Mathew_Freeman
First Post
http://mearls.livejournal.com/151714.html
Just saw this go up on Mearls Livejournal...interesting reading.
Just saw this go up on Mearls Livejournal...interesting reading.
Mike Mearls On the OGL
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
I agree with his observations for the past.
I wonder if Pathfinder might be an attempt to do what was missing so far - a iterative, open development process?
I think one of the big problems with the iterative process though is that it is a lot easier to deploy a software then it is to "deploy" a game.
In a way, the gamers are the computer running the game system. Unfortunately, human memories of game rules can't be overriden as simply as computer memory of an application. The computer doesn't try to remember "Hmm, last time I uploaded an FTP File, this was how it worked". He just executes the code, and if has changed, he doesn't care.
Gamers think "Okay, IIRC, Grapple works like this... Oh wait, no, there was this change in 3.76, the size modifier is now ...")
Maybe this means we have to think on larger scales for game system? A software can be updated daily, weekly or monthly if required.
A game system can only be updated every 4 years (assuming the 3.0 to 3.5 to 4E change)? Maybe Open Gaming just needs more time?
---
Interesting in his observation: The OGL served as a great training ground for designers. But can the GSL ever hope to achieve the same? Or does it not have to, since the OGL is still around, and it is not necessary to train for a specific game system, just for designing in general?
I wonder if Pathfinder might be an attempt to do what was missing so far - a iterative, open development process?
I think one of the big problems with the iterative process though is that it is a lot easier to deploy a software then it is to "deploy" a game.
In a way, the gamers are the computer running the game system. Unfortunately, human memories of game rules can't be overriden as simply as computer memory of an application. The computer doesn't try to remember "Hmm, last time I uploaded an FTP File, this was how it worked". He just executes the code, and if has changed, he doesn't care.
Gamers think "Okay, IIRC, Grapple works like this... Oh wait, no, there was this change in 3.76, the size modifier is now ...")
Maybe this means we have to think on larger scales for game system? A software can be updated daily, weekly or monthly if required.
A game system can only be updated every 4 years (assuming the 3.0 to 3.5 to 4E change)? Maybe Open Gaming just needs more time?
---
Interesting in his observation: The OGL served as a great training ground for designers. But can the GSL ever hope to achieve the same? Or does it not have to, since the OGL is still around, and it is not necessary to train for a specific game system, just for designing in general?
Mark Hope
Adventurer
Interesting article. I don't agree with his points about the ogl's failure from an Iterative, User Driven *What* Now? perspective, though. I'm not saying the ogl has no drawbacks - it has - but I don't think that was one of them.
More specifically, he is looking at its success from that of designers or publishers - and naturally so. Perhaps from that perspective, his point has merit. But from the perspective of an end-user, a gamer, it doesn't.
For mearls, it's a point of failure that innovations occured in a fragmentary fashion, but for a gamer that's not such a big issue, except from an ease-of-use consideration. I can see where mearls is coming from here - innovations were widespread but there was no strong movement to consolidate them into an evolving core ruleset (although it did happen here and there.)
However, for the gamer, the ogl allowed us access to all of these innovations and gave us the opportunity to incorporate them into our own games. And this, I think, is the real success of the ogl. It has enriched the games of players the world over - and that's what it's all about at the end of the day.
To take examples from my own homebrew, I use races from a handful of sources (mainly core but also Sword & Sorcery and Arcana Evolved, and athas.org for my DS games.) Classes come from all over the place (mainly WotC and Malhavoc at the moment). I use the favoured class rules from ogl Conan, the magic system from Arcana Evolved, monsters from Necromancer, White Wolf and Malhavoc. For hit points I use Monte Cook's Grace, Health and Breather rules, and have just switched the core combat, xp and advancement system from WotC's to Pathfinder. And next campaign arc I'll be using armour as DR and defence bonus.
None of that would have been possible without the ogl, so from this gamer's (admittedly anecdotal) perspective, that element of it has been anything but a failure.
I have the impression that mearls would have liked to have seen these innovations be more widely propagated throughout the d20 system, but I think that misses the point. As he says, not everyone can agree on what changes to make - and nor should they have to. This is where his computer code analogy fails. In programming, it's desirable to have uniformity of code. In gaming, it's not necessary, because the whims and desires of gamers vary widely. Instead of uniformity, the ogl brought us wild diversity, a huge range of choices, and a big damn toolbox from which to pick and choose our system elements.
(There is also the consideration that the market leader - WotC - did not embrace the innovations of other companies anywhere near as well as it should have. The widespread propagation of innovation that mearls might have wanted would have been far more successful had WotC started using more ideas from other sources and folding these back into the core rules. It happened here and there, but nowhere near as much as it could have.)
So I'm not sure that the ogl can be termed a failure from the perspective of the gamer. Maybe so from the perspective of a publisher or a designer - but then I'd question the assumption that the ogl was intended to benefit designers and publishers as much as it was meant to enrich players. I'm sure that benefitting publishers and designers was a consideration, but I think that enriching gamers was more important - and rightly so.
All the same, a very interesting read. Thanks for the link
More specifically, he is looking at its success from that of designers or publishers - and naturally so. Perhaps from that perspective, his point has merit. But from the perspective of an end-user, a gamer, it doesn't.
For mearls, it's a point of failure that innovations occured in a fragmentary fashion, but for a gamer that's not such a big issue, except from an ease-of-use consideration. I can see where mearls is coming from here - innovations were widespread but there was no strong movement to consolidate them into an evolving core ruleset (although it did happen here and there.)
However, for the gamer, the ogl allowed us access to all of these innovations and gave us the opportunity to incorporate them into our own games. And this, I think, is the real success of the ogl. It has enriched the games of players the world over - and that's what it's all about at the end of the day.
To take examples from my own homebrew, I use races from a handful of sources (mainly core but also Sword & Sorcery and Arcana Evolved, and athas.org for my DS games.) Classes come from all over the place (mainly WotC and Malhavoc at the moment). I use the favoured class rules from ogl Conan, the magic system from Arcana Evolved, monsters from Necromancer, White Wolf and Malhavoc. For hit points I use Monte Cook's Grace, Health and Breather rules, and have just switched the core combat, xp and advancement system from WotC's to Pathfinder. And next campaign arc I'll be using armour as DR and defence bonus.
None of that would have been possible without the ogl, so from this gamer's (admittedly anecdotal) perspective, that element of it has been anything but a failure.
I have the impression that mearls would have liked to have seen these innovations be more widely propagated throughout the d20 system, but I think that misses the point. As he says, not everyone can agree on what changes to make - and nor should they have to. This is where his computer code analogy fails. In programming, it's desirable to have uniformity of code. In gaming, it's not necessary, because the whims and desires of gamers vary widely. Instead of uniformity, the ogl brought us wild diversity, a huge range of choices, and a big damn toolbox from which to pick and choose our system elements.
(There is also the consideration that the market leader - WotC - did not embrace the innovations of other companies anywhere near as well as it should have. The widespread propagation of innovation that mearls might have wanted would have been far more successful had WotC started using more ideas from other sources and folding these back into the core rules. It happened here and there, but nowhere near as much as it could have.)
So I'm not sure that the ogl can be termed a failure from the perspective of the gamer. Maybe so from the perspective of a publisher or a designer - but then I'd question the assumption that the ogl was intended to benefit designers and publishers as much as it was meant to enrich players. I'm sure that benefitting publishers and designers was a consideration, but I think that enriching gamers was more important - and rightly so.
All the same, a very interesting read. Thanks for the link
CapnZapp
Legend
I'm amazed.
Did mearls really think people would slave away improving the D&D rules when they are owned by WotC?!
The comparison to a free ftp client is completely wrong, in my opinion.
The reason the rules improvement of 3E was "fragmented" is precisely because we all know what WotC would do if the industry agreed on publishing a "3E done right" edition. Yes, they would shoot it down.
Besides, the idea of a singular drive forward is flawed from the beginning. The D&D community is far too big and diverse for all gamers to share the same design goals. The emergence of True 20, Pathfinder and Iron Heroes (say) is something good for the community, not something bad or broken.
This is possibly the first article written by an industry heavyweight that I disagree with completely and fundamentally. Even the merest hint the OGL needed to die for the reasons mearls gives suggests to me a deeply regrettable stink of FUD!
Did mearls really think people would slave away improving the D&D rules when they are owned by WotC?!
The comparison to a free ftp client is completely wrong, in my opinion.
The reason the rules improvement of 3E was "fragmented" is precisely because we all know what WotC would do if the industry agreed on publishing a "3E done right" edition. Yes, they would shoot it down.
Besides, the idea of a singular drive forward is flawed from the beginning. The D&D community is far too big and diverse for all gamers to share the same design goals. The emergence of True 20, Pathfinder and Iron Heroes (say) is something good for the community, not something bad or broken.
This is possibly the first article written by an industry heavyweight that I disagree with completely and fundamentally. Even the merest hint the OGL needed to die for the reasons mearls gives suggests to me a deeply regrettable stink of FUD!
Treebore
First Post
WOTC could have come up with Mutants and Masterminds, True 20, gotten a license to do Conan, etc... but didn't. They were too focused/narrow minded to do it in house. SO the fragmentation Mearls talks about occurred because WOTC failed to take the lead. They will fail with 4E too.
If they want to be the "everything" RPG house then they better create and support everything. They can't even give Star Wars the degree of support they give D&D.
So its a darn good thing the OGL existed and allowed us to have M&M 2E, True 20, Pathfinder, the Midnight setting, Conan, et al... WOTC sure wouldn't have come up with it, let alone support it as well as they have.
The only problem the OGL had was easily fixable. That was the poorly done products. A problem WOTC could have controlled by creating an over site department with enough people to review and give feedback to a product in about a week.
Something that their current GSL still doesn't address.
The OGL's failures were actually failures on WOTC's part. Failures that they still aren't going to address with the GSL.
If they want to be the "everything" RPG house then they better create and support everything. They can't even give Star Wars the degree of support they give D&D.
So its a darn good thing the OGL existed and allowed us to have M&M 2E, True 20, Pathfinder, the Midnight setting, Conan, et al... WOTC sure wouldn't have come up with it, let alone support it as well as they have.
The only problem the OGL had was easily fixable. That was the poorly done products. A problem WOTC could have controlled by creating an over site department with enough people to review and give feedback to a product in about a week.
Something that their current GSL still doesn't address.
The OGL's failures were actually failures on WOTC's part. Failures that they still aren't going to address with the GSL.
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
CapnZapp said:
I know many people who would. And who do. The D&D fan sites are one aspect of this, with tons of "improvements" to D&D.
The publishers might not want to do this, but I think that many fans/designers do/did it. Come to think of it, suggesting improvements to rules that are owned by someone else is a staple of gamerdom, I've done it lots and lots of times.
With this I agree, but the existence of a community derived base 3.5 would not exclude True20, Pathfinder or IH. The variants would still be as viable as stand-alone products.
/M
Vanuslux
Explorer
Treebore said:
In WotC's defense, an oversight department would be expensive and the only time poorly done products were a serious problem was when there was a glut of publishers putting them out and there was an absurd number of products hitting the market. Most of that fat has fallen away on its own.
wayne62682
First Post
While I agree with a lot of Mearls' views, the one thing he's forgetting is that the reason there wasn't many of the kind of additions that WotC expected people to do is because hardly anything was added to the OGL. His analogy to open-source is flawed because with open-source software, everything is available for others to make use of and change, and by the GPL it must remain that way. 3.5 had what, the core books, psionics, a few variant rules and that was it? You couldn't use mechanics from other books, so they pretty much forced publishers to "fork" D&D and make their own systems so they could increase the number of things they could make use of.
WotC clearly just wanted people to supplement "their version" of D&D, not fork it or create their own settings and products. This is evident by how they reacted to things like Mutants & Masterminds, True20, et all and how these types of products have been squashed by the new GSL. The thing is, you can't tell people you're going to open your content to help other people make supplements for it... and then not open anything beyond what amounts to version 1 of it.
If the OGL failed, it failed because WotC wanted to keep their position as "king of the hill" and didn't want to share. In fact, their OGL (and now GSL) are more reminiscent of Microsoft's recent idea of open-sourcing things (basically, we give you some of the code, not all of it, but you can only use it on very specific things i.e. a half-assed way), and not real open-source.
WotC clearly just wanted people to supplement "their version" of D&D, not fork it or create their own settings and products. This is evident by how they reacted to things like Mutants & Masterminds, True20, et all and how these types of products have been squashed by the new GSL. The thing is, you can't tell people you're going to open your content to help other people make supplements for it... and then not open anything beyond what amounts to version 1 of it.
If the OGL failed, it failed because WotC wanted to keep their position as "king of the hill" and didn't want to share. In fact, their OGL (and now GSL) are more reminiscent of Microsoft's recent idea of open-sourcing things (basically, we give you some of the code, not all of it, but you can only use it on very specific things i.e. a half-assed way), and not real open-source.
JDJblatherings
First Post
Mister Mearls is a talented game designer but i have t oquestion the notion of OGL failure. Or the notion the "experiment" was even close to failure.
Arcan Evolved/Unearthed, Conan, Iron Heroes, Castles & Crusades, True 20, Cthulhu-D20, Mutants and Mastermindsand Spycraft. Were not OGL failures.
Green Ronin, Necromancer Games, Troll Lord Games, Malhavoc Press, Goodman Games, RPG-objects and Mongoose and more were not OGL failures.
The OGL was a smashing success. It just wasn't all flowing into the pockets of WOTC.
"Problems" were not universally identified and fixed in the same manner because of the open nature of the beast. Not all issues are a problem in all circles. Art does not have one solution or response to a problem. RPGs are not software.
Arcan Evolved/Unearthed, Conan, Iron Heroes, Castles & Crusades, True 20, Cthulhu-D20, Mutants and Mastermindsand Spycraft. Were not OGL failures.
Green Ronin, Necromancer Games, Troll Lord Games, Malhavoc Press, Goodman Games, RPG-objects and Mongoose and more were not OGL failures.
The OGL was a smashing success. It just wasn't all flowing into the pockets of WOTC.
"Problems" were not universally identified and fixed in the same manner because of the open nature of the beast. Not all issues are a problem in all circles. Art does not have one solution or response to a problem. RPGs are not software.
