Boing Boing on the GSL !

[I'm A Banana]

How can the GSL not prevent that? They [WotC] have already been very vocal about not allowing 3rd party companies to Publish their own PH books that duplicate the rules in the PH. They can put out a PH that adds their own classes, but they won't be able to cut/paste the SRD into their book, which is something that can be done under the OGL.

AU didn't use the PH for anything -- it didn't bother with the d20 STL (which is what you'd need in 3e if you were going to make an officially D&D compatible product). It went with just the OGL. That meant that they had to do things like include an alternate XP chart.

A company could publish purely OGL material, and still make things as compatible with 4e as AU was with 3e, and never, ever touch the GSL. They could even plaster "COMPATIBLE with the 4th edition of the world's most popular role playing game!" on it. They could even call themselves "Dragons And/Or Dungeons" if they wanted to get ballsy about it.

There is nothing that makes any of that illegal. A BEST, WotC would have to drag it into courts, where the precedence is rather against it, since game mechanics can't be protected like most written things.

Boing Boing heard about some sort of controversy and jumped on it to increase their page views.

I don't really think Boing Boing needs to jack up page views at all. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have more pageviews in a day than the Wizard's site does, but regardless, they didn't do it so much to jump on controversy as to let their widespread audience know about something that most BB readers would be ostensibly pretty against -- forcing people to either use worse rules or only work for you.

In fact, I'd be pretty surprised if many people other than maybe WotC and definitely some of their more ardent supporters would be FOR that.

Wizards invested scads of money in 4E, of course they want people to publish for it, rather than a system they've abandoned, Scott Rouse said as much. Looking at it from the perspective of their investment, this makes perfect sense.

If they think it's a better system, then they've got nothing to be afraid of. If they think it's money well-spent, then there's no reason that the OGL should bother them in the slightest.

Furthermore, the poison pill gives them some pretty notable bad PR, and makes them seem draconian and dumb.

Like the blurb says:

This would be like saying that developers could not run programs on Vista if they publish -any- programs under a GNU license.

 

[Hussar]

The problem isn't so much with people going back and forth though.

Companies used the OGL and abandoned the STL because the STL was watered down so badly that there was no difference in products. So many books were produced under the OGL that could have used the STL that it became pointless to use the STL.

WOTC wants the GSL to have value. The OGL has very little value for D&D. How many companies were producing OGL D&D material? Five? Maybe? The only main ones were Paizo with the Game Mastery line and Goodman. That's about it.

The OGL was always a means for pimping D&D. It failed. Everyone took the OGL, made a new game and pretty much abandoned producing D&D material. Mongoose, AEG, White Wolf, GR, the list goes on and on.

WOTC obviously wants the GSL to push D&D. That's why they're doing a separate license for derivatives. Sure, it's a PR hit, but, what everyone seems to forget is that we're talking about two, maybe 3 3PP's that would actually be affected by this. Unless, of course, some companies don't think that their games are strong enough to stand on their own.

 

[Kishin]

I don't really think Boing Boing needs to jack up page views at all. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have more pageviews in a day than the Wizard's site does, but regardless, they didn't do it so much to jump on controversy as to let their widespread audience know about something that most BB readers would be ostensibly pretty against -- forcing people to either use worse rules or only work for you.

No, you always need more. Always. There's no ceiling, and no point in settling.

We still haven't heard confirmation if the 'poison pill' is what we think is. The fact that the doomsayers continue to go Chicken Little regarding the OGL without a definitive statement from WoTC is kinda silly, IMO. While I think the OGL was an absolutely fantastic move for gaming in general, it seems to have engendered a pretty strong entitlement complex in some parties, and I personally can't stand entitlement complexes.

If they think it's a better system, then they've got nothing to be afraid of. If they think it's money well-spent, then there's no reason that the OGL should bother them in the slightest.

I don't think they're 'bothered' by it. They want people playing what they feel is the better system, the system they poured the last 3 years of design work into. That's basically what Scott Rouse said, verbatim. Somewhere along the line though, some people decided this was WoTC working for the Forces of Evil(tm), though, and that's a connection I just can't seem to make, myself.

The OGL was always a means for pimping D&D. It failed. Everyone took the OGL, made a new game and pretty much abandoned producing D&D material. Mongoose, AEG, White Wolf, GR, the list goes on and on.

WOTC obviously wants the GSL to push D&D.

Bingo. Well said.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

If producing material for 4E under the GSL would make money for a given 3PP, won't they do so?

Why does it matter if they also produce OGL? Doesn't WotC still get their 3PP 4E support? (Again, assuming producing for 4E makes money for the 3PP.)

If it's true that any given 3PP will be forbidden from producing for 4E and for OGL, I can't see any business justification for the forced exclusion. (It also seems counterproductive, since it's very easy to imagine a 3PP that could survive on GSL-and-OGL production that could not survive on only GSL production. And, obviously, if such a company founders, WotC doesn't get any GSL production from it.)

It smells manipulatively punitive, at the very least.

I have my doubts that the 4E GSL will be exclusive at the company level. On the other hand, the very possibility is a PR stink that, one would think, WotC would want to get rid of. If the GSL isn't exclusive at the company level -- as opposed to the product level -- why hasn't WotC defused things by explicitly saying so?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The OGL was always a means for pimping D&D. It failed. Everyone took the OGL, made a new game and pretty much abandoned producing D&D material. Mongoose, AEG, White Wolf, GR, the list goes on and on.

Bingo. Well said.

If by "Well said," you mean, "Utterly Incorrect," I agree with you.

The OGL was NEVER about pimping D&D. It was about pimping the d20 system and milking network externalities.

There is not one word in the OGL about Dungeons and Dragons, unless you count the copyright notice in itty bitty type on the last line of the OGL itself.

The d20STL was about pimping D&D. THAT is the license that requires you to refer back to Dungeons and Dragons, or Wizards of the Coast, by name.

 

[Hussar]

If by "Well said," you mean, "Utterly Incorrect," I agree with you.

The OGL was NEVER about pimping D&D. It was about pimping the d20 system and milking network externalities.

There is not one word in the OGL about Dungeons and Dragons, unless you count the copyright notice in itty bitty type on the last line of the OGL itself.

The d20STL was about pimping D&D. THAT is the license that requires you to refer back to Dungeons and Dragons, or Wizards of the Coast, by name.

So, the fact that pretty much no one used the OGL for several years has nothing to do with it? That it wasn't until the STL became so watered down and pretty much without value that the OGL even got a nod is completely unimportant?

The sole purpose of the OGL was to sell PHB's. To make money for WOTC. End of story.

At the end of the day, I suppose it all boils down to whether or not you consider the OGL to be a success or not. I personally don't. That very few 3PP support D&D at all anymore speaks volumes to me.

The way I see it, the supporters of the OGL point to these network externalities and talk about how this is supporting D&D. The problem is, the number 2 publisher out there is NOT d20, and number 3 is so far behind that it's not even registering. WOTC controls about 75-80% of the RPG market. White Wolf has about 15%. The other hundred or so RPG publishers out there make up the last 10% or so.

If all the OGL games vanished tomorrow, it wouldn't even register as a blip for the vast majority of gamers. That's the nasty little truth that no one seems to want to look at.

I'd miss them. I know that I would. About three quarters of the gaming material on my shelves is 3PP. But, I also recognize the fact that I'm in a tiny minority here.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

So, the fact that pretty much no one used the OGL for several years has nothing to do with it? That it wasn't until the STL became so watered down and pretty much without value that the OGL even got a nod is completely unimportant?

That's relevant, sure. Start here:

1) Publishers use the d20 STL because it's the logo that everyone is buying.

But that is not the whole picture:

2) Certain publishers build a name and a following that allows them to move away from the d20 STL and still have a reasonable chance of getting product into distribution.

3) Publishers required a couple of years with the d20 system before they have the chops to expand it in unexpected ways-- ways that were not possible under the terms of the d20 STL. (Mutants and Masterminds.)

It's fallacious to assume that the only reason anyone moved away from the d20STL was because it got watered down.

The sole purpose of the OGL was to sell PHB's. To make money for WOTC. End of story.

Your understanding of the process and your summation is facile at best. You need to go back and educate yourself on what the people who created the OGL were saying about it and its purpose at the time. You're ignorant of the facts.

The d20STL was designed to drive sales of the core rulebooks directly. The OGL was designed to sell core books, if at all, only indirectly.

The OGL was intended to make the d20 system the default game system, so that players could move in and out of WOTCs games to other games, without actually leaving WOTCs system behind. It was about keeping players playing the d20 system, and not other RPG systems. And it was a great success by that standard. I'll repeat: That was the specific, explicit, stated purpose of the OGL, and it was a success according that standard.

That's the facts, your confident "end of story" notwithstanding.

 

[Fifth Element]

So, the fact that pretty much no one used the OGL for several years has nothing to do with it? That it wasn't until the STL became so watered down and pretty much without value that the OGL even got a nod is completely unimportant?

I don't think that's accurate. If you were to create a product compatible with D&D you used both the OGL and the STL. The STL only dealt with the logo and the trademarks - you still needed the OGL for the copyrighted content.

What I think you're trying to say is that few people used only the OGL for several years. Is that right?

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

I love that headline, though .... straight out of the handbook of yellow journalism, you might say ....

"Sleazy proposed new Dungeons and Dragons license seeks to poison open gaming systems"

Ah, neutrality.

 

[Wolfspider]

I love that headline, though .... straight out of the handbook of yellow journalism, you might say ....

"Sleazy proposed new Dungeons and Dragons license seeks to poison open gaming systems"

Ah, neutrality.

I wasn't aware that the posted link was considered journalism.

Heck, I wasn't aware that journalism had to be neutral.