In contrast to the GSL, Ryan Dancey on OGL/D20 in WotC archives

I really dislike parsing posts like this but you've intermixed some subjects that were meant for other people in this thread and have nothing to do with me or my quote.

mearls said:

WotC is part of a potential open gaming movement, for reasons outlined in my original post. If for some reason one could reasonably describe an open movement as specifically excluding any publisher, or any subset of publishers, then the movement has failed.

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WotC has stepped away from the Open Gaming Movement. The Open Gaming Movement is not run by a single entity and has no ability to exclude anyone or any publisher.

mearls said:

The GSL is a system license designed to allow publishers to profit by producing D&D compatible products. Its benefits and drawbacks are irrelevant to open source development. It occupies the same space as the d20 license. The d20 license was also irrelevant to open source development.

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Yes, irrelevant to the discussion I was having, so I do not know why you bring it up as part of a response to a quote by me. Let's leave it aside for the time being.

mearls said:

The OGL, in theory, was designed to allow for open source style development, as Ryan talked about in the links above. That didn't happen, though plenty of good designs did use the SRD as their basis.

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You predilection to discuss the Open Gaming Movement in the past tense shows a bias with which I am not in agreement. Development has happened, is happening and will continue to happen in the community of publishers and individuals who wish to continue being a part of the Open Gaming Movement. The use of the SRD as a basis for so much other development is merely a sign that WotC was a huge contributor of some very excellent material when it was a part of the Open Gaming Movement. It is a shame that they have chosen to step away but, again, that is their choice. No hard feelings.

mearls said:

Regardless of 4e's relationship (or lack thereof) to the OGL, an open source approach to design can help gaming as a whole for reasons I outlined above, such as by promoting a culture of design, discussion, and invention.

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The approach already exists and will continue to exist. It is sometimes nebulous and harder to recognize because it is not as clearly delineated as a corporate structure. Groups can certainly work together but sometimes the participants are not in direct contact with one another. That is part of what makes it so open.

mearls said:

My contention is that the economic and social benefits of open gaming development - making money by publishing a game, the prestige of pointing to a published book with your material in it - are at best short term benefits to specific subsets of the community.

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That shows a lack of vision, IMO, and seems to denote an interest in disenfranchising other publishers from the Open Gaming Movement. I hope that is not the case. The truth of the matter is that, as we have both stated above, the community that makes up the Open Gaming Movement is comprised of consumers, consumer-designers, and publish-designers (who also are consumers, sometimes the biggest consumers). For those who wish to move beyond tinkering with rules and invest more of themselves, both time and even some financial backing into the effort, there is both risk and potential reward. Beyond 3.0e, WotC did this with 3.5e, UA, and slightly in MM2. There is no conflict of interest in risking a bit more and hoping to make some money from those efforts. The community knows that publishers are some of the largest contributors of OGC and will continue to be so. The community rewards those efforts. Sometimes those efforts are one-shots and other times they are sustained campaigns.

mearls said:

Cultivating a culture of design via open source methods has the potential for great payoffs by creating an environment of study and learning. The actual games produced by or tinkered with by such a group are irrelevant compared to the *process* of tinkering, creating, and learning.

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I think that the Open Gaming Movement is beyond such impositions. I think it will grow on its own and in directions that cannot predicted. I think the inability for individuals or publishers, no matter their size, to solely steer the Open Gaming Movement is one of its primary strengths. I think what you have is an idea for a group of folks to get together and be a concerted part of the Open Gaming Movement but I think it would be very limiting and counter to the ideals of the movement to restrict it in the fashion you seem to be proposing.

Darrin Drader said:

No offense, but isn't anyone who is publishing open development products for money in effect hijacking the community, at least according to your definition?

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No. Publishing products for money doesn't hijack the community. However, turning the community's outputs so that they benefit only a publisher, and indirectly its fans by giving them something to buy, would be hijacking the community.

I think that open gaming would be hijacked if people saw the process Paizo is using for Pathfinder as what open gaming is supposed to be. The Pathfinder process is an open playtest in that anyone can simply show up and take part. The goal of the process is to create a product that Paizo will sell for its own direct economic benefit, and for the indirect benefit of publishers that choose to produce Pathfinder-compatible products.

There's a reason why you can get Firefox, the various Linux distributions, and other open source programs for free. When you remove economics from the equation, you allow the community to better express its needs and dictate the direction of development. The community picks its needs and goals. The publisher's needs and goals are already set: profit by publishing the rules.

There's also an important aspect to open development undermined when you involve a publisher too closely to the process. The relationship between a publisher and participants in the process is unequal. The publisher picks what gets pursued, what gets used, and what the goal is. The publisher is in charge.

In a true open environment, the users are in charge. You have people "in charge" in the sense that they organize things, but if they go against the users they aren't in charge for long, or they're left in charge of a project without users.

So, it would be a pity if "open source development" was hijacked to mean "development that allows for free licensing" or "open playtesting", because it sells the concept short.

xechnao said:

What you are advocating here I think is a learning laboratory. My take is that such a thing to be successful should need some sponsorship. If there is a market around it, then obviously the market's biggest powers should be the ones to offer it. You work in Wotc. Do you see such a thing on the horizon?

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I think it might be similar to a sort of learning laboratory, or a community, but I'm still not 100% sure what it should be.

This is where I differ with many people here: I don't think you want or need companies funding or running it. For it to be viable, and for it to pay off in the long run, you simply need people willing to participate. The tools are already there on the 'net: file hosting, forums, and so on.

Mark said:

The truth of the matter is that, as we have both stated above, the community that makes up the Open Gaming Movement is comprised of consumers, consumer-designers, and publish-designers (who also are consumers, sometimes the biggest consumers). For those who wish to move beyond tinkering with rules and invest more of themselves, both time and even some financial backing into the effort, there is both risk and potential reward....

There is no conflict of interest in risking a bit more and hoping to make some money from those efforts. The community knows that publishers are some of the largest contributors of OGC and will continue to be so. The community rewards those efforts. Sometimes those efforts are one-shots and other times they are sustained campaigns.

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Precisely what I was trying to say in my earlier post. In many cases, there is little to no distinction between publisher and community as many small PDF publishers are not much more than a budding of the community.

Granted, once profit becomes and objective, it derails from the remaining community from having a more direct contribution, but even in DSP's case, the publisher still listens very closely to its audience. For example, DSP has been known to release unplanned materials simply because their audience has asked for it explicitly.

mearls said:

I think it might be similar to a sort of learning laboratory, or a community, but I'm still not 100% sure what it should be.

This is where I differ with many people here: I don't think you want or need companies funding or running it. For it to be viable, and for it to pay off in the long run, you simply need people willing to participate. The tools are already there on the 'net: file hosting, forums, and so on.

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Take example of yourself. Didn't financial aids help you in finding the necessary time to work enough so to arrive at the point of being able to develop 4e?

Lord Tirian said:

A programme for something like that isn't really viable, I think, considering the minimal benefits compared to the current ways to "learn" RPG design.

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The biggest thing that I think we need is a way for all those homebrewers and designers to communicate and discuss their efforts. We don't have a community focused on that for traditional, as opposed to indie, games.

With communication and discussion come learning, the exchange of ideas, and all that. We have that to some extent, but we need more.

mearls said:

The biggest thing that I think we need is a way for all those homebrewers and designers to communicate and discuss their efforts. We don't have a community focused on that for traditional, as opposed to indie, games.

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Of course we do, it's just not restricted to a single forum. It's everywhere it needs to be and everywhere it springs to life.

mearls said:

With communication and discussion come learning, the exchange of ideas, and all that. We have that to some extent, but we need more.

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We have all that and more already. You seem to be proposing a single location when what we have now is everywhere. The Open Gaming Movement is not a snake but rather a hydra with an infinite number of heads where the strongest necks are merely a consequence of which heads do the most thinking. There's no need to vorpal the other necks to do what you suggest. Everyone is welcome to try and get ahead.

mearls said:

It isn't really practical for WotC to dynamically incorporate community improvements in to the core rules. We'd have to reprint the rules on a far more regular basis than the typical gamer would stand for!

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So why did Dancey say this? Pie in the sky dreamsniffing?

A marketer blowing smoke in our faces?

Basically what I see Mike advocating is a concerted effort to make a non-published OGL 3.5-esque game. Hmm... rule repository... check in check out make changes, open palytest, iterative design.

Math testing, open playtesting...

The best part is that a publisher Could release a disribution of it and support it.

I think Mike gets open source and open gaming WAY better than Dancey did. Dancey wanted it to line WotC's pockets through network effects. He also successfully wanted to convince people from using the lack of enforceable rule copyright to respect WotC's preferences.

Imagine a bunch of gamers, using really open principles, building a game kernel, modules that pop in, documented interfaces.

Holy crap. I can't express it but I think i love it!

heirodule said:

A marketer blowing smoke in our faces?

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Slickest ever seen in gaming.