Goodman Games 3.5 Revival

[Nellisir]

I was sure that I had seen them given publshing credit for (at least one edition of) M&M.

In section 15 of the OGL, yeah.

But I truly don't understand what the difference is between d20 and OGL. I'll look at the text again tonight, but I was honestly under the impression that they were two names for the same thing. Ok, wait. My wheels are spinning once again: d20 predates OGL, doesn't it? d20 was the first incarnation, OGL the second, and now GSL is the thrid. Am I even close to right?

No. Sorry.

The OGL allows people to use the rules from the SRD (functionally 3.5 D&D) to create their own products & games. The d20 license allowed (past tense) OGL users (and only people who were using the OGL) to say "compatible with Dungeons & Dragons". That, in essence, was it. The OGL controlled rules, the d20L controlled statements of compatibility. A company could release the exact same product under the OGL and the OGL + d20L; the only difference would be that the d20L product could/would say "compatible with 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons". The two products would be EXACTLY the same inside.

WotC has revoked the d20 license. The OGL, according to language written into it from the beginning, can never be revoked or altered, by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The GSL has no such assurance.

The OGL, frankly, was fracking brilliant.

Incidently, the OGL does -not- mean anyone gives up control of their copyright, so WotC was not required to use it for 4e. They can't -withdraw- material already published (ie, the SRD), but they are not required to publish any further material under it. And they didn't, essentially. The GSL controls use of both rules and compatibility statements for 4e: it's the OGL and the d20 combined for 4e.

 

[Leif]

The OGL allows people to use the rules from the SRD (functionally 3.5 D&D) to create their own products & games. The d20 license allowed (past tense) OGL users (and only people who were using the OGL) to say "compatible with Dungeons & Dragons". That, in essence, was it. The OGL controlled rules, the d20L controlled statements of compatibility. A company could release the exact same license under the OGL and the OGL + d20L; the only difference would be that the d20L product could/would say "compatible with 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons". The two products would be EXACTLY the same inside.

WotC has revoked the d20 license. The OGL, according to language written into it from the beginning, can never be revoked or altered, by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The GSL has no such assurance.

The OGL, frankly, was fracking brilliant.

Incidently, the OGL does -not- mean anyone gives up control of their copyright, so WotC was not required to use it for 4e. They can't -withdraw- material already published (ie, the SRD), but they are not required to publish any further material under it. And they didn't, essentially. The GSL controls use of both rules and compatibility statements for 4e: it's the OGL and the d20 combined for 4e.

So, now, why does it occur to me that if WotC wanted to get out of having to live up to STOP HONORING OGL, the best way, maybe the ONLY A way to do so would be to publish a new edition of D&D, eg. 4E. Hmmmmmmmmmmm........ Or is this all just a total coincidence? (I generally tend to be of the school of thought that holds that almost every coincidence is no accident!)

EDIT NOTE: My bad, poor word choices corrected in all caps.!

 

[Filcher]

(I generally tend to be of the school of thought that holds that almost every coincidence is no accident!)

\

You know I brush my teeth every night, and without fail, the sun rises the next morning. Coincidence? By this school of thought you all better hope I brush my teeth tonight!

 

[Leif]

You know I brush my teeth every night, and without fail, the sun rises the next morning. Coincidence? By this school of thought you all better hope I brush my teeth tonight!

The dude in your avatar looks like he might have skipped brushing for a few nights....

 

[Mark]

If it did not concern WotC that someone might try to put out an OGL game that mimicked 4E, then it definitely should have, and certainly there were any number of threads on numerous message boards about attempting to do just that. The mechanics of the game are fundamentally different, the jargon applied to those mechnics is somewhat different and specialized, and a good deal of the core features of the game, like powers, are peppered with unusual and legally-defensible naming conventions. One would have to be giving the designers and developers at WotC very little foresight and not much credit for intelligence to claim what makes their IP more easily protected is mere coincidence and happenstance. It's unrelated that the sun rises the morning after brushing your teeth but it isn't coincidence that you put on sunblock before going to the beach.

 

[Nellisir]

So, now, why does it occur to me that if WotC wanted to get out of having to live up to OGL, the best way, maybe the ONLY way to do so would be to publish a new edition of D&D, eg. 4E. Hmmmmmmmmmmm........ Or is this all just a total coincidence? (I generally tend to be of the school of thought that holds that almost every coincidence is no accident!)

Edit: In sum, you only need the OGL if you're borrowing from someone. WotC isn't borrowing from anyone. They -are- the source material (via the SRD). Everyone borrows from them.

IANAL blah blah blah, etc.

Anyways, this is maybe a little bit complicated.

WotC didn't have to "live up to" the OGL, in any sense.

The OGL doesn't give away your (intellectual) property or copyright, it grants other people a right to use it, without asking you*, and provided they follow certain guidelines (primarily, that they use the OGL in turn). You still own your copyrights.

So lets say Happy Games releases the FunLand Campaign Setting, and says everything is OGL. What does that mean? Well, for starters, it means anyone can reproduce the FunLand Campaign Setting, in whole or in part, with or without changes, without asking you, provided they include and utilize the OGL as directed by the OGL**. (One of those requirements, incidently, is that anything labelled OGC stays OGC, so they can't "close" any OGC they take from elsewhere). It also means that -that- version of the FunLand Campaign Setting is always and forever OGC. You can't undo it.

HOWEVER. Happy Games still owns the FunLand Campaign Setting. They are under no obligation to keep it in print or make it available. After the first month, they've made 6 sales, and have decided to pull it back and rewrite it. Six months later, the HappyFunLand Campaign Setting is released. In this version, all descriptive text is closed, and all mechanics are open. The text is exactly the same in both version (FL and HFL), and the FunLand descriptive text is still open, but only 6 people in the world have access to it.

Giddy Games wants to make a GiddyRules version of FunLand. Giddy Games bought 4 of the 6 OGL copies of FunLand, but they don't like the OGL and don't want to use it. So they contact Happy Games and arrange for another license, between Giddy Games and Happy Games, that lets them use the descriptive text from FunLand (they don't need the mechanics, because they're using their own GiddyRules), and a few months later, release FunLand - GiddyRules! The descriptive text in FL-GR, despite being the same as in FL and HFL, is neither open nor closed under the OGL - it's just regular, copyrighted text.

Now, one more permutation. Happy Games added FunPoints to the rules. In the FunLand CS, FunPoints were OGC, even though they weren't based on the SRD at all. Because FunPoints weren't based on the SRD, Happy Games didn't -have- to make them open, and with the release of HappyFunLand, decided to close them. Because Happy Games invented FunPoints, they can decide on a case by case basis whether or not to make them open.

Bringing this around to WotC...because WotC invented D&D, they don't have to use the OGL with D&D if they don't want to (and they don't). The whole of WotC's D&D is WotC's FunPoints. The SRD is FunLand. WotC only has to use the OGL if they use a 3pp's material, and don't want to work out a private license (or buy it outright; see:Eberron).

The problem, from WotC's standpoint, isn't the OGL itself. It's that instead of 6 people downloading FunLand, 6 million people downloaded the SRD. They gave people the tools to make supplements to the D&D system, not (fully?) realizing they were also giving people the tools to replace D&D as a brand.

People made supplements to D&D; they also made competition. And 4e is WotC's way of reclaiming, individualizing, and differentiating D&D from that competition.

*While I understand that asking is the nice thing to do, the OGL was constructed so you don't have to ask. If you were supposed to ask every time you wanted to use OGC, it's licensing.
**While possible, I've never actually seen anything but a "rules" system copied wholesale, and I've never seen that marketed, except for the Pocket Players Handbook and several pdf/online original SRDs. Never a campaign setting or any kind of accessory or adventure.

 

[AllisterH]

I
The OGL, frankly, was fracking brilliant.

.

This may sound silly but why is the OGL brilliant for WOTC?

I can see many people think it is brilliant for OTHERS, but from WOTC's perspective? What am I missing?

 

[DaveMage]

This may sound silly but why is the OGL brilliant for WOTC?

Since WotC is no longer releasing open game content (such as they did in the 3.x SRD(s)), I don't know how good it is for them any more other than to keep people in the hobby via other OGL games. IIRC, someone once said that a significant number of people, after trying other games, return to D&D.

On the few instances I have tried other RPGs, once we've been finished with them I've always returned to D&D. Of course, now that (essentially) all editions of D&D are being supported either with official products (4e), or with the retro-clones and/or Pathfinder, "returning to D&D" doesn't necessarily mean playing the version WotC is currently selling.

 

[Nellisir]

This may sound silly but why is the OGL brilliant for WOTC?

I can see many people think it is brilliant for OTHERS, but from WOTC's perspective? What am I missing?

It might not look like it does at the moment, but WotC has a limited perspective. Normally any sort of license a company creates would share a similar limited perspective, but the OGL doesn't. That's the brilliant part. WotC was able, as a company, to create something that benefitted and empowered the community more than themselves. I believe, over time, the OGL will do more to keep the RPG community alive and vital than any other single "event" since the creation of D&D. And that will be good for everyone.

Without a community, there will be no WotC.

Edit: And just because the OGL doesn't benefit WotC -now- didn't mean it wasn't a brilliant move -then-, and it doesn't mean it isn't a brilliant idea now. How many inventors didn't make money on their inventions that we use every day now? It might not have benefitted them in the short term, but they enriched all of us in the long term.

And, I do think the audience for 4e would be -significantly- smaller without the OGL. Really, really, smaller.

 

[Ourph]

The OGL allows people to use the rules from the SRD (functionally 3.5 D&D) to create their own products & games. The d20 license allowed (past tense) OGL users (and only people who were using the OGL) to say "compatible with Dungeons & Dragons". That, in essence, was it. The OGL controlled rules, the d20L controlled statements of compatibility. A company could release the exact same product under the OGL and the OGL + d20L; the only difference would be that the d20L product could/would say "compatible with 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons". The two products would be EXACTLY the same inside.

This is almost 100% wrong. The d20 license did not require the concurrent use of the OGL. They were seperate licenses that both allowed access to the open game content in the SRD. You are correct that the d20 STL also allowed the use of the d20 logo and trademark. However, the license also came with a number of additional restrictions, including that products released under it couldn't include a character creation, stat generation or XP advancement system and that numerous terms and mechanics couldn't be modified from their definitions in the SRD. There were MANY products released with the OGL which could never be used in conjunction with the d20 STL (any complete game like Mongoose's Conan or Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds for example), because they didn't adhere to those restrictions.

Which, ultimately, is the best argument against the statement that the OGL was never intended to allow for competing games to be produced using the rules in the SRD. If that was never intended, then the d20 STL would have been the only license necessary. The only reason to have a more open license like the OGL is specifically to allow competing game systems to be made.