Bob the World Builder Interviews Kyle Brink

[Burt Baccara]

B) if you can't get a hold of them, or for some reason they demand it has to be OGL or nothing, you make your product, you attribute WotC for any SRD content you use off CC (they're the reason you can't trust the OGL, after all), you put your own stuff that you want to share on CC-BY or even CC-BY-SA. And for that OGC you wanted to use OGC, you use the OGL, designating everything not that OGC and not what you want to put out there for use Product Identity. Even in the highly improbable event that WotC decides to somehow try to kill the OGL again, whatever they do means nothing to the sub-license you have for that non-WotC OGC.

Mixing open licenses might not be a great idea. Will have to wait to see what IP lawyers say about that. In the original OGL FAQ mixing open licenses was warned against.

 

[Burt Baccara]

There was clearly an internal civil war over this issue. All the evidence suggests that there were people adamantly opposed to the OGL changes and they were overruled from above.

On this, we agree. Although, I am not so sure it was above, as much as lateral, that is the business and licensing people rather than the creative people. I even doubt Chris Cao had any say in the matter, much like Chris talked about crushing DnDB, then was caught off guard when WotC bought it. My take is that it was at the SVP level in the licensing and business side of publishing—that is just a hunch.

 

[darjr]

Mixing open licenses might not be a great idea. Will have to wait to see what IP lawyers say about that. In the original OGL FAQ mixing open licenses was warned against.

M. T. Black has done so with his new players handbook. To what extent I’m not sure.

 

[Retreater]

why would you not use CC today? I see no reason not to, other than the content you derive from being under the OGL only, but that is more an OSR than 5e issue.

If I were to publish 5e, I would be hesitant to use Creative Commons until I saw how other publishers did it. I have 20+ years of examples of the OGL's implementation - but CC I'd have no idea if I were using it correctly, signing over all my IP to CC, etc.
So I'd want others to lead the way. I'm not going to be the first.

 

[dave2008]

If I were to publish 5e, I would be hesitant to use Creative Commons until I saw how other publishers did it. I have 20+ years of examples of the OGL's implementation - but CC I'd have no idea if I were using it correctly, signing over all my IP to CC, etc.
So I'd want others to lead the way. I'm not going to be the first.

Well that is the same argument against ORC.

However, if I were to publish 5e (and I hope to next year) I have 0 experience with the OGL or CC! So it is 6 in one, half a dozen in the other. Honestly, I would probably do both and ORC too!

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Still, there is a constant not-so-subtle slight of OGL 1.0a in all of these interviews as being short and not very useful. It feels like a constant nudge to people to use the CC version. Why?

How so, I didn’t get that sense.

However, as to why they are stressing CC. I think they pushing that because that is out of their control and it is good PR. It is an action to gain trust, while using OGL does nothing to gain trustz

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

If I were to publish 5e, I would be hesitant to use Creative Commons until I saw how other publishers did it. I have 20+ years of examples of the OGL's implementation - but CC I'd have no idea if I were using it correctly, signing over all my IP to CC, etc.
So I'd want others to lead the way. I'm not going to be the first.

Well, you wouldn’t be the first - WotC already did it!

 

[Retreater]

Well, you wouldn’t be the first - WotC already did it!

For the game rules, but they're not sticking setting content, named NPCs, and other IP (at least, not on purpose).
Let's say I publish an adventure and put it under the Creative Commons. Does that mean every NPC, story element, etc., is in the Creative Commons? Can anybody just reprint the whole thing or sell PDFs of it? I have no idea, and I'm not going to use it until I see how to do it while protecting my IP.

 

[mamba]

For the game rules, but they're not sticking setting content, named NPCs, and other IP (at least, not on purpose).
Let's say I publish an adventure and put it under the Creative Commons. Does that mean every NPC, story element, etc., is in the Creative Commons? Can anybody just reprint the whole thing or sell PDFs of it? I have no idea, and I'm not going to use it until I see how to do it while protecting my IP.

Then wait for

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kibblestasty/kibbles-compendium-of-legends-and-legacies/description

The spells will be CC while the rest will not be, so that should probably help answering this

 

[Haplo781]

For the game rules, but they're not sticking setting content, named NPCs, and other IP (at least, not on purpose).
Let's say I publish an adventure and put it under the Creative Commons. Does that mean every NPC, story element, etc., is in the Creative Commons? Can anybody just reprint the whole thing or sell PDFs of it? I have no idea, and I'm not going to use it until I see how to do it while protecting my IP.

Only content you release under Creative Commons is released under Creative Commons. Content not released under Creative Commons is not released under Creative Commons.