WOTC undecided over OGL/GSL. Why you should care

[Umbran]

Okay, and now?

Would you, in fact, believe anything they announced today?

 

[Jack99]

Would you, in fact, believe anything they announced today?

That would very entertaining.

 

[SSquirrel]

Adding "DISCLAIMER:Yes it's April 1st but this is NOT an April Fool's joke" would do it for me

 

[2WS-Steve]

Would you, in fact, believe anything they announced today?

More significantly, if I were WotC and came back from the weekend and saw a 10-page thread in response to a rather short comment made on Friday, I'd very carefully go over my response with WotC legal, marketing, and various other people before releasing it into the wild.

 

[BryonD]

More significantly, if I were WotC and came back from the weekend and saw a 10-page thread in response to a rather short comment made on Friday, I'd very carefully go over my response with WotC legal, marketing, and various other people before releasing it into the wild.

Cause this is the first time a 10 page thread ever happened, and they need to consider this new intraweb thingy real quick.

 

[Dragonblade]

I just ran Goodman Games The Transmuter's Last Touch over this past weekend, and it was much better than the sucktastic Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil. Nuff said about 3rd party publishers there.

Hmm, I find your statement incredibly ironic and amusing, given that Return to Temple of Elemental Evil was written by Monte Cook, one of the premier 3rd party writers.

So yeah. Nuff said about 3rd party publishers, indeed!

(For the record, I like Monte's stuff. But the irony was too good to ignore! )

 

[GentleGiant]

Just a note, there are copies of the BOEF in at least 4 book stores that I frequent, I have shown it to my non-roleplaying wife and she has called it disgusting and demented...so it is still affecting the image of RPG's...

So, I assume that she didn't read it (being a non-roleplaying wife I'd imagine she wouldn't understand much of the rule stuff anyway)?
No?
Sorry, in that case I'm putting this one down to a knee-jerk puritanical reaction.

Is BOEF a good book? Not really, but that's because it details a lot of things that really don't need detailing anyway - much like a book full of various statistics on how various kinds of alcohol, food and sleeping patterns would affect your PCs woldn't really be all that useful.
It's a book concerning itself with sex and eroticism. Is sex and eroticism bad?
Have you shown your wife a copy of the Kama Sutra? If so, did she react the same way?
There's really nothing "demented and disgusting" about it, it's about sex, something all people (well, most anyway) engage in in their adult life.
To me (but hey, I'm European ) all the fuss about BOEF is really much ado about nothing.

 

[Henry]

(For the record, I like Monte's stuff. But the irony was too good to ignore! )

For the record, I love Monte's stuff, too, and RTTOE was not one of his better offerings. His stuff from Malhavoc has been much, much better, and the man can write a sourcebook like unto a god. But the megaadventures Wizards turns out I just don't like.

 

[Bacris]

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if WotC just didn't know what to say to all this blow-up.

It might be hard to say "4E will be Open" if that's not how the GSL is phrased, but since the GSL is under NDA, they can't say "4E will be licensed," especially if it's still under review. They could come and say "No need to panic," but that might likely just cause more speculation or cause people to say "yeah right, they didn't deny it, 4E is closed."

I'm not saying no response is a good thing, I'm just saying it's the kind of situation where there might not be a good response to give, and a response may just add fuel to the fire when it really isn't as bad as folks fear.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if WotC just didn't know what to say to all this blow-up.

It might be hard to say "4E will be Open" if that's not how the GSL is phrased, but since the GSL is under NDA, they can't say "4E will be licensed," especially if it's still under review. They could come and say "No need to panic," but that might likely just cause more speculation or cause people to say "yeah right, they didn't deny it, 4E is closed."

I'm not saying no response is a good thing, I'm just saying it's the kind of situation where there might not be a good response to give, and a response may just add fuel to the fire when it really isn't as bad as folks fear.

The proper answer is from Liz and goes like this. "I'm sorry about my quote. I was in a hurry to give Mike a quote to give you guys something and I accidently said we were reviewing our Open Gaming Policy when I ment to say we were reviewing the Open Gaming License policy. I am still astounded by the love of all the gamers for having 4e be open to some extent and how my leaving out one word could cause all this commotion. We are still committed to open gaming and are still finalizing the OGL so that everyone can work together in a way that allows for both WotC and Third Party Publishers to be successful in this transition to this great new edition. Sorry again about all this confusion."

To me that would be a wonderful answer that covers just about anything except that WotC really is considering making 4e closed.