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Pathfinder 1E This is why pathfinder has been successful.
- Thread starter Evenglare
- Start date
TheAuldGrump
First Post
Read what I said again. I did not make a statement about setting, I made a statement about fiction used in the place of setting material. And that I would rather know the hows and whys of a setting than have bits of fiction.
That is not setting light, it is wanting to look at the parts that make the setting move.
A big chunk of PF's success is the setting and story.
And, given your choice of quotes from the game books... in what way was that not hypocritical? Your comparison was not like to like, it was comparing an apple to an orange and saying that because they were they made bad airplanes. Not only are your examples not like to like, but neither group of quotes illustrated your point.
You are equating fiction with setting. They are not the same thing.
All the examples that you used, aside from a passage that did not pretend to be setting material, were really fiction, and not great fiction at that. Nothing more than atmosphere quotes.
Again, fiction is not setting, do not confuse the two.
Pretty much done with you, your arguments do not hold water.
The Auld Grump
TheAuldGrump
First Post
Yes.
4e as 4e? Maybe. 4e as D&D? No.
Most folks, outside of places hidden in the darkest corners of the interweb, do not call 4e 4e, they call it D&D. The folks that call 4e by that name likely are aware of both games. So it is only folks in a bookstore/gamestore/etc. that are likely to look at D&D and Pathfinder without an awareness of their interwoven histories.
The Auld Grump, LOLth, Queen of the Interweb Pits?....
For note you are accusing me of cherry picking not attacking a strawman. It's not that I chose 3 book to compare to PF I grabbed 3 books I had next to me and My PF pdf.
Now what you said there is in error. fiction as used like it is in the books I quoted are part of the setting. Giving feel via a short story, Granting some exposition, and base line example of play.
BryonD
Hero
Fair enough, but a key part of the point at hand is the idea of PF getting bang out of D&D brand recognition.
I think PF would not have received a fraction of the notice that it has without being able to launch itself off the system recognition and that system recognition came from BRAND recognition. So the logical connection is there. But people are vastly overstating it.
If it was all about Brand then D&D WITH the BRAND would still have a HUGE leg up on D&D with the brand pulled away. And yet the version that is handicapped won handily.
If you define "better" as being the game that appeals to the largest fan base then PF is simply a "better" game than 4E. Now, there may be an even BETTER game out there, but it never got noticed. It never got a fair shake. PF got its fair shake from D&D brand heritage. But a fair shake doesn't come close to being "why it has been successful". There are a lot of reasons that it has been successful. The creativity and talent of the Paizo folks is absolutely on that list. The merits of the core system it uses compared to the merits of its primary competition is also a major part of that list.
That isn't meant to cast any negative or positive on any individual preference. But if you (not You, TheAuldGrump
) really think that system isn't a huge part of this then you are fooling yourself and quite likely confusing your own tastes for truth.So I'm reading through the OGL, to see what Clark Peterson might have had in mind, and I'm struck by clause 5:
(5) If You are contributing original material as Open Game Content, You represent that Your Contributions are Your original creation and/or You have sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License.
OSRIC declares all it's PC generation and action resolution rules as OGC. Clark's view may be that the OSRIC publisher lacks sufficient rights to do so, because of the relationship between that material - which obviously and intentionally draws on the AD&D rulebooks - and material in which WotC enjoys IP rights.
There is also the following curious series of interactions between the OSRIC Open Licence and OSRIC's designation of OGC:
Subject to the other terms of this license, you may do the following:
1. Distribute this document for free or for profit . . .
3. Produce content that is derivative of the “Licensed IP” material in this document,
provided that your product is not a complete game. . . “Licensed IP” means: all of the material herein, with the exception of the artwork,
trademarks, and title. . .
Chapters IV, V and VI [GM guidelines, monsters and treasure] are Product Identity to the extent permitted under the OGL and to the extent such material is subject to copyright, except for any text language derived from the SRD or the Tome of Horrors, which is Open Game Content.
1. Distribute this document for free or for profit . . .
3. Produce content that is derivative of the “Licensed IP” material in this document,
provided that your product is not a complete game. . . “Licensed IP” means: all of the material herein, with the exception of the artwork,
trademarks, and title. . .
Chapters IV, V and VI [GM guidelines, monsters and treasure] are Product Identity to the extent permitted under the OGL and to the extent such material is subject to copyright, except for any text language derived from the SRD or the Tome of Horrors, which is Open Game Content.
If material in those chapters ceases to be OGL because subject to copyright (say, WotC copyright) the OSRIC Open Licence is nevertheless purporting to permit others to distribute it, or material derivative of it, for free.
I'm not competent to determine what copyright, if any, WotC might enjoy in any of these OSRIC chapters in virtue of it's obvious and intentional replication of the AD&D books. But this might be what Clark Peterson had in mind.
Australian common law is the same in all these respects.
If the material were copyright protected and the copyright not owned by the OSRIC authors, then it could not be contributed as OGC. But rules mechanics are not copyright-protected, indeed they are specifically excluded from copyright protection in UK, USA, and every Berne & TRIPS signatory. If you write a new description of a non-protectable mechanic, that description is copyright protected, and you are free to contribute it as OGC. That's what is happening here.
Note that while the OGL may be a bit unclear, since WoTC wrote the OGL, they had the opportunity to make it clear. In interpreting a standard form contract like this, if a term is vague a court will not take the interpretation most favourable to the drafter of the standard form contract. A UK court will lean pretty far the other way (contra proferentem), my understanding is that US courts take a more 'objective' approach, but they won't go with "It means whatever you, the drafter, say it means".
Edit: I don't personally think it's unclear. It's just saying that you should not claim to submit as OGC stuff that is copyright-infringing, because you didn't write it.
Yeah, until recently it was the exact same law.
Influence of EU Directives is shifting us towards a more Continental droit Civil perspective, but pretty slowly. I've been teaching this week on the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations and their "requirement of good faith in business dealings", a concept unknown to English common law at least in the broad sense the UTCCR uses it.Certainly - there would be breach of contract as well as a copyright infringement. But I've looked through OSRIC and I see no indication it's infringing WoTC copyright, so the issue does not arise IMO.
It's not 100% certain WoTC would not win a case either in UK or USA. But they would have to show that OSRIC* or another retro-clone infringes their copyright, in a non-trivial manner, AFTER stripping out all the material derived from the d20 SRD. That is a very tall order, it would be very expensive, the prospects of success would be low, and the consequences for failure dire - for the entire games industry, including Hasbro. It could lead to an explosion of 'cloned' games - actually popular games, not just D&D.
Hasbro (unlike TSR) seem to have competent IP lawyers who know this just as well as I do. Stuart Marshall & co know it, too.
*If I were WoTC and I were going to go after a clone, it would not be OSRIC. OSRIC is particularly carefully written to avoid even a whiff of copyright infringement, IMO.
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Yes. Part of what I base my 98%-don't-understand-the-SRD/OGL/D&D-situation is a lack of clarity over the intersection between IP- and contractually-based obligations.
Linking this back to the question of whether Paizo is leveraging D&D brand recognition - clause 7 of the OGL obliges Paizo to refrain from using any Product Identity so-designated by WotC in releasing the SRD under the OGL - and "Dungeons & Dragons" and "D&D" have both been designated. "3.5" is the best that Paizo can do.
A question for you in your pro bono capacity!: the SRD has almost no fiction for races, and pretty limited for monsters. OSRIC has more than what is in the SRD, and it's modelled on AD&D. An example:
Gnoll raiding parties will be led by a leader with 16 HP. He fights as a 3 HD monster.
There are mechanics there, but is that primarily a statement of mechanics, or a fictional statemen about gnoll raiding parties? And that's just one part of the gnoll entry, which is in turn just one part of OSRIC's replication of AD&D.
I would agree that the strategic dimension to any litigation around the SRD and retro-clones is an important factor. I tend to regard it as a reason to be cautious about inferring that, because WotC is not litigating, it believes that any given retro-clone publisher is compliant under the OGL.It's not 100% certain WoTC would not win a case either in UK or USA. But they would have to show that OSRIC* or another retro-clone infringes their copyright, in a non-trivial manner, AFTER stripping out all the material derived from the d20 SRD. That is a very tall order, it would be very expensive, the prospects of success would be low, and the consequences for failure dire - for the entire games industry, including Hasbro. It could lead to an explosion of 'cloned' games - actually popular games, not just D&D.
Hasbro (unlike TSR) seem to have competent IP lawyers who know this just as well as I do. Stuart Marshall & co know it, too.
