HOW is this an OGC decleration?

[Yair]

This product is produced under the terms of the Open Gaming License v1.0a and the d20 System License v6.0. Open Content consists of game mechanics only.

This is the OGC declaration in a recently purchased product, for a company I respect, or at least repsected.
How can this be an OGC declaration? What person that has any respect for himself would claim this laconic and vague sentence "clearly indicate which portions of the work that [he is] distributing are Open Game Content"? How can anyone release the "game mechanics only" as OGC in good conscience when game mechanics only aren't copyrightable to begin with?
If you're not going to use the OGL, don't use the OGL.
I was considering using this thing. Its author has no respect for the work and product he builds on, no respect for me as his client, no repsect for himself.
I won't be reading it now. It will take me some time to get over my disgust.

Oh, BTW, this is a rant.

Yair

 

[DaveMage]

Out of curiosity, is this a product that is being released under license? (For example, something like the Wheel of Time RPG?)

 

[trancejeremy]

I think publishers have stopped even trying with regards to the OGL. At least some.

 

[Mark CMG]

They've basically opened themselves up to allow any particularly loose interpretation of what constitutes games mechanics that you desire. Perhaps, they really don't care and you can just have at it.

Heck, if it feels like a game mechanic to you and it seems useful in explaining some game rule aspect, then go right ahead and lift it.

What are they going to say? "We believed that people should be smart enough to understand what we meant, but that isn't it!"? Piffle, I say!

Just avoid proper names and anything that smacks of fluffy-fiction text and I'm sure they'll live with it.

Anyway, the time you are spending here complaining is time you could be stripmining their books and posting it on your wiki, so get cracking, you magnificent bastard!


(Try to leave them somthing to sell, though, would you? )

 

[Yair]

Out of curiosity, is this a product that is being released under license? (For example, something like the Wheel of Time RPG?)

No. Just the d20 STL and OGL.

Anyway, the time you are spending here complaining is time you could be stripmining their books and posting it on your wiki, so get cracking, you magnificent bastard!

For the first time, I'm actually tempted.
Not soon. I've got a TRPG and PbPRPG (huh! a new one!) to run, an OGC Campaign and ArM Spells Wiki to contribute to, and a mountain of work; I've got better things to do with my time.
But if I like the rules (and I suspect I will), I think I'll do just that before my next (tabletop) campaign and post the rules on my website. The publisher better hope I won't decide to incorporate them into my current game, or that time scale will be greatly diminished.

Yair

 

[Sledge]

What product are you talking about?

 

[Yair]

What product are you talking about?

The proper names have been witheld to protect the guilty.
Really, naming names will make this a personal attack rather than an attack on the practice, or at least risk it, and I don't think that's appropriate under the forum rules.

 

[danzig138]

Out of curiosity, is this a product that is being released under license? (For example, something like the Wheel of Time RPG?)

Even if it was something produced under license, thast wouldn't matter with that OGC declaration.

Open Content consists of game mechanics only.

This doesn't even say that all of the game mechanics are open, just that the OGC consists of game mechanics.

I wish the OP would simply say what the product is. I don't see how saying "X has this open content declaration" is anywhere near a perosnal attack, and I'd like to avoid buying something that crippled.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

It's mine, from Mythic Heroes, and I did it because I've read OGC declarations like that in larger publisher's works, and from time to time I enter my own products "into the record," so to speak. I do hope eventually to force a few issues.

I've done this from time to time with other products, as well, including Grim Tales, which includes a PI designation for game mechanics that are not derived from the SRD (the Fight or Flight rules).

Yair, you may do what you like with the work, no worries. Mark has the gist of it.

EDIT: I think the only pages that don't include any game mechanics (not counting front and end matter, obviously) are page 2 and page 7.

 

[Cheiromancer]

It's mine, from Mythic Heroes...

And it's a great piece of work; I hope nobody avoids it due to worries about the OGC. But really, it would have smacked of hubris to declare that archetypes like "the Mentor" or stories like "the Hero's Journey" are your own intellectual property; I'm glad you didn't. What you give in Mythic Heroes are ways of implementing these archetypes with game mechanics. And then you make it all OGC- I think that's very classy.

I must confess when I read the original poster I was thinking "What kind of joker would do that?" but now it makes sense.