Simple as that. They announced the CC-BY change for the 5e SRD and (almost) everybody was thrilled. The web was loaded with posts saying things like "we won!" Sounds more like Wizards "won" a corporate PR battle to me as opposed to truly protecting the game's legacy.I would be shocked to find out they were working on it at all. Everyone immediately caved when they put the anemic 5E srd in CC and stopped holding their feet to the fire.
The sentiment from many 5e players re:the older SRDs seems to be general indifference, or at least apathy. "Why would I care about the older ones? I'm not playing that game." Or perhaps for some it's only ignorance: "Wait, they didn't make everything CC-BY after all? The OGL is still needed for something?"
On the first point, I expect you're right on the money. As for the bolded, I 100% agree.What do I think they’ll do, nothing at all or the bare minimum. They might update the SRD, they might not. They made a lot of promises and most they haven’t followed through on.
What I want them to do is go through the entire history of the game and release an OGL and CC-BY version of the full rules, sans specific IP, of every single version of the game from OD&D to all the Basics to 4E and the upcoming revisions.
Especially after the DnD'24-5 books are out, they really don't have an excuse, unless there are hundreds more job cuts in the interim. And there's literally no reason for the 3.x SRDs to not be CC by now, like Reynard said, it's an afternoon's worth of labor to proof that content.
Fact is, if WotC never releases the older editions into CC-BY, it's a marketplace win for them.
- Keep people nervous about using OGL 1.0a to create vintage-D&D-clones? Check.
- Retain 4th Edition mechanics to themselves reintroduce under new guises in 5e revisions.
- Most importantly, the focus of the public remains squarely on their 5th Edition books and products.
Speaking of 4e, while it's true that making a 4e SRD would be time-consuming (as would both a 1e/2e, and BX/RC SRD) it would not be quite as hard as Kyle Brink made it out to be. The existing 84-page 4e SRD from 2009 already makes copious references to which mechanics and powers in the rulebooks were allowed to be referenced by GSL-licensed third parties. All WotC would have to do is populate (by that, I mean copy-paste and lay out) the actual texts from those rulebook sections, and snip out any setting/lore references. Could probably be done by one person in a week or so, then checked for IP mentions by another couple people before sending it out. No, it wouldn't be Essentials nor would it have the corrected Monster Manual 3 encounter math, but it would be a whole lot better than nothing, would rejuvenate interest in 4e (which would result in digital PDF and POD sales for Wizards!) and wouldn't be nearly as time-consuming as crafting an AD&D/2e/RC SRD from the raw rulebooks.
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