Charles Ryan on Adventures

[Pramas]

My regular store told me that Canadian Distributors has ceased supplying Green Ronin. I don't know if they're just giving me bogus info, or if there's some truth to the statement.

The period you mentioned (shortly after the release of Blue Rose) was when we parted ways with the company that used to do our sales and fulfilment. We like to actually get the money for the books we sell; guess we're funny that way. Anyway, after that we made some new deals and started handling sales ourselves but there was a transition period in getting that all worked out. We do currently sell to four Canadian distributors: Lion Rampant, Universal, New Century, and Dynamic. If your local store is still having issues, tell them to drop us a line at our custserv address {custserv [at] greenronin.com}.

 

[philreed]

We like to actually get the money for the books we sell; guess we're funny that way.

What? You aren't running a charity? Ya greedy bastards!

 

[William Ronald]

What? You aren't running a charity? Ya greedy bastards!

Technically, Vow of Poverty is in a WotC book, the Book of Exalted Deeds. So, I don't think the good people at Green Ronin have to follow it.

 

[Rasyr]

It's not quite the same, but IIRC, some of the mechanics from Mutants & Masterminds (Green Ronin) as well as some from The Game Mechanics was included in the OGC of Unearthed Arcana.

So in the whole of the Open Game material available from WotC, it *does* have some 3rd party material.

Nobody has said that WotC has never used 3rd party OGC. The comment was about whether or not any companies have asked WotC to include their OGC in the SRD. Use of 3rd party OGC in Unearthed Arcana does not count here as none of that OGC has made it into the SRD.

 

[DaveMage]

Nobody has said that WotC has never used 3rd party OGC. The comment was about whether or not any companies have asked WotC to include their OGC in the SRD. Use of 3rd party OGC in Unearthed Arcana does not count here as none of that OGC has made it into the SRD.

That's why I said it's not quite the same.

 

[blargney the second]

Technically, Vow of Poverty is in a WotC book, the Book of Exalted Deeds. So, I don't think the good people at Green Ronin have to follow it.

More importantly, it isn't OGC. Green Ronin isn't *allowed* to use Vow of Poverty.
-blarg

 

[Vocenoctum]

No reason they can't. Lots of reason why they won't.

Main reason being the feeling that they would then be giving their stuff away for free, without any chance of making money on it. And even for stuff that's oop, there could be sometime in the future when it would be convenient NOT to have release a lot of it in a digital [Insert Company Name] SRD.

Sad, but it seems as if it's not gonna happen.

/M

Basically, when I've asked about SRD's from companies before, they basically said "WotC can afford to give stuff away for free, we can't". While I understand the sentiment, I think of an SRD as "game support", like 3.5 updates for some of the stuff that won't otherwise be updated, and adventures that may not be as profitable, but advance and build on an earlier product.

For myself, I don't mind buying a book, and a couple of my players might if they enjoyed something, but not all of them will. An SRD would make these games possible for my group, but they "can't" do it because it's not efficient. Meanwhile, I could probably find a pirated copy of the whole thing.

 

[philreed]

Meanwhile, I could probably find a pirated copy of the whole thing.

Please don't.

 

[Rasyr]

Basically, when I've asked about SRD's from companies before, they basically said "WotC can afford to give stuff away for free, we can't". While I understand the sentiment, I think of an SRD as "game support"

See, now that is part of the whole problem. You are looking at an SRD as "game support". Companies are seeing it as "free access to what I am trying to sell you", especially those companies that tend to make their products 100% OGC.

SRD's were never meant to be treated as game support. Such documents are meant for other publishers to use in creating new content, not as a free version of a product.

For myself, I don't mind buying a book, and a couple of my players might if they enjoyed something, but not all of them will.

And nobody can share a book?

An SRD would make these games possible for my group, but they "can't" do it because it's not efficient. Meanwhile, I could probably find a pirated copy of the whole thing.

It is comments like this last one that really galvanizes publishers against free distribution of their works (via an SRD or an OGC Repository, etc..). The "I don't want to pay for it, so you should give it to me for free" mentality.

Now, if companies did begin doing their own SRDs, do you know what would happen? That company would not ever do a product that was 100% OGC ever again. In fact, they would most likely release only the bare minimum into OGC (which would be effectively worthless as it would be the most minimal stat block that could be gotten away with, and not even the name of the (whatever it was) would be open content.

Not only that, but you would see a drastic reduction in release schedules. It takes time and effort to go through a manuscript and to pull out the open content. Time and effort that would otherwise be spent on other products. And once release schedules dropped, so would profits, and then you would see these companies go out of business.

The folks that work at game companies (operative word being "company") want their company to make a profit so that they can do such exotic things as buy groceries and pay their rent. I don't know if you meant to have your post put across a certain attitude or not, and if you didn't, then I apologize, but the impression that I received in the last part of your post was that the game company "owed" you a bunch of free support.

And the comment about going and finding a "pirated" copy? I am not gonna comment on that simply because every time I tried, I ended up lashing out in a manner that would likely get me banned, it got me riled up that much.Any way you look at it, it was not a very nice thing to say.

 

[Vigilance]

An SRD would make these games possible for my group, but they "can't" do it because it's not efficient.

Game companies operate on extremely tight budgets. Budgets that don't include wiggle room for things like paying someone to make a free version of their products.

Also, it doesn't work to make the game any more widespread in a meaningful capacity. I believe the d20 Mecha rules were released in an OGC "SRD" and it hasnt seemed to make the rules any more widespread as near as I can tell.

Finally, this might come as a shock, but the purpose of the SRD is to help publishers, not allow groups to avoid buying books.

WOTC can afford to do this because 3rd party publishers don't meaningfully compete with them and any lost sales are (relatively) meaningless to a company of their size.

For a 3rd party company to do it is a whole different ball game. Since the two groups of people that would make use of a SRD would be 1) companies that DO compete with them in meaningful ways and 2) people who the company would like to buy their books.

Meanwhile, I could probably find a pirated copy of the whole thing.

Nice.

So if the company won't give it to you, you steal it.

Chuck