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  1. John Quixote

    WotC Backs Down: Original OGL To Be Left Untouched; Whole 5E Rules Released as Creative Commons

    The posts by naysayers opining that Hasbro will succeed in killing 1.0a and we should all just resign ourselves to the bad ending will have rapidly aged like milk in the past fifteen minutes or so.
  2. John Quixote

    PC Gamer: OGL not worth fighting for.

    While I certainly have no problem with gamers who enjoy a variety of systems, it gets tiresome to see this hipsterish demonization of D&D get trotted out again and again. The very Skyrim analogy that appears in the PC Gamer article was used in a thread over on r/rpg not too long ago, and...
  3. John Quixote

    AD&D 2E On AD&D 2E

    All you have to remember is that the sign carries no semantic content at all and can be safely ignored either way, as long as you're paying attention to whether the text calls the adjustment a "bonus" or a "penalty"! :p
  4. John Quixote

    What is the most scathing feedback you left?(+)

    This. I hammered hard on Justin Alexander's "cultural vandalism" point, emphasizing that the OGL might be copyright WotC, but the vast majority of Open Game Content isn't owned by them, isn't necessarily derived from their IP, and in some pretty major cases (Fate, d6, and the like) was...
  5. John Quixote

    Legal Discussion of OGL 1.2

    Published on my blog.
  6. John Quixote

    AD&D 2E On AD&D 2E

    1d20 + enemy AC, hit ≥ THAC0. A THAC0 is literally just a DC. If you play 3e, 4e, or 5e, you use THAC0 out of combat all the time. Calm down.
  7. John Quixote

    WotC Unveils Draft of New Open Gaming License

    Ugh. If I've learned one thing from all this nonsense, at least, it's this: when it comes to corporations, never ascribe to stupidity what you can attribute to malice.
  8. John Quixote

    WotC Talks OGL... Again! Draft Coming Jan 20th With Feedback Survey; v1 De-Auth Still On

    Uh, yes, actually. If you grant WotC their invented power to unilaterally deauthorize a perpetual license, they'll gladly take that and run all the way past unilaterally deauthorizing an irrevocable license. Different word, same word-game.
  9. John Quixote

    So was it a poison pill?

    Almost certainly yes. If WotC cannot unilaterally revoke OGL 1.0 because it's a contract with consideration, the only way to actually compel anyone to stop using it is to get them to agree to a new contract with language that forbids it.
  10. John Quixote

    What TTRPG game vocabulary is universal? (Pre-OGL and Non-OGL/TSR/WotC Games)

    "Saving throw" and "armor class" predate D&D and come from wargmes. Many, many RPGs have ability scores named for Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma. Constitution and especially Wisdom are rarer, but you do see them. The vast majority of monsters come from folklore, mythology, and...
  11. John Quixote

    OGL-Gate & Mainstream Media: The Guardian Weighs In

    Jimquisition (a channel almost entirely focused on criticizing the video game industry) has covered the OGL: Makes me wonder if any other former Escapist personalities will cover the story — probably not Zero Punctuation, but Movie Bob might and Extra Credits almost certainly will.
  12. John Quixote

    Taking a Step Back

    Dark times ahead for those of us who love the game and will carry the torch without the brand owners doing the same. Just keep in mind that D&D ≠ D&D™.
  13. John Quixote

    D&D Beyond Cancellations Changed WotCs Plans

    It means the number of people who have cancelled their D&D Beyond subscription is in the tens of thousands.
  14. John Quixote

    WotC Walks Back Some OGL Changes, But Not All

    The royalties and morality clauses &al. were never anything more than a red herring. Wot¢ desperately needs to kill 1.0a to go forward with their plans to please the hedge fund overlords. They need to kill 1.0a to succeed at their initiative, which is to monopolize the digital tools space. If...
  15. John Quixote

    WotC Walks Back Some OGL Changes, But Not All

    And so Wot¢ can GSL their new TETSNBN if they like. They're well within their rights to do that. But the 3.0, 3.5, Modern, and 5.0 SRDs are open-source content now. Publishers have used it and built businesses around it predicated on the irrevocability of that fact. There can be no...
  16. John Quixote

    WotC Walks Back Some OGL Changes, But Not All

    That's it right there: them's the weasel-words. They're still trying to revoke or deauthorize or whatever. A monopoly on future digital tools is Ha$bro's hard line in the sand. They were never going to back down. Remember the OGL v1.1? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
  17. John Quixote

    D&D General Are You Seriously Planning to Stop Playing and/or Running D&D Over The Recent OGL Developments?

    I run and play the game that Dave & Gary made. Nothing WotC produces actually is that game. I'll just stop using their trademarks and call it D&GG (Dave & Gary's Game).
  18. John Quixote

    Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

    That seems to be covered under the definitions of Licensed and Unlicensed Content. They're trying to kill off the concept of Open Game Content and instead say that the 5.1 SRD is Licensed Content, and anything else that has been released as official D&D anything by WotC or a predecessor or...
  19. John Quixote

    Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

    No. 1.0 an 1.0a are two distinct versions of the license. The parenthetical form — 1.0(a) — implies that the "a" can be there or not, so it's talking about both at the same time.
  20. John Quixote

    What's All This About The OGL Going Away?

    And why do think that language applies to anyone who doesn't agree to that version of the license?
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