Black Company Magic System != OGC?

[barsoomcore]

My apologies if this has come up before, but I was leafing through the Black Company book in my FLGS recently, and noticed, to my surprise (and displeasure), that the entire magic chapter seemed to be exempt from the OGC designation at the start of the book.

Does anyone have a theory as to why this was done? It doesn't make sense to me. I'm not going to buy that book just for the magic system, but I'm definitely NOT going to buy it if I can't use the magic system (which looked pretty cool to me) in materials I make myself.

I just don't see the business reason for closing off the magic system. I understood (crankily) why they crippled the Powers descriptions in M&M (by making the point costs closed (and I still don't think it was a good move)), but this I don't understand at all.

Maybe I misread the OGC declaration, or maybe there's some obvious bit of reasoning that makes sense. Any takers?

 

[Yuan-Ti]

Someone brought this up recently in another thread... I hadn't even realized that it was not included in the OGC. Here are my two guesses:

1 - They want to develop it for a later magic system release that is not linked to the BCCS. Now, if they made it OGC, someone might beat them to the punch. And they don't want to release it too early, before the BCCS sales have matured.

2 - By the comments of Green Ronin, it sounds like getting the license for BCCS was a pain, had a lot of restrictions placed on it (no PDF, no products beyond the book itself). Is it possible that the magic system was seen as proprietary? That is, inextricably linked to the campaign setting and therefore the IP of Glen Cook. I realize the mechanics wouldn't be, but maybe the spell descriptions (and notice each spell has a quote from one of the books).

Well, my two guesses, for what it's worth.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Yea, I was kind of upset with the decision myself.

But, having the book and having used the system, so many assumptions are based on specifics of the BC world in some of the fiddly bits that if you reworked it for any other setting it would look quite dissimilar.

Here's what the system is:

Magic Use Skill (charisma based), additional bonus based on class/level benefit.

Spells: Take lvl 1-3 spells, reduce the base effect to something equivalent to a 0th level spell. Base DC 10

lvl 4-6 spells, reduce the base effect to something equivalent to a 1st level spell. Base DC 15

*shrug* That's pretty much it. There are a few spells in there that look a little original to BC, but at their core they are D&D spells that have been rendered down to the smallest possible effect and still capturing the flavor. Sheild is reduced to a +2 bonus for 1 round. Disentegrate is combined with Poison for 1 Con damage in 1 round. Cure Light Wounds is reduced down to 1 HP ... you get the drift.

Basically the magic system in a nutshell.

--fje

 

[arwink]

I just don't see the business reason for closing off the magic system.

Because they aren't necessarily trying to sell the system to other designers, they're trying to sell it to fans fo the Black Company books who are also gamers. Again we get back to the idea that the OGC only really matters to a very small portion of the market. Combine with the arguements mentioned above, and it's pretty easy to see why the system was kept closed.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

but I'm definitely NOT going to buy it if I can't use the magic system (which looked pretty cool to me) in materials I make myself.

To be clear, you can use the material in your own games however you see fit. The fact that the magic system is not designated as open game content only means that you cannot publish something using it.

 

[Henry]

To be clear, you can use the material in your own games however you see fit. The fact that the magic system is not designated as open game content only means that you cannot publish something using it.

I think that's what he meant - Barsoomcore is also now a freelance game designer, and may have been considering reworking the magic system for something for release under the d20 STL.

'Core, have you considered writing Green Ronin and asking them (A) their reasoning for it, and (B) for what it would take for permission to use the core of that system in another product? Like Monte, for original works, they prefer to use in-house licenses for products they've put a lot of effort in (cf. their Superlink license).

 

[Voadam]

2 - By the comments of Green Ronin, it sounds like getting the license for BCCS was a pain, had a lot of restrictions placed on it (no PDF, no products beyond the book itself).

No pdf? That's a shame.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Unless I'm mistaken, it's impossible to successfully copyright game RULES. Isn't that the secret magic mojo of OGC, that it was OGC anyway? Only the wording can be copyrighted, that only fiddlingly so. You could make a system that was exactly the same but used "Cast Magic Skill" in place of "Magic Use Skill" and "Apprentice, Journeyman, Mage, and Archmage" in place of "Student of Wizardry, 1st Magnitude, 2nd Magnitude, and 3rd Magnitude" and be fine to flow.

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue a great deal of that content CANNOT be copyrighted because the spell effects are copy-paste edit-jobs out of the SRD! I don't have my book with me, but we had the SRD and the BCCS book open side by side and things like "Water Talent"'s mist is copy-paste right outta Obscuring Mist from the SRD.

I'm not a lawyer, but that's my current working understanding of how it goes. I was having a discussion with one of my players who thought I should publish our current campaign setting but wondered how I could since we use Grim Tales, BCCS, Corsair, and some purely new home-brew rules and I explained that, since everything we use (beyond the BCCS magic system) is OGC I could put the whole thing together and make a product because only the Intellectual Property elements (I.E. my fiction, my names, my descriptions) could be copyrighted. In fact, if I did so, my new Craft Magic rules, my Air Ship rules, and my spellcasting changes would all become OGC because they're derivative in places (skill descriptions) and rules can't be copyrighted. I could be mean and make people re-write every description, but I'd officially OGC the whole of the rules anyway because I'm cool like that.

Not that people would be beating a path to my door for any of it. While the best game I've ever played, I dunno if anybody else would get their jollies by exploring the finer points of print-culture emergence, early Dutch-style mercantilism, racial politics, and living in fear of being eaten by giant marsupials.

--fje

 

[Henry]

Unless I'm mistaken, it's impossible to successfully copyright game RULES. Isn't that the secret magic mojo of OGC, that it was OGC anyway? Only the wording can be copyrighted, that only fiddlingly so. You could make a system that was exactly the same but used "Cast Magic Skill" in place of "Magic Use Skill" and "Apprentice, Journeyman, Mage, and Archmage" in place of "Student of Wizardry, 1st Magnitude, 2nd Magnitude, and 3rd Magnitude" and be fine to flow.

More specifically, the OG content is the part that can't be successfully challenged in court. But no, if a work is released as partially open content, it doesn't have to have (and it can't be construed as) purely open content. Since they released it as d20 STL, only 5% or so had to be open technically. To be specific, only those things designated as open are actually Open.

And, of course, I am not a lawyer.

 

[barsoomcore]

'Core, have you considered writing Green Ronin and asking them (A) their reasoning for it, and (B) for what it would take for permission to use the core of that system in another product?

Well, before I did ANYTHING I just wondered if I'd had a fundamental misunderstanding, or missed something completely obvious. Doesn't seem that I did.

That said, I don't actually have plans around using the BCCS magic system, I just noticed that it was closed and was quite surprised. Still don't see the business reason for doing it, frankly, arwink's assertion that it's obvious to the contrary.

I don't see how they thought they might suffer losses by opening that portion of the rules, I guess is what I'm getting at.