In contrast to the GSL, Ryan Dancey on OGL/D20 in WotC archives

[Belen]

(1) It is not unreasonable to wish to get paid for producing content. Even so, many publishers have included free OGL on their websites. A good example is the Pathfinder Alpha release.

(2) The value in a product, in terms of open gaming, is the amount of OGC that product contains. Bastion Press, Necromancer Games, etc., have contributed to the open gaming movement far more than some other companies that could be named.

(3) Regardless of how many "pay products" there are, the OGL allows this material to be used in almost any way by the community, in perpetuity; the GSL does not.

Again, you are saying that publishers should retain the decision-making power. I do not think that Meals believes that one.

 

[eyebeams]

To my mind, the two basic issues are:

1) Games are not really the same as software.

2) Open source's effects and culture are not without flaws and differences of opinion.

With the first point, marketing and parts of the d20 design culture have very much promoted the point of view that there is an uncontested linear process of advancement in game design, even though real gamers have highly individualistic reactions to systems and concepts that do not really demonstrate how one rule is consistently better than another. This is a complex miasm of ideology, some very popular assumptions about game design that may be wrong (such as the applicability of averages to gameplay) and folks just winging that mother wherever they don't know something, but it's not always well-connected to play experiences. Whatever's in the mix, the result is that some folks like "less evolved" games just fine. Open source software is far less amenable to subjective judgments. We may hate an interface design, but things like load times and stablity are not really matters of taste.

With the second, the point is that if open source gaming was like open source software . . . it would probably have just as many problems. Open source has high ideals, but interpreting them and bringing them to fruition is hardly without conflict. Take Linux. Everybody loves Linux distros. You can find one to suit your needs without paying a dime.

Unfortunately, for the average user, most of them kind of suck. They're hard to install and are missing the easy functionality many typical users want. The fact that you can kludge a solution with sufficient effort is not an answer to this -- it's restating the problem. Consequently, big efforts to present Linux as a flagship OS have often ended up being criticised by a lot of the open source community (see Xandros and Linspire) for having closed elements, even though in many cases, these were the most expedient way to make them work for typical users. There are plenty of divergent customs about what the pillars of open source mean.

I'm not sure we can really judge the OGL as a success or failure without adopting criteria that ignore the interests of many people who used it. From one perspective, the "failures" included M&M and True20, which were certainly pretty successful for their designers, sponsors and fans. On the other hand, I'm not sure it sold more PHBs or added many basic play options that the average D&D player really used. I'm sure it did all of this for a certain segment of players (that probably includes the "prosumer" niche that is the dominant voice here at ENWorld) but not necessary enough people to really change the culture of D&D. I think Pathfinder's commercial performance will provide clues about this.

I'd say one of the big effects of the OGL is entirely pedestrian. It removed the need to rewrite scads of text about boring things like what skills do and how to make an attack roll. This effect alone made it especially suited for redesigning the core and I speculate this is a big part of why the GSL provides no such privilege.

 

[Mark]

Again, you are saying that publishers should retain the decision-making power. I do not think that Meals believes that one.

By your standard, people cease to be fans and part of the community by publishing, whereas in truth anyone in the community can publish and it only takes following the OGL and sending it to even one person to become a de facto publisher. Publishers do not retain any power they merely exhibit the strongest desire to share on a mass level. You, and Mearls, seem to be trying to massage your points by marginalizing publishers from the community at large.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

By your standard, people cease to be fans and part of the community by publishing, whereas in truth anyone in the community can publish and it only takes following the OGL and sending it to even one person to become a de facto publisher. Publishers do retain any power they merely exhibit the strongest desire to share on a mass level.

You are taking a different understanding of publisher than most people here, I think. When Mearls talks about publishers, he seems to be talking about for-profit companies that produce game materials. These publishers either exhibit the strongest desire to make a profit (ideally within some reasonable limits) or they perish.

The way that most Western countries reward publishers is through state-sponsored censorship and control of intellectual content, its reproduction, and its distribution. This allows publishers to charge more for their product because they have a monopoly on the intellectual content. (This is a market inefficiency implemented by the state in order to support some other state goal: the creation of creative works.) This distinguishes publisher from printers, which is what they would otherwise be without copyright.

The pressures on these publishers, and the only means they have of making money, means that they will behave differently in regards to intellectual property than other people will.

 

[Belen]

By your standard, people cease to be fans and part of the community by publishing, whereas in truth anyone in the community can publish and it only takes following the OGL and sending it to even one person to become a de facto publisher. Publishers do not retain any power they merely exhibit the strongest desire to share on a mass level. You, and Mearls, seem to be trying to massage your points by marginalizing publishers from the community at large.

No. I agree that they are a vital part of the community. They are just a different part because they tend to look at things with a different perspective. The hats you wear shape how you come at things.

Honestly, I think that publishers are doing what they need to be doing. I think it is the fan side which has failed.

 

[Mark]

You are taking a different understanding of publisher than most people here, I think.

That's a narrow view of what a publisher is that does not recognize the underlying document that triggered the Open Gaming Movement (the OGL). Mischaracterizing what a publisher is marginalizes most of the publishers of the community.

 

[Mark]

Honestly, I think that publishers are doing what they need to be doing. I think it is the fan side which has failed.

Except that there are no actual sides when someone can be either merely by generating material and presenting it to all. No one has failed, some have simply not chosen to become as involved as others.

 

[Bacris]

I think a critical point is that the WotC of the OGL and the WotC of the GSL are, in essence, two completely different companies, even if they carry the same name.

The WotC of the OGL produced the SRD as completely open. The WotC of the OGL produced the Unearthed Arcana supplement with vast amounts of open content derived from users. The WotC of the OGL opened up products like the Epic Handbook and the Psionic's Handbook (regardless of the quality of the content, the content was still opened). Unearthed Arcana, even if not the best product released, was a testament to Open Gaming, by taking community houserules and packaging them in an "official" variant sourcebook.

The WotC of the GSL, on the other hand, is releasing closed content that can be referenced, but not altered or restated. The license written by the new WotC is less about Open Gaming and more about tying things to the WotC rules, rather than offering the ability to come up with new innovations, designers (both fans and professionals) are hamstrung in just what they can develop for 4E because of the restrictions of the GSL, which by its very nature stymies the OGL, which therefore stymies the development of new ideas.

I've heard a lot of great things about Iron Heroes as a 3.5 variant - I even picked it up to check it out and thought it had some great ideas. The sad part? You can't create something like this for 4E, because you would be modifying 4E References, a violation of the GSL. That level of restriction with fear of litigation can do nothing but suppress innovation and creativity, because people are going to want to tweak 4E's base rules, but cannot share their ideas in a "packaged" capacity because of the restrictive nature of the GSL.

Am I saying the OGL was perfect? No. But we seem to have swung our pendulum from "too open" back to "too closed" and completely missed the "happy medium" in between.

Sure, I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before, but sometimes it bears repeating.

 

[Belen]

Except that there are no actual sides when someone can be either merely by generating material and presenting it to all. No one has failed, some have simply not chosen to become as involved as others.

I am not marginalizing anyone. I agree with you about publishers being fans. However, for profit publishers are different from normal consumers. They are an ingredient of the whole pie. Publishers see things differently. They have different goals and perspectives.

Example: A few months ago I posted this PDF I had created that ports occupations from D20 Modern into D&D3.5. I created this document because I wanted to use it for my game. People started telling me that I should attempt to "publish" the rules. Would it be that important for me to make some small change on them or would it have been better to be able to post them to a fan-created searchable database where anyone could have used them. Maybe someone rated them really high and people took noticed and there was a lot of adoption. Maybe a publisher comes along and sees how popular they are and uses them in a book. Which method is more valuable to the community? I don't know.

 

[Belen]

That's a narrow view of what a publisher is that does not recognize the underlying document that triggered the Open Gaming Movement (the OGL). Mischaracterizing what a publisher is marginalizes most of the publishers of the community.

It is the traditional and main view though.