GSL news.

[Wulf Ratbane]

Not "having," but "choosing." They chose to go into a business that finds itself somewhat reliant on another company's (WotC's) property. They knew, back when the OGL came out, that the next edition could be closed or under a different license, and this issue could occur. It's a peril of running a business that way.

Utterly incorrect. The OGL is not a license that can be revoked or changed (in any meaningfully detrimental way).

You may be confusing the OGL with the d20 STL. There is nothing inherent to adopting the OGL that creates a reliance on WotC's property. The d20 STL, yes. OGL, no.

Ryan's point (precisely correct, IMO) was that all future editions of D&D would be Open, because any edition of D&D that was far enough removed from the (irrevocably) Open version that it could not be derived from the Open version (whether by WotC or some other entity) would be rejected by the players.

4e certainly does not fit that criteria.

It is still a distinct possibility that some entity will create a derivative version of 3e that is compatible with 4e. Such a version would have everything necessary to "compete" with the official version of 4e except for the Dungeons and Dragons brand-- which of course, is no small thing.

The 4e GSL provides publishers with a new SRD to bootstrap them into the new edition. That's good. It also provides them with the significant advantage of being able to put a D&D compatibility mark on their products. That's beyond good, that's frakkin' amazing.

Unfortunately, it also requires 3PP to abandon their old OGL lines. That's really bad. The biggest, brightest, best publishers, the ones with a proven track record for innovative design and the ability to provide ongoing support for those product lines, are the ones hardest hit.

 

[The Little Raven]

Utterly incorrect. The OGL is not a license that can be revoked or changed (in any meaningfully detrimental way).

I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. There's no suggestion in my post that the OGL can be revoked.

I'm simply talking about WotC being the top dog, and most of the market following the top dog, which will negatively impact those that stay with 3e and the OGL. By choosing to stay with 3e and the OGL, they are choosing a market in which the top dog has moved on.

Such a version would have everything necessary to "compete" with the official version of 4e except for the Dungeons and Dragons brand-- which of course, is no small thing.

One could argue that it's the biggest thing, since more people know what D&D means than the words RPG.

 

[philreed]

So, yeah, you can create a game with basically the same rules, but the entire rules description may be copyrighted, and good luck coming up with a similar enough description to convey meaning that is also distinct enough to avoid a lawsuit.

In my opinion, that's not exactly a huge challenge.

 

[Levi Kornelsen]

So, yeah, you can create a game with basically the same rules, but the entire rules description may be copyrighted, and good luck coming up with a similar enough description to convey meaning that is also distinct enough to avoid a lawsuit.

Grab rulebooks for playing Bridge and Whist.

Contemplate.

 

[Piratecat]

I think we've gotten back on track, but just in case -- no more anti-competition digression, please. Keep this thread focused. If you want to discuss anti-competition issues, feel free to start a new thread on the topic.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I suspect that Wizards put the "Use one or the other but not both" clause in there, and made the other changes to the OGL / GSL, because the OGL did not have quite the effect they wanted it to have. Since everyone else as their opinions stated (with plenty of toy analogies), here is my opinion. Except with a comparison to Videogames instead.

Wizards wants to have the same kind of business model as Valve. They want people to create user mods for their game. They want to license out the game engine to other companies so they can also make content for that game. However, Valve does not let someone take Half Life, make an entirely new game, and then sell it in direct competition to their games.

The OGL was intended to let other publishers make adventures and other content that could be used in D&D, specifically adventures. What did happen was other companies tried to create their own source books. Early on there were alternate monsterous manuals, and prestige class collections. This was not a big problem for Wizards, since they could still be used with Wizards own books.

The publishers of those books realized that the OGL did not really work in their favor though, because people were copying those OGL derived D&D compatible rules and putting them in free rules collections. This also hit Wizards, but Wizards could dictate what was OGL or not. But if you published OGL derived material, than your material could be put online for free more or less in its entirety. So how could a 3rd party publisher prevent their customers from cherry picking their best content from free online sources that they could not shut down?

The answer is to create an entirely new OGL derived game. This is how we ended up with True20 and the like. This works out because material created for something like True20 is not as directly compatible with D&D. You can use it, but it takes a bit more work. It also puts Wizards in the position of publishing material that could be used with their game.

The current situation for Wizards would be like people giving away full copies of Half Life alongside their own user created mods. On top of that, people are doing the equivalent of also giving away or selling games that compete directly against half life. There is a reason why videogames do not use the GPL license that Linux uses.

I have not taken a look at it, but based on what has been mentioned in different threads, I expect that the new GSL license will prevent people from creating entirely new games. I also suspect it will have clauses that prevent people from essentially copying 97% of the rulebook and making it available for free.

Now here is where I get around to making a point rather than just saying things people already know...

If a company makes a 3.5 / 4.0 hybrid product, they would have to release some of that content under the old OGL. At some point, someone would release rules very similar to 4.0 under the original OGL. This would in turn result in the same problem for WotC. Within about 1 year or less, Wizards would be right back to the situation of having 3rd parties who cannot create profitable products that directly support 4th Edition, so WotC would then end up with more games competing against their primary product line based on their own rule set. They do not want that to happen.

The "use one or the other rule" is a work around. It is not a very good workaround, but it is probably about the only one they have which would work. They cannot stop any company from continuing to use the 3.5 ruleset as the basis of their products. But they can prevent them from using the 4th edition rule set. And they can take measures to make sure that the kind of 3rd party products they want to see are not subjected to legalized piracy.

The new arrangement will give Wizards and those who work with them the means to create the support products they want under more favorable conditions than the original OGL. They protect their ruleset, and they protect the kind of works they want to see made to support 4th edition. Finally, they get to keep all the 4th edition specifics out of the OGL.

The OGL was worth trying, but flawed in its execution. It had a lot of benefits, but also a great many unintended side effects. The GSL will probably remedy most of the problems for Wizards. The 'One or the Other' rule is meant to keep the protections of the GSL from being eroded. But it has the unfortunate side effect of screwing companies who aren't ready or are not willing to abandon OGL based products.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[SSquirrel]

But what do people say about Palladium?

Great ideas, horrible system?

 

[breschau]

Grab rulebooks for playing Bridge and Whist.

Contemplate.

Are you serious? Those are both so old that they're public domain in every country in the world. Anyone can use them without fear of a lawsuit. We're talking about games made in the last century, preferably something still under copyright, like, I don't know... D&D. Bridge is at least 119 years old, Whist is at least 167 years old. D&D is 34 years old, even the original version is still under copyright.

 

[Kishin]

Ummm,

You may want to do a search for a little thing called Dark Heresy. Just sayin'.

JoS

They're printing it. I highly doubt they're going to publish a great deal for it. The Rogue Trader sourcebook already turned to dust, so I'm not expecting a lot of support for Dark Heresy.

Look at how much printed RPG material FFRPG has released in the last 3 years. I think they'll keep what push they have with Midnight, and do maybe 1-2 products tops for Dark Heresy.

GW was idiotic to dump the RPG in the process, but they probably were appalled it wasn't generating scads of cash like their miniatures were.

 

[Zil]

Surprised...a little. Dissappointed...well considering what Mr. Rouse said about the 7 figure development figure...I can see why they'd want to maximise their return potential

A seven figure development figure isn't all that surprising. Sure, it might sound like big stuff for the PnP RPG world, but consider the number of designers and developers involved and then cost out their salaries for the time they were involved - add in cost of project managers, brand managers and so on for however many years it was being worked on (including the under wraps period). Did anyone really expect anything less than a 7 figure cost?