OK, this is fair and you are entitled to feel this way. I completely disagree that a retreat from the OGL is a threat to D&D, though this isn't the topic of this thread.
And here I think, again, you are stretching it quite a bit. None of this has happened, and fanning the flames with fear tactics doesn't help.
I read your most recent comment on your blog, and you make some good points, especially about a clear-cut fan site policy.
But you can't use quotes around the word "charging" in context to what Ema was doing. That is swaying the argument in a clearly biased direction and not looking objectively at the situation.
(But.... admittedly, it IS a blog site, and objectivity is not the keystone that holds these sites up.)
Ema was charging, not "charging" for services. He was asking for pay to keep power cards and sheets online with closed content, allowing for visibility to protected full text descriptions of 4e content.
If I recall, he was running ads (at least he was when I last visited) and had even had a Paypal donation option at one time to cover hosting costs.
I am pretty sure that WOTC would NOT have shut him down for that. He decided to make a business out of protected content. This is not cool in the eyes of WOTC, nor would it be for most any other RPG Publisher out there.
How would Paizo handle it if I was selling content that utilized protected content about Golarian without their permission? They just might send me a C&D as well. Maybe, maybe not. But I certainly wouldn't begrudge them if they did.
I posted this also above. I am not sure it was about charging (commercial values competition within a market) but actual competition which is competition with the whole market itself. A site like d20srd.org is free and it seems Wotc sees such venture as undesired actual competition. If one produces a free character builder that competes with their commercial character builder and Wotc can shut the free one down it seems it will do so. This is the policy game for businesses and deals with many factors of the market and it seems now that Wotc is on the aggressive. It makes sense though: initially expand the market with OGL and then try to take as much as you can.
What I see negatively is not Wotc current policy but what it has done with the OGL. Hopefully right now Wotc can limit itself to do only its own business and not mess up with the market like it did 8 years ago. But of course this is my opinion, one I have expressed more times and I know that there are other people over here that disagree with it.
Last edited:
