RPG Legalities: OGF/4eGSL/d20STLDiscussions about the Open Gaming Movement, the Open Gaming License, along with WotC's GSL. This is the new home of the OGF-L and d20-L listserver discussions.
I'm sure this was brought up way back when 4e first poked its head over the horizon, but I don't remember the answer. For that matter with the release of the GSL and 4e, the answer may have changed.
Given that the mechanics of 4e and 3e are so radically different, and that the old 3e *mechanics* as presented in the WotC supplements are now officially "abandonware", has there been any thought given to releasing those supplements as OGC?
I imagine a single "Product Identity/OGL" document per product would suffice. For instance, WRT to Complete Scoundrel: "The following items are considered product identity and closed content under the OGL: names, portraits, and descriptions of all NPCs, all proper names whereever they may occur, the entireties of Chapters 1 and 6, and all parts of classes except for Entry Requirements, Class Table (though not the Class Name), and Class Features section. You may refer to this product as CScd(WotC), base classes from this product as CScd(WotC) BaseClassX (where X is a number), and prestige classes from this product as CScd(WotC) PrC X (where X is a number)." And then the OGL portion would have in its s15" "CScd(WotC), Wizards of the Coast, (c)2007".
Honestly, in the WotC supplements the only things that could possibly be "upgraded" are the Feats. Spells and PrCs have gone away, and their equivalents function very differently, making them essentially unupgradeable.
So maybe the feats might need to be made product identity, or have their names stripped, or something.
What do you all think? Doable? Possible? Or Just-a-Dream?
__________________ GuardianLurker
"I am not a number, I am a free man!" -No. 6
I'm creating an AE/psionics, no magic item campaign world. I'm doing it on the web, in public. Come and comment at my world-building blog.
Well, first, there's no such thing as "abandonware".
Second, given how hard WOTC is working to kill the OGL, why on Earth would they ever release more source material for it? Short of, say, Peter Adkison buying WOTC back from Hasbro, you can be damn sure nothing from WOTC will be coming out as Open Game Content, ever again. WOTC wants people to move to 4e; they have no motive to extend the "life" of 3e, and if it was in any way possible for them to recall the SRD and shut down the OGL, you can be certain they would. Fortunately, the people who created the OGL knew this would happen and made sure it was permanent and irrevocable; this is why the GSL is very explicitly *neither* (and why companies are a bit reluctant to base their business plans on WOTC whims).
__________________ Post-Gencon Update! Breakfast Crunch!Daily (Weekdays) useful stuff for your RPG needs! This week is Zombie Week! You can has feed! LizardGames, now in easy-to-read Feed form! Do you have mad 133t Joomla and CSS skills? Do you want to do unpaid work on a site hardly anyone knows exists? If so, email me! (Hey, I'm honest, at least...)
Well, I'm still waiting for 3.0e material to be released as OGC -- Oriental Adventures come to mind -- when 3.5e came out.
I wouldn't hold my breath for that.
__________________ Joe Mucchiello, Head Honcho at Throwing Dice Games
Priority One: Fatherhood.
Priority Two: Sanity.
Down on the list: seemingly real close to releasing a notebook essential. It's in layout! Has been for months now. (Just nod politely so I won't cry about this.)
"I've never heard of the term Flavor lawyer..." -- Scribble
Well, first, there's no such thing as "abandonware".
Sure there is.
Well, speaking as a big-corp lawyer, you're right.
But that completely ignores that fact that if enough customers want to keep 3E alive as a free community project, Wizards and their cadre of lawyers can't do a thing about it.
There's plenty of examples how people are making old software available despite the publisher's wishes, so I'd say your view is very narrow and misleading. There's a world outside US courts you know!
Well, speaking as a big-corp lawyer, you're right.
But that completely ignores that fact that if enough customers want to keep 3E alive as a free community project, Wizards and their cadre of lawyers can't do a thing about it.
There's plenty of examples how people are making old software available despite the publisher's wishes, so I'd say your view is very narrow and misleading. There's a world outside US courts you know!
Yes, but pretty much all of that world is a signatory to the Berne Convention.
__________________ Post-Gencon Update! Breakfast Crunch!Daily (Weekdays) useful stuff for your RPG needs! This week is Zombie Week! You can has feed! LizardGames, now in easy-to-read Feed form! Do you have mad 133t Joomla and CSS skills? Do you want to do unpaid work on a site hardly anyone knows exists? If so, email me! (Hey, I'm honest, at least...)
Anybody who's decided to stick to 3.x isn't going to be part of the 4e market. So offering OGL licenses for their OOP products doesn't hurt WotC - they weren't going to get 3.x diehards' money anyway. Heck, by licensing the right to republish those 3.x books as OGL to another company or companies (like Paizo, say), WotC could even turn their OOP backlog into free money.
Strip out the PI, and WotC can still mine the old 3.x stuff for ideas when printing the splatbooks for 4e. The mechanics are so different that barring the PI, there wouldn't be anyway to relate the two.
To tell the truth, I've never understood why game companies (of all stripes) don't rent out their "abandoned back catalog" products. It doesn't really hurt them, and the secondary market generated can even get them some halo sales. I understand why the companies drop products - they're no longer profitable - but if a different company thinks it can make a go on the old product, and it won't hurt your sales, why not let them? Maybe they'll be right. Maybe they'll be wrong. But either way, it doesn't hurt the original company at all.
__________________ GuardianLurker
"I am not a number, I am a free man!" -No. 6
I'm creating an AE/psionics, no magic item campaign world. I'm doing it on the web, in public. Come and comment at my world-building blog.
Anybody who's decided to stick to 3.x isn't going to be part of the 4e market. So offering OGL licenses for their OOP products doesn't hurt WotC - they weren't going to get 3.x diehards' money anyway.
This is incorrect.
It's not a 100% boolean issue of "I will/will not move to 4e". One of the factors getting people to switch to 4e once their current games have expired is the perception of 3e as a "dead" system. If there are people making support products for 3e, the game seems "alive" and people have one less reason to switch. If there was a sudden flood of new "official" OGL material for companies to base their products off, this would only increase the number of people staying with 3e who might have otherwise switched to 4e. WOTC has no reason to release anything new to the OGL, and if there was any way they could "un open" the SRD, they would do so in a heartbeat.
__________________ Post-Gencon Update! Breakfast Crunch!Daily (Weekdays) useful stuff for your RPG needs! This week is Zombie Week! You can has feed! LizardGames, now in easy-to-read Feed form! Do you have mad 133t Joomla and CSS skills? Do you want to do unpaid work on a site hardly anyone knows exists? If so, email me! (Hey, I'm honest, at least...)
We (the d20 modern community) were told that every book in the D20 modern line would eventually be added to the d20 modern SRD, and told that much of it was ready and waiting for the web staff to add links, and writing staff was hard at work in getting the rest ready.
We later found out that this was a lie. And all those resources had been dedicated to 4e all along.
__________________ I turned myself into a monster, to fight against the monsters of the world.
http://www.nadaka.us/DiceBoxDB.asp
Check out Nadaka's Dice Box, an online die rolling program featuring a persistant searchable database.
http://www.nadaka.us/ModernNPC.asp
Check out Nadaka's Modern NPC generator, still under construction but it does generate NPCs up to 20th level.
To tell the truth, I've never understood why game companies (of all stripes) don't rent out their "abandoned back catalog" products. It doesn't really hurt them, and the secondary market generated can even get them some halo sales. I understand why the companies drop products - they're no longer profitable - but if a different company thinks it can make a go on the old product, and it won't hurt your sales, why not let them? Maybe they'll be right. Maybe they'll be wrong. But either way, it doesn't hurt the original company at all.
If their renting out their old stuff, they feel its not pushing the new one. If their is no support for the old stuff, customers are forced to move to the new edition.
If their is no support for the old stuff, customers are forced to move to the new edition.
Or try to snapup whats kleft from 3rd edition before supplies run out and when they do the consumer can just buy used material. Or move on to third party products made for 3rd edition (I'm looking at Pathfinder).
We (the d20 modern community) were told that every book in the D20 modern line would eventually be added to the d20 modern SRD, and told that much of it was ready and waiting for the web staff to add links, and writing staff was hard at work in getting the rest ready.
We later found out that this was a lie. And all those resources had been dedicated to 4e all along.
Any links to these promises? I would be interested in reading what they said.
__________________ Andreas Rönnqvist Dreamscarred Press
New publishing with a focus on Psionics
Get a FREE download of our Dreamscape release!
Any links to these promises? I would be interested in reading what they said.
sorry, gleemax is being its usual self. IE I can't log in to search for a lot of the data.
THe relevant issues are the production of D20 Spectaculars, project Javelin adventure path and the failure to deliver bullet points or any web content after 2006.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bullet points 11/10/2006 Owen K. C. Stevens
Welcome to the latest installment of Bullet Points. I'm Owen K.C. Stephens. Every two weeks (or as close to that as we can manage), I answer questions about rules from the d20 Modern line of games and give advice about rules issues.
Note that there were two more bullet points before the end of 2006, then nothing for 2 years.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...icle/20051213a
Project Javelin was a full length adventure path with the first 3 or more adventures written and submitted. The authors of this adventure path is a poster here on ENWorld, he might be able to provide better information.
I am not 100% sure, but I think Rich Redmans Grim Frequency adventure series was also cut short.
D20 Spectaculars d20 modern superhero supplement was fully written and edited AFAIK, and a week before it goes to print it is canceled with little or no explanaition as to why.
Plus there is the issue where additional material was said to be on its way to the MSRD. But once again, most of the posts by WotC employees are on gleemax (that is virtually unaccessable) or the wizards archives (that are difficult to search).
__________________ I turned myself into a monster, to fight against the monsters of the world.
http://www.nadaka.us/DiceBoxDB.asp
Check out Nadaka's Dice Box, an online die rolling program featuring a persistant searchable database.
http://www.nadaka.us/ModernNPC.asp
Check out Nadaka's Modern NPC generator, still under construction but it does generate NPCs up to 20th level.
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
