A Seventh Era (7E) RPG...a call for all the non-Hasbro RPG companies to join together to fight D$D5.1, by creating a shared house system

[Dungeonosophy]

What I'd like to see is all the 'big' and mid-sized OGL publishers—and possibly even non-OGL-oriented publishers such as Pinnacle Entertainment and Steve Jackson Games—meet for a secret summit soon, in the next few weeks.

Picture: Kobold Press, Paizo, EN World Publishing, Free League, Goodman Games, Green Ronin, Malhavoc Press, Modiphius, Troll Lord Games, and possibly dozens of others, in a dimly lit room together, at a vast table.

And, they make a solemn pact....the Alliance of the Seventh Era...whose sole will is to design a next generation, irrevocably open Seventh Era (7E) RPG, which would not only do battle with HD$D (Hasbro D$D), but would serve as the primary house system for all of these companies. 7E would be a meta-RPG which is so modular that various subsets and configurations can result in such variants as:

• Pathfinder 7E (all the contents of PF1 and PF2 as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules; in other words, PF3)
• 13th Age 7E (all the contents of 13A1 + what was going to be Kickstarted as 13A 2E, as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules; in other words, 13A 3E!)
• Adventure Game Engine 7E (the next generation of AGE, as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Castles & Crusades 7E (C&C as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Cypher 7E (the next iteration of the Cypher System, as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics 7E (the next iteration of DCC, as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Gumshoe 7E
• GURPS 7E (GURPS as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Level Up 7E (nuff said!)
• Modiphius 7E (next iteration of the 2d20 system, as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Old School Essentials 7E (OSE -- i.e. BX D&D-style -- as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• BRP 7E (Basic Roleplaying as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Powered by Apocalypse 7E (The next iteration of PbA, expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Savage Worlds 7E (The next iteration of Savage Worlds, expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Traveller 7E (Traveller as expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• Year Zero Engine 7E (The next iteration of Year Zero, expressed through a modular subset of 7E rules)
• and so forth...

It can be done.

Start with the vision of Peter Atkinson's Envoy system, and fully flesh it out.

For example, like with the Envoy system (and like the Powered by Apocalypse system), there'd be stylistic synonyms for various attributes. So that each company can still use iconic attributes and terminology. But it'd still be a meta-unified RPG.

Heck, ask Peter Atkinson and Ryan Dancey to head the Alliance of the Seventh Era!

And together, we overcome the lingering domination of an untrustworthy corporatist behemoth--an existential threat to our game--once and for all. For the love of True D&D...and for the love of our RPG community. It can be done.

-Travis Henry
Twelvefold Works Publishing

 

[dave2008]

Sounds fun, but it probably still wouldn't scratch my D&D itch.

 

[ersatzphil]

Matt Colville actually just announced on stream that MCDM is starting on their own game next week.

 

[payn]

Sounds fun, but it probably still wouldn't scratch my D&D itch.

The D&D itch sounds like having crabs.

 

[xiphumor]

Tantalizing, but having a single RPG system that everyone was beholden to got us into this mess in the first place. It might be better to scatter the stones of Babel.

 

[payn]

Tantalizing, but having a single RPG system that everyone was beholden to got us into this mess in the first place. It might be better to scatter the stones of Babel.

The market cant float scattered stones, but could a couple of giants.

 

[xiphumor]

The market cant float scattered stones, but could a couple of giants.

Operative phrase being “a couple.” I’m happy with that. But there’s no reason everyone needs to peg themselves to a unified system.

 

[kenada]

No.

 

[Umbran]

....would serve as the primary house system for all of these companies.

I... no. Aside from the inappropriate ask of having them all give up their current lines of development and design and start new, that doesn't yield a gaming community that I want to see.

7E would be a meta-RPG which is so modular that various subsets and configurations can result in such variants as...

This is the problem. That's kind of like saying you have one meta-instrument that both flutists and guitarists can play.

It can be done.

It can be done... if you are willing to give up the distinctiveness of individual systems that don't operate on the same core assumptions.

Multitools have their place in the world, sure. But every tool on your Leatherman has design constraints to allow it to coexist with other elements of the multitool. That is a major restriction, and generally means that nothing on the multitool will be better than a well-designed version of the thing that doesn't have to cohabitate.

 

[Clint_L]

Why they gotta meet in a dimly lit room, tho?

Seriously, I like how you kinda framed it like an RPG encounter. You're speaking my language.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Rather than create a licensed RPG system, which runs the risk of another repeat of this drama, making an RPG and placing it immediately and directly into public domain. You can't copyright game mechanics, only their expression. Eliminate that hurdle. Let anyone publish. Sure, someone could conquer the market, or it could be flooded with undesirable products, but no one could pull what WotC is doing now, regardless of legal chicanery. With the core mechanics free to use, publishers would be free to copyright or license their contributions to the systems as they feel fit. Is this profitable for a company to do this? Probably not as much as using the format WotC (possibly falsely) claimed to use for the last 20 years. Would it bring good will to the publisher(s) that do it? Yes, but good will doesn't pay the bills.

Do we need a rival to oppose D&D? Maybe, or maybe not.
Does WotC need to get a taken down a notch or two? Yes.

Whatever comes of this drama, I hope we see a healthier, stable industry in the future, not balanced on legal rulings of an untested License agreement.

 

[pemerton]

If people are worried about WotC litigating against them if they continue to rely on their OGL v 1.0/1.0a rights, how do they think they're going to be better off by publishing a D&D derived game with no licence for protection? It's practically inviting WotC to sue them!

 

[Greg Benage]

“That orc stabbed me through my armor!”

“Take off your armor—problem solved!”

 

[pemerton]

“That orc stabbed me through my armor!”

“Take off your armor—problem solved!”

Some of the recent posts on these OGL threads are getting pretty close to that. It's a bit bizarre.

 

[Yaarel]

There is a difference between:

• An alternative to the legal licensing agreement (OGL)
• An alternative to the gaming content (SRD)

Using the SRD depends on the OGL.

But the OGL has value in its own right, even for non-D&D games.



Even so, the bad faith and predatory behavior of Hasbro-WotC makes all of the value uncertain.



Perhaps two industries will emerge from this:

Like Pepsi and Coke, Democrats and Republicans, Bing and Google.

America seems to love their dialectics.

 

[Art Waring]

I think that the exodus from d&d is good in the long run.

Centralized systems become vulnerable over time.

Just as biodiversity leads to a healthy ecosystem, a diverse gaming community would be healthier in the long term.

Not to mention that dnd has been sucking all the air out of the room for a long time, and other games deserve to breathe too.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I... no. Aside from the inappropriate ask of having them all give up their current lines of development and design and start new, that doesn't yield a gaming community that I want to see.

Despite my purple prose, what I'm envisioning is not far removed from what Morrus and others are talking about in regard to renaming any SRD names and terminology for a re-released Level Up. And how Paizo is saying that "Pathfinder will continue." At its simplest, 7E would just be a coordination of that new non-SRD terminology across an alliance of several companies. That will require a bit of retooling of development and design, but not much.

But at another level, 7E would be something like the 3.5E Hypertext SRD. Consider how, with the UA Variant Rules, the 3.5E SRD is really several different RPGs! It's just presented as a single game: 3.5E.

7E would be like that.

Okay, I admit that it'd be easier if only the 5E-based games (e.g. Level Up) were included in 7E. But still feasible if the D&Dish 6 ability score games were included (PF, OSE, C&C, etc).

If you lined up each mechanical feature of Level Up, PF2, PF1, 13A, 13A2, C&C, OSE, and every other significant D&D-ish / 6-ability score RPG whose name escapes me at the moment, we'd find that really there are a lot of similarities.

Those would all just be variants of the core 7E system.

There'd even be an array of modular variants which would closely model each previous edition of D&D. But it'd all be part of 7E.

Something like how Paizo designed PF1 and PF2 with the intention of taking D&D up a notch, but this time with several design studios working in coordination. And with the resulting game containing so many modular variants, that it can essentially model any of their previous D&D-esque rulesets.

It's true that certain features of the core system would be changed in the course of hammering out 7E together. There'd be some streamlining and improvements. Some terminology would be unified. But these would be features which this all-star alliance of game design companies decide are good for the game. So it's not just a 'genericizing'. It's a new shared edition.

I'm a licensed "pony wisher", so I'll add one more feature which would enable 7E to hammer D$D5.1....

...by hiring a massive team of rules-converters, the entire content of the 3.5 SRD, d20PFSRD and PF2d20SRD (massive!!!), and 5E SRD (with serial numbers filed off, of course) would be included in the 7E SRD from the start. Twenty years worth of Open Game Content, already converted and ready for your table. 7E would be the first edition to skip the trickling rehash.

This is the problem. That's kind of like saying you have one meta-instrument that both flutists and guitarists can play.

Good point. Powerful imagery.
Still, if you bump up the metaphor to the level of the orchestra -- the 7th Era Orchestra, crafted by an alliance of independent RPG studios -- then the similarity is that, like 7E, an orchestra is modular. Its sections and instrumentation can be reconfigured.

It can be done... if you are willing to give up the distinctiveness of individual systems that don't operate on the same core assumptions.

Okay, I agree it'd be easier if only the 5E-based (or at leas d20+6 abilities) systems were included in 7E.

Multitools have their place in the world, sure. But every tool on your Leatherman has design constraints to allow it to coexist with other elements of the multitool. That is a major restriction, and generally means that nothing on the multitool will be better than a well-designed version of the thing that doesn't have to cohabitate.

Good point. Powerful imagery.
Still, Peter Atkinson dreamed of the Envoy system for a reason.

 

[masdog]

So what you're proposing sounds a lot like the foundations that run the open-source software community. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, for example, acts as the overarching non-profit that helps manage multiple open-source projects, and it is supported by the various software companies that use and/or sell products based on these projects.

Something like that might work here. They could create and manage a new open gaming license that isn't tied to a single company (like the OGL is now) AND act as the foundation that managed various "open source" gaming system projects.