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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dmccoy1693" data-source="post: 4436505" data-attributes="member: 51747">Personal rule of mine, Corjay. Treat everyone like they are well informed until they prove otherwise or tell me to act otherwise. You have been making claims about things that lead me to believe that you thought you were well informed. I was wrong. So, changing modes ...  Why was the OGL created? To keep companies from suing each other while allowing other companies that would otherwise go copyright happy. TSR (or T$R as they were called in the 90's because they were so sue happy) filed quite a few law suits against companies that went copyright. TSR lost almost off of them. The few that TSR did win is when another company blatently violated TSR IP. All in all it cost TSR quite a bit of money with very little gain. When WotC took over they didn't want to fall in the same sue trap. So they created a "safe haven" for other companies to publish in. The license basicly said, "You follow a few simple rules and we will not sue you." It kept WotC from having to sue people left and right and it kept other companies within the bounds that WotC wanted. WotC only had a few instances of things going wrong and they were easily handled.  The license allowed WotC to have certain things all to themselves and certain other things any other company could do with as they wish. Things like Beholders or skill tricks or greyhawk were never touched by another company. And 3PPs played nice as a return favor to WotC.  Why did WotC give away so much of the system? One of Dancey's ideas is that it is NOT other companies or other games that hurt TSR (and the RPG industry as a whole) but competing systems. Two prime examples of this are Spelljammer and the Dragonlance SAGA system. Both Spelljammer, basicly being D&D in space, and the SAGA systems were different from D&D's core system. So you basicly had two D&D games that you couldn't easily port over material. This created market "inefficiency" according to Dancey. By getting everyone under the same roof (er system), there will be increased revenue for WotC. D&D has the name recognition and WotC has the distribution capabilities and capital for larger print runs then anyone else in the industry. They can be places where no one else can and they will be able to make more money then anyone else. All the while still giving smaller companies the chance to make a decent buck and the chance to make something of themselves.  So how is this different with the (current) GSL? Excellent question.  One of the first things that Paizo did after losing the magazines was take come of the classic monsters and redefining them. In Pathfinder #1 they turned Goblins into something alot closer to the Grimlins from the movie Grimlins/Grimlins 2. Mongoose's first product line was all about taking various monsters and expanding upon them. Paizo, if they went 4E, would definitely be in violation of this. Mongoose could be. This point puts a real damper on creativity. This is a change from the d20 license.   emphasis mine. This is a point of serious confusion. So 4.1 says I can't redefine something, but 5.7 says I can't make it look like it came from their picture. Back to the goblin example, how can a company have a picture of a goblin that is both not derived from WotC's artwork and without redefining the goblin? Sounds like a catch 22 to me.  The OGL was in plain simple language. But the GSL is meant to be confusing?   Now, I'm not a lawyer, but to me this sounds like a licensee is signing over some of their rights to sue WotC for specific circumstances. As discussed previously, the GSL has a number of ways that Wizards can sue the licensee, but the licensee has to sign over certain right to sue back? That is not the "safe harbor" type of environment of Wizards of 8 years ago. This shows a definite shift in priorities and make some (myself included) wonder if WotC's returning to the days of T$R. This shift also begs the question as to where future shifts will be going to. </blockquote>

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