D&D 4E Interesting Article on OGL and 4E

[CaptainChaos]

http://www.chrispramas.com/2008/02/open-gaming-licenses-past-present-and.html

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That really is a very interesting article. I am particularly surprised to hear that even those who have signed up for the GSL program haven't been given any details yet. I wonder exactly how long WotC is planning on waiting.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Yes, very interesting. Very speculative too, however close to the situation he is.

I also expect there will be differences, but I fear the changes will all be in an effort to increase WotC's monopoly rents on its IP to the harm of the larger market (including the players). Anything that harms the cycle of innovation and feedback in game theory and game design means lost opportunities for us to have really awesome games.

Naturally of course WotC going out of business because anyone can resell the whole PHB (an extreme example) also harms innovation, since they have less incentive to do all that hard design work and playtesting. So a balance must be struck. But my concern is that WotC will move along the scale further from Linux and closer to the RIAA for apparent short-term benefits to WotC but to the long-term detriment of the gaming community (including WotC too).

I hope they hired some good economists and market modelers before coming to any decisions, rather than relying on corporate's "gut instinct."

 

[Charwoman Gene]

The thing I'm really interested to find out is whether the GSL will have a clause that forbids its use with the OGL. I think this is entirely possible. It would the mean that you couldn't take previously released OGC and use it in a book released under the GSL. A book like the already announced Tome of Horrors 4th edition would not be possible under this restriction. This would make things clean and easy for WotC, but would probably cause a lot of chaos in the world of third party publishing.

This is a very troubling statement. Chris is developing doomsday scenarios for other companies products, without any more justification than his own rumblings. I agree it's certainly conceivable for WotC to explore this exclusion of OGL info, but I don't think it should be so aimed at Necro's leaked ideas.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

This is a very troubling statement. Chris is developing doomsday scenarios for other companies products, without any more justification than his own rumblings. I agree it's certainly conceivable for WotC to explore this exclusion of OGL info, but I don't think it should be so aimed at Necro's leaked ideas.

I'm not sure I'm bothered by this. My biggest concern is that 4E 3rd party companies will just rehash a lot of what they did in 3rd edition. I want some new things to get produced for 4E!

 

[Gundark]

This is a very troubling statement. Chris is developing doomsday scenarios for other companies products, without any more justification than his own rumblings. I agree it's certainly conceivable for WotC to explore this exclusion of OGL info, but I don't think it should be so aimed at Necro's leaked ideas.

I think Chris is just making speculations on his blog. I didn't read anything malicious into it.

I too am surprised that they havn't gotten the GCL (or whatever the things is called), I would have thought that WotC would have been faster on that.

Based on comments from Paizo people I do suspect that they are thinking of staying with 3.5. This depends largely on how sucessful 4e is. I hope they go to 4e, my limited knowledge of business/publishing/and demographics would think that not switching would be bad for them in the long run.

Hopefully 3rd party companies will be able to update campaign settings and splat books to 4e (Iron Kingdoms). Time will tell though.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

I am ambivalent about 4e now and if Chris is right, then I will have no interest in 4e whatsoever. 3rd party publishers have IMO created some wonderful materials for D&D in 3e and 3.5e. Of course there was crap, but Paradigm Concepts' Arcanis, Fantasy Flight's Midnight and Dawnforge, Mongoose's Conan D20 (not D&D per se but damn close), Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous and various race books, etc. The market sifts out the crap on its own. Gamers don't need to be protected as if we can't make our own choices about what we will or will not buy.

I'm am writing up a setting now (my homebrew for many years) most likely as a system free setting with free add-on rules for True20 and most likely Runequest. I would like to do the same for 4e but an overly restrictive GSL will prevent that. What I dread is recreating what has been recreated very well under the OGL. I consider myself an excellent fluff writer (if I do say so myself ) but only an "ok" crunch writer. There are certain OGL mechanics that are very good as they are and I know I cannot improve upon them save as to tweak them for setting specifics. I acknowledge my limitations and am grateful to be able to fill in the cracks in my own abilities with the innovations of others.

And the bottom line for me is that I am only going to play what I can write for. Firstly, this is because I can playtest new concepts in the context of the game before releasing it and also I have no interest in supporting anything that is an attempt to turn back the clock on the cross-pollination of ideas that came with the OGL.

If the GSL is overly restrictive, I hope that Green Ronin, Mongoose, Paizo, Paradigm Concepts, etc. choose to keep with their own systems and keep the OGL alive.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Generico]

I'm not surprised by these licensing changes at all. The OGL, while great for information freedom and innovation, is not so great for profits. Like it or not, WoTC is a for-profit company. They have to pay people to produce their products, and in order to sustain their existence, they have to sell those products so they can continue paying their employees.

It amazes me that OGL has existed for as long as it has. It's far more like an open-source sofware license than something you would see from a for-profit company. I will give WoTC credit for their guts in publishing under that license, but to be realistic, it is too open.

I don't think closing things off a little will hurt innovation that much. In fact, it might spur the development of a few new game systems. Maybe even one that's better than d20. People will not stop creating content just because they can't use WoTC material. At least, the people who really just love to play RPGs won't.

 

[TerraDave]

This is a very troubling statement. Chris is developing doomsday scenarios for other companies products, without any more justification than his own rumblings. I agree it's certainly conceivable for WotC to explore this exclusion of OGL info, but I don't think it should be so aimed at Necro's leaked ideas.

I don't think the point is to pick on NG, but just to say "this will be a big change".

He also may be wrong on the ToH. If a new one was just published under the GSL, its not clear That past publication under the OGL would stop it. What I think preventing publishing under both licenses would stop would be something like an update of say True20 to include both 3rd and 4th ed mechanics.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I've been modifying my language from my initial reaction. I don't think Mr. Pramas is intentionally slagging on Necro's plans. I just think it was just a bit unintentionally FUDdy. No Malice.

 

[delericho]

I'm not surprised by the changes to the license. However, I do wonder just how closed 4e actually can be. I strongly suspect the rules will be OSRIC'ed pretty quickly. Failing that, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see some companies at least explore the ability to publish support for 4e under the existing OGL. Just to what extent that can be done remains to be seen, of course.

 

[Pinotage]

What I think preventing publishing under both licenses would stop would be something like an update of say True20 to include both 3rd and 4th ed mechanics.

Can you even prevent that, though? I mean, you can't really copyright mechanics, can you? In which case, you should be able to take 4e ideas and rework them into an OGL product without problems? Or am I missing something?

Pinotage

 

[nothing to see here]

The market sifts out the crap on its own. Gamers don't need to be protected as if we can't make our own choices about what we will or will not buy.

My understanding of the OGL experience is quite the opposite. The market did NOT sort out of the crap on its own. During the 'Boom' people were snapping up products left, right and centre -- the worst of the worst got rejected but a lot of 'crap' got snapped up.

Then when the inevitable post-boom glut came, people started hoarding their precious gaming dollars and a lot of good product was left languishing on the shelves despite being superior to a lot of what was selling mere months before.

 

[TerraDave]

You can't copyright them. Thats right. You can't copyright mechanics, but you can copyright text. So lets say 4th ed has a new Nature skill and you want to use that in your revised OGL game. But you can't just copy it outright, so you call it Nature Lore and have to reword the description. Which makes things just a little harder for those coming from D&D and saying "what is Nature Lore"? (though in this case they would probably figure it out).

And this gets back the original point of the OGL. Instead of making people reinvent the wheel, (or skill), and just adding that complication that fragments the game, maybe you should just let them use Nature.

 

[Pinotage]

And this gets back the original point of the OGL. Instead of making people reinvent the wheel, (or skill), and just adding that complication that fragments the game, maybe you should just let them use Nature.

Yes, but in the case of using 4e mechanics for 3.5e, or publishing it under the OGL, the fact that it's for two editions of a game means that you won't have that fragmentation.

Pinotage

 

[Nellisir]

He also may be wrong on the ToH. If a new one was just published under the GSL, its not clear That past publication under the OGL would stop it. What I think preventing publishing under both licenses would stop would be something like an update of say True20 to include both 3rd and 4th ed mechanics.

The Tome of Horrors is a pretty unique case. I expect there will be a ban on importing material from the OGL to the GSL (and there will definately be a backwards ban), but I don't think that can affect material one holds the copyright to. So, -I- won't be able to update the TOH to 4e, but Necromancer might. It depends on the agreement they had with WotC. If they can go back to the original agreement, they should be all set. If they can't, and were expecting to update TOH material to the GSL via the OGL, they'll probably be out of luck.

In either case, I think they could update original monsters from TOH, TOH2, and TOH3 that they own (most of the entries in the latter two, I believe).

 

[Gundark]

I do wonder just how closed 4e actually can be. I strongly suspect the rules will be OSRIC'ed pretty quickly. Failing that, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see some companies at least explore the ability to publish support for 4e under the existing OGL.

I think that "forward engineering" 4e rules to work under the OGL will not be possible. The fact OSRIC exists makes WotC aware that something like this was possible and they would take steps to prevent it.

I see companies trying to explore the ability of publishing 4e under the OGL. However I suspect WotC would be policing this firmly. It's not worth it for small companies to fight a legal battle to release a game regardless of whether they're right or wrong. That said I don't think that WotC will turn into Kevin Semebeida (God, I hope not) or anything with lawsuits.

 

[Ace]

I suspect the GSL will pretty much be an "adventures and only adventures" type deal for 4e.

WOTC wants the small publishers to do the stuff they think they can't sell. This isn't new, its what they wanted last time but the OGL kinda crimped that.

Also it wouldn't surprise me if WOTC's adventures will be "gotta get em all" kinda deals with extra content stuck in them as a sales spur -- Want to use the XYZ feat/paragon path than you need Temple of Damnation Adventure.

By next addition WOTC will be all closed content ...

 

[Alzrius]

WotC can't stop someone from making a set of OGL rules that mimic 4E. If there is a "Nature" skill in 4E, then there's nothing to stop someone from writing up a new skill called "Nature" under the OGL and - so long as the text isn't identical - giving it the same set of bonuses, making it usable under the same set of conditions, etc.

Even if WotC is aware of this, they have no recourse for stopping it (they can try to take it to court and hope they win via attrition, but that seems extremely doubtful). The only thing that couldn't be used would be protected intellectual properties, such as names of specific characters or names of brand new monsters (e.g. if they have a 4E monster called a "megataur," then someone could make an OGL version that matches all of the statistics, but would have to call it a "mega-minotaur" or something similar).

One way or the other, I think it's only a matter of time before we see an OGL product that's 4E compatible.

 

[starwed]

All this makes me wonder if a consortium of third party publishers might band together to release a kind of "next edition" SRD: not based on 4e D&D, although perhaps drawing inspiration from the things that seem to really work), but of their own devising.

Having a common rules framework doesn't really help WotC, since they're the biggest player on the block. But maybe it could help the smaller publishers out there compete with 4e, if the restrictions on publishing 4e products are too much.