4e D&D GSL Live

[Starglim]

edit: already answered

 

[jaldaen]

So I noticed people mentioning you can cut races, classes, or monsters but not "redefine them" according to the GSL...

Is this going off of the assumption that the section headings are 4e References? I initially read them as just section headings with the 4e References below them being what WotC refers to as "4e References," which you cannot "define, redefine, or alter."

So my question to Scott and Linae is:

Is Human a 4e Reference in and of itself or just the section heading under which the 4e Reference of "Human Defence bonus" is defined?

In other words, can we use "Human" in a GSL product to mean something different than in the 4e book? Such as using "cultures" to modify the "Human" racial traits... or is that forbidden by the GSL?

What about class names? They too could be either a 4e Reference or simply a section heading in the document. Which one are they? Both?

Is Demon/Devil a 4e Reference in and of itself or just the section heading implying we can use all Demons and Devils in compatible products?

What about Monsters with "subsections" of particular monter names? Are those particular names 4e References or just subheadings for ease of finding the 4e Refrences WotC is concerned with keeping standard?

Thanks!

 

[DanMcS]

I'm still of the opinion that the GSL should have stuck with the $5,000 buy-in, only with the change that the buy-in would be a permanent requirement to accessing and using the license.

Who would that benefit? Large(ish) established publishers who don't want competition? Would you have gotten into OGL publishing at all if the licenses for 3e had included such a provision? Or is this your way of saying "they should have made it $5000 so no one would ever do it"?

And yes, I still think the OGL -- as it was released and as it has been used -- is potentially damaging to PDF publishers.

Phil, you've published hundreds, if not thousands of products over the last several years. Your claim seems contrary to your publishing schedule.

 

[philreed]

Who would that benefit? Large(ish) established publishers who don't want competition? Would you have gotten into OGL publishing at all if the licenses for 3e had included such a provision? Or is this your way of saying "they should have made it $5000 so no one would ever do it"?

Yes, I would have gotten into publishing for 3e. Probably in a different manner, and taking it more seriously than I did, but I would have found others to work with and published a few products.

My point is that publishing is both not easy and too easy. Too often, people step into the role of publisher when they're not fully prepared. I was not prepared. An entrance fee would help with this.

Phil, you've published hundreds, if not thousands of products over the last several years. Your claim seems contrary to your publishing schedule.

Yes, but each one is vulnerable. All it takes -- for the PDFs to completely stop selling -- is for someone to start posting the full contents of each PDF online.

The OGL is what it is. It cannot be changed. The GSL was a chance for WotC to reinvent the wheel and hopefully learn from the OGL. It appears that all they learned was how to write a license that most* publishers will not touch.


* Opinion. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most publishers will, in fact, love this license. I don't.

 

[webrunner]

I think this contract needs to be compared with American Contract law. I'm not a lawyer or anything, and I'm Canadian, but there's a few clauses that just don't seem to make sense from what I understand in Law:

• How does "survives the termination of the license" work in the law? It seems to me that pretty much goes against the definition of 'termination of the license', and it seems to me that it shouldn't be enforceable.
• I don't think free-revision clauses are enforceable- I know in Canada the law states that if a contract is changed you have to be told, and if you aren't you can terminate the license as if you never agreed to it in the first place, which is a common way of getting out of cellphone contracts

To those about the 'poison pill', it's exactly what we were told it was going to be: product-by-product, possibly product-line-by-product-line depending on how product line is determined, but not company-by-company as the poison pill was supposed to be.

In addition to this, there is something that really bothers me about this license: the SRD is not a list of content you can use. It's a list of content you can acknowledge exists. Your published adventure cannot include stat blocks of the monsters... which is one of the most helpful aspects of an adventure, having the stat blocks right there. Now a sizable amount of the work to use a published adventure is back in the hands of the DM, making the adventure have less of a point. And, this is an important thing, you can't even say "Dungeons and Dragons has a Beholder monster", you have to pretend those pages don't exist. This is a significant drawback.

 

[kenmarable]

Yes you can, see page 22 of the SRD. (I think)

Yep, you just need to create your own if you want any NPCs 11th level or higher.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Only in John's imagination.

No, not necessarily.

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4307889&postcount=25

This post suggests that a lot of publishers really had a problem contributing their own work with the OGL.

I think the GSL not forcing every publisher to "go viral" is actually a good thing. Let it be the publishers who decide. If you like a nice product somebody else built, ask permission and see if you can work out a deal.

Henry, Wulf, if you're correct, then there probably will be no problem since publishers will work out their own deals. But if you see more publishers keeping their work to themselves, then I think implicitly I was correct because I doubt publishers want to facilitate their own contributions as a free commodity.

 

[kenmarable]

To my mind, the question is -- would WOTC be dumb enough to try to shut down people making things liks PCGen for 4e as non-profit, not-for-sale products?

I'm guessing "non-profit, not-for-sale products" might be better addressed by the fan site policy now.

Or not. (Don't know until we see it.)

But it is looking like the electronic support for 4e will most likely be just DDI, and unlicensed products (probably with user generated content, so it's a generic character generator but users enter the actual text of powers and such).

I can think of some ways to do it - especially as separate products that plug into each other very nicely. I'm not interested in jumping into that legal minefield myself, but I can see how it could be done relying on copyright law rather than the GSL and Web 2.0 style user-generated content.

 

[Sunderstone]

Clearly, as I understand that existing license, there wont be a "Tome of Horrors" for 4E. I'm not losing the right to make an OGL version. Period. In fact, I am pretty sure that I will be announcing a full color Pathfinder version of the Tome of Horrors shortly. That said, I am still considering a monster book for 4E.

We'll see....

Clark

This is great news, count me in for the PF ToH (and any other Necro OGL stuff for that matter, Eamonvale would be sweet too).

 

[Drkfathr1]

How ironic is it that it seems as though the WOTC 4th Ed GSL is going to drive more support to...Pathfinder.