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I think Nifft and WayneLigon hit on important issues. In a way, all the rules produced by an open source project are a waste of time if nobody uses it, whether it's publishers or users. In some ways, you have to start small. We're at that point already. Even the most successful people who...

I think Ryan was looking at how open source benefits software, and expecting the same thing to happen in RPG-dom.

No. Much of my formative understanding of RPG design was derived from the late, lamented Gaming Outpost forums. Paying people allows them to devote more time to RPG design, and it makes really big, sprawling projects that require full-time effort possible. However, in my experience that doesn't...

Publishers are part of the community, but they are not the community in whole. The community consists of users who may or may not be publishers. The thing is, a lot of the cases you cite are (IMO) the first step toward creating a viable open design movement. People saw shortcomings in WotC's...

The biggest thing that I think we need is a way for all those homebrewers and designers to communicate and discuss their efforts. We don't have a community focused on that for traditional, as opposed to indie, games. With communication and discussion come learning, the exchange of ideas, and...

I think it might be similar to a sort of learning laboratory, or a community, but I'm still not 100% sure what it should be. This is where I differ with many people here: I don't think you want or need companies funding or running it. For it to be viable, and for it to pay off in the long run...

No. Publishing products for money doesn't hijack the community. However, turning the community's outputs so that they benefit only a publisher, and indirectly its fans by giving them something to buy, would be hijacking the community. I think that open gaming would be hijacked if people saw the...

All three of those example point out why assuming that the responsibility for open gaming belongs in the hands of a publisher is a bad move. Publishers have to sell books, and they have needs that differ from a community of users. The needs could range from "The sales team is concerned that...

WotC is part of a potential open gaming movement, for reasons outlined in my original post. If for some reason one could reasonably describe an open movement as specifically excluding any publisher, or any subset of publishers, then the movement has failed. The GSL is a system license designed...

You wouldn't want a publisher hijacking a theoretical open development community for its own ends, because when the goal moves from "serve the community" to "serve the publisher", the community suffers. Ideally, an open movement serves the community, which includes both publishers and users.

I've talked about this in passing in various places, but I think it bears repeating. It isn't really practical for WotC to dynamically incorporate community improvements in to the core rules. We'd have to reprint the rules on a far more regular basis than the typical gamer would stand for...

Here's something a little crazy. It breaks the concept of roles, but it should work fine in an experienced group. Use the rogue as your starting point for class features, but replace sneak attack with hunter's quarry. Give him proficiency with all military weapons. Give him Ritual Caster as a...

In some ways, yes. Right now, I'm not sure of the methods, but I'm developing some ideas on the realities of RPGs and how an approach inspired by open source software might take shape.

It's illuminating to me that the motives and reasons for misreading my post are, in some ways, addressed in the next post I'm working on. In essence, there are a number of factors in the RPG business that make good faith efforts at open source development difficult at best. You'll notice that...

The idea of the OGC wiki was the direct result of my experiences with IH. Go back and read the original post. If that's not enough, then, whatever. Frankly, I'm not particularly interested in living up to whatever standards of purity you've decided to erect for me.

This statement makes the false assumption that I had any hand whatsoever in that declaration.

Yup. I think that GNS is a quality-neutral metric, not a tool or a true measure of how good a game is. The important lesson of GNS and similar theories is very simple: make sure your game does what you want it to do. It also provides a useful vocabulary for talking about a game. If you want...

Hey guys, We'll have a PDF version of the characters sheets available shortly. And yes, it will be completely legal to print and copy those PDFs. Sorry!

I shot Scott an email about this. I'll see about getting an official response.

It was fixed. I'm holding a DMG in my hands, and the table is correct.