The OGL, The SRD, and a "New Breed" of Games...

[Mythmere1]

My issue now, is with the new concept, which seems to be SRD based, OGL based, but not D20 games.

And again, I'm wondering if they opened those up, would they "grow out" even more.

That's basically what's done with OSRIC, although OSRIC's the opposite of the "new" game design discussed so far: it's designed to use the core 1e rules and go backward. Some people think it's across the line legally (they're wrong, I think, btw). But in terms of opening systems up for further development, OSRIC contains an open license to most of its Product Identity.

This allows various publishers not only to create derivative material from Product Identity but also to share a single umbrella "name of the game."

I do think that open licensing is the future of RPG game development, but it has a ways to go before open licensing really catches up to its potential.

 

[Scribble]

point taken, but in the early days the 3-18 ability stat block ranged far and wide beyond D&D. CoC had it, Ruinquest had it, V&V had it and probably lots of other games I never saw or played. Most ability score s were identical or similar to D&D regardless of the way they were generated, you might see a END instead of CON or Dextarity split into dex and Agility, but really that was about as far afield as things went. "Hit points" were nearly universal... ect. Where does house ruling end and game design begin?

Well that's sort of exactly it.

House ruling I'd say happens in the house (hehe) while design is a house rule taken out of the house and distributed as part of the system... (if that makes sense.)

In the past, to design you either had to create something "entirely" new, or work for the company whose system you wanted to modify...

Now though, instead of having to make the games different enough to be comfortably away from lawyers you can "tweak" things that you feel need House Ruling, while keeping the things that seem to have withstood the test of time...

Which is what I'm getting at... Instead of say having to reinvent the Dwarf, in order to correct what you felt was a different problem, and opening yourself up to unforseen problems with your new dwarf concept, you can leave the dwarf alone, and only modify what you felt was wrong in the first place...

(at least with respect to the srd, and d20 that is.)

 

[Psion]

point taken, but in the early days the 3-18 ability stat block ranged far and wide beyond D&D. CoC had it, Ruinquest had it, V&V had it and probably lots of other games I never saw or played. Most ability score s were identical or similar to D&D regardless of the way they were generated, you might see a END instead of CON or Dextarity split into dex and Agility, but really that was about as far afield as things went. "Hit points" were nearly universal... ect.

In the 80s, maybe.

By the 90's, this pattern had fallen away (see John Kim's Brief History of Fashion in RPG Design ), and most new games that were being designed fell much further from the D&D tree.

The OGL created a body of games that use similar subsystems to D&D. Though d20 branded products are fading away and further endangered by threat of the d20 system trademenk license ending, these games, and their children, will remain.

Where does house ruling end and game design begin?

From the design perspective - it does not. It's a continuum.

For practical purposes - upon publication.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I dissagree... free was great. Sure, the market was "flooded." But that's not so different then any market. Now we're starting to see that despite it being free, you have to be pretty good to make it in the "industry."

Yes, 'NOW' being the key phrase here and even then, 'pretty good' is tremendously varied. Was Guaridans of Order, with the non-OGL Tri-Stat/BESM system good? Yes. Are they gone? Yes. Was Fast Forward Entertainment terrible despite using OGL? Yes. How about some that might still be around like Bastion Press? Mix of good and bad but suffered from the glut.

My issue now, is with the new concept, which seems to be SRD based, OGL based, but not D20 games.

And again, I'm wondering if they opened those up, would they "grow out" even more.

We've already seen the answer to that and it's they'd be damaged. I saw this based on how the Mutants & Masterminds license changed from the first ed to the second ed showing Green Ronin that quality controls are needed to insure that people aren't getting ripped off by inferior product and it's something WoTC should've done in the start to insure quality controls. How many people bought the first Creature Catalog by White Wolf and then though, "Man, some great ideas but terrible execution. I'm never buying another non-official product again."

Like take Arcana Unearthed. If Mr Cook one day decided to open that up to anyone that wanted to make an AU compatible product, and released an AU SRD... would we eventually see a variant AU phb?

But would the demand be there? There are 3rd party AE/AU books out now that aren't getting the support that fans demanded from the official source so it would almost be counter productive no?

In terms of new OGL/SRD games coming out though, I tend to disagree. What were some of the big games being talked about at Gen Con?

Ptlous, a purely d20 book.

Rappan Athulk, a d20 adventure.

Burning Empires, neither d20 nor OGL.

Qin, neither d20 nor OGL.

Another fantasy generic variant "Powered by the A/B system!"

Runequest, which is OGL but not d20 and based off an old old game so it's whole OGL thing isn't irrelevant but not as powerful as it might've been twenty years ago.

Ultimate Powers for M&M, a sourcebook on an OGL very popular game but I'd say it's the exception rather than the standard. Green Ronin has a name and quality controls in place to help them maintain their level of excellence.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I doubt it, due to the size of the market. I don't play AU, partly because I find it needlessly complicated in its magic, partly because I don't find the races compelling, but mostly because it simply isn't different enough from D&D to bother. There's only so much demand in the market for things that are similar to, but not quite, D&D/d20.

And I think Green Ronin found this out when they keep bring out books that had the d20 logo but weren't 100% compatible with D&D such as Thieves World, Black Company, and other settings/ideas that were good but not extremely easy to put into a generic D&D game.

 

[Mark]

A glut only serves to raise the bar.

 

[JoeGKushner]

A glut only serves to raise the bar.

A glut serves to dilute the brand name so that no one buys the products anymore unless it's from a well known source.

A Game of Thrones may have raised the bar in several fields but it didn't in the end mean squat to Guardians of Order.

Oathbound may have set some new standards in high-fantasy campaigning but Bastion isn't the king of the d20 field by a long.... long.... longshot.

The d20 companies that seem to have weathered things best include those that went the OGL route and diversified but have kept their branding semi-private like Mongoose with lots of use of licensed settings (Conan, Lone Wolf, Starship Troopers, Babylon 5), or their own games like Green Ronin/Troll Lords (Mutants & Masterminds, True 20, Castles & Crusades) in addition to a selected fewer amount of d20 books.

Necromancer and Goodman appeal to an 'older' audience in terms of what they're looking for, and even in that vein, Necromancer has slipped to a somewhat more sourcebook bound company with a number of sequels to their most popular book (The Tome of Horrors) and dropping materials that aren't selling for them (Wilderlands).

 

[Scribble]

Yes, 'NOW' being the key phrase here and even then, 'pretty good' is tremendously varied. Was Guaridans of Order, with the non-OGL Tri-Stat/BESM system good? Yes. Are they gone? Yes. Was Fast Forward Entertainment terrible despite using OGL? Yes. How about some that might still be around like Bastion Press? Mix of good and bad but suffered from the glut.

Sure, pretty good of course is varied. But thats true in anything. There's no accounting for personal taste.

We've already seen the answer to that and it's they'd be damaged. I saw this based on how the Mutants & Masterminds license changed from the first ed to the second ed showing Green Ronin that quality controls are needed to insure that people aren't getting ripped off by inferior product and it's something WoTC should've done in the start to insure quality controls. How many people bought the first Creature Catalog by White Wolf and then though, "Man, some great ideas but terrible execution. I'm never buying another non-official product again."

I could argue that had Wizards released better information on how the system was designed in the begining, a lot of the products would have been better worked. Not all of them of course, but not every WOTC product is the end all be all of perfectness either.

Case in point as you mentioned, CC1. I think had there been a bit more info on creature types and subtypes (like they have in MM2) many of the original CC1 problems people had would be fine.

I don't think just because it's not by the original creator means it's damaged in some way.

The mere fact that Mutants and Masterminds exists is sort of what I was saying in the first place! M&M grew out of the d20 system!

What would happen were it to be open as well, and a game based on M&M created... It would automatically be broken simply because it's not by the original creators? Doesn't that kind of mean that M&M is essentially broken too because it's not by WOTC? (or am I misunderstanding what you meant?)

But would the demand be there? There are 3rd party AE/AU books out now that aren't getting the support that fans demanded from the official source so it would almost be counter productive no?

Counter productive or not, I can't answer. But if they aren't getting the official support?

In terms of new OGL/SRD games coming out though, I tend to disagree. What were some of the big games being talked about at Gen Con?

Ptlous, a purely d20 book.

Rappan Athulk, a d20 adventure.

Burning Empires, neither d20 nor OGL.

Qin, neither d20 nor OGL.

Another fantasy generic variant "Powered by the A/B system!"

Runequest, which is OGL but not d20 and based off an old old game so it's whole OGL thing isn't irrelevant but not as powerful as it might've been twenty years ago.

Ultimate Powers for M&M, a sourcebook on an OGL very popular game but I'd say it's the exception rather than the standard. Green Ronin has a name and quality controls in place to help them maintain their level of excellence.

But most of the Alternate d20 games are relatively new. Give them a little time.

 

[JoeGKushner]

But that's the problem with the alternative d20 games. Many of them by their very nature are fire and forget.

I could be wrong, but many of them were for licsensed settings and those licenses required certain things. For example, I think the reason why the Black Company book is so big is that it had to cover everything. GR was not allowed to do any more material for it.

Thieves World, is AFAIK, finished.

A Game of Thrones, due to GoO status, is up in limbo. (Ditto for Slayers d20, Trigun d20, BESM d20, etc...)

Grim Tales had one massive campaign book and some PDFs but I don't think it's being actively supported now.

Conan, from what I've heard, will be Runequest, not d20 based OGL, upon it's second edition.

Outside of nostalgia (Castles & Crusades) or really excellent game design (Mutants & Masterminds), I don't think we'll see a lot of d20 variants with continued support. I could very easily be wrong but some of these variants are over a year old and some had definite plans when first launched.

As more games go OGL, I think the d20/d20 based SRD will mean even less. Heck, even 'cheap' licensing like Savage Worlds is doing, is alloing other game systems more force than they had before. I'll be very curious to see if anything's done with Fudge (which I believe is OGL) and Runequest.

 

[Scribble]

But that's the problem with the alternative d20 games. Many of them by their very nature are fire and forget.

I could be wrong, but many of them were for licsensed settings and those licenses required certain things. For example, I think the reason why the Black Company book is so big is that it had to cover everything. GR was not allowed to do any more material for it.

Thieves World, is AFAIK, finished.

A Game of Thrones, due to GoO status, is up in limbo. (Ditto for Slayers d20, Trigun d20, BESM d20, etc...)

Grim Tales had one massive campaign book and some PDFs but I don't think it's being actively supported now.

Conan, from what I've heard, will be Runequest, not d20 based OGL, upon it's second edition.

Outside of nostalgia (Castles & Crusades) or really excellent game design (Mutants & Masterminds), I don't think we'll see a lot of d20 variants with continued support. I could very easily be wrong but some of these variants are over a year old and some had definite plans when first launched.

As more games go OGL, I think the d20/d20 based SRD will mean even less. Heck, even 'cheap' licensing like Savage Worlds is doing, is alloing other game systems more force than they had before. I'll be very curious to see if anything's done with Fudge (which I believe is OGL) and Runequest.

Again... I'm not an expert on games... I was really just commenting on what the SRD/OGL seems to have done to thing as of this point. Are the new variants good or bad? I don't know... (but thats largely personal taste)

My point is really that these seem to be an entirely new breed of game design. Games based on one game system that is popular, that don't have to "reinvent the dwarf" in order to exist. They're free to modify the system into something new (variant phb, or spycraft, or M&M or C&C or OSRIC or anything...) but still keep the basic foundation. I think time will tell whether or not they gain a big(er) following. And once they do, if they were an "open source" game... I just wonder (somewhat outside of whether companies could or would make money on it) what kind of product could be developed.