GSL: Necromancer Games SOL?

[Darkwolf71]

Heck, Terry Brooks built his career out of ripping off Tolkien. Made a truck full of money doing it too.

I wouldn't say he built his carrer on it. Got his start certainly, there is no doubt that TSoS was a thinly disguised rip of TLotR, but I would argue that after that Brooks quickly found his own footing. To the point that (As I recall, though it has been several years.) is his later Shannara books much of the more obvious copies were rarely mentioned.

 

[Darkwolf71]

Oh, you mean like Eragon? Yeah, great "original" story there.

Star Wars wasn't exactly 'original' material either.


Besides, that 15 year old wrote a better novel than a few adults I know who have tried.

 

[TerraDave]

double cross posting....

Mr. Pramas clarified his statement on the Tome of Horrors, and the para in the op, here.

http://www.chrispramas.com/

Topic Necromancy for Necromaner
In my essay on the OGL and GSL the other day I said this:

"The thing I'm really interested to find out is whether the GSL will have a clause that forbids its use with the OGL. I think this is entirely possible. It would the mean that you couldn't take previously released OGC and use it in a book released under the GSL. A book like the already announced Tome of Horrors 4th edition would not be possible under this restriction."

From comments here and on EN World, it seems I ought to clarify this statement.

I picked Tome of Horrors as an example for several reasons. First, it's one of the few announced 4E products from third party publishers. More importantly, it's an example of a book that is really going to require the use of the OGL to do right. This is because of the history of the project. Necromancer made a deal with WotC many years ago to update old AD&D monsters that hadn't made it into 3E. Tome of Horrors got those monsters back into the game and opened them up for use by other companies via the OGL.

Many people have asked if companies can take their own copyrighted material and update it to 4E without using the OGL. The answer is that yes, of course, you can do what you like with material you own. The issue with Tome of Horrors is that Necromancer does not own those old D&D monsters. They licensed them from WotC. Now they did also add some of their own monsters and continued to do so in subsequent volumes of the series. So Necro could do a Tome of Horrors that was 4E updates of only their own original monsters and that'd be fine; it just wouldn't have the unique selling point of the original. Now personally I can live without an update of the flumph or the adherer, but they do have their place in the D&D lore.

Should there be a GSL restriction on using the OGL with the new license, the only way those monsters could be done would be for Necro to make a new licensing deal with WotC. I don't see that happening though. The original deal was made with Anthony Valterra, who is long gone from WotC. He made that agreement without really talking to R&D about it, and it was not a popular move at the time. I think it likely that was a one time thing.

In any case, there's no point in freaking out about anything now because we still don't know the terms of the GSL. Hopefully, we'll see it soon and then the speculation can end and the real planning can begin.

 

[The Little Raven]

Besides, that 15 year old wrote a better novel than a few adults I know who have tried.

It reads like a book that a 15-year-old wrote and his mom edited.

And that's not a good thing.

 

[catsclaw227]

Easy. It opens WotC to being sued by other companies for copyright infringement.

Suppose Pelor is covered by the GSL. I, "Ripoff Press", publish a sourcebook detailing Pelor's worship and temples. I'm not required to release any of that as open content. But if Wizards is working on their own Pelor sourcebook, they now have to worry that the material I've already published is similar enough to the things they wrote as to invite a lawsuit.

Until we see what the GSL looks like we can't really say what we can and can't release as Open Content.

Oh... and the "catsclaw" handle was taken back in 2003 when I tried it. You are lucky to have my favorite PC's name.

 

[DaveMage]

Oh... and the "catsclaw" handle was taken back in 2003 when I tried it. You are lucky to have my favorite PC's name.

This could get confusing....

 

[catsclaw227]

This could get confusing....

You ain't kiddin' pal!

I used to have another one, cats_claw back in 2002 with like 300 posts or so, that I forgot about (or forgot the login or something) and created catsclaw227 in 2003.

I asked the moderators if they could merge them together, but that just wasn't possible. Though as a database professional, I can't see that there would be much difficulty with it. Once you write the script once, you save it for anyone else.

 

[kenmarable]

One real worry I have with the GSL is that it will only cover re-using WotC's material. While that's fine and dandy, if it is OGL-incompatible, then there is not industry standard means of sharing content between publishers. Although there wasn't as much of that in 3.x as I think there could have been, it still occurred especially in using monsters and such in adventures.

From personal experience, nearly every adventure I wrote used a non-WotC monster. Paizo does it quite regularly as well. I know many, many publishers at some point used at least a piece of another 3rd party's OGC.

If the GSL is either OGL-incompatible and does not cover 3rd party to 3rd party content sharing (after all, I can see WotC thinking that's not their problem), then we might wind up a convoluted mass of publisher-specific licenses (if they even want to let other publishers use their content), Creative Commons licenses (if that's possible with the GSL), several small groups competing to come up with their own OGL style license (and logo, cuz people love their logos) and convince publishers that theirs is the best, etc.

Although the OGL wasn't perfect and wasn't 100% crystal clear, it was pretty darn good and pretty darn clear, and most importantly, it was the industry standard for content sharing, whether it was WotC-3rd party or 3rd party-3rd party. I really, really hope the GSL covers this as well or at least is OGL-compatible. Given the directions WotC has gone in lately, I have my doubts that they see these as priorities, but that's just wild speculation that I hope isn't true. I'd hate to see 3rd party-3rd party content sharing to become such a legal mess as to be worthless.

 

[Filcher]

Actually, what is more troubling is that it is February and the 4th Ed SRD (or what ever they are calling it) is not already in the hands of those who have ponied up with the $5,000 already . . .

Agreed. The ratio of "worth" (decreasing the longer WotC takes to hand over the GSL) to "expense" (fixed at $5,000 for early adopters) is getting worse with each day. What's the point of forking over 5k to be an early adopter if you don't have the time get a quality product out in time for Gen Con?

WotC wanted to raise the quality standards for the first wave of 3rd party releases, but it is decreasing the chances for this with each passing week.

 

[Lizard]

Agreed. The ratio of "worth" (decreasing the longer WotC takes to hand over the GSL) to "expense" (fixed at $5,000 for early adopters) is getting worse with each day. What's the point of forking over 5k to be an early adopter if you don't have the time get a quality product out in time for Gen Con?

WotC wanted to raise the quality standards for the first wave of 3rd party releases, but it is decreasing the chances for this with each passing week.

Baseless speculation -- I think WOTC was blindsided by the "Use any version" clause of the OGL, quickly decided to just call it a new license to get around THAT, and then realized that a new license which denies access to existing OGC is of less use to publishers. At the very least, the 3x SRD would need to be published under the GSL so that works which derive from it can be upgraded to 4e without massive rewrites of mostly boilerplate text. (I suspect a lot of publisher's 4e plans will be to churn out their best 3x products in bright&shiny 4e editions, as well as capitalize on the splatbook gap.) This also open up problems, since, if the 3x SRD is placed under the GSL, it means publishers can easily produce 'dual stat' products with a 4e brand and 3x content. Oy. It's very dubious they would have made the announcement without them being ready with what they THOUGHT was a valid license to show prospective developers; I can only conclude something has gone wrong.

WOTC might go for a variant of the "Gentleman's Agreement" which was used while the origial OGL was being finalized. They might say, for example, "We will never place 3x under the GSL, but we won't sue you for 'upgrading' old material to 4e, even if it includes portions of copyrighted text from the 3x SRD. However, you cannot use that text in new material or advertise any kind of compatibility with 3x."

Really, the old OGL/STL split was the best solution; a 4e STL *with marketing support* would probably have satisfied WOTCs needs. For example, suppose that adhering to the STL got you space on DDI to cross-promote your books? Or that WOTC worked to help sell "4e Brand" products as superior/more worth buying? The main reason that OGL-only books took off was that there was no value in the D20 logo to make it worth jumping through the hoops, and the vague "community standards" clause undoubtedly scared some publishers.

Lastly, you can only sell a PHB to one person once. Fearing "lost sales" due to OGL-only games is probably silly; I'm willing to bet only a very small number of gamers bought M&M or True 20 who did not also own a PHB. Likewise, the use of the SRD as a PHB substitute, instead of aid, is pretty small; the 4e books will be available on file-sharing services within 0.01 seconds of publication, and anyone inclined to steal rather than buy will do so.