured that out yet. I've paged through it, but never in depth. In terms of mechanics, a CR 12 creature being able to summon a CR 20 monster was enough for me to put it back down.
__________________ Veronica: Where's your brother?
Dick: I think he took Ghost World up to his room. They're probably up there making love. Or playing Dungeons and Dragons. Or both, at the same time. They're both, like, 12th-level dorks. I'm just sayin'
Not everyone's a prude and recoils at the concept of adult content in D&D.
The implication that anyone who does not like the BoEF is a prude is NOT ACCEPTABLE. If you want to impugn the sexual mores of people, you are seriously on the wrong boards. I don't want to see you post in this thread unless the first words are an apology to all and sundry.
If that was not your intention, you were not paying close enough attention. Nobody should expect any patience with such a statement. This thread has been warned once.
This is warning #2.
There will be no warning #3. And, given that this topic is important to our community, it is likely to end in bans, rather than thread closure.
The Book of Erotic Fiction is not the subject of the thread. Please drop it.
Wow. 12 pages in the thread already? The license has only been out a couple of days.
Everyone else is throwing their opinions around, and since I want to be like everyone else...
I don't like 4E. I played it, I DM'd it, I tried writing original content for it, and it just doesn't do it for me. But I am a freelance writer, so I have been very interested in the new GSL for a couple of reasons.
First of all, this new GSL will set the tone for all business relationships that WotC has with third-party publishers. And second, the GSL will guide the evolution of the game more than anything else. The more contributing authors, the more variety and innovation...so this spiffy little document will give these aspiring writers a working, legally-protected platform to sell their ideas.
I think this GSL will do everything it was intended to do: create a solid network of high-quality authors, artists, and publishers, and grow the product line for the mutual benefit of Hasbro and 3PPs alike. So that makes it a success, in my humble (and non-legal) opinion, even though I probably won't ever use it.
As for the BoEF? Don't blame the license, and don't blame the publisher. That book is truly horrible, but the reason that manuscript got approved and the book got printed was because of consumer demand...however slight. It wasn't because of a lack of control over IP.
In other words: if people would stop buying crappy products, publishers would stop making crappy products.
So when the 3PPs start cranking out new material by the boatload, resist the urge to throw your money at anything with the new logo on it. Be selective. Demand good products, and make those publishers earn their money. If a book is awesome, buy it and tell your friends to do likewise...but if a book is awful, do not buy it and warn your friends not to.
Section 18 Waiving my rights to a jury trial of despute. If wizards does take my stuff, and I think its not right, I have to ask them politely to fix it and hope for the best.
You're seriously misunderstanding what that clause means. You waive your right to a jury trial, not to any trial. You still get a trial, but it's with a judge making the final decisions. It's common to include this in business contracts, because judges are a lot more predictable than juries. Judges can generally be relied upon to understand the law and make their decisions based on it, while juries make decisions for all sorts of wild reasons.
It's worth remembering that we've had the rug yanked out from under us by WotC once already.... I'm pretty much all through with putting my fate in someone else's hands...
How dare you learn from experience!
EDIT: Once I already submitted, I see I am told to apologize to Clark about the BoEF stuff in my next post. OK Clark, sorry, I apologize, you are right, it is garbage.
EDIT: In any case, it's the "We can pull the plug on your license for doing something we don't like because it's too R-rated" part of the GSL that I really mean when I say that the GSL won't let us write the type of adventures we want to write. Especially since there's no definition of what might or might not trigger that reaction from WotC... what's appropriate to one reader isn't to another, and all that.
Exactly, that's a smart decision.
Basically, I see licensing D&D or going with the older or variant versions as similar to a choice that a comic writer or artist does when he decides to either do "work-for-hire" with a big company or be independent and have control over copyright, trademark, and full ownership.
Anybody who licenses anything takes a trade-off. And it's important to recognize that.
I think the main gist Clark, Charles, and others have said is, to use the analogy, that being in the former camp is not necessarily a bad choice, as long as you know what you're getting into, and get enough in return.
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
There are plenty of licenses which don't have these restrictions, and it's not unreasonable to make a business decision that you don't want to incur the risk of either one of these.
I have to admit that I find this really unlikely. Are there really "plenty of licenses" which don't involve some kind of content control, whether in the form of a morals clause, freedom to withdraw license, right of review and refusal? Especially when the license is an open one with no royalties involved? It seems like any such license would almost immediately result in "Custer's Revenge" style problems or worse.
I would imagine most licenses that don't have some kind of clause that allows refusal based on content are much more narrow in scope and specific in the products they enable.
I have to admit that I find this really unlikely. Are there really "plenty of licenses" which don't involve some kind of content control, whether in the form of a morals clause, freedom to withdraw license, right of review and refusal? Especially when the license is an open one with no royalties involved? It seems like any such license would almost immediately result in "Custer's Revenge" style problems or worse.
Any larger game publisher would have experience with that. Ask somebody like Mongoose which is licensing several properties, or Margaret Weiss productions.
I think a lot of people are thinking of the new "copyleft" licenses like Creative Commons or software licenses like GPL, MIT, BSD, as examples, as well as the OGL.
The gratis licenses are very rare in the Entertainment world and I don't see we're going to see many big publishers license their own content in this manner, especially if the property is as valuable as D&D.
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
Location: “Over the Hills and Far Away” - (TDY in Florida - "Home" is Michigan)
Posts: 1,547
Quote:
Originally Posted by justanobody
... So BoEF could say D&D, but wasn't made by them and any court of law would be like.... What does this have to do with WotC since they didn't write or publish this book?
Don't you have to prove the person you are blaming for any kind of damages is the responsible party? So anyone claiming damages, even with the GSL, would not be able to hold WotC to blame for something of "mature" content, if WotC did not write it.
I don't recall Gene Roddenbury held responsible for anything occuring from the porn flik Sex Trek with James T **** as the captain. It wasn't his fault, so cannot be held responsible for someone using or misusing his IP.
Not necessarily. A court of law might agree with that at the conclusion of a lawsuit, but not necessarily before. In which case you'd have to spend a lot of money defending yourself, not to mention the PR hit your company and brand may take.
Yes, you'd have to prove they are the responsible party, but, they may be able to force proceedings to attempt to prove just that. It may be possible to force a lawsuit on the premise that WoTC licenses (in this case the OGL and STL) gives tacit permission for such a product, and therefore WoTC is liable. A lawsuit like that would probably never win, but the money spent defending themself, and the PR damage, could be considerable. That could even be just the crack in the armor that anti-D&D activists could use to bring the subject back into the limelight. For a real world example (not as a commentary on politics), lawsuits just like this have been brought against the gun industry. To date, I don't think any of the suits have won, but they've spent considerable amounts of money figthing this and lobbying for support.
But that's only about possible liability issues. Something doesn't have to be legally valid for your brand to take a Public Relations hit. Just look at the hits WoTC takes here on ENWorld for some seemingly inocuous actions (and some not so inocuous actions). Could you imagine what the damage to the D&D brand would be if anti-D&D groups started publicly declaring that D&D promotes pornography and lasciviousness, and used BoEF as exhibit number one? Whether right or wrong, to most parents it would appear to be a smoking gun, which is all that would matter to them. Game over. So, they protect themselves with a clause in their license before it becomes a problem. Sounds like a very smart decision to me.
As far as the porno example, one could make the argument that it's parody, and therefore protected by the first amendment (no matter how distasteful it may be to some people - even bad parody is still parody). Something of which the Trek franchise or Gene Rodenberry's estate would probably have had no ability to control even if they did seek legal action.
(edit: Sorry Umbran. I was probably typing yet when your post went up. It takes me a while to make sure I've spelled everything right - which even then I usually don't have everything spelled right.)
__________________ Mark "El Mahdi" Armstrong - Semper Operor Verus
". . . after all, that is why we're here. Kill the last bad guy and then there's cake." - Major General Jack O'Neal
"Don't Just Do It, Just Do It Right!"
"Right, without Reason, is unmitigated Foolishness."
"If you make a mistake, Acknowledge It, then make it Right."
Location: “Over the Hills and Far Away” - (TDY in Florida - "Home" is Michigan)
Posts: 1,547
Quote:
Originally Posted by justanobody
I just think you
Maybe a "no sexual acts depictions/descriptions" clause rather than just a blanket "no mature content" type clause.
I get where you're coming from. The only problem I see is that "mature content" covers more than just sex for a reason. For example, although the game portrays violence and injury, it does so in an abstract manner. If a D&D book, or a D&D compatable book, presented violence in all of it's graphic horrific un-splendor, it could be adverse to WoTC's goals. WoTC wants to sell books, and espcecially with this edition is going to great lengths to bring in new and younger gamers. Anything that breaks that "PG" standard is just ammunition for those aforementioned anti-D&D groups. They can use it to convince parents to not let their children buy or play the game.
__________________ Mark "El Mahdi" Armstrong - Semper Operor Verus
". . . after all, that is why we're here. Kill the last bad guy and then there's cake." - Major General Jack O'Neal
"Don't Just Do It, Just Do It Right!"
"Right, without Reason, is unmitigated Foolishness."
"If you make a mistake, Acknowledge It, then make it Right."
I get where you're coming from. The only problem I see is that "mature content" covers more than just sex for a reason. For example, although the game portrays violence and injury, it does so in an abstract manner. If a D&D book, or a D&D compatable book, presented violence in all of it's graphic horrific un-splendor, it could be adverse to WoTC's goals. WoTC wants to sell books, and espcecially with this edition is going to great lengths to bring in new and younger gamers. Anything that breaks that "PG" standard is just ammunition for those aforementioned anti-D&D groups. They can use it to convince parents to not let their children buy or play the game.
On the flip-side, nothing gets the word out for your product like controversy. And nothing gets kids to buy something better than those in "authority" telling them its bad for them.
edit: though I can see where Hasbro wouldn't like the wingnuts calling for a boycott on My Little Pony. Yet another reason I wish WOTC was still in control of their own destiny. Hegemony is bad...
__________________ ~Joe
If you like what I said, throw me some XP. I was a goblin sharpshooter for far too long.
Location: “Over the Hills and Far Away” - (TDY in Florida - "Home" is Michigan)
Posts: 1,547
Quote:
Originally Posted by joethelawyer
On the flip-side, nothing gets the word out for your product like controversy. And nothing gets kids to buy something better than those in "authority" telling them its bad for them.
edit: though I can see where Hasbro wouldn't like the wingnuts calling for a boycott on My Little Pony. Yet another reason I wish WOTC was still in control of their own destiny. Hegemony is bad...
Yeah, it worked exactly that way in the 80's didn't it. I think even Gary said it was actually one of the best things for D&D marketing back then.
I don't know if it would work a second time around though. At least back then there was no real evidence, it was all just anecdotal and twisted statistics. But if someone had hardcopy proof in the form of a publication, I don't know if the public would be very forgiving today. But you never know, even if parents didn't let there kids buy or play, I guess you can't be absolutely sure it would adversely affect sales. But, if you're a publicly traded company do you take the chance?
__________________ Mark "El Mahdi" Armstrong - Semper Operor Verus
". . . after all, that is why we're here. Kill the last bad guy and then there's cake." - Major General Jack O'Neal
"Don't Just Do It, Just Do It Right!"
"Right, without Reason, is unmitigated Foolishness."
"If you make a mistake, Acknowledge It, then make it Right."
The OGL was a very unusual license, and in some ways it kind of spoiled the publishers.
I've heard this said many times, the OGL "spoiled" the publishers. Muy perspective is quite different. The OGL was created with a specific purpose in mind: to create a "safe harbor" for third party publishers. In the absence of the OGL, publishers could have put out very similar products, but there might have been questions about what was permissible, which could lead to legal challenges that would be costly to WotC and fatal to most small publishers. The OGL never gave anything away but goodwill.
Virtually no game terms in the SRD are trademarkable and titles are generally not copyrightable. Game concepts cannot be copyrighted, only expressions. There are no patents in the SRD that are being licensed, and at this point, there is nothing left to patent. WotC did not invent elves nor regenerating trolls nor "halflings."
Effectively, the OGL served as a way of sidestepping what might or might not constitute "derivative content." It created a situation such that as long as you followed the rules, if you did create derivative content, you would not be sued and WotC would not have their IP rights weakened by a failure to do so.
I understand the OGL can be interpreted strictly as a business contract, but in a broader sense, it was a covernant. The purpose of the OGL was not to license some kind of original creation (like the Star Wars franchise or a a particular brand name like D&D) but instead to cover all asses. The few truly original variations on old themes (chromatic dragons, dark elves, clerics) long ago became assimilated into popular culture and there is no reclaiming them. I could go fire up Final Fantasy I right now and show you a fire-breathing red dragon, a frost-breathing white dragon, and a gas-breathing green dragon. That ship has sailed.
So in effect, it is WotC that has been spoiled. As originators of the OGL, they have grown used to the idea that they control the use of the SRD material. In fact, you need no license at all to create a wide variety of compatible products with little or no legal exposure. The only major obstacle is WotC's possible willingness to file unlikely suits in the hope of forcing the 3PP out of the game through bullying. Since WotC has retracted their offer as a safe habor, I can draw only two possible conclusions:
1. After years of debate, some folks in upper management still have not grasped the central issues at stake (the D&D trademark, versus the un-ownable right to create gaming products with may or may not be compatible).
2. WotC is prepared to sue 3PP publishers to dust and ashes, TSR style, in an attempt to maximize profits in the short-term by eliminating free market alternatives to their products, and is unashamed to take the role of a bully.
Whichever is the case, as both are dangerous possiblities, I would be leery of entering into any contract to WotC in which the licensee is not protected in some way from WotC's whims.
Keep in mind that WotC feels they are entitled, solely, to use the displacer beast... a creature which inspired by the coeurl, from Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle. They have forbidden others from referencing their unique, original interpretation of someone else's idea. While I do not think WotC is malicious or particularly greedy, it is clear to me that their IP policies reflect a continual tumult of business decisions, rather than a coherent philosophy based on artistic and business realities of the 20th and 21st centuries.
I could sell a vaccum cleaner bag and print right on the label, "Compatible with Hoover upright vacuum cleaners." Yet I am spoiled for thinking I can do the same for an adventure module? I can write books about elves and dwarves and such, drawing from the same sources as D&D... yet WotC presumes to tell me how tall an elf is and must be? The EU has told Microsoft, in plain terms, that they must allow others to write compatible software for their copyrighted OS and provide no impedence to them, yet WotC feels exempt from this basic pillar of efficient free markets.
What bothers me is not WotC's generosity, which has been reasonable in scope, but their presumption. It bothers me that they would make publishers jump through hoops who actually want to work with them and promote their brand, when less loyal 3PP can simply publish as they see fit, and as long as they practice reasonable caution, suffer no such restrictions. Whereas the OGL was a partnership of WotC, 3PP, and fandom, the GSL is imperial.
If the OGL was a bad business deal, then why was 3.5 so successful?
I think even Gary said it was actually one of the best things for D&D marketing back then.
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
