WotC non-OGL alternative to D&D

[mamba]

This means they can republish without the OGL, but if they keep it they are still bound by it regardless of whether they used the SRD.

yes, but what exactly are the restrictions there ?

 

[rcade]

yes, but what exactly are the restrictions there ?

The normal OGL restrictions: Include this license, identify your open game content, identify your product identity, add your product to Section 15.

 

[Burt Baccara]

^^^^^. What @Reynard said. Best on the block.

Also, (to a lesser degree) Forbidden Lands.

Other that exist, mostly out of print:

• Rolemaster
• Palladium Fantasy

- WEG D6 Fantasy

• Fate
• Chronicles of Ramlar

Now wish I had backed Drakar och Demoner/Dragonbane.
Don't forget Runequest, which can be played as a generic FRPG.

 

[overgeeked]

It also means that WOTC/Hasbro can't tell you to stop publishing the work or publishing your own derived works from it because it has nothing to do with their IP.

Except that they hold the copyright to the OGL. They can ask you to stop printing their copyright material in your books.

 

[mamba]

The normal OGL restrictions: Include this license, identify your open game content, identify your product identity, add your product to Section 15.

exactly, essentially nothing

 

[rcade]

Except that they hold the copyright to the OGL. They can ask you to stop printing their copyright material in your books.

If Hasbro tried to wipe out the use of the OGL with that tactic, it would be a threat to every open source license and provoke a vigorous legal defense from deep-pocketed entities across the open source world.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which issues would you say were intractable? I was considering Fantasy AGE and maybe the issues won't matter to me but maybe they will.

Its easier for me to speak of Dragon Age, since I ran it and not just read it.

The easily addressable one (which they have fixed as at least an optional in Modern Age) is that the level elevating hit points do not work at all well with the damage absorbing armor, especially since the ways to raise damage output are pretty limited.

The other issues is that there's sharply limited ways to show any sort of vertical increase in ability; there's plenty of ways to show horizontal increase, but pretty quickly it can turn into "Yeah, I can buy this Talent or this Focus I'm probably never going to use). And connected with that, if you don't have the elevation in hit points, there's even less way to show any increase in defensive ability (a couple Talents can help, but in an even more limited way than on the offense).

As I noted, none of this starts showing its ugly face until you hit about 8th level (though at least in DAGE you also had blatant winners and losers among the Talents and the Spells; I'm not qualified to judge how true that is with FAGE).

 

[Thomas Shey]

HP bloat + very efficient damage reduction from armors.
It is also not hard to ''auto-hit'' most creatures after 5-6th level.

Yup. The HP problem is addressable, but I forgot about the second issue (its been quite a while since my campaign).

So it becomes a game slog because you roll only to see if you Stunt (rolling double of the 3d6s) and hope to at least deal some damage to a creature with a huge pool of hp, even at low-level.

There's also some shoehorning going one with the class, giving melee only features to the Warrior and ranged only to the Rogue.

With DAGE at least it also become progressively pointless to use healing magic because it was so small relative to both the damage and the hit points involved.

But its a pretty basic and simple system, its not hard to correct those and some issues were even addressed in the companion (optional rules to boost damage or halve HP, frex).

There's also a distinct lack of monsters. There's only a few enemies in the corebook and a single thin(while quite good) bestiary. And since there's 9 stats, making new enemies can take some time; not PF 1 time, but still a little long.

That part never bothered me, but then, most of my gaming career has been with games more complicated than that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Now wish I had backed Drakar och Demoner/Dragonbane.
Don't forget Runequest, which can be played as a generic FRPG.

Sort of.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If Hasbro tried to wipe out the use of the OGL with that tactic, it would be a threat to every open source license and provoke a vigorous legal defense from deep-pocketed entities across the open source world.

That's why there's been a suggestion that they need to walk pretty carefully if they don't want to attract, oh, Alphabet's attenton.