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I think what is interesting is the move away from the position adopted by WoTC in the days when they sponsored the Open Gaming Foundation. Ryan Dancey was encouraging other companies to adopt the Open Game License to create a shared pool of "open" IP. But with OneD&D, Wizards seems to be...

People forget that in the early 1980s, Runequest was a serious rival of D&D in Europe and Australia / New Zealand. Games Workshop produced very attractive hardcover editions of the game before Warhammer took off. And many early issues of White Dwarf contained Runequest content!

This is where it gets complicated. Greg Stafford regained control of the Runequest trademark, but he didn't regain ownership of the Runequest III rule system from the IP of Avalon Hill. So the Mongoose edition of RQ was a re-write of the system from the ground up. The first edition of Mongoose...

There are a heap of them. The original concept of the Open Gaming Foundation sponsored by WoTC back around 2000 - 2003 was to encorage widespread adoption of the OGL. An early example is the Action System from Gold Rush Games. Another is Stefan O'Sullivan's FUDGE system. This spawned the popular...

There's a long and complex history here going right back to the days when Avalon Hill produced a licensed version of Runequest in the 1980s. Chaosium lost ownership of the Runequest trademark for more than a decade as a consequence. Avalon Hill ended up as part of Hasbro. Peter Adkison of...

I suspect access to the OneD&D SRD may require agreement to a simple clickwrap agreement stating that you agree to use version 1.1 of the OGL. This will be problematic if it requires you to migrate existing material released under the OGL to the latest version of the license as a condition of...

I'll see if I can dig out the reference. It came from the Basic Roleplaying forums about two years ago. It was part of the statements made by Rick Meints and MoB upon the release of the BRP System Reference Document and the BRP-OGL. Someone asked them to explain why they didn't go with the OGL...

Something that has seen little discussion yet. What does the OGL update mean to non-D&D / d20 games published under the license? There are a lot of them. Everything from the Cepheus Engine to FATE has the OGL attached. Then there's the area of D&D retroclones / spin-offs. These don't use the...

I'm working my way through the PDFs and liking what I see so far. The Level Up Compatibility Logo License comes into effect on 5 November 2021. Have any third-party publishers announced plans to support the A5E system yet? When will the Level Up System Reference Document (LUSRD) become...

Looking back at it with the benefit of hindsight, market forces eventually sorted out the d20 glut. Most of those companies that established a track record for producing good d20 material are still going strong, although some of them moved into different markets when 4e came out (e.g. Green...

Looking back at it with the benefit of hindsight, market forces eventually sorted out the d20 glut. Most of those companies that established a track record for producing good d20 material are still going strong, although some of them moved into different markets when 4e came out (e.g. Green...

Actually, this is an interesting case. I met the science fiction author Charles Stross at a book signing a few years back and got him to sign my copy of the 1e Fiend Folio. While I was talking to him, he indicated that he never granted the UK subsiduary of TSR perpetual rights to any of the...

This is truly awesome news! Personally, I would like to see those companies who intend to move towards Pathfinder compatibility work closely together to strengthen the Pathfinder brand as a whole. I think that there are potential benefits in a coordinated effort to build up the...

This is an important point. IMHO, the most valuable thing that D&D possesses is its network of established players. Many good RPGs into obscurity because they can't establish this kind of support base. The current market position of D&D is almost a textbook example of network externalities...

The concept of Rage Points for barbarians sounds interesting. It might add a bit more versatility to the barbarian character class without greatly increasing its overall power level. My only concern is that this mechanic may introduce some additional bookkeeping in combat....

Given that the market for traditional pen-and-paper RPGs has been shrinking rapidly for the past few years, I don't think that the hobby as a whole can afford a major new edition of its flagship brand to turn into a train wreck. I sincerely hope that WotC can pull a rabbit out of their hat with...

I will be sticking with 3.5 for the time being until the dust settles a bit. I'm not virulently anti-4e, but I don't really see any compelling reason to upgrade at this point. When 3e came out, there was a broad consensus that it was time for a new edition. 2e was increasingly broken due to...

Good news for us GURPS Traveller fans! Steve Jackson has announced that Marc Miller has explicitly exempted the GURPS Traveller license from the current agreement. This means that material for GURPS Traveller will continue to be published until at least 2011! Woohoo! THe official...

Although I sometimes grumble about the physical quality of books produced by Mongoose, I've gotta admit that they have always been extremely generous with OGC. And this is outstanding news for the Traveller community as a whole. Although I felt that some of the early d20 stuff put out by...

Personally, I rather like the fact that Traveller is available for a range of different game systems ... so I consider this a bit of a step backwards. I'm primarily a GURPS fan, but I've bought just about everything released for T20 as well. Nonetheless, I understand the reasons why it may be...