D&D 4E 4E: What we think we know

[MerricB]

I'm going to get some sleep.

See you in... err... 10 hours or so. I'll update the thread then. If you could post more info then... oh, like I could stop you!

Cheers!

 

[thormagni]

They didn't specifically embargo us but since I saw news on the front page about it with quotes from Bill, I figured I could comment on it.

Although, it appears that the top part of the front page article is taken directly from the press release, so it may already be out on the wire then?

 

[MerricB]

I was at the press announcement last night (I work for an Indiana newspaper) and they very definitely said that 4e would fall under OGL and they would be releasing a new SRD. They very clearly expressed a desire for third parties to continue to produce D&D compatible material.

A 4e Forgotten Realms will be the first setting book released, and I believe that is scheduled for next August. Chris Perkins was pretty vague when I asked directly what they were going to do with Ravenloft, Dragonlance and Eberron. It seemed like the plan would be to roll out one new setting each year. He even teased me that Greyhawk could be one of those. But I think that was just because I admitted to being an old-school Greyhawk gamer.

For what it's worth, I believe there is going to be a 930 a.m. press release hitting the wire, or so their PR people told me last night. They didn't specifically embargo us but since I saw news on the front page about it with quotes from Bill, I figured I could comment on it.

Cool, thanks muchly!

(You managed to delay my bedtime by a few minutes with that news! )

Cheers!

 

[Rothe]

Who needs the OGL? Seriously. You can't copyright or trademark rules and there are ways to say on the cover "compatible with..." legally. The ability to say "usuable with..." "compatible with..." etc. is not limited to the world of games. The only thing left is product identity, and that is not some uber IP right, far from it. And product identity can be easily avoided, unless you think you can't posibly publish without saying Mind Flayer, etc., in every product. For example, changing hobbit to halfling seemed to work pretty well for TSR.

Third party publishers should band together and pony up the $30K-$40K for a reasoned opinion of counsel from a tier 1 firm and finally get some sense of certainty here. Heck, they may even be able to use the market power of WotC/Hasbro against it. That is if your goal is to make materials compatible with the rules. If you want to use logos, the "official" designator, etc. then well I guess you may want that license.

 

[grodog]

Thanks for the info Merric! I'm at the show, and will be curious to hear what the scoop is from folks at WotC, in particular on the status of the OGL and d20 STL, and what this whole free fan license means (WotC republishing fan material sounds dubious to me, on first reading it).

 

[Garnfellow]

I was at the press announcement last night (I work for an Indiana newspaper) and they very definitely said that 4e would fall under OGL and they would be releasing a new SRD. They very clearly expressed a desire for third parties to continue to produce D&D compatible material.

Support for the OGL was my single biggest concern about 4e; I feel much better about this project now.

 

[thormagni]

Cool, thanks muchly!

(You managed to delay my bedtime by a few minutes with that news! )

Cheers!

Sorry to keep you from your sleep.

It looks like the report from theminiaturespage.net is the verbatim press release minus a line and the closing paragraph:

For more information, visit our digital newsroom at www.wizards.com/gencon2007

Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE HAS), is a worldwide leader in the trading card ... etc. etc.

Again, I think this is supposed to hit the wires at 930 eastern time

 

[Bacris]

OGL and SRD for 4E?

My biggest concerns have been assuaged - now to wait to read ALL the crunchy bits...

 

[thormagni]

Thanks for the info Merric! I'm at the show, and will be curious to hear what the scoop is from folks at WotC, in particular on the status of the OGL and d20 STL, and what this whole free fan license means (WotC republishing fan material sounds dubious to me, on first reading it).

They mentioned that Dungeon and Dragon would both be represented on the new Web site and new articles would appear three times a week. Then once a month the best of those would be combined into a "magazine" but it was unclear to me whether that "magazine" would be digital or an actual print product.

 

[MerricB]

Thanks for the info Merric! I'm at the show, and will be curious to hear what the scoop is from folks at WotC, in particular on the status of the OGL and d20 STL, and what this whole free fan license means (WotC republishing fan material sounds dubious to me, on first reading it).

For more background on this:
http://www.gleemax.com/articles/announcement010.html
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=896542
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=901372

In particular:
"I know that the D&D guys are planning to use Gleemax to help them find new writing talent. They still intend to pay writers for magazine-style content and the easiest way to find those writers is going to be to browse the user-generated content portions of Gleemax and see who the audience is rating highest. That's also a good way to find the content itself.

"There's no kind of automatic compensation guarantees built in because one thing that happens all the time is that multiple people will think up the same idea. I constantly see "new" Magic cards online that I know are already in our database. In the Great Designer Search there were several times when a designer submitted a card that was already in an upcoming set that we had signed off on but had not yet published.

"So we're not promising any sort of compensation because we don't want to wind up in a position where someone is demanding compensation that isn't called for. However, we do believe in identifying and rewarding talented contributors and we'll definitely be watching the community to see who we might want to work with as contractors or even, hypothetically, as employees." - Randy Buehler

Cheers!

 

[WayneLigon]

The 4th Edition rules emphasize faster game play, offer exciting new character options, and reduce the amount of "prep time" needed to run the game

That is is supremely encouraging, but I wonder if that's a built-in function of the rules or the imagined effect of Insider?

The December and January preview dates just astound me, though

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

Who needs the OGL? Seriously. You can't copyright or trademark rules and there are ways to say on the cover "compatible with..." legally. The ability to say "usuable with..." "compatible with..." etc. is not limited to the world of games. The only thing left is product identity, and that is not some uber IP right, far from it. And product identity can be easily avoided, unless you think you can't posibly publish without saying Mind Flayer, etc., in every product. For example, changing hobbit to halfling seemed to work pretty well for TSR.

Third party publishers should band together and pony up the $30K-$40K for a reasoned opinion of counsel from a tier 1 firm and finally get some sense of certainty here. Heck, they may even be able to use the market power of WotC/Hasbro against it. That is if your goal is to make materials compatible with the rules. If you want to use logos, the "official" designator, etc. then well I guess you may want that license.

The d20 publishing community is a small one... I don't think anyone benefits from getting the lawyers fighting each other.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Lol, they have one Doomsday and one Halellujah thread prepared. That feature alone will make it easier for people to whine about the new edition. I love it when people plan a head.

So yeah, we have two eyes, a nose, two ears, a mouth, and hair all over the top. What? You say he wanted me to "plan ahead," not "plan a head?" Back to the drawing board, then.

 

[Mystery Man]

I just can't believe how fast eight years can go by.

 

[Xyxox]

Support for the OGL was my single biggest concern about 4e; I feel much better about this project now.

I'm in this one all the way. I'll definitely subscribe to D&D Insider and the online Dungeon and Dragon magazine content now.

An SRD released under the OGL was my requirement and they met it.

Hold on Matilda, I'm drinkin' the KOOLAID!

 

[Fifth Element]

The d20 publishing community is a small one... I don't think anyone benefits from getting the lawyers fighting each other.

...other than the lawyers, of course.

Anyway I don't think we need another copyright discussion in this thread, it's been done at length in others threads. This one is about 4E.

 

[thormagni]

I'm on the way out the door now for an interview at the show, but here is what I wrote this morning. Not many crunchy bits, I'm afraid because it is for a general interest newspaper. But someone might find it interesting...

http://www.therepublic.com/main.asp?SectionID=393&SubSectionID=979&ArticleID=111814

 

[Wormwood]

I am loving just about every aspect of this announcement. C'mon May!

 

[Cadfan]

I don't understand this D&D Insider thing. Specifically, I don't understand the limits on the system.

Limiting you to three games per month is possibly reasonable, if they're concerned about people sharing passwords. This makes it so that sharing your password with someone else directly reduces the amount of times you can play. But there's objections to this: first, why three times? If a game runs on a weekly basis, that number needs to be 5 (to encompass 30 day weeks where the game starts on day 1 or 2). And second, there certainly has to be a better way to do this than to impose an arbitrary limit. Many other online communities have handled password sharing problems, I'm sure D&D could do the same.

What really doesn't make sense to me is limiting a player to 10 stored characters, and/or 10 stored versions of the same character. Why? It can't possibly be file space. A character sheet is a low file size item. Even if you allowed players to upload multiple high definition jpegs of their characters, you wouldn't expect to pass a megabyte in storage.

 

[Yair]

I just can't believe how fast eight years can go by.

So true