NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 5785915" data-attributes="member: 158">Thing is, I could live with a "more open" GSL versus using the OGL again, if they hired Clark Peterson or someone with his legal knowledge and passion for the game to give definitive guidance on the license, because in as example in him you had someone in business for themselves, who understood companies' desire to control its own IP, but also willing to make the concessions that make it attractive to 3rd parties to want to do something under license.  However, as much as Scott Rouse and Clark Peterson pushed, there was no budging above Scott, and personally I still get the vibe that both Linae Foster and Scott himself lost their jobs over the issue. Don't know if that's true, of course, just the impression I got from the time tables involved and statements made on message boards.That said, despite people telling me I'm wrong, I REALLY don't think a new edition will succeed without using either the OGL or a license open enough to entice both professional third parties as well as amateur users to use it. Why? Because to me the success of 3E wasn't in the brand, it was in the fact that there was no ONE way to play D&D. There was the Unearthed Arcana way. There was the Grim Tales Way. There was the Thieves' World way, the Black Company way, the True Sorcery way, the OSRIC way, the Swords and Wizardry way, and every fly by night blogger who had a new skill system in his campaign that "fixed" the problems he saw in 3E. We are a culture of tinkerers. We like to "make it better, our way" and share it. the GSL restricted this from happening dramatically. Under the GSL you can't:-reprint any existing mechanics-redefine already-defined game terms-redefine existing monsters-redesign the way core systems work (like healing surges)Could you do this on your own web site without the GSL? Sure -- as long as you run the risk of being C&D'd or sued because you're little fish. Everyone who isn't WotC doesn't want to take that chance, even hint at it, especially not in this litigious day and age.Under a safe harbor, you can "fix" D&D for your home games to your heart's content and share it with your e-neighbors. Without this part of the culture (that's been there since the late 1970's mind you, hello Alarums & Excursions!) the game's network doesn't embrace it as much.No, we didn't have an OGL for 1E or 2E, but I'd argue we had the same cultural landscape under the OGL we had under 1E, and less so under 2E. Early-90's TSR's financial failures were legion, but one major contributor I assert was the attitude TSR took on "derivative works" in the early 90s -- their earned nicknames of "T$R" and "They Sue Regularly" needed to be combatted in order for WotC to get the community behind D&D again. The OGL was one of several strategies Dancey used to restore the community's interest.That's my take on the "harm" the OGL has done, even though I don't have much more proof than a shaky cause-and-effect premise. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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