Charles Gray
First Post
OGL concerns-- some possible answers
I think people are a little too worried about the OGL content, as I was when I got SAS D20.
First of all, a company like GOO, which is mixing their original IP's, has to be VERY careful-- because accidentally releasing something into the OGL could hurt their control over their non-d20 properties. Secondly, there is the fact that in SAS d20, you could play an entire game on the ogl, all you had to do was adjust the flavor text-- and IMHO, they went to a good deal of work on that, so they should keep it. THe main point is that there is nothing withheld that makes it impossible to use the OGL in a game of yours, which is important, since you could easily stick by the letter of the OGL and still make the content effectively useless.
As it is, looking at the SAS D20 book, and using Regeneration (pp 70) for an example. You have the rule and state block which is released (in Helvetica). Therefore, all the crunchy bits are there.
But not the flavor text so I, get on my word processor and type:
" Regeneration: When basking in the light of heaven, the saints can regain life energy by the power of the One. At level 3+, their might is such that they can regain power even if brain dead, and at level 7+, even dismemberment will not destroy them. Being blwoing into small pieces, or vaporized will slay the saint permamently, however. "
See? Goo holding their flavor text in truth does nothing at all to prevent the writer from using their system. In the front of the book, everything about character generation was in helvetica, leaving it open.
Now here are my questions: First of all, will the crunchy parts of class creation be OGL? I know they were in SAS, but since this will be rather more extensive and venture into more of the BESM methodology, I wasn't certain.
I'm really, really, looking foward to this-- one of hte big problems many gamers have with D20 is the fact that they feel it's too constraining, and this may go far to break that down.
I think people are a little too worried about the OGL content, as I was when I got SAS D20.
First of all, a company like GOO, which is mixing their original IP's, has to be VERY careful-- because accidentally releasing something into the OGL could hurt their control over their non-d20 properties. Secondly, there is the fact that in SAS d20, you could play an entire game on the ogl, all you had to do was adjust the flavor text-- and IMHO, they went to a good deal of work on that, so they should keep it. THe main point is that there is nothing withheld that makes it impossible to use the OGL in a game of yours, which is important, since you could easily stick by the letter of the OGL and still make the content effectively useless.
As it is, looking at the SAS D20 book, and using Regeneration (pp 70) for an example. You have the rule and state block which is released (in Helvetica). Therefore, all the crunchy bits are there.
But not the flavor text so I, get on my word processor and type:
" Regeneration: When basking in the light of heaven, the saints can regain life energy by the power of the One. At level 3+, their might is such that they can regain power even if brain dead, and at level 7+, even dismemberment will not destroy them. Being blwoing into small pieces, or vaporized will slay the saint permamently, however. "
See? Goo holding their flavor text in truth does nothing at all to prevent the writer from using their system. In the front of the book, everything about character generation was in helvetica, leaving it open.
Now here are my questions: First of all, will the crunchy parts of class creation be OGL? I know they were in SAS, but since this will be rather more extensive and venture into more of the BESM methodology, I wasn't certain.
I'm really, really, looking foward to this-- one of hte big problems many gamers have with D20 is the fact that they feel it's too constraining, and this may go far to break that down.
