New GSL Announcement

[evileeyore]

I find it interesting that several pages have gone by without anyone from WotC explicitly confirming the whole-company idea. Perhaps they would like to do so?

The whole company idea came out and Linae posted afterwards... granted she might have missed whole swathes of the conversation or just wanted to sleep on it to make a very clear post.




Personally, I hope this "3e or 4e company wide thing" is what they are doing. Further I hope WotC crashes and burns for it. (I dislike D&D)

TSR burned a lot of gamer trust and lost a lot of good will towards the end. WotC regained it all and then some with the OGL (as much as I hate D&D, the OGL was a very spiffy thing). Burning the bridge in this fashion and demanding the companies that are "supporting" them do so as well... it really stinks.

A more moderate approach, allowing dual support (just not dual support in the same product, ie no "RttToEE 4e" is fine, a bit of a head scratcher as "reworking old classics" is sort of a staple to the gaming biz) would mean those 3e companies and products that are done well would continue and those same companies that produce quality goods would be able to support 4e. Eventually either 3e would thrive in own market share and those good companies would make more and more 4e materials, or 3e woudl shrivel away and die as everyone found the new edition superior.

Forcing some of your stiffest D&D competition to not support your shiny new wonder toy and thus continue only supporting the old is really just stupid.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

No, not really, it says nothing relevant to this discussion. Did anyone not expect that Wizards would discontinue 3e support and do only 4e? No, of course not. However, is that supposed to make us feel happy about every other game company being compelled to forgo open gaming entirely, 3.5e based or not?

Considering that the GSL only appears to forbid simultaneous use of the OGL, this idea is kinda crazy. I mean, sure, the OGL is the most commonly used open gaming license, but it's not the only open license out there that is applicable to gaming, nor is it the only open license under which RPGs have been published. There is also, for example, the Creative Commons license, which is much more open and not tied to any single corporate parent. It doesn't sound - correct me if I'm wrong - as if the GSL forbids the use of ANY open license for gaming, just the specific, Wizards of the Coast created OGL.

CC works just fine for most artistic endeavors. People do quite decent business publishing books, art, poetry, recordings under a CC license (I ought to know, I publish artwork under a Creative Commons license), so it's not like CC and OGL are mutually exclusive, or like CC is a kiss of death while OGL means that the game will succeed. And the GSL doesn't seem mention CC (it shouldn't, CC is not a license that WotC has legal control over, unlike the OGL), so you can publish all your non-D20 games under Creative Commons and your 4E stuff under D&D GSL. All it means is that the companies that want to do D&D 4E have to finish up their 3E lines and switch, which is the point of an edition change anyway. None of this halfass one-toe-in-the-water crap. The only companies that could conceivably be harmed are the ones with a heavy investment in 3E game mechanics who don't want to stop publishing 3E-compatible game materials.

One of my bugaboos with the OGL is the fact that a number of game publishers just slapped it and the d20 System onto their games without thinking, "Is this REALLY the best expression possible for my ideas?" This ended up producing a lot of games that are not very good - the d20 System is designed for adventure fantasy, not Generic Roleplaying. Yes, there are some great d20 based games out there - Spycraft for one - but there's also a LOT of dross in the market.

 

[Piratecat]

I find it interesting that several pages have gone by without anyone from WotC explicitly confirming the whole-company idea. Perhaps they would like to do so?

Take a look at the time stamps. Also, I'd like to take a sec and thank everyone for keeping their tempers during this conversation. With a brief exception earlier in the thread, it's been thoughtful and reasoned. Sheesh - and people ask me why I love our members...

Legally, my suspicion is that if Green Ronin wants to publish 4e material, Pramas can create a second company that does so. It may have the same employees as GR, so long as its a second business entity. There are a lot of reasons that this might be a bad idea -- name recognition, establishing new distribution networks, duplicate costs, etc. -- but I'm not sure that anything in the GSL will prevent this. It does seem like a lot of expensive busywork, though.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

Legally, my suspicion is that if Green Ronin wants to publish 4e material, Pramas can create a second company that does so. It may have the same employees as GR, so long as its a second business entity. There are a lot of reasons that this might be a bad idea -- name recognition, establishing new distribution networks, duplicate costs, etc. -- but I'm not sure that anything in the GSL will prevent this. It does seem like a lot of expensive busywork, though.

"Verdant Samurai" anyone?

 

[Oldtimer]

At least, now we seem to know what the mysterious "vetting our open gaming policy" quote meant.

It simply meant "how do we use our market muscle to kill open gaming as effectively as possible?"

I really hope that more information from WotC will show that is not that bad. Please?

 

[Rauol_Duke]

Wow... I didn't expect this. Certainly, this is a restriction that is not needed by WotC for 4E to be successful. Please reconsider this part of the GSL.

 

[DaveMage]

I don't think people are looking at the silver lining in this cloud:

IF, and I stress IF, Orcus, Lidda, and The Rouse are in agreement with what the actual contract terms will be, then the people who want to keep playing 3E should be on Cloud Nine. The GSL ensures that Green Ronin WILL be a content creator of OGL-based products for a long time to come (at least as long as M&M and True20 keep being "staples" for the company); it almost ensures that Paizo will be joining them, assuming they continue to support Pathfinder through 2009 and further.

Well said, Henry.

Pathfinder FTW!

(New emoticons are fun!)

 

[lurkinglidda]

Nope. And accusations of trolling are frowned on here.

I publically apologize, BryonD. I posted before thinking. That wasn't cool of me.

 

[Morrus]

Hmmm... am I missing something? I'm trying to put together a news item compiling all the posts made by WoTC here, and I've found the "can't have the same product in two different licenses" stuff, but can't seem to find where people are getting the "a company may only use one license, period" implication from. I've scoured this thread, and I must have missed that post; could someone point me towards it so that I can include it in the news item?

 

[JohnRTroy]

It wasn't posted by WoTC reps, but they answered. Orcus posted what he knew based on talks to and from WoTC...I think, anyway...