A new site Idea The OGC exchange

[soulcatcher]

Community standards

I think perhaps it is a bit to early to create a database like this. It is something that I have been VERY interested in, but after alot of thinking, I have determined that some framework needs to be created first.

As a community, we need to define how something actually looks (like a feat) before we can really start determining how to store/rate/deal with that information. I would propose that the community needs to define something like an XML standard for each particular OGC item that will be stored. So, for example - once it has been defined precisely what a makes a feat, what are the possible things that can be attached to a feat, then people can start to communicate with each other properly ABOUT feats.

Second, I don't think a unified, single database is the right answer. That requires alot of maintenance, and bandwidth for something that is going to be likely done as a hobby. Because we have defined what each discrete D20 item IS, we can easily transfer information between databases. Where this is leading, is that I would propose that as a community, we agree upon a person, or group of people who can act as reasonable stewards of a particular type of data. The Net Book Of Feats crew certainly seem to qualify well for acting as stewards of Feat infomation - they can catalog it, rate it, and distribute it.

I believe that it would be a good idea to include the ability for not only a selected 'council' to rate these gaming items, but for the system to also handle votes from individuals - moderation by the community (the House/House of commons if you will) and by community appointed 'experts' (the Senate/house of lords so to speak)

This achieves multiple things I think

1) it creates a single go to point for the latest and the greatest, as well as the chaff.

2) it creates a 'language' that people can write databases, editors, and utilities for

3) It allows for the general gaming populus to influence what is considered to be 'good' rules, while still having a group with a known set of behaviors while rating

4) This allows the D20 community to break up this increadibly large task into discrete chunks to be managed by individuals

5) this also allows people to run databases that contain all the rules, or some of the rules. This could create a far easier situation for GMs who want to determine WHAT rules are in effect for their games - just pull down what you are interested in off the net, and then use a utility to define your world rules.

I would furthur propose that this be considered a democratic organization - run similarly to open source projects like this (The Debia Project for linux is a good example), so that there is a way for the community to police itself.

Not only do I think this will be beneficial to the consumers (the gamers), I think it will be beneficial to the publishers, as this could easily be designed to only contain the crunchy bits (and the odd picute for some of the monsters)

it would give a very direct way for the publishers to talk to the community representatives as well.

This would also encourage Publishers to produce MORE open game content, as it will likely result that the most used rules are the ones in the database. People will buy books, when they see that a large number of the rules they like come from a particular publication/publisher.

Finally, it makes it easier for publishers to find rules, so it would reduce duplicated effort for good rules.


just my 20 cents (too big for 2)

 

[The Sigil]

Re: Community standards

I think perhaps it is a bit to early to create a database like this. It is something that I have been VERY interested in, but after alot of thinking, I have determined that some framework needs to be created first.

As a community, we need to define how something actually looks (like a feat) before we can really start determining how to store/rate/deal with that information. I would propose that the community needs to define something like an XML standard for each particular OGC item that will be stored. So, for example - once it has been defined precisely what a makes a feat, what are the possible things that can be attached to a feat, then people can start to communicate with each other properly ABOUT feats.

To be honest, I think this is a load of crap. Everybody want to administrate, manage, and otherwise fiddle-faddle around going to meetings but without doing any real work.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think there are certain things that are already well-defined. Feats are well-defined (if your character must spend a "Feat Slot" to acquire this ability, it is a Feat). Spells are well-defined. Skills? Well-defined. Monsters? Well-defined. Classes? Well-defined.

Granted, there is some OGC that defies normal classification, but I think trying to classify everything before we start is stupid and an exercise in futility - every new d20 item that comes along tries to push the envelope a bit and establish new categories, doesn't it?

Second, I don't think a unified, single database is the right answer. That requires alot of maintenance, and bandwidth for something that is going to be likely done as a hobby. Because we have defined what each discrete D20 item IS, we can easily transfer information between databases.

I dunno, a huge database, with clearly defined tables ("Creatures", "Spells", "Feats", etc) is doable and is nice to have the information in one place. It does get clunky when you get to the "miscellaneous other stuff" though.

Where this is leading, is that I would propose that as a community, we agree upon a person, or group of people who can act as reasonable stewards of a particular type of data. The Net Book Of Feats crew certainly seem to qualify well for acting as stewards of Feat infomation - they can catalog it, rate it, and distribute it.

That would be nice, but there will always be those who don't agree with the person/people selected. How do we accomodate them? I don't think people will mind if you say, "here is where it is catalogued and distributed" but some people rankle at the idea of rating.

I believe that it would be a good idea to include the ability for not only a selected 'council' to rate these gaming items, but for the system to also handle votes from individuals - moderation by the community (the House/House of commons if you will) and by community appointed 'experts' (the Senate/house of lords so to speak)

Your project is becoming increasingly complex, here. Though I must say, it sounds rather like you want what the FaNCC is already trying to do (http://www.fancc.org )

1) it creates a single go to point for the latest and the greatest, as well as the chaff.

For "undercutting publisher" reasons, I doubt we will see the latest and greatest in any such endeavor.

2) it creates a 'language' that people can write databases, editors, and utilities for

I am suspicious any time anyone want to establish a single "standard" for databases, et al. As far as I'm concerned, if it can be ported among standards (say, via a comma-delimited output) that's fine with me. Let me do things my way - don't force me to use someone else's way that I may not be comfortable with - or that may be totally outdated two years hence.

3) It allows for the general gaming populus to influence what is considered to be 'good' rules, while still having a group with a known set of behaviors while rating

4) This allows the D20 community to break up this increadibly large task into discrete chunks to be managed by individuals

This really does sound similar to what the FaNCC has been attempting to do with "fan-created material" (though not all publishers' material) for the past two years. You really should check into them.

5) this also allows people to run databases that contain all the rules, or some of the rules. This could create a far easier situation for GMs who want to determine WHAT rules are in effect for their games - just pull down what you are interested in off the net, and then use a utility to define your world rules.

That would be nice - agree completely here.

I would furthur propose that this be considered a democratic organization - run similarly to open source projects like this (The Debia Project for linux is a good example), so that there is a way for the community to police itself.

Hmm... the FANCC holds elections for officers on a yearly basis, has considerable discussion on issues... really, you ought to check them out.

Not only do I think this will be beneficial to the consumers (the gamers), I think it will be beneficial to the publishers, as this could easily be designed to only contain the crunchy bits (and the odd picute for some of the monsters)

it would give a very direct way for the publishers to talk to the community representatives as well.

Again, I worry about calling any set of people "community representatives" - even the ENWorld community is not the entire d20 RPG community.

This would also encourage Publishers to produce MORE open game content, as it will likely result that the most used rules are the ones in the database. People will buy books, when they see that a large number of the rules they like come from a particular publication/publisher.

Of course, this also puts the onus on the Publishers to provide more fluffy bits since all of their crunchy bits are in the database. And since most hardcore fans are annoyed by fluffy bits, this is self-defeating.

Finally, it makes it easier for publishers to find rules, so it would reduce duplicated effort for good rules.

That's for dang sure.

Personally, I would love to eventually create a database where people can sew stuff together, but it wouldn't be run democratically - works too slowly. I would be sole custodian and decide what does and doesn't make the cut. If you like it, great. If not, go elsewhere. If I do it any other way, we get bogged down in "processes" instead of "publishing stuff."

--The Sigil

 

[soulcatcher]

To be honest, I think this is a load of crap. Everybody want to administrate, manage, and otherwise fiddle-faddle around going to meetings but without doing any real work.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think there are certain things that are already well-defined. Feats are well-defined (if your character must spend a "Feat Slot" to acquire this ability, it is a Feat). Spells are well-defined. Skills? Well-defined. Monsters? Well-defined. Classes? Well-defined.

Granted, there is some OGC that defies normal classification, but I think trying to classify everything before we start is stupid and an exercise in futility - every new d20 item that comes along tries to push the envelope a bit and establish new categories, doesn't it?

yes, this is true - trying to classify everything first IS an exercize in futility - no one will get anything done, and they will just sit around trying to
establish a starting point.

What I am wanting is for this to A) be decentralized, and B) to break the work out into seperate areas

so - feats being my main example, it should take at most an hour to make an XML definition for that, as it's very simple. But, but creating this standard way of talking, we get the ability for programmers to use that as an API. Programs like PCGen, or others could then just suck feats out of any 'D20 open content database', because that database will know how to import and export this XML feats document. By agreeing on this one standard (which only would need to be used for programs, not personal data as you mention later) one essentially opens all those feats up to be used for anything from feats editors to character generators (or whatever else).

the Key here is that I DON'T think that any one group should have to wait for anyone else's definitions to become finished - so if there is a feat group (like the FanCC people making the Net book of Feats) - they could start cataloging this stuff immediatly. (and in their case they already have)

I dunno, a huge database, with clearly defined tables ("Creatures", "Spells", "Feats", etc) is doable and is nice to have the information in one place. It does get clunky when you get to the "miscellaneous other stuff" though.

Right - but this is not necessarily the 'Master' - give the 'Master' Feats database to the people who know feats. This allows anyone to be able to personally run a 'huge database', and there could be more then one on the net. The Open Gaming community, just as in it's progenetor, the Open Source/Free Software movement is not likely to want to only have one of these - you can gaurentee that more then one person is gonna want to run a cool wiz-bang rules repository on their website. More power to them - it spreads the bandwidth out across multiple parties. Hopefully though, we can establish some controlability, by establishing 'go to' databases for the master information.

Your project is becoming increasingly complex, here. Though I must say, it sounds rather like you want what the FaNCC is already trying to do (http://www.fancc.org )

I know about them, and I think that the FanCC would be a perfect home for this, they have a good foundation from which to build upon - but being as I am not on the council, I have no say in their future direction.

I am suspicious any time anyone want to establish a single "standard" for databases, et al. As far as I'm concerned, if it can be ported among standards (say, via a comma-delimited output) that's fine with me. Let me do things my way - don't force me to use someone else's way that I may not be comfortable with - or that may be totally outdated two years hence.

I understand, and I sympathize. But I do feel that there is value to having an agreed upon standard - that is build to handle future growth. This is beneficial, because it gives a foundation to lots of programmers out there, who could leverage this work - but without forcing them to require a database backend for a simple treasure generator. And once again, it creates the situation of allowing GM's to easily pull rules from net DBs to define their own campaigns

Again, I worry about calling any set of people "community representatives" - even the ENWorld community is not the entire d20 RPG community.

Of course, that is the nature of open communities - but there is no reason that a group cannot create an organization that represents a good chunk of the community.

Personally, I would love to eventually create a database where people can sew stuff together, but it wouldn't be run democratically - works too slowly. I would be sole custodian and decide what does and doesn't make the cut. If you like it, great. If not, go elsewhere. If I do it any other way, we get bogged down in "processes" instead of "publishing stuff."

And that is precisely what I want to enable. If you get individuals/groups to take ownership of segments of the rules, they can each process stuff quickly. This shouldn't be democratic at the rules level - vote a person in, and let them do their job - but you can leverage that work to create your own database, where YOU select the rules YOU like.

I would think that each area of the rules (back to feats) would probably just add anything that was submitted (as long as it's OGC of course) - but then they could choose to publish something that contains the recommended rules to use - precisely how the Netbook of Feats works today - but with the addition of accepting OGC easily (from published works), and granting access to the database by a known API

If it's done correctly, you (for example) could pull down the feats, remove the chaff (by say removing all feats that aren't paper published, or removing all the ones the FanCC considers to be badly created - you could then take this set, and select what you want to offer from your database.

 

[smetzger]

I don't think defining an XML format is a good place to start. It could be done at a later time and used as the medium or go-between for several databases.

We need to start by finding someone or a group of people who will step up to the plate and say "Yes, I will commit to doing this the right way."

I do not think that the FanCC should be used for this. Or at least I don't think that the current netBook teams can handle this. The netBook of Feats 6 months to a year behind reviewing submissions. They don't have enough people to handle it.

I do think the FanCC could set up new netBook teams for OGC/OGL material. Or a completly new organization similar to the FanCC could be formed. This way the work could be divided among several people and it would be a community product.

There is no way that this could or should rely on publishers submitting there own material. Individuals should be allowed to submit OGC/OGL and then the team members would confirm and notify the copyright holders before psoting the material for general consumption.

*:> Scott

 

[soulcatcher]

I don't think defining an XML format is a good place to start. It could be done at a later time and used as the medium or go-between for several databases.

We need to start by finding someone or a group of people who will step up to the plate and say "Yes, I will commit to doing this the right way."

ok, yeah - from the perspective of getting it done, defining standards before we define who is going to define them/who is going to implement is a bil like putting the cart before the horse... But I still think it should be an early step - because of the interoperability it provides/API it gives to others outside the core people doing it.

I do think the FanCC could set up new netBook teams for OGC/OGL material. Or a completly new organization similar to the FanCC could be formed. This way the work could be divided among several people and it would be a community product.

Deffinitly - though I don't think this is necessarily a new 'netbook' A new relationship could be defined - you have people who accept submissions, and tend the giangatic database of stuff. Things submitted to the database could be considered to be submitted to the appropriate netbooks.

So, to fall back on Feats - a new group could be formed in the FanCC called like the Net OGC Feats DB. the net book of feats could then use that as a source for feats. So the Net OGC Feats DB would need to be able to handle revision or something like it - so that feats that have to be submitted multiple times can change over time - but still allow people to get to the old version if they need to. Basically, a system like this could not only act as an OGC repository, but also as a revision control system - to handle erratta and changes to submitted feats. Just an idea....

This is not the only possible relationship - the Net OGC Feats DB could instead see the Net Book of Feats as a publisher. The fact that they could both be working under the same umbrella of the FanCC does kinda make the first method desirable though.

There is no way that this could or should rely on publishers submitting there own material. Individuals should be allowed to submit OGC/OGL and then the team members would confirm and notify the copyright holders before psoting the material for general consumption.

I totally agree. Pulling all the OGC content out of some of these books is alot of work - work that it's not necessarily fair to ask the publishers to do for us - after all, they gave the community rights to the content in the first place, no reason to make it cost them man hours to make it available.

This is getting ahead of where it is, but I would say that the organization should have a flexible policy of generally pulling in OGC after a certain amount of time - like say 2 years. BUT keep a dialog with the companies to cover for situations like the rituals and relics situation mentioned earlier in this thread (it's been out 2 years, and they are looking to release R&R II, and a reprint of R&R I). There is no need to antagonize the publishers, but they did explicitly allow us to use this data by choosing to cover it under the OGL.

Is there anyone here from the FanCC? If you are, do you have any comments about moving an effort like this under the FanCC umbrella (as new teams, not userping old ones)

 

[epicsaga]

Re: Re: No one has mentioned...

Its just an index of the OGC. I would like to see the actuall OGC.

Does anyone forsee a day when the typical DM says "I allow any OGC/OGL stuff in my game."? Instead of what we usually hear "I allow any WOTC stuff in my game."

The Free Gaming Association (http://theFGA.com) is working on a repository that will contain the actuall Open Gaming Content. The system will be web based, and the content will be available via search, as XML, HTML and PDF formats.

People will be able to submit material, that an editor will overlook and approve to be entered into the system.

When someone does a search for something, for instance "Firearm rules" -- the system will produce a custom document with a correctly formated S.15

The reason that the Open Gaming Exchange (http://www.OGExchange.com) is currently only providing an index, is because that allows us to side step the OGL. By side stepping the OGL we can provide names & descriptions for items that are declared Product Identity by publishers.

An actuall database of OGC, would have to be released under the OGL, and thus you would have to strip all Product Identity, and you could not even state where the OGC comes from unless you get special permission from the individual publishers (because the publisher names are trademarks.)

Anyone that wants more information on this project, or would like to assist in this project, please contact me directly at mcortez@ogexchange.com

--
Michael Cortez
Managing Director, The Free Gaming Association
http://theFGA.com

and

Webmaster of the Open Gaming Exchange
http://www.ogexchange.com

 

[smetzger]

Re: Re: Re: No one has mentioned...

The Free Gaming Association (http://theFGA.com) is working on a repository that will contain the actuall Open Gaming Content. The system will be web based, and the content will be available via search, as XML, HTML and PDF formats.

Looks like you have been around since Feb 18. What is taking so long?

 

[kingpaul]

Is there anyone here from the FanCC? If you are, do you have any comments about moving an effort like this under the FanCC umbrella (as new teams, not userping old ones)

I am, and speaking from my experience, getting the people to devote time to a project of this nature would be tough...but that's just my 2 coppers.

 

[DSC-EricPrice]

Well, I think the project has enough merit that I am willing to move forward with it. I have registed the domain name hugeogre.com (OGRE stands for Open Gaming Resource Emporium) and I am working on a SQL-driven database at this moment that will store the OGC properly.

You'll be able to find it soon at

http://www.hugeogre.com

I'm meeting with the lawyer in just a few minutes to discuss my legal requirements for getting, among other things, the S15 posts correct. I'll also be polishing up a business plan on how I can pay for this project. I specifically will not be using popup ads for travel vacations and x-cams. I think we've all seen enough of those.

If there are members of the community who would like to help with various aspects of this project, including getting a php driven content-management system online, I'd love to hear from you.

Eric Price

 

[soulcatcher]

If there are members of the community who would like to help with various aspects of this project, including getting a php driven content-management system online, I'd love to hear from you.

For a job, I write data management systems for really big companies, and I have written more then one content management system in PHP. I know sql & XML quite well - I would be quite happy to work on a project like this.

e-mail me at soulcatcher@evilsoft.org if yer interested.