GSL: Necromancer Games SOL?

[Irda Ranger]

I'd really be surprised if WotC prevented third-parties from porting over stuff that was released in the 3.5 days. WotC is already facing the very real risk of losing a large amount of sales to third party publishers who are sticking with d20 3.5 under the OGL/SRD. I don't think they'd want to make it worse by provoking potential customers who'd be willing to play 4E, but only as long as [insert favorite 3.5 setting/rulebook] is ported over.

I can see a lot of people saying "Sorry, WotC, 4E looks cool and all, but no Iron Kingdoms, no 4E for me." (replace Iron Kingdoms with whatever you choose).

 

[Maggan]

Hey, a chance to speculate wildly based on wild specuation on a blog! And I've got no info or knowledge whatsoever to base my speculation on! Count me in!

I wildly speculate that WotC will not have a clause that forbids OGC from the "3e era" to be used with the 4e GSL . I just can't see how they would "police" such a thing.

Having said that, I could see a scenario where WotC tried to put limitations on use of their IP, which could be something that would have an effect on Tome of Horrors.

I also guess that this is one possibility that Necromancer is prepared for.

I also guess that this will not have any effect on my byuing 4e products.

/M

 

[Spinachcat]

I too shall speculate on the speculation of a speculator!

The new GSL will limit companies to the following products - Adventures. Nothing but adventures. You can include unique monsters in your adventures and put your adventures in a unique setting, but you can NOT publish a monster book or a setting book. Wanna include a new class, magic item or feat? Awesome, as long as it is in the context of an adventure for D&D 4e.

That's my crazy guess.

 

[GMSkarka]

Does that mean that aside from the publishers that pay the $5000, nobody in the general gets to see the GSL until August?

What those of us on the original conference call were told was that the GSL will be made public when the game is released in June, but will have a clause stating that use of the GSL cannot begin until the go-live date (which, for the non-Phase-1 publishers, will be January 2009).

 

[Darrin Drader]

I don't think Necromancer would be SOL, even if there is a clause in there saying they can't do this. Clark has said that he knows he's risking the money he's investing in this book, so if the GSL says he can't do it, he can still attempt to make special arrangements with WotC to get his book published anyway. He would probably just need to give them a cut. Even if the answer to that is no, again, Necromancer is probably strong enough to scrap development on one book and then make all future products fully compliant with the GSL. I think people really have little to worry about, Necro will be OK either way.

 

[The Little Raven]

Let's be clear about this whole thing, since there seem to be some misconceptions about the GSL/SRD, their NDA, and the public launch.

Select 3rd-party companies have signed the NDA in order to see the GSL. The GSL is not completed yet, which is why we've seen Lidda tell us that some restrictions will hopefully change, which is why they haven't seen it yet. This means that nobody has paid the $5000, which they only pay after seeing the GSL and agreeing to proceed with Phase 1.

The GSL/SRD goes live effective June 6th, the date the core books are released. This means that every Tom, Dick, and Harry will be able to see the license. This also means that you can look over the SRD and the core books you just bought and figure out the extent of what you can draw upon. However, you will still be unable to publish any for-sale products (they've made it clear that people putting up house rules and non-revenue generating fan material will be in the clear) until January 1, 2009, since you are not a Phase 1 publisher.

All of this information (with the exception of clarifications by Le Rouse and Lidda [whose real name I don't want to risk misspelling ]) is available from their OGL Conference Call announcement.

 

[HarbingerX]

More wild speculation

Based on rumor, innuendo and vast amounts of lurking, I too feel expert enough to opine on this subject...

Releasing items under the OGL does not remove your copyright on the material - it only restricts your ability to prevent others from using it without your permission. So anyone who has released their original work under the OGL is free to release it and attach a different license. What you can't do is take someone else's OGL content and remove the license, so including any SRD material in your release becomes impossible.

We know that the terms of the GSL will be more restrictive than the OGL, so there may be material that is not compatible with the GSL. I suspect that there will be restrictions on the ability to republish other people's material released under the GSL - giving WotC and 3rd-party publishers better control over their intellectual property.

What is really wild speculation is if there will be terms to prevent the publication of other rules systems or wildly different settings (sci-fi, horror, etc.) I don't see how they could craft language to that effect that would hold up to legal scrutiny but lawyers are paid well to work that out.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I dunno. Take all the rules out, dump them, replace them with new rules. Sure, they all look like the same monsters, but there's no real OGL in there if you do that. Right?

Piece of cake.

Yeah, I'm not sure what would be the purpose of "here's a GSL; please don't use it" would be. If WotC didn't want people to create content for D&D, they wouldn't bother creating a license.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Tome of Horrors has a problem. The original NG monsters can be redone under the GSL, but the monsters that are the property of Wizards would only be able to be redone if Wizards agrees to it with a new agreement.

Cheers!

I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I understand it, when it comes to IP laws and the OGL, we're looking at three things: patent, copyright and trademark. Copyright ONLY applies if they're directly copy-pasting text; they can steal as many ideas as they want with no problems here. Trademark may apply to a few D&D-exclusive monsters like beholders (the stuff not in the SRD), but they definitely can't trademark fantasy staples like orcs and zombies that predate D&D. (And honestly I'm not sure they've really trademarks beholders and the rest. They consider them "PI" and thus not part of the SRD, but that's not legally binding outside of the OGL.) So what we're down to is patent. Patents have to be registered, and AFAIK Wizards hasn't done this with any D&D rules. (I don't think most RPG rules are even patentable, considering that "mathematical formulas" aren't.)

So if I just took the 4e core books, rewrote the whole thing (no reusing quotes, tables, etc), and snipped out those few trademarked monsters and names, I could publish it and the WotC lawyers would have a hell of a time stopping me.

OGL was intended to establish a clear legal ground for people to make content. I think it's even specifically stated that most OGL stuff may not be protected IP; the license is intended as a positive catchall to assure people that WOTC wasn't going to start battering people's doors down for publishing 3e sourcebooks.

In this case, well, those monsters can only be "property" of WotC if they're trademarked, which they're probably not. (Necromancer will be rewriting rules and flavor text, so copyright and patent law wouldn't apply.)

This is of course assuming Necromancer Games doesn't care if they piss off WotC and is willing to fend off their angry lawyers if necessary, both of which seem kind of unlikely.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Yeah, I'm not sure what would be the purpose of "here's a GSL; please don't use it" would be. If WotC didn't want people to create content for D&D, they wouldn't bother creating a license.

I'd argue that the OGL ended up working out to WotCs advantage. When the glut of D20 products hit, it lasted for a couple years, and at that point there was a consumer backlash against 3rd party products with the D20 logo. The commonly used argument was that the 3rd party stuff was mostly cheaply produced and of inferior quality. The fact of the matter is that most of these products had a higher production value than many of the TSR 2nd edition products, often much higher. In terms of the inferior quality argument, I'd argue that a few products weren't so great, but the vast majority of them were good, not to mention the fact that they were often written by the very same people who were writing products for WotC. Regardless of truth vs. perception, the fact of the matter is that the belief that WotC was making better stuff on the whole drove a lot of people back to WotC. These are possibly the same people who, under a previous edition, might have jumped the D&D ship entirely for a whole different RPG system.