Re: Not deadly clear, rewrite the document.
jester47 said:
Now about the document. The document is badly written. It looks to me in my professional opinion that the document was not in its final stages when it was released.
I have a unique perspective on the document.
I wrote much of it (though the final version is mostly a paraphrasing of a more detailed license text submitted in draft form to WotC, and doesn't represent my verbatim text).
Here's the deal, in a nutshell.
WotC has the ESD program in place, making a whole bunch of 1E/2E stuff easily available on the net. They know that there are people out there who want to use that content in 3E games. Furthermore, there's been an active conversion community almost since The Big Announcement at GenCon in 1999 (and long before the thing known as an "ESD" even existed). Most of that work was done in good faith by people who just enjoy playing D&D and want to spread the love, and represents an honest effort to make a "conversion" rather than rewrite a product or unfairly profit from WotC's work.
However, there have been an increasing number of people who don't understand that the conversions are not authorized and aren't really legal; they exist in a quasi-legal state based on informal understandings between various WotC employees (and ex-employees) and a handful of proactive web site administrators.
Those people have started to become a problem. The most egregious problems are people who have solicited, or announced that they indend to solicit, conversions of whole products (or parts of products like monsters, magic items & spells) to distributors as commercial products. Nobody at WotC has the time or the resources to try to educate these people about how copyright and trademarks work. Furthermore, there's a whole community of publishers who are using the OGL and the d20 license correctly who could be harmed inadvertantly if the framework those licenses create is jeopardized by the actions of a few rogue publishers.
It's pretty hard for someone who doesn't take the time to read up on the topic to understand the difference between the "licensed" content in the SRD, and the "unlicensed" content in a collection of monsters, spells, magic items, etc. on a web site which appear to be "official". The chances that some of that "unlicensed" content will get into a commercial product have recently increased substantially.
There's also been a subtle shift in the way that the conversions are handled on-line too. Originally, Eric's web site was totally non-profit. That has changed. Under the current management, the site sells advertising and operates a retail division. The original "deal" was that conversions could be offered in a "not for profit" environment - and that's no longer the environment that the largest conversion library is hosted on. WotC feels (rightfully, in my opinion), that if anyone is going to make money off of D&D, it should be WotC.
It would be great if there was a
legal way for a 3rd party to create a conversion of those old products and let other people download that conversion. Starting from that premise, WotC evolved a basic policy that said "let 'em". (Which, if you think about it, is a pretty amazing thing for a company in the business of publishing games to do.) They took a couple of stabs at writing a policy, and eventually someone asked me to take a look at what they'd done. Instead of sending them back a bunch of comments, I just wrote them a short license they could use or alter as they saw fit. They did alter it in places, but most of the legalese I suggested is retained in the final document.
The objective, as I saw it, was to formally codify how to do a conversion. The issues to resolve were:
1) Where is the original source material going to be stored and to what extent can it appear in the conversion?
2) How are the issues of trademark and copyright handled, specifically how will they interact with the OGL?
3) What are the specific agreements between WotC and the person doing the conversion?
My answers to WotC (i.e., my opinions as expressed in the license text itself)
1) The ESD needs to stay on the WotC site. That means that the conversion shouldn't be a complete product; it should be a companion to the ESD and require the ESD for use.
Reasons: It retains the value WotC owns in the ESD program. It also ensures that the conversions act as free advertising for that program; driving people to the ESD system who might not otherwise know that it existed. It also removes a rat's nest of issues of copyright and trademark usage.
2) The agreement licenses the use of the copyrights and trademarks in the ESDs to you formally, and clearly identifies them as Product Identity. Thus, the ESD agreement is compatible with the OGL, and allows the OGL itself to be the enabling license for the whole conversion.
Reasons: Better by far than writing
another license for the use of game materials. The OGL may be a bit prickly, but there's a huge number of resources available to help anyone understand it who needs help. This "lightweight" approach to the copyright/trademark issue is much easier on everyone than a whole new license.
3) The person doing the conversion agrees that the copyrights and trademarks in the original ESD are owned by WotC. They agree not to distribute the whole ESD itself. They also agree to assert WotC's ownership to the copyrights and trademarks explicitly. Finally, they agree to use the OGL as the binding license for the converted content.
WotC agrees to let them. Specifically, WotC agrees to let people use it's copyights and trademarks without prior approval, and without cost. Which is a pretty big deal, even if we've all gotten used to the old "don't ask, don't tell" policy that started the whole conversion movement in the first place. A formal deal that says you don't have to ask permission, and you don't have to pay is a damn sight better than an informal agreement to look the other way while copyright and trademark infringement is carried out. [and frankly, I'm astonished that WotC is going to allow it.]
> First, it needs to define its vocabulary.
I really don't agree. Is anyone confused as to what an "ESD" is? Or the "OGL"?
> Second, it needs to look at how people make conversions. It does not address this.
The policy doesn't address it, because it's not important. The policy says "you can convert the ESD", it doesn't try to tell you how to do the conversion. Specifically, the agreement says "All you are authorized to convert to 3E are the mechanics themselves". If all you're converting are the mechanics, how many ways are there to do so? Is there any reason to have detailed instructions?
> There is an obvious confusion between Jim Butler's ESD program and his ideas on making conversions.
Jim, like myself, doesn't work for WotC anymore. Jim happens to have evolved a policy with my prior approval, when we both worked at WotC, which could be loosely described as "unlimited conversion without oversight", with the only significant requirement being that the conversions themselves could not be used in a for-profit manner.
That policy was useful and it served everyone well. It has become less useful, and it has started to cause problems.
WotC has now issued a formal policy which is more detailed. It doesn't matter what the prior policy was, all that matters is what the current policy is.
I think I can clarify a few issues which might help. These "clarifications" are of course, informal, and don't represent any kind of offical statement. However, I'm in a unique position to understand how the OGL works, how the ESD policy works, and how they both fit together, so hopefully my thoughts will be helpful.
Q: How do we handle monsters in ESD products that aren't in the SRD?
A: You convert 'em as you see fit. WotC asserts ownership to the "Product Identity" of all proper nouns in the ESDs, and that includes the monster names. Your converted stat block is just Open Game Content, like you'd see in any OGL licensed work. The "name" of the monster remains WotC's exclusive property and isn't OGC.
Q: What if my conversion looks just like a conversion in another WotC product like "Monsters of Faerun"?
A: All OGC is derived from the System Reference Document. If you happen to put the peices together in the same order that WotC did in another product, so much the better.
Q: What if I want to use content such as a feat, skill, spell, magic item, or other game element from a non-OGL source, like "Sword & Fist", or the "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting"?
A: Either wait until that material is included in the SRD, or re-write the material you want to use in your own words, thus avoiding WotC's copyright on the specific expression. You've already got the right (via the OGL and the SRD) to use the game mechanics - even if your "new" Feat and the Feat you're duplicating have the exact same mechanical expression, you are not violating WotC's copyright unless you also use their actual wording. You should change the proper name of your "re-written" game element too, just for safety's sake. If you need to include such content in your conversion in order to make the stat blocks based on those additions make sense, that's totally OK, because the ESD policy says:
"You may add any additional mechanical information necessary to run the encounter in a 3E game, aside from the stat block"
Q: Exactly what products are covered by the ESD policy?
A: 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D materials available for public download as ESD's on WotC's web site.
Q: What if the product I want to convert isn't an ESD yet?
A: The policy was written for ESD conversions. Some of the text which is "wrapped" around the policy isn't very clear about that, but all the "legalese" in the policy itself is. If WotC wants to expand the policy to include non-ESD products, it would be fairly easy to do so. If this is something that matters to you, I'd write to them and ask them to either extend the ESD policy, or draft a sibling handling non-ESD content.
Q: Could WotC take my conversion, and then use it without paying me anything?
A: Yes.
That's the nature of Open Gaming. WotC gives you a bunch of free stuff (the SRD, for example), and you do interesting things with it. In return, you agree to give WotC (and every other person on the planet) the same courtesy in return.
If you think you're good enough to be a professional game designer, and you want to earn a living at the trade, withold your conversion from the public and pitch it to WotC as a real product. Who knows? Perhaps they'll buy your work!
On the other hand, if you want to distribute a conversion to a WotC product without approvals and without any form of payment, it is totally reasonable for WotC to have the right to take that conversion and use it as it sees fit, provided that proper credit is given (as required by the OGL, to which WotC, like you, would be bound in this particular situation).
Q: What should happen to the existing library of conversions?
A: My opinion is that WotC should give Morrus a deadline of say, six months, to review the content in the existing archive, and remove those works which cannot be modified to comply with the new policy, and adapt the remaining content so that it does so. Morrus in turn could rely on a trusted group to ensure that the content in the archive does in fact comply with the OGL and the ESD policy (assuming he doesn't want to do that work himself).
It would also be a good idea for WotC to give Morrus a separate agreement that stipulates that in the event that a problem is uncovered that Morrus will be given some reasonable amount of time to fix it, and, failing a fix, remove the offending work with no other repurcussions. That would ensure that Morrus' liability is limited and that he could not find himself facing a serious problem based on the actions of some 3rd party converter.
Implementing those suggestions requires a dialog between Morrus and WotC, which I hope (based on seeing two messages already from the key people) is already underway.
I hope that this has been helpful.
Sincerely,
Ryan S. Dancey
CEO, OrganizedPlay
{and big fan of conversions}
