D&D General Any movement/update on Creative Commons SRD for previous editions?

[Remathilis]

They would have to pretty much create a whole new SRD for 4e too, unless it can piggy-back on the 3e or 5e one. The 4e SRD is in a very different, and much less usable, format than the 3e and 5e SRD.

True, but it provides a framework to start from as opposed to starting from scratch.

The real reason though is that I don't imagine WotC is overly quick to re-expose the "warts" of AD&D again. They can release 3e "as is" for the most part, and 4e could just be given necessary adjoining info to complete it, but AD&D would require a "ground up" rewriting of the actual rules (removing Gary and Zeb's voice from the projects) which at the very least would change the nature of the works (stuff we argue about today, like the definition of hit points or alignment) and could possibly be used as an attempt to correct problematic elements (be it as innocuous as clarification of the 1e initiative system or radical as removing female strength limits). Essentially, the SRD would require a whole new version of AD&D to be written, and that is a project with few upsides and a lot of downsides (fan reaction, media reaction, competition with OS games, etc).

So I feel the WotC editions 3, 4, 5) are a safe enough bet. They were already partially designed to handle a SRD and the work to them is lesser. AD&S Don't is a brand new project in service to a small market already primed to dislike the results. It's simply not worth it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The OSR scene has some of the older editions covered OK, so that feels less urgent, but it would be nice to kind of officially embrace the "no wrong way to play D&D!" philosophy and officially put out CC. Especially because to be in the OSR scene you already need to be pretty high on the grogn-o-meter.

4e seems important to me in a unique way, given how much people care about that fork of the game specifically and how hard it is to do anything officially in that capacity. It's really HARD to play 4e these days, in a way that it isn't for 1e/2e. Opening up the rules in a way that lets people, forex, put out a compatible retroclone with some character building tools or a version of the Compendium with the CC rules in it (expandable from the community) would go a long way to helping people who love that version play that version.

 

[bedir than]

I'd love to see a Basic D&D CC BY SRD.
Is it needed? No.