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

[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.