d20 Logo News

As seen on the front page on 6 Nov. and HERE:

Morrus said:

• Wizards of the Coast will use a 'three tier' system for licenses. The d20 System logo will be - it seems - a traditional WotC trademark licensed just to some big publishers (Mongoose, Paizo, Green Ronin) while other, smaller publisher will have to ask for some support from a bigger publisher that will 'guarantee' that the smaller publishers publish 'quality' books. It seems that the main reasons for this are avoiding the appearance of controversial products such as The Book of Erotic Fantasy and of third rate products that could hurt sales.

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This is the first I hear of this, but it does match something that was discussed at the d20/OGL Panel at Gen Con (which, as a reminder, you can listen to HERE). I guess they decided that troublesome as it will be, they prefer to have some sort of review process upfront, rather than leave it to self-policing and market forces. It would be good to get some sort of confirmation about it from Scott Rouse or someone at WotC.

I don't know how to feel about this, actually. It's not about whether I could get logo support from one of the threshold publishers (I'm pretty sure I could), but the fact that I need to get permission at all. Then again, I can (as of now, anyway) publish using the OGL by itself, and this may actually help the trademark regain some face.

I need to chew on this.

Thoughts?

Well, all I have to say is that it would be nice if those of us who gave business cards to Mr. Rouse (when he requested them at the seminar) would actually hear this directly from WOTC, rather than second-hand.

I wonder if this is actually official, rather than just second-hand repetition of the seminar info.

Well speaking as a consumer (as opposed to a publisher) I can say the d20 license has never meant anything to me. I view all OGL/SRD products the same way whether they have the logo or not.

I think it's smart of WotC, though. They get a certain degree of quality and content control, but push the actual work of vetting onto the bigger third-party publishers. Then they can hold those publishers somewhat responsible for anything done under their sponsorship.

As I said over on the other thread, it seems odd to me. I've asked for clarification on who said what exactly. It sounds like the info came from 25 Edition, who aren't WotC.

This was discussed a lot at the 4E d20 meeting at Gen Con, and I was personally distressed by how many of the big names in the industry seemed to like this plan (I can be heard voicing my opinion of the idea on the audio file).

I don't like the idea. While I'm "just" a consumer, it's the principle of the thing that bothers me. Setting up a few companies as being in charge of distributing the d20 License essentially leaves all other companies beholden to them if they want in on that. It essentially gives that small group huge bargaining powers - that they'll give a smaller company the license, but that company must agree to publish them as an imprint of said larger company, at a fairly cutting deal.

True there will be other companies this smaller company could go to, but not many. And if the larger companies share notes or form anything resembling a monopoly, well, there'll be little to reduce their theoretical stranglehold on the d20 STL.

I admit that this isn't the most likely of scenarios, but as I said, my argument is one of principle. Giving a small group of successful companies police-like power over the d20 community isn't right, in my opinion.

I'm sure there'll be a lot of people who say that principle shouldn't be a factor; that businesses are there just to make money, and that's what really matters. And besides, smaller companies can just avail themselves of the OGL directly.

Well, that's all true enough, and at the end of the day imprinting smaller companies could make more of a profit for the bigger companies, but the littler publishers lose out. The d20 logo does provide easier at-a-glance recognition for casual buyers, and not being able to use that will hurt sales for the small companies that need those sales the most. Likewise, if they want to sign on with a larger company, they face being in an extremely weak bargaining position.

Giving a small group of companies the right to decide what is and isn't d20 is certainly optimal for them; it's everyone else I'm worried about.

Just to make sure it's covered in both threads:

Scott_Rouse said:

I just want to officially say that this is not official and that the information presented in the 25th Edition news item is full of inaccuracies one of which is the subject of tiered D20/OGL licensing.

We are not looking to implement a tiered licensing structure. This is stuff we talked about in the seminar at GenCon it was just talk/idea sharing and we long ago decided we would not implement such a system.

There will not be tiers within the OGL.

There will be Wizards official D&D products (which will include licensed D&D products for foreign language translation) and OGL products made by third parties like Paizo, Expeditious Retreat, etc.

We will try to address the other inaccuracies immediately. Sorry if this caused any grief we were caught off guard as well.

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Source: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3875048&postcount=34

Sure, OGL is not tiered. You only need one.

But will the d20 System Trademark Licensing be structured in tiers?

IIRC, Gold Rush Games tried to structure their A!STL in tiers and offered three different logos.

You missed the point where he says "We are not looking to implement a tiered licensing structure." - that was to both the OGL and the d20 STL.

Peachy.

And hey, all cleared out before the thread reached 2 pages!

Bacris said:

You missed the point where he says "We are not looking to implement a tiered licensing structure." - that was to both the OGL and the d20 STL.

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Yeah, well Scott_Rouse also says there will be more 3.5e errata forthcoming before 4e.

Whether or not such structure exist, I only say it makes sense to apply said structure to the Trademark License, not the OGL. Whether I agree or disagree with said structure, I don't know. For now, the only valid d20STL is version 6.0.