Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[mamba]

If you're saying publishers will go to court just to be able to keep selling old stuff, I definitely do not think so.

they aren’t, they go for the right to produce new stuff

 

[jgbrowning]

What a court says isn't important. The trust is what's important.

And that has definitely changed. Irrevocably, you might even say

So everything has changed.

I'll go ahead and say, "I disagree again." The issue is the legality and safe harbor quality of using WotC Open Game Content. Any court will (most likely) resolve both issues, and when that happens, there's no need of "trust" in its use as that would qualify as "verified."

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

The exact stance WotC - or the courts - ultimately decides to take is a footnote by now.

I disagree. The legal status of the Open Game Content put into all the various SRDs by WotC is far from a footnote in anything right now.

(How do I know? Because it is that content that WotC is trying so desperately to prevent others from accessing freely. It is literally the reason for everything that they're doing regarding the OGL.)

joe b.

 

[glass]

Who's to say--but--allow me to refer you to 2008-2012 when for the first time in history a competing game was outselling d&d. And they weren't even trying to claim the right to void the old ogl back then.

Note that this is a myth. According to a flawed reporting methodology, PF1 outsold 4e in particular channels. Meanwhile DDi alone was making staggering amounts of money.

 

[mamba]

Note that this is a myth. According to a flawed reporting methodology, PF1 outsold 4e in particular channels. Meanwhile DDi alone was making staggering amounts of money.

for which we have no evidence at all, and the fact that the edition was killed so fast basically points to the opposite.

We can go in circles on this all day long, or we move on and focus on something more productive…

 

[kjdavies]

One of the big problems with that is that 6e is really 5.5e and just about all you'll need to create new content would already out there in SRD land.

(Edit: the other big one is that's what they did with 4e and the GSL, and they believe that environment is what created their largest competitor, so...)

joe b.

(I would call that a fair assessment; they raised the cost of playing in their playground -- 4e -- to the point many publishers decided to go somewhere else... starting with one of them building a new playground that looked a lot like the old one.)

 

[CapnZapp]

when that happens

I wouldn't hold my breath.

(I'm not even saying it can't happen. Only that people aren't trusting WotC to keep playing in its garden anymore. Whether the garden is safe or not is somewhat less of a pressing issue when it's empty)

 

[Enrahim2]

If you're saying publishers will go to court just to be able to keep selling old stuff, I definitely do not think so.

Likely not. But I think there will be at the very least for a while a fringe underground movement continuing publishing material for 13th age, PF1 and retro-clones. These systems seem to have a sufficiently strong fan-following that I don't foresee them being stomped out easily. And such fringe content will likely be published under 1.0a both to spite wizards, and to provide the sanctioned attribution to those creating the system.

Wizards would likely either have to see the other way, effectively allowing 1.0a to continue, albeit likely without any serious commercial actors. Or they would have to initiate a large number of highly unpopular legal actions, causing a constant remainder about how bad they are as a company.

1.0a is dead as a commercial platform for any "serious" actors - so in that regard wizards have gotten as it wants. Further insisting on trying to disallow even the "hobbyists" and "activist" to use 1.0a doesn't seem to align with any of their goals, so I really don't understand why wizard would press that matter. I just don't see 1.0a go completely away in at least the next few years. And that without anything actually going to court.

 

[jgbrowning]

I wouldn't hold my breath.

(I'm not even saying it can't happen. Only that people aren't trusting WotC to keep playing in its garden anymore. Whether the garden is safe or not is somewhat less of a pressing issue when it's empty)

There is no need to use analogies when we can talk about the thing at hand. People will still be willing to use WotC's Open Gaming Content after this. There are no other open licenses applied to that content, and "relying upon copyright law" to try and mimic that content results not only in a reduction of that value (like "what does Hits To Kill translate into?" etc.), it also comes with clear legal risks that are greater than using the OGL.

Any other open license and other new open license will not have as valuable content attached to it. That value will always create interest.

The OGL is very far from dead because the OGL as a license has minuscule value in and of itself: the value derives from the Open Game Content that has been attached to it.

joe b.

 

[kjdavies]

Likely not. But I think there will be at the very least for a while a fringe underground movement continuing publishing material for 13th age, PF1 and retro-clones. These systems seem to have a sufficiently strong fan-following that I don't foresee them being stomped out easily. And such fringe content will likely be published under 1.0a both to spite wizards, and to provide the sanctioned attribution to those creating the system.

I asked a friend -- avid 4e fan -- if there are still people creating 4e content.

"Oh yes! I'm well-connected. There are dozens of people!"