It is time to forgive WOTC and get back onboard.


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Imaro

Legend
I agree they didn't make any promises. But it will tell us an awful lot about how WotC wants to be as a company in the future.
I'm confused by this sentiment... Do we hold all ttrpg publishers to the standard of having to release their SRD's for open use? Or am I misinterpreting what you are getting at?
 

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
I'm confused by this sentiment... Do we hold all ttrpg publishers to the standard of having to release their SRD's for open use? Or am I misinterpreting what you are getting at?

No, but then in market position, WotC is not just another publisher.
 

Imaro

Legend
No, but then in market position, WotC is not just another publisher.

I'm not sure this matters in so far as expecting them to give away the product they create for free on a continuous basis... So let me rephrase... do we expect all market leaders to continuously give away their product for open use?
 

I'm confused by this sentiment... Do we hold all ttrpg publishers to the standard of having to release their SRD's for open use? Or am I misinterpreting what you are getting at?
I'm saying that WotC will be telling us what they want for the future of D&D with how they licence 1D&D. You might want to take this all a bit less personally. It's not about "holding people to standards" or whatever. It's about listening when WotC tell you who they are. They've had a big moment here. They tried to do something entirely crazy. People yelled at them. WotC realized it was crazy, and completely stood down. The question is, what did they take from that? What did they learn from that?

I don't have any "demands" or "standards" I specifically want from the 1D&D SRD/licencing (if there even is licencing, if there isn't that's a whole other interesting message). But I want to know what they do before I say "Well, WotC went crazy but then they got it back together!". There's a huge range of different things they could do, different things they could learn.

If they want to make 1D&D a sort of locked-off system with a very tight licence, that's no skin off my nose, for example. But it'd be interesting. If they want to release the 1D&D SRD under CC/OGL 1.0a that's a huge statement, a gigantic one. I don't require it of them, but that would really be saying something. But those are only two in a myriad of possibilities.

No, but then in market position, WotC is not just another publisher.
Indeed.

On top of that, an awful lot of mid-range publishers, those closest to WotC in terms of success (though it's not very close!) do actually have SRDs and open licences, at least where possible.
 

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
I'm not sure this matters in so far as expecting them to give away the product they create for free on a continuous basis... So let me rephrase... do we expect all market leaders to continuously give away their product for open use?

Well, by "all" we mean "There is only one market leader, who has, through their own previous action, created an entire sub-industry that has been around for decades, for whom a closed edition is a threat to their continued livelihood"

There is no other comparable company. So continuing to ask if we do this for all other comparable companies is actually a non-question.
 

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
I'm saying that WotC will be telling us what they want for the future of D&D with how they licence 1D&D.

Well, I think they'll be telling us what they want with the combination of 1D&D license and design.

If 1D&D is really highly compatible, then functionally it may not matter if it is separately licensed. The 5.1 SRD may be sufficient for 3pp needs.
 


Imaro

Legend
Well, by "all" we mean "There is only one market leader, who has, through their own previous action, created an entire sub-industry that has been around for decades, for whom a closed edition is a threat to their continued livelihood"

There is no other comparable company. So continuing to ask if we do this for all other comparable companies is actually a non-question.
I was speaking to a comparison with other industries. Sorry if I didn't express that clearly
 

Imaro

Legend
I'm saying that WotC will be telling us what they want for the future of D&D with how they licence 1D&D. You might want to take this all a bit less personally. It's not about "holding people to standards" or whatever. It's about listening when WotC tell you who they are. They've had a big moment here. They tried to do something entirely crazy. People yelled at them. WotC realized it was crazy, and completely stood down. The question is, what did they take from that? What did they learn from that?

I don't have any "demands" or "standards" I specifically want from the 1D&D SRD/licencing (if there even is licencing, if there isn't that's a whole other interesting message). But I want to know what they do before I say "Well, WotC went crazy but then they got it back together!". There's a huge range of different things they could do, different things they could learn.

If they want to make 1D&D a sort of locked-off system with a very tight licence, that's no skin off my nose, for example. But it'd be interesting. If they want to release the 1D&D SRD under CC/OGL 1.0a that's a huge statement, a gigantic one. I don't require it of them, but that would really be saying something. But those are only two in a myriad of possibilities.
I'm not taking it personally, I'd argue that if you have expectations for WotC to release their OneD&D SRD as open content and they "are crazy" if they don't then that's taking it personally. I'm curious about the motivation behind this because I truly believe they have every right to do what they want. Deauthorizing the OGL 1.0a IMO was wrong because of the expectations and dependencies WotC had set up for it but if they choose to make a future product closed off... well for me at least it doesn't really have anything to do with what just happened. But you've made it clear that you weren't expressing that expectation only curiosity, which is why I asked initially if I was misinterpreting what you were getting at.
 

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